Revealed (2 page)

The first man held up his hand, refusing to let his own drink be refilled. “I don’t think imbibing so much is good for our . . . operation.”

“
C’est la difference
. England seems to have better French brandy than France. Even in this”—he gestured at the crowded, common merriment about them—“place. I will take my share of its pleasure. The pigeon robbed me of much, but he did not rob me of that.”

“But when—”

“When it is necessary that I be sober, I will be. For now, we are nothing more than two
commoners
meeting for a drink. So I suggest you have another,” the Frenchman bit out. “
Non?
Fine. As for our arrangement, I am prepared. I suggest you prepare as well.”

And with that he stood, picking up his silver-handled walking stick, and turned, perfectly balanced. He loped to the door with the grace born to those of his nationality, and exited.

The first man turned back to the bar, signaled the man for another drink. He let out a low, unsteady breath.

He knew what he did was for his good and the good of England.

But damned if he wasn’t making a pact with the devil.

Outside the Bull and Whisker, it was a generally quiet evening, as evenings down at the docksides go, Johnny Dicks thought, chewing the stub of his cheroot. He watched as the sober went into the pub, nodding as they doffed their caps to him as they passed, and then watched them leave, drunk and sloppy. Sometimes he had to stand up off his somewhat comfortable stool and keep the rougher sort from entering the Bull; sometimes Marty would poke his head out and bring him inside to remove someone who became a bit rougher with drink than Marty liked.

When he and Marty were mates in the Seventeenth Regiment, he was a rum one for a good fight, but ever since he bought the Bull, he’d said the cost of replacing all the broken chairs and crockery made the fighting a touch less the crack.

So it was that Johnny Dicks was contemplating the last time Marty had bemoaned a splintered chair and how his brother-in-law the carpenter was like to bilk him, when the reedy gent came strolling out the Bull and Whisker, swinging his stick like he owned the world and the sky above it.

“Have a good evenin’, Cap’n,” Johnny Dicks called out and nodded as the man passed. The man swung around wildly, his cane connecting with Dicks’s shin.

“Hey!” he called out. “That hurt, that did!”

“What did you call me?” the reedy man spat out, his Frenchy accent slurred by drink. The man held himself together when walking well enough, but with his temper up, the drink showed through. Johnny Dicks gained his feet. The height and weight that made him an imposing doorman was put to work now, leaning over the Frenchy. But the Frenchy’s face took on a peculiar sheen, a glint of anticipation in his eye.

“I am not your captain,” the Frenchy bit out. He swung out with the stick, like a cricket bat. Johnny caught it in his hand and swung with his meaty fist. But the Frenchman was faster, ducking and landing two quick blows to Johnny’s body, one to his liver and one to his spleen. The silver-headed cane clattered to the ground as Johnny Dicks fell to his knees.

“The pigeon did not end me; neither shall you,” the Frenchy spat out, and with one swift, vicious motion, his heavy Hessian boot landed on Johnny Dicks’s jaw.

Johnny fell back, tasting the grime of the cobblestones. He lay on his side, breathing heavily, his jaw on fire, and watched as the Frenchman picked up his cane and, easy as you please, strolled down the way and disappeared around the corner.

“Oy! Johnny!” came a high, soft voice. Johnny rolled over and saw Miss Meggie, a local “lady”—couldn’t be more than twenty years old, but long since initiated in her professions of part-time prostitute and full-time pickpocket.

“You all right? That bloke just felled you like you was made o’ sawdust!” Miss Meggie said, helping Johnny to sit up. Johnny felt his jaw, happy to find it unbroken, but he found it necessary to spit out a small bit of blood and a tooth or two.

“What’d you say to ’im?” Miss Meggie asked.

“I said good night.”

“Yeah, and I reckon he said it right back,” Miss Meggie snorted.

“Actually he said somethin’ odd—somethin’ about a pigeon.” Johnny’s brow furrowed, only a little painful. “Meggie, you think you can follow the gent? I have a mind to find out more about ’im.”

