she could not be sure her eyes functioned. She was stiff with cold. Her jaw ached, and her lip felt the size of a ripe plum. She had no idea of the time. She held herself perfectly still, willing her heart to stop its sudden pounding.
A small, unfamiliar tinkling sound had wakened her. She breathed in the smell of earth and decay. The cold, damp stillness of the place made her think she had been buried. Her ears seemed filled with a roar that was no sound, her arms felt heavy at her sides. If she lifted them and met a coffin lid, she thought her heart would burst out of her chest. Xander would never know she loved him. How inconvenient to recognize her true feelings when the chance to express them had clearly passed. She closed her eyes and told herself to behave with common sense, making her numb hands move outward from her sides.
A rough, grit-covered cloth lay under her. She spread her hands further and felt a wave of relief. She was not in a box but on some sort of bed or cot. It had an edge over which the rough cloth hung down. The ringing sound of metal against glass came again.
She opened her eyes and carefully turned her head. Above her on the right a pale slit wavered against the blackness, a trick of her light-deprived eyes. She fixed her gaze on it, and gradually, the shape became clear, a long, low arch like an oven door.
She slowed her breathing and waited for her heart to calm its pounding so she could hear. Above her, beyond the pale light, voices and footsteps came and went, children’s voices. She thought she was confusing things in her head. Ragged urchins had been playing on Hill Street when her uncle took her. She concentrated on her present circumstances, staring hard at the faint light above.
Then it came to her. Her temporary tomb was a cellar with a window that opened on a street or a court where people were passing.
Slowly she sat up. Her head throbbed, and her stomach roiled with nausea. She held herself still until the sickening sensations passed, refusing to close her eyes again. With a dizzying effort she got to her hands and knees, tangling briefly in her cloak. Reaching out to brace herself against the wall, she put her hand to clammy bricks. She staggered to her feet on the sagging bed, hearing it creak and groan under her. The window was higher above her than she thought. Her corset straps limited the reach of her arms, but by standing on her toes and stretching her arm out as fully as she could, she could reach the bottom ledge. She started at one end, inching her fingers along, feeling the grimy edge and the frozen glass. Snow must be piled against the other side. She stopped suddenly where a draft of icy air rushed across her fingers. She strained further, feeling an edge of broken glass and through it, snow.
As she poked the snow, her fingers met other fingers, cool and strong. She drew her hand back and almost lost her balance on the flimsy bed, coming down hard on her heels.
“Lady Jones,” said a young male voice from beyond the window. “Listen, we’ve got to get you out. My friends and I.” Pure, sweet, educated syllables, a boy’s voice newly deepened into mature tones.
Cleo caught her breath. He even sounded like Xander. “Your brother has been looking for you.”
For a long moment there was no answer, just the children’s voices. She feared she had frightened her ghost away. Then he spoke again.
“Lady Jones, we’ll get you out, but you must help. Something’s coming down through the hole. Catch it.”
Cleo waited, watching the hole. A shadow crossed it, and then she heard the clink of metal hitting brick. She couldn’t see anything below the window, but the clinking thing tapped the wall, moving closer to her. She reached for the sound and found a thin metal rod, a broken piece of railing, tied to a bit of string. Carefully, she released the rod from the string.
“Have you got it then?” came the voice.
“Yes. Where am I?”
“You’re in the front cellar of the public house, Lady Jones. It’s mostly barrels and rubbish. Men are watching the place from up the street. We can’t let them catch you.”
“What am I to do?”
“The door is straight opposite, not more than eight steps. Work the lock with that rod. We’re going to play a game, tapping on the window. When you have the lock opened, tap back. We will signal when it’s safe to leave. Then take the stairs. Go up, and keep going up, as fast as you can.”
X
ANDER became a shadow at the foot of Bread Street dressed in Will’s castoffs. Maybe chance had cast him as a shadow from the start, a nameless product of London’s wicked ways, one of her baseborn sons, told by his father to disappear, by his mother to hide.
Only he hadn’t. He had crossed the line set for him by his birth. He had saved a prince, married a baron’s daughter, and dared to dream of lighting London’s blackest darkness.
Only his mad wife wanted to be seen with him in the glare of lights. He knew that now. She had heard him named a bastard in the first moments of their acquaintance, but somehow she had always seen him, not the ugly word. Something else to appreciate about her if he could bring her alive from March’s hold.
Half of Bread Street lay in early evening darkness, the last streaks of a red sunset casting a lurid light on low gray clouds. Yesterday’s snow, churned up and soot-blackened, made dirty drifts along the edge of the street. The telltale donkey cart leaned against the wall of Number Forty, where Xander was certain March had Cleo.
Xander could see the street from end to end. At the top of the hill, where Will would appear, the dark corner of Bredsell’s school jutted out. Opposite and below it was the back of Truman’s Brewery, where three vast wood holding vats bounded by black iron bands rose above the crumbling wall of the brewery yard. Thousands of gallons of black porter fermented there, enough to quench the thirst even of Bread Street.
A crowd of workmen left the yard as Xander watched, streaming out from the gate below the vats, heading up the street or stopping at the fish shop for greasy papers of bloaters. Within minutes it struck Xander that Bread Street was unusually quiet. Of the hundreds who lived there, only a handful of ragged children playing outside the public house, and a group of idlers, standing around a bonfire, gave life to the scene. The boards advertising positions at Xander’s gasworks, torn from the building, made a blazing fire. So much for the wages he offered.
The loafers were bullyboys all, thick-necked and ham-fisted. Their gathering lacked the spontaneous look of true idleness. They gave off a tense air of waiting for something to happen. No one was drinking, and no women were present.
