The Water Nymph (5 page)

“The Siren?” Crispin and Lawrence countered, in unison.

Elwood brought his eyes down to his audience to explain. “Yes. I am not sure if it is because her beauty has the power to lure men from their destiny or because her tongue can lash them to death. Both are said to be true.” The young man blushed slightly and rushed on. “Those who do not call her the Siren still claim that she is some sort of sorceress or, rather, witch. She does things to men, it seems, which make them behave strangely. It is said that she curses those who dare to touch her or, worse, propose to her, but that does not stop them.”

“Has she had many proposals?” Crispin asked casually.

Elwood consulted the red leather volume. He flipped one page, then another, his lips moving as he counted the names. “Forty-three,” he replied finally, then paused and turned another page. “No, I beg your pardon, forty-six. There were three in the last week.”

Lawrence whistled slightly. “What odds are we offering?”

Elwood moved back and forth among the pages. “At first the bets were very safe, with an equal payoff. When Thomas Argyle proposed, one pound would get you one pound if she accepted him.
Then, by the time Lord Creamly proposed, one pound would get you ten if she accepted. On these most recent two, we are offering one hundred pounds for one pound.” He looked up at the two men, his eyes wide. “That is the highest the payoff has ever been, for anyone, in the marriage wager.”

“You know”—Lawrence leaned toward Crispin—“if you could pull it off, you would be very rich.”

“I am already very rich,” Crispin pointed out. “Besides, she is not my type.”

“Ah, so you have seen her. What is she like? Perhaps I will try it myself.”

Elwood look concerned. “If I might venture, my lord, I would not suggest it. She is a very dangerous woman.”

“Dangerous?” Crispin and Lawrence repeated, again in unison.

Elwood nodded solemnly. “We were asked to investigate her on behalf of Her Majesty, but despite our best labors we were able to learn nothing of her background or family. We got as far as the fact that she was born somewhere near Newcastle, but the parish records were locked away or destroyed, no one knew which, and there was a new priest who had never heard of her. She first appeared in London society roughly two years ago, introduced by Lord Grosgrain. Your neighbor, Lord Sandal. It was then that the Crown consulted us for information. Lord Grosgrain claimed she was his goddaughter, but there were questions about that, questions which were left unanswered at his death last Monday.”

There was something in the man’s tone that piqued Crispin’s interest. “Do you think she killed him? Her godfather?”

“I do not think, my lord, I merely report,” Elwood said humbly. “Lord Grosgrain’s death appears to have been a riding accident. But there have been intimations of other sorts. There were rumors, even before the accident, that his relationship with Miss Champion was not exactly what it seemed. Shortly after he presented her as his goddaughter, he remarried.”

Lawrence cut Elwood off here. “That’s right, he’s the one who married Constantia Catchesol.”

“Yes, sir. At one and a half pounds to the pound. It was a very likely thing.” Elwood turned to address Crispin directly. “I believe, Lord Sandal, that you were once involved with the lady?”

Crispin, who had learned long ago not to be astonished by the thoroughness of Lawrence’s information network, nodded. “I was. But don’t put my name into your betting book as her next suitor just yet. One must observe a respectable mourning period.”

One day earlier, the news that Constantia was again available would have filled Crispin’s heart with joy. She had been the most beautiful woman he could imagine ten years earlier when, at twenty-two, he had proposed to her. She had been beautiful as she fluttered her hand to her breast in surprise at his clumsy proposal, and still beautiful as she laughed sweetly and told him that although she adored him, she could never think of marrying him because he was far too young. He probably would have married her after the death of her first husband, three years earlier, if he had not left for the continent before her period of mourning ended. At that point, older, wiser, and rich, she had given him strong indications that he could easily win her hand, if not her heart, and he suspected the same conditions still held.

She would make an ideal wife for him, he knew, beautiful enough to enjoy making love to, conceited enough not to require large doses of his admiration or affection, and shallow enough not to need too much stimulation. After their marriage he could go on with his life as he liked it, so long as he saw that she was provided with jewels and gowns and whatever other pleasures she desired. They would appear together stunningly in public, stay out of each other’s way comfortably in private, and perhaps share an occasional interaction between the sheets of the marriage bed. It would be the perfect marriage of convenience for both parties. What was more, he knew, The Aunts would be overjoyed with his choice.

But Constantia was not the woman he had come for information about. Shaking off his reverie, Crispin asked, “What does Lord Grosgrain’s marriage have to do with Sophie Champion?”

“It is said that after the marriage, Lord Grosgrain and his goddaughter grew apart,” Elwood explained. “People drew the obvious conclusion that she had been expecting to become the next Lady Grosgrain and was disappointed, or rather, enraged. This is generally offered as the reason she rejected all her previous proposals.”

