Page 87 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“Are you certain you remember nothing else about the night Briggs was attacked?” the marquis purred.
Nagle licked his lips, but he had not entirely forgotten the presence of his other customer, the one who lingered in the shadows by the rear door.
Nagle said, “If I remembered anything, I would have said so.”
He could feel the weight of the marquis’s displeasure. But all his lordship did was to lay several pound notes by his calling card. “If your memory should improve, sir, I trust you will wait upon me. I could make it worth your trouble. My name and direction are written upon the card.”
Nagle nodded in jerky fashion. He did not feel able to breathe freely until the marquis had turned and strode back out of the tavern. Then Nagle pounced upon the card and the money, shoving them deep in the pocket of his dirty apron.
The customer who had been lounging at the back of the tavern now stepped up to the bar. Nagle tried not to give a nervous start.
“What was that all about, George?” the young man asked.
Nagle knew enough about Gideon Palmer not to be fooled by the deceptive pleasantry in Palmer’s voice.
The tavern host forced a shrug. “Only some high and mighty lordship with nothing better to do than bother an honest working man with a deal of questions he can’t answer.”
“Mandell,” Gideon muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Palmer stroked the scar that disfigured his chin. “So, what did his lordship wish to know?”
“Just a deal of nonsense about the night that Briggs fellow was attacked and about the Hook.”
“And what did you tell him my dear friend George?”
The question was soft, but Nagle felt the hairs prickle along the back of his neck.
“I had nothing to tell his lordship, did I?” Nagle blustered. “And I wouldn’t if I did. I have too much regard for my own skin and besides that, I have no patience for fellows as would squeak for a handful of coins.”
“At least that is one thing we have in common, George,” Gideon said with a silky smile. “Neither do I.”
Mandell urged his black gelding through the gates into St. James’s Park, the fresh smell of the grass and warm spring breeze dispelling the stench that clung to him from the Running Cat tavern, a noisome combination of sour spirits and stale smoke. There was nothing so enlightening, Mandell thought wryly, as returning to the scene of one’s drunken revels when one was stone cold sober.
He had only returned to the tavern out of sheer frustration at Briggs’s continued silence. Although Lancelot had recovered enough to sit up in bed, he seemed to retreat deeper into himself each day, shrinking from receiving any visitors, especiallyMandell. If Briggs’s assailant was to be apprehended, Mandell realized he would have to seek information from some other quarter.
Wheeling his horse into the leafy path that led toward the lake, Mandell grimaced at the image of himself visiting the tavern, playing at Bow Street Runner, a piece of pure foolishness that had gained him nothing. He did not know why he had bothered. Briggs was obviously beyond caring whether the Hook was captured or not. It would do little to aide his recovery or even assuage Mandell’s guilt to charge about acting like some heroic avenger.
What he needed to do was to forget the whole sad and frustrating affair and regain his aura of cool detachment, something that he strove to do as he drew back on the reins, checking both his own impatience and the gelding’s urge to break into a gallop.
Mandell focused his thoughts upon the rendezvous he had come to keep, in its own way a folly as great as his efforts to unmask the Hook. These visits to the park were a far sweeter pursuit, but equally as mad.
Since the weather had turned fine, Anne brought her daughter to St. James’s before the park became too crowded with young bucks showing off their flashy phaetons and ladies unfurling their parasols, determined to be seen abroad at the fashionable hour. Mandell had taken to joining Anne and Norrie on their daily walk by the lake.
It was a strange habit for the cynical marquis of Mandell to have formed, he reflected. Certainly not his usual mode of courting a woman, strolling with her through the sedate walkways of St. James, helping her little girl feed bread to the ducks. No doubt it was the spring air filling his lungs, the breeze upon his cheek as warm and heady as a kiss that made him so eager for these afternoon jaunts.
As he drew closer to the pond, he caught himself leaning forward in the saddle, straining for his first glimpse of Anne. His mistress.
The word still seemed wrong to him when applied to Anne, almost unholy. Even though he had managed to steal her away to his bed twice more since the first night they had made love, he preferred to think of her as his friend. It was a question of semantics, a way perhaps of avoiding the harsh realities of their relationship. But it was the only way he seemed able to continue to meet the innocence of her gaze and that of her daughter.
As he rounded a bend, the lake stretched out before him, and in the far distance, the stately buildings of the Horse Guard and Downing Street. The water shimmered in the sunlight, smooth as a looking glass, the surface broken only by the wakes of the majestic swans swimming near the embankment. A willow bowed over the embankment, its slender green branches trailing like a maiden’s hair to the water’s edge.
It was a scene of enchantment, a fitting setting for the little girl with the fairy-gold curls astride the snow-white pony. The leading reins were grasped firmly in the hands of a sturdy young groom, but Mandell found the picture incomplete.
He drew up with a frown of surprise when he saw no sign of Anne. She was usually never far from Norrie’s side. Mandell had teased Anne about her tendency to hover, assuring her that for all of Norrie’s air of fragility, she was a sturdy imp who would doubtless give her mama many uneasy moments when she grew a little older.
But he was given no time to reflect upon the mystery of Anne’s whereabouts, for at that instant, Norrie spied his approach. She whipped her chip straw hat off her head, hailing him with its flowing pink ribbons as he approached. Her small face lit up with a joy and adoring trust that touched a corner of Mandell’s heart he was not even aware existed.
