The Bride Wore Pearls (16 page)

Quartermaine did not invite him to sit. “Lazonby here would like to learn, Pinkie, what you know about that reporter from the
Chronicle,
” he said. “And I confess I, too, have become curious.”

“Wot would I know of ’im?” asked Ringgold defensively. “We ain’t exactly bosom beaus. Chap passes through on occasion, going between Fleet Street and Whitehall. ’E’s a reporter, awright? Writes about crime and thievery sometimes. And ’e seems obliging enough.”

Anisha wondered what distinction, precisely, Ringgold drew between crime and thievery.

But Quartermaine merely relaxed into his chair and opened his hands wide. “And yet we are not quite on the way to Whitehall here, are we, Pinkie?” he said musingly. “Something brings the chap down this practically dead-end street. And if it is not your charm and wit, then it must be . . . well, what?”

Ringgold’s bottom lip protruded a fraction. “Well, I’m wot you’d call a connected chap, sir,” he said almost defensively. “You knows that. It’s why you hired me. Coldwater knows it, too. ’E likes ter arsk me for information from time ter time. About ’oo is ’oo, and ’oo’s up ter what—from the penny-thugs ter the fences and madams.”

Quartermaine tilted back in his chair and drew a mechanical pen back and forth between his fingers as he regarded Ringgold across the wide, walnut desk. “And what’s his interest in Lazonby?” he said quietly. “What has he asked you? And be precise, if you please.”

Ringgold’s lip drew in again, and his eyes narrowed. But he said nothing.

“Pinkie—?” This time Quartermaine’s tone brooked no opposition.

“Says ’e finks Lazonby ’ere got away wiv murder,” Ringgold finally answered, baring a set of yellowing canines. “Says the gents over at the St. James Society ’elped ’im do it, too. A cabal, ’e called them—like the Masons, but wicked. Claims they’d lie and cheat for one another, and that they do just enough of ’er Majesty’s bidding to be o’ use to ’er, and that’s ’ow they stay above the law.”

“If I were above the law,” Rance growled, “I’d already have strangled that lying little bastard.”

“Lazonby, really,” murmured Quartermaine, tilting his head in Anisha’s direction.

Rance looked at her and blanched. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “again.”

“And you, too, Pinkie,” Quartermaine added. “Keep a respectful tongue. Now what do you know of the man? Where is he from? Has he a family?”

Ringgold shrugged. “American, someone said,” he answered. “Never asked, meself. Got a sister up in Hackney, though.”

“How do you know?” Rance shot back.

Ringgold narrowed one eye at him. “ ’Cause I makes it me business ter know,” he said nastily. “Do I look like a bloomin’ idjit? A chap needs ter be sure just ’oo ’e’s dealing wiv, so I followed ’im one night as ’e left Fleet Street. But ’e don’t really live there. Keeps bachelor rooms off Shoe Lane.”

“American, hmm?” Quartermaine seemed to be mulling that one over. “A genuine revolutionary, then. No wonder he works for the
Chronicle
.”

“Aye, he might be American,” said Rance musingly. “There’s something odd about the fellow . . . something I’ve been unable to put a finger on.”

Inwardly, Anisha sighed. How had this conversation turned so completely to Jack Coldwater? Really, why had she come here? Rance did not need her; he was capable of feeding his simmering obsession with Coldwater without anyone’s help.

“These rooms near Shoe Lane,” said Quartermaine. “Have you been there?”

Ringgold looked uneasy. “Once er twice,” he admitted. “Coldwater’s been known ter grease a chap’s palm when he could provide certain kinds o’ information.”

Quartermaine cut him a dark glance. “You’d best not provide him any information about anyone in this street,” he growled. “And that includes the St. James Society, Pinkie. We’ve an understanding with the gents across the way—they don’t trouble us, and in return, we do not trouble them.”

Guilt sketched across Ringgold’s face, but he said nothing.

