“If only Gustav could see you now, my love. He’d run me through with the nearest sword just to have you for himself.”
“Oh, don’t mention that cad’s name. I dislike him intensely.” She lifted a hand and fluttered slender fingers to hasten her husband back to their original topic. “Go on, Jeffrey, I’m waiting.”
“Aye, that you are, my sweet.” He sighed, relenting to her winsome urgings. “When I was a youth, I had to endure a lot of ribbing when I went skinny-dipping with my friends. We used to swing out over the water on a long rope tied to one of the branches of the tree that grew alongside the stream. Sometimes it evolved into a contest to see which of us could sail the farthest before letting go and plunging into the creek. A few of us had more than the average handle, and there were many humorous suggestions as to what our companions could do if the rope ever broke. Their recommendations amounted to me or any like me climbing up in the tree as a replacement for the rope. Their hilarity was as vast as their imagination, for they wagered that since our members would have some flexibility, everyone would be able to fly farther. Otherwise, they claimed there’d be little difference between us and the rope.”
“Didn’t their teasing make you feel ashamed?”
Grinning, Jeffrey raised a hand and, with a finger, scratched his cheek reflectively, very near the intriguing cleft made visible by his grin. “Considering that a few of them had nothing more in their breeches than what amounted to a spit in a pot, I decided I wasn’t so unfortunate after all. At least no one ever mistook me for a girl.”
“I like the way you look.”
Feeling himself responding to her ogling stare, he offered a suggestion. “I don’t suppose you’d consider taking a moment to sport with your husband, would you? I could offer excuses for our tardiness downstairs.”
Raelynn could imagine the curious stares they’d receive upon returning downstairs. “The bed squeaks too much, Jeffrey. They’d know without a doubt what we were doing.”
Her husband snorted. “I’m going to take you home where the bed doesn’t squeak, madam, and then I’m going to keep you there until you plead for me to let you go.”
Her countenance brightened as she dimpled. “Promise?”
He winked at her. “You have my word on it, madam.”
21
GUSTAV FRIDRICH STRODE DOWN THE STREET, oblivious to anyone who was foolish enough to get in his way. Although his shining, round face had become a mottled scarlet from his exertion, and his breath wheezed harshly from his stout chest, he never once considered slowing his pace. Pausing to rest would have been a weakness he despised almost as intensely as the world in which he found himself.
His upper lip curled derisively as he observed the relaxed passage of several elegantly garbed couples on the street. “As if zhey haf no care in zhe vorld,” he mentally jeered. “Fools! Veak, despicable fools!”
In his opinion, Charleston was a cesspool of languid self-indulgence and careless gaiety deserving only his contempt. Despite the fact that his many smuggling exploits and business affairs in the city and the surrounding area had made him a very wealthy man, he loathed the populace. People here seemed much more interested in enjoying the simple pleasures of life and being hospitable to their friends and neighbors rather than striving and working hard in a serious quest for fortune. He especially disliked its sheriff. If not for Rhys Townsend, he’d still own Raelynn. Possessing her would have served as sweet succor for his useless arm. He had never had a woman the likes of her before, and he was gut-wrenching tired of the jaded strumpets who eagerly bellied up to any man for a coin or two. Those he had attempted to ride after his shoulder had been shattered had left him writhing in shame and frustration. He had sent them fleeing in wide-eyed trepidation before the lash of his savage tongue and his bellowing rage.
But with Raelynn, it would be different, he consoled himself. The merest thought of bedding her kindled that part of him which the harlots, with all their knowledge and experience, hadn’t been able to stir from its limpness. Enchantingly beautiful, well-bred, and elegant, not to mention sufficiently young to be easily held underneath his thumb, Raelynn would have proven a delectable morsel in his bed.
It didn’t help knowing that his insatiable desire for her had already resulted in a horrible impairment, one which grieved him unmercifully. Now he couldn’t even bear to look at his own reflection, the girth of which was growing with each month’s passing. The dead weight of his useless arm, much like the one in his crotch, was a constant reminder of why he utterly loathed Jeffrey Birmingham. The constant awareness that the sheriff hadn’t yet seen fit to arrest the man for Nell’s murder only served as another sharp, nettlesome thorn in his flesh.
