Secret Admirer

by Michele Jaffe

“I doubt that.”

  “If you do not tell me where you were I shall be forced to assume that you are hiding something or protecting someone.”

  “I have never in my life met a man more determined to be mistaken.”

  Instead of saying anything, Lawrence made a low growling noise and scowled at the air in front of him. He was debating whether to go ahead with the scheme he and Miles had devised. Through a quick interview with CeCe he had learned that Tuesday had not left her chamber the night before, so she had not been the one to knock Tom out in the alleyway. But of course, if she had an accomplice, she would not even have had to get out of bed.

  Whether she was responsible for Tom’s injuries or not, sticking to her side was still the best way to learn what she knew, Lawrence decided. He rapped once on the roof of the coach and the vehicle rocked into motion.

  Tuesday did not recognize the house they pulled up in front of, but it had to be one of the largest in London. She imagined the façade was lovely, but it was impossible to tell with the number of workmen swarming all over it, scrubbing each brick by hand and hanging huge garlands. Inside the scene was even more impressive. She had never seen such a lavish establishment, or so many servants tearing around under stacks of linens or huge trays of glassware. She tried not to stare too openly as Lawrence guided her up a staircase, past a Michelangelo painting, and into a large room, made larger by the fact that it was practically unfurnished.

  There was a desk at one end, with a man leaning against it. He got up as they came in and gestured Tuesday into a chair that appeared never to have been sat in.

  “That is the viscount Dearbourn,” Lawrence said in clipped tones. “Miles, this is her.”

  Miles could barely keep the amusement off his face. He had never seen Lawrence quite like this before and he was sorry his cousins weren’t there to witness it, too. They had all been worried about him since his return from Spain—unlike the rest of London, they were not fooled by Lawrence’s constant smiles, or the vague rumors of his love affairs. They knew that he had not been happy since he got back, had not, really, been anything. At least now he seemed genuinely annoyed. Definitely an improvement.

  Tuesday momentarily put aside her own annoyance in favor of surprise. She had heard of Miles Loredan but never thought she would be meeting him. According to the news sheets CeCe was always quoting, he and his cousins, known as the Arboretti after a company they owned, were the richest and most important, not to mention most famous, men in England, if not all of Christendom. And, she now remembered, their names almost never appeared—at least not when their more astonishing and outlandish escapades were mentioned—without being linked to that of Lawrence Pickering. Which, of course, figured.

  She began a low curtsey but Miles stopped her. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Arlington. Lawrence had told me a bit about you.”

  “Probably the bit about my being a murderess.”

  “That did come up. In fact, that is why you are here.”

  “Is this the processing center for Newgate?”

  “Not quite. We now have a witness who saw a man—”

  “A witness? You have a witness?”

  “Yes. Albert Marston. We were hoping you could help us with him. I have been told that you have a book of faces, pieces of faces. Could you make a portrait from—”

  She was not looking at Miles anymore but had craned her neck around to stare behind her at Lawrence, who was tossing a gold piece in his hand. “You found someone who saw the killer and it was not me, but you still kept me under arrest?”

  Lawrence caught the coin and looked at her stonily. Miles, who had decided he liked her a lot, said, “Actually, they found him using the description you provided.”

  Lawrence glowered at Miles. They had not discussed telling her that. In fact, Lawrence hadn’t even told Miles that much. Whoever had leaked the information was going to be in trouble.

  But Lawrence’s glower was no match for Tuesday’s. Any urges she had once felt to smile were eradicated. She turned around to address him. “You believed what I told you yesterday about the murderer being a brown-haired man? You called me a liar.”

  “I was exploring possibilities,” Lawrence said coolly. Very big trouble. He tossed the coin in the air.

  “I wish I were a murderer,” she hissed, and there was no question about who her first victim would be if she decided to take up the vocation. “Now you owe me two apologies.” She turned to face Miles again. “Mr. Pickering has abominable manners when he does not get his way.”

