He got up and strolled across to the window, leaning on the sill as he had done earlier when he had seen Catherine. Now the square in front of the inn was empty. The scaffold was shrouded in darkness, Clarencieux’s body in its rough pine coffin taken away for medical dissection. The thought still made Ben feel ill.
“Clarencieux was my friend, Sam,” he said over his shoulder. “Those women thought his death was just another sport. They were here to gloat.”
Sam’s good-humored face fell. “It was disrespectful of me to bring them, I suppose,” he muttered. “I didn’t think.”
Ben gave him a pitying look. “You might have spared yourself their fee,” he agreed. His cousin’s finances were almost as parlous as his own. Sam belonged to the wealthy side of the Hawksmoor family, but his elder brother, Gideon, kept him on a short rein with an allowance that was barely sufficient to feed him, let alone pay for the pleasures of the town. Ben had the family title, Gideon the family money. Ben wanted money and Gideon would probably have given his left testicle to have Ben’s title. They detested one another. Ben could recognize that the irony was the richest thing in the situation.
“I suppose they were Haymarket ware,” Sam said, “compared to Lady Paris. No wonder you thought them tawdry. The only thing that astounds me is that you could ever look at another woman with the memory of Paris before your eyes.”
Ben laughed. “I have told you a hundred times, Sam, that Paris and I share nothing more than business interests. We do not share a bed.”
“Of course not,” Sam said, without rancor and without the slightest sign of believing him. “Everyone in town knows you are her lover and you are the only one denying it.”
Ben’s smile grew. Sam was the only person to whom he had told the truth of his relationship with Lady Paris de Moine, and the only reason he had told Sam was that it amused him to do so knowing that his cousin would never believe him. Every printed scandal sheet in the land reported that he and Paris were lovers. Every gossipmonger in the Ton passed on the latest on dit that linked their names. Ben had no quarrel with that. Together, he and Paris were more famous, more sought after and more likely to make money than they were separately. It enhanced his reputation to have the most outrageously beautiful courtesan in London on his arm. In return, Paris basked in the glamour that his dangerous reputation shed on her. It was the most perfect charade, as empty as a spun-sugar confection from Gunters.
“Paris and I are not lovers,” he said.
Sam’s eyes widened. “I see,” he said, in a tone that clearly demonstrated he did not. “So when did you last have a woman, Ben?”
“Mind your own damned business,” Ben said affably. The truth was that he could not remember. There had been a pretty widow in Spain eighteen months back, when he had been looking to blot out all the twisted horror of the war. And more recently there had been the bored wife of a foreign ambassador whom he had met at one of the regent’s soirees. Neither affaire had lasted very long. He was no good for any woman. Before he even met them, he was thinking of how to leave them.
He paused, more than half-surprised to realize that it had been so long. He was no monk, but he was no rake either, despite his reputation. He had lived so long in a world that used sex as just another currency that he had grown bored with it, fastidious even. His lips twisted. That probably made him a hypocrite. Well, he had been called worse.
The sound of voices raised in convivial song floated up from the taproom below. Ben sighed again.
“I am leaving, Sam,” he said. “Forgive me, I am not good company tonight.”
He looked out into the night. The inn sign creaked in the rising breeze. A crowd of drunken revelers spilled from the inn door out onto the cobbles of the square. A torch flared, throwing the shadow of the scaffold into harsh relief.
Ben turned back to the lit room. He felt blue-deviled and angry with himself for the weakness. Ned Clarencieux was dead and gone, a fool who had lived by his wits and died when those wits had not proved sharp enough. Ben had no doubt that his friend had been wrongly convicted, but because Clarencieux had had no money, power or status he had not been able to save himself. It was a salutary lesson.
Ben clenched his fists tightly. He was not like Clarencieux. True, he was an adventurer, but he was more ruthless than his friend had been and he had more advantages. He had his title, empty as it was, and the patronage of the Prince Regent—and plenty of enemies who would have been happy to see him swing on the end of that rope.
