by Kate Moore
By the end of the first set, she could no longer find him, and she accepted her partner’s offer to accompany her to the refreshment room. From there it was easy to find her way back to the dancing with a new partner. She expected to wear away her slippers with dancing until it was time to collect their cloaks and gloves and step back into the carriage. The musicians upset her plan by taking break. Her partner of a moment before was distracted by an acquaintance. Jane turned and found Mrs. Lowndes beside her.
“My dear, I am going to accompany Lady Violet home. Can you manage on your own with Hazelwood?”
Jane nodded. She could. She was undeceived now about his character. One short carriage ride more, and she would be free of him.
He was there to meet her just beyond the blaze of torches that lighted a path to the waiting vehicles of the guests. Hazelwood hauled her into their coach beside him with a firm grip on her arm. “Let’s have that argument now,” he said.
“All right then.” She twisted on the bench and leveled a fierce gaze at him. “You stole my book.”
“You exposed yourself to unnecessary danger.”
“You mean, rather, that I exposed the book to danger, that had I been felled by that brick or stone or whatever it was that smashed the shop window, the book you wanted would now be in someone else’s hands.”
“The hands of an enemy with the will and means to destroy your father and his friends.”
“Like a certain large, redheaded man who entered Kirby & Sons shop? Are you not in league with him against my father?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Do you deny that you know the man?”
“I work for him.”
She gasped and backed as far away from him as the narrow bench permitted. “From the moment we met you have attempted to charm me into giving up that book. The only motive for such a campaign of deception has to be your belief that the book contains information your employer wants.”
“In that we agree. It’s no accident that your father gave you a ‘guide’ with a sequence of initials in the margins of its pages. You and I both heard your uncle describe your father’s long habit of using family names to identify places on maps. And you and I both suspect that the painting of Nelson above the staircase in what was once your father’s house conceals a map that is the key to unraveling your father’s journey and identifying England’s friends in the East. Have I left anything out?”
“You admit it all. You are no protocol officer. You were sent to spy on me.”
“I was.”
If she expected remorse, she heard none. His voice was hard and flat. “Then you and I must have no further connection.”
His gaze searched her face. “Ah, you think the big red-haired man betrayed him.”
“You know his name?”
“Goldsworthy. I’ve worked for him for a year. He’s as loyal a man as there is, as secret as the grave, and an enemy to all of England’s enemies. Don’t mistake him for your father’s real enemies.”
She turned her face straight ahead. There was no more to say. She could not credit his assertion of the big man’s honesty.
She did not quarrel with him about seeing her to the door or speaking with the guard. As she opened her door, he caught her by the arm one more time and spoke in a low voice.
“Before you go, there is one last thing you must allow me to tell you.”
“Must I?” She kept her gaze on her hand on the doorknob. She would not look again at the handsome face so near her own.
“Yes, because it concerns another to whom you would not wish to be unjust.”
“Very well.” She waited.
“Miranda Kirby, a girl of seventeen, is not my mistress. She is not under my protection. She is a husband hunter, like yourself, and she will, in time, make sure of her man before she offers up her person to him.”
“And you have not led her to believe that you will offer her marriage some day?”
“Far from it. I have proclaimed my unworthiness as a husband many a time.”
* * * *
At the appointed hour of the morning when by some persons’ reckoning it was still night, Jane, a shivering Nell by her side, knocked on the chemist’s shop door. Along the street a few lights gleamed in windows from which came the noise of reveling, but there was no one to observe the two cloaked women.
The door opened, and they hurried inside. Miranda faced them, cloaked and gloved herself. A candle on the counter cast a dim glow over the dark shelves.
Jane nerved herself to deal with the girl. “Did you bring the book?”
Miranda shook her head.
“You agreed to meet me with the book,” Jane protested.
“First, you must promise to give up Lord Hazelwood.”
“He is not mine to keep or to give, but I will cut my connection with him directly. You know where the book is? Where he lodges?”
