He smiled, then had to hide a frown. His reaction to her genuine pleasure in his company surprised him, and he wasn’t comfortable with surprises. But she was right. It was such a simple diversion and yet so diverting. They were only walking through the Park. It was more pleasant than most things he did, more amusing than most conversations he had, and the most exciting time he’d spent with a woman in a long time, and that included interludes in dim, perfumed boudoirs.
Kate and he just talked. Or rather, today she listened to his running commentary on things they saw, laughing in all the right places, and for a miracle, actually made him laugh, too. Really laugh, not just assume a knowing smile as he so often had to do. His pleasure in the day, and hers, was seen by everyone they passed. They looked as though they were having a wonderful time, and they were. She was a perfect accomplice.
Alasdair’s admittedly lax conscience was clear. Kate Corbet had no pretenses, but that didn’t mean she was naive. A well-informed mind saw the humor in life, just as a strong streak of practicality made her see nonsense for it was. She had a lively sense of fairness that sometimes made her chide him for being unkind, even as she struggled to restrain her laughter at whatever unkind thing he’d said. He congratulated himself on a well-conceived plan. Whatever the outcome of this adventure, she might profit even if he didn’t. Now that Society had noticed her, some real suitors might take an interest in her, too.
He ought to be content. It was a good day’s work. The fashionable in the Park noted his interest in Kate. That was the only difficult part of it for him. Not his interest—but letting others see it. That wasn’t his style.
It was a masterstroke that Sibyl Swanson was there, too, partnered by Leigh. The pair strolled along behind Alasdair and Kate, a maidservant pacing decorously after them. Few had even known of Sibyl’s existence, but now anyone could see she was the best-looking of that ill-favored lot, so she and Leigh attracted their share of stares and comment. There was a lot for idle and active observers of society to notice, and more to feed the gossips. It was going very well.
But they only had the afternoon to show the world their courtship. He couldn’t take Kate out by day and night, at least not in the same day. They were playing an intricate game, and he had to leave her some reputation when they were done with it. That didn’t mean he couldn’t make the most of it. Laughter was all very well. They needed more to really make tongues wag.
He bent his head. “We have to go back soon,” he told her softly. “Our revels must soon be ended, or your uncle will be waiting for us with a preacher.”
“Go back? Already?” she asked in surprise.
“Too soon, I agree,” he said, lowering his voice, “But tomorrow we have the night. We’ll meet in public then, too, but the advantage is that not even the keenest eyes can see everything we do in the night.” The smile he bent on her was gentle, intimate, knowing.
Her eyes widened, her color rose. She lowered her eyelashes, and he knew she was searching for a comment to lighten the moment.
“…Which will help our charade enormously,” he went on smoothly, his smile becoming wider when he saw her reaction. It was relief, and chagrin, and possibly, regret.
“Good,” he whispered to her. “Laughter is good, but blushes are better. The world will certainly note that.”
Her chin rose, she looked him in the eye. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll look like a jilt when we’re done?” she asked with asperity.
He laughed. “But no, my dear Kate. You’ll be the jilt. It will enhance your reputation enormously.”
She bit her lip.
“And I’ll be pitied, which will help me, too,” he added. He patted her hand where it lay on his arm. “Don’t worry, no one can lose by this, and I’ll be helped so much. Have I said thank you lately?”
“You’re welcome,” she murmured, still looking troubled.
So he made her laugh again, and then again.
But then it was night, and Alasdair found himself pacing his study, curiously edgy, anxious to do something, with no idea of what that was. He trusted his instincts, they’d always served him well. The damnable thing was that though he racked his brain, he couldn’t find a reason for his unease. Everything had gone as it ought, he should be relaxing now.
