Steadfast (33 page)

Now it was Lionel’s turn to feel a little faint. Almsley was quite correct. And this
was something he hadn’t even thought about. This was bad. This was—

But there was still another page to the letter, and Lionel turned it over to read.

“Nevertheless, I am determined to find a way to free this poor girl from the brute.
It is not only mandated by real alarm over what she—and her Elementals—may become
if she were to lose control. It is mandated by pure decency and honor. I shall be
joining you in Brighton as soon as I am able to get away.”

“What?” Jack exclaimed, his head snapping around, turning to stare at Lionel with
wide, disbelieving eyes.

“It says right here, he’s going to help us,” Lionel pointed out. But there was more.

“You are a soldier, and your friend is a magician of the stage as well as of the Art.
I suggest you put your talents together. There are other ways that may work to rid
yourself of this troublesome brute. If, for instance, he was convinced that she was
dead, he would have no reason to continue to remain in Brighton. Or, if you were to
lure him into committing some act of violence in public, you could have him imprisoned.
Neither of these things has to be real of course. Nor do they require the aid of your
Elementals. They could easily be mere stage-illusion. I merely make these suggestions
and leave it up to you two to see if you can think of an implementation. Yours very
truly, Lord Peter.”

15

K
ATIE woke at dawn to the sound of a single bird singing right outside the window.
Something had happened as she had slept; she had, as the saying went, struck bottom.
It was enough to trigger rebellion in her. And she woke, filled not with terror and
despair, but with determination.

Last night, she had thought she wanted to die. She woke knowing that was a lie; she
did
not
want to die. And just who was Dick Langford that he could actually make her think
she did, at least for a little while? What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she learned
anything in the months she’d been away from him? How could he so thoroughly have reversed
everything she believed in to the point where she was actually thinking
he
was in the right and she was in the wrong?

She had to wonder now if perhaps there wasn’t something about
him
that could not be explained by ordinary means. He’d always been persuasive with women—look
at all the women he’d gotten into his bed for all these years in virtually every single
town and village the circus went to! He was legendary for it. He even had a different
sort of persuasion with men; he could make them think he was daring and bold, and
make them secretly envy him, rather than thinking he was a filthy cad who took advantage
of everyone he ran across.

There were only a few that were immune to his peculiar charm. Andy Ball was one; her
father had been another. Andy Ball had taken advantage of that charm for his own ends,
however, and—well, at least according to her recollections—had been very well aware
of it, if not personally affected by it.

She lay quietly in the trundle, thinking very hard about this as the church clock
struck six, indicating that she didn’t need to be up quite yet. Was it magic, this
power that Dick had? Now that she knew magic existed, it seemed that this might be
some sort of magic. She certainly couldn’t explain it any other way.

Well, whatever it was, last night’s nadir of despair had changed something in her.
She’d managed to shake off whatever persuasive power he’d had over her, and she had
regained her own spirits.

You’ve no more power over me, you right bastard,
she thought angrily at the snoring hulk in
her
bed.
You’ll never get it back again, neither.

She was, somehow, going to find a way to be rid of him. For good, this time. Lionel
had showed her at the theater that there
were
times when they could talk safely. Together the three of them were sure to find some
way to thwart Dick. He’d never talk his way around police, for instance, if they found
a way to lure him into trouble.

And if Dick had a confederate watching her, well, she had
her
informants, too, except there was an entire group of them, not just one. If it had
been him, and not a confederate, she’d have been more worried, but there was no way
he could work his magic through someone else. The chorus girls were all her friends,
even the couple that didn’t get on well with most other girls, because despite her
star status, she took care to never put on airs. And—be honest—because when the bounty
of chocolates, trinkets, and flowers came in from would-be admirers hoping to get
to know the “Russian Ballerina,” she shared them with the chorus girl’s dressing room,
and generally shared the name of the admirer as well. Several of them had eaten well
on the bounty of one of those disappointed fellows, and one was still doing so. She
could ask the chorus girls quietly—and with obvious distaste—if one of the men working
at the hall had been asking about her. She’d hint she’d found some disturbing notes
in her dressing room. Every single one of them had experienced, or were experiencing,
the attentions of someone they really did not care for or want anywhere about. They’d
assume the fellow in question had an unsavory pash for her, and they’d tell her who
it was.

