The mob had passed, however, and she couldn’t skulk here forever. For one thing, she’d freeze to death.
She pulled on Monk’s coat, but then worried that she’d attract attention in a footman’s blue and braided jacket. Poor people wore castoffs, though. She took the jacket off again and rubbed and rolled it on the ground until it looked like a soiled rag. Then she put it on again, discarded her lovely velvet cap and cloth muff, and crept away down the narrow lane, shaking with awareness of danger.
Like a rat sneaking behind the wainscotting, she felt safe in the lane that ran a narrow cart’s width between the backyards of the houses. She had to find a place to hide, however. A place where she could think. Away from here, in case the hunt turned back.
That thought gave her courage to sidle into the open street and hurry away. She didn’t even think where. Just away.
She tried to look like any poor woman going about her business, but when she paused by a greengrocery to get her bearings, the scrawny man came out and shouted, “Bugger off, you! I’ll have the constables on you!”
Meg ran, stopping a few houses away to look back at him, aghast. Even in the days when she had been tempted to steal an apple, no one had ever treated her like this!
He was still watching her, and he shook his fist, shouting “Garn!” exactly as if she were a mangy cat.
Meg turned and staggered on, terrified. She was no longer a respectable member of society. She was vermin.
She began to notice other vermin. Mostly, she could tell them—men, women, and children—by their scruffy, dirty clothes, but she could recognize the looks in their eyes, too.
Did she look like that?
“In trouble, dearie?” asked a kindly voice.
Meg started, and slid a look at the plump, middle-aged woman. She wasn’t vermin. Her clothes were clean and respectable, her face kind.
Even so, Meg said, “No,” and began to edge away.
“Don’t run off, dear,” the woman said. “I’ll not harm you. Life throws these funny turns at us, doesn’t it? My name’s Mrs. Goodly and I’ve suffered through a few of them. If you want it, I’ve a quiet room nearby, and I can make you a cup of tea. Then I’m sure I can find some way to help you in your predicament.”
The soothing run of words held Meg. She didn’t think the woman could help with her problem, but refuge of some kind would be pleasant. . . .
Then something in the woman’s eyes—a glint of calculation, perhaps—sent a warning down her spine. Mrs. Goodly might be a Good Samaritan, but there were such women who made a business of trapping young women into brothels.
“Come on, dearie.” The woman reached for her.
Meg turned and ran. As she stumbled around a corner, she heard laughter and a coarse voice calling, “Lost that one, Connie, eh?”
Dear heaven, she’d been right!
The narrow escape drained the last traces of courage from her. The world now seemed a jungle, hung with poisonous vines, concealing only fanged predators.
She wanted to go home! She wanted none of this to have happened.
After a startled moment, she realized that home now meant Marlborough Square. Home meant the earl. He’d probably toss her back onto the streets after the mess she’d landed in. She leaned against a wall and burst into tears.
Thank God. Monk carried a handkerchief in his pocket, and she was able to dry her tears and blow her nose. The brief burst of weeping seemed to have cleansed her a bit, too. She could think a little.
Seeing curious but indifferent looks all around, she raised her chin and walked on.
Walking to nowhere.
This was ridiculous. She couldn’t just wander until she froze to death. Her feet and hands were already icy. She had to go somewhere.
Perhaps she should go home. Part of her reluctance was shame and an illogical hope that she could somehow sort the mess out so that Saxonhurst need never know.
Then, a lad ran to a nearby street corner, a pile of news sheets over his arm. “Latest! Latest!” he cried. “Read all about it! Foul murder of man and mistress. Countess involved!”
Meg just stared at him. The ink must still be wet!
She didn’t think everyone around would suddenly turn to her and know her for the countess involved—nothing was less likely—but she was appalled to think the news was already out on every street.
Passersby stopped to give him a penny for one of the sheets, and she heard him saying to each one, “Lady Saxonhurst, they say. Newlywed an’ all.”
All around her people paused to read, sometimes two or three to a sheet, exclaiming and speculating about the scandalous affair.
She was ruined. Absolutely ruined.
Saxonhurst would never want to see her again.
She hadn’t done it, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment. What she needed was some kind of rat hole to hide in.
Could she find help among her old neighbors on Mallet Street? She didn’t think anyone there would stand against the law for her, and surely that would be the second place the constables would check.
Where, then?
Wearily dragging herself along random streets, hounded by news-criers, some actually shouting her name, Meg felt scoured raw and naked.
Then a refuge occurred to her. A desperate one, but the only possibility. Surely the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield would not want the scandal of a public arrest in the family. Even though there was no love lost between them, the duchess would have to hide her. Perhaps she could help clear her name.
At the least, it would be sanctuary for a little while.
In fact, once she was there, the duchess could send word to Saxonhurst. This might even be the emergency needed to bring the unhappy family back together! Meg took her bearings and started the long walk to Mayfair and Quiller’s Hotel.
Shivering with cold, and weary, she eventually arrived on the busy street. The hotel looked exactly like a gentleman’s residence, with only a discreet plaque to identify it. Meg was about to climb the steps, when she noticed the way people were staring and shifting to avoid her. They thought her a beggar.
