It Happened One Season Read online

  He humphed, and rapidly did up her laces. Five minutes later, they were back in the curricle and heading back to Bedford Square.

  Sebastian had hoped to make more headway toward his ultimate goal—perhaps even admit to his true agenda—but her decree … then again, he couldn’t regret those moments in what he already thought of as their drawing room. The house, the chaise, all had gone as he’d planned—better than he’d planned. He hadn’t imagined she would react as she had, that the place would move her in that way, but he couldn’t in all honesty complain. If nothing else, the interlude had confirmed just how perfectly suited they were in every way.

  He’d simply have to find another opportunity to break the news to her that their sham betrothal was to him no sham.

  He drew rein outside her parents’ townhouse. Leaving his tiger with the reins, he escorted Tabitha up the front steps. Biggs opened the door to them; Tabitha went in and he followed, intending to take his leave of her in the back parlor. And preferably steal another kiss while he was at it.

  But after closing the door, Biggs lifted a salver from the hall table. “A letter for you, miss—a boy brought it around an hour or so ago.”

  One glance informed Sebastian that the letter wasn’t merely another invitation card. Alert, he waited as Tabitha looked back, then retraced her steps.

  She lifted the letter from Biggs’s salver, then glanced at him. “Let’s go into the parlor.”

  He followed her down the hall.

  In the parlor she walked to the window, broke the seal on the letter, smoothed out the single sheet. Angled it to the light and read. She met his eyes as he joined her. “This is it—the blackmailer’s demand.”

  She offered him the sheet.

  He took it. The few lines required less than a minute to read. “We need to send for Stokes.”

  Tabitha crossed to the bellpull. When Biggs answered the summons, she asked for a footman to be sent to Bow Street.

  Stokes didn’t keep them waiting. Within the half hour he was standing on the parlor rug scanning the missive. “Tomorrow at ten in the morning.” His eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t give you much time to think.”

  “It was the same with Rothbury’s payments,” Sebastian said. “The first demand gives the target a day, but subsequent demands—which escalate in amount—give increasing notice.”

  Stokes nodded. “Because after the first payment is made, she’s sure the target is hooked, and she’s smart enough not to scare her targets off at the first jump—just look at this sum. A pony. Significant, but not that much when all’s considered. Tempting enough to think that the easiest way out is simply to pay.”

  “So.” Seated on the sofa beside Sebastian, Tabitha fixed her gaze on Stokes. “What will we do?”

  Stokes looked again at the letter, then at Sebastian.

  Sebastian turned to Tabitha. “We do precisely as she asks, and give her her due.”

  Chapter Seven

  The following morning at half past nine, Sebastian handed Tabitha down from her parents’ town coach at the eastern end of Fleet Street. St. Bride’s Church stood in a quiet court between two buildings to the south of the bustling thoroughfare. On Sebastian’s arm, Tabitha held up her skirts as they crossed the street, then entered the churchyard.

  At the center of its court, the church could be approached from virtually every direction; there were countless alleys and shadowy runnels from which someone might have been watching them.

  They halted a few steps from the church door. Any watcher would have interpreted the ensuing charade as Tabitha wanting a private moment alone inside the church, possibly to pray or to remember some dead relative. Sebastian agreed with a shrug. Slipping his hands into his pockets, he settled to wait, looking idly back at the traffic thronging Fleet Street.

  Tabitha entered the church alone. Their plan was relatively simple. Follow the instructions in the note and put the package containing the money—they were taking no chances; Sebastian had produced twenty new five-pound notes—into the pocket for music sheets carved into the side of the first choir stall on the right, then Stokes and his constables would keep watch and follow whoever fetched the money until the package reached Elaine Mackay’s hands.

  Entering the shadows of the church’s foyer, Tabitha looked around. To make a charge easy to prosecute, Stokes had to see her put the package into the choir-stall pocket, then see whoever came to get it pick it up, and keep them in sight as they—they assumed the courier would be another young lad—ferried it to Elaine Mackay’s house, and ultimately placed it in her hands. It was, apparently, highly preferable for Stokes to keep the package, or whoever was carrying it, in sight at all times.

