Page 38

When her unexpected visitor had left, Rosanna felt a sudden wave of extreme tiredness sweep over her.

It was late now – past time she dragged herself to her aching feet and out of here, back to the cheap and insalubrious lodgings close by that she currently called home.

She sighed and rose, pressing the small of her back with her hands and then stretching, but then – would this night never end?

– the door creaked open again. And this time, she’d been listening for footsteps, in case the strange lady who’d made her indefinably uneasy might have decided to come back, but she’d heard nothing. Not a whisper.

It was a small, spare man in respectable but not expensive clothing – not quite a stranger from another world, like the woman who had flitted away a few minutes ago, though, because this fellow looked perfectly at home in the broken-down old playhouse, and what was more, she knew him, even though it had been years since she’d last set eyes on him.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said blankly. ‘What are you doing here, Ezekiel? Come to lock me up at last?’

‘Not unless you’ve done something wrong, Rosie,’ Mr Pennyfeather said genially, seating himself comfortably in the chair that Lavinia Thornfalcon had so lately occupied and looking about him with interest. He missed nothing, she knew. ‘ Have you done something wrong, my love?’

‘Not lately,’ she said shortly. She’d done quite a few things in her time that weren’t illegal but still weren’t right – but she had no intention of telling him about them. Apart from anything else, they’d be here all night. And he was no innocent, either.

‘Well then,’ he said, producing a long earthenware bottle and two small, heavy-bottomed tumblers from one of the capacious pockets of his overcoat, ‘very happy I am to hear it, both in my official capacity and as an old friend. And that being so, why not take a glass or two of heart’s ease with me? You look like you could do with it.’

‘Isn’t that the truth?’ she muttered. She still didn’t give the impression of being precisely delighted to see this fresh arrival, but she took the glass of gin and tossed it down all the same, as one accustomed to the action, then held it out for more directly.

‘Long day, Rosie?’ he asked as he poured. His deep-set eyes were shrewd and bright as he regarded her.

‘Long week, long month…’

‘Long life!’ he finished neatly, toasting her, and draining his glass as quickly as she had.

‘It doesn’t seem all that likely at the moment.’

‘Oh, nonsense, I’m sure, nonsense. You may be in low water just now, but you’ll come about.

You’re still a great lady and a great actress and very lovely woman.

A phenomenon. Yes indeed. I don’t like to think what Mrs Pennyfeather would say if she saw me with you now, so cosy together.

She’d have my guts for garters, so she would. ’

‘Ezekiel Pennyfeather, you can’t gammon me like all the rest, so save your breath to cool your porridge,’ she said tartly.

‘You always did like to play your little games of pretence, but there’s no need to try it on with me.

The only Mrs Pennyfeather living is your old besom of a mother, and if she thought you were claiming to be getting cosy with me, she’d laugh herself into a fit.

She knows better than that and so do I, and have these last thirty years.

You’re not in the petticoat line, Zeke, and never were. ’

‘Well, that could be because you broke my heart in a thousand pieces when I was no more than a green young chub,’ he replied, not the least disconcerted.

‘Of course I’ve never looked at another woman since – who would?

No one could ever compare to you, my lovely.

And didn’t your illustrious future career prove my superior taste and judgement? ’

She scoffed, and drank, and a little silence, by no means uncomfortable, fell between them.

‘More,’ he sighed at last, not apparently referring to the gin.

‘It’s more than thirty years, though, Rosie.

We’re neither of us getting any younger.

And I’m glad to hear from your own lips that you haven’t been getting in the suds, and I do devoutly hope that you plan to keep it that way.

It’d break my poor old heart all over again to have to take you in charge. ’

‘You always talked too much, even as a whelp,’ she said lazily, stretching and yawning as the gin warmed her. And then when his words sunk in, she straightened and looked at him with fresh suspicion. ‘What the devil do you mean?’ she shot back.

‘The thing is, Rosie, I happen to know the lady who just paid you a visit,’ he said calmly.

‘My God,’ she said, grabbing the bottle and sinking another glass of daffy without blinking, staring back at him fixedly. ‘You were following her, Miss Sugar Bubs.’

