Elyse Mady (17 page)

“Freedom?” Timothy asked, never letting his eyes drop. “Is that all?” His expression was challenging, his tone bordering on cynical, but there was a frank attraction that Robert found compelling. He shook his head, headily aware of Timothy’s hand, slowly moving up and down his calf. His thumb circled Robert’s ankle bone, pressing into the flesh.

There was pain and wanting all at once. Timothy knelt in front of him, kneading and soothing. Robert couldn’t help but notice the tanned lines of his neck and the way his hair curled over his shirt collar. He wanted to reach out and touch it, brush the hair from his eyes. He wondered what it would feel like.

“I-I want…”

“What do you want, Robert?”

The grit beneath his palm abraded his skin as he pressed his hands down against the rough stone beneath him.

Timothy was asking too much. Robert felt himself hardening under his ministrations. A particularly deep movement and he gasped, the truth flying from his lips. “I want you,” he whispered.

He was appalled and sickened and aroused all at the same time. He had never spoken of his desires before. It had always been conducted as a cipher, all signals and nods and gestures. Understood but unacknowledged. Now he’d gone and told a man in light of day that he wanted him. It frightened him but it was the truth.

Timothy leaned back on his haunches. The smile was gone from his face, making him look older than his twenty years. Around them, the yard was crowded with prisoners, their visitors, the hawkish guards. No one was paying them any mind; they could have been alone, save for the hundreds of men who surrounded them.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Robert closed his eyes and rested his aching head against the wall. He wanted to smile but didn’t. The pressure on his feet eased, and he felt the touch of Timothy’s arm against his as the latter came and sat down beside him. They weren’t touching, beyond the brush of their shirtsleeves, and yet it felt as intimate as a kiss.

He opened his eyes. Timothy’s hand lay on the ground beside his own. If he stretched out his smallest finger thus…

He felt, rather than heard, Timothy’s intake of breath at the first contact. Robert’s arms and feet throbbed dully, but the only sensation he was fully aware of was of Timothy’s skin touching his own. It was reckless, embarking on such a course when he was facing a trial for sodomy already. If they were discovered, they could both be hung.

But something about this man disarmed him.

Was this what had compelled Hester to act thus with Thomas Ramsay? Was it this electric madness that had sucked her in? He didn’t know. He had never experienced such a compelling draw with anyone before, man or woman, but the question persisted even as he and Timothy sat side by side through the long afternoon.

Chapter Fourteen

Thomas could no longer doubt he was being followed.

Over the past few weeks, he’d had his suspicions. A face in the crowd, peering at him a little too intently, or meeting the eyes of a man he didn’t know, who looked away the moment he was observed. Random happenstance, taken singly. But taken as a whole, they spoke of a larger, more nefarious plot.

He couldn’t imagine who might be behind it though, and that absence worried him a little.

He’d noticed the latest man—in a worn blue jacket, with a slight limp—when he’d left the house this morning. The fellow had been on the far side of the thoroughfare when he’d exited his home after breakfast, leaning against the railing that surrounded the park.

Thomas had paid him little heed, occupied with the pleasures of the night before. He ought to have been turning his mind to the negotiations that he was on the verge of beginning. Instead, his thoughts had been filled with the peculiar, breathless sigh Hester made when he’d kissed her goodbye in the morning room, all soft and tempting and tasting of quince jelly.

But when he’d arrived at his office, the negotiations—involving a particularly stringent pair of transatlantic trading firms—had engrossed him. He’d spent the day immured in forecasts and fixed prices and terms of trade so that the man he’d seen briefly on the doorstep had become one of the myriad of anonymous fellow men of the city.

But then, when he’d stopped at the newsagents to procure a broadsheet, he’d seen him again.

The same pale blue coat. The same hesitant step.

In an instant, he’d been alert. Years of dealings in lawless ports of call had taught Thomas to trust his feelings. And those self-same instincts were telling him that this man, for all his nondescript dress and blank face, bore him an unnatural interest.

He stopped in front of a watchmaker’s, pretending to inspect the merchandise on display. He glanced at the porcelain dials, all the while watching from the corner of his eye for his pursuer. The man had stopped and turned away, as though to read a bill pasted on a nearby wall.

Feigning nonchalance, Thomas began walking again, making sure to keep his pace steady, as though he were concerned with nothing but reaching the livery and returning to his home after a long day of toil. The man in blue fell in behind him.

Who was he?

And who had paid him to follow Thomas?

In the past, he’d crossed paths with some unscrupulous men. Traders who still flouted Mr. Wilberforce’s Act and carried illicit human cargo from the African coast to the plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas. Privateers whose fortunes were made boarding and claiming for their own the cargos of ships less fleet and far less armed.