Quartermaine leaned across the desk. “I hope I have made myself clear,” he said warningly. Then, without waiting for an answer, he extracted a piece of paper from his desk drawer, slammed it shut, and handed it across to Ringgold. “Now write down the direction of Coldwater’s rooms and this sister.”

With another dark squint in Rance’s direction, Ringgold wrote out the addresses in a surprisingly neat copperplate as Anisha looked on.

“Thank you,” said Quartermaine, snatching up the paper to fan it dry. “Now from here out, you’re to tell Coldwater to stop loitering. Whatever his quarrel with Lazonby, he needs to take it elsewhere—they
both
need to take it elsewhere. I’m tired of hearing they’ve come to near fisticuffs on my doorstep. None of us need”—here he cut a warning look at Rance—“
any
undue attention from the authorities down our quiet little lane. Do we, Lord Lazonby?”

Rance stood, Anisha following suit. “No, I daresay not,” he said, taking the proffered paper. “Thank you, Quartermaine, for your help. And you, too, Pinkie. I’ve no quarrel with you. I’m an innocent man, and I’m just tired of Coldwater dogging me.”

Ringgold shrugged. “Eh, newspaper chaps,” he said offhandedly. “Obsessed wiv getting at the truth, I reckon.”

“If he’s so obsessed with getting at the truth,” Rance retorted, “tell him to figure out who killed Lord Percy Peveril, because by God, it wasn’t me.”

At that, Ringgold flashed his yellow teeth again. “If yer wants that little mystery solved,” he said, “seems to me yer about to put an influential friend in yer pocket.”

Rance looked at him blankly. “How so?”

The grin widened. “Wot, din’t I ’ere weddin’ bells across the way?” he said. “Reckon yer little scientific society is about to snare old Roughshod Roy by ’is—” Here, Ringgold looked at Anisha and blanched. “Well, by ’is nose, let’s say. De Vendenheim’s chit, now,
that’s
a prize.”

Rance grunted dismissively. “De Vendenheim’s not apt to intercede with Royden Napier on my behalf,” he said. “He doesn’t know me. Besides, he’s coming back to England but briefly. Just for the wedding.”

But Ringgold just shrugged. “Pr’aps so, but sometimes it’s more ’ow things looks that counts, Lazonby. I’d say Roy won’t trouble you further. And de Vendenheim—now there’s a chap that knows people. People ’oo knows people, and a lot of ’em dodgy. If yer knows wot I mean.”

Anisha understood. Like Calcutta, London had a desperate and furtive underclass—a world where the rule of law meant little and a man’s life could mean even less. Pimps, pickpockets, and prostitutes vied with cracksmen and con men to see who could most easily separate the other side of society from their coin—or their morals. But more interesting still was that twice in as many hours, someone was suggesting Geoff’s new bride might be worth more than her pretty face.

But there was nothing further to be said on the subject. Quartermaine meant to get on with his day and was already shaking Rance’s hand good-bye.

A few moments later, Anisha found herself going back up the stairs on Rance’s arm to the grand, sunlit entrance hall. “Well, that was interesting,” he said, pushing open the door for her and again setting his hand almost protectively at her spine.

Outside, Anisha turned on the pavement to look at him, but his hand lingered before falling away. “Well, what were you able to discern from them?” she murmured, setting her head to one side. “Is Quartermaine honest? Is Pinkie?”

Rance shook his head. “Quartermaine’s always been a hard one to judge,” he confessed. “In that line of work, they always are. Otherwise one cannot survive.”

“Do you think he’s evil?” asked Anisha.

Rance shrugged. “Define evil,” he said, turning to offer his arm. “He is dangerous, yes. But he’s also a businessman. Pinkie, on the other hand, is only as honest as he has to be. Nothing he said today was a lie—nor was any of it entirely the truth.”

“Do you still have a notion of hiring someone to poke about?”