And as though in an echo of his thoughts, Sam put out a hand. “Ben—” his voice was more hesitant than his cousin had ever heard it “—you will not pursue this matter of Clarencieux’s death, will you?”
“Why do you ask?” Ben said.
Sam’s face was troubled. “Because when you were in your cups last night, I heard you say that you thought Ned was innocent and that he had been framed.”
Ben made an uncontrollable movement. He had not thought he had been so indiscreet even when maudlin drunk on the night before the execution.
“It’s all right,” Sam said hastily. “No one else heard.” He paused. “So was he?”
“You are too persistent,” Ben said.
“I know.” Sam grinned. “So?”
“I am sure he was,” Ben said. He had spent much of the evening thinking about it. “Clarencieux swore he was innocent, and he had not the wit to forge money nor the stomach to shoot his banker.”
Sam shook his head. “But why would anyone take the trouble to frame Ned? He was not important enough for anyone to wish to remove him.”
“Someone must have had a grudge against him,” Ben said slowly. Like him, Clarencieux had been a gamester who had taken money from other desperate men. And Ben suspected that Ned had been engaged in a clandestine love affair. Cuckolded husbands could be extremely vindictive. And then there had been Withers’s threats…
Sam was gnawing his lower lip. “But you will not pursue it?”
Ben propped his elbow on the table. “You may be easy. I have no intention of looking for trouble.”
Sam looked infinitely relieved. “Thank God! What good would it do, anyway? Ned is hanged and you’ve never been one to stick your neck out for others.”
The words dropped awkwardly into the silence of the room. Then Ben laughed.
“Quite right, Sam,” he said. “I care nothing for others, as we have previously discussed.”
He stared into the fire. Ned Clarencieux had served alongside him in the Peninsula. They had both been outcasts in their own way, Ben the product of the scandalous match between a lord and a housemaid, Ned the disinherited son of a clergyman. It had been a bond between them. They had been closer than brothers. Ben had saved his comrade’s life once when Ned and some of the others had got so drunk on the retreat to Corunna that the commanding officer had ordered they be left behind. Ben had dragged him out and literally carried him until Ned had sobered up. This time Ned had not been so lucky, and Ben had not been able to save him. He knew he should let it go now, but old loyalties were dying harder than he had imagined.
“There is one matter in which I must act, however,” he said slowly. “Withers threatened me today. I need to find out why.”
Sam was staring like an owl, unblinking. “Withers again? What did he say?”
Ben frowned as he tried to remember. “Merely that justice had been done with Ned’s death and I would be next.”
Sam raised his brows. “Meaning?”
“I am not sure.”
Sam shrugged. “It probably means nothing. Withers is mad and it is true that he has been no friend to either you or Ned, but surely he is not dangerous.”
“You mistake,” Ben said quietly. “There are men who are nothing but talk and then there are the ones who would knife you in the back in a dark alleyway, and Withers is one of those.”
Sam moved away to pour another tankard of ale for himself from the pitcher. “Then let the matter drop, Ben, and keep away from him.�
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Ben shook his head. “Not until I know if his threats are hollow or not.”
Sam paused. “I do not like it,” he said obstinately.
“You do not have to.”
“At the very least, do not provoke him by stealing his mistress.”
Ben laughed. “It might be the very way to smoke him out.”
Once again the desire stirred in him, more complex than mere lust. He wanted Catherine. He had held her yielding body against his and now he wanted her with a hunger. He would have to be careful. He would seduce the little jade but that would be all. Anything else would be madness.
He picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
“I am sorry that I am such poor company tonight, Sam,” he said. “Forgive me. I will see you on the morrow.”
Sam’s face lightened. “Brooks?”
“Brooks,” Ben confirmed, with a grin.
He went down the stairs, past the rowdy taproom with its smell of beer and fug of tobacco, and out into the cobbled square. He shrugged his jacket on and turned west. It was a long walk to St. James’s but he needed to clear his head.
