A Wicked Gentleman

by Jane Feather

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and spun around, the knife poised in his hand. A girl, no more than twelve, stopped on the stairs and stared openmouthed. The slop jar in her hand shook, threatening to deposit its malodorous contents on the floor. Harry put a finger to his lips, then came lightly to the stairs. He pointed downwards and made a shooing gesture with his hands. She hurried down again, and he followed her.

  He took a gold sovereign from his pocket. It glimmered in the dim light of the narrow hallway at the foot of the stairs, and the girl gazed at it as if mesmerized. “Listen carefully,” he said in a bare whisper. “This is yours if you do exactly as I say.” He explained what he wanted of her, and she nodded, her eyes never leaving the glittering gold. “Can you do that?”

  She found her voice. “Aye, sir.” She held out a grimy hand.

  “I’m going to put it here,” Harry said, balancing the coin on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “You may pick it up when you come down, when you’ve given the message.”

  She nodded eagerly, setting down her slop jar before running up the stairs again. Harry followed her, knife in hand, and pressed himself against the wall beside the door.

  The girl knocked timidly and when there was no immediate response knocked harder. “Who is it?” a strongly accented voice demanded from within the chamber.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but there’s a lady what wants to talk wi’ you,” the child said, sticking to her script. “She’s belowstairs, sir. Says she’s got summat fer you.”

  They heard the sound of the heavy bar being raised and the door opened a crack. “Send her up,” the same accented voice growled.

  The girl shook her head vigorously. “She don’t want to come up, sir. Said fer you to come down. Said she’s got summat fer you.” She turned tail and ran down the stairs, scooping up the gold coin as she passed, heading for the street door as Harry had instructed.

  There was a murmured exchange in the chamber, then the door was pushed wide and a lean, dark-visaged man stepped onto the landing followed by a much burlier companion who commanded brusquely, “Allons-y.” They hastened down the stairs.

  Harry reckoned he had maybe three or four minutes at the most before they realized there was no one waiting for them. He stepped swiftly into the chamber, his gaze sweeping the room.

  Nigel Dagenham was tied to a rickety chair, gagged with a scarf, an ugly cut bleeding above his eyes. Eyes that regarded Harry with anguished terror. His face was bruised and swollen, his clothes torn.

  Harry took a step towards him, then he saw the small shape on the sagging cot in the corner of the chamber. He took two strides to the cot.

  He bent over the blanket-wrapped bundle. The child was unconscious, his breathing stertorous, complexion pasty, the lips a little blue. Harry put a finger against the pulse beneath the boy’s ear and exhaled slowly. The pulse was strong and steady, but he could smell the telltale sweetness on the child’s breath.

  Laudanum. How much? But there was no time to speculate. He straightened and moved to cross the room to release the bound and gagged Nigel. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs. No time for Nigel now. He crossed to the still open chamber door. He slid behind it, flattening himself against the wall as he nudged the door half-closed with his foot.

  The door was pushed wide open concealing the man behind. “Merde,” one of the men cursed as he stepped into the chamber, his shadow falling long across the floorboards from the flickering candle in a sconce by the door.

  He stepped quickly across to Nigel who tried to shrink back against the chair, his eyes wide with silent terror. “You think to make a fool of us, mon ami.” He raised a hand and struck Nigel across the mouth.

  Harry remained behind the door, barely breathing.

  “Laissez-lui, Michel,” the second man said, coming into the room. “Il n’est pas vaux l’effort.” He spun quickly towards the door again, just as Harry pushed it closed again with his foot.

  Harry smiled. “Bonjour, messieurs.” He stepped away from the wall, his knife in one hand, the lash of his whip curled against the palm of his other.

  For a moment, nothing was said. The three men assessed the situation, each swiftly calculating possible moves in the confined space. The two Frenchmen appeared unarmed, but Harry was not prepared to rely on appearances. He reckoned he could handle both of them in a knife fight, but if one of them produced a pistol, then he’d be in trouble.

  Where the hell was Lester?

