Valentine

Chapter Nineteen

Theo reached the corner of Curzon Street and Audley Street just in time to see Sylvester hail a hackney carriage. There was a second one immediately behind, and without pausing to think, she flagged it down.

"I'm going where they're going," she said, gesturing to the other vehicle before scrambling into the dark, shabby interior.

"Right you are, lady." The jarvey cracked his whip, hoping this would be a long fare.

It was only as the hackney swung round a corner, bouncing over the cobbles, that Theo realized she'd brought no money with her. Never mind. Sylvester would pay her fare as well as his own, and if she lost him, she'd take the hackney back to Curzon Street, where there was money aplenty.

Where could he be going? She pushed aside the grimy leather curtain over the window aperture and stared out in the dark streets. The area they were going through had a very unfamiliar feel, but, then, she was only just learning the topography of the few square miles of London inhabited by the ton. Presumably Sylvester wasn't going to the clubs on St. James's. He'd surely have walked that short distance.

After what seemed a very long time they turned alongside the wide, dark body of the Thames and drove along the embankment. The air smelled different. Dirty and smoky, fetid with a midden stench and the ancient river slime clinging to the sloping cobbles of the embankment.

Theo pushed her head out the window and craned toward the box. "Are they still in sight?"

"Aye," he called down. "Turnin' on Dock Street. This ain't a good place fer Quality, if I might be so bold."

"No, I can see that," Theo said, withdrawing her head. What business could Sylvester have in these parts?

What area of his privacy was she intruding on? A ripple of unease lifted the fine hairs on the back of her neck, and she almost told the jarvey to return to Curzon Street. Then she thought of what she wanted to say to Sylvester. And she wanted to say it now. When he heard it, he'd understand that she wasn't sticking her nose into his private affairs.

Although if she did discover a clue or two on the way, she wouldn't close her eyes to it. The still small voice of ruthless honesty spoke through her private protestations.

The hackney drew up in a dark, narrow cobbled street where the stench of river and sewage was so strong, Theo could barely breathe as she stepped out of the carriage. The other hackney was waiting across the street, presumably on Sylvester's instructions. Public traffic in these parts wouldn't be that frequent, and he would need transport home.

A rusty iron sign creaked over the narrow door of a tumbledown wooden structure. Gusts of noxious smoke drifted through tiny unglazed windows, where dim, flickering lights showed and strident voices bellowed. Something crashed heavily to the floor, an angry voice yelled; there was a burst of raucous laughter, and the door flew open abruptly, a man sailing through the air to land on his backside in the filth of the kennel.

With a roar he clambered to his feet and charged back through the door, head down, fists flailing.

Theo stepped back just in time as he came flying out again, this time followed by a furious red-faced woman wielding a rolling pin.

"Get outta my tavern, you great ox!" the woman bellowed, adding a few choice epithets that were new to Theo's fairly educated ears. "Get back to yer woman, Tom Brig, and don't go messin' wi' my customers." She stood over him, sleeves rolled up revealing massive forearms, a tattered fringe of filthy petticoat showing beneath her stained apron. Then, with another curse, she turned and went back inside. The door closed and the alley was in darkness again.

Tom Brig half rose to his knees, then subsided into the kennel with a whimpered exhalation, letting his head fall onto a heap of rotting cabbages, his eyes closing, a stale, beery froth bubbling at his open mouth.

Theo grimaced, stepped over him, and pushed boldly at the closed door. It swung open, and she found herself on the threshold of a square room, foul sawdust on the floor, sea coal belching noxious fumes from the hearth, mingling with the acrid, greasy stench of the tallow rushes and the fish-oil lamps swinging from the blackened rafters.

Her eyes were streaming from the smoke, and for a minute she could see nothing. Then a voice exclaimed, "Well, lookee 'ere, then, Long Meg. Get an eyeful of what the river's dropped on us."

A sea of eyes swiveled toward her. Bloodshot eyes with yellow whites. Grinning mouths revealed blackened stumps, and the reek of unwashed bodies and stale breath enclosed her like a miasma. Then she saw Sylvester, up by the bar counter, a mug in his hand.

