“And your uncle?” said Sebastian. “Did he have reason to regret his marriage, do you think?”
Ellsworth gave a harsh laugh. “What? Apart from the fact she was playing him false?”
Sebastian had half expected it, and still the words troubled him more than he could have explained. “You mean with the Regent?”
“I wouldn’t know about the Regent. But you don’t really believe Anglessey fathered that so-called heir his lady wife was carrying, do you?”
“Older men than he have succeeded in siring sons.”
“Perhaps.” Ellsworth tossed down the dregs of his wine and pushed to his feet. “But not this one.”
The breeches were of the finest plush velvet, with a coat of satin-trimmed blue velvet to match. Together with the silk stockings and snowy white shirt, they formed a livery fit for the footman of a duke—or at least for the boards of the Covent Garden Theater, which is where the costume was normally seen.
Twitching uncomfortably in his starched shirt, Tom supposed there were some fellows who might find the ensemble attractive. But as far as he was concerned, the rig made him look like a popinjay.
“Stop fidgeting,” said Kat, her normally precise diction slurred by the need to speak around a mouthful of pins.
Tom fell obediently still. His back itched unmercifully, but he didn’t move. He had a sneaking suspicion Miss Kat wasn’t above sticking one of her pins into him, if he didn’t do what he was told.
They were in Miss Kat’s dressing room at the theater, and she was busy adapting to his small frame the page’s livery she had borrowed from the theater’s costume collection. “I don’t see why we’re doin’ this,” Tom grumbled. “I got me a bang-up livery already, what the Viscount give me when he made me his tiger.”
“Huh.” Miss Kat moved around to do something to a seam of the breeches. “One look at that yellow-and- black-striped waistcoat of yours, and Lord Anglessey’s servants would mark you down as coming from the household of a sporting gentleman. Those in service have very decided opinions on the subject of young sporting gentleman, and few of those opinions are charitable. You’d be lucky not to find yourself sent off with a flea in your ear.”
Tom swallowed the argument he’d been about to make. The humiliation of yesterday’s failure to scout out anything of use at the Pavilion still burned within him. He was determined to wheedle the information Devlin needed from Lady Anglessey’s servants, and if that meant dressing up like some eighteenth-century fop—well, then, he’d do it.
Tom craned his neck to get a better look at the seam Miss Kat was taking in. “That’s crooked.”
“I’m an actress, not a seamstress.” She bit off her thread and sat back on her heels to survey her handiwork. “And this livery belongs to the theater. You tear it, or spill anything on it, and I’ll take the cost of it out of your hide.”
Tom stepped off the low box she’d had him standing on. “’Ow would I tear it?”
She laughed, an open, spontaneous laugh that made him grin. She was bang-up, for being such a famous actress and all. She was also the best pickpocket he’d ever seen, although he supposed most folks didn’t know that.
“Tell me about this man, the one who was following his lordship yesterday,” she said in an offhand kind of way as she bent to assemble her scattered pins and threads.
“I didn’t see ’im afore ’e come up with us. But then, no one’s got eyes and ears like his lordship’s.”
She nodded, not looking around. “Do you think he might have something to do with this murder his lordship is looking into?”
“Don’t know what else it could be about. I mean, it stands to reason, don’t it? You go pokin’ around in a murder, you’re liable to stir up some weery desperate people.”
Tom thought it was all pretty exciting, but then he got a look at Miss Kat’s face and he suddenly regretted having said so much. He snatched up the ridiculous scrap of satin and velvet that was supposed to serve him as a hat. “Well, I’m off, then.”
Her face cleared so suddenly he was left wondering if he’d simply imagined the troubled shadows he thought he’d seen there. “Remember,” she told him as he balanced the tricorne on his head and started to dash off. “No scuffling with the linkboys.” She raised her voice to shout after him. “And no eating or drinking.”
THE MARQUIS OF ANGLESSEY’S TOWN HOUSE was an enormous pile on Mount Street.
Tom stood on the flagged sidewalk, his neck aching as he tipped his head to look up four stories and more to the stately house’s pedimented gray slate roof. The Marquis himself was obviously still in Brighton, for the knocker was off the door. But his servants had already draped the house in mourning, festooning the tall, silent windows with crepe and hanging a black wreath on the entrance.
Adjusting his starched stock, Tom marched up the short flight of steps and used his fist to beat a lively tattoo on the shiny, black-painted panels of the front door.
When there was no answer, he pounded harder.
Beside him, an iron railing separated the main front door from the area steps that led down to the service entrance. When Tom knocked a third time, the service door jerked open and a middle-aged woman with a bulbous red nose, plump cheeks, and wiry gray hair covered by an old-fashioned mop cap stuck out her head and peered up at him. “What you doing there, lad? Can’t you see the knocker’s off the door?”
Tom held up the folded, sealed letter Miss Kat had prepared for him. The letter was empty, of course, but then he had no intention of giving it to anyone. “I got a message here, for Lord Anglessey from Sir James Aston. He says I’m to give it into Lord Anglessey’s hand and no one else’s. Only, ’ow’m I supposed to get anyone’s attention when there’s no knocker?”
