Chapter Four
T he first thing that struck Lark about Lady Aurora Melforth was the keenness of her gray gaze. The second was the shaking of her right hand where it lay on the arm of her couch, as if the hand had a will of its own separate from her ladyship’s intentions. She caught his glance and moved the hand, arranging the folds of her wrapper. The shaking stopped. She was a long, thin woman with an abundance of wavy red hair loosely coiled around her head and a nose that descended from her brow like a buttress jutting out of a wall.
“Those insinuating Strydes think that because my foot is broken, my brain is not working. Have you sent them packing, Viv?”
Viv left Lark’s side and went to adjust her ladyship’s cushions. “Haxton is seeing them out, ma’am.”
“Thank goodness. Their Anti-Vice tirades are tiresome beyond endurance. And who is this gentleman?”
Viv glanced at him. “I… we… He is my betrothed, Mr. Edward Larkin.”
“What?” Lady Melforth’s startled gaze met Lark’s, but she spoke to Viv. “He’s not one of your beauxs from Bath. How did you meet?”
“Ma’am, if you’ll permit me to explain,” Lark ventured. “No blame attaches to Miss Bradish. ”
“That’s for me to decide young man,” she snapped.
“Oh, Lady Melforth, you must thank Mr. Larkin. He’s the one who routed the Strydes.”
“Routed them?” Lady Melforth’s gaze turned curious. “And how did he accomplish that?”
“It turns out that Mr. Larkin is acquainted with the Duke of Wenlocke.” Viv Bradish gave him a challenging look, daring him to stick to his story in front of the viscountess.
“I lived in the duke’s household for many years, ma’am,” he said.
“You know her grace then?” Lady Melforth’s voice grew wistful.
“I do.”
For a moment Lady Melforth looked a little lost. “I knew her parents in Italy years ago before the French came. Ah, well, those times are gone. Who are your people? What are your prospects?”
“My people are old Londoners, ma’am. I bank with Hammersley’s.”
For a moment her ladyship was silent, whether because of the decidedness of his reply or because she knew Hammersley’s. At last, she said, “You must not expect to marry any time soon, young man. Miss Bradish is quite necessary to my comfort.”
“And you have your guide to finish. I understand, ma’am. We have made no immediate plans. It is enough that I may call her mine.” He felt Viv’s glance, and knew she would take him to task for that remark.
“Very well, you may go. I must talk with Miss Bradish now.”
*
Lark stepped into the street and turned away from the house, moving east. The sky was black, the gas lamps lit, making pools of yellow light at intervals along the street and casting shadows across the stone facades of the houses. He refused Haxton’s offer of her ladyship’s carriage. He wanted to avoid unnecessary questions about where he lived, but he felt a little lightheaded, and walking pulled at the wound in his side. His own rooms were close by, but to reach Rook and find out how his old partner had fared in the event, he’d have to find a cab soon.
He’d gone but a short way when a man fell into step beside him. It was the doctor.
“Acquainted with dukes, are you?” Newberry asked.
“Just the one.”
“I doubt it. Whoever you are, you’re no duke’s secretary. And you never met Vivian Bradish over a book.”
“No? The title is The Spanish Brothers .”
The doctor snorted. “Nevertheless, my money says you’re out to ruin our Viv.”
Lark gritted his teeth. He really didn’t like that our . “Since when is a proposal of marriage likely to ruin a lady?”
“Since when does a lady shoot her betrothed? I give you fair warning, Mr. Larkin, if that is your name, I mean to find out why she shot you and expose you for the scoundrel you are.”
Lark halted and faced the doctor. If they put gloves on and stepped into a ring, Lark had no doubt he could take the man. Another memory surfaced with the idea, a day at Daventry Hall when all of Dav’s lost boy gang had taken turns sparring on a patch of lawn behind the house. “Expose me if you think there’s something to expose, but don’t injure Miss Bradish. You do not want to see her dismissed from Lady Melforth’s employ, I think.”
