Since the Surrender (17 page)

He was struck by the fact of this: he had stopped because of the song.

He had the sense he should squirrel the thought away and examine it in privacy.

Or perhaps Rosalind was affecting his powers of reasoning.

“Was there for ’is ’angin, Mr. Eversea’s. They did a whole show fer it, the puppet theater did, ’ad a little puppet scaffold, wi’ a wee noose danglin’—”

“Very skillful, indeed,” Chase interjected hurriedly. A song commemorating the event was one thing; he found a pantomime of Colin’s near-hanging a trifle less whimsical. “I’m sorry to have missed it. Do they sing Colin Eversea’s song very often? The puppets?”

“Nivver ’eard ’em sing that particular song before today. ’E’s free now, Mr. Eversea is, wasna guilty a’tall! Imagine that. Wonder what

’e’s about now?”

“I wonder, too. Do you, sir, know anything about the puppeteers?”

The man’s shoulders heaved up and down in a shrug, and as if he could wait no longer, his hand catapulted toward his mouth and he cleaved the apple in half. His next sentence was muffled by masticated fruit. A fine spray of juice accompanied his words, drizzling over Chase like a Sussex fog.

“Nah. I dinna know. I jus’ watch, and gi’ a penny when I’m able. They pass the ’at around a’ the end, like.” He held the remaining half of apple out to Chase with an eyebrow arched in question. Chase demurred with a slight shake of the head. The man shrugged again, just one shoulder this time, and, to Chase’s relief, swallowed.

“Are they here often, then? The puppeteers?”

“Two, three days o’ th’ week when the weather is fine.” He beamed approvingly up at the sun beaming agreeably down upon them. Helpful information. “Thank you, sir.”

“It’s Martin, and perhaps I’ll see ye again.”

“I’m…Mr. Charles. I’ll be here tomorrow, if the weather is fine.”

“Splendid!” Mr. Martin was pleased to meet a fellow marionette admirer, and they parted with an exchange of civil bows, Martin jauntily whistling the tune about Chase’s brother, and Chase knew he was doomed to hear it in his head all day.

Colin would have been immensely amused.

Martin paused to click the heels of his big boots before heading cheerfully into the Mumford Arms, just as someone else was being heaved out of it. Someone who, from the way he rotated like a lopsided wagon wheel on his two feet, arms windmilling gracelessly before he landed on the ground, had been in there all morning. Chase took one final look over his shoulder.

All traces of the puppet theater were gone, and the square was empty apart from a black cat slinking alongside one of the weathered buildings, weaving in and out of rain barrels as if for the sheer pleasure of being thin enough to do it.

The Final Curtain was an ominous name for a pub, Chase thought, but as long as they served strong drinks they could have called it the Devil’s Arse for all he cared. It was clearly filled with ambitious actresses and opera dancers and men with cash to spend upon them. They could have easily eliminated half of the chairs; the women, it seemed, preferred to sit on the laps of men. Kinkade was standing in the rear near an empty table, as though guarding it. Perhaps in deference to the fact that he hadn’t reminisced with Chase in a good year or so, he hadn’t an actress in his lap. Chase was quite, quite touched.

“Injure your leg dancing again, Eversea?” Kinkade said by way of greeting, when he saw Chase threading over to him.

“Injure your mirror by looking into it, Kinkade?”

And thus the bonds of affection were re-established to the happy satisfaction of both men.

“Here.” Kinkade kicked out a chair for Chase to settle into. The pleasures of whatever had happened the night before showed in the shadows and sagging skin beneath Kinkade’s eyes and his gray face. He no doubt had enjoyed a proper debauch last night. Which was a contradiction in terms, Chase supposed. Nevertheless. Chase took the chair while Kinkade remained standing, because his scars from the war were on his back, and sitting too long made him uncomfortable.

He’d always thought he looked more appealing to the ladies when he stood, anyway.

“How was your assignation, Eversea?”

“Surprisingly satisfying.” Not entirely a lie.

“Are you going to share the name of this woman?”

“I don’t intend to share her at all,” he said cryptically. This, he suspected, wasn’t entirely a lie, either. He patted the table loudly; a barmaid who seemed made of more bosom than anything else wended her way over to them.

wended her way over to them.

“Ale, luv,” he decided. “The dark.”

He knew a brief yearning for the magical stuff on tap at the Pig & Thistle. Perhaps the Final Curtain had something drinkable. Kinkade was disdainfully sniffing a cigar. “Foul thing. Gift from a friend, but now I suspect it was more of a fobbing off than a thoughtful act. Reminds me of Colonel March. Remember that foul blend of tobacco he insisted on smoking? A singularly acquired taste. You could smell the man from across a room.”

