Читать книгу Wicked: - Noelle Mack - Страница 6

The same night…

Angelica awoke at last, but not where she had been. The curtain-draped room in the Congreve house, its walls and furnishings, the cloaks and furs given into her keeping, all of it had vanished in a swirl as utterly as if she had dreamed every detail.

Someone had come in to that place—a man—but who? She tried to think. Her mind was as blurry as her vision for some reason and she lifted her head to look around. She was lying on a bare wood floor, a cuff of cold iron around her ankle, a chain rattling from it to a bolt set into a beam in the wall. A feeble light came from a candle in the far corner, throwing circles of shadows upon the walls.

Who had brought her here? Not the handsome fellow with the foreign name who’d given her his coat. Not the footman Jack, who’d come and gone with armloads of women’s things.

No. Someone different. An older man, someone she had taken for a guest at the party, lost, as Semyon had seemed to be.

She clenched her fist and something sharp pricked her palm. Angelica lifted her hand and saw that she was holding a long-stemmed red rose. Then it came back to her in bits and pieces.

The older man had come in shortly after Simon—Semyon, she corrected herself. His name had been Semyon Taruskin and she had written it down on a piece of paper and put it in the pocket of his coat. Just in case some other man was to come by with a similar coat…she vaguely remembered telling him something like that.

She had spelled his name correctly and he’d seemed surprised but she had heard of him. Semyon had a rakish reputation that men envied, and women sighed over.

Several more layers of blur seemed to fall away as she held on to the rose, letting it prick her palm to aid her memory, not minding the thin trickle of blood from the first inadvertent wound or caring about the white dress that was tangled about her aching body.

Semyon’s sudden appearance had startled her in the extreme. By the time the second man, the older one, came through the curtains, she had been less wary.

The rose in her hand…yes, he, the one who’d come after Semyon had been and gone, had given her that, a gesture that had puzzled her at the time as he’d said nothing about it. But she’d supposed he only meant her to hold it while he struggled out of his coat.

She had taken the rose politely, not inquiring as to whether it was to be presented to a sweetheart, or if he wanted its stem clipped and the bud fastened to his lapel, expecting him to tell her.

The older man had not said anything about it, just remained oddly quiet once he was out of his coat, holding that close to his body, as if he was waiting for her to do something. But what had he wanted? She still could not think clearly.

He had seemed reluctant to hand the coat to her, beginning to fiddle with the waistband of his breeches while she averted her eyes. She’d listened absently to the distant strains of music from the crowded ballroom, noticing how it and the dancers seemed to thunder in unison as the gathering became more and more boisterous.

He’d murmured a no when she’d finally asked if he needed a button sewn, praying that he would not. He just stood there, red in the face and sweating hard—his shirt was soaked with it and not clean to begin with.

In fact, he seemed to emanate foul smells from all over his body that she could not name, but decay was the strongest.

Angelica’s nose had wrinkled and without thinking, she’d brought the rose she’d been holding to her face and smelled its sweet fragrance, liking its extraordinary freshness. Ignoring the unpleasant man, she’d touched a finger to its tightly furled petals, separating them and found that the heart of the rose was drenched with a curious, crystalline dew.

Longing to taste it, avoiding the man’s gaze and his revolting appearance, she had ventured to sample the dew, putting a fingertip first in it and then to her lips…and…and…she had fallen, knocking over a small dressing table and the book she’d used to write upon that lay atop it.

Gasping, terrified, she’d pulled herself up by the lapels of Semyon’s coat somehow, unable to stand. The masculine smell of it had given her a jolt of strength that soon dissolved—she had let go and fallen again, to her knees. The other man had laughed at her, his voice coarse, a mongrel’s bark.

She’d tried to crawl away, escape the shadowy chamber and the strange intruder who had tricked her, holding on to the stem of the rose. It had seemed to grow thick in her hand, as thick as a young tree, and the bud had become as big as a human head.

Then her other hand had touched the fallen book and she tried to tear out a page, thinking wildly of leaving a note for someone to find. The man had kicked the book away before she could. Sobbing, she flung the rose away from herself, but the man forced it back into her hand, curling her limp fingers around it and squeezing painfully hard with his hand until its thorns pierced her skin.

