Sharon Sobel (29 page)

Perhaps it would fade in time and she would be utterly bereft. Might she challenge Mr. Queensman’s sense of duty to renew the acquaintance? If she asked him to elope with her to the north, would he be sufficiently amazed?

“I see you smiling, Lark. I knew your bad temper would not last for very long,” Janet said comfortingly. “It must be the thought of confounding Mr. Queensman that revives your humor. I believe him a man who is very rarely wrong.”

“He provides a very strong contrast to me, it would seem. I believe there is nothing I have done right in some time.”

Janet tied her cape about her shoulders. “You have been a very loyal and generous friend. Surely it must count for something.” She leaned down and kissed Lark on the cheek.

“Perhaps not. The same might be said for the little cinder girl, and she did not go to the ball either,” Lark said.

“You forget the story, my friend. She did go to the ball, after all, disguised so well her sisters did not recognize her.” Janet walked to the door, and then turned, as if in afterthought. “And in the end, she married the prince.”

Lark felt the breeze caused by the closing of the door. But it is not the prince I wish to marry, she said to herself, and had not the heart to pray for what she most desired.

The patients at Knighton’s were very much in the habit of retiring early, and the servants who saw to their every need usually took advantage of the opportunity to do the same. Lark opened her door to the soundless, darkened hallway and wondered how much she might dare with so slim a prospect of an audience.

She could not sleep, nor had she the patience to read anything in her small collection. She had worked and reworked Mr. Siddons’ little maps until she knew the territory by memory and the light was not strong enough for needlework. The night air seemed full of music, both from the distant Pavilion and from the closer, more insistent waves upon the beach, and it proved invigorating for her already restless mood.

Lark stepped out into the hallway.

No bells rang, nor did cries of alarm stop her in her tracks. The voices of the night sang on, tempting none of the residents of Knighton’s but her.

The smoothly polished floor felt hard beneath her slippered feet, so unaccustomed was she to treading upon her toes, and once or twice she felt as if she would lose her balance. But she made her way to the great room with no mishaps and pushed open the doors onto the scene she had come to know best during her respite in this place.

The great room, with its huge plate windows open onto the
veranda and the sea beyond, was at once familiar and strange. She had never known it so dark and quiet, but yet there was the book she had abandoned earlier in the day, the morning’s flowers fading on the library table, a deck of playing cards spread across a gaming table. Several of Mr. Siddons’ tedious dissected maps were laid out upon a corner table, awaiting completion on the morrow.

Feeling just a bit mischievous, and remembering something of an old tale about the shoemaker’s elves, Lark thought it would be fun to make some progress on the pieces and confound their owner. She positioned the table to take advantage of the gentle moonlight and considered the matter.

But she was disappointed to realize she had once worked this map, and she remembered how it seemed the least exciting of any that Mr. Siddons brought. It was of the coastline, from Winchelsea to Brighton, falling short of the extensive properties of the Seagate estate, which would have been the only features to truly hold her interest. And yet it seemed, for a while, to hold that of Mr. Queensman, who seemed perversely antagonistic about the whole subject when he questioned Mr. Siddons about his choice of map. Lark mused as she fingered one of the pieces, thinking she knew Mr. Queensman so much better now, and how his actions and words were never arbitrary. If he had bothered Mr. Siddons about his gift, he must have had a reason.

He might have, but to Lark the whole question of the relationship between the two men remained perplexing. At one time, her vanity had insisted that Mr. Queensman acted in jealousy against a man who brought her little gifts and amused her. But surely he came to realize, as did she, that Mr. Siddons withstood her charms very easily and made no untoward advances. Whatever set them off against each other had nothing to do with herself.

So much for the beautiful, wealthy daughter of Lord Leicester. Her earlier self-effacing comparison proved apt: She might as well have been the cinder girl.

And, lacking an invitation to the ball, she might as well be happy in her own lonely corner.

