by J. A. Rock
Yes, Chant had spent a good bit of time admiring Gale before approaching him. The sketch in the Gazette did not do the man justice at all.
Gale moved with a rigid determination that was echoed in the set of his jaw. It’s as though he’s never danced before, Chant thought, hiding a smile. Ah, well. Chant would continue his relaxed, happy turns about the floor and hope his companion might soon uncoil.
“Aren’t you going to ask me whatever it is you’ve got to ask me?” Gale’s tone was weary but with a hint of belligerence that made Chant’s brows lift. “What is it? Did your grandfather leave behind a box of mysterious letters? Do the doors in your house open and close by themselves? Does your portrait of the queen have a treasure map hidden behind it?”
“I have already asked you to dance,” Chant replied. “Which was what I wished to ask you. Do you wish to ask my name?”
“Not particularly,” Gale replied. But Chant was well versed in the difference between rudeness for rudeness’s sake and rudeness born from an anxiety that was rapidly becoming unmanageable.
When the music shifted, he took Gale’s elbow. “I could use some air. What do you say we go out to the terrace?”
Gale looked as though he might like to bash Chant over the head, but he was far too pale for the glare to be fully effective. Chant led him toward the French doors in back. Behind them, the band struck up a rousing tune, and revellers flocked to dance. By the time Chant drew Gale outside, they were nearly the only two on the terrace. He let go of Gale’s elbow and watched carefully as Gale went to the balustrade and leaned with his forearms braced upon it. Bent slightly like this, it was apparent just how thin he was.
Chant quietly approached the rail and leaned on it as well. Gale’s breathing had become more laboured, and he passed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know what is the matter with me,” he said tersely.
“It is quite noisy in there,” Chant replied. “And too stuffy.”
Gale made no reply. When his lungs truly began to rattle, Chant stepped closer and placed a hand between his shoulder blades. He half expected Gale to buck him off, but all that happened was that the fellow tensed as though he had never been touched before in his life.
“Draw your breath in slowly,” Chant advised.
“I do not require instruction on how to breathe.”
“Of course not. But perhaps you could humour a new friend.”
Gale gripped the balustrade and dragged in a breath through his nose.
“That’s very good. Now let it out as slowly as you can manage.”
Gale exhaled, his rigid shoulders softening a bit as he did.
“There, that’s the way.” Chant rubbed the back of Gale’s coat. Gale still did not shrug him off, which Chant thought was something.
After a moment, Gale drew another uneven breath and muttered, “I do not like people. At all.”
Chant smiled, though Gale wouldn’t be able to see it. “Ah. I like nearly all people, it seems. Generally speaking.”
Gale cast a glance at him, then stared out across the lawn once more. “I have no choice but to conclude there is something gravely wrong with you, sir.”
“You are probably right. But it seems easier to like people than to dislike them. For me, anyway. Resentment takes such a lot of effort.”
“I assure you it comes quite naturally to me.” Gale attempted another breath, and Chant winced in sympathy at the wheeze in it.
He removed his hand from Gale’s back and stood beside him in companionable silence. Then he began to talk as silence also seemed to him to take such a lot of effort. He commented on the roundness of the moon, and the light it cast on the branches of the Harringdons’ sycamore tree. He spoke of his carriage ride here, and how the driver thought one of his horses had thrown a shoe. Once Gale’s breathing steadied, he asked, “Do you wish to go back inside?”
“I have never wished anything less,” Gale responded faintly.
Chant laughed. “I thought that might be the case. Will you allow me to see you safely home?”
Gale straightened abruptly. “I shall go to my private rooms tonight. I’ve no need for company.”
“You are welcome to use my carriage if you do not wish to draw attention by taking your family’s.”
Gale’s eyes flashed in the moonlight. “My sister. Good lord. Clarice, or Cadence, or Clarissa, whatever the hell her name is. I am supposed to be chaperoning her. My mother will flay me alive.”
“Perhaps you could find someone to—”
“No. No, I’ve shirked this duty often enough, and I promised tonight…” The shiver that passed through Gale was impossible to miss. He reminded Chant, for a bittersweet instant, of Reid. The long lines of him. Shoulders stooped under the weight of the world.
“Lord Christmas,” Chant said quietly, quirking his eyebrow at the half-wild glance Gale shot him. “I’ll not keep you from your duty, but I feel it is my duty to remind you that I will be in there as well. Should you find yourself overwhelmed again, you may seek me out at any time for conversation or a trip to the terrace—”
“I was not overwhelmed!” The harshness was back in Gale’s tone. “And I require no rescuer. I have attended dozens of these functions. I could chaperone Candace in my sleep.”
Chant raised his hands slowly, more amused than insulted by Gale’s prickliness. “Forgive me. I meant no offence.”
Gale blew out a breath. Then, without another word, he turned and walked back inside.
“Well,” Chant murmured to himself, “I’d say that went quite well.”
“Christmas?” Clarissa stifled a giggle with the back of her hand.
Gale groaned and focused on the bumping of the carriage.
