Ghost of the Thames (21 page)

She withdrew her hands from his grasp
and sat back, looking away again. He felt the curtain draw, saw her
shut herself off from him. “Yes. Very different.”

As much as he would have liked to ask
her more questions, Edward knew he was hiding things from her, as
well. He no longer entertained any doubt as to Sophy’s identity,
but he was saying nothing to her about what he and Dickens had
discovered. And as much as he tried to rationalize that it was for
her safety that he was doing this, he still questioned whether it
was right to withhold the truth from her.

“Miss Burdett-Coutts told me on the
way out that she is going to send the sitar over to you tomorrow or
the next day. She recognizes the significance of it in helping you
remember.”

“Her kindness astounds me. But I know
the reason for it.” She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Thank
you, Captain.”

Edward fought the urge of reaching for
her. He had missed her. Every moment they’d been apart, he had been
thinking about her. He wanted her . . . badly.

“I don’t deserve any
credit.”

“But you do,” she argued. “I cannot
even begin to thank you for your generosity. Since saving my life,
you have continued to provide me with so much. The dresses,
the—”

“No. Please do not mention any of it.
Whatever you need, and everything you ask for, and anything I
provide you with, they are just a gift from one friend to another.
You have no obligations to me, no reason to feel indebted in any
way.”

“Is this what we are then?
Friends?”

“Friends,” he repeated in a lower
voice.

She started to say something, but
paused and played with the edge of her cloak for a few moments. She
finally looked up.

“And you wish for us to be nothing
more.”

Her words cut through the
lie he was telling her. He remembered Wren’s attentions to Sophy
tonight. And
that
blackguard was his
friend
. He wouldn’t have a chance
with her once she began attending parties and making her way around
London society. And once the Season began in earnest after
Christmas, there would be no stopping her. As it should
be.

CHAPTER 22

“It is undoubtedly the same woman,”
Dickens said excitedly. “This Priya that Sophy mentioned must be
the same woman that John Warren is keeping safely tucked away in
his residence--and not with the rest of the servants, but
separately. She never leaves, by all accounts, nor has she received
any visitors since arriving in London.”

“Warren is keeping her
prisoner?”

“She is a servant. But I don’t know if
this is by choice or not.”

As the two men strode along Bishops
Walk past Lambeth Palace, Edward gazed vacantly at a boat builder’s
raw timber and sawed planks stacked up along the riverbank. Four
men were sweating, in spite of the biting cold wind, as they
silently loaded wood onto a cart. Edward had just caught up with
the novelist a few minutes earlier and given him the name Sophy had
mentioned last night.

“How do you know so much about her?”
he asked.

“I still have friends in the newspaper
business,” Dickens replied as they worked their way around the
cart. “A court reporter I know has been investigating to write a
story on the Warren heiress. He has stymied at every turn, he says,
trying to speak to this woman. She’s the last one who saw Sophy,
apparently, before she fell into the river.”

“Has he gone by the Warren house?”
Edward wanted to know.

“Everything but knocked at the door.
He has even posted of a letter to John Warren, asking his
permission to speak with her. No response.”

As he spoke, Edward saw that Dickens
was watching two bent-backed river men just offshore, leaning on
their oars and exchanging words. One was pointing upriver as the
two boats drifted along.

“So for the past couple of days,” the
novelist continued, “my acquaintance has been waylaying some of the
other Warren servants at the market and paying them for
information. And what I told you is what he has
learned.”

“Does he have any knowledge of the
kind of schedule Warren follows? Is there a certain time of the day
that he is, perhaps, not at home?”

“Indeed, we are thinking along the
same lines, Captain,” Dickens replied. “I have already instructed
my reporter friend to get just exactly that information. I intend
to accompany him and call on the Bengali woman the next time that
we are certain Mr. Warren will be absent for any length of
time.”

The lane narrowed as they reached a
row of shops and houses that now lined the riverbank on their
left.

“Before you ask,” Dickens continued,
“I do not believe you should be joining us for the
visit.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Captain Edward Seymour would
attract too much attention. I will simply accompany the reporter
and stand back. Having you along would raise a red flag for Warren
and possibly expose Sophy.”

Dickens was right. The last thing he
wanted to do was to expose her whereabouts to John Warren right
now.

“Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll be most
careful to not give any indication that we are acquainted with the
young heiress. I will do nothing that will endanger
her.”

CHAPTER 23

Peter Hodgson knew that the world was
a place where only the fittest survived. In the past, fitness was a
matter of strength—the strongest warrior, the strongest castle
wall. In this modern age of industry and finance, though, fitness
was a matter of wit and intelligence, and the willingness to gut an
opponent of his financial and social power when the opportunity
arose.

And the survivors, the fittest, kept
their eyes open for that opportunity.

Peter had long ago cast aside any
weakness or timidity when it came to bending rules and going down
illicit paths. In recent months, especially, he’d found himself
throwing caution to the wind many times to better himself and his
place in the world.

Still, for all his desire to establish
himself, there was a voice inside him that he could not completely
silence. It was a voice that he tried to quell, that reminded him
of where he had come from, of those who had striven so hard to
raise him. There were days when he could not put off the burning
sensation in the pit of his stomach that told him he was going too
far, venturing too deeply into a place of darkness, into a place
from which a man might not find redemption.

For Peter Hodgson, today was such a
day.

