Secret Admirer

by Michele Jaffe

  Reluctantly, the Lion made ready to leave. But he would be back. Back to watch, and wait, and dream his own dreams. Dream of the day when he would be who he deserved to be. Have what he deserved to have.

  He gave the woman and the painting one last glance.

  A day very soon.

  Chapter 2

  Grub Collins kept his fingers hooked over the cracked leather belt slung around his hips in order to keep them from fidgeting. Over the years he’d learned how to control his face and his voice and his walk to keep from showing excitement, but his damn fingers seemed to have a mind of their own.

  It was a perfect summer day and the inhabitants of Ram Alley were taking advantage of the fine weather to do all their washing. Laundry hung on lines from almost every window, creating a canopy of lacy petticoats and well-worn trousers. It looked just like any other morning, perhaps a bit quieter than usual. Even if someone had noticed the strange feeling of expectation that fluttered on the breeze with the petticoats, they would not have been able to put their finger on it.

  Grub peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against for the last hour and lounged slowly down the street, squinting at the laundry. An ancient tavern keeper in high leather boots stopped his sweeping long enough to try to coax him in for a drink, but Grub pressed on. He dropped a coin in the outstretched hand of a one-legged beggar, then continued slowly down the street toward a drunk stretched out next to the street door of the Little Eden.

  Roused by the shadow being cast over him, the drunk opened one eye, slowly, then the other.

  “Nothing doing,” Grub started to say, but stopped as the drunk’s gaze moved behind him. He turned and saw the beggar, now in possession of both legs, running hard down the center of the street.

  Men and women filed from the doorways of about half the buildings to watch as the beggar spoke urgently to the drunk man, and calm turned to acute expectation. This was not the voyeuristic interest of gossipy neighbors, because these were not the normal inhabitants of Ram Alley. Every chamber maid, shopkeeper, and butcher’s boy was a highly trained operative, part of an elaborate surveillance operation designed to catch one of England’s biggest enemies. The laundry was not merely hung out to dry, but actually spelled out a report. Grub Collins was not a loafer but a messenger, and the surly drunk was no less than Lawrence Pickering, the earl of Arden—the man Queen Elizabeth herself called “Our greatest hero,” now the head of Her Majesty’s operation against smuggling.

  “It’s off,” Lawrence announced, getting quickly to his feet, and everyone began talking at once. He silenced them with a look. “I am going with Tom—” he gestured to the agent who had been dressed as a beggar, and whose face had gone sickly pale, “—but I want the rest of you to stay at your posts until I return.” Halfway down Ram Alley he stopped and retraced his steps to the old tavern keeper. “Christopher, send word to the Special Commissioner that someone got to the Lark before we did,” he barked, then turned and continued down the street.

  Lawrence Pickering knew this area intimately. It was here that he had built, with his own hands, the empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Two years earlier he had owned almost every one of the newly refurbished buildings he and Tom were now passing, and had funded most of the now thriving businesses. It was also here that he had grown up—sometimes in the buildings he would later own, more often taking whatever shelter he could in the bleak and filthy alleyways between them. From these, he watched the men and women of Alsatia, and watching them he learned the two most important things he knew: that there was a huge difference between living and living well; and that it had nothing to do with money. He knew that for certain.

  After volunteering to fight against the Spanish and doing everything he could to get himself killed, from sail a burning ship into the middle of the Spanish fleet to lead a jailbreak of 200 prisoners—

  (“I just wasn’t lucky,” he’d said with a beguiling smile and a shrug when he returned to England.

  “You don’t believe in luck, Lawrence,” his best friend, Crispin had reminded him. “But I do, and I am glad you are back.”

  “So am I,” said Lawrence, sounding like he meant it.)

  —he had returned to London a hero. His attendance became the most crucial ingredient for a successful dinner or ball, his title the most valued accessory a marriageable young woman could hope to wear, and his presence the most sought-after accouterment for every boudoir.

  (“Last year it was diamond shoe buckles, this year it is me,” he had joked with one of the women who invited him to her bed.

  “My diamond shoe buckles broke,” she commented, looking him over with a sweep of long lashes. “There does not appear to be anything broken about you.”

  Lawrence had chuckled, acting like he meant it.)

  But even his most ardent and attentive admirers would have been hard pressed to recognize the earl of Arden in the filthy but determined figure who now accompanied Tom away from the tavern, which was, of course, the point. His men had only been undercover and in position for the past three hours; Lawrence himself had been there all night, checking and double checking. He had enough enemies that he knew better than to go to an anonymously called meeting without real precautions.

  He would not normally have responded to an anonymous summons, but at this point he would do anything to shut down the smuggling operations that had been damaging Her Majesty’s coffers and war efforts for the past five years. In the three months that Lawrence had been in charge of the anti-smuggling operation, illegal trafficking had gone from a torrent to a trickle, but that was not good enough for him. They even thought they knew who was responsible for it, but they could not prove it, and even if they could, just grabbing him would only upset, not end, the selling. What they needed was someone who could explain the organization, someone who could name names. Someone like the man they code named the Lark because in his letter to Lawrence he requested a meeting at the crack of dawn. He offered them all the information they might desire about the smuggling in exchange for immunity and a hideout in the countryside. For that information, Lawrence would gladly have risked his life. Twice. Unfortunately, it was the Lark’s life that went instead. And with it whatever he knew.

