X
ANDER took stock of the two mammoth constables sent to keep him at the bank. Their truncheons rested lightly in huge fists. He could take out one of them but not both. He recognized the one who had spoken as a regular in the court, so not one of March’s hirelings. March was undoubtedly behind his arrest, but not entirely in control.
The arrest meant little, really. It merely corrected a mistake he had always understood—yielding to desire. His cancelled partnership with Cleo Spencer had been a step in his search for Kit. She had agreed to their union because she, too, cared for a brother. They had lost their heads briefly in a dream in his bedroom, but a bank was just the place to wake one up to reality. Reality was relying on oneself, sticking to one’s purpose, going it alone. He had made sure she would not pay a long-lasting price for their night of passion. There would be no babe. She would hate him, but she was strong and resilient, and she, too, would go on.
He crossed to Evershot’s desk. Meese flattened his scrawny person over the documents as if to protect them, but Xander lifted him by his threadbare collar and sent him staggering toward the two constables. Meese made a show of taking a stand beside the larger men, while Evershot subsided into one of the chairs by the tea table, muttering to himself.
Xander settled down to examine the documents. He put aside the copy of their wedding lines. For a moment he couldn’t see clearly. He reminded himself that he was angry, not hurt. Hurt was a closet, a dark, musty place where your skin crawled, your breath felt trapped in your chest, and your stomach knotted. Hurt was a tight place where you curled in a ball and waited and stared with open eyes in the dark and saw nothing.
He was not locked in a closet.
He took up a copy of Cleo’s trust. Three nights earlier March had tried to kidnap her in spite of the legal advantage he had gained. That made no sense. If there was a clue to March’s actions, it would be in the trust.
I
N Xander Jones’s room, Cleo found that the bed had been restored to order as if their joining there had been erased, an impression in sand, washed away with the tide. She turned from it and went straight to the chest with its drawer of perfumed letters. Their fading scent rose up, a compound of loss and longing and regret. She sank to her knees, took up a letter of recent date, and tore it open.
My dear Xander,
Nearly three years now. I tell myself you will fi nd him soon. You must not think my spirits languish. Paris is not so cold as London, and I do not want for companions. Though you do not answer, I think of all my sons each day.
Leave the lamps burning. He will return.
Cleo tore into the next one and the next. A dozen letters later she sat on the floor of her husband’s bedroom beside the remaining unopened letters. Blame or forgiveness—she didn’t know which the letters offered, but she understood why they remained unopened.
Her husband’s house was not Bluebeard’s house, but a house of lost dreams, of a girl who had fallen in love with a lord who betrayed her for his class. A child whose father had abandoned him. A boy who had been snatched into darkness.
Xander believed that boy was alive. Could he be? Three years later? In London where children died by the hundreds each year, their names filling the pages of the Bills of Mortality?
It was fearful how fast her mind went to the pale ghost boy in the garden. She had nothing. No proof, but her mind raced on. Did he come at dusk to peer into the lighted windows of his lost home like a phantom? If her ghost boy in the garden was not Teeth, the chestnut seller, but Xander’s brother, why did he not come in out of the cold? What did he fear? Whom did he fear? Xander’s father mentioned unknown enemies. Not March then, but someone else. Kneeling, Cleo scooped the letters back into the drawer.
T
HE bank was closing now, the hum in the vast lobby subsiding. The two constables stood as steady as ever, but Meese fidgeted with his watch. Evershot slumped, inert in his chair. The door opened at last to admit an officer of the law in his greatcoat, holding the black, crown-imprinted staff of a Runner in one hand, his face grim.
Xander looked up and grinned. “About time.”
The pair of ox-like constables parted to let Will Jones pass. He flashed a writ and an answering grin. “It’s not every day that a man gets to arrest his brother.”
He nodded to the two constables. “Thanks, lads, this one’s all mine, but you can take away the audience.” The two men seized Meese and dragged him out into the main bank chamber. Meese could be heard squeaking and protesting as he was hauled away.
Xander stood. “How did you know there was a writ for my arrest?”
“The old beak himself gave me the duty.”
“You took your sweet time about it.” Xander turned to Evershot. “You’re coming with us, man. You’ve got some explaining to do. Bring those papers and ledgers along.”
Evershot’s gray face lost the rest of its color. He started to speak. “I can’t—”
“Now, Evershot,” Xander insisted.
Will pulled Evershot out of his chair. “He sold you out, you know. He told March exactly when you planned to be here.”
“I gathered.” Xander followed Will and a stumbling, laden Evershot to a waiting hack.
Outside the bank, Will shoved Evershot and his armload of papers into the vehicle. Will’s confederates had apparently taken Meese elsewhere.
Xander paused to take a deep breath, letting his lungs fill with cold, sooty London air before he climbed into the closed space. He didn’t know why his old discomfort should plague him now. The hack was not a closet, not the narrow space in which he had hidden while his mother raged and wept after his father left, in which she had locked him while she courted her next lover. Xander climbed into the cab.
The hack had not gone two blocks when Evershot was vilely ill. They stopped briefly to clean up the man and the carriage, Will berating him in a stream of foul language. Evershot slumped back against the side of the cab, panting, indifferent to Will’s abuse.
Xander watched him. “Evershot, you’re in this up to your neck. You tipped March off that we would be there today to withdraw funds.”
Will prodded Evershot’s shoulder with his staff. “Answer, man, why are you in bed with March?”
