For a moment, he was still. The lights from behind us bathed his strange suit in a ribbon of glinted light and oiled leather, what seemed like shades of faded green and darkest brown cut with tarnished copper and brass. From between, I saw stripes in green, purple and blue—muted in shade, yet still oddly more dapper than I expected. The pouches hanging at his waist bulged, as if filled to the brim, whereas others were corded and narrow, sealed against my prying eyes. There was a holster affixed to his side, strapped to one leather-clad and plated leg, but it was empty.
What weapon would fit in such a wide sheath? Where had he left it?
I met his returned scrutiny with a wide-eyed glower, as fierce as I could muster. When he moved, I stiffened, prepared to fend off this armored figure with naught but my gloved hands and a prayer.
Then, a noise leaked out from under the mask. A choke. A snort.
The rotter was laughing.
“Stop that,” I ordered, far too haughtily for the urchin I pretended to be.
He paid my demand no mind. “A wee thing like you? A collector?” His laughter deepened, for all I received the impression he was attempting to stifle it. “No, no, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” He tapped his helmet; it did not ring like the bell I half expected it to be. “Good one, lad. Very good. I’m afraid you’ll have to go without a coin for it.”
My jaw tightened as I bit back the caustic words my pride demanded I unleash.
Finally, laughter evened to a few snorts and sniggers, he sighed like a man satisfied and dismissed me. “Get on back to your mum,” he told me. “There’s a good lad.” He reached out with a gloved hand, the plates on the back of it clicking gently.
Perhaps he meant to pat me on the head like the good lad I wasn’t. I did not allow it.
I seized his wrist in both of mine, yanked him hard as if I would force him to run into me. I pivoted into his chest when his balance skewed and he tottered forward. The motion caught him so off guard that my elbow collided with the breastplate—sending stunning shocks of pain through to my shoulder—and he stumbled off my slighter figure like I were a lamppost and he the fool who ran into it.
The act allowed me two advantages. It put him off his balance, which then let me wriggle out from under his flailing arms and push him hard against the Nunnery wall.
That rang like the bell I’d hoped to hear.
This act was not an uncoordinated one. When one is caught between assailant and hard surface, it is an excellent way to get behind the ruffian and avoid being caught by him.
Usually because one’s fingers are in his pocket.
Which, in my case specifically, was exactly the issue. The gaping utility pouch hanging from his sturdy belt provided too much a temptation for old habits, and so I claimed the advantage.
Paper crinkled in my hand. I leapt back before the armored collector’s sudden change of balance earned me a boxing. His hand sailed over my head, where my ears had just been.
I may have caught him off guard this time, but it wasn’t a trick I’d be able to use twice. Not against a man more than my height and armored, beside.
I danced back, hiding my hand behind my back as I smiled ear to ear. The parchment was heavier than it should be, a bit of something tucked inside, and a titch more than the weight of any coin I had filched before. “Teach you to lay hands on a collector,” I taunted.
“Right.” He shoved off the wall, spinning with greater ease than armor should have allowed. “You’ve earned a right good bolloxing.” This warning came on a muffled uncivility I couldn’t make out, but I did not stay close at hand to ask him to repeat it.
My thoughts went as such: I had gone to collect Mr. Strangeway. This armored collector had obviously gone to do the same. That he was leaving now, empty-handed and with no sign of Mr. Strangeway, suggested that our mutual quarry was not at the Nunnery—despite a reputation for spending most Thursday evenings ensconced within.
The coin-laden parchment I’d taken might give me a clue, but the drubbing I’d get if I lingered would ensure a very quick end to my newly claimed profession.
And so, as the collector reached for me, I turned tail and ran.
I had no destination in mind—only the habits borne of more than a few years dodging rozzers and angry marks alike. In some cases, isolation was the key to a successful escape attempt.
In many others, however, it became a game of crowds.
I sprinted down the alleys I’d come through, rounding back on my own trail, darting between lanes. I hadn’t learned about the Cat’s Crossing yet, so I did not think to utilize the sloping roofs and intricate maze by which the most agile of the below drift urchins made good their own escape routes.
