by Connie Lane
Rooster’s eyes clouded with confusion. “But, sir. She’s golden-haired and—” His mouth dropped open and a look of absolute astonishment crossed his face. It was followed immediately by a smile as wide as the Thames. “Are you tellin’ me, sir—”
“It’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Nick gave him a friendly slap on the back. “It’s a new day, Rooster! And I am a new man.”
Rooster’s eyes sparkled. “And the lady, sir?”
“The lady,” Nick said, heading for the door, “is meeting me downstairs for breakfast.”
At eight, Nick checked the clock on the mantel in the breakfast room for the fourth time in as many minutes. Willie was usually down to breakfast by now and impatient to see her, impatient to talk to her, and just as damned impatient to send Mr. Finch on some fool’s errand as soon as Willie walked into the room so that he might kiss her silly, he drummed his fingers against the tabletop and downed another cup of coffee. In his mind, he played over any number of scenarios that might explain her absence but as they presented themselves—each more imaginative and impossible than the last—he silenced them with a healthy dose of logic.
Today was not a usual day. Hadn’t he told Rooster as much? He should not expect Willie to act in a usual way. Especially considering the fact that she might be feeling just a bit shy.
As if he needed any confirmation of the theory, Nick thought of everything they’d done the night before. In light of it, it was impossible to keep a bolt of desire from streaking through him.
Though he’d never thought about it before, he suspected it could not be easy for a woman to face a man over the breakfast table when only a few short hours before they had faced each other with nothing between them at all and delighted so completely in each other’s bodies, that he tingled still, just from thinking of it. Willie had made him feel things even the most skilled bit of muslin he’d ever been with had not made him feel.
Still, he must not forget that as bold and as intelligent and as astonishing as Willie was, she was also inexperienced. He must be patient and not fault her for being bashful.
At nine o’clock he convinced himself that he had simply been too enthusiastic with his affections the night before. Poor, sweet Willie! She must be exhausted.
By ten, the eggs on the sideboard were cold in spite of the fact that Nick had asked Mr. Finch to replace them not once but twice, just so they were sure to be hot and ready when Willie arrived. Nick finished yet another cup of coffee and paced the length of the room.
By eleven, he was sure that he was an utter nod-cock. Of course Willie was in no hurry to come down to breakfast! He was usually not out of bed as early as this and she knew it. He suspected she had taken advantage of the opportunity. She would be down in a moment.
By noon, he was long past waiting.
“Madame!” Nick need not have bellowed. Sensing that something was amiss, Madame was waiting right outside the door to the breakfast room.
“Sir?”
“Has anyone looked in on Willie?” he asked.
His question must have been something of a surprise. Madame stepped back and took stock of him. “Willie? You mean you ain’t callin’ for your carriage? To go over to see—”
“Willie.” Nick reined in his growing impatience. “Has anyone seen her this morning?”
“Not that I know of, sir. I thought she must be up and about somewhere and—”
Nick excused himself around Madame and took the stairs two at a time.
He didn’t bother to knock. Let the staff talk if they so wished. He was long out of patience. He pushed open the door to Willie’s room and stopped frozen in his tracks. Across the room, the wardrobe door was open. Willie’s clothes were gone.
Behind him, he heard Madame choke out a sob. Not one to be patient herself, she pushed past him and looked around. “’Er portmanteau is missin’,” she said. “As are ’er slippers. And ’er best black gown. And—”
By the time Madame turned again to the doorway, Nick was already halfway to the front door.
“Jem!” Nick’s voice echoed through the house and though he was outside stationed at the bottom of the stairway where he would be ready if it happened that someone came to call, Jem heard Nick well enough. He suspected that every man, woman, and child between Somerton House and St. Paul’s heard.
At the sound of his master’s booming voice, the boy’s eyes widened and his lower lip trembled. Though he was, for all intents and purposes, working, Jem was not one to spend too much time being too little active. Under the watching eye of Bob—a scruffy stray dog that was lounging contentedly thanks to the plate of eggs Jem had fed him earlier—Jem had been teaching a tiger named Malcolm who worked nearby to roll dice. With the assistance of a pair of fulhams that always came up to Jem’s advantage, he had also been winning steadily.
