by Kate Bateman
Anya glanced around her comfortable bedroom. She had a wardrobe full of clothes, silver-backed brushes and mirrors, a host of expensive luxuries she’d always taken for granted. She pushed down a brief pang of regret. “We’ll have to leave all of this behind.”
Elizaveta nodded decisively. She selected a small bag and thrust a few choice articles inside, then picked up Anya’s travelling cape and the reticule of diamonds. “Thank goodness we didn’t leave these in there with him.”
Anya pulled her leather jewelry box from the back of the wardrobe. “I have some coins. And we can take a few more jewels. Vasili won’t know what’s missing.” She grabbed the satchel she used for watercolor paints and thrust her favorite pair of leather ankle boots inside, along with a shawl and a few clean chemises. “Hurry! Heaven knows how long we have before he wakes up.”
She rushed to the writing desk in the corner, snatched up a pen and paper, and dashed off a short note proclaiming her intention to throw herself into the Seine. That done, she joined Elizaveta at the front door to the apartment. A thousand contradictory thoughts crowded her brain.
Good God. How had it come to this? Thrust from a life of peaceful contentment into one of terrifying uncertainty, all in the space of a few days. If they ran, they would be just like every other citizen out there; they’d have to make their own way in the world without the cushion of rank or fortune to ease the way.
The thought was oddly beguiling. Anya might never have experienced the hardship of living without family, or wealth, or social status, but she’d developed a certain amount of cunning while learning to survive the scandals and machinations of the Russian court. Neither she nor Elizaveta were fools. They were determined and resourceful. They would rise to this challenge. And really, could whatever awaited them out there be worse than the fate Petrov had planned for her?
She doubted it.
Anya took a fortifying breath. This might be an ending, but it was also a beginning. A chance to experience all that life had to offer. Her whole life she’d been seen as little more than a means of enrichment or a political pawn; it was time to see what she could achieve on her own.
She grasped Elizaveta’s hand. “Are you sure you want to come with me? I can give you enough money to get back to St. Petersburg, if you want.”
Elizaveta returned the squeeze. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you, my love. What’s the plan?”
“All right. We’ll find a carriage heading north, toward Belgium. There will be plenty of wounded soldiers returning home. We’ll attach ourselves to them and say we’re widows, or looking for our husbands. We’ll go to England. Vasili won’t think to look for us there.” Anya gave a decisive nod. “Think of an English surname.”
Elizaveta wrinkled her nose. “Smith? Brown? What was the name of the family in that English book we read last year? Bennett?”
“Perfect. You can be Elizabeth—no, Lizzie—Bennett. Or Smith, if you prefer. And I shall be Anna. Anna Brown. From this moment, Princess Anastasia Denisova is dead.”
Chapter 3.
One year later. September 1816.
Sebastien Wolff, Earl of Mowbray, frowned down at the dead man at his feet and sighed in irritation.
He wasn’t dressed to investigate a murder. He’d been about to leave for the opera and a visit to the infamous Mrs. Haye’s brothel in Covent Garden, when his two best friends, Benedict Wylde and Alex Harland, had arrived at the Tricorn Club, commandeered his carriage, and effectively kidnapped him.
Alex had let out a slow sarcastic whistle when he’d seen Seb’s immaculate evening clothes. “Look at you, pretty boy,” he teased.
“Oh, sod off,” Seb said amiably. “You’re just jealous. Your coats never fit this well. What’s going on?”
“Conant’s got a new job for us,” Ben said, referring to their superior, the head of Bow Street and de facto head of police in London, Sir Nathaniel Conant. “Murder. Behind a tavern, down at the East India docks.”
“That’s hardly a reason for us to investigate,” Seb said crossly. “People are killed down there every night of the week. Bar brawls, robberies gone wrong. It’s not our territory. What’s so different about this one?”
“Sounds like the deceased was a visitor to our shores. The innkeeper saw him drinking with another man and overheard them speaking Russian or Prussian—something foreign, at any rate. They seemed to be on friendly terms, but not fifteen minutes later, our man was found in the side alley with his throat slit.”
