The King’s Evil. Andrew Taylor
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The King’s Evil - Andrew Taylor страница 7
Название: The King’s Evil
Автор: Andrew Taylor
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780008119171
isbn:
Brennan was only gone for a moment or two. When he returned they walked back the way they had come. She would have been content to go by herself – in the past year, she had learned to cope with the streets. She always carried a knife, and was not afraid to show it. But it would make Hakesby unhappy if she walked alone after dark, so she accepted Brennan’s company. Walking back with her to Henrietta Street did not take him far out of his way.
‘What’s amiss?’ he said as they passed St Clement Danes. ‘You hardly said a word during supper.’
‘Nothing,’ she said automatically. Then she came to a sudden decision and changed her mind. ‘No. That’s not true. I – I have a difficulty. I need to go away for a while. And no one must know where I am. Even Mr Hakesby.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can’t be so foolish,’ he said. ‘Is it something to do with that letter you had?’
She nodded. ‘It’s urgent. I must go, and the sooner the better.’
They walked past Somerset House. The Savoy, where Marwood lived, was not far away to the west and she pulled up her cloak to shield her face.
Brennan misinterpreted the action. ‘Do you think someone might be following you?’
‘Perhaps.’
A solitary woman always attracted attention, she thought, usually the wrong kind.
‘Would you – would you need comfort?’ Brennan said.
She stared at him, her anger flaring up. ‘What?’
‘If there were somewhere you could hide, I mean,’ he said hastily. ‘But somewhere the conditions were mean and poor, where they weren’t suitable for … you.’
‘Why?’
‘I know somewhere you could go for a week or two, longer maybe. It wouldn’t cost much.’
‘As long as I was safe, I wouldn’t need a featherbed. Or a maid to wait on me. If that’s what you mean.’
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I have a notion that might help.’ He hesitated. ‘Though what I have in mind would hardly be fitting for one such as you. But no one would find you there. No one would even think to look there.’
‘Where is this?’
‘A few miles outside London. It’s a refugee camp, and it’s on my uncle’s land. He used to farm it, but everything’s gone to wrack and ruin since his son died.’
WHEN CAT AND I had gone our separate ways, I walked down the Strand to the Savoy. My house was here, in Infirmary Close, which lay deep in the warren of crumbling buildings that made up the former palace and its immediate surroundings. The Savoy was still owned by the Crown, though its precincts were given up to a variety of purposes. I was lucky to have even a small house to myself – lodgings of any sort were in short supply, especially since the destruction of so much of London in the Great Fire. My master Mr Williamson had spoken on my behalf to the clerk who handled these royal leases.
I was not in the best of tempers. When my manservant, Sam, let me into the house and took my cloak, I swore at him for his clumsiness, though in truth he was as graceful as a man with only one whole leg can be, and more nimble than many with two of them.
Margaret, his wife, brought me my supper. She lingered by the table as I began to eat. ‘Your pardon, sir, but is it the Gazette women that’s troubling you? My friend Dorcas says they’re all at sixes and sevens and she’s worked off her feet.’
I felt ashamed of my ill humour to the servants, who were hardly in a position to answer back if they wanted to keep their places. I said, in a gentler voice than before, ‘That and other things.’
‘It’s only that perhaps I could help. If you need someone to do a few rounds for a week or so, then I will, if you permit me. Or I could share Dorcas’s load. I’ve done it before.’
It was a kind offer. Margaret had been one of the newspaper’s distributors before she came to work for me, and she was still friendly with several of the women she had worked with. She knew the routine. I also knew that she had disliked the work intensely, for the younger, more comely women often attracted unwanted attentions.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I need you here.’
I dismissed her. In a way it was useful that Margaret and Sam should think that I was out of sorts because of problems with the Gazette. Better that than the truth.
Afterwards I sat by the window, which looked out over roofs and walls. Slowly the daylight slipped away from the evening while I thought about Catherine Lovett and her ingratitude. Couldn’t the woman understand that I was trying to save her life? Why was she so headstrong? Why so foolish? Or was I the fool to put myself out on her behalf for no good reason whatsoever?
I worked myself up to a sullen rage and encouraged my sense of ill-usage to burn steadily within me. What had really upset me was the knowledge that Edward Alderley had raped Cat. And also the fact that she had betrothed herself to Simon Hakesby, a man old enough to be her father, possibly her grandfather.
I should have felt an abstract outrage that Alderley had forced himself on an unmarried cousin living under his father’s roof. As for the betrothal, I should have felt an equally abstract pleasure for Hakesby and Cat, for he would bring her security and she would bring him the vigour of a young woman.
But there was nothing abstract about my outrage. The very thought of these things made me feel inexplicably injured. So, desperate for a diversion, I fell to thinking of my Lady Quincy instead, though I found little consolation there. Tomorrow I would see her again, but I could not begin to understand why she wanted me to collect her from church in a hackney. Was it to do with her stepson, Edward Alderley, and the warning she had asked me to pass on to Cat? The possibility unsettled me. I wanted nothing further to do with Edward Alderley in this world or the next.
Something else unsettled me: the thought of seeing Lady Quincy again. Despite the difference in our stations, I had desired her once. It had been folly then, and it would be worse than folly now. Besides, as Chiffinch had reminded me, who could desire a man like me?
CAT MADE HER preparations. A strange calmness possessed her, a sense that her fate had already been decided and that nothing she could do would materially alter it.
СКАЧАТЬ