Almost a Princess (5 page)

“But I’m not alone. There are other single women like me who have rented rooms, and I have the best room of all. It’s on the ground floor, with a view of the river, and there’s a French door onto the terrace so that Lance can come and go as he pleases. Don’t worry, Freddie. There are plenty of footmen about, so we’re all quite safe. Besides, I have Lance.”

He looked as though he might say more, but when she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek, he sighed, said his farewells, and left.

When she entered her own room, she went straight to the French door, unlocked it, and stepped outside. A few moments later, Lance came padding in. She caressed his huge head; he licked her hand, then sniffed her gown and wrap while she stood there patiently, waiting for his curiosity to be satisfied. That done, he padded over to the hearth and settled down for the night.

Before undressing, she took one last look at her reflection in the looking glass. The gown was everything she’d hoped it would be. She’d made it herself from a pattern she’d seen in
La Belle Assemblée,
and it had been packed away in tissue paper, waiting for just the right occasion to make an appearance. She was glad she’d worn it tonight, glad that Lord Castleton had seen that there was more to Miss Plain Jane Mayberry than the dowd he’d met that morning.

The stray thought brought her up short. This was dangerous thinking. She hadn’t worn the gown because she craved masculine attention, but because she liked pretty things. She had a box of pretty things in Hillcrest, her house near Highgate, and when the occasion demanded, she was happy to wear them. The trouble was, she had few occasions to wear them.

She sat on the edge of the bed, lifted her skirts, and stared contemplatively at her silk-shod legs. This was luxury on a grand scale. Silk stockings cost ten shillings a pair, and she didn’t have the funds to indulge in them too often. They represented several hours of hard work at her desk, writing pamphlets, speeches, and articles that various clients had solicited, clients that had come to her on Lady Octavia’s recommendation.

She didn’t know why she was sighing. She was the luckiest girl in the world. She loved her work, she had good friends, and she was solvent. What more could she want?

Lance was looking at her. She got off the bed. “My trouble,” she said, “is that I don’t have enough to occupy me when I’m in town. Well, that will all change tomorrow when we go home. We’re having company, did I tell you? Miss Emily Drake. I know you’ll be kind to her because she’s a runaway like us.”

As she got ready for bed, her thoughts drifted to Gideon Piers. That’s what had brought the earl into her life, his investigation of a murder that somehow was connected to Gideon. It didn’t make sense. Then, of course, the earl wasn’t interested in helping her make sense of things.

Her feelings for Letty’s brother had always been ambivalent. He hadn’t been much of a brother to Letty. On the other hand, his devotion to his mother had been unquestionable. It had always chafed him that his mother had been given a pauper’s burial and he’d promised Letty that one day he’d have their mother’s remains removed to a proper churchyard with a proper service. He’d kept his promise, but he’d done it posthumously, through his last will and testament.

She and Oliver had arranged everything. It was just too much for Letty who had two babies to look after by this time. But Gideon’s gesture had impressed them all. It was more than a gesture. He’d left enough money to cover all the expenses, and the expenses were considerable.

She blew out the candle and crawled into bed. She fell asleep trying to imagine how she would have turned out if she’d been raised in a poorhouse.

In the aftermath of their pleasure, Case felt physically replete and vaguely relieved. Nothing had changed. Amelia had been the perfect solution to his black mood. They’d been lovers once before and she hadn’t disappointed him. She had a carnal appetite to match his own. She was just the kind of woman he preferred.

There were no promises on either side when he left her, and that was something else he liked about Amelia. She wouldn’t make claims on him any more than she would allow him to make claims on her. And he could count on her discretion. She had a position in society to maintain, and though the whole world might suspect that she had taken a lover, as long as she was discreet, she would still be invited everywhere.

It was different for a man. He could be as indiscreet as he liked and no one would raise an eyebrow. It was unjust, but it was the way of their world. The woman always paid the penalty.

Amelia’s house was just off Berkeley Square and only a ten-minute walk to his own rooms in the Albany. In spite of the late hour, there were plenty of people about, and plenty of carriages and hackneys coming and going. This was Mayfair, where the residents rose at noon and idled the hours away in a round of partying until they fell into bed just before dawn.