“But it would not account for her rejecting the three proposals this week which must have come after his death,” Crispin interposed before he realized he was speaking. “Or even those offered after Lord Grosgrain wedded Constantia.”

“No, indeed it would not.” Elwood shook his head. “However, it has been suggested by the more coarse-minded that Miss Champion’s wealth derived from blackmailing Lord Grosgrain for breaching their betrothal contract. Accepting someone else’s proposal would have negated her claims on him.” Seeing Crispin poised to ask a question, he rushed on. “There is no evidence for such a contract, it is merely rumored. We have nothing on our books”—he tapped the red leather volume—“to indicate it existed. His name was never listed among those who proposed to her.”

Crispin looked confused. “If she was blackmailing him, why would she kill him?”

“There are those who say she was unable to stop at blackmail, and that, a passionate woman, she resorted to murder. Others scorn the blackmail theory entirely, and say that her disappointment alone caused her to do it. The opinions are not very clear. “A woman scorned,’ you know.”

Crispin frowned. “This makes no sense. If she resented the marriage, why not kill Constantia instead of Lord Grosgrain? Besides, I thought you said it was an accident.”

“The Sirens of mythology,” Elwood began, “were able to lure a man to his death merely by singing to him. Many people would not hesitate to assign Sophie Champion similar powers.”

“She sounds like quite a woman,” Lawrence said as Elwood fell silent.

“She is,” Crispin answered to himself, then asked aloud, “Do you know where she lives?”

“That is another reason people think she is a witch,” Elwood resumed. “She lives in the old convent of Our Lady of the Whispers, just adjacent to her godfather’s house and across from yours, Lord Sandal. People call the place ‘Hen House’ now because she lives there with two other women, Octavia Apia, the famous dressmaker”—Elwood paused and looked at Lawrence, who flinched almost imperceptibly—”and Emme Butterich, the late Lord Elsley’s daughter. All the servants are female as well.”

“Even the cook?” Lawrence and Crispin asked, once more in unison.

“Yes,” Elwood confirmed. “And she is said to be very good. Apparently, the Duke of Dorchester tried to hire her away from Miss Champion after merely hearing her ‘cake of candied orange peels’ described, but he was unsuccessful.”

Lawrence looked hard at Crispin. “Why did you want this information, anyway? Are you after the cook?”

“No, I am quite happy with Castor.” Crispin shook his head and hoped his smile looked genuine. “Actually, a friend of mine asked me to make inquiries. In return for your help, I’ll be sure to have him enlist in your book if he moves into the proposal stage. Although I am not sure that in good conscience I can recommend he betroth himself to such a monster.”

“Monster,” Lawrence repeated. “That reminds me of something I meant to ask you about, Crispin. Elwood”—he faced the
A-to-F
man—“you have been invaluable. Thank you very much.”

Elwood bowed awkwardly to the two men, then loped out the door clutching his red leather volume.

Crispin’s eyes followed him across the threshold. “He is remarkable. Where did you find him?”

“He picked my pocket,” Lawrence said, laughing. “Or attempted to. He was desperate, trying to feed his mother and four sisters on scraps and fish skeletons from the sewers around the Palace. Her Majesty’s courtiers would scurry by him every day, heaping their stinking trash on his head, without giving him a second thought. I could tell he would never be a first-class hand man, but he was intelligent and it seemed somehow just to give him the power to heap the stink of ill repute on the heads of Their Lords and Ladyships if he should feel like it.”

Crispin shook his thus-endangered head. “I suppose I should have given him my purse, then, just to be on the safe side.”

Lawrence assumed a mock swaggering tone. “Don’t worry. I might be able to put in a good word for you with his boss. So long as you do me a favor in return.”

Crispin spread his hands wide. “Whatever you wish, Your Lordship.”

“Not a favor, really. Just a question. While you were on the continent, up to no good, did you ever hear about a fellow named the Phoenix?”

A crease appeared on Crispin’s forehead as he tried to remember. “The Phoenix. Isn’t that a mythical bird? The one that regenerates itself constantly from the ashes of its own destruction or some such nonsense?”

Lawrence was nodding impatiently. “Yes, but it is also a man. A fairly mythical man. He got the name because, like the bird, he seems to be impossible to kill. Every government on the continent, as well as the Emperor of China, has offered to pay a bounty to whoever does him in irrevocably. The bounty has been collected four times by people claiming to have killed him, and then returned four times when he reappeared unscathed. Everyone assumed he was working for dear Queen Liz, but someone in London is offering a bounty fit for a king for the Phoenix’s identification and capture, and, from the size of it, it would appear to be the Royal Highness herself.”

