Nicola Cornick - Deceived

He perused the marriage lines and the promissory note for a third time. His hand stole toward the drawer of his battered cabinet, where a bottle of sherry was hidden for emergencies. This was a full-scale emergency if ever there was one. He paused. It would, however, be better to deal with Henshalls first. He did not relish giving those most ruthless of moneylenders the news that Princess Isabella Di Cassilis’s debts were now impossible to claim, the responsibility of some luckless wastrel in the Fleet Prison. He reached for his hat and folded the marriage lines within the pocket of his waistcoat. Sometimes he felt he did not get paid sufficient for the trials of his work. Still, for Princess Isabella Di Cassilis he would do almost anything.

An hour later, Mr. Churchward tottered back up the stairs to his chambers. He had been pale before; now he was ashen. He went directly to the cabinet, extracted the sherry and resisted the temptation to drink it straight down from the bottle. He was shaking so much that the neck of the bottle rattled like a cannonade against his sherry glass. He collapsed into his chair with a heartfelt sigh, raised his glass and gulped the revivifying liquid down with as little regard as though it had been water.

To his great amazement, the Henshall brothers had been very pleased to see him. Only an hour before, they had received a visit from a gentleman who had settled in full—and in cash—the debts of Princess Isabella Di Cassilis. There had been handshakes all round.

Mr. Churchward lay back in his chair as the sherry warmed his veins. He tried to make sense of the aspects of the case that puzzled him, which were practically all of them. Princess Isabella had given him to understand that her new husband was under lock and key and would remain so for the foreseeable future, yet when Churchward had arrived at the moneylenders’ he had discovered that the gentleman was not only at liberty but had already paid the princess’s debt.

He wondered why on earth Isabella had not told him her husband’s true identity.

He wondered what on earth Marcus Stockhaven, one of the richest men in the Ton, had been doing in the Fleet Prison.

And he wondered what the devil his two most noble clients were doing contracting an apparent marriage of convenience and then expecting him to arrange an annulment.

“Dear oh dear oh dear,” Mr. Churchward said unhappily, emptying the sherry bottle into his glass. A third glass of sherry was previously unknown in Mr. Churchward’s experience, but such unsettling circumstances called for extreme measures.

“HOW DO I LOOK?”

Marcus Stockhaven tilted his head to one side, the better to appreciate the set of his neck cloth in the mirror above the drawing-room mantelpiece.

“Like a man who has spent three months trying to tie his cravat in a dark cellar,” his friend Alistair Cantrell said brutally.

Marcus grinned. “That bad?” He surveyed his reflection thoughtfully in the mirror and rubbed a hand over the stubble shadowing his chin. “I need a barber.”

“You need more than that.” Alistair looked around. “Where is your valet?”

“I gave all the servants leave of absence whilst I was away,” Marcus said. “Why do you think you are pouring your own brandy?”

He watched as Alistair folded his lanky length into the armchair beside the fireplace. Stockhaven House was small as London town houses went, and wholly unostentatious. The Earls of Stockhaven had never felt the need to boast their wealth and lineage through vulgar display, and Marcus was no exception. Nevertheless, a house like this required a staff to run it. The room was cold, for the June evening had turned unseasonably damp. No fire glowed in the grate. The dust sat thickly on the cherrywood furniture and the whole house felt faintly unloved.

“So,” Alistair said, turning from contemplation of his brandy to study Marcus’s face. “Why the change of plan?”

Marcus shrugged. “My business was all but complete,” he said, “and I was starting to draw attention in a manner that I could ill afford.” He took a mouthful of brandy, grimaced and put his glass down. “Either someone has been selling off my liquor whilst I was in the Fleet and replacing it with tea dregs or I have lost my taste for brandy.”

Alistair looked amused. “It has an excellent flavor, Marcus.”

“Then my sense of taste has definitely been ruined by the disgusting swill that passes for food inside,” Marcus said, sighing. “I thought as much. A man must be desperate indeed to tolerate such appalling slops.”

Alistair grinned. “Just like Harrow, as I recall. But did you discover what you wanted?” He gestured with his brandy glass. “Did you find Warwick—and his criminals? You must know that I am expiring with curiosity. Tell me all.”

Marcus stretched out his long legs toward the empty fire grate. He felt as chill as the house, cold and empty. One of the reasons he had been able to spend three months in the Fleet was that there was no one to notice his absence. In the years since his wife had died, he had traveled widely. No one was in the least surprised when he disappeared for months on end, and positions in his service were eagerly sought since his servants had the longest holidays in London.

In the three days since his release from the Fleet Prison, he had noticed more than ever before the emptiness of Stockhaven House. It was odd, for previously his solitude had never disturbed him. Now, however, he felt that he wanted more—although he was not sure exactly what more was. A house full of servants did not seem the answer.

“I discovered that the prison is a fertile ground for the recruitment of men to the criminal fraternity,” he said, in reply to Alistair’s question. “Debtors who are desperate for their freedom will promise anything to those who buy them out of jail.”

Alistair pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Just as you thought. But surely it would be better to recruit a bunch of hardened criminals in Newgate rather than the Fleet?”

Marcus shook his head. “What is the point of recruiting a man who may well hang the next day? The debtors of the Fleet are a better class of criminal. Some may not even be criminals at all. But all are frantic for lack of money, and the man who can buy them out of prison has a hold over them for the rest of their lives.”

“Is Edward Warwick one such?” Alistair asked.

Marcus nodded. Hunting Warwick, a criminal mastermind, was the reason he had gone into the Fleet in the first place. “He is certainly one of the main players,” he said. “I spent three months in a cell with men who were terrified of his very name. All my cell mates were too afraid to tell me more than the merest scraps of information about him. I learned that Warwick buys a man’s debts—buys their very souls—so that they dance to his tune.”

Alistair narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “It sounds as though you were wise to make your inquiries incognito. You never met the man yourself during your time in the Fleet?”

“Unfortunately not, although he regularly visits the prison to recruit his men. But perhaps it was fortunate that Warwick and I have not yet met.” Marcus’s mouth took on a grim line. “We will one day and I would wish to be better prepared.”

Alistair Cantrell nodded. “So did you discover anything useful about the fire at Salterton? Can you tie it to Warwick for sure?”

“Yes, I can,” Marcus said. His gaze turned inward, away from the cold, dusty room. It had been bad, that winter night at Salterton six months ago. It was the night that his wife’s mother, Lady Jane Southern, had died. He had been up at Salterton Hall trying to restore order and bring comfort to the servants, many of whom had served the Southern family for years. Marcus had been grief struck and bone weary, and when he returned to his own house in the grounds at nigh on midnight, he had wanted nothing but the oblivion of sleep. Instead, he had caught a lad in the very act of burgling his late wife’s chamber. The boy had overturned a lamp in his attempts to escape. In a matter of seconds the tapestries and curtains were ablaze and so was the boy’s clothing. The lad had made a desperate leap from the window in an attempt to escape.