Rolling her pen between her palms, Charlotte, Countess of Wrexford, huffed a sigh as she stared at the blank sheet of watercolor paper on her desk. It wasn’t often that she dithered over a subject for one of her drawings.
As London’s most popular—some might say infamous—satirical artist, she felt it was her solemn duty to keep the public informed about the important social and political issues of the day that affected their lives. Corruption, misuse of power, the personal peccadilloes of the high and mighty, laws that placed unfair burdens on the poor—her sharp-tongued commentaries spoke out for the masses who had no real voice of their own.
Of late, however, things had been awfully quiet in Town.
“No wars, no political crisis, no scandals,” Her lips quirked. “Which, of course, is a good thing.” The only bit of current news was the daring escape of an exotic monkey—a gift to the king from an Indian sultan—from the Tower Menagerie. Having taken Hawk, a budding artist and one of the three orphan boys for whom she and her husband served as official guardians, on a recent expedition there to sketch the famous lions, Charlotte had actually seen the creature.
Long, feathery silver-grey fur framed an ebony-black face, whose darkness was accentuated by a pair of luminous yellow eyes . . . After quickly dipping her pen into the inkwell, she began to doodle. Elongated arms and legs, curious fingers that seemed to be constantly exploring his surroundings . . . Apparently a keeper had left a key in the cage’s lock, and the clever monkey had let himself out—
“Are you perchance going to comment on the Maurading Monkey?” asked McClellan as she nudged open the workroom door and placed a tray replete with tea and pastries on the side table. Officially, her title was lady’s maid to the Countess of Wrexford, but that did not begin to encompass the full range of her duties. Taskmaster of the three Weasels, sometimes sleuth, baker of ambrosial ginger biscuits—she was, in a word, the cog who kept all the various gears of the admittedly eccentric household running smoothly.
“Apparently, the animal broke into the kitchens of Carlton House last night and ate all the special fruit and custard pastries that had been prepared for the Prince Regent’s supper,” added McClellan. “Which, of course, has captured the public’s fancy. They are all cheering for the monkey to remain on the loose and can’t wait to hear what havoc the rascal will wreak next.”
Charlotte pursed her lips in thought, and then let out a chuckle. “Ah, I have it—the Pirate Primate!” she announced, already envisioning a composition featuring a gleeful monkey eluding a crack regiment of the Coldstream Guards led by the apoplectic royal regent. “Prinny must be furious. Not simply because of the ridicule that is about to explode, but because he is a glutton for sweets.”
“Among other pleasures,” said the maid dryly. She poured two cups of tea and carried one over to Charlotte’s worktable. “Adding to the drama of the story, the palace had just announced that a very handsome reward of five gold guineas will be paid to the person who returns the fugitive to the Tower.”
“This gets better and better by the moment,” said Charlotte with an evil smile, mentally picturing the monkey in a fancy embroidered waistcoat and tossing gold coins to the pursuing soldiers. “But this is a perfect solution. I’ve been dawdling, but now I had better get to work, so Raven can deliver the drawing by midnight.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” murmured McClellan after taking a sip of her tea. “The Weasels had a decidedly worrisome gleam in their eyes after I told them the news of the reward.”
Charlotte was suddenly not feeling so amused. “Drat.”
“I heard them rummaging in the attics when I stopped to leave a plate of ginger biscuits in the schoolroom just now.” A cough. “The words “fishing nets” and “coils of rope” were repeated several times.”
Expelling a sigh, Charlotte closed her eyes for a moment, trying not to picture the diabolically creative plans that three exceedingly clever boys could concoct for snaring the fugitive monkey . . .
“M’lady, M’lady!”
Hawk, the younger of the two brothers whom Charlotte had taken under her wing when she was a struggling widow, raced into her workroom.
Had it only been three years ago? It felt like a different lifetime. Her smile quivered ever so slightly, recalling both the sorrows and the joys of that fraught time when she had been an outcast from Society, trying to eke out a living with her satirical art after assuming the persona of A. J. Quill, her late husband’s nom de plume . . . until Fate in the form of a gruesome murder had thrown her and the notoriously short-tempered Earl of Wrexford together. It had not been a match made in heaven. But strangely enough, their mutual antipathy had turned to grudging respect . . . and then friendship.