Chase remembered too clearly. “I remember. I couldn’t persuade him to any other kind, though. Quite set in his ways, March was. A good man.”

Such a pointless platitude. Then again, platitudes were an effective way to keep residual guilt at bay and to prevent the man in question from entering the conversation.

“Speaking of those days,” Chase continued smoothly. “Kinkade, I heard about Lucy Locke. Is it true she was arrested? An unfortunate incident involving a bracelet? I imagined you’d know something about it, given your position in the Home Secretary’s office.”

Kinkade was lighting his cigar, his back to him. Still lean despite his rigorous lifestyle of drinking and eating to excess, clothes tailored nearly to a skin fit. The look of a rake, but he was closing in on too old to be a rake and in a year or so his dignity would suffer for it. With surprise, Chase saw that his friend’s hair was thinning; he could see pale scalp through the blond.

Kinkade turned around. His face was pensive. He blew out the smoke.

“Shame, that. Naught I could do.”

“Truly?”

“Well, the fact is, old man, Lucy Locke has stolen at least once before, and I saw her do it. She begged me not to say a word. Deuced awkward, too, given that she stole from the hostess of a party we were attending.”

Chilling news. “What did she steal?”

“’Twas but a bauble. She’d secured an invitation to a party at the Burkes’—Washington Square, you know the place. Large party. Lucy was being taken about the ton by Delilah Moreton, who likes to surround herself with girls as pretty as she is regardless of whether they possess brains. An aesthetic thing, I suppose. Found Lucy in Lady Burke’s chambers palming something from her night table. Turned out to be a comb.” Kinkade pointed to his own hair, as though this needed further illustration.

“The thing you won’t be needing to use in a year or so.”

“Oh, well played, old man!” Kinkade was delighted. “Virile! ’Tis virile I am. The balder atop, the harder and longer lasting below. Proven fact. This comb was the sort ladies use to hold up their hair, like. An expensive furbelow. Ivory.”

“What were you doing in Lady Burke’s chambers?”

Chase was acquainted with Lady Burke. Occasionally she forgot to shave the hair from the mole on the side of her chin, and it seemed to sprout seasonally, like wheat. Other than that, she was quite attractive in a sparse way, and an acerbic and informed conversationalist, which made the hairy mole all that more startling. Kinkade hesitated.

“Might have been I was looking for Lucy,” he confessed. “Juicy gel, that, and you can’t deny it, Eversea. I defy you to. After the dinner, I saw Lucy gliding up the stairs, trying to be sneaky about it. I’d had a bit to drink, you see. More than a bit. Saw her go up and seconds later I confess to succumbing to impulses ungentlemanly and followed her. Thought I’d…oh, steal a kiss. Get in a bit of intimate conversation, as they say.”

“How very unlike you.” Chase’s ale arrived. He slid money into the barmaid’s palm and she winked at him.

“Isn’t it!” Kinkade was in full, astonished, mocking agreement. “I generally confine my animal impulses to…places one should confine such impulses.”

“Admirably constructed sentence.”

“Thank you.”

“Had she gone upstairs to steal?” Lucy Locke was a bit of a featherbrain, but he’d never thought of her as larcenous. He tasted his ale and winced. Dreadful stuff.

“Couldn’t be certain. I think she was having a look around. She’s a mushroom, no other way to say it, always wanted to see how the trees lived. We all saw it, poor gel. If not for her face, she would never have been invited to places, and she hadn’t the wit to parlay her looks tactically. Unlike her older sister, who bagged a colonel and charmed a regiment and kept us all in line while we were at it, didn’t she? When Lucy saw the comb, doubtless she couldn’t resist it, as she never could have afforded it, and she could be one up on the rich gal. “Twas small enough to tuck into her bodice, and that’s where she put it. But I suspect she had the habit on her, I think

—stealing. A bit of a problem, when one isn’t an aristocrat.” Dryly said. “If you get caught, that is. And she had gambling debt, too. Mayhap she was looking for something to pawn.”

Chase didn’t relish telling any of this to Rosalind.

“What did you do?”

“I told her to put it back, and she bought my silence by allowing me to retrieve it from her bodice. She’d had it well and truly tucked in there, too. Took my time about it.”

Was Kinkade serious? “Your suggestion or hers?”