“And you would like to collect this regal reward,” Crispin hazarded.

“Exactly. I thought you might have heard something about the man while you were abroad, or noticed someone here that you had seen over there. He has been operating in Europe for the past two years, but rumor has it that he is back in England now.”

“Back in England? Has he been here before?”

Lawrence nodded. “He crushed a counterfeiting ring a few years ago. That was the first that anyone heard of him, and also the beginning of his myth. A bystander saw one of the counterfeiters—Damon Goldhawk, a damn good shot—fire at him four times. Instead of getting shot, the bullets apparently ricocheted off the Phoenix and returned to Damon, all of them going straight into his heart.”

“How do you propose to capture him, then?” Crispin asked with unfeigned interest, and was disappointed when Lawrence only shrugged.

“First I must find him. Then I can worry about trapping him.”

Noticing that he had already stayed far longer than he intended, Crispin wished his friend luck and took his leave.

“Be careful,” Lawrence advised Crispin as he reached the door. “With this menagerie of mythic beasts running around, London is hardly safe.”

Walking down the stairs, Crispin chuckled to himself as he remembered Lawrence’s words. It had been three bullets that were fired at him, not four, and only two of his had gone into the counterfeiter’s heart. After all, the Phoenix was not
completely
infallible.

“Where have you been?” Octavia demanded when she opened the front door of Hen House and found Sophie there. Without waiting for an answer, she gently steered Sophie toward the library and into a green brocade chair. “You really look dreadful,” Octavia continued despite herself. “Where did you get those leggings? And that shirt. The fabric is beautiful—it looks too fine to be English—but it is much too large for you. What did you do with the suit I made you? Are you aware that your mustache is slipping?”

Sophie just stared at her friend through this torrent of questions, and had begun to think of trying to compose a response, when Emme burst into the room.

“Where did you find her?” she demanded of Octavia.

“On the front walk. She was sort of teetering there when I got back from my workshop.”

Sophie resented the word “teetering.” She was sure she had been more perching than teetering, and she planned to tell them so, probably next spring.

“You look dreadful and that stupid mustache is crooked,” Emme told Sophie, circling around to face her. “What happened to your head?”

“Orange cake,” Sophie replied, squeezing the words out.

“You were hit with an orange cake?” Emme’s tone suggested incredulity.

“No.” Sophie found her strength coming back in the all-important pursuit of orange cake. “But I will hit you with one if you do not stop badgering me. Providing there are any in the house. Are there? I could eat about ten of them.”

Octavia and Emme exchanged pained looks. “You know that Richards will quit again if you refuse to eat anything but her candied-orange cake,” Octavia reminded her. “And we do not want that to happen.”

“But this is an emergency,” Sophie pleaded, and she really felt it was, considering the state of her head, her nerves, and her unfed stomach. It was not every morning she awoke naked in a man’s bed. “I promise, if she lets me eat ten, no, make it twelve of them, now, I will never do it again.” Sophie reached her hand toward her heart pathetically as if taking an oath.

“Your word of honor?” Emme asked.

Sophie looked alarmed. “Has it come to that?” When Emme and Octavia nodded in tandem, she sighed. “My word of honor.”

Emme moved off toward the kitchen, the domain she shared with Richards the cook and whose borders no one else was allowed to breach, while Octavia shuttled Sophie toward her bedchamber. Sophie loved this room, indeed it was the reason she had purchased the abandoned convent of Our Lady of the Whispers two years earlier.

That day, a hazy early summer’s day like this one, she had entered the abandoned convent at dusk. Wandering alone through its long halls and deserted rooms, she had found herself, as if magically, in a chamber that dazzled her. It was filled with light, in hundreds of colors, streaming in through five tall stained-glass windows at its far end, bouncing off its yellow stone walls. The windows had once belonged to a private chapel, but had later been built into the abbess’s private chambers. The two pairs of windows on either side contained portraits of female saints, four exquisite women, each wrapped in a different-colored mantle. In the middle of these, in a window taller and wider than the others, the Lady of Whispers was enthroned, smiling a quiet benediction on the inhabitants of the room.

Those five women were Sophie’s guardian angels. During the day they filled her room with sparkling colored light, always changing and moving, allowing her to gauge the time of the day by the color of the walls. Early morning was a pale blue, then came red, then gold in the middle of the day, then a light green that grew darker as evening approached, and finally finished in a dazzling purple. By day the women in the windows shared their colors with Sophie, but it was at night that they really did her a service. They drove away the darkness and kept her company so she was never alone, never unprotected, their pacific faces holding at bay the voice that haunted her perpetually. No one could hurt her, Sophie believed, as long as she was under their watch.

