Chapter Six
Nicholas spent the next morning in one of the more squalid parts of the Ratcliffe Highway, asking questions that might lead to answers about his uncle’s involvement in his lost years.
Once he might have felt out of place in such a location but the forces that had shaped him in the Americas were the same as those he now trawled through in the pestilent dark alleys of Stepney. Destitution, filth, poverty and overcrowding abounded here and criminal activity was a direct result of that.
The smell of the river was everywhere and the toil of those who lived by it easily seen, the scavengers and mudlarks who survived on what they could find on the bottom of the Thames when the low tide washed in various pieces of coal, rope, bones or copper nails if you were lucky. Nicholas knew this because the James River had held the same desperation and there were times, especially in the early months there, when he had wondered about crawling into the sludge himself.
Those who held the run of the docklands were steeped in beggary and with no other means available to them were unlikely to overlook opportunities that might keep them from the workhouses.
Opportunities such as the kidnap of a viscount and his subsequent disposal. He’d had the name of a man who might have some information about such things, given to him quietly, of course, and taking the last of his gambling winnings from Frederick’s soirée to obtain.
He’d dressed accordingly, but there must have been something in the lines of his face that spoke of menace and experience because walking through the mean streets of the place he had been completely unchallenged. Perhaps the scar did him a service here.
Mess with me and I will deal with you, as others have dealt with me.
The White Horse Tavern stood on the corner of East Smithfield and a smaller unnamed street, the river visible from its front portal. Those who watched him enter were miserably clad with barely a boot between them and the stench of the streets followed him inside to the bar where he recognised the look of some of the cheaper liquor he’d dispatched himself in Richmond.
A stranger approached then, a man in his forties with an eye that was patently false in its deformed socket, as well as being poorly fashioned.
‘You’d be the one who has been asking about the details of a snatch in Jermyn Street some years ago?’
‘I am.’ Words were not things to be bandied by the starving in the same way as the ton was wont to. The less said the better.
‘Join me over there.’
The very position of the man’s seat told Nicholas two things. He liked his back to the wall and he felt safer near a further exit. A small door was visible beside the table, three steps running down to it.
The newcomer held his hand above his belt as he sat and Nick knew there would be a knife there. There was probably another one on the outside of his right boot given that was the side he favoured as he gestured to Nick to also sit.
‘Did you bring money?’
‘I did, but the amount depends on what you might tell me.’
Neither of them used names. The parish constables and the Night Watch were noticeable by their absence in these parts of London, but there were other means of maintaining order. Should the need arise for violence Nick knew the man would not hesitate and there were those close undoubtedly involved in the same scam. The lad in the corner tending to the fire, the bearded fellow behind the bar, the two older patrons to one side who were stiff with focus.
He turned back and waited, his breath quiet and even, but nevertheless relieved when the contact fumbled in his pocket to bring forth a small book.
Turning over the pages to find the right entry, the glass-eyed man read quickly.
22nd August 1812
Jermyn Street, Mayfair
Viscount Bromley
Twenty pounds
Paid
The shock of the words made Nicholas’s breath come shallowly. ‘Who paid?’
‘An older fellow named Bartlett and an arrogant toff he was, too. The mark was put into a hackney coach and thrown into the river as per instructions and then left for the tide to take.’
Or to crawl out? To be picked up? To find a ship to faraway shores?
‘Did Bartlett pay again later when it was discovered that the man was still alive? Did he have someone follow Viscount Bromley abroad?’
‘No. That was the end of it. A simple drowning. No amount of gold would be enough to entice those I hire out to cross the seas to hunt further.’
‘But others might?’
‘I have never heard even a whisper of it, but I suppose with enough gold offered it could be possible.’
Nick believed what was said and the hope of a quick resolution wilted. His uncle might have ordered his demise in the first place at the river, but when that did not eventuate another had tried to finish him off.
