To Seduce an Angel (9 page)

“Looks like a toad to me.”

She closed her hands and looked up at him, the blue dazzling. She gave a slow reproachful shake of her head as if he were a thickheaded student.

“What? Are you an admirer of toads?” He hardly knew what he was saying with her hands still cupped in his.

“He's quite handsome if you think of him as a dragon.”

“But homely if you're in the toad faction.”

She withdrew her hands from his. “Well, I'm in the dragon faction, and we're going to find this fellow a proper home on the riverbank.”

He looked at her again. He'd just shared a light moment with her, and he'd thought the only brightness in her spirit was in that hair.

“Don't fall in.” He stepped aside, and she passed him, but it was another minute before he remembered whether he had been going down or up.

 

 

FROM the roof he could see the faded rose of her cloak against the browns and faint greens at the edge of the river. The green surprised him. He'd arrived at Daventry Hall in late November and come to expect a perpetual winter landscape, like the rooftops of London. He liked a muted landscape, another reason to prefer the roof of the hall to its luxurious rooms with their brocaded walls in rich colors. In London he could read colors from leaden and ashy grays to umbers and deep coffee browns to rusts and coppers, and know the heat and texture of a rooftop. Here in the country, where he could not roam freely from rooftop to rooftop, he had learned to drive. The bare fields bounded by ditches and leafless hedgerows had at first been blank slates of earth, but now he was learning to pick out the marks of a harrow or a plow and identify the bits of stubble clinging to the clods.

Below him at the river's edge the boys chased after one another and sent birds flapping into the air. His gaze followed the red cloak and black bonnet, and he felt the scene sink to dullness when they disappeared below the bank. He was surprised at the difference that bit of red made in the empty rolling landscape.

He regretted that he would not dine with the boys and their tutor but with his estate manager and the local vicar, who wanted to consult him on a matter of tithes.

ON her third afternoon at Daventry Hall Emma set off for the town. On the way she tied a thread to those places in hedges and trees where she might later conceal the items needed for her escape. Adam Digweed had not returned to the hall, and each night Emma fell asleep waiting for the man in the room next to hers to succumb. She could not match him in wakefulness and doubted that he actually slept. He walked the roof. He read insatiably. He didn't sleep. She knew little more about him than she had learned that first day. What she did know—that he cared for a ragtag band of boys—was not something to tell his enemies. She formulated her report to Aubrey's man as she walked.

The village of Somerton sat on a rise above the same river that flowed past the hall. Wood-timbered buildings with overhanging upper floors lined Bridge Street on one side of the green. Rows of plastered cottages extended down the side streets, and a tall old church with a spire sat back in a large churchyard opposite a brick town hall. The Bell, where she was to meet Aubrey's man, was a whitewashed building with a prominent bow window and a busy yard. A redbrick malting house stood on one side and the town shop on the other.

Josiah Wallop leaned back from a pigeon and beefsteak pie in one of the inn's private dining rooms when Emma arrived. His imposing girth stretched the closure of a purple silk waistcoat below a brown-stained napkin tied about his neck. His doughy face had a broad genial expanse like the face of a prosperous farmer with ruddy cheeks, abundant black side whiskers, and multiple chins nesting in his linen, but his eyes were sharp and sly and the tufts of his brows rose like wicked tongues of black flame. No other man in Somerton wore purple silk.

Wallop looked her over.

Emma did not know any English farmers, but she knew jailers. You could tell a good guard from a bad guard by the way each handled the fish soup. It was always fish soup. The good guards were the indifferent ones, the ones bored by the long stretch of hours in the Castello di Malgrate. They were cardplayers who would place bets on the liveliness of the fleas. They shoved the soup forward into the cell and went back to their next wager.

The scrupulous guards with neat uniforms and trim moustaches were not half bad, either. They played by the rules, were punctual to the minute in their routines and predictable in all their movements, even to the glance of their unseeing eyes. They set the soup down warm or cold in the same spot every evening. New guards, green ones who did not know yet what power was theirs, were the best of the lot. They sometimes brought a bowl filled to the brim.

Bad guards were a different lot. They expected a little bite, a bribe for bringing the soup into the cell. A prisoner with nothing to offer could watch his soup sit on the cold stones until yellow islands of congealed grease floated in the broth. The worst guards were the dictators, the pashas of the prison, who let girls know what would happen to them if they didn't obey orders. They spit in the soup.

In Emma's judgment, Josiah Wallop combined all the worst guards in his large person. He would insist on his little bite and then spit in your soup. He pretended to check on Emma as a chance acquaintance he'd helped along the way. The waiter left, closing the door behind him with a firm tug, that popped a cupboard door open a crack behind Wallop. It gave Emma a bad feeling to see that thin black crack as if the cupboard watched her, too.

“So you got the position, eh?”

Emma nodded.

“Good thing for you. Now if yer smart, missy, ye'll know whose side yer on, and ye'll end up plump in the pocket with His Lordship Aubrey and the whore's get, both paying you.”

Wallop applied his fork and knife to the pie and lifted a large bite to his mouth. A drop of glistening gravy hit his waistcoat below the napkin and settled in one of its folds. He chewed with slow ponderous working of his large jaw and patted his mouth with dainty taps of the napkin. His shrewd eyes never left Emma's face.

“It's best we come to an understanding, miss. Josiah Wallop is a businessman. His business is dealing with inconveniences. Your highborn gent knows no more than a baby how to deal with inconveniences. So he turns to Wallop.” Wallop shook his head. “These are inconvenient times, they are, so business prospers. Wallop puts a half crown in the plate at St. Margaret's every week. Now, girl, you don't want to become an inconvenience, do you?”

