Page 12 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

A s Robin watched from the surgery window, evening descended on Berwick Street. The hum of commerce still rose from the stalls, and the crowd churned down a narrow channel in the middle of the street between the barrows with their canvas awnings. Robin saw no sign of a red tie, but men and women alike became shadowy figures, bundled against the evening chill, chins tucked down, hands shoved in pockets or under shawls. He watched Mrs. Kendall leave Leary’s former lodging. She pulled the veil over her face, hooked the umbrella over her arm and stepped into the crowd. She no longer carried the basket.

He followed, keeping the black velvet ribbons of her hat in view. In her path people shifted and paused or swung around, but Mrs. Kendall kept moving forward. She was making good progress toward the north end of the street when he spotted a man in a flat gray cap following her too regularly. Robin could not see whether the fellow wore a red tie, but he was willing to wager on it. Mrs. Kendall gave no sign of knowing she was followed.

Robin picked up his pace, angling left and right with his shoulders, startling people and drawing a sharp cry from a man who dropped a sack he was carrying. Ahead of Robin, flat cap closed the gap between himself and Mrs. Kendall. Robin lifted a stout matron out of his way and plowed forward.

As flat cap stretched out a hand, Mrs. Kendall swung around and leveled the umbrella at him. She popped it open, and jabbed it at the man’s face. He stumbled back against Robin, his feet kicking at Mrs. Kendall’s skirts, his arms batting at the umbrella. His cap went flying. Robin caught him around the chest, and he writhed in Robin’s hold, one hand clawing for Robin’s face.

Mrs. Kendall snapped the umbrella closed. “Knife!” she cried. Her cry alerted others in the street.

The blade flashed down and glanced off Robin’s thigh, tearing his trousers. He hoisted the assailant off his feet. Mrs. Kendall swung the umbrella and whacked the man’s knife hand.

A beefy vendor from a vegetable barrow shouted, “Hey,” and charged into the street. One large fist descended on Robin’s shoulder, unbalancing him and sending him staggering back, his hold on his assailant broken. The assailant elbowed Robin sharply in the ribs, broke free, and staggered into Mrs. Kendall, knocking her against the vegetable barrow. Robin caught a glimpse of the red tie before the man disappeared down the street.

“Wot are ye about then?” demanded the vegetable seller. “I should call the coppers on ye.”

“I am a copper,” Robin said. He reached for Mrs. Kendall, pulling her back onto her feet.

*

Robin took Mrs. Kendall’s hand and set a brisk pace back to the square. Danger, he reflected, was supposed to frighten ladies, not spur them to take on attackers. The encounter with red tie unsettled the proper order of things, and Robin didn’t like the outcome. Phoebe Marchmont seemed to feel that as Mrs. Kendall she did not have to follow the rules that governed gently born maidens. He did not know whether the man in the red tie had seen Mrs. Kendall’s face, but she had clearly seen his. Robin wanted her back in Marchmont House and out of her bold disguise. Once she dressed as an earl’s daughter, she could not be connected with the widow on Berwick Street.

In the square he found Constable Trigg and sent him to Berwick Street to see to the two women in Leary’s former lodgings. Then he helped Mrs. Kendall into the first available cab and told the driver to head for the Charles Street mews. Once again, he sat pressed against her in a froth of black skirts, his knees jammed against the front of the cab, the knife tear in his trousers evident.

The cab rumbled into motion, and she lifted her veil. She pulled aside the torn flap of wool over his thigh. “Are you bleeding?”

“A scratch,” he said. “I’ll get it looked at as soon as I get you home.”

“How did red tie come to be following me?” Her hand rested on his thigh, a light touch that overwhelmed his senses. His knee bounced against her hand with the motion of the cab.

“He must have picked you up when you went into Leary’s former lodging. You were in there a good amount of time.” He blamed himself for that. He had not spotted the fellow sooner, and now he’d let him get away. Red tie would be off to report to someone higher up in the Benevolent Assistance League.

“ Red tie wants to find Leary, doesn’t he?” she asked.

“He does,” Robin admitted. He hoped she did not understand why, or realize that there were potentially more men in that distinctive neckwear.

“By going to that lodging house, I might have helped him find Leary. If he does, Andrew is not safe.”

He could hear the anguish in her voice. “Stop.” He lifted her hand from his leg. “ Red tie already knew that was Leary’s old lodging.”

“But I don’t think he talked to Liza and Jenny.” She sounded puzzled.

He let her hand go. “Because they are expecting you to lead them to Leary.”

“ They? ” Her gaze challenged him.

Bleeding hell. He’d slipped. “What did you find out?”

