London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "Do you think it's a genuine identification?" Malcolm asked. "Or a feint to cover up the identity of the real victim?"

  "Difficult to tell," Roth said. "But several people said the description sounded like him, and the man who identified him got teary-eyed. Which doesn't preclude him being a good actor." Roth set down his cup and stretched his legs out in front of him. "It appears his closest relationship is with a woman named Sue Kettering, who works at an establishment called the Gilded Lily in St. Martin's Close." He glanced at Suzanne, then gave a rueful smile as though acknowledging the folly of being overly delicate. "No one, of course, wanted to admit it to me straight out, but reading between the lines it appears to be a brothel. Yet Coventry seems to have had an ongoing relationship with Miss Kettering."

  "Not uncommon," Malcolm said in an easy voice. He didn't want to risk a look at his wife, but he wondered what her reaction was. He could not but be aware of the revelations of six months ago and the fact that she had once been employed in a brothel herself.

  "No." Roth reached for his teacup and turned it in his hand. Eggshell porcelain rimmed in silver. Delicate and refined. Like the face Suzanne showed to the world. Malcolm wondered suddenly what it meant to his wife to make a life for them in Mayfair. He had no doubt now that the family they had built was genuine, but had the trappings of the beau monde driven her mad with their hypocrisy, a silver-rimmed shell round whatever was real between them? Or, after a past that had at times been appallingly raw, had she been building a haven for herself as much as anything? "Murder's still an unusual occurrence in London, thank God. But now we know the man's identity, the chief magistrate's attitude to the investigation is rather less urgent than when the Duke of Trenchard was murdered."

  Roth's ironic tone held a knife-sharp edge. Malcolm could still remember Roth's hard gaze sweeping over him in the guttering light of a Spanish farmhouse. That had been their first meeting. Roth had been assigned to assist Malcolm on a mission. Malcolm had been disguised as a wine merchant, but had dropped the persona to strategize with Roth. His clothes might have been worn and mud-spattered, but his accent had been Oxbridge with a hint of Scotland. Roth had quickly grasped the details of the mission and responded with strategic suggestions that were shrewd and to the point. But his mocking gaze said he had sized Malcolm up as an aristocrat and suspected Malcolm was playing at being an agent. It wasn't until the end of the mission, by which time they had each saved the other's life, that Malcolm felt he had won Roth's trust.

  "They aren't suggesting you drop the investigation, are they?" Suzanne asked.

  "Oh, no." Roth took a sip of tea. "Murder is still murder. And the property of gentlemen of substance is involved. That should be enough to ensure some interest from the London authorities." He returned his cup to its saucer, as though being careful not to clunk it down. "I could go talk to Sue Kettering in my official capacity, of course. But given how difficult it was to even uncover her name, I doubt she'd say much to a Bow Street runner. I wonder if we wouldn't do better—"

  "With someone undercover?" Suzanne asked.

  Roth met her gaze and smiled. "You're under no obligation, of course. But you can't blame me for thinking of what's best for the investigation."

  Suzanne's smile deepened. Even Malcolm couldn't read any hesitation in his wife's expression. "An evening out away from Mayfair and a chance at a genuine mission in disguise? I could kiss you, Jeremy."

  Roth laughed, something he would never have done at such a comment six, even three, months ago.

  Malcolm reached for his teacup and managed a smile.

  Malcolm looked across the barouche at his wife. The interior lamps reflected off the watered silk seat coverings, casting a soft glow, but Suzanne had applied her lip and cheek rouge and eye blacking with an unusually heavy hand that created a harsh effect. The thick layer of powder on her normally luminous skin implied that she was covering up imperfections in the complexion beneath.

  She turned her head and met his gaze with a mocking, knowing smile, as though already sinking into her persona. She had worn that same auburn wig for a visit to a dockside tavern in Paris, a night that ended in a murder and set them off on one of their most challenging investigations.

  "Are you sure about this?" he asked.

  "Darling, you enjoy a mission in disguise as much as I do. You just aren't as quick to admit it. How often do we have a chance to do this since we've come to Britain?"

  "I didn't say I didn't enjoy it."

  "It's probably a good deal less dangerous than when we broke into Carfax's study three months ago."

