Someone to Watch Over Me (21 page)

Victoria brushed by the maid and continued speedily to the basement. After reaching the final landing, she passed the door to the coal vault, and after that, the kitchen quarters. Mercifully she encountered no other servants as she went to the door that led outside and pushed it open.

The air was heavy and electric with the promise of rain. Inhaling deeply, Victoria crossed a small service road and hurried along the gravel path that led to the enclosed garden. Thick poplar hedges protruded over the top of the ivy-covered brick walls. She passed beneath a pedimented arch and ran the length of the fifty-foot-long garden, skirting around a stone table surrounded by windsor chairs and stone pots of flowering nectarine trees.

Her heart began to thump with exertion, but her pace did not lessen as she exited the door at the back of the garden. With each step she took away from the main house, a feeling of hope and relief surged inside. She edged around the stables and coach house, and strode swiftly through the mews that bordered the back row King Street town houses.

There was no doubt in her mind that leaving the house was the right thing to do. Let Keyes stay there and assume he had cornered her. She would be long gone by the time he realized she had disappeared. Victoria imagined his frustration upon discovering that she had already left, and a nervous, almost giddy laugh broke from her lips. She
quickened her step, heading toward the welcome bustle and mayhem of Covent Garden.

The large, smooth stones of the carriageway became rough and pebbled as it led to the Garden piazza. Victoria kept to the paved walkway, pulling her hood low over her face. She brushed by mop trundlers washing soil from the walkways of elegant houses, lamplighters climbing to the suspended globes of oil lamps hung from iron brackets, and itinerant musicians playing fiddles and tambourines. The street rumbled with wagons, drays, carriages, and animals, a mass of sound that assaulted her ears.

A few more drops of rain fell, promising relief from the odors of smoke and manure that wafted through the hazy air. The storm was holding back, however, as if waiting for a cue to begin. Ladies with metal patten rings on their feet made clinking sounds on the pavement, while gentlemen kept their umbrellas tucked tightly beneath their arms and cast furtive glances at the blanket of clouds overhead. The premature darkness threw an ominous cast over the scene, and Victoria shivered beneath the folds of her premise.

Bow Street was just a short walk away, she told herself. She would cross through Covent Garden, remaining as inconspicuous as possible, and then she would reach the safety of Cannon’s office.

At Mr. Keyes’s request, Mrs. Buttons brought wine as they waited for Vivien to return downstairs. Holding the stem of the rare Charles I silver wine goblet between his thumb and forefinger,
Keyes examined the piece closely. Its shape was elegantly simple, the rim slightly flared, the bowl smooth and highly polished. “Morgan’s done very well for himself,” he mused aloud, his tone not altogether admiring. “Wealthier than any Runner I’ve ever known. Has a knack for making the chinks, doesn’t he?”

“Mr. Morgan works very hard, sir,” the housekeeper replied, feeling vaguely defensive on her employer’s behalf. Morgan was a clever, brave, and celebrated man—it was only right that he had been generously rewarded for his accomplishments.

“No harder than the rest of us,” Keyes observed, his mouth shaping into a smile, his eyes remaining cool. “Yet
he
lives like a king, whereas I…” His voice faded, and his expression turned blank, as if he had regretted the words.

“Well,” Mrs. Buttons said, concealing her own touch of discomfort, “I would like to thank you on behalf of Mr. Morgan’s staff for taking care of Miss Duvall. We have confidence that she will be as safe under your protection as she would be with Mr. Morgan himself.”

“Yes,” he said beneath his breath, “I’ll take care of his precious pet.”

Mrs. Buttons cocked her head, not certain she had heard correctly. “Sir?”

Before any reply could be made, they were interrupted by a small dark-haired housemaid, whose face was taut and streaked with tears. She was highly agitated, her hands gathered into trembling fists. “Mrs. Buttons, ma’am,” she said in a small voice, standing half hidden at the side of the
doorway. “Mrs. Buttons, I thought I should come to you right away, even though she asked me not to…Oh, I don’t know what to do, but I wouldn’t hurt her for the world, truly!”

“Mary,” the housekeeper said in concern, approaching her immediately, while Keyes straightened in his chair.

“What is it?” he asked sharply. “Whom are you referring to? Is it Miss Duvall?”

The maid gave a jerky nod. “She’s gone, sir.”

“Gone?” Mrs. Buttons repeated in surprise, while Keyes shot up from his chair.