He waved a hackney away and decided the cool night air was just what he needed to clear his mind. He thought about Jane Mayberry on the walk home and felt a small pang of guilt for having set Harper to watch her. He’d done it on the spur of the moment and now he regretted it. Law-abiding, decent citizens had a right to their privacy.

She’s very beautiful.
Amelia’s words flitted into his mind.
Beautiful
wasn’t the word he would use to describe Jane Mayberry.
Uncommon,
perhaps, or
arresting.
Her face had character and intelligence rather than the perfection beauty demanded. Freddie had seemed quite taken with her. He wondered what their relationship was.

He was suddenly as restless as he had been before his encounter with Amelia. For once, he didn’t try to trace the source of his irritation. He resolutely put Jane Mayberry from his mind and on the rest of the walk home, concentrated on Gideon Piers, speculating on why it had taken him three years to show his hand again, and finally debating whether everyone else was right and he was wrong. Maybe Piers really
was
dead; maybe the murder in Hyde Park
was
the work of someone impersonating Piers and that would be the end of it.

The porter opened the great iron gates for him, and as Case crossed the courtyard to the front portico of the house, he noted that the windows in his own rooms were ablaze with lights. They shouldn’t have been. He’d told his manservant and Harper not to wait up for him. One candle in the hallway was all that was required to light his way.

He took the portico steps two at a time and made straight for his rooms on the first floor up. Ruggles, his manservant, opened the door for him.

As he divested his master of his coat, hat, and gloves, Ruggles said, “It’s Harper, your lordship. He was set upon and robbed outside the King’s Theater. He suffered a concussion, but that’s not all. I think he may have broken a rib. He won’t let me send for the doctor.”

Case lost no time in crossing to the parlor. Two steps into the room, he halted. Relief washed through him and a smile curled his lips. Harper was wrapped in a blanket and seated in front of a blazing fire, looking as cross as Case had ever seen him.

“It’s about time you got here,” Harper said. “Now would you mind telling this . . . this fusspot,” indicating Ruggles, “that beef tea is for invalids and not veterans of the Spanish Campaign? There’s nothing wrong with me that a wee dram won’t cure.”

The effect of this little speech was ruined when he suddenly clutched his side and groaned.

Ignoring Harper, Ruggles said, “A lump on the head as big as a turnip, your lordship, and no one knows what other injuries he sustained in the attack. He really ought to see a doctor. He hardly knew his own name when I questioned him.”

Ruggles, red-haired, freckled, and in his early thirties, was a well-bred servant who was unfailingly pleasant whatever the provocation. He was supplied by the Albany, one of the services the management offered its residents, and Case was determined that if he ever left the Albany, he’d take Ruggles with him no matter how much it cost to break his contract.

“How did he get home?”

“The Watch found him and sent him home in a hackney.”

“Get the doctor.”

No protest from Harper this time. He was too busy trying to find a position to ease the pain in his side. “Bastards,” he said. “They must have kicked me when they dumped me in the alley.”

“I’ll get you that ‘wee dram,’ ” said Case.

Harper’s beaming smile lasted until Case handed him a glass with a thimbleful of brandy in it. “I don’t call that much of a reward,” he said, “after what I’ve been through.”

“You’ll get your reward after the doctor has had a look at you. No. No more arguments. Tell me what happened.”

Harper bolted the brandy and licked his lips. “What happened,” he said, “was that I did exactly as you told me. I kept my eyes on Miss Mayberry. When she and her little party left the theater, so did I. When they flagged a hackney, so did I, only when I entered
my
hackney, someone poked a pistol in my back and followed me in. My head exploded and the next thing I knows I’m lying in the lane behind the Hay-market with the Watch crouched over me, shaking me awake.”

“You were robbed,” said Case, more a statement than a question.

“Just the opposite. I said I was robbed so your man would stop pestering me with questions.” He held out his clenched fist. “Look what I found in my pocket,” he said.

Case held out his hand and stared at the object Harper placed in it. It was a small, round pebble.

