Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 0] Read online

  She stole a look behind her as the carriage she’d hired rolled through the late-summer drizzle. Once she’d left the interview, she’d dashed into an alley to pull her dress on over her waistcoat and trousers and her bonnet over her ruined hair before making the journey back to the boardinghouse.

  She didn’t trust her landlady, Mrs. Farquart, not to interfere with her plan and she honestly didn’t know how to make her way across town as a man.

  As it was, her one shabby dress had caused most of the carriage drivers to pass her by for richer fare. She’d been fortunate to catch this cabbie whose tattered vehicle was even more disreputable-looking than herself. He’d still asked her to show him her purse before he’d taken the fare.

  Now she wished she’d kept Phillip’s masculine armor for a bit longer. Was someone following her again? She wasn’t sure, nor was she sure about the previous occasions either.

  Ever since she had come to London on the run from Napoleon’s soldiers and searching for the one man her father had trusted, the city had played tricks on her vision, her memory, and her pocketbook.

  Of course, it was possible that there was no one after her at all. She might be jumping at shadows, seeing things that weren’t there—French spies around every corner—

  Yet they had come before. In the night, tramping through the Spanish village of Arieta, pounding on the door of the villa where she lived so quietly with Papa.

  Papa had known precisely what the soldiers had wanted somehow. Without so much as peering through a window, he had acted.

  As she had stood at the foot of the stairs in her nightdress, shivering more from a sense of unreality than from cold, he’d rushed to his study where he’d flicked open his wall safe with one motion and emptied it into a bag.

  He had directed her to fetch traveling clothes and boots from her room, then ordered her into a small opening that had somehow appeared next to the fireplace in the back parlor.

  It was not much bigger than a sea chest, not high enough to stand in, not wide enough to lie down. He’d stuffed her in with her things in her lap and his satchel at her feet.

  “It’s Napoleon’s men. Stay still. Not a word. I’ll let you out soon. If . . . if I don’t, go to London,” he’d whispered. “Change your name. Travel quietly. There’s a little money in the bag, enough for your passage. Go to Martin Upkirk, in Cheapside High Street.”

  “But Papa, what—”

  He’d put a finger to her lips, dropped a kiss on her brow, then shut her into the darkness. She’d stayed, her long habit of obedience fighting her impulse to burst from hiding as she’d covered her face with her hands and listened to the muffled sounds outside her tiny cell.

  Her father’s voice, seemingly calm and unconcerned. A deeper voice, rough and impatient. Angry words, not quite understandable. Then a series of crashing sounds, as if someone were throwing their things about the rooms and against the walls.

  A scuffle of feet . . . a cry of pain . . .

  Then the tramping footsteps had retreated and the house had become silent. Still she waited for Papa to open the panel and release her, to take her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.

  He hadn’t come. That’s when she’d known that nothing would ever be all right again.

  It had seemed to take hours to discover the tiny ridge between the panels that held the trigger to the door of her little prison, then even longer for her to activate it.

  Finally the small panel had sprung open and she had crawled from her hiding place, her back and legs aching from their cramped confinement.

  The house was a shambles. Her mother’s china lay in shards on the stained and littered carpet. Shredded pages of their precious library lay scattered, while more books smoldered sadly in the grate. Barefoot, Phillipa picked her way through the empty house, her careful calls for Papa resounding in the silence.

  Her own clothing had been shredded on the floor of her bedchamber. In fact, her room and Papa’s study seemed to have taken the worst of the damage. It was as if the intruders had been looking for something they had not found, and had taken their frustrations out on the empty rooms.

  And perhaps on Papa.

  That last cry of pain echoed through Phillipa’s mind again as she sat in the rocking carriage. She blinked, tearing her thoughts from the past to look about her. Some sound from the street around her had startled her, but she could not say what. These streets were always filled with the sounds of violence and suffering.

  She had no proof of her suspicions of being hunted. None but for the way her chamber in Arieta had been targeted and later the way her uncle had fearfully rushed her from his home.

