Authors: Kate Moore
To Tempt a Saint (5 page)
Cleo hefted her reticule. “We do have potatoes. Thanks to Davies. He gave me a half dozen this morning and I’ve lugged them about London all day.”
“Potatoes? Seriously?”
“Seriously. Let’s put the pot on.”
“Cleo, you are a sister in a million.”
“Perhaps, but I didn’t persuade Evershot to give me a shilling more allowance.” In spite of her best intentions the news came out sounding a bit gloomy.
It subdued their banter as they cooked and put a damper on the glory of the potatoes when Cleo put the steaming dish on the parlor table. Not all the reckless brilliance of four tapers lifted the mood, but Cleo savored every bite, and when the dishes were removed, she did not immediately put out the candles but brought out her gift for Charlie. She set the roll of thin paper in front of him and settled down to anticipate his pleasure. Charlie never dove into anything. If she had her way, she would give him endless gifts just to watch the thoroughness of his appreciation. Let the candle stubs burn on.
Charlie held the roll of thin paper lightly in his hands. “You’re not going to tell me where it came from, are you?”
Cleo shook her head. “Guess.”
Charlie’s thin fingers moved lightly over the roll of paper and circled its ends. “Stanford’s?”
Cleo could not deny it. She had stopped in the book and paper shop on Rose Street after she left the bank. “Not an entirely fruitless trip to town, after all.”
“But what is it?”
“You have to open it to find out.”
Again Charlie waited. His eyes shifted back and forth in the way he had when he was thinking. His hair, a shade more brown than Cleo’s, stood out in thick waves from his thin face. “You know, Cleo, I could do more for us.”
“No.”
“I talked to Davies this week, and he’s willing to let me have the entrails when he slaughters his hogs. He says if I scrape out the muck till they’re white as snow, Mr. Hems the butcher will pay me a penny a pound for casings.”
“Charlie Spencer, don’t you dare think it. You have more than enough to do to keep this farm going and keep up your studies.” Cleo was shaking. She thrust her hands into her lap and clenched them together. “We will have you in school by Hilary term. Now open it, open it.”
Charlie pulled the ribbon off the roll with a sweep of one thin arm and spread the paper open. He could not resist the pleasure of the gift. “It’s capital!”
In clear lines and wonderful detail was a diagram of a series of improvements to a Boulton and Watt steam engine. Charlie was instantly engrossed in figuring the math of each variation. “This one would double the efficiency of that one.”
“I’m glad you like it. We’re managing well enough, and only feel a pinch because we must get you to school.”
“Before March takes me away.”
“I won’t let that happen, but let’s try everything else before the pig entrails plan.”
Charlie grinned. “You’re sure?”
“If you are to be a great inventor, you need a scientific education, and we will find a way to get you one.” It was a fine resolution, only a little diminished as one of the candles guttered and went out.
T
HE administration of justice at Number Four Bow Street being one of the principal cheap entertainments of a London evening, a crowd packed the magistrate’s room when Xander arrived. He worked his way through the mob to his brother Will, who cleared a space with a swift, sharp glance at a burly apron-covered fellow reeking of fish.
HE administration of justice at Number Four Bow Street being one of the principal cheap entertainments of a London evening, a crowd packed the magistrate’s room when Xander arrived. He worked his way through the mob to his brother Will, who cleared a space with a swift, sharp glance at a burly apron-covered fellow reeking of fish.
Xander leaned toward Will to make himself heard above the babble. “Anyone of interest in tonight’s lot?”
“Nate Wilde, petty thief and informer. He’s one of Bredsell’s boys.”
A member of the foot patrol in a black hat and blue coat with brass buttons hauled a short, wiry young person into the court by his manacled hands. The youth swore and resisted, but the officer paid no attention. Behind the youth a man in severe clerical attire whispered something and the boy subsided.
“A pony says he gets off.” Xander offered more than his usual wager.
Will did not look away from the proceedings. “A pony? You’re flush in the pocket. Ah, Miss Finsbury accepted your proposal.”
“She did not.”
