A Dark and Brooding Gentleman (19 page)

‘Good morning, Lord Bullford,’ she said politely and forced a smile to her face.

‘You are out and about early this morning, Miss Allardyce …’ he glanced around the street paying special attention to the apothecary shop from which she had just emerged ‘… and without Mrs Hunter?’ His expression held all the kind friendliness that it ever had.

‘Indeed, sir. I am afraid Mrs Hunter is much distressed
with a headache. It is the reason for my journey; I have come to fetch a prescription to relieve her pain.’

‘Oh dear,’ murmured Lord Bullford with his brow creased in concern. ‘Poor Mrs H., how she suffers with her head.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phoebe. ‘Which is why, sir, I must beg your leave and return immediately to Grosvenor Street.’

‘Of course.’ Lord Bullford nodded. ‘But I have a better idea. Please, Miss Allardyce, allow me to convey you home in my coach.’

‘Your offer is very kind, my lord, but I should not.’ She smiled in earnest to soften her refusal.

‘By coach the journey will take but a few minutes. On foot, I imagine a great deal longer. And you did say that Mrs H. is quite unwell … I thought only to relieve the lady’s discomfort. But if you would rather walk …’

Phoebe felt a pang of guilt at Bullford’s gentle reproach. ‘Perhaps you are right, sir.’

‘I will have you at Grosvenor Street in no time at all to tend the poor lady.’ He smiled, and Phoebe was reassured. He held out his hand and helped her climb up into his coach, and the door slammed shut behind them.

H
unter stood before the fireplace, thinking of Phoebe. If anything had happened to her. And as he worried, his eye caught the carving on the stone beneath the mantel.

A hunter with a great black dog pursuing evil-eyed foxes and boars and ferrets. It was a picture that had fascinated Hunter since he was a child. He remembered coming to this house and tracing his fingers against each of the figures of the scenes. He had always thought that lone huntsman astride his horse had been hunting with his dog, but now that he had seen the defined colourful mosaic in Obsidian House he could see that the dog was not a dog at all, but a wolf. And he could see, too, that there was something missing from this carving, a small detail that had been clear in the background of the tiled mosaic version.

Lurking amidst the trees of the forest, the backdrop against which the hunter rode, were six wolves’ faces—Hunter knew there were six because it had been his
habit to count them as a child. In the mosaic there had been seven. Hunter looked where the seventh should have been on the stone carving, and there in its place, clear now that he was looking for it, was a headless wolf.

And the strangest thought occurred to Hunter. From his pocket he withdrew the wolf’s-head ring, and the wolf seemed to look up at him, its emerald eyes sparkling in the morning sunlight. Hunter pressed the silver wolf’s head into the hollow where the wolf’s head on the carving should have been, and turned, and one of the long wooden panels in the mahogany wall of his study popped open. Behind the hidden door was a room all in darkness. Hunter lit a candle and stepped into the secret room.

The candlelight showed a long narrow room empty save for four Holland-covered paintings that hung upon the wall and a large chest in the corner. Hunter pulled the holland cover from the closest painting. The cream linen slid silently onto the floor to reveal his father staring out from the canvas at him. In the portrait his father’s hair was as dark as Hunter’s and his face only a little lined. He was dressed in the same long black ceremonial robe that Bullford and the men had worn and on his finger was the wolf’s-head ring. And Hunter suddenly knew that his father was the ‘monk’ in the picture at Blackloch. His gaze dropped to read the plaque fitted to the bottom of the gilt frame—
Mr Edward Hunter, Master of the Order of the Wolf.

The other three paintings showed Hunter’s grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather; all three men were garbed in the same black robes and each wore the same wolf’s-head ring upon their fingers.

Hunter’s heart was thudding as he turned to the chest, and his hands shook as he found the letter addressed to
My Son, Sebastian Hunter.
The writing was that of his father, the seal that of his father’s signet ring. He broke the seal, unfolded the paper and began to read.

Hunter wept as he read the words his father had penned only two months before his death. He wept
because written in that letter were the words his father had never spoken to him in life—that he loved him, that he was proud of him. He lifted the ancient brown calf-leather-bound book from the chest, and leafed through its pages.

His father was right, everything he needed to know was there. The history and inception of the society, its rules, its purpose, the methods of its operation, initiation ceremonies and trials for new members and much more. At the back of the book were pages and pages of names of men who had been, and still were, members of the Order. The last name entered on the list, written in his father’s own hand, made his heart skip a beat, for it was Hunter’s own. He took a deep breath, and scanned the list. Linwood was there, marked as an office bearer, which explained his wolf’s-head cane, and the viscount’s father was listed, too. Francis Edingham, the Marquis of Willaston, Bullford’s father, was described as the deputy master. Bullford’s name was not amongst them, but Hunter supposed that no one in the Order had had access to the book to add any new members since his father’s death.

Hunter knew now why they wanted the ring and he had an inkling why it was Bullford who had been given the task. He took the neatly folded black robes from the chest and then moved back out of the dark chill of the secret room to the sunlit study.

A knock sounded at the study door. He snuffed the candle and, retrieving the ring, slid it onto his finger. The panel pressed easily back into place, the seam of its outline invisible against the rest of the ornate panelling that surrounded it. Then Hunter opened the study door
to find Trenton waiting there, a single letter lying upon the silver salver.

‘A letter has just been delivered for you, sir. The boy who brought it said it was for your most urgent attention.’

Hunter felt his jaw tense as he lifted the letter and saw his name upon it, for it was penned in the same disguised hand that had been used in all of Bullford’s letters to Phoebe. He ripped it open and read the unsigned contents.