  As well as that feeling—the one that set the hairs on her neck to tingling. The one that never truly went away.

  The hired carriage pulled to a rough stop a block away from her boardinghouse, just as she’d requested. “ ’Ere you go, miss.” The driver didn’t bother to help her from her seat on the shabby cushions.

  Phillipa hopped down on her own, then turned back to the driver. “I’ll only be a moment. If you’ll wait, I’ll pay you extra to take me back to Mayfair.”

  The driver nodded indifferently. “Mind you, don’t keep me long, then. I’ll not waste the daylight on ye.”

  His dull eyes sent her a glare that said, Return or rot in hell, it’s all the same to me. She shivered, reminded that London was a hard place of cobbles and stone, where death occurred daily and danger even more often.

  Well, there’d be no more of that, for she now had a mission and a safe place to stay. Thank heavens for Mr. Cunnington’s naiveté in this matter.

  Phillipa ducked into a shop and turned her flimsy blue summer cloak to show the brown lining. That left the clammy wet side against her, but if she were being followed, it might just break the trail. She also slouched deeply and affected a slight limp, just to confound any possible pursuers further.

  Finally she reached the house where she had taken a room and breathed a sigh of relief. With determination, she reminded herself that today was the last time she’d have to come to this dreary place or travel through those lawless streets.

  Phillipa paid Mrs. Farquart the back rent she was owed with her chin high, daring the sour-faced woman to challenge her sudden wealth. The landlady only scowled and counted out her change as if it hurt to let go of every copper.

  The woman held on to the last coin, pinching it thoughtfully between her thumb and finger. “Got something you might like to know.”

  Phillipa continued to hold out her hand. “My change please, Mrs. Farquart.”

  The woman shrugged. “Since you paid in full, I’ll give you a hint.” A smirk passed over her thin lips. “Someone was here today, looking for you. A bloke, a real gent.”

  Phillipa somehow kept her outstretched hand from trembling. “I’m sure there must have been a mistake. I know no one in London.”

  “Well, he knew you. Described you right to your hair, even knew about when you moved in.”

  Phillipa withdrew her hand to twine her fingers together. Let the woman keep the penny. “Someone who saw me on the street, no doubt.”

  The coin disappeared with breathtaking swiftness. Mrs. Farquart began to turn away, losing interest now that the money was hers. Phillipa stopped her.

  “This man—what did you tell him about me?”

  Mrs. Farquart shrugged but there was a dark glint in her sour gaze. “Huh. Told him nothing. Think I wanted you hauled off afore I got my back rent?”

  Meaning that now there was no counting on further secrecy. Nor was there a moment to lose.

  Phillipa dashed to her small dank room. There was no fire, nor had there ever been one, despite the pre-autumn chill. This sort of room didn’t come with amenities like coal or plentiful blankets.

  It didn’t take long to toss her few belongings into the bag she had carried with her in her flight from Arieta. She hesitated as she fingered the wool of her borrowed frock coat.

&nbs
p; It was time to return these things to Bessie’s trunk. Yet Phillipa knew it would be difficult to buy new things before she must return to Mr. Cunnington’s.

  Well, she would simply have to find new clothing on her own. It was bad enough to tell the necessary lies, she would not add stealing to her sins.

  When she checked for the trunk that had sat in the hall that morning, however, it was gone. Had Bessie returned?

  Mrs. Farquart knew the answer. She stood with her arms crossed in the front hall, sour disapproval etched on her craggy face. “She’s not returnin’. Kilt herself, she did. Flung herself right out the window of the hospital.”

  “Oh, dear Bessie.” Phillipa pressed one hand to her breast. Her neighbor had been grief-stricken, it was true, but Phillipa had never suspected that the woman would do something so drastic.

  “Her family come to take her things,” Mrs. Farquart continued, flicking her glance to Phillipa’s own small bag.

