Chapter 2

An undertaker?

That was going a little far.

Clunking down the steps two at a time into the bustling street—no mean feat with Gabe’s shoes falling off her feet and these spectacles blurring her vision—it seemed this couldn’t have gone more wrong if she’d pulled off the jacket in the center of the hall and shouted, I am a woman! But she would sort it.

“Splen …” Gabe’s maroon necktie bobbed into view.

“The damn cheek of him. I mean, did you just hear him?” She spat the words. “Be there at dawn.”

“Oh, I think the whole hall heard his nibs.” He leapt in front of her. “Splen … I know what you’re thinking. And you can’t. Do you hear me? No, listen—“

“Can’t, can’t, can’t. It’s what you all say to me. Of me. Sapphire and Amber, and all the other girls. Can’t steal. Can’t sew. Oh, and let’s not mention my cooking. I couldn’t do anything apparently but sweep the floors and sleep on the scullery floor. When I can. Now, get out of the way.”

“No. You need to let this go. Let him go. Now. Because Splen, you have never fired a gun.”

“Never fired a gun? Of course I haven’t. Must you always state what Ruby called the bleedin’ obvious? I’m a skivvy for goodness’ sake. Not a crack shot. So far as I know it never came in my job description. Now get out the … ”

She leaped back as a rattling coach wheel spattered muddy water all over her—Gabe’s—Oxfords. The jacket and spectacle lenses too. Drips ran down her nose.

“Look, Splen, whatever you think, whatever them others said, no-one thinks—“

“Not now, Gabriel. Please.”

She peeled off the spectacles. She’d lost all sight of Stillmore among the trundling carts and carriages. Despite his height, he’d disappeared into the crowd on the other side of the road. And she’d no idea of his actual address. Mayfair somewhere.

This was over.

If only Earl Stillmore’s abilities with a pair of pistols weren’t as deadly as his temper and she could fight that duel. With her last reserves stretched to breaking point, it was catch up with him or face turning back along closing paths to the perdition she thought she’d left behind. As a teacher’s daughter she’d been respectable. But this gutter-snipe existence? Although, actually … She passed her tongue over her lips, set the spectacles carefully back on her nose.

“Anyway who says anything about firing a gun? Why would you even think that I would contemplate such a thing?”

“Because no-one knows you better.”

“True.” All the years. A scrap of food, a piece of gossip. He was the one thing that had made her sorry existence bearable. The light that lived across the street. The name of an angel, even if the fall of dark hair across his narrow cheekbones always gave him a devilish cast. It was only lately the thought had come sneaking that the light had gone out and she couldn’t let it.

She shrugged. “But, in this instance you’re wrong.”

“How’s that?”

“Very simply, actually.”

“When the earl has called you out? You can’t come back here tomorrow without stoppin’ off first at Blackfield Heath? And if you do, the next place you’ll be goin’ is the cemetery? He’s killed a man.”

“Just one? I heard it was—”

“Whether it’s one, or three, ain’t the point. Ain’t re you even listenin’?”

She glanced across the street. It was better somehow to look at the coach posts lining the corner, the wind playing havoc with scarves and mufflers, than feel her throat tightening and tightening, as if these same scarves had wound along the cobblestones.

As if they ran up her leg, slithering their cheerless black and browns over her heart, their cold trail settling about her neck. She knew exactly what Gabe was going to say. She could have said it for him and saved him the trouble. It wasn’t what chilled her heart.

She had always thought that what she felt for Gabe was it, the most she would ever feel for anyone. Now it merely seemed lackluster and safe compared to what had thrummed in her blood in the hall. As for the obstacles he kept putting in her way? Like now? When she’d no intention of fighting a duel with Stillmore? She wanted to think it was because he cared. Lately it just hadn’t seemed that way.

“His wife divorced him,” Gabe continued.

“Marietta? Yes. Well, imagine waking up in the morning to the glug of brandy decanters being drained, downtrodden servants being exhorted to fetch more, called out to a duel if they didn’t. Look, do you think I don’t know all this? I made it my special business to find out--”

“He disinherited his daughter.”

“Phoebe? I suppose she was just glad when her mother remarried. I’d know I’d have been. Swinging from the chandeliers in my drawers, in fact.”

