The last Richard heard from Landon was a muttered, “Deuced inconvenient.”
Kingston appeared ready to speak but Richard laid his forefinger over his lips to indicate that they should not. If he could hear so well what went on in Landon’s stall, then Landon would just as clearly hear anything said by him. He did not know what he would do with the information he’d heard, but for now he’d rather that Landon did not know he’d been overheard.
Actually, he did know one thing he would do as a first step. He would pound Landon to pieces in the ring. That must be a start.
*
“Bemmy,” Caroline saidas they were swept along with the crowd, “there are so many people I doubt we will be able to see anything.”
“Never you mind, miss,” Bemmy said, “I’ve got an idea.” The maid pulled Caroline to a side street that led away from the seaside rather than toward it.
Caroline was on the verge of questioning why they should go that way, but decided to hold her tongue. Bemmy was overflowing with clever ideas and she supposed this must be one, though she did not yet understand it.
They hurried down the deserted street and came to a halt at the back of a large building.
“That there is The Ship Inn,” Bemmy said. “I’m particular friends with a serving girl there what has a room in the attic. She shares it with another girl who won’t mind neither, they’ll both be run off their feet today and won’t care who’s peering out their window above stairs.”
“Oh I see,” Caroline said. “Perhaps, if you are certain they would not mind, we might use the room to view the fight. And then I suppose I could leave them some money for their trouble.”
“Now that’d be what’s called the sugar on the biscuit, they’d be that happy over it,” Bemmy said. “Now we slip in the back door and up the backstairs. It ain’t never locked, what with the suppliers coming and going all the time. A man should be at the door, but he won’t be—not with the fight getting ready to start.”
Bemmy was right, the door was not locked and whoever was meant to be supervising comings and goings had taken himself off somewhere. They slipped in unseen.
Directly to their right, they found the narrow steep stairs leading to the servants’ quarters. Bemmy went up as fast as a hare and Caroline was quite breathless by the time they’d reached the attics.
They tiptoed down the dreary hall, its fading wallpaper peeling more than it was intact, and came to a door at the end. Bemmy knocked and, hearing nothing, tried the knob.
“It’s latched, just as I thought,” Bemmy said.
Caroline could see the small hole in the door, but there was no latch string to pull the latch up. “How do they get in?” she asked.
Bemmy dug through the voluminous pockets of her cloak and pulled out a thin scrap of wood. “You’ll see.” She slid the sliver of wood in the crack where the door met the casement and slid it up until it hit the inside latch and the door swung open.
Caroline could not help but be alarmed by this operation. “Bemmy,” she said, “do you always carry round housebreaking tools?”
Bemmy snorted. “This is how I get in my own house when my ma’s gone out. We got some metal on the door, fashioned to look like a sturdy lock and no latch string showing to give away the ruse. We jimmy our way in.”
Caroline nodded, as she supposed it made sense. As she gazed round the room, she could not help but notice how dull and dismal it was. Just a square box with two bedsteads with threadbare coverlets. It was not at all like the servants’ quarters at home.
Her father’s staff lived in bright and cheerful rooms, the women had lively yellow papered walls and the men had manly scenes of riders on the hunt. There were light quilts for summer and heavy for winter and a small carpet next to each bed. Every servant was given their own chest to store their personal items. Each room had a fireplace, and plenty of coal to go with it, though there was no hearthhere. She could not imagine how cold it must be in winter, with the frigid sea air blowing gales.
She took two shillings out of her reticule and slipped one each under the serving girls’ pillows.
“Here we go,” Bemmy said, already at the window. “Ain’t nobody has a view like this and we don’t get jostled around by the crowd.”
Caroline hurried over and looked down. The view was ideal. They were above the ring and at just the perfect angle to see everything. Further fortunate, nobody would ever know she was there unless they looked up at the window, and who would look up when the crowd was facing the opposite direction and there was so much to see in the ring?
“I got the lowdown in the servants’ hall last night,” Bemmy said. “That line of stalls just beyond the ring has got all the men who will fight. The fights are to go by Broughton’s Rules, though nobody seemed clear whohewas. Mr. Bramley did put up a good show of hinting he might know the fella, but I reckon he don’t. ’Parently, there’s rules about what to do when, but the only one I did understand is if a fella gets knocked down, he’s got half a minute to get up again and get back to his side.”
“That sounds very reasonable,” Caroline said, her mind less taken up by Broughton’s Rules and more taken up with wondering which stall Lord Bertridge could be found in. And Mr. Landon too, of course.
“You see on the left,” Bemmy said, “there’s a raised dais with an awfully big chair. I reckon that’s for the Prince to view the proceedings.”
Caroline supposed so. She did not know who else would require a chair so large.
“They’s to fight in rounds, with the winners going on, until one man is left standing,” Bemmy said. “I suppose Lord Bertridge will acquit himself grand.”
“Do you think so, Bemmy?” Caroline asked, her heart speeding up. It was all well and good to watch the men practice but now they would fight in earnest. Anything might happen, somebody might be seriously hurt. Lord Bertridge might be seriously hurt. She could not help notice that she had not been equally struck by the idea that Mr. Landon, or any of the rest of them, might be hurt too.
