Excerpt of The Lady's Hazard by Miranda Jarrett

St. James's Square, London 1805

William Callaway stood in the shadows of the iron fence and thought again of how much he hated weddings.

The guests were arriving now for the wedding feast, clustered along the pavement before Penny House as they waited for the new husband and wife to appear. The gentlemen laughed and joked, already drinking, while the women preened like gaudy exotic birds in the late afternoon sun, the plumes on their hats nodding as they gathered in chattering little groups on the pale stone steps. Their laughter rippled across the summer afternoon air, bright with excitement.

William hunched his shoulders deeper into his coat, ignoring the boy who'd guided him here. Too much joy, he thought grimly, too much happiness and optimism for all the suffering and misery that filled the world. Didn't these fools understand that this couple was as doomed as any other? Couldn't they see that what the beau monde called love was only a fool's solace, temporary and empty?

The steady procession of carriages had slowed along St. James's Street, and gentlemen leaned impatiently from the windows to see the cause of the delay. William slipped further back into the shadows, ducking his head beneath the yew branches that overhung the wall. Almost as an afterthought, he hooked his arm around the boy and pulled him back into the shadows, too.

"Best not to let them see us gaping, Twig," William warned. "They'd rather folks like us kept our eyes to ourselves."

"In the gutter, you mean, Guv'nor?"

"I mean out of their sight," William said. "Poor people are an eyesore to the rich, a blight they'd like swept from their pretty streets."

A woman in one of the carriages noticed them, lifting her scented handkerchief to cover her face and nose, and William's expression hardened. How far would the gentry go to rid London of those who didn't share their good fortune? Workhouses, transportation, gaols...

Or poison? "A pox on what them want." Twig rubbed a grimy, defiant thumb across his nose, ready to challenge them all. "I say a cat may look at a king, an'them swells an'ladies, too."

That made William smile. "No ladies in that troop, Twig. Penny House is a gaming house, a private club for gentlemen only, with no true ladies welcome."

Twig craned his neck to look back at the women with fresh interest. "Then they all be whores?"

"After a fashion, yes." William wasn't in a humor to discern the good women from the bad. Once, long ago, he'd been part of this world, and he hadn't forgotten how such women had fluttered around him in his bright new regimentals, or how heady their perfumed scent had been beneath his nose, their soft breasts pressed against his chest. "The only difference comes with the prices they command for their company."

"All whores, then." Twig whistled low. "Even the lady- bride, Guv'nor?"

"She cannot be a lady," William said firmly. Everyone in London had heard of the three Penny sisters, the clever, beautiful daughters who ran this fashionable gambling club near St. James's Square. Though the gossip claimed they were the daughters of a Sussex minister, William doubted it, just as he doubted the great virtue that they tried to claim for themselves. The great sums they supposedly gave to charity were likely exaggerated, too, or perhaps some stipulation of their inheritance. There could be no other explanation. How could a true generous spirit exist in a place like this?

"No real lady could live in such a house, Twig," he said.

"Not catering to the follies of gentlemen as they do."

The boy glanced up at him, his dark eyes full of doubt. "Beg pardon, Guv'nor, but not Miss Bethany Penny. You'll see. She don't be like them. She be kind, an' gentle, an' good to everyone, not just to fine gentlemen. She be famous for it. Her 'flock," she calls us at her door, like we be special to her. She be a true lady, all right and no mistake."

But William didn't answer. Bethany Penny was the reason he'd hired Twig to bring him to Penny House. The streets and poorhouses were full of talk about her generosity to the unfortunate, but William didn't give a damn if she were twice, even three times the paragon that Twig and the others claimed. All that would matter was whether she was guilty, or innocent.

"You'll see, Guv'nor," Twig insisted. "Once you — ah, there be the bride an' groom now!"

The open carriage was a glossy pale blue and decked with garlands of white flowers that made the women squeal and clap their hands with delight. Blue silk ribbons were braided into the manes and tails of the matched greys, and riding on the box behind were two trumpeters in old- fashioned livery and powdered wigs, their gleaming silver instruments heralding the arrival of the newlyweds.

"They say th'groom be richer than th'His Majesty himself." Twig's voice rose, eager to share his own information. "Mr. Blackley. That be his name. Mr. Richard Blackley. They say he made piles an' piles of gold in the Indies, growing sugar."

"How fortunate for him," William said dryly. "From the looks of this, I'd guess he must be spending at least one of those piles today."

All gallantry, the groom waved aside the footmen who hurried to open the carriage door. He gathered up the bride in his arms, kissing her to more applause and cheers, then carried her up the stairs in a froth of ruffled white muslin. The bride tipped her head back against his arm and laughed with joy, not caring at all that her coppery hair was tumbling loose from her headdress or that her slippered feet were kicking so high among her skirts that she displayed her legs clear to her blue garters.

"Lor'," Twig said with open admiration. "Now that do be a show, don't it?"

