The group exchanged a few pleasantries, then the first callers left.
"If you hauled me back due to any suspicion that Danby is involved in this letter business," Byron said, "you wasted our time."
"Yes, I realized that when he said he just returned from Surrey."
"Which may or may not be true, but Danby has no need of money. The man's a nabob. He got that brown face in India, not Spain. They say he's worth a million. P'raps it's India I should go to. Oh and he's lucky at cards along with it. Pity he ain't a lady and one of us could marry him. A friend of mine, Cam Hobhouse, sat down to a game with him once and lost his quarter's allowance."
They climbed into Prance's waiting carriage for the drive back to St. James's Street. "Well, that was much ado about nothing," Byron said.
"No need to call in the Brigade," Prance was happy to reply. He and Byron could wrap up the business, then he would casually mention it to Luten. "I daresay we ought to be skulking about the designated corner before midnight. A quarter to, do you think?"
"That should do it. What a demmed nuisance the ladies are. If Adele were not a good friend of my best she-friend, Lady Melbourne, I would not have obliged her. Demme, she ain't even flirtable."
"A trifle long in the tooth for my taste, and the
grande affaire
with Brunei took place only seven years ago. She must already have been in her thirties. She waited a long time to have her one fling. I’ll call for you around eleven, if that suits?"
"Come earlier if you can, Prance. I'm working on a little something I'd like to have your opinion on."
A choir of angels singing could not have uttered a more pleasing sound. Prance had much experience at amateur acting, however, and managed to say, "Ten-ish?" in a voice that concealed his euphoria.
"Could you make it nine-ish? When I say I'm working on a little something, I mean a little twenty or so pages thus far. And very likely another twenty by tomorrow. My pen has no sense of discernment. It runs away from me, but dash it, if I don't scribble out my troubles, I should go mad. Don't you find that too?"
Prance, who had to drive himself to his desk and once there sweated over every word, replied, "Absolutely. The scribbling is all that keeps me sane."
After a little talk about writing, Byron said, "You'll bring a pistol tomorrow night?"
"Yes, though I don't foresee much trouble. It has to be a thieving servant we're dealing with."
"It certainly looks like it. Besides the simplicity of the plan, who else would have access to the letters? Except the lady's husband, of course. That would be amusing if he were the villain, eh?"
"To say nothing of embarrassing. How Luten would love it, a Tory caught holding his own wife to ransom."
"Stranger things have happened."
Byron didn't invite Prance in when they reached his flat. This suited Prance as he wanted to speak to a furniture maker about having an ottoman constructed. Perhaps he could add just a little something to support the back. He rather thought he might write home to Granmaison and have his Aunt Phoebe send him a cat from his estate as well. The barn was full of them, and he didn't actively dislike cats. He would specify that it must not be a marmalade and must have both eyes. He didn't want to be accused of being a copycat–he smiled at the felicity of the words–which would reek of copying Byron.
He wore a mysterious face that evening as he sat in Lord Luten's box at Covent Garden, watching an inferior musical burlesque. He was piqued that no one inquired about his visit to Byron but on the whole was happy enough in the anticipation of stunning them with news of his daring exploit after the matter was settled.
"Now that's what I call a dandy night's entertainment," was Coffen's verdict when the entertainment was over.
"That is what I call an excellent soporific," Prance said, covering his yawn with his fingers.
"That as well," said Coffen, who knew very few polysyllables.
"I'm home to bed."
"Are you on for the Dauntry's party tomorrow night?" Coffen asked as they stood awaiting their carriages. Lady deCoventry had come with Luten. As Prance wanted to arrive late and make a grand entrance to show off his new jacket, Coffen had come alone.
"I may drop in late, after midnight," he said mysteriously.
"Then I'll tag along with Corinne and Luten." Coffen narrowed his eyes and asked, "What are you acting so mysterious about, Reg? You usually boast your head off when you're doing something with Byron."
"Who said I was doing something with Byron?"
"Your smug face says it. Daresay it has to do with women. Or scribbling. Well, I'm off. I've spotted my rig at the far corner." He waved and ambled off.
