by Amanda Quick
“Save your breath, sir. I was the one who actually spoke to Miss Post, after all. If Hamilton is guilty of this mischief, which I doubt, I have some questions of my own for him.”
“I feared as much.” Baxter got out of the carriage. He turned back as a thought struck him. “I have a question of my own concerning Miss Post’s visit to you.”
“What is it?”
“What with one thing and another, I overlooked one very odd piece of this business.”
“Yes?”
“Why was it that you did not believe Miss Post’s tale? What made you think that she was not my cast-off paramour?”
Charlotte gave a ladylike snort. “Don’t be ridiculous, Baxter. You would never abandon some poor woman who was pregnant with your child. Such a callous action would be completely out of character for you. Whoever sent Miss Post to me with that wild tale obviously did not know you well.”
Baxter studied the line of her firm, straight nose, which was just barely visible beneath the hood of her cloak. “I think it far more likely,” he said softly, “that whoever commissioned Miss Post to act her role did not know you well, Charlotte.”
He closed the carriage door before she could respond.
He glanced back once as he went down the street toward The Green Table. She would be safe, he thought. The coachman from Severedges’s would keep an eye on her.
In spite of the unpleasant scene that lay ahead, he found himself smiling a little as he walked through the light, swirling fog. Most ladies would have believed Juliana Post’s outrageous story. It was an all too common tale. Women alone in the world very often fell prey to the cruel seductions of men who had few qualms about abandoning them once the liaisons became inconvenient.
In the course of her extremely unusual career, Charlotte had become better acquainted than most of her sex with the dark side of masculine nature. Her view of men was pragmatic to the point of cynicism. It would have been quite natural for her to have believed the worst that Miss Post had to tell her. Yet she had not given a moment’s credence to the lie.
Baxter savored that thought as he approached the steps of The Green Table. For some reason that he did not want to examine, it was of vital importance to know that Charlotte had believed in him when faced with such damning evidence. Surely she had some spark of genuine affection for him that went beyond a mere desire for passionate experimentation.
A carriage rumbled to a halt in front of the gaming hell just as Baxter reached the steps. Loud laughter and coarse jokes sounded from the cab. The vehicle’s door slammed open and five young, drunken dandies spilled out onto the pavement. One of them lost his balance on the wet ground and wound up planted on his rear. His friends found his predicament hilarious.
Baxter stood back in the shadows and waited as the newcomers righted themselves and paid the coachman. When they turned to stagger up the steps, he fell in behind them. They never noticed as he went through the door in their wake.
The dim, firelit interior of The Green Table was thronged. Without his spectacles, the scene had an unfocused quality that seemed remarkably appropriate. Baxter did not need his eyeglasses to conclude that there was little chance of anyone observing him in the crowd. It was still early by Town standards, but the men who filled the overheated room were already sunk deep in heavy play at the green baize-covered tables. No one paid him any attention.
A roaring fire on the large hearth threw a hellish red glow over the scene. The air was thick with the smell of ale, sweat, and smoke.
Baxter found a secluded corner protected by a large, well-endowed stone figure of a nude female. He removed his pocket watch and held it up as though to get a closer look at the face. He studied the crowd through the single lens. The faces of the hell’s patrons sharpened abruptly.
There was no sign of Hamilton or Norris.
Frowning, Baxter started to close the watch. Movement on the stairs at the rear of the large room made him hesitate. He raised the lens again and took a quick look.
Several young men, including Hamilton and Norris, were on their way to one of the upper floors. Baxter wondered if there were private dining parlors above or if the new owner of the premises had elected to continue offering the services of a brothel in a more discreet fashion.
Then he recalled something Hamilton had said about the management providing a special meeting place for the members of his exclusive club.
Baxter shut the watch case and dropped it into his pocket. He did not need the single eyeglass to make his way across the room.
But when he got closer to the bottom of the staircase, he saw a large, somewhat blurred figure lounging against the banister.
While the crowd milled around him, Baxter took out his watch and risked another survey. One glance at the thick features of the heavyset man on the stairs was all that was necessary. He was looking at a guard. The man had obviously been posted to protect the elite club members privileged to partake of the pleasures that were offered on the upper floors.
Curiosity and a strong sense of foreboding descended on him in equal proportions. The ground-floor gaming room of The Green Table was bad enough. It was the sort of place in which a careless young man could lose a great deal in a night’s deep play. Whatever lay overhead was probably a good deal more unpleasant.
What sort of devilish nonsense had Hamilton gotten himself involved in? Baxter wondered. He could almost hear his father’s voice telling him to keep an eye on his younger half brother.
Stifling a resigned groan, Baxter eased his way back through the crowd to the front door. He waited until a group of patrons chose to leave and quietly attached himself to their number.
Outside on the pavement he made his way to the corner of the street. He paused to fish his eyeglasses out of his pocket and put them on. Then he turned and went down an alley that looked as though it would take him to the rear of The Green Table.