“What the hell do you mean, gone?” His tone turned ugly, and the women’s gazes focused on him in surprise.

The maid replied in an incoherent jumble. “N-not five minutes ago…I passed her on the servants’ stairs, and she s-said for me not to…Oh, I should never have told, except…well, she’s in
danger
out there, isn’t she?” She gazed at the housekeeper in abject misery. “Mrs. Buttons, have I done wrong?”

“No, Mary,” the housekeeper soothed, patting the girl’s arm. “You did exactly as Mr. Morgan would have wished you to.”

“The damned bitch,” Keyes exploded, throwing his goblet to the floor, heedless of the wine spilling over the fine hand-knotted carpet. An ugly blood-colored stain sank quickly into the yellow and blue pattern. “She won’t get away from me,” he vowed, striding from the room and bellowing for his coat and hat.

Mrs. Buttons rubbed her forehead as a small, insistent
ache began in the front of her skull. Uneasy speculation carved deep lines into her features. “He is behaving oddly,” she said, more to herself than the girl beside her. “It’s plain he has no great liking for our Miss Duvall.”

“I hope he finds her,” Mary remarked in a subdued tone. “Then she’ll be safe, won’t she?”

The housekeeper did not answer, only wandered to the entrance hall and flinched as the heavy door slammed closed behind the departing Runner.

Though Covent Garden had begun as a pair of aristocratic piazzas containing spacious town mansions and a small church designed by Inigo Jones, it had undergone many incarnations in the passing centuries. In its present condition, it boasted of the most famous theaters in the world, not to mention coffeehouses filled with writers, artists, and musicians. A spectacularly large covered market had extended its tentacles outward from the piazzas into the surrounding streets and alleyways. It was at least an acre wide, attracting noise and bustle that only seemed to grow with each passing year. The nobility had long since evacuated their fine mansions, of course, and now the stately old buildings with majestic staircases were occupied by shops, taverns, and figures of the London underworld.

Cautiously Victoria stepped beneath the arches of the covered arcade, where people milled around shops and stalls. She blended into the crowd at once, letting the current push her past a profusion of flower baskets and old women who made bouquets on request. Dozens of hands skimmed over
piles of vegetables, plucking and gathering the choicest ones for purchase. Strings of eels hung over fish stalls, where men deftly cleaned and gutted the freshest catch and wrapped them. A bird dealer held a screeching parrot aloft on his gloved hand, while cages of canaries, larks, and owls raucously advertised their availability for sale.

Victoria passed the doorway of an herb and root shop, where glass containers of leeches were lined along wooden shelves, and a perfumery with a window full of unguents, creams, and heavily fragrant oils encased in colored glass jars.

“‘Ere, luv,” came a cackling cry, and Victoria turned with a start as a clawlike hand caught at her sleeve. A diminutive, gaudily dressed old woman wearing bangles, scarves, and red skirts held tightly to her arm. “Let me tell yer fortune, dearie…a shilling to learn the secrets of tomorrow! Only a shilling, mind ye…an’ wiv a face like yers, what a fine future it may be!”

“Thank you, but I have no money,” Victoria said in a low tone, jerking her arm free and walking away.

The fortune-teller persisted, however, following with a spry step and catching once more at her wrist. “I’ll tell it fer nothing, luv!” Her voice rose to an inviting screech not unlike the parrots at the bird dealer’s. “Come one an’ all…Who wants to ‘ear the lovely lass’s fortune?”

Realizing the woman intended to use her as some kind of advertisement, Victoria pulled hard against the restraining clutch of her hand. “No,” she said sharply. “Let me go.”

The minor scuffle attracted a few gazes, and Victoria glanced warily over the crowd as she broke free from the fortune-teller. Suddenly she caught sight of a gentleman’s pale gray hat, and her chest contracted painfully with alarm. It looked exactly like the one Mr. Keyes wore. But he couldn’t have followed her so quickly, could he?

She searched for another glimpse of the hat, but it was gone. Perhaps she had imagined it, she thought anxiously, and hurried eastward toward the massive pillared portico of the opera house. The towering height of the four fluted columns that fronted the building made the swarming public look like a colony of ants. Some sort of protest was being staged, a mob in front shouting at the closed doors. Gentlemen and beggars alike contributed to the tumult, all of them barking and braying about a recent increase in admittance prices.