‘That’s Lady Sugar Bubs, I’ll have you know, and yes, I was,’ he admitted with a quick grin that made him look like a mischievous boy again for a moment.

‘In the execution of my official duties, of course. And can you imagine how surprised I was when she led me here, pretty much the last place you’d expect a gentry mort of her type to go, all the way from Berkeley Square in a hackney carriage?

You could have knocked me down with a feather. ’

‘We used to say, “You could have knocked me down with a sailor”,’ she said, suddenly wistful. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Of course I do. And God knows it was true.’

‘Of you and me both, my dear. It’s not some trap then, Zeke?’

‘Not on my part,’ he said gently. ‘I had no idea she was coming to see you when we set off on our little adventure, though of course I know now why she did.’

‘It’s that obvious?’

‘She seems to think she’s subtle, but she really isn’t, Rosie. She’s about as subtle as a brick in the face. Did she tell you what she wanted?’

Rosanna shrugged carelessly. ‘She means to serve the Wyvernes a bad turn, that’s all she said, and thought I might help her. Would pay me handsomely for it. I’ve no fondness for them, as all the world knows. Neither does she, it seems.’

‘And did she tell you why?’

‘No, not properly. Some stupid ton catfight, I thought. Why should I care, if she’s sporting the blunt?’

‘So you don’t know that young Lady Amelia Wyverne – your stepdaughter, in case you’d forgotten – has just recently got herself betrothed to Lord Thornfalcon?’

‘Who’s likely to tell me?’ she said with a touch of bitterness. ‘I’m not taking tea with the old Queen every Wednesday and chatting about the latest news over little iced cakes. I’ve never met the chit, and they won’t be asking me to the fancy wedding, you can be sure of that.’

‘Nor her, if they can help it. She’s Lady Thornfalcon, Sugar Bubs is, and she was married to the present lord’s older brother, but he died.

She and the current lord were childhood sweethearts first – just like you and me, my love, but a good bit hotter and heavier, is my guess – and she’s desperate to take up where they left off.

She means to marry him. He’s a fine, big figure of a man, my dear, such as any woman might get a yearning for once she’s had a taste.

Not just a woman, if we’re being honest. And then it’s a different matter, as you know yourself, to be a wife with an indulgent husband than a poor widow counting out the pennies. ’

‘Her husband’s brother, though? Is that legal?’ Despite herself, Rosanna was interested. It was a distraction from her own desperate situation – a glimpse of a world she’d never truly been part of, and which seemed even more distant now.

He held out his hand and rocked it from side to side.

‘It’s tricksy, like a lot of things – it looks legal if nobody questions it and goes to hell in a handbasket the instant anybody does.

But whatever the rights of it, he’s not keen on being leg-shackled to her, for which I can’t blame him, for in my opinion, she’s as mad as a horse, however much of a prime article she is.

Now he’s engaged himself instead to your young Amelia, and Sugar Bubs is far from pleased, as you’d imagine.

And what I’m sure your new friend didn’t rush to tell you is that somebody, as yet unidentified, pushed the girl down a set of steps a few days ago in the middle of a ball, and damn near finished her off.

Would have, probably, if Thornfalcon hadn’t jumped in quick as a flea to save her. Very touching, I hear it was.’

‘The chilly bitch did it? That’s a bold move. Dangerous. Mind, I did think she looked like she was queer in the attic.’

‘Dicked in the nob, for sure, she is. And no, not in person she didn’t. Can’t have done. But she’s up to her pretty neck in it all the same. There’s a lot of foolish wenches take her as their heroine, and who knows what they’d do if she asked nicely?’

‘And you’re investigating.’

He tipped his glass in toast to her, emptied it down his throat, and courteously drained the last drops from the bottle into hers. ‘Bow Street’s finest, my angel, called in on cases of particular delicacy. Scandals in high life, and so on, such as this.’

‘So you’re warning me off,’ she said slowly. ‘For my own protection.’

‘Not exactly,’ he replied, pulling his chair closer to hers in a confidential manner. ‘God forbid I should come between you and a nice little purse of yellow boys, which I know you need just at the moment, being temporarily embarrassed as you are. This is what I have in mind, Rosie…’