  "I wasn't thinking of the danger." He hesitated. He was still learning to navigate the waters of her past. "You could be pardoned for not wanting to visit a brothel."

  "It's hardly the first time. Remember Le Paon d'Or?"

  Malcolm had a vivid image of his wife firing her pistol at the man who had him at sword's point. "That was before—"

  "You knew I'd been a whore myself?"

  "Stop it, Mel. You shouldn't say such things about yourself."

  Her brows lifted with amusement, but her gaze was hard. "Would you rather I said prostitute?"

  "It's not the word, it's the tone." He reached for her hand. He wanted to fold her in his arms, but he knew she'd regard that as too simple.

  She let him take her hand, though her shrug was a defensive gesture. "It's part of my past, Malcolm. Not a part I particularly enjoy remembering but not one I want to deny either. You may not have known it at the time, but Le Paon d'Or did stir some memories. But nothing I can't handle."

  He saw the gleaming paneling and velvet upholstery in the brothel in Brussels. "Le Paon d'Or was—"

  "More elegant? It's true. The Gilded Lily sounds more like the brothel I was in in Léon. All the more reason it's a good thing I'm here. I do think I'm rather more equipped to navigate it than Jeremy. Or even you, darling."

  He tightened his fingers over her own. "That's without question."

  The smile she gave him was as brilliant as diamonds. Or a polished knife blade. And somehow at once ruthlessly honest and resolutely armored. "We both know one can never move on if one can't confront the past."

  Scenes from his own history clustered in his memory. Coming back to Britain had meant confronting his past, part of the reason he'd resisted it for so long. But he wasn't at all sure he'd managed to adequately do so. "Easier said than done, sweetheart."

  "No one said this was easy, dearest." Suzanne turned her gaze to the dark shadows beyond the gleaming glass of the carriage window. "Here we are."

  Suzanne accepted Malcolm's hand and climbed down from the carriage into the shadows. Randall had let them off on the edge of Seven Dials, close enough to Covent Garden that if anyone glimpsed the barouche they would just think he was finding an out-of-the-way place to wait while his employers were at the theatre. Dangerous to take the carriage into Seven Dials itself, and counterproductive to their masquerade if they were seen descending from it.

  She stumbled as her foot hit the cobblestones and had to clutch Malcolm's arm. The cobblestones were uneven and slick with damp and oils and God knew what. Plenty to account for her unsteadiness. She gave Malcolm a quick smile designed to indicate her slip had been mere foolishness. It couldn't have anything to do with tonight's mission. Danger was more likely to quicken her blood than turn her stomach. And if their destination could not but stir memories, it was, as she had said to Malcolm, hardly her first visit to a brothel since she'd left the one where she had once made her home. It wasn't even her first visit with Malcolm.

  Though it was the first since he'd known the truth of her past.

  Randall snapped the carriage steps back into place. "You're sure you'll be all right?"

  "It's a short walk," Malcolm said. "And we can look after ourselves."

  Randall grinned. "Can't argue with that, sir."

  "Go back to Berkeley Square," Malcolm said. "We'll find our own way home. It should be quieter in the streets by th
en."

  They had taken the carriage less because they needed transport for the short distance than because walking through Mayfair dressed at they were would have stirred unwelcome comment.

  Suzanne took Malcolm's proffered arm, and they moved into the winding labyrinth of Seven Dials. Shadows closed in round them like the curtains of a stage set. Butting up on Covent Garden and the theatres like Drury Lane and the Tavistock, where the streets would now be thronged with fashionable carriages like theirs, Seven Dials was its own world. The streets round Covent Garden were narrow and winding in their own right. (Suzanne, an expert at navigating uncertain terrain, still vividly remembered getting hopelessly lost on her first visit to Britain on her way to meet Raoul a coffeehouse.) But in Seven Dials the buildings were even closer set, blocking out the sun in daylight hours, seemingly almost designed to allow thieves to shake pursuit.

  The streets were coming to life for the evening. Torchlight flickered over smoke-stained stone walls. Dice rattled. Shouts and the smells of ale and sausages filled the air. Once they narrowly avoided the contents of a chamber pot dumped from an upper story window, another time a stream of urine. Two men shouted offers to Suzanne, despite the fact that she was holding Malcolm's arm. The occasional well-dressed young man appeared amid the crowd thronging the streets. Suzanne wondered how well their disguises would hold up if they encountered anyone they knew, and what story they would come up with otherwise.