She remembered no more after that.

Angelica looked with horror at the rose she still clutched. The innocent-seeming petals had held a potent and dangerous drug. She threw it into a corner and curled up in a ball when she heard footsteps approach.

Two people. Men, judging by the tread.

They stopped by her head. One bent down to test the chain attached to the cuff around her ankle, seeming to find it sound. Through her hair, she saw the heavy boots of the man doing that, boots with round, scuffed toes and a split sole on the left one that had been mended, not well. The other pair were far more elegant—they were riding boots that had cost a small fortune and were polished to a high shine. She could almost see her face in them—a tear-swollen, dirty face, she knew that, half covered with matted hair.

“Hello, Angelica,” the owner of the boots said. “Pity, seeing you in such a disreputable state. You always prided yourself on your beauty, didn’t you, my dear?”

The tip of one of the boots pressed into her cheek. Icy terror gripped her heart and her breath stopped in her lungs. She had known that voice all her life. Angelica looked up into the face of her stepbrother and fainted dead away at his feet.

Semyon was unable to sleep and left his bed, peeling off his nightshirt and dressing again, rather carelessly. But who would see or care in the dark streets of London as he roamed through them? He was thinking of Angelica all the while, slipping out and away from the Pack’s house with such stealth that he awakened no one.

His preternaturally long strides took him first to a marketplace, already stirring in the hours before dawn. No one noticed him, occupied as they were with the business of setting up stalls and dickering with farmers. Dray horses stood shivering in their traces, stamping their massive hooves with dull clops, their heavy muscles exhausted with the effort of pulling wagonloads of winter vegetables over the rutted roads to the city. Semyon glanced without interest at turnips and mangel-wurzels piled higher than his head, the earth still clinging to their lumpy sides. Another cart held immense cabbages and small sprouts still on thick stems, green kale tucked in frilly bunches beside them.

Sturdy farm women, swaddled in wool shawls and skirts, clomped about in wooden shoes. They had come to sell pies and jellies and other dainties, upturning the baskets they’d carried everything in and arranging their wares on the flat bottoms.

An enterprising one of their number had a charcoal fire going in an odd contraption that only a tinker could have made and was doing a brisk business in tea and coffee, sold in mugs that the customers drank from and handed back.

He decided against having any. Her clientele had a raffish air, for the most part. The bristling mustaches and stained beards of the men and the cracked lips of the women seemed unhygienic, although they were enjoying the steaming brews.

He walked on, lifting his head. Ah yes. Swinging sides of beef rolled by on a wheeled rack pushed by a butcher’s lad. There was mutton too, unless he missed his guess, marbled with fat. But no lamb, not in winter. He could not help wanting to snag a hunk of raw meat. It was the wolf in him and he would not apologize for it.

If he did take a bit of meat…then what? He could not eat it raw. No, he would have to thrust a stick through it and roast it over a fire with the tramps and beggars that prowled the outer edge of the market.

They might accept him as one of their own, a highwayman in stolen clothes, he thought. Or they might knock him over the head and turn his pockets inside out.

Semyon chuckled and bought a meat pie to eat instead and devoured it in seconds, licking his fingertips inelegantly but with considerable pleasure.

Then he walked away from the market, tossing a shilling into a grimy palm that stretched out to him from a shadowy doorway, and nodding to a young kitchen maid and fat cook who bustled by with empty baskets over their arms, heading in.

After a time, he became aware that he was heading in the direction of the Congreve house. In another several minutes, he was there.

Wonder of wonders, the windows were still lit up. The last of the revelers were being helped into their sedan chairs and carriages, while Congreve himself and his much younger wife called their good-byes from the top of the imposing outside stairs.

When the final door was shut, he distinctly heard Penelope say, “Good riddance!”

Semyon smiled. His hand went to his throat to fix his cravat into a decent-looking knot, and he realized he had forgotten to wear one. He looked down. His shirt was half-in and half-out, and his unbuttoned coat flapped in the chilly wind off the Thames. At least his breeches were fastened properly.