“Leary moved his family the day after the fire. He was at the fire most of night.”

“And?”

“And Molly thought nothing was left for her brother but digging work. That was going to be his plan.” She paused. “But if they are going to follow us to Leary, how can we continue the search?”

“We’re going to get help; help they won’t recognize. I know someone who can tell us which digs in London were hiring after the fire.”

She pulled back the torn fabric of his trousers again, exposing the bloodied line across his thigh. “The thing is,” she said, “ they don’t simply want to find Leary, do they? They want to stop him, to silence him.”

Her gaze met his. Light from the lamps as they passed illuminated her pale face briefly.

“So,” he said, “we get to Leary first.”

“Now?”

He laughed. “Tomorrow morning. Early.”

“And Liza and Jenny? And Jenny’s baby? Can you protect them? Or move them?”

“Move them?”

“I have friends who would—” She stopped. Her expression dismayed at the blunder. She had clearly forgotten she was Mrs. Kendall.

“The police will find a place for Liza and Jenny,” he assured her. “Where will you be tonight, Mrs. Kendall?”

“Me?”

“You saw red tie ’s face. If you go anywhere, don’t go alone, take a companion, some lady.”

“We housekeepers stay at home, Jones.” She said it primly, but he knew she could doff her disguise and disappear into the fashionable world to which she belonged.

When the cab stopped at the Marchmont House mews, Robin lifted Mrs. Kendall down, and opened the back gate himself over her protest. She hurried along the path to the kitchen door, and once she was inside, he returned to the cab. He needed to take care of Leary’s old neighbors. Then he would find Wenlocke. If any dig in London had hired men after the fire, Wenlocke would know which one and where.

*

Phoebe entered Lady Rivington’s elegant Park Lane house on Henry’s arm. She concealed a yawn. Her double life was more tiring than she expected. Henry was his usual amiable self, escorting Phoebe and Mary, and claiming to be the envy of other gentlemen for having two such beauties on his arm. There was a delay on the stairs as guests waited to be announced and greeted by their hostess.

“Tonight,” Henry told Phoebe, in the sort of stage whisper meant to be heard, “you’ll meet Mary’s secret admirer. He’s the real reason we hurried back to town.”

Phoebe peeked around Henry to see Mary’s reaction to her brother’s teasing. “A secret admirer?”

“Henry, you’re absurd. There’s nothing secret about my friendship with the Comte de Vanche .”

“He’s a count?” Phoebe asked.

“Well,” confided Henry, leaning down to speak in Phoebe’s ear over the buzz of conversation around them, “what passes for a count these days in France. Who knows when they’ll have another revolution and do away with titles altogether. They’ve certainly flirted with the notion any number of times.”

“He has English properties,” said Mary rather stiffly, as they moved up the stairs.

“But he lives abroad?” asked Phoebe.

“In the summer,” Mary said. “There’s a town he likes in Germany, in Homburg with springs and woods, that sort of thing.”

“Gambling, if you ask me,” said Henry. He received a glare from his sister.

“Phoebe,” she said. “I hope you’ll meet him with an open mind. He’s been a good friend to me these past two years.”

“Of course I will, Mary,” Phoebe reassured her as they reached Lady Rivington’s receiving line. She was conscious of her neglect of Mary. She had been so consumed with fear and worry for Andrew, she had quite forgotten that other people had lives. She needed to be more attentive.

After the program of a soprano and a pianoforte piece, Phoebe had mixed impressions of Mary’s count. Mary was obviously taken with him, and he made her laugh, which Phoebe believed to be important.

He was a powerful-looking man somewhere over forty, with the muscled thighs of a horseman. His face was too long to be conventionally handsome, but his crisp, curling hair was fair, and his eyes were blue. A ridge of vein marked his otherwise smooth, broad forehead. Phoebe thought it would be charitable to say that the count had a bit of French disdain for English dullness.

At the interval, Lady Rivington’s refreshment room reminded Phoebe of Berwick Street in the oddest sort of way. Two long rows of tables on either side of the room groaned with trays and plates and overflowing baskets of sweets, sandwiches, and fruits. Her ladyship’s guests squeezed and jostled down the middle between the two tables, exclaiming about the goodies and filling little plates.

As Phoebe decided between a rout cake and a syllabub, the count spoke directly to her. “I understand that you have been searching for your missing brother for some time.”

“A year.”

“So Miss Marchmont tells me. A year, is it? Is there no hope of finding him?” the count asked. “Or do you still have agents looking?”

Phoebe wondered why people’s well-intentioned concern so often seemed critical or required that she comfort them. “With my cousins’ help I retain one of London’s Bow Street Runners. Mr. Tanner has assured me that he is doing everything in his power to find my brother.”

