Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “Have you heard anything from Bow Street? It’s been days.”

  Lucian frowned. “No, but my staff certainly has. The runner in charge of the case spends more time in my kitchens than my dinners do these days.”

  “He’s been investigating you?” Arthur asked in astonishment.

  Arthur seldom saw his older brother looking uncomfortable. But now the older man rolled his shoulders as though his tightly fitted jacket was pinching. “He is, he has been,” he admitted. “I think I’m going to have to increase the reward even more to get some other runners on the case. This one believes murder begins at home. Or at least, he thinks I’m the heir, and so his suspicions center on me. Men of that class often see relatives doing each other in for gain, I suppose,” he muttered. “Too bad we can’t have thief-takers who aren’t so very nearly thieves themselves.”

  Lucian looked up at the ornate ceiling, then eyed the dark mahogany wainscoting lining the dim, heavily shadowed salon. “You’ll have to have the place redone, of course,” he commented. “It hasn’t been touched since the last century. Put this heavy furniture in storage, get some new light pieces, in the Egyptian style that’s all the rage since Wellington went there. Bring in some color.” He waved a hand at the walls. “Paint it something bright, pleasant. Apple green, perhaps…” He paused, looking surprised at what he’d said. “Well, the thing is you can do wonders for the place,” he went on briskly. “It could be made comfortable enough, more than enough for a young sprig like you.”

  “You’re being premature,” Arthur said, though his fresh face flushed with pleasure, or embarrassment. “We haven’t heard the will yet. And—well, damme Lucian, but it doesn’t feel right to be talking about acquiring a man’s worldly goods when we’ve just laid him in his grave.”

  “Why? It’s all he ever talked about,” Lucian said callously—“justifying his autumn marriage, nattering on about the importance of begetting a male heir. What else is everyone here thinking about? Apart from the way he died, of course. I’m not the only one who found his forthcoming nuptials distasteful; others had better reason to resent it. Many are relieved the money’s not leaving the family. Just look over there, in the corner—Cousin James. I’ve seen sadder faces at orgies. He must have hopes.”

  “Hopes?”

  “Arthur, we must get you to listen to some gossip,” Lucian sighed. “Yes. He’s a gambler. He was born to a comfortable income, but not half enough to support his pleasure. One may see him at horse races all the time, unless he’s at a boxing match, or cockfight or a gaming hell, that is. He’s no great wit, and lives to wager… Now there’s a fellow the runner ought to be questioning. That’s a thought. I wonder if James saw Uncle often enough to wedge himself into a Last Will and Testament. I must remember to drop a word into Spanish Will’s eager ear.

  “On that head,” Lucian said seriously, “have you been thinking about it? Any word recalled, any new ideas at all on where Uncle was bound that night?”

  “Perhaps…” Arthur said hesitantly. “I’ve come to think that maybe he went to buy Louisa a bride present. He did ask me what young girls would want, and so it’s the only thing that makes any sense at all. Because that might have been his errand, and if he’d just bought something expensive and someone had seen it and was following him, it might account for a sudden savage attack. I do listen to gossip sometimes, Lucian.”

  He leaned closer to his brother. “And I hear some people are saying he might have been buying something not quite legitimate down there. I mean, you know—sometimes one’s barber or bootmaker says they know someone in the slums who can get their hands on a valuable they want to sell cheaply to be rid of fast. That could be. All Uncle knew how to buy was books. How would he know where to get something for a young woman? Jewels from Bond Street cost a fortune and he wasn’t used to spending much. He always gloated when he got a good bargain on a valuable edition. I can’t see him doing that in the normal way, but who knows? Love does strange things to men, they say.”

  “Coming it too strong!” Lucian said with a bark of laughter that made everyone in the room stare. Any other man might have looked abashed, Lucian merely stared back until they dropped their eyes and looked away. “Love—and Uncle? And in the same breath?” he chuckled. “Still, there may be something to it. Maybe Louisa’s interest was waning, perhaps at the last minute she was thinking of calling it off. Maybe he thought diamonds would go a long way to mend matters…who knows? Interesting though…” he mused, staring across the room at the young woman in black.

