“So what are you here to talk about then?” Lady Guthrie’s sullen voice bounced off the walls.
Celine’s voice quivered slightly. “Lord Granwich’s son.”
Lady Guthrie remained silent.
Henry’s voice was strong in the blackness. “Why did you want information on him, Lady Guthrie? Why did you make a deal with the Viper?”
Lady Guthrie’s laugh started low and rose higher. And then stopped. Long shallow breaths filled the air. “Are you listening to me breathe again, Anglethorpe? The other prisoners love to hear me breathe.”
“This is useless.” Henry’s mutter was audible in the stone lined room. “I’ve been coming here for a year. I can’t get anything out of her.”
“How’s your wife, Anglethorpe? Are you sure she’s still alive?” Lady Guthrie moved into the sunlight. Edward gasped as Celine moved to grip his hand tightly. The side of Lady Guthrie’s face that had been cloaked in darkness was a mess. Her jaw sunk away revealing teeth thinly covered by mangled lips. The skin was tight and red, as if it had been smoothed away from her face with a spoon. Her hairline started only at her left ear.
“I must leave,” Henry said. He pushed past Edward and Celine and banged on the door. “This is the first time she has threatened her directly.”
Edward frowned. “Why is she threatening your wife?”
Henry stopped banging as the door opened. “Because Agatha blew Lady Guthrie up. She is the reason Lady Guthrie looks like that.”
CHAPTER 9
Celine let go of Edward’s hand as Henry stalked out. “I want to continue talking to her.”
“You’ve heard Henry, she won’t speak to anyone.” Edward paused then re-grasped her hand and pulled her bodily through the door. “Celine, she is unhinged.”
Celine nodded. She’d accompanied them to the prison for Edward’s sake, worried that from every corner one of Mr. Khaffar’s men would pop out and deal a blow at Edward that would mean she would never be able to tell him how she felt. She just didn’t trust any of the others to look after him. “But if we don’t find out any information we…you are back to confronting Mr. Khaffar and his men, outnumbered, out armed. They want you dead, Edward. There were more than a hundred arrows on that door before I left.” She clenched her fist. “I don’t care what Pithadora says, there is more to this note than meets the eye.”
“I must have some sort of leverage, some way to stop him,” Edward muttered. “I know everything about his business dealings.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you going back in there, Celine.”
“Why, Edward?” Desperately Celine looked into his face, uncaring of the gaoler who swung his keys behind them. “Tell me why.”
He blinked and looked away. “I won’t have it on my conscience.”
Celine hunched. Why had she bothered?
“If you aren’t coming back in, go away.” Lady Guthrie’s voice snaked through the door. “I need time with my thoughts.”
“I’m telling you she’s, she’s mad,” Edward said hoarsely.
Celine shook her head. “She’s not mad, Edward.”
“How do you know? You’ve met her for five minutes.”
“Because she’s lucid. She talks in straight lines, she plots, she measures the effect she has on others, she shocks with her disfigurements. She might hold a different set of moral values to you or I, but she is not mad in the sense of the word where she barks like a dog.”
“But…but…what if she’s forgotten everything?”
Celine frowned. Edward’s line of questioning was off-kilter, unexpected even. “You mean as in forgotten why she wanted the note?”
“No. Yes.” He shook his head, anger entering his voice. “All I know is that I don’t want you going in there with her.”
Celine took a step back towards the door. “Is this like you and the war effort, Edward? Run away from conflict as fast as you can in the hope that it won’t happen to you?”
“It’s already happening to me, Celine! If you insist on going back in, I’m going in with you.”
She blinked.
“But I won’t allow you to get close to her. You may believe she’s sane, but I think she’s more like a wounded animal—”
Celine didn’t stop to listen to Edward. She nodded at the gaoler who let them back into the cell. The darkness enveloped them again.
“So you’re not holding his hand this time are you?” Lady Guthrie’s snide voice trickled across the stones. “Gained a little confidence have you, little sister?”