“With no proper companion, you rely on your cousins a great deal, do you?” The count sipped his drink. “I’ve been abroad. Perhaps I have forgotten the English custom.”

“Yes.” Whatever the count meant to imply, Phoebe saw no point in denying her reliance on Henry and Mary.

“I can’t blame you,” he said. “Miss Marchmont speaks often of her concern for you. She is a most tenderhearted woman.”

That made Phoebe laugh. “Oh dear, Count, I hope my cousin Mary is not so tenderhearted. Living with our great-aunt Serafina as she does, it would be fatal to show the least tenderness. One would be quite shredded.” She gave the count a nod and moved to find her hostess and congratulate her on the success of the evening.

A few minutes later, a change in the program was announced. There was to be dancing after all. As furniture was moved and couples formed a line, Henry found Phoebe. He nursed a glass of claret, and stared resentfully at his sister, standing with the count, speaking animatedly. The count was attentive to her in a flattering degree that brought the blush up in her cousin’s usually pale cheeks. Again, Phoebe thought the count must have some hidden good points. Mary looked almost happy in his company.

Phoebe turned to Henry. “Where did Mary meet the count? She said he’s been her friend these two years.”

“Some party of Great-Aunt’s. He doesn’t dance, you know. Mary likes to dance, but he uses that cane, has some old injury to his foot.” After a moment Henry spoke again. “It’s no use. I can’t like him.”

“I know,” said Phoebe. She understood. One didn’t always like the people that one’s friends liked. She wasn’t sure why, but in the count’s face she could find no capacity for sympathy, not even when he looked at Mary.

*

Robin met Wenlocke at Tom Moody’s Fives Corner not far from the Turk’s Head Tavern on the east side of Soho. A round of sparring with one of Moody’s boys, all well-trained in the science of pugilism, would clear his head of Mrs. Kendall. He’d spent too many moments looking into that face, the case fading from his mind. He worked alone. He liked to lose himself in the details, letting each piece of evidence speak to him, and he wanted his evidence arranged his way. He could defend himself, but defending a woman from a knife-wielding attacker was not part of the job. He suspected that she was out somewhere among the fashionable, and told himself that he need not worry about her. Out of her disguise, she was safe.

Moody’s was a place where a man named Jones could be at ease. Tom Moody’s father, a free black man from Saint Kitt’s, ran a successful tailoring business near Golden Square. Moody, Sr. had educated his three sons, one a vicar, another a solicitor, and outfitted them in fine style. Only Tom Moody possessed his father’s business judgment, and saw an opportunity in providing a ring, equipment, and sparring partners not merely for the elite of Mayfair, but for clerks and tradesmen. His trainers were also in demand as models for various artists in Soho. Finch, who clerked for a firm of barristers, was the lost boy who first found Moody’s and told the others. Since then, Wenlocke had become an investor, and Moody liked to say that he made an exception to his no-toffs rule for the duke.

The converted warehouse establishment had two raised rings with ropes and padded floors covered with canvas. Around the rings were separate areas for stretching, pulling up on iron bars, or punching sand-filled leather bags. Prints on the walls depicted the legends of the ring—Cribb, Jackson, Mendoza, Molyneaux, Broughton, and Richmond. Also tacked to one wall were fading newspaper accounts of famous bouts. The place smelled comfortably male, sweaty and damp, warm and sour. Behind a long curtain, a separate area held a changing room, tubs for soaking muscles, baskets of towels, tables for rub downs, and stalls with buckets for washing down.

In the far ring, Wenlocke sparred with Nicos, a Greek trainer who could give a punishing workout. At thirty-two, a father of five, Wenlocke had forgotten none of the science they learned as boys. His hands up, he moved lightly on his feet, and his left shot out to quick effect.

Robin passed into the changing area. He showed his sliced limb to Simon Dodds, one of the older trainers at Moody’s, who cleaned and taped his thigh. The injury was minor, but a reminder that there was more to the case than first appeared. He had now exposed Mrs. Kendall, that is Lady Phoebe Marchmont, to a danger he did not yet understand. He wanted to come at the puzzle with a fresh mind. Sometimes it helped to let the body take over, while the mind wandered about undirected.

Robin warmed up and climbed into the second ring with Jack Bosley, a former sergeant of the 42nd. He and Bosley were well-matched in reach. In minutes, the case vanished from his mind, his concentration fixed on his opponent, his mind simply tuned to the movement of his hands and feet in familiar pattern of jab and block.