Rance shook his head, then drew her to his side and laid his hand protectively over hers. “No,” he said as they set off. “No, I don’t think I trust them.”

At least the awkwardness between them had been dispelled, and she was glad they were at peace again. “Oh, well,” she said. “For my part, I thought it all rather exciting. After all, it was a gaming hell.”

But Rance did not reply. Instead, he was looking down the pavement—looking past her, and in the direction of St. James’s Street.

“What?” she said, following his gaze.

Something inside her went perfectly still.

Jack Coldwater was calling an omnibus to the corner by waving his black umbrella, his back turned to them. But his lithe frame and dull-colored mackintosh were unmistakable, even to Anisha.

She stopped abruptly. “He’s been poking around again, I suppose.”

“Aye, looking for Pinkie, I daresay.” Rance’s jaw was set implacably. “I ought to follow him. By God, I ought to follow him, corner him, and give him a piece of my mind—or my fist.”

Anisha glanced toward the St. James Society. Rance’s groom had already walked his horse down to the end of the lane and turned the carriage. And Anisha had had enough.

“Just go, then,” she said sharply. “Run after him, act the brute—or whatever game you mean to play—and make a fool of yourself again.”

The omnibus driver had clicked to his team, and the van was pulling away. Rance was watching, seemingly transfixed, as Coldwater shuffled sideways toward a thin woman with a large market basket. The wheel struck something, causing the van to lurch, and Coldwater was flung awkwardly into his seat.

Rance cursed softly beneath his breath. His horse had clopped to a halt and now stood at Anisha’s elbow, mouthing his bit and snorting impatiently.

Anisha felt much the same. “Look,” she said less sharply, “there’s a hackney drawing up near the Carlton Club. Go. Take it. I can drive myself back to Mayfair.”

She could see that Rance was eager to do just as she’d suggested—fairly aquiver with it, like a foxhound waiting to be unleashed.

“I said
go,
for heaven’s sake,” she repeated.

Something in her sharp tone got through to him then. Rance turned on the pavement to face her, his back to the street. His hands caught her upper arms harshly, as if he might shake her. “Anisha, please. I—” His words fell away, his eyes drifting over her face, bleak and sad.

She threw him off almost violently and stepped back into the shadow of Quartermaine’s door. She was
jealous
. Jealous of his obsession with Jack Coldwater. And the realization sickened her. “What?” she whispered. “Just go, Rance. I am not stopping you. You owe me nothing.”

He swallowed hard, his throat working up and down. “Anisha, I sometimes think I owe you—well, more than I can ever repay. And I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid perhaps you will never know.”

They were not talking about the fact that he had escorted her down to St. James and was now obligated to escort her home again. No, the conversation had somehow—and suddenly—gone in an entirely different direction.

But Anisha was having none of it. “All I understand is that you are still obsessed with Jack Coldwater,” she said, her voice low and tremulous. “You hate him, and yet you think of him constantly. You think . . . my God, Rance, I don’t know what you think. But Coldwater cannot help you exonerate yourself. He wants you to
hang,
can’t you see?”

“But he knows something,” said Rance. “Doesn’t he? I mean—he
must
.”

“He knows how to yank your leash, certainly,” she retorted. “Now I am going to take Jacobs and drive myself up to Mayfair. Shall I send your carriage home? Or will you retrieve it?”

“Nish, I can’t let you do that,” he said.

“Why? I invited myself, did I not?” She turned and climbed into the cabriolet alone, then snapped her fingers for the reins. “Up on the back, Jacobs, if you please.”

Without so much as looking at his master, Jacobs leapt to do her bidding.

“Anisha, really,” Rance said, but it was a lame protest.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, if I can drive Luc’s phaeton, I can manage this,” she said in a rush. “Now look. You’ve lost your hackney, and that bus is likely halfway to the Strand. Hurry down to palace corner and hail another.”

And with that, Anisha snatched his whip, gave it a neat crack, and set off.

Chapter 6

Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed,

Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed.

