by C. S. Harris
Sebastian said, “I gather Hendon told you about Stephanie?”
Hero tossed the hat on a nearby chair. “She can’t be allowed to marry that man. He’s shockingly bad ton.”
“He’s heir to a marquis. A very wealthy marquis.”
“He’s bad ton,” she said again.
“He’s worse than bad ton.” Sebastian retrieved his brandy and took a long, slow drink. “Hendon is laboring under the illusion that Amanda might listen to me. But she won’t.” He drained the glass and went to pour another. “So tell me: Did you meet Cousin Victoria?”
“I did.” Hero went to work on her spencer’s row of buttons. “I must say, she’s nothing like what I was expecting. She’s only a few years older than I am and very pretty. She’s so tiny she makes me feel like a hulking giant when I stand next to her, although—” She broke off.
“Although?” he prompted.
“Although I’m not convinced she’s quite as sweet and innocent as she likes to appear.”
Sebastian glanced over at her. “You didn’t like her?”
“Honestly?” Hero shook her head. “Although I can’t precisely say why. I have the most lowering suspicion that I’m simply jealous of the extent of her travels.”
He found himself smiling. “I find that difficult to believe.”
“Well, thank you. I’m flattered, even if I’m not entirely convinced.” She jerked off her spencer. “So tell me about the murder.”
Another man might have been inclined to hide such an ugly reality from his gently born wife, but Sebastian knew Hero well enough to suspect she’d be both furious and insulted if he were ever so presumptuous. He said, “The victim is a fifteen-year-old street urchin named Benji Thatcher. Someone raped and tortured him for days before finally strangling him, and the only reason his body was found is because an ex-soldier chanced to interrupt the killers before they could bury him at an abandoned shot factory outside of Clerkenwell.”
“‘Killers’? As in, more than one?”
“Evidently. A gentleman driving a cart and a youth digging the grave. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the boy’s little sister, Sybil, is missing too.”
“Dear God. Do you have any leads?”
“Not exactly. According to Alexi Sauvage, there’s a house in Pickering Place that caters to men who like their whores young and have an interest in whips. I suppose it’s a place to start.”
“You mean Number Three?”
He stared at her. “Good Lord. How do you know that?”
“I heard about it when I was researching the correlation between the current economic situation and the increasing number of women being pushed into prostitution.”
“How much did you hear about it?”
“Not a great deal, fortunately. It’s run by twin sisters named Grace and Hope Bligh. I’m told they’re dwarfs, although I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Dwarfs?”
“Mmm. I gather they’re nasty characters. Quite nasty. Most of their girls are little more than children. Do you plan to go there?”
He nodded. “Tonight. Although I doubt I’ll find them overly anxious to disclose the names of their customers.”
“You will be careful,” said Hero. Characteristically, it was not so much a request as an instruction. In some ways she was very much her father’s daughter.
He reached out to cup her cheek with his palm, gazed deep into her beautiful, intelligent, worried eyes, and smiled. “I will.”
She did not look convinced.
Chapter 12
Sebastian left Brook Street later that evening, riding in his town carriage with two footmen standing up behind. As usual he carried a knife sheathed in his right boot, and tonight he’d also slipped a small, double-barreled flintlock pistol into one pocket.
St. James’s Street was the Upper Ten Thousand’s male preserve, home of exclusive gentlemen’s clubs such as White’s and Brooks’s, of fashionable shops that ranged from Lock & Co. hatters to the venerable old establishment of Berry Bros. & Rudd, where Beau Brummell and the Prince Regent could sometimes be found checking their weight on the firm’s giant coffee scales. Single, well-heeled young men—and the mountebanks who preyed upon them—kept rooms both on the street itself and in the surrounding district. Pickering Place lay just to the northeast, practically within the shadow of the old brick palace built by Henry VIII.
Leaving his carriage outside Berry Bros. & Rudd, Sebastian passed through a narrow arched passage paneled in oak that ran beside the shop. The passage was long and tunnel-like and opened out into the tiny, completely enclosed square known as Pickering Place. The century-old, tall brick buildings surrounding the square housed an unsavory collection of gambling dens and brothels and, in one darkened corner, the discreet establishment known simply as Number Three.
He paused, lingering for a time in the shadows and watching as the light from the single oil lamp mounted high on the house’s wall flickered over the plain facade. Two shallow, flagged steps led up to a shiny black door with a polished brass knocker and freshly painted white surround. The rest of the square rang with male laughter, high-pitched female squeals, and the tinkling of a badly tuned pianoforte played with more energy than skill. But Number Three remained oddly quiet, the curtains at its front windows tightly closed.
Sebastian mounted the steps to ply the knocker, then stood listening as the sound faded into silence.
He could feel someone watching him, evaluating him, through the peephole in the closed door. He knocked again, his head tipping back as he studied the windows of the first floor above—
And caught the cautious footfalls of a heavy man creeping through the passage behind him.
“Interesting way to answer the door,” said Sebastian, one hand in his pocket as he shifted to stand sideways. He had no intention of turning his back to that door.
