Page 114
Lucy looked down the street, imagining the scene, the gilded coach materializing in the moonlight, the coronet winking on the door. But it wouldn’t have been the coach she knew, Anthony’s coach. Effie’s family hadn’t taken her home. Her whereabouts were a family mystery.
Unless . . . Her whole body was prickling now. Unless they weren’t a mystery at all.
Had Weston the elder abducted his daughter, taken her, not home, somewhere else?
“I ain’t seen her since that night,” the girl continued, up again on her toes. “I wrote to Charlie about it. He started life as my humble cousin, but he’s gotten too high for his nut.”
She made a face, dropped her heels down hard.
“Charlie . . . Nixon?” Lucy asked.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Of course Charlie Nixon, the great Charlie Nixon. He’s in California by now. If he ever got my letter, he didn’t deign to write back. He was fit to spit when I threw in with the Flying Zamoras. Cursed me silly. I was the best wire walker in the act.”
The girl rose to her toes, twirling an invisible umbrella over her shoulder, smile wide and dazzling.
“Indispensable, he said. Ha!” She dropped again with a burst of laughter. “Ain’t nothing indispensable to Charlie. Anyways, I like it here better. It’s more civilized.”
She shrugged when Lucy didn’t smile her confirmation. It was impossible to smile. She felt dazed.
“He’s apt to be wrathy.” The girl sighed. “It don’t bother me. But he could have had a care for his wife. Don’t think I didn’t warn her off him. I know my relations ain’t princes.”
Lucy wondered briefly about the great Charlie Nixon, wrathy cowboy and callous husband. Had he hoped, through Effie, to wedge his hands into the Weston family coffers? Had he menaced and mistreated her before he left her to her fate?
The man was certainly a villain, but there were others, more dangerous, nearer to hand.
“Effie is a lady,” she said, looking urgently at the garish canvas of the girl’s face, all white powder and red rouge. “Whoever forced her into that carriage against her will is going to pay dearly. Think, I beg you. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
The girl nodded. “One of the men called out to the other, called him Jeffers, or Jephson.” At Lucy’s startled movement, she raised her brows.
“You know him?”
Lucy bit her lip hard, arms folded against her chest, steadying herself. She would get to the bottom of this, however low and dark. She met the girl’s wide-eyed gaze.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
• • •
A half hour later, she was pushing open the door of the George and Dragon. The public house was doing a brisk business. The main room was crammed with patrons, mechanics and tradesmen mostly, and the waiters worked at a dash. Lucy pushed her way forward. For a moment, she felt like a young girl again, at sea in a crowd of boisterous men, hoping to spot her father, and hoping she wouldn’t—hoping against hope that he was already on his way home, walking under his own power. For that moment, the feelings crowded her, made her feel bruised and fragile. But she forced them aside.
She wasn’t that young girl anymore. She knew how to make space for herself. She pressed on, sweeping the tables with her gaze.
There he was, sitting at the end of a crowded table. He wasn’t dressed in red pantaloons, but she’d know him anywhere, even without the signature gold-topped walking stick he flashed when strutting about the borough.
“Mr. Purcell,” she said loudly. His nose was buried in the foam that topped his tankard, but he raised his head and squinted.
“If you’re the one looking,” he leered.
“You’re lucky I’m not looking for you tonight,” she snapped. This was greeted with appreciative hoots. She ignored them.
“I’m looking for Dr. Jephson.”
“Come to me, asking for another man.” Purcell heaved an exaggerated sigh, wiped a mock tear from his eye with an index finger weighted with a thick gold ring set with a large red stone.
“You’re not a man. You’re a toad.” She bit off the words. In her fantasies, she’d followed up a tirade with a punch. She put her fisted hand on her hip. “You know the other toads,” she said sweetly. “Where can I find him?”
“One of your ladies, Purcell?” A silver-haired, wolfish man was grinning at Lucy over Purcell’s shoulder. “Loved her and left her?”
“More like one of Jephson’s lunatics.” This shout came from the other end of the table. Another man piped up.
