Nineteen

Thy secret is thy prisoner, and if it is let go, thou’rt a prisoner to it.

–Old Devonshire Proverb

Annis had not brought her Tell Stones to London. They remained in Devon, safely locked in Devona’s chest.

But if she had brought her Tell Stones to London, she was certain that at the dawn of this particular day, she would have cast the five-barred gate, which meant news, letters, tidings, arrivals. Unlike the great destinies crystallized within the Bright Stones, the Tell Stones were made of common clay with runic markings that were used to divine the little eddyings of fate and fortune that made up the flow of daily life.

On this particular day—the sixth day since she had escaped the Red Queen’s awful court—there was an abundance of news, letters, tidings, and arrivals.

Clare returned from High Marleigh, having passed muster before the Deverills, the neighbors, and the Dowager Vie. Pinned to her bosom was a gold broach of familiar design.

Jamie accompanied her, his ill aura gone, a certain ring of familiar design upon his finger.

Early that afternoon, Dicken Potter returned from Devon, bearing both the bank draft and wonderful news. The day of his arrival at Robson Major, Susannah had safely given birth to a healthy son, who was to be named Halford Hugh after his father and grandfather.

Aunt Annis winged her way to Barclay’s Bank and had Lord Ryder’s money in hand a day and a half before the deadline. She could, of course, send it directly to Ryder’s residence and end this ridiculous charade once and for all. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t.

That same day, Lord Nicholas Ryder received a reply to the letter he had written six weeks ago to Horace Bolton, who had been making delicate enquiries for him in Devonshire. The letter contained ten close-written pages about a certain lady, her family history, her late husband, and her reputation in the community.

By the time Ryder finished reading the letter, he looked as if he had been poleaxed right between the eyes.

Some imp of mischief made Annis wait until the last possible moment to pay her just debts. The man to whom she was indebted received her as before, in his library, though he did not look as if he had been reading. He looked as if he had been pacing.

“Good for me, at any rate,” she said cheekily as she handed over the notes. “Your fifty pounds, my lord, with my greatest thanks. All went wonderfully at High Marleigh.”

He surrendered her locket box with a rueful shake of his head. “It seems everyone has made good work of this adventure but me.” He looked at the folded notes thoughtfully. “Tell me, how long have you had this money in hand?”

“I did tell you,” she reminded him, “that I was certain my messenger would return in good time.”

“And I’m very sure you do, my bewitching Annis whose nurse was denied a church burial for being a witch.”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? It’s commonly known among your neighbors, is it not?”

“I don’t think so. And I think your old nurse taught you very well.” His eyes, blue as the burning heart of her heartsblood candle, held hers. “What have you been doing to me?” he asked softly. “Have you made a poppet of me and pierced it through the heart with a silver needle? Or do you turn it slowly on a spit over hot coals? Is that how your old nurse taught you?”

“No! She was not that kind of a—” She broke off, realizing that she had come within a syllable of convicting both Devona and herself out of her own mouth. “She was not that kind of woman, and neither am I. And now I must take my leave.”

She catapulted off the settee and made for the door, but his long-legged stride got him there before her. “Don’t be afraid,” he said unexpectedly. “I don’t condemn you. I’ve always wondered how you got to be so extraordinary. Now I know. But I do wish you would dispense with your pins and hot coals or whatever it is you’re doing to me. Enough is enough, sweetheart.”

Annis stared up at him in wonderment. Here was a truly brave man. His calm acceptance of what most men would find to be a liver-curling revelation was something that brought him very close to the blood in her veins and the marrow of her bones. Terribly, wonderfully, seductively close.

How tempting to think of showing him a little of what she could do. How she would like to dazzle him, the master of horse, with her own horse magic. She would smear his hands with a potion that would make his fine, famous mounts shy away from him as if he were a stranger. She would tell him of the horse charms that would make the vicious horse docile, the skittish pony stand still for its first shooing, the hard-to-catch stallion come at a call. She would tell him of the ancient secret cult of the horse shamans and how Devona’s great-great-grandmother had seen the last of them, curvetting with their herds under the full moon in their bronze and leather finery.

But then merciless logic set in, and she knew she could never tell Lord Nicholas Ryder any of these things. “This conversation is preposterous, and I must go.”

