Masked by Moonlight

Matthew stood in the doorway between his bedroom and the sitting room, raking his fingers through his hair as he desperately analyzed the facts at hand. “So you put the whip in the sheets, and they took away the sheets, whip and all. Have I got it?”

Thompson folded his hands together, with just the mere hint of a wince. “I believe you do, sir.”

What to do now? One couldn’t go traipsing around a foreign city asking for a wayward whip. Matthew had visions of himself, crimson necked, trying to explain his odd choice of exercise to the hotel laundress. Then again, this was San Francisco. It might not prove to be the oddest thing she’d seen. He’d pay a discreet visit to the laundry, then, rather than have to deal with the hotel clerk or someone more likely to raise eyebrows.

Matthew pulled out his cuff links and offered them to Thompson. “I’ll just have to go hunt it down, then, won’t I?”

The valet looked at him askance. “Sir?”

Matthew dropped the links into the man’s outstretched hand and started undoing his necktie. “I can’t very well waltz into the hotel manager’s office and demand my missing whip, can I? It’s undoubtedly found its way to the laundry, and I’ll just go fetch it back.”

“Now?” As if to emphasize the lateness of the hour, Thompson produced his pocket watch and checked it.

“Better tonight than at breakfast tomorrow, don’t you think? I can slip down to the laundries and slip back unseen if I’m careful.”

In a rare show of disapproval, Thompson looked as if he found that a very bad idea.

Well, no, it wasn’t a stellar plan, but Matthew had to get that whip back, and he wasn’t swimming in good alternatives at the moment. “Have you a better solution, man?”

Thompson returned to a stone-faced silence.

“Very well, then. Don’t wait up.” Matthew rolled up his shirtsleeves in an attempt to look more common and less gossip worthy, should the laundry staff prove to have loose tongues. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t go hiding my belongings again, whatever you think may be the consequences.”

Are you laughing, Father? Snickering in your velvet smoking jacket at the vision of your son, the indubitable Covington heir, sneaking toward the hotel laundry like some kind of cornered culprit?

Matthew’s father had hated the whip from the moment his brother, Matthew’s uncle, had given him the unusual weapon. “Ridiculous and overdramatic,” Reginald Covington had declared with a frown when Matthew had showed him the first trick he had mastered. Here it was, the first accomplishment that was not just a mere shadow of his father’s strengths, and it was dismissed with scorn. The whip was, and had continued to be, something entirely Matthew’s own, which brought him a joy he couldn’t ever quite put into words. Maturity had not yet changed that fact.

What a lark you’d have with my current pickle, Matthew thought, the familiar slant of his father’s scowl coming to mind. ’Tis a good thing the Atlantic is as wide as it is.

Why couldn’t Thompson have misplaced the sword? It would prove so much less a problem, attract much less attention.

As he descended the third flight of stairs and caught the distinct scent of soapy water, Matthew thought of his valet’s amazing ability to disappear. Somehow, Thompson could stand in the back of a room and evaporate into the wallpaper. One hardly even remembered he was there, until he would materialize—with a startling sense of timing—just when he was needed. The man anticipated needs with such uncanny skill that the rest of the household staff often declared he could read minds.

When Matthew was a young boy, the mere threat of Thompson’s presence could stop him in his tracks. No matter how well Matthew hid his mischief, the man would always know.

Hesitating on the landing now, Matthew was struck by the irony that here he was, decades later, hiding mischievous deeds again. And Thompson still knew.

As he turned the last corner, the noise and scent told Matthew he’d found the laundry at last. He listened to the lilt of a woman’s voice as she gossiped with someone over her work.

If he was careful, he could imitate their speech enough to hide his accent and, hopefully, his status. That had been a favorite trick of his youth—mimicking others’ voices. It drove his father to distraction—which was, of course, its highest value. By the age of twelve Matthew could imitate relatives enough to fool even his sire momentarily. More than once Covington had threatened to ship his son off to the most vile form of punishment imaginable—the theater. Matthew knew, though, that the threats were hollow; the Covingtons would have endured anything before allowing an actor to taint the family name. Trouble was, young Matthew had more than once thought the stage might be a better life than one under his father’s constant glare.

“Ain’t it amazing what shows up in the laundry?” asked a gravelly old voice from the steamy room to his left. “Fine entertainment it is.” A fowl stench hit Matthew as he inched closer to the open door. “Most of the time. Nicky, my boy, what is you boiling up back there? Smells like six-day-old fish!”

A man snickered. “You ain’t so far off. Some old salt in one of the rooms done died, and nobody found him for two days. The manager got so mad he sent the entire staff back to change every bedsheet in the hotel all over again.”

“I told you that man ain’t got no more sense than I got eyesight,” the old woman snarled.

“I ain’t never fought you on that one, Neda. And him telling us to do somethin’ so useless. Like it’s our fault some girl missed a room, so’s now we got to do double loads of wash to keep up.”

