Beyond Compare (18 page)

While Kyria had been preparing for her role, Rafe had spent most of his time trying to think up some reason to leave her behind this evening. The last thing he wanted was to see Kyria exposed to any danger, and going into the sort of place he expected the Blue Bull was seemed to be jumping into the most dangerous situation one could find. As if the risk of drunken
brawls or men pawing her was not enough, he could not imagine Kyria, with her tall, striking, flame-haired beauty, blending in with the tavern’s patrons. Taking her with him was risking discovery for both of them, not only among the tavern’s rough clientele, but also with the very man they were hoping to catch.

But when Kyria walked into the informal drawing room, he came involuntarily to his feet, his jaw dropping open in astonishment. In Kyria’s place stood a bent, dirty crone several inches shorter than she, as well as a lifetime older.

A scarf, stained and smudged, covered her head, and below it a tangle of brown hair, streaked with white, tumbled out, matted and dirty. The same scarf covered part of her forehead, and below it Kyria’s milk-white skin was several shades darker and caked here and there with dirt. Her nose looked somehow wider and her eyes smaller, and her lips were thin and colorless. She walked with a stoop, as if her back hurt, and her lithe body was covered in bulky rags of an indeterminate color that gave her a lumpish shape. Shoes with holes in the toes completed the picture.

When Rafe said nothing, merely stared in astonishment, Kyria broke into a grin, displaying the pièce de résistance: four of her teeth appeared to be missing, and the remainder were an appalling yellowish color.

“Good Lord!” Rafe exclaimed, recoiling.

Kyria burst into laughter, followed by the twins, who had come downstairs to view the results of their handiwork.

“Isn’t it wizard?” Alex cried, coming around to look at Kyria again. “You look horrible,” he told her happily.

“Wizard,” Rafe agreed dryly, adding, “well, at least
I won’t have to worry about fighting off your admirers.”

“I told you I could blend in,” Kyria reminded him. “Oh! The last thing—we need to splash a bit of liquor on me. Gin would be best, but I doubt Papa or Reed have any here.”

They went to the smoking room, accompanied by the twins, and rooted through the liquor cabinet, and though they could find no plebeian gin, they shook a bit of whiskey over her ragged clothing to add a realistic smell.

Kyria slipped the heavy revolver Rafe had given her into a pocket amidst the folds of her clothing and stuck the small derringer up her sleeve. Rafe, with a pair of Colts and a knife in a scabbard strapped to his arm beneath his sleeve, was even more heavily armed.

“Did you expect to be attacked in Europe?” Kyria asked, watching him check his pistols and thrust them into his belt, one at his side and one at the back.

He grinned at her. “When you transport silver ore, you get accustomed to arming yourself. A useful habit, as it turns out.”

“Mmm.”

They took one of the family carriages, an old-fashioned one that did not bear the ducal crest on the side, and though the coachman looked dubious about their destination, he drove them to Cheapside without a murmur. As they neared the tavern, the streets grew increasingly narrow, until there was barely room enough for the carriage to move between the dark and dingy buildings. There were few street lamps to light the way.

They found the Blue Bull, a narrow brick building, its color unrecognizable beneath the years of grime. A
sign hung above the door, sporting a blue bull—or at least half of one, for much of the figure’s lower body had weathered away. Rafe had instructed the driver to drive past the tavern when he found it and let them out a block away so that no one at the tavern would see them emerging from a conveyance so at odds with the neighborhood. The carriage rolled on past the next narrow cross street before it stopped.

Rafe stepped down from the carriage and glanced carefully around, then reached up to help Kyria out of the vehicle. She looked around her. The street was so dark she could see little, but she was well able to smell the place. The stench of rotting refuse assailed her nostrils.

Rafe sent the carriage into a side street to await them. He would have taken a hack, since it would have been less-conspicuous a vehicle, but he suspected that they just might need a quick getaway, so it would be better to have a carriage waiting for them.

“Are you ready?” he asked Kyria in a low voice.

