The Viscount's Unconventional Bride

He reined in, not so much because he was interested in what was happening around the gibbet but because the crowds were so thick it was almost impossible to force a way through them. It was then he remembered this was the day Robert Shirley, the second Earl Ferrers, was to be hanged for murder, the first peer ever to suffer that fate; the usual capital punishment for a member of the nobility was to have his head severed from his body with a blow from an axe. His pleas to be sent to the Tower for execution had been in vain; he was to be treated like any other common criminal. Even thinking about it made the hairs on Jonathan’s neck stand on end and he felt as if his cravat were choking him. Not that he had ever killed anyone, except once, and that was in a duel and did not count. It was a fair fight and a long time ago, when he was a cabbage-head and had not yet learned to temper conquest with mercy.

Instead of being taken to the gallows in a plain black mourning coach, the noble lord was being allowed to take himself there in his own landau in a macabre procession that was driving the populace wild with excitement. It was headed by five coaches, all belonging to the Earl, so that as each appeared the crowd cheered it to the echo, only to be fooled because it was empty. The sixth, however, did contain the Earl, dressed in a white suit embroidered with silver. He was accompanied by the Sheriff of London and the Tower chaplain, with warders as outriders. Behind them came more coaches bearing the Lord High Steward, Masters in Chancery and twelve judges and behind these the Earl’s friends come to give him a good send off. London had never seen anything like it. What, Jonathan asked himself, had James been thinking of to call a meeting of the Club today of all days? It wasn’t as if they had had a hand in bringing the Earl to justice; he had needed no searching out and his action in cold-bloodedly shooting his steward had left him no defence.

Jonathan did not wait to see him hang and moved on, turning into Tyburn Lane and thence to Hyde Park Corner and into Piccadilly to the London mansion of Lord Trentham, a member of the government, who had given up a room in his house for the meetings of the Society for the Discovery and Apprehending of Criminals, popularly known as the Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club. Here he found the others of the group gathered in a room set aside for the meeting.

Jonathan breezed into the room, bade everyone good day and made them a brief bow before subsiding into the only empty chair round the table. The place at the head of the table was occupied by Lord Drymore who, as Captain James Drymore, had founded the Society nine years before. On his left was Harry, Lord Portman, immensely rich, who pretended to be a macaroni, but was as astute as any man and whose particular interest was in coiners, men, and women too, who counterfeited coins of all denominations. Their exploits were becoming so widespread they were beginning to threaten the stability of the economy.

On James’s right was Sir Ashley Saunders, a one-time naval man and a confirmed bachelor, or so he maintained, whose chief concern was with the security of the realm. Both these men had been with James from the beginning and Jonathan had joined them soon afterwards. A newcomer was Alexander Carstairs, one-time cavalry captain and an expert on weaponry. And lastly, at the foot of the table was Sam Roker, who, though not ranked a gentleman, was admitted to the company on account of being James’s devoted servant and friend and very useful to have with you in a tight spot. Besides, he knew his way round the rookeries of the capital where thieves and cutthroats were wont to hole up.

They were all very different men, both in background and temperament, but they worked well as a team and Jonathan was pleased to be counted one of their number. Sometimes they were joined by Sir John Fielding, London’s Chief Magistrate. Blind as he was, he had a fearsome reputation and it was said he could recognise any number of thieves by the sound of their voices. Today he had other duties, probably to do with Earl Ferrers.

‘I am sorry I am late,’ Jonathan said. ‘But there’s no getting through the traffic today. I never saw such a sight. Ferrers has the whole capital in a ferment. You would never think he was riding to his death.’

‘At least that is one more criminal who has received his just deserts,’ Ash said. ‘And I, for one, am glad to see the law deal even-handedly, no matter what rank the accused holds. There should not be one law for the rich and another for the poor…’

‘We all concur in that,’ James said. ‘But can we get on? I intend to set off for Blackfen Manor tonight. Amy will soon be brought to bed with our fourth and I wish to be there when it happens, even if it is only pacing the corridors. Now, Ash, what have you to report?’

‘The City is quiet again after the latest onslaught of the mob, intent on pulling down the dwellings of the Irish labourers,’ Sir Ashley told them. ‘It was all stirred up by a building labourer who had been discharged as a troublemaker. He roused them to fury, but once I had him in custody and talked to his followers they dispersed and no real harm done, except a few bloody noses. But I will keep an eye on things.’

‘Good. What about you, Harry?’ James queried.

Harry stopped examining his beautifully manicured nails to answer him. ‘Jed Black has escaped from Newgate again. That man is as slippery as an eel and should have been hanged long ago.’

‘What’s his crime?’ Alex asked. Being new to the group, he did not know the story behind some of their operations.

‘He’s a notorious coiner and murderer,’ Harry explained. ‘Head of a gang. I had a hand in his arrest some weeks ago. He has a crafty lawyer who keeps finding reasons to delay his trial and he is not prepared to languish in prison when he has a lucrative operation waiting for him to return to it. He escaped once before and a devil of a job it was to track him down and have him taken up again. Now it’s all to do again.’

‘Do what you can,’ James said. ‘The man is dangerous and must be brought to book.’

‘Ten to one he had accomplices on the outside and bribed the guard,’ Harry went on. ‘I plan to go to the gaol and question the warders and the man’s fellow prisoners.’

