The Spider's Touch (15 page)

Drawing near Piccadilly, he felt the endless pull of Hawkhurst House. But he did not dare walk that way, for he would court not only the certain risk of being recognized, but also a longing he would find too hard to hide.

In the end, no matter how much he preferred to walk to stretch his legs after a two-day ride, he hired a chair the rest of the way to St. James’s Square, aware of the need for curtains to shield him from any of his acquaintance who might be coming out of the King’s Theatre at this hour.

It was not yet dark enough to fear an assault. A merchant, who would be presumed to be outside his own neighbourhood, could easily fall prey to a group of Mohawks—or Hawkubites as they were sometimes called. The names of these gangs had been taken from the Red tribes in the colonies, but they were made up of young aristocrats who had a taste for hurting people, particularly the weak and the helpless. One group had even been known to beat old women to death, but with the Watch made up of old men, who were too frail to take them on, these young vandals were seldom caught.

Arriving in St. James’s Square, Gideon had the chairmen set him down on the south side, at the back of the houses facing Pall Mall Street. This was the farthest distance from Ormonde House, but he had been warned that government spies could be keeping an eye on the Duke’s visitors. So, while reaching into his pocket to pay the chairmen, he stole a furtive look about, but he saw no one who appeared to fill the role of spy.

St. James’s Square was now the most fashionable address in town. It had been developed by the Earl of St. Albans, who perceived a need for adequate housing for aristocrats who wanted to spend more of their time at Court. The earl had sold his own house to the first Duke of Ormonde, and since the Duke’s death, it had been occupied by the family of his grandson and successor, James Butler, the second duke and military hero. Spanning the width of three houses, Ormonde House was by far the largest one facing the piazza. It dominated the rest, but every house on the square lodged a peer.

Gideon was glad that his ancestors had built on a different site, for this piazza had become a convenient place for the parish to dump refuse. The glittering salons in which the Norfolks, Ormondes, Kents, and Pembrokes gave balls and banquets all looked out onto heaps of ashes, dung, and animal carcasses, as well as a shed that someone had built on the square to collect and sell rubbish. The remains of the fireworks that had been set off for the King’s birthday celebration still littered the square. The odour coming from the filthy combination should have been enough to chase off even the meanest of spies.

It was so distracting, in fact, that it took Gideon a moment to realize he had made an error in picking such a sociable hour. The plays had just ended. Groups of ladies and gentlemen were making their way to their evening’s entertainment. Lights from some of the mansions, the occasional opening and closing of a door, and visitors descending from chairs announced that more than one supper or card party was taking place in the square tonight.

Luckily, the onset of darkness was on his side. The oil lamps were only now being lit. Nevertheless, he could make out the identity of some of the arrivals by the sound of their voices. He wished he had padded his coat to disguise his young man’s physique, but decided that a crooked back and stiff gait would age him enough. He assumed this posture as he circled the piazza.

The Duke’s house was scarcely lit as Gideon pulled on the bell to the porter’s lodge and waited for the servant to answer.

A faint sound of footsteps coming through the heavy portal heralded a servant’s arrival. Gideon gave the porter a false name and asked to see the Duke.

But Ormonde was out. The carefree porter, an Irishman from the Ormonde estate, could not be brought to say where his master had gone or guess the hour of his return. He asked Gideon to state his business, and Gideon gave the answer Madame de Mézières had told him to use.

“I have important news for his Grace concerning his cousin Jonathan.”

The porter became instantly alert, although he volunteered no more information than before. Whether he understood the Jacobite’s code name for James or not, he did at least seem to think that Gideon’s visit would be important to his master, for he asked if Gideon wished to leave a note.

Rather than try to catch the Duke at home again, when he would have to dodge acquaintances in the street, Gideon decided to leave a message. The porter invited him in to write it, and they walked through the massive hall, lined with dozens of leather buckets bearing the Ormonde crest, coronet, and monogram, to a downstairs antechamber, which was furnished with nothing more than a single table and two simple chairs. The porter fetched a piece of parchment and inkstand and stood at the door, while Gideon accomplished his task.