Wenlocke was waiting for him when Bosley called an end to the session. A short stroll took them to the Turk’s Head, where they found a corner table. A serving girl brought them ale and beef pies.

“You’ve got a case to tell me about?” Wenlocke began. “Does this mean that Mayne is giving you a chance to prove yourself?”

Robin nodded. “Did you find any gas or water works that were hiring after the fire?”

Wenlocke patted the breast pocket of his coat. “I have a map for you. What’s the case about? Can you say?”

Robin took a pull on his ale. For Wenlocke, as for Robin, the case recalled the past. “It’s an unsolved disappearance. A boy went missing almost a year ago, on the day of the fire.”

Wenlocke stilled. His hands, which had picked up knife and fork, froze. The moment passed, and Wenlocke stabbed a bit of pie with the fork. “Did something happen to revive the search?”

Robin explained the messenger at Mrs. Kendall’s kitchen door and the message wrapped around the coin. He did not mention the lady herself.

“So, there’s a threat to the boy. Who is he? Or can you tell me? Is this one of Mayne’s test cases?”

“It is.” Robin considered what he could say. Wenlocke would sense any omission or evasion. “The main lead in the case is a footman who was with the boy when he disappeared, a man named Leary, also missing. Leary has been sinking into poverty, dragging a sister and her two boys down with him. Digging work might be his last resort.”

“Not crime? Not kidnapping?”

“He may have been recruited to take the boy.”

“Recruited by whom? Someone in the missing boy’s family who stands in succession?”

“I can’t rule that out.” Naturally, that suspicion would occur to Wenlocke. The details were painfully similar to his abduction as a boy. In his case, he had been kidnapped by a tool of his grandfather. The puzzling element in Andrew Marchmont’s disappearance, was Robin’s sense of an organization behind the event. “I think there’s a society, the Benevolent Assistance League, that directs its recruits to act. Have you heard of it?”

“The Benevolent Assistance League?” Wenlocke shook his head.

“They have an office next to the hiring agency from which Leary presented papers he appears to have gained under a false name.”

Wenlocke gave Robin a sharp glance. “Too coincidental, you think?”

“Entirely. Leary kept a letter which says he was promised and given money for acting against his employer’s family.”

“You have been busy. What do you know about this league so far?”

“They use multiple agents who wear red ties to signal others. Shattuck, the used clothes dealer, may prepare false documents that enable them to place their recruits in targeted households.”

“Did one of them give you the slice on your leg?”

Wenlocke never missed anything. It was a quality of his that had kept them alive for nearly three years.

Robin nodded. “Yes. I suspect the league wants to silence Leary, so we… I have to get to him first.”

Wenlocke raised a brow. “We?”

“The client.” Robin tried to meet Wenlocke’s penetrating look with a level gaze of his own.

Wenlocke pulled a small folded map of London from an inner pocket and spread it on the table. “Then you’ll want to go here, I expect.” He tapped the map. “George Pritchard, a colleague of Xander’s in the gas lighting field is running a branch east off the original Bread Street line.”

For a moment Robin simply stared at the map. Bread Street.

“Brings it all back, doesn’t it?” Wenlocke said quietly.

Robin nodded. But he could handle Bread Street. Recently he had stopped at the school at the top of the street opposite the brewery to help Wenlocke’s sister-in-law Lady Cleo Jones get her reluctant brother to a family Christmas gathering. Robin had gone inside the building with no hesitation and come out untroubled by memories. Lady Helen Jones, another of Wenlocke’s sisters-in-law had turned the school into something far different from the place it had been. He looked up and caught Wenlocke watching him.

“Don’t you want to know the truth about your family?” Wenlocke asked. “You could be a secret lord.”

“Or, I could be someone’s by-blow, a bastard,” Robin said. “I’d rather be myself… just Jones, and I don’t need any other family.”

Wenlocke laughed. “Fine, but can I help with the case? Does this Benevolent Assistance League have an address? Who’s behind it? Do you know who the ratepayer on the property is?”

Robin gave the number on Dean Street. “The listed ratepayer since ’25 is an insurance company, Thames Property Recovery, Ltd.”

Wenlocke rose. “Let me ask Finch to go deeper into the records. If he can turn up a name, you’ll have something more to go on.”

Robin thanked him and tucked away the map. In Wenlocke’s carriage as they rolled smoothly across town to Robin’s lodging, Wenlocke spoke mainly of the newly wedded lost boys, Lark and Raven. The casual talk did not fool Robin. Wenlocke still wanted Robin’s permission to look for his first family.

But when Robin climbed down from the duke’s carriage, Wenlocke said only, “Let me know when you want to break into this Benevolent Assistance League. I’ll be there.”