It was too much to expect his coachman would actually meet him at the door. Indeed it was little short of a miracle that Fitz had got this close to the theatre. He had no notion of direction, and very little of driving. In common with the rest or Coffen's servants, he was ill-suited to his job.
* * * *
As Luten and Corinne drove home, he asked nonchalantly, "Did Prance happen to mention what he's up to with Byron?"
"Not a word, and I wouldn't satisfy him to ask, but that gloating expression tells me he's up to something. Perhaps he told Coffen."
"As long as he's not planning to draw you into his doings with Childe Byron, I don't really care," he said, reaching for her. A pulse beat in her white throat as she was drawn into his arms. Then all was silent in the coach.
* * * *
Prance spent the next morning studying his Italian grammar and checking to see that his pistol was in firing order. In the afternoon, he spoke to his valet, Villier, about the important matter of a costume for the night's endeavour. They were agreed on black, but had to work out the details.
It was while they were discussing the eligibility of wearing a black cravat that Lord Byron arrived, causing Prance to bolt headlong downstairs, where Byron stood at the drawing room window, studying a set of coloured crystal vases arranged to cast a rainbow on the opposite wall when the sun struck them.
"Prance, you won't believe it," he said, limping quickly forward. Prance stared, wondering what on earth could have astonished this man, who had seen pretty well everything the earth had to offer, and not blinked an eye.
"Tell me," he said.
"The demmed fool lady has gone and paid the money."
"What? But it wasn't to happen until tonight."
"I had a note from her just half an hour ago. She said there was no need for us to do anything further as she had paid up last night and recovered her letters."
"What can have happened to change the time? And why didn't she call us?"
"She did send a note around to my place last evening asking me to call, but giving no idea it was urgent. I was out and didn't return until two-thirty. I planned to call this morning, then I received a second note. You didn't hear from her?
"Not a word! Don't you think we should call on her?"
"I bloody well intend to demand an explanation. Damme, I spent an hour practising with my pistols at Manton's shooting parlour yesterday, and destroying my ear drums into the bargain. I was looking forward to the meeting tonight. London is so demmed dull."
Dull was hardly the word Prance would have chosen to describe this legend's life, but then Prance had never trod on foreign shores. It was the regret of his life that he had been deprived of the Grand Tour due to various wars. Yet Byron had not let mere wars deter him from travel.
"Dull as dish water," he agreed. Dull as that metaphor. What would Byron think of him?
"Then let us be off. I have my carriage outside. The
esposo
should be at the Foreign Office by now.
Many lords and ladies sprinkled their conversation with a dash of French. Leave it to Byron to come up with a new spice.
Prance, who usually preened before his mirror for half an hour before allowing the world to see him, put on his curled beaver, picked up his malacca walking stick with the silver knob, his York tan gloves and was off with no more than a passing glance in the mirror.
They found a distraught Lady Jergen alone in her parlour, stroking a white cat which rested on her knee. She was not weeping but sat gazing sadly into the grate.
"Ah, Byron," she said, but with no sign of joy. She acknowledged Prance with a wistful nod. "Do have a seat. You are wondering about those notes I sent you, Byron."
"I was out last evening when your first note arrived. What happened?
"I had another note from the Bee last evening, just as Jergen and I were leaving the house. We were to dine with the Liverpools. The note said the time had been changed. Due to what he called ‘unforeseen circumstance.’ I had to give him the money last night. You may imagine Jergen's mood when I couldn't accompany him to the Prime Minister's dinner party. Fortunately I had a thundering headache by that time and hardly had to act at all. All the details of the hour and place of the meeting were the same. I had to do it, Byron. He had Snow Flake!"
She lifted the white cat in her arms, rubbed her nose against its ears and said in baby talk, "I couldn't let him kill my precious. No, I couldn't. Mommy loves her baby."
The cat emitted an angry meow as it reached out and scratched at her face. "Naughty kitty," she said and returned it to her lap to resume petting it.
Prance had been admiring the dainty collar around its neck. Pink kid leather decorated with what he assumed were strass glass "jewels" but might possibly be real diamonds. The woman was mad.
Byron, that famous animal-lover, glowered in anger. "He threatened to harm the cat?"
