The Spider's Touch

by Patricia Wynn

  He tried to overcome his discomfort with a jest. “Oho! I shall have to warn my sister of a rival, shall I, Hester? Lord Lovett will be wishing me to the devil.”

  Lord Lovett gave him a withering sneer, which made the young man turn red and scowl.

  Hester felt embarrassment grip her throat. She did her best to feign ignorance of her cousin’s meaning, but when Lord Lovett turned his gaze on hers, it instantly softened. A smile played at his lips, as if to say that he knew how much she detested that sort of raillery and he would not permit her to be annoyed.

  Hester wondered how much should be read into a gaze, for there seemed to be even more in his—a confirmation of what Dudley had implied, and not the denial she had expected to see.

  She offered Lord Lovett refreshments, but this unfortunately drew his attention to Dudley’s drinking.

  Since the night of the opera, Harrowby had insisted that Dudley only be given watered wine. A carafe with this weakened mixture was standing on the table where they had played piquet. Lord Lovett’s gaze traveled to it, and he immediately raised one brow before turning to Hester with a frown.

  “I shouldn’t have thought that Hawkhurst would leave you alone.” He did not seem to care if Dudley was offended by this speech.

  Hester gave a quick glance at her cousin and saw that he had grasped Lord Lovett’s meaning. His expression changed from crushed to furious.

  Before he could speak, she turned back to Lord Lovett, with a measure of reproof. “I am not alone. I have my cousin here to keep me company. We have been enjoying a game of cards.”

  Her words were not enough to remove the sting of Lord Lovett’s, though. Once roused, Dudley’s temper was never easy to smooth down, and his most wounded feelings had just been trounced upon.

  “I suspect you mean that she is not safe with me,” he said, taking a big step towards Lord Lovett with his hands in fists.

  Hester hurriedly said, “Now I’m certain that his lordship meant nothing of the kind.”

  She looked to Lord Lovett for assistance, but he merely stood his ground. His expression said that Dudley might interpret his meaning any way he liked.

  She tried again to calm her cousin, speaking firmly. “No matter what anyone says or even thinks, you will never change their minds by becoming upset. What is needed is restraint.”

  “It’s easy for you to talk about restraint!” Dudley turned his fury on her. “You aren’t the one being accused of something you didn’t do!”

  Lord Lovett made as if to step between them, which would not help at all. Hester tried to stop him by raising a hand, but she was obliged to place it on his chest.

  This made her a trifle flustered when she addressed Dudley again. “No, I’m not accused of anything, but since you are, you need all the friends you can get, including your brother-in-law. And I can assure you that he will never forgive you if you start another brawl in his house!”

  This warning finally penetrated Dudley’s ill-humour. He struggled visibly to overcome his temper, but when he could not, he pushed past Hester, nearly flinging her into Lord Lovett’s arms, and stomped for the door. “If anybody cares where I’ve gone, you can tell them that I’ve gone out! And I shall stay out until I feel like coming back!”

  As soon as the door slammed behind him, Hester realized that Lord Lovett was still holding on to her. One of his arms had gone protectively about her, and the next step seemed that it would be to turn her to face him within his embrace.

  Even though her pulse livened at the thought, she would not allow herself to be seduced. She wriggled out of his arms and turned to face him from a safe distance away.

  That she had surprised him was evident in the tilt of his brow. Something in the twist of his lips said that she had offended his pride as well. But Hester was not only embarrassed—she was also angry, which, after a long pause, he seemed to realize.

  He cast her a rueful glance from under his thick, black brows. “I imagine that you blame me for provoking that outburst?”

  His willingness to acknowledge his share of the blame disarmed her. She reminded herself, too, that he was a baron and a guest in her cousin’s house, before responding as lightly as she could, “In all fairness to Dudley, I must say that his temper was perfectly even until you made that unwise remark.”

  Lord Lovett confronted her with an offended laugh. “And if I had not made it?” he asked. “Better still, if I had never come this evening? How long would you have kept your cousin company? Until some little thing you said made him turn his violence on you?”

  Hester started to protest, but he cut her off. “And, please, have the goodness to spare me the fiction that Mayfield was keeping you company, instead of the truth, which is that you were set to stand guard over him.”

  Hester watched him walk a tight, angry circle in the room. She could not deny what he’d said, but she would not allow his implication to stand. “My aunt did ask me to entertain Dudley this evening, but not because she fears another outburst from him. It’s because he has been asked to stay away from Court, and nobody else will invite him.”

  He came to a stop behind a chair. “Can you blame them?”

  “No, I suppose not. It does not follow, however, that he murdered Sir Humphrey.”

  He gave her a look that was half-way between frustration and pity. “I understand that you do not wish it to be Mayfield,” he said, not without sympathy. “But I have to tell you that it takes every ounce of my restraint not to call him out for Cove’s murder.”

  “You are convinced of his guilt.”

  He averted his gaze, as if loathe to hurt her. Then he nodded. “I cannot imagine anyone else in the role.”

  “Not even the absent Mr. Blackwell?”