Miranda nodded. “I deserve him, you know. I am kind to him when no one else is. I keep him fine. Everyone thinks ill of him, but I know the truth of his…character.”
“Then we are agreed.” Jane stuck out her hand in the English way, and after a brief hesitation, the girl took it.
“Come then,” she invited. “Be quick, say nothing, and mind your steps on the path. It’s icy.”
They left Nell in the shop with a second candle. Jane gave Nell’s hand a squeeze, and told her not to worry.
Miranda took a candle and led Jane through the curtains, along a hallway and out a door into cold so sharp her chest ached when she drew breath. She concentrated on her steps over a patch of icy grass that crunched under foot. They reached another set of steps at the back of a larger building. Miranda opened a door and they descended into the basement of the house, where Jane could hear servants stirring in the kitchen. She could smell bread baking.
They turned and began to ascend the servants’ stairs. Miranda moved quickly and surely, and Jane stayed right at her heels. At the top of a third flight of stairs, Miranda opened a door into a carpeted hallway lighted with sconces. She led Jane to a door on the left and nodded. She mouthed the word, here.
Jane mouthed back, locked?
Miranda shook her head. She turned and headed back for the stairs.
Jane let Miranda’s footsteps die away. She listened carefully at the door, and when she heard no sound from within, she put her hand to the knob and turned.
* * * *
Hazelwood woke on his back in the darkness in a state familiar from his Cambridge days, his body ready for female companionship of the most intimate sort. Jane. He recalled no dream of her that had stirred him, so he could only blame his present discomfort on the folly of kissing her the night before. He lay staring at the invisible ceiling, waiting for his brain to take over his thinking processes.
He became aware that his feet were cold, colder than the rest of him. He must have kicked the counterpane aside in whatever unremembered dream he’d been having. In the next moment he realized that he wasn’t alone in his room. Even as he had the thought, he steadied his breathing, wondered how the club’s defenses had been breached, and weighed the chances that the book still lay on the table beside his bed.
“Shall we have some light, so that I may see you?” he asked the invisible presence. He tried to guess the time and whether anyone would be stirring yet. He had no weapon, but Clare was sleeping just down the hall. A shout would bring him.
“No need.” Jane’s voice answered. “I have what I came for.”
His body had an instant and enthusiastic response to her presence in his room. His mind applauded her boldness. “Have you?”
She must be cold. He could hear it in the little quaver in her voice. He could warm her. A rapid succession of images passed through his mind of taking her hand, drawing her to the bed, pulling her down, removing her cloak and glo
ves, opening the covers, and letting her slip in beside him. Her clothes would be cold against his skin, but he would remove those too. All the veils would fall away. They could sleep skin to skin.
He tried to push upright and discovered that his feet were bound together and to the end of the bed to judge from the pull on them.
“I’m just leaving now. Do not trouble yourself to rise.”
“You took pains apparently that I should not.” She had been touching his naked feet. No wonder he’d awakened as he had. It occurred to him that Jane was the sort of intrepid girl he’d dreamed of as a boy, not a sleeping princess to be kissed awake after all, but a girl who would pick up a dropped sword and face the dragon.
“I’m afraid I’ve ruined one of your cravats, but you have others, I’m sure.”
He tried to shift his feet to see how much give there was in the binding and found none. “You could stay, you know. We could work out the book’s code together.”
He couldn’t see her in the dark, but he imagined her shaking her head.
“I’ve left the hotel. I will remain with my cousins until the investiture.” Her voice sounded sad. It was a farewell she was offering.