“Don’t think I can’t manage to expose you without harming our Viv.”
“Perhaps you can, Doctor, but remember she’s my Viv now, not yours.” Lark began walking again. He felt absurdly satisfied to lay claim to Vivian Bradish. The doctor didn’t move. Now, if Lark could only make it to the nearest cab stand without passing out.
*
The cab dropped Lark on Holborn at the top of Chancery Lane. From there he headed south, threading his way through dark turnings to the forgotten little court where he and Rook had shared rooms until the great October fire at Westminster Palace.
Lark let himself in to the once elegant house, divided long before Lark was born into separate dwellings for as many as fifty souls. Suddenly weak-kneed, he leaned heavily on the stair rail to pull himself up to their old rooms, now Rook’s domain. Wide stairs turned upward around a central well that by day let in hazy light. By night, the stairs were quite black, except for faint rays emitted from under and around doors that no longer fit snugly in their jambs. Lark could find his way as much by smell as by sight, by gin and ale, and fish and tar, and the fragrances of several occupations on the lower end of the wage scale. The smells seemed to mock him for the part of a gentleman that he’d been playing. Vivian Bradish might be a hired companion, but her genteel dependence on a rich lady, still left her many strata above Lark in the layers of London society.
It was quiet on the stairs. Few of Rook’s neighbors were at home as they had occupations better suited to darkness than daylight. Lark heard only the occasional muffled quarrel as he passed up the two flights and around the landing to the rooms at the front of the house overlooking the sad little court. Rook’s reeking boots covered in river muck sat in a tin tub outside their door. Rook hated to risk having his boots pinched, but their charwoman, Alice Povey, refused to have the boots inside.
In the common room when Lark entered, other smells reminded him that he’d left posh London far behind. The remains of Rook’s dinner, a fried bloater, a jacket potato, and ale, mingled with the scent of burned bread. In Lady Melforth’s house, no coarse kitchen smells reached the main rooms. The fragrant tea Lark drank in her dining room faced no competition from humbler scents.
“Where’d ye get to?” Rook grumbled from a chair by the fire. He held a long fork with a smoking hunk of bread on the end near the glowing coals.
“Henrietta Street.”
“Wot? Where? How’d ye end up there?” Rook had long abandoned the effort of speaking the way Daventry taught them.
“She shot me.” Lark wanted a bed and his old one would do. He wanted to shed his coat, tie, and ruined waistcoat. His wound burned, and his skin itched around the edges of the sticking plaster.
“Who?”
“The mark. She had a Toby under that cape of hers.” He wondered what she had done with the gun.
“A barker? Did she twig you?” Rook sat up straight, giving Lark a closer took.
“No. She was aiming for you. I got in the way.”
“Where’d she hit ye?”
“Right side. Can you help me out of my coat? The sawbones told me to have my valet change the dressing for me.”
“Valet. ’e thinks ye have a valet? You fooled ’em proper, did ye?”
“They think I’m Edward Larkin, a fine gentleman.” Lark grinned.
Rook snorted. “The more fool them, and I’m no valet, no servant neither.”
“Just help. I don’t want to undo the sawbones’s handiwork.”
Rook put aside the smoking piece of bread and pushed up out of his chair. Lark extended the arm on his unwounded side, and Rook pulled the sleeve until Lark could shrug out of his coat. At fifteen, when they’d left Daventry Hall, they’d been about the same size. Now at seven and twenty, Rook was a good four inches taller than Lark and much broader. He had a pleasant open face, which he concealed as much as possible behind a dark beard and heavy moustache.
Rook whistled at the sight of the bloodied waistcoat. “Why’d ye go t’ ’enrietta Street for a sawbones? Why not go t’ the casual ward? ”
Lark did not want to explain his dislike for dirt and drunkenness. In Rook’s part of London, a man was hardly a man if he didn’t have beer on his breath and grime under his nails. Lark’s preference for soap and clean linens was an ironic holdover from their time with Daventry. He was having entirely too many thoughts of that time lately. Maybe the memories had clouded his judgment.