Since his school days, he’d heard
tales of the underworld king named Shill. The man was more than
just a butcher or a mastermind. Shill was the very devil himself.
Today, Peter had received an order from John Warren that he was to
make use of several men connected to Shill.

This would go badly, he knew. One does
not deal with the devil.

But John Warren wanted
answers.

Two gentlemen, referring
to themselves as members of the press but offering no calling
cards, had shown up at Warren’s residence while he was away from
the house. One had introduced himself as Mr. More, a reporter for
the
Times
. The
other had not given a name. After asking to speak with Priya, they
were rebuffed by the butler. Apparently, they had even offered a
bribe to gain access to the Bengali woman. Still finding no
success, they had gone away in a huff.

And even though the second man had not
identified himself, Warren’s butler had recognized him. He was
Charles Dickens, the novelist.

There were intelligent and
aboveboard ways of dealing with this, Peter had thought. He would
have gladly gone to the
Times
office and spoken to Mr. More about the visit.
But Warren wouldn’t have it. Instead, he had brooded for several
hours and then sent a footman off with a message to one of his
employees down by the river.

And now, Hodgson found himself at a
private table in a squalid hole of an oyster house in which the
smell of fetid fish battled with that of stale beer. Keeping his
gloves and cane in his lap, he looked around the scarred wood table
at the three men he was meeting with, men notorious for being among
the most dangerous cutthroats in London.

“My employer says that you are to
follow the novelist wherever he goes. You are to take notice of
whomever he sees and you are to bring back report of it back to me.
We are interested in a specific person the novelist might
communicate with.”

Two of the men exchanged glances of
amusement, while the third stared at his hands. Regardless of the
generous offer of compensation, the nature of the job didn’t seem
to excite any of them.

“Who is the person ye’ll be wantin’?”
one of the thugs wanted to know.

“A woman. A young woman of quality
approximately twenty years of age.”

“A woman, ye say?” The other two were
now interested.

“Indeed. Brown hair. Medium height.
Attractive . . . no, beautiful actually. Quite easy on the eyes. No
pockmarks or scars. Well-proportioned face.” Hodgson was surprised
how clearly he remembered Catherine Warren’s face, though they had
only met once. He’d been too tongue-tied by her beauty to say much
during the dinner they’d shared on board of the ship.

“Don’t much help us, now,” the thug
sitting across from him said. “What’s ‘er name?”

“Catherine.” Hodgson didn’t know if it
was wise to provide a last name, considering all that had been
written up in the newspapers. He looked at the three men. Plenty of
muscle, but he wondered if any one of them could read. “Her name is
Catherine Sophia. No need to know more.”

“And what do we do if we came across
such a jewel?”

Hodgson’s discussion with his employer
had not gone into great detail. But he had no trouble understanding
what John Warren’s wishes were.

“Kill her.”

CHAPTER 24

Sophy was tired of
socializing.

Tired of being dragged by Mr. and Mrs.
Dickens to dinner parties and luncheons. Tired of lying to gawking
strangers about a life she supposedly lived in Boston. It was
tiresome. And none of this helped to spur any more of her lost
memory. She was finding herself distracted wherever she went,
finding it difficult to focus on whomever she spoke with. She only
wanted to see one person. Talk to one person. Captain
Seymour.

Always there, Edward was polite but
distant. Accommodating but aloof. He was playing the role of
'friend' to perfection. At the same time, she felt an underlying
tension whenever Lord Latham showered her with
attention.

The clock downstairs chimed two, and
Sophy ran a nervous hand down the front of her riding habit. The
offer to take her riding today at Hyde Park was Lord Latham's, but
thankfully, her aloof friend had stepped in and taken over the
arrangement.

There was a knock on her door. Sophy
grabbed her veil and rushed to meet Captain Seymour.

*

Located on the south side of the park,
between Hyde Park Corner and Kensington, ‘Rotten Row’ was used only
for saddle horses. In the months of May, June, and part of July,
between the hours of five and seven in the evening, the broad,
packed sand path was crowded with hundreds of equestrians. The
reputation of the Row was that, during the Season, all the youth,
beauty, celebrity, and wealth in London may be seen on horseback
here, including the queen and her stiff necked German husband. Now,
with the sun setting early, and cold wet weather always a threat,
fewer riders could be seen exercising their mounts in the
evening.

Edward had suggested they arrive at
about three, when only serious equestrians would be on the Row.
Later, as darkness began to creep across the park and the
lamplighters began to make their rounds, the number of riders would
increase as the London set would arrive to socialize, show off
their finery, and compare invitations for the evening’s
entertainments.

Edward turned and watched Sophy as she
handled the chestnut thoroughbred expertly. The animal’s proud neck
arched as they loped side by side, her speed matching his. Her blue
veil fluttered in the breeze, and her fashionable gray riding habit
drew considerable attention from those they passed. He knew that
many would be wondering who she was.

A wisp of hair had torn
free of her riding hat, and he smiled as she glanced happily at
him. None of the hardships she’d endured had dampened her spirit of
independence, her
joie de vivre,
in the slightest. She was
irrepressible.

“Come on,” she said with a laugh,
nudging her mount into a gallop, with Edward right after
her.

His attempts at keeping his distance
were becoming a torment. At the same time, he understood how
important it was that Sophy understand exactly who she was. He had
no right to complicate her life further. Edward knew he could have
just told her. But after talking to some experts, Dickens didn't
agree. And there was also the matter of the circumstances of her
injury, and the people who might have caused it. There was a great
deal that she had to remember on her own.