A Flaw in the Blood

by Стефани Баррон

  The staircase ended abruptly in a landing.

  Three doors gave off the hallway beyond—and the farthest one was ajar.

  Somewhere below them, a shout went up—a curse of pure rage. The man with the cosh had found Button Nance—and from the squeal that followed, he hadn’t liked how the whore answered his questions.

  “Patrick—”

  “You’re not to go back.” He gripped Georgie’s hand, ignored her frown of protest, and pulled her through the doorway.

  There were at least a dozen people in the shadowy room. A few women, a clutch of children, an elderly couple huddled by a smoking fire. Barely a stick of furniture, and the single dormer window had rags stuffed where glass should be. These were sodden with sleet and the air was cold enough to see your breath.

  “Oi!” a woman shrieked. “Whaddya think yer about, then? This ain’t a flophouse; you can’t bring yer fancy-piece ’ere!”

  The idea of Georgiana Armistead as prostitute would normally have fired Fitzgerald’s tongue, but he merely brushed his way past the woman’s upraised fist, and made for the dormer window. He threw wide the casement.

  “Can we get out?” Georgie asked.

  “It’s good and steep, but we’ve no choice. We’ll have to slide.” He scanned the tiles; they were slick with slush and treacherously cracked. Where the downslope of the garret met the upslope of the neighbouring hovel, a guttered roof joint ran between. Georgie would find safer footing there; he just hoped it did not lead to a sheer drop—he had no way of knowing, and no time to reconnoiter.

  “Didn’ you hear me? Get out! ” the woman shrieked in his ear.

  “Aye, and we’re just going.” He reached for his purse and found her a shilling—enough to cover her share of the rent for a month. “Take this for your trouble. Now, up you get, Georgie!”

  He put his hands together and she stepped into them, hoisting herself onto the sill. Then she swung her heavy skirt through the window, while all the children in the place ran up to Fitzgerald to tug on his arm and beg for coppers. He scattered coins at his feet and told the largest boy, “Close the door and bolt it, there’s a good lad.” Then he followed Georgie out onto the tiles, sliding toward the roof joint.

  She was already at the bottom, picking herself up and brushing at the back of her fine dress with a quarrelsome expression. The silk was in a fair way to being ruined. She glared at his heels as they slid into the gutter, spraying her boots with filth.

  “Was this really necessary, Patrick?”

  Before he could answer, a cosh shattered the frame of the window above their heads and fragments of wood rained down on the icy tiles. Georgie turned without another word and began to inch along the gutter, toward the edge of the roof and whatever lay below it.

  Fitzgerald thrust himself to his feet. He stumbled after her, waiting for the impact of another body behind him—when it came, he looked back and saw the ruffian with the cosh.

  The garret room was at the very end of the hallway; there were no more windows giving out onto this section of roof. The gutter ran toward St. Giles Street in one direction, and in the other, toward the warren of alleys behind it. Georgie was headed away from the street, deeper into the rookery maze. But when Fitzgerald looked ahead, he saw she had come to a complete halt—poised on the edge of nothing.

  A rough hand snatched at his shoulder. He lost his balance, feet flying out from under him, and fell backwards. Georgie’s medical bag sailed out of his grasp—and it was probably this sound, of the bag bursting open and the instruments clattering across the tiles, that brought her head around in search of him. Fitzgerald heard her yell—not a high-pitched woman’s scream, but a guttural, savage sound wholly unlike the Georgie he knew. He wanted to tell her to save herself—to get away while the tough was on top of him—but the man’s hand was at his throat. And then the cosh rose wildly above him—

  Fitzgerald pulled his knees up, hard, into his attacker’s groin and dodged sideways, the cosh smashing into the tiles where his head had been moments before. The man toppled. Fitzgerald rolled upright and leaned on his enemy’s spine, taking great gasps of air through his grateful throat. The torso beneath him was broad, heavily muscled—the frame of a man who moved stone for a living, or hauled ropes, or placed a value on punishing strength in his line of work. There was the hand that held the cosh—Fitzgerald grasped the weapon and pulled back hard, as though it were a lever, shouting Georgie, go! while his enemy grunted and cursed his hatred of Fitzgerald and heaved himself upright so that Fitzgerald was straddling him now, the man corkscrewing like a maddened horse, the powerful wrist snapping in Fitzgerald’s grasp and the cosh sailing free of the nerveless fingers—

  “Patrick!” Georgie cried in warning. “Behind you!”