Agile primarily because of the dangers involved. I would learn this too.
But not this time. As the rhythmic echo of the collector’s heavy footsteps came closer, faded, doubled back, I played cat and mouse in the lanes I’d only just learned myself.
By the time I stumbled from the narrow mouth of a neighboring lane, I was plastered with sweat and likely covered in the gray streaks that so characterized London below. Such was the momentum of my exit that fog blew past me in thick wafts of black cotton, tinged yellow by the lamplight.
Yet no eyes turned to me in the choked street.
Instead, a disturbance had erupted near the Nunnery gatekeeper—that large man who had so caused me concern before. A knot had gathered, men shouting in anger and dismay, as two plain-dressed men tussled with the gatekeeper.
The man put up a solid front. No one was getting in, I gathered from the calls. No one was getting out.
There had been a problem inside.
A problem that involved a man in armor, perhaps?
I tsk’d silently to myself as I straightened my coat and hat, and shoved the bit of paper into my pocket for later reading by stronger light.
“We wants in!” shouted a man, and the footman palmed his face with a large hand and shoved him back.
“Git off,” he ordered, a gust of wind driven by hoarse pipes. “Nobody in, y’ear me?”
Nobody in, perhaps. But from my vantage across the lane, I watched a slim figure slip from the Nunnery door, glance briefly at the gathered crowd and the straining back of the footman who held them, and pause to pick a rolled bit of white from his own pocket.
Was this, then, Mr. Strangeway?
Impossible. The notice had claimed the man lived in Chelsea. This fine figure in tailored coat and jauntily perched bowler could not possibly be my quarry.
The man had skin dark as the polished wood tables I’m told my father imported from far-flung India. His eyes, bottomless in the shadowed brim of the hat, flicked this way and that—impossible to tell the color from such a distance, but most certainly not pale. The shape of his jaw was finely cut, the light gleaming from his skin turning a faintly purple hue.
His clothing suggested finery, his bearing indicated polish, and he was—even by my rather naively jaded standards—handsome.
Some servant, perhaps. A man sent to pay off a debt or collect a wayward lordling from the stews before scandal caught on.
A spark caught, glowed cheery bright, and a plume of smoke drifted from his pursed lips.
A cigarette. Not quite the fashionable pastime of the upper-class.
Whoever this man was, I briefly entertained the notion of following him for a spell. I wagered that he’d lead to all sorts of curiosities, this coffee-skinned man in the finery of a toff. Perhaps he was, quite opposite my own design, a servant who had stolen some lord’s clothing for a night about the stews. Or he was a man of adventure playing at wealth.
I wished him well, this enigmatic fellow, and prepared to leave without fuss.
Yet as if the smoke told him of my presence, his head turned, tipped back slightly. I was left with the impression that I’d been seen, and not only seen but studied. Even from a distance, I felt the weight of that gaze.
Very white teeth flashed in the shadows. A no
d, a gentleman’s gesture. Before I could respond—and how, I had not quite decided, for I was a street boy in this guise—he turned away from the straining mob of angry men and sauntered back down the alley. He would come out where the metal man had fallen, and if he were unlucky, the collector would be waiting.
Then again, what did he have to fear from a collector after my mark?
Nothing, certainly. Whoever the man, whatever the course his ambitions would chart for him, he was not my quarry, and the man in armor was not likely to care.
I was the one who would find Mr. Strangeway first, and I would have to do it before anyone else.
That purse, all that coin, would be mine.
The things I would buy with it, the delights I would allow myself. Periodicals, books aplenty.
And a flask extra of laudanum for those difficult times, so that I could better sleep without stoking Fanny’s concern.
All but floating upon the promise of such easy coin, I made my way back into the crowded stews, visions of the future dancing merrily in my thoughts. I had all but forgotten the mysterious parchment crinkling in my pocket; it was too dark along the way to read it, anyhow, and nothing was more suspicious than a kinchin cove with his nose in letters.