He put a small bag of gold on the table, the clink of it satisfying. ‘If you hear anything at all about this matter I would be well pleased to learn of it. Leave word at the address inside and mark it “Stepney”.’
As a duke, Jacob was often receiving missives. No one would take notice of a further messenger.
A quick nod of his head and the man stood, using the small door to disappear. There was mud on his boots from the river and his cloak was torn at the hem.
As Nick rose himself the tavern owner came forward and slugged him hard on the side of his good cheek.
‘In warning not to say nothing of this to anyone.’ He could feel the eyes of all the others upon him as he left.
* * *
She had worn the sprigged muslin to Gunter’s six years ago, Eleanor thought as she rifled through the clothes she’d brought down to London from Millbrook House. But there was nothing here remotely similar to that which her eighteen-year-old flighty self would have once favoured. Certainly apart from the one very formal gown she had worn to Frederick’s, there was nothing in gold.
Hauling out a deep blue velvet, she held it up against her. The colour made her eyes bluer and she had always liked the cut.
Sighing, she stroked her fingers across the pile. Was she doing the right thing? She missed Lucy and every day she promised to help Nicholas was one less she did not have with her daughter. She wondered if she should put more of a guard up, for her protection and for Lucy’s. But she wished his memories back as desperately as he himself did because only then she would know whether she could trust him to be the sort of father her daughter needed.
The demons still sat upon his shoulders and the menace that had become such a part of him now was worrying. Still, yesterday at Bromworth Manor he had discovered his uncle’s part in his mysterious disappearance so that was one less concern. The debts he owed should right themselves with his newly come inheritance and things would return to normal.
Normal?
He would never be the rakish pleasure-seeking smiling Viscount she had once fallen in love with, but her older self found this dangerous, larger and quieter version even more attractive.
He was steel now, honed in fire, the pieces that had been light and reckless burned away to the bone. She could not even imagine how this Nicholas might enjoy ice cream with her at Gunter’s.
Despite everything she looked forward to their next meeting. It had been the middle of August last time they were there—now hot chocolate might be more the order of the day on a cold December afternoon. All she could feel was excitement.
* * *
His carriage arrived on the dot of two and Jacob called to her as she came downstairs hoping to leave before anyone saw exactly who she had gone with.
‘Tell Nick to stop in for a drink here with me afterwards.’
Eleanor smiled because there was very little her brother ever missed when it concerned his family. ‘I will.’
‘And make sure he takes take good care of my baby sister.’
‘Hardly that. I am almost twenty-five. A matron.’
He shook his head and stood. ‘Experience does not always come with the years one lives, Ellie. I don’t want you hurt.’
‘You think I might be?’
‘After all that Rose and I endured, I am now of the opinion that no one knows better what is right for your life than you do. But a word of warning. If you are hurt, let it be your making and not that of others. He is a good person, Nick, but in a difficult situation.’
‘I know.’
‘And you are a bit the same, I think.’
She made no answer to this as she turned to go, but sometimes she got the distinct impression that her brother could read her more easily than she gave him credit for.
Nicholas was just walking towards the town house after speaking with his driver and he looked up when he saw her.
‘The while we keep a man waiting he reflects on his shortcomings.’
She frowned at his words.
‘It’s an old French proverb, though I have changed the pronoun.’
His explanation made her frown. ‘What are your shortcomings then, my lord?’
‘I have so many I cannot remember half of them.’
When he smiled she saw a dark bruise on his left cheek, newly gathered.
‘I hope no one else has decided to try to do away with you since yesterday, Lord Bromley.’
All humour evaporated and when he didn’t answer Eleanor felt a growing bud of alarm.
He was dressed in his own clothes this morning. A black jacket over lighter trousers, his white shirt and cravat enhancing the tan of his skin. His hair was back in a looser queue today, allowing wisps of dark brown to frame his face in a fashion that was unusual nowadays, but one that suited him completely.
Beautiful. She had always thought him that even in the very worst of times.
