A trio of laughing men brushed by him, leaving a smell of yeast, sweat, and fresh bread in their wake—bakers.
“D’ye hear what that bitch said to me?” one was demanding in mock outrage. “How he dares!”
“Ah, come on, then, Betty. Ye don’t want ’em smackin’ your sweet round arse, don’t wave it about!”
“Wave it—I’ll wave you, you cheeky cull!”
They disappeared into the dark, laughing and shoving each other. Grey walked on, feeling suddenly more comfortable, despite the seriousness of his errand.
Mollies. There were four or five molly-walks in London, well-known to those so inclined, but it had been a long time since he had entered one past dark. Of the six taverns on Barbican Street, three at least were molly-houses, patronized by men who sought food and drink and the enjoyment of one another’s companionship—and one another’s flesh—unashamed in like company.
Laughter lapped round him as he passed unnoticed, and here and there he caught the “maiden names” many mollies used among themselves, exchanged in joke or casual insinuation. Nancy, Fanny, Betty, Mrs. Anne, Miss Thing … he found himself smiling at the boisterous badinage he overheard, though he had never been inclined to that particular fancy himself.
Was Joseph Trevelyan so inclined? He would have sworn not; even now, he found the notion inconceivable. Still, he knew that almost all his own acquaintance in London society and army circles would swear with one voice on a Bible that Lord John Grey would never, could not possibly …
“Would you look at our Miss Irons tonight?” A carrying voice, raised in grudging admiration, made him turn his head. Holding riotous court in the torchlit yard of the Three Goats was “Miss Irons”—a stout young man with broad shoulders and a bulbous nose, who had evidently paused with his companions for refreshment en route to a masquerade at Vauxhall.
Powdered and painted with joyous abandon, and rigged out in a gown of crimson satin with a ruffled headdress in cloth of gold, Miss Irons was presently seated on a barrel, from which perch she was rejecting the devotions of several masked gentlemen, with an air of flirtatious scorn that would have suited a duchess.
Grey came up short at the sight, then, recollecting himself, faded hastily across the road, seeking to disappear into the shadows.
Despite the finery, he recognized “Miss Irons”—who was by day one Egbert Jones, the cheerful young Welsh blacksmith who had come to repair the wrought-iron fence around his mother’s herb garden. He rather thought that Miss Irons might recognize him in turn despite his disguise—and in her current well-lubricated mood, this was the last thing he desired to happen.
He reached the refuge of the bridge, helpfully shadowed by tall stone pillars at either end, and ducked behind one. His heart was thumping and his cheeks flushed, from alarm rather than exertion. No shout came from behind, though, and he leaned over to brace his hands upon the wall, letting the cool air off the river rise over his heated face.
A pungent smell of sewage and decay rose, too. Ten feet below the arch of the bridge, the dark and fetid waters of the Fleet crawled past, reminding him of Tim O’Connell’s sordid end, and he straightened, slowly.
What had that end been? A spy’s wages, paid in blood to prevent the threat of disclosure? Or something more personal?
Very personal. The thought came to him with sudden certainty, as he saw once more in memory that heelprint on O’Connell’s forehead. Anyone might have killed the Sergeant, for any of several motives—but that final indignity was a deliberate insult, left as signature to the crime.
Scanlon’s hands were unmarked; so were Francine O’Connell’s. But O’Connell’s death had come at the hands of more than one, and the Irish gathered like fleas in the city; where you found one, there were a dozen more nearby. Scanlon doubtless had friends or relations. He should very much like to examine the heels of Scanlon’s shoes.
There were several men standing, as he was, near the wall; one turned aside, tugging at his breeches as though to make water, another sidling toward him. Grey felt the nearness of someone at his own shoulder, and turned his back sharply; he felt the hesitation of the man behind him, and then the small huff of breath, an audible shrug, as the stranger turned away.
Best to keep walking. He had barely resumed his journey, though, when he heard a startled exclamation from the shadows a few feet behind him, followed by a brief scuffling noise.
