by Sophia James
‘The Comte de Beaumont asked me for some recommendations yesterday. He is rumoured to be rich beyond any imagination.’
Violet turned to the window. She did not wish for her godfather to see the emotions that would be so readable in her eyes.
Aurelian de la Tomber had not come, but had sent others in his stead. Was this a sign? Would he stand beside her in any practical manners, but no longer in the intimate ones?
‘He is out of London today.’
This brought her attention back into the moment.
‘Who is?’
‘The Comte. He sent word that he had some business to take care of and would not be in the city until the morrow at least.’
‘Do you know what business?’ Amaryllis asked this of Charles and Violet blessed her for it.
‘Yesterday he saved you at the park, Violet, but only just in the nick of time. De la Tomber does not strike me as a man who would enjoy nearly being bested.’
‘What does he strike you as, then?’
‘One whom others tread carefully about. If you listen hard, there are many things said of him.’
‘I know he is a spy for France.’ Violet stated this because she was sure Charles knew he was and because she wanted Amaryllis to know of it, too. ‘What else is he?’
‘A hidden man. A dealer in violence. A soldier of a ministry that would stop at nothing to see that his home country stays intact.’
‘Why did you ask him for his help, then, yesterday?’
‘Because he is a man who does not obey the strict rules of conflict. I was right to ask him. Without his presence...’
‘Violet would be dead.’ Amaryllis stepped forward. ‘I am not certain you buried as many whispers as you might have hoped to, though, Mr Mountford. According to our housekeeper, there was much gossip in the markets this morning about the Comte’s part in the fracas in Hyde Park.’
‘A fact that is worrying.’
‘Because it places him in more danger?’ These words slipped from Violet unbidden. Already she could see the peril in it, for him, for Aurelian de la Tomber, her knight in shining armour. Was this part of why he had left London and put other guards in place here? Had he gone now to try to deal with the assailants by himself without the English knowing, in the hidden and festering underbelly of the criminal world?
Would he be back?
She had offered him her body under the pretext of safety, but after last night she knew next time it would be for a repeat of the feelings that he had engendered. She could not imagine there not being a next time, and lust was only a small part of her yearning for him.
Charles looked concerned.
‘Everything about the attempt on your life yesterday in the park was unusual, Violet, and made no sense whatsoever. Someone set de la Tomber up and yet it was a last-minute decision on my behalf to visit him and plead for his assistance.’
‘Could there be someone in the Home Office who wanted him dealt with, then? Someone with the same information that you had?’
‘I received word of the attack an hour or so before it happened so there was no time to gather up a group of youths unless...’ He tailed-off, clearly amazed he had actually said so much, but Violet was not letting him off so easily.
‘Unless what.’
‘Unless the one who sent the assailant wanted the French Comte to be remarked upon, to be out in the open, so to speak?’
‘That sounds like a dangerous place to be.’
‘It is, but de Beaumont can disappear in a heartbeat just as he can appear in one. He was the one who helped Summerley Shayborne home to England and he has aided countless others.’
‘English people?’
‘And French and Italian and Spanish. His speciality is dealing with the trickiest of diplomatic disasters and resolving them when it suits those in charge of the power in France. I doubt he has failed in one single mission.’
‘Not a man to trifle with, then.’
‘Or a man to settle. As your godfather, Violet, I would advise you to stay well away from him.’
Amaryllis coughed in a strange way. ‘The French Comte did save her life yesterday, my lord. He can’t be all bad.’
‘Untamed is a better word, Mrs Hamilton. He’s like a wolf in a henhouse when he graces the hallowed halls of the ton. All teeth and hunger.’
Charles was right in that, Violet thought. Every person in the room was approaching this conversation from a different angle. On her behalf, she wished Aurelian might come back and gobble her up again.
‘If there are any developments with your assailant, Violet, I shall send word. As it stands, the guards outside will protect you and Cummings and his department are doing their very best to try and make the miscreant talk.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave her gratitude in a haze, everything that had happened over the past few days sending her mind awhirl. She wished Aurelian would come tonight to see her, but Charles had said the Comte would not be back in London until tomorrow.
* * *
The smell of rivers never changed, Lian thought. Not in Paris nor in London nor in any far-flung stinking hellhole into which he had trawled in order to find information.
The tone of the calls of the working boatmen across a falling day seldom changed, either; the congestion of the evening leaving a heavy wash on the boards of the lighter upon which he travelled.
The others about him pressed in, trying to escape the wetness. Drying heavy wool in winter was difficult and it was far better to simply do away with the need for it. Hence the man to his right was almost plastered to his chest, the smell of old tobacco and cheap liquor on his breath and sharp interest in his eyes.
The note that Violet had showed him last night worried him. The paper had smelt faintly of some scent he could not quite get a hold of. A hand of disguise, but a light hand none the less.
‘You be going over for the celebrations of the wedding of the MacKintosh party?’