“Christmas!” insisted Anne-Marie, who was riding home with them. “Clarissa danced with a beau who—well, he found out she likes books, and he told her—about this book…” Anne-Marie collapsed back against the seat, giggling like mad.
“I cannot read.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Clarissa said. “You read more than anyone I know. Except for me.”
“You are a bluestocking,” Anne-Marie giggled so hard she snorted into her gloved hands.
“Now there’s the sort of ladylike sound that is sure to land you a spouse,” Gale remarked.
“We cannot tell you about the book!” Anne-Marie doubled over, her laughter so intense it became silent, punctuated by a wheeze here and there.
Gale rolled his eyes up to the carriage ceiling and wished the horses would step a bit higher. “Is it The Maiden Diaries?”
Clarissa and Anne-Marie shrieked.
“Dear Lord.” Gale placed his fingers at his temple. “I could use that sound to locate that drunkard’s missing dog,” he muttered, before raising his voice to be heard over his sisters’ cackles. “You are too young to know about that book. If you say another word about it in my presence, I shall tell Mother.”
It was useless. They didn’t hear him.
“Christmas,” Clarissa said after a moment. She pressed her lips together to stifle a last snicker. “Erm, we saw you dancing with Mr. Benjamin Chant.”
“You never dance with anyone,” Anne-Marie added.
He nobly held back a sigh. “And?”
“Did you like dancing with him?” Clarissa asked.
“Did he want to dance with you because you’re famous?” Anne-Marie added.
“Maryanne—”
“My name is Anne-Marie.”
“If you say so. I do not wish to talk about Mr. Benjamin Chant. I do not wish to talk about anything. Whoever stays silent the entire ride home gets whatever sweet they want from the bakery when I go out tomorrow.”
His sisters both sat up straight and pressed their lips tightly together.
Gale exhaled his relief and leaned back. The next minute and a half was mercifully silent. Then Gale found himself opening his mouth. “Do you know much about Benjamin Chant?”
“You talked!” Anne-Marie cried, pointing at
him.
“Well, yes, my own ability to remain silent is irrelevant. I can have whatever sweet I want anytime I want.”
“But that is not fair because now we have to answer you!”
At the same time, Clarissa said, “Only that he is very kind. He helped Letitia find her shoe once when it came off on the Bellboroughs’ footpath. And he is quite one of the most handsome gentlemen in all of London.”
“Is that a fact?” he asked Clarissa.
Anne-Marie had tightened her lips again, though she looked as if she might burst if she did not get a chance to add to the conversation.
“Anne-Marie,” he said. “You may have a sweet of your choice tomorrow if you tell me all you know about Benjamin Chant.”
A little squeal made its way through her pursed lips, and then she puffed out air as though she had been holding her breath for some time. “He is handsome, and he is nice, and he lives in a house with very old stairs, and he has some half-brothers who are older, and they don’t live in London, and he once had a sister, but she died, and there was a man named Reid, and everyone thought he and Reid would marry, but now Reid lives in France, and Mr. Chant’s father was the old mad earl, but now he’s dead too.”
“Annie-M!” Clarissa cried, swatting her sister’s side. “That’s just rumour and speculation.”
“But he is dead!”
“No, I mean that he was mad. Do not repeat such things.”
“But Christmas said to tell him all I know of Mr. Chant!” Anne-Marie addressed Gale again. “Are you investigating him?”
“No.”
“Is he a criminal?”
“No.”
“Will you investigate him if he commits a crime?”
“I will buy you two sweets if you stop talking.”
“What if he committed the crime for you?”
“A crime of passion,” Clarissa added.
“That phrase does not mean what you think it means.”
Clarissa huffed. “I should be pleased if—”
“Ah, look at that, we’re home.”
Anne-Marie shot him a look as the driver helped her from the carriage. “Mama asked me the other day if you still live here. You are always off in your private rooms.”
“Do you even like us?” Clarissa pouted.
“You are my sisters,” he said, for that was true enough. He stepped down from the carriage, helped them down, and bid them goodnight. A throbbing headache had come upon him. He thought briefly of Mr. Benjamin Chant’s hand on his back. Gentle, steadying. He shrugged off the memory as though an invisible hand were still touching him. He was beyond exhausted.
When he arrived at his building in Russell Street, a figure waited in the near darkness. He frowned, hesitant to move closer. Mrs. Faulks, his landlady, must already be in bed, otherwise she would have chased this shadowy fellow off with all the fierceness of a guard dog. She liked Gale a great deal, and Gale slipped her a bit of extra money each month with the rent in exchange for keeping gawkers and news writers away from the place.
The figure was even taller than Gale, and stout. As Gale grew closer, his suspicions were confirmed.
He suppressed a sigh. “Darling.”
George Darling straightened. “Gale. You’re a hard man to track down.”
“If only that were true. Is your business urgent? I’m rather tired.”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d seen the papers yet. The imposter who stole Lady Carstairs’s brooch was found guilty, so I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“Ah. So you came all the way out here, Darling, to tell me what I could have read in any news sheet?”