Most of the nearby buildings were dark at this hour but there was enough light from the windows and the kitchens of The Green Table to guide Baxter. The establishment was three stories high. From the alley he could see that the windows on the top floor were dark. But on the floor below, a tiny sliver of light escaped from one window.
Years ago, The Cloister had been notorious, Baxter reminded himself as he prowled through the shadows of the garden. In its heyday, it had been the sort of place that had traded in a variety of illicit activities and exotic tastes. It was an establishment that had needed clandestine entrances and exits, not to mention peepholes and hidden staircases.
It was the sort of place that had attracted his father.
A privy stood in the unkempt garden. As Baxter watched, a drunken man staggered out of the necessary and made his way back into the club through a rear door. A moment or two later, Baxter followed him. He found himself in a small servants’ hall. It was empty. A flight of narrow, twisting steps led to the upper floors.
He took the steps with caution. Fortunately, they were all in sound condition. He paused on the first landing. The door that opened onto the hall was locked. He had not thought to bring his lock picks, so he was obliged to pause long enough to correct the problem with the wire earpiece of his eyeglasses.
A moment later he was inside the darkened corridor.
He was about to make his way down the hall toward the room where he thought he had seen a light when he heard the scrape of a shoe on a wooden stair tread.
The sound was too light and too tentative to have been made by the guard.
He waited in the shadows. A figure swathed in a voluminous cloak entered the narrow hall.
He stepped quickly away from the wall and locked one arm around his pursuer’s throat.
“Do not move. Not one word. Not one sound,” he warned very quietly.
The trapped figure froze and then nodded quickly, silently. Baxter caught a whiff of a familiar scent, part herbal soap, part female, absolutely unmistakable. The particular fragrance was forever registered on his senses. He wou
ld go to his grave able to recognize it. It would no doubt be his grim fate that even on his deathbed, he would still suffer the sweet, aching tug of desire whenever he inhaled it.
“Bloody hell, Charlotte. What are you doing here?”
Twelve
“I saw you leave the club and go down the street. But you went off in the wrong direction. I did not know what to think.” Charlotte was breathless, not only from the anxiety that had impelled her to leave the carriage, but also from the mad dash along the alley and the climb up the rear stairs.
The shock that she had just received upon finding herself pinned in the dark by a man’s unyielding arm had only made matters worse. The realization that the man who held her was none other than Baxter was a tremendous relief but it was not doing much to slow her racing pulse.
Baxter sounded angry. Very angry. There was an ice-and-steel edge to his voice that she had never before heard.
“I told you to wait in the carriage.”
Charlotte struggled to take several deep, fortifying breaths. “I was concerned. I did not know what was going on. I thought you might need my help.”
“If I had needed your assistance, I would have asked for it.”
“Really, Baxter, there is no call to lose your temper with me. We are in this together, as I keep reminding you.”
“How could I possibly forget?” Baxter released her and gave her a small push toward the door. “We shall go back the way we came. Quickly.”
“But why did you come up here in the first place?”
“To find Hamilton. But that matter must wait. The first order of business is to get you out of here.”
“There is no reason why we cannot go ahead with whatever plan you had in mind.”
“There is every reason why we cannot.”
A burst of muffled masculine laughter echoed from the chamber at the far end of the hall. Baxter stilled. Charlotte felt him turn to glance down the corridor. She followed his gaze.
There was a small, undraped window in the wall at the end of the narrow hall. It provided just enough illumination to reveal the two rows of closed doors that lined the passage. A tiny ray of light winked from beneath the last door on the left.
“Hamilton is in that chamber?” Charlotte asked very softly.
“I suspect that is where the club members meet.”
She was intrigued. “You intended to spy on him?”
“Let’s just say that I was curious.” Baxter reached past her to open the staircase door.
Footsteps thudded on the lower stairs. A fresh dose of alarm went through Charlotte. Someone was coming up the rear staircase. Baxter did not swear aloud but she could almost hear his silent bloody hell.
He closed the door as quietly as he had opened it.
He seized her arm and pulled her down the passageway. She noticed that he did not bother to try the first three doors. Instead, he chose the next one. She breathed a sigh of relief when it opened at his touch. She did not relish the prospect of being caught in the hall by whoever was tromping up the stairs.
It would be not only awkward and embarrassing, but quite scandalous if she and Baxter were discovered there tonight. The fashionable young gentlemen of the club were likely to be incensed at being spied upon by Baxter St. Ives and his fiancée. Word would spread through the ton with the speed of a fire in the stews.
Baxter eased her through the doorway of the small chamber. Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the stale, musty smell that greeted her. It was obvious that the room had not been aired in some time. She moved with great caution, unable to see anything in the dense darkness.
Another distant rumble of laughter sounded from the room at the end of the hall. Baxter quickly closed the door. Charlotte felt him move and realized that he had put his ear to the panel. She knew that he was listening to the footsteps of the person who had climbed the back stairs.
She took a cautious step back and came up hard against another door. She realized it must open into the adjoining room, the one that separated this chamber from the one being used by Hamilton and his friends.