Dwelling on his grim musings, Gustav turned crisply into an alley to take advantage of a shortcut to the area where he had left the livery waiting. Oblivious to the two sailors, who, after exchanging a nod, followed him into the narrow lane, he strode angrily on, absorbed in his own violent musings and hatred.
Of a sudden, his good arm was seized, and he was shoved face-first against a wall, causing him undue pain as the force of the impact nearly broke his nose. He tried to look behind him, but a stout forearm wedged up close against the back of his neck.
“Here now!” Gustav barked. “Vhat iz zhe meanin’ of zhis outrage!”
A chuckling breath left him gasping in a cloud of fetid stench as a hoarse voice rasped near his ear. “Give o’er yer money, gov’na, or I’ll cuts yer throat here an’ now.” To emphasize his willingness to perform such a deed, the sailor pressed a large blade to his victim’s stout neck until a thin trickle of blood oozed from a newly inflicted cut.
The other sailor wasn’t up to wasting time with mere threats to get what he wanted. Kneeling beside the German, he started rifling through his pockets. When he could find no suitable amount of coin, he began searching upward underneath their victim’s coat. A bulge around the man’s waist made him whisk out his own gleaming blade. He made short work of the man’s suspenders, and soon he was dragging the trousers downward over taut hips. Once free of the ham-like buttocks, the pants dropped forthwith around Gustav’s ankles, leaving naught but the tails of his coat and long underwear covering his heavily muscled legs. The ties of the money belt were severed, and soon it was slung over a brawny shoulder.
“This should tide us o’er for a winter or two, mate,” the fellow boasted with a chortle and clapped a hand upon his companion’s shoulder.
“What do we do wit’ him?” the latter queried, looking to his companion for guidance.
“Slit his gullet, what else?”
Accustomed as he was to inflicting rather than being a casualty of fear, pain and death, Gustav was literally paralyzed by fright at the thought that he’d be murdered by a pair of lowly tars. His heart thudded against the inner wall of his rib cage, and his harsh breathing was now reduced to sharp gasps. As much as he loved money, he gave no tiniest thought to it at the moment. What loomed before him was his life in retrospect, the men he had ruined, the ones whose deaths he had arranged for his own gain, the women he had used in the foulest way possible, the elderly he had swindled and left to beg on the streets, the children he had kicked out of his way or the beggars he had backhanded and sent flying. A few of his victims had been pawns in his climb to wealth and power, others useless entities he had trod upon without regret after reaching the lofty height to which he had once aspired. Now, as he balanced on the precarious precipice between life and death, the faces of his victims came back to haunt him, at the forefront of which loomed Nell. Hadn’t he promised a thousand Yankee dollars to see Jeffrey Birmingham removed as an obstacle between himself and Raelynn? And what had followed but the death of the young mother!
Not my fault! I didn’t know! his mind screamed to the black-shrouded judge whose skeletal visage towered above him. The gavel came crashing downward. Guilty, by all intents and purposes! The sentence is death!
Not having prayed since the tender age of
six, Gustav struggled to remember just how to go about it when a groan suddenly broke from the tar who held the knife wedged against his throat. The other sailor raised his arm with a gleaming knife clutched in his hand, but abruptly gasped in surprise. A long, bloody blade slipped free of his gut, and then, quite slowly he doubled over with a muted groan.
“Ye can pull up yer breeches now, Mr. Fridrich,” a familiar voice informed him. “These here tars ain’t never gonna do ye no more hurt.”
“Olney?” Gustav struggled mightily to drag his trousers up over his long underwear.
“Aye, it’s me all right.”
Facing the younger man, the German finished tugging the waistband up over his buttocks and began buttoning the flap as he settled a glower upon the scamp, totally dismissing from mind the fact that Olney had just saved his life. “Vhere haf yu been? I expected yu back veeks ago.”