The man beside him waited for an answer and, having little idea of what he alluded to, Lian simply shook his head. He’d long been at home with accents and had an ear for returning the cadence of languages so the thought of falling into conversation was not worrying him.
What was concerning him was the fire he could see on the bank to the left, a fierce wind whipping the sparks south into the timbered wall of a shack on the close.
He’d been in the middle of the July fire in Paris of 1810, when the Austrian Ambassador had given a ball to celebrate the wedding of Napoleon to Marie Louise of Austria. Ever since, he’d been wary of flame and this one seemed to be growing by the moment.
Others, too, seemed to be becoming increasingly aware, the shifting weight causing the wherryman to shout at the top of his lungs for the passengers to keep still as the wooden piles of the wharf came beneath the boat.
The air was thick with rancid smoke though the wind was swirling and the next moment it was gone to blow in an opposite direction.
John Wylie was waiting for him.
‘We’ll need to go away from the riverfront because of the fire.’
‘Is it being put out?’
‘Oh, aye. The firefighters have arrived and the place is self-standing, so the only problem now is finding a seat in another drinking establishment, given the tavern here has been emptied. I coulda come to you, guv, if ye’d wanted it so.’
Aurelian shook off the idea. ‘No. It’s better here. Is Welsh with you?’ After yesterday at the park he could not be sure he wasn’t being watched.
‘Over there with Peter Flavell. They both did as ye asked.’
The room they found after walking up the incline was at the back of the tavern, a small rickety space with the barest of privacy.
‘The man in the custody of the Home Office is dead, guv.’
Aurelian swore. ‘You are telling me that h
e died under lock and key and well guarded? That’s something to think about and think about hard.’
‘Flavell spoke to one of the guards who brought food to the prisoners. He said the man in the bottom cell was dead as a doornail with froth at his mouth come morning.’
‘Someone wanted him gone,’ Aurelian said as he looked across at Peter Flavell.
‘Badly. Douglas Cummings visited him once.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘A woman. Mrs Antoinette Herbert. She lives in Kensington for I followed her home. A lady of means by the looks and most agitated.’
‘You have the address?’
‘Here.’ Flavell brought a small scrap of paper from his pocket and gave it to him.
‘Who was he? The man in gaol?’
‘Stephen Miller. A jeweller. He had a small shop in Holborn but he had been Dragoon in the Peninsular Campaign under Moore in Corunna so he was handy with a weapon.’
And cognisant of the properties of gold, Lian thought, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
‘There’s something else, too.’ Frank Welsh spoke now. ‘It seems you have stirred up a nest of hornets. The gaol cell of Miller’s might very well be yours to occupy next.’
He smiled. ‘I’d like to see them try it. What of Chichester and the death of George Taylor? Did anything more come of that?’
‘Taylor was hit by a carriage on the Southern Road. He was another jeweller with a shop in the centre of the city. A well-heeled one, too, by the size of the purse that was found upon him.’
‘Not robbery, then?’
‘Well, his luggage is missing.’
‘Luggage?’
‘Taylor had been to Chichester and was on his way back to London, by horse. His steed was found wandering a mile or so up the road and the pub master where he’d been staying was certain he had left with luggage.’
The smell of the fire had reached this place now, the wet scent of damp ash and smouldering embers. At the Austrian Embassy on Chausée d’Antin, Lian had pulled the lifeless body of the Ambassador’s wife out of a salon filled with flame and thick black roiling smoke. Fire gave him the feeling of a hollow pit in his stomach, but so did the unexplained deaths of Miller in the gaol and Taylor just outside Chichester.
Desperation caused mistakes and someone willing to kill had a lot to hide. These dead men were not thugs, but jewellers and gentlemen. The man in the boarding house in Brompton Place had been of the same ilk with his soft body and unmarked hands and there had been a full purse in his pocket, too. Men like this should have been enjoying the fruits of their labours rather than dying ignominiously and in violence, yet someone or something was paying them to take a stand.
Douglas Cummings was not quite as he seemed and neither was the jeweller Whitely. This was another worry. Could all these deaths mean that the fortune of French gold was still intact or at least that someone believed it to be? Perhaps the person who had it wanted no others to talk? No links. No strands of culpability. A clear mandate to spend it and never be bothered again.
Violet was the daughter of a jeweller and the wife of a man with French sympathies who had been sent the gold in the first place. Perhaps she knew too much, had seen too much?
‘There’s something else you need to know, too, guv.’ Peter Flavell lowered his voice. ‘The woman in the park you saved yesterday was also the one who Douglas Cummings went to see around noon today. He was there for a while. The Minister, Charles Mountford, was there a bit earlier.’
This did not make any sense. Why would Violet meet Cummings at home on the day after an attempt on her life and especially if Mountford had visited an hour or two before him?
The wrong side of the law in a land that was not his own was always going to be a difficult place to operate in. Someone would make a mistake soon, he knew they would and he had to be ready. He just prayed that it was not going to be Violet Addington.