And then—
Her musing were wretched back to the present moment by a loud chortling from Hawk’s older brother Raven and Peregrine, the recent addition to the band of fledglings, as they appeared in the doorway An orphan, though because of the death of his aristocratic father, he was now Lord Lampson, Peregrine had come to be involved with their family during the murder investigation of his uncle, a brilliant inventor who had been working on a secret project for the government. Due to a number of complexities within his own family—his aunt bitterly resented the fact that the family’s title had gone to a boy whose mother was of African descent—she and Wrexford had offered him a loving home, and his kindly cousin had agreed to transfer legal guardianship to her husband.
“Ha! I’m willing to wager we’ll have the monkey in our sack by dawn!” crowed Raven as he held up several coils of rope and a bag of overripe fruit from the kitchen.
Peregrine shifted the two long-handle fishing nets cradled in his arms and nodded enthusiastically.
Charlotte noted that Raven was, like his fellow Weasels, also wearing a bulging rucksack strapped to his shoulders. She decided not to inquire what was inside it.
“The three of you must realize that the money—” she began.
“Oh, we are well aware that seeking the reward money would threaten our family secrets,” assured Raven. “If we catch the monkey, we’re going to give it to Scratch, the street sweep who took over Skinny’s corner, so he and his friends can claim the reward.”
“We are looking at the hunt as an educational experience, M’lady,” piped up Peregrine. “We’ll need to use geometry to figure out the angle of approach if the creature is hiding among the buildings, and I’m sure our tutor will applaud the reading we have been doing on monkeys.” A pause. “Did you know that the word “simian,” which is used to describe the broad family of monkey-like animals, derives from the Latin word for ape?”
She smiled. “Actually I did. But I give you high marks for creativity in trying to convince me that this expedition has any relation to your schoolwork.”
The boys all grinned.
“Don’t look too smug yet, Weasels” warned McClellan. “I have feeling that M’lady is about to lay down some rules before you hare off.”
“Correct,” replied Charlotte. She deliberately took her time in eyeing their urchin garb and the sooty filth streaked on their face. Raven and Hawk had spent their early years fending for themselves in the in the slums of London, so their rags were like a second skin. And Peregrine had quickly learned how to blend in.
“If you spot any official authorities while you are on the hunt, you are to immediately give up your chase and melt away into the shadows.”
“Oiy,” agreed Raven.
“If you corner the monkey, you must be extremely careful about being bitten or scratched. No attempting to approach unless you are wearing a pair of thick leather gloves.”
“Oiy!” answered Hawk. “I put three pairs in my rucksack.”
“One last thing,” she added. “You will have to put off your departure for an hour. I need to finish my drawing and have you drop it off for Mr. Fores before you set out on your great hunt.”
“Oiy!” The three of them looked a little disappointed at the delay, but they answered in unison without hesitation.
“There are ginger biscuits in the schoolroom, which should help sweeten the wait.” said McClellan, which had them jostling with each other to lead the way to the stairs.
“Well, then, I had better get to work,” murmured Charlotte, though her voice betrayed a flutter of uncertainty. “Though I do wonder whether this particular night is a wise time for them to be out in the city. Given the reward, I daresay a great many people who aren’t the usual denizens of the night will be on the prowl for the fugitive monkey.”
“Don’t fret.” The maid gathered up the tea things to take back to kitchen. “The boys are experienced in navigating all the ins and outs of the stews and know how to stay out of trouble. I don’t think there’s any danger of them getting into any serious mischief.”
Charlotte drew in a deep breath as she dipped her pen into the inkwell. “From your lips to the Almighty’s ears.”
* * *
Steam rose from the liquid gurgling at a soft boil in the iron cauldron. Wrexford consulted his pocket watch and then made a notation in his log book. Two more minutes. He watched the second hand move through the increments, finding scientific satisfaction in the unwavering precision.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to devote several uninterrupted days to chemical experiments, and the orderly sequence of thinking demanded by testing his theories was calming as well demanding.
“Reason rules in science,” he murmured, extinguishing the flame at exactly the right second. “While in Life, chaos is king.”
Grasping the cauldron with the two ends of a towel, he moved it to a trivet on the counter and covered it with a sheet of glass. Once it had cooled overnight, he would be ready for the next step in his experiment. But for now . . .
Wrexford straightened and took a moment to massage at a kink in his neck. A glass of Scottish malt and a bit of reading by the banked fire would be a pleasant way to spend the rest of the evening. Indeed, the pleasures of a quiet evening at home felt even sweeter in this new year, reflected the earl, as he moved from his laboratory and poured himself a measure of spirits.
“Sláinte,” he murmured to the cosmos in general before settled into the soft leather of the armchair angled by the hearth in his workroom. The previous summer and autumn had brought a number of unexpected upheavals—
“You look thoughtful,” said Charlotte as she appeared from the shadows of the corridor and joined him in the mellow glow of the glass-globed oil lamps and red-gold coals.