But this afternoon, as he helped her into the carriage, he felt less safe than he had yesterday. She could almost imagine he might scrap the plans for the tea-shop visit and head instead to find some frightening shadow-filled tavern in which to imbibe uncut liquor in great quantities.
For years she had lived so carefully, with circumspection and quietness. She had blended into Millbrook House without incident, making sojourns to London only occasionally and always being on her very best behaviour.
She had dressed appropriately, trying not to draw any attention to herself, she had spoken solely on topics that caused no debate and in any group she had always stood back rather than pushing herself forward. She had stayed well away from the masculine gender.
Camouflage. Penance. Lucy did not need a mother of any more notoriety or shame and Eleanor had done her level best to make certain that she was exactly the type of woman others expected.
She had grown old.
That thought had all her attention.
And staid.
Another shocking truth.
She had become a woman she would not have recognised at eighteen when she had thrown away all restraint and jumped head first into the thrall of Nicholas Bartlett.
‘You seem preoccupied?’ His voice came through all introspection and shattered her resolve with ease.
‘Did you like yourself when you were younger, Lord Bromley?’
‘Not much, I think, but responsibility and experience have weathered the rough edges.’
Given that she was thinking just the opposite, she smiled.
‘I have always been careful.’ She gave him this in reply. ‘So careful that perhaps...’ It was hard to finish.
‘Offering to help me with my memory and coming with me to the places where I could find some recall is not so careful? There are many here in society who would say I am a risky man to know and stay well away because of it.’
‘And are you? Risky, I mean?’
‘My uncle would swear that I am and so would those who hold debts from me which have remained unpaid. Society always labelled me a wild cannon and my friends might say it, too, because in the loss of self-knowledge there is the propensity for chaos. Sometimes in the late of night when I cannot sleep I may even admit it to myself. I am damaged, Eleanor, and have been for a very long time.’
‘Even before you disappeared?’
He nodded, but she could not let the subject go so easily.
‘A viscount who founded the most depraved gentlemen’s club ever to grace the hallowed halls of Oxford University and then moved it to Mayfair where it became even more dissolute and scandalous? That sort of damage?’
He shook his head.
‘Every act within Vitium et Virtus has always been consensual. People are there because they want to be. No one is forced.’
‘A morality within the scandalous?’
‘Exactly.’
And right then and there Eleanor knew what she had missed the most when he had disappeared. It was this, this conversation that was more real to her than any other thing she had ever felt. Every single part of her was more alive in his company. Her body. Her brain. Her heart. Her soul.
He made her fascinating and brave and clever. Effortlessly.
‘After meeting with a few people, I don’t think my uncle was the one who paid people to follow me to the Americas.’
The bubble burst. Real life rushed in like a blast of frigid cold air, enemies poised again at every bend in the road.
‘How could you know this?’
He didn’t speak, but she could see the answer in his eyes, on his cheek and in the guarded quiet of his posture. He had not just waited for such information to trickle slowly down to him, but had gone to actively seek out the truth. Gone presumably into the poorest parts of London that few aristocrats would feel comfortable to be. Except him.
There was a certain respect in such an action that she could not help but feel. But to pretend joy and eat ice cream?
To laugh at the fussy decorative moulds and sip at tastes inconsequential and unimportant when there was an enemy afoot who wished him harm in such magnitude?
She wanted to throw herself down on the plush leather seat of his carriage and sob because a day that had begun with such promise was now falling into complete disarray.
* * *
Damn it. He should not have said a thing about his suspicions. Now Eleanor Huntingdon was looking as though she might hurl herself out the window before the carriage stopped just to escape from his company.
He could not believe he had told her any of this. Usually he clammed up about affairs that were even remotely personal, but the laughter and ease of the conversation had been beguiling and he had let his guard slip.