“I still don’t see what it has to do with us,” Seb groused. “Two foreigners had a disagreement and one of them ended up dead. It was probably over a woman. Or cards. Let the local magistrate deal with it.”
Alex shook his head. “The mention of Russia is what interests Conant. Castlereagh and the Foreign Office have been looking for a spy who passed information to the French about Russian troop movements before Waterloo. They think someone warned Napoleon the Russians were on their way.”
“Bastard,” Ben muttered savagely.
Seb nodded. All three of them had been left scarred by their years in the Rifles that had culminated in the bloody carnage at Waterloo. That the three of them had survived was nothing short of a miracle.
“Information’s still getting out. A Russian delegation arrived last week for trade talks, and Conant wants us to keep our ears open for anything that might identify the leak. So we’re investigating anything that involves Russians. Dead or alive.”
Seb snorted. “Keep our ears open? Ha. Only one of my ears works, thanks to Bonaparte.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” Alex added dryly, and Benedict chuckled at their gallows humor. A canon blast at Waterloo had permanently damaged the hearing on Seb’s left side. Alex had lost a portion of his peripheral vision in the same explosion.
The carriage lurched to a stop at the end of a dark alley. The three of them got out, eliciting a slew of bawdy comments from a couple of whores on the corner.
“Ooh! Come ’ere, gents. Sally’ll show you a good time.”
Ben ignored them and headed for the front door of the tavern. “I’ll talk to the landlord.”
Seb nodded to the man posted at the alley entrance to protect the crime scene and slipped between the overhanging buildings, followed by Alex.
Here, in the stinking slums that clustered round the Thames docks, murder was commonplace. Human life was cheap. Seb wrinkled his nose against the rank smell of piss and stale beer that mixed with the fetid odor of the nearby river to create a nauseating miasma. The creak of ships moored at the water’s edge could be heard above the rattle of carts and the occasional angry shout. A rat scurried behind a pile of refuse.
Blood and death didn’t bother him. He’d seen so much of it during his years in the Rifles, he’d become immune. Sometimes the fact that it didn’t affect him worried him a little. His emotions, good and bad, seemed distant, unimportant. Had he lost the ability to be horrified or surprised by anything anymore?
Seb dismissed the thought and crouched down, careful to avoid the black pool of blood that glistened on the filthy cobbles. No point ruining a good pair of boots. The dead man wore plain clothes, nothing flash that would have attracted the attention of a thief. He lay sprawled like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Seb searched the man’s pockets and withdrew a leather money purse. “This wasn’t a robbery.”
Alex pointed at the man’s hand. “He’s still wearing a ring on his little finger too. Someone wanted him dead, but not for gold.”
Seb tugged the ring from the corpse and squinted at it in the dim light. It was too dark to see the markings on it, so he slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll take this home and look at it there.”
Alex bent to examine the man’s neck. “It’s a clean wound, almost professional. Someone knows their way around a blade. There’s not much evidence of a struggle. The poor bastard probably never suspected a thing.”
Seb straightened, imagining the scene. “He did it from behind.
Put an arm across his neck and cut, then dropped the body. No sound. Very efficient. Sneaky bastard.” He flicked a glance at the dead man’s face and experienced a fleeting stab of pity. He was young, barely thirty, maybe the same age as himself. Too young to die. Especially like this, so far from home.
Benedict appeared at the far end of the alley.
“Do we have a description of the suspect?” Alex asked.
“The innkeeper says he was wearing a hat pulled low over his face and a heavy overcoat. Said he was big, maybe six feet, with pale hair.”
Seb rolled his eyes. “A big blond Russian. Well, that certainly narrows it down.”
Alex grinned at his sarcasm. “There are Russian immigrants all over the city. It could be someone with military experience, a former soldier maybe, considering the precision of the wound.”
“He might not even be Russian,” Seb said irritably. “The innkeeper could have been mistaken. They could’ve been speaking Cornish or Welsh. We’re wasting our time.”
