Chapter Four #2
Grandmam insisted Fletcher always address her as Mrs. Bean, whether or not others were present. She didn’t want her authority to be undermined. She wasn’t soft. Nor someone’s gentle grandmother.
“Give her a bit of gin, but not enough so’s she can’t work.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Fletcher had watched Mrs. Bean kick a bleeding prostitute who was begging in the alley once.
Stood silently as she took a cleaver and hacked off the finger of a boy who’d stolen from her to teach him a lesson.
She was many things, his grandmam, but not gentle or soft.
But she’d also found him a tutor, a disgraced, defrocked priest who loved gin more than God.
Found a man who taught him how to use a pair of knives so Fletcher could protect himself.
Showed him how to brew a poison fit to keep a man trapped in his own body but unable to move. Or kill him.
Delores Bean was full of contradictions. Raising a vicious killer and thief who also read Socrates was one of them.
“If that lordling shows his face again. You let Ripps handle him.” Her bleary gazed dipped to the tops of his boots where Fletcher had tucked his knives. “You don’t get involved. Hear me?”
“I’d rather run the card games at The Swan; you know that Mrs. Bean. Or charm the girls between patrons. I’ve spoken to Durmont—”
“Keeps raising his price. But there’s some that like that fancy French wine. You included.”
“I negotiated down the cost. The brandy is ordered. The gin I’ll be gettin’ from Lark as usual. Vulture will bring it by.”
“Stupid name,” she coughed.
All the members of Lark’s inner circle were named for birds. Fletcher hadn’t any idea why.
“The ledgers are balanced. I sent Mary to the market this morning.” Mary was the maid and cook for Mrs. Bean and The Swan. “Mind if I join you for a brandy?” Fletcher grabbed a glass that looked clean enough, picked up the bottle of brandy, and poured out some of the amber liquid.
“I’m having tea,” she protested.
“I can smell the brandy, Mrs. Bean and the bottle’s at your elbow.
No sense in pretending. I’m not objecting, by the way.
” Enough brandy allowed her to sleep and calmed the cough, though he didn’t want her getting foxed with only Ripps and Mary to depend on.
But Mrs. Bean had survived a long time in The Devil’s Acre.
And as Lark had reminded Fletcher on more than one occasion, there wasn’t any reason to kill a dying woman.
But we’ll have a bit to discuss, boy-o, when Mrs. Bean has departed.
“Fine.” Her fingers lifted, trembling and unsteady. “Then I want you next door at The Swan. Keep an eye on Ripps.”
“I always do.” Fletcher considered what he might have missed while playing Roxboro. Something that had her questioning Ripps and his loyalty, though Fletcher didn’t think the big man would harm a hair on Mrs. Bean’s head. As Lark said, no sense in killing a dying woman.
“Put a wee bit more in the pot then, if you will.” Her wrinkled face was stern but softened as Fletcher came closer. “Darling Freckle.”
His hand paused pouring the brandy. She hadn’t called him Freckle since he was a child and even then, the endearment had been rare. Affection was not Delores Bean’s strong suit. A beating with a switch had been far more common than a hug.
“I haven’t heard you say that in years, Mrs. Bean.”
“That freckle.” A finger lifted to his nose, ignoring his words.
“Struck me, you see. All those years ago.” She slurred just a bit as she spoke, which had Fletcher wondering how much of the brandy she’d had.
“I couldn’t help myself.” The finger retreated back to her lap, grabbing at the handkerchief.
“Did my mother have one? A freckle?” Fletcher asked, knowing damn well there had been no Hannah, though Mrs. Bean had never admitted as much.
“I don’t recall.” Her eye slid away from his. “It’s been a long time since I’ve—seen your mother.”
What was the name of the village where Hannah lived?
I don’t recall. Name escapes me.
What was my father’s name?
Hannah never said.
Mrs. Bean remained so elusive in her answers, that eventually, Fletcher stopped asking.
At times, he wondered if he were the by-blow of one of the girls at The Dancing Swan, but why would Mrs. Bean have taken a liking to him?
Because of the freckle? He’d seen dozens of whores come and go over the years, but not one claimed to have been here when Mrs. Bean brought him home from her mysterious trip to the countryside.
He knew there had been a handful of maids before Mary, just as The Swan had other doormen before Ripps.
No one lingered for long in The Devil’s Acre.
“Lark paid me a visit,” she said, voice creaking nearly worse than the stairs leading up to the front door.
“Poking about. Asking after you.” She sighed.
“Whatever you’ve involved yourself in, best tell him before he’s got a knife pressed to your ribs.