His thoughts, as it turned out, were relatively easy to clarify. Despite what he had said to Sam, he would look into the matter of Ned Clarencieux’s death. His own survival could depend on it. And he would pursue Catherine. He would take her away from Withers and he would take the greatest pleasure in doing so. Now all he had to do was find her.
CHAPTER THREE
It is not considered seemly for any young girl to be out alone, not even coming from church.
—Mrs. Eliza Squire, Good Conduct for Ladies
“CATHERINE! IT IS SO LOVELY to see you, even though I know I should not have arranged to meet you here.” Miss Lily St. Clare, her face wrinkled with concern, drew her friend into the shelter of a shop doorway and away from the hordes of people milling on the Oxford Street pavement. It was another cold morning and, although the sun was rising, it had not yet started to melt the frost from the London rooftops. The pavement was slippery underfoot. The scent of a thousand coal fires lingered on the still air.
Catherine submitted to her friend’s chiding with a broad smile, hugging her close. “I wanted to see you again. It has been an age! Do not worry—no one will notice us in this crush. How are you, Lily?”
Lily stood back and thrust her hands deeply into her fur-lined muff. Catherine thought that she looked pinched and pale, but it was not simply from the cold. It was as though the months of her social exile had sapped something from her. Her spirit had died. There was no animation in her piquant face. She was as beautifully dressed as ever, her dark hair peeping prettily from beneath her bonnet, but her outward elegance was a stark contrast to the misery Catherine could sense within her.
“You do not look very happy,” Catherine ventured. She felt foolish as soon as the words were out. How could Lily be happy working in a Covent Garden brothel? They were of an age, but now the gulf between them felt immense. Catherine could not even begin to imagine what her friend’s life was like, but she knew that gently-bred Lily St. Clare should never have come to this.
They had been the closest of friends from school through to their first London season. Lily had made a conventional marriage to a rich and titled man. Catherine’s father had betrothed her to Lord Withers. But suddenly the whole fabric of their parallel lives had started to unravel with Lily’s unhappy marriage and her love affair, and the situation had ended with her friend in disgrace, a fallen woman, and Catherine forbidden ever to see her again.
“I am well enough,” Lily said, her painted mouth stretching into a smile that did not reach her eyes. “I am only concerned for you, Catherine. You know it is dangerous for you to meet me. Were anyone to see you, or your father hear that you had gone out alone…”
Her voice trailed away as Catherine squeezed her hand. “It is more important to me that we may still see one another,” she said firmly. “Besides, no one will notice me in this crush.” The crowd on the pavement was growing thicker by the second and now someone trod heavily on Catherine’s foot, forcing her to take a farther step back.
“Your chaperone is very lax,” Lily said, smiling a real smile now. “You are shockingly bad, you know.”
“I know,” Catherine said, “but Maggie is sick again—the laudanum, you know—and no one pays any attention to what I do, so I am free to come and go as I please.”
Lily was shaking her head, though whether over Maggie’s condition or Catherine’s own behavior, she could not be sure. The crowd was spilling from the pavement into the road now and Catherine reflected that when she had suggested Oxford Street for her meeting with her old friend she had not anticipated the scrum that would ensue.
“It is monstrously busy today,” she said, frowning. “Perhaps we should go to Blake’s coffeehouse instead. I have not seen a crowd like this since Papa brought me to see Lord Nelson when I was a child! What on earth is going on?”
“There is to be a curricle race,” Lily said. “I confess that I was eager to see it. Lord Hawksmoor has challenged Mr. Lancing to race him along Oxford Street, up Newman Street, along to Cavendish Square and back.” She looked closely at Catherine’s face. “Are you quite well, Catherine? You have gone very pale. Is the crowd too pressing?”
“I am cold, that is all,” Catherine said, through the sudden chattering of her teeth. She did not wish to admit to Lily that the mere mention of Ben Hawksmoor’s name had her shivering as though she suffered an ague. “It sounds like madness,” she added. “What on earth would possess them to do such a thing?”
