Anthea, too, was tearing at Grippen’s wrists, trying to force them loose. He heard her cry, “Don’t … !” as he felt the man’s huge, square hand tear his shirt collar free, and thought, with bizarre abstraction, And now for a little experiment in applied folklore …
“God’s death!” Grippen’s hand jerked back from the silver chain, the reek of blood on his breath nauseating. Asher dropped his weight against the slackened hold, slipping free for an instant before the enraged vampire struck him a blow on the side of the head that knocked him spinning into the opposite wall. He hit it like a rag doll—the strike had been blindingly fast, coming out of nowhere with an impact like that of a speeding motorcar. As he sank, stunned, to the floor the philologist in him picked out the sixteenth-century rounded vowels—far more pronounced than Ysidro’s—as the vampire bellowed, “Poxy whoreson, I’ll give you silver!”
His vision graying out, he saw two shapes melt and whirl together, black and ivory in the lamplight. Antheahad hold of both of Grippen’s wrists, trying to drag him back, her storm-colored hair falling loose from its pins around her shoulders. Though his mind was swimming, Asher staggered to his feet and stumbled the length of the room to the pillared archway. An inglorious enough exit, he thought dizzily. Properly speaking, a gentleman should remain and not let a lady take the brunt of a fracas, but the fact was that she was far more qualified than he for the task. It was also very unlikely Grippen could or would kill her, and virtually certain that, if Asher remained, he was a dead man.
Savoy Walk was silent, empty, wreathed thickly now infog. If he could make it to the end of the street, up Salisbury Court to the lights of Fleet Street, he’d be safe …
He stumbled down the tall stone steps, scarcely feeling the raw cold of the river mist that lanced through his shirt sleeves and froze his throat through his torn collar. Dangerous ground for a mortal to tread indeed, he thought, as his feet splashed in the shallow puddles of the uneven cobbles. Heedless of appearances, he began to run.
He made it no farther than the black slot where the court narrowed into the crevice of the lane.
In that shadowy opening a form materialized, seeming to take shape, as they were said to, out of the mist itself—a diminutive girl, a pocket Venus, primrose curls heaped high on her head and dark eyes gleaming feral in the diffuse glow from the lights of the house. He turned, seeking some other escape, and saw behind him in the fog the pale face of a world-weary ghost that belonged to the third Earl of Ernchester.
Their hands were like ice as they closed around his arms.
“I’m sorry,” Ernchester said softly, “but you have to come with us.”
EIGHT
“SEVEN YEARS is a long time.” The Honorable Evelyn Westmoreland stirred at his coffee with a tiny spoon, looking down into its midnight depths. Across the table from him, Lydia hoped that seven years was long enough.
“I know,” she said softly and rested her hand on the table, close enough to his to let him know that, had she not been married, he could have covered it with his. The plumes on her hat, like pink-tinged sunset clouds, moved as she leaned forward; from the lace of her cuffs, her kid-gloved hands emerged like the slim stamens of a rose. Her brown eyes were wide and gentle—she could see him as a soft-edged pattern of dark and light, but had decided that in this case it was better to look well than to see well. Besides, she had learned how to interpret the most subtle of signs. “Believe me, I wish I could let the matter rest.”
“You should.” There was an edge of bitter distaste in his voice. “It’s not the sort of thing you should be asking about… Mrs. Asher.” The soft lips, fleshy as those of some decadent Roman bust, pinched up. Past him, the red-and-black shape of one of Gatti’s well-trained waiters glided by and, though it was well past the hour when teas ceased being served, fetched a little more hot water, which he soundlessly added to the teapot at Lydia’s elbow, and removed the ruins of the little cake-and-sandwich plate. The restaurant was beginning to smell of dinner now rather than tea. The quality of the voices of the few diners coming in was different; the women’s indistinct forms were colored differently than for daytime and flashed with jewels. Beyond the square leads of the windowpanes, a misty dusk had fallen on the Strand.