“The mark took me. I wanted to see what I could get out of… the adventure.” He needed to turn Rook’s thoughts elsewhere. “How much did you get from her purse?”
“Naught. She’s a minx. Had stones in ’er bag is all. The bag might fetch somethin’, but ye won’t be payin’ fer new threads with stones.”
Lark laughed. It was as he’d suspected. She had used the weighted bag as a decoy and kept her money elsewhere.
“Ye can laugh?” Rook protested. “I call it a bloody cheat. That skirt is dangerous.”
Lark nodded. Rook was right. The woman was dangerous, but the balance had shifted in his understanding of their situation. The wrong of shooting him far outweighed the wrong of taking a false purse. No wonder she had been willing to take him to her own fancy sawbones for medical help.
“She offered to pay my tailor,” he said. His tailor was E. Isaacson Brothers, the ready-made retailers with their fashion guides and their huge gas-lit shop front, or the used clothes shops on Monmouth Street. If a man read the bankruptcy listings, and headed for Monmouth Street in their wake, he could dress fashionably on the cheap in London. Anything saved on tailoring bills could be invested .
“Ye mean ye turned ’er up sweet?”
Lark didn’t answer. He had thought to make a story of it, to have a laugh at how he’d pulled the wool over the eyes of some toffs, but now he wanted the adventure with Vivian Bradish to be his alone, not a shared thing. He concentrated on removing his bloodied waistcoat and shirt. A sudden chill shook him, and he clamped his jaw shut. He might spend the night with Rook for old times’ sake.
“So, is she old or young? Pretty or plain?”
“Young, pretty.” But dangerous. If her guidebook taught other women to go boldly about London, prepared to meet danger with courage and a weapon, his old profession would disappear.
“Yer sure she didn’t twig ye?”
“She didn’t. I’m going to see her again.” He was starting to shake all over, and he could feel his knees going slack. He needed a room, a bed.
“Why? She’s above yer touch, ain’t she?”
“Doing her a favor.” He turned away and crossed the room. It was one half of some ancient lady’s drawing room, bare now of the amenities that had once graced it, no rugs, no sconces on the wall, no paintings, no fine furnishings.
“Wot’s in it then? Yer not thinking of turning cracksman, are ye? Pinching her silver?”
“Don’t be daft. We should take a holiday is all.” He said we , as if they were still partners.
“’oliday?”
“No clicks.” Lark shrugged. He had been trying to persuade Rook to quit since the fire. Now the problem of Rook had become urgent. Lark needed time to see what would come of his arrangement with Vivian Bradish.
“Are ye bosky?”
He wasn’t drunk. He just felt crazy as if he’d climbed into one of Mr. Green’s famous hot air balloons and taken off skyward with no tethers to hold him back. “Tired.”
“Wot ’re ye not telling me?” Rook asked. “If we don’t do clicks, ’ow do we eat?”
“We’ll eat. Don’t worry. Just hold off until… these stitches come out.” He pushed open the door to his old room. Rook had changed nothing as if he had expected Lark’s return to their old life. The room had once been a lady’s boudoir. Now it had a bed, a chair, a makeshift wardrobe, and a trunk bolted to the floor and securely locked. Lark could make it to the bed. He knew he could.
Rook came up behind him. “Wot’s wrong w’ ye? We do clicks. You and me. Ye’ve been taking a bleedin’ holiday since the fire. Ye can’t keep on like ’at. Wot’ll I do?”
“Just a bit more holiday,” Lark said. He reached the bed and pulled back the coverlet. Old and worn as it was, he needed its warmth. He let himself sink down on the bed, and pulled the cover up around him and fell back onto the mattress. He could barely see Rook standing puzzled in the doorway.
“I don’t need a bleedin’ ’oliday,” Rook said.