Miles tried to rein in his rising excitement. Vaughn might just be eager to meet a mistress… but what man kept a mistress in this part of town? Although the streets were unfamiliar to Miles, his internal compass was spinning merrily away, and had landed unerringly on southeast; they were heading, in their roundabout way, away from Mayfair, away from Piccadilly, towards the river and the more rough-and-tumble areas to the east. Clearly, they were not making for Vaughn's townhouse in Belliston Square.
On a street of shuttered shops and seedy taverns, Vaughn's chair began to slow. His chairmen obediently trotted around a corner, and paused in front of an alehouse whose sign creaked idly in the evening breeze.
Miles jabbed the chairman between the shoulder blades. "Stop here!"
The chairman skidded to a rib-crushing halt just before the turn. At least, Miles's ribs felt like they had been crushed. They had whacked right into the chairman's head. Wheezing, Miles vaulted out of the chair, clapped some coins into the chairman's hand without stopping to count them, and flattened himself against the corner of the building.
Miles watched as Vaughn waved away the hand offered him by one of his bearers, and climbed out of his chair. At least, Miles assumed it was Vaughn. The figure who emerged from the chair was entirely swathed in a large black cloak. Only the serpent-headed cane marked the phantom figure as the same man whose footsteps Miles had dogged. Pausing to arrange something with his chairmen — most likely the time at which he wished to be collected, as the neighborhood was not one in which a gentleman would wish to go on foot — Vaughn disappeared into the tavern.
Miles squinted at the faded sign above the door. Depicted below a ducal coronet were a pair of broad-topped boots of the type worn by the cavaliers of a century ago. Miles could just barely make out the faded legend, THE DUKE'S KNEES.
The entire place had a seedy aspect, an air of long decay compounded by drooping shutters and peeling paint. Despite its rundown aspect, it seemed popular enough. A trio of men, swaying together in song, had just staggered out the door, unleashing a hint of the hubbub within — and a strong reek of spilled ale — before the door teetered closed again.
As an afterthought, Miles leaned down and undipped the jeweled buckles from his shoes, slipping them into his waistcoat pocket. In this neighborhood, they shone like a beacon, if not to his quarry, then to the thieves and footpads who waited to prey on inebriated gentlemen after dark. If Miles could have also stripped himself of his white silk stockings and knee breeches, he would have, but somehow, he thought he'd arouse more attention striding in there buck-naked than he would clad as though for a court audience.
What he needed was a cloak, one of those big, all-enveloping sorts that Vaughn had been sporting. Damn! Keeping to the shadows, Miles cursed himself for not having thought of it. Of course, he hadn't realized that he was going to be playing the intrepid spy tonight as well as the bored escort; had he known, he would have dressed accordingly. Not in black — since no one wore unrelieved black except spies and parsons, and Miles had no desire to be taken for either — but various dull shades of brown that would blend into the scenery and render him eminently unremarkable.
As luck would have it, there was a brown cloak of exactly the type required walking Miles's way. Unfortunately, it was attached to a very large individual, with a crooked nose and scars on his face that proclaimed he wouldn't look amiss at a brawl. There was a female creature in dirty flowered cotton and tattered lace clinging to his arm — secondhand goods by the look of them, both the clothing and the woman.
Miles stepped out in front of the pair. "Hello," he said, with a winning smile. "I'd like to purchase your cloak."
"My cloak?" The man looked like he'd sooner punch him than negotiate with him. "What do you want with me cloak?"
"It's chilly, don't you think?" Miles improvised. He rubbed his arms and feigned a shudder. "Brrrrrr!"
"Awww, gi' it to 'im, Freddy," cooed the little doxy, hanging on his arm like a squirrel off the branch of a tree. "I'll keep ye warm."
"A charming sentiment," Miles applauded. "And now for the price…"
The mention of money had its desired effect. Miles walked away several shillings the poorer, proud possessor of a smelly piece of brown wool. A voluminous, hooded, smelly piece of brown wool. Never again would he leave home without one, he vowed.
No time to muse on the functionality of cloaks. He had wasted too much time already. How long had Vaughn been in there? Swirling the cloak about him, Miles strode rapidly towards the Duke's Knees. Miles gingerly pushed open the door, which lolled drunkenly off its frame, held in place by a makeshift hinge at the top. From the splintering in the wood of the frame, it looked like the door had been broken off its hinges, and more than once. Charming clientele this place boasted.
Holding his cloak close about him to hide his telltale white stockings and knee breeches, Miles kept his back hunched and his head low. The taproom was full. Uncertain light wavered over the proceedings from the hearth in the left-hand wall and the battered pewter sconces on the wall. A gang of rowdies in rough shirts and unkempt hair was playing a complicated game with a knife in one corner of the room, the object of which seemed to be not getting one's fingers sliced off.
Miles could safely say Vaughn was not of their company.
In another corner, men were dicing, flinging ivory cubes from a battered tin container. A busty barmaid squirmed on the lap of a red-nosed patron, slapping at his hands and squealing protests with more form than force. Definitely not Vaughn. A steep flight of stairs in one corner led out of the taproom, to private rooms upstairs, no doubt, the sort of rooms designed for clandestine meetings of the amorous kind. Or of the treasonous kind.
Miles started towards the stairs. But there was another corner of the room left. His eyes had initially skirted over it because the little nook sat entirely in shadow, too far from the hearth for any light to reach. The candle on the wall had gone out — or been blown out, by someone aiming to discourage prying eyes.
Tucked away behind the curve of the bar, wedged in the far right-hand corner, there was room for just one small table. At that table were seated two men.
Vaughn. There could be no question. Although the hood was pulled down as far as it would go, covering his forehead and shadowing his eyes, there was no mistaking that aquiline nose, or the elegant aesthete's hands that sat so incongruously on the scarred wood of the table. Those were not the hands of a laborer.
Miles sidled closer, under pretext of getting a drink from the bar.
His companion, too, was cloaked and hooded. Hoods, thought Miles with a wry twist of the lips, appeared to be popular this season. The two were seated on a slight diagonal, with Vaughn nearer the bar, slightly turned away from the main room, and the stranger wedged in the crook between the join of the walls. With the second man's face turned out, Miles should have been able to make out his features, but the lack of light transformed his visage into something out of one of the novels Hen was so fond of, a hooded horror with nothing but emptiness where the face ought to have been. Dramatic rubbish, thought Miles, inching nearer.
There was a slightly darker shadow that might have been a mustache… Miles bumped into the corner of the bar, and bit back a startled oomph.