Lord Crayle's Secret World

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‘Quite clear, my lord. However, you did not tell me to decamp.’

‘Did I not? I would have thought the sentiment expressed with sufficient force. However, since you seem to require it made explicit, I am telling you to do so now.’

Sari raised her hand in mock salute.

‘Right, Major. One decampment coming up.’

She turned on her heel and made sure she closed the door very quietly behind her, despite the urge to slam it.

Michael turned back to the room and the three other men pulled back their grins.

‘You were trifle harsh on the signorina, Michael,’ Antonelli expostulated.

‘She can take it,’ Michael replied.

‘Sure and she can.’ O’Brien chuckled. ‘There must be some Irish blood in the lass. She gives as good as she gets, that one.’

‘You must be more forgiving with her, Michael. It takes time to adjust to this place,’ Antonelli said.

‘I make no demands on her above what any one of us would make for any other recruit,’ Michael retorted curtly, pulling another foil from the rack. ‘Antonelli?’

The old master shrugged and took his place on the strip opposite him.

‘As I understand it, the purpose of the Institute is to train our agents to be as effective as possible. I do not personally believe the best way of achieving that is browbeating a young woman into obedience.’

Michael flicked his foil through the air angrily. She had them all wrapped around her little finger. And in a mere couple of weeks. Why the hell was he the only one who realised this was a problem?

‘She is miles away from obedience, Antonelli. And without a more serious measure of it she will be of no use to us at all. En garde.’

Fencing with Antonelli always required all his attention and the session helped to clear Michael’s mind and focus it back on the most important matter facing the Institute at the moment. Their contacts at the ports had reported that both Frey and Junger had been sighted arriving in London, but discussions with the Foreign Office had yielded no more intelligence about the reason for the presence of the two Austrian mercenaries on English soil. There was some conjecture that they had been hired to protect the personal interests of an Austrian banker based in London, but Michael was unconvinced. He knew they had to intensify their efforts to find out what the two were doing in the city.

* * *

After the fencing match he went in search of Anderson and tracked him down outside Deakins’s office.

‘I want to update you on our two Austrians. Is Deakins in there?’

‘I... Uh, no... I just saw him upstairs with Morton. Why?’

‘Inside.’

Anderson followed him inside Deakins’s office and closed the door, his brows raised.

‘I met with Castlereagh and Wellington last night to discuss the business we just concluded up in Birmingham and we touched on Junger and Frey. They aren’t convinced the two are here for political purposes, but they agreed we should investigate them in case Metternich is using that Austrian bank business as a cover. I asked O’Brien to investigate and he tracked Frey to lodgings above the Black Dog in Southwark last night, but he couldn’t find Junger. I have put Morton on to tail Frey tonight while O’Brien goes down to the docks to dig for Junger. We need to know where he is and what he’s doing.’

Anderson nodded. ‘Fine. Let’s hope they’re right and this isn’t political. From what you told me about Paris, I’d rather their business isn’t ours.’

* * *

Sari stood silently by the closed door of Deakins’s laboratory. After her encounter with the earl she had retreated to her other safe haven at the Institute, well ahead of her lesson with Deakins. She had not meant to eavesdrop on their conversation, but once she had recognised their voices on the other side of the laboratory door, she hadn’t had the nerve to call attention to herself.

In fact, within minutes of her defiant retreat from the salle she had been swamped by a familiar rise of panic. The Institute was becoming more than a means to an end, a source of the salary that kept Charlie in school and might even allow George and Mina to start the family she knew they wanted. This was something she wanted for herself. She had never felt such a sense of...rightness in her life. She knew the earl had his doubts about her and her behaviour back in Antonelli’s salle had probably only added to his reservations. She had to prove herself, and quickly, or they might decide she was more trouble than she was worth.

Perhaps if she could help find this Junger, they might keep her, she thought. Whatever the case, she had best do something soon. She moved to inspect Deakins’s closets of disguises. She would need to be inconspicuous and she would need to protect herself. She pulled out the street-boy’s coat Deakins had shown her, with its cleverly concealed pockets hiding lock picks and a thin, deadly dagger. It was so much easier being a boy...