When the front door flew open, Jem stuffed the loaded dice into his pocket. He had no need to warn Malcolm away. One look at the expression on Lord Somerton’s face and Malcolm dove behind the shrubbery where, more days than not, Bob slept on the blankets Jem had pinched from Lord Somerton’s linen cupboard. Thinking he had been found out—about the eggs, the blanket, and Bob—Jem urged the dog into hiding with Malcolm and tossed the plate into the shrubbery with them.
By the time Nick made it to the bottom of the stairway—with Madame, Mr. Finch, Rooster O’Reilly, and every other servant of the household trailing behind—Jem was ready. Scrawny shoulders squared even if they were not steady, he turned to face his fate. “M’lord?”
If Nick was not so concerned about Willie, he might have commented on the corner of woolen blanket he saw sticking out from the bushes. The one that looked all too familiar. He might have mentioned—in the kindest way possible, of course—that there was a large brown and black monstrosity of an animal who looked to be licking eggs from one of the porcelain plates adorned with the Pryce family crest.
He was in too much of a hurry to care.
“Willie,” he said and though he did not explain that he was looking for her or why, Jem apparently caught the drift.
“Ain’t seen ’er.” Jem scraped one finger under his nose and looked up and down the pavement as if by doing so, he might make Willie appear. “Not since last night anyways,” he elaborated. “When we was cleanin’ up, sir. From that there ball.”
“I know she was here then.” Nick wasn’t sure if the feeling that clutched his insides was panic or heartbreak. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He did know that he had to fight to keep his voice even and calm so as not to upset the staff. He might have had a good deal more incentive to do it if not for the fact that Bess and Marie were already crying, Flossie was twisting her white apron into knots worthy of Rooster’s neckcloths, and Clover was holding her breath and clasping both hands to her mouth, sure that her son was about to receive a sound drubbing, all because of a dog she’d told the boy to be rid of days before.
“It’s after the ball I’m talking about,” Nick told Jem. “After say, three or so this morning.”
It was a bit of information none of them had been aware of before now and Nick knew exactly how they’d construe it. The ball had ended early, just after one. Willie had sent the staff to bed soon after when the most pressing of the cleanup was finished. If Lord Somerton knew of Willie’s whereabouts up until three in the morning…
As if they’d choreographed the move as neatly as the steps of a contredanse, Nick heard a collective, thunderstruck gasp and felt each and every gaze of each and every one of his servants drill into his back. He heard Simon Marquand cough politely and saw out of the corner of his eye the way Mr. Finch elbowed Madame. He couldn’t fail to miss the way Madame grinned like the cat’s uncle.
“Excuse me, sir.”
At the sound of a voice from somewhere near the stairway, Nick turned, grateful for the interruption before any of his staff could interrogate him. He found a head—and the shoulders that belonged to it—peeking out from between two yews. “Is it th
e nice young lady you’re lookin’ for?” the boy asked. “The one what ’as all that flamin’ red ’air?”
Nick’s hopes surged. “That’s the one,” he told the boy. “Come out here. Come on.” He had not meant to call the dog out with the boy but apparently thinking the command was aimed at him, the creature came trotting along. It parked itself at Nick’s feet, its tail wagging.
“Good heavens!” Though he was a firm believer in everything Beau Brummel had ever said about the virtues of cleanliness and the benefits of plenty of hot water and much soap, Nick was not one to be finicky. Still, even he could not stand so close to the dog without wrinkling his nose. “I say, sir…” He turned to Jem, who had thought to make a clean getaway and was just about to duck behind Clover’s skirts when Nick caught him by the scruff of the neck. “Does this animal belong to you?”
Jem’s eyes were as round as saucers. His voice was breathless. “Couldn’t be, could it, sir?” The smile he tried for wilted on contact with Nick’s frown. “Ain’t supposed to have no animals, my lord, sir.”