  With his jaw clenched, Lawrence followed Tom around a corner and into a narrow alley. They had to skirt a group of mangy looking dogs fighting over a piece of meat, and then duck under a short arch before reaching the door of the abandoned house where the Lark had been found dead.

  It was dark inside but the circle of light given off by the lantern Tom held illuminated a figure slumped half against the wall and half on the floor. Lawrence bent down toward the motionless form and wrinkled his nose. Of the three things Lawrence disliked most in the world, one of them was lilacs, and the dead man must have drenched himself in lilac water before going out. Close inspection revealed no wound on the man’s back, so Lawrence reached out and carefully turned the corpse over. And froze.

  Behind him, Tom inhaled sharply, then retched and dropped the lantern. The light flickered madly back and forth as it fell and crashed on the ground, spluttering out. With their eyes unused to the dim interior, they were instantly plunged into impenetrable darkness. But even in the darkness the corpse seemed to hover before them.

  Lawrence felt as if the image had been seared into his mind, joining so many others and trumping them. There was the agonized expression on the man’s face. The long, red gash that crossed his pale throat above his ruff like a bloody smile. And then, below it, the gaping cavity in his chest where his heart should have been.

  “Tom,” Lawrence turned to call behind him into the darkness. His voice sounded hoarse and strange to his own ears. “Tom, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” was the unsteady reply.

  “Good. Do you think you could do me a favor?”

  “Yes.” A little more steady.

  “Please go outside and stop those dogs from eatin
g—whatever they are eating.”

  There was a gag, a pause, a scratching noise, and then the sound of footsteps clumsily receding.

  When he was sure the young man was gone, Lawrence steeled himself and relit the lantern. Until that moment he believed he had seen all that man could offer in the way of death and destruction, both on the streets of London and on the field of battle. And until that moment he had not understood the security that such a belief offered.

  Those other killings, while pointless, at least were motivated by something: patriotism, greed, love, loss, rage. But even if that had been the case here, the violence of the killing moved it beyond that, beyond the space of motive. There was something chillingly malevolent, hauntingly calculated, about the way this man’s life had been taken. Something that went beyond mere murder.

  As he looked at the heartless body in front of him, Lawrence perversely remembered one of the axioms he used to drill into his men: It is not what you take away that matters, it is what you leave behind. He had always considered it as a way to control his enemies, send them the message he wanted them to see.

  What message was the killer sending through this violated body?

  Lawrence knew with overwhelming certainty that he did not want to find the answer to that question, did not want to again find himself wading into a dark pool of violence and death and betrayal. He knew that finding it would cause him to suffer in ways he could not even imagine.

  Just as he knew, with equal certainty, that he had no choice.

  He was right on both counts.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday bit the inside of her cheek and glared at the half-finished portrait on her easel ferociously. She would have given anything to be able to concentrate on it. But her eyes kept looking past it, toward the door.

  When she had first set up her studio in Worthington Hall’s unused laundry rooms, she had angled her easel so that she painted facing the large windows that opened onto the street. But after only three days she had turned it around. Her neighbors, who enjoyed peering in and trying to guess the identity of whomever she was painting, thought she changed it for their benefit. She let them think it, because she hated the real reason.

  She did it so she could watch the door. So she would know the very instant Curtis came home.

  If he came home.

  She wanted to kick herself for still waiting, for still looking up anxiously every time there were footsteps in the hallway, wondering if this time, this day, was the day-week-hour when Curtis would come back to her. A dozen times she had consciously turned the easel back toward the windows, and a dozen times, without realizing it, she had found herself staring again at the damn door.

  She dragged her eyes from it and forced them back onto the portrait.

  Living in this constant state of vigilance was taking its toll on her. It was not just the dreams, although those were part of it. She had begun to feel like someone was watching her all the time. She found herself eyeing shadows in the street and jumping at loud noises. Just that morning she had been convinced that someone had rearranged her linens. She hated feeling afraid all the time, as if she were under siege, as if right this moment—

  “Good morning, fair princess.”

  Tuesday gave a start at the sound of the familiar voice, saying the familiar phrase, behind her. She turned as George Lyle was in the act of climbing through the open window.

  “Sorry to scare you,” he said, scowling at a fleck of dirt on his meticulous breeches. “No one answered the door.”

  Annoyed at herself for being so edgy, Tuesday waved away his apology. “It’s nothing. I think CeCe has Morse helping her put up some new experiment. He must not have heard you knock.” She mustered a smile. “How are you this morning, George?”

  “Better now that I have laid eyes on you.”

