Hunt raised his empty glass to toast, “To the downfall of Lady Emma Donoghue!”
“Amen!” Richard said as he poured half of his brandy in Hunt’s glass so they might drink together.
Richard knew himself not very good company; therefore, he stood and clapped Hunt on the shoulder. “I believe I will claim my own bed tonight.”
Hunt staggered a bit. “You cannot leave me alone. You promised...” His friend looked around in confusion. “I cannot recall the promise, but I beg you to look about. This place is as tempting as hell itself.”
Richard thought Hunt’s analogy appropriate, for the room reminded him of a level of Dante’s hell inInferno. He handed Madame Ahrens the necessary coins to pay for Hunt’s choice. “I am not fit for company, but see that my friend has fond memories of his last days of bachelorhood.”
Madame Ahrens was not one to have the coins for one gentleman when it was possible to ensnare two paying customers. She snapped her fingers and the two blondes were wrapping themselves about him and Wickersham.
“My friend says your friend is the most handsome man in the room,” the taller of the two blondes declared, “but I told her she is blind without her glasses.”
“So you think I am more handsome than Sir Hunter?” he asked, half amused and half flattered.
The girl did not respond to his question. Instead, she said, “I am Chastity.”
Richard could not swallow the genuine laugh which burst from his lips. The idea of a lady of the evening named “Chastity” spoke perfectly to the absurdity of this whole day.
“I am Richard,” he managed to say with a straight face. “A real Rick-Dick.”
“Pardon?” the girl remarked.
“Nothing worth explaining,” he said. “I am leaving,” he told Hunt. “I mean to claim your carriage, but I will send it back for you.”
Hunt nodded his understanding, but it was obvious his friend was near passing out. The blonde who called herself “Chastity” latched onto Sir Louis McCarron as quickly as the man entered the parlor. The women employed by Madame Ahrens were expected to “produce” at least one patron per night, and Chastity quickly realized Richard would not be the man.
Therefore, Richard presented a salute of loyalty in Hunt’s direction and then made his way through the overcrowded parlor and the attached sitting room and, finally, to the hall leading to the exit.
He stepped around two young men likely up from university and eager to prove themselves with one of Madame Ahrens’s “ladies.” The hackney they had hired to deliver them edged from the curb to expose the closed square surrounded by houses held together by lost hopes and a shared wall, and Richard’s attention shifted to a figure standing under a single streetlight that flickered on and off as if a candle had been gutted by melted wax. If there was truly such a creature as the “dark angel of death,” this figure could be thusly named.
Hanging back in the shadows, which was easy to do in this part of London, the figure’s clothes appeared the blackest shade of darkness Richard had ever viewed, though there was a hint of smoothness about the material. Silk, perhaps. If Richard had been drunk, he would have thought he had encountered theDevil himself. The man or demon, depending on who Richard might ask, stood hunched over, as if he carried the weight of the world, or perhaps he nursed a wound or a sour stomach, but, more likely, a great sin rested upon his shoulders. The man’s face was not readable, but, if Richard had been one who made serious bets, rather than a fanciful one about a woman who was a pain in society’s side, he would bet the figure’s interest rested as much on him as his did on the stranger.
A half dozen men and women exited another of the buildings in the close, and Richard’s attention was drawn to them for a matter of seconds, but when he again sought the dark figure, the man was nowhere to be found.
For some unknown reason, Richard’s curiosity had claimed his normal cautiousness, and so, he nodded to the group and picked up his pace. “I doubt I could describe the man,” he mumbled, and he realized the fellow was probably just a man searching for a woman, but, fearing his shortcomings, whatever they may be, would not have one of the Covent Garden’s prioresses having their fun at his expense.
Richard finally caught a glimpse of the stranger walking quickly in the direction of Drury Lane and the Theatre Royal. The fellow looked back once before hailing a hack and jumping in quicker than Richard could reach the corner. But there was something unusual. Where Richard thought the man was all in black, when the man turned the fellow’s cape was lined with a blood-red silk.
A frown marked Richard’s forehead as he turned back to where Hunt’s coach would be waiting. “Just a man who wanted to be with a woman, but decided against it,” he told himself. “Mayhap someone who recognized me and did not wish me to name the day the fellow had fallen off his pedestal.” A smile crossed Richard’s lips. He could easily name a half dozen Bible-thumpers, as James Hogg described them in his periodical,TheSpy, who fit that description. “More likely the man had been waiting for one of the women to leave her house of ill-repute and to walk these streets alone. Someone to rob for her coins or claim a free night in her bed. Perhaps the woman was his former love, who has been set upon by hard times. Someone the man loved, once upon a time,” Richard thought.
Satisfied the stranger had abandoned his plans, Richard was again in search of Hunt’s carriage, but he had somehow made a wrong turn in his pursuit of the unknown man in black. “Foolish,” he chastised himself. “I am no better than the other drunks peppering these streets.”
He made two more ill turns in quick succession and had to backtrack. “It would be nice to have a streetlight here and there,” he grumbled as he found himself in what he thought was the old market area. “I understand now why the Duke of Bedford wishes Parliament to regulate this area.” He paused to look around him to claim his bearings. Thinking himself assured of where to find Hunt’s carriage, Richard took a side street and a short alley, ignoring a man throwing up his oats and a woman chastising him in her best fishwife imitation for ducking under her line of clean laundry and knocking part of the rope down.
Richard had cleared the pair and stepped upon the wooden walkway when a woman staggered from the shadows and, quite literally, into his arms. At first, he thought another of the area’s many pickpockets thought to make him her mark, but somehow Richard recognized her. “Lady Emma Donoghue,” his mind announced. The woman was not inebriated, nor did she appear to be on some sort of black powder; she was injured. “Who had taken their revenge out on her? Likely, many have thought to do so, who was brave, or rather foolish, enough to go against her?”
Though she attempted to pull away from his embrace, he held her in place. There was blood seeping from a cut at her temple, as well as several defensive-style wounds along her arm.
She swayed in place as he propped her against the side of a nearby building so he might determine how badly she was injured, while also searching the area for a sign of her attacker.
“Don’t!” she groaned as he braced her with one hand and turned as best he could to scan the area. “Don’t touch me, I must find the three...”
“I shan’t!” he declared, though he kept his hand on her shoulder. “Who was in your party?” he asked, though the idea of her being with any man who would do this to her was unsettling. “Find three what?”
Her dark chocolate hair hung loose on one side, and what once must have been a string of pearls laced in her curls had fallen over her forehead, which sported what would likely be a large bruise. The skirt of her gown was ripped on one side and covered with alley filth, a mix of garbage and human waste and mud, as if she had been knocked to her knees, and she was missing her evening slippers.
He asked again. “With whom were you traveling? Are there others for whom I should be seeking? Three more, perhaps?” Richard was already wondering if the man he had been following earlier had committed this crime. He could not imagine even the daring Lady Emma Donoghue, though she pushed all boundaries of conformity, would venture to Covent Garden alone. She swayed in place and he tightened his hold on her shoulder. “How did this happen?”
