Читать книгу The Midnight Man - Charlotte Mede - Страница 8

The light from the gas lamp swam before Helena’s eyes. No one moved. It was a frozen tableau, except for the fine trickle of cold perspiration that inched down between her shoulder blades. Ramsay’s arms held her like a vise, his strong profile turned to stone.

Then Madame Congais shifted, the rustle of her wide bombazine skirts breaking the spell. She pushed aside her majordomo with admirable vigor and addressed the constables on her doorstep directly through thinned lips.

“I shan’t have this, absolutely out of the question,” she said with the cool tones of a barrister mounting an argument in court. “I don’t care if the Archbishop of Canterbury himself sent you, but I shall not have a disturbance in my home. I have guests,” she added, too astute and too experienced to blush or dissemble, “and I will not have them exposed to such mayhem.” Throwing the ruddy-faced constable a shrewd glance, she continued unabated. “As a matter of fact, I believe that there are several judges gracing my table this evening who would, without doubt, look askance at such an inexcusable interruption.”

Ramsay pushed Helena behind him, his broad back blocking the doorway. “Gentlemen…” he began.

A chill shot up the back of her neck, followed by a pure surge of survival. Spinning around, she launched herself through the hallway, bursting ahead. A quick left and then back through the main salon, and if there was anybody following, she didn’t want to know. The inhabitants of the salon had dwindled to a few drunken sops, their eyes unfocused and their snores reverberating in the darkness. Holding her breath, she leapt over a man lying on the floor, directly in her path. The lamps were turned down low as she continued her way to what she thought was the back of the residence.

Tension tight in her chest, she reminded herself to breathe. She wouldn’t, couldn’t think of Ramsay now, or wait until she felt his hard, hot exhalations on the back of her neck, the cruel grip of his hands. She should have known that he was involved with Sissinghurst, and if it hadn’t been for the fog shrouding her reason and her senses…She wiped the imprint of his strong features, those empty eyes, from her mind.

A light hand skimmed her shoulder and she jumped. “Lady Hartford,” Madame Congais whispered, pulling her toward a dimly lit corridor to the right of the salon. “This way.”

Her mind now blazingly clear, Helena made a quick decision to trust the woman, as though she had any other choice. Leaving behind the richly paneled décor of the main house, the passageway narrowed to emerge into the kitchen where kettles gleamed and the smell of baking wafted in the air in incongruous contrast with the decadent luxury and musky perfume of the main house.

Pulling her cloak more closely around her, Helena first looked for an exit and then into the eyes of her unexpected benefactor. Madame Congais was older than she first appeared, with delicate papery lines fanning out from her rouged lips and cheeks. A canny intelligence emanated from her like the bouquet from a finely aged wine.

“You needn’t explain, Lady Hartford.” Madame Congais kept her voice low, suddenly losing her French accent. “I should know better than most how unfair the world can be to women.” She continued moving, pulling her toward the small exit leading to the courtyard behind the kitchen. “The authorities can be held off for a few moments longer, but you must make haste. Now, have you a place to go?”

Helena weighed her options—all appallingly dismal—deliberating how much to reveal. She glanced at the small window outlining the alleyway, anticipating that she was a few miles from Soho, but with her sturdy shoes she could arrive at her destination within the hour. If she wasn’t being followed. She refused to entertain the prospect. Terrifying enough that she had brought the authorities to Madame Congais’s door.

“I must apologize, madame,” she said, realizing full well that trouble clung to her like a black cloud, as her father had always reminded her. “I’ve jeopardized your enterprise by bringing the law to your establishment. I would dearly like to make amends. If you need anything, ever…”

Impulsively, she lightly touched the older woman’s arm. “And, yes, I think I have a place to go. Not here in Mayfair, but there’s a friend…” She thought it better not to complete the sentence. “I’ll go on foot, so as not to attract notice.”

Madame Congais colored beneath her fine makeup before stepping away, her pride visible in the straight set of her spine. “No need, no need at all to make amends,” she said briskly, pursing her lips. “I know about your generous donations to the Ladies’ Association for the Care of Friendless Girls and the schools, of course. You do enough already and very openly, with no regard for your own reputation.”

Helena shook her head, unable and unwilling to explain what compelled her to give away much of her fortune. “I have the means, after all. It is no great thing.” Yet it was the least she could do with the obscenely large inheritance that seemed to attract far more misfortune than it ever did good.