  “Yes, he does,” Miles agreed heartily. Mister Pickering, and Lawrence hadn’t even flinched. “Now about—”

  At that moment the sounds of someone bashing into furniture interrupted him, followed by a discreet knock on the door. Miles crossed to open it, and found himself facing one of Lawrence’s men. He made an urgent gesture to his boss.

  Lawrence and the guard conferred together in whispers for a moment until Lawrence turned to Miles, his eyes blazing, and said, “She tried to bribe one of my operatives this morning.”

  The guard shook his head and pulled Lawrence back into conversation.

  “What do you mean I—?” Tuesday asked, but Lawrence put up a hand to stop her. The blaze in his eyes changed, then changed again.

  “Show him in,” he said finally, rubbing his hands together.

  The guard disappeared, then reappeared with one of his colleagues. Between them they were supporting an enormous man, half a head taller than either of them, who was writhing in their arms and bleeding from a cut above his eye.

  “Oh my God, Jack, what have they done to you?” Tuesday cried, coming out of her chair and reaching for the man.

  At the sight of her, at the sound of her voice, the man named Jack threw off his guards, wrapped his arms around her, and let loose a torrent of unintelligible words. She held him and rubbed his back and moved him gingerly into the chair she had just vacated. “Keep your eyes closed,” she told him in his ear, and he did, using his entire face to smash them shut.

  She kneeled next to him, cleaning the wound to his head with the sleeve of her gown, the whole time whispering to him in an undertone. Lawrence moved closer to hear what she was saying and she looked up, giving him, in a split second, a glance that could have singed the bristles off a boar.

  He decided to talk to his men instead. “Who is this?”

  “Man she was with this morning. Name is Jack, sir. Traced her ladyship’s movements backwards, like you said—bit of luck, her trying to pay off Cassandra—and discovered that she’d been at this one’s apartment. And it ain’t the first time, neither,” the man added ominously. “Seems she goes three, four times a week, according to the landlady. Makes no secret, neither, of her feelings. One day Mrs. Peach, that’s the landlady, she saw these two embracing and kissing, very familiar. And,” he paused for emphasis, getting ready for the good stuff, “Sir Curtis as was her husband? He used to go there regular, too. Then one day he goes and finds this one—” thumb jabs at Jack, “—with her, and there’s a regular big fight and then Sir Curtis never comes back again. Want my opinion, these two is a couple and Sir Curtis gets wise and—”

  Lawrence cut him off. “I’m not interested in your opinion. What did the man himself tell you about her visit?”

  “Nothing. Not said a bloody word. We don’t even introduce ourselves and he starts swinging. He’s like an ox.”

  Lawrence turned to Tuesday. “How do you explain this report, Lady Arlington?”

  “How do you explain what they did to him, Mr. Pickering?”

  “He lunged at us, sir,” the man put in defensively.

  “He was terrified,” Tuesday challenged.

  “Terrified?” Lawrence snorted. “He’s twice the size of my men.”

  “Yes but he is—”

  “Grub said you were looking for a paper. He got one, all right, but we had to tie his hands just to pry it off him,” the man cont
inued and Tuesday went completely white. “He tried to deny having it, tried to deny knowing Lady Arlington, but we cornered him and made him hand it over.”

  The man held out a folded sheet of paper. Before Lawrence could take it, Tuesday said, “Give that to me.” When no one moved, she grabbed for it.

  Lawrence got there first.

  “Give it to me, please,” she said, and now the defiance was gone from her tone, replaced by something desperate that made Lawrence almost sorry for her. Almost. He grabbed the paper and unfolded it brutally. He stared.

  It was a drawing of a horse. Just a drawing of a horse.

  “Please give it to him if you don’t want to give it to me,” Tuesday implored now, leaning over Jack. “He won’t be able to breathe right until you do.”

  Lawrence looked up and realized that the large man was gasping for air and rocking back and forth.

