Dangerous Angels
Amanda Scott
To Denise Little
With gratitude, memories of pictures on goblets, and a great deal of affection
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
A Biography of Amanda Scott
Prologue
London, March 31, 1829
“FOX CUB? THANK GOD you’re here! There is no time to lose.”
The tall dark-haired gentleman standing on the single step outside Number Ten Downing Street smiled at the fair-haired man who had opened the door, and with a slight inclination of his head, replied, “Le Renardeau, il est tout à vous, mon ami.”
“Good God, Tony, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your English!”
His light blue eyes glinting sardonically, Antony St. John Foxearth said, “Would it be surprising if I had, Harry? Must be ten years since I last set foot in England, and nearly as long since I clapped eyes on you.” He glanced back toward Whitehall and the narrow entrance to the cul-de-sac that was Downing Street, then added gently, “I do understand your desire to prevent the scaff and raff from encroaching upon His Grace, but do you mean to keep me standing long on the doorstep? It’s damned cold out here.”
Stepping back, Harry Livingston said with a shake of his head, “You haven’t changed a whit, Tony. Come in. He’s waiting for you in his office.” He put out his hand, and Antony gripped it firmly.
“It’s good to see you, Harry. Have you, too, been cast off by your family, that you must needs play porter now for Wellington?”
Livingston grimaced. “More secretary than porter, but no. My father’s got better sense than yours ever did, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
“Willingly. What’s amiss now, Harry?”
“He wants to tell you himself. I’m playing porter this afternoon because he’s cleared the house in order to meet with you alone. A damned foolish thing to do under the circumstances, but I daresay he knows what he’s about. He generally does. He doesn’t want your presence here widely known, you see.”
“Was he worried that I’d take a stroll through Brooks’s before coming here?”
Livingston flushed. “No, he wasn’t, damn your eyes, and if you take that tone with him, Tony, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. He hasn’t changed.”
Antony made a graceful little bow. “Lead on, Macduff.”
Eyeing him suspiciously, Harry said, “That’s Shakespeare.”
“Just wanted to show you I haven’t forgotten my English, dear fellow.”
“Damn it, Tony, at school you used to start spouting Shakespeare whenever someone annoyed you. What the devil have I done—?”
“You are keeping me waiting, Harry.”
“I am?” Indignantly, Livingston paused with his mouth open, then snapped it shut again and turned, muttering, “It’s this way, damn you.” Leading the way from the entrance hall upstairs, Harry said, “Very grand, ain’t it? Soane, the architect, spent three years refurbishing this place before the Duke took office. He’s only staying here till they’ve finished doing the same at Apsley House.” Approaching a carved walnut door, he reached for the latch.
“Why you, Harry? As porter, I mean.”
Pausing with his hand on the latch, Livingston looked over his shoulder. “Because he thought I’d be likely to recognize you after all these years. You haven’t exactly mixed with the beau monde in France, Tony, or in Verona, for all he said we would have been at a disadvantage there without you after Castlereagh put a period to his existence. You will recall that I was with the Duke in Verona, I expect.”
“I don’t associate with your world anymore, Harry. I’ve been made to feel most unwelcome in it.”
“Tony, that was years ago, and some of us, including the Duke, tried to change things. Why, I even—”
“Not many were like you.”
“Look, your father’s been in his grave these three years and more,” Harry said sternly. “You didn’t even attend his funeral.”
“A little difficult, my friend. Word of his demise did not reach me for four months. By then I could see no reason to come back.”
“But—”
“We are keeping him waiting, Harry.”
Grimacing, Livingston pushed open the door and said brusquely, “He’s here, sir, but what you can want with such a damned uncivil fellow, I can’t imagine.”
The Duke of Wellington, now Prime Minister of England, got to his feet. Though approaching his sixtieth birthday, he had retained his wavy brown hair and his slender five-foot-nine-inch physique, and was still accounted a handsome man despite his large, bony nose. His bearing was stiff and aristocratic, but his bright blue eyes were twinkling when he stepped around his desk to shake hands with Antony.