  Moving into the nave, Tabitha was reassured to see Stokes lounging in one of the rear pews. He saw her and nodded, but it might have been merely a polite acknowledgment rather than a greeting. Not, Tabitha noted as she continued more confidently down the center aisle, that at that hour there was anyone else about to see.

  But they’d agreed to behave as if Elaine Mackay herself was watching; even though they’d come early, for all they knew, when she took on a new “client,” Elaine might take a more personal interest in the proceedings.

  Tabitha made her way to the first choir stall on the right. After glancing once more around the church, she drew the packet from her reticule, and deposited it in the music-sheet pocket.

  Her part played, she turned and walked briskly back up the aisle. Drawing level with Stokes, she surreptitiously gave a little wave. He responded with a stern look, but she saw his lips twitch.

  When he’d met her and Sebastian in Bedford Square an hour ago, he’d brought two young constables with him to keep watch and assist as needed; she didn’t know where the pair were, but they’d been dressed as laborers the better to blend with the many thronging the pavements.

  Stepping out into the sunshine, she saw Sebastian waiting on the path ahead. He’d been watching the street, but as if sensing her presence, glanced back at her. She smiled, walked forward and slid her arm into his. “All done. Stokes was there and saw all as required.”

  “Good.” Sebastian closed his hand over hers on his sleeve as they walked toward the street. “I suggest we take his advice and depart. We can repair to the other end of Fleet Street. If, as we expect, she sends another boy to fetch the packet, he’ll almost certainly pass that spot on his way to deliver it.”

  “How will we know which boy to follow?” As they stepped onto the street, she waved at the hordes busily bustling in every direction. “There’s boys of all sorts everywhere.”

  “Only one will have Stokes and his lads on his heels.”

  “True.” Without further argument, she climbed into the carriage.

  He gave Gifford their direction, then followed.

  At two minutes past ten o’clock, they left the carriage pulled up at the curb in the Strand, and strolled arm in arm to take up a position on the pavement on the north side of the western end of Fleet Street. They pretended to be admiring the spire of St. Clement Danes.

  “It seems appropriate,” Tabitha said, “that the payment that will allow us to stop Elaine Mackay will go past here, the spot where the payment that led us to her was made.”

  “Indeed.” Sebastian glanced over her head, back down Fleet Street. “And here comes our courier.”

  When she tried to whirl about, he prevented it. “No—don’t look.” Turning her, he strolled westward, in the same direction as the courier. “I’m not sure which boy it is, but Stokes is coming this way, and he’s clearly got someone in his sights. Let’s amble and give them a chance to overtake us.”

  She nodded decisively. “Then we’ll follow.”

  He could see no way of preventing it. Neither he nor Stokes was eager to have Tabitha present when they confronted Elaine Mackay, but as it was her mission, as it had been she who’d persevered and brought the blackmailing scheme to light to the point where an arrest was looming—and given her determination, let
alone her intransigence—they’d had to give way on that point.

  Within a minute, one of Stokes’s constables came striding past, whistling a cheery tune. A few paces behind him, a young lad—a messenger boy indistinguishable from the hundreds of others who ran errands in that part of the city every day, ferrying papers between solicitors’ offices, law courts, various registries, banks, and countless businesses—strode along.

  Stokes, his eyes alert, his attention fixed, moved smoothly in the boy’s wake.

  Sebastian allowed Stokes to get several paces ahead, then yielded to Tabitha’s insistent nudging and followed.

  “If that messenger boy knows what he’s carrying, I’ll eat my best bonnet.”

  “I doubt you’ll be put to that masticatory feat—I suspect most messenger boys learn to have no knowledge of or interest in the packets they carry.”

  After a moment, she said, “Too much temptation?”

  “Too much danger.”

  They remained behind Stokes, who cleaved through the teeming crowds like a tracking hound. He was tall enough that his black hat showed clearly above the throng.