  “Please, he is terrified. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Please, Lord Pickering—”

  Jack had moved his hands to his eyes and was watching Lawrence and Tuesday in the gaps between his fingers, but as soon as Lawrence extended the paper toward him, his hands came down. Jack held the paper right in front of his face, inspecting it, then lovingly refolded it and slipped it inside his doublet. He straightened up in his chair and smiled at Lawrence.

  Lawrence frowned but Jack didn’t seem to notice. As soon as Jack smiled, the nature of his relationship to Tuesday was clear. They looked almost identical, except where her eyes were stoked with fire, his were uncannily serene. Jack was like an overgrown infant, pleased with everything and completely dependent on Tuesday, who was unquestionably his sister. He was obviously not anyone’s accomplice. He was just a sweet, slow boy that Tuesday cared for deeply.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him when I asked you?” Lawrence demanded. “Why keep Jack a secret?”

  “Because I didn’t want your men going there and terrifying him.”

  “Jack is scared of soldiers,” Jack put in then. “When Jack is scared he can’t breathe. One time Jack almost died.”

  Lawrence was absolutely furious. He was furious that he had been so wrong, furious at his men for making such a mistake, furious at her for turning out not to be a cunning criminal, for being willing to do anything—even look guilty—in order to protect her brother. Damn her.

  As he watched the two of them together, he felt like there was more he did not understand. He rolled the gold coin between his fingers. “Your father does not know you are seeing Jack,” he stated.

  Tuesday nodded. “Can he go home now? It isn’t good for him to be out so long.”

  Lawrence could tell something was making her tense. What was he missing? He tossed the coin. What—

  “Jack, were you friends with Curtis?”

  Jack looked quickly up at Tuesday. Her hand rested affectionately on his shoulder, and Lawrence saw her give it a small squeeze. But there was no affection in her eyes when she turned them to him. “Jack is a very special man,” she said, and Jack grinned big. She smiled down at him, then returned her cool eyes to Lawrence. “He has some special skills that Curtis liked to make use of.”

  “Such as?” Lawrence asked.

  “Jack has an incredible memory. He knows everything he has ever heard or read or seen. He can remember the exact location of every item in a room after visiting it for only a second. Curtis used to take him to taverns and make wagers against him getting answers right.”

  “They called him the Genius Boy,” Miles put in then. “I’ve heard of him.”

  Tuesday nodded. “Sometimes people did not like the fact that Jack never made a mistake. Once some men, soldiers, followed him home and beat him up. Since then, he has been terrified by men, especially men in uniforms. He is scared to even leave his house except to play with the children in the yard at Bridewell.”

  Lawrence stole a look at Jack, expecting him to be tense or wary at being discussed, but was surprised to see that he merely looked impassive. In fact, he did not seem to be paying attention to them at all.

  “He likes anything shiny,” Tuesday explained, gesturing with her chin toward the coin Lawrence was tossing. “Curtis told him that if he got enough shiny things he could have a real pony, so he’s been fascinated by them ever since.”

  Lawrence looked down and realized that Jack’s gaze was indeed trained wistfully on the coin he was tossing in his hand. It was a coin he’d had for a long time, had kept on purpose. It held a wealth of memories and reminders. He threw it to Jack, who caught it nimbly and began tossing it in his hand as Lawrence had been.

  “You are Jack’s friend,” a beaming Jack told Lawrence. “Mr. Pickering is Jack’s friend.”

  Tuesday looked like she wanted to bite someone. The truth was, she was torn between making Jack give Lawrence Pickering back his stupid gold coin so that she would not have to hear endless monologues from Jack on the subject of his friend Mr. Pickering, and letting Jack keep it so that Lawrence could not stalk around tossing it. But the decision was made for her when Lawrence told his men to escort Jack home.

  She was seething so thoroughly that she barely acknowledged Jack’s good-bye wishes. She pretended not to hear when Lawrence told his men to allow Jack to ride home on one of his horses. As soon as the door was closed she turned to him and began, “How dare you drag him out of his house and—”

  Lawrence cut her off clean. “Next time you try to bribe one of my operatives, you’ll need to offer them more than four pennies. I pay very well.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking—” Tuesday began, then stopped and gaped. “She—? You—?”