Are you running a card game? There’s a rumor going around about a receiving house on Rosemary Lane. Someone says you’ve been there.”
Fletcher wasn’t stupid enough to use a common fence for the gems he stole.
He’d been to Rosemary Lane, but never to sell anything.
There was an antiquities dealer with a tiny shop near Grosvenor Square; a place Lark didn’t know existed.
Fletcher took the gems there, but only after he’d pried the stones from their settings.
The gentleman who ran the establishment, Mr. Jims, was discreet given he dealt exclusively in luxuries the soon-to-be impoverished upper class sold to him.
Fletcher never received payment directly, instead the proceeds were deposited in an account at the Bank of England under one of his aliases.
Jims didn’t know Fletcher’s real name and thought him only a messenger of sorts, acting on behalf of his employer.
Fletcher did not dissuade him.
“I’m not runnin’ a card game. I’ve a ladybird in Cheapside who I visit most nights, of which you are well aware. She’s a widow and likes a bit of silk and such. I’ve been to Rosemary Lane once or twice to get her somethin’ pretty.”
“He’ll kill you,” Mrs. Bean whispered. “’Specially if he knows you—resemble the Duke of Roxboro and haven’t let him in on your scheme.”
Fletcher took a seat in the chair beside her. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
She coughed softly, pressing against her chest until speaking again. “I overheard Charlotte that day. Be glad I was the only one. Lucky the parlor was empty, else you’d be dead already. I know what you’re up to. Don’t think I don’t.”
“I’m touched, Mrs. Bean, by your concern.” Fletcher hadn’t any intention of admitting to anything.
“It’s far more dangerous,” her voice cracked. “Than you think.”
Charlotte had been one of the girls brought in to work at The Dancing Swan last year.
Upon seeing Fletcher, walking across the main parlor of The Dancing Swan at midday, before the first of the brothel’s patrons arrived, Charlotte had stopped dead in her tracks.
She’d stared at him in awe before immediately lowering into a strange bow, limbs folding awkwardly about her.
Your Grace, she’d whispered, not daring to raise her gaze to his.
Apparently, in The Devil’s Acre, even a trollop knew how to address a duke properly. He’d found out later that strange bending Charlotte had done was a curtsey.
Fletcher had been highly amused and assured Charlotte he wasn’t a duke, but the grandson of Mrs. Bean. Sitting before him, she’d tilted her head, taking him in from head to toe.
You’re the spitting image of him.
Charlotte insisted she’d met the duke at a house party in the country full of nothing but spoiled lords and a great many naked courtesans of which she’d been one.
Spirits and depravities abounded for nearly a month; she related a bit wistfully.
Spirits had flowed for days. The grandest time of her life.
You could be the duke’s twin. ’Cept when you talk.
Fletcher had realized some time ago that to truly escape The Devil’s Acre, he would need to become someone else which would require a great deal of money.
He’d thought long and hard about how he might acquire such a sum without Lark knowing what he was up to, or Mrs. Bean.
Cards were fine, though the games at The Swan didn’t bring in much unless a lord was playing and lost heavily.
Easier to just pick a pocket, but then Lark would find out.
He had mulled over Charlotte’s words for days before he took action.
“And what is it I’m up to?” Fletcher glanced at the door to make sure Ripps nor anyone else wasn’t roaming about.
“A duke,” she said quietly. “Can go all sorts of places that Fletcher Bean cannot. Which I imagine you’ve already surmised. You play the idiot well, my Freckle. Just as I taught you. But you are far from one.”
Fletcher had purchased a coat and trousers, the sort a titled gentleman might wear and put a stickpin he’d won in a game of dice into the secondhand cravat twisted about his neck. He bathed. Used pomade in his hair.
And then he went to Hyde Park to test Charlotte’s words.
Riders doffed their hats. Bowed. Ladies dipped into curtsies. Fletcher heard Your Grace uttered so many times his head swam. Charlotte had not been wrong. He did resemble the Duke of Roxboro, at least from a distance which was good enough for what Fletcher had in mind.
“Whatever happened to Charlotte?” When he’d returned from that day in the park, she’d been gone as well as all her things.
Mrs. Bean didn’t even flinch at the question, the truth gleaming in those brittle eyes. She and Lark were two sides of the same coin, after all.
“Left,” she groused. “After all I did for her. Took up with some toff who came in one night. Didn’t even get paid for the loss.”
“That’s a shame.” Charlotte was most likely dead. Her fate sealed by Fletcher’s resemblance to a bloody duke and Mrs. Bean didn’t want Lark knowing.