He let go of her and moved to one side of the window, looking out without seeming to. “So we are.”
Susannah felt sick, her body tight with tension and-she had to admit it-a measure of fear.
He studied the shadowy garden and seemed to come to some conclusion. “He will not come out into the light. And there is not much of that in any case. I must deal with this now, Susannah. And the servants must not know.” He sighed. “It is a good thing your drainpipes are in excellent condition. Make sure that Mr. Patchen locks all the doors tonight.”
“He always does,” Susannah replied in a miserable whisper. “But the servants will remark upon your sudden absence.”
“Are you not an empress? Ignore them. And stay away from the windows.”
“Yes, of course.”
Carlyle waited a few moments more, and she watched his eyes follow the movements of a predator she could not see, drawing her own conclusions when Carlyle looked up through the window and in the direction of the garden’s back wall, shrouded in darkness. The man, whoever he was, had undoubtedly gone over it
Carlyle didn’t waste a minute. He lifted the window, put one long leg over the sill, grabbed the drainpipe, which clanked, and swung the rest of himself out.
It was three in the morning when he returned. Susannah had stayed in the same room, waving away Molly, who thought she had fallen asleep in the armchair. The English girl had been easy enough to get rid of, but not Lakshmi.
Lakshmi noticed the slight disarray of her mistress’s attire-and more important, the agitated state Susannah was in. But Susannah had sent her away too.
“Never mind, Lakshmi. Please go.”
The Indian woman had obeyed, but with obvious reluctance.
Susannah eventually did fall asleep in the armchair and wakened with a little scream when she realized Carlyle was standing over her.
“Hush,” was all he said.
She looked at his face and gasped. “Oh-what happened?”
His eye was black and a bloody scrape extended from his ear to the front of his chin.
“I became involved in a rather delicate negotiation. But in the end I prevailed.”
She rose and looked about for a handkerchief to soak and wash his face with. The cold cup of tea on the small table by the armchair would have to do for balm. “Who was he, Carlyle? What did he want?”
Carlyle shrugged. “A hired brute. His name is not important. He meant to frighten us.”
Susannah dipped the handkerchief in the tea and pressed it carefully to his face. Carlyle flinched. “He hurt you.”
“Indeed he did. And I hurt him back.”
She cleaned away the drying blood. The task was made more difficult by the short whiskers that roughened his jaw. “Why? You should have-”
“Should have done what, Susannah? Notify the police?”
They would not understand the complicated matter of the gems. “No.” She inspected his skin, seeing for the first time the faint purple bruise underneath the blood. “But should you see a doctor?”
He shook his head, looking at her wearily before sinking into an armchair. “We must keep the gems in a safer place than this house. Do you know, I had thought of putting the corset into a safe deposit box at the bank, but I could not get Lakshmi to let it out of her keeping.”
“She has been so frightened, Carlyle.”
He sighed. “She has reason to be, now more than ever. But there may not be much time. Where are the rubies and sapphires?”
“In the toes of my evening shoes. I took them out to have Mr. De Sola appraise them, but it seemed like as good a hiding place as any so I put them back.”
“Females,” he said with irritation. “Why do all of you squirrel away valuable things inside your clothes?”
“Because God did not see fit to allow women to do our own banking,” she replied tartly. “A divine law to that effect is undoubtedly somewhere in the Bible, although I cannot cite chapter and verse at the moment.”
Carlyle laughed under his breath. It was obviously painful for him to do so.
She softened her tone a little. “Imagine the questions I would get if I asked my father’s banker for a safe deposit box. And do not forget that I had nothing to do with smuggling those damned stones in the first place.”
Susannah came over to his chair, saddened that the glow of their evening together had been obliterated. She put a hand upon his shoulder and he patted it. “We must not fight. I have had enough of that for one night. I nearly killed the fellow.”
“Why?” she said.
“He was in your garden. He confessed to following you.”
Susannah raised an eyebrow. “And what did you do to encourage that confession?”
“I punched him in the belly and he went down. But that was after he slammed me into a brick wall.” Carlyle rubbed his chin. “I shall not shave today.”
“Tsk. Surely nothing is worth that. The gems be damned. We should throw them in the Thames. We can live without them, surely, and so can Lakshmi. I suspect the carpet-seller’s son would take her off our hands. I shall marry her off.”
“It seems to be de rigueur in Albion Square,” Carlyle said wryly.
Susannah looked down at him. “What happens now, my love?”
He didn’t answer right away. “What did you just say?”
“What happens now?”
He craned his neck rather stiffly to look up at her. “I de-camp before the servants wake up. And then, my love, we shall see.”
The next night…
Carlyle had extracted the name of the fellow who had hired the brute before he dropped him on his head in a Soho alley, so chasing him down had been worth it. The brute had even been persuaded by a well-placed kick to mumble a relevant address.
He raised the lion’s-head knocker and let it fall. It sufficed to bring a doorman, who let him in with a silent nod when he said his name and went inside a room to the left to announce his arrival. Carlyle waited in the hall.
“Mr. Jameson.” The doorman returned and accompanied him to the room on the left. He withdrew as Carlyle entered.
He had no clue to the identity of the man sitting in front of the fire, other than his Indian name: Tagore. The high-backed chair made it impossible for him to see the fellow.
“Good evening, Mr. Tagore,” he said.
The man rose slightly, hands on the padded arms of the chair, and looked over the back. He wore thick spectacles and his black hair was parted in the middle like a school-boy’s. His face was almost cherubic-except for the considerable intelligence that shone in his dark eyes. “Good evening, Mr. Jameson. Please sit down.”
Carlyle chose the matching chair and they sat side by side in clubby warmth. But there were no other members present. Considering what they were about to discuss, that was just as well. One did not talk casually of rubies and sapphires and diamonds without expecting every ear in the room to twitch inquisitively.
“I understand you and Jack had a bit of a scuffle last night. Oh-” he peered at Carlyle’s bruised jaw and black eye-“I hope you are healing nicely. How unfortunate. Jack is quite a one for fisticuffs and mayhem.”
“That was why you hired him,” Carlyle said.
“Of course. But you were more than a match for him,” Tagore said cheerfully. “Boxing is a wonderful sport, but I prefer cricket. More mud, less blood, you know.”
Carlyle was feeling rather worse than he had last night, when his injuries were fresh. “Mr. Tagore, if you could get to the point, I would appreciate it.”
“Of course, of course, of course. Let us begin at the beginning. We know that you and Miss Fowler came into possession of some very interesting gems, by means which may not have been entirely illegal, but nonetheless resulted in the removal of said gems from the vicinity of Rajasthan-”