“That paper knighthood Prinny gave you didn’t impress your pigeon?”
“I was honest with her.”
“Quaint. She saw through you, then.”
“That point has been made.” Xander had a vivid recollection of a pair of green eyes and a smart mouth.
Will grinned. “Good, we wouldn’t want you to think that a tap on the shoulder from his royal fatness changes who you are.”
Trust Will to remind him that his knighthood was a careless honor bestowed at the whim of an unpopular prince. Being Sir Alexander Jones did not change the facts of Xander’s birth.
It was one thing for his brother to understand him so thoroughly, but it was unsettling for a bedraggled stranger to do so. She had made him realize what he’d been unwilling to admit to himself—how thoroughly reluctant a suitor he’d been. “In fact Miss Finsbury accused me of being a common fortune hunter.” He did not need to mention the other accusation the lady had made.
“Ouch.”
“I’ll live.”
“Of course you will. It wasn’t a heart wound because you have no heart.”
“An inconvenient appendage at best, prone to breaking, I hear.” Xander ventured a quick look at Will and noted a fresh cut above his brother’s right eye.
“The question is—will your bleeding partners wait for you to raise the ready?”
Xander shrugged. He had been invited to join the newly formed Metropolitan Works Group, one more change in his fortunes since the night he had come to the prince’s rescue. The MWG planned to transform London from an unhealthful maze of crooked lanes to a fitting capital for an empire. To launch the venture each member was expected to put up twenty thousand pounds of his own money. Xander had spent a great deal of his own money in the search for Kit. What he had left, a modest fortune, he kept invested, hence the great charm of Augusta Finsbury’s substantial dowry. Ready money was what he needed at the moment.
“By the way, Brother, I have a letter for you.” Will handed him a creased and well-traveled envelope covered in a lacy feminine script.
The letter’s spicy perfume reached Xander even among the competing scents of heated bodies and well-aled breath. He tucked it in an outer pocket of his coat. He would have his man air the coat tomorrow.
“Not going to read it?”
“I’m assuming you did. Is she well?”
Will laughed. “You think I read your bleeding letters?”
“I wouldn’t think much of your spying abilities if you didn’t.”
“Paris agrees with her.”
“Good.” He meant it. One member of their sorry family at least should find peace and a fresh beginning. Nearly three years of searching had not produced Kit. The restless pack of unanswered questions stirred to life in his mind.
Who had taken Kit and why? Was he still alive? Was he in London or in some wretched corner of the wide globe? What more could they do to fi nd him?
Who had taken Kit and why? Was he still alive? Was he in London or in some wretched corner of the wide globe? What more could they do to fi nd him?
Attending these sessions was Will’s idea of a search strategy. In Will’s view London’s vast underworld was a network as elaborate as any assembled by army intelligence. Toshers and mudlarks, prigs, drabs, and hired fists were linked to fences and abbesses and even more shadowy employers. The vilest wretch passed through the dark labyrinth of inner London and saw and heard its secrets. Slowly, Xander and Will were plotting these connections, following the threads that linked pick-pockets and prostitutes and those that preyed on them.
The buzz in the courtroom ceased as the bewigged magistrate entered the hall and took the bench. An officer bid the onlookers come to order.
Xander studied the youth now leaning insolently against the iron-railed dock. His face had such a hungry, feral look, it was hard to tell his age. Xander guessed anywhere from twelve to fifteen. The boy had been groomed like a choirboy for his court appearance, but his features had the twisted quality of one hardened by life’s blows. He caught Xander’s gaze, and his lips peeled back in a snarl, baring strong white teeth. “He might know something.”
“If he’s one of Bredsell’s boys, he knows all the rigs in St. Giles and more.”
“What’s his history?”
“Born in the Seven Dials, raised on drink, brawls, and thievery. Bredsell’s only had him a year though, so he’s not gallows bait yet.”
Bredsell ran a school for boys in a warehouse off Bread Street in one of London’s worst rookeries. “Receptacles,” they were called, for boys in trouble with the law. If Bredsell wanted to get a young man out of the hands of the law, he generally managed. Xander scanned the crowd for Bredsell’s aristocratic patron, Archibald March.