“I’ve been tryin’ ta save me arse. Me arm was busted an’ I had ta wait till it healed afore I dared come outa hidin’. If ‘tweren’t for Birmin’am’s hired men snippin’ at me heels an’ the sheriff trackin’ me wit’ his men, I’da’ve been able ta get some rest here and there. But they nearly drove me inta me grave tryin’ ta escape ’em. Me temper got plumb sour, it did. I ain’t had me a real bath or bedded a wench in o’er a month. Considerin’ everythin’ I’d been through, I decided I had enough o’ runnin’ through the swamps an’ woods an’ could just as well hide out at that there cat house where I found Ol’ Coop the last time. Yes, sir, I’m gonna have me a taste o’ them fancy women they’ve got there. In fact, that’s where I was headin’ when I seen ye an’ yer friends here turn inta the alley.” He canted his head curiously. “What’s happenin’ wit’ Birmin’am, anyway? He been arrested yet?”
“Nein! Zhat stupid sheriff refuses to do anyzhing about Nell’s murder! Yu killed her for nozhing!”
Olney laughed caustically. “I didn’t kill the li’l wench! Birmin’am did! I saw him do it!”
“Yu’re lyin’, Olney. Yu took her out zhere, promisin’ to make trouble for Birmingham. Zhen I hear she vas killed. Vhy vould he bother to murder Nell vhen he has such a beautiful vife?”
The curly-headed man lifted his brawny shoulder. “Maybe Birmin’am flew inta a rage after Nell went into his house durin’ his fancy ball an’ threatened to expose him afore all o’ them friends o’ his. She said she was gonna tell ’em he were the one what filled her belly wit’ that ‘ere li’l bastard she whelped. The ways I figgered it, Birmin’am didn’t want ta suffer the shame o’ his friends thinkin’ he’d knocked up the li’l twit an’ then sent her packin’. Some men are like that, carin’ more ’bout their reputations than they do ’bout keepin’ themselves respectable an’ safely wit’in the law. O’ course, the two o’ us don’t e’er have ta worry about that none, do we, Mr. Fridrich?”
Though he sensed the question was spoken in derision, Gustav ignored the insinuation to his life of crime as he considered the viability of his foe being a murderer. “As much as I vould like to have it so, I haf trouble believin’ Birmingham vould be so foolish,” Gustav muttered. “Perhaps yu vere mistaken, Olney. Maybe yu saw zhe real murderer an’ just thought it vas Birmingham.”
“I’d almost be willin’ ta swear afore a judge that it were Birmin’am himself, but that ain’t hardly gonna happen, ’cause the minute I show me face, the good sheriff’ll arrest me. Huh! He’ll probably tell all kinds o’ nasty things ta the jury just to see me locked up for the next brace o’ years. A measly thousand dollars ain’t worth the trouble I’d be gettin’ meself inta, so if’n that’s what ye’re expectin’ me ta do ta get it, ye can be keepin’ what ye promised me.”
The ice blue eyes narrowed calculatingly as Gustav considered what would tempt the rogue. “Vhat about zhree zhousand?”
Olney snorted. “The only way I’d do it is if’n ye give me the use o’ yer lads ta spread the news that I’m back in town an’ that I saw Birmin’am kill Nell. Yer men would have ta go ’round town, stirrin’ up the people against Sheriff Townsend an’ accusin’ him o’ bein’ partial ta his friends. Then they’d have ta follow me ta the sheriff’s office, along wit’ the people they riled, an’ be ‘ere ta heckle Townsend when I turns meself in.”
“I can haf my men do zhat easily enough. Vhen do you vant zhem to start?”
“I’ll need a bath, a couple of hours with a wench an’ ten thousand up front.”
“Zen zhousand! Yu must be mad! I vill never pay yu so much!”
Olney lifted his shoulders, blandly unconcerned. “Suit yerself, Mr. Fridrich, but I’m not doin’ it for anythin’ less. I may have ta spend a few years in prison, an’ I wants a nice tidy sum ta invest afore I’m taken in so’s I can live like a Birmin’am once I’m set free.”
“Vhat yu ask iz highway robbery!”
A derisive chuckle came from the younger man. “Well, me grandpa was a highwayman, so’s it must be in me blood somewheres, but if’n ‘ere’s a thief betwixt the two o’ us, Mr. Fridrich, then I’m lookin’ at him. Ye pay me wages, remember? I’m an honest, hard-workin’ gent who knows how ta barter when the time’s right. Three or more years in prison is too long a time for me ta even consider the measly pickin’s ye’re willin’ ta dole out. In short, I ain’t acceptin’ anythin’ less’n what I asked for.”