William grunted with disgust. A show, yes: a vulgar, self- indulgent, ostentatious display of the worst and noisiest sort. No wonder Penny House's more staid neighbors complained to the watch, if they were often forced to suffer through this sort of low rigmarole. How many of London's orphans could be fed tonight simply for the cost of the silk ribbons trailing from the carriage and horses?

"That be Miss Bethany," Twig said, stepping away from the wall as he pointed toward Penny House. "There, near the bottom of the steps, her an' her sister Miss Amariah."

With new interest William looked to where the boy was pointing. From this distance, all he could see was that Bethany Penny shared the same red-gold hair as her sisters, and that she was the same height, too, tall and slender and graceful. Beyond that he had only a vague impression of a simple but elegant — and no doubt very costly — bright blue gown that fluttered about her legs and hips with a provocative sway, and a matching bonnet whose wide brim hid her face. She carried herself with a beauty's confidence, sure her every move would draw attention.

Or was it the arrogance of a woman who dabbled in poison under the guise of charity? A clever woman whose cookery could nourish, or kill?

He sighed restlessly, refusing to let himself be drawn into her spell. Four men, good men, had been murdered since spring. William couldn't let himself be lured into thinking better of Bethany Penny just because she was beautiful.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she ran her fingers flirtatiously along the edge of the sweeping brim of her hat, then hooked her arm through her sister's. Their heads nodded toward one other, sharing some secret between them, as they climbed the steps after their now-wed sister, with the rest of the guests following.

"So much for the public diversion, lad," William said.

"The rest of that party's only for those with an invitation."

He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat for a coin to pay Twig for his time. He was more tired than he wished to admit, the scar in his leg aching from having kept pace with the boy. He shouldn't have let his pride make him leave his walking-stick at home, not when the consequences were that every nerve in his body groaned in angry protest.

He glanced back to the steps where the woman had stood. Seeing her and the other revelers of Penny House had brought back too many old memories that he'd rather keep safely in the past, and the effort of shoving them further back into his head had been just as exhausting as the long walk to this part of London.

"We'll return tomorrow, Twig," he said, purposefully turning away from Penny House, and his own past. "Better to give this foolish lot plenty of time to sleep away their celebrating."

"Oh, no, Gov'nor, not at all!" Twig flung his arms out, as if offering William the world. "Miss Bethany won't be above stairs with them others. She never goes there. She always be below, in the kitchen an' at her door for us."

William frowned, skeptical, the coin tucked between his first two fingers. "On her sister's wedding day? I am sorry, lad, but surely a woman like that will have other ways to occupy herself this evening than giving scraps to poor folk."

"Beg pardon again, Guv'nor, but you don't know Miss Penny," Twig insisted. "She gave her word yesterday that she wouldn't forget us tonight, and she won't. She won't."

William shook his head. "With this lot, "tonight' could mean noon tomorrow."

"Not with Miss Penny." With the nerveless audacity of London street-boys, Twig grabbed William's arm to lead him toward the back of the gaming house. "I'd wager there already be a line to her kitchen door. Come with me, Guv'nor. I swore I'd take you there, an' I will."

William shifted his weight from one leg to the other, wincing at the sharp, fresh pain. But this time the pain wasn't limited to his leg, instead shooting straight to his conscience as well.

He was still alive to feel that pain, still alive to worry over a pretty woman's reaction to his ravaged face and body. Too many others were not as fortunate, including the four dead men who had died not on the battlefield, but alone and unlamented on these London streets. He had been their major, their leader, and they had always followed him with unquestionable courage.

And he would not fail them now. "Very well, then, Twig," he said softly. "Lead away." The boy knew the way exactly as he'd promised, guiding William from the affluent public face of St. James's Street down the narrow alley that ran behind the grand houses. Used for deliveries or emergencies, the alley was unpaved and muddy, lined with high walls to protect the tiny city gardens. Heavy locked doors kept outsiders away and the ladies safe within, along with their whitewashed Chippendale benches, a bed of carefully tended flowers and perhaps a nodding crabapple tree or two.

But there was no genteel ladies' garden behind Penny House, nor was there a heavy padlock to bar the alley. Instead the door was propped open, so welcoming that even Twig marched boldly beneath the arch. Inside these walls, the ground was worn bare, with only a pair of halfhearted yews in planters beside the door, and several rough benches.

Yet what William noticed first wasn't the lack of a garden, but the crowd of people, more people in this little yard then had likely been in all the others on the street combined in a year. They stood in a queue that began at the back door and snaked back and forth until it nearly reached the alley, and they stood patiently, quietly, with the resignation of those who'd seen too much of the raw end of life. Sad women with fretful, ailing babies, old men bent with age, grimy, hollow-cheeked girls and boys like Twig — they all had their places in line.

But the ones that caught William's attention were the men who should have been in their prime: men still young in years, but old in the ways that only war could cause.