  His gaze sharpened. “Who is the gallant soldier at her shoulder?” he asked. “The one looking at her the way a dog looks at a bone?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Past time to see him now, then,” Lucian said, already moving toward the pair. “Again, I offer my condolences, my lady,” he said, bending over Louisa’s black-gloved hand, where she sat, by his mother’s side.

  “It is I who ought offer mine to you,” she said, looking unflinchingly into his eyes. “After all, I’m not related to him, am I?”

  “Alas, no,” Lucian said, his face unreadable.

  She wasn’t an attractive woman, but she wasn’t ugly. She looked like many another woman, and that was her tragedy. Tall, with a boyish figure that the new fashions showed to advantage, she had a face that was eminently forgettable. Her eyes were brown, her nose was straight, her lips well shaped, she had no deformity, but no grace notes either. Since she was also quiet and well mannered, she was the kind of woman men forgot about when some other female who was curvaceous and smiling came into the room. Or one who was slender and witty, or provocative with any kind of looks, for that matter. She was well liked but little noticed—until she’d become engaged to the Baron St. Cloud.

  “She’s holding up beautifully, Lucian,” his mother said with a frown. “And I wish to say again that I think it doesn’t look right for young Nicholas not to be here too. You were at your father’s funeral when you were not much older than he.”

  “Rightly so, Mama, since he was my father,” Lucian said coldly. “Your brother was Nick’s great uncle. I sympathize with your loss, but now you suggest I take my son out of school and send him on such a journey in this weather for such a treat?”

  She gasped as he went on. “Three weeks of fog with the roads closed half the time and the coaches crashing into each other the other half, and now this incessant snow. I’m sorry, Mama, but I don’t aspire to attend two funerals this winter. Nick stays at school until spring unless I die before then, and Convention be damned.”

  His mother glared at him, but didn’t argue. He was right; he was usually right, but that didn’t endear him to her. Not much did. Why could he not be like Arthur? Child of her old age, and solace to her always. Even so, as she often told Arthur…she could almost wish Arthur had been the firstborn with all the rights, privileges and fortune. Because Arthur really liked her. Lucian tolerated her. He was very like his father.

  At least, the dowager viscountess thought triumphantly, Arthur would get her brother’s estate now. It wasn’t a patch on what Lucian had, but at least it was something he wouldn’t have. Lucian had too much as it was. Her brother had been a cold unfeeling man, but he’d listened to her and begun to cultivate Arthur a few years ago. And now he was dead before he could marry and leave it elsewhere. The religious were right, the viscountess thought happily, the Lord did move in mysterious ways.

  “Such a pity, poor girl,” she said again, patting Louisa’s hand.

  Louisa said nothing. Lucian noted it and approved. There was nothing for her to say. She was already an intruder in this house of mourning—if anyone was mourning the baron, that was. It wouldn’t have been easy being his bride. It might be worse being the almost bride of a man found naked and dead in the gutter. But at least it was briefer. The gossip would fade in time. Left to his own devices Uncle might have lived on for years.

  “A terrible misfortune,” the soldier
standing close to Louisa’s side said, with a slight bow. “My condolences, my lord. It’s a most unhappy circumstance.”

  He didn’t look unhappy, Lucian thought, returning his bow. He looked proud, pleased and dashing in his Hussar uniform. He would have looked merely weedy in civilian clothes, Lucian thought, assessing him. Slight, with an ordinary face sporting a military mustache that tried to make up for his thinning blonde hair, his right arm was bound in a sling, clipped to his chest. But not so close as to obscure his medals.

  “This is my cousin, Lieutenant Pascal, my lord,” Louisa said. “Jonathan, here is Lord Maldon.”

  “Cousin by marriage,” the lieutenant corrected in a murmur, bowing again.

  Louisa ignored his comment. “My cousin just arrived in England, my lord. He’s mending from wounds received when he was with the Marquess Wellington, at Nive, just a month ago. We’re happy to have him still with us.”