William Shakespeare,
All’s Well That Ends Well

T
he remainder of the week passed before Anisha made any further effort to call upon Royden Napier. And gloomy, altogether disheartening days they were, filled with cold spring showers and copious self-flagellation. Indeed, still simmering in her anger for much of the first day, she vowed not to go to Napier’s at all, reminding herself that Rance scarcely deserved her efforts.

Miss de Rohan returned at midmorning to plan the dinner party. Anisha felt a fraud for even aspiring to be a London hostess, but her new friend seemed not to notice. Indeed, Miss de Rohan seemed undyingly grateful for her help. Anisha decided the poor girl was, indeed, quite desperate.

Still, she found herself liking Miss de Rohan and was grateful to her as well, for she had saved Anisha from a difficult decision: whether to do what was best for Tom and Teddy, always her foremost concern, or do what was best for herself—not that she was especially clear on the latter point. Nonetheless, Bessett would have made an ideal stepfather, of that she’d harbored no doubt. It was the only reason she’d permitted things to go as far as she had.

That evening, Lucan decided to dine at White’s before heading out on the town with his perpetual partner in debauchery, Frankie Fitzwater, leaving Anisha alone to ruminate over her quarrels with Rance, like someone bent on picking at a scab. In the end, Anisha decided that it wasn’t just that Rance was undeserving of her efforts but that
she
did not deserve the inevitable scars.

But that was not, after all, the end. On the second day she awoke to the sudden realization that her
not
going to visit Napier would give Rance rather too much satisfaction. And that it might even—horror of horrors—leave the overbearing man with the impression he had cowed her. Anisha sent a note round to Number Four at once, enquiring whether Mr. Napier had returned from his travels.

The following day, however, she was forced to stop waffling between indignation and doubt when Tom came back from a romp in Green Park with a sudden, frightful fever, shutting all else from Anisha’s mind. She called at once for Chatterjee, who ordered the footmen to move Teddy’s bed out.

Once Tom was tucked in, they hovered over the child. “My lady, what would you have me do?” asked the servant.

Anisha set her fingers to Tom’s forehead. “Go into the conservatory, to the pots behind Milo’s cage,” she murmured. “We shall need a great handful of
tulsi
. Take it to the stillroom, and set out my seeds—coriander, cumin, and fennel to start.”

And so Anisha spent the next days remembering what she had learned of the ancient
Charaka Samhita Sutra
texts as she chopped and ground and steeped the things required to keep the fever in check, while allowing it enough latitude to burn out Tom’s illness.

As always, when the fever became too high, she soaked cloths in salt water and laid them upon his forehead and belly until it subsided. When he became too agitated, they sat on the bed together as she showed him how to perform a simple
kapalabhati pranayama
to help purge the illness with his breath. Every six hours, she stroked his feet, pressing all the right points to release his healing energy.

Tom was a stoic little soldier. And throughout it all, she spared Rance and his vendetta little thought. Still, for nearly two days, the child lay pale and profusely sweating, the English servants looking on curiously as she cared for him. In those rare hours when Anisha slept, Chatterjee and Janet took turns at Tom’s bedside, never leaving him alone until, in the wee hours of the third morning, his fever broke, and the over-bright look left his eyes.

“Heavens,” whispered Higgenthorpe, who peeped in an hour later, swathed in a nightcap and wrapper. “The lad looks himself again.”

Anisha looked up wearily from her chair. “Higgenthorpe, you should be abed.”

“Something woke me,” the butler murmured. “I’m glad, for I shall sleep far better now.”

“Higgenthorpe,” croaked Tom from the bed, “what sort of pudding was there at dinner?”

Anisha managed a soft laugh. “Oh, not yet, my love.”

But just then Chatterjee came in, flushing Higgenthorpe out and ordering Anisha to her own bed. She went. And only then did she fully relax, drawing up the bedcovers and collapsing into the deep, undisturbed slumber of a mother reassured.