“Grateful,” he replied with a wry smile. “To think that we’ve had blessed peace and quiet for over—”
“Ha! Cast that thought to the wind.” She took a seat in facing chair. “Ensconced as you were in the cerebral solitude of scientific inquiry, you’ve not yet heard of the Great Escape!”
Wrexford tightened his grip on his glass. “Bloody hell, don’t tell me that Napoleon has—”
“Ye gods, what a macabre imagination you have! But grace a Dieu, no, it’s not quite that dire.” Charlotte allowed an amused smile. “The monkey—a grey langur—recently gifted to the King by the Sultan of Golcanda escaped from the Tower Menagerie yesterday . . .”
She proceeded to explain about the animal’s pilfering of the Prince Regent’s special sweets from Carlton House and the subsequent reward being offered for its re-capture.
Wrexford chuckled.
“You might want to stifle your mirth until I finish,” she warned.
“Ah.” He took a prolonged swallow of whisky and stared down at the dregs in his glass after hearing what the Weasels had in mind. “I should have known better than to spit in the eye of Fate by raising a toast to the fact that we’ve eluded murder and mayhem for several months.”
Charlotte rose in a rush and grabbed a bottle from the sideboard. Pulling out the cork, she splashed a measure of the amber liquid into the coals.
Smoke and steam billowed up with a serpentine hiss.
“May Eris the goddess of Chaos, accept this libation as an apology for a mere mortal’s hubris,” she intoned.
“Amen to that,” murmured Wrexford. He blew out his breath. “A lone monkey on the loose in a very large city filled with all manner of buildings and hidey-holes . . . “ He pursed his lips. “The odds of the boys finding it are not good.”
“Indeed not,” announced their close friend Kit Sheffield, as he entered the room. An unofficial member of the family, he—along with his now-wife Cordelia—came and went as he pleased at the Berkeley Square townhouse.
“If you wish, I could do the mathematical calculations.” Sheffield pinched at the bridge of his nose. “But I’d rather not. I’ve spent the last five hours wrestling with mind-boggling numbers and equations.”
“A budget meeting for the Bristol Road Commission?” asked Wrexford.
Sheffield and Cordelia were the owners of a highly profitable shipping business, though as members of the beau monde, they had to keep their involvement in trade a secret. He had become a vocal critic of Britain’s antiquated system of roads and transportation infrastructure for moving goods and people around the country, and when the opportunity had arisen to have a voice in shaping the future, he had seized it with great enthusiasm.
However, observed the earl, their friend was presently looking a little deflated.
Yes,” replied Sheffield, frustration sharpening his voice. “And I decided to stop here and whinge before heading home. Cordelia has listened to my recent rants our lack of progress with grace and good humor.” He made a face. “However patience has its limits.”
“But Love does not,” murmured Charlotte. “Cordelia admires and applauds your dedication to making the country a better place for all who live here. Nonetheless, you are always welcome to unburden yourself here. Heaven knows, we’ve drawn you into enough of our troubles.”
“
So what’s the current issue?” queried Wrexford.
“We’ve a number of important projects planned, and have spent months hammering out the final costs. But the funds promised by Parliament have slowed,” replied Sheffield. “I’ve been told that there has been some unexpected fluctuation with the sovereign debt, and thus government spending has been cut back for the moment.”
The earl frowned. “My understanding is that financial markets are always fluctuating.”
“Don’t ask me to explain how they work.” Sheffield blew out a mournful sigh. “I liked it better when I was a feckless fribble, and everyone assumed that I wasn’t capable of intelligent thought.”
Their friend had a reputation in Society of being a charming but ne’er do well rascal. However, over the past few years he had proved himself to be an astute entrepreneur, and had recently taken an interest in the world of finance.
Charlotte smiled. “No, you didn’t.”
That drew a wry chuckle. “I suppose not. Cordelia wouldn’t have given me a second look if I was a complete lackwit.” He fluttered his lashes. “Despite my beau yeux.”
“You’re an idiot,” commented Wrexford as he rose to refill his glass. “Would you like a drink?”
“
True. However, I do appear to have some people fooled,” drawled their friend after giving a grateful nod. “A fellow member of the Bristol Road Commission just asked me to be chairman of the Finance Committee and take charge of trying to convince the government that funds for the project are an important investment in the future of our country.
Sheffield paused to accepted a glass of spirits from Wrexford. “But getting back to Cordelia, I’ve received an even more important invitation because of her . . .