  “Oh,” Phillipa said faintly. She felt terrible that she had removed the clothing from the trunk now. “Well, it’s good that her loved ones can benefit from her husband’s pay.”

  It had merely been an innocent comment, but Mrs. Farquart’s reaction was harsh and immediate. She grabbed Phillipa’s wrist in her talons.

  “What d’you know about the pay?”

  Astonished, Phillipa could only blink as she stammered an answer. “B—Bessie had t-two years of pay saved in her trunk. She and her husband were going to open a shop when he returned home.”

  Evident fury and fear washed Mrs. Farquart’s face white. “That money weren’t in the trunk when her family come for it.”

  Phillipa didn’t grasp her meaning at first. Then her own fury spilled over and she wrenched her arm from the landlady’s grasp. “Well, I didn’t take it out.”

  “You must have!” shouted the woman. “Yes, it was you. You took it! I knew you were a liar and a thief the minute I laid eyes on you!”

  “If anyone took it, it was you! You’re a harsh and wicked woman, Mrs. Farquart, and I’m mightily glad to be quit of this house!” Phillipa grabbed up her bag in one hand and her skirts in the other and made a run for the door. Mrs. Farquart had always been sour and rude, but this was downright frightening.

  “I’ll call the law down on you, thief!” shrieked the woman as Phillipa dashed down the street to where her conveyance still waited. “I’ll call the watch to take you clean away!”

  The absurdity of the woman’s fury and her own flight into the darkening afternoon suddenly struck Phillipa as laughable. Mrs. Farquart thought to strike fear into Phillipa’s heart with threats of the lazy, bounty-chasing London watchmen?

  That should be alarming when Napoleon himself was after her?

  Chapter Three

  By the time James approached the Liar’s Club where it stood on the edge of the fashionable part of town—a sector where the underworld and upper classes mingled in pursuit of pleasure and entertainment—dusk was overshadowing the already gray sky and the lanterns hanging from all the carriages and carts had been lighted.

  At the corner just before the club, James spotted a familiar figure. A tattered little man stood with one shoulder leaning into an unmarked doorway, just barely out of the rain. James couldn’t see his face, but that practiced air of inoffensiveness was very Feebles. The wiry little pickpocket was one of the less house-broken of the Liars. Oh, he was loyal to the core, but he worked best on his own, scorning the club environs yet gathering information in seemingly magical ways. And there was none better at tailing a suspect, for swift and nimble Feebles could become even more invisible at will.

  Feebles didn’t take a bit of notice of James, but James knew the fellow saw him. He raised a finger to his hat brim, ostensibly to pull it down to block the wet. Feebles was looking in an altogether different direction, but he responded with a slight shrug. Grinning slightly to himself, James went on.

  James contemplated taking a more discreet route to the club—say, down the back alley and up the side of the building—but with the misting dampness, the ledge that led to the secret “back door” of the club was not likely to be too comfortable at the moment.

  At any rate, his hat was pulled low and his collar had been turned up for blocks, like every other bloke fool enough to walk in this weather.

  Deciding to risk an open entry this time, James dashed across the street to where a plump doorman stood under a nondescript awning. The doorman’s eyes widened, but he opened the door quickly, then followed James in to help him remove his coat.

  In the process, Stubbs leaned close to whisper in James’s ear, although there were no members yet gracing the outer rooms of the public Liar’s Club. “Himself is waitin’ for ye in the cry—the cryptol—the code room.”

  James sighed at Stubbs’s stumbling words. The fellow was officially his apprentice, but the former street orphan had never had the merest lick of schooling. “Have you been practicing your letters and your mathematics like I told you, Stubbs?”

  “I tried, sir. I just can’t make no sense of that primer book.” Stubbs’s earnest face had reddened when James turned around.

  James nodded, praying that he at least appeared patient. “I know it’s difficult. But you cannot operate as a saboteur if you cannot read and add, Stubbs. You’ll blow up mutton instead of muskets. And how will you make your explosives if you cannot mix and measure?”