Two loafers slogged their way up the snowy street, muffled in rags. Xander pressed deeper in the shadows to let them pass.
The first opened a fist to show his companion a coin. “I know nuffin, but a toffy bloke give me ’alf a crown to stay out of the tap. Said there’d be free beer for all.”
“ ’Ow’s there to be free beer with the tap closed?”
Xander wondered the same. Bread Street loved its liquor. Every doorway, every ledge had its row of pint pots. The smallest child knew not to come between a man or a woman and drink, yet above the stone slab that marked the public-house entrance, the heavy double doors bore a chain and padlock. Instead of the usual ebb and flow of drinkers, children played a game in the front of the tap. Xander turned his gaze on those grubby urchins tagging the basement window with sticks.
The low window barely rose above the pavement in a flattened arch partly concealed by piled snow. The opening was dark and narrow as the gully holes in the curb. At least eight children played the game, young and thin and darting swift as birds. A low rumble of a voice in the darkened doorway opposite launched the children in pairs. Each pair made a quick dash, tapped with sticks at the cellar window, paused, whirled, and sprinted back. Some were barefoot in the snow. The exercise might warm them, but Xander wondered that they had not sought shelter. They, too, watched the men around the impromptu bonfire.
W
ILL had less trouble than he’d expected getting into March’s club. He’d never be admitted as a member, but apparently the sanctity of the place depended more on the lower orders accepting their inferior position in society than on the vigilance of the porters at the door.
But then, he’d always known rats to find their way into a palace.
His appearance did not raise an eyebrow in the long room with the vaulted ceiling when he picked up a paper and strolled across the room. Only taking an empty chair caused anxiety in a nervous waiter. Confused by Xander’s borrowed tailoring, and understandably wary of Will’s own brand of menace, the poor fellow shifted from foot to foot, clearly unable to decide whether to ignore Will and face the member whose chair he’d claimed, or confront Will directly. Will discouraged the waiter from any thought of the latter with a savage glance.
Other members gave him sidelong looks as they came in. One chubby fellow halted, stuttered into speech, caught Will’s eye, and subsided in a deep leather chair a comfortable distance away.
The room was too well lit to suit Will. Bright light was overrated. It revealed sagging chins and bellies, spotted linen, and thinning hair. What a bleeding soft lot they were, these fat fish in their scummy pond, content to swim in each other’s piss, as long as their own magnificent scales flashed before the notice of all.
As he waited for March, Will’s dislike of Xander’s plan grew. Four officers would tramp Bread Street and risk getting their heads broken while March sipped claret and got away with attempted murder. They had to find Cleo, but to let March escape was not Will’s style. The rub was that to arrest him would be premature. The bleeding maggot would likely get off.
March should sweat. He should feel every eye in his bleeding club on him, every member doubting the sterling reputation of London’s great philanthropist. There must be men in the club who, like Evershot, were uncomfortable with March’s information about their doings. Will wanted to know where March kept those files that so unmanned Evershot. Will wanted to open an investigation into the death of Cleo Spencer’s father. He suspected that March had murdered his half brother. It was time for March to feel exposed, scrutinized, suspected.
A chorus of clocks about the room chimed the quarter hour. Will leaned back against the wings of the chair, one polished boot crossed over the other knee. Xander had his mission, and Will had his. He just had time to make March squirm before he met his companions at the top of Bread Street. He felt the room fall silent and knew March had arrived.
“Jones, how did you—?”
As Will looked up, March threw a wild glance at the clock. There was a brief, satisfying flash of something like fear in his eyes as March corrected his thinking about which brother he had in front of him.
“
My brother
unfortunately is still at large.”
“Jones, this is a members-only club.” March looked around again.
“Your chair, March?” Will rubbed his palms along the armrests. March could come and go from Bow Street or Bread Street, but he never expected someone or something from that end of London to ooze its way out of the gutter and into his sanctuary.
“Sadly, March, official police business sometimes takes a man among the most depraved souls in London.” Will made his voice loud and clear. He kept his gaze on March, feeling rather than seeing the rest of the room grow quietly attentive.
“I’m certain no official police business concerns this club or its members.” March again looked at the clock.
“Investigations have their own timetable I find, March.”
“Surely, your investigation can wait for a more appropriate time and place. I often have business at Bow Street with the magistrate.”
“Best to act when information might prevent murder, I find.” Will took a swallow of March’s claret—insipid stuff.
“I have no such information.”
“I thought it was common knowledge, March, that you had files on half the gentlemen of London, that you and the Home Secretary were bosom boys. He is a member here, is he not?” Will looked around at the faces of the sheep trying not to appear interested though every other conversation in the room had died.
March’s face remained smooth except for a tightening of the mouth. “Jones, apparently you’ve been misled by rumor and gossip.”
Will stood, conscious of the clock’s steady advance. He just had time to throw another coal on the fire. “March, which of your properties is most profitable—the tenements on Bread Street or the brothel where your brother died?”
The mask slipped ever so slightly, and Will caught a gleam of pure rage in March’s gaze.
At the same moment an icily polite voice spoke from behind Will. “March, your sordid interview is disturbing the members. I suggest you see this man out.”
“I’m on my way,” Will said. He thought he knew that voice. He started to turn when something heavy broke over his back, smashing the breath out of his lungs. Staggering forward under the blow, he hurled his glass at March.
It missed March but clipped a passing waiter, who stumbled backward, dropping his tray with a clang, and the room erupted in most ungentlemanly howls of rage as men swarmed him. Will got off a few more blows, mashed a chair to splinters, and shattered a mirror before he found himself pinned to the floor, fighting the downward flutter of his eyelids.