Point of Honour (2 page)

“Such a handsome way to meet one’s obligations. Who’s the other corpse?” Matt pitched his apple core past Miss Tolerance’s knee and into the fire.

“Sir Evan Trecan; wrote a draft on his bank, which the bank has so far declined to honor. Damn, damn, damn.”

Matt rolled over onto his stomach and set his chin on his fists. “How does a lowly woman of business dun a member of Parliament—a
dead
member of Parliament?”

Miss Tolerance sighed gustily. “I shall write a note to his estate. Although if Sir Evan’s pockets were as deeply to let as I believe them to have been, his agents will likely laugh at it. At least someone will derive some amusement from the matter. Damn, there’s paper and ink spent, probably to no account.”

For several minutes, as Miss Tolerance scratched earnestly at her paper, there was no other sound but that of the fire. At last she looked up and cocked an eyebrow. “How does my aunt’s business tonight?”

“Brisk, my dear, brisk. Something about a thunderstorm seems to bring out the rake in any number of our notable citizens.”

“I don’t suppose Horace Maugham has come by this evening?”

“That bore? He rarely comes to us—I think he prefers a lower class of pleasure, and I’m not what he fancies,” Matt said airily.

“I didn’t expect it, merely wondered. I finished Mrs. Maugham’s business this morning and gave her the damning evidence tonight as she was dressing for Almack’s.” She smiled mirthlessly. “It will doubtless be all over town tomorrow, for it’s as Mrs. Maugham suspected, only less savory. Her husband keeps a pair of girls—little more than children—in a cottage near Riversend, on his wife’s money.”

“Lower class and younger, then.” Matt nodded.

“Sisters, not above thirteen. And Mrs. Maugham’s thoughts will be all for punishing her husband—she’ll bring him to heel, and the children will be cast aside.”

“Enough to give you a jaundiced view of marriage,” Matt said. “How lucky we are to have avoided it.”

Miss Tolerance frowned for a moment, then went back to the paper, turning the page from the Dueling Notices to the city news. “The Queen Regent and her doctors report that the King’s health remains good, despite his infirmity—is madness an infirmity, then, like gout?”

“I’ve heard the Queen will not be left alone with her husband for fear that he will ravish her. At her age?” Matt sounded delighted by the thought. “Marriage is overrated.”

Miss Tolerance did not rise to the bait. “The Queen Regent has canceled Thursday’s Drawing Room owing to a slight indisposition,” she read. “Lady Julia Geddes has moved the venue for her ball to Versellion House, owing to a recent infestation of ladybugs in her own establishment. And hear this! Fevier is running in the by-election for a seat in the House, with Versellion’s support. Montroy means to oppose him, and in that I suspect the delicate hand of Lord Balobridge. What great boards these kingmakers play upon! And the vote in the House regarding the question of support for Viscount Wellington’s Spanish campaign was tabled for more debate—again. By the time the House votes support for Wellington, the war will be five years over, and Bonaparte long in his grave. The price of corn has risen again. And—dear me: a Mr. James Mondulac was beaten last night as he left his club—Tarsio’s, as it happens—and sustained considerable injury. What was that about, I wonder? I believe I shall take my lunch at Tarsio’s tomorrow, and nose about to satisfy my vulgar curiosity. If anyone wishes to discuss business, they are more likely to search for me there than here.”

“A very respectable ambience that is, Sarey.” Matt shook his head.

“Unlike the refined precincts of my aunt’s brothel?”

“The membership of Tarsio’s is … variable. At your aunt’s, you know the quality of the help”—Matt sketched a bow—“and you know the clientele is impeccable.”

“Whereas I collect, the women at Tarsio’s are in the main players, poets, and adventuresses.
Entirely
unlike myself.” Miss Tolerance favored her friend with a tight smile. “There are not so many places in London that a ruined woman may comfortably frequent, Matt. There’s no reason for your snobbery. Not everyone can be a whore at Brereton’s, and it’s hardly fair to hold it against Tarsio’s that they admit all sorts of people.”

“And if I declared you an honorary doxy?” Matt grinned.

Miss Tolerance’s expression was carefully neutral, her tone cool. “I should die a pauper, and little honor in that. Now”—she had noted the hour on the pocket watch that rested on her mantel, and roused herself from the firelit comfort of her chair—“I will send you out into the night. I’ve been abroad since dawn tracking Mrs. Maugham’s wayward husband. I need to sleep.”

