The Spider's Touch

by Patricia Wynn

  “The simplest thing for me to do would be to talk to Lady Oglethorpe and ask her about them,” St. Mars said, startling Hester.

  “But is that safe? I refuse to put you in more danger, my lord. I had rather Dudley hanged first.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” His laughter teased her. “And you won’t be putting me in danger. I was on my way to see Lady Fury myself, when I saw you entering and turned back. Next time, I’ll make certain she’s alone.”

  A sense of foreboding ran down Hester’s spine, though she couldn’t say why. Perhaps from a dislike for the lady, which she only now admitted to herself. Surely there was something untrustworthy about a person who nurtured rebellion while begging favours from the crowned King?

  “Just—please be careful,” she begged St. Mars, with a growing belief that they could not be certain whom to trust.

  They discussed the first steps they should take, and Gideon asked her to discover where the Colonel lodged.

  After arranging to meet again, they parted.

  * * * *

  Gideon left the park feeling a surge of energy, which his meeting with the Duke had gravely sapped. Whatever faith he should keep with James and his agents would always be second to his duty to Mrs. Kean. And whether he liked it or not, she had become embroiled in an affair involving the Jacobites.

  On his way back to the White Horse for breakfast, he tried to remember everything he could about Sir Humphrey Cove, but all he could recall was a harmless face and a pair of expressive hands. He found it hard to imagine any motive for putting such an innocent to death, but there was no question that Sir Humphrey had considered himself a Jacobite. How active he had been would be hard to say.

  Regardless of the information he received from Lady Oglethorpe, Gideon knew that an investigation would take time. No murderer who was clever enough to get away with a crime in that hour and place would easily betray himself, which would mean that Gideon would be staying longer in town than he had originally planned. And given that, some things would be better changed.

  * * * *

  Tom had nearly lost all patience with his situation when his master’s letter reached him near dark on the following day. It was not that Tom had been uncomfortable. In many ways he had never lived so well. His work was easy, his room was more commodious than any corner he’d inhabited over a stable, and Avis, the boy, did the messiest jobs, leaving Tom to exercise the horses as he liked. By any man’s standards, he had begun to live a life of means, with excellent meals and beerand his wash attended to by a cheerful, brown-eyed woman.

  But that was the source of his misery, though he did worry about his master, too. He alternated between fearing for his lord and being furious with him for leaving him in such a tempting place, where idleness had led to feelings he did not wish to have.

  Tom eagerly paid the messenger, who had been promised more money for making the journey in two days. He broke the seal of St. Mars’s letter with hands made clumsy by anxiety. Reading St. Mars’s few words, he felt an immense relief, for the message ordered him to London immediately, along with whatever of his master’s belongings Tom thought best to bring for an indefinite stay. St. Mars told him to bring Penny, too, and to give Lade more money, so he would not be tempted to let Gideon’s bedchamber or to sell his things while they were in town. And St. Mars gave him the address where they would meet in three days time.

  All of that was fine, but the postscript at the bottom of the letter gave Tom’s heart a jolt, for St. Mars’s had added as an afterthought, “Bring Katy with you.”

  The horror that filled Tom on reading these words was that of a man who knows that he is doomed, both in body and in his immortal soul. For if he could not resist Katy—and how would he, if she was continually placed before him?—then chances were in the end he would die of the pox that had ravaged his father.

  Tom did not believe in fate; however, if there was a chapter in the Bible he believed in, it was the Book of Job. And he had no doubt at that moment that his faith was being tested with every weapon the Almighty possessed.

  * * * *

  When he told Katy that they were going to London, her eyes grew round and her pretty mouth gaped.

  “To Lunnon—me?”

  Tom nodded, feeling the darkness heavy on his brow. He growled, “If the master says you’re to come, then you’re to come, and that’s all there is to it. I tried to tell him this wasn’t no job for a woman. But you got it, so you’d better pack up his clothing this evening and be ready to leave before dawn.”

