A thump followed by a bustle of movement and laughing chatter drew his attention back to the stage. The scene had ended. Still wiping his hot face with a towel, Hugh Gordon ran lightly down the steps, to the pit.
“You wanted to speak with me?” he said. He was smiling, but Lovejoy noticed the wariness in his dark eyes, that cautious kind of watchfulness one saw often in the face of a man confronting a magistrate.
“That’s right.” Stiff with the cold, Lovejoy pushed to his feet. “I understand you and Rachel York were once . . .” He hesitated, searching for an expression that wouldn’t offend his moral sensibilities. But any irregular sexual liaison of that sort outraged Lovejoy’s strict Evangelical principles. He finally settled on the word, “involved.”
Gordon’s nostrils flared with a quickly indrawn breath. “Everyone knows who killed her. It’s that viscount, Lord Devlin. He did Rachel, and yesterday he got that other one over in Bloomsbury. So why are you here talking to me?”
The aggressiveness of the man’s tone took Lovejoy by surprise. “We’ve been doing some checking into your background, Mr. Gordon, and we’ve discovered a few things which disturbed us.”
“Such as?”
“Does the name Adelaide Hunt mean anything to you?”
The man hesitated, his jaw clenched as he considered his response. “You obviously know it does. I haven’t seen the woman in years. What’s she to do with anything?”
“I understand you cut her up once, quite badly. In fact, you almost killed her.”
“She tell you that?”
Lovejoy said nothing, just looked at the man expectantly.
A muscle bunched along the actor’s jaw. “I was defending myself. The bloody woman came at me with a bed warmer. Did she tell you that?”
“As I understand it, you flew into a rage when she attempted to break off the relationship. She wielded the bed warmer to defend herself.”
“No charges were ever pressed, now were they?”
Lovejoy drew in a deep breath scented with greasepaint and the faint, lingering tang of orange peels. “Some men make it a habit of cutting up women who try to break off with them. I understand you were particularly angry with Rachel York when she left you for another man.”
A faint flush darkened the actor’s lean, handsome face. “So? That was almost two years ago now. What is it with you people? I explained all this to that other fellow.”
“What other fellow?”
“The one who came around a couple of times, asking questions about Rachel. First he claimed to be her Cousin Simon Taylor from Worcestershire, then he said he was a Bow Street Runner.”
“What? What did this man look like?”
Gordon shrugged. “Tall, lean, dark. Younger than he was trying to make himself look. Dressed rather scruffy.”
Lovejoy felt a quickening of interest verging on excitement.
For the description fit almost perfectly with that of the man seen leaving Mary Grant’s lodgings. The man identified by Mrs. Charles Lavery as Viscount Devlin.
Edward Maitland was coming down the Public Office’s front steps when Sir Henry Lovejoy made it back to Queen Square.
“I want you to set a couple of men to watching Hugh Gordon. Both at the theater, and at home,” said Lovejoy.
The constable drew up in surprise. “What? You don’t seriously think Gordon is our man?”
Lovejoy hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility, but he wasn’t about to go into all that with Maitland. “No, I don’t. But Devlin seems to have developed an interest in him. He’s already approached Gordon twice, and he may try to do so again. I want us to be ready for him.”
Chapter 44
The signs of looming social disaster were subtle, but there—in the furtive looks cast in Amanda’s direction, the whispered conversations that broke off abruptly when she drew too near. Amanda felt a cold anger hardening her heart as she moved with easy determination amidst the steely-eyed matrons and turbaned dowagers. She was Lady Amanda, wife of the Prince’s boon companion Lord Wilcox and daughter of the Earl of Hendon, Chancellor of the Exchequer. They would offend her at their peril.
Midway through the evening, she was surprised to see her own husband approaching her through the throng. Having no taste for the whirl of social functions or visits to the theater and opera that occupied his wife’s time, Wilcox normally retreated after dinner either to an evening session of the House of Lords or to one of his clubs.
“Something wrong, dear?” she said in a smiling aside as she lifted a glass of champagne from a passing servant’s silver tray. “Has Sebastian’s latest exploit resulted in your being blackballed from White’s? Or has Boney landed at Dover?”
Wilcox’s habitual placid smile was firmly in place, but his eyes were grave. “Bayard tells me his uncle paid you a visit this afternoon.” Even as he spoke, he kept his gaze moving casually over the glittering crowd. “Is that wise, my dear?”
“Really, Martin. Do you seriously think I had extended Devlin an invitation? Suggested he might want to hide out in the carriage house, or perhaps pose as one of our footmen?”
“No. I suppose not.” For one telling moment, Wilcox’s smile slipped. “Where the devil
“He didn’t happen to mention it. But unless I miss my guess, he’s taken refuge with that light skirt he made such a fool of himself over when he first came down from Oxford.”
Wilcox swung his head to stare at her. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am.” Amanda set aside her glass. “Ah, there’s Lady Bainbridge. Do excuse me, dear.” And she left him then, to make use of the information or not, as he chose.
Sebastian watched Leo Pierrepont rein in before the open door of his carriage house. Night came early to the streets of London in February; by four, the mews and the gardens leading up to the house were already dark. “Giles!” the Frenchman shouted, his voice echoing hollowly in the cold stillness. “Giles?
Swearing to himself, he swung from the saddle to lead the tired chestnut into the stables. He lit the lamp suspended from the rafters, glanced around the softly lit area, then said, “Merde,” under his breath and reached to unbuckle his cinch.
From the shadows of an empty stall at the end of the row, Sebastian waited, listening to the muttered grunts of a man unused to the task of unsaddling and grooming his own horse. The smell of warming oil mingled with the scents of hay and oats and horseflesh. In a nearby stall, one of Pierrepont’s carriage horses moved restlessly.
Slipping the flintlock pistol from his pocket, Sebastian crept to where the Frenchman, still grumbling, crouched to run a currycomb over his chestnut’s wet belly. Sebastian held out the pistol until the muzzle was scant inches from Pierrepont’s ear. At the sound of the hammer being pulled back, Pierrepont froze.
“Move very carefully, Monsieur Pierrepont.”
Pierrepont turned his head, his gaze focusing on the pistol before lifting to Sebastian’s face. “Where are my groom and coachman?”
“Someplace where we don’t need to worry about them disturbing us.”
The Frenchman straightened slowly. “What do you want?”
“I thought I’d tell you a story.”
Pierrepont’s eyebrows lifted. “A story.”