Ben shrugged. “Well, I doubt there’s any more to learn here, at any rate. Let’s go. The locals can take it from here.”
Back in the carriage, Seb said, “So, Conant wants us to listen out for Russian gossip, does he? At the Tricorn?”
The Tricorn, the gambling club the three of them had opened following their return from Waterloo, had become one of the most popular gaming houses in London. Seb, Alex, and Benedict had lived there together until Alex and Ben had both found themselves wives and moved out a few months ago.
Seb would never have admitted it aloud, but he missed them. Despite the constant noise and excitement of the club itself, the private apartments were depressingly quiet. He never brought women back there; he enjoyed the privacy of his personal domain, but it was rather dull, with just him and the servants rattling around.
Not that he was lonely. Of course not. But maybe he should take in a lodger? There must be hundreds of chaps who’d jump at the chance of living in a gambling hell—
“Yes, but quietly,” Alex said, and Seb realized with a jolt that he’d been woolgathering. “We don’t want the delegation to know we suspect one of their countrymen.”
“I haven’t seen any Russians at the club yet,” Seb said, “And even if they do come, I doubt they’ll be discussing sensitive information in such a crowded place.”
“They might, if they’re speaking Russian and don’t think anyone else can understand what they’re saying,” Alex said reasonably. “Or if they’re very drunk. In vino veritas, as they say.”
“What good is it to us even if they do talk?” Seb grumbled. “Can you speak Russian? Because I bloody well can’t.”
“I can say a few curse words.” Benedict chuckled. “And ask for a drink. But that’s about it.”
“Maybe we should find ourselves a native speaker?” Alex said. “Employ them to loiter about on the gaming floor listen in to conversations? I’ll make some inquiries.”
Seb reached into his waistcoat and withdrew his pocket watch. “Bugger. I’ve missed the first half of the opera. I might as well go straight to Covent Garden.”
“You’re never going to find a decent woman in a brothel,” Ben said with a slight frown.
Seb sent him a smile sure to irritate. “That’s precisely why I’m going. It’s the indecent ones I’m after.”
Alex leaned forward, his hands dangling loose between his knees. “Since Ben and I moved out, you’ve been playing and working too hard.”
Seb snorted. “That’s bollocks. I don’t gamble. I rarely drink to excess. Women are my only vice. What is it about you married people? You get yourselves leg-shackled, and then nothing will do but to try and snare everyone else in the parson’s mousetrap. You’re like two fussy old women. I’m not ready to settle down just yet. I’m having far too much fun being a reprobate.”
“Marriage really isn’t that bad.” Alex laughed.
Seb rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you got better things to do than nag me about my love life? Or maybe, being married men, it’s your own lack of action between the sheets that has you so interested? Trying to live vicariously, boys?”
Alex snorted at the insult. “Not me. Emmy’s at a charity gala tonight, but rest assured when she gets home, she’ll show me just how much she’s missed me.” His lips curved in a contented smile and Seb grimaced in disgust.
“I’m not lacking in that department either, thank you very much,” Ben added smugly. “Marriage does not equate to celibacy, Seb.”
“I never said it did. I just didn’t think you’d both be so content to get it from the one source for the rest of your days.” Seb shook his head in mock horror. “Seems a damn shame. When you think of all the available women out there, crying out for the love of a good man—”
Alex shook his head. “You haven’t attended many ton functions recently.”
“Because I’m sick of fending off scheming debutantes and bored housewives. No woman’s worth facing an irate husband or an angry father over pistols at dawn.” Seb leaned back into the comfortable squabs of the carriage. “Tarts are honest and uncomplicated. They don’t expect anything more than a tumble in the sheets for the price agreed. There’s no hurt feelings, no clinging when it’s time to end things. No delusions of marriage.”
He glanced between his two friends. “The fact that you’ve both found one woman you want to spend your life with is amazing—but it’s never going to happen to me.”