You couldn’t sail around the world for any length of time and not encounter such miscreants. But those encounters, unpleasant though they had been at the time, had all occurred quite some time ago. What would have spurred an interest in his comings and goings now?

For a moment, he wondered if it might have to do with his houseguest’s arrival but as quickly as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. Up until her brother’s arrest, Hester had lived a life so retiring as to be nearly invisible. Even now, she seemed determined to avoid drawing any undue attention to herself.

It could have nothing to do with her; he was sure of it.

He quickened his step as the crowds in the street grew thicker. A street vendor trundled past, pushing a heavily laden handcart. As soon as he passed it, he darted into the first shop at hand without pausing. It didn’t matter what goods it offered. He was interested in it only for the disguise it offered. He would spend a quarter of an hour in its interior and watch his pursuer’s reaction to the lost scent.

Thomas turned and peered out the window, feeling a grim satisfaction when he saw the blue-coated man hurry past, his head sweeping from side to side and consternation writ clear on his homely face.

“Sir?” The proprietress’s startled voice recalled him to his surroundings and he realized into what sort of a shop he had sought refuge.

A mantua-maker’s shop, its tall shelves stocked with calicos and muslins and linsey-woolseys of every hue, while ribbons and trims and feathers and tassels were draped across small shelves and open drawers.

Men frequented shops like this from time to time. Husbands and wives, swains accompanying their belles and married gentlemen in the company of their current paramours would, on occasion, be clients of just such a shop.

But a single man unaccompanied? He knew what an untoward sight that was. The dressmaker’s face conveyed that all too patently. He cleared his throat.

“I wondered if I might trouble you for a gown,” he invented recklessly, still trying to watch through the window. It was not an easy task, what with all the geegaws and samples impeding his view. He caught a glimpse of the blue coat, heading back the way they had come, as though to retrace his steps.

“A gown?” She looked startled but she did not balk. “Of course, sir. And does your wife have an account with us?” It was fishing and an obvious lure at that, but he did not rise to the bait.

“Not my wife. Not my mother.”

Her plump mouth worked, opening and closing like a winded carp at his unspoken admission. He didn’t know why he hadn’t lied or invented a fictitious—and respectable—relative on whose behalf he could claim to be shopping. But the truth slipped out unrehearsed and now he had to deal with her curiosity when he simply wanted to be left alone.

He didn’t care what she thought of him. He needed her to leave him. If he were to succeed in turning the tables and follow his pursuer undetected, he could not let him from his sight.

The man in blue was standing by the pump. He’d clearly decided that Thomas had entered one of the shops and that searching for him in each would be unprofitable. Better to wait for him to emerge and snare him that way.

Clever, but still bound for failure. Thomas would slip round the back of this execrable shop and surprise him. Someone had hired him; Thomas would simply make it worth his while to tell him who. Those types of men, shiftless and underhanded, had no loyalty in the face of hard coin.

But before he could put his plan into action, the determined dressmaker returned, a book of fashion plates in her hands. “These are the latest from Mr. Ackermann’s excellent magazine, sir. I imagine you were thinking of something for the evening? We have some beautiful spangled yardage that would make up into a lovely opera ensemble.” She turned the pages slowly. “Or something for the theatre?” She showed him a hideous gown, capped off by the ugliest turban it had ever been his misfortune to clap eyes on. “No? No. Or for something less public…” She simpered, her kohled eyes narrowing. “This might be more to your taste.”

Thomas’s jaw snapped tight and for a moment, the man in blue was forgotten.

The gown was damned near indecent. The model lolled indolently on an upholstered divan, her legs crossed at her ankles, one slipper hanging in precarious balance. The pearls that had been drawn round her neck hung low, almost to the apex of her thighs, their bulbous spheres the only thing of substance against a gown that was no better than a suggestion.

There was no doubt what sort of private activity was meant to take place with a woman wearing raiment such as that. And while it was all too easy for his imagination to place Hester in just such a gown, the fact that it was being suggested by this grasping merchant galled him.

“No. Not that one,” he snapped, slamming the book of fashion plates shut with a resounding gesture. He started to turn away and then turned back abruptly. “Do you really think a woman is best served by dressing like a Cyprian?”

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” the woman stammered. “I am sure I did not mean to give offense. The gown is very fashionable, but I apologize unreservedly—”

He waved an impatient hand. “The woman this gown is for does not dress in that fashion. She is beautiful—”
very beautiful
“—but she doesn’t flaunt her assets. Ever. They are best appreciated for their subtle beauty and not announced like the touring singer at the Vauxhall Rotunda. Do you understand what I am saying?”

She nodded, chastened. “Yes. Of course. We have other samples, if you prefer.”

He could linger no longer. In all probability, the man who had been following him had gone and all this little charade had accomplished was to raise his ire and make him more watchful in the future.