  A sign with a faded, gold-tipped lily clutched in the hand of a fair-haired woman with a filmy white gown slipping from her shoulders marked the Gilded Lily. A couple staggered out the door, the man clutching a bottle of gin in one hand, his other arm thrown round the woman's shoulders and his hand halfway down her laced bodice. The smell of gin and fetid breath slapped them in the face.

  They stepped into hot air, loud voices, the slosh of liquid. Not entirely unlike the crush at a Mayfair entertainment, save that the voices were a bit louder and the smell of unwashed bodies a bit stronger; the flickering light was the greasy glow of tallow candles, not the soft brilliance of wax tapers; and the drink of choice was ale rather than champagne. Malcolm released her arm and wrapped his own arm round her shoulders. Partly, perhaps, because it presented a less decorous picture more in keeping with their masquerade, but also, she thought, because he was having one of his Hotspur-ish protective moments. And, for once, she was grateful. In fact, she knew a traitorous impulse to turn in his arm and bury her face in his shoulder. Her past washed over her. Coarse words, groping fingers, soul-destroying powerlessness. For a moment, the urge to run was almost overmastering. And so she did the only thing she could when fear threatened to overwhelm her. She tossed her shoulders, sending her spangled shawl slithering down her arms, and marched into the fray.

  Rough plank tables were scattered about the room. A staircase led up to the next floor. A couple were on their way upstairs and another were coming down, the man buttoning the flap on his breeches. The girl had dark hair and thick face paint, but she didn't look much over fifteen. Maybe less. A flash of light from the swaying iron chandelier caught the bleak look in her eyes. Suzanne willed her footsteps to be steady on the ale-soaked floorboards.

  The Gilded Lily appeared to be a tavern with rooms upstairs in which the girls could service clients, rather than an organized house like the one Suzanne had worked at in Léon. Malcolm steered her towards a table. She received two more offers before she had seated herself and settled her spangled skirts. Malcolm ordered ale from the pockmarked waiter who approached them, and asked after Sue Kettering. His voice had a Scots lilt to it, which came naturally to him and worked well when he was playing against aristocratic type.

  "Leaky Sue?" The waiter raised his brows. "What do you want with her?" His gaze slid to Suzanne. "Looks as though you're already well-provided for."

  "She's a friend of a friend."

  "Is that what they're calling it these days?" The waiter gave a short laugh, but when Malcolm slid a coin across the table to him he said he'd see what he could do.

  Suzanne let her shawl slither down over the chairback and leaned closer to Malcolm. She tugged the spotted handkerchief he wore in place of a cravat loose and planted a kiss on his throat. It wouldn't do for it to look as though they were at the Gilded Lily on any business but pleasure. He turned his head and kissed her forehead. A bit too tenderly. But then tenderness, thank God, could be found in any setting.

  A baby's cry rose over the buzz of talk and clink of tankards. Suzanne looked round to see a fair-haired girl in a grimy pink dress, with tired eyes set in a teenaged face, tip a glass of gin down the throat of the baby in her arms.

  Two tankards of ale slammed down on the table. Suzanne turned back to see not their waiter but a woman with hair of a brilliant auburn not unlike her own wig. The woman wore a low-cut scarlet gown and smelled of gin and violet scent. "I'm Sue Kettering. What do you want?" She glanced between them. "I don't do threesomes."

  Malcolm, to Suzanne's relief, didn't blanch. But then, his abilities as an agent always trumped his delicacy of mind. "I'm a friend of Ben Coventry's."

  Raw grief shot through Sue Kettering's blue eyes. Almost immediately, wariness closed over it like a shutter pulled taut against prying outsiders. Or snipers. "I've never seen you before."

  "My name is Randall. Charlie Randall."

  "Ben never talked about you."

  "We served in the 95th together. I was there when he took a musket ball at Waterloo."

  She dropped down in a chair opposite them. "He didn't talk about the war much."