In the year that Xander and Will had been attending the night court sessions, Xander had come to expect the appearance of Bredsell and March.
The charges against the boy were read. The list was long, and the penalty for his most grievous crime was transportation.
The Reverend Bertram Bredsell rose, a pink-cheeked man with a head of close-cropped, yellow gold curls and a downcast gaze as if the wicked ways of the world grieved him, but Xander was not fooled by the angelic face. Bredsell, dubbed “the Moralist” by the papers, could get a crowd to believe almost anything.
“Your Worship, if I may speak a word on this young man’s behalf.”
“Mr. Bredsell, this court is not a pulpit. Speak briefly and to the point.”
“Thank you, Your Worship.” Bredsell then fell silent until the hum in the court died down and all eyes were focused on him. The man had presence. He looked up and spoke in a silken tenor. “The world judges Nate Wilde harshly, but he is not to blame for the darkness in which he lives. And that darkness will not be cured in the blackness of the hold of a transport ship or a cell. No, his spirit can only be cured if we bring him into the light. I appeal to this court to turn this young man over to me and my school so that we may bring light to his soul.”
Xander swore and turned to Will. He doubted Bredsell had much spiritual light to offer the boy. “Better to bring light to his street than his soul.”
“That is your plan, isn’t it, Brother?”
It had been. With Miss Finsbury he believed he had found the perfect match for the sort of marriage he had in mind. Her father was a grazier whose fortune had allowed him to establish his family in fashionable circumstances among London’s wealthy tradesmen. Miss Finsbury had been broad-minded in her taste in suitors. Xander’s knighthood and the town house off Berkeley Square had been sufficient inducements to get her to that meeting in the bank.
His plan had suffered a severe blow with her rejection of his suit. Without her thirty thousand pounds he could not join the Metropolitan Works Group. His part in the partnership was an experiment in lighting the streets of St. Giles, the darkest rookery in London, where the likes of Bredsell preyed upon the hungry and desperate. He had lost a month courting Miss Finsbury. Now he had to begin again. He had only been half joking when he asked Miss Ragmanners to recommend an heiress.
Will nudged Xander as a gentleman ambled into the court and leaned down to whisper something in the learned judge’s ear. Archibald March, the chief “patron” of Bredsell’s school, was a man of lean, cool good looks. In his forties, he had a long nose made for sneering at the world and a thin slice of a mouth. His dark hair fell with careless abandon over his broad brow. For all the foundling schools and widows’ societies that March supported, Xander could not detect a charitable line in the man’s smooth face.
“Self-satisfied worm,” Will grumbled.
March settled himself in a reserved seat with a proprietary air. According to Will, March had endless funds to pass around to charities. Will suspected that he profited in unholy ways from Bredsell’s school, by training boys as petty thieves and using them to peddle illicit materials and spy on men whose positions made them vulnerable to scandal. It was a monstrous accusation to make against a man with friends in high places, but it could not be denied that March always came to the proceedings when there was a chance of a boy being sent to Bredsell, and his word in the magistrate’s ear was often sufficient to sway a case. Both March’s unexplained influence in the court and his ties to the Home Secretary troubled Will.
Bredsell was still speaking about the power of his school to enlighten the souls of poor children, who would, without his guidance, surely end up leading the most degraded lives headed for a noose or transportation.
The magistrate cut him off. “Enough, Mr. Bredsell, you need not tout your school any longer. Young Wilde may remain under your tutelage at present, but if he comes before my court again, he’ll see the shore of Botany Bay before he’s sixteen.”
Xander caught the look exchanged between Bredsell and March as Wilde was released from manacles and turned over to the reverend. The youth himself could not contain a sly smirk and a swagger as the manacles fell from his wrists. Now there would be no chance for Xander or Will to question him. Within minutes Nate Wilde would disappear into the dark lanes off Holy-well Street. As he passed, the youth gave Will a cheeky salute. Will’s hand shot out and clamped on the boy’s arm, stopping him in his tracks.
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