From ferry to skulking beyond the lamps of London above, from the narrow avenues reserved for the staff and servants of the uppercrust I found myself living among, all was quiet.
By the time I made my way back to the kitchen door, creeping my way through the shrubbery of the neighboring home, I was too tired to contemplate anything but hiding my pilfered clothing and falling into bed. The note would wait.
That night, I did not reach for the laudanum. It was the first I’d neglected to do so in a very long time.
Chapter Four
At this age, I was expected to arise at a decent hour, to be ready for breakfast without complaint, and to eat all that was placed before me.
Betsy, older than I by only a handful of years, made sure that I would pass Fanny’s most critical muster, haranguing and wrestling me into a bath. As she was my company from the moment I awoke, I had no chance to peek at the letter I’d stolen, and barely a thought for it this early. I was exhausted.
“How on earth did you get so dirty?” she demanded, more a complaint as her work-callused fingers scrubbed at my scalp. “As if you were rolling about in the fireplace!”
“Maybe I was,” I began impishly, only to suck in a breath as she pushed my head below the surface.
Clueless she may have been, she was also skeptical—and out of time to question my antics in the direct way she had. Quickly, ignoring my half-hearted struggles, she forced me into corset and underthings, whipped my hair into a semblance of propriety with more pins than I feared it could hold, and tucked me into a pale blue day dress.
“Scarper off,” she ordered, in unknowing mimicry of the orders I’d received the night before. Unlike Red Lettie, Betsy’s Bow Bell accent had been softened by her time serving. “And why are you smiling, you daft girl?”
I had always adored her. “For you,” I offered, and briefly embraced her as dear friends do—I was an impetuous thing then. It turned her apple cheeks fiery. Muttering, she pushed me bodily out the door.
Fanny was waiting at the breakfast table, already set with Mrs. Booth’s fine fare.
I was a titch late, but I trilled a sweet “Good morning!” as I slipped into place.
Fanny was always an old woman to my young eyes, a widow in widow’s weeds and sterner for them. Her blue eyes were often kind in those early days, but flinty with determination, and her mouth was permanently set in firm lines. I was a devil’s child, and well I knew it. Eventually, our regard would turn more to friendship and chaperoning than strict teaching.
Not, however, today.
After breakfast, wherein we spoke of the day’s agenda, I learned I would have a free period to spend as I liked. “Mrs. Booth will stay while I attend to affairs,” Fanny told me.
Fanny did not often tend to personal affairs. A quick recounting of days, and I sobered. “Of course,” I said, gently as my fifteen years of worldly understanding could shape.
Today, the thirtieth day of October, was the day Fanny always reserved for her late husband. God rest him.
“I will read, then,” I added, to ensure that she would not worry for me. I could read for hours. There were many books in Mr. Ashmore’s study—that is, my father’s study—and I enjoyed reading through them when at all possible. I was young enough that I was allowed this small luxury.
“I shall instruct Mrs. Booth to keep you from the impractical and irresponsible subjects,” Fanny said, with an air of finality I didn’t bother to argue.
Esther Booth was a sturdy woman of impeccable work ethic, married to the butler who ran the household. Booth and his wife were without children of their own. I well knew, even then, the subtle indulgences they permitted me, and as long as I minded myself, they were happy to allow me to read what I liked. This afforded me the opportunity to browse the library that had once belonged to my father, and now belonged not to me—as it should—but to my absent guardian.
Even at fifteen years of age, I had considered Fanny’s mode of thinking to be outdated and offensive. That she would assume the study to be a man’s domain—to wit, Ashmore’s by rights of simple legality, at least until I inherited at one and twenty years—has always been a sore point between us. After all, they were my father’s books, my father’s desk, my father’s possessions. Ashmore was never here to enjoy them. He did not read them; they did nothing for him.
While for me, they opened ways of thinking that I had not previously dreamed of. Galileo, Angelicus Finch, Shakespeare, Socrates, and so much more I had yet to devour. There were books on science and philosophy. Treatises on politics historical and, until twenty years ago, current. There were even books on adventures taken by travelers living and dead, successful and otherwise.