He nodded but made no move to vacate the doorway. “Very well, deny yourself if you will. That’s what witches do, isn’t it, when they’re caught? But before you go, let me ask you something, Annis of the witchly name and uncanny associations. Is the Devil himself my rival for your affections?” He didn’t sound particularly intimidated, just curious. “Isn’t it the Devil that witches acknowledge as their master? And with whom they take their pleasure?”

Annis found that she simply could not walk out the door without disabusing him of the vile canard that had gotten so many women hung or burnt. It was a slur that she could not let stand.

“Since we are speaking of things commonly known in the Devon countryside, I will tell you that by general repute, witches are wise women who would never worship an evil devil, but rather revere the Horned Hunter of the Wildwood, the Prince of Nature, the Lord of Potency and Fertility, the lover and consort of the Goddess...”

Somehow this explanation wasn’t going in the edifying manner she had intended, and she wished he would stop looking at her in a way that lit white-hot, terribly imprudent yearnings in her breast. “But I’m sure,” she chirped, rather in the manner of a cricket that had landed on a hot rock, “that you aren’t interested in our rustic country lore, so I’ll bid you good day. Shall I be seeing you at Mrs. Bunberry’s whist party?”

He nodded gravely. “Where you go, I follow. Even—God help me—to Mrs. Bunberry’s whist table.” Then he stood aside and let her flee the room.

Shortly after Mrs. Fulton’s precipitous departure, Ryder’s butler, Curran, appeared on the library threshold. “A gentleman to see you, my lord.” Something about Curran’s tone indicated that a gentleman the visitor was not. “A Mr. John Vickery. From the Bow Street Police Office. He is most...insistent.”

“All right. Show him in.” And then, for no particular reason that he could think of, Ryder took the letter concerning Annis Fulton’s past and concealed it in a back edition of the Annals of Agriculture.

Mr. Vickery was a man of medium build, respectable in his dress, but far from modish. He had thinning brown hair and a bland, almost babyish face. Ryder was not deceived by his appearance. He knew John Vickery to be one of the most celebrated of the Bow Street Runners.

Vickery got immediately to the point. “I should like to know, my lord, if you are acquainted with a young woman of about twenty years of age, slender build, darkish hair, and green eyes.”

“I daresay it’s possible,” Ryder said, genuinely puzzled, “but no one in particular comes to mind.”

“Not even Belinda Riggs, one of Belle Barlow’s Cyprians?” asked Vickery, watching him unblinkingly.

Ryder drew a careful breath. “I can only repeat that no one comes to mind, and I should like to know why you are making this inquiry.”

“Several days ago, my lord, the corpse of a young woman, naked, with her throat cut, was found upon the altar at St. Bartholomew. An inquiry determined that the girl was this Belinda of Mrs. Barlow’s establishment. When questioned, Mrs. Barlow informed us that you had taken a woman out of her place three nights before the body was found.”

“And you gentlemen at Bow Street are ready to credit any tale of Mrs. Barlow’s.”

“As to that, we have no love for that woman or her ilk. But murder has been done, a sanctuary of the Church of England has been defiled, and we are obliged to investigate. You are not a man easy to misidentify, and there are witnesses willing to swear to your presence at Mrs. Barlow’s on the night in question.” He pulled his Occurrence Book from his pocket and poised a pencil over it. “If your lordship would care to recount the events of that evening?”

Ryder shrugged. “Certainly. While I was at Mrs. Barlow’s establishment, a young woman confided to me that she wished to leave the premises, but Mrs. Barlow would not permit it. I assisted her in making her escape—and on that account, I’m sure Mrs. Barlow would like to make me pay. But I did not cut the young lady’s throat and leave her on a church altar in the altogether.”

If Vickery was skeptical of this, he did not show it. “If you will give me the lady’s name and direction, I will proceed there and interview her.”

“I have no intention of giving you her name. It would be a betrayal of her trust, and it would make her vulnerable to Belle Barlow.”

And so Curran was forced to stand by in silent indignation while some Bow Street Dogberry poked his nose into every nook and cranny of my lord’s residence. My lord was considerably less perturbed. The only thing he had to hide was safely concealed in the Annals of Agriculture to which Vickery gave not a glance.