‘He’s too fly to go to ground in his usual haunts,’ Sam put in. ‘Do you want me to help?’

‘Yes, if it’s agreeable to you, James.’

‘By all means.’ James turned to Jonathan. ‘Jonathan, what about you?’

‘Acting on information received, I recovered most of Lord Besthorpe’s property and returned it to him and no harm done,’ Jonathan reported.

‘By that I suppose you mean you did not arrest the perpetrator?’

‘No. He was a skinny little urchin. Couldn’t bring myself to hand him in.’

James laughed, remembering how he had done the same thing himself years ago and saved Joseph Potton from a life of crime. The lad had grown into a fine upstanding young man who now worked for Jonathan.

‘The nipper was used by others to climb into a tiny window at his lordship’s house,’ Jonathan went on. ‘I came up with them while they were dividing the spoils and the men made good their escape, leaving the bratling to carry the can, but I will unearth them. The boy gave me their names in exchange for his freedom…’

It was then Luke Vail interrupted the meeting, having begged the man on the door to let him in. He doffed his hat, bowed to everyone, then addressed himself to Jonathan. ‘My lord, I need your help urgently. My sister, Louise, has disappeared. We, that is the family, are beside ourselves with worry. I heard you were a member of the Gentleman’s Club that likes to solve mysteries and it seemed to me you might consent to help find her.’

Jonathan studied him carefully. The young man was dressed in the sombre clothes of a cleric, which sat ill on his broad, athletic figure and youthful good looks. ‘I know you, do I not?’

‘Yes, my lord, I am Luke Vail. We were at the same school, though not in the same year. My father is the vicar of Chipping Barnet, hard by your father’s estate. I am to take up a curacy in Bedfordshire in two weeks.’

‘Louise, you say,’ Jonathan said. ‘I seem to remember seeing her once when I attended your father’s church. We go to St Saviour’s as a rule. She was a pretty little thing.’

‘She is not a little thing now, my lord, she is twenty and the apple of my father’s eye, being the only girl in the family.’

‘When did she disappear?’ James asked. ‘Under what circumstances?’

‘Yesterday afternoon when everyone was out of the house. My mother came home from shopping to find her missing. Her gardening apron and gloves and the little fork she used for weeding had been flung down on the flower bed and abandoned. It is not like her to be so untidy; she usually puts them away in the potting shed before she goes indoors. I questioned all the servants and our young gardener told me he had seen her running down the garden path as if the hounds of hell were after her—his words, not mine. He said she sat in the arbour at the bottom of the garden for some time, then suddenly got up and ran back into the house. Later he saw her leaving with a small portmanteau…’

‘She has run away with a lover, perhaps?’ Ash put in.

‘Certainly not!’ Luke was indignant. ‘She would not, even if such a person existed, which he does not.’

‘Did the gardener speak to her?’ Jonathan asked.

‘No, he said it was not his place to question the young mistress and she frequently went into the village carrying a basket of provisions or a bag of clothes and such like to be given to the poor families. She is well known for it and he thought nothing of it.’

‘Then has she gone visiting friends?’ James asked. ‘Have you enquired?’

‘Certainly I have. No one has seen her.’

‘Did you enquire if she had boarded a coach?’ James asked.

‘Yes, it was one of the first things I did. No one saw her and everyone knows her in the village, so if she had done such a thing it would have been noted. Her horse is still in the stable. I rode to my brother Matthew’s house about three miles distant, in case she had taken it into her head to visit him. She was not there nor had been. No one had seen her. I searched the roadside in both directions in case she had met with an accident, but to no avail. She had not been to Mark’s either. He is another brother and has a living near Rickmansworth, though how she would have gone to him I have no idea. Someone would have had to take her. He had seen nothing of her. We do not know what to do next. My mother is distraught.’

‘I can understand that,’ James said. ‘And she left no clue as to her intentions?’

‘No, though she did leave a note telling our parents not to worry and she would soon be back…’

‘There! I said she had run away with a lover,’ Ash said.

‘No, she has not. I wish you would treat the matter seriously.’

‘We are treating it seriously,’ James assured him. ‘But we exist to track down criminals. If no crime has been committed…’

‘Please make an exception in this case. She would not willingly have worried our parents by staying away all night. We think something dreadful must have happened to her. Help us to find her, I beg of you,’ Luke said desperately.

‘This seems like a job for you, Jonathan,’ James said at last. ‘But you must lose no time or the trail will have gone cold.’

Jonathan rose to obey. ‘How did you arrive here?’ he asked Luke.

‘I rode.’

‘Good. I will ride back with you at once. Let us hope the crowds are not so thick now…’

They could not ride side by side until they had passed the Tyburn gibbet. The hanging had been accomplished and the body taken down, but some of the crowd still milled about, talking about it, buying mementoes, waiting to see if there would be any other convicts to meet the same fate. There was usually more than one dispatched on hanging days. As soon as they were on the open road and the noise behind them had faded to a distant hum, Jonathan questioned Luke more closely about his sister’s disappearance. Had anything happened to trigger it off? Had she been unhappy at home? Had she expressed a desire to visit friends or relations? To all of which the young man was noncommittal. And when he asked for a description of Louise, the only reply Luke made was, ‘Oh, she is beautiful.’