“Do I detect a whiff of righteousness, Eversea?” Kinkade gave a sniff.

“That stink is your cigar, Kinkade.”

“Of course. Well, it was my suggestion, of course. I’m not a fool, I think on my feet, and she was too frightened to think at all.”

Kinkade sounded a little too pleased with himself. Something unfamiliar crawled along Chase’s spine, a sensation subtle and new and difficult to identify. The idea of a frightened Lucy Locke, featherbrained as she might be, allowing Kinkade to root around in her bodice, wasn’t playful. It was repellant. It smacked of a casual abuse of power, rather than flirtation. Chase wondered if he was getting old.

He tasted his ale again. It was still awful. “Do you know where Lucy is? Mrs. Rosalind March tells me that she’s gone missing, of all things. Can’t imagine it would be easy to get out of Newgate without things. Can’t imagine it would be easy to get out of Newgate without anyone noticing.”

“It’s a wonder she went to Newgate at all, old man. If she was there

—well, they’ve no record of it. I’ve asked, I assure you. I can’t find anyone who claims to have seen her there.”

This was unexpected.

“But Mrs. March says she visited her sister in prison. And an unpleasant visit it was.”

“So her letters to me have said. No one has a pleasant visit with anyone in Newgate. But Eversea, there are hundreds, thousands, of felons to track. Many of them are women. When prisoners die they’re shoved under with quicklime at Newgate right quick. The place reeks of it. Well, you’ve spent a little time in the godforsaken place, thanks to Colin, so you know. She might have been recorded under a wrong name. She may have been moved by mistake. She might have been inadvertently transported—a ship sailed to Botany Bay only two days ago. And then there are the hulks. There are actually women kept in some of them, awaiting transportation. Such are the prisons now. Mistakes have been made before, though it’s miraculous that we make them as seldom as we do. It’s unfortunate, I grant you, but then again, so is rampant crime.”

Somehow he was hearing this as through Rosalind’s ears, and it struck him as shockingly callous. If someone had spoken so rationally about the disappearance of one of his sisters, he would likely be choked with fury. He did understand Kinkade’s point of view.

Nevertheless.

“But Lucy Locke is your friend, Kinkade,” he said evenly. A moment of silence. Kinkade’s silvery eyes regarded him levelly.

“Define ‘friend,’ Eversea.”

It was lightly said. But a tense ambiguity swam beneath the words. Chase disliked it, because in his experience, nothing about Kinkade was subtle.

“All right. She was an acquaintance, then.”

“I’ve many of those, and many are pretty, but she’s the only one ever arrested for theft, a simple fact. I cannot lay claim to any strong feelings of loyalty, and I did make inquiries about her whereabouts, but beyond that I don’t know how I can help Lucy. How on earth did you hear about Lucy from Mrs. March anyhow?”

“Quite by accident my path crossed with Mrs. Rosalind March here in London and I inquired after the health of her sisters.”

It wasn’t a lie.

Kinkade was quiet for a moment. “What of the other sister?”

“Has a husband and a baby.”

“Felicitations to her,” Kinkade said absently.

Kinkade gave his cigar a prurient suck, as if hoping it would taste better the more he smoked it.

“Is she still something to look at?” he asked thoughtfully after a moment. “Mrs. March?”

“She is no gargoyle.” Chase wanted to protect Rosalind, to keep her from conversation.

“Rosalind March…” Kinkade mused. “Do you remember how we were all in love with her?”

“No,” Chase said flatly.

“I suppose you couldn’t see her quite that way—the way the rest of us saw her—as you were quite tight with the colonel. A dear friend of his family, and all that.”

Chase again thought he detected irony. But then, he was hearing the words through the filter of his own conscience.

“Let me remind you, Chase. She was a vision. Beautiful thing. Young, a corker, so lively. Lucky old dog, Mathew, rest his soul. Odd, we saw a good deal of the top of her breasts in those dresses, but I always wondered about her legs most of all. Had a birthmark”

—Kinkade gestured to his collarbone—“here. I loved her voice. Used to love to hear her laugh. Was like hope, like spring thaw, that laugh.”

“Positively Byronic of you, Kinkade. My heart sighs.”

“I cannot tell you the number of times I imagined her tits.”

He knew he was supposed to laugh, but his back teeth ground together as he beat back a surge of something black and ferocious. And he was uncomfortable with the fact that he was suddenly uncomfortable with Kinkade, who was simply being precisely who he was and who he always had been, and yes, Rosalind March’s tits were worthy of any man’s fantasies.