So often had Annie, the chambermaid, found her asleep on the floor beneath the windows that Octavia had finally had a divan made to fill the space, large and stuffed with the softest feathers. It was on this commodious piece of furniture that she now deposited Sophie and then disappeared. When she returned a quarter of an hour later, she was trailed by a servingwoman pushing a large tub on wheels filled with steaming water and another carrying a wooden box holding glass vials.

“Strip,” Octavia commanded Sophie, and was surprised to see her friend cringe. “What is wrong?”

“I never,” Sophie said, rising from the divan and pulling off the shirt Octavia had admired, “want,” she continued, balling up the leggings and kicking them into the corner of the room, “to hear,” she went on, stepping into the bath, “that word”—Sophie slid down into the tub—“again.” She ducked her head down and let the hot water cover her completely.

Octavia stood at the edge, carefully adding drops of oil from one of the glass vials. The scent of jasmine soon filled the room, and as Sophie brought her head to the surface, she felt herself relax. With her eyes closed and the deliciously aromatic water lapping around her, her mind began to settle down. There were three things she had told herself to remember, she remembered, but she could not remember what they were. In the hope of reclaiming them, she began to slowly recall the events of the previous night.

She recollected the idiotic cat-and-mouse game through the streets of London and the horrible striptease and the wager, but after that everything got fuzzy. There had been a bird who was noisy, and a man who was silent, and…

“Ouch!” she hollered, sitting straight up in the water. Sophie reached a finger toward her upper lip, found it unadorned, and turned toward Octavia, who was dangling the sopping-wet false mustache in her hand. At that moment, Sophie remembered one of the things she had forgotten. “I am very upset with you,” she told Octavia sternly.

“Because I took the mustache off? It did look rather fetching, but—”

Sophie interrupted. “If it was not for you I never would have ended up in his bed naked.”

“I don’t see—” Octavia began, but stopped herself. Certainly she had been encouraging Sophie for months to at least explore the caresses of the opposite sex as a way of getting over her discomfort with men, but she did not recall having recommended that she throw off her clothes and go to bed with them all at once. Nor had Sophie ever given the least sign of listening to her, other than making faces involving gnawing on her upper lip with her teeth and rolling her eyes, or grunting like a wild boar. This turn of events was very perplexing, even worrying, and Octavia thought for the first time that perhaps the bump on Sophie’s head was more than superficial. “I am afraid I do not understand what you are talking about,” she said gently. “Did you hit your head hard? Do you remember where you are?”

Sophie glared at her. “It was that mustache paste you made. I think I am allergic to it. It made me feel very strange and…” Sophie’s voice trailed off.

“The mustache paste made you take your clothes off?” Octavia queried as if it were the most natural thing in the world, while she busied herself collecting the clothes Sophie had strewn around the chamber.

Sophie was somewhat appeased by her friend’s tone. “No, he did that when he made me strip. But I probably would have been thinking more clearly and would have avoided it, if it weren’t for the mustache paste making my insides feel like I had been drinking hot spiced wine, and my knees like they were made of cream pudding.”

Octavia now understood Sophie’s earlier reaction to the command “strip,” but the words her friend was speaking were certainly not the words of Sophie Champion. Sophie Champion would rather have leapt off the top of Saint Paul’s than take her clothes off in front of a man. The only thing that sounded like Sophie at all was the guileless gourmet description of what were clearly the symptoms of physical attraction. As Octavia’s concern that she really had poisoned Sophie ebbed, her curiosity about what human male could possibly have induced such sensations in her friend increased. “Who was this man who ordered you to strip?” she asked nonchalantly.

“The Earl of Sandal,” Sophie replied, avoiding her friend’s eyes.

“I see.” This was the delicate part, Octavia knew. She paused for a moment, twirling a lock of golden blonde hair around her finger as she tried to figure out the best way to phrase her question. “And after you took your clothes off, you decided to go to bed with him?”

“Are you mad?” Sophie was no longer avoiding Octavia’s gaze. “With that disreputable caterpillar? That odious worm? That—that—” Sophie spluttered and decided to change tactics. “Go to bed with him? Never. And then, because of your mustache paste and his infernal hatefulness, I was compelled to make a wager with him. And the next thing I know I am lying in his bed, naked, and it is nearly midday and my clothes are gone.” Sophie stopped for breath.

Emme entered the room then, carrying a silver cake platter, but she stopped abruptly when she saw the pained expression on Octavia’s face. “What is wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Octavia answered, obviously struggling to keep breathing and avoid either weeping or laughing, Emme could not be sure. “Sophie was just telling me about how the mustache paste made her sick and compelled her to strip off her clothes, make a wager, and then spend the night with the Earl of Sandal, and it is all my fault.”

