CHAPTER 9
The pen, fumed Wrexford, jamming his hands into his pockets as he walked away from the print shop window, was in this case mightier than a battalion of cavalry sabers. It certainly sliced with far more deadly precision, each stroke a perfectly designed cut.
With an inward wince, he admitted that the satire was perhaps deserved.
Neither he nor Canaday had showed to advantage.
Though how Charlotte had learned the embarrassing details was a matter for further exploration.
A man’s club was supposed to be sacrosanct, a haven where a strict code of honor ruled within its walls, a refuge where one was safe from ridicule.
But apparently those pillared, patrician walls had ears.
And Charlotte would likely retort by asking why should women play by the rules when they were all written by high-and-mighty men.
A fair point, he conceded, albeit a sharp one that was now sticking rather painfully in his arse. His pique was quick to dissipate as he conceded she had warned him that her livelihood depended on feeding juicy tidbits of gossip to the public.
As he climbed into a hackney and ordered it to head east, his thoughts turned back to the morning’s murder and how it was connected to the death of the Right Reverend Josiah Holworthy.
For he refused to believe it was naught but coincidence.
The universe, despite its apparent chaos, worked according to fundamental laws of Nature that could, as Newton had so ably proved, be explained by reason and logic.
One simply had to employ careful observation.
What am I not seeing? Leaning back against the squabs, Wrexford brooded on the question until the vehicle made its way past St. Martin’s in the Field. Rapping on the trap, he ordered the driver to halt, then paid the fare, choosing to walk the rest of the way.
The streets narrowed, their crooked turns quickly becoming crisscrossed by alleyways. The area was clinging to genteel poverty, but stews and their rough-edged violence were clawing closer.
He turned up the collar of his coat and let his shoulders slouch.
Next time, he must take care to dress in a less lordly fashion.
Mrs. Sloane would not thank him for drawing unwonted attention to her.
Hugging close to the shadows, he made his way to her lane and approached the front door of her house.
The knock went unanswered.
He tried again.
Damnation. He hadn’t stopped to consider that she might not be at home.
A surreptitious jiggle of the latch showed it was locked. And aside from the moral question of invading her privacy, he hadn’t brought a set of picks.
“Oiy!” A voice, trying to sound deeper than it was, rose up from his rear. “Wot’s ye doing there? Better bugger off quick-like, ’less you want a shiv stuck in your pegs.”
Wrexford turned. “If you stab a blade into my leg again, brat, I will birch your bum until you can’t sit down for a week.”
Two dirty faces fixed him with matching scowls.
“Just try it,” challenged the older boy.
“I would rather behave in a more civilized manner.” He rattled the latch again. “I assume you can open this?”
“Yeah.” Raven—or was it Crow?—held up a key. “But I don’t see why should I let the likes of you in.”
“Then allow me to give you a good one. I need to have a word with Mrs. Sloane, so I won’t be going anywhere until she returns.
” He gave a pointed look at the adjoining house, where already the window draperies were twitching.
“And I daresay she would rather not have the neighborhood gossiping about strange men loitering outside her door.”
The younger boy whispered something in his brother’s ear. The scowl grew fiercer, but after a small hesitation, Raven stalked past him and opened the lock. “I suppose you can come in. But we’ve got our eyes on you.”
“I expect no less,” he murmured, following the boys through the small entrance foyer into the jack-of-all-trades room that served for cooking, dining, and working.
Drawing out a stool from the table, the earl sat and crossed his legs.
The two boys did the same.
Repressing a smile, he took a leisurely look around. Despite the shabby furnishings, it had a comfortable coziness to it, a sense of life that belied the nicks and dents.
“Have you any idea when Mrs. Sloane will return?” he inquired.
“Naw,” muttered Raven.
Wrexford recalled his earlier visit. “I doubt she would approve of slurred gutter language in front of guests.”
Raven narrowed his eyes, but both boys sat up a little straighter.
“Milady went out te meet a friend,” volunteered Raven’s brother, carefully enunciating his words. “She didn’t say when she would be back.”
“Hawk,” chided Raven in a sharp whisper.
The younger boy looked confused. “I wuz just trying te be polite. M’lady says a gentleman is always polite te guests.”
“He ain’t—he isn’t—a guest,” said Raven. “He’s nothing but trouble.”
Was he? Wrexford considered the statement carefully. His own concerns had dominated his thoughts, and his actions. He hadn’t paid any attention to how his demands had affected her life.
Granted, she was making money off his scandal, but it likely wasn’t that simple. Nothing was.