A massive, big-headed man drew up abruptly some feet away. A relatively new purple scar split his left eyebrow, and he had the swollen knuckles, broken nose, and cauliflower ear of someone who’d spent years in the ring. He was making no effort to conceal the three-foot section of iron bar he held clenched in one meaty fist.
“What ye want here?” he demanded, thrusting forward a jaw that reminded Sebastian of a coal barge.
“Presumably what every other man who knocks at this door wants.”
The big, dark-haired man shook his head. “Miss Grace don’t think so.” He tightened his grip on the iron bar. “Why don’t ye jist sod off? Huh? We don’t need no trouble.”
“What makes you think I’m trouble?”
“Miss Grace knows who ye are.”
“Oh?”
A second man came through the passage to range alongside the first. This one was both larger and uglier, and carried a knife rather than a length of iron.
Sebastian said, “If Miss Grace knows who I am, then she should also realize that I’m wise enough not to have come here without informing others of my destination. Attempt violence against me, and this establishment will bring down upon itself precisely the sort of attention she is most interested in avoiding.”
The door beside him opened, spilling light down the steps. He smelled beeswax and incense and flowers, their scents mingling in a way that reminded him, perversely, of a church. At first glance Sebastian took the figure standing in the doorway for a child—a pretty little girl of seven or eight with fair hair and eerie, light-colored eyes. Then he noticed the swell of white breasts above the plunging bodice of her blue silk gown, the fine delineation of her cheekbones and nose, and realized this was no child but a tiny woman somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties.
When Sebastian was a boy, in Cornwall, he’d known an incredibly nimble, good-humored dwarf named Matt Downey. Matt’s arms and legs had been short, his head large, his thick torso the size of a normal man’s. But unlike
Matt, this woman was essentially a perfectly proportioned adult in miniature: slim and finely made, yet standing no more than four feet tall.
She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, her expression giving nothing away. Then she opened the door wider. “Come in.”
For reasons he could not name, Sebastian found himself hesitating as an unpleasant chill tingled along the back of his neck.
Something of his reaction must have shown on his face, because a smile touched her bow-shaped lips. “Do we frighten you?”
“Is there a reason I should be frightened?”
“With a carriage and two footmen awaiting you in St. James’s? I don’t think so. But Joshua and Thomas can stay out here, if you prefer.”
He followed her past an opulent, aggressively sensual reception room with red velvet curtains and a number of lurid paintings, to a smaller but considerably more tasteful chamber hung with hand-painted Chinese wallpaper and furnished with delicate chairs and exquisitely carved commodes in the style of Louis XV. A second golden-haired woman, identical to the first and wearing the same blue silk gown, sat perched like a child on an armchair near the fire, her hands folded in her lap. Neither woman moved nor spoke, but simply stared at Sebastian with those strange, light gray eyes.
He was not invited to sit.
“Would you like some wine?” asked the woman who had opened the door.
“No, thank you.”
She turned to a marble-topped table that held a selection of decanters and glasses. “Even if I promise it’s not poisoned?”
“No, thank you,” he said again, his gaze flicking over the oil paintings in heavy, gilded frames that adorned the walls. He recognized a Watteau, a Boucher, and several Fragonards. Providing very young girls to the most debauched of London’s wealthy men was obviously highly profitable. He felt his stomach heave, his blood surge with a raw fury he had to fight down.
She said, “I trust you don’t mind if Hope and I do?”
He brought his gaze back to her face. So this was Grace. “If it were up to me, you’d be in Newgate by now.”
She poured wine into two sparkling cut-crystal glasses. “Oh? Yet you seem very determined to speak with us.”
“The body of a fifteen-year-old boy was discovered yesterday in Clerkenwell,” Sebastian said bluntly. “He’d been raped as well as tortured with a whip and knife before being strangled. His younger sister is also missing. It’s been suggested you might know something about that.”
She set the wine carafe aside. “I hope you’re not insinuating these incidents have anything to do with us.”
“It struck me as a possibility, yes.”
Something shimmered in the depths of this tiny woman’s strangely pale eyes, something that reminded him of coiled snakes and glacial lakes in the dead of winter. Her voice took on a dangerous, silken edge. “We don’t generally lose our workers.”
“Not generally? So what about occasionally?
“This isn’t Chalon Lane. We are very careful in the selection of our clientele.” She turned to hand one of the wineglasses to her sister, who still didn’t say anything. “Those who refuse to abide by the house rules are no longer admitted.”
“Simply because they abide by the rules here doesn’t mean they behave the same elsewhere.”
“We have no control over that.” She reached for her own wineglass but did not bring it to her lips. “What do you want from us?”
“Names.”
She laughed out loud. “Our customers expect confidentiality. If we were to give you what you seek, we would be out of business.”
He let his gaze drift, significantly, around the room again. “You and your sister appear to have done quite well for yourselves.”
“Thank you. Or was that meant as a threat rather than a compliment? Are you thinking of informing against us?” Again, that faint smile curled her perfectly molded lips. “Do you seriously believe the authorities don’t know we’re here?”
“Perhaps. Yet there are ways to make establishments of this nature . . .” He paused as if searching for the right word, then said, “Uncomfortable. And unprofitable.”