Shortly after dawn, however, she arose to find Tom’s bed empty and, after a moment’s panic, found him in the kitchen being dandled like a baby on Janet’s knee, his grin stretched from ear to ear, his cheeks stuffed fat as a squirrel’s with bits of warm toast dipped in treacle.

“P’rhaps it’s not in your
Ayurveda,
my lady,” said Janet defensively, “but my mam always said black treacle strengthens the blood. And I don’t know a blessed thing about fancy breathing or special energies. But he’s weak, the poor, wee mite.”

But Tom was no longer ill, not seriously, that much was apparent—and at the grand old age of seven, no longer very wee, much as it pained his mother to admit it. And Janet was right. It was time for the boy to begin eating. So when the front bell rang an hour later, bringing a message from Whitehall to say that the assistant commissioner would be pleased to see Anisha at her convenience, there was no further excuse for ignoring what she had vowed to do—and no more subduing her curiosity, either.

And it was Rance’s murder conviction, she reassured herself, that she was curious about. That hot, penetrating emotion in Royden Napier’s eyes when they swept over her did not intrigue Anisha in the least.

It was, however, a bit of a balm to her wounded psyche.

So leaving Tom in Janet’s capable hands, she put on her favorite amber carriage dress, then wrapped her hair and shoulders with a black and gold paisley shawl, stuffed one of Raju’s folios full of blank paper, and ordered the big traveling coach brought round.

The building known colloquially as “Number Four” was unchanged from her first visit, still rank with the smell of overcooked cabbage, moldering ledgers, and unwashed bodies. This time, at least, the front porter was on duty.

After glancing at her obviously expensive, if slightly untraditional, attire, he apparently judged her worthy and waved her up the creaking, badly lit stairs to the second floor. There she strode to the rear of the building to wait in one of the stiff oak chairs under the sidelong gazes of Napier’s clerks, who resembled nothing so much as a brace of black crows perched upon a pair of gateposts.

The wait seemed interminable but was in reality less than an hour, for she could hear the clock at St. Martins-in-the-Field striking, the faintly mournful sounds carrying on the sharp spring air.

From time to time, one of the crows sailed down from his tall stool to flit about the office, pecking at this and that before hopping up on his perch again. In the Great Scotland Yard behind Number Four, Anisha could hear through the open windows as the occasional cart rumbled in, bringing criminal suspects, perhaps, to appear before the magistrate, for twice there was a slight hue and cry followed by the rattle of chains in the courtyard below.

After a while, Anisha tuned all of it out, closed her eyes, and focused instead on willing the tension from her body. It was a learned skill; one that helped her maintain balance and order through life’s tribulations. And in time, as it always did, the strain left with her breath, and a quiet peace flowed through her.

But mere moments later, Napier’s hinges creaked and the peace was lost again.

A dapper, dark-clad gentleman with a black satchel stepped out—a young barrister, perhaps—and, after dropping Anisha a long, passing glance, strode out of the room and down the dark passageway.

Anisha looked round to see Napier glaring at her—at least glare was the word that first sprang to mind—his feet set wide upon the threshold. “Lady Anisha Stafford.” His voice, always low, was pitched even lower. “You wished to see me.”

Anisha rose, seizing her folio. “Indeed, if you’ve time.”

A bitter smile twisted at his lips. “For Lord Ruthveyn’s sister?” he murmured, moving to hold open the door. “Were I to ask our Lady the Queen, she would doubtless assure me I have all the time in the world for such a task.”

Anisha felt her temper ratchet up again, but she held her tongue and swished past him. As soon as the door shut, however, she laid the folio on the edge of Napier’s desk and turned to face him. “Let us understand one another,” she said as sweetly as she could muster. “I am not a task. I did not ask the Queen’s favor. I can assure you my brother did not. You promised, all on your own, to allow me to read through Peveril’s murder file.”