“No worries, Johnny; there ain’t been a gent yet that Meggie could’na track down.”

And with that, Miss Meggie left Johnny sitting on the ground, ducking into the alley after the gent and disappearing in the shadows.

Fifteen minutes later, Johnny was installed back on his stool outside the door of the Bull and Whisker, two teeth fewer than before and developing three good-sized bruises, when Miss Meggie came walking out of the shadowed alleyway.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I caught up to ’im in the high street, but he hopped in a hansom that was waitin’ for him. It took off too fast for me to follow.”

“Which way did it head?” Johnny asked.

“West.”

“Well, that’s somethin’ at least.”

“Yeah,” Miss Meggie said with a smile, “and so is this.” She pulled out of her skirt pocket a folded-up bit of foolscap. “Ah, ah, ah!” Miss Meggie said with a smile, holding the paper out of Johnny’s reach until he produced a coin and traded her for it.

“What’s it say?” Miss Meggie asked, leaning over Johnny’s shoulder as he unfolded it. Johnny was not the best reader—his talents lay in other areas—but he knew Miss Meggie was no reader at all. Willing to satisfy her curiosity, he concentrated on the slanted, educated writing.

“Its . . . it’s a list,” Johnny replied.

“What’s it a list of?”

“I dunno,” Johnny said. His mind knew he had pieces to a puzzle. A Frenchy who spoke about a pigeon; who hit with the precision of a sharpshooter, even when in his cups; and now this list. He had the pieces, but he didn’t know how it all went together.

He turned to Miss Meggie. “But I know a gent who might.”

E
VERYONE agreed that Mrs. Phillippa Benning was a beautiful young woman. Stunning even, with her cornflower blue eyes and cornsilk hair. One poetic gentleman had likened her teeth in shape to perfect corn kernels, but that perhaps was taking the metaphor too far.

Mrs. Benning simply sparkled. Her wit and humor and gay joie de vivre, gave her entrée into the most exciting crowds in the Ton, a place that lady enjoyed and intended to stay. So, if she was occasionally seen as being too forward in her thoughts and too ambitious in her flirtations, it was easily forgiven as the capricious combination of youth and beauty, for when Phillippa Benning smiled—a sultry pout known to cause married men to forget their wives’ names—no one could find fault in her.

Indeed, everyone thought well of Mrs. Phillippa Benning. And they certainly would have done so even if she were not so rich and so conveniently widowed.

All the world knew Phillippa Benning’s short marriage had been the stuff of fairy tales, merely lacking the ever after. And after mourning her husband of five days for a full year, Phillippa had discovered it was exceedingly pleasant to no longer require that smothering protection unmarried ladies lived under, and took to her life as a young woman of independent means with verve.

She liked all the same things other women liked but made them artlessly hers. She read the latest gothic novels by M. R. Biggleys and Mrs. Rothschild, but whenever she commented that the hero of one was far too bland for her taste or the setting of another was spine-chilling, it was automatically taken as fact and quoted by scholarly ladies and gentlemen alike as such. She could affect sales of fabric as much as a drought or rainy season would affect a crop: If Phillippa Benning declared lilac watered silk to be déclassé, sales of such material would plummet; conversely, if she was seen strolling the park in mint green sprigged muslin and butter colored walking boots, two dozen such costumes would be on order at the best modistes the next day.

It was uncommon for someone so young to rule the Ton (she was just one and twenty), but when it came to Mrs. Phillippa Benning, it was unquestionable. Her favor could make or break a novel’s success, a modiste’s reputation, a hostess’s event, a young debutante’s popularity, or a young buck’s heart.

And she knew it.

“I absolutely refuse to attend Mrs. Hurston’s card party. She insists on wearing that feathered violet turban, and I have taken the trouble twice to tell her how it does not suit her,” Phillippa said as she looked through her opera glasses, scanning the crowd lined up along the parade route.