“Not at present. But I must ask you to come with me to view the body of the young woman. Perhaps the sight of her will improve your memory. And one thing more...” Vickery’s bland voice hardened. “Do not think we will be dilatory in our investigation because you can plead your peerage.”

It clearly didn’t sit well with the Runner that his prime suspect had a hereditary right to trial in the House of Lords rather than pleading his case before commoners in the criminal courts.

“I plead nothing,” Ryder said through his teeth, “for I’ve done nothing.”

“As you say, my lord. And now I trust you are agreeable to accompanying me to the charnel house.”

Ryder smiled thinly. “I’m always agreeable, Mr. Vickery, when I have no other choice.”

He got into Vickery’s carriage along with two other Runners who watched him closely, as if he were already condemned. I have been playing with witchfire, and now I have got myself properly burned. Annis, see what you’ve brought me to.

Lord Ryder did not appear at Mrs. Bunberry’s whist party. Nor did he appear at Lady Petersham’s charity bazaar, nor at Miss Laurence’s garden party. Annis did not know whether to be grieved or relieved. She was sitting in the library brooding about it when Pym appeared, looking gloomier than usual.

“There is a person to see you, madam. He claims to be Lord Ryder’s coachman, and he demands to speak with you.”

“I’ll see him at once,” she ordered, and a few minutes later Sloane clumped in, a large, rough-hewn man who looked ill at ease in the literary surroundings of the Camden House library.

His account of the murder inquiry confirmed that Ryder was indeed in a bad fix. The fact that the victim’s body was found on a church altar made Annis go pale. A blood sacrifice. Altar meat. That’s why the poor girl was killed in such a manner. The blood magic of the city was roused, and Nick was drawn into it.

“I fear,” Sloane was saying, “that Mrs. Barlow means to testify that the dead girl was the one his lordship got away from her place.”

“She lies then.” Annis fairly spat the words at him. “She could never be mistaken about my identity.”

“But she has cozened the Runners to her way of thinking, and Lord Nick has commanded myself and the two grooms to silence. The grooms are off his estate. When they got old enough, they followed him into the cavalry. They’ll never cross him. But I’m a London man, his lordship’s sergeant from when he was a green lieutenant, and I will cross him for his own good. So I came to tell you that today at one o’clock, he faces an interview with the Bow Street Magistrate.”

Sloane spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “His lordship’s barrister, Mr. Sedgewick, was in the greatest despair that his lordship would not name you. I think he fears that if you don’t come forward, the magistrate will commit Lord Nick to the Tower to await trial before the Lords.”

“Worse than that. The Lords will hang him if they think he did murder—especially with the corpse left in a church. The people will demand it, and the Lords will have to order him stretched, the way they done that Lord Ferrers for murdering his groom.”

“That won’t happen, Sloane. I won’t let it.” She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s nearly one o’clock now. Why are you not with him?”

“Mr. Sedgewick conveys his lordship in his own rig. I took the chance to come here and lay the story before you.”

“You were right to tell me. Put your fears to rest. Your master will not face the magistrate alone. I’ll be ready directly.”

As soon as Sloane departed, Annis rushed across the hall to the salon and was relieved to see that Clare had detached herself from Jamie’s side for a few minutes. Jamie’s greeting was silenced by her distraught expression.

“It’s Nick,” she began, and when she finished Jamie exploded, “Damn and blast that bloody hag! I had a feeling we’d not heard the last of her.”

Annis made herself scarce to deal with her buttons and curls and then returned to see how Jamie was faring in his confession. Apparently, all was well, for she found the young couple locked in a fervent embrace.

“Of course it does,” declared Clare, who for all her shy ways possessed a strong practical streak. “I would never get up in the boughs over some ladybird Jamie had in keeping before he met me. I shall only mind the ones he takes up with from now on.”

Jamie shook his head in rueful denial. “You’ve nothing to fear on that score. I won’t be a rake once we’re wed. I see now that I lack the constitution for it.” Taking his hat and gloves from Pym, he added, “I’m going with you, Annis. I’d be the biggest rascal unhung to let you and Nick face this alone.”

Annis regarded her little sister with exasperation. “There’s no need for you to be drawn into this.”

But Clare was determined, and Annis had neither the time nor the inclination to argue with her. Later, she would wish with all her heart that she had.

They dashed past the puzzled Pym and ran outside to where Ryder’s carriage was waiting.