“No,
task
is entirely the wrong word for you
,
Lady Anisha,” he quietly interjected. “On that, I stand corrected. But there. I have interrupted your diatribe, I collect. Pray continue.”

Napier’s hands appeared to be clasped behind his back. His posture was rigid, his eyes dark with what looked like unspoken anger and, if she guessed aright, taking in her every inch.

Pushing the cashmere shawl back from her hair, she swept past him to the open window, suddenly in need of air. “All I am saying,” she answered, setting one hand on the sill, “is that if you mean now to renege on what was offered, kindly say so. I do not need another lecture—not from you—on my brother’s influence, nor on Lazonby’s culpability. By no one’s definition has the man been an angel.”

Until he set his hand over hers, Anisha hadn’t realized Napier had followed her to the window. “I beg your pardon, Lady Anisha,” he said quietly, “but it is hard to watch you obsessed by this vile business. Especially when Lazonby, I fear, is not worthy of your regard.”

She turned then, eyes blazing. “Indeed, I hold Lazonby in the highest regard,” she retorted, “but that does not make me any more blind to his faults than I am blind to yours.”

He had withdrawn his hand at once. Now his smile curled almost indolently. “Have I a great many faults, then, my lady?” he asked. “And would you care to enumerate them for me?”

“It would be a short but grave conversation, sir.”

“By all means,” he murmured, his eyes drifting over her face, “indulge me.”

Anisha considered it only a moment. “The Vedas—the Hindu Holy Scriptures—teach us the story of Yajnavalka, who became so wrapped in his own certainty, he dared challenge the knowledge of his
guru,
his teacher, and was driven from the learned fold,” she said. “It is the Hindu way of saying, I suppose, that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

“Ah. And so I am prideful.” Napier’s voice was soft. “Or is it haughty?”

“Is there a difference?” she asked. “I confess, my English is not always as nuanced as one might wish.”

Napier shocked her then by laughing; one deep, loud bark which sounded wholly undignified—this from a man who was, so far as Anisha had seen, the very embodiment of dignity. “Oh, come now, Lady Anisha,” he said. “Your English—faintly lilting though it may be—is about as imprecise as a surgeon’s blade. But do go on. You were punishing me, I think?”

“And you seemed to be taking a perverse sort of pleasure in it,” she replied, her gaze running down him. “There are men who do, I’m told. Though I would not have taken you for one of them.”

Napier lifted one slashing, dark eyebrow. “Indeed not, my lady,” he said. “I prefer to take my pleasure in quite another way. But like any man who earns his crust in government service, I am hardened to criticism. Fire at will.”

Anisha lifted her chin. “Very well, then, yes, you are prideful,” she said. “And if you don’t have a care, it will be your downfall. Humility, even a little, can bind us together. But pride can only blind us—particularly to our own faults. Like Yajnavalka, you possess great knowledge, but as yet, little wisdom. You cannot see beyond your own assumptions.”

This he seemed to ponder seriously, at least for a moment. “And what would you have me do?”

“Open your knowledge to me,” she said, tossing one hand in the direction of his desk. “Do what you have promised. That is, after all, the Peveril file open upon your desk, is it not? I saw it, you see, when I laid down my folio.”

He fell silent for a moment, his gaze turning inward. “You are quite as clever as your brother Ruthveyn, I think, Lady Anisha,” he murmured, “but a good deal more subtle.”

When she said nothing, he merely watched her for a time, the mood in the room oddly shifting. “You are in love with him, aren’t you?” he finally asked. “With Lord Lazonby.”

For an instant, Anisha could not hold Napier’s gaze.

He had suggested as much, though less bluntly, when she had come here with Rance that first time. And she had asked him—quite bluntly, once Rance had been tossed out on his ear—why he’d never stopped looking at her.

He had not answered. But it had had nothing to do, she was quite certain, with the security of her brother’s silver. Napier wanted her. And at the time, she had wanted to make him say it, for reasons she had not fully understood.