Madame Congais ushered her closer to the door, the set of her jaw firm. “But go, go now, Lady Hartford. I don’t know how long Ramsay can detain them.”

At the mention of the name, Helena’s ears strained for the sound of footsteps and suddenly she was cold, inside and out. “Detain them? I’m not so sure.” Uncertainty simmered beneath the statement. “Nicholas Ramsay’s appearance at your establishment here tonight to meet with me was surely no coincidence.”

Madame Congais stopped with her hand on the door frame. “There’s not much time for discussion, Lady Hartford.” She frowned, the corners at her eyes fanning out in fine wrinkles. “Let me simply say that you’re quite right in assuming that he’s not the type of man that does anything without purpose.”

“You know him well.” The question was rhetorical. Of course, Francine knew him well. Helena wondered what she was doing, wasting time, and for what exactly? She needed to leave, now.

Madame Congais opened the kitchen door quietly but noted Helena’s expression with seasoned expertise. “I won’t lie to you, Lady Hartford. Ramsay is both dangerous and powerful.” She paused significantly, as though sorting through memories she had long ago stored away. “I have, shall we say, a great depth of experience with those of the opposite sex, and I will warrant you this—Nicholas Ramsay defies definition of any kind.”

The words were enigmatic, breeding ever more suspicions like noxious weeds in an overgrown garden. Helena kept her voice low, despite the fear gathering beneath the surface of her tenuously controlled calm. “The warning comes just soon enough and I’m now doubly in your debt.” With a quick farewell, she slipped into the alleyway.

She sped down the narrow slope into the low fog and around the bend, past several stables and kitchen gardens. Her rapid footsteps echoed hollowly against the soot-stained walls of old buildings and along the uneven cobbled streets. Mindlessly, she raced past stone enclosures, green hedges, and hissing gas lamps, every shadow looming menacingly with renewed threat.

Pressing onward, muscles straining, she refused to give into panic. Her thoughts careened along with the blur of buildings and vegetation scattered with the images of Ramsay, Sissinghurst, and the duke merging into a sickening montage. She was afraid to look over her shoulder, and instead ran as if pursued by hell’s demons.

After a good fifteen minutes, she skirted around a curve to emerge on Leicester Square. The area was deserted and it was only an hour away from sunrise. She risked a look behind her and slowed to listen but heard no sound of pursuit, ignoring the scuttling noises coming from behind an untended shrub. Once the haunt of a few respectable families, the area was now filled with prostitutes, music halls, and small theaters. And artists. But even they were now abed.

Breathing hard, she resumed her hellbent run, her lungs absorbing the lingering aromas from the cheap eating houses that dotted the area and scented the gritty air. She rounded a puddle of slop and tore away from the square, scanning the horizon. Turning right, she made for another street that she knew would take her farther uphill and away from the shackles that awaited her at Madame Congais’s.

Finally, she allowed herself to slow, attending to the rhythm of her feet and the more measured beat of her heart. Chest heaving, she spared one more glance over her shoulder before turning abruptly into a mews, all former carriage houses, lined up like chess pieces in the dark. Adjusting her eyes to the gloom after the relatively well-lit streets, she counted three entryways before knocking softly on the fourth.

Answer, please answer. Helena adjusted her cloak, shook out the folds, and smoothed her hair, desperately hoping that she didn’t look like a wild thing. Then the door opened.

She flung herself into a bony chest and a pair of long arms, unable to hold herself back, her sense of relief spilling from every pore. “Thank God, you’re in, Horace. Thank God, you’re in,” she breathed, looking up into the kind eyes of the older man.

Without asking questions, he pulled her inside, shutting the door firmly behind them. Holding her quaking shoulders, he examined her face closely. “What is it, my dear? What’s happened now?”

Helena forced herself to straighten away from him, gathering her remaining strength around her like tattered rags. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, Horace,” she said, struggling to regain a semblance of composure. Despite her mad flight, she felt gripped by a strange chill that had taken over her body since her escape from Madame Congais’s. She regarded the rumpled man in his late forties, his sparse brown hair hiding a balding pate, with something like hope. His eyes were a generous warm brown.

“I could think of nowhere else to turn,” she said simply.

Horace Webb studied her quizzically, a frown marking his high brow, before gesturing her to take a seat by the hearth where a few embers still burned. The low-beamed room of what was formerly a stable was rustic, furnished in chintz and paisley for comfort rather than fashion, and ringed with canvases in various states of completion. For once Helena’s gaze did not linger on the images that crowded the small parlor.