Chapter 5

You took care of it personally?” “Hardly. Like you, I’ve come up in the world, Gideon. I don’t get my own hands dirty. But the men I used know what they’re doing.” “Fine. Then tell me how it was done.”

John Merrick sighed. Gideon Piers was turning out to be a monumental pain in the arse. Everything had to be explained to him in minute detail. “One of my men followed the bodyguard into the hackney. After stunning him, he ordered the driver to stop, saying that his friend wasn’t feeling well. Bart was waiting for him in the lane. They made sure Harper would be out of commission for a while, then they left. No witnesses worth mentioning. Everything went according to plan.”

Gideon Piers allowed himself a small smile. He was well satisfied with how things were progressing, and after tonight, there would be no question in Castleton’s mind that Gideon Piers had risen from the ashes. Good. Let the earl stew. Let him wonder where and when he would strike next.

He looked at the man seated on the other side of the fire. They were in a private parlor in the Rose and Crown on Oxford Street, and though it was very late, there was much coming and going on the street below the windows: wheels rattling over cobblestones, the jingle of harness, occasionally a voice raised to hail a passing hackney. London, it seemed, never went to sleep and neither did the Rose and Crown, which was why Piers had chosen to put up here for the few weeks he would be in town. He could come and go at all hours of the day or night without rousing anyone’s suspicions.

“Tell me about Castleton,” he said.

Merrick grinned. He was thirtyish, of medium height, stocky, and unremarkable at first glance. A closer look would reveal that his garments were of the first quality and he was fastidious about his tailoring and person. He had expensive tastes and the money to indulge them. Much the same could be said about Piers. He was of the same age, pleasant looking and immaculately turned out, but he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. He was, however, leaner and harder than Merrick, the result of his years in Spain and his devotion to the gentlemanly pursuits of fencing and boxing. Merrick was more often to be found at the card table.

He’d known Merrick for a long time, from their poorhouse days. They had once been partners in crime, petty thieves who’d stolen from the homes of the wealthy in Mayfair to augment their paltry wages as clerks. Their careers as housebreakers had come to a sudden end when they’d killed a wealthy merchant who had surprised them in the act. When the authorities started closing in on them, Merrick had retired to his home in Yorkshire for a time while he, Gideon, decided to try his luck as a soldier.

He had no qualms about Merrick’s loyalty, not if the price was right. All the same, Piers revealed as little as possible of his private life. Merrick had no idea that he had established a new identity in Bristol. He was Arthur Ward, a wealthy man of business with an interest in various trading companies around the world. To give Merrick his due, he wasn’t overly interested in Piers’s new life. He, too, regarded himself as a man of business, and his services and connections did not come cheaply.

Merrick said, “Castleton made it easy for us. Halfway through the performance, he left with a lady by the name of Mrs. Standhurst. His bodyguard did not go with him.”

“Who is Mrs. Standhurst?”

“A new light o’ love is my guess.”

Piers frowned. He’d spent the last month gathering information on everyone the earl was close to. This was the first he’d heard of a Mrs. Standhurst. He didn’t like last-minute wrinkles in a plan that he was ready to set in motion.

“What about Harper?” he asked. “Why didn’t he follow them?”

“Now this is interesting. By all appearances, he was left to watch the party in Box Twelve, Viscount Latham, his sister, and a female companion.”

Piers knew all about Viscount Latham and his sister. They weren’t important. “Do you have the name of the companion?”

“Jane Mayberry. Yes, you may well stare. The same Jane Mayberry that Castleton saw this morning at the library, then followed to your sister’s place, and encountered tonight at the opera. What’s his interest in her, Gideon?”

Piers shook his head. “I have no idea, unless he thinks she’s acting as a courier between my sister and me.” There was a pause as he thought things through. “All I remember about the woman is that she taught at the charity school with my sister, and that they were good friends.” He looked at Merrick. “She’s a bookworm and a dowd. Hardly Castleton’s type.”

“She didn’t look like a bookworm tonight at the opera. She was dressed to turn heads and you’d be surprised how many heads turned to stare at her. Castleton’s included.”

“Yet Castleton left with this other woman, what’s her name?”