  As they’d expected, the boy led their procession around Aldwych and into the streets about Covent Garden, eventually turning down the narrower lanes, taking a direct path to Elaine Mackay’s door. For most of the distance, one of Stokes’s constables ambled ahead of the boy; Sebastian didn’t sight the second constable until he joined them in the shadows of an alley opposite and a little way short of Elaine Mackay’s door.

  When Sebastian arched a brow the man’s way, he grinned and held up a finger to enjoin their silence. Then, much to Tabitha’s irritation, the constable turned and took up a position in front of her. Sebastian saw her glare at the poor man’s back, then she shifted to peer around him.

  Their plan was nearing its culmination.

  Having reached his destination, the boy paused to pull the packet from inside his jerkin. The constable who’d been ahead of him earlier had continued ambling, but more slowly, along the lane, scanning the doors as if searching for a particular house. Stokes had halted in the middle of the lane, looking down it, apparently surveying something in the distance. He paid no attention to the messenger boy, only a yard or two away.

  Packet in his hand, the boy faced Elaine Mackay’s door and rapped smartly.

  A minute ticked by, then the door opened, revealing Elaine Mackay.

  She saw Stokes, but as he wasn’t looking her way, she ignored him and looked at the boy, focusing on the packet he offered her.

  She smiled, smugly satisfied, and reached for it.

  She didn’t see Stokes’s head turn, didn’t see the rest of them watching.

  Grasping the packet, she passed the boy a coin she’d had ready in her hand. “Good. Off you go.”

  Packet in hand, she turned to go inside and the boy turned away.

  But Stokes was there. He seized the boy, pushed him into the arms of the young constable who’d swiftly returned up the lane.

  Whirling, Elaine Mackay saw Stokes coming after her. Her expression shocked, aghast, she tried to slam the door shut, but Stokes reached it in time and forced it back. Elaine released the door and fled deeper into the house. Stokes followed.

  The constable in the alley had raced out to support Stokes. Tabitha had shot after him; Sebastian had gone straight after her.

  On Stokes’s heels, the constable rushed in through the open door.

  A heavy thud and a string of curses halted Tabitha and Sebastian on the threshold. In the gloom within they saw Stokes and the luckless constable rolling in a narrow corridor desperately trying to untangle themselves from a large amount of washing that had been slung in their path. Both had fallen, their legs trapped in damp sheets.

  Beside them, the messenger boy was still frantically wrestling. Sebastian turned to help the other constable assure him that he was wanted only as a witness and not suspected of any crime.

  That took a mere instant—a single forcefully delivered sentence—but when Sebastian looked back, Tabitha was gone.

  He glanced around and caught sight of her skirt whisking down an alley alongside the house. He swore and raced after her.

  Tabitha wasn’t about to let Elaine Mackay escape and continue to make hay from other people’s misery. Especially not Tabitha’s friends’ misery. She rushed down the alley to the back of the house, barreled around the corner—

  Came to a teetering halt—facing Elaine Mackay holding a pair of sharp hair shears leveled at Tabitha’s face.

  “You!” Elaine spat the word. “How dare you!” Her eyes blazed, fury and hatred an incandescent mix. “You’re nothing but a pampered idiot. Get out of my way!”

  Tabitha might have obliged, but there was no place for her to go—the back wall of the next house stood close to the back of Elaine’s; the space they stood in was a few feet wide.

  Lips curling, face contorting, Elaine jabbed the shears viciously at Tabitha’s face.

  Heart pounding, she weaved back.

  A steely arm looped about her waist and hauled her back and to the side of a hard male body. From the corner of her eye she saw a fist flash past at head height.

  Then Elaine Mackay howled.

  Tabitha heard the clatter as the hair shears hit the ground.

  Wriggling in Sebastian’s grasp—he was holding her off the ground—she looked and saw Elaine Mackay—still yowling—with both hands clapped to her nose and blood pouring down.

  Tabitha glanced up at Sebastian; he was frowning and looked thoroughly uncomfortable. “What?”

  He watched, lips thinning, as Elaine Mackay’s howls subsided to sobs and she crumpled to sit on the ground. “I’ve never struck a woman before.”