  Of course there would be more men; he’d counted six. A few had probably posted themselves at the building’s front and back doors, but the rest would be coming through the shattered window right behind their leader, and probably armed. He tossed the cosh in Georgie’s direction, then lunged from the man’s back toward the glint of metal in the gutter—one of Georgie’s knives, from her scattered bag. The creature beside him doubled up in pain, clutching his broken wrist. The scalpel slid into Fitzgerald’s palm, cold and wet.

  He seized his attacker’s head, pulled it back, and thrust the edge of the scalpel against his throat.

  “You soddin’ little Paddy,” the man gasped, his fingers clawing at Fitzgerald’s arm.

  The second tough was almost upon them, but he stopped short when he heard his mate’s bubbling gasp.

  “If you come any closer, he dies,” Fitzgerald warned, fingers clenched in the man’s dirty black hair. “And then you die. Understand?”

  The second man glanced sideways, no doubt calculating the distance from one roof to another, or searching for a broken tile he could hurl at Fitzgerald’s head; over his shoulder, Fitzgerald saw a third figure easing across the garret windowsill. His grasp on his prey tightened, and the hum of violence sang in his ears, a familiar hymn as carnal as sex. The knife edge nicked the throat beneath his fingers and the throat whimpered faintly.

  Georgie advanced, the cosh raised high, and said in that same guttural snarl, “We’ll cut his neck and call you murderer. A gentleman’s word against a labourer’s. Are you prepared to hang, my friend?”

  The man inched backwards, his eyes widening; then he turned and stumbled toward the garret window, kicking and clawing his way back up the tiles.

  “Who sent you?” Fitzgerald demanded, in his enemy’s ear. “Who pays your wage?”

  An oath spat through his clenched fingers; nothing more.

  “Patrick, they’ll be back,” Georgie said.

  He released the black hair and forced the man beneath him, onto the tiles. Then he tore the cosh from Georgie’s grasp and delivered a punishing blow to the back of the skull. The solid bulk went limp.

  “Pray God you didn’t kill him,” Georgie said faintly.

  “Why? He’d have killed me. He’d have killed both of us and left our bodies on the roof. Just as he left Sep to die in chambers.”

  She did not reply, her face as white as paper.

  At the edge of the icy gutter, Fitzgerald knelt carefully and peered over the edge, senses swimming. He was unaccustomed to the eerie pitch, the irregular angles of this view of the world; he drew back, and waited for his head to steady.

  “It’s a sheer drop.”

  Georgie’s teeth were chattering with cold and tension, but she had retrieved her bag of surgical tools. “I refuse to retrace my steps. I will not walk past that man. I’m a doctor, Patrick—to leave him in that condition, in this weather, knowing what the result might be—”

  “Your scruples do you credit,” Fitzgerald said dryly. “His men would be waiting for us inside, in any case. Georgie, that fellow called me a Paddy.”

  “It’s hardly the first time someone has.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I hadn’t spoken yet—he had no
thought for my accent—and it’s faint enough after all these years. He came looking for an Irishman. He was sent here. By whom?”

  “He probably followed you from Great Ormond Street.” She brushed the sleet from her cheek impatiently. “No doubt these people are watching Septimus’s house—to learn whether he dies.”

  It was possible, Fitzgerald owned. And yet—

  He glanced back, afraid of what he might see coming through the broken window, and said suddenly, “Would it cheer you to know, Georgiana, that our friends from the garret are already picking your man’s pockets?”

  She turned swiftly, saw the clutch of women and children hunkered around the body. “Without even pausing to know if he’s dead or alive?”