He threw himself into a chair and stared gloomily at the unlit hearth. What was troubling him? His plan was afoot, victory was near. He was too keyed up, that was it, he needed diversion. He wished he could see Kate, that would be amusing…but impossible. It was late, no gentleman went running to a woman’s house at this hour without a previous appointment, if she was respectable. But he wanted to be with her, see her, discuss things with her, see those amber eyes crinkle as that pretty pink mouth curled up in laughter, smell her perfume, touch her….
He threw his head back on the chair and let out a gusty sigh. What a dunce he was! Such a simple thing. It wasn’t Kate he wanted now, he just needed a woman. Since his attention was being focused on Kate, he thought she was what he wanted. There was a piece of nonsense he could never share with her!
No denying she attracted him, and vigorously. But half that attraction was because he wasn’t used to women like her. The other half was just as clear to him now that he thought about it. He didn’t belittle her charms, he couldn’t. But they were obsessing him too much. For good reason. It had been a while since he’d enjoyed the favors of any woman. He’d come to London with a plan that had occupied his mind so much he’d forgotten about his body. Now his body was reminding him. He sprang from the chair.
Simple problems had simple remedies. And such simple remedies were easy to find in London. What a good idea! Relief from tension, if only for a few moments, would be welcome. He felt a surge of expectation as he strode to the door.
He paused halfway there.
Matters of the body had always been simple ones for him. Light affairs with adventurous women, temporary trysts with playful widows, money exchanged for services rendered by experienced courtesans, those sorts of liaison were easy outlets.
He suddenly realized none of them was possible now.
A call on any of his former playmates would be noticed—if indeed, those women were still free. He’d been abroad a long time. They might be married, or dead, by now. He never bothered keeping in touch with his casual paramours, and he had no other kind. He wasn’t about to roam London by night, knocking on doors, asking their whereabouts. And this certainly wasn’t the time to set up a new flirt.
He could go to a brothel. It wasn’t the best thing, but a jolly woman who could make it seem that she liked her work was acceptable on nights like this. But he stayed where he was, irresolute.
Sometimes anonymous sex was necessary. If it was safe. He wouldn’t go to an inferior brothel for the same reason he’d never take a woman who walked the streets. He’d no desire to end up raddled with the clap, the disease of incautious pleasure. There was no cure for it, and it disregarded rank and fortune, leveling the rich and famous as well as the poor and unknown. The afflicted poor could be seen begging in the streets, gone crippled and disfigured with it, but Alasdair had seen too many of the mighty fallen with it, too. Ladies of a sportive nature who suddenly gave up dalliance, going veiled to hide the ruin of their skin. Gentlemen of interesting reputations who began to forget important things, like their names.
The wages of sin were too often slow wasting of the body and secret erosion of the brain. Alasdair wanted to have his body and his wits in his old age—if he was lucky enough to reach it.
Anyway, if he went to any of the better brothels, he’d be seen. That would put paid to any hope he had of convincing the world he was serious about Kate! A gentleman could dally and it might be winked at—but not if he was supposed to be in the throes of ardent longing for a particular woman. He felt desire ebb away.
So what to do? Impossible to sit still with a book. Ridiculous to drink until he fell asleep. He had to do something.
He reviewed his options. A gentleman�
��s club wasn’t the answer. Nothing they had to offer would do tonight. He wouldn’t wager—when he was restive like this he’d leap at any dare. Even political discussions might come to mayhem while this wild mood was on him. So he’d also have to avoid those friends he had. It would be too easy to alienate them with some misplaced word.
No play of any sort was available to him.
Alasdair felt caged and thwarted. It was too dark to ride, too late to stroll the streets looking for diversion, too late to reorder his life. But he could do business. His spirits rose. Yes, the business of his life, his revenge. Yes. He’d see how his plan was doing, firsthand. Or, actually, secondhand, which was better, because that was the way his enemy saw it. He needed to know what the Scalbys were thinking.
Alasdair knew he’d made the right decision if only because of the way his heartbeat picked up when he bounded from his house and walked out into the night.
