LITMIR.BIZ

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Nick’s jaw tightened as he saw her give Rashleigh the same tempting, secretive smile in parting that she had given to him.

      He watched as Rashleigh drained his glass of wine in one gulp and ordered a second, which he dispatched the same way, his eyes on the door the whole time. Nick guessed that the girl had asked Rashleigh to give her a few minutes in which to prepare herself before he joined her in her bed. He got to his feet. It was time to spoil his cousin’s party. He started to move toward Rashleigh with deliberate intent.

      Rashleigh looked up and their eyes met. For a long moment they looked at one another and then Rashleigh turned away abruptly and hurried out without a word. The tavern door crashed on its hinges as it closed behind him. The candles fluttered in the wind and half of them went out. Men cursed as they knocked their drinks over in the dark. Nick blundered across the room and found his way to the door. He was not going to let Rashleigh get away from him now.

      The alleyway outside was pitch-black. The tavern sign was swinging in the rising breeze and creaked overhead. Nick stopped, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He listened intently but could hear no sound of movement. He could not tell which way Rashleigh had gone but he was determined to find him and confront him with Hawkesbury’s accusations before Rashleigh gave him the slip and tumbled into bed with that willing little harlot.

      Then he saw the glimmer of something in the gutter at the end of the lane, where the narrow passageway joined the high road. His breath caught. Turning, he shoved open the door of the tavern and shouted inside, “Bring a light!”

      The landlord hurried to do his bidding, a flaring torch in his hand. Nick could see a fold of the silver cloak, all muddied now from the dirt of the gutter, gleaming bright in the torchlight.

      The customers were piling out of the alehouse, scenting trouble. Another lantern flared, showing Rashleigh lying on the ground, his face paint smeared, his wig askew. One of his hands lay outstretched as though clutching after something that had eluded him. Nick could see a knife protruding between his ribs. It was buried to the hilt. Beside him lay a blond wig and a black velvet mask.

      Images filled Nick’s mind of Anna, lying there in the gutter in his cousin’s place, limp, broken, her life drained away. He saw her blue eyes clouding over in death and felt the familiar tide of sickness and guilt wash through him. With an immense effort of will he forced the images from his mind and looked dispassionately down at his cousin’s tumbled body. Rashleigh looked undignified in death. His face had fallen and crumpled in on itself. He looked weak and dissolute and pitiful. Nick searched his heart and did not feel a scrap of sorrow. The world was a better place without the Earl of Rashleigh.

      The breeze stirred the edge of Rashleigh’s silver cloak and stirred, too, the scrap of paper that had been clasped between his fingers. It fluttered free and Nick bent to pick it up. It was a visiting card and on it was printed the flaunting symbol of a peacock in gold. Nick frowned. He had seen that device before. It was similar to the coat of arms of his old school friend Charles, Duke of Cole. He turned it over. On the back was written the words Peacock Oak, the estate in Yorkshire where Charles had his country seat.

      Nick saw the inn servant at the front of the crowd, his face thin and terrified in the flickering light. He walked over to him.

      “You were standing near to Lord Rashleigh when he was talking to the girl,” he said. “Did you hear anything they said?”

      “Are you the law?” the servant demanded.

      Nick thought of Lord Hawkesbury and wondered what he would make of this mess. “Near enough,” he said.

      The servant shook his head. There was the sweat of fear on his upper lip and he wiped it away with his sleeve. “He asked if there was a place where they could talk and she said to wait a few minutes and then to follow her across the street. That was all.”

      Nick held out the card with the golden peacock on it. “Have you ever seen that before?” he demanded.

      The inn servant held the card up to the light, peering at it. Then he recoiled, and pushed it back into Nick’s hands. He cast one, fearful glance over his shoulder.

      “That’s Glory’s calling card!” He turned an incredulous look on Nick. “Have you not seen it, sir? It’s been in all the presses. Glory leaves her card when she robs her victims!”

      A hiss went through the crowd, a strange indrawn breath of fear and excitement, for there was only one Glory and she was the most infamous highwaywoman in the country. Everyone knew her name. No one needed an explanation.

      Nick straightened up. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly.

      He remembered the touch of the girl’s lips on his. She had kissed like an angel. He felt part shocked, part incredulous, to think her a criminal and a murderer. It seemed impossible. He had thought her honest and even now some instinct, deep and stubborn, told him she could not have killed Rashleigh, though the evidence was right in front of him. The wig, the mask, the knife…And his cousin’s fallen body that reminded him so sharply, so heartbreakingly, of Anna….

      He thought about the strange tension he had sensed in the girl when Rashleigh had entered the room. She had recognized the Earl. Perhaps she had even known him. She had told Nick that she was waiting for someone and that someone must have been Rashleigh himself. All her actions that evening must have been calculated. She had lured Rashleigh outside to kill him in cold blood.

      “Shall I call the watch, sir?” The landlord was at his shoulder, his face strained and sweating in the half-light. “Powerful bad for business, this sort of thing.” He saw Nick’s face and added hastily, “Terrible tragedy, sir. Friend of yours, was he?”

      “No,” Nick said. “Not my friend. But he was my cousin.”

      The landlord gave him a curious glance before beckoning the bar servant over with a message for the watch. Nick knew he should go directly to tell Lord Hawkesbury what had happened but he lingered a moment longer, his eyes scanning the dark warren of streets that wound away into the dark. He thought fancifully that the faint, incongruous scent of flowers still seemed to hang in the air. For a second, above the creaking of the inn sign, he thought that he could hear the tap of her heels, see a flying shadow melt into the darkness of the night. He knew he would never find the girl again now.

      Word of the murder was rippling through the crowd. People were gathering at the end of the street to peer and point and whisper at the sight of the infamous Earl of Rashleigh dead in the gutter. And beneath the whispers ran the words “It was Glory. Glory was here. She did it, it was her…”

      

      LORD HAWKESBURY was not amused.

      When Nick and Dexter Anstruther were ushered into his presence the following morning he was clearly in a very bad mood indeed.

      “This is the most godforsaken mess, Falconer,” Hawkesbury barked, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. “Murder and sedition on the streets of London, the whole capital stirred up by the deeds of this vagabond criminal! It’s in all the morning papers. They are treating her like a heroine for ridding the country of scum like Rashleigh. The whole point of you heading Rashleigh off was to prevent this sort of incident. Instead you spend a jolly half hour with Glory in a tavern and then allow her to wander off and stab your cousin!”

      “Quite so, my lord,” Nick said, wincing. He reflected that Hawkesbury’s mild complexion was a poor guide to his choleric disposition. “But whilst there was, no doubt, a long list of people who wanted to murder my cousin I do not believe we could have predicted that one of them was apparently a notorious highwaywoman.”

      “You couldn’t even recognize a notorious highwaywoman when you saw one,” Hawkesbury grumbled, drawing toward him Nick’s written statement from the previous night. “Thought she was a harlot, I see.” He looked up. “How old are you, Falconer? Two and thirty? You sound as naive as a babe in arms!”

      Anstruther shot Nick a sympathetic look. “It’s Glory’s calling card right enough,” he put in, picking up the card that Hawkesbury offered irascibly

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