A sudden stillness descended upon Mr. Powys. His veneer of charm vanished. Stripped of all the roles he played, he was left with the lethality that had allowed him to rise from street urchin to co-owner of one of the most successful theaters in London, second only to Drury Lane. He brought to mind one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—angelically handsome but bent on annihilating those who had done wrong.
“Hawley is nothing but a murderer. He arranged for Althea’s death, even if he didn’t personally light the flame that killed her. I am certain of it,” Mr. Powys spat out, referring to the actress and former mistress of the viscount who died in a mysterious fire. “Hanging is too good for Hawley—not that they’d likely execute a nob. But I’ll do whatever is necessary to see his power reduced.”
“And I will suffer anything to keep you safe, Charlotte,” Calliope said as she reached over to give Charlotte’s hand a comforting squeeze. “I can manage to be civil.”
“As can I,” Mr. Powys intoned.
“Where do we begin?” Charlotte looked around the room.
“Hawley is bloody good at slithering away from his crimes without leaving a trace,” Mr. Powys reported bitterly. “I could find nothing to directly connect him to Althea’s murder.”
“Nor could I,” Mr. Belle said. “Two years ago, in the wake of Althea’s death, I ordered my men to trail him from his haunts in London for six months. Although he met with villains of all sorts at the time, no one in my employ witnessed him committing an actual crime.”
“I’ve experienced the same trouble when I’ve shadowed him,” Matthew said. “It’s been over a year since I tried, though, since I was in the Colonies.”
“That piece of jewelry must be the key,” Charlotte said as she pulled out Miss Harrington’s letter. “I’m sure of it. Miss Harrington did not recognize the necklace itself, but she did identify the creature on the pendant. Here. Let me read what she wrote:
I must admit it was a surprise to hear from you, Lady Charlotte, or that you even remembered a wallflower like myself. I do not often think of my less than illustrious debut, but your kindness toward me was always a spot of brightness during those disaster-filled days. I am delighted to be able to return your charity by answering a few simple questions. I do not recognize the choker in the drawing that you sent, but I have been always more interested in pieces worn by the long-dead than the living. You are correct that the jewelry appears to be Tudor, which is also too modern of an era for the likes of me. The cameo though, contains an ancient pagan symbol of a Scottish wildcat. The image is not Pictish as you suggested but rather from the Chatti people. They were a Teutonic tribe chased by Romans from the region that is now theLandgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt. Pliny the Elder and Tacitus both mention the Chatti, but I digress. Some of the tribe escaped to Scotland, and a few Highland clans claim descent from them. I would assume that the pendant is not actually a carving from antiquity but an attempt a century and a half ago to replicate the old, half-forgotten art.
“Matthew, does your family have any connection to the wildcat?” Alexander asked when Charlotte finished. “I don’t recall there being any, but you do have Scottish blood.”
“The only interest my family has in the predator is hastening its eradication.” Matthew frowned as he pulled out the choker for everyone to examine. “You witnessed my brother’s reaction to the felines when I spoke at your mother’s salon. He has no love for the animal, especially not enough to value a cameo emblazoned with the beast. I’m surprised that he didn’t toss it immediately.”
“But it is an important symbol to certain clans, as Miss Harrington said.” A nervous excitement trickled through Charlotte. The individual pieces started to form a cohesive whole, but she still couldn’t make out the entire image. “At the salon, Lady Fiona Sutherland mentioned that her family’s crest contains one.”
Calliope picked up the necklace and frowned. “This looks nothing like the Sutherland heraldry. Their symbol clearly consists of some sort of cat. This looks like a malformed pig.”
“The Keith family also says that they are Chatti,” Matthew pointed out. “Remember the shy young miss who mentioned that her ancestor was saved by a wildcat?”
“Lady Margaret!” Charlotte practically shouted her name as everything slammed into place. In her eagerness, she forgot entirely to hide her familiarity with Matthew. She clung to his arm as her wild speculation fell from her lips. “Her grandmother wasLady Chattiglen. She was an old-fashioned sort—the very kind to wear a Tudor necklace. She was killed by a highwayman. All her jewelry was taken. Do you think… it seems improbable but… it could… I mean…”
“What is it?” Hannah asked impatiently.
“Could Lord Hawley be a highwayman? Maybe the late Lady Hawley discovered the necklace in his belongings and realized its significance. When she confronted him, he had his men orchestrate the accident. It sounds absurd, but—”
“It doesn’t sound far-fetched in the least. My brother takes pleasure from inflicting pain.” A horrible hollowness rang through Matthew’s voice, and she wondered what he had endured at his older brothers’ hands. She recalled the stories Alexander had told her about Hawley, Henry, and their friends. More than once they’d stolen Alexander’s cane and forced him to walk across a narrow board over an icy, fast-running stream in the dead of winter. He’d invariably fallen in when they jostled the plank. What had they done to Matthew, who’d lived with his tormentors his entire childhood until he’d escaped to Charlotte’s family home for the summers?
Charlotte’s insides clenched, her skin prickling with the awfulness of it all. She longed to reach for Matthew, to hold him close, but she refrained. There would be time later when they did not have an audience.
“I agree with Matthew.” Alexander reached for his walking stick and fiddled with the handle. “Hawley would be more than capable of doing something like that. It would amuse him when people speculated on the highwayman’s identity.”
“Hawley detested Lady Chattiglen. I remember him complaining about her to our brother Henry. When Hawley was down from Oxford, she chided him at a soiree for failing to acknowledge her.She made a witty comment about his eyesight, and his friends laughed. He never forgave her.” Matthew visibly held his body with brittle stiffness. It was how he had carried himself all those years ago, a boy not just content but desperate to stay in the shadows. Pain seeped through Charlotte.
“In the past year, there has been a noticeable increase in highway robberies.” Mr. Powys leaned forward. “There’s gossip about it almost every night at the theater. But we’d stopped trailing Hawley a year and a half ago when our previous efforts had proved fruitless.”
“We should make a list of the holdups and see if Hawley had a grudge against any of the other victims,” Charlotte suggested.
“I was about to recommend the same thing,” Sophia said.
For the next half hour, they did precisely that. It did not take long to confirm a distinct pattern between Hawley and many members of the nobility, gentry, and demimonde who had been victimized in the past twelve months.
“What should our next step be? We cannot simply hand over the necklace since we have no proof that it was in Lord Hawley’s possession,” Mr. Belle pointed out.
“Nor can I easily explain how it came to be in my hands.” Matthew sighed in frustration, but he seemed less rigid than when they’d first started the conversation. “I can return it to my brother’s town house, but this time Hawley will likely dispose of it, rather than keeping it as a trophy. I could search his place for other damning souvenirs, but I am afraid he will use his money to explain away their existence. He may even find a poor sot who would confess in return for a bit of blunt to help feed his family.”
A sense of certainty shot through Charlotte. She knew exactly how to free herself. She just needed to be brave enough to see her plan through. “We must catch him in the act, and it starts with me becoming the bait. That way, we can manipulate the timing andlocation of Hawley’s next attack. I have an idea for how to lay the final trap, but I need all your help to set it.”
“Enjoy checking Charlotte’s bandages, Matthew!” Hannah sent them a wink before she shut the door to hers and Sophia’s private quarters above the coffeeshop. The whole wound inspection had been entirely Hannah’s idea.