  At her question, he quickly raised his eyes. Then, as if needing time to collect his thoughts, he stared down at the chair and ran his fingers back and forth along its back.

  “Mrs. Kean,” he said, finally lifting his head. “I have trusted you with information that could get me hanged. And the danger for me and my friends has never been more acute. I can only give you my word that Blackwell had no reason to kill Sir Humphrey.”

  The sincerity in his eyes gave her a chill. He acted as if he could verify Blackwell’s innocence, which might mean that he had seen Blackwell leave the theatre, or that they had been together during the last part of the interval. Naturally, if they had, Lord Lovett would not have been able to give that testimony without alerting the authorities to Blackwell’s true identity. But if he was certain of Blackwell’s innocence, she could see why he believed that her cousin was guilty.

  She did not want to ask him about Colonel Potter, but she had to force herself to believe that he could have been deceived in his friend.

  “I have reason to believe that Dudley was engaged in a different pursuit, while Sir Humphrey was being murdered,” she ventured.

  Lord Lovett furrowed his brow. “What makes you believe that?”

  Hester looked down at her clasped fingers. “It has been apparent from the first that he was lying about the reason he went downstairs. He will not tell me what lured him that way. I think he is afraid for his mother to know. But, if the young woman could be persuaded—”

  “You think he went downstairs with a harlot?”

  His frankness unsettled her, until she realized that honesty was just what she needed.

  Still, even grateful as she was, it was not easy to meet his frown. “Go on,” he said, as if her revelation had disturbed him.

  “I was thinking that the woman, perhaps, might be found. I assume she would be in the theatre on other nights. If someone could help Dudley find her, then perhaps she could be persuaded to swear to his alibi.”

  But Lord Lovett had begun to shake his head. “When that could land her in Bridewell? Why should any whore do that?”

  Hester flushed, but she persisted. “She wouldn’t have to say what sort of intercourse they had been engaged in, just that Dudley had been with her during
the pertinent time.”

  Lord Lovett stared quizzically at her. “You realize that someone would have to pay her to testify...which means that Mayfield could as easily pay her to lie. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “Of course, not!”

  “Then, my dear girl, I’m afraid you will have to think of something better. In the first place, every magistrate is sure to know the harlots working in his neighbourhood. And he also knows that they will swear to anything for the price of their dinner.”

  Hester felt deflated and chagrined. Hanging her head, she wondered how she could have been so naive. “How stupid of me!” she said, forcing a little laugh. “Of course, you are right. It is just that—”

  “Just what?” he said. He had taken a step towards her as if to comfort her, but he halted with another frown. “What else is troubling you?”

  She wrinkled up her face with the effort to convey her reasoning. “It just seems so convenient for a murderer,” she said. “My cousin is heard to have attacked Sir Humphrey in a drunken fit of temper. Then, Sir Humphrey is murdered when Dudley is a guest in his box. Dudley is distracted by a woman when the murder is being committed, so he arrives back in the box without an alibi. On top of which, someone jostles him in the crowd, so that he spills a glass of spirits on clothes, which makes him reek as if he’s been drinking to excess.”

  While Hester talked, Lord Lovett’s eyes grew narrow. She could almost see the way his thoughts were flying. If, as she suggested, someone had tried to frame Dudley for the murder, then Colonel Potter must surely enter his mind.

  He looked distressed. His gestures, which had always been languid, seemed nervous when he said, “You mean that someone caused him to spill his wine on purpose—perhaps, even paid the harlot to distract him?”

  Until Hester had started speaking, she had not put the two together, although the incidence of the spilled wine had always bothered her. Now, seen as two parts to a plan, they seemed to fit.

  “The Colonel said in his testimony that he did not see who jostled Dudley’s arm in the crowd, but I have never been convinced that he was telling the truth.”

  Lord Lovett turned pale. “Promise me that you will not speak of this to anyone else for now. Not until I can question Potter.”

  Hester tried to hide her quandary from him. She had to share her theory with St. Mars. “I promise,” she said, telling a lie.

  He looked only slightly relieved. Clearly the fear of his friend’s treachery was still uppermost in his mind. But he did not forget to caution her. “If you see Potter, you must never give the impression that you suspect him. There’s no telling what he might do, if he thought you did.”

  “I am not likely to see him. With all the turmoil in the streets, and Dudley to entertain most evenings, I seldom leave the house. And my lord has told the servants that Colonel Potter is no longer to be admitted.”

  He nodded, and a burden seemed to be lifted from his shoulders, but there were others in his eyes, even more disturbing.

  “I cannot tell you how much this distresses me,” he finally said. “But for your own safety, you must admit that it is still conjecture. Your cousin may still be the one who is lying. Don’t take any chances around him. I will see if the harlot can be found. Then, I’ll get what I can from Potter.”

  Hester apologized for having to defend Dudley by casting suspicion on his friend, but he dismissed her concern.

  “It isn’t over. Anything could happen. Or nothing. We mustn’t let ourselves be overwhelmed yet.”