Horace was still fully dressed, his waistcoat hanging open, but there was no sign of his mistress. Sitting down before the fire, her cloak billowing around her, she felt her heart slowing. “I apologize for this rash intrusion, but I was counting on the fact that you often work late into the evenings,” she rambled, reminding herself that this was her old friend who had supported her through many battles, despite his own often tumultuous personal life. “I’m sure Perdita has already retired for the night.”

“You’re in trouble,” Horace said bluntly, already pouring her tea from an earthenware pot that stood on the low table between them. “And, yes, Perdita has already retired.”

“When am I not?” Helena took the cup, relieved that her hands weren’t shaking, and sipped the tepid liquid gratefully.

Webb ran his palms down the front of his waistcoat, his features pinched and drawn. The silence between them was thick with memories, a shared past that had more shadows than either cared to acknowledge.

Webb would never forget the day he’d first met the rash young woman who was the daughter of a wealthy city merchant and who would proceed, in the coming years, to upend every last convention held dear to society. Six mornings a week, Burlington Gardens in London was invaded by a group of girls weighed down with portfolios, cases of drawing materials, and in one particular instance, overweening ambition. Already a member of the Royal Academy, he’d spied Helena setting up her easel on the dew-wet grass, a powerful landscape inexorably and inexplicably taking shape under her young hands. It was a portent of things to come and, sure enough, her talent had rapidly outstripped his own.

“You refuse to learn, don’t you, Helena?” Memories and resignation laced his tone. He remained standing, one hand in the embroidered pocket of his waistcoat. “Your willfulness has never been productive.”

Helena set down her tea, the porcelain clattering. She knew exactly to what he was referring, a continuing sore point between them. “Even if I hadn’t enrolled in the Royal Academy, my father would still have married me off to Hartford.” A well of sadness shone from her eyes even though her voice was emptied of emotion. “He wanted the title, and the old duke wanted my money.”

“It was not the worse misalliance, surely. You might have compromised, taken private lessons, confined yourself to water colors and rubbed along well enough with the old duke.”

Helena shook her head, feeling weary, silently and reluctantly acknowledging the Webb family connection with the duchy of Hartford. As with her late husband, Horace’s background was far more illustrious than hers, but however much she depended on him for his personal friendship, she could not understand the duplicitous life he continued to live, seemingly without emotional repercussions or societal censure. Married to Isabelle, with whom he shared four children, he maintained a separate household with Perdita only two miles down the road but a world away.

“Men have an easier time of it, managing to be upstanding gentlemen and wayward bohemians simultaneously.” She directed her words and irony to the smoking embers of the fireplace before returning to look at him directly, compelled to make her argument heard for at least the hundredth time. “And as you well know, I was one of the first female students who qualified when the Royal Academy Schools began accepting women. I couldn’t turn my back on the opportunity, not just for what it represented for me, but for what it represented for my sex.”

Horace sighed heavily. “I don’t deny you that opportunity, my dear. You know how much I admire and have supported you in your artistic endeavors. It’s simply that you continue to draw attention to yourself unnecessarily.” He winced when he recalled the first study she presented to the judges of the academy. It was audacious, an affront, a deliberate assault on the classical standards set by the establishment. And this at a time when female students were confined to drawing from the antique, followed by a slow progression to still life and then onward to the draped female model. “I’ve only ever wanted to help you,” he said with a stab of anguish.

Helena’s expression softened. “I know, dear Horace, and you can’t realize how much I’ve come to rely upon you to preserve my sanity in these past few years.”

Webb grimaced at her unfortunate choice of words. To mask his growing anxiety, he walked over to an easel and adjusted a drop cloth to cover the image of a pleasant drawing room scene. Helena had raged inconsolably the day her father had terminated her studies at the academy and had locked her in her rooms for a fortnight. When she emerged, dry-eyed and resolute, he had promptly married her off to a man who was more than twice her age and whose expectations for wifely behavior were set in the Middle Ages.

“I thought your life might become more peaceable once the duke had passed away.”

Helena hesitated for a moment, then rose to join him at the easel. “You know it didn’t.” They didn’t talk about her outrageous behavior, her flagrant taking of lovers, her shocking, incomprehensible work, and the fortune she was intent on giving away. “And that’s why I’m here. Just for a short time to collect myself before I return to my atelier.”

