Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Carlton House
Dora rushed up the portico stairs, past the Greek statues in their niches, and into the palatial hall of Carlton House.
She shouldered her way through the gaggle of men who had gathered, all discussing the accident that had just been cleared up by the grooms from the Prince Regent’s stables.
She grabbed the elbow of the nearest footman.
‘You can’t come in here, miss,’ he said with all the portentousness of his over-six feet of height, royal livery and white wig.
‘Dr Sandys? Where is he?’ she asked, ignoring his attempts to keep her out. Her voice echoed around the space, drawing attention to her. The gentlemen turned to stare.
‘And you are?’ the footman said coldly, disengaging her fingers from his sleeve.
This was one moment when she wished she and Jacob were already married. ‘His business partner, Dora Fitz-Pennington. Please, just tell me where he is. Is he badly hurt?’
The men returned to their conversation with renewed vigour, no doubt discussing her effrontery for bursting in, but the footman relented. Perhaps he heard the note of genuine distress in her voice. His grip gentled and he steered her away from the onlookers.
‘He’s in the kitchens, miss. He said he didn’t want to bleed on the marble.’
‘That sounds like him.’
Following the servant’s directions, she made her way into the domestic parts of the Prince Regent’s house, barely noticing the sage walls, white plaster and gilding – thousands of pounds’ worth of government money going on keeping the regent in the opulent style he preferred.
Her heart was still galloping, and she wouldn’t be happy until she saw with her own eyes that Jacob wasn’t badly injured.
The last ten minutes had been a nightmare.
After she had dropped Miss Austen at home, she had made her way to the office only to arrive at the same time as the messenger bearing the news from Jacob that he had been run down by a carriage in Pall Mall and wanted money for a surgeon.
Jacob had none on him because an enterprising pickpocket had stripped him of his purse while he was lying in the gutter.
The fact that Jacob had had enough presence of mind to demand a message be sent was the only thing that had prevented her from panicking.
With the help of a maid dusting a bookcase, she found the kitchens, a cavernous series of connected chambers that added up to a temple to fine dining. The Prince Regent’s chef was world-famous. She had never seen such a display of copper pans and jelly moulds.
Then she saw Jacob – and time stopped still for a moment.
He was sitting on a wooden chair at the end of the scrubbed kitchen table, a cloth to his head, and his foot up on a stool.
A medical gentleman had stripped to his shirt sleeves to examine the back of Jacob’s neck.
The staff had retreated to the other end of the kitchen to continue their work, though from the low level of activity Dora surmised that the regent himself was not in residence.
That was a blessing. She would not fancy her chances of barging in if he had been at home.
‘You’ve a nasty contusion, Sandys,’ said the surgeon. ‘You’re lucky the horse didn’t break your neck.’
‘Luck was with me. The hoof just clipped my shoulder and I managed to scramble back to the pavement before the wheels ran me over. The coachman was damned good at controlling his team. I think he chose to collide with a wagon rather than with me.’ Jacob groaned as the doctor felt his ribs. ‘I’m eternally grateful to him.’
‘Hurts?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I have laudanum if you need something for the pain.’
‘No, thank you,’ he said in a harsh tone, then composed himself.
‘I’ll manage without.’ Dora smiled to herself: her injured warrior was not going to let the little matter of being trampled by horses overset his decision never to take opium in any form again.
Good for him. ‘Though I have to say,’ continued Jacob, ‘the poor horses might need something to calm them. They got as bad a scare as I did, bowling along the street at one moment then finding someone under their hooves the next.’
Dora shuddered at the thought. Jacob sounded surprisingly calm about the whole thing, but then again, he had been in battle. Perhaps he was inured to shocks?
‘What on earth were you doing throwing yourself in front of Lord Southwell’s coach in the first place?’ said the medic, feeling the back of Jacob’s head. ‘There’s a lump there. Watch out for signs that you have a concussion – I don’t need to tell you the symptoms.’
Dora came to Jacob’s side and took his hand in hers. He gave her fingers a squeeze.
‘My love.’ He gave her an apologetic look to say all was well and that he was sorry for the scare. ‘Did you bring the money?’ he asked. ‘Dr Beverly was kind enough to drop everything and come to my aid.’
The doctor, an elderly gentleman with pepper-and-salt hair and a bushy beard, harrumphed at that suggestion.
‘Good God, Sandys, I don’t need paying! You can stand me a drink next time we meet at the club.