“I’m not your sister.” Celine smoothed her damp hands against her skirts. By gods, the woman was manacled, but yet she, Celine, was still afraid.
“No you are not. My sister, my cousin who was my sister was ten times the woman you are.”
“But she’s dead. Lord Anglethorpe killed her.” Celine’s voice was flat. The Monsieur Herr affair had been all across the papers, detailing in lurid terms the death of one part of the Franco German spies, Monique, and her cousin Lady Guthrie at the hands of an unnamed war hero. It wasn’t hard to guess who the killer had been.
“Bastard.” The word came out like a shotgun.
“I know how you feel.” Celine’s voice was hot, powerful. “I’d like to rip his shirt open, push my hand in and pull his heart out whilst it still beats.” She remembered the hurt, the pain as Henry looked across at Agatha, and Celine realized that the couple had found what she could never have. Still did not have.
“Yesssss.” The hiss came a little closer. A chain clanked as Lady Guthrie got to her feet, only the side of her dress in the light from the window.
“I could trap him for you.”
Edward jerked beside her. She put out a hand and felt blindly for him, staying him with a push.
Celine left her hand on Edward’s warm body. “You know who I am, don’t you?”
The spit to the floor was audible. “A putain for the Melinno Society. That’s why I call you little sister. You are no better than I or my ilk.”
Celine kept her hand steady as Edward surged against it.
“Then you know what I can do. I had him before. I know everything about him. I can get him for you again, here in this cell.” Celine paused. “And you unchained.”
“And then?”
“He’s yours. All yours. Of course Anglethorpe is unlikely to come back unless I throw him a crumb to bring him back. I’ll have to concentrate on this problem of Lord Granwich’s son first.”
“Dear young Major Coxon-Williams?”
Celine drew a breath and stepped forward. A name. She had her, the eagerness in Lady Guthrie’s voice spilled out with every syllable. “Yes,” Celine breathed. “If I could just find the Major—” She gasped as a claw like hand clutched at her ankles and pulled. She screamed as her hand lost contact with Edward, and an inhuman strength dragged her further into the cell. “Edward! She’s—” Twisting and turning Celine kicked out with her feet, connecting only occasionally with Lady Guthrie who grunted but kept pulling her in. Blindly Celine felt with her hands for a knife, but her fur coat had her tangled as it pulled up against the damp stones on the ground. “Edward, help me!” She gasped as a shooting pain surged through her ankle. “My god, Edward, where are you? She’s bitten me!”
Where in the hell was he? Celine groaned as the pressure increased on her ankle. She grasped at the floor, trying to find a grip amongst the cobbles.
Then suddenly all pulling at her feet ceased. Lady Guthrie’s hands that had so powerfully pulled her suddenly disappeared. The woman grunted once, and then there was silence.
Celine scrambled to her feet, her breath hitching with every movement. “Edward, Edward? Where are you?”
Silence filled the cell. Running to the door, Celine banged on it. Had he slipped away to leave her? To teach her a lesson when she said she would trap Henry?
The gaoler took a few moments to open the door. Celine shook. “Give me a lamp.” The gaol
er shook his head and gave her his small oil burner. “Come with me,” she pleaded, but she no time to wait for him. Celine turned and held up the lamp, waiting for its light to fill the cell.
Lady Guthrie lay flat on the floor, stretched at full length, her chain taut away from the wall. Celine gazed in shock as Edward sat, a knee on Lady Guthrie’s head, a foot lengthways on her body, pressing her flopping body into the ground, his hands effortlessly pinioning Lady Guthrie’s arms behind her back. His head drew down low over Lady Guthrie’s and Celine could just hear him muttering.
The gaoler took one look and ran from the room. “Help, help, men needed, Lady Guthrie’s at it again!”
It took eight men to hold the woman before it seemed Edward could let her go. He walked towards Celine, but didn’t touch her.
“How is your ankle?” he asked gruffly.
Celine ached to touch him. She put out a hand, but he danced away. Her arm fell slowly back to her side. “I can still walk.”