As he looked up, his glance caught a pile of books on the table. An elementary Latin textbook, a history of Great Britain, a primer on penmanship—with a start he recognized them as the same schoolbooks he had had as a boy.
“Lessons?” he murmured.
“Aye,” answered Hawk. “M’lady is sending us te a tutor once a week. We’re learning all about knights in armor.” He fixed him with a shy look. “D-D’you have a suit of armor, m’lord?”
This time his brother didn’t try to shush him.
“There are several at my country estate,” he answered. “As a lad I did attempt to try one on. It weighed more than a sack of stones and reeked of rust.” The memory provoked a wry grimace. “As I recall, I fell over when I tried to take a step and my brother had to fish me out of the dratted thing.”
Hawk giggled. Raven tried to hide a smile.
“Do you have swords?” pressed the younger boy.
“A whole wall of them,” answered the earl.
The boy’s eyes widened. “Great big ones with jewels on the handle, just like the one in the picture of Richard the Lionhearted?”
“Even bigger. There’s a Viking broadside nearly as tall as I am.”
Assuming a look of boredom, Raven had slipped back into a slouch. But talk of blades tested his resolve. “You’re bamming us. Nobody could lift a sword that big.”
“It has a double handle, made for two hands.” Wrexford went on to describe it in great detail.
“Cor,” Hawk exhaled an admiring sigh. “Mebbe some day I’ll get te see a sword like that.”
“Yeah, and mebbe someday we’ll take tea with the Prince Regent,” muttered Raven. But a wink at his brother took any sting out of the sarcasm.
Undeterred, Hawk asked. “Wot other weapons have ye got?”
Maces, battleaxes, pikes—what ruthless little savages! He had forgotten how bloodthirsty boys were at that age. Hawk peppered him with questions about the arsenal, and when talk turned to daggers and rapiers, Raven couldn’t resist joining in.
Blades, thought the earl wryly, appeared to have a particular appeal to him.
“And then there are the crossbows,” said Wrexford.
“My brother and I were birched ’til our bums were scarlet for stealing one from the wall and taking it out to the fields to test its aim.
” He paused, recalling the long-ago incident.
“It was likely a good thing we were caught by one of the servants. Trying to shoot an apple off Tommy’s head probably wasn’t the wisest idea. ”
“I’ll bet ye wacked swords wid each other when nobody was looking,” said Hawk.
Memories, memories. He had not thought about the bonds of brotherhood in a long while.
“Many a time,” he replied. “Though not with real ones.”
“Who won?” asked Hawk.
“I was older, so I had the advantage when we were boys.”
The boy darted a glance at Raven, then a hopeful look at the earl. “And now?”
“And now . . .” A pause. “And now Tommy is dead.” Strange how the pain was still like sharpened steel lancing through flesh and bone.
He had thought that locking it away would have dulled its edge.
“So all that larking about through the forests and fields with sticks as our sabers is long in the past.”
“Aye, well, people cock up their toes all the time. Even toffs,” said Raven, trying to sound tougher than his years. “Nothing much you can do about it.”
A glimmer of fear lit for an instant in Hawk’s eye, but he nodded gamely. “Aye.”
As silence settled over them, Wrexford regretted his words. Death seemed to have him on the defensive this morning.
“Wot’s it like in the country?” asked Raven abruptly.
The earl thought for a long moment. How to explain to these boys the wonders of exploring the fields and woods, the magic of catching polliwogs or spying a badger’s sett?
Of climbing trees, of wrestling matches in new-mown hay.
Of biting into a fresh-picked apple and letting the sweet juice dribble down one’s chin.
“There’s no smoke in the air,” he answered slowly. “It’s quiet, and you can walk for miles without seeing any people.”
Their faces scrunched in thought, as if they were trying to imagine such a foreign world.
The click of the door latch lifting forestalled any further talk. He turned as Charlotte entered the room, a pasteboard box carefully cradled in her arms. She looked pensive, preoccupied—until her eyes met his.
Then her expression turned to wariness.
Trouble, he reminded himself. To her, he was naught but Trouble.
“He was waiting outside,” explained Raven quickly, “and said it was important. I figgered it was best to let him in.”
“Yes, you did the right thing,” assured Charlotte with a forced smile. She took a moment to set the box down on the table. “You lads have your lessons with Mr. Keating soon. Gather your books and be off. It would not do to be late.”
“But we’ve plenty of—” began Hawk, only to be silenced by a nudge from his brother.