Those seven years, Lydia reflected privately, had not been particularly kind to the Equally Honorable Evelyn. He was still as big and burly as he’d been in those halcyon days of rugger matches against Kings; but, even without her specs, she could tell that under his immaculate tailoring he’d put on flesh. When he’d taken her arm to lead her to their little table, Lydia had been close enough to see that, though not yet thirty, he bore the crumpled pouchiness of dissipation beneath his blue-gray eyes, the bitter weariness of one who does not quite know what has gone wrong; his flesh smelled faintly of expensive pomade. He was not the young man who had so assiduously offered her his arm at croquet matches and concerts of Oriental music, no longer Dennis Blaydon’s puppylike brother-in-arms against all comers on the field. Even back when she’d been most impressed with his considerable good looks, Lydia had found his conversation stilted and boring, and it was worse now. It had taken nearly an hour of patient chitchat over tea to relax him to the point of, she hoped, confidences.
She looked down at her teacup, fingering the fragile curlicues of its handle, aware that, with her eyes downcast, he was studying her face. “How did he die, Evelyn?”
“It was a carriage accident.” The voice turned crisp, defensive.
“Oh,” she said softly. “I thought … I’d heard …”
“Whatever you heard,” Evelyn said, “and whomever you heard it from, it was a carriage accident. I’d rather not…”
“Please…” She raised her eyes to his once more. “I need to talk to you, Evelyn. I didn’t know who else I could ask. I sent you that note asking to meet me here because … I’ve heard there was a woman.”
Anger flicked at the edges of his tone. “She had nothing to do with it. He died in a…”
“I think a friend of mine has gotten involved with her.”
“Who?” He moved his head, his eyes narrowing, the wary inflection reminding her of her father when he was getting ready to say things like “station in life” and “not done.”
“No one you know,” Lydia stammered.
He paused a moment, thinking about that, turning things over in his mind with the slow deliberation she had remembered. The Honorable Bertie, dimwitted though he had been, had always been the brighter brother. Then he said slowly, “Don’t worry about it, Lydia… Mrs. Asher. Truly,” he added more gently, seeing the pucker of worry between her copper-dark brows. “I… You see, I heard recently that … that someone I know had been seeing her. Of course, you were barely out of school when Bertie was found… when Bertie died, and there was a lot we couldn’t tell you. But she was a pernicious woman, Lydia, truly evil. And a week or so ago I … er … I met her and warned her off … paid her off … gave her money and told her to leave the country. She’s gone.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke.
Embarrassment? she wondered. Or something else?
“Truly?” She leaned forward a little, her eyes on his face, trying to detect shifts of expression without being obvious about it.
She heard the weary distaste, the revulsion in his voice as he said, “Truly.”
She let another long pause rest on the scented air between them, then asked, “What was she like? I have a reason for asking,” she added, as the Equally Honorable Evelyn puffed himself up preparatory to expostulation on the subject of curiosity unseemly for a woman of her class and position. “You know I’ve become a doctor.”
“I do,” he said, with a trace of indignation, as if he’d had the right to forbid it, and she’d flouted his authority anyway. “Though I really can’t see how Professor Asher, or any husband, could let his wife…”
“Well,” she continued, cutting off a too-familiar tirade with an artless appearance of eagerness, “in my studies I’ve come across two or three cases of a kind of nervous disorder that reminded me of things J—my friend—told me about this—this woman Carlotta. I suspect that she may be insane.”
That got his interest, as she’d found it got nine people’s out of ten, even those who considered her authority for the accusation an affront to their manhood. He leaned forward, his watery eyes intent, and she reached across the small table with its starched white cloth and took his chubby hand in both of hers. “But I haven’t met her, or seen her, and you have … if you’d be willing to talk about it. Evelyn, please. I do need your help.”
In the cab on her way back to Bruton Place she jotted down the main points of the subsequent discussion—it would have looked bad, she had decided, to be taking notes while Evelyn was talking, and would have put him off his stride. The waiters at Gatti’s, well-trained, had observed the intentness of the discussion between the wealthy-looking gentleman and the delicate, red-haired girl, and had tactfullylet them alone—something they probably would not have done had she been scribbling notes.