Page 174

S injin brushed the back of his hand across his brow and went back to working the mortar and pestle on the Duke of Chelmsford’s kitchen table.

He was surprised he could see at all between the dim light of the single candle on the table and the fact he was perspiring like a scythe-wielding yeoman harvesting wheat.

Of all the things he ever considered he’d do for the love of Alice Lister, baking poisoned pasties in a duke’s kitchen in the middle of the night was not one of them.

“Tell me again, sir, why we could not do this in your kitchens?” Nell Barker, Alice’s lady’s maid, said as she rolled out the dough for the pasties by the light of another candle.

“Ye’ve never met our Missus Beatty, have you, lass?” Seamus asked. He brought the bowl of meat mixture to Sinjin. “She sleeps in the room next to her kitchens and guards them like a ragman’s dog guards a bone.” He shuddered to emphasize his point. “Here is closer to the Golden Lion too.”

“If His Grace’s cook comes down here, we’re all dead where we stand,” Nell replied.

“If you had talked Lady Alice out of this mad plan,” Sinjin said as he dumped the mixture of crushed herbs and seeds into the meat mixture. “We wouldn’t be trespassing in the Duke of Chelmsford’s kitchen making pasties to poison three gentlemen on their way to Almack’s, would we, Miss Barker?”

Nell snatched the bowl from his hands and began to spoon the mixture onto the dough squares she’d rolled out onto a marble-top work table. “ You try talking her ladyship out of something once she sets her mind to it. You’d have a better chance than me, especially these days.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Sinjin turned away so the maid didn’t have the chance to see his expression. He’d caught Nell Barker giving him knowing looks far too often over the past few weeks.

“Poison?” Seamus looked at the bit of meat mixture he’d sneaked from the bowl. Sinjin leapt to his feet and held the boy’s hand under the kitchen pump. He washed and dried Seamus’s finger with the cloth lying next to the sink.

“What’s in this, Mister Perriton?” Nell began to close up the pasties one by one. “I won’t trouble myself about killing those three, but I’d rather not hang for it if it’s all the same to you.”

“Hang?” Even in the dim light in the kitchen Seamus’s sudden pallor was unmistakable.

“ Carapichea ipecacuanha is not poison. Not really. In small amounts it is medicinal. And with the amount we’re using, it…simply makes one ill.”

“Ill?” Seamus fixed him with a skeptical gaze. “Ill, how?”

“Stomach trouble,” Sinjin mumbled as he watched Nell put the pasties into one of the duke’s Rumford stoves.

“What sort of stomach trouble?” Seamus’s tone grew more suspicious by the moment.

Nell laughed, cackled really, the sort of laugh that put one in mind of a witch in the wilds of Cornwall. “Don’t you worry about what sort of trouble, lad. Just don’t try any of those pasties if you know what’s good for you. According to Lady Alice that carapi…carapi…”

“ Carapichea ipecacuanha ,” Sinjin said slowly as he regretted the very moment he’d mentioned the plant’s properties to Alice.

“Bless you,” Nell said with a grin. The door to the kitchen gardens burst open, and Alice bustled into the kitchens in a whirl of icy wind and green wool. Her hooded cape made her appear like a character in a play for children, especially with the large covered basket she clutched in her hands.

“Are they ready yet?” she asked as she removed her cape to reveal the rich blue silk ball gown she wore.

The bodice sported a heart-shaped neckline that emphasized and lifted her bosom to great effect, if Seamus’s startled stare was any indication.

Sinjin smacked the boy’s shoulder and wondered who might smack his own shoulder as he could not take his eyes off Alice.

“Not yet,” Nell said as she took the basket from her mistress.

The maid pulled a pastie from under the dingy white cover and handed the treat to Seamus.

“You can eat this one, lad. Old Sue never made a bad pastie.” Seamus took the pastie and began to devour the meaty confection.

Sinjin fetched his leather satchel from one of the benches around the kitchen table and dropped his mortar and pestle and the box of Carapichea ipecacuanha roots and berries into it.

He would not risk cleaning anything that had touched those items in the duke’s kitchens.

“So, you were able to purchase all of Old Sue’s pasties and send her on her way?” Sinjin asked and tried not to sound disappointed.

“Of course,” Alice replied as she sat next to him on the bench.