“Sent for him because he’s the one man I know I can trust to get to the bottom of things in Cornwall before they blow up in our faces,” he said, speaking in his rapid, clipped way. “Well met, Tony. I need you. Some damned unfeeling Cornishmen want to assassinate me, so Le Renardeau had better go down there and put a stop to it.”
Antony smiled at the man who had had so much influence—both good and bad—on his life. “Must I, sir? I should think it would be a deal more sensible to avoid venturing into Cornwall until they’ve found something more interesting to do.”
The Duke gestured toward a chair. “Can’t do that. I promised to attend the consecration of the new cathedral in Truro on the fourteenth of June. The nation is contributing a set of famous sacramental vessels removed from an abbey on the Tamar that was shut up during the Reformation and eventually destroyed under Cromwell. I don’t dare even let the threat be known. We’ve got a new police bill before the Commons, and Robbie Peel believes that with luck he can push this one through.”
“I did hear rumors that he’s trying again to organize a civilian police force.”
“We must succeed this time, Tony,” the Duke said earnestly. “I know the military too well to believe in soldiers as peacekeepers, I assure you. Any country that relies on its army to keep order in peacetime invites dire peril. Since Peel returned from Ireland ten years ago, he’s tried to form a police force here like the force he created there, but Englishmen persist in thinking police of any sort mean tyranny.”
“Englishmen still value liberty above order,” Antony said. “As Fox once said, most of them would prefer to be ruled by a mob than by a standing army of police.”
“Our police will not be an army,” the Duke said. “Disciplined constables armed only with truncheons can master mobs, Tony. But we need time to push the bill through Parliament and time to set the scheme into motion. The last thing we need is a threat to assassinate me. Public knowledge of it would stir a general outcry. My opponents would demand either that I remain safely in London and break my word to the people of Cornwall, or that the military be sent in to keep peace while I’m there. The latter choice could lead to another Peterloo. And that, I need hard
ly say, would frighten off a lot of our support. Wavering members could easily decide that any police force is bound to develop into an ever-present army of violent men, and vote against us.”
Antony frowned. “Forgive me, sir, but the reference to Peterloo escapes me. I’ve heard the name, certainly, but—”
Harry Livingston said, “It began as a political meeting in St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester, Tony, four years after Waterloo. Men militating for economic relief and parliamentary reform were united by the damned Methodists—”
“Don’t blame the Methodists,” the Duke said, smiling tolerantly. “England probably owes it to them that she’s one of few countries not to suffer a revolution in the past fifty years. In any case, Tony, the gathering began peacefully. Women and children present—about sixty thousand people in all.”
“That many?” Antony was surprised.
Wellington nodded. “Magistrates on the scene decided that if the leaders were arrested, the meeting would disperse. They called in the military to arrest them, and a troop of yeoman cavalry rode into the crowd.” He sighed. “Their first victim was a two-year-old child, crushed in the onrush.”
“But how would a civilian police force have behaved differently?”
“Those soldiers had been carousing. They were poorly disciplined, and their mounts untrained. They lost formation, Tony, foundering in the press of people. When they made their arrests, they lost their heads completely, smashing the dais and dragging down the banners. A contingent of regular cavalry, thinking the crowd had attacked the yeomanry, charged in to disperse them. In the resulting panic, people fled as best they could, leaving sabered and trampled babies on the ground. Fifteen died. Hundreds more were wounded or injured.”
Livingston said, “The worst was that afterward Parliament passed all sorts of repressive laws. They sent troops in wherever the least hint of unrest stirred. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Peel successfully organized a civil police force. He wants to do the same here, but it will take months to get it through both houses, so we can’t afford a flare-up in Cornwall. Half the nation believes Cornwall is a wilderness nearly as unpredictable as Scotland. Trouble there could ruin everything and set Peel’s plan back ten years or more.”
