Wren had to admire his use of theatrical property. He drew the pouch closed and handed it back. Butcher secreted it away in the folds of his cloak, revealing as he did so the silver rabbit-fur lining of the black wool garment.
“Where did you acquire your costume?” Wren asked.
For the first time in their short acquaintance, Butcher seemed reluctant to answer. Indeed, if Wren didn’t know better, he’d say he looked almost abashed. Still, in the stirring bass voice with a hint of a burr, Butcher replied, “I made it.”
Wren raised his brows. Butcher might take more pride in such an accomplishment—if it were truly his accomplishment and not the accomplishment of his theatre’s dressmaker, which Wren thought the more likely outcome. “Did you indeed?”
Butcher cleared his throat and held out his left hand. Dark lines wore through his weathered palm like tree-rings, and his long fingers bore more than a few calluses. It looked more like a sailor or farmer’s hand than the hand of a thespian or an aristocratic eccentric. “Tonight I join the Wild Hunt to slay the beast that has devoured the children of the Court of Moons. If you will venture out with me, I will show you that all I spake of rings true.”
This, then, was the trick. No shell hidden beneath a cup or ha’penny pulled from behind an ear. Just a fairy tale to lure Wren out of the city. To what end, he couldn’t fathom.
Yet even as his rational mind supposed that such an adventure could only end in mugging or murder, his Romantic soul stretched its withered wings and soared at the notion of leaving the suffocating fog of Staple Inn behind to venture out into the wilderness beneath the full moon.
Furthermore, if he did end up murdered, it meant he’d never have to copy out another account-book again. And if he must end in murder, Wren supposed he’d rather have a strapping specimen like Butcher slide the knife into his heart.
A morbid smile curled Wren’s lips. “Very well. I accept your challenge.”
So saying, he grasped Butcher’s hand with his own. Warmth suffused his touch and flowed up his arm to the elbow. He’d quite forgotten what the touch of another person could feel like, much less a handsome stranger. Recognition tingled in his fingertips and kindled a voiceless longing in his heart.
All too soon, Butcher broke off their handclasp. Not unkindly, and with a look that suggested to Wren’s fevered imagination that he wished for more as well, but he broke it nonetheless and turned to glide down the staircase with heavy tread.
Wren snatched his coat and hat from the cupboard and fumbled locking-up twice in his haste to follow him.
Though the almanac declared this the night of the full moon, none of its silvery light penetrated the fog that hung over London. The yellow flame of the gaslights lining the streets proved a poor replacement. Still, they sufficed for Wren to keep sight of Butcher as he took two quick steps for every one of Butcher’s lengthy strides. Butcher led him north out of Staple Inn onto Holburn and turned westward. Holburn became Oxford Street. They passed fewer and fewer clerks returning home after a long day and more and more unfortunates just beginning their night’s work.
Then they came upon Hyde Park. The gaslight of the street didn’t reach far beyond the park’s iron fencing, leaving the verdant depths in the dark.
Rather than continue on the road past the park, Butcher strode through Cumberland Gate and on into the darkness.
Wren supposed he should have guessed as much and followed him.
While Wren had never before personally availed himself of the many services offered by divers persons in Hyde Park by night, he’d heard all the rumours—not just of painted ladies but also of gentlemen seeking anonymous like-minded company. The Horse Guards in particular, with their barracks in Knightsbridge, had quite the reputation. And, as Wren stared at the shadowy outline of Butcher’s feathered cap, he could well imagine the tall, brawny, self-assured stranger as a member of that particular crew. Such poise and carriage would serve a man well astride a warhorse.
Though, if that were the answer to Butcher’s riddle, Wren wondered what deuced purpose the medieval costume served. If Butcher wasn’t a soldier in the Horse Guards, perhaps he was auditioning for a role as an ornamental hermit in the park. Assuming he hadn’t been hired on as such already—
Butcher threw his arm out to block Wren’s path.
Wren stumbled to a halt and aimed a quizzical eyebrow up at him. Through the course of their journey through the park, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could just perceive the silvery outline of Butcher’s profile. Butcher appeared stoic as ever, looking not at Wren but at something ahead of them on the path. Wren rolled his eyes and trained his gaze on the deeper shadows beneath the overhanging tree branches. At first he saw nothing. Then a thud resounded on the packed earth—a hoofbeat. The limbs of a dead tree emerged from the shadows—no, Wren realized, not leafless branches after all, but—
The antlers of a stag.
It stood far taller than a red or fallow deer; as tall as the draft geldings that pulled a brewer’s dray, at least fourteen hands high at the shoulder, and with its noble head and many-pronged antlers climbing higher still. Perhaps the darkness made its shaggy coat look black as ink, rather than red or white-spotted fawn, but that didn’t explain the thick mane of course fur hanging from its throat, tinged with gleaming grey like frost over heath.
As Wren stared, Butcher put up his palm before the beast. And to Wren’s amazement, the stag bowed its head to nudge Butcher’s hand. Butcher patted its broad, bovine nose, and the stag let him, tame as any fireside hound.
The stag startled Wren for many reasons. First, its monstrous size and apparently docile nature and Butcher’s familiarity with it.
Second, not only was it out of season—Hyde Park being stocked with deer only during spring and summer, not autumn—it was neither a red deer nor a fallow deer, but some third, enormous, ethereal type he’d never beheld before. A type that retained its antlers well past the point where they ought to have fallen to the forest floor.
And third—
“Do you wish to ride ahead of me or behind?” asked Butcher.
Wren blinked at him. “Ride?”
Butcher waved a careless hand toward the stag, as if there were any doubt.
Wren’s pulse fluttered in what he dared not acknowledge as excitement. The stag proved nothing. No matter how much Wren wished it could. He wondered what conspiracy the Restive Quills had concocted to acquire the beast. Perhaps Butcher was truly an eccentric aristocrat after all, the sort to not only keep his ancestral hold stocked with elk but also tame and ride them. And run around London dressed as a medieval highwayman. And hire himself out to literary clubs with grudges against former members.
