Page 65 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
Mandell was thunderstruck when Briggs shook his head. “You may curse me or mill me down, but there is nothing you can do to prevent me following you.”
Briggs’s plump chin set into an attitude of amazing stubbornness, his brown eyes filled with unwavering devotion.Mandell took a menacing step forward, but Briggs did not flinch from the expected blow.
Mandell heaved an exasperated sigh but was unable to proceed further. He turned away with an angry shrug.
“Very well,” he snarled. “Follow me to hell if you choose. But I give you fair warning. You’d best be able to look out for yourself when we get there.”
Mandell strode away without another backward glance.
The Running Cat tavern near Covent Garden was not precisely hell, but close enough. A haze of smoke blanketed the dingy taproom, half obscuring the group of coarse men dicing at one of the tables. A buxom serving wench slapped away the hand of a bold customer while an old sailor slumped in a corner over his bottle of gin. The pipe falling from his slack lips seemed in danger of setting the entire place afire.
But the den of noise, stifling heat, and stale beer made little impression upon Mandell, no more than did the scantily clad woman who had settled herself upon his knee. She possessed a hardened kind of prettiness, her long black hair spilling about her half-bare shoulders, her expression as weary and jaded as Mandell himself. She pressed kisses against his neck with a practiced skill and nibbled at his ear, but Mandell struggled to focus on the murky darkness beyond one of the tavern’s narrow windows. How many more hours would it be until dawn, he wondered. How long until he was exhausted or drunk enough to find the oblivion of dreamless sleep?
He sought to reach past the wench nuzzling him, groping toward the table to find his glass of whiskey again, but she stopped him, murmuring, “I’ve got a little room upstairs, m’lord, an’ it would please you to bear me company there.”
She began to undo the buttons of his shirt with a kind of rough impatience. It was then that Mandell realized his frockcoat and cravat were missing, but he had no notion what he had done with them over the course of the evening. The girl slipped her hand inside his shirt and began to knead the hair-roughened flesh of his chest. Mandell attempted to conjure some stirring of response, but all he could think of was the gentle way Anne had touched him last night in his bed, her slender fingers skimming over him with a kind of wonder. Would he never be able to get images of that lady out of his head? He gritted his teeth, but the vision of Anne’s blue eyes persisted. The cloying odor of the black-haired woman’s perfume repulsed him. With an oath, he thrust the doxy off his knee.
She staggered a little but regained her balance. Her full lips curved into a sullen pout. “Did I do something wrong, milord?”
It was a painful echo of the same thing Anne had said to him.
“No!” Mandell snapped. He groped about for his purse. In this place, he was astonished he had not already been relieved of it.
“You aren’t the first man who ever got too drunk to perform,” the girl said. “But there are other things I could do to?—”
Mandell cut off her suggestion by shoving a handful of guineas at her. “Go upstairs and try sleeping for a change.”
The girl regarded him with surprise, then shrugged and took the money. As she sashayed away from him, Mandell leaned his head back against the rim of his chair and closed his eyes.
He had no idea how he had got himself to this place or even what else he had been doing this evening. He had foggy memories of White’s, lurching along in a hackney cab, frequenting some other gaming hells that all blurred into one. He had stumbled along some refuse-strewn back street and rousted a shopkeeper from his bed to ... Mandell believed he had bought something, but that was absurd. What would he have wanted to purchase at this hour of night?
Massaging the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, he frowned, beginning to feel the throbbing effects of the amount of spirits he had consumed. He was drunk, but not drunk enough to blot out the things he most wanted to forget—Anne, his grandfather, the ages-old nightmare that still threatened to claim him if he dared to sleep.
Mandell forced his eyes open and realized someone was hovering over him. Lancelot Briggs, wearing that whipped puppy look that Mandell so despised.
“Damnation,” Mandell growled. “You still here? I thought I’d finally lost you back ... back in—well, somewhere.”
”No, my lord.” Briggs perched himself on the edge of the wooden chair opposite Mandell. He had Mandell’s frock coat and cravat draped over his arm.
Struggling to an upright position, Mandell demanded, “So what’re you about now? Applying for a post as my valet?”
“No, I am simply trying to make sure you leave here without misplacing anything.” Briggs regarded him hopefully. “My lord is ready to go home now, perhaps?”
“And perhaps not,” Mandell said, locating his whiskey glass. “What’s the matter, Briggs? Are you not enjoying yourself?”
“No, I don’t like it here.”
“Surely you are not afraid? The bold Sir Lancelot who once encountered the Hook himself, who has pledged to aid in that villain’s capture and eventual hanging?”
“Don’t taunt me, Mandell. I am frightened and I am not ashamed to admit it. There are all manner of evil wretches hanging about this part of town. Especially that soldier over there by the rum keg. He has a wicked-looking scar on his chin and he has been staring at us in a most suspicious manner.”
Mandell bestirred himself enough to glance in that direction. He saw only a scullery boy in a greasy apron.
“You’re imagining things, Briggs,” he scoffed. “Have another whiskey. If you’re going to hallucinate, you might as well be as drunk as I am.”
Briggs declined. He drew forth his pocket watch. Snapping open the gold case, he consulted it with a weary sigh. “It is not so late. Maybe we could leave and go call upon your cousin Nick. Yes, that would be the very thing. He would know what to do.”
“What the devil would I want with Drummond? I am in no mood for any speeches.”
