I Thee Wed

  Carriage lights glowed in the mist. Edison started walking, absently aware of the familiar sounds of a busy London night. The muffled clatter of hooves and the jangle and squeak of harness leather echoed in the darkness. The drunken laughter of several fashionably dressed rakes grated on his ears.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the dandies disappear into a narrow lane. He knew that they would spend the rest of the night seeking various forms of debauchery and unsavory excitement. Deep in those narrow streets and alleys, they would encounter smoky gaming hells and brothels that offered all manner of perversions.

  Edison felt the old anger twist inside him. His father had lived just such a careless, wasted life as those young rakehells who had vanished into the black maw of that lane. The relentless pursuit of meaningless, unwholesome pleasures had been paramount for Wesley Stokes.

  He thought about what he had overheard Emma say to his grandmother the day Victoria had ordered her to come to tea. It must have been heartbreaking for you to realize what an irresponsible son you’d raised.

  Emma was right. Victoria must have been well aware of the truth about his father. She was too intelligent not to have known that Wesley had been, at heart, an incurable gamester and a feckless wastrel. However much she had doted on him, she must have been deeply saddened by the inescapable knowledge that her son and the family’s sole heir had been doomed by his own uncontrolled passions.

  Emma was right about the rest of it, too, Edison reflected. Victoria would have blamed herself. Every time she looked at Wesley’s portrait in her drawing room, she had to face the fact that she had failed.

  Just as he would blame himself if his own son turned out badly.

  His own son.

  He looked into the fog and saw a future he suddenly ached to bring into existence, a future in which Emma held their baby in her arms.

  The vision was so real that it brought him to a halt. He shook himself free of the image and glanced abound. He was mildly surprised to notice that he had walked farther than he had intended. The realization brought him back to the business at hand.

  For a moment he had almost forgotten his purpose this evening. Such lapses could be dangerous. He had not come out into the night with the goal of pondering the past, the present, or the unknowable future. It was not good for the spirits to dwell on what could not be altered. He thought he had learned that lesson long ago.

  He glanced at a passing hackney and contemplated hailing it. He had used just such a public coach to come to St. James Street earlier after having left his own carriage for Emma and Victoria. The two Runners he had hired that afternoon would serve as coachman and groom. They would see the women safely home from the ball.

  In the meantime, he had plans of his own. They required his full attention.

  He turned at the corner and walked down a fog-clogged lane. At the end of the narrow passage, he could see the fiendish glow of a gaming hell’s windows. In a nearby doorway a man huffed and groaned hoarsely in the throes of sexual release. The prostitute he had pinned up against the wall murmured something encouraging. Her giggle sounded brittle and utterly false.

  Edison continued walking toward the fiery lights of the underworld that lay at the end of the alley. He did not turn to glance back over his shoulder. There was no need. He heard no footsteps behind him, but he knew the watcher had followed him into the lane.

  The Vanza fighter would not be able to resist such an opportunity. He was too young to have learned the virtues of the Strategy of Patience.

  Edison unfastened his greatcoat as he walked steadily toward the fires of hell. He slipped his arms out of the sleeves and draped the heavy garment over his shoulders as if it were a cloak.

  The young fighter was good. The attack, when it came, was swift and virtually soundless. If he had not been expecting it, Edison thought, he might have missed the telltale whisper of an in-drawn breath altogether.

  As it was, it told him the fighter’s exact position.

  Edison moved, gliding to the side and spinning around. The lights of the gaming hell glared in the fog, providing just enough illumination to enable him to see the masked figure closing in from the side.

  Realizing he had been spotted, the Vanza fighter lashed out swiftly with his booted foot.

  Edison slid out of range. “What’s this? No formal challenge this time? I am offended. Where is your sense of tradition?”

  “You do not honor the ancient traditions, therefore I do not challenge you in the old way.”

  “A very practical decision. Congratulations. There may be hope for you yet.”

  “You mock me, O Great One Who Has Stepped Out of the Circle. But you will not do so for long.”

  “I would take it as a favor if you would stop addressing me as though I belonged in some ancient legend.”

  “Your legend ends tonight.”

  The fighter danced closer. He swung his leg in another brutal are that failed to find its target.

  “Take off your coat,” he snarled. “Or do you intend to try to use your pistol to even the odds again tonight?”

  “No. I don’t plan to use a pistol.” Edison stepped back. He let the greatcoat fall from his shoulders.

  “I knew that you would eventually accept the challenge.” Satisfaction laced the fighter’s words. “I was told that even though you have gone outside the Circle, your honor is still Vanza.”

  “Actually, my honor is my own.”

  Edison dodged another kick and moved in beneath it. He snapped out a blow that caught the fighter on the ankle. The man gasped and lurched to the side in an unbalanced move that left him vulnerable.

  Edison seized the opportunity. He rained a series of short, sharp blows designed not to cause injury but to keep his opponent reeling.

  The young fighter abandoned the effort to maintain his balance. He threw himself to the ground and rolled toward Edison.

  It was a deft recovery. Edison was impressed. The move was an old one from the Strategy of Surprise.