“Don’t trouble yourself.” Thomas strode to the front of the shop, thinking to leave, when a flash of colour caught his eye and he paused to examine its source.

The gown was made of dark blue lustring. The silk glimmered and the neckline, while deep, was neither plunging nor indecent. Its hem was worked with deep beaded curlicues and the short sleeves boasted a cunning frill of what could only be Venetian lace. Amazing what flotsam a man’s mind could retain when he had two dress-mad sisters.

“On second thought, I will take this dress.”

Hester would look magnificent in it. An image of her, arrayed in it, lit by candlelight, appeared before him and he had to close his eyes briefly against its siren call.

“It’s a sample. It hasn’t been fitted. There will have to be alterations made.”

“I don’t care,” he said, taking out his card and scribbling his address on it. “You will send it to this address immediately. Surely one of your girls can accompany it.”

“Yes, but normally we hold fittings here, in the shop. I cannot spare my girls to run willy-nilly about the city.” She drew herself up self-righteously, resembling nothing more than an aggrieved pigeon.

“Madam, you may hold your fittings at St. James’s court for all I care,” he said, walking to the rear of the shop. At the door, he paused. “See that it is delivered and the bill sent to my attention.”

He hurried out into the alley, accompanied by the sounds of the dressmaker’s fading protestations. He was eager to surprise his follower and learn the truth of his employment.

But when Thomas reached the pump, it was to find that his prey had vanished. The man in blue was gone and he was no nearer to distinguishing his adversary than he had been this morning. All that he’d learned was that he was being followed and that in the future, he must consider his every step very carefully.

* * *

Hester wandered up and down the aisles of the bookseller’s shop. George, the market basket over his arm, waited at the front door. She’d intended to go straight home after the shopping but the books, displayed in the narrow bowfront had been too tempting to resist.

Thomas’s library tended to the navigational and the commercial, and while she was fascinated by the tales of discovery and travel he shared with her, reading
The Practical Navigator
held no appeal. She had a small amount money to spare. She would buy two books: one as a gift for Robert, an olive branch as it were, the other a novel that she might read in the evenings at home.

She reached up to draw a book of verse from the shelf and faltered as the realization of what she had just thought struck her.

She had called Thomas’s townhouse “home.”

She’d done it reflexively, but it was the naturalness of the gesture that horrified her even more than the slip itself. His address was only a temporary respite, not her home. She would do very well to remember that, as easy as he sometimes made it to forget.

She reached again for the book, but her hands trembled a little.

“Miss Aspinall.”

She turned, surprised at being hailed so publically. “Mr. Wooley. This is a surprise.”

The solicitor smiled but his narrow face still scanned her own closely. “The pleasure is all mine, I assure you. Ah, you are reading one of our great poets?”

She looked at the book in her hand. “It is for Robert. A distraction.”

“Very kind of you. I’ve always thought that might be a solicitor’s motto. ‘How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?’” Seeing her confusion, he gestured at the book in her hand. “Mr. Pope’s words, not mine. But apt, don’t you think?”

George had moved closer, clearly determined to intercede if she was being bothered. Hester nodded reassuringly and he retreated a few steps. Mr. Wooley didn’t fail to notice the footman’s gesture and dipped his head politely.

“I am detaining you and for that, I apologize. Might I trespass on your kindness a moment longer? I would like to speak to you of your brother’s case.”

“You have news.”

“Some good, some less so,” he prevaricated. “Will you take the book? We might talk as you walk.”

She hurried to the counter, eager to learn what the solicitor had accomplished since they had last met. Robert was still not speaking with her, beyond his curt instructions sent via the intermediary of George.

“On account?” The clerk at the counter took note of the book and began to wrap it for her. Wooley seemed inordinately interested by the answer, but when she glanced up his face was bland and he was inspecting a copy of botanical prints.

“No,” she said, withdrawing her purse and counting out the coins. She tried not to think what Robert would say of her wasting their precious money on something as frivolous as a book, but she couldn’t bear to think of him in that dour, awful place, without some diversion.

Outside the shop, she and the solicitor began walking down the street side by side. George followed a few steps behind, the book tucked in his reed basket.

“You said the news was good?”

“After a fashion,” Wooley admitted. “I have been able to secure the names not only of those arrested, but also those detained.”

Hester couldn’t see what difference it made. “Aren’t those one and the same?”

He smiled triumphantly. “Hardly. Twenty-three men were detained. But for some, justice was evaded. Thanks, I have no doubt, to a timely offer of funds.” He rubbed his fingers together, as though testing a coin.

Bribery.

Of course. It made perfect sense. Men of consequence could not run the risk of being identified. Middling men and tradesmen like her brother who lacked the capital had been taken up, whilst those with the means to avoid to the magistrate’s interrogation would have seen to it that their detention would be overlooked by the Bow Street police.