“That,” said Wellington, “is where you come in. I want you to find out who the plotters are and stop them before I get there. You’ve no reason to love me, Tony, but you’ve served me well in the past. Can you bring yourself to do so again?”
“With all my heart, sir.”
“Excellent, but you’ll have to mind your manners. The most likely source of the trouble is a gang of smugglers and wreckers operating along the south coast. Our informant says they’re in league with French smugglers who still think of me as the man who ended their emperor’s reign, and the most lucrative period in their careers, as well. But though Cornwall is, as Harry said, thought by many to be foreign territory, remember that it’s still England. Anything that even looks like the employment of spies is as unacceptable to the public now as it’s ever been, and still believed by most to be alien to the British belief in fair play.”
“Plus ça change; plus c’est la même chose,” Antony said bitterly. “Who is our informant?”
“Alas, he signs himself only as one who cares. He does not even say whether he cares about me or about something else altogether.”
“So what would you have me do, my lord duke?”
“What you do best, of course, but don’t break any laws, because if you do, you will be exceeding official instruction. I won’t be able to help you.”
Antony grinned, understanding him perfectly. “Perhaps I’d best pose as a lord then, rather than a smuggler.”
Wellington chuckled. “I leave that to you to decide. Just keep this from blowing up in the public eye, Tony.” He paused with a speculative look, then added, “Speaking of lords, it occurs to me that you’ve a relative or two in Cornwall, lad. Might that pose a problem?”
“None whatsoever,” Antony responded confidently. “I’ve never met a single one of them, and I can’t think of a single reason to alter that fact.”
Chapter One
Cornwall, April 18, 1829
WHEN THE LARGE TRAVELING coach suddenly increased its speed on the narrow cliff road, the monkey was the first of its dozing passengers to waken. His bristly round head popped out of his small mistress’s large fur muff. Round, inquisitive shoe-button eyes glinted alertly in light from the gibbous moon hovering over the British Channel and the perilous south coast of Cornwall. The monkey cocked its head, listening.
Lady Letitia Ophelia Deverill, a child with nine whole summers behind her, was the next to stir. Her eyes slitted, blinked sleepily, then opened wide. When the monkey began to chatter nervously, she held it closer, murmuring, “Hush, Jeremiah, it’s all right.” Looking out the nearby coach window, however, she gasped and added less confidently, “I think it’s all right.”
Beside her, twenty-four-year-old Miss Charlotte Tarrant shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, which was no easy task after days of lurching travel with three other persons and a monkey in the close, albeit luxurious, confines of the coach. Inadvertently, she stepped on her father’s foot.
Charles Tarrant muttered, moved his foot, and opened one eye to glare at her.
The carriage rounded a slight bend, and moonlight streamed inside, so that when Charlotte opened her eyes, she saw his expression clearly. Smiling ruefully, she said, “Sorry, Papa. Letty,” she added when Charles shut his eyes again, “Whatever is the matter with Jeremiah?”
“I-I don’t know, Cousin Charley, but are we not going rather fast? I just looked out the window, and all I can see is the sea, very far down.”
Charley leaned across the child to look out the window. She and Letty occupied the forward seat, facing Charley’s parents. Her mother, Davina, wakened, frowning.
“Gracious me, Charles,” she said, “this carriage is swaying like the Royal Mail! Do tell John Coachman to slow down before he has us over the cliff!”
As Charles reached forward to knock on the ceiling of the coach, a shot rang out, followed by others. The coach moved even faster.
“Highwaymen,” Davina screamed. “Robbers! Oh, Charles, where is your pistol? Why did we not go through Launceston? Oh, why did we not hire a guard?”