The Old Cat was an historic tavern on an old street near the river. Somehow it had escaped the Great Fire and weathered the centuries since, though the building was tilted with age and the front was still blackened by smoke and soot from the fire, as well as the accumulation of years. Travelers visited so they could mention the name in their journals, men of fashion dropped by, workers in the district met there, too. It was a place where the high and the low could meet without notice or comment. That was why the Honorable Frederick Loach was usually found there, because he did business with all kinds of men.
Alasdair’s restlessness had been somewhat cooled during the long walk to The Old Cat, so he was his usual self when he ducked his head under the low door and strolled into the taproom.
The place smelled of smoke and ale, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The light was dim and yellow, but not so much so that Alasdair couldn’t see the Honorable Frederick seated at his usual table.
Alasdair strolled to the table.
“Give you good evening, Sir Alasdair,” Frederick said easily, indicating a chair. “I hadn’t thought to see you so soon again.”
“I was out on the town and thought I’d drop by,” Alasdair answered lazily as he seated himself. “How are things going with you, Fred?”
The Honorable Frederick Loach was a slender gentleman with fair hair as thin as his smile, and a smile faint as his voice. Fred came from a good family and ran with bad sorts, his vices were many and his money soon parted from him. Fortunately for him, his morals were just as meager. He had entree to all the best places and insinuated himself everywhere else. He heard everything and sold what he heard to those who had a use for gossip: caricaturists and writers of scandal sheets who spun the dross of other people’s folly into their own gold, reselling it to an eager public. Frederick earned even more by selling specific gossip to anyone, for a price.
Alasdair reached into his pocket, extracted some coins and put them on the table. “I recall now that I lost that wager the other week. Never let it be said that I forget my debts.”
Frederick’s hand moved fast as a lizard’s tongue. He had the money in his pocket before the echo of Alasdair’s words faded. “Thank you. You are indeed a man of your word.”
Alasdair sat back, his eyes half-lidded to conceal the gleam in them. Pretense had been kept, proprieties observed. Now he’d get what he paid for.
“I hear you’ve been courting Miss Corbet, cousin to the Swansons,” Frederick said in his die-away voice, so softly that Alasdair had to listen closely to hear him above the general babble. “Everyone’s buzzing about it. How charming for you. I understand her cousins are in alt about it because it’s brought so many suitors to their doorstep. How pleasant for their youngest, the heretofore unknown Sibyl. The latest rhyme goes:
“‘As I was going to take the waters, I met a man with seven daughters.
Six could turn Medusa to stone, but I have eyes for one alone.
Who is Sibyl, what is she?
Not like her sisters—there’s a mercy.
No wonder they kept her under wraps, away from the eyes of us eager chaps.’
“Not inspired verse, but ever so amusing, don’t you think?”
“I’d hoped you’d heard something more to my taste,” Alasdair said with barely concealed impatience.
Frederick’s gaze sharpened. Alasdair wasn’t a man he wanted to trifle with. “Oh, that,” he said quickly. “They’ve heard, of course. Almost at once. I wasn’t the first to tell them either. They pay well to hear about you. But you’d want to know how they took it and what they thought. How can I tell you that? I had no intimation from their expressions, of course. Don’t be vexed with me, I am a veritable fount of information, sir. But I cannot crawl beneath their bed to know their true reaction, can I?”
Alasdair frowned. “They go nowhere? They see no one?”
“They do not stir from their house. But they have visitors. Not friends of mine although all of them are known to me and all serve the Scalbys in rather the same capacity that I do. So there they sit, and yet they’re in the thick of things, as it were. One bit of news, though.”
Frederick paused to take a sip at his tankard. Alasdair restrained himself from throttling the news out of him.
Frederick saw Alasdair’s face and set the tankard down. “Some of their informants also work for those of lesser rank,” he reported. “A ranker rank, if you’ll forgive the jest. For example, that wispy fellow by the tap, the one between those two carters? You have to squint to see him, then focus hard to keep him in sight. He has a gift for disappearance,” Frederick added enviously. “He’s employed by an old friend of yours.”