“A love of a wager,” Lily said dryly, “and on Lord Hawksmoor’s part a reckless disregard for his own life and safety—oh, and a desire to profit by it.”
“Profit? How?”
Lily touched her arm. “You see those gentlemen of the press over there? Hawksmoor will already have sold them the story and regardless of the outcome of the race it will appear, suitably embroidered, in tomorrow’s scandal sheets.”
“I see,” Catherine said slowly.
“And he will be taking a cut of the profit from the bets, of course.”
Catherine huddled deeper within her thick winter pelisse. “You sound as though you dislike him,” she said.
Lily’s blue eyes lit with a spark of amusement. “Not at all. I admire his skill.” Her tone hardened. “Those of us who have to work to survive do what we must.”
Catherine hated to hear the disillusion in her friend’s voice. It was as though Lily had gone somewhere that Catherine could not understand; somewhere she could not reach her. It was the same world that Ben Hawksmoor inhabited, as alien to Catherine as a foreign land, where lives were bartered, bought and sold for survival. She hated the thought of it.
Nevertheless she wanted to understand. She wanted to help Lily if she could. There was nothing that she could do directly but she had had an idea that might serve.
She put out a hand. “Lily, I was wondering…” She broke off, biting her lip. “I know your current life is hateful to you,” she said in a rushed undertone, “and I was wondering whether when my godmother, Lady Russell, returns from her travels, we might arrange something different. You could be her companion, perhaps—”
She stopped as Lily gripped her hands hard. It seemed to Catherine that there were tears in her friend’s blue eyes, but it could just have been the keen winter breeze that was making them water.
“Oh, Catherine—” Lily sounded choked “—I love you because you care so much about other people, but you are forever coming up with ridiculous plans! No respectable lady would wish me to be their companion now, with my reputation.”
“But Lady Russell isn’t respectable,” Catherine argued. “That is, she is, of course, but what I mean is that she cares nothing for society’s opinion. She likes you, Lily! I am sure she would wish to help us.”
Lily’s mouth twisted. “You are all goodness, Catherine, but I cannot see that it would serve.”
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“Think about it,” Catherine urged. “I do not know when she will be back in London, but when she comes I will send to you.” She looked about her. “Now let us forsake this event and retire to Blake’s for a proper chat. I am freezing to the spot.”
“It is too late,” Lily said, shaking her head. “We cannot get through this press of people. We shall have to wait until the race has begun.”
For Catherine, it was beginning to seem uncannily like the scene at Newgate. There was the same febrile excitement in the air, the same sense of anticipation and edge of danger. It breathed gooseflesh along the back of her neck and made her tremble down to her toes. Then a hiss went through the crowd like gunpowder catching alight, and Catherine looked up to see a lightly-built scarlet racing curricle drawn by a magnificent matched team of chestnuts pressing its way through the crowded street. Suddenly the whole day seemed more vivid and alive. The seething throng of people pressed forward, pushing and calling. The bookmakers upped the bidding. The newspaper hacks scribbled busily.
“Briggs of Lanchester Square have loaned the curricle to Lord Hawksmoor for the race,” Lily whispered. “Is it not fine?”
Catherine could not answer. Her gaze was fixed on the figure of Ben Hawksmoor as he handled the reins with a dexterity that she could see was much envied by the gentlemen in the crowd. He was laughing, his teeth white in his bronzed face as he reached down to shake the hands of the multitude. His hazel eyes were alight with an expression that made Catherine’s breath catch in her throat, a mixture of pure uncomplicated excitement and a chilling recklessness.
“Jack Lancing is one of Hawksmoor’s set,” Lily continued, pointing to the lime-green curricle that was trailing Ben Hawksmoor’s down the street. She laughed. “He is another penniless adventurer. Goodness only knows how he scraped together the wherewithal to finance his team.”
Jack Lancing was whip-thin and dark, and clearly a favorite with the ladies. Catherine recognized him as one of the men she had seen romping with the half-naked bawds at Clarencieux’s hanging.
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