Lord Foxbridge Butts In (17 page)

“I’ll meet you outside, pretty,” he pinched my chin and headed off toward the door.

“I’m off to meet the Angel Gabriel!” I told Pond excitedly, squeezing in next to him at the bar, “Stan’s taking me.”

“I didn’t think Stan was your type,” Pond glared at me.

“He’s not, I’m only going with him to meet Gabriel,” I explained, somewhat surprised; perhaps I’d stirred the green-eyed beast when I danced with a chap he fancied, “He’s fond of the boy, apparently. And while I’m gone, you ought to ask around about his brother, Mike. See if you can find out anything we can use against him.”

“From what I’ve heard already, there’s plenty. Everyone loves Gabriel, and everyone says ‘too bad about that brother,’” he seemed only slightly mollified, “Where does this Gabriel live?”

“Oh! I don’t know,” I frowned, realizing I’d need to learn to be more precise in my questions, “Stan didn’t tell me the address, only that he knew where he lived.”

“Then I think I’d better follow you,” Pond stood up and drained the last of his lager, “I don’t know Stan that well, and you don’t know him at all. You’ve no idea where he’s taking you, it could be dangerous.”

“I’m sure Stan wouldn’t hurt me,” I objected, “He’s very nice.”

“Nevertheless,” Pond insisted.

“Well, have it your own way,” I shrugged and turned to go. Pausing only to pay my bill with the raven-headed maître’d, I exited the Green Parrot and met Stan at the top of the area steps.

We walked a reasonably short distance around a corner and up Wardour Street, with Stan flirting ceaselessly as we went while I was too acutely aware of Pond behind us, wondering what he was making of the display. We turned onto a side-street, and then stopped at an archway giving into a space that called itself a Mews but was really a dark, narrow, incredibly sinister-looking alley that ran about fifty yards to a dead end.

“Well, come along,” Stan prompted as I stood indecisively in the archway, reluctant to commit myself to such an insalubrious enclosure, “You’re not afraid of an alley, are you?”

“A little,” I admitted, but stepped forward bravely, secure in the knowledge that Stan could obviously handle himself in a fray and that Pond was not far behind.

“I won’t let the bogeys get you,” Stan laughed heartily and threw an arm around my shoulder, escorting me up to a door so anonymous that didn’t even have a number on it, which he pushed open to reveal a tangle of bicycles and a rickety staircase lit by a single very dim electric bulb.

“Gabriel lives
here
?” I wondered, my nose crinkling at the smell of cabbage that permeated the place as we ascended stairs carpeted in a filthy threadbare runner. It was a level of squalor that simply didn’t exist in Oxford, or anywhere else I’d ever been, and I was appalled.

“Not exactly the Ritz, eh?” Stan winked at me and knocked on a door at the second landing.

“Well, if it ain’t old Stan!” the door was opened by Mike Baker; expecting the door to be opened by this gilded cherub I’d been hearing about, I was quite taken aback by the spectacularly ugly object that filled the door-frame.

He had probably been quite a looker some years ago, before he’d smashed his nose into a shapeless blob and snarled his lip with a nasty scar, before he blotched and spotted his com-plexion with drink, before the innate meanness of his personality had stamped his expression with sneering contempt; but he retained quite remarkable gooseberry-green eyes and really beautiful golden hair, and the remains of his beauty were made almost poignant by the otherwise total wreck of his face.

“Is Gabriel at home to visitors this evening?” Stan inquired with an arch sort of courtesy, hatred for Mike Baker gleaming from his very pores.

“Who’s paying?” Mike made the unmistakable gesture of rubbing his fingers together as if crackling bank notes and putting out his hand for payment.

“How much?” I inquired, pulling out my note-case.

“For the both of you?” Mike narrowed his eyes at me appraisingly, no doubt calculating my resources to within a penny, “A fiver ought to do.”

“Five pounds!” Stan yelped, “A sovereign each, and you’ll be glad of it.”

“You’ll leave immediately and not come back tonight,” I said with as much imperiousness as I could muster while handing him a five-pound note, “I’ll gladly pay extra to be spared the sight of you.”

