The Perils of Pleasure (17 page)

He looked across at Madeleine Greenway. Her head was nodding like a rose needing topping. And in the dark, in the narrow lanes and streets, threading through other passengers beginning their evenings out or workman returning home, it would take nearly an hour, perhaps longer, to reach the hospital in South
wark, and they would need to cross the river by way of Westminster Bridge, always a slow proposition at the best of times.

“Sleep,” he ordered Madeleine. A moment later he added, by way of a test: “And allow me to hold the pistol.”

Despite the dropping head, she still managed to bris
tle. “I’ll
sleep
when—”

“When? Where? On the streets? Who knows when you’ll find a sheltered place to sleep again? Sleep
now
. What good are you to either of us if you don’t sleep?”

She was unable to argue with this, both from a per
spective of logic and fatigue.

“Close your eyes, Mrs. Greenway. And what harm could I possibly do with a pistol? I’m really more of a
knife
sort, if you believe the broadsheets, which have heretofore been your source of information about me.”

She looked back at him, her dark eyes glowing like some wild creature’s in the semidark of the carriage. He met her gaze evenly.

And then she reached into her pocket and handed the pistol thing across to him.

“It was my husband’s,” she said.

And with that stunning little non sequitur of a rev
elation, she lay back against the seat, tipped her head against the window, and apparently fell asleep, judging from the hair fluttering up and down near her mouth with her even breathing.

And he held the pistol that had been her husband’s.

Colin’s thumb worked over the inlay. Handsome, if not the most demure of designs. Now that he was able to look at it closely, he saw it was a mermaid, nude from the waist up, with hair that waved like seaweed down to her waist.

So Madeleine Greenway had married a man who had mermaids on his pistol. He thought this perhaps showed her husband had a sense or humor, and for a disorienting instant, he thought he had a sense for the man. The sort you would have enjoyed having a drink or playing the odd game of cricket with. She spoke like a lady; she might have been a merchant’s or wealthy farmer’s daughter, someone who had been educated and had married reasonably well.

Why now the secrecy?

He wished he could plunder her mind for secrets while she slept. Was she a thief for hire? An assassin? Or simply a “planner,” as she said? Orchestrating his rescue had indeed been a breathtaking feat, worthy of admiration—
and
hanging, if she’d been caught. It wasn’t as though they were merciful to Guy Fawkes when they caught him messing about with explosives.

But though her work had thwarted the justice handed down to him by English courts, it hadn’t been treason. This woman, through ingenuity and unimaginable daring, had managed to right a grave injustice. She’d been
hired
to do it.

Then again, she hadn’t particularly cared about his innocence. She’d cared about her fee.

They crossed the Westminster bridge—picked their way over it, actually, quite slowly—which had been lit entirely by gaslight a few years earlier. He parted the curtains a few inches; each tall lamp seemed to have col
lected its own shimmering nimbus of dust and smoke, the remains of a still summer day, and threw blurs of light down onto the incomparable-smelling river.

They
could
use a good rainfall. Pity Mrs. Greenway wasn’t awake to discuss the weather.

The coach, like every hackney, stank in a multitude
of ways, but in all likelihood so did he, Colin thought morosely. In another day, he would have acquired enough beard and grime to be unrecognizable to even his blood relations. He could prop himself against the wall next to his friend in St. Giles and live out his days in anonymity.

Not enjoying the run of his thoughts, he decided to test a theory, and to be a devil. He leaned forward very, very slowly, stretched out his hand to touch Mrs. Green-way’s knee.

Her hand snapped out and caught him by the wrist before her eyes even fully opened.

When her eyes did open, she seemed almost surprised to find herself holding a wrist.

He smiled. “Good trick.”

“What were you about, Mr. Eversea?” The heavi
ness in her voice told him she wasn’t fully awake. He doubted, however, she’d ever been fully asleep. The acerbic tone was already in evidence.

“I wanted to hold your hand in the dark, Mrs. Green
way. I thought it might be romantic.”

She dropped his wrist as though it were a dead rodent.

He laughed.

