Chapter 10
Ten
Lady Frances finally called for her landau when the light was violet, the shadows long since absorbed by the dusk.
There would be a full moon tonight—Madelaine was sure Lady Frances had timed her picnic for it—but the servants had lit torches too. They would be clearing away and packing up long into the dark.
Madelaine glanced back as the landau pulled away. The torches smoked and glowed, making new, shifting shadows on the tent’s canvas walls. It looked quite medieval. Henry VIII’s ghost wouldn’t have felt out of place.
She sat back against her seat, the view being quickly lost. The landau’s covers had been pulled up, enclosing them in their own, dim, moving tent, the scent of sun-warmed leather and dye strong in the small space.
The tired commentary the other three ladies shared soon wore out, and within fifteen minutes everyone was drowsing in their own corner.
Despite her own fatigue, Madelaine was too tense to fully close her eyes.
She sat looking through the open slice of window, watching the passing silhouettes of tree and hedge against the darkening sky.
Lord Cotereigh rode somewhere close behind them.
His horse was black, entirely black, she’d noted with a hidden snort of amusement.
Of course he chose his animals to match his fashions.
Several other of the gentlemen rode nearby too, and though it was 1812 and not 1712, and the highwaymen had long been hung into oblivion, there was comfort in that. Lord Cotereigh wouldn’t be an easy mark. Lord Cotereigh was—
She cringed. Why had she done that? Overflowed like a broken tap, all that…
that pain and nonsense spilling out. What did he care?
She was only a chess piece, something to be moved around his gameboard at will.
What strange ways they thought up to entertain themselves, all these people who had too much and cared too little.
Peacocks. All of them. Dragging their consequence behind them, even if it wearied them to death.
“I liked hearing you talk…”
There were better things to think of. She gave herself a shake.
The journey back to London could be more usefully spent.
She would take a mental catalogue of everyone she had met today, commit their names and personalities to memory, and work out which of them could be useful, which it might be worth approaching, and how.
But she must have dozed herself. It seemed only a moment later when she jerked awake to the clatter of hooves on cobbles.
Lady Frances woke too, yawning widely, only belatedly covering her mouth with the back of her hand.
She leant forward, blinking sleepy eyes, and looked out of the window.
When she turned back, smiling, her energies appeared to have been fully restored.
“Is it about nine, do you think?”
The two other ladies woke at her voice, the dark-haired one groping for her reticule, which, she promised, contained a watch.
“Certainly it’s no later than ten,” Lady Frances said. “Plenty of time to get changed before Lady Lloyd’s ball this evening. It does seem a little greedy having two engagement balls, but her father was still in India at the time of the first one.”
The watch being discovered, the time was discovered also. It was twenty minutes past nine.
“Plenty of time,” said Lady Frances, pleased. Then, to the younger woman at her side, “Are you still planning on lavender?”
“Mama said cream. And my pearls.”
Whatever Lady Frances’s expert opinion of this might have been, Madelaine would never know. There was the sudden piercing cry of a child in pain.
It was faint but clearly recognisable, the shrill anguish making her heart skip and her blood run cold. Looking anxiously from the window, she thought she saw an alleyway flash by; she thought she saw two figures in the lantern-lit shadows, one large and one small.
“Please, mister, stop, stop, please…”
There and gone in an instant, a young boy’s sobbing voice. The carriage bowled on, the alleyway already behind them.
“Stop!” she called. “Stop the carriage.”
“Whatever—”
But she paid no heed to Lady Frances or the surprised exclamations of the others. “Stop!” She leant out of the window, calling to the postillions. “Driver! Stop!”
The nearest rider glanced back then called ahead. “Woah, woah, halt.”
Her hand was on the latch before the carriage had lurched to a stop. She stumbled getting out, but, picking up her skirts, ran back the way they’d come.
“Mrs Ardingly!”
A man’s shout. Lord Cotereigh, somewhere up high on his dark horse. She ran past him too.
There, there, that was the alleyway. And yes, there were the sobbing cries and a man’s voice, rough, angry, cursing.
“Let that boy go this instant!”
She rounded the corner, the words out even before she could properly take in the scene. A skinny boy of eight or nine was on the filthy, dirt-packed floor. A man stood over him, foot swinging in a kick that landed even as she cried again. “Stop it! Stop it!”
She ran forwards, but a hand on her shoulder dragged her back. Lord Cotereigh, breathing hard, dark eyes narrowed in fury—but all the fury was directed at her.
