Maggie MacKeever (23 page)

Lady Dorset hadn’t been invited to join the party. Hannah was not yet showing her face in public, which was a good thing, because Ned hadn’t got over his wish to do her violence. Nor did Lord Saxe accompany them, though he might have preferred Astley’s over an inspection of the
Military Asylum and Chelsea Hospital in company with the Eminent
Nuisances, to be followed by a splendid dinner at the Merchant Tailors’ Hall.

Kane didn’t approve of this expedition, and so he had told Ned. He didn’t think Clea should be hobnobbing with a thief. The baron might have felt differently had he been with them in Portugal, where Clea had hobnobbed with worse than thieves.

Ned shifted position in his seat. He had placed Julie next to him, not the wisest arrangement considering how badly he wanted her in his lap again, but he was not sufficiently a saint to deprive himself of the warmth of her arm pressing against his, and the smell of her perfume.

Clea leaned forward, intent on the gentleman singing about a mock courtship between a frog and a mouse. Julie stole a sideways glance at Sabine, who might have performed onstage herself, so well costumed was she for this event. The older woman’s pale hair was drawn up in a Grecian knot, with a profusion of tiny ringlets
escaping to frame her face. Her gown was of the high-waisted diaphanous style made popular in France by Leroy; her shawl woven from the fleece of wild Kashmir goats, expensive but light and warm. She wore a necklace and matching earrings fashioned of sapphires set in gold filigree. Julie’s eyes lingered on the stones.

“Tradition holds that Moses was given the Ten Commandments on tablets of sapphire, making it the gemstone most often chosen by kings and high priests,” murmured Ned. “It’s said that a necklace of sapphires will cure a sore throat.”

Julie rolled her eyes at him. “I wasn’t going to pinch the things. I just thought they were nice.”

So they were. Ned wondered what kind of jewelry Julie might like. She appeared the unexceptionable young lady in white muslin with pansy-pink flowers, which Ned assumed was another of Lady Georgiana’s cast-offs. Clea was demure in long-sleeved yellow cambric with a sash brought round her waist and tied on the left. For all the play-acting in this box, they might have formed their own theatrical troupe.

“The old black cat jumped over the wall

And ate the rat, the mouse and all
. . .”
 

Clea sang along with the performer, and joined in the applause.

Sabine’s expression was pensive. “Do you remember the Grotto in the Largo de São Paolo? Lisbon seems long ago and an immense distance away.”

A brief time passed in reminiscences. Ned described for Julie the city’s cathedrals and white houses, flowers and orange groves; the narrow streets of the Bairro Alta and the riot of color in the Chiado fruit market. Clea chimed in to explain that in the Peninsula she had carried her own brightly striped umbrella, for the sun was
fierce, the roads were dusty, and there was little shade. Sabine contributed an account of large green lizards and other vermin such as spiders, mosquitoes, scorpions, snakes and ants and flies
which insinuated themselves everywhere. The conversation
moved on to the liberation of Spain and the battle of Vitoria; the storming of San Sebastian, the horrors of Badajoz.
“‘
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don’t know by what you do’,” concluded Sabine.

Clea sat up a little straighter. “Are we playing quotes? That was
Wellington. ‘You should go to a pear tree for pears, not an elm.’ Syrus.” She nudged Julie. “Your turn.”

Sabine also turned to Julie. “You are from Yorkshire, Miss Wynne? A parson’s daughter, I believe?”

“I am.”

“Your parents are deceased, I’m told. Have you other family? Frequently it is the younger son who is destined for the church.”

“There is no one. That I know of, at any rate.” Before Sabine could ask further questions, Julie launched into a discussion of tithe dinners and bell ringers, Bible study and the Penny Bank.

“We should suggest to Hannah that she become involved with
charitable affairs,” commented Clea. “It would give her something to do with her time. I am abandoning my attempts to learn the
pianoforte; too much practicing is required. I
found a lute in one of the attics earlier today, and have decided I will learn to play that. Oh, look!” She pointed at the ring, where an equestrian was dancing a hornpipe on the back of a galloping horse. He somersaulted backwards, leapt from the animal and remounted in the same sprint to face the horse’s tail. Clea leaned forward, the better to see. Sabine watched Julie, her expression unreadable.

