Banquet of Lies (24 page)

But Unwin was shaking his head. “No. Not him. Though, o’ course, if Mr. Greenway could do something for him, he would. No, it was to get Miss Barrington safe. Mr. Greenway
was to drop everything and keep Miss Barrington safe, make sure she wasn’t alone somewhere with Sir Barrington in jail or worse, and with no one to turn to.”

“And you say three letters were already overdue when I came yesterday?” That would make sense. It was over nine days since Barrington had died.

“Yes. Mr. Greenway was already twitchy about it, but when you came to tell him about the break-in, and someone looking through Sir Barrington’s letters, well, that did it.” Unwin heaved a sigh. “Like there was a fire under him, it was.”

Jonathan recalled Dervish had had to move immediately to catch a boat leaving for Stockholm. If Greenway had moved a little slower, been delayed even slightly, he might have missed it. Might be cooling his heels in Dover right now, waiting for the next boat to leave.

“Thank you, Mr. Unwin. You’ve done the right thing, and I promise you, there’ll be no trouble from Mr. Greenway over this.” Jonathan stood, eager to be on his way. If he could reach Dover while Greenway was still there, he could finally do something useful in all this.

If Greenway had missed the boat, he would try to get to Sweden another way, rather than wait the week for the next ship. Pay passage on a fishing vessel, perhaps, or a private boat.

But that would take time. Time Jonathan could use to reach him, if he left without delay.

And if Greenway
had
made the boat with Dervish, he wondered if the two men would meet, get talking and realize they shared the same goals.

Doubtful.

Dervish was as forthcoming as a stone, and Greenway not much better.

He gave Unwin a quick wave as he jogged down the path to the carriage Durnham had loaned him for the journey. He looked up to the driver, huddled in his coat against the rain. “Get me to the nearest coaching inn.”

G
igi snuck out of the house at dawn. She didn’t want to see Edgars and hadn’t heard a sound from his bedroom as she’d grabbed the baskets and put on her coat.

It was a relief.

She would prefer him to be up and about, back in control, before she saw him again. Not stumbling hungover into the kitchen after a bad night.

That way led farther down the twisted, antagonistic road they’d begun on, and she wanted off.

This was not her kingdom to fight for. She needed to leave the field of play.

She didn’t call Iris to go with her. With Mavis gone, Iris and Babs would have to take on Mavis’s jobs. She would manage at the market on her own.

She glanced down the alley toward the back lane, but the thought of trying to retrieve the letter she’d left for Dervish in the early morning dark was suddenly too much for her. She’d tell Aldridge about it when he deigned to make an appearance, and they could retrieve it together. She was tired of taking chances.

The sun was still firmly below the horizon and the streetlamps were on, casting a dirty yellow glow over things. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, though, and the air was cool and clean, with the faint tang of mud.

As she stepped onto Chapel Street she looked left—habit by now—to Goldfern, but there was no one there.

She began walking to South Audley. A man was coming down the street toward her. He stepped into the pool of light from a streetlamp, and she stared at him before his stride took him back into the shadows.

Though she was still in the darkness between lampposts, she knew he had been watching her, too.

He was well dressed. Not a nobleman, she would guess, but someone who worked for one. A lawyer or a banker.

There was something about him—not his looks; nothing about him was familiar—but something in the way he moved, the way he looked at her, that set the hairs on the back of her neck upright, and she gripped the baskets tighter, wishing they could be used as weapons.

She also wished it wasn’t five o’clock in the morning, and that she and this stranger weren’t the only people on the street.

There was nothing for it, though, but to keep walking toward him. The alternative was to run back home, and she refused to do that.

Gigi increased her pace, her boots thumping a quick beat on the cobbles in time with her racing heart.

She wanted to look away from him, to avert her head, but
that tasted too much like fear to her, revealed too much of her nerves. She deliberately looked toward him as they stepped closer to the next streetlamp, approaching from opposite sides.

He made no pretense about watching her, his lips set in a strange twist, his gaze fixed on her face.

She skirted the edges of the light, pretending to give him space, as a lower-level servant would a gentleman. He did the same, careful to keep his face in shadow, and her fear propelled her higher up the sheer cliff face of terror.

She forced herself to give a polite nod as they passed, baskets held close to her body, but he made no similar response. She sensed his head turn as she moved beyond him, keeping her in sight as she faded completely into the gloom.

She refused to turn her head, looking straight and lengthening her stride. She strained to hear his footsteps continue on, and relaxed her shoulders a little when they did. Only when she reached the corner of Chapel and South Audley did she give herself permission to look back.

She didn’t see him where she expected him to be, and her gaze skittered, panicked, up and down the street.

She found him standing only a little farther down from where they’d passed each other, staring at her with his head cocked to one side, as if deliberating with himself.

For a second they both stood completely still. And then he took a step toward her. A deliberate, purposeful step.

Gigi turned in the direction of the market and ran.

T
he coach inn was in chaos. Durnham’s coach was forced to stop at least a mile down the road from the big building, and Jonathan leaped out to see if he could find out what was going on from someone in the line of carts, wagons and coaches.

Most didn’t know either, but an enterprising stable lad eventually wandered down with news about two coaches caught in gridlock, with panicking horses and furious drivers, not to mention complaining passengers.

Jonathan looked up at Durnham’s driver. “Any point finding a different inn?”

The man shook his head. “Next one’s a fair distance, but there’s no turning round in this lane anyway. We have to go forward.”