  “You might check his pulse yourself.” Fitzgerald rose and brushed fragments of ice and slate from his trousers. “That lot would never be out here unless the gang had fled. Which means we can go home in peace.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “You think von Stühlen is behind these attacks,” Georgiana said. “That’s why you inquired about him.”

  They had retraced their steps through the tenement building without a further glimpse of the murderous pack. A swift walk up St. Giles to the hackney stand in Covent Garden, both of them unsteady from relief and fatigue. The early dusk of December fell swiftly, and the temperature had dropped as the afternoon waned. Georgiana shivered uncontrollably in her soaked gown, and Fitzgerald thought it imperative to get her home as soon as he could. Her gloves were torn and her hair sliding out of the bandage; they had not stopped to inquire of Button Nance where her bonnet had gone. She looked, in short, uncharacteristically slatternly. Fitzgerald looked as careless as always—but he'd lost his topper.

  The sole cabbie lingering at the stand was more interested in the sight of their money, however, than the state of their clothes. Fitzgerald did not respond to Georgiana's remark until the lap robe was tucked over her knees and the reins snapped over the horse's back.

  Bells still rang throughout London for Albert's passing, a dull monotony after all these hours; lengths of black crepe had appeared on door knockers and window fronts. Shops in Henrietta Street, Fitzgerald noticed, already sported black mourning shutters—which were closed, like the premises. There would be a considerable loss of custom in the weeks running up to Christmas, except among the linendraper firms—everyone, even the children of the lowliest clerk, would go into blacks for at least a month.

  “I asked about von Stühlen because I hated the way he looked at you,” he told Georgiana.

  “Like a wolf with a cornered sheep?”

  “You saw it, too?”

  “Well, he has earned a dreadful reputation.”

  “—For shearing sheep?”

  “No. For raping the unwilling.”

  There it was again—Georgie's appalling worldliness. “How do you think he lost his eye?” she continued.

  “In a duel—or so it's said. Was that over a woman?”

  “A fifteen-year-old girl of excellent birth—kidnapped, raped, and returned like a piece of soiled goods to her family several weeks later, when von Stühlen tired of her. The child's brother tried to kill the Count—but in the event, only added to his air of dash, by giving him the eye patch.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  She shrugged. “I may still claim a good part of the acquaintance I formed at school, you know—and am everywhere received. Do you really think ladies talk only of fashion?”

  “I'll warrant the word rape never crosses the lips of your select friends.”

  “No. They use gentler terms—a kind of code for men of that stamp. They call von Stühlen dangerous, or the very worst of rakes, or unreliable. By which they mean he hasn't a feather to fly with, is a gazetted fortune hunter, and has any number of women in keeping.” Georgiana's eyes were trained on the horse's head as it trotted toward Russell Square. “He even offered to keep me, if it comes to that.”

  “He what?”

  “—Was so obliging as to suggest I should be his mistress. In the enclosure at Ascot, last June. He gave me his card on the strength of it.” Her smile was twisted. “Women such as myself, he assured me, were excessively diverting because of our intelligence; we added a certain spice to amour; but we could never hope to receive an offer of marriage in the general way. I believe he considered his notice an exceptionally great honour.”

  “I'd like to whip him the length of Pall Mall,” Fitzgerald said through his teeth.

  “I'm afraid I did something much worse. I laughed at him. And tossed his card back in his face. He was furious—publicly humiliated. If I'd been a man, I daresay he'd have demanded satisfaction.”

  “How could he think you'd listen to such a dishonourable proposal?”

  “He first made my acquaintance in the company of the Prince—and no doubt assumed I was Albert's mistress. Although the Consort was the least likely of men to have a lady in keeping, I daresay any number of gentlemen have made a similar error. How else to account for my intimacy with the Prince?” She worried the torn leather of one glove, her face averted. “But tell me, Patrick—why should von Stühlen be concerned with these attacks? That pack of ruffians may be bent upon killing Septimus Taylor for reasons wholly unrelated to us. Perhaps they merely followed you because you'd discovered their handiwork.”