* * *
Hours later Lian watched the Addington town house from a small distance, sliding into the moonlight through the overhanging trees to hide his presence. The same wind that had ignited the shack on the south bank of the Thames blew here, the force of it lifting the old brown leaves from the streets and sending them scurrying down the road towards Beauchamp Place. He glanced at the fob watch at his waist.
Eleven thirty.
Late enough for the house to have gone to bed. He moved forward, waiting till Eli Tucker, the largest of the guards, came closer before speaking.
‘Have there been any problems?’
‘My God. You gave me a hell of a fright, sir, appearing out of thin air like that. But, no, there hasn’t been any sign of trouble.’
‘Stay on here, then, until you hear otherwise from me. No one else but me. Do you understand? For I am the one paying your wages and I need you here until I say that I don’t.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
He left the man there and, using a heavy vine that twisted and knotted, he was up on the second-floor balcony within a moment.
The door opened even as he stood trying to work out exactly what he might say. Violet was dressed in a nightgown, pale and flowing, her hair in the moonlight far darker than it ever looked in the sun.
‘Aurelian?’
‘I cannot stay.’ Hell, what had made him utter that? Uncertainty, he thought, and the worry that she might begin to understand him just as others did. Distant. Brutal. Savage. Second chances for him were not things easily doled out.
‘Why the hell was Cummings here today?’
He had not meant to ask this so baldly, the demand harsh against the candlelight and the quiet.
‘He came briefly to deliver some papers.’
Her face flamed and the discomfort in her eyes was easy to see. Lies were his stock in trade and he of all people could recognise untruth.
Flavell had said the man had been in the house for a good hour and he would not have lied. Disappointment filled him even as she stepped forward and her hand took his.
‘Come inside for it’s freezing out here.’
Her room was so warm he had to take a deep breath, the fire blazing and more than a few candles burning. There were a number of books on a table beside her bed and he tried to remember the last time he’d had enough hours in his life to read. So many things he no longer did as he’d walked the lonely pathways. A ghost sometimes, a shadow. The living embodiment of emptiness. The end of nobody’s rainbow.
‘Thank you for the guards. They make us feel safer.’
When he didn’t answer, the frown on her face settled, but he felt dislocated and strange, the heart of hope ripped from his body.
* * *
He was more distant tonight and larger and taller and darker. The clothes he sported were also different, less fashionable. They were garments that the poorer inhabitants of the east side docklands might have favoured. The chill from outside had come in and the fire flickered in the grate and smoked badly. Aurelian smelt of smoke, too, and she wondered. The man from last night had dissolved into this one.
‘Your assailant from yesterday is dead.’
Shock ran from her head to her feet. ‘How?’
‘He either killed himself or someone else did it for him. I do not know which it is yet. My guess is the second.’
No one else had been truly honest with her in all of her life and she liked the way he never tried to soften unwanted facts. It was one of the things about him that she liked the most. He treated her as an equal. The niggle of her own untruth about Cummings’s visit surfaced as a result.
Lian said, ‘I think that Douglas Cummings may have some hand in this. How long has he been working for Mountford?’
‘For years, I should imagine. Why?’
There were tensions in him that she thought he was trying to hide. He spat out Douglas Cummings’s name as if he hat
ed the very sound of it.
‘A whole lifetime of work and yet he still has no true authority in anything he does. A man like that might seek other avenues of advancement.’
‘Illegal avenues?’
‘Not everyone is inherently honest.’
‘Are you?’
He laughed at that and then sobered. The sound was not kind.
‘My father has been placed under home arrest in Paris. He will stay that way for as long as it takes me to find the lost gold.’
‘And if you cannot?’
‘I very rarely fail in anything I pursue.’
Important considerations and large reasons to succeed, she thought, watching the black indifference in his eyes. There was threat there, too, bound in his words.
‘Mountford said the very same thing of you.’
‘I don’t imagine it was enunciated in a particularly flattering way. We have crossed paths only briefly, the Minister and I, but it has never been easy.’
‘He advised me today to keep well away from you.’
‘A bit late for that, I think.’
It was the first personal thing he had said to her and she stood still, waiting.
‘You probably should take his advice.’ His voice was deep and cracked. A voice tonight with a great deal of wariness on its edge.
‘Should I?’
His hand slid across the line of her chin though the expression on his face did not match the gentleness of his fingers. There was cider on his breath and in his clothes sat the smell of the river.
‘I am not who you think I am, Violet. I am a much darker man than the Comte de Beaumont who appears in society and those who know me also know never to cross me.’
* * *
The shock of his words had her turning. He was a spy who might decipher everything on only small and tiny clues and Amaryllis and her sons would be gone in two days, away from British law and injustice, away from paying so completely for the death of a man who had abused them.
‘Cross you? Why would I do that?’
She was glad her voice sounded strong. The fury in her was building by the second, but alongside that came caution.