  She asked breathlessly, “But how will we get them there?”

  Tom noticed that she had ignored his cruelty, which meant either that he had lost the power to hurt her feelings, or that she had simply grown used to his surly ways.

  Neither probability made him happy.

  “I’m leaving now,” he told her. “I’ve got to find us a post-chaise. You’ll ride inside with the master’s things, and I’ll ride Penny and Beau by turns. We’ve only got two more days to get there, but we can make it with the good weather we’ve been having. You’ve just got to be ready, that’s all.”

  “Me? Ride in a post-chaise?”

  The idea seemed to stun her and tickle her all at once, and Tom could not restrain a grin. “Ay. You’d best get used to travellin’ like the Quality now.” He used this term, for Katy still didn’t know that her employer was an aristocrat. And he would never be the one to tell her, Tom vowed, trying to resume his glower, but he found it impossible to frown in the face of her delight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On him, their second Providence, they hung,

  Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue.

  He from the wondering furrow called the food,

  Taught to command the fire, control the flood,

  Draw forth the monsters of th’ abyss profound,

  Or fetch th’ aerial eagle to the ground.

  Till drooping, sickening, dying they began

  Whom they revered as God to mourn as Man:

  Then, looking up from sire to sire, explored

  One great first father, and that first adored.

  Or plain tradition that this All begun,

  Conveyed unbroken faith from sire to son.

  III. vi.

  Gideon penned a message to Lady Oglethorpe, using the same words he had used in his note to Ormonde, but he delivered it himself, feeling safer that way. None of Lady Fury’s servants knew him, and he rather thought he had perfected the posture and shamble of an older man. His request to have a word in private concerning her Cousin Jonathan received the immediate reply that he should call on her after dark that very evening, when he would discover her and her daughter Anne alone. He was asked to enter the garden through the mews, where a servant would be waiting to let him through the gate.

  * * * *

  He spent the rest of the day looking for better lodging for himself and his servants. He examined furnished rooms in the City of London, but found them all too small. There was not an abundance of empty houses, for ever since the Great Fire, the building had not stopped merely to catch up with the number that had been lost. Charles II had tried to regulate the style and materials used in the new buildings in order to avoid a future conflagration, but the displaced populace had not always had the patience to wait for shelter. Consequently, many houses in the City had been thrown up in the old haphazard way, with projecting second stories, in spite of the laws against them. Gideon doubted their soundness, for every now and then the news-sheets contained the tale of a house that had collapsed.

  He combed the advertisements, and at last decided on purchasing a house. Only three had been mentioned, and one of those was in Covent Garden, much too near the people who could recognize him. The other two were across the river, one in Southwark and one near Vauxhall Wharf.

  Gideon went first to see the property in Worcester Street in the Park. It had a spacious brick house, with four rooms up and down, stables, and warehouses, and had be
en advertised as suitable for any number of trades—soap-making, brewing, vinegar-making, and sweet-baking among them. Its location had many advantages, in that it was not too far from the Kent Road, while still standing well away from any principal street. Plenty of inns, taverns, and eating establishments were also near.

  He wondered, though, what the neighbours would eventually think of an owner who sold nothing from those warehouses.

  The acre and a half in Vauxhall stood right on the Thames. A good, high wall surrounded it on the east, west, and south, while an iron palisade protected it from the river. The house on the property was smaller than the one in Southwark, but since he did not expect to entertain any guests, it should be large enough for him. With a bedroom and two other chambers upstairs for his personal use, and another three downstairs for Tom and Katy, not to mention a separate counting house, stables, and a long pile of buildings for any purpose he might choose, the property seemed more than sufficient for his needs.

  There was something about the location, too, that felt just right. From Vauxhall Stairs, or even from his own dock, he could take a boat to anyplace in London. He would seldom, if ever, need to take his horses across the river, but if he did the horse ferry was near. And, though this house was not as close to the Kent Road as the other, on horseback he could take Kennington Lane, then ride cross country until he joined up with the highway into Kent farther south.