He stared at her for a minute, wondering if he'd had enough gin and water to create this image. The crimson velvet hood of her cloak was thrown back, revealing the blue-black hair in startling contrast. Her eyes were dark and intense in the glowing brown face, her lips parted as if on the verge of an eager message.

As he struggled to make sense of this extraordinary visitation, Theo pushed her way through the room toward him, ignoring the hands that grabbed at her cloak, the coarse voices that offered a variety of lewd suggestions for her entertainment.

"Sylvester, there's something I have to tell you." She reached him, smiling, putting her hand on his arm. "I don't believe anymore you've hurt me at all, and I think I've just been -"

Sylvester found his voice. "I must be going insane. What in the devil's name are you doing here?"

"I followed you," she said. "What's that you're drinking?" She picked up the tankard and sniffed its contents. "Is it blue ruin? It smells horrible, but I suppose it's what people drink in places like this."

She turned to look around her with a curious eye, feeling secure now that Sylvester was beside her. "Why would you come to a place like this, Stoneridge?"

Sylvester debated whether to wring her neck on the spot or wait until he could enjoy the exercise at his leisure. "How dare you follow me?" he said finally, aware of how inadequately the words expressed his feelings.

"I wanted to tell you I've realized that actually I don't mind anymore that you tricked me into marrying you," she explained earnestly, her eyes huge and dark in the smoky dimness, her hand still on his arm.

"Well, I'm delighted to hear it," he responded with feeble sarcasm. "Such vital information couldn't have waited, of course, for a more suitable place and time."

"No, it couldn't," Theo declared. She took a sip from his tankard. "Ugh! It's disgusting."

He snatched the tankard from her and smacked her hand away sharply. It relieved his feelings a little, but not nearly enough.

"I can't deal with you here, but by God, I'm going to enjoy getting you home," he said grimly, flinging a shilling on the stained planking of the counter. "You've managed to ruin my own plans, endanger yourself -"

"Not so," Theo denied as he caught her wrist and pulled her behind him toward the door. "I can handle trouble, as you know perfectly well."

"Well, I'll tell you this much, my girl. The trouble I'm about to administer, you won't be able to handle," he asserted, pushing her through the door.

"What plans have I ruined?" Theo demanded, tripping over an uneven cobble and grabbing at his arm. "Oh, you have to pay my hackney. I didn't bring any money."

Sylvester cast his eyes and a prayer for patience heavenward and dug into his pocket for his purse.

"Did you see that man in the corner of the taproom?" Theo persisted. "He didn't look as if he belonged in a place like that either… I mean either like you or me. What were you doing there, Stoneridge?"

Sylvester stopped at Theo's hackney with an arrested expression. "What man?"

"I'll show you if you come back inside," she said. "He was all muffled up, but his muffler was of good wool, and he wore top boots. And his cloak had a silk lining."

Sylvester stared at her in the darkness. "How did you see all that?"

"I'm very observant," she said. "So's Rosie. Even with her poor eyesight, not much passes her by."

"You goin' to pay me, guv, or jest stand there gabbin' all night?" The jarvey leaned down from his box. "Two shillin'."

"From Curzon Street! That's daylight robbery."

"But he did have to follow you," Theo pointed out. "He had to drive so that he could keep you in sight all the time."

"A formidable task. Clearly, I stand in his debt," Sylvester muttered with heavy irony. He handed over the two shillings.

"Shall we go back inside and I'll show you the man?"

"No." He bundled her over to the other hackney. "Jarvey, just pull to the far corner and stay there. I'll tell you when to move on." He followed Theo into the vehicle and sat forward, holding the leather curtain aside, his eyes fixed on the door to the Fisherman's Rest as the hackney pulled into the deep shadows thrown by a steeply pitched overhanging roof at the corner of the lane.

"Who is the man?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be here."

"Aren't you going to tell me anything else?"

"No. And if it's all the punishment you receive for this insane interference, you can count yourself lucky."

Theo contemplated his profile and decided she didn't have too much to worry about. There was a telltale curve to the chiseled mouth and a note in his voice that belied his words.

