The Black Hawk

Forty-seven

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FOYER, CUMMINGS COLLECTED his overcoat. A footman helped him into it, handed him hat and cane, and went to attend three men who’d walked in the front door and were shedding belongings.

Hawker didn’t glance in that direction. He’d humiliated the man in public. Dealing with him was now dangerous as hand-feeding a rabid dog. Next week or next month he’d need to work with Military Intelligence again.

Or maybe not. Cummings and his happy lads had been brought back to England to enforce order upon an unruly populace. The papers were already calling it “England’s secret police.” Letters to the editor talked about dissolving Military Intelligence for good.

Cummings definitely had the wind up. Whoever wrote the letter that sent Cummings off to Bow Street understood his lordship right down to the ground.

His Lordship twitched his cuffs smooth under the coat sleeves with brisk little motions. Upright, distinguished, disdainful, he was all an important gentleman should be. You’d never guess he’d lost the skirmish in front of Liverpool. Reams was significantly absent.

Cummings was headed this way. Looked like he wanted to exchange a few words. But then, Cummings was an old campaigner. Maybe he took the setback philosophically.

“I must congratulate you.” Cummings said it the same way he’d say, “I must flay the flesh off your still-twitching bones.”

“Thank you.”

“You switched the knives at Bow Street.”

“That would be clever of me.”

Cummings developed a tight, white line around his mouth. He gripped his cane like they’d had an argument and it wanted to leave. “We both know what happened.”

“Truth is so elastic. Within an hour, the polite world will talk of nothing but the Bonapartist plot.” He allowed himself to become very French, and shrug. It maddened Cummings when he acted French. “Who can contradict what the world knows so thoroughly?”

“Don’t challenge me, Hawkhurst. You don’t want me for an enemy.” He turned and swept away, his cane swinging angrily, his heels clicking the marble floor toward Castlereagh who stopped and exchange a few words.

“There is a long tradition,” a voice said from behind his shoulder, “that senior intelligence agents should hate one another.”

Owl draped her lace shawl at her back, arm to arm. She looked like one of the great ladies of the ton. Dignified and aristocratic. Prettier than any of the others, though.

He said, “I’ve heard that.”

“It is a matter of testing their competence. If they cannot emerge victorious among their colleagues, how can they outfox their enemies? I believe a similar method is used in training gamecocks.”

“We had an encounter just a few minutes ago and I am now the chief gamecock on this particular hill. Are you tired? Doyle can take you home if you’re getting tired.”

“I am weary, of course. It is embarrassing to walk about, rudely staring at women, comparing their faces with my memory of a young girl. I have only one glimpse of an assassin in the rain and a tiny figure seen through glasses many years ago. I do not know if I would recognize her again. And she will have changed. It is sad, sometimes, to see what life makes of pretty young girls.”

“I liked you as a pretty young girl.” He let men and women brush past on either side of him and only looked at her. “I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face.”

“I will not say you speak flattery. I will only point out that you say most exactly what I want to hear.”

“Truth, then. You want to hear truth.” He couldn’t touch Owl, except with his eyes, so he let his imagination slide across her, planning where he’d kiss her later on tonight. He liked kissing beauty and he’d done a certain amount of that over the years. With Owl, he’d start with beauty and go on to kissing ruthlessness and ideals in the lines at the corners of her eyes. Passion and practicality sitting around her mouth. Not a comfortable woman, his Owl. Not ordinary.

She wrapped her hand on that bandage she was wearing under the sleeve of that silk dress. “The next party is bigger than this and noisier. More people.”

“I am not fragile.”

“I have never been an admirer of fragile. I think we have to do this tonight, before she hears we’re looking for her.”

“I think so too.” Owl was faced the right way. She spotted Fletcher and gave a little tilt of her head toward him.

Fletcher came, ducking through a line of young girls, so carefully groomed they were almost indistinguishable one from the other. He brought a bright-eyed maid with him.

“This is Mary, maid to Lady McLean.” Fletcher handed her the Caché drawing he’d been showing around the kitchen and stables. “Tell them.”

“I have seen this woman.” She unrolled it to look at one last time. To hold out and show. Her English was careful, with Scots underneath. “Twice. Once outside a shop on Oxford Street. Once in Portman Square, watching a street player.”

The West End. Still a big place to search. “Do you remember anything else? Was she with somebody? How she was dressed?”

“On her own, both times. Not a maid in sight. It was by that I noticed her, because a woman dressed as she was should have her maid about her.” She tapped the paper with the back of her hand. “She was wearing Madame Elise.”

Owl slipped in, “The dressmaker.”

“It was a walking dress in Pomona poplin, the first time. Satin trim and a perline cape, long, with scallops.” She made shapes in the air. “The second time, she was in Portman Square. That was a carriage dress in spotted silk. And a very pretty color it was. Amber. Lined with sarcenet.”

Owl leaned close to his ear. “This may be the one. I have thought it would be a woman who recognized her.”

“We’ll try the dressmaker. You and Doyle come with me. I’ll send the rest off to the next party.”

“The dressmaker will live near her shop. With luck, there may even be someone working this late. Give me three minutes more and I will come.” Owl touched the maid’s arm and drew her a little aside, into a quiet space beside the stairs. “Tell me more about the dresses. Satin and braid on the Pomona one? What color was the braid?”

When he they left Cummings was walking out too. He watched their carriage drive away, looking grim.