Chapter Nine (#ulink_2bc0365b-217b-541c-91fa-cebea7c231a1)

That evening Sari did not head back to Pimlico. She gave a coin to a link boy to take a note to George and Mina telling them that she must stay late at the Institute and they were not to worry. They would, of course, but she knew George trusted her enough to calm Mina’s worst fears. Then she headed out to Westminster Bridge, calculating that Morton would most likely cross there on his way to Southwark. Dressed as a street boy, with a wool cap pulled low over her face, she was as invisible as the moon on this overcast night. It was a tedious wait, but at around eight o’clock she saw the slight, unremarkable figure of the agent heading south over the other side of the bridge.

She followed at a distance as Morton headed into the alleyways off Lambeth Road. He finally stopped and settled onto a bench next to a couple of sailors playing backgammon outside the Black Dog. Sari crept by and slipped into the recessed basement entrance of a cobbler’s store and waited. It was cold and damp and she pulled her coat more tightly around her, comforted by the firm line of the dagger in her pocket.

Eventually a man in a grey cap and dark coat stepped out of an unlit doorway by the tavern, heading swiftly southwards. After a moment Morton followed and Sari eased her way out as well. In Tooley Street, Frey and Morton were swallowed in a large crowd of men weaving down the road in a cacophony of drunken song. Sari hesitated, afraid to be caught up in the knot of drunken men, pushing and shoving. By the time they had moved on, neither Frey nor Morton were anywhere to be seen. Cursing her luck, she turned and headed back towards the bridge. But just as she reached New Cut Road she saw a familiar grey cap moving northwards towards the river. She glanced around the rough crowd which filled the street, but could not see Morton. After a moment she took a deep breath and hurried after the Austrian.

The heavy, rotten smell signalled they were close to the river. The narrow, depressing lanes gave way to dark warehouses and beyond them she saw the first of the unlit piers jutting into the Thames, like black fingers on the dark water. Across the river, the lights of the city glinted murkily and she wished she were there. But she had come too far to stop now.

Eventually even the gas lamps spaced out and then finally disappeared. Occasionally a light spilled out from a warehouse, but then the night closed in again, a palpable presence. Here sight was replaced with the vividness of smells—tar and rotting fish and the cool musty scent of the wooden piers above the brackish odour of the Thames. Rats scraped past her, their slick, naked tails twitching.

She almost faltered, but the man suddenly turned down an empty pier stretching out onto water so dark it might as well have been hanging from a cliff. Through the gloom Sari could just make out the shape of another man seated on a crate at the end of the structure, almost shimmering in the faint damp mist rising off the sluggishly moving water. She sucked in her breath, swallowing a frustrated oath; they were too far away for her to hear anything.

She moved behind a stack of barrels smelling strongly of wood tar and inspected the pier ahead of her. It had recently been widened and raised to accommodate the larger ships coming up the Thames, but the older pier beneath had not been demolished—it lay a few feet beneath the newer structure, narrow, neglected and invisible from the pier above. She inched closer carefully and climbed down beneath the new pylons, onto the older structure. The wood felt firm under her hands and she crawled cautiously towards the men. Below her the dark water swirled and eddied around the wooden beams. To her, with her tautly strung nerves, it almost looked as if it was laughing at her, waiting to pull her into its undulating dance. When she was finally within several feet of the two men she stopped, focusing on the conversation in German above the thumping of blood in her head and the gentle splashing of water.

‘...meeting...did you arrange it?’

‘Yes. The damn fool won’t meet direct. He’s sending some lackey. Amateur. If they weren’t paying us so well...’

‘But they are. Where is the meeting?’

‘Nine at the Eagle and Crown.’

‘Filthy hole. You always choose filthy holes, Jurgen. I’m getting too old for this business. Idiot English. Very well, let’s get this over with. But next time I want see the man himself. I’m damned if we will take directions on the actual deed from a pawn. We need to make sure we can trust him to get us out of here once it’s done. That’s the only thing that matters.’