“What were you doing?” she demanded again.

“I didn’t believe you were sleeping, and I decided to test my theory.”

“I
was
sleeping,” she insisted primly. She cleared her throat a little, gave her head a little experimental turn to loosen the stiffness.

He was quiet for a moment, watching her profi le. Gaslight caught her; her face was half aglow.

And suddenly he was quietly, unaccountably angry.

“I’m not a
whimsical
killer, Mrs. Greenway. Appar
ently I need to be full of ale and temper and confronted with a Redmond in order to murder. You’re quite safe with me. You can sleep.”

She shook her head and made an impatient sound. “Please don’t jest about . . . that.”

What
was
he supposed to do about that? “I didn’t kill Roland Tarbell,” he said stubbornly. Quietly.

She studied him. “I allowed you to hold my pistol.” Her tone was softly wry. Placating.

Well. He exhaled. It wasn’t precisely a gushing con
fession of trust. But it was something.

“I slept in front of
you
,” he countered.

“Like a felled tree,” she confirmed with some relish. “Are you actually
hurt
, Mr. Eversea, that I wasn’t sound asleep?”

“No,” he lied. Well, more accurately, he was more irritated than hurt.

They were quiet together again, and Colin valiantly struggled not to succumb to the gloom of his own thoughts and the peevish turn of his temper. He wanted someone—
anyone
—to trust him again. Someone be
sides Harry the footman.

And then, at last, the lights of the bridge were behind them.

“I seldom sleep very well,” she offered so softly she might have been talking to herself.

He paused, surprised. “Ah.”

He would have preferred fervent declaration of belief in his innocence. But with that one sentence, Mrs. Green
way had given him a glimpse into her nights, and into herself, and that door into her was just a little more ajar now. In truth, he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted that door all the way open, because God only knew what he’d find behind it, and the reason for her troubled sleep.

At least he knew she was not without a conscience.

And apparently he would not entirely win her trust before she entirely won his.

“Here’s your stick.” He handed the pistol back to her.

She hesitated before she took it. And then her smile was a quick and bright curve in the dark, and she did take it.

“Thank you for minding it.”

He touched the brim of his hat wryly.

Moments later they turned into St. Thomas Street, and then the handsome iron gates that enclosed the courtyard of Edderly Hospital were before them.

Colin had never visited the hospital, but he’d known people to go in and come out more or less cured, and many others to go in and never return, and such were the ways of medicine.

He kept his coat on, as it was dark and so was the night and blending was desirable, but he kept his collar up and pulled his hat down before he stepped down out of the carriage after Madeleine.

The jarvey had already helped her out.

The hackney driver offered up a few shillings by way of change for the button along with a kind, grave fare
well: “Good luck wi’ . . . everything . . . guv.”

Colin was puzzled about the careful treatment given the word “everything” until he recalled he was sup
posed to have a masculine problem. The poor jarvey probably thought he was overreacting to the issue just a bit, given that they were now standing before an actual hospital.

Then again, if one kept company with a woman who looked like Madeleine Greenway, correcting masculine problems might indeed seem urgent.

“Thank you, sir,” Colin repeated just as gravely. Still not meeting the man’s eyes.

And then the driver took another passenger who never looked once at Madeleine or Colin, and the two of them prepared themselves for their wait for the doctor.

“You will recognize him if you see him, even in the dark? Dr. August?” Colin murmured to Madeleine.

“Tall, handsome, well-dressed, gold-topped walking stick, if I know him; air of absorbed self-importance, a small unfashionable beard,” she recited quietly.

“How handsome?” he wanted to know. “Harry the footman handsome? Or Colin Eversea handsome?”

“No one is Colin Eversea handsome,” she said ab
sently. “Not even Colin Eversea.”

He suppressed a delighted grin. “And the small un
fashionable beard. Like mine?” Colin stroked his chin.

“Yours isn’t quite a beard yet, is it?”

“Ah! So you’ve been monitoring the progress of my beard?”

“Oh, you’re all I see, Mr. Eversea.”