“Saucy little toff, ain’t ye?” Mike leered at me while pocketing the note, then retreated behind the door to have a short conversation with his little brother and retrieve his cap and coat; returning to the landing, he executed a sarcastic bow followed by a lewd smirk before clattering down the wooden stairs.

“What a revolting creature,” I complained to Stan as I followed him into the tiny flat.

“Like I told you,” Stan shook his head sadly, “A bad lot.”

The sitting-room was empty when we entered, giving me an opportunity to study my surroundings before getting down to business: it was a surprisingly comfortable room, the walls draped with printed muslin like an Arabian tent, worn but colorful Turkey rugs on the floor, a single bed fitted out like a divan with a profusion of cushions, and a couple of easy chairs and a pouf in front of a tiny fireplace with an electric heater made to look like a coal fire.

“Oh, it’s you, Stan!” Gabriel entered from the room next door, which I assumed was the bedroom, dressed in well-fitting trousers with embroidered braces, an open white shirt, and carpet slippers; he was as exquisitely beautiful as I’d been led to expect, his golden curls hanging loose around his heart-shaped face, the big pale-green eyes fringed in long lashes, the scarlet mouth a perfect Cupid’s-bow, the peaches-and-cream skin blooming on his smooth rounded cheeks. His voice was sweet and musical, his diction the carefully refined accent of a shop-assistant or waiter; his figure was slight but gracefully proportioned, his movements as elegant as a dancer’s. He was perfectly enchanting, and I understood the devotion he inspired in those who knew him.

“How’s my boy?” Stan asked lovingly, enfolding the boy in a tight embrace and kissing him on the nose, then turning to introduce me, “This is my friend ‘Bastian, he wanted to meet you.”

“A pleasure, Bastian,” Gabriel glided over to me, gently grasped my lapels, gazed adoringly up into my eyes and planted a warm wet kiss on my mouth. It was perhaps the most remarkable greeting I’d ever received.

“My name is
Se
bastian,” I corrected my new friend, “Sebastian Saint-Clair.”

“Yes, I know,” Gabriel smiled mischievously, “I recognize you from your picture in the last
Tatler
, Lord Foxbridge. I just thought you’d want to remain anonymous.”

“Anonymity is for romance,” I smiled back, and stepped away from the boy; his closeness was distracting me from my purpose, “I’m here on a matter of business.”

“Those papers, I guess,” the boy’s manner altered from seductiveness to something even more disarming: embarrassed candour.

“Baron van der Swertz has asked me to arrange for their return. Would twenty pounds meet the case?”

“My brother told me to ask for fifty,” he blushed charmingly, his eyes on the carpet.

“Wait a minute!” Stan inserted himself into the conversation, rounding on me, “You’re a lord? The little round buster is a baron? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t help me,” I answered truthfully, “Reggie thought a bunch of titles would put people’s backs up, so he told me to stick to Christian names.”

“Reggie isn’t just an acquaintance from Oxford, then?” Stan narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“He’s my valet,” I said after a short pause in which I weighed the advantages between complete honesty and further dissimulation.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he shook his head again, vigorously this time, as if trying to make the new information jostle into place.

“But to return to the papers,” I perched on the edge of an easy-chair and pulled out my note-case again, “I was authorized to go to thirty pounds, but I will make it up to fifty myself, if it will help you out.”

“Really?” Gabriel was surprised by my acquiescence to the outrageous demand, “Why would you do that?”

“Because Gustaaf wants to help you, and Stan wants to help you. Even Charley said she’d help you; now I’ve met you,
I
want to help you, too. You’re in a bad corner with this brother of yours. Is there anything I, or the Baron, can do to rid you of him?”

“He’s my brother,” Gabriel sagged down onto the corner of the divan, “Nothing anybody can do about that.”

“Nonsense,” I leaned back in the chair and put my feet on the pouf, “Brothers don’t treat brothers the way I’ve heard he treats you.”

“Maybe in
your
world, Lord Foxbridge; but in
my
world, they do,” Gabriel sighed sadly.

