“What is the meaning of all this?” Alexandra asked, looking from the old man to his son, who was still breathing hard, still holding his hand to his head. “Who are you, sir?”
“Ah, my lady. So you are Douglas Sherbrooke’s wife.” He gave her a slight bow. “Your husband is a cocky bastard I greatly admire. He is a genius at strategy and has proved it many times over the years. I suppose my son here brought you along as leverage against Helen?”
“Yes, I did,” said Gerard, pushing off the wall and finally managing to stand straight. “And it will work. Helen is fond of her. They are great friends. I have but to point my gun at the countess’s head and Helen will take us to the magic lamp. She already said she would, once I threatened her friend here.”
“A lamp,” Sir John said, marveling at his son. “You actually believe that foolishness that is all over London? Are you an utter fool? There is no magic lamp. It is all fiction, an interesting tale invented in Helen’s fertile imagination. Everyone is enjoying gossiping about it. It means nothing. Don’t you realize that if there were something that important, some ancient relic with strange powers, no one would know about it? It would be kept a close secret.”
Helen looked at him and smiled inwardly. Spenser had been exactly right. How could anyone possibly believe in something purportedly magic when everyone knew about it?
Alexandra went to stand by Helen, making Sir John laugh. “Just look at the two of you together. You are a giant, Helen, an oddity, a freak.”
She grinned over at him. “At least I am not so old that my skin is spotted and hanging off my body and my teeth are all rotted.”
He took a step toward her, raised his hand, then slowly lowered it. He looked down at his hand for a moment. “You were not so impertinent when you were eighteen,” he said slowly.
“And you were not so openly rude—though you were older than death even back then. I remember as well how you looked at me and how you did not want your precious son to marry me.”
Sir John shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t hold him. I knew you wouldn’t give him a child immediately, as he claimed you would.”
“What do you mean, I wouldn’t hold him?”
“Even then, my worthless son was already searching out ways to make more money. I bought him the commission, hoping, praying he would change. He could have followed in my footsteps. But he didn’t. He got an excellent dowry from your father, but it was gone in a month. And what did you do? Nothing. You believed every ridiculous lie he told you. But I knew you would change. I knew there was grit in you, a strong will, but you just didn’t change quickly enough to be of any use to me. Yes, I was right. Just look at what you’ve become.”
“No, Father,” Gerard said. “Her dowry lasted two months. It would have lasted much longer, but I was cheated. It was Jason Fleming, Lord Crowley, who cheated me. I wanted to kill him, but then he left to go hunting in Scotland, the conniving bastard, and I could do nothing. And Helen refused to get pregnant.” Gerard gave his wife a malignant look. “All I wanted from you was a child, nothing more, nothing less, at least after your dowry was gone. But you wouldn’t give me one.”
“I am very pleased about that,” Helen said. “Incidentally,” she said to his father, “I was only eighteen. If I had been as smart then as I am now, do you believe I would ever have attached myself to your toad of a son? Not very likely, sir. He turned out badly enough. I cringe to think if he had, instead, turned out like you.”
Gerard, unlike his father, did not have much self-control. “Don’t you insult my father, you worthless woman!” He was on her in an instant, his arm drawn back to strike her. Helen just shook her head as she raised her knee, struck him hard in the groin, then sent her fist into his neck.
Gerard howled, clutched himself, and fell to the floor, hitting the wall. He didn’t know whether to rub his crotch or his neck, both hurt so badly. He kept swallowing and moaning as he rocked back and forth. Finally he whispered, “Father, look what she did to me. Kill her. No—just wound her. You can
kill her later, after I have the lamp—but maybe not. She is my wife, after all. I will think about this. Also, if she knows you will kill her, there is no reason for her to take me to the lamp. And I swear to you, there is a magic lamp and she knows where the lamp is. She finally admitted to me that she has it. I want that lamp. She said there is no power in it, that if there were, she would have struck me dead with it.
“But she is just a woman, she doesn’t know anything, except how to lie. Oh, God, I will die now.” He was gasping, leaning over, holding himself.
“I don’t know how you can talk with that blow to the throat,” Helen said, not moving, just watching the effects of her handiwork. “Much less talk so we can understand you.”
“Thems were fearsome blows ye planted on ’im,” said the skinny little man in such an admiring voice that Alexandra stepped forward, shook her fist at him, and said, “Would you like to be next, you little sot?”
“Sich words from a countess. It be a disgrace.”
“Be quiet. Hold your place, my lady. Now, what is your name?”
“Alexandra Sherbrooke.”
“No, not you, I know who you are. Him, the little villain.”
“Me name’s Bernie Ricketts. Yer son wot’s lying agin’ the wall over there moaning give me money to get them ladies. I knows locks, and I twists them and kisses them until the doors open like a dream, I did, and in yer son goes, all free like, into both them bloody mansions. Then I keeps the watch so nobody can come and nab us. I did everything right, I did. Yer bloody son, that one didn’t give me enuf money. The big ’un there, all blond and beautiful she be, but at the core o’ things, she’s a killer.”
“Yes, I can see that she is,” said Sir John Yorke. He looked bemused at the outpouring of all Mr. Ricketts’s confidences. He shook his head. “Now, all of this has been amusing, but I have much to accomplish before the new day breaks.”
“The new day has already broken,” Gerard said, trying to straighten, trying to speak above a whisper, because now his throat hurt very badly. “What do you mean?”
Sir John looked his son over, his eyes dark and very tired. “You know, I tried to kill you once, Gerard, and I failed.”
“No,” Gerard said, “no, that’s impossible. You may be sinister and no one really knows what you do or who you are, and I know that you beat my mother to death, but you’re still my father. You wouldn’t kill me, would you? Surely that isn’t right.”
“I didn’t beat your mother to death, you idiot. She fell from the balcony of our house, nothing more than that. As for you, you were my son and I had hopes that you would make something of yourself, but you didn’t. You are a wastrel. You are utterly worthless. You became a traitor to your country. There is nothing lower than a traitor.