There was no easy way to say that he was damaged and reduced in value, the spoiled and harmed product of years of fear and danger written inside him like a story. Any fineness he might once have had was diluted by experience, weakened by a lack of trust and diminished by an absence of honour.
Nick could still feel the stranger’s neck in Shockoe Bottom breaking under his grip, the shameful truth of death by his own hand making him swallow down bile.
Like an apple in a barrel, rotten to the core. ‘Please, God, do not let me hurt Eleanor. Please, God, keep her safe.’
He recited this beneath his breath as she turned away, the sky through the window about as bleak as his mood. He needed to throw off these maudlin thoughts, or she would decide to return home. There was probably only so much of him that even an angel like Eleanor Huntingdon could take.
The anger and shame reformed into effort.
‘Would you like a walk first on the square before we go in for tea? We could stroll around the pathways. Is that something we did before?’
‘No.’ Her voice was hesitant.
‘Good. Then let us make some new memories before remembering the other ones.’
Her coat and hat looked warm and her boots sturdy. A small walk in the cold might reinvigorate them both and shake the cobwebs from their worries.
He smiled because suddenly he remembered his mother saying that to him and when Eleanor caught his glance she tentatively smiled back. He wanted to make her laugh again and talk again, her truths revealing a woman who’d been saddened by life. He wanted them both to forget what had been and to concentrate on now.
He would ask Jacob more about her dead husband when they were alone next time and if he gave back flippant answers as he had before he would confront him further.
‘Virginia was a place that winter took to with a vengeance,’ he said as they exited the carriage and began to amble around the small neat square. ‘But the coldest region I’ve ever been to was Caribou in northern Maine. It’s close to Lower Canada where the air sets up in Hudson Bay and is sent southwards. If you happen to be in a river valley sleeping rough you’ll know well sure by the morning that you should not have been there.’
‘Were you? Sleeping rough, I mean.’
‘For a good week. I was on one of the trails hunting at the end of autumn and had not expected it to turn to cold so quickly.’
‘A different life, then. One you would never have had if...’ She stopped and he liked her confusion.
‘I was probably insufferable, the man you knew before?’
She laughed at that and gave back a query of her own. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘My gambling debts were rising and I could see no way out. That was one of the last things I remembered before I couldn’t, arguing with my uncle about the sums I owed. Hardly auspicious.’
‘I agree that you were reckless and wild, but there was something else there, too. Something honest. If there hadn’t been I doubt I would have stayed around to bother.’
‘Perhaps you were trying to save me even then?’ He said this as a jest and she hit him lightly on the arm in return before she realised it was the injured one. Then he had to stop and listen to five more minutes of apology.
‘You owe the world nothing, Eleanor, and remorse should always have its limits.’ He could tell she was listening as she tipped her head. ‘Regret is not an easy emotion to live by and if things do not turn out quite as you expect them to, then you need to shape your world to make sure that it does.’
‘Do you do that?’
‘I try to. Since coming home I try to forget what once was.’
‘You have reshaped your life?’
The small line between her brows was deep and because of this he gave her back something of his truths. ‘Not entirely, but the pieces still lost to me will return. I know it.’
The tea shop on the south-east corner had now come into view and as expected it was half-empty, the cold driving the clients away. As they walked inside the man who met them asked if they had a preference for where they wanted to sit. Eleanor gestured to the table by the window.
‘We sat here last time?’ Nicholas said this as they were seated, the green and gold baize chairs small and dainty.
‘A lucky thing it was, too, for a group had just moved off when we came and it was very busy. The summer view was better.’
‘Yet Berkeley Square still holds its charm.’
He was careful with his words because so far none of this was in any way familiar.
‘Tea for two, please.’ She smiled at the waiter as she gave him back the menu.
‘A simple choice. I was imagining the pineapple delicacy you told me about.’
‘I was teasing you, Lord Bromley. We were only here briefly for we were en route to Bullock’s Museum.’
‘We shall go there tomorrow, then? I will pick you up at eleven.’