  He briefly debated the wisdom of living this near to Spring Gardens, where so many of his acquaintance would come to promenade, but the wall should shield him from their view.

  Besides all the logical reasons, there was a strictly emotional one that compelled him to take this property, too. From the bank of the river, on a clear day, as this one was, he could see across to Lord Peterborough’s house. Beyond it were the streets of Westminster and St. James’s, Hawkhurst House in Piccadilly, and all his old haunts. If he could not live where he had been raised, he would at least be able to see it and feel it when he gazed out of his windows.

  There were, also, plenty of country roads nearby on which to exercise his horses.

  Gideon quickly settled with the seller of the property and arranged to take possession on the following day.

  * * * *

  That night, on arriving at Lady Oglethorpe’s back gate, he found the footman, as promised. The houses in the Palace Yard were closely clustered, and there was nothing to prevent the neighbours from seeing the visitors who paid a call on Lady Fury. Gideon was certain that many of her callers had the habit of arriving at strange hours. He was grateful, nonetheless, for even this much secrecy.

  Lady Fury and her daughter, Mrs. Anne Oglethorpe, received him in the mother’s bedchamber, not giving the slightest hint of recognition between them. They stood in front of the curtained bed, and each made a brief curtsy while the servant withdrew, shutting the door behind him. Then, as his footsteps faded, Lady Oglethorpe curtsied again, much more profoundly, and spoke in a clipped voice.

  “My Lord St. Mars, I had a feeling it would be you. What news do you bring from his Majesty?” Never a calm woman, in his remembrance at any rate, she seemed more than normally agitated now.

  “I have no message from James. My errand to England is quite otherwise. I was asked to discover from Ormonde when he will give the signal for the rising.”

  “And have you? What has his Grace said?”

  Her question astonished him. “Why, he’s told me nothing at all! Surely you would be informed well before me?”

  She turned to speak furiously to her daughter in French. “What did I tell you? I am beginning to doubt that Ormonde has the courage to lead. He will insist on listening to everyone who counsels him to wait.”

  She cursed in French then turned back to Gideon, and without excusing her rudeness, said tersely, “I had hoped that another gentleman would be able to rouse him, but you were unsuccessful, I comprehend.” She railed, “If I had only been a man, that cuckold would already be hurrying back to Hanover with his horns between his legs!” When Lady Oglethorpe gave in to anger, her French took over.

  Anne seemed every bit as distressed as her mother, the exception being that where her mother’s primary emotion was anger, Anne’s looked like fear. Other than that, she was very much like her mother and her sister—tall and elegant, but with an intensity that would make every man within her sphere either gather near as if to a magnet, or make a run for the first hiding place.

  Although Gideon found them both beautiful, he also saw them lacking in the sort of gentleness that usually drew him to women. To him, a generous and accepting spirit was at the very core of womanhood. Not this grasping, self-centeredness, which one often saw in men, and which he despised in his own sex, too. This latter thought led to a revelation—that the quality he was thinking of had nothing to do with a person’s sex.

  “It is not Ormonde I came to talk to you about.” He noted that his hostess was too nervous even to invite him to sit down, though three chairs had been drawn up by the fire. That suited him fine, since he had no wish to linger, but he wondered what had set Lady Fury off. “I have come to ask what you know about Sir Humphrey Cove’s murder and the men who were in his box Saturday night.”

  At the mention of Sir Humphrey, her head shot up. So that was it. Cove’s murder had rattled her.

  “I know nothing about it,” she exclaimed in a near-hysterical voice. “How could I know anything? Humphrey was nothing—a lamb. How can anyone have wanted to kill him?”

  Lady Oglethorpe had started pacing back and forth. Gideon looked to Anne, in the hope of gathering more information.

  Anne said, “It is true what Maman says. Sir Humphrey was no danger to anyone.”