“And are those same animals you ain’t supposed to have supposed to be eating from the family china?”
“Ain’t supposed…” Jem swallowed hard. “Ain’t supposed to, sir.”
“Then I suggest you take this animal that ain’t supposed to be here and ain’t supposed to be eating my breakfast from my dishes and see to it that he is scrubbed until he is squeaky. That way, the rest of us will be able to breathe freely and concentrate on the problem at hand.”
“Yes, sir.” Jem didn’t wait to be told a second time. He called to the dog and together, they disappeared toward the back of the house.
“Now…” Nick turned his attention back to the urchin in the shrubbery. “Did you say you saw Willie? When, sir? And what was she doing?”
Seeing that Jem had not caught hell for his acquaintance with Bob, the boy ventured out of his hiding place. “It was early, sir.” He scuffed his boots against the pavement. “Just as the sun was comin’ up. What little sun we can see today, what with the fog and all. I was waitin’ for my master to get in.” He pointed toward the home across the way where he was employed. “And I seen a carriage pull up. I wouldn’t have thought nothin’ of it, sir, except for the fellow what got out of it. All dressed in black, ’e was. Like a regular vision of Death.”
“Ravensfield?” It did not seem possible, yet Nick turned the thought over in his head. If Ravensfield had some prank in mind and intended to make Willie a part of it…
He stopped himself just short of calling for his carriage so that he might head over to Ravensfield’s and beat some sense into the man. But only because he had yet to get the full story.
“Was it a gentleman?” he asked the boy. “Tall? Fine clothing? A crack carriage?”
“He was tall, right enough.” Thinking, the boy squeezed his eyes shut. “And a real spindle-shanks, if you get my meanin’, my lord. Thin as a yard of pump water, ’e was. And ’air down to ’ere.” The boy pointed to his shoulders.
“Not Ravensfield,” Nick mumbled to himself. And yet the description sounded familiar enough. The truth hit with all the force of a fist to the stomach.
“Reverend Smithe?” He looked to Madame for confirmation but he needed not a word from her. The worried look in her eyes spoke volumes.
New urgency in his voice, Nick turned back to the boy. “What did they do, Willie and this man?” he asked. “And which way did they go?”
“Willie didn’t do nothin’, sir. On my honor, she didn’t. Just said something to the man and then ’e like put his arm around ’er, sir, and walked ’er over to that there carriage. ’E got into the carriage with ’er, sir, and last I seen them…” He pointed down the street. “They was ’eaded that way.”
It wasn’t nearly all Nick needed to know but it was enough. At the same time he reached into his pocket for a coin for the boy, he gathered his household staff around him to plan his strategy.
17
Rooster O’Reilly stopped in at Jackson’s Rooms in Bond Street that afternoon and later, at the Daffy Club. Though none of them anticipated that the search for Willie would end in violence, it would have been shortsighted to begin it without knowing that reinforcements were in the wings should they be needed. Rooster knew a great many people and most of them were brawny, brave, and threw a hell of a punch. As he was quick to point out, a few of them owed him favors. By the time he returned to Somerton House, there were a dozen burly men with him, all of whom pledged their assistance in exchange for a meal in the kitchen and a few bottles from the cellar to quench the thirst that would, no doubt, come from waiting.
Five Fingers Finch had friends of his own and he put the network into action as soon as he arrived at the East End pub where many of them spent their days. He returned with no news to report—and smelling as if he’d bathed in ale—but he did his best to cheer Nick by reminding him it was early days yet; like the Polite World, the criminal classes had a rumor mill all its own. If there was mischief in the works, one of his associates would get wind of it soon enough.
Madame and the girls were busy, too. They left Clover behind to supervise Bob’s washing up and went out to canvass the neighborhood, talking to everyone they knew and many they did not in hopes of finding someone who’d seen more or heard more than Malcolm had reported. A tweenie by the name of Susan who worked in a home farther up the road would talk to no one but Madame and only in private. Susan, it seemed, had crept out of the house early for an assignation with a young man. Though she and her swain had been busy themselves and thus disinclined to watch the goings-on around them, Susan had seen both Willie and Childress Smithe. Her story verified Malcolm’s.
