Wicked Widow

They said she'd murdered her husband because she'd found him inconvenient. They said she'd set fire to the house to conceal her crime. They said she might well be mad. There was a standing wager in every betting book in every club in St. James Street. It offered a thousand pounds to any man who managed to spend a night with the Wicked Widow and lived to tell the tale. They said many things about the lady. Artemis Hunt had heard the rumors because he made it a practice to stay informed. He had eyes and ears throughout London. A network of spies and informants brought him an endless tide of gossip, speculation, and snippets of fact. Some of the flotsam that washed up on his desk was based on truth; some was only probable; some was blatantly false. Sorting through the lot required considerable time and effort. He did not waste either attempting to verify all of the information he received. Much of it he simply ignored because it did not affect his very private affairs. Until tonight he'd had no reason to pay close attention to the gossip that swirled around Madeline Deveridge. Whether or not the lady had dispatched her husband to the next world had been of no particular concern to him. He had been occupied with other matters. Until tonight he'd had no interest whatsoever in the Wicked Widow. But now, it seemed, she had developed an interest in him. Most would say that was an extraordinarily ill omen. He was amused to discover that he found it to be quite intriguing, one of the most interesting things to have happened to him in a long, long time. Which, he thought, only went to show how very narrow and circumscribed his life was these days. He stood in the night-shrouded street and contemplated the small, elegant carriage that loomed in the fog. The vehicle's lamps glowed eerily in the mist that seethed and foamed around it. The curtains were drawn shut, concealing the interior of the cab. The horses stood quietly. The coachman was an indistinguishable mound on the box. Artemis recalled the adage he had learned years ago from the monks of the Garden Temples who had instructed him in the ancient philosophy and the fighting arts of Vanza. Life offers an endless banquet of opportunities. Wisdom lies in knowing which ones to taste and which are poison. He heard the door of his club open and close behind him. Loud, drunken laughter echoed in the darkness. Absently he moved into the pool of deeper shadow created by a nearby doorway and watched two men stumble down the steps. They clambered into a waiting hackney and shouted directions to the coachman, demanding to be driven to one of the gaming hells in the stews. Boredom was the enemy of their sort. They would go to any lengths to defeat it. Artemis waited until the old vehicle lumbered off down the street. Then he glanced again at the dark, ethereal little carriage in the mists. The problem with Vanza was that, for all its arcane learning and instructive philosophy, it did not make sufficient allowance for the very human factor of curiosity. Or at least, it did not make allowance for his curiosity. Artemis made his decision. He moved out of the doorway and walked through the drifting fog to the Wicked Widow's carriage. The stirring of anticipation within him was the only warning he got that he might come to regret his choice. He decided to ignore it. The coachman shifted and tensed as he drew near. "Can I help ye, sir?" The words were properly respectful, but Artemis caught the edge beneath the surface. It told him that the man, hunched beneath a many-caped greatcoat and a hat pulled low over his ears, served as guard as well as coachman. "My name is Hunt. Artemis Hunt. I believe I have an appointment with the lady." "So yer the one, eh?" The man did not relax. If anything, his tension seemed to increase. "Get in, if ye please, sQuick, Amanda is the author of 'Wicked Widow', published 2001 under ISBN 9780553574111 and ISBN 0553574116.