“Oh, you bold pullet!”
“What are—hey! Mmph!”
“Oh? Well, if you’d rather, my dear …”
“Oy! Leggo!”
The agitated voice raised the hairs on the nape of Grey’s neck in recognition. He whirled on his heel and was moving toward the altercation by reflex, before his conscious mind had realized what he was about.
Two shadowy figures swayed together, grappling and shuffling. He seized the taller of these just above the elbow, gripping hard.
“Leave him,” he said, in his soldier’s voice. The steel of it made the man start and step back, shaking off Grey’s grip. Pale moonlight showed a long face, caught between puzzlement and anger.
“Why, I wasn’t but—”
“Leave him,” Grey repeated, more softly, but with no less menace. The man’s face changed, assuming an air of injured dignity, as he did up his breeches.
“Sorry, I’m sure. Didn’t know he was your cull.” He turned away, rubbing ostentatiously at his arm, but Grey paid no attention, being otherwise concerned.
“What in Christ’s name are you doing here?” he said, keeping his voice low.
Tom Byrd appeared not to have heard; his round face was open-mouthed with amazement.
“That bloke come straight up to me and put his pego into me hand!” He stared into his open palm, as though expecting to find the object in question still within his grasp.
“Oh?”
“Yes! I swear as a Christian, he did! And then he kissed me, and went for to put his hand into me breeches and grabbed me by the bollocks! Whatever would he want to do that for?”
Grey was tempted to reply that he had not the slightest idea, but instead took Byrd by the arm and towed him out of earshot of the interested parties on the bridge.
“I repeat—what are you doing here?” he asked, as they reached the refuge of a residence whose gate was sheltered by a pair of flowering laburnums, white in the moonlight.
“Oh, ah.” Byrd was recovering rapidly from his shock. He rubbed the palm of his hand on his thigh and stood up straight.
“Well, sir—me lord, I mean—I saw you go out, and thought as how you might have need of someone at your back, as it was. I mean”—he darted a quick glance at Grey’s unorthodox costume—“I thought you must be headin’ to somewhere as might be dangerous.” He looked back over his shoulder at the bridge, obviously feeling that recent events there had confirmed this suspicion.
“I assure you, Tom, I am in no danger.” Byrd was; while most mollies were simply looking for a good time, there was rough trade to be found in such places and persons who would not take no for an answer—to say nothing of simple footpads.
Grey glanced down the street; he could not send the boy back past the taverns, not alone.
“Come with me, then,” he said, making up his mind upon the moment. “You may accompany me to the house; from there, you will go home.”
Byrd followed him without demur; Grey was obliged to take the young man’s arm and draw him up beside—otherwise the boy fell by habit into step behind him, which would not do.
A middle-aged man in a cocked hat strolled past them, giving Byrd a penetrating glance. Grey felt the boy meet the glance, then jerk his eyes away.
“Me lord,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“These coves hereabouts. Are they … sodomites?”
“Many of them, yes.”
Byrd asked no further questions. Grey let go the boy’s arm after a bit, and they walked in silence through the quieter end of the street. Grey felt all his earl
ier tension return, made the more uncomfortable for the brief interlude before Byrd’s appearance had recalled him to himself.
He had not remembered. Hardly surprising; he had done his best to forget those years after Hector’s death. He had sleepwalked through the year after Culloden, spent with Cumberland’s troops as they cleansed the Highlands of rebels, doing his soldier’s duty, but doing it as in a dream. Returning at last to London, though, he could no longer keep from waking to the reality of a world in which Hector was not.
He had come here in that bad time, looking for surcease at best, oblivion at worst. He had found the latter, both in liquor and in flesh, and realized his luck in surviving both experiences unscathed—though at the time, survival had been the least of his concerns.
What he had forgotten in the years since then, though, was the simple, unutterable comfort of existing—for however brief a time—without pretense. With Byrd’s appearance, he felt that he had hastily clapped on a mask, but wore it now somewhat awry.
“Me lord?”
“Yes?”