If you wish the safe return of Miss Allardyce, then you will leave your father’s wolf’s-head ring on the gravestone of Abigail Murton in the churchyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields, this afternoon at two o’clock.

He screwed the paper into a ball and threw it onto the grate in the fireplace. Then he readied his pistols, slipped them into his pockets and rang the bell for Trenton.

Phoebe woke to find herself lying in a dark room. Her wrists had been tied behind her back and her ankles bound together and there was a gag around her mouth. She could hear nothing and see nothing; she remembered the carriage and Lord Bullford removing a small brown bottle from his pocket to drip some of its foul-smelling liquid onto his handkerchief. The warning bells had been sounding in her head, not so much at what he was doing, but at the strange expression upon his face.

She heard his words again:
I am sorry, Miss Allardyce, if only you had done as we asked.
And there had been genuine regret within his eyes.

And she had known, then, who it was that had organised the break-ins in Mrs Hunter’s Glasgow town house and at Blackloch, and who had sent his Messenger to threaten her papa.

‘You!’ she whispered in disbelief and tried to flee, but Bullford was across the carriage and pressing the foul-reeking cloth to her nose and mouth. The vapour of it choked her and burned her throat and lungs, and that terrible suffocating sensation was the last that she remembered.

She shifted, trying to ease her body into a more comfortable position.

‘You are back with us again, Miss Allardyce.’ The voice was not that of Bullford, but it was one she recognised. This man, whoever he was, was the same one who had held her hooded within his coach.

A flint struck against a tinderbox and she saw the spark catch to the tinder and the flame light a candle. The small flickering light seemed too bright against the darkness and she narrowed her eyes and peered through the blackness to see the identity of the man to whom Bullford had delivered her.

There were two men standing looking down at where she lay, but even if the room had been fully lit she would not have known their identities for both men were dressed in plain long black robes, the hoods of which had been pulled up over the heads to leave their faces hidden in shadow.

The stouter man gestured to the other and his associate bent down and released the gag from her mouth, and as he moved she thought she caught a glimpse of a narrow face and shifty grey eyes and she was sure that he was the Messenger.

‘Untie me, sir,’ she demanded.

‘I am afraid we will be keeping you safely trussed for now, my dear,’ said the gentleman from the carriage and she realised with a shiver that his voice was not so dissimilar to Bullford’s. There was a small silence as he stepped closer to loom over her in the darkness. ‘You told Hunter, did you not, Miss Allardyce? Despite all our warnings.’

‘No,’ she lied. ‘I do not know how he came to be in Spitalfields.’ That, at least, was the truth. ‘He knows nothing of any of this, I swear it.’ She did not know how Sebastian had found her at the marketplace, but she knew with all her heart that she must protect both him and her papa.

The gentleman, whose face remained hidden by the folds of his cowl, gave a small laugh and clapped his hands together in mock applause. ‘Very impressive, my dear, but I seem to recall at our last meeting how very anxious you were to protect Mr Hunter from harm.’

‘The gentleman is my employer’s son,’ she countered. ‘His welfare affects Mrs Hunter and therefore also, albeit indirectly, myself. I would not see Mrs Hunter’s sensibilities distressed.’

‘How solicitous of you, Miss Allardyce. If it is not too indelicate of me to say, the gentleman may be your employer’s son, but he has engaged your affection, Miss Allardyce, a feeling which, if I am not mistaken, is reciprocated.’

‘You are very much mistaken, sir!’ she exclaimed, frightened of where this was leading and what it would mean for Sebastian.

‘For your own sake, Miss Allardyce, you had better
hope that I am not.’ There was a chill in his voice as he uttered the soft words.

Her blood ran cold. ‘My papa?’

‘Your papa remains unharmed and blissfully oblivious to all.’ He reached down and stroked a finger against her cheek. ‘But what will Hunter give to save the life of the woman he loves?’

She jerked her face away from his touch and stared up at him with defiance. ‘He will give you nothing!’ It was the truth. Sebastian would not part with the ring even when he had loved her and she had no doubt what his feelings were for her now. A shiver rippled through her at the memory of his face in the marketplace. Whatever Sebastian did, he would not give them the ring.

‘Oh, no, my dear Miss Allardyce. I very much suspect he will give us exactly what we want.’ She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Had we known Hunter would develop such a
tendre
for you, it would have made matters so much easier for us.’

‘And if he does not give you the ring?’ Her heart was filled with fear and none of it was for herself.

‘Let us just hope, for your sake, my dear, that he does.’ And then he gestured to Messenger, who knelt down and fixed the gag in place across her mouth.

Then the two black-robed men were gone, taking the candle with them and leaving Phoebe alone in the darkness.

‘Lord Bullford is not at home,’ the footman said to Hunter, who was standing upon the steps of Bullford’s father’s house in Henrietta Street.

‘Perhaps you wish to reconsider that reply.’ Hunter slipped a pistol from his pocket and held it against the
footman’s ribs. He had seen the shadowy figure of Bullford outlined against the library window as he called the lad over to hold Ajax.

The footman gave a nod and showed him in to the hall where he pointed silently at the library door before hurrying back down beneath stairs.

Bullford was loitering at the side of the window when Hunter opened the library door and stepped inside.

Bullford took one look at Hunter and the pistol in his hand and the colour drained from his face.

‘Hunter, old man,’ he tried to bluff, ‘what on earth are you doing here and with a pistol at the ready?’

But Hunter had no time for games. ‘Where is she, Bullford?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, old man.’

‘Then you had better start thinking and fast.’ Hunter aimed the barrel of the pistol at Bullford and began to close the space between them.

Bullford backed away, stumbling in the process, but righted himself to keep edging away.

‘You blackmailed her, terrorised her, threatened her father.’