She sat back since there wasn't room for both of them to look out the window and contemplated the puzzle that had brought them to this insalubrious spot.

Suddenly it came to her. "Those men this afternoon! Someone set them on you, and they told you he would be here."

Theo was too sharp for her own good. He said nothing immediately, however, but kept his eye on the door.

His patience was rewarded. A tall man slipped outside, pausing in the lane to adjust the woolen muffler around his mouth. A flash of white silk showed as his cloak swung when he turned sideways, looking up and down the narrow alley.

Sylvester could see nothing of his face, but he knew who it was. There was something about the way the man held himself, about the set of his shoulders. Sylvester had been at school with Neil Gerard. He'd known him since they were terrified ten-year-olds hiding from their bullying elders.

"Sweet Jesus," he murmured, pulling his head back into the carriage. Neil would have seen him in the tavern. But he didn't know that Sylvester had recognized him. Gerard would have seen only the diversion Theo had provided. Presumably, he'd been waiting for his hired assailants to make their report. When they hadn't appeared, and their intended victim had come in their stead, he would have guessed what had happened.

But he wouldn't know for sure that Gilbraith had seen him. Theo had done double service with her outrageous impulse. Provided distraction as well as the means for identification.

"Who was it?" Theo demanded in a low voice as he banged on the ceiling to give the jarvey the order to move off.

"I don't know," he lied. Theo's entanglement in this puzzle ended here and now. She was far too impulsive and unpredictable. She reminded him of an unstable Catherine wheel, liable at any moment to spin off its pin onto some darting, whirling course of its own. After this evening's exploit there was no knowing what she'd do if he opened the door even a fraction.

"But you must have some idea who would want to injure you," she persisted.

"Come here." He dragged her across the space that divided them and settled her on his knee. "Now, tell me again what it was that brought you hotfoot on my heels."

"But why would someone want to hurt you?" She tried again, pushing herself away from his chest. "You can't just stop discussing it as if it never happened."

"Oh, I believe I can do that," he said coolly. "Just as I can become extremely unpleasant on the subject of my wife's sticking her overinquisitive nose with unpardonable recklessness into my very private business. Now, do you wish to discuss that, or would you prefer to tell me what inspired this piece of foolishness?"

Theo sat in chagrined silence for a minute, and Sylvester, smiling, drew her head to his shoulder and slipped his hand beneath her cloak to find the soft swell of her breasts. "Come, gypsy," he said, softly cajoling now. "You came a long way to say something to me. I'd like to hear it again when I can concentrate."

Theo bit her lip in frustration. But she did want him to concentrate on what she had to say, and clearly he wasn't going to be prodded into confiding in her. She'd just have to go about discovering the truth in some other way.

"I wanted to tell you that I don't seem to mind anymore that you tricked me into marrying you," she said, sitting up on his knee and cupping his face in her hands. "Life with you is much more exciting than it ever was without you." She bent to kiss his face, her tongue flickering over his lips, dipping into the cleft of his chin, licking upward over his nose, flickering across his eyelids.

"And that's all that counts?" he murmured. "Excitement?" His teasing tone masked a sweet joy.

"It covers a multitude of delightful things," Theo responded, her tongue tracing the plane of his cheek and around to his ear. He shuddered with pleasure as the hot tip flicked, probed, licked the sensitive whorls, and her teeth nibbled on his earlobe.

"Who was the man? You did recognize him?" She couldn't resist one last try with the simple approach.

He kept his response light. "Blackmail, Theo."

"You should know. You're a fairly impressive exponent of the art yourself." Her tongue was a burning dart, and her loins moved sinuously over his so that his flesh sprang to life.

She slid a hand down to cup his arousal through the constraint of his britches, to press the erect flesh against her palm. "Of course, I had intended to suggest that we go back to Stoneridge, since I find London very boring. But now that we're in the middle of this adventure, I can see that it could become quite exciting."

"Theo, I am not involving you in my affairs just to satisfy your ennui," Sylvester declared, removing her hand abruptly. "Sit over there." He took her waist and deposited her on the opposite bench.