“The . . . bank . . . could . . . fail,” Evershot managed between panting breaths.
“March doesn’t have that much money in the bank, does he?” Xander knew March had controlled two large fortunes, Cleo’s and her brother’s, for years, but Xander’s own partners had substantial sums in Evershot’s bank as well.
Evershot shook his head, a weak motion. “March has files.”
“What do you mean files?” Will’s voice was quiet, almost deadly.
Evershot’s hand fluttered weakly. “Names, dates, places, parties involved. He can ruin half of London if he chooses.”
“Your half, apparently,” Will put in.
“You’ve been letting March see clients’ records, haven’t you, Evershot?” Xander nudged the man’s boot.
A whimper was the reply.
“Where does March keep these files?” Xander asked.
“I don’t know.” Evershot groaned, without looking up.
Xander lifted him by his limp, soiled linen. “Your bank is about to bleed money from a dozen gaping wounds. Think of the investors you will lose when I start talking to my friends about you.”
“No, no need to withdraw money, Sir Alexander. You should thank me. Truly. I saved her. I kept her alive.”
“What do you mean?” Xander’s chill had nothing to do with the cold.
“There’s a reversion clause in her trust. If she dies without issue, her husband must repay any funds he received into her brother’s trust.”
“Who put in the reversion clause?”
Evershot coughed weakly. “March.”
“When?”
“When she refused his choice of suitors.”
“The devil,” said Will. “A bleeding recipe for murder. March is a clever worm.”
The carriage stopped, and Xander opened the door. Raw wintry air washed in. “Evershot, if March hurts her, I will close your bank, and you’ll rot in jail.”
They put Evershot down in the Strand without his papers. Cold wind ruffled the long, thin strands of his hair.
“Bleeding coward.” Will signaled the driver.
A block later the hack turned north, and Xander glanced at his brother. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, you’re going to jail. It’ll do you good, I think. Mix it up some with true Londoners. Take some of that stiff-necked pride down a notch or two. Hard to say how long it will take to get you there.”
“I’d rather see my wife.”
“Not possible at the moment.”
“Does March have men at the house?” Xander wanted Cleo protected.
“No, but there’s a price on your head. Cheer up, I’ve known Runners who’ve hunted their man for days, weeks even.”
“Is that what you’re doing, hunting me?”
“I figure it could take a week to find a dangerous suspect like yourself in our vast city.”
“Could your hunt take us by Norwood’s chambers?”
“After dark.”
The hack stopped in a murky lane off the Strand, and after Will made arrangements with the driver, he led Xander deeper into vile byways, stopping along a twisting street between a six-shilling bawdy house and a taproom.
“All the neighborhood conveniences, I see,” commented Xander.
“Especially as I own the building,” Will replied. “It gets better. There’s a cundum warehouse on the corner, erotic prints for the asking at the ‘book’ store across the way, and plenty of treasures at Beck’s pawn shop.”
“No milkmaids?”
“Not my style.”
A crescent moon with a grinning profile of its famous man marked the lintel of an unseen door, fronting the street. A darker shadow rose snarling out of the gloom and bared its teeth, emitting a deep, rumbling snarl. Will ordered the shadow into submission, and it obeyed.
“Your dog?”
“Argos, Blind Zebediah’s mastiff.” Will opened a nearly hidden door and led the way up a surprisingly clean and sturdy stairway to the third story.
He unlocked the door to a large high-ceilinged room with the dark paneled walls of an earlier age. A massive canopied bed with tangerine damask hangings stood on a dais. A mound of silken pillows with chocolate-colored tassels lay against the tall, carved headboard, and tangled coverlets with swirls of indigo design threatened to slide down to the rich blue carpet below. A brass chandelier hung above, and gilded mirrors reflected the bed from every angle. Xander had to shake his head. His brother’s apartment was a whore’s dream.
“Did you steal some sultan’s state bed?”
Will caught his expression. “A friend was going out of business. The bed is extremely comfortable, and you have to admit that Hill Street doesn’t offer anything like it.”
Will headed straight for the far wall, pressed a spot at the edge of the paneling, and sprang a hidden door, which swung open on a second room, furnished with Spartan simplicity. It held an unmade bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a pair of worn wing chairs by a hearth, and a remarkable collection of maps, books, and instruments.
Again Xander couldn’t contain his surprise. “What have you got here?”
“I suppose someone should know about this place. It’s my own police office, essentially. Don’t leave it, except by night, or with me, or you’ll be standing in the dock before the magistrate.”
Here the lighting was bright and efficient. The walls were lined with careful maps of the city and shelves of law books. Tables held scientific instruments.
“Drink?” Will asked.
Xander nodded.
Will lit the coals in the grate and sprawled in one of the chairs, drink in hand. “Where’s your bride?”
“Isaiah took her home.”
“She walked out on you, didn’t she?”
“My plan to undo our marriage disappointed her some.”
“Let her go. You wanted to end it. Now you’re out.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You didn’t bed her, did you?” He shot Xander a penetrating look. “You did! Not the saint, after all, are you?”
“I never claimed to be.”
“Man, you bollixed up your own damned plan.”
Xander gazed at his wine. It seemed to trap the candlelight, reminding him of his wife’s garnet dress.
“There’s no chance of a child though, is there?”
“None.”
Will raised his glass in a sardonic salute. “Then it never happened. Norwood would get you out of it anyway.”