Dark Angels (53 page)

A
T THE
S
WAN,
Richard saw the clerk for the secretaries of state, went over to talk with him. As he did so, he watched Walter put the last pieces of a meat pie into his pocket. Caught, he thought, some of his anger from last night sparking. Is he playing me for the fool? He went back to his table. “What are you doing?” He waited for the lie, waited to give him a blistering lecture on stealing.

“For Nan. She’s always hungry these days, and sometimes there ain’t enough to eat for her. I didn’t take none of yours, I swear.”

Richard walked to the counter, purchased a tin pail for a few pennies and two more meat pies, set the pail on the table before Walter with a thud, dropped in the fresh pie and added the remainder of his, gave Walter another whole one. “You eat your fill. Here’s one and more for Nan. Don’t think I’m going to be buying meat pies for nine months.”

“No sir. We wouldn’t expect it, sir.”

Out on the street, atop Pharaoh, Walter felt like a burr against his back. The cold was good on his face. How did those clerks in the treasury and navy do it, live all day in closed chambers lit by candles? He felt he wasn’t alive unless he was outside, cold or rain or sun. It was a bright enough day, sun feeble, but no fog. Richard trotted the horse skillfully through carts, some carrying barrels of water, some carrying piles of refuse, through carriages and sedan men carrying sedan chairs. When I’m through with Madame Neddie, Pharaoh and I are going for a gallop, aren’t we, boy? he thought.

At Wych Court, Walter slid off the back of the horse and ran toward a corner turn the narrow alley made, calling to Richard, “I’ll just take this to Nan.”

Richard dismounted, knocked on the red door. The burly giant opened it. “I want to speak with Madame Neddie,” Richard told him.

“She ain’t receiving visitors just now.”

Richard held up a coin. “Tell her Captain Saylor wishes only a moment.”

C
HAPTER 30

I
n her festooned bedchamber, Neddie had her skirts pulled up. Henri Ange sat on a small embroidered stool before her, her feet in his lap. He was painting her toenails. At the knock on the bedchamber door, she called out, “Go away.”

“Someone to see you.”

“There’s no one I want to see.”

“That soldier.”

Neddie motioned for Ange to stop. “Enter,” she called, and the giant opened the door gingerly. “The handsome one with the gold hair?”

When the giant nodded, she lifted her feet from Ange’s lap, stood up, and shook out her skirts. “Send him up, Tiny. I haven’t a stroke of rouge on, damn it.”

“What soldier is this? Why would he come to call on you?”

Neddie winked at Ange’s image in the pier glass as she pinched her cheeks and fluffed out her hair. “He’s formed an infatuation for one of the boys. So sweet. I think he wishes to make it official. Oh, Madame Neddie sends another beloved out into the wicked world with a new family, but not for nothing. It costs. Wait here, my love. I won’t be long.” She shut the door firmly behind her, but Ange moved forward silently and opened it just a crack.

“A captain are you now? Bravo, sir. What brings about this visit?”

Neddie stood before a window, and she was still beautiful, but not quite so startlingly so. Richard was trying to determine what, exactly, was different about her as he bowed over her hand. Perhaps the candlelight last time? Perhaps the rouge? “Do you remember the man I asked you about?”

“Not really.”

“He was a Frenchman, dark and thin, who spoke English. Well, it’s come to us that he may be posing as an Italian. He may speak Italian. Has a man of that description visited your establishment?”

Neddie played with her hair. “My curiosity is up. Why is it so important that you capture this man?”

“Capture? I don’t think anyone has said that word. We want to speak with him, that’s all.”

“It must be a very important question you want to ask him.”

“It is.”

She bit the tip of a curl and batted her eyes at Richard, flirting.

“There would be some sign of gratitude,” said Richard, reading her flirting properly.

“How much of a sign?”

“Ten guineas.” Am I mad? thought Richard. Would Balmoral pay that? It was a huge sum.

“My, my, I am impressed.”

Richard had an odd feeling. He glanced around the chamber, but he couldn’t put his finger on precisely what bothered him. She isn’t going to play, he thought, or she is going to lie. He’d set a watch on this house, back and front, to see if anyone who looked like Ange entered or left. That was better than paying ten guineas for what might not be the right man at all. He bowed again, turned to leave.

She followed him to the door, walked out into the hall with him, shutting the door of her antechamber. She said quietly, “For twenty-five guineas I might have seen him. Thirty and a promise from Bamoral himself that this place will never be closed, and I have seen him. There was an alderman up my ass the other day because his son is a regular.”

Her crudity shocked Richard. His senses began to tingle. Something was off. “That can be done.”

“Bring me a letter from Balmoral and the coins.”

“The man first.”

“What man?”

Richard started down the stairs. Neddie followed him.

“A letter and half the amount I ask. The other half on sight of him.”

Richard held out his hand to shake hers.

“A kiss, my sweet, let’s seal it with a kiss.”