  "One doesn't. Even with those one is closest to." Malcolm took a sip of ale. "I stayed on in Paris after I was demobilized. Good pickings for a man who knows where to look. That's where I met Suzette." He glanced at Suzanne.

  Suzanne flashed back the smile of a woman besotted but not quite to the point of forgetting to look after herself. "And he persuaded me to come to this damp, gray island," she said, her French accent pronounced. "I'm still not sure when I became so soft in the head."

  Sue Kettering gave a short laugh. She had strongly marked brows and high cheekbones that lent a sort of elfin prettiness to her face. "Men. They'll do that to you if you aren't careful. Many's the time I told Ben I never wanted to see him again—" She slammed a fist over her face.

  "I was trying to find him when I heard of his death," Malcolm said. "I'm so sorry. He was a good friend."

  Sue wiped her hand across her eyes, smearing her eye blacking. "He was a bastard. But he had a way with him. And he didn't cut and run, I'll give him that." She hunched her shoulders and pulled her tattered lace shawl closer about her. "He'd disappear for weeks at a time. Months sometimes. But he always came back. So's I suppose you could say he was loyal to me. And Jem—" She bit her lip.

  "You have a child?" Suzanne asked. "Mon Dieu, it's so difficult, isn't it? I swore I'd never again be tied to a man and then before I knew what I was about I've gone and tied myself to him all the same through nos enfants. We have a boy who's two"—their story had to have the children born after 1815—"and a baby girl."

  Sue hesitated a moment. "We—I have a boy. Jemmy. He's just past two. He doesn't know about Ben yet. Can't work out how to tell him."

  Suzanne slid her hand across the table and touched Sue's own, too thin and with the paper dryness of harsh soaps laced with lye. "Sometimes honesty works best, chérie. Even with little ones. I had to tell mon fils—my brother took a knife to the ribs in a tavern brawl."

  "Pierre was reckless," Malcolm said, with a shake of his head that told volumes about the supposed Pierre's character. "Ben wasn't." He turned back to Sue. "I heard he took a knife to the back. He wasn't the sort of man to let someone sneak up on him. What happened?"

  Sue cast a quick glance about the room. "I don't know."

  "But you must have ideas. Someone said he'd gone soft—"

  "Soft!" Sue's voice squeaked. "Ben was a lot of things, but he was canny as ever." Her gaze slid to the side. "Damn it, he
told me he'd be careful. He said it was worth it."

  "What?" Malcolm's voice was gentle and compelling as only he could make it.

  Sue cast another glance about, then leaned forwards across the table. Her breasts threatened to spill from her low-cut bodice, but there was nothing seductive about her attitude. "I don't know. Not entirely."

  "But?" Malcolm asked in the same inexorable voice. "He was my friend. He saved my life in the Peninsula when a French patrol surprised us outside Salamanca. I want to find out what happened to him. I'd like to see him avenged."

  Sue's gaze shot to his face and lingered there. She bit her lip. "It was just fetching something, he said. A bit of paper someone was willing to pay more for than any ink and paper should be worth. But if it was worth that to them, his not to question. He said no one should be there. Not even guards. Safer than stealing silver and more blunt to be had. I don't understand who killed him."

  "Nor do I," Malcolm said. "Who hired him?"

  "He said I was better off not knowing."

  Suzanne snorted. "That sounds like a man. They say they're protecting you and rush headlong into trouble."

  Sue met her gaze. "In a nutshell."

  "But you're clever." Suzanne smiled at her with fellow feeling. "You must have heard or seen something."

  Something flashed in Sue's eyes. Suzanne recognized the triumph of not letting oneself be coddled.

  "One night. About a week since. I'd gone back to his lodgings with Jemmy for the night, and I got up because Jemmy was fretful. I heard the voices first. The man had a gentleman's voice. That caught my attention—not the sort of man Ben usually entertained."

  A portly man with breath that smelled of gin and garlic staggered into their table and stuck a hand down Sue's bodice. Sue pushed him away without looking at him. "I couldn't make out most of the words, but I caught something about 'mission' and 'warehouse' and something like 'wait lee.' Then they came towards the door, so I had to nip out. But I ran to the window and saw the man leaving. The torchlight caught him for a moment. Plain dark coat. But from the way he moved—I'd swear he was a soldier."