Murmured, and as dry as a fine wine, those words, and so
perilously
close to flirtation he actually felt his breath catch a little. She sounded like a woman who would have married a man with mermaids on his pistol.

He looped his arm through hers deliberately then, both to be a devil and so they might look like a married couple, which would make them seem less conspicu
ous. He felt her go tense, and he ducked his head so the world couldn’t see his smile, or the rest of his face for that matter.

Fortunately the hospital courtyard was a busy place, with humans and hackneys leaving and arriving or
parked waiting for fares, and the two of them could

have been any married couple awaiting a loved one.

As long as they didn’t hover overlong, that is.

“What if he never emerges? What if we’ve missed him?” Colin muttered.

“It’s too early yet for dinner. He gives a lecture, the butler told me, and then he goes on to his club, and will likely be home very late. Creatures of habit, men are.” She flicked him a glance. “Most men.”

And if they hadn’t both been staring at the hospital gates at that moment they might have missed him, and the description fit: tall, handsome, self-important, small beard. Dr. August swept out with long-legged strides and an air of distraction, pulling on gloves, transferring a gold-topped walking stick from one hand to the other as he did it. He ignored all the hackneys, cast quick glimpses to the left and to the right of him, then set out walking south along St. Thomas Street so smoothly and swiftly that if it weren’t for the wink of the walking stick they might have lost him in the dark.

“There aren’t any gentlemen’s clubs in that direction. And I should know,” Colin murmured.

They had no choice but to pursue.

nm

r. August was walking like a man with an urgent destination. And he was alone, seldom a wise thing to be in London at night. Colin thought he might have headed for London Bridge, which would have taken him into the city; in
stead he kept along St. Thomas Street and strode past the rows of older shops locked for the day, past aging inns and pubs just beginning to liven for the evening, wedged between once-grand older homes whose owners were steadily abandoning them for more fashionable addresses in the city.

The doctor glanced over his shoulder more than once—they were subtle turns of his head—and then turned a sharp left down a street that seemed com
prised solely of pubs.

Colin kept his arm looped through Madeleine’s, and they tacitly attempted to keep a discreet distance behind the doctor, dodging the wan pools of light thrown down by the street lamps as best they could. No bril
liant gaslight had yet invaded Southwark. Colin could feel heat in his ankles beneath the cravat bandages, and a weariness of a day’s worth of constant movement and
turmoil was beginning to tug at his limbs. Damned, however, if he would slow, particularly in harness with Mrs. Greenway.

They turned the corner just in time to see Dr. August vanish down the stairs into a pub called the Lion’s Mark. The sign was painted in great fading red letters set aglow by a lamp hung out on its iron hook, but the light barely diluted the dark around it.

“This is where
I
become useful,” Madeleine whis
pered. “I know this inn.”

“Are you known
inside
it? Do we dare enter?”

She hesitated. “I think we should wait.”

Out of the light of a street lamp, in the sheltering shadows of the space—not quite an alley—between the pub and the home next door, Colin and Madeleine hovered.

They were quiet together for a few minutes. There were other walkers out on the street, some pushing open the doors of pubs and inns. Carriages, modest ones— none painted with visible coats of arms, anyhow—and hackneys rolled by.

Colin absently fished into his pocket and pulled out the few coins he’d been given in exchange for his button. He rubbed them between his fi ngers, enjoying the
snick snick
of metal against metal.

“Buy ye a pint, me dove?” he murmured. A pint was an unimaginable luxury right now, and they both knew it.

She gave a soft laugh. Ah, a laugh. It was music. “I
should
like a pint.”

“Are you the pint sort?” He liked the idea of her tip
ping a hearty lager back. It was, and it wasn’t, at odds with her singular sort of grace.

“Oh, now and again.” The laugh was still in her
voice. “My husband
did
like his. We went once or twice a week to the Black Cat. Lovely, cozy place. And we’ve had a drink or two at the Lion’s Mark, this very pub. Once when . . . ”

Ah, bloody hell. She’d actually begun to ease into
conversation
; he’d even heard a smile in her voice. And then she stopped.

