Point of Honour (7 page)

As they crossed the street, Miss Tolerance kept her glance away from the group of men; when they reached the other side, she steered Chloe to a shopfront half a dozen paces from them, where she could hear some part of the conversation, and watch it all in reflection in the shop’s glassed front. Lord Trux, Miss Tolerance noted, now stood at the elbow of the man in the blue coat as if to lend him countenance, although the man in blue did not seem to require such support.

“Have you spoken with him?” the elderly man was asking. In contrast to the anger of the man in brown, the old man seemed as calm as the younger, and taller, man in blue. “I think you’ll find the Prince’s enthusiasm for your party has waned with maturity.” His tone was smooth and pleasant, sailing upon the tension between them. When the man in blue answered, his tone was just as untroubled.

“I never thought an interest in the opposition was the exclusive province of the young, sir. My father remained an active and convinced Whig until his death, and he was a good friend of the Prince’s.”

“
Your father
—” The man in brown spoke as if the words were an oath.

In the glass before her, Miss Tolerance saw the elderly man put a restraining hand on his companion’s elbow. “Your father, Versellion, had the sorry luck to be raised as a Whig, which His Highness was not. As we grow older, common sense—”

The man in brown interrupted furiously. “You think to turn matters to your own advantage! You scheme to get power just as your father did, your lies—”

The elderly gentleman again put his hand on the sleeve of the man in brown, this time with more force. “Henry,” he said mildly. “Unless you wish to find your name in the dueling column of the
Gazette,
I counsel you to keep your conversation civil.”

The man in brown shrugged the older man’s hand away with little grace. “The devil with civil conversation! You heard him baiting me—”

“I heard accusations, falsehood, slander!” This was Trux, sputtering in outrage.

Now it was the turn of the man in blue to restrain his companion. “Let him say what he likes, Trux. It hardly matters; he knows where the truth lies, although he does not care to speak it. What the Prince believes or does not believe, we shall see, if this matter goes on for long. I, for one, do not intend to bandy it further upon the open street. My lord—” The man in blue bowed to the old man. “Cousin”—a bow to the man in brown. “Come, Trux,” the man in blue said, rather like one who was calling a dog to heel.

Trux and the man in blue wheeled about and were suddenly facing Miss Tolerance, who turned her face slightly away and continued her examination of the half-boots in the shop window. It seemed to Miss Tolerance that as the men passed her, Lord Trux’s step faltered, but then he went on. After a moment or so longer—the half-boots really were quite elegant and wholly impractical, pale blue kid painted with delicate forget-me-nots at the ankle—Miss Tolerance suggested to Chloe that they start back to Manchester Square.

“You don’t wish to try the boots?” Chloe asked.

Miss Tolerance shook her head. “What was it you suggested? Find what you like in Bond Street and buy somewhere cheaper?”

Chloe agreed, but appeared disappointed to have had her shopping excursion ended so soon. “As
you’ve
found what you wanted, I suppose we might as well go home,” she said disagreeably. The walk back to Manchester Square seemed a long one.

M
iss Tolerance made a quiet supper of bread and cheese and an apple, writing a few notes to herself on the matter of Lord Trux’s investigation. Briefly she considered going to Tarsio’s for a while. In fact, she was tired, and her interviews with Mrs. Cockbun and Mrs. Smith had left her dissatisfied and unquiet. She put the kettle on the hob and was warming the teapot when one of the footmen from the House came with a summons.

“A man has called for you, miss.”

“Called for me at my aunt’s house? Did he give a name?”

The footman presented a card. Written on it in a small, spidery hand was the name
Trux.

Miss Tolerance sighed. “Oh, lord. Bring him here, please, Cole.”

Given the choice of entertaining a client in her own unimpressive dwelling or in the midst of her aunt’s clientele, she had no hesitation in having Trux join her. Still, she preferred to keep her home hers; she kept her membership at Tarsio’s particularly for interviews with clients.

In a few minutes Cole reappeared and bowed Lord Trux into Miss Tolerance’s cottage. She had a pot of tea brewing, and two cups warming. She did not believe that Lord Trux would require tea, from the look of him. The high color on his face was not a product of the firelight, she thought, but of some sudden choler. Evidently Cole thought so, too, for he lingered at the door of the cottage as if unsure whether it was safe to leave Miss Tolerance with the gentleman.