Looking like this, she was never going to get in to see the duchess. Weakened by shock and exhaustion, Meg would have given up then if there’d been any way to do so. But the only way to give up was to hand herself over to the law and be thrown in prison. She’d heard enough about the inside of London’s prisons to want to avoid that.
Knowing she was attracting attention just standing there, she walked on, circling the block, wondering how cautious, staid Meg Gillingham had come to these straits.
And what had happened to poor Monk? He was swift and clever. Surely, he’d got away. Of course, then he’d got straight to his master and tell him the sorry tale.
What would the earl do?
She had no idea. The man was a mystery to her, and a rather frightening one. It was all very well for Mr. Chancellor to say Saxonhurst never hurt people, only things. The earl had never been married to a woman accused of murder before.
A woman who lied to him, and admitted that she kept secrets from him.
A woman, if he ever found out, who’d used Black Arts to trap him into a disastrous marriage.
She stopped with a hand over her mouth. Oh God, this was all the sheelagh’s fault! This was the sting in the tail.
Look what had happened to her parents, after all.
She sagged against the trunk of a leaf-bare tree, grief squeezing like a vise at her chest. Her mother would never have wished for her own death. Her love for her husband had been powerful, but she would never have deliberately abandoned her children. So, whatever wish she had framed had gone wrong, or the sheelagh had claimed her life as price.
And Meg had brought this evil into the earl’s world.
As she made herself stagger on, she decided he and everyone else would be safer if the marriage was annulled. The duchess might know how to achieve that, and she’d certainly be willing. Saxonhurst would be better off, even wit
h Lady Daphne Grigg, than he was with Meg Gillingham!
But first, she had to get into the hotel.
A rough voice curtly told her to “mind her back.” She hastily moved out of the way of two men with a barrowful of vegetables, then watched as they turned down a lane. They might be heading toward the hotel!
Cautiously, she followed. One man dragged the two-handled cart, whole the other helped heave it over rough spots. Meg felt around the two keys in her pocket, seeking the few coins she’d possessed on her wedding day. How much did she have? A sixpence and a few pennies.
What a dowry for a countess!
Determined to try, she came up behind the man at the back.
“I have to get in to see a lady in the hotel,” she whispered. “I’m desperate. I know she’ll help me.” She showed him the sixpence.
He nudged the cart over a bump. “So?”
“Let me pretend I’m with you? I’ll help unload.”
The man who was pulling stopped and turned. “Harry, we’ve no time now for that!”
“Nah,” said Harry. “She just wants to help unload.” Meg showed the sixpence again and Harry took it. “No reason for us to complain if she likes to work.”
“Half that’s mine,” said the other man, going back to hauling.
Playing her part, Meg helped push the cart over the next rough bit.
“Pudding in the oven?” Harry asked.
“What? Oh”—Meg blushed—“no. Just in a bit of trouble. The old lady in the hotel, she knows my husband. I think she’ll help me.” Even now, Meg found it hard to tell lies.
“Fancy folk don’t help the likes of us, ducks, but it’s no skin off my back.”
Meg pushed the cart again, thinking of backs and skin. One punishment for minor crimes was whipping at the cart’s tail. Being dragged around half naked, and whipped until the blood ran. Of course, they wouldn’t do that to a countess.
Would they?
For murder, they’d hang her anyway.
Surely the earl could stop that.
Transportation?
She had no idea what powers the nobility had about such things.
But she hadn’t done it!
She was so panicked, she kept forgetting. She hadn’t done it. Someone else had murdered Sir Arthur. Who? Why?
Little Sophie?
But no. If the gossip was true, she’d died, too, poor child.
The housekeeper?
Perhaps. But why?
They were at the back door to the hotel by then, and the man in front rapped at the door. A manservant opened it.
“Provisions ordered from Samuel Culler.”
“You’re late.”
“Came in from the country late.”
“Never mind your excuses, get ’em in that store shed over there.” The servant slammed the door.
Meg looked with frustration at the freestanding wooden shed the men were opening. Then she grabbed a net of brussel sprouts and stalked through the door.
She’d expected to walk into a kitchen, and had a number of good lines to try. Instead, she found herself in a deserted, dark corridor. Ahead, a half-open door probably led into the kitchen, judging from the racket and smells.
Almost past caring, she shed her foul coat and dumped it in a corner with the sprouts, then walked boldly past the door and climbed a set of narrow stairs. Nobody stopped her.
At the top of the stairs, before a baize-covered door, she paused to gulp in air and tidy her hair as best she could. Now, in her decent dark gown, she might be taken for a guest, or at least the servant of a guest. That, of course, meant she’d be safer inside the hotel then in the servants’ quarters. All the same, she didn’t want to go out into the public spaces.
She went up past the main floor to a higher one where the guests would have rooms.
She’d been in a hotel like this once when traveling with the Ramillys, but she had no idea whether they were all the same. That one had dining and reception rooms on the ground floor, and a kind of drawing room on the upper one, where the guests could sit if they wished to, and take tea or other refreshment. The rest of the building had been guest rooms, some suites with private dining rooms, some just bedchambers.