  At the door, before taking his leave, he raised her hand to his lips. Then he gave her fingers a squeeze, which Hester found too tight, but knowing how unhappy he was, she concealed this from him.

  “When I met you,” he said, looking down at the fingers turning white in his hand, “I had no idea that you would overturn my life the way you have.” He released her fingers, only to take hold of her chin. And before Hester could blink, he had brought his lips to hers.

  The kiss lasted only a moment, but Hester was left with her mouth wide open in a gasp.

  Lord Lovett gave her an ironic grin, with one eyebrow cocked, and in the next instant, he was gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

  The proper study of Mankind is Man.

  Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

  A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:

  With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

  With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

  He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

  In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;

  In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;

  Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;

  Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

  Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

  Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confused;

  Still by himself abused, or disabused;

  Created half to rise, and half to fall;

  Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

  Sole judge of the Truth, in endless Error hurled:

  The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

  II. i.

  As soon as Gideon returned to London, he sent Katy with a note for Mrs. Kean.

  Since Katy had never been into the City of Westminster alone, she was daunted by the challenge of finding her way to Hawkhurst House. So Gideon asked Tom to guide her to Covent Garden to buy strawberries to fill her basket and then to Hawkhurst House. Tom, of course, must not be spotted by the servants with whom he had worked for so many years, so he would have to wait nearby to escort her back to the dock at Westminster Stairs.

  Tom’s grumblings on receiving this assignment were not as loud as usual. They were so perfunctory, in fact, as to make Gideon grin. He watched them set off from his open window upstairs and almost felt a pang of envy.

  It was a beautiful day for a promenade.

  * * * *

  Tom and Katy, however, each began the trip with a wealth of misgivings. Tom’s were always the same whenever he had to be with the woman he found so attractive.

  Katy’s were different. She could never be entirely at ease with Thomas Barnes—not when he disapproved of her so strongly—but for once, Tom was not the biggest ogre she had to face.

  The very thought of walking up to the gate of an earl’s house and speaking to the formidable servant, whose job it would be to keep people out, had her knees shaking before any additional qualms arose. Then others emerged, and together they made a frightening picture.

  Even if this “Mistress Kean” did wish to receive Mr. Mavors’s message, Katy doubted that any lady living in an earl’s house would gladly receive it from the hands of a woman like her. When she had worked in a shop at Tunbridge Wells, she had seen how disdainful the fashionable women could be. And that to Katy’s parents, who, unlike her, had always been respectable people. Mrs. Kean would not care that Katy had been lured into error by a young crook who had claimed to love her. She would see an unmarried woman who had no business keeping house with two unmarried men.

  Deep in the Weald, where everyone about her worked in poverty or crime, she had almost forgotten her shame, but today it had returned with force. How could she face a pious lady?

  These were the two fears that had disturbed her sleep the previous night. Now, as she stepped into the boat, with Tom unexpectedly taking her by the elbow to assist her, the worst thought imaginable entered her mind.

  With the blood draining from her cheeks, Katy sank onto the wooden seat.

  Once, she’d been gulled into doing a favour for a man she had believed loved her. And that favour, so innocently done, had ruined her and landed her in gaol. Now, she was being asked to do something secretive for another man who altered his name.

  What if Mrs. Kean was not a lady, but his accomplice, and Mr. Mavors’s plan was to rob the earl? Had Katy been chosen to take the blame, when helping them would
surely get someone hanged?

  She wondered how she could have been such a fool as to take an order like that from Mr. Mavors. If he and Tom were not thieves, why were they hiding? Why couldn’t Tom carry the message?

  Katy had imagined that Mr. Mavors wanted to send a secret message to his love without alerting a father or a husband, perhaps. He had seemed so kind when he had talked to her about Tom. But kindness could be feigned. She thought she had learned that bitter truth, but perhaps she had been fooled again.

  Waking to her surroundings, she saw that the current had taken them quickly down river. The waterman was straining at his oars to cross. Soon they would arrive at the opposite bank, and it would be harder to turn back.

  Tom sat behind her in the stern. He had never pretended to like her. He had made it clear from the start that he wanted nothing to do with her at all. Yet, twice, he had helped her. Against his own opinion, he had asked his master if she could have the job of caring for his clothes. And he had stopped Mr. Menzies from using her as his wench.

  She could not say that Tom was her friend, not when he had no desire to be one. But he might tell her the truth if she asked.

  She twisted to face him in the boat. A wary surprise flickered in his eyes. They darted from her face to her lap, then back to her face, and nervously to the other bank.

  “Tom,” she said, trying to keep her lower lip from trembling, “I can’t carry this note for Mr. Mavors until I know what it’s about.”

  She had pitched her voice very low, so the waterman would not hear her over the splashing of his oars, but Tom’s brows snapped together in alarm. He threw warning glances over her shoulder, as if to remind her of the rower’s presence.

  “Are you going to tell me,” she persisted, “or shall I tell the waterman to turn around?”

  Her boldness annoyed him, but it also seemed to inspire his respect. Seeing this drove her shakiness away.

  “I can’t talk about the master here,” Tom whispered fiercely, casting another glare at the man behind her.