“Thank you, Cole,” she said pleasantly. “My lord, I had not expected to see you this evening. Will you take a dish of tea with me?”

Trux faltered. He was clearly expecting his anger to oppress her. “I have not come for tea,” he said.

“No, of course not. But will you take some regardless?”

He shook his head. His face grew redder. “I must know—” It seemed his words were being pushed out of him with great pressure. “Were you
following
me this afternoon?”

Miss Tolerance permitted her eyes to open in a cartoon of dismay. “Following you, sir? Our paths crossed in Bond Street, but I would never embarrass a client by seeming to know him in public.”

“But were you following me?” Trux shouted, then seemed a little abashed by the sound he made in her quiet cottage.

“Of course not, my lord.” It was near enough the truth, Miss Tolerance reckoned. “Why would I do that?”

The question apparently confounded Trux. “Well, then, perhaps you can tell me if you have made any progress on my …” He paused as if the proper word eluded him.

“The matter of the fan? I have made good progress, I think, sir. I spent the morning interviewing women who might have reason to know Mrs. Cunning, and this afternoon pursuing more information, based on what I had learned in Leyton.”

“Leyton!” The ruddy color returned to Trux’s face. “I told you Richmond!”

Miss Tolerance poured a cup of tea for herself. “Indeed, she may be in Richmond, but my information is that she was removed from Richmond and set up in Leyton some years ago. So Leyton is where I went.”

“To get information?”

“Yes, sir. And I did obtain some useful news which I put to good use this afternoon.”

“In Bond Street?” Lord Trux seemed determined to find some fault with her, Miss Tolerance reflected. “If you were not following me in Bond Street, then you were shopping! You had a
parcel
!”

Miss Tolerance was hard put not to laugh. “Can I not persuade you to take some tea, my lord? I think you will find it soothing.” She poured out another cup and set it down upon the settle, and nodded toward it as if to invite her guest to take his ease. Reluctantly Trux sat down. He looked at the tea in his cup as if it were a substance entirely foreign to him.

“Now, sir,” Miss Tolerance said firmly. “You must understand something about the work that I do. It is often necessary, for that very discretion which you desired, for me to appear to be doing one thing when I am, in fact, doing something else. I appeared to be shopping this afternoon—I bought a pair of gloves to lend veracity to my imposture. But in fact I was interviewing shopgirls about the possible whereabouts of your Mrs. Cunning.”

“By God, how am I to judge the truth of that?” Trux sputtered. “You can say whatever you like and charge me three guineas a day for nothing. For gloves!”

“You will not be charged for the gloves, sir. I intend to keep them for myself. Now, my lord: I must operate my investigation in the way that seems best to me. I am not a common thief-taker; you came to me, I had supposed, because I have some experience in such matters. If you cannot have faith that I know my business and am working to do your will in the swiftest manner I can, then we had best part company at once, and I will send you a report and a bill for my services to this date.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Lord Trux looked deflated. His lower lip drooped and his brows knit together fiercely. “There has been progress?” he urged.

Miss Tolerance nodded. “Indeed, my lord, given how little information you gave me to work with, and how much of that was flawed, the progress has been considerable.” She indicated the pile of notes by her hand. “Would you like a written report?”

“No.” He seemed suddenly to recollect where he was. “I had thought you lived in Mrs. Brereton’s establishment,” he said. “Surely this is not very comfortable.”

“It does me well enough. More tea, sir?”

Trux shook his head. “No,” he said almost sadly. “I must go. I have a dinner to attend, and I must be shaved and dressed.” He looked around him as he turned toward the door. “It’s such a small little place,” he said peevishly. “You
cannot
be comfortable here.”

“Ah, but I’ve only myself to worry about. I really am far more comfortable here than I would be at Mrs. Brereton’s. Now, may I bid you good evening?”

Miss Tolerance stood in the door of the house, watching as Trux crossed the garden to the back of Mrs. Brereton’s, where she was sure Cole was waiting to show him to the street.

“Well,” she murmured. She turned back into her house and settled herself by the fire again, musing. “Well. A fan missing these twenty years is, overnight, the subject of some anxiety to its owner. My dear Lord Trux!” She clicked her tongue thoughtfully. “What have you neglected to tell me about your Italian fan?”