Well, he wouldn’t press. Barely above a whisper, he said, “There’s a pub in Pennyroyal Green. The Pig and Thistle. They brew their own, and it’s the fi nest you’ve ever tasted. They’ve a dark and a light. And the dark tastes like . . . oh, Mrs. Greenway, you should taste it. It’s like peat and night and all that’s good about the downs, and it would make a dead man rise and sing. You could spoon it down for dinner. Beer makes Louisa sneeze.”

Madeleine laughed again, muffling it with her fi st just in time.

“But she
does
like her punch. It’s how, in fact, I got her to kiss me for the very fi rst time. ’Twas Christmas. She’d had too much. I rather pressed them upon her, the cups of punch, but it wasn’t as though she’d refused. She rather egged me on. And then she . . . ”

And now
his
voice trailed off.

A universe away. All of that. He remembered that moment now. Louisa’s cheeks had been flushed, and her lips so soft. A very chaste kiss, for all of that.

Colin put the shillings abruptly back in his pocket, as if they’d conjured the memory. As if the very bright
ness of it would betray their hiding place.

And then they saw Dr. August emerge so quickly up the stairs that he couldn’t have had time to down a pint. Colin swept Madeleine into his arms, pressed her face against his coat so she couldn’t complain and pressed
her against the wall so they couldn’t be seen. If they were noticed at all, they would be mistaken for a couple overcome by ardor or perhaps in the throes of a fi scally arranged amorous connection. Regardless, a gentleman would avert his eyes, and it felt marvelous to have an excuse to once again wrap his arms around the lithe form of Madeleine Greenway, whose entire body was tensed.

They waited for the sound of Dr. August’s boots to pass.

Colin released her—well, held her at elbow’s length away from his body—and she glared ferociously up at him, looking for all the world like a ruffled, glaring owl in the dark. He couldn’t help it; he began to smile. And just as they prepared to follow the doctor again, they heard another set of footsteps right behind him.

And he pulled Madeleine right back into his arms.

But not before he caught a glimpse of the man. A distinctly different stripe than the doctor. A compact rectangle of a man with a boulder for a head, and all of his clothing was too tight.

“Dr. August.” The accent had a distinct fl avor of the docks.

The doctor stopped. And they heard his boots step
ping back toward the Lion’s Mark.

“’Tis a good price for four larges and two smalls,” the man said, his voice low and careful. It sounded both like a whine and an attempt at persuasion. “Mayhap ye’d like to reconsider.”

“There’s unfortunately no shortage of
smalls
in London, Hull,” the doctor said, his own voice low and curt. “We discussed this. I do not want any smalls. The price we agreed upon was for six larges. You may either take what I have offered for your four larges, or take your wares elsewhere. It is not open to negotiation.”

Silence.

In Colin’s arms, Madeleine was frozen. He couldn’t sense her breathing. She was terrified, or horrifi ed.

“What will I do wi’ the smalls?” It was nearly a whine.

“It is none of my concern.” The words were impa
tient and impersonal. And Dr. August set out walking back toward the hospital, the strike of his boot heels getting farther away.

“Guv!” The voice was raised.

Dr. August’s footsteps stopped. They heard the scuff of boot heels turning. He didn’t move.

“Doctor,” Hull corrected hurriedly, his tone more respectful. Something about the good doctor’s expres
sion, perhaps. “Verra well,” the voice lowered again. “Ye’ve a bargain.”

Colin lifted his head just slightly, peering around the corner of Madeleine’s head from beneath the shelter of his hat. The doctor was stepping forward and extending his hand to the square man. But it wasn’t a gentleman’s way of sealing a bargain. The square man took away a rustle of pound notes in his palm.

“Bring them ’round tonight as usual,” the doctor said gruffl y. “I’ll be waiting.”

They parted ways, turned to walk swiftly in oppo
site directions, the doctor back toward the hospital, the large square man deeper up the street. He was engulfed by shadows soon enough. Dr. August was becoming smaller, illuminated and then in darkness again at in
tervals as he made his way back to the hospital guided by the row of streetlights.

