A Dangerous Madness (6 page)

He didn’t know if he was pleased about that or not. The notion of her complete disregard for his title and station was as refreshing as the cool green of her hidden garden.

He turned to look at it properly, and found it a wild, thick riot of parsley, fennel, rosemary, mint, thyme and many other herbs he didn’t know the names of. There was an order to it, but the human touch on this place was light, guiding rather than regimented, free but not out of control.

He had a sudden, deep sense it reflected its creator. He turned to look at her, and saw she was watching him carefully. There was a defiance in the way she stood now, and his frustration at her attitude gripped him.

“Miss Hillier. One more time. What were you doing outside Newgate Prison?”

“I don’t want to tell you.” She jerked her gaze from his face, leant down and snapped off a fennel stalk, twirled it in her fingers.

“I am well aware of that.” He crowded her on the path. “But you will tell me anyway.”

“Why should I?” The aniseed flavour of the fennel scented the air as she crushed the stalk and looked up at him.

She wasn’t being coquettish. She wasn’t being petulant, either. She was deadly serious.

He forced himself to consider her question. “You have no reason to, beyond that I am asking you.” Usually, simply being a duke did it. Or his money. Or his influence.

None of those things seemed to motivate Miss Hillier.

And if he told her the real reason, the carefully built fiction of the dissolute nobleman with a grudge against the government would come unravelled.

He tried to ignore the temptation of that. Of finally heaving off the chains of what had started as a lark, and had ended up defining his life and his relationship with everyone around him.

He’d started taking the first tantalizing steps of setting himself free over the last month, but now was not the time for his secret to come out. Not with the prime minister dead and no answers.

“You aren’t asking, you’re demanding.” She threw the now shredded fennel stalk into the garden and picked another one. “If you were to explain yourself to me, I would consider explaining myself to you.”

“How about the other way around?”

She gave an indelicate snort. “You’re the one who wants information from me. While I’ll admit you’ve made me curious about you, I’m not as desperate for your story as you seem to be for mine.”

She picked up a basket that lay near her feet, and began to work her way down the row, snipping sprigs of herbs.

Serene. Completely at ease while she waited for him to decide if he would explain to her or not.

He didn’t have time for this.

“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Hillier.”

She shook her head. “I just really don’t want to tell you.”

He choked back a laugh, and made his decision.

“Coo-ee. Phoebe, my dear. Tea’s ready.”

Miss Hillier looked toward the house, then slanted him a look. “You took too long to make up your mind. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” She started walking back down the path.

“Tomorrow is too late.” He reached out and clamped a hand around her arm, and she stopped. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I was going to a ball, but I think it’s been turned into a sort of memorial to the prime minister.”

“The Edgeware thing?”

She gave a nod.

“I’ll see you there.”

“Phoebe, do hurry, the tea’s getting cold.”

“I can’t go off with you,” she whispered. “The same rules apply at the ball as would have done in the park.”

“Well, then.” James gave her a quick grin, relief at missing the Edgeware ball, no matter what the reason, a sweet fizz in his blood. “You’ll have to keep having that headache, cry off, and meet me in this garden at nine o’clock tonight.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “You assume a lot.”

He huffed out a quiet laugh. “Miss Hillier, nothing about you so far has been in any way the normal run of things. It is far too late to pretend outrage now.” He moved to the wall, reaching out with his hands to find the holds he needed to climb it, and looked over his shoulder. “I’ll expect you tonight. Right here. Nine o’clock.”

Chapter Eight

H
e could still smell the fragrance of Miss Hillier’s garden on him. He must have crushed some lavender underfoot when he had been tramping through her flowerbeds, because the scent of it rose up as he navigated the traffic on Fleet Street.

Fortunately, the lady herself was not as fragile as her plants.

She had not wilted or even bent under his demands, and he couldn’t understand why he did not feel frustrated by that. Instead, he was charmed. Intrigued.

An idiot.

He smiled at himself, and pushed open the door to the coffee house Jerdan’s colleagues at the
British Press
told him the journalist would be.

He asked one of the servers, and she pointed out a large man sitting on his own, staring into a mug of coffee beneath the window facing out onto the street.

“William Jerdan?” James stood beside the table and Jerdan looked up, blinked, and then rose, lifting his bulky frame up with surprising dignity.

“Good afternoon, Your Grace.”

James made a gesture with his hand for Jerdan to sit, and slid onto the bench opposite him. He’d hoped not be recognized, but Jerdan was a political correspondent, after all. He shouldn’t be surprised the man knew who he was.

He hoped Jerdan wouldn’t question his interest in Perceval’s death. And if he did think it suspicious, he would not publish any speculation about a duke in his newspaper lightly.

There were also usually more interesting things to write about James in the papers than his interest in political assassination.

Like whose fortune he had won in a game of Hazard.

“I have some questions for you about the death of Mr Perceval.” He watched Jerdan think about that, and take a long sip of his coffee.

“What do you want to know?”

“Your impressions. I understand that you were there, that it happened in front of you.”

Jerdan gave a tight nod. “I didn’t hear the shot. I know it’s incredible, but I didn’t hear it. Been wondering ever since if there is something wrong with my hearing, although I’ve never had a problem before.”

“Did the others there say it was loud?”

Jerdan shrugged. “Vincent Dowling, who’s with the
Day
, was in the gallery, covering the Orders in Council inquiry, and he heard it. But he said most people ignored it. It was more the furore that happened in the wake of it that alerted the House and the gallery that something was wrong.”

James hid his surprise at the mention of Dowling’s name. He knew it. He had read the man’s reports on political radicals more than once as part of his duties on the committee he sat on for the Home Office. He hadn’t realized the man worked as a reporter, as well as a government informer. “So Dowling was a witness?”