“Yes, go on—it won’t do for anyone to see us out here chatting,” Kyria said.

Rafe looked around sharply once more. It went against his grain to turn and walk away from Kyria, leaving her to follow, but given the roles they had adopted, it would not do for them to be seen entering together. He tugged his cap lower on his head and began walking toward the tavern, using all his discipline not to turn around to look at Kyria following him.

She let him get several steps in front of her. Her heart raced as his figure walked away from her, soon swallowed up by the darkness of the poorly lit street. She was all alone in the wretched street with who knew
what sort of criminals lurking about. Fear twisted through her, but Kyria shoved it down.

Taking a deep breath, she started forward into the darkness.

R
afe strode along, his ears stretched to hear Kyria’s artfully shuffling and stumbling progress behind him. When he reached the door of the tavern, he paused and sneaked a careful look to his right. Kyria was leaning against the side of a building and coughing as if her lungs might come up. That, he supposed, would do as much as anything to keep everyone away from her.

Rafe opened the door and went inside. The tavern consisted of a single, low-ceilinged, dimly lit room, with a pockmarked bar against one wall. A loutish-looking barkeep stood behind it, glowering around the room, and several disreputable types leaned against the bar, drinking their ales. The remainder of the area was littered with tables and chairs in various stages of dilapidation, and more than half of them were filled with men, each more criminal in appearance than the one before.

Rafe, adopting the hard countenance and steely gaze he had employed in more than one Western saloon, made his way to an empty table against the left-hand wall. It was not far from the door and afforded a good view of the rest of the room, especially the doorway.
It was the barkeep himself who ambled over a moment later and loomed above him.

Rafe looked up and locked gazes with him challengingly. The barkeep was the first to give in, finally barking out a belligerent, “What yer want?”

“Pint of ale,” was Rafe’s equally terse reply.

They stared at each other again for a time, then the barkeep shuffled away. At that moment the door opened, and Kyria stumbled in. She reeled across the room, stopping at one table, then another, trying to cadge a drink and being brusquely repelled in each instance. Rafe watched her, his whole body tensed, waiting for the moment that he might have to come to her defense.

But no one did more than snarl at her, and after a few moments, the bent and twisted old crone stopped in front of him. “Buy a poor gel a drink, mister?” she asked, her voice roughened and tinged with the East End.

He scowled at her, but Kyria sank down into the other chair at his table, continuing to plead. Finally, with an irritated jerk of his head, Rafe raised his hand to the barkeep and signaled for a drink.

“Thankee, kind sir, thankee,” Kyria said, scrabbling for his hand and trying to pat it.

“Behave,” Rafe muttered, and jerked his hand away, schooling himself not to smile into her laughing eyes.

“Awr, now, don’t spoil all a gel’s fun,” Kyria retorted in her gravelly voice, adding in a murmur, “Have you seen anything?”

“Nothing’s jumped out at me. Just looks like a room full of shady types.”

“We’re here before him,” Kyria said with satisfaction.

The barkeep brought two glasses and slapped them down on the table, casting a glare at Kyria. After he left, Kyria lifted a glass and stared down at it.

“This smells dreadful,” she whispered. “And I’m positive this glass has not been washed.”

“Pour a little on your dress,” Rafe suggested. “It will add to your aroma.” He took a drink and repressed a shudder. “I think we’ll be pouring a few of these on the floor tonight.”

They made a show of drinking and surreptitiously poured part of their drinks on the floor.

“What shall we do?” Kyria murmured, picking up her glass as if in a toast, sloshing a good bit more of it out.

“Wait,” Rafe suggested, “and see who comes in.”

With a nod, Kyria settled in, her eyes turned toward the door, and their vigil began.

Time crept by. They watched as the patrons of the tavern got progressively drunker. Each person was given a careful scrutiny, but there was nothing to any of them that seemed out of the ordinary for a place like this.

After managing to pour the contents of two glasses on the floor, Kyria laid her head down on her arm and pretended to pass out in order to avoid having to deal with any more liquor.