Webb looked at her silently, and an understanding born of a shared obsession burned between them.

Helena lifted her chin. She never was good at keeping secrets from him because there had never been any need. “The constabulary appeared at Madame Congais’s tonight. Looking for me,” she said brusquely.

He froze. “So it’s come to this…. What were you thinking, going to Congais’s?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“You never do.”

“I just wanted to escape.” She gestured to the canvas on the easel. “I haven’t been able to draw, to paint, to do anything worthwhile since that damned Sissinghurst began his campaign.”

“And Madame Congais’s was a solution?”

“Not all of us are as adept at compartmentalizing our lives, Horace. You would never give up your painting.” The words were more resentful than she’d intended.

“Helena—you risk too much.” Anger seeped into his usually mild tones. “You know he’s the Bishop of London and he can make good on his threats.”

“To have me committed, you mean? Yes, I know that the Bishop of London has the ability to do that and much more. But what can I do? If I can’t work, I might as well stop breathing. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same. You’re as obsessive about your work as I am—if not more so.”

Horace pulled the drop cloth back over the canvas, his impatient movements communicating anger and frustration. “If your work is so important to you, have you considered compromising with the bishop? Being more diplomatic, for a start, and selecting more appropriate subjects and approaches for your painting?”

Helena shook her head mutely, Horace’s suggestions inconceivable.

He picked up a paintbrush by the easel and then almost immediately put it back down, his brow furrowed with concern. “Your very freedom is at stake. And there is nothing I can do to help you if you persist in this willful and headstrong path to self-destruction.”

“It’s already too late,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sissinghurst has amassed evidence to support my incarceration, and the authorities are so close, I can feel their breaths on my neck.” She shivered. “He sent one of his emissaries specifically to entrap me this evening, I’m sure of it.” Her pulse began an erratic beat, her mouth suddenly dry. “Is the name Nicholas Ramsay familiar to you?”

Horace’s kind eyes widened in disbelief as his hand once again closed around the paintbrush. “Ramsay, did you say?”

She nodded, watching carefully for his reaction.

The older man looked away for a moment before relinquishing the brush to take both her hands in his. “My dear girl,” he said, worry lacing every word. “You don’t want to know this man, trust me. If Sissinghurst has enlisted his aid, you are in grave danger indeed.”

Helena pulled away, the chill returning to her bones. She remembered Madame Congais’s warning along with Beckwith’s hasty retreat. And her own galvanic response to the man, the shiver that had run from her head to her core at his touch. “So do your worst, Horace.” She straightened her spine in defiance. “What and who could possibly be worse than Sissinghurst? Tell me?”

Horace gently released her hands and glanced briefly out the room’s one window. It was quiet, except for an early-morning robin beginning its song. “Nobody really knows,” he said slowly, “and that’s the dilemma.”

“Knows what, exactly?”

“Who Ramsay is and where he comes from.”

“Then why all the trepidation whenever his name is mentioned?”

“Ramsay is possibly the richest man in England. He could buy and sell the monarchy, the House of Lords, and Parliament several times over. Rumor has it that if he ever decides to call in his chits, the world would end as we know it. And I’m exaggerating only slightly.”

Helena shrugged, unable to reconcile the Faustian powers of a wealthy potentate with the intensely physical man from Madame Congais. Nicholas Ramsay had exhibited none of the rarefied airs of the insanely rich. Quite the opposite, her instincts told her. He belonged to the open seas, to exotic terrain and savage mountain ranges. “Wealth alone does not make one dangerous. I’m still not clear why he instills such”—she paused awkwardly for a moment before concluding—“fear.”

“It’s what he does with his money, Helena, that’s the sticking point. As well as the fact that it’s unclear how and where he amassed such a stupendous fortune. There are rumors as I’ve mentioned, one more unsavory than the next.”

Her throat was suddenly dry, her legs unable to support her. Looking for a place to sit, she collapsed onto an embroidered ottoman before the fire. “You’ll need to explain because I still don’t understand.”

Horace looked relieved that she was finally paying heed to his warnings. “The little I know can’t help you, I’m sad to say, my dear, and if anything, the less you know about Ramsay, the better.”