When she nodded Nick let out the breath he had not realised he was holding. Another outing. Further conversations. With the light from the window falling across her face he thought Eleanor Huntingdon was by far the most fascinating woman he had ever laid his eyes upon.
‘We spoke of animals last time because there was a black spaniel sitting at that table there.’ She gestured to a vacant setting over by the wall. ‘You said you had had a dog most similar when you were young?’
The feeling of loss hit him so forcibly Nick thought he might have fallen off the chair had his hands not curled to the seat.
‘I spoke of him?’
A frown marred her forehead. ‘Are you remembering things? I think you said his name was Vic.’
The horror of what had happened to the animal made his heart beat quicken. Vic. Victor. Victory. His father had named him after the Siege of Bangalore in 1791. Another thought hit him like a sledgehammer.
‘How close were we, Eleanor?’ He’d never told another about the dog, its death one of the defining and terrible moments of his childhood.
* * *
Nicholas Bartlett looked at her directly as he asked his question; a question Eleanor had been expecting given the nature of her plan so she’d concocted exactly the right answer.
‘We were friends.’
With a nod he looked away though she could see anger in the line of his jaw. It had been like that last time, too, but then he had been much less adept at hiding his sorrow. Now there was only the slightest hint of it. A man with his emotions well under control, the uncertainty of a few days ago gone entirely.
For a moment she could only stare at him, this harder, more unreadable stranger wrapped in the shape of the one she had lost her heart to, but then the tea came and the moment ran again into now as she thanked the waiter for bringing the refreshments.
Twinings black tea. The very same as last time.
Today though Nicholas Bartlett used his right hand to lift the cup. Then it had been his left. She noticed he still cradled the injured hand whenever he could. In the carriage it had lain against the top of his thigh, the swollen reddened fingers curled in pain.
She didn’t want to ask of this though because she knew there would be some story attached to the wound that wouldn’t be an easy one. Nothing about him at the moment seemed easy.
‘We talked also of your hope of a Tory victory for the Duke of Portland in the next elections. You spoke on that for a long while.’
‘A topic you must have found riveting?’ The irony in his tone was obvious.
‘You don’t follow the turning wheels of government any more?’
‘Not particularly. I think I am more in favour of living life quietly.’
‘At Bromworth?’
He nodded. ‘The land is fertile and the work is interesting. After so long spent moving from one place to another, I would like to find a base now, a home.’
When the waiter brought them milk Nicholas thanked him. Once he would not have noticed the ministrations of a servant at all.
‘I live for a good part of the year at Millbrook House in Middlesex, my lord.’
‘Why?’
‘The life of a widow is a solitary one.’
‘But you have your daughter? The child Jake told me of?’
‘Indeed I do. Is this tea to your liking, for you enjoyed it last time?’
She did not wish to discuss Lucy with him and she hoped he had not noticed her leading him on to another topic.
‘It is.’ As he toyed with his cup she was reminded of the quiet a panther or a lion might employ before his next strike.
‘Will you come to dinner at my town house, Eleanor?’
The shock of his invitation was startling. She wanted to tell him that this was not something they had done then, but that was a lie. She had gone alone to his town house and enjoyed a meal unlike any she could remember. A meal of anticipation and sensuality and climax that had been unequalled.
‘As it would be my first foray into entertaining I would like to have friends there. I will ask Jake, of course, and his wife Rose.’
Friends. She felt an ache of disappointment and of sorrow.
‘That would be lovely.’ The very thought of an evening at the Bromley town house on Piccadilly actually made her feel like turning to run. There had been few servants there that evening six years before as the Viscount had given much of his staff the night off, but what if anyone left recognised her? What if his memory returned in the middle of the dinner? Her brother was a man sharp on detail and nuance and so was Rose. That was a further worry.
She was swapping one set of problems for another. She was walking on a tightrope much like the artists she had once seen perform in Astley’s at the Royal Grove, but without the comfort of a safety net. Recreating their ‘courtship’ as closely as possible was turning out to be a lot more complicated than she had thought.