“Mrs. Amelia Standhurst. But I saw the look he gave the Mayberry woman, and I’d say there’s something between them.”

There was another pause as Piers digested this.

“What do you want me to do about her?” asked Merrick finally.

“Nothing. No doubt he thinks she can lead him to me. She’s not important. If her name comes up again, then we’ll take a closer look at her.”

“And the Standhurst woman?”

“What do you know of her?”

“Nothing, so far, except her name.”

“Then find out if she’s important to Castleton.”

Merrick cocked his head to one side, studying the other man. Finally, he said, “It’s been two months since you employed my services, Gideon, and apart from that first spectacular kill in Hyde Park, you’ve had me do nothing more than amass a mountain of information on Castleton, his friends, his associates, and his women. I know Castleton is your target, so why are we holding off? Why not simply eliminate him? What’s the point in the delay?”

“Through no fault of mine, my schedule had to be rearranged. Hence, the delay.”

“What schedule?”

Piers smiled and stood up, indicating the interview was over. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you. When the need arises, I’ll tell you. But one thing I want to make absolutely clear. No one touches Castleton. He’s mine, and I’ll deal with him in my own time.”

After Merrick left, Piers lit a cheroot from the candle on the mantel, and stood there, in front of the fire, idly smoking it. He was reflecting on Merrick’s words: Why are you holding off? Why not simply elimi
nate him?

Because that would be too easy; because he wanted Castleton to know that Gideon Piers was calling the shots. Their positions were reversed. He was the hunter and the earl was his prey. It had taken him almost three years to recover from the debacle in Spain. He wasn’t interested in a quick kill. He wanted to savor the pleasure of having at his mercy the high-and-mighty Major, Lord Caspar Devere, who had hunted him from pillar to post and cornered him like a rat in the monastery of St. Michel.

He was, however, a lot more cautious now than he was then. He didn’t want to stir up a hornets’ nest until after he’d made the kill. No one cared about the murder of John Collier. He was a nobody, a mere solicitor’s clerk. Harper, the bodyguard, was different. He was a celebrity, but more important, he was a Special Branch agent. If he’d had Harper killed, Special Branch would move heaven and earth to find the killer of one of their own.

He looked up when the door opened to admit Joseph, his right-hand man. They’d been together now for more than five years, and Joseph was about the only person Piers trusted. Joseph’s loyalty was unswerving, largely because Piers had rescued him, a Spanish deserter, from a band of Spanish soldiers who were on the point of executing him. And that’s how they’d started out, just the two of them, fending for themselves. And that’s how it had ended.

Joseph was a good ten years older than Piers. He had the face of an ascetic and gave the impression of being slow-witted, but that was a false impression. In his native tongue, he could be quite voluble when he wanted to be; in English he frequently had to search for words.

Joseph said, “I watched Merrick leave. No one followed him.”

Piers was amused. “You worry too much, Joseph. I’m not expecting trouble. If we’d killed Harper, that would be different, though I can’t see how Special Branch could trace us. No, this is between Castleton and me, and he doesn’t know anything.”

“Trouble comes when you least expect it—isn’t that what you English say? And that English milord, he’s clever that one, like a fox.”

Piers masked his irritation behind a smile. If Joseph had been anyone else, he would have annihilated him with a few well-chosen words. No one praised the Earl of Castleton in his hearing. But Joseph hated the earl almost as much as he did, hated him and was just as eager to see him suffer and pay for his crimes.

“If he was as clever as you make out,” he said pleasantly, “he would have known I hadn’t died in the slaughter at St. Michel.”

“How could he? He doesn’t know your face.”

“Precisely. Poor Halford. I was sorry to sacrifice him, but he made it so easy. He had to have a rose just like mine tattooed on his left arm. And so we escaped.”

“Dressed as women!” Joseph said scornfully, but he smiled.

“Chivalry is one of the earl’s weaknesses,” Piers replied.

It had been a brutal fight, he remembered, with the only chance of escaping certain death when Lord Castleton called a truce to allow the women and children to go free. Piers and Joseph, disguised as women, had joined the caravan that fled the doomed monastery. The humiliation of it, his abject defeat and subsequent flight, still had the power to make him writhe.