An open carriage such as a Landau or a Barouche is essential to the Husband Hunter’s quest. In fine weather, and any day without rain must be considered fine, such a vehicle is the velvet box in which the Husband Hunter appears as a rich jewel. The open vehicle allows her to make the best use of her time in the public parks, for while she might appear to advantage on a horse or in a curricle, each has its peculiar disadvantages. On horseback, she risks drawing attention to the horse itself and must be an accomplished rider to show herself to advantage. In a curricle, she will inevitably be perceived as fast, in that either she is driving, and thus vying with her potential husband in one of the manly arts, or she is riding in such close intimacy with one gentleman as to discourage the attentions of any others. Therefore, this guide recommends that the Husband Hunter contrive to appear in the park in the front-facing seat of a Landau or Barouche.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Eighteen
Jane allowed her cousin Clive to help her into the waiting barouche with the firm intention of making the most of this attempt to connect with her cousins. For one afternoon at least their interests and concerns would be her interests and concerns. She would try to see London as they saw it, and learn its customs from them. She would banish Hazelwood’s mocking voice from her mind. They were her cousins, and she would honor the family connection, no matter the size of Allegra’s hat. They were going to see a man attempt a rare feat—driving a loaded wagon over a frozen lake in the middle of Hyde Park. From the way her cousins talked nearly everyone in London would be there.
“So, who is this man who proposes to race his van and horses over the Serpentine?” she asked Clive as they pulled away from the hotel.
“He’s quite the popular hero. Hunt, or rather Hunt the younger. His father is a famous radical orator, jailed more than once for his attacks on the king.”
“Attacks?” Jane had not heard of the king being attacked.
“In print only.”
“He’s hardly a hero,” Allegra said. “Though he is a notable whip. That’s why fashionable people come to see him.”
In the intense cold, the horses wore blankets, and the coachman was invisible in his greatcoat and gloves, a long brown woolen scarf wrapped around his face, so that only his eyes showed beneath his hat. They entered one of the northern gates of the park, and its vast sloping expanse stretched before them.
Pock-marked mounds of glittering snow with dirty edges like yellowed lace dotted the bare brown hillsides. Carriage wheels made dark tracks in the drive. Distant trees arched in charcoal smudges against the low gray clouds. Jane tried to get her bearings, but she hardly recognized the icy landscape as the place where her father had taken her fishing on the Serpentine in the rain.
She did not see the lake of her childhood, like a finger crooked in summons. Instead a huge crowd had gathered at the base of the slope, restlessly moving about in a tide of dark cloaks and coats in which bright bits of blue, yellow, and red bobbed like flotsam on the muddy Thames. As the carriage drew closer, Jane realized that the crowd stood and skated on the ice of the lake itself. Clumps of brown reeds and bare, black-limbed trees marked the edge of the water. Across the breadth of the long, narrow lake was a swath of ice empty of spectators. Other fashionable carriages like theirs converged on the slope above the lake. Gentlemen called greetings and ladies waved at her cousins. Clive directed their driver to the right along the brow of the hill above the crowd.
Allegra immediately protested. “Clive, we must be nearer.” She spoke directly to the coachman, telling him to drive to the water’s edge.
The coachman appeared not to hear her.
“Clive, tell him.”
“Allegra, show some sense. We’ll be mobbed when the ice goes if we come too close.”
“You think the ice will collapse?” Jane asked. The lake was perhaps a hundred yards wide and fifteen feet or more in depth. She had no idea how thick or sturdy the ice would be.
“Oh pooh,” said Allegra. “Clive just wishes to remain aloof. He’s not much of a sportsman, our Clive. He rarely wagers on anything.”
Jane smiled at Clive. “Sounds sensible to me.”
“All true gentlemen wager,” Allegra declared with a toss of her head that shook the ribbons on her bonnet.
* * * *
Hazelwood might not like Clive Walhouse, but he approved of his good sense in choosing a spot on the northeast slope from which to view the Radical Race, as the print shops and papers were calling Hunt’s proposed dash across the width of the lake. Allegra’s elaborate bonnet made the open barouche easy to spot in a loose circle of fashionable vehicles. Coachmen in their greatcoats had gathered together to smoke their pipes and no doubt to share their own opinions of the exploit about to be attempted.