  He opted for a move from the same Strategy. Instead of falling back, he leaped over the rolling figure, twisted in midair, and came down on the other side.

  The fighter realized too late that his attack had been thwarted. He struggled to get back to his feet, but there was no time.

  Edison was on him. He pinned the young man to the damp paving stones with an unbreakable hold from the Strategy of Restraint. He felt the fear and rage that shuddered through his victim.

  “It’s over,” Edison said softly.

  There was a moment of tension during which he worried that the fighter would fail to yield. He would have another kind of problem on his hands if the young man made such a decision. He sought for the formal words that would allow his opponent a face-saving way out of the impasse.

  “Even though I have gone out of the Circle, my honor is unquestioned by any in the Society or on Vanzagara itself,” he said. “I demand from you the respect that a student must show to a true master. Yield.”

  “I … yield.”

  Edison hesitated a few seconds and then released his captive. He got to his feet and stood looking down at him. “Get up. Take off that ridiculous mask and move closer to the light.”

  Reluctantly the fighter hauled himself up off the stones. He limped slowly toward the glare of the gaming hell windows. Then he stopped and reached up to pull the scarf away from his face.

  Edison looked at him and stifled a bone-deep sigh. He had been right. The fighter was no more than eighteen or nineteen at the most. No older than he himself had been when he had sailed for the East with Ignatius Lorring. He looked into the sullen, haunted eyes and saw a mirror that reflected his own past.

  “What is your name?” he asked quietly.

  “John. John Stoner.”

  “Where does your family live?”

  “I have no family. My mother died two years ago. There is no one else.”

  “What of your father?”

  “I am a bastard
,” John said flatly.

  “I should have guessed as much.” The tale was so close to home that it made him shudder. “How long have you studied Vanza, John Stoner?”

  “Nearly a year.” There was a desperate pride in the words. “My master says I learn quickly.”

  “Who is your master?”

  John looked at his own feet. “Please, do not ask me that. I cannot tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he told me that you are his enemy. Even though you have defeated me in honorable combat, I cannot betray my master to you. To do so would be to sacrifice all that is left of my own honor.”

  Edison moved closer. “Will it make it any easier for you to give me his name if I tell you that your master is a rogue? He has not taught you true Vanza.”

  “No.” John’s head came up swiftly, his eyes stark. “I will not believe that. I have studied hard. I have served my master faithfully.”

  Edison considered his options. He could probably force the name of the renegade out of John, but to do so would deprive the young man of the only thing of value he had left, his honor. Edison remembered too well what it felt like to have only that one commodity to call his own.

  He contemplated the scene through the gaming hell windows. The fiery glare revealed the figures of the debauched men inside, men who drank too much and risked too much. They were men who had nothing left to lose, not even their honor. It would be all too easy for John to become one of them after his failure tonight.

  Edison made up his mind. “Come with me.”

  He turned and walked toward the entrance of the fog-shrouded lane. He did not look back to see if John had obeyed him.

  • • •

  The fog had lifted by the time Edison arrived at the docks with John in tow. The cold light of the moon revealed the outlines of the ships that bobbed gently in the water. The familiar stench of the Thames filled the air.

  There had been only one brief stop en route. That was to collect John’s entire assortment of worldly possessions from a dismal little room above a tavern.

  “I don’t understand.” John hitched his bundle higher on his shoulder and stared, bewildered, at the creaking masts of the Sarah Jane, “Why have we come here?”

  “You have been a nuisance on occasion, John, but you have succeeded in convincing me that you are serious in your quest to learn true Vanza. I take it you have not changed your mind in the past hour?”

  “Changed my mind? About Vanza? Never. Tonight I have failed but I will never cease to search for the balance that brings knowledge.”

  “Excellent.” Edison clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Because I am going to give you a chance to study Vanza the way it should be studied. In the Garden Temples of Vanzagara.”

  “Vanzagara?” John swung around so quickly that he nearly dropped his bundle. The lantern he carried revealed the stunned expression on his face. “But that is not possible. It lies across the seas. Is it not enough that you have defeated me? Must you continue to mock me?”

  “The Sarah Jane is one of my ships. She sails at dawn for the Far East. One of her ports of call is Vanzagara. I will give you a letter to give to a monk named Vora. He is a man of great wisdom. He will see to it that you receive instruction in the true ways of Vanza.”

  John looked at him as though afraid to believe him. “You are serious.”

  “Very.”

  “Why would you do this for me? You owe me nothing. I did not even tell you the one thing you wished to know, the name of my master.”

  “Your ex-master,” Edison said. “And you’re wrong. I do owe you something. You reminded me of someone I knew when I was much younger.”

  “Who?”

  “Myself.”

  Edison saw the elated John safely aboard the Sarah Jane. He had a word with the captain, informing him that his new passenger was to be put ashore in Vanzagara, and then he returned to the small room John Stoner had called home for the past year.

  There was very little left in the tiny chamber. But the remains of John’s most recently used Vanza meditation candle were still in a dish on the table. Edison had noted them earlier but he had said nothing about them.