“Balderdash,” Stan put in, furious, “If my brother tried to bully me the way Mike does you, I’d have his guts for garters.”

“I bet your brother’s not twice your size, and a boxer,” Gabriel looked at Stan bitterly.

“Well, no,” Stan ceded the point, sitting down on the opposite corner of the divan. “But just because you can’t knock him down doesn’t mean you have to stay with him.”

“He’s all I have in the world,” the boy said lifelessly, as if repeating a lesson.

“That’s absolutely not true,” I leaned forward again, “You have Gustaaf and me, and Stan here. You have a
lot
of friends. That’s worth more than any number of useless blood relations, and certainly worth more than that brute Nature paired you with.”

Much to my chagrin, the boy began to cry, heartbreaking sobs that brought both Stan and me to our feet. But Stan had the better instincts, sitting down next to the lad and pulling him into his lap, soothing him as one might soothe a frightened child; I stood and stared at the scene like an idiot with my mouth hanging open.

Eventually the boy calmed down, and relaxed into Stan’s embrace, apologizing for his outburst and accepting my handkerchief to mop his face. I lit a cigarette and started walking around the room, marking out a Thinking Circle in the unfamiliar space, tripping occasionally on a previously unnoticed bit of furniture.

I
had
to get this boy away from that brother, but I didn’t know how. Could I just take him home with me to Hyacinth House? Or put him up in another hotel, one more suited to his station? Did I even
want
to take responsibility for this boy I scarcely knew? Was he as innocent in all this as he seemed? And if so, would he consent to leave his brother? And if he did, where could I take him that Mike couldn’t find him? Was St. James’s far enough? Could my aunt receive him at Foxbridge Castle? Did the Baron have a place in Holland he could go?

“All right, Gabriel,” I came to a stop in front of the divan, where Stan was still comforting the boy, though his caresses were becoming more amorous than filial, “If we could get you away from your brother, would you come?”

“Where could I go?” he wondered.

“We’ll figure that out later;
would
you come?”

“I don’t know,” he said after a thoughtful silence, “If I ran away and he found me, he’d hurt me bad.”

“If we could take you someplace where he couldn’t find you, would you come?” I insisted.

“I don’t know,” he looked at me with fear and confusion in his eyes, “I just don’t know.”

“Well, then, I’ll give you time to think about it,” I shrugged, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to make the boy decide until I had something more concrete to offer him in the way of a plan, “If you’ll go get the papers, I’ll give you the money; also the pawn ticket for the paper-knife, if you have it. I’ll talk to Gustaaf in the morning and see what he’s able to do for you. Then I’ll call around tomorrow night and we can discuss your options. How’s that?”

“All right,” he conceded, extricating himself from Stan’s arms and heading toward the other room, “Help yourself to a drink, won’t you?”

Stan knew where the drinks were kept, so I resumed my seat by the little fireplace as he poured us a couple of short brandies; he accepted one of my cigarettes and took the other easy chair, and we sat in companionable silence waiting for Gabriel to return — which eventually led me to wonder what was taking him so long.

“I can’t find the ticket,” he said when he came back into the sitting room, now dressed in a gaudy but appealing scarlet silk dressing-gown and apparently nothing under it, which explained his prolonged absence, “But the knife is at Nazerman’s in Broadwick Street. The papers are all here. Would you tell Gustaaf I’m sorry?”

“He knows,” I accepted the papers, looking at them briefly but not understanding what they were or knowing if they were all there — I should have asked the Baron for an inventory — then handed over the fifty pounds, which he tucked carefully between two books on a shelf; he turned off the overhead light, leaving the room softly lamp-lit, and slid out of his robe to reveal a perfectly exquisite body, a Donatello David carved from warm ivory — though bearing some ugly bruises that I assumed Mike must have put there.

“Well, I think I’d better be going,” I got up and reached for my hat.

“Why?” Gabriel was surprised and embarrassed, clutching his dressing gown in front of him, “You’ve already paid. I thought you were going to spend the night.”