Matt grimaced, took up his boots in one hand and a large, rectangular rain shield in the other. “You’re certain you wouldn’t prefer I stay? I’m little good to you as a man, but I’m far more agreeable than a copper bedwarmer.” He grinned as if he knew what the answer would be.

“Cat! You would do anything to avoid going out in the rain again, wouldn’t you? Go!” Miss Tolerance gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the door but did not wait to see him go out into the night. She took up her candle and went upstairs to her chamber.

By the light of the one candle, she brushed her long hair and braided it, exchanged dressing gown for nightshift, and climbed into her bed. While the cottage she let from Mrs. Brereton was rustic in its appointments, the bed was, like all those in the house itself, broad and lushly comfortable. With a small fire in the grate to take the chill out of the air, she would shortly be delightfully warm and sleepy. Except that, as sometimes happened when an assignment was completed, Miss Tolerance found that she could not sleep at all.

At last, irritated, she relit her candle, propped herself on one elbow, and took up Mainley’s
Art of the Small-Sword.
She had read it often before and found it a remarkably soporific work, but should its tranquilizing power fail to lull her to sleep, she reasoned, at least it would reinforce her training. She read until the candle guttered and the book fell from her fingers, but still did not sleep. The best she could manage to do was to lie listening to the thrum of raindrops on the roof and the tap of rain on the window, the small, sharp crackling of the fire, and the slow, even sound of her own breath.

Miss Tolerance woke the next morning to find the sun well advanced in a blue sky; only the gutters, still clogged with leaves, and her greatcoat, still smelling of damp wool and gunpowder, put the lie to the sunshine. She took her time in rising, calling across to Mrs. Brereton’s kitchen for hot water, and bathing the last memory of sodden chill from her muscles. Then, with no assignment before her and the pleasant memory of Mrs. Maugham’s account, paid in full, to comfort her, Miss Tolerance dressed for the day. As she did not anticipate any activity more taxing than luncheon or a game of whist, she allowed herself the vanity of going out in her new blue morning dress and ivory straw bonnet. She braided her hair, put it up in a coil on her head, and at last took up her gloves, half jacket, and reticule and left the house for Tarsio’s Club, in Henry Street.

Making her way through the street past fruitmongers and a clutch of climbing-boys engaged in vociferous argument, Miss Tolerance felt the air sliding around her, warm, thick, humid; the hot breeze which blew from the river did nothing to improve matters. A few tendrils of her dark hair escaped their confinement and curled damply at the nape of her neck; her gloves felt too small and very sticky. She began to think with anticipation of a glass of punch in the cool white confines of Tarsio’s Conversation Room.

The footman at Tarsio’s, who was an old acquaintance of Miss Tolerance’s, greeted her with a mixture of familiarity and respect, hoped that he found her in good health, and regretted that no messages were waiting her.

“I hear there was trouble a few nights ago, Steen,” Miss Tolerance observed.

Steen nodded. He was assumed, professionally, to be above gossip, but Miss Tolerance had more than once slid him a coin across a tavern table to acquire some choice bit of information. He had learned to speak freely to her, and was not infrequently the source of new business. “An ugly business, miss,” he said now. Several members were crossing the hall to the Billiard Room.

Miss Tolerance waited until the hall was again clear, then asked, “Did it happen close to the club?”

Steen looked mildly affronted. “Would I have let a gentleman of this club be beaten in my sight, miss? It were around the corner, on King Street. By the time we heard the commotion and Corton and I run around to see what was afoot, Mr. Mondulac was lying on the ground and all I saw of his attackers was the soles of their boots.”

“More than one of them, then.”

“Yes, miss. Might happen there was three of ’em, though I’m sure I couldn’t say for sure.”

“Ah, well. Thank you, Steen. Oh.” Miss Tolerance took a coin from her reticule to press into the footman’s hand. “Should Mr. Mondulac be curious as to who his assailants were and wish to pursue the matter, you will stand my friend, will you not?”

Steen permitted himself to smile. “I will, miss.” He pocketed the coin.

From the hallway, Miss Tolerance repaired to the Ladies’ Salon, where a collation had been arranged on the sideboard in lieu of the more formal noontime meal which was commonly served in the Men’s Dining Chamber.