But she knew that she would have to be very careful not to betray her newly reawakened
spirits to Dick. Any evidence of rebellion would bring a beating. Mind, being meek
and cowed would not
prevent
a beating if he was sufficiently determined to find an excuse to give her one, but
evidence of rebellion would bring more, and more often.

She came down the ladder from the loft consciously assuming the hunched-over posture
of someone suitably humiliated, spirit broken. She had never thought of herself as
an actress, but now she would have to put on the best performance she’d ever done,
and she might have to keep it up for weeks—months. At least it was a role she was
familiar with; her body assumed the posture easily, and she knew she wouldn’t have
to feign a wince if he looked as if he was about to raise his hand to her.

She managed to get down the ladder so quietly he didn’t even snort in his sleep, and
started cooking. She made Dick’s usual breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs, and fried
bread instead of toast, but this time she brought it all on a single huge metal serving
plate she’d found in the bottom of the pantry last night. It had been stored with
some dubious pots and pans that looked as if they had been put away with burned food
still encrusted on them. The platter, at least, was clean, and was probably meant
for serving up a whole roast chicken, or something of the sort, but it was big enough
to load down with all the food Dick considered necessary in the morning.

He was sitting up waiting for his breakfast when she turned and brought it, along
with a tea mug full of gin. One eyebrow went up at the sight of the huge platter,
but he smiled a little. “There’s a
proper
brekkie!” he said with approval, and dug in, while she made all the usual preparations
to tide him over while she was gone. If he continued to eat like this, without doing
anything but lying around in bed all day, would he get fat? She wondered if it would
be possible to just keep feeding him until he got so rotund she could outrun him,
like the Fat Man in the circus sideshow. It was an amusing thought.
He could set himself up in a Boardwalk stall then. He could live in the stall, never
leave, and hire a child to take care of him and feed him on fish and chips.

Thinking of the Boardwalk triggered another thought, one that could have more potential
than turning Dick into a sideshow freak. “Have you been down on the Boardwalk or the
beach?” she asked quietly as she cut bread and sliced meat.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw his head come up, and he looked at her suspiciously.
“No,” he replied shortly, his dark brows knitting together in the start of a frown.

“You’d have such a laugh if you did,” she said. “It’s like the longest sideshow you
could ever imagine. There’s heaps of people setting out with acts down there. Some
have stalls, some just have a rug, and there isn’t one strongman that is half as good
as you.”
There. Let that put a bee in his bonnet.

She didn’t need to add anything to that, for although he was lazy, he was also frugal
in a way. She knew he hated having to pay for women, drink, and food if he could get
them free, as he had with the circus. He had relied on his circus turn and his personal
powers to attract people and his pub tricks to bring them close enough to haul in
and get them to pay for things for him. Then he would do a few tricks outside the
pub and flex his muscles to get the women. He was a lazy man, but his tricks weren’t
difficult, and at this point even he had to be getting bored with sleeping the day
away and eating. He wasn’t going to amuse himself with going to the halls—he’d never
see the sense in
paying
for the sort entertainment he was used to
being
in. He would absolutely never consider doing a regular act in one of the halls himself,
not when he had
her
money to laze about on. But going down to the Boardwalk when he felt like it, putting
out a scrap of rug, and picking up the odd bit of money
and
attracting women he wouldn’t have to pay for? Now that was something he’d enjoy.

He’d also enjoy showing up some of those other strongmen with his tricks. He loved
to lord it over other people. That would make him very happy indeed, and the happier
he was, the better off she would be.