Congreve murmured something placating to his wife that Semyon did not hear. But he looked up when she called to him suddenly.

“Mr. Taruskin! Whatever are you doing there? I thought you had gone long ago.”

“I had, Mrs. Congreve.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair in a futile attempt at grooming. “But I could not sleep and decided, ah, to take a constitutional. I happened to walk down your street.”

“A constitutional? At this hour? Have you gone mad? Come in and have a glass of sherry and whatever is left of the aspics and meats, and we will send you home at daybreak,” she said.

Her husband chimed in. “Yes, do. We shan’t sleep until the sun comes up. And you will catch your death of cold if you stand there upon the cobblestones.”

Semyon hesitated. He had hoped to catch an early-rising scullery maid of theirs out and about, and quiz her discreetly about Angelica, not speak to the Congreves. But since the invitation had been issued, he would be a fool not to take advantage of it.

He bounded up the stairs, noting with dismay that there was a look of blatant lust in Penelope Congreve’s beady eyes.

“You do look as if you just tumbled out of bed, Mr. Taruskin,” she said admiringly, “with your tousled hair and that flush in your cheeks. And your clothes—dear me. Such romantic disarray. Have you left a lady sighing happily into her pillow, then?”

“No, Mrs. Congreve.”

“You can tell me if you have. Who is she?” She swanned through the door, followed by her harrumphing husband, who seemed bored with her chatter.

Semyon hoped she would not flirt with him anymore. It was difficult as it was for him to ask the least little question about the pretty maid who had seen to the cloaks and coats. Penelope was too shrewd not to guess why.

“Come along, come along,” Congreve said affably, turning to urge him inside when Semyon hesitated.

He nodded and joined the couple in their foyer where a maid barely able to stand on her feet stifled a yawn before they turned to her.

“Squiggs, take Mr. Taruskin’s coat,” Penelope said sharply to her, “and be quick about it.”

“Oh—no. I would rather keep it on,” Semyon said, “I won’t stay long.”

Squiggs, a stolid young woman, stepped back into position against the wall, her face a blank mask.

“Has the other girl gone, then?” he asked Mrs. Congreve.

“What other girl?” Penelope replied.

“The one named Angelica. I went down the wrong hall during the thick of things and met her by chance.”

Penelope Congreve shrugged. “Do we have a servant by that name?” she asked her husband in an arch voice. He did not reply. “Congreve, I am talking to you.”

He only grunted, too old and wise to take her bait.

The true nature of a marriage was fully revealed in the weary hours after a party, Semyon thought. Mr. Congreve might be guilty of indiscretions too numerous to name, but Semyon suspected that his cold-eyed wife strayed too. He hardly cared and it was too late to take back his inquiry. But he hated to think of old Congreve even trying to touch Angelica.

He would take her away from here, he decided suddenly. It would not be difficult to persuade her as soon as he could find her and talk to her.

If she wished to go, he reminded himself dutifully.

Bah. He had a feeling she would fling herself into his arms and beg to be rescued.

Once she was safely by his side, he would figure out what to do with her. Semyon had never been one for thinking further ahead than a day or two, a privilege of being the last-born of his brothers. They did his thinking for him and he ignored their good advice. He was as wild as he wanted to be.

“Her last name was Harrow, I believe. Or something like that.” Semyon strove to keep his tone conversational, as if he didn’t care in the least what had happened to a mere maid.

“Oh, her.” Penelope shot a look of disgust at her husband, who appeared not to notice it. “Of course. Angelica. How could I forget her first name? Silly me.” She favored Congreve with a thin smile. “We were giving Harrow one last chance with the coats tonight, weren’t we, my dear?”

“I see.” Semyon Taruskin waited for her to say more.

“He”—she went on, indicating her husband with a wagging finger—“hired her on a friend’s recommendation—his friend, not mine—as a lady’s maid for me. Sight unseen. Most unwise. I never quite trusted her and she seemed to think she was too good for the job, so it seemed best to take her down a peg. Mr. Congreve had to agree, as I vowed to make his existence a living hell if he did not. I always get my way.”