Byrd drew a deep and trembling breath, which made Grey turn to look at the boy. Dark as their surroundings were, his strong emotion was evident in the clenched fists.
“Me brother. Jack. D’ye think he—have ye come to find him here?” Byrd blurted.
“No.” Grey hesitated, then touched Byrd’s shoulder gently. “Have you any reason to suppose that he would be here—or in another such place?”
Byrd shook his head, not in negation, but in sheer helplessness.
“I dunno. I never—but I never thought … I dunno, sir, that’s the truth.”
“Has he a woman? A girl, perhaps, with whom he walks out?”
“No,” Byrd said miserably. “But he’s a cove to save his money, Jack. Always said as how he’d take a wife when he could afford one, and before then why tempt trouble?”
“Your brother sounds a wise man,” Grey said, letting the hint of a smile show in his voice. “And an honorable one.”
Byrd drew another deep breath, and swiped his knuckles furtively beneath his nose.
“Aye, sir, Jack’s that.”
“Well, then.” Grey turned away, but waited for a moment, until Byrd moved to follow.
Lavender House was large, but in no way ostentatious. Only the marble tubs of fragrant lavender that stood on either side of its door distinguished it in any way from the houses to either side. The curtains were drawn, but shadows passed now and then beyond them, and the murmur of male conversation and occasional bursts of laughter seeped through the hanging velvet.
“It sounds like what goes on at those gentlemen’s clubs in Curzon Street,” Byrd said, sounding faintly puzzled. “I’ve heard ’em.”
“It is a gentlemen’s club,” Grey replied, with a certain grimness. “For gentlemen of a particular sort.” He removed his hat, and, untying his hair, shook it free over his shoulders; the time for disguise was past.
“Now you must go home, Tom.” He pointed the way, across the park. “Do you see that light, at the end? Just beyond is an alley; it will take you to a main street. Here—take some money for a cab.”
Byrd accepted the coin, but shook his head.
“No, me lord. I’ll go to the door with you.”
He glanced at Byrd, surprised. There was sufficient light from the curtained windows to see both the dried tears on Byrd’s round face and the determined expression under them.
“I mean to be sure as these sodomitical sons of bitches shall be aware that somebody knows where you are. Just in case, me lord.”
The door opened promptly to his knock, revealing a liveried butler, who gave Grey’s clothes a disparaging glance. Then the man’s eyes rose to his face, and Grey saw the subtle change of expression. Grey was not one to trade on his looks, but he was aware of their effect in some quarters.
“Good evening,” he said, stepping across the threshold as though he owned the place. “I wish to speak to the current proprietor of this establishment.”
The butler gave way in astonishment, and Grey saw the man’s calculations undergo a rapid shift in the face of his accent and manner, so much at variance with his dress. Still, the man had been well-trained, and wasn’t to be so easily bamboozled.
“Indeed, sir,” the butler said, not quite bowing. “And your name?”
“George Everett,” Grey said.
The butler’s face went blank.
“Indeed, sir,” he said woodenly. He hesitated, plainly uncertain what to do. Grey didn’t recognize the man, but the man clearly had known George—or known of him.
“Give that name to your master, if you please,” Grey said pleasantly. “I will await him in the library.”
On a table by the door stood the clockwork figure Rab the chairman had noted—not an orrery, but a clockwork man, elaborately enameled and gilded, made to drop his breeches and bend over when the key was wound. Grey made as though to go to the left of this figure, toward where he knew the library to be. The butler put out a hand as though to stop him, but then halted, distracted by something outside.
“Who is that?” he said, thoroughly startled.
Grey turned to see Tom Byrd standing at the edge of the lightspill from the door, glowering fiercely, fists clenched and his jaw set in a way that brought his lower teeth up to fix in the flesh of his upper lip. Mud-spattered from his adventures, he looked like a gargoyle knocked from his perch.
“That, sir, is my valet,” Grey said politely, and, turning, strode down the hall.