Edward walked past her, not stopping at the exit to the cell, onwards down the dank corridor. Celine ran after him. “Edward, wait!”
But he wouldn’t. With seeming ease he navigated down the confusing staircases, into the main front hall, past the officers and out onto the street. In the light of the day, his face was a dull red.
“What did we gain from that?” Edward exploded. “I told you not to go in there!”
Celine pulled her coat around her. “I wanted to try and find out what she knew. For your sake.”
“For my sake? Don’t you mean for your sake, Celine? For the Melinno Society? Isn’t that all you care about? I’m just a leg up in your career.”
“No, Edward. Melinno aren’t interested in the note anymore. Don’t you understand?” Celine took a deep breath. “I don’t want to lose you.” Oh gods. She’d said it. She’d told him the secret that no one else knew.
But he didn’t stop in shock. He didn’t melt, or put his arms around her. He laughed harshly. “Lose me? Celine, how can you lose someone that you never had?”
Celine swallowed at the air. She felt as if she was drowning, the blue of the sky coming down to meet her. “Don’t you—don’t you—” She couldn’t continue. The bite on her ankle started to throb.
Edward threw his hands in the air. “And you know the worst thing. You know what that animal, that maimed animal in there told me?” He waited, his gaze as sharp as a knife.
Celine said nothing, whimpering softly inside.
“She told me that Granwich’s son is dead, and that someone called Fairleigh, the only man that knew how to find his body, was dead too.”
Celine rested her head against the wood of the coach body as it shuddered back to the East End. Edward had thrown up his hands and walked away from her, leaving her frozen in the harsh sunshine outside the prison.
Hunching in her seat she pulled at the shoes that had not protected her ankles. Hitching up her skirts she looked down at the uneven scores of marks that tattooed her skin. Lady Guthrie’s teeth had sunk deeply into her flesh, not in a round semicircle, but in a strange S shape that followed the line of the deranged woman’s damaged jaw. Blood still poured from the wound, despite the makeshift dressing she had tied to it.
Slowly Celine pulled at the hem of her new, beautiful green skirt, and blotted it against the wound.
How had Edward managed to negotiate the dark so easily to find her? In silence too, against those cobbles, trussing Lady Guthrie up like a rabid animal?
An animal. Edward had already called her that, a wounded animal.
Celine gasped as the blood from her wound seeped out of the bandages. And their lead had finished. Both the son and whoever Fairleigh was, were dead.
“Out you get, Celine.” Gunvald opened the door. She hadn’t realized the coach had stopped. “Loverboy not here to look after you?” His face softened as Celine blinked at him.
Pulling at the coach rails, she hoisted herself to her feet, wincing as her ankle throbbed. “I’m not sure we’ll see him again.”
Gunvald looked at her astonished. “You’re giving up? We went all the way to the north country and rescued him, just so that you can give up?”
Celine sniffed. “He doesn’t need me.”
Gunvald barked out a bite of laughter. “And you don’t need him.” The disbelief in his voice was obvious.
Celine turned to him in anger. “You made fun of him. You made a fool out of me. You didn’t take it seriously.”
“Yes.” Gunvald sobered. “That was before I met him.”
Celine frowned. “What changed your mind?”
Gunvald frowned. “Isn’t it obvious? That man is no mere accountant! And if he is then I am the second Beau Brummell.”
Celine couldn’t stop her gasp of laughter. Gunvald didn’t realize, but he was more good-looking than Beau Brummell, in the ice like way of the Swedes. It wasn’t just his looks, it was his devil-may-care attitude and insouciance as he picked his way through locks, and then made off into the night.
Gunvald smiled. “That’s better. What now?”
Celine took a deep breath. There were dead ends everywhere she looked. They had no more new information that helped them. She paused and stared. Bloody hell.
“We go to the Melinno library, Gunvald. Lady Guthrie gave us the name of Lord Granwich’s son. Major Coxon-Williams.”