Hazelwood was willing to admit that his year of spying might have impaired his ability to judge danger rationally. England, London, and Hyde Park might have their share of rogues and footpads, but enemy agents were rare, and not likely to join in the amusements of the king’s ordinary and loyal subjects. A public kidnaping at a fashionable gathering in front of hundreds of people was unlikely, but if not a kidnapping, what? In the fortnight she’d been in England, Jane Fawkener had been followed, had her hotel room invaded, been nearly pulled from a carriage, and had a stone chucked at her head. Whoever had orchestrated those earlier attacks on her would not likely let an opportunity pass. And through Hazelwood’s blunders she was no longer in his care.
The carriages on the slope, occupied by people he knew or had known, offered some protection for Jane, but a challenge for him. His eye had to discern between the ordinary and familiar and the unexpected and out of place. The real danger, he decided, was in the restless movement of men on foot. A hired fist, dressed as a coachman or a hawker, could move among the carriages without anyone’s notice.
Hazelwood glanced back at Nate and Miranda in his own vehicle and set off across the slope, crunching through the frozen grass, to position himself closer to Jane. He picked a vantage point from which he could see the girl, the carriage, and the surrounding turf and tried to shake off his unease. A quick downhill sprint would bring him to her side if anyone suspicious approached her. He thought again that maybe he was crazy to imagine enemies in the midst of such a crowd. Jane’s family might be as vain and obsessed with rank as most of their circle, but they weren’t going to let Jane be kidnapped.
Once he had his spot, he widened his gaze to take in the larger scene. Touts circulated, taking side bets from several men he once counted as friends. An enterprising pie man worked the crowd with his wares. Young gentlemen hung about the open Walhouse barouche, plainly vying for Allegra’s attention, and Hazelwood swo
re to himself when one of them opened the door and let down the steps. Without meaning to, the man had made it easier for the enemy to reach Jane Fawkener. His sense of unease increased when he spotted Lord and Lady Ravenhurst with their good friend Count Malikov. The position of the Ravenhurst carriage above and to the east of the Walhouse barouche was no accident. Count Malikov would have Jane directly in his sight as he watched the race below. The thought of Jane in the hands of the enemy lodged like a stone in the pit of Hazelwood’s stomach.
* * * *
Jane studied Allegra. Whatever was happening on the ice below, Jane could learn the most by watching Allegra manage her admirers. Several young men had gathered to lean against the vehicle looking up at her. Jane had met some of them at her cousin Phoebe’s musical evening. Now each gave her a polite summary glance, rating her attractions, and an equally quick dismissal. By turns Allegra invited a favored man to step up into the carriage until she dismissed him to give one of his rivals a place in the seat of privilege. Hazelwood had warned Jane that she might lose her head when she, too, found admirers, if she ever did, but Jane could see that Allegra was not losing her head, at least not in the way Hazelwood meant. But she was not using it, either. Allegra’s method did not give her more knowledge or understanding of the young men vying for her attention, instead it reminded Jane of looking in a mirror at oneself to see which angle flattered.
Clive, too, Jane observed, did his share of looking about. The trick with both of her cousins seemed to be to take notice of others without letting anyone see you do it. It was something her father could do quite well, and she wondered if he had learned the trick in London society rather than in the palaces and courts of the East. Clive was taking particular care not to notice a striking group in a nearby carriage above them. His studied disinterest made it seem to Jane, as if an invisible string connected him to a golden-haired lady in lavender silk and dark furs who sat with two gentlemen in another open carriage. The one gentleman, fair and relaxed, shared the back seat with the lady, and made occasional comments that drew her laughter, while the other gentleman, dark-haired and restless, talked a great deal to two boys with him in the other seat, pointing out elements of the great scene. The second gentleman never looked at the lady. The lady herself seemed an expert in taking no notice of others, but Jane suspected that she knew Clive watched her.