There were a few men in the library, sprawled in chairs near the hearth, chatting over their newspapers and brandy. It might have been the library at the Beefsteak, save that conversation stopped abruptly with Grey’s entrance, and half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed upon him in open appraisal.
Fortunately, he recognized none of them, nor they him.
“Gentlemen,” he said, bowing. “Your servant.” He turned at once to the sideboard, where the decanters stood, and in defiance of convention and good manners, poured out a glass of some liquid, not taking the time to ascertain what it was. He turned back to find them all still staring at him, trying to reconcile the contradictions of his appearance, his manner, and his voice. He stared back.
One of the men recovered himself quickly, and rose from his seat.
“Welcome … sir.”
“And what’s your name, sweet boy?” another chimed in, smiling as he tossed down his paper.
“That is my own affair … sir.” Grey returned the smile, with a razor edge to it, and took a sip of his drink. It was porter, curse the luck.
The rest of them had risen now and came to circle round him, nosing in the manner of dogs smelling something freshly dead. Half curious, half wary, thoroughly intrigued. He felt a trickle of sweat roll down the nape of his neck, and a nervous clenching of the belly. All of them were dressed quite ordinarily, though that meant nothing. Lavender House had many rooms, and catered to an assortment of fancies.
All were well-dressed, but none of them wore wigs or paint, and a couple showed some disorder in their dress; stocks discarded, and shirts and waistcoats opened to allow liberties that wouldn’t be countenanced in the Beefsteak.
The golden-haired youth to his left was studying him with narrowed eyes and obvious appetite; the stocky brown-haired lad saw, and didn’t like it. Grey saw him move closer, deliberately jostling Goldie-Locks, to distract his attention. Goldie-Locks put a soothing hand on his playfellow’s leg, but didn’t take his eyes off Grey.
“Well, if you will not give your name, let me make you a present of mine.” A curly-haired young man with a sweet mouth and soft brown eyes stepped forward, smiling, and took his hand. “Percy Wainwright—at your service, ma’am.” He bent over Grey’s hand in the most graceful of gestures, and kissed the knuckles.
The feel of the boy’s warm breath on his skin made the hairs stand up on Grey’s forearm. He would have liked to grasp Percy’s hand and draw him in, but that wouldn’t do, no
t just now.
He let his own hand lie inert in Wainwright’s for a moment, to offer neither insult nor invitation, then drew it back.
“Your servant … madam.”
That made them laugh, though still with an edge of wariness. They were not sure yet if he was fish or fowl, and he meant to keep it that way as long as possible.
He was a good deal more cautious now than he had been when George Everett had first brought him here. Then he had not cared for anything in particular—save George, perhaps. Now, having come so close to losing his for good, he had some appreciation for the value of a reputation; not merely his, but those of his family and his regiment, as well.
“What brings you here, my dear?” Goldie-Locks stepped closer, blue eyes burning like twin candle flames.
“Looking for a lady,” Grey drawled, leaning back against the sideboard in assumed casualness. “In a green velvet gown.”
There was a sputter of laughter at this, and glances among them, but nothing that looked like dawning recognition.
“Green doesn’t suit me,” Goldie-Locks said, and licked a pointed tongue briefly across his upper lip. “But I’ve a charming blue satin with laced pinners that I’m sure you’d like.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” the brown-haired boy said, eyeing both Grey and Goldie-Locks with clear dislike. “You cunt, Neil.”
“Language, ladies, language.” Percy Wainwright edged Goldie-Locks back with a deft elbow, smiling at Grey. “This lady in green—have you a name for her?”
“Josephine, I believe,” Grey said, glancing from one face to another. “Josephine, from Cornwall.”
That provoked a chorus of mildly derisive “Oooh”s, and one man began to sing “My Little Black Ewe,” in an off-key voice. Then the door opened, and everyone turned to see who had come in.
It was Richard Caswell, the proprietor of Lavender House. Grey knew him at once—and he recalled Grey, it was plain. Still, Caswell didn’t greet him by name, but merely nodded pleasantly.
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