Rafe watched as two fights developed and took their course, deftly snatching away their drinks as two of the men reeled into their table and careened off. People entered and a few exited, but none appeared to be looking for anyone.

Rafe was beginning to wonder if their intruder had lied to them about meeting his employer at the Blue Bull when the door opened and a man entered who
caught Rafe’s interest. The new customer was wrapped warmly in a dark-blue pea coat, a luxuriant beard and mustache covering the lower half of his face. He walked slightly hunched over, his hands shoved into his pockets, and as he walked, his eyes roved over the crowd.

Rafe’s pulse quickened, and he nudged Kyria with his elbow. She opened her eyes and watched with a narrowed gaze as the stranger crossed the room and sank into a chair. He turned toward the bar and lifted a hand, and there seemed to Rafe that there was an unconscious arrogance in his gesture that did not fit with the man’s humble attire.

The barkeep ambled over, and when he reached the table, Rafe saw a subtle shift in his attitude. He bent down in a way that for that brusque man indicated a certain subservience, and he returned in a few minutes with a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

A mistake, Rafe thought, pleased. The man had dressed to blend in, but he had given away his affluence with his attitude and a full bottle of good whiskey. No one who could afford that would normally be frequenting a place like the Blue Bull. There was also the fact that even though he glanced around the room now and then, he also kept looking at the front door of the tavern.

“I think we have him,” Rafe muttered to Kyria, and went up to the bar to order another drink, strolling past the new customer as closely as he could without drawing attention.

When he returned to the table, Kyria groaned and made a show of waking and rubbing her face, looking around, then returned her head to the table, facing in Rafe’s direction.

“Did you see him?”

“As well as I could,” Rafe murmured, propping his chin on his hand to help cover the slight movement of his mouth. “This place is damned dim, and he’s got his cap practically down to his eyes. The rest of his face is hidden by the beard.”

“False?” Kyria asked.

“I’ll wager.” Rafe sighed. “And with the way he walked and those bulky clothes, it’s hard to get a good guess as to even his height and shape.”

“Is he foreign?”

“He’s dark for an Englishman,” Rafe said. “I’m not sure if that means he’s foreign. He isn’t the dealer who visited us, that I’m relatively certain of. There’s a scar near his eye, and it draws his lid down in an odd way.”

“A disguise, do you think?”

“I don’t know. It could be real—or as real as your salt-and-pepper hair.”

He took a drag of his drink and firmly refrained from wincing. Kyria stirred restlessly in her chair.

“Shouldn’t we go talk to him?”

“Wait till he leaves and we’ll brace him outside. This isn’t the best place to be if he starts to fight.”

Rafe kept a surreptitious eye on the stranger, who began, after a few more minutes, to grow somewhat fidgety. The man looked around the room more carefully, then returned his gaze more noticeably to the door. Finally, after thirty minutes or so, with a disgusted twitch of his mouth, he stood up and began to walk toward the door.

Rafe tapped Kyria on the arm, and she once more went through a performance of raising her head and looking blankly around, although this time, she ended it by draping herself over Rafe’s arm. Their quarry was
almost to the door by this time, and Rafe stood, Kyria rising quickly beside him. They started toward the door, and Kyria abandoned her drunken shuffle in the excitement of the moment.

As the stranger stepped outside, he suddenly grasped a man who was entering the tavern. With a twist of his body, he deliberately propelled the newcomer through the doorway and into the group nearest the door, resulting in a commotion of spilled beer, raised voices and flying fists.

“Blast!” Rafe swore.

He and Kyria sprinted to the door, but they wasted precious seconds while Rafe shoved a couple of the combatants aside. They stumbled out the door and looked up and down the street, seeing, a good half block away, their fleeing suspect. Rafe tore off after him, with Kyria in hot pursuit. The man skidded around the corner of a building, and the next thing they knew there was a loud pop, and the sound of something small striking the brick behind them.

Rafe swore again and, grabbing Kyria, ducked into the nearest doorway, the stench of which was enough to make her gag.