  Tabitha looked at Elaine Mackay, then back at him. “Well, just remember not to do it again.”

  Stokes, who’d appeared through the back door, grunted. “Not unless they’re villains like this one—then you’re excused.”

  “There, see?” Tabitha gestured at Stokes as without compunction he hauled Elaine Mackay to her feet. “You’re absolved.” She paused, then, when Sebastian didn’t respond, added pointedly, “You can put me down now.”

  He glanced at her, then, as if only then registering that he held her still, grunted and complied.

  Tabitha wondered what was it about men and grunting. As a form of communication, it left a lot to desired.

  They followed Stokes and his captive inside the small, poky house. Stokes had sat Elaine in the single chair by a rickety table in the tiny kitchen. Over the tops of the hands still clasping her nose, the hairdresser’s eyes shot daggers at Tabitha. “I’m going to ruin you!” The words were muffled, yet still venomous. “You haul me up before a beak and I’ll tell everyone what I know about you and your precious letter.” She transferred her gaze to Sebastian. “Your engagement will be over faster than you can blink.”

  Tabitha heaved a dramatic sigh, reclaiming Elaine’s attention. “What you don’t understand is that it’s all a lie—a sham. There’s nothing you can do to harm me or Mr. Trantor—everything you think you know was a fabrication, a trap to make sure we caught you.”

  For an instant, Elaine Mackay looked utterly shocked, then her malevolence returned. “I’ll tell all about the others, too. How do you think they’ll treat you then—when it’ll be your fault that the ton learns all their silly secrets?”

  “Oh, there’s no risk of that.” Stokes grinned wolfishly when Elaine looked up at him. “Now you’ve helpfully admitted your involvement with blackmailing others, too, and in front of several members of the force”—he nodded at the two constables who were standing in the doorways—“as Mr. Peel has no intention of setting the ton against him by unnecessarily airing their scandals, you’ll face a closed court. No chance to tell anyone but the judge all about the things you’ve learned while dressing young ladies’ hair.” His grin grew intent. “You’re nicked.”

  He glanced at the constables; the messenger boy was hanging
back in the hallway, round-eyed. “Take her back to Bow Street, and you can take the boy, too. Lad,” he said to the messenger boy, “once you tell the sergeant what you did today, you’ll be free to go.”

  The boy bobbed his head.

  Leaving his men to see to their charges, Stokes waved Tabitha and Sebastian out of the crowded kitchen. Stepping into the rear yard, Tabitha led the way down the alley and back out into the lane.

  Sebastian joined her.

  Stokes halted before them. “Thank you both. I assume you’d rather you heard no more of this episode?”

  Sebastian agreed.

  Tabitha hesitated, then said, “Only if she escapes.”

  Stokes smiled at that. “Rest assured, she won’t.”

  “One question,” Sebastian said. “How will the others—those she truly blackmailed—know they no longer need to fear exposure? Admittedly they’ll no longer receive any demands, but they may well grow anxious over what the sudden silence portends.”

  “Hmm.” Stokes frowned. “I’ll have a word to my superiors. It seems like that’s something Mr. Peel himself might like to undertake—discreetly putting it about that Miss Mackay the hairdresser had been blackmailing various ton clients, but as she’s now to be transported, her victims need no longer fear her. No need to single out any clients, and no need to explain your part in it, either.”

  Tabitha nodded. “That should do it.”

  They parted with handshakes and congratulations all around.

  Stokes turned back to the house, to where his men were leading out their prisoner.

  Taking Tabitha’s arm, Sebastian turned her toward Aldwych, beyond which Gifford and their carriage would be waiting. “It’s too early for a celebratory luncheon.” And he had to clear one last major hurdle before he could celebrate anything at all. “In the interim, might I suggest we adjourn to the park?”

  Tabitha glanced at him, then nodded. “If you wish.”

  Tabitha couldn’t understand why she felt so … deflated. She’d succeeded in her mission. Brilliantly, even if she said so herself. Yet instead of bubbling and effervescing with delight, she felt as if some huge, dull weight was dragging her down.