chapter one: dead eyes

With his pianist's fingers, Cutler Beckett did up his cravat. Behind him, on a rumpled bed, sat a pitiful, hollow scarecrow of a woman. She was silent, and her large-knuckled hands were clenched tightly on her lap. After another moment of this ragged silence, Beckett turned to face her, finishing the tying of his cravat with a flourish. He examined the woman before him.

A worn-down, colourless figure she was; with a tight, chinless jaw. Her irises were like discs of glass, devoid of all life. For all he knew, she could have been a weary, wiry doll, sat there with her back hunched. Her pale hair flopped, as if the idea of life were too much effort for it. There was nothing vivid or lively about her: she sat like a blank piece of paper.

"Miss Hawes," he said, in clipped tones. "A pleasure, as always." She raised her head to look at him, but said nothing. He was well used to it now. It was her way. Finally, Beckett pulled on his frock coat. He was fully dressed and ready to go—and he knew that Mercer would have his coach ready by now.

He glanced over the scene once more with those sharp, grey-green eyes. Audrey Hawes was much older than him, and had a swarthy neck balanced on her rick-a-bones body and tight, barely visible lips. As he prepared to leave, she stood up quickly, and walked stiffly towards him, blandly predatory. Against the door she gave him a crushing, crippling kiss that tasted cold as a grave, before opening the door and closing it deftly behind him.

It had all started so strangely: the newly-titled Lord Beckett had never thought he would find himself bedding a common woman, especially a miserable and quite, quite insane wretch like Audrey Hawes. Although she looked and moved like a ghost, he knew that she contained a perverse violence that unsettled even his unshakeable core, and it was quite a recent development that their business relations had crumbled into emotionless, aggressive sex.

Although his clerk, the divinely efficient Mr Mercer, took care of a lot of his business, he had found it necessary to delve into the labyrinth that was the dark side of London and sift through it, and the result had been Miss Hawes. Dead-eyed and still, she was the perfect assassin—not to mention (and even Beckett would admit) that she was damn scary.

Walking out of the small bedsit at which she lived, down a set of outside steps and into a bustling London street, streaked with greyish sunlight, he took in a breath of the over-filled air. Smells bombarded him from every side. Something that would bother most about Miss Hawes' living space, a single room of her own, was the fact that it looked as if it were not inhabited at all. It contained nothing but a large, dull cupboard, an empty side-table and her narrow, narrow bed. It was perhaps not meticulously tidied, but it simply looked like nobody had been there for years. Miss Hawes did not seem to leave footprints in the dust as any ordinary person did.

Once he had adjusted his eyes from the gloom of Miss Hawes' bedsit to the faint light of the outside world, he strode to the end of the street and turned the corner to where Mercer leaned against a dark carriage, smoking some tobacco. The carriage was made out of a dark and rich wood, and its curtains were drawn. Mercer stood up and opened the door for Beckett, looking him up and down briefly—something Mercer always did.

"Thank you, Mr Mercer," Beckett said, daintily stepping into the carriage and sitting down. "Now, on to the horse show: my wife will be most disturbed if I miss it."

Although Mercer raised an eyebrow, he did not comment—he and Beckett had been associates for about two years now, and were very comfortable with each other's presence... nevertheless, there were some things not even worth commenting upon.

They arrived at the Baedeker Ring within twenty minutes, and were hurried through the gates by box-boys who immediately recognized the duo. And who did not? Cutler Beckett and his permanent shadow, Mr Mercer, were two stark figures amongst London high society; the Becketts were all a family of noble blood, and the men all seemed to come out dominant, intelligent and assertive and the women came out as sharp yet social beauties. This particular Beckett had recently received the title of Lord without having to wait for his father to die, as he was granted it for services to the British Empire as one of the high-fliers of the East India Training Company. This had made him very happy.