  Stubbs nodded miserably, his pale blue eyes defeated. James clapped him on the shoulder and added heartily, “You can do it, man! Just keep at it!”

  With that James turned away, hoping Stubbs wouldn’t pursue the subject. He didn’t know how to teach someone to read, for pity’s sake. He could barely get Robbie to bathe semiregularly.

  Perhaps he ought to send Stubbs to school, now that Agatha and her husband, Sir Simon Raines, had opened a spy-training academy across the street. Although it stood under the guise of a charity school for the less fortunate, the newest recruits would be coming into the Liar’s Club with all the advantages of education and deportment that Agatha’s considerable persistence could drum into their heads.

  A boon for the future Liars to be sure, but not likely to be much help to poor Stubbs. James didn’t think that the nearly thirty-year-old Stubbs would take well to sitting out lessons with the younger blokes now being trained. The man had been a working Liar for years, and had a phenomenal mechanical aptitude.

  Perfect for a saboteur and entirely trainable, if James could only get him past the barrier of his extensive ignorance.

  I shall add it to my list. Feeling rather bowed under the weight of it all, James tried to think of something else as he climbed the stair to the next floor.

  Like the surprising appeal of long red locks when he’d always been partial to golden tresses.

  James ran a hand over his face, self-disgust rising anew. Last night had been something of a revelation. He’d thought his baser impulses had been quelled by his experience with Lavinia. Apparently he’d only been lying to himself. It was a good thing he would never see the anonymous flame-haired woman again.

  Jackham was coming down as James was going up, his grizzled head bent as he managed the stairs one at a time. “Hullo, Cunnington.”

  The club’s manager was getting about more slowly than usual this afternoon. Bones broken in a fall long ago had taken one of London’s finest jewel thieves out of the profession forever. The previous spymaster, Simon Raines, had hired his old friend to run the public portion of the club, while carefully keeping the admittedly greedy Jackham out of the inner circle.

  Jackham knew the Liars, every one, but believed the club was a front for thieves. All the resources behind the wall had been explained to Jackham as tools for the elaborately planned jobs that fueled all their fortunes. The men were thieves, or thieves in training. The map room was for storing the building plans of all the finest houses—which in fact it did, along with secret routes in and out of Paris and Napoleon’s many properties. The code room took
a bit more explaining, of course. But Jackham didn’t worry much about the details, not as long as his cut was littered with jewels and the club continued to turn a profit.

  Jackham enjoyed his work, for he was a fine hand with making money and he knew his whisky, and keeping up the “thieves’ den” secret made him feel part of his old life.

  James smiled slightly. He’d always been fond of the openly larcenous older fellow. “Feeling the weather, Jackham?”

  The man stopped to tug his usual hideous waistcoat into place. “Had worse, I have. Had better too before this summer.” Jackham had taken the deaths of the Liars hard, as had they all.

  James nodded and moved on. He wasn’t in the mood for casual conversation, even with such an old friend as Jackham.

  The hallway above led to a number of rooms that were used by various Liars when needed, a good place to bed down for a few nights between missions when things were hectic, the way they always were these days.

  To someone off the street, the rooms would seem to be nothing more than the usual rather monastic bedchambers common to gentlemen’s clubs around the city.

  The difference lay behind these rooms. James walked to the end of the hall, to where the carpet ended at a wall elaborately paneled in gleaming oak. With one hand he pressed upon a single small panel above his head. With the other, he pressed on another panel at waist height.

  The wall before him shifted with a click, then retreated a few inches, enough for James to slide it to one side and step through the opening. The door returned to its former position on its carefully calibrated springs and clicked back into being a featureless wall.

  On this side, the hallway was slightly less gleaming, slightly more threadbare and—as the smell of old books and slightly damp wool carpet rose to meet him—far more welcoming.

  This was his home, not the fine London house he’d purchased at his sister’s behest, nor even Appleby, the Lancashire estate he’d inherited on the death of his father.

  This club was home, these men his family. What there was left of them . . .