The old woman grunted. Numerous piles of linens along the hallway confirmed that the laundry staff would be working through the night to catch up. Matthew poked his toe at one or two of the piles, hoping to detect the hilt of his whip among the soft folds. He wasn’t so fortunate—the bedding billowed gently.

“If we’re washing clean sheets all over again, then what’s that awful smell?”

“The dead man’s linens, Neda. Can you believe it? I said we should throw them out, but the manager says if we bleach ’em enough times they’ll be good as new. Not me—you’d never catch me sleeping in sheets some old coot died in.”

Matthew flattened himself against the wall and wrinkled his nose against the dreadful smell. Good thing no one had to come out into the hallway to do away with the questionable bundle.

“Well, whatever you think, take it outside, why don’t you? I’m too old to be smellin’ dead people’s things, you sniggering fool.”

“I was just hauling it outside, Neda. If you could see through those eyes of yours, you’d know that. Now stay where you are so you’re out of my way whiles I go past.”

So the laundress had bad eyesight. Matthew would never get another chance like this. He could be in and out with the whip—if she had it—by the time Nicky came back inside. Matthew let his head fall back against the wall. I must be daft. Reaching up, he mussed his hair and rolled his shirtsleeves higher.

“Hey,” he said brightly, raising his voice in pitch and adopting the rusty Southern drawl he’d heard from the woman. “You all found a big black whip, by any chance? I’d heard it was down here.”

“I told Nicky somebody’d come lookin’ fer it.” Neda was an enormous woman with dark, shiny skin and eyes that were a milky, unfocused gray. She sat precariously balanced on a small stool, surrounded by baskets of linens. A stack of perfectly folded facecloths rested in her lap. She swiveled her round head, with its knot of thick, braided hair, toward a shelf to Matthew’s left. “That it?”

“Sure is,” he said, wincing at his own comical effort to alter his voice.

“Well, fetch it on back to your master then, boy, ’fore Nicky decides to sell it, like he was plannin’ to.” She squinted at him, blinking repeatedly. “Big one, ain’t you?”

Matthew grabbed the whip, keeping his eye on the door through which Nicky might return at any second. He hid his relief as his hand wrapped around the familiar hilt. “Huge, Mama says. Thanks!” he called as he ducked out the doorway, feeling as though he’d just gotten away with far more than he deserved.

He heard Neda chuckle loudly as he crept back down the hallway. “Hey Nicky, guess what? The Black Bandit just came and got his whip back. And you missed him. What do you think of that, Nicky boy?”

Chapter Eight

“That’s servants’ gossip.” Georgia scowled. “Haven’t you better sources than that?”

Stuart broke a flower off the hall arrangement—from the center again, as he always seemed to do, no matter how many times the house staff had asked him not to—and slipped it into his lapel. “Better sources than servants? They’re the best sources there are, Peach. Now that our Bandit’s a public mystery, everyone wants in on the fun. Of course, the promise of a few coins for Bandit stories doesn’t hurt, either.”

Georgia planted her hands on her hips. “You’ve wasted your money. Really, a whip loose in the hotel laundry? That’s nonsense.” She took a step closer to him. “Honestly, Stuart, isn’t the Bandit selling enough of your papers? Now you pay people to invent collaborations?”

Stuart pouted. “You think so lowly of your own brother? Your own flesh and blood?”

“You are perfectly capable of such a thing.”

He snatched his hat from the hands of the waiting butler. “Loath as I am to disappoint your high moral standards, this tale just happens to be genuine. A black whip showed up in the laundry at the Palace Hotel last night, and some tall young lad snatched it back before anyone could get a good look at it or at him. Absolutely Bandit-worthy, in my humble opinion, and straight from the mouth of a highly respected source.”

Georgia frowned. “I’ve never known your opinion to be humble. Highly respected sources? In a hotel laundry?”

“On Mama’s grave, Peach,” Stuart said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “the whip’s for real.” He put on his gloves. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the talk of dinner tonight at the Hawkinses. Mrs. Hawkins has become one of the Bandit’s most ardent fans. Imagine that.”

Georgia winced. Stuart knew his strategy. Bedillia Hawkins was by far the most excitable woman Georgia had ever met. If by some remote chance the newspaper account of a Black Bandit whip sighting didn’t stir the public’s imagination, Bedillia Hawkins would surely finish the job. It would be the town’s juiciest gossip by sunrise. Stuart had probably made sure they would be dining at the Hawkinses tonight for just that reason.

“Don’t you think, Georgia, dear?” Bedillia inquired of her obviously distracted dinner guest.

“Mrs. Hawkins?” Miss Waterhouse blinked, pulling herself back to the topic at hand. Matthew couldn’t say he blamed her for her wandering thoughts. The conversation had been frightfully dull until the subject of the Bandit came up.