Ned, in his turn, was watching his friend. Kane claimed he didn’t trust Sabine.

She glanced again at Julie. “Your papa the parson approved of attending such spectacles as these?”

“My papa the parson believed people were entitled to amusements, so long as duty wasn’t shirked,” Julie replied. “He was a keen follower of all field sports, and had a particular fondness for birds, which he shot and had stuffed for his collection. We had dead things perched all about the house.”

“‘
Acta deos nunquam mortalia fallunt’
,” Clea said cheerfully. “The deeds of men never escape the gods. Hush, or you will miss The Flemish Hercules. According to the playbill, he is to somersault through a hoop of fire, sail over seven horses, and leap over a banner twelve feet high.”

At the present moment, Hercules was supporting a seesaw platform and a trained horse. The horse walked to the middle then tilted the apparatus one way and the other with a step forward and then back. Julie was put in mind of the freaks she’d seen in Fleet Street,
the posture-master who could extend his body in countless deformed shapes, the man who ate live coals and sucked on a red-hot poker five times a day. Clea in her turn was reminded of the
Art of Love;
and confessed to disappointment that Ovid, despite all his technical advice, barely mentioned the act itself. Ned thought of the touch of Julie’s fingers as she traced his scars.

He caught Clea’s eye. “Oh!” she said. “It is almost intermission.  Will you accompany me, Sabine?”

“Of course.”

Ned thought Sabine seemed eager to remove herself from the box. Maybe Julie’s resemblance to Julian Faulkner was too painful, or maybe it wasn’t painful enough. Ned surveyed the other private boxes, was surprised to find Lilah
gazing back at him. He wouldn’t have thought a brothel’s madam would have a taste for amusements such as this.

Lilah inclined her head. Ned nodded in return.

“I’m sorry you aren’t enjoying yourself,” he said to Julie, who was still watching the stage. “Sabine and Clea are old friends. I thought they might entertain one another and leave me to entertain you.”

Instead of showing interest in being entertained by Ned, as he had half-hoped she might, Julie toyed with her reticule. “Have you known Mrs. Viccars long?”

“Several years. She and her husband were a second family to Clea when we were all in the Peninsula. Francis was slain at Badajoz.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

Ned blinked. “I most definitely am not. What tittle-tattle have you been listening to now?”

Julie scowled. “When you do decide to marry someone, you must tell me. Because.  You know.”

“Because?”

“Because then there’ll be no more trifling. It wouldn’t be right.”

Not surprisingly, this comment put Ned in mind of the trifling he had already done. When he’d taken off his shirt and had Julie
sprawled on his lap; had caressed her bare breast and had her pretty nipple in his mouth. After which she’d had his nipple in
her
mouth, along with his earlobe, though hardly at the same time.

He thought of her sharp knife, and wondered where she’d hid it. Perhaps it was strapped to her thigh. Perhaps he might disarm her with his hands and lips and teeth
. . .

And perhaps he should distract himself before an embarrassing event occurred. “Speaking of touching—”

“We shouldn’t be speaking of it,” retorted Julie. “We wouldn’t
be if you weren’t sitting so close.”

“We’ve sat closer,” Ned said wickedly. “I enjoyed it well. I thought you did too. Have I offended you, sweetheart
?
I admit that during our last meeting things got out of hand.”

“It isn’t that.”

“What then?”

“He’s here tonight.”

There was another man in Julie’s life? Ned said, “Who, pray, is ‘he’?”

Julie cast him a reproachful glance. “It’s
your
lap I sat on. As well as the rest. There’ll definitely be no more touching if you think I’m the sort of girl who sits on more than one lap at a time.”

Ned didn’t think it. He would have been surprised if Julie had ever sat on any lap other than his own.

“I’m a dolt,” he admitted. “If you need to box my ears again, I’ll make no effort to defend myself.”

Julie almost smiled. “I’ll think on it. Him you call the puppet-master, that’s who’s here tonight.”

Only years of experience enabled Ned to remain sitting calmly in his seat. “Point him out to me.”

“I don’t know what he looks like.”