  Silver glinted as knives appeared in the Frenchmen’s hands. The wicked shining blades of stilettos. They stood shoulder to shoulder facing Harry. He could only pray that they didn’t think about using the child. A knife at Stevie’s throat, and Harry would be rendered helpless.

  His hand moved swift as lightning and the lash of his whip snapped, catching the knife hand of the man closest to him. The lash curled around his wrist, and he gave a cry of surprise and pain. Caught off guard he stumbled, and Harry sent the whip curling again, snapping against the man’s cheek.

  The other Frenchman took a jumping step towards Harry, his knife raised. Harry feinted, then came in low, driving upwards with the knife. It caught the man’s thigh but without sufficient force to penetrate deeply through the cloth of his britches, leaving little more than a scratch on the flesh. But it was first blood, and they both jumped back, taking stock.

  The sound of feet racing up the stairs broke the taut concentration. Harry’s gut sank. It was a woman’s feet. Cornelia. He stepped backwards in front of the door. He couldn’t bolt it or stop her from opening it without taking his eyes off his opponents, and they were both lined up again, shoulder to shoulder, and the one he’d caught with his whip had a most unpleasant gleam in his eye.

  “Cornelia, stay where you are,” he yelled, but with only the faintest hope that she would obey him. He felt the door shiver as she seemed to hurl her entire weight against it and his two opponents pounced on him at the same time. He ducked sideways, dancing towards the far wall, and the door crashed open.

  Cornelia stood on the threshold, looking wildly at the scene. Two men with drawn knives. Harry by himself against the wall, a smeared knife in his hand. Some huddled body on a chair. Nothing seemed to make any sense at first, then it did. She made a move to back out of the room but an instant too late, as one of Harry’s opponents, realizing his advantage, leaped at her.

  Cornelia didn’t think. She drove her knee upwards into his groin as he grabbed her arms, and twisted to drive her elbow into his belly. He let her go with a grunt and Harry jumped on him, his knife slicing deeply into the shoulder of the man’s knife hand. The knife clattered to the floorboards, and Harry bent and swept it up, discarding the whip as he did so.

  Nigel groaned. Momentarily distracted, Cornelia looked towards him, and the second man grabbed her from behind, spinning her back against him. He held her with one arm a tight band across her breast, his knife pressed against the side of her neck. She felt a prick and a sticky wetness on her skin.

  And silence fell. Harry’s face was without expression, his eyes almost blank, showing nothing of his feverish calculations. He had two knives now and one wounded and disarmed opponent. But the other had Cornelia.

  There was one possibility. “Give him the thimble, Nell,” he said quietly. He didn’t know how long it would take for the man to realize the thimble was a counterfeit, and a clumsy one at that, but there was a chance he might be fooled long enough.

  “Not until I have Stevie,” she said, her voice clear and steady. “Where is my child?”

  “Stevie’s all right, love. He’s sleeping,” Harry said, still quietly. “Give him the thimble. It’s what he wants.”

  Cornelia didn’t immediately respond. If she refused to give her captor the thimble, then it seemed likely he would try to wrest it from her. If she put up enough of a struggle, it might give Harry an opening. But then, of course, the man at her back could simply drive the knife into her throat and take the thimble that way. The g
rim reflection was punctuated by another prick of the knife against her neck.

  She looked bleakly at Harry. Did he really know that Stevie was all right? How could she really trust him? He might be deceiving her for his own ends. He’d been doing that, after all, since first they met.

  As she stared at him, trying to read his soul, she sensed a change in him. A sudden stiffening, imperceptible, and yet she who knew his body so well could sense the subtle tension in his muscles. His eyes never left her face, his mouth showed nothing, but he was as alert as a panther scenting the hunter.

  She stamped hard on her captor’s foot, bringing her full weight to bear, heedless of the threatening prick of the knife, aware instinctively that Harry needed the man to lose focus, even for a second.

  As she did so, Lester hurled himself from the doorway. Her captor made a surprised little sound, halfway between a grunt and cry, and the press of the knife was no longer against her neck. The imprisoning arm fell away, and she felt his weight brush against her back as he crumpled to the floor.