  On her way to Jack’s room that morning, Tuesday had noticed a very poor girl following her. She’d had only a few pennies and the meat pie she was taking to Jack, but she offered the lot to the girl who had kindly, but surprisingly, refused it. “That girl is an operative? She is not—?”

  “A beggar?” Lawrence finished the sentence for her. “No. She was once but she’s been working for me for five years. She’s one of my best operatives—the head of that whole quarter of London.”

  Tuesday did not like his smug tone or what he was saying. She did not like having to replace her black-and-white image of what he was with a more nuanced portrait of a man who took beggar girls under his wing and gave them legitimate jobs. She did not like anything at all about Lawrence Pickering. Only the way his frown was digging deep furrows across his forehead and his hands, now without their coin to toss, were clenched tight made her feel any better. And gave her something to work for. She wondered if it was true that muscles under strain could freeze that way.

  Although Miles was finding watching Lawrence open and close his fists and Tuesday bite ferociously on her lip amusing, he decided the best thing would be to speed the happy couple on their way. He picked up where they had left off before Jack’s arrival. “Is it true, about your book, Lady Arlington? Could you produce a sketch of the man observed leaving the scene of the murder from the witness’s description?”

  Tuesday had to grind her mind back to the conversation as she considered Miles’s request. She had used her book to draw someone absent before, and both times had been a disaster. The first time, with the Burns children, their disagreement over the color of their dead mother’s hair had left one of them bloody and another with a whole new rhyme for the word “itch.” But the second time was worse: CeCe had become positively incensed with Tuesday for “having every other forehead known to man and not my dear, dear fiancé’s” in her book and burst into tears, accusing her mistress of being part of a conspiracy to obliterate her and everyone she loved from the earth as if they had never existed. The memory of that scene and of the tearful apology that followed still made her feel wretched. She would try that again only for a very compelling reason. “I might be able to make a sketch, but what good will that do?”

  “We could have a team copy it and then our men could blanket the city, showing it
around, to try to locate him.”

  “And if I refuse to help you?”

  “Then we shall be forced to conclude that you are hiding something or shielding someone. Your arrest would stand.”

  “Imagine how hard that would be on your father,” Lawrence put in from behind her.

  Miles moved past that. “Of course, in return for your assistance, we would provide you with protection.”

  Tuesday had been staring at her hands in her lap, turning over ideas. Now she looked up at Miles, a strange expression on her face. “Protection?”

  “Yes, a bodyguard and men to watch your house. Lawrence—Mr. Pickering—and I have been trying for several months to break a ring of smugglers, the ones we think your husband was working with. They are not nice characters and if they think you are helping us, you may be in some danger. Whoever killed your husband might come after you.”

  Tuesday shook her head and said, “I appreciate the offer, but I am sure I would be in no danger.”

  “I have to disagree. If they think you know something or are working against them, they will come after you.”

  “But I don’t know anything. Besides, if there were guards in my house, they would upset my father. His condition, as Lord Pickering so thoughtfully pointed out, is fragile.”

  “We could disguise them so that they did not seem to be guards,” Miles volunteered.

  Tuesday shook her head again, then stopped as if something had just occurred to her. “I don’t see—could they appear to be servants? Like a valet?”

  “Yes. Of course,” Miles agreed.

  “Or musicians?” she went on.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Miles saw Lawrence’s frown deepen. Miles said, “I suppose so.”

  Tuesday nodded. “Very well. As long as my father is protected, I will be fine. I don’t need a guard.”

  “Actually, Lady Arlington, we think you need protection most of all. In fact, Lord Pickering is going to assume the office—”

  “No.” It was a flat denial.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I will not have him circling around me, haunting me, all the time. No. Under no circumstances. Never.”