by Kate Moore
“You sound very sure. You’re always so sure, as if I could never be right.”
“I don’t know what happened. It’s the spies’ job to find out, and if we do, the club will open again.”
After a moment she asked, “Is it so important to you that the club reopen?”
“It’s everything,” he said. If she couldn’t love him, at least the club would offer work and pay, and a chance to go on rising in the world, far beyond Bread Street.
She didn’t answer, but he heard the bedclothes rustling again and the bed frame creaking.
“Is the mattress lumpy?” he asked.
“No,” she said in her smallest voice.
Something troubled her, and he waited to see if she would tell him. He should not have mentioned the club. He knew it was a vexed topic. For months Miranda had pinned her hopes and fancies on one of the club’s gentleman spies. Lord Hazelwood was a disgraced and disinherited lord who made a charming spy and who would never marry a shop girl. Now Hazelwood had married another.
When he didn’t hear her movements any longer, he asked, “Do you still love Hazelwood?”
In the close and empty darkness she made no reply.
* * * *
Harry was out of practice. He had not attended a polite dinner party in years. He had forgotten how admirably some women could maneuver to advantage in the terrain of a drawing room. He knew good tactics when he saw them. Miss Throckmorton was adept at it, while Lucy plainly had no sense of strategy. It was up to him in the last minutes of the evening as the guests moved toward the stairs to get close enough to speak a word in her ear.
“Miss Holbrook, I wonder if you would come for a drive with me in the afternoon tomorrow?”
She looked up with a ready smile and a glow of pleasure in those blue eyes. It was a mystery how a man like Iron Tom Holbrook with his dark hair and brows and a build as square and solid as the Norman tower of St. Botolph’s church had come to bear such a fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter. Harry was in danger of getting lost in those eyes.
“You’ll want a complete account of how our friend is getting on,” he told her, making good on his promise.
Her glance shifted away, her smile dimmed. “Thank you, Captain, that would be kind,” she said.
The business of leave-taking separated them again before he understood what he’d said to rob her of that first smile.
As the husband hunter dresses for an outing in London society, she fears that her lack of acquaintance in town dooms her to the sidelines of any gathering or conversation. At times it seems that everyone around her has been on the town forever and that allusions and asides have a meaning to the Londoner that she cannot fathom. At other times London ways seem odd. She is amused at the degree of importance attached to such trivialities as the cut of a gentleman’s lapel or the plumes in a lady’s hat. She fears that her inexperience and lack of familiarity with London ways will exclude her from good company. But she need not fear. A lively curiosity and an open mind are the only vouchers she needs to be admitted to the best company in London.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter 12
The captain, arriving in Brook Street at the fashionable hour for a drive in the park, met with Cassandra and Cordelia’s entire approval for his hat and caped driving coat and the look of his curricle and pair. With a quick survey of Lucy’s dove-gray pelisse, gloves, and bonnet, they hurried her out the door to see and be seen.
After he handed her into his carriage, he met her gaze and asked, “What’s so amusing?”
“Don’t look up,” she said. “I’m sure my dear friends are observing us from the window. They’re determined to snare me a husband and have given you their seal of approval as the ultimate fashionable accessory for a woman’s appearance in the park.”
“Accessory?”
“Exactly.” She gave him a quick scrutiny and found it was not enough. He was not handsome precisely, but compelling. She wanted to look at him far more than politeness permitted. “Apparently, my being seen in your company will draw the notice of other gentlemen.”
“Do you have any in mind?”
“It’s early days yet, Captain. Besides yourself and my old friends from our Back Bench Lending Library, I have met few eligible bachelors.”
“And you wouldn’t bet on a horse without seeing the field, is that it?”
“Exactly, the husband hunter must cast a wide net.” Lucy laughed. If he intended to flirt with her, he showed no sign of doing so.
The street was crowded with carriages like theirs headed for the park on an afternoon of warm sun and cool breezes. The trees made a swaying tracery against a bright blue and white sky. The captain handled his pair with ease. It was one more thing about him that drew her attention. When he’d got them through the traffic of Grosvenor Square and the park was in sight down the end of Brook Street, Lucy brought up the true reason for their drive.
“You wanted to tell me about Adam,” she said.
“He’s with a friend of mine,” he said, “a steady man, who keeps a shop with a back room and a small garden, quite concealed from notice. They get on well together.”
“Has Adam had any...episodes?”
“None. You’ve thought about why he has them, haven’t you?”
“When I was twelve, I made quite a study of his...frenzies. He had so much distress that summer, and I thought there must be a way to...help him if I could understand what brought on his...fits.”
“And did you figure anything out about their cause?” His gaze was on his horses, but he seemed intent on her answer.
“No. Papa made me stop. I wrote down all the things Adam said in those moments. I thought perhaps they made a story.”
He nodded, watching her with a narrowed gaze. “And you thought it would help him if you could unravel the story?”
“I did, but Papa convinced me that it would be a selfish experiment to push Adam to relive whatever happened. It might drive him to true madness.”
“Would you be willing to risk the experiment now, if you thought it might help him?”