  Tuesday looked at him closely. George had been one of her closest friends for a long time. He was just past forty, and grew only more handsome with each passing year, each encroachment of gray around his temples. His square jaw, deep green eyes, and flirtatious smile managed to hold allure for even the most chaste aristocratic wives, and had made having a George Lyle Original Portrait one of the requirements for stature in the fashionable world. But recently, at least to Tuesday, George had begun to look different. Something—the tightness of his smile, the newly metallic edge of his laugh—had changed. Today she noticed that there were bags under his eyes where there weren’t usually, as though he had not been sleeping.

  Pretending not to notice her scrutiny, George bent to eye the painting she was working on, then stood up abruptly. His face was a mask of exaggerated horror. “Ugh. Dowager Castenough. She is terrible. I absolutely refuse to do this in front of her.”

  Tuesday nodded as if she understood. “Perhaps today we ought to let it go. Just skip it.”

  George looked injured. “You don’t mean that.” He took a deep breath and looked soulfully into her eyes. “Tuesday, will you run away—”

  “No thank you, George.”

  “You didn’t even let me finish.”

  “I knew what you were going to say. You say the same thing every morning.”

  “That does not mean you can just interrupt. I never interrupt when you say ‘let’s just skip it,’ which you do almost every morning. Besides, it is quite rude to interrupt when a man is proposing to you.”

  “Not if you are married and he does not mean it. Can—”

  “Lady Tuesday Worthington Arlington, will you run away with me and be my love?”

  “No thank you, George. Do you have any—”

  “No thank you? That is all?” George frowned. “You usually at least say ‘that is very kind of you but I shall have to decline.’ ”

  “I was striving for variety.”

  “Let us try this again. Tuesday, will you run away with me and be my love?”

  “That is very kind of you, George, but I shall have to decline. Now, can you tell me what is wrong with this picture? I’ve been working on the nose for an hour and I can’t quite get it right.”

  “Everything is wrong with it. The dowager of Castenough should never let herself be painted.”

  “You were the one who sold her on the idea.”

  “It was only to punish you for not running away with me. I thought it might make you jealous. Look at me.” George interposed himself between Tuesday and the canvas. “Look at this face. How can you say I don’t mean it?” He turned heavenward and gripped his chest, but his eyes stayed on Tuesday.

  “I do not mean to be callous, but could you have your fit a little farther from the wet paint on the left ear? Thank you.”

  With a sigh, George seated himself on the arm of the settee next to Tuesday’s easel and began to twirl a paintbrush between his fingers. “Really, princess. How can you be so cruel?”

  “George, don’t be absurd. You knew when you walked in here that I was not going to run away with you.”

  “But why not?”

  “What reason did I give yesterday?”

  “I think it was your shoes being too tight for running. No, I’m wrong. Yesterday was the one about not abandoning your father. I’ve always thought that one rather unconvincing. Bad Sir Dennis would hardly notice.”

  “Very well. Which reason do you like best?”

  “Truthfully, I think they are all rather weak, but if I had to choose, I’d go with ‘Curtis will come find us with murder in his heart and pistols at the ready.’ At least that one has some drama to it.”

  Even, Tuesday thought to herself, if it wasn’t true. As if Curtis would come for her. As if he would even care.

  “George, it is very kind of you to offer, but I must say no. It would utterly destroy our friendship—you know how messy I am, and how you hate chaos.”

  “I would learn to live with it.”

  “No. Your esteem means too much to me.”

  “Now be serious, princess. I’ve got it a
ll planned out.” He took a sip from the glass on Tuesday’s work table, choked, and put it back. “What the devil is that?”

  “Water,” Tuesday replied, vaguely amused. “It comes—”

  “I know where it comes from.” George wiped his mouth on his hand and stared at her as if she had tried to poison him. “And I know what it is good for. Cattle. No wonder you look so listless today. What you need is some strong wine.”

  This was another manifestation of the new George. He had always been a man who liked spirits, but now he was almost never without a drink, or the lingering scent of one. And he suddenly looked agitated. Tuesday opened her mouth to ask him what was bothering him, but he spoke instead. His usual playfulness seemed to have drained away, leaving him businesslike, abrupt.

  “Never mind. We can get some on the road. It’s time we were going. Curtis might return at any moment, you know, princ—”

  “Oh George, thank goodness you are here!” a female voice exclaimed from the open door. The voice—genteel, sweet, and very feminine—matched the woman to whom it belonged perfectly. With her reddish-blonde wavy hair, milky skin, luscious figure, and huge, guileless blue eyes, CeCe had managed to capture the imagination of every man in the neighborhood from the moment of her installation as Tuesday’s maid at Worthington Hall, and at the same time befriend most of the women. There were those—the Mean and Uglies, as CeCe called them—who mocked her “hoity-toity” manners and the way she would lecture to younger housemaids about what colors not to wear and how to hold their shoulders just so, but they were in the minority. Tuesday could not remember a day when CeCe hadn’t received at least one marriage proposal, which she always politely declined with the explanation that she was waiting for her fiancé—lost during the war against Spain—to make his way back to London. This denial served only to make both her male and female admirers sigh louder as they added “loyalty” to her list of virtues.