  “Where’s Stevie?” Her voice sounded thick and hoarse.

  “Behind you,” Harry answered. “On the cot.” He wanted to look at her neck, but he knew it would have to wait.

  Cornelia saw the cot for the first time, or at least registered its presence for the first time. And she saw the small, curled, blanketed bundle. She ran to her child, kneeling by the cot to gather him against her, tears now flowing as she cradled his head against her breast. She was aware only that he was breathing, and his body felt the same as it always did. Holding him tightly, she inched herself onto the bed, positioning herself in the angle of the wall so that she could hold him in her lap, rocking him gently, while her eyes now roamed the miserable chamber, taking in everything she had not noticed before.

  Lester. What was he doing here? But, of course, he was connected to Harry. His employment in Cavendish Square, such a useful man to have around, had not been in the least serendipitous. Harry had planted him there. It was all too clear now. She watched as the two men conversed swiftly in an undertone, heads together with the ease of those who knew each other of old, who trusted and relied upon each other. Who would each give his life into the other’s hands.

  Another melodramatic thought, Cornelia reflected, amazed at the return of cynicism after the scrambling terror of the last minutes. It would be melodramatic in the ordinary world, she amended. But not in this shadowy universe in which she now found herself. The rules by which these four men played bore no relation to any she understood.

  No, not four, five. Harry had moved to the bound figure in the chair. He sliced through the bonds with his knife before reaching behind his head to untie the gag.

  Cornelia stared. The figure moaned with pain as the blood returned to his arms. “Nigel.” She spoke his name incredulously, clutching her child closer to her. What had Nigel to do with this?

  Nigel spat blood. His voice was thick and muffled. “I didn’t do it, Nell…I couldn’t do it,” he said, confusing her even more. “They tried to force me…I tried to stop him from being scared…I swear—”

  “Don’t try to talk,” Harry instructed curtly. “You can explain later, when Nell has the time to listen to you. You’re the least of anyone’s concerns at the moment.”

  He went over to the cot, and sat beside Cornelia. He caught her chin, turning her head to one side to look at the cut on her neck. “It’s not too bad, but it needs cleansing. Lester is going to take you and Stevie home.” He touched the child’s cheek, relieved to note that a smidgen of color had crept into his complexion and the lips were less blue. “He’s taken what I suspect is a fairly large dose of laudanum, and he’ll have a headache when he wakes. He’ll probably be sick too. But there’ll be no lasting ill effects.”

  “You would know, of course,” she said bitterly. “Did you calculate the dose precisely?”

  Harry looked shocked. “You can’t imagine that I…Nell, I didn’t do this.”

  She gave a short laugh. “No, not with your own hands, I’m sure. But you were responsible for it.” She stared at him, her eyes as hard and blank as blue stone. “Deny it, if you can.”

  And he couldn’t.

  He rose from the cot, his face closed. “Lester has a carriage downstairs. I must finish up here.” He gestured briefly towards the physical debris on the floor. One man was surely dead, Cornelia thought with strange dispassion. The other rocked on the floor clutching his shoulder, from which the blood oozed thickly. Nigel sat slumped, his hands over his face.

  “Coles and Addison’ll be along shortly to help with the cleanup, sir,” Lester said in his stolid fashion. “I’ll be taking Lady Dagenham and young Stevie home now.” He came over to the cot and gently but firmly took the boy from Cornelia. “Come on, ma’am. The sooner the lad’s in his own bed, the better he’ll be, I reckon.”

  Cornelia as always found Lester’s calm competence reassuring. Whatever his involvement in this shadow world, he was not directly responsible for what had happened to her son. She knew where that responsibility lay. Nigel must have had something to do with it, but God knows what mess he’d found himself in. She did believe him when he said he’d tried to help Stevie.

  Harry Bonham was another matter. He had used her, used her children, her friends. But most unforgivable of all, he had taken her soul.