“Perhaps, if I thought him growing worse, or if I truly could not manage to keep him at the inn.” It struck her that Harry Clare should have thoughts similar to her own about Adam. She gathered that he had been at war from the long Peninsular campaign through the final decisive battle at Waterloo. He must have been quite young when he began soldiering. She had had a glimpse of his scars, but he had survived. He must have seen other men with worse wounds, perhaps even wounds of the mind such as Adam suffered.
There was a bit of a jam entering the park, and he slowed the horses to a halting walk.
“How do they bear it?” she asked. “They are made for freedom and speed, but we put them in harness and blinders, tug on their poor mouths, and insist that they barely move.”
“We ask much more of them than that,” he answered.
“In war, you mean?”
“And wherever there’s money to be made from their strength. Radcliffe is a notorious abuser of horses, you know.”
She shook her head. “Tell me.”
“He wears his teams out and shifts the weakest horses to the night run. They die in the traces at an appalling rate.”
“So why is someone stealing those horses?”
“I’d like to know.”
“Is that why you drove out to the scene of the robbery the other day?”
A brief flash of surprise showed that she’d caught him off guard. “Cole abandoned his passengers. I thought I might offer some help.”
It was a quick recovery, but he was not telling her the true reason he’d gone out to the scene of the robbery.
They passed at last into the park proper and joined the fashionable parade. It was plain from the looks and laughter and gaiety of most of the crowd that it was the hour fo
r flirtation. Lucy caught the glances ladies directed at her companion. Perhaps they envied her, but she had to laugh at herself at how little interest in her he showed. Their talk was all of Adam or horses. If she had to sum up his character, she would say that Harry Clare was a man who put duty first, kindness second, and ladies, nowhere. She could put to rest the question of his having any special interest in her. Still, she thought to rally him a little. She was startled from the thought when a gentleman on a tall bay gelding rode straight at them, reining in, blocking their path. Harry pulled the carriage to the side.
The gentleman stared hard at Lucy while he brought his restive mount to order with a harsh application of pressure on the horse’s mouth. The lathered animal stood, snorting and quivering.
“I see you’ve found an heiress already, Harry,” the man said.
“Good afternoon, Richard.” Harry angled his shoulder forward, so that his body was between Lucy and the stranger. “Miss Holbrook, my brother, Lord Mountjoy.”
Over Harry’s shoulder Lucy nodded to the earl. His angry pallid face offered no answering acknowledgement. Lucy saw little resemblance between the brothers.
“Time is running out, brother,” he said to Harry. “If you’re going to marry money, you’d best have the banns called at once and get on with it. I had an offer for Mountjoy today.”
“You’ll have others, I’m sure,” Harry answered.
Richard turned his gaze to Lucy. She met his pointed stare as steadily as she could. “Do you fancy him, girl?” Richard asked Lucy. “Your friends can help you to a better match, I’m sure.” He leaned forward in his saddle. “My dear brother has neither charm nor money. I’m surprised he’s left off his uniform. It’s been his meal ticket for years. I hear he gives a firsthand account of the great battle for a mutton chop and pot of ale.”
As abruptly as he’d come, Lord Mountjoy wheeled his horse around and set off down the carriage drive against the traffic.
Harry Clare maneuvered their vehicle back into the moving line of carriages. It was several moments before he spoke. “I’m sorry you had to endure that. I did not expect to meet him here.” Nothing in the cool manner of his driving suggested that he was the least disturbed by his brother’s anger. “You know Adam talks of you and Queenie. Of the pair of you, he may miss Queenie more.”
Lucy swallowed. She understood him. They were to keep the conversation light and teasing. It wouldn’t do to say that she thought the unpleasantness of the encounter was nothing for her, a moment’s discomfort, while for him the pain of such an estrangement from a brother did not end.
“Queenie, I’d quite forgotten her for the moment. She must have come home by now.”
The captain said nothing in reply, apparently preoccupied with his horses in the London traffic.
* * * *
Lucy was becoming an old hand at dinner parties. She tried not to feel the least bit let down at the absence of Harry Clare. He was hardly essential to her pleasure. He had taken her driving in the park. She could not expect him to dance attendance on her.
She paced herself through the inevitable courses and removes on Lady Eliza Fawkener’s table, avoided the buttered prawns, kept an overzealous footman from refilling her wine glass, and picked her moment for the ladies’ retiring room. But she could not elude her new acquaintance, Miss Sophia Throckmorton.
At the interval between dinner and the tea tray Sophia squealed with delight upon seeing Lucy, and with an unerring instinct for causing discomfort, she settled down to probe in earnest about Lucy’s mother.
“I’ve just learned how dire your situation is! Poor you. You can’t be presented at court, can you?” she asked. “Not until you resolve the question of who your mother’s people were. I wonder that your father did not make some provision for telling you.”
“Oh, not so dire, I think. I can’t be presented while still in mourning, in any case,” Lucy said.
“Quite so. Your father was innkeeper, was he not? I expect he was just the sort of careful man one expects an innkeeper to be. Did he never mention the church where your parents married?”