“Yes, so I guessed. He’s good, but not quite invisible. I’ve seen him before.”
Frederick fell still and looked at his drink.
“I seldom pay merely for poetry,” Alasdair added evenly, though there was a note of warning under his words.
“Oh, well. The fellow is in the employ of a lout known as Lolly Lou. He’s a larcenous boor. A low creature, though he’s done well enough for himself. He has his podgy digits in many a disreputable enterprise in the lower parts of London. If a thing can make money for him, he’ll do it. He has no discretion at all,” Frederick added fastidiously.
“I know him,” Alasdair said, nodding. “He’d sell out his country as soon as any one of his wives.”
“So you heard about that, too?” Frederick asked in disappointment. “Well, I suppose you would, having met up with him in your adventures during the late wars, I suppose…”
He turned pale. Alasdair’s face had grown cold. His eyes seemed to glow with an infernal glare as he leaned forward so that his soft cold voice could be heard. “You will promptly forget that line of reasoning and anything to do with my work during the late wars. If you wish to remain in your fastidious line of work—in one fastidious piece, that is. All things are for sale with you, I accept that. We accept that, I should say, because there are others concerned, and believe me, they would be if they heard how free you are with our histories. Inane gossip about fashion or love affairs is one thing. A man’s work for his country is another. The wars are past, our parts in it often are not, so it’s not a matter for discussion even now. Is that clear, and understood?”
“Certainly,” Frederick breathed, his hand to his throat. “By all means.”
Alasdair rose and towered over the table. “Good,” he said. “If you hear anything else, you know where to find me. As I know where to find you—anywhere in London. Good evening, Fred.”
He stalked from the tavern, only letting his shoulders relax when he’d left it. He walked to the corner, turned it, stepped into a shadow, and waited. It wasn’t long before the slight man who had been at the tap scurried out, looked around, and hurried down the street. Alasdair eased out of the shadows and followed, even though he was certain that he was being followed, too.
He lost the furtive man in the mists, but Alasdair thought he knew the way anyway. He walked to a dark street by the river, then went down a few old stone steps and opened a weathered do
or. There was no sign over the door. Those who came there didn’t need one. He knew he’d come to the right place by how utterly still it got when he did. The gin shop was small and dirty, packed with bodies that hadn’t seen much water since it had last rained. There was so much smoke the candle flames had to leap to be seen, but they might have been hopped higher because everyone’s breath was so soaked in spirits. The smell was indescribable. Which was fortunate, Alasdair thought. Because those who could describe it by comparing it to anything else they’d experienced were truly damned. The patrons of this place looked it.
The men and women in the gin house were dangerous. Their faces showed they’d nothing to lose but their lives, and that those lives were the least of what they had. These were people who scraped together livings from the leftovers of others’ lives, or stole them outright, or sold themselves so they could buy what the others stole.
There were mudlarks, black with muck, still reeking from hours of plodding along the banks of the Thames searching for lost treasure, and that was anything that could yet be sold. They, and the many prostitutes in the place, at least worked for their living. The others were thieves of every rank. The better dressed were those who met the public, running confidence games, passing counterfeit money, or keeping clerks busy while their mates lifted merchandise. The other thieves who frequented the place didn’t worry about appearance because they hoped no one would ever see them. After all, it was hard to see someone who crept up behind you and stole your purse, or waited until you were asleep and crept down your chimney and looted your house, or did that after they smashed your windows, or your head.
Everyone stopped talking to stare at the big gentleman who loomed in the doorway. He was obviously rich, and just as obviously looking for someone. He was either out of his mind, in which case he’d be out of his money as well as his boots before another hour passed—or he was out for them. Most of the denizens of the gin shop believed the latter, and tried to look innocent, or started to edge toward the back exit. Lolly Lou looked up, saw the dark, dangerous gentleman on the doorstep, and smiled.
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