If Julie clenched her fists any tighter, she’d split her gloves. Ned pried her fingers open and took one hand in his. “If you don’t know what he looks like how can you know he’s here?”

“He’s got someone watching me. By now he’s probably watching you too. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself doing things you’d rather not.”

“No,” said Ned, “I won’t. I can take care of myself. If you’d let me, I might take care of you. And no, I’m not offering you carte blanche. Although if you would like me to, I might.”

She shook her head at him; after a moment’s indecision, withdrew a folded square of paper from her reticule. “Don’t let anyone see.”

Ned took the note from her, read through it twice.
Rat’s Castle. Tonight.

“When did you receive this?”

“It was put into my hand when we first arrived. That’s how I know he’s here. You look cross.”

Damned right Ned was cross. “The bastard could have waited until the entertainment ended to give you his note. He took his pleasure from ruining yours. Bates is in the audience, keeping an eye out. With luck, he may have seen the note being passed.”

“He won’t have seen anything. No one does.”

“Julie.” Ned waited until her eyes met his. “You must realize that this business has gone too far.”

“You’re like a terrier that’s got a rat between its teeth. Thinking you may shake it to death.”

“I may shake
you
. If you don’t tell me the rest.”

“Very well, if you must have it,” muttered Julie. “He’s known as Cap’n Jack.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

It’s too late to ask advice when the danger comes.
— Pubilius Syrus

She’d told what she should not. She’d peached on Cap’n Jack. For all Ned claimed he could protect her, the Cap’n would have her head as soon as he found out. Whatever had possessed her? Some daft notion that she wished to see the earl without his shirt again before she died? Julie returned to Ashcroft House to change her clothes before sneaking out again, and discovered that her things had been disturbed.

Maybe a servant had been curious. And maybe not. Julie made sure Ned’s statue was safe in its hiding place. She tucked her knife securely in her sleeve and then set out.

Swells and beggars. Haves and have nots. Unless a girl wore blinders, the gulf between rich and poor was evident everywhere in London she looked. One street was lined with noble colonnades, bow windows and gleaming doorknockers; the next with gin-shops, pawnbrokers and broken-down dwellings so squalid they literally oozed filth. A mere few steps from the Strand to Fleet Street;
another hop and she was in the Holy Land, made up of  the adjacent slums of St Giles, named after the beggars’ patron saint, and Seven Dials, where as many streets converged. Stinking alleyways wound between rotting tenements and taverns left over from an earlier century, in some places so narrow she had to turn sideways to pass. Julie rounded a corner, taking care not to stumble into a refuse heap composed of slops and ashes, rotting vegetables, offal from the butcher’s stall. Where once she had been used to it, the stench now stung her nose. When the cesspits beneath the houses
overflowed, they drained by means of a crudely built culvert into a partly open sewer trench in the middle of the street.

Overflow, the cesspits frequently did. As the ancient buildings overflowed with people seeking shelter from the night. It wasn’t long past that Julie had no regular place to sleep. When her idea of riches had been to have enough pennies in her pocket to buy a spot in a lodging house crammed cellar to garret until there wasn’t room for another louse. Six to a bed or more; six strangers, sick or healthy, drunk or sober, young or old. Julie had never slept alone in a bed before Pritchett bought her way out of Newgate.

Pritchett, on behalf of Cap’n Jack. Who was sending her back to the last place she wished to go. Julie pulled her shabby jacket closer around her and her cap down further on her brow.
She passed haggard men with uncombed hair, women with gin-bloated faces and short pipes in their mouths, children in tattered jackets and broken-out
shoes and breeches tied at the waist with bits of string.

Some remained upright. Others sprawled senseless in the street. Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two, and no straw on which to sleep.

The steeple of St. Giles rose stark against the sky. Orator Jones was at his usual post near the churchyard’s entrance, close by the gate adorned with a bas-relief of Judgment Day. He had on several hats tonight, along with numerous waistcoats and again as many jackets; was additionally girdled about with rag-wrapped parcels and canisters, matches and a tinderbox, a battered Bible and several tattered issues of
The Gentleman’s Magazine.
His long beard was dirty yellow. On his fingers were numerous brass rings.