  Chapter 24

  A HACKNEY CARRIAGE stood in the street outside the tavern, a much more salubrious-looking vehicle than the one that had brought Cornelia. She climbed in and impatiently held out her arms to Lester.

  “Give him to me.”

  “Here you are, ma’am.” Lester leaned in and placed the child on her lap, then called an instruction to the jarvey as he climbed in after her. He took the corner seat opposite and sat back, folding his arms with an air of placidity that seemed extraordinary to Cornelia, given that he’d just killed a man.

  But presumably that was not a noteworthy occurrence in the world that Lester and Harry Bonham shared. Her mouth hardened.

  Stevie stirred, and his eyelids fluttered a little, but he didn’t wake. She drew him closer to her, hoping that her familiar scent and warmth would penetrate his drugged stupor and chase away the fear that must have been his last waking emotion.

  “How long have you worked for Lord Bonham?” she asked, glancing across at Lester.

  “Around twelve years, give or take,” he responded serenely. “Since his lordship joined the service.”

  “What service would that be?” She couldn’t help the sardonic edge to the question.

  “Why, the Crown’s, ma’am,” Lester answered, as if it was obvious.

  “Ah, yes, of course, the Crown’s,” Cornelia said as sardonically as before. She should have known. Harry had told her rather obliquely that he worked for the government when he’d reminded her that England was at war. She just hadn’t really absorbed it.

  So she and her friends and her children had been conscripted in the same service, without their knowledge. Was that supposed to excuse Harry’s actions? Was it supposed to make her feel better? Was she supposed to be grateful for the compulsory opportunity to serve her country?

  Well, it didn’t and she wasn’t.

  She was simply enraged. And if she could hold on to the purity of her fury, then she could ignore the tangle of emotions swirling beneath.

  She reached into her pocket for the thimble and drew it out. “So what is this, Lester? Why was my son’s life risked for this?” She tossed it disdainfully onto the seat beside Lester.

  He picked it up. “You should ask his lordship, ma’am.”

  “I’m asking you,” she stated flatly. “What’s the significance of those engravings?”

  Lester for the first time looked uncomfortable. He turned the thimble around between finger and thumb. “Actually, there’s no significance to these, ma’am.” He held the thimble out to her.

  Cornelia stared at him. “What? I don’t understand.” Absently she took it back, enclos
ing it in her palm.

  Lester pulled at his chin. “His lordship will explain, my lady.”

  “In his absence I see no reason why you shouldn’t,” she insisted. “As it happens I don’t intend to give myself the opportunity to ask Viscount Bonham anything, but I would like an explanation from you.”

  Lester frowned. “I don’t fully catch your meaning, my lady. His lordship will explain everything, I’m sure, when you see him next.”

  “Let me be quite frank, Lester. I do not intend to see Lord Bonham again. So, will you tell me why those engravings have no significance?” She thrust the thimble back into her pocket.

  Lester felt himself shrinking from the ice blue darts of her eyes. This was the viscount’s mess, not his, and he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it. “It’s not for me to say, ma’am,” he stated, fervently hoping that she’d leave it at that.

  Cornelia continued to regard him in the dim light, a deep frown drawing her arched eyebrows together. Then Stevie gave a little cry, and she forgot all about Lester, the thimble, the viscount.

  “It’s all right, love,” she murmured. “Everything’s all right now. Mama’s here.” She lifted him up against her breast and kissed his damp forehead. His eyelids fluttered open, and he gazed up at her dazed and uncomprehending. “Go back to sleep,” she said softly, kissing his cheek. “Everything’s all right now.”

  Stevie settled again, his eyelids drooping heavily as he burrowed against her breast. She held him tightly within her arms and rocked him, crooning a lullaby, feeling him slide back into a deeper sleep.

  Nothing more was said until the carriage drew up in Cavendish Square. Lester jumped down and reached in to take the child, but she said sharply, “No. I can manage.”

  He helped her down with a steadying hand under her elbow and ran up the stairs to bang on the door. But it opened before he reached it, and Livia and Aurelia came rushing out.