The room fell into silence except for the light warble of the lone robin and traces of watery sun leaking into the room. Helena looked at her old friend, at the lines of worry etched in his forehead. A feeling of dread swept over her. “You aren’t in his debt, are you, Horace?” she asked, bolting from the ottoman to his side. “I shouldn’t ever want you to risk your reputation or your family or Perdita by associating with someone as dangerous as this man. If you need more money, you only have to ask and I’d be more than willing to help.”

He looked at her hand on his arm, a strange expression on his face. “No, I’m not in his debt,” he said stiffly, a strange formality infusing his words. “But I thank you, as always, for your concern. I’m fine at the moment.”

Helena dropped her hand, feeling awkward. The specter of financial doom had always clung like a fine mist over Horace’s dealings, a delicate issue for a family whose name had been associated with nobility and wealth for centuries. She hurriedly changed the subject.

“It probably doesn’t matter, anyway, what you know or don’t know about Ramsay. In a few short days I shall disappear into the continent for several months at least until Sissinghurst’s campaign loses some of its luster for him,” she added bitterly, hunching further into her cloak.

Horace frowned, their previous conversation seemingly forgotten. “But where will you go? What will you do for funds?”

Helena pulled the collar of her cloak up around her neck, preparing to leave. Morning had broken and she didn’t dare make her way through the streets later in the day. “I’ve been funneling some money into an account in Paris for the past several months, so no need to worry, even if Sissinghurst does manage to seize my inheritance.”

“And how will you manage to avoid him—and this Ramsay fellow? Europe is hardly beyond the reach of powerful men, my dear.”

Helena’s back was against the door. “I don’t have much choice, Horace. I must take this risk to pursue my work elsewhere.”

“Or?” he asked.

Her voice cracked with revulsion. “Or spend the rest of my days shackled in a filthy cell. Slowly and inexorably going mad.”

After the early-morning sunshine, the narrow stairway to the attic was dark as a tomb, but Helena knew the winding steps to her atelier as though by heart. The rest of the building was empty, save for boxes and containers, detritus from a former tenant, the A.R. Burrows Shipping Company, that had long ago decamped to a more favorable location closer to the dockyards. Several years earlier, she had instructed her solicitor to buy the property for her under an assumed name, as a refuge from the official residence of the Duke of Hartford on Belgravia Square.

She was exhausted, perilously close to collapse. After leaving Horace’s carriage house in Soho, she had made the trip to her atelier in short order. The early-morning streets had been empty, only workmen and domestic servants going about their business while their betters slept untroubled by the demands of the oncoming day.

The stairway came to an end and she carefully moved the old flowerpot on the grimy windowsill. The key waited for her, its familiar scrape against the lock a reassuring counterpoint to the chaos that had overtaken her life just a few hours earlier. The door opened on well-oiled hinges and she was struck by the welcoming aroma of turpentine and paint. And something else. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom to take in the floor-to-ceiling windows covered with drapes against the outside world.

She sensed, rather than seeing, that something was desperately wrong.

Panic shot to her brain. She slid low into the dimness, nausea rising in her throat. Her two easels, usually positioned in the middle of the room, were hacked into slivers, like children’s wooden toys, now broken and useless. Paint pots, palette knives, drop cloths littered the floor. The cherry wood cabinet, which had held a few simple dishes, sketchbooks, and favorite novels, was smashed, fractured glass creating a crystalline sparkle on the frayed Persian rug.

Her canvases, her paintings. She stiffened as if she had just been struck. Her work had been slashed into ribbons with an unholy vengeance and flung against the wall.

She covered her mouth with her hands. Her back slid down against the wall until she was almost sitting on her knees, bent over. She was going to be sick. It was then she noticed something else, a detail that had caught her unawares earlier. The aroma, the sickly sweet aroma of a cheroot. Raising her head, she caught the small orange flame on the far side of the cavernous room. It glowed from the chair nestled in the corner where the wall met the ceilinged windows. A dark outline sat in the deep shadows, a curl of smoke mocking her.

Her throat went dry, her nausea dissipated by pure, undiluted rage.

“Who are you—you sick bastard!” Her hands shook as she quickly righted an overturned lamp, grasping clumsily for a match to light the wick.

She heard the faint sound of a pistol being cocked. But before she could respond, the man’s voice said, “Allow me.”

Frozen, she watched as he rose and pushed aside the heavy fabric from the window. Harsh sunlight escaped through the gap, glinting off his pistol still trained on her with iron resolve. She stopped breathing.

That low gravel voice. “Hello again, Lady Hartford. Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t find you.”