Sherry Thomas - His At Night

It was silk, lustrous, smooth, lavish, something that two thousand years ago would have been quite worth the walk from Chang’an to Damascus.

“So soft,” he said. “Like your skin.”

Her grip tightened on the nightshirt. “May I have this one then?”

“Indeed, have it. Took you long enough to find one you liked.”

But she would not escape him so easily yet. He insisted she unclench her fingers, to avoid wrinkling the silk, and then he took hold of her hand and rubbed his thumb over her palm. Giving her his most thick-witted smile, he sighed. “Ah, yes, just as lovely as I remember it.”

And remembered it. And remembered it.

It dawned on him that he tormented no one but himself with this little game of his.

He dropped her hand and stepped back. “Well, then, off you go.”

She looked at him uncertainly. He began to undo the fastening of his trousers. She needed no more urging after that, her departure swift and resounding.

Holbrook sported a black eye.

Vere had to smile at the sight. “So Lady Kingsley did not forget to pay you a visit when she was in London.”

Holbrook gingerly touched the bruises around his eye. “She should have delegated the task to you. You would have punished me more tenderly.”

“Quite so.” Vere pushed the cigarette case–size casting mold he’d used at Highgate Court across the table to Holbrook. “I need a key made from this.”

They were seated at White’s, as far away from the bow window as possible. It was more than permissible for mere acquaintances belonging to the same club to dine together, but there was no point advertising their contact to passersby on St. James.

“What does the key open?” asked Holbrook.

“Something of Edmund Douglas’s.”

“Hmm,” said Holbrook, pocketing the casting mold. “And what have you learned from your visit to Mrs. Watts’s old neighborhood?”

“That Douglas probably murdered Mrs. Watts.”

“His own great-aunt?”

“I don’t think she was his great-aunt,” said Vere, slicing his veal cutlet. “I don’t think he is Edmund Douglas, in fact.”

Holbrook’s brows rose. “Where is the real Edmund Douglas, then?”

“My guess? Murdered, too.”

“These are serious crimes to suspect of your uncle-in-law.”

“I’m nothing if not a dutiful nephew-in-law.” He almost wished his father were still alive. I married the niece of a murderer, Pater. It’s a spectacularly suitable match for me, don’t you think? “Any progress from your code breakers?”

“Some, but they haven’t quite cracked it yet.”

There was no doubt in Vere’s mind that the Crown would nab Douglas sooner or later—not only was the noose tightening around the man’s neck, but he was currently so distracted by his niece absconding with his wife that he had no idea his secret life was being peeled back layer by layer. From a strictly professional point of view, there was no hurry. On the extortion front, they did not yet have any diamond dealers willing to cooperate with the police. And if they wanted him prosecuted on charges of murder, they needed time to find old acquaintances of the real Edmund Douglas who were willing to travel from South Africa to England to give their testimony in court.

But an Edmund Douglas at large was an Edmund Douglas capable of committing further atrocities. When he realized that Vere was a difficult man to hurt, he would no doubt turn his attention back to his wife and his niece. Vere had not left his house thinking the world of his wife. That did not, however, negate the fact that he was now responsible for her safekeeping.

“I want you to work on it,” he said to Holbrook.

Holbrook was one of the best code breakers in the country, if not in the entire world. Like Lady Kingsley, Vere, too, believed instinctively that there was something in the coded dossier that would allow them to arrest Douglas immediately.

Holbrook, no doubt taking note of Vere’s impatience, leaned against the back of his chair. “Why, Lord Vere, you know how much I hate real work.”

Of course, Holbrook’s help always came with a price. “What do you want?”

Holbrook smiled. “Remember the blackmailing of a certain royal I mentioned some time ago? I am still in need of a superior, dedicated agent to extract said royal from his troubles. But since you are a staunch republican and wouldn’t lift a finger in the service of the monarchy, I have not brought it up.”

Vere sighed. Under normal circumstances he’d have refused: He did not consider aiding useless royals a worthwhile endeavor. But just this once he would do it, if for nothing other than to appease his own conscience, which was still indignant that he’d so gleefully put his wife in harm’s way.

“What do I need to know?”

* * *

The blackmailer was a Mr. Boyd Palliser. According to Holbrook’s intelligence, Palliser, in trouble with certain uncouth elements of society, feared for his safety. His house was tightly secured against intrusion and the only way to get in was to be let in.

“I want you to lose enough money to him at cards to be invited to his house. Once there, drink him insensate and abscond with the goods—and preferably with your gambling notes too,” Holbrook said.

Vere rolled his eyes. “Someday you should give your own plans an implementation. I don’t like drinking anymore.”

“Nonsense. You can drink a rhinoceros under the table.”

In his later adolescence and early twenties, Vere had been able to drink a herd of elephants under the table with no ill effects whatsoever. These days, however, his liver no longer cared for that sort of abuse. But on such short notice, there wasn’t much else he could do.

He left White’s and found Palliser at the latter’s favorite gambling place. It took fantastical losses at the card table, enough rum to float the RMS Campania, and idiocy of an extent to impress even himself, but he was finally invited back to Palliser’s house in Chelsea toward the end of the night.