"But I am involved."

"You are not! And if you ever endanger yourself as you did tonight, I can safely promise that you will regret it."

The simple statement somehow carried more force than a more explicit threat. Theo nibbled a thumbnail in contemplative silence for a minute. She hadn't felt in the least endangered, but Sylvester wasn't in the mood to hear that.

She said cheerfully, "Well, since I don't wish to quarrel with you tonight, perhaps we can go back to what we were doing before?"

Crossing the narrow space, she sat on his knee again. "Now, where was I?"

"About here, I believe," he said, taking her hand.

"Ah, yes, now I remember…"

Several hours later Sylvester lay in the darkness of his bedchamber, Theo's deep breathing filling the quiet, rustling across his chest, his fingers tangled in the fragrant cloud of her hair. Despite his relief that she'd at last decided that the why of this marriage no longer mattered when set beside the fact, he knew it disposed of only one of his problems. Theo's acceptance would do neither of them much good if Neil Gerard succeeded in inflicting the damage he seemed so set on.

But what could possibly drive Neil Gerard to attempt murder? What could Sylvester, his friend from their earliest schooldays, have done to drive a man to such desperate straits? Neil was a coward, inclined to panic, but Sylvester had understood his physical fears and had never condemned him for them. Indeed, he'd stood by him and stood up for him through some of the worst schoolboy hells. Neil had not returned the favor, though. At the court-martial he'd done everything but directly accuse his old friend and comrade of cowardice.

And he turned his back on him afterward.

The old serpents of hurt and self-disgust coiled in his belly, and their venom ran in his veins. Neil had made it clear that Sylvester Gilbraith had forfeited all claims to friendship and loyalty.

And now he was trying to kill him! His mind snapped clear of the pointless misery of the past. Why would a man who'd destroyed the reputation and career of another then decide to go one further?

Vimiera had to be behind this. There was nothing else that connected the two of them in antagonism.

What was Neil afraid of now? Was he trying to prevent something from happening? Sylvester must hold the key to some secret.

It was the only explanation. Some secret that would ruin Gerard.

He tried to force his mind back to those moments on that Portuguese plain. It had been sunset, and they'd been holding their position since dawn against continuous enemy forays. The river had been behind them, and his small company formed a lonely outpost protecting the bridge for the main body of the army, expecting to cross at some point in the night.

He knew all that. It was documented in the records at Horseguards. Captain Gerard was to come up with reinforcements. They had only to hold out until dusk.

Sylvester closed his eyes, trying to recreate those hours. A hawk circled in his internal vision, a dark shape against the dazzling blue expanse of the sky. How had he been feeling? Apprehensive… frightened even? Probably. Only fools were unafraid of battle and death. A young private, little more than a lad, had been wounded in the morning and had lain throughout the heat of the day, alternately whimpering and screaming, calling for his mother. He could hear his voice now, coming at him across the mists of memory. He could see the face of Sergeant Henley, hear his voice reciting the drill, exhorting the men to greater speed as they fired and reloaded at the undulating blue line of Frenchmen appearing over the small line of hills facing their position.

They'd beaten them off. How many times during that interminable day had they driven that line back beyond the hills? It would have been so easy to have withdrawn over the bridge, and yet not once had it occurred to him to do so. They would be reinforced at nightfall, and the bridge would be secured.

And then what had happened? The line was coming up at them again, the sun dipping into the hills behind the advancing French so it was hard for his men to see as they fired into the red glow.

And then what happened? It was as if his mind retained that single picture, a brightly colored picture surrounded by blackness. And a certain something hovered on the periphery of that picture, but it refused to take a tangible, recognizable form.

It was no good. He always got this far and no farther. There was only one other memory of hideous clarity – an isolated picture that had no physical context. He saw the face of the Frenchman standing over him, the bayonet poised. He saw the twisted light of a fanatic in the man's eyes and the flash as the bayonet descended. He thought he'd put his hands up to cover his eyes before the white light had burst in his head. And he remembered nothing else, except confused moments of delirium, punctuated by Henry's voice, until the brain fever left him months later in that stinking jail in Toulouse.

