Page 45 of One Perfect Dance
He descended the steps to the street with his mind joyfully employed on imagining those things, oblivious to his surroundings until Rex’s body crashed against his and they tumbled to the footpath. Even as he fell, his mind replayed the sharp bark of a rifle, heard through the din of the busy street. As Rex rolled off him and he took cover behind a cart parked in the road, he was already scanning the rooftops on the other side of the road.
A dark-clad figure holding a rifle clambered up a roof on the other side of the street and disappeared over the ridge. A moment later, the person topped the ridge behind and presumably kept going
Rex had hurried back up the steps and was exploring the dent the bullet had gouged in one of the stone pillars that held up the portico. “Definitely a bullet.” he reported.
“Definitely a rifleman,” Ash said. “I saw him running away.”
Rex was scanning the ground. “It dropped here.” He stooped and came up again with a lump of misshapen lead.
“Good reactions,” Ash told him.
Rex shrugged. “I saw a glint off the barrel. On the way down, I thought—it couldn’t be a rifle. Not in London!”
Ash was still scanning the rooftops. “I cannot see any movement.” He grinned at his friend. “I’m glad you didn’t stop for second thoughts. Was that for you or for me?”
Rex shrugged. “Or a case of mistaken identity. I have to say it rather confirms that the falling stone incident outside Tolliver’s was no accident.”
“Lord Barker mentioned a firm of enquiry agents, Rex. I think we should call them in.”
A few pedestrians had stopped to stare, but most of the traffic—foot, hooved, and wheeled—continued, oblivious to the attack. Two of the men were lascars by their dress and complexion, like those present when the stone block narrowly missed them after the meeting with Tolliver. These were unlikely to be the same two. London attracted people from all over the world, and many British ships sailing to and from India and nearby lands employed locals from those parts as sailors.
In any case, there was nothing to connect two men in the street to the man on the rooftop. Ash shook off his momentary distraction and followed Rex across the road.
By the time Ash and Rex made their way around the row of buildings opposite the club, the gunman was long gone. As they looked up at the back of the most likely house, Ash noticed a groom watching them from inside a stable that let onto the alley.
“Hey,” Ash called. “Did you see a man come down of the roof here?”
The man shuffled a few steps forward and reported seeing a man drop from the roof onto an outbuilding and from there into the alley, where he had mounted a waiting horse and ridden off.
The groom couldn’t describe the man except in the most general terms. Medium height. Heavy build. Dark clothes. A hat. No, he didn’t see the man’s face or any other features that might distinguish him. No, he didn’t try to stop him. Wasn’t his business, was it?
And that was it. Nothing to give them a lead.
“We’ll see what the enquiry agent turns up,” Ash said.
“We’ll have a chance to catch the villain when he tries again,” Rex said, ghoulishly.
*
When she wokethe next day, Regina’s first thought was of Ash’s kisses, and her second of Geoffrey. When she asked her maid whether the young master had come home, the answer was in the negative.
Unsettled by her physical yearnings, worried about Geoffrey, she decided to tidy her desk drawer—a humdrum task that might at least keep her occupied in one place instead of pacing to and fro like a wild beast.
In the back of the drawer, tied with string, was a bundle of letters. Her mother’s letters, mostly from the early year of Regina’s marriage. Her words to Geoffrey about holding a grudge, and William’s expression whenever he spoke of their mother, which hinted at the pain their estrangement caused him, came back to her.
She sat down and read them all again, starting with the first one she received, in which her mother wrote of her fear that Regina would have a marriage like her own, in which her husband found love elsewhere, and she was all alone. At the time, Regina had been angry at the insult to Regina’s father, but as she read the letter again, her heart ached for her mother.
By the time she had finished them all, she was crying. Her poor Mama. Her loneliness showed through the stiff and courteous questions about Geoffrey and Gideon, wry observations about life in the village, intelligent comments on current affairs.
Why had Regina never seen it before? Gideon had, she realized. He had told Regina that Mama was grieving—not just Papa’s death, but the sorrows of her marriage, which was so much less than she had hoped. That had fueled her anger, her grasping after Mr. Deffew as a suitor, her insistence that her world would come to an end if Regina did not elope with the horrid man.
Regina had first scoffed and then become so upset that he’d let the matter drop.
Her mother had written for the last time after Gideon was shot, when everyone, including the doctors, expected him to die. Regina had returned the letter unopened with her first reply to any of her mother’s letters wrapped around it. She could remember the precise words. “Leave me alone. I do not wish to hear from you.”
Regina blinked back tears. She had been so unfair! If only she could go back and respond differently. She swallowed against a suddenly thick throat. Poor Mama. Regina took a deep pained breath and shut her eyes. Would she be willing to forgive Regina after all these years? Regina had to try.
Geoffrey appeared late in the morning, slinking into the house with an expression Regina could only describe as surly.