She looked at the map piece in her hand and saw that it included
the shoreline very near where she now, stood. Surely this little fragment of the universe held no great significance, and yet it was where a dead man had only recently washed up on the beach, where Mr. Queensman’s hand had been slashed and where Martha Gunn had met with her accident. Mr. Queensman and Mr. Knighton could not have imagined such misadventures when they chose their separate sites for their hospitals.

But surely the events were no more arbitrary than Mr. Queensman himself. Might such disasters have occurred on this beach precisely because of who dwelt here? And might Mr. Queensman already know the cause?

Lark again focused on the piece in her hand and noticed the fine line between the land and the water. With absolute clarity, she recalled the conversation about the king’s arrival at Brighton and how Mr. Queensman allowed his rival to mistakenly believe the entrance would be via the sea. She did not believe him so petty as to merely deny the man the spectacle of the king’s entourage; therefore, he must have had another reason to coax him away from the scene.

But he did not succeed. Mr. Siddons found his way to the cliff road anyway, although he looked like he had run through swamp and briars to get there. Why had it been so important?

The piece dropped to the floor, and Lark knelt to retrieve it. At first, she thought she had found another part of the map, for this piece had writing scrawled across its tiny form, but then she realized she saw its back side.

“King’s Pie …” was distinctly legible. Surely no one doubted the monarch liked his pie, but why on earth would such a thing be written on a map? Lark held it closer to her face and thought perhaps the second word was incomplete. Piecrust? Pieman? Pied? Pier?

The King’s Pier? There was such a place, where the royal barge docked when the king was in Brighton. If George had arrived by sea, as Mr. Siddons believed, he would have made landfall at the Pier.

Lark stared down at the little missive and made a curious cry. Instinct and sense finally came together as she scrambled the assorted pieces on the table and turned them all onto
their reverse. Even in the dim light, she could see scrawling writing in the same hand forming words and phrases when linked together.

“Our man waits King’s Pier. No opportunity for error …”

Fleetingly, Lark prayed she was being too melodramatic to think what suddenly seemed obvious.

“… must be done before Friday. Palace last chance if all else fails. Way land …”

Perhaps an alternate plan, if the king came by way of the land. But that did not seem to make sense, and Lark squinted into the darkness.

Not “Way land”—of course, it read “Wayland.” The colonel himself, the tiresome fool who spoke endlessly about his American campaigns and yet remembered none of the particulars. The man who received visits and maps regularly from his nephew and who regarded them as matters of great importance. Scarcely a gentleman, but one who somehow secured an invitation to the king’s costume ball, a privilege denied even Lord Raeborn’s intended.

Why did Wayland need to document the movements of the king, and why did he receive puzzling little messages on the back of dissected maps? Why did Gabriel Siddons receive these seemingly innocent gifts, delivered by men he met on the beach early in the morning?

Lark felt her knees give way, and she fell down onto a chair. Her weakness had nothing to do with any physical frailty, though she felt as if she had been hit by a powerful wave. When she returned to the surface, gasping for breath, she saw certain things with a clarity that had eluded her until this moment. And she saw, as vividly as if he stood before her, the traitorous Colonel Wayland in his Napoleon’s costume.

It was then that Lady Larkspur knew that her stealthy journey through the darkened halls of Knighton’s was not the most adventurous deed of this night’s work.

Lark paused in the shadow of a tree, hoping the gang of young roughs passing drunkenly on the street would ignore her. They looked to be the sort of men who might easily torment an innocent youth, but if they should prove aggressive and discover the softness of her woman’s body under the rough shirt and trousers she wore, the consequences would
prove disastrous. She stood still, not daring to move even though the trousers scratched her flesh most annoyingly.

In the moonlight she glimpsed their faces, broad, whiskered, damp with sweat or ale. Their odor confirmed the latter.

When Lark allowed herself the luxury to breathe again, she realized this guise was her most futile one yet. Somehow, she had managed to convince at least some people she was an invalid, but she suddenly realized that not a single person would allow her to pass inspection as a boy.

But she had no choice. She could not walk the streets in woman’s clothing, nor could she reveal her plan to anyone else at Knighton’s. She did not know whom she might trust.