Quickly, he and Mercer hurried into a private stall where an array of the upper crust were seated. There was another larger stand filled with the middle and upper-middle class; and that was all. The working class were not permitted to a competition such as this, apart from to sweep the stables and lead the horses. Beckett spotted his lady wife immediately; she was leading a large, dapple-grey thoroughbred towards the show jumping ring.

Lady Beckett walked, when she was leading her horse, as she always did: her chin was tipped upwards at an almost ridiculous angle, and her jodhpur-clad legs took steady, straight-legged strides. Her shoulders were thrust back as if she were posing for a portrait, leaving a sharp curve in the small of her back. She always walked as if she were blowing across short-shorn grass on brisk, bright mornings; whether she was at a social function, in the streets or at home. She was a sportswoman, right down into her tempestuous bones.

One would think that most men strayed into adulterous affairs once they had tired of their wives, or if they found their wife unattractive: in Beckett's case, this was not true at all. His wife was beautiful, that was for certain, and everyone knew it: she was one of the most renowned beauties of London. Would Cutler Beckett take anything less? She had light brown hair that was always shiny, and an even, softly framed face. Yet it was all too easy to be taken by these features and her glittering eyes—she was haughty, with a voice perhaps half an octave lower than what you would expect from a slim, feminine-faced girl such as herself, and had a wild need to get her own way—especially when concerning her husband. Sometimes, he felt absolutely hounded by her.

She did well, and placed second out of fifteen in this particular round of jumps. As she foisted her thoroughbred onto a stable hand, he saw her shade her glorious, amber eyes with one hand and cast them over the stands he was sat at. He raised one hand in greeting: she pulled her riding hat off and began making her way towards them.

"Well done, Verity," Beckett said as she arrived in the stall and stood in front of him. Her hands were clasped on her slim hips and her chin, as usual, was pointed up towards the large canvas roof above them, her eyes rolled right down to glare at him. The day was brightening and many women were bringing out their fans—he could see a sheen of perspiration across his wife's proud forehead.

"You're late," she said, not caring who heard. Beckett sighed, as if she were an insolent child.

"You know I took lunch with my father today," Beckett said smoothly, his face betraying not one flicker of proof of this lie. "It just went on a little, that's all—we don't have much time to catch up." Verity Beckett regarded him a moment, her eyes squinting just a little under pale but luxurious eyelashes. Then, nodding haughtily, she murmured that she would see him after the show and turned to leave. She paused, and spoke over her shoulder:

"You were in the Times, by the way. For the peerage you were granted. You are the political cartoon of this week, too."

Everyone in the room watched her go. That was, perhaps, what had attracted Beckett to her in the first place: she was a head-turner, in every way. Everything she did, everything she said. It was from the way she looked right down to her attitude. Oh, when he had first seen the young Miss Verity Lovelace walking her sporting walk across the floor, he had known he had to have her.

Perhaps their courtship had been a little too hasty: they had married quickly, ruled by passion—but at this point, a year later, they hardly seemed to live in the same world.

Beckett fished a slightly dishevelled copy of the Times from a casket in front of them and ruffled through the columns of blotchy print until he came to the small, scratchy ink scene drawn by the cartoonist known only by his pen-name of 'Dill'. Beckett supposed that an alias was necessary for a man that made puns so bad that he was very much deserving of a lynching.

This week's cartoon was as bad as expected: it showed a fork, with a crown upon its prongs, offering a small box to a spoon with a wig on. This, Beckett guessed, was meant to represent the silver-plated set of knives, forks and spoons given to him by King George at the ceremony in which he was given his title: an expensive gift that he would doubtless hand down to many generations, were he to ever have children.

The caption read: Cutlery Beckett.

"Mr Mercer," Beckett said, rubbing his temple as if a headache was quickly approaching the point of burst vessels in the brain, "I do not know in which county, country or continent anyone on this God-given Earth could find this amusing."

Mercer merely lifted a corner of one lip in a slightly sneery smile.