Sylvester eased himself out of bed. Theo murmured and rolled onto her stomach, her arms reaching across the bed as she searched for him in her sleep.

He poured himself a glass of water and stood at the window, watching the imperceptible lightening in the east.

But why, if Neil wanted him out of the way, hadn't he simply condemned him at the court-martial? It would have been so easy when Sylvester had nothing to say on his own behalf. Gerard could have said that Gilbraith had surrendered prematurely. That he himself had arrived exactly on time. And the verdict would have been cowardice in the face of the enemy and a firing squad.

But he hadn't said that. He'd taken the risk that Gilbraith would go free. And therefore that his secret, whatever it was, might somehow come out. And now he was trying somewhat clumsily to get rid of him. Presumably because he'd reappeared on the public scene. Licking his wounds and buried in shame in the wilderness, Sylvester would have seemed a minimal threat. But he'd come back to life, and the old scandal inevitably reared its head.

Even as a boy, Neil had reacted in blind panic to threatening situations. And it seemed he was doing it again. But was there more to this panic than the fear that Sylvester would come upon his secret? Why hadn't he condemned him at the court-martial? There'd been another witness, his sergeant. What had he said?

Sylvester shook his head impatiently. He could see the man's face; he was an ugly specimen of mankind. But he couldn't remember what he'd said. His testimony was pure formality, anyway.

"What are you doing?"

Theo's drowsy voice shattered his intense reverie. He swung round to the bed. She was sitting up, blinking sleepily, the sheet tangled around her waist, her breasts lifting gently on the narrow rib cage with each breath.

"Watching the dawn," he said. "Go back to sleep."

Theo continued to sit there, however, regarding him gravely. What had he been thinking as he stood there gazing into the gray darkness? He did know the man's identity, she was certain of it. There had been something forbidding, chilling in his face as he turned to answer her. It had disappeared now, but she'd seen it. She wouldn't want to be in the shoes of whoever inspired that look.

She threw aside the covers and padded across the carpet toward him, black hair swirling around her creamy nakedness. "Is it dawn, already?"

"Almost." The bare skin of her arm brushed his own, making him startlingly aware of his own nakedness. Tense, he waited for more questions, but she merely leaned against him, her hair flowing over his shoulder, one hand lightly tracing the scar running down his rib cage and round the narrow waist.

"When did you get this?"

"Oh, some skirmish about ten years ago."

Theo nodded and looked up at him, into his face, where she saw the lingering pain behind the cool gray eyes. Her husband bore more scars than those visible on his body, and if she was ever going to understand him, she had to understand those scars too.

"Come on, back to bed," Sylvester said with sudden briskness. Catching her up, he carried her back to bed and dropped her on the feather mattress. He leaned over and smoothed her hair from her brow, smiling slightly. "What an intrepid, ramshackle gypsy I have for a wife."

"And you'd prefer another kind?" She couldn't prevent the flicker of anxiety in her eyes, but Sylvester shook his head.

"No, I've told you before we suit very well, you and I." He climbed in beside her, slipping an arm beneath her, rolling her into his embrace. "But there'd better be no more of these impetuous excursions, my love, however gratifying the reason for them."

Theo made no answer but lay quietly against him, relaxing into the warmth of his body. There was no point in further discussion. Prohibition or not, she'd have to conduct her own investigation. Maybe Edward would go with her to the Fisherman's Rest, and they could ask their own questions.

As the October sun rose over the Thames, Neil Gerard paced the small bare room in his anonymous lodgings, wondering what had gone wrong the previous afternoon. His men hadn't appeared for payment at the Fisherman's Rest, but Sylvester Gilbraith had come in their stead.

How he'd managed to overpower three armed thugs was a mystery when his only companions were a gaggle of young women, a child, and a one-armed cripple. Neil had only seen them from a distance, but it looked as if Gilbraith were escorting a schoolroom party. That notwithstanding, he'd overpowered his assailants and managed to learn about the rendezvous.