Four

M
iss Tolerance dreamt she was in Amsterdam, fencing in the
salle des armes.
The dream was a sum of many sensations: sweat beading between her breasts and on the nape of her neck; the damp cling of linen across her back; the protest of muscles as the sword drill went on and on. The high-vaulted ceiling of the
salle
echoed the bite of boot heel against wooden floor as she advanced, thrusting to head, to wrist, to hip, to shoulder, and around again; then retreated, parrying in
quarte,
in
tierce,
in
prime,
and
sixte.
There were the smells of sweat, worn leather, and burning torches, and beneath them the pleasant memories of straw and horse dung: the
salle
had once been a stable.

Gradually, without words, Sarah and Connell shifted from drill to sparring, caught up in the exchange of blows, as if each cut expressed a feeling that could be expressed no other way. The torchlight flicked and danced, and they moved in and out of the shadows as they traversed the room, so focused on each other’s faces that Sarah felt she would fall into her teacher’s dark eyes. Still they fought on.

At last she caught Connell’s blade on the forte of her own and pressed in,
corps a corps,
until their faces were only inches apart. Their arms, and their swords, were caught between their close-pressed bodies, and Sarah felt the hard, rapid beat of his heart against her forearm. He was tall; she had to tilt her head up to look into his eyes, which met her own, steady and unsmiling. His breath came as raggedly as her own, and smelled sweetly of fennel seed. Sarah flushed with heat and exertion. Her lips trembled. He bent his head as if to kiss her, and she awoke.

Her heart was still pounding, and the bedclothes were tangled and damp as if she had fenced among them. She lay in the dark, waiting for her pulse to slow, letting the heat and the pain of memory seep from her. At last she lit the candle at her bedside and took up
Art of the Small Sword,
but tonight even Mainley’s dry prose could not soothe her. She was still awake at dawn, staring at the book’s pages without seeing them.

I
n the morning Miss Tolerance turned her cottage inside out looking for her riding crop. She was very soon satisfied that the crop was not there, and a few minutes’ reflection convinced her that she had left it in Leyton the day before, most probably in Mrs. Smith’s musty, odorous parlor. It would have been a simple thing to forget the matter and buy a new crop, but Miss Tolerance was fond of this particular one; she liked the balance, and knew several neat defensive tricks calculated to its weight. That the crop was one of the few possessions remaining to her that had once belonged to her seducer, the fencing master Charles Connell, was of course incidental to the necessity to retrieve it. Swearing at her stupidity, Miss Tolerance went round to the mews to arrange for the hire of a horse for another day. She would retrieve the crop from Mrs. Smith that morning and hope that when she returned to Manchester Square, there would be news of Mrs. Cunning’s whereabouts awaiting her.

She made the trip as quickly as she could. As she rode up the quiet lane toward Mrs. Smith’s house, the greasy smell of the river again rose up to assault her. Not for the first time, Miss Tolerance thanked God for her own small, snug establishment, so insulated from the worst of London’s smells and sights. She dismounted and tied her horse, and knocked upon Mrs. Smith’s door.

After a few moments of knocking, Miss Tolerance was forced to the conclusion that the old woman was not at home. She only hesitated a moment before trying the door—she had no desire to ride out to Leyton yet again on this errand, and after all, she had only come for her own property—which yielded at once to her touch. Again Miss Tolerance found herself in the dark, dusty box of a hallway. To the smells of cat, river, and dried flowers, the scents of burnt bread and meat had been added, and something else, a faint smell Miss Tolerance could only identify as an old lady’s scent. She wrinkled her nose and entered the parlor to retrieve her crop.

She found it lying where she had left it, on the cushion of the sofa she had occupied the day before. Mrs. Smith’s body half covered it. She was dead; her eyes and mouth were wide open as if in surprise or outrage. She lay on her side, one hand outstretched, her temple crushed against the carved wooden arm of the sofa. Blood from her temple had flowed down the arm of the sofa onto the seat cushion and left a sticky, half-dried puddle. There was blood, too, on the white-work embroidery of her cap that had been knocked askew and bunched under her head. On the old woman’s cheek, Miss Tolerance noted, there was a dark, plummy bruise. A lamp and several candles had been knocked to the floor, and at least one bowl of dried flowers upended. In the scattering of lavender and verbena across the floor and rug, she saw cat prints, and the print of a man’s boot.