Darling ducked his head. Gale was vaguely aware that he was being unkind, but he could practically hear his bed calling to him. He knew what Darling truly wanted of him, and knew just as well that he would never be able to give it to him. Their recent collaboration on the matter of Lord Balfour seemed only to have bolstered the fellow’s hopes, though.
Darling was a Bow Street Runner—below Gale’s station, for a start—and Runners were bloody useless. Darling was better than most, but he still had an aversion to performing his job that Gale supposed he should have empathized with—except that Gale was a gentleman with nothing expected of him but idleness, while Darling was employed by the Bow Street Magistrate’s office. The only reason it hadn’t seemed like drawing teeth to get him to help collect evidence against Balfour was that the fellow would have done anything for a nod of approval from Gale. Gale didn’t dislike him—at least no more than he disliked all of humanity as a rule—and he had, in his more desperate moments, imagined what it would be like to embark on an affair with the fellow. Yet he knew he could not. A man of his station could not make an honest man out of Darling, and for all his faults Darling deserved someone who could. Besides, more than any consideration to the fellow, Gale did not like what would happen if he allowed Darling to get close. There was something needy about Darling, something too eager to please that verged on obsequiousness, and Gale knew himself well enough to know that whatever feelings Darling fancied he held for Gale, Gale would poison them.
“I wanted to see how you were,” Darling murmured.
“Tired,” Gale repeated firmly. “And oughtn’t you get some rest too? Who knows what tomorrow will bring for the brave constables of Bow Street.”
Even in the dim light, Gale could see Darling make a face. “There’s a fellow dead right now in Rotherhithe. Stabbed to death, they say.”
“Then what on earth are you doing here?” Gale was genuinely appalled. “I don’t investigate murders, you know. So you can’t be seeking my help.”
Darling waved that notion away. “Nothing to be done about it. Just a drunk killed outside a pub. The Belled Cat. Fellow who reported it says the dead man’s out of Jacob’s Island. Well, surely you won’t be knowing that area.”
“I know of it.” Gale was intrigued despite himself. Jacob’s Island, a name which would rarely crop up in polite conversation, and he’d heard it twice this evening.
“Wretched place—worse than what you’re imagining, Lord Christmas.”
“I see.”
“The old sod probably said the wrong thing about the wrong fellow’s mother, and it escalated. The office isn’t sending anyone out.”
Gale stared grimly through the darkness at Darling. “Some old drunk” out of Jacob’s Island. A man living in poverty. A man not worth the magistrate’s time.
Gale himself was no moral paragon, and he could hardly condemn the unfairness of Bow Street’s attitude when he himself benefitted from his own position with every breath he took. When his position only existed because so many others had none at all. But it did infuriate him that the magistrate’s office simultaneously lacked any nuanced understanding of why a person living in poverty might commit a crime and any inclination to seek justice for crimes committed against the poor.
“Thought about going out there just to have a look,” Darling went on. “But without the magistrate’s orders backing me up, I’d just be a fellow poking at a corpse in Fernside’s cellar.”
“Fernside took the body?”
“Oh, certainly.” Darling’s teeth caught what little light there was on the street as he grinned. “This one’s Fernside’s dream. The poor bastard had six fingers.”
Gale stood so still that for a moment it seemed the whole street might merely be set dressing—a backdrop for the stage that Gale could lift of its hooks and shake out, leaving utter darkness in its place.
“Six fingers,” Gale repeated.
And wasn’t he wide awake now?
The dead man was Howe.
Chapter 2
Chant had just settled into bed and blown out the candle when a knock came at the front door.
Who on earth would be calling at this hour? The servants were abed, and he did not want any of them to have to rouse themselves for whatever oddity this was.
He got to his feet and made his way carefully down his home’s ver
y old stairs, feeling his way through the dark into the entry hall. When he opened the door, he was astounded to see Christmas Gale standing there, wearing an overcoat that looked as though it had been stolen off a costermonger, and a pinched expression that could only be his own.
“I am sorry,” Gale said. “I do not usually apologise, as it always seems it is the world that should be apologising to me, but I am truly sorry to wake you. I—I did not know who else to consult. I thought Soulden at first, but, no, he is far too busy.”
He trailed off, leaving Chant to stare and try to blink himself back to wakefulness. Chant recognised the name Soulden as a fellow from Bucknall’s, but why Gale seemed less inclined to bother him with whatever the matter was than Chant remained a mystery.
“Come in.” Chant opened the door fully and ushered Gale in. The man stood awkwardly in the entryway, his tall frame stooped as though he feared Chant’s ceiling might not be high enough to accommodate him. Chant led him into the parlour and lit a lamp.
“My sisters tell me you are altruistic,” Gale said without preamble. He did not immediately go on, so Chant wondered if he was supposed to confirm the statement.
“I… try to treat others well.”
“Then you might be just the fellow I need.”
The situation was growing stranger by the minute, but Chant confessed himself fascinated with Gale, and so he waited for his guest’s story.
“A man has been killed.”
Chant’s eyes widened.
“His body was found outside a pub called The Belled Cat in Rotherhithe. A stabbing. The man is from Jacob’s Island.”