Though she had grown up in a household of women, knowing what to do with the garments she retrieved from one of the servants’ closets did not cause much consternation. The shirt pulled tightly over her breasts but just managed to button closed, and the trousers were secured with a bit of twine. Her hair caused a greater problem, but she braided it tightly and stuffed it neatly under a tweed cap. She might be forced to remove it at the entrance to the Pavilion, but she had no choice but to chance the consequences.

As she ran through the dark streets of Brighton, following the lights of the Pavilion as a beacon, she tried to rehearse what she might say. She needed to talk to Mr. Queensman in a matter of much urgency. Should she mention the names of one of his patients? Or would he dismiss her errand as foolish, since he had left the very capable Matthew Warren in charge? What could she plead as important enough to get his attention?

“Halt, boy! You are nearing the palace of the king!” A brusque voice, suitably menacing, stopped her in her tracks.

Lark cleared her throat.

“If you please, sir. I am a servant sent from Knighton’s with an urgent message for Mr. Benedict Queensman, who is a guest here.”

The guard stepped out of the shadow of the doorway and held out a very large hand.

“Let me have it then, and away with you.”

“It is impossible, sir. I have nothing in hand.” Lark cursed
herself for this oversight. “It is committed to memory.”

“Let me hear it, then,” the guard said impatiently.

“Lady Larkspur suffers a serious relapse and may die this night. Do not upset Lord Raeborn with the news, but come at once.”

“Is Lady Larkspur your mistress?”

“Mr. Queensman is my master,” Lark said, thinking it might carry more weight. She hoped the guard did not see her blush. “Please, sir. It is most urgent.”

“Those who approach me for favors usually offer some compensation.”

Lark blinked like a fool, not at all understanding what the man demanded of her.

“I see you are untutored. I cannot understand why Mr. Queensman would want you.”

Lark thought the man sadly close to the truth of the matter, though not in the way he intended.

“But I will admit you nevertheless.”

“I am sure you will be amply recompensed, sir.”

The guard grunted his doubtfulness on the matter and pushed open the heavily ornate door to the palace. “I will have you wait here while I send someone to find Mr. Queensman. He is with the king, you say? Do you know his costume? It is very difficult to recognize even the regulars this evening.”

Lark realized she had no idea what Mr. Queensman might be wearing, though she could think of a few ensembles that would suit him very well.

“You are a simpleton, are you not? Stay here, and out of trouble, boy. And take off your hat in the palace of the king.”

But even as Lark’s trembling hand went up to remove the offending article, the guard turned abruptly on his heels and did not look back as he marched from the room.

She was in! Feeling a great rush of satisfaction, Lark took the opportunity to inspect her surroundings and to pass her own judgment on the building that had been the cause of so much censure by everyone who saw it. She studied the broad painted expanse of the ceiling, so cleverly done it rivaled the afternoon sky. She blushed at the statuary around her, which revealed not only all the particulars of the
human form, but also a very active imagination. Several of the marble faces resembled George himself.

Lark was well on her way to getting an education of a certain sort when the sound of men’s voices caused her to duck between the statues. Once there, she could not be sure which was worse, being discovered or being forced to press up closely against a man’s marble bottom.

Master William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh passed by without noticing her, as did Queen Elizabeth, who followed closely at their heels.

“Are you certain you heard the boy correctly? The lady Larkspur was in no danger when last I saw her,” argued a familiar voice, and Lark summoned the courage to step out from her sanctuary.

From one end of the long hallway, two men approached, one towering over his companion. Though he wore a half mask and a curiously feathered hat, his very manner, if not his voice, reassured her completely. She watched him as they neared, and felt only relief that once again he should come to her rescue.

“There he waits, sir,” the guard said. “An insolent little rogue, he is. Still wearing his hat, I see. Why, I should like to—”

“Leave him be,” Mr. Queensman said as he stopped the man’s hand. “I have urged him to wear his cap, to prevent a chill.”