He saw it again, that lethal glitter of raw malevolence. And he found himself wondering about her background, about how she and her sister came to be here. Her voice and manner were educated, although he knew that could be an act.
And why the hell didn’t her twin speak?
She said, “What you ask is impossible.”
“Then give me the names of those customers who played so rough that they’re no longer welcome.”
The twins exchanged glances. It was as if they were so in tune with each other’s thoughts that words were unnecessary between them.
Grace Bligh set aside her wine untasted. “Very well. We will give you two names. The first is an actor: Hector Kneebone.”
Sebastian knew a flicker of surprise. Kneebone was one of the stage’s most promising young actors, gaining rapidly in popularity, particularly amongst the more influential members of the ton. “What did Kneebone do to violate your rules?”
“He became . . . unmanageable.”
“Meaning?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“And the second man?”
Grace Bligh hesitated, her gaze sliding again to her twin. He saw Hope Bligh’s tiny hands clench, hard, around the arms of her chair. But to his surprise, Grace Bligh smiled.
“The second man was blackballed after whipping one of our girls half to death.”
“That’s against the rules? I thought that was part of what you offered here.”
“It’s not supposed to be taken to such extremes.”
Sebastian felt it again—that urge to lay violent hands upon this diminutive, evil woman. He suppressed it with difficulty. “And his name?”
Her chin lifted, her strange, wintry eyes glittering with a raw, visceral hatred she made no attempt to disguise. “I assume you know him, seeing as he’s approximately your age and a viscount, as well. His name is Ashworth. Lord Ashworth.”
Chapter 13
Grace Bligh could be lying.
Sebastian acknowledged the possibility even as he prowled the gentlemen’s clubs and fashionable coffeehouses of St. James’s, looking for Viscount Ashworth. If the betrothal of Miss Stephanie Wilcox to the Marquis of Lindley’s handsome, dissolute son had already been made public, then Sebastian would have been inclined to view the nasty little brothel keeper’s words as nothing more than pure malice. But the betrothal was not known, and that made Grace Bligh’s information considerably more intriguing. Not reliable, by any means, but definitely worth looking into.
When he drew a blank in the area that had once been known as St. James’s Fields, Sebastian shifted his search farther east to Covent Garden. It was there, near Drury Lane Theater, that he came upon his niece’s betrothed.
Anthony Ledger, Viscount Ashworth, was a tall man, nearly as tall as Sebastian, with the broad shoulders and trim, muscular frame of a Corinthian. They were sporting men, the Corinthians: gentlemen of rank and fortune known for their dedication to hunting and horses, who spent a sizeable chunk of their time boxing at Gentleman Jackson’s and fencing at Angelo’s. The Viscount’s honey-colored hair was fashionably disheveled, his dark blue coat, doeskin breeches, and high-topped boots exquisitely fitted and very expensive. He was on the verge of entering a tavern in the company of a group of friends when Sebastian hopped down from his carriage and said airily, “Ah, there you are, Ashworth. If I might have a word with you?”
The Viscount paused, his lips curling into a pleasant if faintly puzzled smile.
“It won’t take long,” said Sebastian. “Walk with me a ways?”
“Of course,” said Ashworth, excusing himself to his companions with a bow.
He and Sebastian turned to walk along Catherine Street. Both Dr
ury Lane and Covent Garden theaters were scheduled to open for the season in a few days, which meant that dress rehearsals were now under way. Laughing crowds of excited young men thronged the footpaths and spilled out onto the pavement; the air was heavy with the smell of ale and tobacco smoke mingling with the occasional, elusive whiff of hashish.
Ashworth said, “I take it you’ve heard of the announcement that is to appear in tomorrow’s papers?”
Sebastian stepped wide to avoid a reeling, red-faced young buck waving a bottle of brandy and shouting verses of Virgil to the night. “I have. Although that’s not why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“I’m told you’ve been blackballed from Number Three, Pickering Place for half killing one of their girls.”
Ashworth squinted up at the sky as if assessing the possibility that the gathering clouds might bring rain. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
Ashworth drew up and swung to face him, that pleasant smile never slipping. “Do you imagine that knowledge of some of my more unorthodox sexual interests might complicate or even end my betrothal to Miss Wilcox? If so, then I’m afraid you don’t know your niece very well. Or your sister. After all, what are the bleatings of some ignorant trollop when set against the lure of a coronet?”
Sebastian made no effort to keep his reaction off his face. “The Bligh sisters don’t provide their clients with women. They supply very young girls—some of them essentially children. And boys, if one is discreet and willing to pay enough.”
“I’ve no interest in children, if that’s what you’re suggesting. But I won’t deny I prefer my Cyprians on the young side, given that they tend to be both cleaner and less jaded.”
“How young?”
“You seriously think I ask?” Ashworth threw a telling glance toward his waiting companions, an edge of exasperation creeping into his tone. “Why are we having this conversation?”
“Because a young street urchin by the name of Benji Thatcher was recently raped and tortured before being strangled to death. And his little sister, Sybil, is missing.”