“Not of the shooting, he came down too late from the gallery for that, but he helped secure the assassin afterward.” Jerdan paused. “Him and General Gascoyne.”

There was something in the considering way he said Gascoyne’s name that made James lean forward.

“You’re talking about Gascoyne, the Member of Parliament for Liverpool? What about him?”

Jerdan pursed his lips. “I don’t like him, so you can take what I’m about to say with that in mind. But he lied at the committal proceedings that were held straight after the murder. A bald-faced lie.”

James tried not to let the eagerness in him show on his face.

Jerdan lifted his mug and wrapped both hands around it, even though the coffee house was more than warm enough. “The room where we were all gathered for the hearing was packed, and so hot, there was no air to breathe…” Jerdan lifted the mug to his lips and took a long gulp. “I was pressed against a wall, and I was in shock, I suppose. I’d just seen the prime minister shot down. I decided it was a lie in the heat of the moment, Gascoyne putting himself forward over-much. Taking the limelight, you know. He’s the sort to do it.”

James didn’t know Gascoyne well enough to agree, but he knew enough to know he was a strong advocate of the slave trade and bitterly opposed to the Orders in Council. No friend, by any means, of Perceval and his policies.

He also represented Liverpool, which was where Bellingham was from.

“What did he lie about?”

“He said he grabbed the pistol from Bellingham, to prevent him from taking another shot.” Jerdan set his mug down with a thump. “Thing is, he wasn’t anywhere near the man when he shot Perceval. He came down with Dowling, from upstairs. By the time they got there, Perceval had been taken into a room off to the side. Bellingham was just sitting there, quite still, and the gun was on the bench next to him. Gascoyne did grab his hand, so hard Bellingham cried out in pain, but he didn’t have anything in his hand at the time, and he was no threat by then.”

“So you could be right. He was simply putting himself forward as a bigger hero than he had cause to claim.”

Jerdan shook his head. “I’ve thought about it a lot since it happened. Gascoyne grabbed the man, and then later made a big production about recognizing him. Bellingham’s from Liverpool, it seems, and Gascoyne’s his parliamentary representative. He’s been to see Gascoyne in the past about some petition for compensation he feels the government owes him. But it was suspicious. The way he behaved when he ‘recognized’ the man. It rang false.”

“Where are you going with this, Jerdan?”

Jerdan sighed, and shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps I’m wrong. It was an extraordinary day. Perhaps I mistook. But that doesn’t change that Gascoyne lied. And that no one so far has nay-sayed him. Not even me. The trouble it would cause, and the offence he’d take at being contradicted.” Jerdan shrugged. “Is it worth it?”

“Perhaps if you’d spoken up at the time, at the hearing.” James spoke slowly. “But now, yes, it would be awkward for Gascoyne if someone contradicts him. Especially if there are others who would agree with you.”

“Dowling was there. So were a number of others.” Jerdan rubbed his cheek. “They may think it’s worth setting the record straight. But I’m stirring up trouble for nothing, most likely. Gascoyne may not be asked to testify at the trial. Why should he, particularly?”

James gave a nod. “And what of the prisoner? Bellingham? His prison warden says you think he’s mad?”

Jerdan looked him in the eye at that. “I do. If you had seen him after he shot Perceval…” He shuddered. “I’ve never seen a man so affected. He was hitting his chest, as if to get air into his lungs, and sweat ran down his face like he was standing in a spring shower. He was so pale, so very, very pale, and completely without animation.”

“It wasn’t just the shock of what he’d done?”

“Then why did he do it?” Jerdan’s voice rang out too loud, and he shook his head in apology. “If he was a criminal, and had his wits about him, he could simply have walked out the door. No one understood what had happened for some minutes after the shot rang out. Someone called for the doors to be closed, but people were rushing in from outside, and they stayed open. He could have walked out unnoticed and no one would have even known who had done the deed. Not even me, and it happened right in front of me.”

James thought about that. “What did he say, when he was confronted?”

“That is the strange thing. The very reason many think him sane is one of the strongest reasons I think him mad. Even though he was shaking, even though he was in obvious distress, he spoke calmly, at odds with his physical reactions. There is something wrong with him. He is not in his right mind.”

James sat quietly for a few minutes, and Jerdan seemed unable to say any more. He sipped at his coffee, though by now it must surely be cold.

“Thank you for your honesty.” James stood and gave the big man a bow. Jerdan had sunk back into the gloom he’d been in when James arrived and he gave a nod, but didn’t reply.

James left him at the table, grateful that the journalist had been too preoccupied to ask why he was looking into the details of Perceval’s assassination.

He stepped into the darkening street and realized it was too late to chase down Dowling. But he would. As he walked back to his coach, he wondered what the significance was of a Home Office informant being at the scene of the prime minister’s assassination.

It would be interesting to find out.

But first, he had to get home for dinner, or his chef might think him unappreciative and leave him, and after that, he had an appointment with a lady in a garden.

Chapter Nine

P
hoebe gripped the handles of the French doors leading to the back garden, pushed them slightly outward, and paused.

The night was fresh and fragrant, the air moving over her like a cool compress over hot skin. Usually she would step out into the garden on an evening like this with delight.

But tonight Wittaker was lurking out there, a dark shadow waiting for her to lay her secrets bare. She shivered, wanting nothing more than to close the doors and avoid him.

He would not stand for that. The steel beneath his genteel façade had come more to the surface as the day had progressed. This morning he’d been civil enough. Outside Newgate, his demeanor was less accommodating, and this afternoon in the garden she had seen the gleam and shine of the metal.