Outside in the hall, floorboards creaked as someone walked steadily past the room in which she and Baxter hid. Whoever it was did not pause. A servant going about his duties, no doubt, she concluded. Perhaps taking claret to the members of the club. She and Baxter would be trapped there until the man went back downstairs.
She touched Baxter’s arm.
“What is it?” he asked in her ear.
“Another door. Leads to the next room. You might be able to overhear what is being said.”
“I’ve got to get you out of here.”
“You keep saying that but we can do nothing until the servant leaves again. And as we are already in the neighborhood, it seems a pity to waste the opportunity.”
She felt him hesitate. She took his hand and guided it to the doorknob behind her.
“Bloody hell.”
But she could feel him wavering. She wondered if Baxter considered her a bad influence. After a few seconds’ pause, he apparently reached a decision. He stepped around her and slowly, carefully opened the connecting door.
Another wave of stale, long-closed-in air wafted out of the adjoining chamber. Charlotte leaned forward to peer around the corner. There was just enough light from a partially draped window to see something of the interior. A sagging bed, the looming shape of a wardrobe, and a washstand stood on the threadbare carpet. A framed picture hung askew on the wall.
Baxter touched his fingertips to Charlotte’s lips. She did not need the warning to remain silent. Only a single wall separated them from Hamilton and his friends.
There was another burst of laughter from the next chamber. Then it faded. Voices, less raucous now, could be heard through the wall.
Charlotte watched, mystified, as Baxter crossed the room to the wardrobe. He opened it cautiously and quickly examined the interior as though he expected to discover something of interest inside.
Plainly dissatisfied, he stepped back, gently closed the wardrobe door, and went to stand in front of the framed picture. After a moment’s close study, he lifted it down from the wall.
A small circle of light appeared. Charlotte stared in astonishment at the hole in the wall. It would, she realized, provide a view into the chamber where Hamilton and his friends were gathered. She made a note to ask Baxter how he had known to look for the peephole.
He put his eye to the opening. She went forward, eager for a peek, and caught a faint whiff of a sweet, smoky, herbal vapor. It reminded her a bit of the incense Juliana Post used. But this was stronger, more intense. She saw Baxter pull back far enough to take a deep breath of the stale air in the room before he turned back to the peephole.
The voices of the club members could be heard more clearly now but they sounded blurred and subdued, as if the men were not only intoxicated, but a bit drowsy.
“Begone, man,” someone said to the servant.
The door opened and closed. Footsteps sounded in the hall.
“It’s time to summon our magician,” one of the men announced in a dreamy voice. “Let us see what demonstrations of the powers of the metaphysical plane he has prepared for us tonight.”
“A test,” another man said in singsong tone. “He promised us a test. Let the great magician show us his skills tonight.”
“Excellent notion,” someone chortled weakly. “Let’s see how clever our mage is. Let him put Norris, here, in a real trance. You’ll volunteer, won’t you, Norrie?”
“Why not?” Norris sounded languid but willing. “Always glad to conduct an experiment on the metaphysical plane. Summon the bloody sorcerer.”
There was a shuffling sound next door, as though the furnishings were being shifted. Baxter took a step back from the peephole to get another breath of air. Charlotte saw the light coming through the small opening abruptly dim to a weak glow. Someone had turned down the lamp in the next chamber. The club members began to chant in an eerie, dreamlike cadence.<
br />
“Lead and silver, electrum and gold,
Degrees of power, ancient and old.
When the emerald laws reveal the sign,
Mercury, sulphur, and salt combine.
Pure knowledge exists for all to see
But few will ever know the key …”
The men repeated the chant, their voices thickening. Tongues got tangled. Someone giggled.
Charlotte tugged on Baxter’s sleeve. He hesitated. She gave him a small push and he moved reluctantly aside to allow her a peek.
She took a breath, stood on tiptoe, and put her eye to the hole. She found herself gazing into a dimly lit chamber that was clouded with smoky incense. There was a large wardrobe against the far wall. She recognized Hamilton and Norris. They and the other club members lounged on large Turkish pillows around a brazier. Each had a glass of claret in one hand, but they all seemed more interested in the fragrance of the burning herbs than in the wine.
“That which the heirs of Hermes desire
Is revealed to the laborers in the fire.”
The words were almost unintelligible now. The men nodded over their glasses. The incense that drifted through the tiny peephole was irksome. It made Charlotte’s eyes water and blurred her vision. She turned her head away to take a breath of fresher air.
“Behold, the magician,” one of the men announced with a small giggle. “He appears before us.”
Charlotte quickly put her eye to the peephole again. She was startled to see that there was a new figure inside the secret chamber. She was quite certain that the door had not been Opened. It was as if he had simply materialized out of the wardrobe.
The magician walked slowly across the room to stand amid the languidly sprawled men. He was cloaked from head to foot in flowing black robes. A heavy hood was pulled down very low over his face. Charlotte could not make out his features—because of the shadows cast by the hood, she thought. Then the newcomer turned his head slightly. Light glinted on a gleaming black silk mask that concealed his entire face.