“Old prices!” many of the disgruntled patrons were calling. “We want old prices!”

“Too high, too high!” others screamed.

Plunging into the noisy throng, Victoria pushed her way deep into the crowd until she came to the lee of one of the Doric columns. Leaning back against the cold stone, she stood very still, pulse thrumming, while the crowd surged and booed and moved around her. She stared fixedly at the reliefs set in the panel before her, a carved figure of Shakespeare, the Muses, and above it, a statue of Comedy set in a niche.

Keyes was following her; she could
feel
it.

Keyes thought she was Vivien, and he was going to kill her either out of vengeance or because he
had been hired to do so. If he knew she had left the house, he would guess that her first thought of sanctuary was number 4 Bow Street. He would do everything in his power to stop her from reaching Sir Ross.

Suddenly Victoria experienced a flare of anger at the unjust situation. She was in danger through no fault of her own. She had come to London out of worry for her sister, and then one bizzare event after another had led to this.

It seemed the sky opened up, torrents of water suddenly breaking through the air, causing the mob to disperse rapidly and search for shelter. The heavy splashing rain saturated the scene, sluicing over umbrellas and hats, soaking through clothes and shoes.

Taking a deep breath, Victoria looked around the column again and glanced over the crowd. She caught sight of the gray hat again, and terror shot through her as she recognized Keyes. He was standing perhaps fifty yards away as he questioned someone, his face set and cold, his posture betraying extreme tension. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

As if he sensed her gaze, Keyes turned and looked directly at her. His expressionless face suddenly contorted angrily. He shoved the man he was questioning out of the way and started for Victoria with murder in his eyes. Victoria bolted at once, pushing her way through the scattering throng and running alongside the opera house. She saw the corner of Russell Street and tripped on the cobbled carriageway. She fought to regain her balance, aware that Keyes was closing the distance between
them.
You won’t stop me
, she thought with grim determination. She
would
reach Bow Street, damn him…She had come too far to fail now.

Grant hurtled through his own front door, his face white as a skull as he beheld the unusual gathering of servants in the entrance hall, footmen and housemaids clustered around Mrs. Buttons.

“Mr. Morgan!” the housekeeper exclaimed, rushing forward without her usual calm dignity. She seemed anxious, perplexed, a few skeins of her graying hair escaping the usually immaculate coil atop her head. Grant had never seen her in such disarray.

“Where is she?” he asked savagely, though his insides were already screaming in denial at the obvious answer.

“Thank the Lord you’re back,” Mrs. Buttons chattered nervously. “I was about to take it upon myself to send a note to Bow Street, as we didn’t know when you might return, and I thought it important to verify Sir Ross’s request—”

“What the devil are you talking about?” He glanced at the assembled servants with their funereal expressions. “Where is Victoria?” he snapped.

The question caused all the faces in the entrance hall to pucker in confusion. “Victoria?” the housekeeper repeated bemusedly.

Grant shook his head impatiently. “Vivien. Miss Duvall. The woman who has been living here for the past few weeks, dammit. Where is she? Where is Keyes?”

A moment of heavy silence ensued, charging his nerves with immediate alarm and fury. No one wanted to answer him, he realized, and in his consternation he barked out a question at a volume that made all of them jump.

“Someone tell me what’s happened, damn you!”

Mary stepped forward, her shoulders slumped and her head slightly ducked, as if she suspected he might be tempted to strike her. “It was my fault, sir,” she said in a small voice. “I saw Miss Duvall leave the house. On the servants’ stairs, heading to the outside door by the kitchen. She asked me not to tell anyone. She said it was life and death to her. But I thought ‘twould be best to go to Mrs. Buttons, and so I did.”

Grant’s blood pumped brutally hard, causing a drumming noise in his ears. “Life and death,” he repeated thickly. Victoria had somehow realized the danger she was in, and bolted.

Mrs. Buttons smoothed her hands repeatedly on her apron front, as if she couldn’t seem to blot her palms thoroughly enough. “You see, sir, Mr. Keyes said immediately upon his arrival that Sir Ross had asked him to bring Miss Duvall to Bow Street. His manner was rather odd and cold. In the years that I’ve been acquainted with him, I’ve never seen him quite like this. It was clear Miss Duvall did not want to go away with him, but she asked leave to change into her walking shoes. And while we waited for her in the library, she slipped out of the house. I suppose any woman in her position would be a bit fearful of strangers.”