What use had I for tutors and lessons when all I needed to know came bound with gilded pages? What right had that upstart Ashmore to lay claim over a whole room he would not use? My father’d all but lived in this study, his mark apparent in the various possessions he’d left behind, of wondrous make and foreign design. It was mine.
Yet, alas, Fanny’s mind was not identical.
So I smiled and languished through two hours of lessons. Comportment and refinement, lettering and all those things a lady would need when she stepped into Society proper.
How I ever managed it in those early years, I simply do not know. Likely all in thanks to the promise of laudanum I would be allowed that night.
And to the laudanum I was not allowed and claimed anyway.
I confess that I stole a sip mid-morning, for no particular reason than that I was bored, and my head given a mild ache.
I had survived half a pianoforte lesson with my governess when I recalled the paper I had not been afforded an opportunity to read.
Of course, by day, I couldn’t very well chase my collector quarry, and so I resolved to wait until night. That was the responsible thing to do; and wasn’t I quite the adult, sorting my priorities?
Only once I’d remembered it, that mysterious scrap of paper with its coin haunted my every waking breath. My concentration, abysmal to begin with, shattered, and the third time Fanny corrected my fingers upon the keys, I believe we’d both given up.
Yet it was the day for her gravesite visit, so my governess was forgiving. “There, now, you’ve worked a difficult piece, Cherry. Shall I ring for tea?”
I seized the reprieve. “Please!” And then moderated my tone to a more composed, “If you would be so kind.”
Her smile approved of my self-correction. Yet she did not leave the room to acquire Mrs. Booth’s services. Instead, she relied upon the ringer, a tasseled rope near the door and matched to one in near every room.
I wanted to dash upstairs and find that letter, to read it and solve once and for all who that collector was, what he wanted with my qu
arry, but I did not. I could not.
Instead, we made idle talk until the tea could arrive. Most centered on the bits Fanny read in the Society papers. A countess’s gardens in late bloom, the proposed marriage of a viscount set for spring. Prospects for marriage and the customary columns written by salon ladies with little better to do than devise ways to bedevil me with the many rules and demands of a so-called fashionable woman. Or, at least, bedevil girls like me—creatures of dreams and ambition, if any existed at all above the foggy divide.
Fanny adored fashion, which explained why she made sure we visited Madam Toulouse’s dress shop every month. Tools of science and periodicals were too fine for the stipend allowed us, yet day gowns simply could not go un-purchased when fashion turned so drastically.
I could have happily turned one of Ashmore’s dueling pistols onto my own forehead rather than suffer this drivel.
Finally, an opportunity came. “Fanny, have you heard of a Mr. J. F. Strangeway?”
Her brow wrinkled. “Why ever would you ask?” And then her eyes narrowed, back straightening further than I thought it possible. “He hasn’t come calling, has he?”
I must not have kept the horror from my face, because her dry, “Ladies do not scowl, Cherry,” also allowed for a smile of her own. “You will soon change your tune.”
Never. At fifteen, I knew full well what it was to marry.
“It was a name I read,” I said, not a lie, but hardly the whole of it, either.
“Oh, is he returned to the scandals?” She shook her head. “Mark my words, my dove, the Strangeway name is a long and storied affair not fit for the consumption of young girls.”
What could possibly be so varied from the usual scandals that his was a name to avoid reading of? It seemed hypocritical, at worst, and deucedly mysterious at best.
“So,” I drew it out in deliberate goading. “He’s a wastrel, then?”
Fanny’s exclamation almost made me laugh outright, but I smothered it lest she lose the conversation in a lecture. “Where do you acquire such things?” she demanded. A pause, and then she shook her head as Mrs. Booth carried a tea tray in. The silver shone brilliantly, as I had come to expect from my industrious housekeeper. “Yes, you certainly could call him that,” Fanny continued. “Best to avoid him when at all possible, and should you meet him at a function, refrain from partaking of his company longer than it must require for a greeting.”
The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway Page 3