Piers gestured to the bottle and glasses on the sideboard. “Help yourself to cognac and pour one for me.”

It was a regular ritual, this sharing a glass of fine cognac before retiring for the night, a symbol of mutual respect and friendship. But Piers didn’t really regard Joseph as a friend. In fact, he didn’t have any friends, didn’t want any, though there were many in Bristol who would have been surprised to hear it. Friendship implied intimacy, a sharing of confidences, and for all his charm, Piers shared himself with no one.

They pulled chairs up to the fire and sipped their drinks for a moment or two in silence, but Joseph’s words were still turning in his mind, still rankling and he felt compelled to justify himself.

“You credit the earl with too much intelligence. Collier’s execution has him completely baffled, and not only Castleton, but the authorities also. They’ve had a month to investigate, and it was just as I told you. They don’t know where to begin to look for me.”

Joseph, no connoisseur, gulped at his cognac as though he were drinking beer. “I wasn’t thinking about now,” he said slowly. “I was thinking about the past, about St. Michel. He found us there.”

“It won’t happen this time.” Piers’s words were clipped, almost angry. “There is no Judas to betray our movements, no John Collier to give us false information.”

That’s how Castleton had found him. It was a trap. Collier was their spy at headquarters. As he’d done in the past, he alerted them to the presence of a British convoy escorting a wagon of gold to headquarters. There was no gold, only Castleton and his crack unit of killers waiting for them.

Collier maintained his innocence to the end, but it had not saved him. Whenever there was a question of a man’s loyalty, Piers always erred on the side of caution. And traitors deserved no mercy.

“What about your sister?” asked Joseph.

“What about her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she knows something.” Piers smiled. “As far as Letty knows, I died in Spain fighting for king and country. I’m sure the thought brings her solace. She will never believe anything bad of me. Besides, what can she say? She knows nothing.”

“She knows your face.”

Piers let out a long, patient sigh. “We’re not likely to come face-to-face, but if we do and she recognizes me, she won’t give me away. We’re family. That means something to Letty.”

In fact, if he came face-to-face with his sister, he wasn’t at all sure what he would do, but he knew how Joseph’s mind worked, and he knew how to manipulate him. There was nothing Joseph prized more than family. The only real family Joseph had ever known were the “Brothers”—that’s what they called themselves, not deserters or bandits, but “Brothers.” Anyone who betrayed a brother was beyond the pale, and dealt with accordingly.

The reference to family put Joseph in a nostalgic frame of mind, and he reminisced for a while about the good old days, when the Brothers were warlords in their own domain, until the English milord came among them and spoiled everything. Now there were only two left, himself and Piers, and the souls of the dead Brothers that cried out for blood.

After five minutes of listening to Joseph’s rambling, Piers suddenly got up. “I’m going out,” he said.

Piers never went anywhere without Joseph, so he got up as well. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“To Twickenham.”

Joseph groaned. Twickenham, always Twickenham. “It’s late,” he said, “and it’s miles away.”

“The trouble with you is you’ve grown soft. Go to bed, Joseph. I’ll go myself.”

Joseph knew better than to accept that offer. He followed his master out.

It was a grim-faced, three-story building with windows in the attics. Originally, it had been a barracks, and the acreage on which it stood was the parade ground, but that was before living memory. Sometime during the last century, it had been turned into a poorhouse, but the name Barracks had stuck. It had stood empty and neglected for a long, long time, but had been recently acquired by Mr. Arthur Ward from Bristol.

He would raze it to the ground, thought Piers, and build a house to rival other grand houses in the area, especially the house just across the river. Twickenham House. The name, the memories, were burned into his brain.

He left Joseph to explain their presence to the watchmen he’d hired to keep trespassers away, and he walked along the riverbank till he came to a gap in the trees. Across the river, the Deveres’ stately home was quite visible, though on his side of the river it was as dark as pitch. The Deveres, the high-and-mighty Deveres, had money enough to keep the darkness at bay. Outside lanterns were still lit, and though the duke and Lady Sophy must have gone to their beds long since, lights shone from the upstairs windows. God forbid that a Devere should waken and find himself in darkness.