Point of Honour (11 page)

It was a clear night, and the sound of music which emanated from Mrs. Brereton’s house was agreeably subdued. Lights from the Square spilled irregularly onto Spanish Place; it was shadowy but not completely dark. She was thus able to make out the forms of two men waiting by the private gate in the garden wall. The gate was difficult to find in the dark; they could only have been stationed there to wait for her by someone who knew there was a gate there to find. Miss Tolerance drew her sword without haste, held it low, and continued forward.

The first of the men moved toward her; in his hand she saw a glint of steel. Any hope that these were friendly visitors was banished.

“You’ll be Miss Tolerance?” he asked. He must have been forewarned, as the sight of a woman in breeches did not confuse him. Miss Tolerance’s first thought was that Sir Randal Pre must have hired the men to pay her in kind for his humiliation the other night. “You’re to come with me,” the man said.

She shook her head. “I’m afraid that will not be possible, sir. The hour is late and I am very tired. Excuse me.” She took another step.

The man raised his sword and pointed it at her midsection as he might have a pistol.
Not a swordsman,
she thought.
He expects the mere sight of the sword will reduce me to tears.
Tired as she was, Miss Tolerance had no patience now for bullying at swordpoint. Perhaps she could chase them off.

She raised her own sword, stepped in to engage his, corkscrewed the point in, and swept her hilt upward, neatly knocking his sword into the air. She caught it in her left hand and tossed it over the wall into her aunt’s garden.

“Christ!” the man growled. “Jack! Take the bitch—but be quiet, and don’t kill her. That’s orders.” He waved his accomplice forward.

Miss Tolerance stepped fast, kicking hard at the first man’s groin, and watched him drop. “Pardon,” she breathed as she turned to meet the second man.

The accomplice gave a cry of outrage and moved in, sword drawn. This one had obviously trained with the smallsword. For a minute or so Miss Tolerance was busily engaged, and the sweet chime of sword against sword rang out in the street, not loud enough to bring people from the Square or from the houses with a face on Spanish Place. There would be no rescue, so it was time to bring the encounter to a close.

The man thrust to her shoulder; she beat his point away and returned the thrust, pinking his left arm. Her tip almost became fouled in the sleeve of his coat, but she pulled back, retreated a step, watching to see if the wound would make him stop. He followed after her, angry enough to thrust for her heart and be damned to his orders to keep her alive.

“Your teacher surely told you to keep your point up!” She parried the thrust. “If you don’t”—she slipped her hilt along the length of his blade, driving his arm up, sword still clutched in his hand—“you will find your blade is very easily captured!”

She dropped her hand and drove the hilt of her sword down just above the man’s temple. A nasty blow; he would have hell’s own headache in the morning. He staggered back, tripped over the body of his partner, who still lay moaning on the cobblestones, and fell hard.

Miss Tolerance took up the second man’s sword, pitched it across the street and into the shrubs that guarded the house there; in the dark, it would take some time to find them. She turned back again and stood over her attackers, thinking what to do next. She did not particularly want to turn the miscreants over to the inquiries of the Watch, and certainly she had no desire to kill them.

The problem was solved, for the moment at least, by the appearance of a closed coach which turned the corner onto Spanish Place and bore down on Miss Tolerance and the two men. She sheathed her weapon and watched as the two men staggered to their feet and across the street out of the path of the carriage.

“You may tell whoever gave you your orders that I respond much more helpfully to a civil request,” she called. “Good evening.”

She did not turn away, however, but stood with her back against the ivied wall of her aunt’s property, watching as her attackers limped up the street to Manchester Square. It occurred to her to follow them to the corner and enter at Mrs. Brereton’s brightly lit and well-attended front door, where any second attempt by these footpads (or any others) would be easily repulsed. But a tug at the gate suggested that the garden was still secure, and thus her little cottage would be as well. And with a good deal to consider, Miss Tolerance found herself loath to be caught up in the society of the brothel tonight.