Jonathan clenched his fists. He wanted to be away, to do what needed doing, so he could get back as fast as possible to Madame Levéel.

He had sensed the capitulation in her nod this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, he corrected himself. It was now way past midnight. She might still be waiting up for him, he realized. He hoped she was still inclined to take him into her confidence when he did see her.

Two hours of interminable waiting finally deposited him at the inn, and he was able to book passage on a coach to Dover. He wrote a brief note to Edgars, hesitating as he sealed it. He took out another piece of the inn’s rough parchment and wrote an equally short note for his cook, begging patience.

He handed both letters to Durnham’s driver to deliver on his way home, along with a detailed note to Durnham himself, and felt the weight of his exhaustion tugging at him as he watched the carriage disappear into the night.

The message would be delivered long after dawn, even if Durnham’s driver made good time.

The call to Dover sounded behind him, and Jonathan turned and pulled himself into the large, squeaking coach. The chase for Greenway had begun.

T
he shadow man had found her at last. The thought jolted through Gigi with every slap of her boots on the cobbles as she raced for the market. There would be enough eyes and ears there to make it impossible for her follower to do anything to her.

It could be another watcher he had sent out for her, but she didn’t think so.

This was him.

She looked over her shoulder again and saw he was gaining, although he wasn’t running at full tilt like she was.

As if it were beneath him. As if her capture was inevitable.

That, more than anything, told her she was looking not at an underling, but at the man himself.

Anger at his arrogance added an edge to her fear.

Or perhaps he’d seen which house she’d stepped out of. Knew even if he failed to run her to ground here, he could always find her later.

Her feet stumbled at that thought, but she steadied herself. He
couldn’t
have seen her come out the side lane. He’d only turned onto Chapel once she was already walking down the street.

Though even if he hadn’t seen where she’d come out, he would know that if he watched Chapel Street long enough, he’d find her eventually.

He couldn’t even be certain who she was. She’d worn her cook’s apron and cap deliberately, and he hadn’t seen her in anything close to a full light.

Something about her—her walk or looks—must have struck him as familiar, and he was taking his time stalking her, curious rather than hot on the trail.

She had no doubt that would change when he finally saw her clearly. If he’d been telling the truth to her father, he’d been introduced to her, or at the very least had watched her at embassy functions.

She, on the other hand, had had too many new acquaintances
in Stockholm to juggle in her head, and she had no hope of remembering him.

The lights and sound of the market hit her as she turned the last corner to the square, panting with exertion. The wooden barrows and tables were jauntily lit by lanterns and the smell of baking bread filled the air.

She forced herself down to a steady walk and made her way straight into the thick of the crowd, in case he asked around about a woman running.

Once safe in the arms of the market-goers, shielded and protected, she relaxed a little. She edged to a stall selling fish, tried to angle herself so she could see if he came into the market, but there were too many people.

“Fresh fish! Fresh fish!” The shout near her ear made Gigi cry out and drop one of her baskets, and it broke with a loud snap under the boots of a large laborer walking past, hefting a crate of fruit.

He gave her a filthy look as he kicked the basket back toward her and disappeared into the crowd.

Gigi picked up the broken wicker with shaking hands, and then turned indignantly to the fishmonger who’d startled her. He avoided her eye, busying himself with stacking the boxes of fish before him.

“We make home deliveries,” he told her at last.

She opened her mouth to say she wouldn’t need a home delivery if he hadn’t caused her to drop her basket, but then snapped it shut. She’d been wondering how to get home.

And it hadn’t escaped her that she had to do the shopping,
shadow man or no shadow man. Her relationship with Edgars was too unstable for her to risk coming back empty-handed. He might take it as the last straw of disrespect and fire her, the consequences with Lord Aldridge be damned.

If she had her shopping delivered, she could sneak into the back alley at the top of South Audley without her purchases slowing her down, and get to Aldridge House without using the main roads.

“I should think you
would
deliver,” she told the stallholder, handing him her broken basket to throw into his rubbish bin. “And I expect your best price.” She chose her fish and gave the address, then began to move from stall to stall, keeping watch, cautious as a mouse.

She saw her man once, standing with his back to her, watching the lane they’d both used to come to the market.

She would have to choose another way out, but that wouldn’t be difficult. And he couldn’t watch them all.

With every moment that passed, the buzz of panic in her ears grew louder. It seemed harder to choose produce, as if the quality and size of the chicken would decide her fate, or the gleam and color of the apples was the difference between life and death.

Snow White, she thought, as she pointed irrationally away from the dark red apples on one side of the cart and chose the rosy pink and green ones instead.

Only she wouldn’t be sleeping until a kiss woke her, unless Lord Aldridge’s kiss could bring back the dead.

And now she was putting Aldridge into the role of handsome prince. She hunched her shoulders in disgust.

No one could save her from this other than herself.

The market was getting emptier, as cooks and servants headed home to make breakfast, starting the day before their lords and ladies arose from bed. She’d have to leave before she lost the shielding crowds.

She did a careful check to see if the shadow man stood where she had last seen him, but he had gone, and she forced herself not to swing around wildly to make sure he wasn’t right behind her.

Instead, she turned calmly in the direction she’d chosen and began walking toward the exit, letting her gaze sweep the crowd as if she were searching for someone.

She saw him at last from the corner of her eye, standing out from the others in the market because of his still watchfulness. He hadn’t seen her, and she slipped between a footman carrying half a lamb wrapped in brown paper and a group of women chatting loudly as they made for one of the far lanes.