He put his mouth on hers, and her tongue stroked his lips, darted in between. She bit his bottom lip, held the playful bite a moment before stepping back, her eyes shining. “Sweet as honey,” she said. “I knew you would be.”

“This man, he’s very dangerous.” He was telling her too much, but the kiss had thrown him off guard.

“How dangerous?”

“He’s killed.”

“I’m invincible.”

Richard stared after her as she ran back up the stairs, her skirts lifted so she wouldn’t trip. Her feet were bare, her ankles shapely.

A
NGE WAS SITTING
on the sumptuous daybed Neddie liked to drape herself upon to receive visitors. She shut the door behind her and pouted. “Now don’t be mad. I kissed the soldier. I couldn’t help it. He is so gorgeous.”

“Why did he call on you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Are you going to do what he asks?”

“Of course not.”

“Why? Wasn’t the price high enough? I’d give away any one of the brats you pimp, dead or alive, for ten guineas.”

Neddie’s laugh was low and throaty. “You heard that, did you?” She sat in Ange’s lap, lifted her skirts high. It wasn’t the fashion to wear drawers of any kind. She flicked his ear with her tongue. “We need to finish my toes.” She bit his ear.

“Do you have a razor?”

She breathed in his ear, “Touch me? We can share the soldier. I know he’d do it….”

“I want to shave my hair off.”

She sat up. “Why? I adore your hair.” She ran her hands through it. “It’s as thick as a sheep’s. Don’t cut it. It’s winter. Wait until summer when it’s hot.”

“I want to shave it off and wear a periwig. It would be warm, as warm as a hat.”

“That might be handsome. Yes, I can see you in a periwig. Yes, I like that vision.”

“Shave my head.”

“Now?”

“You’ll shave my head, and we’ll finish the garnishing of your toes and see what else occurs. Something interesting, I promise.”

W
ALTER WAS WAITING
outside beside Richard’s horse. “Come and meet them. They want to say thank you.”

“Who does?”

“Nan and her mother.”

“No, I need to be off.”

“It won’t take a minute. They’re just around the corner here.”

Richard followed him around the corner of Madame Neddie’s, down the narrow space made by buildings that were only a few yards across from one another. The mud separating the buildings was slimy, smelled. It was the habit of Londoners to throw the contents of their chamber pots out a window or a door.

Richard had to stoop to enter the dwelling. He stood in a low-ceilinged chamber that seemed to be filled with people, children from babies to Walter’s age or more and, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, an old man in the corner, someone feeding him some pie from the pail. The furniture was sets of beds and stools. There was hay on the floor, fresh hay, a way to keep out the chill of the dirt under it. Sweat broke out on Richard’s upper lip. It was the combination of the dark, the dank, and the smell of too many people in one chamber. A thin woman came forward, a baby on her hip.

“This is Captain Saylor,” Walter said. “Captain, this is Mrs. Daniell.”

“We be thanking you for the food you gave Nan. Come here, Nan, and make your curtsy to the soldier.”

At the word
soldier,
the old man stood and saluted.

“Dad be in the war, fought under Fairfax.”

Richard nodded to the thin girl, who obeyed her mother and came forward to meet him. Was she twelve? Perhaps thirteen? “Very good. And a good day to you, Mrs. Daniell. Nan.”

“My man would thank you, too, but he works in Wapping.”

Wapping was past the Tower of London, where the ships docked. Likely he worked on one of the wharves unloading cargo. Her husband had a long walk to and from work, thought Richard. Outside again, he put his hand on the horse’s neck. Pharaoh’s stall had more light than these people lived in. They looked thin and pale, like plants without enough sun. He would be buying meat pies for nine months. Longer.

He headed up Wych Street to make his way to Drury Lane. Fields lay at its end, and he put just the touch of his spurs on Pharaoh, who knew what to do with open fields and country lanes, the horse running in his bold, nothing-held-back, gallant style and Richard leaning against his neck, leaning into the wind and cold until the pair of them were less restive. Clearheaded again, he trotted a tired Pharaoh back to Whitehall. Now there was the matter of Alice, but more important, there was the matter of Renée.

C
HAPTER 31

A
lice was in the Stone Gallery, a long gallery on a lower floor in the palace, just as she’d said. Dozing, she was huddled up into a chair, her skirts bunched around her. Richard stared down at her, at the sweep of cheek and neck, the dark hair curling out of its clips and ribbons. He didn’t want to do this, to talk about the wedding last night. That had to be why she had demanded to see him. He pulled a stool close and sat. “Alice.”

Her eyes opened at once. There were shadows under them. She’s suffering, thought Richard, that’s good. He could see a pulse throbbing in her neck, right near her jaw. The blue vein of it was pretty. For a fleeting second, he had the urge to put his finger there and trace it.

“Barbara married John Sidney last night,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Were you there?”

“Of course.”