  “No happier than I,” the lieutenant said. “At least to be here, I mean to say. Not, of course, to be at this sad occasion, no, no. I’d thought to be at a wedding this week. Ah, well, that’s life, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s death, actually,” Lucian said.

  The conversation faltered, as everyone tried to think of something fitting to say.

  “My lord?” a meek hesitant voice behind Lucian asked. “Ah. Um. Lord Maldon? If you’re not busy at the moment?”

  Lucian turned to see a stout middle-aged man looking at him anxiously. “If you’d permit me to introduce myself? I’m your late uncle’s man-at-law. If you could spare me a moment? If it’s convenient?”

  The room went deadly still.

  “Of course,” Lucian said. “The reading of the will?”

  “Oh my no!” the lawyer said. “We can’t probate with such speed, my lord, not even for you. But there are a few details that must be seen to immediately. So if you’d be so kind as to step into the library with me?”

  “I see. Come along, Arthur, we may as well get things moving,” Lucian said.

  He turned, Arthur at his side. They were stopped by the lawyer’s agonized whisper. “Oh, but that won’t be necessary,” he said apologetically. “Mr. Arthur doesn’t have to come. His bequest can be handled in its time. It’s the running of the household, the little matters—but quite large in the servant’s eyes, of course—the disposition of their duties until such time as you make final arrangements as to their future in this house….”

  Lucian sighed. “I am the head of the family now. But let’s dispense with formalities. My brother, as my uncle’s heir, can and should see to that.”

  The lawyer looked even more agitated. His whisper sank to a tortured croak. “But my lord!” he said miserably. “such is not the case. You are your uncle’s heir, and will get all—save for some bequests to his staff, and such.”

  “And my brother?” Lucian demanded, too surprised to care about all the enthralled listeners around them.

  “Some volumes…some books,” the lawyer stammered, looking from the viscount’s angry face to Arthur’s white one.

  “But he was my uncle’s favorite!”

  “Yes, my lord, true…but you see, your uncle was a most conservative man. You must be aware of that. And so for all he enjoyed Mr. Arthur’s company, ‘Mr. Fisher,’ said he, ‘the lot goes to the elder, so it always is, and so it must be. I won’t be the one to break with family tradition, nor should anyone expect me to.’ He was going to change the will after he married, if he had a natural heir, of course, but…” The lawyer’s voice faded into the silence in the room.

  When Lucian finally spoke again his voice was clipped. “Yes, then certainly,” he said crisply, “I’ll be there—after a physician is called for my mother; she appears to be ill. See to her, Arthur,” he snapped at his brother, who was standing stock still. Then he muttered, low, “Damn him, damn the old fool, anyway!”

  “But you must have known, my lord,” the lawyer protested, “for that was the one thing the baron knew about you. ‘Whatever else he does, he does the right thing,’ he told me, many a time he told me that.”

  Lucian shut his eyes. When he opened them again, everyone in the room was still staring at him. Except for his Mama, of course.

  *

  “What you need, lass, is a man about the place,” Tom persisted. He still hadn’t left Maggie’s back room though he was done delivering his coal.

  “Yes, so you’ve said,” Maggie said impatiently, “and that’s what I’ve got. And more. Men, women and children, everyone in London, these days. I can’t keep enough fish in stock. I thought it would pass. But they’re still here. It’s become a meeting place for everyone. They come, they buy, they gossip and wait.”

  “Good for you,” he said.

  “Well, if it was permanent… But even so, I can’t be easy.”

  “Exactly!” he said triumphantly, stepping closer. “Days must be fine, the shop’s filled. But nights… Oh Lass, I bet you can’t close an eye. I bet you sit up at every sound you hear.”

  “Not likely,” she said, laughing. “I’m so tired these nights, I could sleep through a herd of…but don’t be getting any ideas. I’ve got the girls and Davie on alert, and safeguards too. So don’t you think to come catting around of a night, because all you’ll get for your troubles is a bucket of water in your face and enough screeching to raise the Watch and the dead.”

  “Then invite me in,” he said with a bold smile.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” she said, her smile gone, a warning clear in her voice and her eyes.