All the while, Nick did not sit idle. It would have been impossible and besides, there were facets of the investigation only he could manage. After all, it would not have been nearly as effective to send an emissary to the Church of Divine and Imperishable Justice. As it was, the unexpected appearance of the Viscount Somerton was enough to draw Ebenezer and Amabel Miller’s attention away from the hymn they were in the process of rehearsing—and butchering—when he wrenched open the door and marched into the church.
He was prepared to bribe them if that’s what it took to gain their cooperation. It happened that he needn’t have bothered.
The fact that Nick was chafing at the bit and looked as if he could bite through bricks was enough to convince the Millers that it was in their best interest to tell him all they knew.
Unfortunately, what they knew did little to calm Nick’s worst fears.
“India, you say?” Arthur Hexam had poured himself a drink the moment he strode into Somerton House. It went down nicely on top of the drink he’d poured at home to calm his nerves as soon as he received Nick’s message that Willie was missing. Finished with the one drink, he reached for the bottle that Palliston had been kind enough to bring along when they traipsed up to the third floor. “Well, there’s some comfort in that, I suppose. At least they are not headed to Gretna Green.”
Some comfort, yes.
It was small.
There was a drink on the floor next to Nick, too, but though Palliston had plunked it down just a few minutes earlier, he’d completely forgotten its existence. Thoughts of India, Gretna Green, and the incredible experience of making love to Willie swirled through his head and produced nothing but more anxiety to add to the disquiet that had been plaguing him since the moment he realized Willie was gone. He was on his hands and knees, his head poked into a little-used cupboard tucked beneath an even less-used stairway. There was a mountain of discarded odds and ends in the cupboard, all of it coated with dust, and Nick’s clothes were streaked with dirt, his hair was disheveled, his face was caked with grime.
He supposed that had he been feeling more inclined to sit and do nothing and less inclined to be restless enough to wear the carpet away from pacing it, he might have listened to his friends who told him what he was doing was a job for one of the servants.
He didn’t. Searching through the library, the box room, the butler’s pantry and—with the help of Madame and the girls—every one of the bedchambers, gave him something to do.
Something besides worrying. Something besides wondering where Willie was. And if she was safe. And if—as the Millers had hinted must be true, for surely no man of the cloth could be so wicked as to force a woman to do otherwise—Willie herself had contacted Reverend Smithe and arranged to meet him, that she had gone with him willingly.
A veneer of dirt was a small price to pay in exchange for trying to get his mind off the blame he could not help but place squarely on his own shoulders. One moment, he wondered if his too-ardent demonstration of his affections had caused Willie to panic and if her panic made her run. The next, he questioned whether he had, instead, simply not done enough to make her happy and keep her where she belonged.
“And you’re sure they said Willie and this Smithe fellow would be leaving from Dover?” Latimer’s question broke through Nick’s brown study. He paced back and forth behind Nick, sounding no more calm than Nick felt. “What if they lied? This Mr. and Mrs. Miller…what if they lied? What if they are in league with this awful Smithe person and they were told to lie to you should you come inquiring about Willie?”
Nick didn’t bother to acknowledge the questions. He was in the process of picking through a trunk that looked to be promising. It was filled with household account books from his father’s days. After what he’d learned from Rawdon Farleigh when he tried to sell what he thought were the family treasures, he suspected there was nothing inside the ledgers but red ink. He burrowed his hand beneath the books and felt the edges of a wooden box.
Encouraged, Nick dug out the box and backed out of the cupboard. He didn’t bother to get up off the floor but held the box in his lap and snapped it open.
Just as he remembered seeing when he was a lad, his father’s dueling pistols were still inside.
A smile on his face as deadly as the barking irons in the wooden box, Nick pulled himself to his feet and tucked the pistols into the waistband of his trousers. “Something tells me they knew I was not in the mood to be lied to,” he told his friends and without waiting for them to comment, he hurried downstairs.