He frowned. The conversation was steering nauseatingly close to the kind of self-indulgent, romantic sap usually reserved for women over a cup of tea. Seb had always been a cynic, but having witnessed the transformation of his two closest friends from rakish jokers to happily married men, his unshaking belief that romantic love was as fictitious as a virgin in a whorehouse had been undermined.
“Both of you were attracted to your wives as soon as you saw them, correct?” he said.
Alex and Ben nodded.
“But you were attracted to other women before you met them, so clearly physical attraction isn’t enough. There must have been something more. Some spark that set them apart from all the rest.”
“I thought it was irritation at first,” Alex said with a reminiscent smile.
“I wanted to throttle her.” Benedict chuckled.
“Well, then.” Seb crossed his arms. “I’m still waiting to find that gorgeous someone who irritates me enough to want to strangle her. Until then, I plan to enjoy my bachelor status to the hilt.”
Alex sighed. “I thought we could come for supper. I miss Lagrasse. I’ve been dreaming of his puddings for weeks.”
“Then I’m afraid you’re doomed to disappointment.” Seb grinned. “I’ve given him the night off.” He glanced out of the carriage window. “We’re nearly at Covent Garden. I’m off to Haye’s to see what all the fuss is about. Harwood says she has the finest girls in London. You can set me down here.”
Chapter 4.
“Sweet violets! Penny a bunch!”
Anya crossed the bustling square of Covent Garden, nodding a friendly greeting to several of the stallholders who plied their wares in the haphazard chaos of London’s largest outdoor market. She dodged a costermonger’s barrow boy, staggering under the weight of a wheelbarrow dangerously overloaded with turnips, and smiled at the eel pie vendor on the corner. She’d never been brave enough to actually try an eel pie, but the smell that emanated from beneath the cloth-covered baskets was surprisingly inviting.
She and Elizaveta had been in London for almost a year, but she never tired of the myriad sights and sounds. It was still so strange and foreign, such a contrast to the gilded, glittering palaces she’d known in St. Petersburg, or the cultured order of Paris. London was beauty and ugliness pressed close together. Foul gutters and vibrant flowers, filthy death and pulsing life, danger and excitement, all rolled into one fascinating metropolis.
Anya ascended the steps that led to the small apartment she shared with Elizaveta. Covent Garden certainly was
n’t the most genteel of neighborhoods, but that suited her purpose very well. She had no desire to mingle with the elevated members of society who resided a few streets to the west in Mayfair.
Not that their finances would allow such a luxury. She’d had to sell most of her precious diamonds to afford the rent on even this tiny apartment, and her wages, though generous, only just enabled them to live within their means. Lodgings in Covent Garden were always in high demand due to its proximity to both the theatre district and the fashionable enclave of St. James’s.
Elizaveta glanced up from her sewing when Anya let herself into their small front room. “How was the dowager duchess?”
“In fine fettle, as ever.” Anya carefully removed her hat.
“Who’s incurred her displeasure this week?”
“Lady Jersey. Apparently the wine she served at her soiree was ‘an insult to vintners everywhere.’”
Elizaveta chuckled. They both enjoyed the elderly dowager’s acerbic insights into the workings of the haute ton. It was better than reading the scandal sheets.
When they’d first arrived in London, Anya had been dismayed to realize how completely unprepared she was for any form of meaningful employment. She’d visited an employment agency, naively confident that her ability to speak English, French, and Russian, and her extensive knowledge of literature, history, and geography, would qualify her for the position of governess or tutor. Not so.
The pinch-faced woman behind the desk had given a wheezy, cynical chuckle. “Have you looked in a mirror, child? No wife will want you within a hundred leagues of her husband or her sons, believe me. Women want tutors who are stout and ugly, preferably with whiskers and warts, so they don’t pose any temptation.”
Anya had stifled a sinking feeling. “I can teach manners and etiquette to girls.”
“I have no openings for that, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps I can become a translator for a bookseller, then?”
The woman gave a dismissive sniff. “There’s not much work to be had for anyone right now, what with all the soldiers back from the war. Everyone’s looking for work. And very few men want to employ a woman, unless it’s for pleasure.”