The silver platter fell to the floor with a bang, sending a round sugary confection flying across the floor. “You spent the night with the Earl of Sandal?” Emme stopped gaping long enough to ask.

Sophie rose from the tub, frowned at the round confection, and then turned her frown on Emme. “Where is the orange cake?”

Emme managed to unlock her jaw. “Richards says there is no need to make orange cake when you order a dozen meringues from Sweetson the baker to be delivered every week.”

“Meringues are quite delicious,” Octavia added in a slightly stilted tone.

“Maybe,” Sophie said, waving the comment aside. “But they are not orange cakes and I did not order them. Why would I order anything from anyone else when I have Richards—Satan’s knockers!” Sophie had just remembered the second thing she had forgotten to remember earlier, and it was all thanks to the meringue. Relieved, and feeling much better after her bath, she stepped out of the tub, scooped the fluffy confection from the floor, kissed it, and tossed it out the window. Then she danced toward Emme and gave her a kiss likewise. “Thank you. It would never have come back to me if not for you. Now, be wonderful and tell Richards that I don’t know anything about ordering meringues and I am still begging for orange cake.”

She watched the now doubly stunned Emme totter out of the room, and then swung toward Octavia. “I need clothes, women’s clothes, but easy to move in,” she explained.

Octavia and Emme had grown accustomed to Sophie’s unusual behavior and no longer thought twice when she went from pensive to ebullient in the blink of an eye, but this business of sleeping with men and kissing desserts was out of the ordinary, even for her. Beginning to wonder if indeed the mustache paste had made Sophie mad, Octavia opened the armoire that was stuffed with the gowns she had designed for her friend and selected a pale blue silk.

“No, not that one,” Sophie said, shaking her head, and Octavia felt that her worst fears were confirmed. Sophie had never, in all their years together, expressed an opinion about her clothes.

“What about the green gown?” Sophie asked. “The new one, with the other green on the bottom and that stuff all over the front.”

This description sounded more in character, but even so Octavia had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if Sophie would not rather lie down—say for two weeks, perhaps in a comfy apartment at Bedlam—as she extracted the requested gown from the armoire. It was one of her recent designs, light green silk the color of a young apple, over a darker green silk skirt. The “stuff” on the front was actually elaborate embroidery work depicting delicate vines that curved over the bodice, drawing the eye and emphasizing its low, square cut. Flowers of light pink, blue, and purple grew out of the vines, and just above the left breast there was a small bumblebee. Octavia signed all of her gowns with a bee, causing that humble insect to become the most sought after object of adornment in London for the past two seasons. Women eyed one another with disdain if there was no bee visible and scrutinized each other’s embroidery to learn if it was a real Octavia Apia or a sham. But Sophie paid attention to none of this as she flounced miserably in and out of balls, Octavia’s best advertisement and London’s most envied model, nor was she thinking about it now.

No, she was not thinking about the many compliments she had received on the gown before, or the fact that it made her eyes look remarkably green, or the hungry, desperate way every man had gazed at her the last time she wore it out, or that she had been described the next day, in public, as the most beautiful woman in London. She had chosen it, she knew, only because she remembered it was comfortable and not on the off chance that the man who lived in the palace across the street might look out his window as she departed. Or rather, exactly on that off chance, so that she could show the callow beetle that she did not care what he thought of her. Or something like that.

As she stepped out of the house, brushing from her riding cloak, crumbs of the orange cake she had inhaled, she suddenly remembered the third thing she had forgotten. She hesitated for a moment, about to go back in and ask Octavia about the pistol, but decided against it. She could ask her later, Sophie thought, mounting her dappled mare and taking the reins from the stable-girl, when she returned home to eat two dozen more cakes.

Setting out across London, she could hardly have known that there would be no later. Sophie Champion would not be going back to Hen House. Not later. Not ever.

This was no way for the Phoenix to be spending his day, Crispin thought to himself as he shifted uncomfortably on the unsteady stool-like torture apparatus and started on the final bundle of papers. He would rather have been out facing a group of Spanish brigands armed to the teeth desperately protecting their unlawfully collected treasure, or the French royal firing squad with pistols loaded, or even a Turkish merchant who had padded his body with gunpowder that would explode at the merest touch by another person and embarked upon a suicide mission to blow up the English ambassador’s residence in Constantinople. He would rather have been dealing with any of these (as he had—the firing squad more than once, in fact) than sorting through other people’s perfumed love letters in someone else’s perfumed den of iniquity.