After another glance around her, she unlocked the gate, entered, locked it again, and stood listening. She thought she heard, over the festive noise issuing from her aunt’s parlors, a shouted inquiry to her attackers. Was it the Watch, wondering what these two were doing in the Square at this hour, or their employer asking after their success? She was gambling that the two men would not want to tell anyone in authority what they had been about, or that they had been beaten by a woman with a sword. When the shouting ceased, Miss Tolerance turned toward her little house.

It was dark; perhaps it had been a busy night at Mrs. Brereton’s, for usually one of the servants found time to come and light a lamp for her if she was out. The unaccustomed darkness gave Miss Tolerance enough of a qualm that she drew her sword again, just in case, and entered her cottage prepared to find an intruder. There was none. Feeling a trifle foolish, she stirred up the coals in the banked fire and lit a candle at the hearth. Within a few minutes she had made herself comfortable and snug: her boots off, her dressing gown on, her hair loosed and falling down her back, and a plate of bread and meat beside her. She sat with a child’s slate at her hand and a piece of chalk, making idle notes as she thought.

Who had sent her attackers? The first names which occurred to her, Sir Randal Pre and Mr. Horace Maugham, she dismissed almost at once. She suspected that Maugham, at least, would be kept mighty close to home by his wife for a time; his wife had brought her considerable fortune to the marriage, and the money had been tied up so efficiently that the improvident Mr. Maugham could not afford to anger his wife overmuch. Sir Randal might have the wherewithal Mr. Maugham lacked, but she did not imagine he would have stressed to his minions that she was not to be killed—quite the opposite, in fact. There were a few subjects of past queries who might have been pleased to hear of her death, but none of them could she imagine conniving at it.

She was left with an unsubstantiated, but powerful, suspicion that the attack had something to do with Lord Versellion’s fan.

When the matter was combined with the fact of Mrs. Smith’s death, Miss Tolerance could not help but believe that there was far more to the fan and its history than the Earl of Versellion was willing to admit. Perhaps more than he knew. And more hazard to herself, too.

Something else occurred to her, a very disturbing thought. It was commonly believed that she lived in Mrs. Brereton’s house; who would know that she did not, or that she usually did not go through the house in order to reach her own cottage? Who would know how to find the door in the ivied wall? Who would know she had gone abroad tonight?

Only some member of Mrs. Brereton’s household.

It was a cold notion to take to bed. Miss Tolerance wiped the slate clean, finished her tea, and, before falling into her bed, checked her pistols and put them on the table by her bed.

Six

W
hen she came downstairs the next morning, Miss Tolerance found a small pile of the previous day’s correspondence which had been left upon her doorstep by one of Mrs. Brereton’s servants. She made a pot of tea, cut herself a piece of bread, and nibbled on the crust while she shuffled through the letters. London’s haze had lifted from the precincts of Mayfair, and the glittering light of morning was tinted spring-green by the trees that gathered closely around the cottage. The breeze combed through the ivy on the brick of Mrs. Brereton’s house across the garden with a pleasing low rustle. The scent of wood smoke and black tea filled the small sitting room of the cottage comfortably. In such delightful surroundings, it was hard for Miss Tolerance to give credit to her suspicions of the night before.

The men who had accosted her on the street were somehow attached to the matter of Lord Versellion’s fan—Miss Tolerance was inclined to trust her intuition upon this point. Her best defense was to conclude the investigation as soon as she might. The bells of All Souls tolled in the distance; Miss Tolerance realized with chagrin that it was Sunday, and to accomplish what she planned, she would miss services—not for the first time in the pursuit of a client’s goal.
Next Sunday for my soul,
she muttered,
today for Greenwich, and the lady formerly known as Mrs. Cunning.
Miss Tolerance was about to go across to the house to ask Cole to hire a hack for her, but a thought stopped her. If someone at Mrs. Brereton’s had given information about her movements to the men who had attacked her, then it was better that she keep her movements to herself. She would go directly to the stable herself to find the hack.