  He walked across the small room and hoisted the lantern to spill light on the cold, melted bits of beeswax. The candle had been tinted a dark crimson. Edison pried one of the pieces off the plate and inhaled the scent.

  To know the master, look at the student’s candles.

  When he found the man who had given John the crimson tapers, he would find the rogue master.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  So, you have managed to win over the Exbridge Dragon.” Basil’s mouth curved with dry humor as he brought Emma to a halt at the edge of the dance floor. “My congratulations, Miss Greyson. You must be something of a sorceress.”

  “Nonsense.” Emma glanced toward Victoria, who was chatting with two women who appeared to be old friends. “Lady Exbridge was kind enough to invite me to stay with her until the marriage.”

  Basil looked thoughtful. “Until tonight, no one in Society would have believed that the Dragon would ever have deigned to recognize her bastard grandson’s choice of bride.”

  Emma raised her chin. “She is his grandmother, when all is said and done, sir.”

  Without waiting for a response, she whirled and walked briskly away from Basil. She had not wanted to dance with him in the first place. She had not wanted to go back onto the floor with anyone after Edison had left. She had been too busy worrying about his plans for the evening.

  But Basil had materialized the moment Edison vanished, and Lady Exbridge had urged her to accept his invitation to waltz.

  It was really very difficult trying to please Victoria, Emma reflected as she moved back through the crowd. In the short time she had spent with her, she had learned that her gowns were not only cut too low, they had-too many flounces. She had been told that the particular shade of green Letty had decreed for most of the items in her wardrobe was not the right one. In addition, she had been informed that Lady Mayfield had allowed her to accept too many invitations from the wrong people in the Polite World.

  All in all, Emma thought, she was very glad that she had not had the misfortune to have been employed by Victoria as a lady’s companion. She had no doubt that Lady Exbridge would have proved to be every bit as difficult an employer as her grandson.

  A liveried footman went past with a heavily laden tray. Emma seized a glass of lemonade and paused beneath a potted palm to down the entire contents. Dancing, she had discovered, was thirsty work.

  So was worrying about Edison. She glanced out the window into the night. He was out there somewhere pursuing his scheme to lure the Vanza fighter out of hiding. She was still annoyed with him for refusing to take her with him.

  She was searching for a place to set down the empty glass when she heard Victoria’s voice drift through the branches of the palm.

  “I have no notion of what you are talking about, Rosemary. Murderess, indeed. What utter rubbish.”

  Emma went very still.

  “Surely you’ve heard that Crane was found shot dead in her bedchamber,” the woman named Rosemary said.

  “I assure you,” Victoria snapped, “that if my grandson’s fiancée actually did shoot this Chilton Crane person, he most certainly deserved it.”

  Rosemary gave a shocked gasp. “Surely you jest, Victoria. We are speaking of the murder of a gentleman of the ton.”

  “Really?” Victoria sounded coolly astonished. “If that’s true, then it was, indeed, a memorable event. After all, there are so very few true gentlemen in the ton. It would be a pity to lose one. However, I do not believe there is any cause for alarm in this case.”

  “How on earth can you say such a thing?” Rosemary demanded, clearly scandalized.

  “From everything I have heard, Chilton Crane was no gentleman and no great loss to the world.”

  There was a short, stunned pause and then Rosemary abruptly ch
anged tactics. “I must admit that I was amazed to see that you have given your approval to your grandson’s choice of brides. Even if one ignores the fact that her name is connected to a murder, there is no getting around the business of her former career.”

  “Former career?” Victoria repeated vaguely.

  Sensing an opening, Rosemary pounced. “Heavens. Has no one told you that Miss Greyson made her living as a lady’s companion until the night she became engaged to your grandson?”

  “What of it?”

  “I would have thought that you would have preferred a daughter-in-law from a more elevated station. An heiress, surely.”

  “What I prefer,” Victoria said crisply, “is precisely what I have got. A future daughter-in-law who shows every sign of being able to help my grandson reinvigorate the family tree.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Family bloodlines are not unlike horse bloodlines, you know. To keep the breed strong and robust, one must look for spirit and intelligence in a prospective daughter-in-law, just as one would in a mare.”

  “I cannot believe—”

  “Look around you,” Victoria said. “Don’t you think it’s a pity that so many families in the Polite World show evidence of weakness in the bloodlines? Poor constitutions, a sorry tendency to frequent the gaming hells, and an inclination to debauchery. The Stokes family line will be spared that fate, thanks to my grandson and his bride.”

  Emma managed to restrain herself until she and Victoria were on the way home in the carriage. When the vehicle, guarded by two sturdy-looking Bow Street Runners, set off into the late night traffic, she looked at the older woman.

  “Weakness in the bloodlines?” she murmured.

  Victoria’s brows rose in a manner that was strongly reminiscent of Edison. “So you overheard that, did you?”

  “It’s a shame Edison was not present. He would have been extremely amused.”

  Victoria turned her head to look out the window. Her jaw was set in rigid lines. Her shoulders were stiff and very straight. “No doubt.”