  “There’ll come a day,” he said with a shrug. “Just remember I’m here, willing and able.”

  “And married,” she said, as she turned her back on him, and went back to the shop, leaving him standing there.

  But she was called to the back room often because deliveries kept coming. She’d put out the word and the cream of Billingsgate Market obliged her. Other fish sellers might have to go down to the docks at dawn to get the best selection. But Bernard’s relatives remained loyal. Besides, she always paid cash, no arguments.

  One had a particular fine delivery for her.

  “Plump, fresh, I don’t know how you get them, Mr. Hardy, what with the weather and all, but I’m that grateful,” she said, looking at the box of shining silver mullet he’d just delivered.

  “Aye, well, I’m thinking you’ll be more so in a minute,” he chuckled, fishing in the inner breast pocket of his heavy coat. He was an old man, or at least, he looked it; sun, wind and brine had practically pickled his face. He sailed out of London and fished in deeper waters than the Atlantic, or so rumor went. Bernard’s family were seafaring men, and some had connections it was better not to ask about. They could deliver fish, or treasure whose origins were best left in ignorance, or so Bernard had said when she’d first gasped over some of her wedding presents. As she did now.

  “Better than last time?” he asked, grinning.

  “That vase was magnificent—but this! Oh Mr. Hardy! I’m almost afraid to touch it.”

  “Well, you needn’t be!” he said indignantly. “If it were stolen, it were done a hundred years ago. Got it off Our Martin, what just come back from the Caribes, and he vows that’s so. You know we’ve never landed suspect merchandise on you, nor will we ever.”

  “I know, that’s not what I meant. But this!” She gazed at the perfect little jade figurine of some long dead Chinese lady.

  “Well,” he said smugly, “you got an eye for beauty, so when we see such oddments and pretties, we thinks of you. For Old Bernard’s sake. And you pay prompt. So?”

  “How much?”

  He told her. It was more than reasonable and they both knew it. “I hadn’t planned—but how can I pass it up?” she sighed again. “Done! But what’s to become of my old age I don’t know—what with me spending every spare penny on such beautiful things as you bring me.”

  “Ha! Got a great many extra pennies these days we hear! And no reason for a saucy, pretty wench li
ke you to be worrying about your old age, is there? Not when you could get a husband by snapping your fingers. But after Bernard, may he rest in peace, who can blame you? As for the pretties? I vow, Maggie, you love them so, ’tis a wonder you don’t open a shop and sell them ’stead of fish. We’d do for you, y’know. Keep you well stocked with all sorts of chinaware and gems, for only a small percent of the take.”

  “There’s a thought—for another lifetime! I can hardly keep this shop running smooth. And how could I bear to part with them? Cod’s one thing, art’s another. Still…I love this, and thank you kindly, I’ll treasure it.”

  She paid him, said good-bye, and carried the figurine up to her own sitting room immediately. She put it on top of the bombe chest another of Bernard’s relatives had sold her years before. But after giving it one last glance, she hurried downstairs again. There’d be time to gloat over it in privacy later. It would ease the long hours when she couldn’t sleep, which were many these past nights, no matter what she’d told Tom.

  When she got downstairs, she found she’d more company, and they’d made themselves at home.

  “Davie brung us tea,” Mrs. Gow said when Maggie came into the kitchens to see whose voices she’d heard. “’E’s a good lad.”

  “Wouldn’t trouble you or clutter up your kitchen,’ Mrs. Gudge explained, “only we knows you always keeps a kettle on. Got a basket of mackerel for you today, sweet as peaches, swear on me life. Can you use them?”

  “Absolutely,” Maggie said, sitting down with them at the table.

  “Well, you’re still run off your feet, but it’s all blown over now, ’asn’t it?” Mrs. Gow asked, setting down her mug of tea. “It’s as I said, didn’t I, Mrs. Gudge? The nob was scragged and it’s a fair pity—poor soul, what a turrible way to die—and ’im turning out to be a baron, no less, what got so much to live for! But it’s over like a summer storm and good riddance, says I.”