’ He darted an interested glance at Dora from under white brows.
‘So, this is the lady, is it, your intended?’
Dora gave Jacob a startled look. Had Jacob been talking about her while Dr Beverly tended to him?
‘This is her.’ Jacob flushed, though whether from embarrassment or pain was hard to tell. ‘Dora, darling, I’m all right. Sit down. You look terrified.’
She sank in the chair next to him, her knees trembling. ‘I was – still am. What happened? It’s unlike you to have an accident.’
‘I’ll tell you later, my love. First, would you be so kind as to see the wagoner is compensated for damage and the coachman given something? The servants on the door can show you where they are.’
Dora nodded and stood up. She got the message that he didn’t want to discuss it in hearing of one of his peers. She wagged her finger at him. ‘Listen to what the doctor says, Jacob, and don’t you dare move until I get back.’
Dr Beverly smiled grimly. ‘Ah, I see you know what doctors are like as patients. We are the worst possible people to take our own advice.’
‘Then I expect you to convince him to be the exception.’
Dora returned to the entrance hall and sought out the footman who had allowed her entry. She explained her mission.
‘They’re in the Red Lion, miss, steadying their nerves, if you know what I mean.’ He gave her a wink, indicating exactly what the steadying entailed.
‘Right then, I’ll make sure they have the funds for that.’
She found the pub in an alleyway that ran between Pall Mall and King Street, a dirty black-timbered building that had none of the spruce Palladian pretensions of Carlton House and surrounding buildings.
The coachman and the wagoner were huddled together at a table.
It looked like adversity had resulted in them striking up a friendship.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Dora, approaching them. ‘Dr Sandys sent me to see if you are both well.’
‘Dr Sandys?’ asked the coachman. He was smartly dressed in navy livery and looked none the worse from the incident. ‘Who’s that?’
‘The man you almost ran over.’
The coachman pulled out a stool for her. ‘Hah! He’s a lucky beggar. Is he going to be all right?’
‘He is right enough to be thinking of you both. A surgeon is seeing to him now.’
The wagoner, distinctive in his country smock and nankeen breeches, raised a mug of ale to her. ‘Thank the good Lord for that. I thought he was a goner when I saw him tumble off the pavement.’
‘He didn’t tumble,’ said the coachman. ‘He was pushed. I saw it as clear as day. That gave me a second to steer away. I’m only sorry that I clipped your wagon.’
‘Better my wagon than a man’s leg.’
‘He was pushed?’ Dora felt sick. ‘Did you see by whom?’
The coachman shook his head. ‘Not so I would recognise him again. There were several gentlemen on that side of the road. You have to notice in case one of them takes it into his head to try to cross before the horses. Those flash gents can’t be trusted when they’ve had a skinful.
All I can say with any certainty is that a man in a dark brown jacket and brown hat, smart like, hurried up from behind him, then deliberately came alongside and shoved. ’
‘You were coming up from behind too?’
‘Yes, that’s me. Trotting along after dropping his lordship at his club, not a care in the world, then, bang, there’s a man under Jill’s hooves and not a damn thing I can do about it.’
‘Were you coming in the other direction?’ Dora asked the wagoner.
‘That’s right, miss. I had just unloaded some kegs in Jermyn Street and was thinking about what I was going to have for supper, and then this one comes crashing into me.’ He grinned at the coachman.
‘The man who pushed Dr Sandys would have been facing you – the one in the brown jacket. Did you see him?’ asked Dora.
‘No, miss. I was too busy stopping Bernie and Tucker from making a run for it. My Clydesdales could’ve dragged his lordship’s carriage with us where we’d locked wheels, taken it all the way home to Kent.’
Dora passed over a purse containing what she guessed was generous compensation for a cartwheel and any resulting loss of earnings while it was fixed.
‘Dr Sandys doesn’t want you to be inconvenienced for getting caught up in this.
If that isn’t enough for repairs, you can find us at our office. ’ She slid him a business card.
The carter squinted at it. ‘What does it say? I was never very good at reading curly writing.’
‘Fitz-Pennington and Sandys, Private Enquiry Agents.’ At his blank look, she added: ‘We investigate crimes that the usual authorities can’t or won’t handle.’
‘Bet you make a few enemies along the way,’ said the coachman, pocketing the money she had passed in his direction.
‘If we are doing our job correctly, I’d say that’s inevitable,’ she agreed. And who had tried to murder Jacob was another mystery they would now have to solve.