Charles snapped, “We didn’t go by way of Launceston, my dear, because you insisted that we take a look at the Plymouth house, that’s why. And we did not stay the night in Looe, which would have been the sensible course, because you don’t like to travel on Sunday and thought we could reach Tuscombe Park tonight. Why anyone of sense would want to drive the Polperro Road, ever, let alone in the dark of night—”
Searching through her satchel, Charley interjected calmly, “But we are here. Ah, here it is. I’ve got my pistol, Mama, and the big one is in the holster by Papa’s door, where it is always kept. John Coachman must have seen them following us, which is why he increased his pace. But with only two horses, and on this of all roads, it is a stupid thing to do. Shout at him to pull up, Papa. We can deal with highwaymen, but if we should go off the road or lose a wheel—”
As if thought had given birth to reality, the coach bounced heavily over a rock, and with a screeching crack, the left hind wheel broke off its axle. Had it happened scant moments before, the carriage would have plunged a hundred feet to jagged, surf-frothed rocks below. But they had reached the rugged, unfriendly slope of Seacourt Head, a jutting triangular headland that formed the east boundary of St. Merryn’s Bay.
When the wheel broke, the coachman did his best, but the coach was traveling too fast. Swerving, it lurched off the road, and he could not regain control. After a few awkward bumps, forward action ceased and the heavily laden coach began to roll ominously backward down the steep slope of the headland.
The horses strained, but the coach was too heavy. It dragged them backward, faster and faster, inexorably nearer the edge, until it caught on boulders and toppled ove
r sideways, skidding briefly, then rolling. The horses screamed in panic.
In the tangle of bodies inside, Charley dropped the pistol she had snatched from her satchel and clung tightly to her small cousin. Windows broke, and dust and glass rained over them when first one side, then the other, hit the rocky ground. The nearside door flew open, and when the vehicle hit the ground again, Charley and Letty shot out.
Landing hard on her back against a steep slope of loose scree, with Letty on top of her, Charley felt herself sliding. She heard a sickening scrape of coach against rocks, her father’s panicked shouts and her mother’s screams, echoed by those of the horses. The sounds faded until she heard a distant, crunching thud, then, except for the sound of the surf far below, there was silence. Still sliding toward the brink over which the coach had plunged, she tried to dig her heels into the loose scree.
Letty struggled to free herself. Tightening her grip, Charley muttered, “Be still.” She scrabbled wildly with her free hand, desperately seeking a handhold, anything to stop their fatal slide toward the precipice.
The surf rolled out again, providing a few seconds of near silence. From his lookout position, crouched in a cluster of boulders just above the tidemark on the beach they called Devil’s Sand, Antony heard a coach above him on the cliff road, then gunshots. Raising his eyes heavenward, he blessed the cliff overhang—the same steep overhang he had cursed an hour earlier when he feared he had misjudged the tide and might be trapped by the unpredictable waves. Several times he had reminded himself that the caves just up the beach were dry enough to store smuggled goods. But as the water inched nearer, and the moon finally slipped behind clouds that his comrades had expected to hide it much earlier, darkness and the noise of the surf stirred a primordial fear that had taken much of his overtaxed resolution to defeat. Now, with the moon’s reappearance, he had new worries. Smugglers did not welcome moonlight.
At the same time that he blessed the overhang that would protect him if the fast-moving coach plunged off the road, he spared a thought for the passengers and horses. He had not spent so much time alone that he did not still think of others, although he doubted he would ever again feel the same magnitude of caring and compassion he had felt for family and friends in long-ago days, before his emotions withered and died. When they cast him off for disgracing them with his “unsportsmanlike activities” during the unpleasantness with Bonaparte, the break had devastated him. He grieved for them then as if they all had died. Memory of the expression on Harry Livingston’s face three weeks before, when Harry rebuked him for missing his father’s funeral, brought only a sigh of depression now. He had felt nothing at learning of his father’s death, all bereavement spent long before, after his father gave him the cut direct in front of everyone at Brooks’s Club in London. The wrenching pain of that moment stirred again, then vanished instantly amid panicked screams of horses and humans. The noise of the surf had muffled sound from above, but he heard the screech of coachwork on rocks somewhere near the headland at the west end of Devil’s Sand. Then more horrible screams, a muffled crash on the beach, and silence.
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