Gustav peered at him narrowly. “Yu guarantee Birmingham vill be arrested if I agree?”
“I guarantee.”
“Zen zhousand zhen for his arrest. If yu fail, yu vill be found in zhe river vith yur throat cut. Zhat much I promise yu.”
“GOOD AFTERNOON, SHERIFF.”
Rhys Townsend spun around in quick reflex, his hand reaching for his pistol. He hadn’t been able to forget that voice, not by any stretch of the imagination. It had haunted him night and day through all of his efforts to figure out just where that wily rat, Olney, had lit out to. He surely hadn’t expected the scamp to come prancing himself across the threshold of his office like some dandified gent in garb that could’ve crossed one’s eyes. But there Olney stood, big as life, leaning cockily against the doorjamb and wearing a loudly checked frockcoat, a red shirt, and the bottoms of his tan trousers stuffed into overrun, deer-hide boots that had seen better days.
“What the devil are you up to, Olney?” Rhys barked, flicking his gaze out the window at the crowd of people collecting in front of his office. His hackles fairly prickled. Something was up all right. He could feel it in his vitals.
Making no effort to curb his grin, Olney sauntered forward with an air of a man who had the world by the tail with a downhill pull. His thick shoulders came up in a casual shrug. “I just thought it were time I came ta pay me respects, Sheriff. Any objections?”
As the younger man ambled past him, Rhys wrinkled his nose and turned his face aside in sharp repugnance as if he had just gotten a strong, downwind whiff of a polecat. “You smell like a perfume factory, boy.”
Olney threw back his head and loudly guffawed, snatching awake the deputy who had been dozing in a nearby cell. The older lawman stumbled to the bars and stared bleary-eyed through the barrier as he mumbled sleepily, “Wha’s happenin’?”
“Go back to sleep, Charlie,” Rhys bade tersely, sending the deputy tottering back to the bunk. Rhys cocked a brow at the sly, young fox who was doing everything but swishing his tail across his nose.
“Don’t ye like me new duds, Sheriff?” Olney inquired, tossing back a taunting grin.
“A bit gaudy for my taste, Olney, but then, I’m not you. How’d you get the money from Fridrich to buy them?”
“There ye go again, Sheriff, always supposin’ me integrity’s for hire.”
Rhys scoffed in rampant amazement. “What integrity?”
“Don’t ye worry none ’bout that, Sheriff,” Olney retorted hotly, coming around in a huff and thrusting a forefinger beneath the lawman’s nose in an effort to dismiss his jeer. “I gots meself plenty o’ that.”
“Yeah? You and who else?”
&n
bsp; Olney sighed heavily and shook his head as if sorely lamenting his visit. “Here I be, ready ta help ye solve a murder ye can’t unravel, an’ ye ain’t even willin’ ta be nice ta me.” He flung a hand toward the thickening throng milling about in front of the sheriff’s office. “I’m sure all o’ ’em folks out ‘ere would be eager ta hears what I has ta say on the matter o’ Nell’s murder, even if ye ain’t.”
Rhys strode thoughtfully to the barred window and gazed out. He had a good memory for faces, and some of the men he saw looked very much like the same ones who had been in Fridrich’s warehouse the night he and a whole host of friends and deputies had barged in with guns blazing. “I don’t know why it is, Olney, but I have a gut feeling that your friends out there already know what you’re about. In fact, I think you’re just itching to tell me the name of the man you claim is a murderer. Would you like me to guess the one you’re going to blame?”
Tugging on an earlobe, Olney mauled a smile as he considered the sheriff’s offer. “I suppose I can allow you one guess.”
Rhys jerked his head toward the street. “Considering all those people you’ve brought with you on your mission of goodwill, no doubt with the idea of forcing my hand, I’m of a mind to think that you’ll be naming none other than Jeffrey Birmingham as the murderer.”
Chortling softly, Olney scrubbed a forefinger beneath his nose. “Ye know, Sheriff, at times ye plumb surprise me. Ye don’t seem nearly as daft as I’ve been led to believe.”
“Thank you, Olney,” the sheriff rejoined dryly. “I’d accept that as a compliment, but I must consider the source.”
“I seen Birmin’am do it, Sheriff! I ain’t lying!” the brigand insisted irately.