“Was that a gunshot?” Kyria asked, covering her nose and mouth in an attempt to breathe without smelling the odor. She tried not to think about what they might be standing in.

“Yes. He’s firing at us,” Rafe replied.

“Damn! He knows who we are. How?”

“My guess is he realized it when we stood up and started for the door after him. We may have been less than subtle.” Rafe paused, then went on, “He may not know
exactly
who we are. For all I know, there may
be any number of people who are interested in his activities. But he knew that we were following him.”

Rafe paused, listening. There was a clatter of horses hooves and carriage wheels on the cobblestone street. Rafe peered around the doorway to see a carriage disappearing at a good clip down the dark street.

“I think he’s gone.” Rafe stepped cautiously out. He glanced down the street in the direction the carriage had gone, then back up to where it must have come from, when something caught his eye.

A figure stood in the opening of a nearby alleyway, cowled and robed all in white. Rafe sucked in his breath, and in that instant the figure disappeared.

“What the hell!” Rafe started forward, and Kyria followed him.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“There was the strangest-looking…” Rafe hurried over to the alleyway where he had seen the figure and peered into it. It was pitch-black inside, and he could see nothing beyond a few feet. He wished he had a lantern. Frowning, he turned. “Nothing. It’s gone now.”

They started toward the side street where their own carriage waited.

“We should have left first,” Kyria opined. “Then we could have waited outside for him to emerge and talked to him then.”

“It would have been wiser,” Rafe agreed. He glanced at her and smiled. “Next time we lie in wait for someone, we’ll have to remember that.”

“Who do you suppose he was?”

Rafe shrugged. “The man who wants your reliquary—or someone who is acting as an agent for that man.”

Kyria sighed. “We’re no better off than we were.”

“Well, we did get a look at the man.”

“Yes, in disguise,” Kyria retorted. “Could you even tell how tall he was?”

“He wasn’t short. Exactly how tall…” Rafe shrugged.

“He wasn’t Mr. Habib,” Kyria said. “At least we know that. Which would seem to indicate that there is more than one person after the reliquary.”

“Yes. Although I suppose he could be an associate of Habib’s.”

“Sid did say he was foreign,” Kyria conceded. “On the other hand, it could be that there are two people working separately.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how this is helping us much.”

“We still have the barkeep,” Rafe said. “Sid told us that it was he who arranged the meeting, right?”

“True.”

“So I can question the barkeep and see if he can tell us who our man was.”

“He obviously seemed to know him.” Kyria’s face brightened.

They reached the carriage and climbed into it. Rafe looked at Kyria and said, “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to go home now and leave me to question the man.”

“You certainly could not,” Kyria said cheerfully.

“It won’t be pretty.”

“No. It wasn’t pretty being threatened by Sid and Dixon, either,” Kyria retorted. “And you might need help. I can’t in good conscience leave you here by yourself to face the barkeep.”

The two of them sat in the carriage, waiting for the
minutes to pass, having agreed that it would serve their purposes better to confront the barkeep after all the customers had left.

It was some time before that occurred, and Kyria had dozed off once or twice, then jerked awake to find Rafe, irritatingly enough, sitting there wide-awake, one corner of the window curtain pulled aside, gazing out at the tavern door.

“How can you do that?” Kyria asked, squirming in her seat and blinking to keep her eyes open.

“Habit I picked up in the war. Reconnaissance. Never lost it—comes in handy sometimes.” He stiffened slightly and leaned forward. “I think it may be closing. There’s a stream of them coming out.” He pulled a watch out of his pocket and glanced at it. He looked at her. “You ready?”

Kyria nodded, and they slipped out of the carriage and moved quickly down the street. As they approached, the door opened, and a final two customers staggered out. Behind them in the doorway stood the barkeep. He started to close the door, but Rafe was there before he could do so and braced his arm against the door, shoving it back.

“Ere, now,” the barkeep said gruffly. “We’re closed. Go ’ome.”

“I don’t want a drink,” Rafe told him, stepping into the tavern. Kyria slipped in after him. “I want information.”