  “Sep was at the Inner Temple, nowhere near Hampstead last night,” Fitzgerald said flatly. “Somebody cleared away that palisade on the Heath—and your dangerous Count was on the scene within hours of the wreck. That much we know. I go further, Georgie—I say von Stühlen saw murder done in the wee hours of the morning, then ordered the destruction of all evidence.”

  “Why?”

  “What other business could bring him to Hampstead? He came direct from Windsor!”

  “He admitted as much,” she retorted impatiently. “But you've nothing to tie him to the attack at the Inner Temple, much less that pack of hounds in St. Giles.”

  “Sweet Jesus, woman—would you defend such a man? This madness began last night, with my summons to Windsor. I was probably called there in order to be killed on my return.”

  “But why, Patrick? Why is it necessary to silence you? What do these people fear?”

  “I don't know,” he admitted bleakly as the hackney pulled to a halt before Georgiana's door. “But I won't risk dying before I find out. I leave London tonight—and you're to come with me, Georgie lass.”

  Her smile wavered. “Another carte blanche?”

  It was the polite term for von Stühlen's type of sexual arrangement. Fitzgerald's heart stuttered, and a wave of heat surged through his body. Before he could speak, however, she pressed her fingers against his lips.

  “I should be so fortunate. No, Patrick—I won't come with you. I have poor Lizzie to think of, and others—”

  But her words died in her mouth. Fitzgerald looked toward the doorway. Georgie's housekeeper was racing to meet them, a stricken expression on her face.

  Georgiana's rooms were like the woman herself, Fitzgerald thought—elegantly spare; intelligently arranged. Not for Georgie the excess of velvet hangings or the wave of bric-a-brac crowding every surface, the plant stands overflowing with ferns; Georgie's walls were cream, picked out with gold, the simplest of hangings at the tall windows. Light poured into the rooms even in the darkest months of winter. To sit there with Georgie was to stem the turbulent beat of his days, the wild disorder of his thoughts and passions. Georgie was the voice of reason. The air of decision. The order of science. Caught in a form as breathtaking as Venus.

  Now, however, the house was a scene of devastation.

  The Aubusson carpet was rucked up over the floorboards; a gilt picture frame lay smashed in the fireplace, its canvas torn; a piece of the marble mantel had been broken off and tossed at yet another picture, which hung askew and ravaged above the settee. Chair upholstery was slit down the middle and feathers strewn everywhere.

  “I just stepped round to St
. George's, Hanover Square, to pray for the repose of the dear Consort's soul,” the housekeeper said as Georgie stopped dead in the middle of her drawing room, her medical bag slipping to chaos on the floor, “and you always give the staff their afternoon out, of a Sunday. So the place was empty, do you see? And when I returned—just look at it! We've had thieves, miss, and what I can't make out is what they thought to come for! All the silver's in the pantry, and your jewels never touched in the boudoir . . . but my word, your desk!”

  “My desk?” Georgiana repeated faintly—and then swept through the drawing room to the library beyond. “Oh, Patrick!”

  Papers scattered everywhere, as they had been in Fitzgerald's chambers.

  He took one step forward into the room and stopped short. He had never seen Georgie cry before—not even when John Snow died.

  “My darling,” he said, and went to her.

  “It's just that it's so cruel,” she muttered against his shoulder. “These aren't my things, Patrick—they're Uncle John's. All his case notes. Documents he kept for decades—statistics of populations, meticulous research. It will take me days to reorder them all. And for what?”

  He held her away from him, studied the swimming eyes.

  “You'll have to find out,” he said. “Now, not later—because whatever you may think, Georgie, you're leaving London with me tonight. I will not allow you to remain in this house.”

  “But—”

  “Those men came here. They tracked you to St. Giles. They wanted something you had. They didn't come because of Sep or even because of me—they came because von Stühlen glimpsed you in Hampstead at dawn. Do you understand? You're in danger, love. Now start picking up these papers and tell me what the men found. They didn't want your candlesticks—they wanted something in this room, in your desk. What was it?”