Lucy shook her head. She had a sudden rueful realization that as a child she asked more questions about Adam than about her own mother. She had accepted her father’s explanation that her mother died in childbirth and that both he and she must not dwell on their loss. “Tell me about your—”
“Oh, well, I suppose you could try St. Botolph’s. It is likely that they were married right there, and their names would be in the book. Or...” Sophia bounced in her seat, her splendid bosom covered in old gold braid. “...or, you could try your father’s solicitor. Solicitors are shockingly privy to all manner of family secrets, I dare say.”
* * * *
Nate did his best to stay awake in the moving coach. Miranda had drifted off miles earlier. Now she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, one of her hands looped through his arm. The story of her ailing mother and Miranda’s beauty had won them the front-facing seat inside. The soft velvet crown of her bonnet rested against his left ear.
They’d survived the awkwardness of waking in their room in the morning, but she’d been in low spirits as they’d wandered Sunley. They had sent an express to Captain Clare to tell him they’d be on the Rocket. Then Nate had dragged Miranda through churches and graveyards, and treated her to linen and lace shops. Only the stockings they’d found to replace her ruined ones cheered her briefly. Still he could not regret their adventure. Wherever they went, he’d turn and catch a glimpse of her profile, or feel the weight of her hand on his arm as they crossed cobbles and climbed stone steps. Now in the rocking coach he enjoyed the warm weight of her body against his and the huff of her breathing. He just needed to outlast his fellow passengers before he looked for anything hidden in the coach’s secret pockets.
Nate had noted the coachman Cole as they’d boarded. A smile split his broad red face, and coins from the passengers jingled in the pocket of his many-caped greatcoat. He carried a short tommy, a murderous weapon of weighted whalebone that could extract the last burst of speed from a flagging horse. The Rocket itself was a ton of wood, leather, and steel built for speed by London’s premier carriage maker.
Nate did not catch the guard’s name, but he didn’t like the exchange of glances between Cole and the guard as they entered the coach. Nor had he liked the guard’s notice of Miranda. At the moment they bowled along at a steady pace on a road that seemed mostly in good repair. By the dim light of the carriage lamps, he watched the two men opposite him. Once he was sure the other passengers slumbered, he would check the lining of the coach’s side panels.
* * * *
Miranda was not sure what woke her. Her bonnet was askew on her head, its ribbons cutting into her throat, and her right arm felt tingly from sleeping on it. An unfamiliar weight pressed her to the seat of the coach. It was Nate Wilde stretched across her lap in a shocking way. He was reaching into a pocket in the side of the coach. She tugged at his shoulder to pull him upright, but he was too heavy to budge.
“What are you doing?” she hissed in his ear. Across from them their fellow passengers snored.
He closed a panel on the side of the coach with a soft click and righted himself next to her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.
“What were you looking for?” she asked, whispering like him.
“There’s nothing there,” he said, his voice puzzled.
“What did you think—”
Shots, splintering glass, and sudden darkness cut off her question. The horses veered sharply to the left, and the coach leaned alarmingly. Above them the outside passengers shouted. Miranda clutched Nate’s arm and held on as the coach wobbled like a blancmange. Just when it seemed likely to topple over, it stopped.
Over the squeaks and creaks of the vehicle and the rattle of harness, a contemptuous voice said, “Cole, you anno
y me. What have I said about using a tommy on your horses?”
“They’re Radcliffe’s cattle, not fit for the clapper most of them.” Miranda recognized the coachman’s voice.
“Highwaymen,” whispered one of the passengers opposite them.
The voice outside spoke again. “Your fellow creatures, Cole.”
“Just get on with your business, man, and let me do mine.”
Then the highwayman spoke in a foreign tongue. From the woods on either side of the road came a gang of shadowy figures. There were more voices in the strange tongue and the jingle of harness and clop of horses’ hooves.
“They’re freeing the horses,” Nate whispered. “Like the last time.” He shook off her hold and turned the latch on the door, pushing it slowly open. That was just like him. She was frozen with fear, and he was going to stick his head into trouble.
Without letting down the steps, he dropped softly to the ground.
Miranda hesitated an instant, then stuck her head out of the door. “The steps,” she said to Nate.
He put a finger to his lips and lifted his arms to catch her.
“You there. You’re in league with the thieves. Stop!”
She turned to see the guard pointing his pistol at Nate from the rear of the coach. It made no sense.
Then he fired. The flash of it illuminated his face. The shot spun Nate to his left, and he crumpled to the ground in front of her. Miranda jumped. She dropped to her knees in the dirt and rolled Nate onto his back, tearing at his coat, searching for a wound.
Around her she could hear shouts in the strange tongue and moving horses, but her ears were mainly full of the shot. She tore off her gloves and felt his shoulder. Her fingers found the hot blood welling up from the wound. The smell of it terrified her. Nate’s blood was leaving him. She pushed down hard with her gloves against the place that bled.
She lifted her head to look for help. A man was leading the coach horses away into the woods. Instinct told her the robbers were about to leave. She would be alone to care for Nate with the man who shot him.