He had just finished scribbling the note, in which he begged the Duke to appoint a time when he might deliver some news about his Cousin Jonathan, giving his address at the White Horse in Smithfield, when he heard a lady’s voice calling out for the porter.

The man gave a start. “That’ll be the masther’s daughter,” he said, as light footsteps came towards them through the hall. “I’ll have to see what her ladyship wants. Just you stay here.”

As soon as he went through the door, Gideon hid himself behind it. He could hear the porter’s response and the voice of the lady who had called.

He recognized it as belonging to the Lady Elizabeth, the Duke’s eldest daughter, an unmarried lady of Gideon’s age. They had met as children and had danced together at Court, paired by rank in the minuet.

She asked the porter who had rung the bell, in an anxious tone that hardly seemed warranted by the event. It was unusual for a lady to concern herself with the identity of an evening visitor, particularly the Lady Elizabeth, who with her wit and charm had always attracted friends. Even the impossible-to-please Dean of Dublin Cathedral, Jonathan Swift, confessed to being one of her admirers.

Gideon was torn between the desire to set an old friend at ease and uncertainty as to how he would be received. The porter assured her that it was no one she knew—just a tradesman on business. Gideon heard her doubt, and he longed to reassure her that she had nothing to fear. But the moment’s delay had made his position clear.

The Duke would not want his daughter dragged into a conspiracy. Neither would he wish her to converse with a man charged with murder, a person he might believe was guilty.

Something as tight as a clamp closed about Gideon’s heart.

In another moment, the porter had convinced her that the visitor was not worthy of her notice, and she retreated upstairs. After waiting to make sure she would not reverse her steps, Gideon handed the note to the porter in the hall and headed out, careful to make no noise as he went. He left Ormonde House behind him and started to walk with no destination in mind.

The inability to divulge his presence to a friend had bothered him more than he cared to admit. Disappointment spawned his anger, and he strode from the Square, careless of his gait. Fortunately, night, his friend, had fallen now. It would hide him again.

He wandered blindly, made heedless by his temper,  until he found himself perilously near Hawkhurst House. He had automatically turned his steps up Duke Street towards home. Burlington House, with its gate and imposing courtyard, loomed just before him. Only one sharp turn to the right and he would see the walls of his house.

The clamping sensation threatened to squeeze the life from his chest. It took all his fortitude not to give in to the wish to see his home. He could not think of one place in this whole parish where he would be safe.

That left him with the choice of retiring to the White Horse, to a flea-ridden bed, or finding a coffee house in the east end of London where few aristocrats would ever go.

He was about to settle for the latter, when he thought of the only house in Westminster where he might be welcomed. With a slightly lighter feeling, he turned and directed his steps to the Palace Yard.

* * * *

Earlier in that week, Harrowby had come home from the House of Lords and had related, with a touch of unease, that Mr. Walpole had revealed that the Committee of Secrecy would soon be ready to make its report.

“He had the Tories quaking in their boots, I can tell you,” he said, to the ladies and Dudley, who had gathered in the salon before going for a stroll in the park. “’Pon my honour! But the man seems out for blood! He said there would be charges of treason laid—against Harley, I’m sure, but it seems there will be others. He even said, ‘Heads will roll.’”

Harrowby gave a shudder, while nervously playing with his fob.

“But why should Lord Oxford or anyone else get his head cut off?” Isabella was straightening a ribbon on her bodice and asked this in the tone of a woman making conversation with her husband when her mind was really on something else.

Harrowby’s gaze was unfocused, too, but he answered, “They will say that he schemed with Louis to end the war and did it secretly, behind our allies’ backs.”

“Then maybe he deserves to die.” Mrs. Mayfield folded her arms with a righteous huff. “I don’t hold with creatures who connive behind their friends’ backs, and I’m sure his Majesty don’t either.”

No one would have dared to challenge the accuracy of this statement, but Harrowby was not even listening.

“There was some talk of papers,” he mumbled, musing aloud. Then, fright leapt into his eyes. “I must speak to James Henry.” He started to bolt from the room, tossing over his shoulder, “You will forgive me, Isabella, if I do not come with you?”