On and on she prattled, leading both men into the library and heading for a decanter and set of small glasses. In other rooms of the vast house, he could hear servants putting things to rights and clearing away the debris of the party, and one occasionally passed through where they were, looking nervously at Mrs. Congreve first.

She handed round the filled glasses herself, sipping hers daintily but fast and refilling it several times as the conversation between the two men ebbed and flowed. Semyon was listening with only half an ear, hoping to catch a glimpse of Angelica or hear her soft voice over the hubbub. After a time, he made some excuse to leave, and bent over Penelope’s outstretched hand in a pantomime of a gallant kiss, not about to touch his lips to her papery skin. Fortunately, she was quite drunk and did not seem to care what he did.

Semyon straightened. Mr. Congreve, he realized, had slumped in his chair, suddenly overcome by sleep in the manner of an aging man who had had too much sherry and stayed up too late.

As Semyon watched, the older man’s mouth fell open and his tongue lolled within the pale pink cavern as he snored juicily.

“You see what I must contend with.” Penelope dashed away a tear.

Semyon had no doubt that she felt infinitely sorry for herself and with some reason. But he was no closer to finding his goddess and could not very well prowl the house looking for her.

“Yes. I daresay he is tired. As we all are. Mrs. Congreve, I must go,” he said firmly.

“Are you sure?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“Quite sure.” He disentangled himself from the surprisingly strong grip of her hand on his arm and offered her a pillow instead. With a prodigious yawn that revealed every one of her neat, small teeth, Penelope flung herself into it, looking up at him coquettishly.

Semyon hastily withdrew, leaving the Congreves to each other and shutting the door to the library behind him.

He headed for the front door, glad he’d worn no hat that he might have forgotten in his haste to leave. Glancing into the rooms being set to rights, he looked around one last time for Angelica and spotted Jack instead.

The footman, whose livery had been replaced by work clothes to help the others move the ballroom furniture back to where it had been, gave him a worried frown and took him aside.

“Sir—may I talk to you?”

Semyon knew instantly that the other man’s concern was for Angelica.

“Yes, of course.” He let himself be led into an alcove where they would not be heard or seen should a busy servant pass by. “What is it?”

“Our Miss Harrow is gone, sir. I could not wake her after you left and when I went back an hour later, she was not there at all.”

“What? Have you looked elsewhere in the house?” He controlled his tone and suppressed his instinctive fear for the beautiful woman he’d desired so much. Had some other man happened upon her as she lay in slumber?

“Of course or I would not have come to you,” Jack replied. “She is not in her chamber under the eaves and none of the other women have seen her for some time. One said that the mistress was fuming because Angelica was not there to hand back the coats. It was a mad scramble, I hear—”

“Never mind that, man. Do you think Angelica was sacked and left because of that?”

“No. Her belongings are just as they were in her chamber, nothing taken. Only she is gone. And I put your very question to several of the servants. Someone would’ve heard something. Mrs. Congreve is a great one for making scenes and screaming. Her husband cannot control her and she does as she pleases.”

“Hmph. I daresay she cannot control him,” Semyon muttered.

The footman only shrugged, as if he had no particular concern for the Congreves. “Those two would not care if Angelica vanished forever. Something about it does not seem right to me, but I cannot say why. It is not like her—she was always kind to others and she would have left word with a sympathetic soul or told me had she decided to run away.”

“So. It seems that no one would blame her if she did, am I right?” Semyon asked.

“The higher you go, the worse it can get in this unhappy house,” the footman said soberly. “I was thinking that as Mrs. Congreve’s maid, she might know more than the rest of us. But she never said. Things go on here behind closed doors that no one but the master and mistress can open.”

“I see. That does not bode well.”

Jack hung his head as if saying the briefest of prayers, then looked up. “You told me to take care of her, and I tried to, sir. And I would have done, gold guinea or no—”

Semyon’s every hair stood on end. He was just as guilty, if anyone was. He too had left her where she lay, asleep and vulnerable. “Good God, man, where could she have gone? Who are her friends? Where is her family?”

“I don’t know. None of us knew much about her. It is like that in London, sir—”

“Yes, yes, of course. Let us think only of this evening at the moment. What happened, exactly, after I left you two alone?”