“And that’s not enough for you to see what a merciless, damned bastard he is?”

Of course she did. She hadn’t stepped into that tournament without first apprising herself of the opposition. She’d just been a little astonished to meet it. “Look, Gabriel, I’m doing it for us. For Topaz too. Someone has to look out for her when there are reward posters everywhere for her, you know.”

“And she’d do that for you?”

“Well, she can’t, can she? Not with galloping consumption and a broken leg. But maybe you want her to get off her death bed and try stuffing her leg in these trousers? What’s more, there’s no reward for me.”

“More’s the pity. Then you mightn’t have been so ready to set out on this scheme.”

She paused for a moment. “Well, I did it for us. I’m thinking of our wedding. The dress with the daisies on it. And all the things we’re going to do afterward when you’ve bought your way into the clergy.”

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. “I told you before, that’s a stupid dream.”

To marry her? Or join the church? At all costs, she mustn’t let the mask slip. Must curve her lips.

When Papa had died in prison, when Starkadder, as a family friend, had arranged her release, she was not going to fall to pieces on the pavement, although Gabe’s look as she placed her hand on his chest was as encouraging as a dead worm, as bleak as windswept granite. Was it because he worried about her fighting a duel, or worried about her dragging him to the altar?

“Papa always said dreams are only stupid if you cannot accomplish them.”

“No. They’re stupid if you end up dead.”

“Who says anything about that? If that’s what you think, that I’m really that stupid, you’re wrong. Gabriel, where’s your faith?”

Gabe shrugged his thin shoulders, shivered in the breeze blowing up from the Thames. Maybe the sun had struggled up above the clouds; its rays were cold as old fire ash. It was surely why he didn’t take her in his arms. Lately—lately wasn’t something to think of here. What was, was the startling idea that had occurred to her a few moments ago. Run after Stillmore? Was she mad? The whole thing did not end here, standing or falling on her ability to fight a duel.

“It’s like this,” she said. “I’m thinking of paying him a visit.”

“What? Are you stark, ravin’—”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean I’m going to see him.”

“The hell with the duel, Splen, do you want to be shot on sight?”

“How would that be if I go as myself?”

“Yourself?”

“Oh, not myself exactly. God, no. I was thinking—”

“Thinkin’’s what got you into this.”

Her throat tightened to a pinprick so that it hurt to laugh.

“Going to the earl is the most important thing I can do for us if I’m to stay in the competition, stay alive. Please don’t look as if you’d prefer me to jump headfirst into the Thames with stones attached to my ankles.”

“I ain’t. I just think you’ve done more than enough for one day.”

“But what if I went as Lady Aurora Splendora even? How would he possibly know I’m Nathan from the tournament?”

“Because you ain’t Lady bleedin’ Aurora Splendora.” Gabe’s face darkened. “You’re plain Dora who was once locked up with her father—in a debtor’s prison. A debtor’s prison.”

Did that make her a bad person? Her mind went behind a cloud. She wasn’t plain. Her real name perhaps wasn’t the most exotic her mother could have thought of for her. It was why she liked to call herself Splendora. Why shouldn’t she call herself Splendora? What was wrong with it?

“His nibs gets wind of that and starts askin’ questions, do you think the trail ain’t going to lead all the way back to Lanthorne Street and the Starkadder Sisterhood? London’s ‘Premier’ Jewel Thieves? Well?” Gabe’s voice cut through her like a jib. “As it is, we can barely pawn a thing. They’re still after us. After you and Topaz, anyway. So, what we’re going to do, what you’re going to do—”

“No, I’m not. What you do is, of course, up to you. But I’m going back in there to get his address. If you think I can’t do this, you’re wrong. I need that money, and if I have to throw myself on his mercy to get it, I will.”

If Stillmore had any mercy. Everything she’d heard said he’d

none. But despite Gabe’s desperation to force her to drop this,

the distance her mind had retreated wasn’t so great she couldn’t retrieve it. Ten thousand pounds was at stake.

She was going to win it by fair means or foul, and she was going to marry Gabe. The earl’s dueling pistols would not stand in her way.

***