Phillippa’s best friend, Nora, clucked her tongue and shook her head, supressing a delicate giggle beneath a tiny hand.

Nora was an adorable little creature Phillippa had picked up this year. She was eighteen, in her first Season, and could have turned out disastrous if not for Phillippa’s intervention. Miss Nora De Regis was very rich, born and raised English, but suffered from a touch of dark coloring inherited from a Greek grand-father and from a mother who refused to allow the child to dress in anything other than eyelet cotton and stiff corsets. Phillippa simply made certain the world saw Nora’s dark eyes and olive skin as exotic and steered her mother to more expansive modistes. Now mother and daughter alike would not be caught dead in anything but the latest fashions. Nora, at the beginning of the season, also had a rather innocent and open nature, which Phillippa was teaching her to suppress.

Nora was proving a very apt pupil.

“No Phillippa Benning at Mrs. Hurston’s party?” Nora replied archly. “She’ll lose more face than if Prinny himself failed to appear. Maybe that will shock the good Mrs. Hurston into taking your advice more seriously.”

“Really,” Phillippa replied, lowering her opera glasses, “you would think they would know by now.”

Normally, Phillippa was not one to partake in organized outdoor activities before noon. But then again, there were very few social events whose express purpose was the ogling of men, and a parade of militia was one of them. Patriotism was all the rage. Her companion, Mrs. Tottendale, could not be roused to attend, but Nora was always game for assessing young men’s attributes. And besides, Phillippa’s other best friend, Bitsy, her Pomeranian, could use the fresh air.

The red woolen coats slashed with gold epaulettes glinted brilliantly in the sun, but none of that distracted Phillippa from her view of a dashing gentleman in a dark green coat watching the processional from the other side of the thoroughfare.

“Did you spot him? The Marquis of Broughton?” Nora craned her neck, trying in vain to see over the throng gathered at the park.

“He’s just across the street, to the right,” Phillippa replied, never looking directly at him but always keeping him within her view. After all, she did have all of these dazzling redcoats to look at. Bitsy shook delicately in Phillippa’s arms, his emerald collar jangling with the dog’s nervous energy.

Nora went up on tiptoes and leaned over far enough into the thoroughfare to nearly be knocked over by an outside fife player. Finally, she spotted the object of Phillippa’s intensely purposeful inattention.

“Oh! He’s simply delicious!”

“I know,” Phillippa purred, letting a small smile play about her mouth, soothing Bitsy with long, gentle strokes. “Where has he been keeping himself? The past few seasons would have been so much more interesting if he had been around.”

“The past few seasons have not been dull for you, Phillippa; admit it,” Nora replied, wide-eyed and mocking.

It was true. Phillippa had thoroughly enjoyed her first season as a widow. Oh, she had enjoyed her original season, too, but it had ended rather abruptly with Alistair’s death, and as such, Phillippa had been determined to regard her emergence from mourning as a fresh start. She knew she would marry again—the hazy vision of a quiet country life with rug rats loomed over her like a cloud threatening rain—but her first season as a widow had been such an overwhelming success, she refused to settle down before giving herself another. She was accountable to no one. Her funds were her own, having inherited her trust upon her marriage. There was something unbelievably luxurious about being untethered. She could flirt with no dreadful repercussions. She could dance until dawn.

Oh, her parents, the Viscount and Viscountess Care, were hopeful that she make a match, of course, and provide them with a few grandchildren to dote upon and make heirs. But Phillippa informed them she required the perfect specimen of man for her to even consider marriage: rich, titled, a leader of the Ton. And until that man arrived, her parents could do nothing more than throw up their hands and go back to their own lives. Her father to the estates and playing the market, her mother to Bath or Brighton, where the waters were as invigorating as the men, she’d say.

But her parents would be very pleased when they learned of the Marquis of Broughton’s arrival on the scene, and how very perfect Phillippa had found him thus far.