‘“She would not wake and I could not stay with her, not when mistress was shrieking for me. You must have left the house before that or you would have heard her too.”

“Most likely I had, yes.” His mind raced, considering various possibilities. “Jack, can you take me to the room where the cloaks were? Will we be noticed?”

The footman hesitated. “Where is the mistress? She will threaten to have me whipped from pillar to post. Her and Mr. Congreve fought over Angelica.”

“Asleep on a pillow in the library after several glasses of sherry. Mr. Congreve is snoring in a chair beside her.”

Jack nodded, as if that were something he’d seen many a time before. “Come with me then.”

“It is the most logical place to start,” Semyon said, low urgency in his voice.

In a little while, going this way and that, they came to the part of the house where the narrow hall and the curtained chamber were. On the way there they caught a glimpse of Kittredge heading upstairs with Mrs. Congreve, a limp burden in his arms, feigning sleep.

None of the servants seemed to notice it, or care that Jack was escorting a guest through the house.

They hurried down the hall. Even from the end of it Semyon could see that the curtains had been carelessly swept to one side, as if someone had departed from inside in haste.

The cloaks and furs and mantuas were all gone and the room had the appearance of being ransacked. It was difficult to tell the difference between the aftermath of a large party, though, when servants who were tired or drunk or both would scramble to retrieve milady’s things. The few chairs leaned against the wall but one had been knocked over. The dressmaker’s figure stood upright, a mute witness to what had happened here.

“I left her on that pile where she was, still a-sleeping,” Jack said. “It was much later when I came back and that was to break up a fight between two lady’s maids. Scratching and clawing they were, but Angelica was nowhere to be seen.”

“Did you not search the house?”

Jack shook his head. “I was wanted elsewhere.”

“There is a bad smell in the room,” Semyon declared. “Of decay and worse.”

Jack took a cursory sniff or two. “It smells the same to me, sir. But it has not been aired out. The high and mighty stink like anyone else, of course, and so do their clothes. Especially after a long night.”

Semyon willed his wolf-sight into his eyes, turning his face away from Jack so that the servant would not see his pupils change to glowing gold. He strode to the wall, where he had discerned faint, long scratches.

Yes. He caught her smell underneath the lingering odor of decay, the cause of which he could not guess. As Jack had pointed out, many people had come and gone in this small space tonight.

He looked intently at the wall. The scratches had been made by fine fingernails, feminine ones, and it was clear to him that she had made them. Perhaps clawing at the wall, sliding down it after falling against it. Had she tripped over the pile when she had arisen at last? He had to consider the possibility that nothing of consequence had happened to her, that she had merely decamped, especially considering the antipathy between her and her mistress.

The possibility that she had gone off with an unknown lover—the matter of the rose in her hand still troubled him—was not something he wanted to think about.

The side of his boot touched against something hard. Semyon looked down.

He recognized the book she had used to write his name upon the slip of paper she’d put in his pocket. He bent down to pick it up and opened it.

A few pages had been torn and recently. A few fine threads of linen trailed from the jagged edge of the torn pages. He put it to his nose, catching the unmistakable scent of fear. Her hands had been sweating, her body exuding a nameless terror that only he could sense.

To Jack, to anyone, what he held was only a book. Semyon quickly riffled through the other pages to see if anything had been written in it in desperate haste—no. There was nothing.

The book was small enough to slide into his pocket and he did so, touching the slip of paper he had not thought of until now, the one with his name on it.

Hearing a noise of someone dashing about not far away, Jack had gone into the hall just outside. Semyon brought the slip of paper to his nose, smelling it for comparison.

The feminine hand that had touched it had left a trace of scent as well, but there was nothing at all fearful in it.

No, it was pure and sweet. He knew that seeing him had been a pleasant experience for her from that alone, and he studied the graceful handwriting. Just his name, written with care in pencil. He sensed that she had liked writing it and hope sprang high in his heart.

So little to go on. So much to be found out. Wherever she was in the teeming city, he would find her. And he would deal savagely with anyone who hurt her.

Semyon put the slip of paper back in his pocket with the book and joined Jack in the hallway.

“There is nothing here,” he said with finality.