“Dickie was right. She couldn’t turn down a chance to leave her corner early on a night like this with every pastie sold and at the price we paid her.

She’s probably at the Lamb and Flag with a bowl of stew and a pint of gin at this very moment. ”

“How fortunate for her.” Speaking of stomach trouble, Sinjin’s began to roil at the thought of the plan they were setting in motion. “What about the rest of this mad expedition?”

Alice rolled her eyes and clasped his forearm with both hands.

“Everything and everyone are in place. It has been more than a week since the Venetian breakfast. They won’t suspect a thing.

Dickie is watching for Earden, Stanton, and Weatherly to leave Almack’s for their mid-assembly trip to the Golden Lion.

Sally Big’uns is waiting at the Golden Lion to take Old Sue’s place on the corner with our basket of pasties.

If they ask, she’ll tell them that Old Sue is ill and sent Sally in her place.

” She shook Sinjin’s arm, her face alight with excitement.

“Once Dickie is certain they have taken the bait he will come here so we can make out way to Almack’s in time to witness the ultimate comeuppance. ”

“Ultimate comeuppance,” Sinjin muttered. He lowered his head to rest on the table with a moan. He ran every possible outcome of this evening’s plan through his head and nearly cast up his accounts. What had possibly persuaded him to participate in such a dangerous and outrageous plan?

Alice kissed the top of his head and squeezed his arm once more. “Your plan is brilliant, Sinjin. What could possibly go wrong?”

Ah! Now he remembered. Alice had gazed at him with those imploring blue eyes and he’d folded like a house of cards.

Slowly, he raised his head which afforded him another excellent view of the crests of her breasts cradled in the elegant silk of her ball gown.

Yes, he definitely remembered why he’d agreed to use his knowledge of plant properties to make three gentlemen of the ton violently ill at Almack’s.

“Who is this Sally woman?” Sinjin asked. “Can she be trusted?”

“Sally Big’uns,” Seamus offered, his mouth full of pastie. “She’s a right one. She won’t do us wrong.”

“Of course, she won’t,” Alice said. She jumped up from the bench and went to the stove to check on the pasties. “She is a friend of Uncle Percy’s.”

“His Grace has a friend called Sally Big’uns?”

“Sinjin, really? My uncle’s wife is a former pirate who owns a pleasure club. His brother is the largest purveyor of naughty books in London. Are you really shocked he knows someone like Sally Big’uns?”

Sinjin sighed and began to empty the other pasties from Old Sue’s basket onto a plate. “At this point, nothing about your family surprises me. I find myself straining simply to keep up.”

“Oh, Sinjin,” Alice turned and wrapped him in a hug.

“I keep forgetting what a hermit you are.” He wrapped one arm around her and held her close.

The heavenly scent of her lemon and verbena perfume teased and tempted him as nothing else could.

She adjusted his neckcloth and when he glanced down, he saw her looking up at him, her expression soft and strange. His heart did a little skip.

“Are we ready?” Dickie asked in a loud whisper as he slipped in the kitchen door.

“Yes,” Alice cried as she spun out of Sinjin’s embrace and gathered up the basket of dosed pasties and her cloak. “Everyone into the carriage.”

Sinjin waited until the others had filed out of the kitchens.

He blew out the candles and placed them carefully back on the shelf where he’d found them earlier.

With a sad shake of his head, he struggled into his silk evening jacket and closed the door behind him as he made his way to Frederick’s carriage.

His brother had been all too happy to lend the handsome conveyance to Sinjin.

“Mother and father will be in alt when I write them you are out and about in the social whirl. Especially as they have such high hopes for you and Lady Alice,” he’d said this evening as Sinjin left the house.

Sinjin had stopped protesting the notion of there being something more to his escorting Alice about than friendship.

Frederick refused to believe him, and for Sinjin the truth hurt too much to keep repeating.

The only thing he and Alice were courting was disaster, not each other.

He pulled himself into the carriage and subsided onto the seat next to Alice.

Dickie and Nell sat across from them. Seamus was up with John Coachman.

A thousand random thoughts careened through Sinjin’s mind.

Alice threaded her fingers through his, and in spite of the silk gloves they’d both pulled on, the heat of her grasp soaked into his very bones.