In the Salon there were perhaps a dozen women of all conditions of respectability, Tarsio’s one criterion for its female members being that they were sufficiently funded to afford the yearly fee and commons. A recent and notorious author was listening with sympathy to the narrative of a woman Miss Tolerance recognized as the mistress of a well-placed peer; with each nod of comprehension or empathy, the author’s highly ornamented bonnet shook violently, with a rustling that could be heard throughout the room. A young opera dancer whose rapid rise had been recently matched by a precipitous fall from public favor entertained three dewy, blinking young men, chatting vivaciously; she was shopping for a protector so blatantly that Miss Tolerance was surprised she had not been politely ushered out. Despite a liberal attitude toward its members, Tarsio’s Club did have some standards to uphold.

There were several women seated together at a table enjoying a quiet game of cards; Miss Tolerance nodded to the group but took a seat by herself near the window, drew a journal from the table nearest her chair, rethought the notion of punch, and ordered a pot of tea. She then settled in, intending nothing more than to spend the afternoon reading and dozing, like any of her counterparts in the Men’s Reading Room. As she read, however, she listened; before her tea had arrived, she had learned that it was indeed a dispute over the favors of that same Harriet Delamour, who now sat across the room choosing from among her three suitors, that had led to the untimely demise of Lord Henly; that there was a new shipment in of gold-shot silk at the docks; and that at any moment an Oxford scholar could expect to be sanctioned by the archbishop on suspicion of popery. No immediately profitable intelligence, Miss Tolerance thought, but less interesting news had proved valuable before.

After a time she put her feet up on a footstool, folded the journal in her lap and crossed her hands over it, and stared out the window. The affair of Mrs. Maugham had been accomplished with a little less simplicity than she had led Matt to believe; she had left her rooms on Mrs. Maugham’s business nearer midnight than dawn, and the dissipations of the night, which had included being chased along a narrow footpath at the riverside by one of Mr. Maugham’s lackeys, had taken their toll of her. It was very pleasant to sit in a sunny window and think of nothing for an hour.

“Miss Tolerance?”

As she disliked to be taken unawares, Miss Tolerance did not move her gaze. She gave a small nod and said, “I am she, sir.”

“Madam?” From the sound of it, her interlocutor was not sure that Miss Tolerance was, in fact, awake.

“I am still she, sir. How may I assist you?”

“I am Trux. You have heard my name before?”

Miss Tolerance turned from the window and smiled. “Your name is known in the circles I frequent, my lord.” That, she thought, was a nice turn of phrase. He could believe she meant the gentry or the criminal classes, as he pleased.

Trux flushed, bobbing his chin slightly, as if his neckcloth were too tight. Miss Tolerance motioned toward a chair, and observed him as he settled into it. He was stocky, not above medium height, and the fine-knit fabric of his breeches strained across heavy thighs as he sat. His clothes were of excellent quality, but his blue coat was just a shade too bright in hue, the buttons a quarter inch too wide, and his neckcloth was tied poorly in too elaborate a knot. He wore his dark hair cut fashionably short, in a style that made the worst of his features: small, peering eyes, ears that jutted from the side of his head, and jowls already too heavy for a young man’s face—she did not judge him to be much above twenty-five. Youth and money, Miss Tolerance thought, but decidedly no taste.

“Miss Tolerance,” Trux said. “I understand that you undertake, from time to time, small tasks … .”

“I do, sir.”

“Tasks of a private nature … .” He paused as if to convey a sense of delicacy.

“I try to keep all my business private, sir. It is not always possible, but I undertake that no disclosure will come from me.”

“Rather from the sight of Hermione Maugham throwing a cup of Almack’s lemonade into her husband’s face?”

Miss Tolerance cocked an eyebrow. “Did she so? Lord Trux, I can but complete my client’s assignment. What happens after, I cannot control.”

Trux paused to consider this, then nodded. “Reasonable, I suppose. I will be brief, Miss Tolerance. I act as the agent of another, who has requested that I find, or cause to be found, an article of his which is missing.” Trux raised his lace-edged handkerchief and delicately blotted the sweat on his upper lip. As he did so, Miss Tolerance noted the dark circles under his arms where the sweat was already soaking through his coat.

“And was this article stolen from your … patron?” Miss Tolerance paused meaningfully. She had seen all too many people who pretended the work they required was not to be done for themselves.