“What is it?” he whispered into Madeleine’s ear. He wanted to know why she was so unnaturally still.

“Larges . . . smalls . . . Mr. Eversea, I think . . . ”
She swallowed, to steady her voice. “I think he’s talking

about bodies.”

Colin frowned. And then comprehension set in.

“The doctor was speaking to a . . . Resurrectionist?”

“Larges and smalls.” Her voice was unsteady. “Mean adults and children. The
bodies
of adults and children.”

Everything in London was for sale. And nothing was safe. Not even bodies. Resurrectionists—body snatchers—dug up the newly dead and sold them, quite illegally, and quite lucratively, to doctors for dissection.

And it looked like this good doctor was buying them.

Well. This was a secret on the caliber of an affair with a footman, at the very least.

They allowed Dr. August to outpace them by twelve footsteps and two street lights—Colin counted them— and then a few moments later the good doctor had shadows in the form of a beautiful mercenary and an escapee from the gallows.

They followed him around to the back of the hos
pital, which was encircled by another large courtyard, which was encircled by a damned wrought-iron gate.

Topped with very handsome, very daunting, spikes.

They were about fifteen or so feet behind Dr. August, keeping close to the dark bars of the gate and away from the dim pools of the streetlights, when they heard the unmistakable click of a pistol being unlocked.

“All right.” Dr. August’s voice was shaking a little. But with rage, not fear. “That’s it. I’ve done enough. You aren’t getting anything more from me. And if you aren’t gone by the time I count three, I will shoot with no compunctions. One—”

“Dr. August,” Madeleine said quietly.

That put an end to the doctor’s count. After a stunned silence—the sound of the doctor registering a soft woman’s voice—

“Show yourself,” the doctor demanded.

“Dr. August, it’s Mrs. Greenway. Mrs. Madeleine Greenway. We’ve met. Do you recall . . . the Smallpox Hospital? Five years ago?”

The doctor didn’t lower his pistol. But a good ten swift heartbeats later, when he spoke again, his tone was quieter. If not entirely pleasant.

“I recall, Mrs. Greenway.” His voice was quieter now. “What is it you want with me? Why have you been following me?”

She hesitated. “I’m not alone.”

“I’m aware of that,” he said brusquely. “What is it you and your companion want with me? I’ve business at the hospital this evening.”

“We should like a few minutes of your time to ask a few questions. We’re not here to harm you.” Mad-eleine’s voice was very even, very calm.

“I’ll ask again: who the devil is ‘we’?”

Not a patient man, Dr. August. So Colin took a deep breath, then lifted off his hat slowly before he stepped into the light—on the theory that sudden movements once he got into the light might cause the doctor’s trig
ger finger to spasm.

The doctor stared up at him, then he frowned darkly. Absorbing the surprise, apparently.

And then came the wondering smile Colin was grow
ing accustomed to. The doctor’s smile, however, wasn’t quite as fulsome as Croker’s or Harry the footman’s had been, and by way of novelty, contained a touch of cynicism.

“Good Lord. Mr. Colin Eversea. The whole of London is looking for you.”

Colin bowed—bloody habit of politeness again— though he ought not let the doctor out of his line of sight.

The doctor didn’t return the gesture. The pistol re
mained trained on both of them. Madeleine’s pistol was pocketed, as far as Colin could tell.

“Have we ever met, Dr. August?” Colin asked.

“Not formally, no, Mr. Eversea. But I did pay for a seat in the courtroom to see you at your trial. I saw you on the scaffold as well, from the distance of a house above the Old Bailey. Very briefly, of course, as all hell broke loose thereafter. And of course there were numerous interesting illustrations in the broadsheets.”

A bit of dry humor from the doctor.
“Of course,” Colin said.
“Extraordinary, your escape,” the doctor mused.
“I cannot agree more, Dr. August.”
“And I cannot begin to guess what . . . ” The doctor

paused, and then turned to Mrs. Greenway. “You’re keeping significantly different company since last we met, Mrs. Greenway.”