  “But he was a Jacobite, wasn’t he?”

  Lady Oglethorpe made an impatient gesture. “Oh, he thought he was—yes—and it gave him great pleasure to think of himself as a conspirator, but he did it in the same way that he thought of himself as a hunter or a courtier. It was no more real to him than a hand of piquet. He played at being one of us. I cannot tell you the number of times he would write me from his home in the country and ask me how the rebellion was coming along—as if he were inquiring about the weather!”

  Gideon frowned. “But wouldn’t his letters have been opened by the government?”

  “Sûrement! But I tell you, that is how naive he was! Do you think I ever answered his questions? Me? If I had, then we all should have been arrested. But even the government could not take Humphrey seriously. If I had risked responding, he would long since have forgotten his question anyway. To Humphrey our cause was something he inherited from his family—like his estate or his religion. It gave him something to talk about to his friends about and nothing more.”

  Gideon did not like the easy way she dismissed her murdered friend. Lady Oglethorpe spoke of Sir Humphrey with something near contempt. He began to see how she had earned her nickname, Fury. Nevertheless, he was certain that Sir Humphrey Cove had not been deep in the conspirators’ confidence.

  “I heard that you know all the gentlemen who were in his box that night.”

  She halted in her paces, staring furiously at him as if he had accused her. “I do not know Mr. Dudley Mayfield, nor could I be said to know your cousin Harrowby very well. Or do you prefer that I refer to him as Lord Hawkhurst?”

  Gideon knew she had made that thrust to punish him for what she perceived to be an insult, if not an outright accusation.

  He bowed low enough for an apology. “I’m afraid you have misunderstood me, my lady. I only wonder what you can tell me about the gentlemen, since none of them are known to me.”

  “What is your interest in this affaire, St. Mars? I sought you were here on his Majesty’s business.”

  “There is no news I can carry to James right now. If there were, I would take it. Ormonde has instructed me to wait.” He did not tell her that he would go only when he was sure that Mrs. Kean was safe and satisfied that her cousin was not going to be charged with the m
urder.

  Nor would he tell her what his real motive was, so he simply said, “As you have pointed out, there were also members of my family in Sir Humphrey’s box. I may have lost my estates, madame, but I have not lost my responsibility to them.”

  A knowing glimmer came into her eyes, so Gideon could hardly be surprised when, with a sly look, she said, “And there is one member of this family that you are still very eager to protect. Eh?”

  She was talking about Isabella, he realized, not Mrs. Kean, whom she would not regard as worthy of his notice. But he had not thought of Isabella at all. In fact, she was never in his thoughts now, and he wondered how he had ever become so obsessed with her.

  But he would not discuss the change in his feelings with this woman, of all others, so he ignored her implications. “I do have a personal interest in bringing Sir Humphrey’s murderer to justice, yes. I would be very grateful if you would tell me what you think of the gentlemen you do know who were in that box. Colonel Potter, for one.”

  Lady Oglethorpe acted as if she considered this a great waste of her time, but she finally acquiesced with another one of her impatient gestures. At Anne’s suggestion, Gideon was finally invited to sit down. He did take a chair, but only in the hope that their sitting would encourage his hostess to be more forthcoming.

  “Colonel Potter is a Jacobite, I’m assuming, which is why he was cashiered from the Guards?”

  She nodded bitterly. “Yes, what do the Scots call him—the ‘wee German lairdie’—has been purging his army of James’s men. There are still many more that he knows nothing about. I tell his Majesty, he will be gratified when he sees how many men in the army will rally to his cause.”

  He did not want to let her wander too far away from their subject. “But George did find out about Colonel Potter. Not enough to prosecute him, I suppose, or he would have been arrested?”

  Anne answered him this time. “No, there is nothing the Colonel has done to warrant arrest. We do not know why the government has grown suspicious. But it would have been very useful to us to have him in the army. His role was to try to turn as many of his men as he could before the rising.”