"To kill her!" she said. "And he certainly would have done it for he killed Queen Mab."
That was when we decided that she was, literally, insane. Queen Mab was a creature of fiction, variously represented as the fairies' midwife in Shakespeare and queen of the fairies in Drayton's
Oberon.
Byron, as usual, was a step ahead of him in finding some sense in her ramblings.
"Whose cat was Queen Mab?" he asked.
"Queen Mab was not a cat, Byron," she chided, shaking her curls at his stupidity. "She was Lady Callwood's sweet little French poodle, white like my Snow Flake. Only three years old. So young to die." Her ringed fingers tightened protectively around Snow Flake, who growled at her.
"You mean the jackanapes has been holding other ladies besides yourself to ransom?" Prance demanded. The simple little case was growing before his very eyes. At this rate, he would have to call in Luten, who would read him a stiff lecture for the delay.
"Only Mimi, to the best of my knowledge," she assured him. "I daresay it's possible there are others. It's not the sort of thing one cares to talk about in the usual way."
"Who is Mimi, and how did she come to tell you about it?" Byron asked.
"She is Lady Callwood, Byron. So pretty. You must know her, she goes everywhere. She called on me yesterday afternoon. I shouldn't mention it, but the fact is she wanted to borrow a little something to pay her modiste. A lovely new gown she has had made up, but then she always dresses so well. I had to confess I was a little short myself. And when she looked at me in that way–you know, as if I just didn't want to help her, then I'm afraid I began to cry, and she started crying too, and before you know it I had told her about my predicament.
"And that's when she told me about Queen Mab. She had been stung by the Bee as well, but it seems he only got three thousand from her, which was fortunate as it was every penny she had in her own name."
"Interesting," Prance said. "It seems the Bee knew in both cases what sum his victims could pay."
"I never thought of that!" she said, gazing at him as if he were a genius. "But–surely that means it is someone who
knows
us. A close friend. One doesn't tell just anyone how much money she has."
"One hesitates to use the word friend in this case, but an intimate acquaintance, certainly."
"I call that shabby behaviour," she tsk'd.
"I call it extortion," Byron said, his jaw firming in anger, like a Greek deity. "Tell us about last night, Adele. Anything you can remember about the hackney cab, the driver, and especially the man you gave the money to."
"There's not much to tell," she said, setting the restless Snow Flake down. "It was just an ordinary hackney. Black, with a team of bays, I think it was. The driver never turned around. He wore one of those old hats that drivers always do wear, all dilapidated because of rain and so on."
"And the man you gave the money to?"
"He had Snow Flake in a dirty old bag!" was her reply to that. "I had to give her a bath when I got her home, and she didn't like it I can tell you. And hungry! The poor dear was starved. Of course the first thing I did was burn the letters from Mr. Brunei in the grate. I made sure they were all there, especially the one–the one I was particularly worried about. Poor Snow Flake. I shouldn't be surprised if he beat her. She seemed so very nervous."
"What about the man in the hackney, Adele?" Byron asked, rather gently, for he approved of her concern for Snow Flake.
"Oh I can't tell you anything about him." Byron and Prance exchanged a frustrated glance. "It was dark, you know, and he wore a mask and gloves and never said a word. He seemed rather small, somehow. He just reached out and took the money and gave me the letters and the bag with Snow Flake in it. I snatched the bag and my letters and ran home as fast as my poor legs could carry me, as soon as I peeked in the bag and made sure it was Snow Flake."
"What kind of bag was it?" Prance asked. "Could we see it?"
"I burned it with the letters. It was just a dirty old bag. There was nothing written on it."
They pestered her with questions for some time but couldn't get another detail about the man other than that he was smallish. She couldn't even say for sure it wasn't a woman, although whoever it was wore a man's curled beaver hat and seemed mannish somehow.
"How long had Snow Flake been missing?" Prance asked.
"I hadn't seen her since the night before," she replied. "I said goodbye to her when Jergen and I left the house that evening. Hiram, my butler, always puts her out before she goes to bed. He usually lets her in but sometimes she goes to the back door, and when he couldn't find her, he assumed Cook had let her in. She does sometimes, but she hadn't that night. That must be when she was stolen.