She would have enjoyed, on such a morning, time to linger over her breakfast. Instead, she went rapidly through her mail: a dunning note for her new boots; a bank draft from a client—Miss Tolerance pressed the paper to her lips in thanksgiving, as she had despaired of seeing a penny from that quarter; a note from a haberdasher advising her of the location of the striped silk she had sought out on her aunt’s behalf; and a note from the secretary to the Viscount Balobridge:

Lord Balobridge presents his compliments, and requests the honor of a meeting with Miss Tolerance, on a matter of potential benefit to both parties. If Miss Tolerance will name a place and time that is convenient to her, Lord Balobridge will be pleased to make himself available.

Discreet, yet intriguing. “How sudden is my popularity with the peerage,” she murmured. Miss Tolerance considered the note as she dressed. Balobridge, like Versellion, was rich, well known, and highly political, an elder in Tory politics, one of the Queen’s circle of advisors. If he had need of her services and she could assist him to his satisfaction, it was likely to be a very good thing for herself and her purse. But the timing of this summons was intriguing. Balobridge was one of Versellion’s political rivals, and the coming of this note, on the heels of the attack she had suffered the night before, made her wonder. What had she told her attackers? That she responded better to a civil invitation than to force? This—she looked again at the note lying on the table—this was a very civil invitation indeed.

She finished tying her neckcloth, drank the last of her tea, wrote out a reply to Balobridge, and let the ink dry while she pulled on her boots and coat. Then she sealed the note and tucked it into her pocket, banked the fire, and for the first time since she had taken up residence in Mrs. Brereton’s guest cottage, locked the door behind her as she left.

A
s she had decided, reluctantly, that she could not trust even her favorites among Mrs. Brereton’s servants, Miss Tolerance delivered her reply to Lord Balobridge’s house, pressing it into the hand of a footman who clearly did not often encounter females in masculine dress. Then she turned her hired mount toward the river, crossed at Tower Bridge, and proceeded to Greenwich, inquiring there for the inn called the Great Charlotte.

She found it at last, after some difficulty. Because the Royal Naval College was located there, Greenwich was acrawl with officers and sailors, most of whom could not be counted upon to give reliable directions, and a number of whom were piqued by Miss Tolerance’s appearance in breeches and riding boots and made every effort to follow along with her, plaguing her with noisy admiration. At last, however, she was directed to a street not far from the Royal Observatory, where she found the inn. Contrary to its name, the Great Charlotte was a small establishment, shabbily genteel in its trappings, and with no particular pretensions to affluence. Mrs. Cook’s name was immediately recognized by the maid who opened the door.

“I don’t know if she’s awake yet, sir—I mean …” The girl looked around her in confusion, and Miss Tolerance gathered that Fallen Women in the bloom of youth were not a daily occurrence here.
I must be careful not to give Mrs. Cook’s past away, if she has succeeded in disguising it,
Miss Tolerance thought.

“Do you mean that Mrs. Cook lives here?” she asked. She had imagined that the woman merely used the inn as a dropping-off place; it was unexpected luck to find her actually in residence.

The girl was nodding. “I could go up and see if she’s to home for you,” she offered. Her slight emphasis on the last word made it clear the girl considered that very unlikely. Miss Tolerance took her to be fifteen or sixteen years of age, and perhaps the daughter of the owner. Her accent was rather purer than might be expected of a tavern maid east of London, and her dress was made up modestly, nearly to her throat.

Miss Tolerance nodded and dropped a penny into the girl’s hand. “If you would tell her that I have been sent on a matter of business, and it may mean a sum of money for her?”

The girl’s eye brightened, and her caution was replaced with a cordiality which told Miss Tolerance a good deal about Mrs. Cook’s financial situation. “I’ll tell her this minute, si—ma’am. If you’d like to sit in the parlor?” The girl opened a door to a small chamber and waved Miss Tolerance in. A little time later she reappeared, smiling.

“Mrs. Cook’s compliments, and would you be able to come up to her rooms, ma’am?” She gestured toward the stairs. “She’s none so spry these days, and it’d be a kindness, like. Second floor, first on the left, if you don’t mind seeing yourself. I hear someone in the coffee room and—”

“I perfectly understand.” Miss Tolerance pressed another coin into her hand.

She climbed the two flights up and found the door without trouble. She knocked and was bade to enter by a pleasant, low voice.