Neil's only comfort was the certainty that Gilbraith hadn't seen him, huddled in his shadowy corner behind a rickety wooden pillar. Gilbraith had been in the place just long enough to order a drink before the girl had arrived, and in the excitement and disturbance of that arrival, he certainly hadn't had a chance either to look around the room or to ask questions.

What a startling creature she was with that scarlet cloak and midnight-dark hair. Young, though. Very young for Sylvester Gilbraith. But her arrival had certainly annoyed and surprised the earl. Despite her confident smiles and the proprietary hand on his sleeve, he'd removed her in very short order.

She was presumably the earl's mistress. A woman not too unfamiliar with taverns like the Fisherman's Rest. Of course, Stoneridge had just married the Belmont chit. Probably he needed a little meat in his diet. A marriage of interest could make a thin meal, and there must have been an ulterior motive for that connection. Something to do with the entail. It was a common enough arrangement.

However, speculating about Gilbraith's marriage and extramarital connections wasn't throwing any light onto what had gone wrong at Astley's. Whatever it was had brought Gilbraith a dangerously close step toward Neil Gerard. It was time to change his tactics.

He glanced round the bare room with its few sticks of furniture and thin curtains. Wind gusted through the ill-fitting panes of the grimy window, and the small fire in the grate spurted.

He'd hoped to leave this miserable lodging with his problem solved and return to his elegant house on Half Moon Street and the life of the carefree bachelor, no longer obliged to pay his weekly visits to Spitalfields to hand over his blackmail.

A scrupulously cautious man, Neil Gerard had ensured that no one knew he was in London while he plotted the downfall of the Earl of Stoneridge. At these rooms on Ludgate Hill he was an anonymous lodger who paid his rent without fuss, and at the Fisherman's Rest he was an anonymous customer who had business other than drinking. As long as he conducted his business in these places, there was little chance he would accidentally run up against someone from his real life. But now his cover had been destroyed, and there was no point suffering this wretched discomfort any longer.

There was a scratch at the door, and a scrawny maidservant came in, her nose pink from the cold, a scuttle of coals in her hand.

"Make up the fire, sir?"

He nodded and stood watching her as she bent to the task, her skinny hips pressing against the rough linen of her skirt. The image of the girl in the Fisherman's Rest flashed through his mind. There was no comparison between that vibrant image and this work-roughened, scrawny creature, but he hadn't had a woman in several weeks, and his present failure-induced annoyance required soothing.

He moved to the dresser, selected a small coin from a pile, and tossed it to the floor beside the kneeling girl.

She looked up, her eyes widening. "Fer me, sir?"

"Are you clean?" He unfastened the tie of his dressing gown.

A flash of fright crossed her eyes, but she nodded dumbly, picking up the coin as she rose to her feet, wiping her hands on her apron.

"If you please, sir -"

"Well?" he said when she seemed unable to go on.

"I ain't never done it before." She dropped her eyes to the floor, twisting her hands in her apron.

Neil raised his eyes heavenward. It was an old trick. Virgins had a higher price, and he knew of several in the houses in Covent Garden who'd had their virginity restored at least half a dozen times. This girl was just trying to improve her own price.

"What kind of a gull d'you think me?" he said. When she still stood staring at the floor, he said impatiently, "If you're willing, get on the bed, girl. If you're not, get out of here."

The girl took a hesitant step to the bed, then lay down, closing her eyes tightly.

Neil threw off his robe and clambered over her. She shuddered as he pushed up her apron and petticoat. She was wearing no undergarments. It took him no more than a minute to realize she'd been telling the truth about her virginity. It increased his pleasure significantly, and when he'd finished with her, he took another coin from the dresser and tossed it to her as she limped from the room, weeping softly.

Considering that he'd been more than generous, he went back to bed, feeling sufficiently relaxed to return to sleep.

Later in the day he would leave this miserable place and resume the life of Captain Neil Gerard of Half Moon Street. An eligible bachelor of good though untitled family, with a respectable fortune and a starred army career.

He'd approach the problem of Sylvester Gilbraith from another angle. With the hand of friendship.