Gunvald shook his head. “I don’t understand how that helps or why you even continue to pursue this.”
“Don’t you see? All those war documents Pithadora has that we’ve collected? They contain all the names of enlisted officers since 1790. He’ll be in there.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll find out just what he was doing for the last twenty years for everyone to want information on him. Blackmail my foot. Don’t you see—that’s why the note is so important? This isn’t about Lord Granwich. This is about his son!”
CHAPTER 10
Edward walked blindly away from Newgate prison, shaking off its emotional sludge with every stiff step. The bells of the Old Bailey Court House chimed a pretty tune behind him as he skirted the City walls and trudged up Old Street towards the white villas of Islington.
As he reached the front door of a large suburban villa he stopped and frowned. He’d blindly followed the path that he had many times before as an accountant and businessman towards the Old Bailey to give evidence in financial transactions that he had been involved in. But not once had he ever feared for his life. And yet despite Mr. Khaffar having threatened him, shot arrows at him, no one, but no one had bothered him at his most vulnerable as a walking pedestrian on the wide open space of Old Street.
Hurriedly he looked around himself. The road was watchfully silent. Frowning he stepped up to the door and knocked.
Alasdair pulled open the front door slowly, apprehension filling every rounded curve of his cheek. His face slackened in relief as he caught sight of Edward.
“Mr. Fiske!” His cry was a fervent plea for help. “What a to-do!”
Edward pushed the door open further and strode into the tiled hallway. He’d bought the villa from new. The designer of the terraced house had offered him all sorts of fancy tiles for the entranceway but he had chosen black and white. It had suited who he was at the time. “I need a wash, Alasdair, and then I need to check on some of our business deals.”
“Um. About that.” Alasdair hung onto the door, as if wanting to give Edward the option to leave again. “One of your more persistent clients has paid us a visit.”
Edward rubbed at his hair. “Mr. Phelps? I told him weeks ago that the Great Randolph would not dock at Wapping for at least five months. It has only just arrived in New York. If he wants a return on his investment of twenty percent then he is going to have to wait for it.”
“Ah, no. It’s not Mr. Phelps.”
“Good god. It’s Count Ondaren isn’t it? That man never pays his debts but is always keen to be in on th
e next hot thing.”
“Err you could say our client is at the sharp end of business, sir.”
“And I’ve grown sharper since our association, Mr. Fiske.”
Alasdair hung his head as the menacing figure of Mr. Khaffar stepped out of the shadows of the small morning room. “I did try and get him to leave his sword at the door, sir, in the hat stand but I—”
“I can be very persuasive,” finished Mr. Khaffar.
Edward took in a deep breath. “Killing me won’t solve any of your problems, Mr. Khaffar. All of those arrows missed. And I would remind you that there are many people interested in my whereabouts.”
“Kill you?” Mr. Khaffar grinned. “Why would I want to kill you?”
“You mean that nice stunt you pulled with the scimitar up north and then the hail of arrows whilst I was in a shop were just your way of warning me how you do business?”
Mr. Khaffar blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Edward pulled the door from Alasdair’s hands and kicked it shut with his foot. Mr. Khaffar looked like a badger that had been startled in its hunt for worms, not a wolf ready to jump on its prey. Yet even badgers were fierce fighters, and he knew from Celine that Mr. Khaffar had already used his sword to brutally maim.
A little of the bravado that had helped him close the door left him. He rubbed at his face, his arm brushing against the hard weight of his pocket watch beneath his coat. He pulled it out and opened the lid mechanically and closed it again. It was only then that he realized he had not checked the time. Drawing his hand away from his face he looked up and picked up a pair of spectacles from the hall table. They were completely useless, but they made him feel the part.
Edward cleared his throat. “You want to know about my association with Lord Anglethorpe and Lord Granwich?”
Mr. Khaffar nodded. Alasdair drew in a sharp breath behind him.
“I wasn’t entirely truthful when I said I had never done any business with them.”
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