She was sure the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield had a suite, but that didn’t help her find it. She’d never find it skulking here, however. She squared her shoulders, turned the knob, and walked boldly out into the guest part of the building.
A white-haired gentleman strode by briskly, hat at a jaunty angle, cane swinging. He did not so much as glance at her. Meg walked in the opposite direction, trying to look like someone’s companion on a busy errand. Or a governess. She’d been that once. It should be easy.
Then a man in shirt sleeves and apron backed out of a room, carrying a tray. He must be a hotel servant.
“Excuse me,” Meg said. “I’m afraid I’ve lost the way to my mistress’s rooms. The Dowager Duchess of—”
“That un,” he said with a grimace. “Bet she’s waiting for you with boiling oil ready! You’re on the wrong floor, blossom! Don’t know how you got up here.”
“Oh.”
But he’d already hurried off toward the stairs she’d used. Of course, the invalid duchess would be on the ground floor if there were guest rooms there.
She teetered between going back to the servants’ stairs or using the main ones, and decided it had to be the main.
I belong here, she said to herself as she walked back toward the wide, carpeted stairs. I am governess to some children staying here, engaged on a legitimate errand. I will not look like a fugitive from the law.
She walked down the stairs, not acknowledging a fashionable couple going up chattering about theater plans for the night. They ignored her as if she were a ghost. Down below, a porter stood by the door, constantly ready to attend to people coming and going. Close by, a powdered footman hovered, available for any request or errand. This being a quiet moment, they were chatting.
They paid her no attention, but they’d notice her if she looked lost. She slowed as she went down the last few stairs, trying to think what to do.
Where would a private suite be? Surely not at the front. Through one door she could glimpse a front room and it was a dining room.
At the bottom of the stairs, without pause, Meg turned around the carved newel post and headed toward the back. Two servants hurried by, one with a box, the other with a cloak over her arm. Another overtook her from the other direction. None paid her any attention except to swerve around her.
She thought of again claiming to be lost, but there could be so few private rooms down here that it would sound very strange.
She was going to have to open doors.
She picked one, and walked in.
Then walked right out again, the image fixed of two older gentlemen glaring at her through the smoke of their pipes.
Gentlemen’s smoking room, and one portly man had taken his shoes off. He must be troubled with corns or bunions!
Tempted to giggle, Meg picked the next one, ready to apologize and back out again.
She walked right in to the hawk-eyed glare of the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield.
“Get out of here!” snapped the old woman, who was on a chaise, a fur over her legs, a book in her hand.
Meg closed the door behind her and leaned on it, suddenly weak. “You probably don’t recognize me, Your Grace. It’s . . . it’s Lady Saxonhurst.”
Color flared in the woman’s sallow cheeks. “Why are you here?” The duchess’s hands had tightened on her book, and could even be shaking. With rage? Fear? “Are you going to attack me?”
Meg stared at her, suddenly filled with pity. “Of course not, Your Grace.”
“Then what do you want?”
Meg wanted to shake the silly earl who wouldn’t bend, and who had this belligerent old woman afraid. “You did say I could come to you for help, Your Grace.”
The yellow eyes narrowed and the duchess put aside her book, stead
ier now. “You want help? Then I’ll go odds Saxonhurst doesn’t know you’re here. Sit!”
Meg obeyed the barked command, feeling rather like a puppy.
“Help with what?” the duchess demanded.
It was appallingly difficult to put things into words. “Well, Your Grace, I have landed in a pickle, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t sidle around things like an ingratiating churchwarden. Tell me straight!”
Meg swallowed. “Some people seem to think I’ve done something . . . that I’ve committed murder!”
“Whom did you kill?”
“No one! But I think . . . Sir Arthur Jakes is dead, you see. And some people seemed to think I did it. So I ran. Or rather, Monkey did. And when he went, I couldn’t think where to go. I don’t want to go to jail. So I came here.”
“Monkey?”
“A footman.”
The duchess rarely blinked. Meg realized that was what made her stare so unnerving. “Who is Sir Arthur Jakes?”
“A friend of my parents, Duchess. And our landlord.” Trying to ignore the fixed, hawk’s eyes, she went on to tell her story, leaving out the reason for the visit and Sir Arthur’s disgusting behavior.
“You took no servants?”
Meg was beginning to realize how thin her story sounded without the essential details. “I am not used to servants, Duchess. And I was just visiting an old friend.”
“You have no business visiting gentlemen without your servants. No lady does.”
Feeling like a scolded puppy now, Meg lowered her head. “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
“I have never left a house alone,” the old woman declared. “Since becoming Duchess of Daingerfield, I have never gone on foot in a public thoroughfare. I would take a carriage, young lady, to cross the street!”
“But I’m not a duchess, Your Grace.” Meg added a silent, thank heavens.
“You are a countess. Learn to act like one. How will the world go on if people do not behave according to their station?”
She was, Meg saw, completely serious. Dangerous laughter teased at her.
“Well?” the duchess demanded.
“I really don’t know, Your Grace.”
Too late, Meg realized her inner amusement must be showing. The duchess’s whole face pinched.
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