“James Henry left for Rotherham Abby yesterday,” Hester said, before he could reach the door.

“Plague take him! You’re right!” Harrowby turned, and his face was pale. “We must send for him immediately. I don’t even know what sort of papers my cousin kept, but they must be burned right now!”

“St. Mars’s papers?” Isabella was confused.

Hester glanced at her aunt and saw that she had tensed.

“No—well, perhaps his, too! But I was speaking of his father’s, don’t y’know. The old gentleman was a terrible Tory. I don’t know what he might have written down.” Another thought struck him and his eyes grew wide. “What if the government took his papers after he died? They took Bolingbroke’s about then.”

“But wouldn’t someone have told you?” Hester asked. “I cannot believe that James Henry would fail to inform you of something so important.”

Her calmness and sense finally penetrated his panic. A desperate relief lit his features. “That must be so! You are sure to be right, Mrs. Kean. What a treasure you are, to be sure! Now, you must write to James Henry at Rotherham Abby and tell him to burn all my cousin’s papers. Then, there will be nothing left to worry about.”

“I still don’t see what Lord Hawkhurst’s papers have to do with Lord Oxford’s head,” Isabella complained.

“Nothing, my dear!” Harrowby’s mood had turned ebullient, now that Hester had quieted his fears. “There is very likely nothing in them at all. But, with Walpole’s blood up the way it is, I assure you, we cannot be too prudent.” He reached over the back of her chair to pinch her cheek. “And you wouldn’t like to lose your pretty coronet, just because of some bit of twaddle the old man jotted down, now would you?” He sobered slightly. “But, now that I think of it, I don’t want any of you writing letters or keeping diaries, or whatnot.”

“That won’t be hard,” Dudley said, with a laugh. “I never write letters unless I have to.”

“I hate the very thought of writing,” Mrs. Mayfield agreed.

“Good for you!”

“Hester does all my writing for me,” Isabella said, with more honesty than her mother.

Harrowby turned to face Hester again, but he was not as comfortable giving her a strict order as he was with the others.

“Well, I suppose
some
kinds of letters will have to be written, but you must be cautious Mrs. Kean! Nothing must be said about the King or the government or, especially, about any person or anything over the water! In fact, if I was you, I should never employ the word
water
in any of my letters.”

Hester managed to smother her smile, long enough to assure him in a serious tone of voice that the word
water
had never figured largely in her prose.

He accepted her reassurances with gravity.“Well, you can thank me for alerting you to the danger of using it. I doubt you would have suspected it on your own.”

Hester agreed with him, and as he had just given her the task of writing a letter to James Henry, she excused herself from their walk. She saw them off before seeking pen and paper in Isabella’s escritoire.

The message would have to be carried down by one of the grooms, for she dared not trust it to the post. If government agents were reading all letters, as everyone believed, their ears were sure to perk up at the news that a peer’s papers were being destroyed. And whether there were any papers remaining at Rotherham Abby that could implicate the former earl, Hester knew that there once had been.

That was not the largest problem facing her, however, she reflected with pain, for she would have to ask James Henry to burn the remains of his dead father’s thoughts without revealing that she knew what their relationship had been.

* * * *

A few days later, Harrowby and Dudley left for Guilford with a great many other gentlemen to watch the horse matches with the King. Their conversation over chocolate that morning had consisted of excited speculations as to which horse was likely to win the Fifty-Pound Plate. Harrowby had not decided whether to put his money on the Duke of Somerset’s bay, Star, or the Lord Great Chamberlain’s grey horse, Governor. Dudley was sure it would be a mistake to underestimate Mr. Broderick’s Hermitage. But Harrowby cautioned him not for any fortune in the world to bet on Sir William Windham’s gelding, Smiling-Tom.

“Why not?” Dudley asked. “Have you seen the horse?”

Harrowby pursed his lips and arched his brows, as if he could tell his brother-in-law a thing or two, but all he said was, “There have been whispers. And it wouldn’t be wise to be seen to support Sir William right now, or even his horse.”