“There’s lots of acts,” she continued, meditatively, starting the washing-up. “All
up and down, and some on the beach.” As one of those acts himself, she didn’t have
to tell him that he could see bits of them for free just by strolling up when the
barker was extolling them. “Fireworks after sunset, and electric illuminations. If
you get tired of sleeping, you can just take the ’bus for a penny each way.”

“Huh.” His brows had unknitted and now he just looked thoughtful instead of suspicious.
“Is there foights?”

She knew what he meant; not random fighting, but bare-knuckled brawling matches where
men fought for prize money or against all comers, with money for the man who could
stay five minutes in the ring. Just before she’d run, he’d started looking for those,
and collecting on them too. No one expected a man who looked like Dick to move swiftly,
or to fight with any level of calculation, but he was fast, and he had certainly learned
the best places to hit by practicing on her and other people he had beaten up.

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I’m in the hall all day but dark day, and I
never looked for any. But Brighton is big. It stands to reason there are matches somewhere.”

“Huh.” He was clearly thinking hard about all this. “Lotta toffs ’ere?”

Now, “toff” no longer meant the same to her as it did to Dick. To Dick, a toff was
a man who had more money than he could reasonably spend, and who liked to toss it
around to show off. That was how a Traveler thought, too.

But she had come to think of a “toff” the same way Lionel did; toffs had money, all
right, but they generally had titles too. When they tossed money around—which many
of them did—it wasn’t to show off, it was because it literally meant very little to
them. There always had been money, there always would be money, so why not spend it
to have some fun? They paid very little attention to how much they actually spent.

Dick’s sort of toff wanted the biggest impression he could buy, but he wanted it at
a bargain rate, which was why they spent their money on cheap beer in cheap places.
They knew they would never be able to penetrate the circles of noble rank and extravagant
wealth, and many of them didn’t try, preferring to go after lower-hanging fruit.

Lionel’s sort didn’t care what sort of impression they made as long as they and their
friends were amused out of their boredom for a bit. If the people around them were
offended by their attitude, they would neither notice nor believe it—the lower classes
were not expected to have any sort of “finer feelings” to be offended. The lower classes
were expected to be flattered by having any attention from a gentleman at all. And,
of course, the lower classes were expected to wish to do anything for money.

That was the sort every chorus girl dreamed of meeting, for that sort was the kind
who might bestow generous presents on them, or even “set them up.” It almost never
happened of course, and on the rare occasions that it did, the “chorus girl” in question
was generally a famous beauty in her own right. But the cheap novels they read were
full of such promises, and the girls believed them.

Dick’s sort of toff was the kind that would buy an entire pub several rounds, bet
extravagantly, and spend most of his money on showy trappings for himself—like a pretty
little mistress he could take around to the sort of places he wouldn’t take his respectable
wife. This was actually the sort of fellow who
would
buy a common chorus girl presents—trinkets of silver and jet, for instance, not gold
and diamonds. He
might
“set her up” for a time, but within six months he would tire of her and another would
take her place. More than six months together, and she might start to get “ideas”
and make demands. He couldn’t have that. So she had to go before she got to that point.

Since the showy trappings that
wouldn’t
make demands on him might include patronizing a prizefighter, that was the sort Dick
was interested in, anyway.

Mind, the ones with the titles were inclined to patronize a fighter too—but they were
far more easily offended by someone who was very much their social inferior being
too familiar than the self-made “toffs” were. In fact, Dick’s sort, sometimes having
come up from rough beginnings themselves, often prided themselves on “not forgetting
their roots” and encouraged a certain amount of familiarity—provided it didn’t come
with demands of any sort.

That was the sort of toff that came to Brighton to holiday, sometimes alone, having
left the respectable wife and children at home, sometimes with the respectable wife
and children in tow. It was easy enough to slip off while the wife was supervising
the children at the beach, or taking them to some of the less-dubious attractions
such as steam-gondolas, roundabouts, and Ferris wheels. Titled ones went home to their
country estates where it was at least marginally cooler and a great deal less odorous
than in the city.