Could she know Nicholas Bartlett again? Would he ever let her in? Or had the years of apartness made them into people who were too different to rediscover the core of each other.
She felt her knee brush his thigh momentarily as he moved to change position, the touch sending fingers of shock through her whole body.
Breathless.
Absolute.
Gripping her fingers as hard as she could on her lap, she felt herself slip into the flame.
* * *
Lady Eleanor Huntingdon looked flushed.
She was trying her hardest to appear normal, but her knuckles were white as she clenched her fists; the small blue artery in her throat beating at twice the usual rate.
His recent life had taught Nick to read the signs of high emotion in people and she looked more than agitated.
It was his dinner invitation. She had been flustered ever since he had issued it. Perhaps she was regretting her decision to help him and was wondering now how she could turn him down politely and leave him in this mire of non-memory?
As he finished his tea he saw the leaves in the bottom arranged in a pattern.
‘Leaves like this can be read, I think,’ he said, pleased when he saw that had caught her attention. ‘Once a travelling woman in Richmond told my fortune from a pile of sticks she carried. I imagine it is the same principle for the leaves.’
The corner of her mouth turned up. ‘What did she say?’
‘She assured me that I would be rich, famous and more than happy, though she warned there was a valley of emptiness between me and my dreams. At the time, running from town to town without a clue as to who I was or why I was there, her words meant very little, but now...’
‘Your memory. A valley of emptiness? I did not expect you to be one who would put much stock in the world of the occult?’
‘Amnesia does that to one, Lady Eleanor. “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”’
When she laughed out loud the tension was replaced only by warmth.
‘You used not to quote Shakespeare either, Lord Bromley.’
‘Another difference, then, Lady Eleanor.’
‘You remember nothing of this? Of Gunter’s? Of the outing?’
He shook his head and wished it were otherwise.
* * *
The bells of St Martin’s could be heard in the distance counting out the night hour of eleven o’clock. Rose snuggled into her husband’s side in the ducal bed as the prevailing winds came in from the south-west, shaking the fragile glass panes with their force.
‘Do you think Eleanor seems changed lately, Jacob? Happier, I mean?’ She whispered this into his chest and liked the way his arm curled about her, holding her close.
‘She went with Nicholas for an outing today. To Gunter’s. He came in his carriage and picked her up.’
Her smile came unbidden. ‘The tea shop with all its fussy food is a place I can barely imagine Viscount Bromley being comfortable in.’
The shake of his chest told her that he had held the same thought.
‘Perhaps my sister wants to help Nick become reacquainted with the ways of London life.’
‘Like a small rabbit might aid a hungry fox, you mean?’
At that he turned, his eyes, pale in the fire flame, full of question. ‘What are you saying, Rose?’
‘Nicholas Bartlett gives the impression of such danger and distance that I would have imagined Eleanor to be running the other way and yet she is not. You said she has been lonely for such a very long time, but perhaps we might be hopeful for an ending to her solitude?’
Jacob laughed. ‘Matchmaking is a precarious occupation, Rose.’
‘I know, but they suit each other in a way that is surprising. At the ball when they danced I thought they looked completely right.’
‘I doubt Nick would appreciate words on the subject from me, but I suppose a relationship could be possible.’
Rose ran her finger down across his cheek to his lips and then her touch fell lower. ‘Which is exactly why we shall only watch from a distance, Jacob, but with hope in our hearts.’
He turned at that and pulled her down beneath him, his dark hair burnished by candlelight. ‘You are both wise and beautiful, my love, and I thank God every day that he allowed us to find each other.’
‘Show me,’ she whispered and wrapped her nakedness about him. As he blew out the scented flame Rose had the distinct impression of strength tempered with gentleness, and the sheer beauty of Jacob Huntingdon, her husband, warmed her heart.