They drank. They sang. They all but whored together. At one point, wobbling dangerously across the room, Palliser swung a curio cabinet away from the wall and revealed a safe behind it. Then, patting every pocket on himself, he eventually drew a chain from around his neck, opened the safe, and took out a jade statuette of such intricate lewdness that in Vere’s state of advanced inebriation it took him nearly a minute to grunt in appreciation.

He also did not notice until Palliser opened the safe again to put the statuette back that the safe also contained a bundle of letters.

There was nothing to do now but drink Palliser to oblivion, then grab the packet of letters and run—a goal, however, that receded faster the more Vere imbibed, as Palliser had the vexing habit of staring at Vere until Vere emptied his glass, making it impossible to chuck his drink into the plant stand behind him.

Palliser reached across the table for the rum bottle and knocked over a pewter vase. The vase fell loudly to the floor.

“Did you hear that?” asked Vere.

“Of course I heard it.”

“No, something else,” said Vere. He rose unsteadily to retrieve the vase, only to upend a chair that had appeared out of nowhere.

The chair crashed.

“Did you hear that?” asked Vere again.

“Of course I heard it!” said Palliser, a little peeved now.

“No, something else.”

Palliser grabbed hold of his walking stick and levered himself upright. He listened. Then he waved the walking stick in the air. “I don’t hear nothin’.”

The walking stick walloped a marble bust off a shelf, which promptly broke against the floor.

“Bugger!”

“Shhhhhhhhh,” said Vere. “There is a scuffle going on.”

“Where? I don’t hear a thing.”

Vere stepped backward and knocked over the entire side table. It fell with a terrific bang. “I think somebody’s running this way.”

“About time. This place is a disgrace. It needs to be tidied right now. In fact—”

The door opened and in rushed a stranger. A stranger with a revolver in his hand. He lifted the revolver with what seemed to Vere infinite slowness. Or was it that his perception and reflexes had become infinitely slow? Vere glanced at Palliser. The man hadn’t even noticed the intruder yet; he was still staring with dumb fascination at the broken halves of the marble bust.

The intruder fired. The sound barely penetrated Vere’s glue-like consciousness. He watched with a calm, distant appreciation as Palliser crumpled to the floor. The shot had gone in the left side of Palliser’s chest, leaving a neat hole in the middle of the gaudy peony Palliser wore as a boutonniere.

The intruder turned toward Vere. He pulled the trigger. Vere ducked. The sharp pain in his right arm abruptly revived all his rum-drowned instincts. His hand closed around the pewter vase on the floor.

That vase hurtled through the air and met the intruder squarely on the forehead. The man yelped and wobbled. Before he could recover, a chair hit him in the face. And then he was smashed with a side table, this time with Vere’s weight behind it.

The man collapsed in a heap. Footsteps came pounding outside the room. Vere flattened himself against a wall. But it was only Palliser’s servants—not his bodyguards, merely an excited and confounded pair of footmen.

“You, go fetch a doctor,” he said to one of the footmen, though he’d be surprised if Palliser was still alive. The footman left running. To the remaining footman he said, “And you, the constable.”

“But Mr. Palliser, he wants nothing to do with the police.”

“Well, then go fetch whomever it is he would want to fetch when someone has shot him.”

The footman hesitated. “I don’t know, sir. I’m new here.”

“Then fetch the constable!”

After he dispatched the second footman and made sure no more servants were arriving to witness the carnage, Vere slipped the chain from Palliser’s lifeless head. Wrapping the key in his handkerchief—the police could do things with fingerprints these days—he opened the safe and retrieved the packet of letters. He glanced through the contents—yes, quite mortifying if made public—and counted the letters—seven, just what he was looking for.

He’d come prepared with a different packet of letters, also from said royal, but on entirely inconsequential matters. He made the switch, pocketed his loot, and returned the key to Palliser’s corpse.

Only then did he glance down at his right arm. The bullet had grazed just below his shoulder. A fairly superficial wound. He would take care of it later, when he was in the safety and privacy of his own home.

Now he must vacate the premises before the doctor, the constable, or anyone else reached the scene.

* * *

Outside his house Vere realized that he should have gone to one of Holbrook’s hidey-holes instead. He had remembered to discard the wig, the mustache, and the spectacles he’d worn as part of the temporary identity he’d assumed for the evening, but forgot that he should never come home in a state of injury.

And now he was too disoriented and worn out to go anywhere else. He swayed and decided that bleeding arm or no, he’d best get inside.

He let himself in, grimacing as he did so. He was left-handed; a wound to the right arm did not overly inconvenience him. But that did not lessen the pain.

Somewhere a clock chimed quarter past four in the morning. He trudged up to his room and turned on the light just enough to see. The packet of letters immediately went into a locked compartment in his armoire—immediately meaning as soon as he could fit the key into the lock. His maids would find many scratches around the keyhole in the morning.

He grunted as he took off his evening coat. The waistcoat did not give him trouble. But the fabric of his shirt stuck to the wound and he grunted again as he ripped away the sleeve.

It was worse than he’d thought. The bullet had taken a chunk of his flesh. He would do what he could now and get himself to bed. When he woke up—assuming the bad head did not kill him outright—he would summon Needham, an agent of Holbrook’s who also happened to be a practicing physician.

He soaked several handkerchiefs with water from the pitcher on his washstand and cleaned the blood from around the wound. There was a bottle of distilled alcohol among his shaving things. He doused another handkerchief with it.