“What the devil are you—this is no place for—”
He couldn’t get his words out, and she had no time to listen. Shaking him off, she hurried forwards again.
The man had turned, his hands in fists, his face red and belligerent, though his attention darted from her to Lord Cotereigh, apprehensive, measuring.
At his feet, the boy sobbed, breath ragged, curled up in pain.
“He’s a thief.” The man spat. “Seen him three times with my own eyes picking pockets. And this time he tried mine. But I was ready for him.”
He wore the dress of some merchant’s clerk, a sheen of sweat on his face, red and glowering in the orange light.
“Then you ought to call a watchman,” said Madelaine, voice firm despite the hammering of her pulse. “Get out of my way. The boy needs aid.”
“The boy needs hanging. They all do, the lot of them, thieving from hardworking, honest men—”
“Honest! Honest to murder a child?”
She’d already moved forward, ignoring the man’s continued protests, ignoring whatever Lord Cotereigh said somewhere behind her. She knelt at the boy’s side.
He was dark haired, skinny, filthy, his clothes little better than rags.
His breathing was laboured, pants of pain, his arms wrapped around his middle, head tucked down, though that had been little protection.
Blood and bruising darkened his brow under the greasy forelock of fringe. More blood leaked from his nose.
The man spat again, the globule landing in the dust nearby. “He ain’t dead. Just getting the lesson he deserves. But they’ll hang ’im anyway, miss, and good riddance.”
“You,” she said, looking up, “will give your name to that gentleman”—she nodded towards Lord Cotereigh—“and expect a magistrate’s call in the morning. What you’ve done is a crime.”
The man laughed. Madelaine set her hand gently on the boy’s head, but he whimpered in pain. “There,” she said gently, “you’re all right now. You’re safe.”
She kept murmuring other such things as she tried to assess the damage. Broken ribs? Collarbone? If the internal organs were damaged…
Dimly she was aware of the two men talking, the clerk protesting, but his tone was much more deferential with Lord Cotereigh than it had been with her.
He seemed to be pleading, but Lord Cotereigh’s reply was dark and clipped.
When she looked up again, the man had gone and Lord Cotereigh was looking down at her, his face grim.
“Can you carry him?” she asked. “But carefully. His ribs may be broken.”
“Where am I supposed to be taking him, Mrs Ardingly?”
“To the carriage. It’s only up the street.”
“It will have gone. Lady Frances has no wish to become embroiled in…this.”
“And I suppose she does have a party to get to.” The boy let out a moan. Her hands were starting to shake.
“As do I. And a horse waiting, held by who knows whom. I didn’t have time to be choosy.”
“If you won’t help, then at least stay here while I summon a hackney cab.”
Lord Cotereigh’s jaw flexed. After a moment, he said, “There’s some manner of tavern back down the way. I’ll carry him that far.”
“And how much care do you think he’ll get there? He needs a doctor. He needs nursing.”
Lord Cotereigh looked away, his glare fixed on the shadows down the alleyway.
He needs a noose, is probably what he was thinking. But, his words like gravel, he said, “My house is nearby.”
Her heart lifted. Gratitude, guilt, surprise. But there was no time to think. The only thing that mattered was the boy. She got quickly to her feet.
“Close enough to walk?”
“Yes.”
He gave the boy a loathing look, eyes utterly black in the low light. But he stooped down and picked him up. The boy cried out in pain then went limp.
“Fainted,” said Lord Cotereigh. He turned and headed out of the alley with his burden.
“Maybe that’s best.” Madelaine hurried along at his side. Lord Cotereigh made no reply.
They walked up the street, attracting a great many stares.
When they reached Lord Cotereigh’s horse, he stopped.
A man in battered, greasy clothes was holding it, looking nervous and confused.
At their approach, he took a hasty step forward, seeming to forget he was holding the horse and making it jerk its head in equine annoyance, one ear going back. The man was clearly drunk.
“You,” Lord Cotereigh said. “Follow behind us.”
“Yes, me lordship, honoured, lordship.” The man saluted clumsily, goggling at the boy in Lord Cotereigh’s arms. “What’s that ye got there? Why’s…a boy, all battered up. Know him, do ye?”
Lord Cotereigh made no reply but continued on up the road, Madelaine at his side. She glanced over her shoulder to where the man was now asking similar questions to the horse and getting similar answers.