Emma shook her head. She kept her face as blank as a wall.

Wallop nodded. “Good lass. Now let's see wot you have for me.” Wallop heaved himself out of his chair and unrolled a small scroll of the house plan on the table next to his pot of ale. “Wot can you tell me about where he keeps to and what he does?”

Emma's plan was simple, a mix of truth and lies that would leave Wallop trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.

“He sleeps on the second floor in the north wing.” Emma put her finger on the place, and Wallop made a note. “He has a large servant, Adam Digweed, who looks out for him. The household staff includes the butler, who serves as Daventry's valet, four footmen, a housekeeper, five maids, two laundresses, a cook, and three scullery maids. Out of doors there are a groundskeeper, four under-gardeners, a head groom, and two stable boys. When the estate manager comes, he and Daventry drive about the estate with an armed companion. He dines with the boys in the dining room in the southwest corner, ground floor.” Again she put her finger on the spot.

“Digweed, eh? A big man, you say?”

“His hands are bigger than my head. His shoulders would touch both jambs of the door, and he'd have to bend down to enter.” She did not mention that he was away in London investigating the new tutor.

“The big fellow must sleep sometime. Find out where Digweed's quarters are and when he's not with his master. An accident waiting to happen is wot that whelp is. You know, a blowup, a tumble, a smash.”

Emma kept her face still. Let nothing show. Wallop must think her indifferent to her employer. After a minute, he seemed satisfied, and rolled up the map.

He settled himself in front of his plate and speared a dripping bite of fowl. “What can you tell me about his dogs?”

“Nothing.” She hadn't seen any dogs.

“Josie Wallop doesn't like
nothing
, missy. Josie Wallop doesn't take
nothing
for an answer.”

“I didn't know I was to spy on the dogs. There are no dogs in the house.”

“Well, there are dogs somewhere. So you'd best find'em. Start with the stables. Find out who feeds 'em and when and how much.”

“My place is in the schoolroom with the boys.”

“Your place is where I say it is. You'd best get out of that schoolroom when you can. You're the inside man on this job, d'ye see? Josie Wallop is the outside man, the best in the business.” He tapped his head. “Up 'ere I've got everything stored about that whelp. I've been watching 'im since'e were just that whore's fry. I know everything that passes in or out of that house. I know who that maid of yers flirts with in the village. But yer the inside man.”

A fit of coughing stopped him, and he took a long pull at his ale pot. “The whelp received a package yesterday delivered by his London visitor. Yer ta go over the house when he's abed and find it. Ye do see 'im at supper, don't ye?”

Emma nodded.

“Well, make sure he sees you, missy.” Wallop's eyes narrowed. “And don't go wearing that old rag.” He shook his finger at her. “You look like you came straight from the workhouse in that frock. Yer ta wear wot's in that trunk, mind. Has he seen your dairies yet?”

He made himself understood with a leer. Emma shook her head.

“Well, you weren't picked for yer wit, girl. Make sure that he sees 'em. Yer ta get close enough to hand him his bath towel. If you don't, you'll be wearing a hemp necklace.”

 

 

EMMA picked a seafoam silk gown for supper that had Ruth shaking her head and searching for pins to secure its low bodice.

“Ruth, do the hall people go to the village often?”

“Most of the tradesmen come here, miss.”

“I'm sure, but do you or other servants go into the village?”

“On Sundays mostly, miss. Everyone in the big house has family in the village. My aunts is there, and most of us know someone who works in a malting house, malting being the main trade hereabouts.”

“Do you have a young man in the village?” Emma watched Ruth in the mirror.

The girl flushed. “Now, miss, a girl like me?”

“I suppose Mrs. Wardlow and Mrs. Creevey know all the tradespeople.”

“Of course, miss. How would they get honest service?”

“Are there never strangers about?”

“Only passing through, miss, on their way to Newmarket for the races mostly. Even some fools that ought to know better just can't stay away when there's wagers to be made.” Ruth frowned and jabbed a pin in Emma's curls, and Emma thought her maid might have a sweetheart after all, someone to whom she would talk as artlessly and openly as she talked to Emma. If Wallop knew how to ply Ruth's beau, he would have a way of obtaining information about Daventry. He would know if Emma wore the fine silk dresses in her trunk.

“Ruth, do you know anywhere where might I shop, for small things, you know, shoes and shirts?”

“Oh, you'll want to go to Symonds' Emporium on Witt Street.”

 

 

NEARLY twelve feet of linen-draped mahogany, four sets of glowing candelabra, a half dozen serving dishes, and seven active boys separated Emma from Daventry, but she felt his scrutiny nevertheless.

Her
dairies
as Wallop had called them were on display, or at least as much of them as she and Ruth could not contrive to cover. Emma's gown had a bodice of two halves that crossed in a deep vee. Ruth had contrived to pin the halves together, but the tops of Emma's breasts rose in curved white slivers above the narrow bodice.

Wallop's comment made her understand Aubrey's intentions more clearly. He had chosen her to be a lure, a bright thing flashing in the stream to catch Daventry's notice. Aubrey could not guess that she had no experience attracting men. She had not met any men to attract. Tatty simply made it a rule of their prison life to discourage their guards from thinking about them as women. If Emma so much as smiled at one of the new guards, Tatty would scold.
You don't want them looking. If they start looking, they want to touch. If they touch, they want to take. That new one may have a pretty face, but he's just as mean as Fausto.