‘We’ll pass the message along tonight. Cheer up, Joachim, after this you will be able to retire.’

‘If this damn English weather doesn’t kill me first. Very well, I will see you there.’

Sari held her breath as the two men started back towards the shore. Their footfalls creaked overhead and Sari closed her eyes and waited.

When their footsteps finally receded she began to realise how foolhardy she had been. If they had found her, she would now be simply another corpse floating down the Thames with all the other refuse. Even her body might never have been found. Charlie might never have known what had happened to her. Her body started shaking convulsively, but she forced herself to move, keeping to the shadows until she reached the bridge.

She had to tell someone what she had learned. There would be no one at the Institute at this hour, but she had to contact Anderson, or Lord Crayle, as soon as possible if they were to reach the rendezvous on time. Since she had no idea where Anderson lived, she headed towards Grosvenor Square.

* * *

Once there, another fact became apparent—she could hardly knock on the front door and asked to see his lordship, dressed as she was. She hurried round to the mews and stared in some dismay at the tall ivy-covered wall that protected his house. With a sigh, she grabbed a fistful of the plant and hauled herself over the wall as quickly as possible. She was definitely earning her keep tonight.

She approached the dim light coming through a pair of long French windows which led into a sitting room. She could see no one there and after a moment’s hesitation she selected one of Deakins’s hooks and bent down to spring the lock. To her surprise it did not give in to her first attempt and she silently cursed the earl for having to make things especially difficult. He must have had these locks custom made. She took a deep breath, selected another, finer hook and tried again. It took her several long minutes to disengage the lock and, because she was annoyed and tired and the news she had to deliver was burning in her mind, Sari slipped into the room with less caution than was advisable when breaking into someone’s home.

Without warning she was half raised off her feet and shoved back against the wall. She gave a shocked yelp and found herself staring up at the earl, whose eyes glinted with the same silvery grey as the sharp letter opener pressed to her neck.

‘It’s me!’ she croaked, tugging off her wool cap with one hand, whilst her other pulled at the arm which pressed her back against the wall.

The dangerous look on his face was replaced by stark incredulity as he lowered the letter opener.

‘What the...?’ Words failed him for a moment. ‘Where the devil did you come from?’

Then he saw the open windows and if anything the look on his face became even more dangerous than when he had first grabbed her. She realised suddenly that he was dressed only in a shirt, with his sleeves rolled up, and one arm was still pressing her against the wall. She knew she should remove her hand from his arm, but she didn’t. It was warm and hard under her palm; she could feel the tension in his muscles and she remembered the image of him towering over her in the salle, his shirt clinging damply to his shoulders. She shivered even as a flush of heat rose through her.

* * *

Michael stared at her flushed face, the tumbled hair and the patched coat she wore. He had been working in the study when he’d heard someone working the lock. The fact that the burglar had succeeded in opening the lock Deakins himself had promised him would withstand even skilled thieves had prepared him for a professional criminal. The last person on earth he had expected was her. He shoved down his shock and focused on one thing. She had broken into his home. She had better have a good excuse, even though he could not imagine any excuse good enough to placate him at the moment.

‘Well?’ he prompted, biting out the word as if that was all he was capable of enunciating.

Sari wet her lower lip nervously, and decided to get straight to the point.

‘I followed Frey. He met Junger and they are going to meet someone at the Eagle and Crown tonight, at nine. It’s just a lackey this time, they said. They also said they would demand to meet with the man in charge before they went ahead and carried out whatever it is they are being paid for...’

She felt some relief as she saw she had at least succeeded in distracting the earl from her transgression for the moment. He still had not released her and she tried not to think about the heat of his arm as it pressed against her chest.

‘What the devil were you doing following either of them? And how did you hear this? I cannot imagine them standing around in the middle of Piccadilly discussing it. Where was Morton?’

‘He gave Morton the slip. They were on a pier in Southwark. I climbed on the pylons underneath it. They didn’t see me.’ She felt very warm suddenly.