I seated myself at my writing table and wrote a letter back, telling him that I would call on him at my own convenience. I let my annoyance seep into the letter, and I let myself imply what I thought of a man who could ruin an artist's success with a simple frown and a person's acceptability with a raise of his brows. I was tired of his charity, and I refused to give up my integrity for Grenville's exquisite brandy and fine foods. I ended by recommending that if he wanted to hear all about true living, he should attend Louisa Brandon's supper party. No doubt Brandon would regale all present with detailed accounts of our adventures during the war.
His message had said he'd send his carriage at nine. Shortly before nine, I left the note for Mrs. Beltan to post in the morning, and I went out.
I walked all the way to Long Acre, and then east and north, away from my usual haunts. Let Grenville's footman search the environs of Covent Garden for me in vain.
Cool had come with the darkness, but the bitter cold of winter had gone. The air had softened at last, and it was almost a pleasure to walk. Others must have felt the same, because the streets were crowded.
I went to a tavern I'd never entered before. The locals, working-class men with calloused hands, leathery faces, and good-natured banter, looked me up and down in suspicion as I entered. These were the carters and wheelwrights and hostlers and a large man with knotted muscles who must have been a smith, catching time with their cronies before going home to sleep. After I'd settled onto a low stool by myself and remained sitting quietly, they left me alone. I had a glass of hot gin, then a tankard of ale.
I was halfway through that and pleasantly warmed when Black Nancy danced into the room. She looked about with wide, eager eyes, swishing her hips, then spotted me and rushed across the room.
"There you are, Captain. I tried to follow you, but I lost you in Long Acre. I had to ask everyone if they'd seen a lame man walking alone. A gent told me he'd spied you coming in here, and here you are."
I set down my ale. "Very clever of you. I came here because I am not in the mood for company."
"I'm sorry to hear yer say that." She dragged a three-legged stool to my table, perched on it, and gave me a wicked smile. "I got something to offer yer."
I was not in the mood for her teasing. I said sharply, "Which I have refused before."
"Not that. I know I ain't got a chance. Listen, Captain, ye want to nab this bloke what nabbed your Miss Jane or Miss Lily, or whatever her name might be, don't you?"
I nodded and sipped ale.
"Well, I can help ye there. Me and Jemmy. He thought it over, and he don't like that he was made to do it. That's why he were so blackish when you questioned him. But we thought of a way to get the bloke, and we need your help."
Alarm stirred inside me. "What the devil are you talking about, Nancy?"
Nancy rested her hand on my shoulder. "Don't fret, Captain, it will be simple. All I have to do is get myself nabbed, and you catch him doing it."
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty
My response was instant. "No."
She grinned. "I knew you'd say that. Me and Jemmy, we got it all planned."
"The man is far too dangerous, Nance. I don't want you near him at all."
"I won't get myself near him. We worked it all out. Jemmy'll volunteer to go out and nab me. He'll take me back to his master, and then you can come along with the magistrate and arrest him. Then you will make him tell us where your Jane is, and me and Jemmy split the ten guineas reward. I would be rich. You want me to be rich, don't yer?"
I shook my head at her simplistic ideas. "Mr. Denis is not a usual kind of procurer. He doesn't want street girls, and it's most likely that Jemmy still works for him, and he's only luring you, and me, into danger.
Nancy snapped her fingers under my nose. "That's all you know. We already done it, anyway. Jemmy's not stupid. He's proper handsome too." She flicked her gaze up and down me, as though finding me wanting in comparison.
"Nance, do not do this," I said sternly.
"Don't matter. I'm to meet Jemmy, going midnight, behind the Covent Garden theatre. You can come along, or Jemmy and I will tumble him on our own. We don't need you to get our reward."
I caught her arm. "You and Jemmy are a pair of fools. This man is too dangerous."
"Let go of me. You ain't my father."
Nancy's voice carried. Heads turned. The locals eyed me with disapproval.
"If I were your father, I'd lock you in the cellar."
She jerked from my grasp. "And I'd scream the place down. You ain't my protector, neither. If I was, I'd do everything you said, always."
Nancy fled from me. I threw a crown on the table and hobbled after her. The inhabitants watched me go, likely glad to be rid of me.
"Nance," I called into the night.
I heard her footsteps moving away through the narrow lane, but I could not see her in the darkness. I hobbled after her, though I knew I'd never catch her. She was expert at disappearing. I would just have to arrive at Covent Garden theatre a little early and spirit her away before she and Jemmy could carry out their plan. I had no cellar to lock her into, but I had the keys to Mrs. Beltan's attics. I could put her in there until the danger had passed. She'd not thank me, but at least she'd be alive.
I went to another tavern closer to home and had another tankard in peace. No black-haired girls with ridiculous ideas burst in to bother me, and if Grenville's lackeys were looking for me, they were not looking very thoroughly. At half past ten, I returned to Grimpen Lane. I did not see Grenville's carriage, or any of his efficient footmen, so I concluded they'd decided it not worth waiting for me and had returned, empty handed, to Grenville.
At half past eleven, I went to Covent Garden theatre, which reposed at the end of Bow Street. The carriages of the wealthy still came and went in the front of the edifice, but behind it, darkness was complete. I shone my lantern around the blackness of the narrow passages, but except for a rat and an old man who scurried away, I was alone. The rat remained.
The clock at St. Paul's, Covent Garden struck the three-quarter hour. Running footsteps sounded, and I set my lantern down and stepped back into the shadows. I recognized the light footsteps of Nance, and presently, she trotted into the lantern's feeble glow.
"Who's there?" she said, much too loudly for my comfort.
"Me."
Her teeth glittered as she threw herself toward me. "Aw, Lacey, I knew you'd come."
I seized her wrists and jerked her to me. Her eyes, close to mine, opened wide.
"What are you doing? Are you trying to kiss me?"
"No, I am restraining you."
She looked at me in alarm then, and drew in a long breath, preparing to scream. I clamped my hand over her mouth. She tried to kick me, but I pinned her against the wall with my weight. She bit my hand. I snarled at her. She went suddenly limp and silent.
I jerked her upright and began to tow her back to the street, scooping up the lantern as I went. She trotted along, sniffling.
At the corner of the theatre, four men stood waiting. None were Jemmy. I took a step back, but they followed.
I tossed the lantern in one direction, and Nance in another. She squealed as she fell among the rubbish, and the lantern rolled and extinguished, plunging the passage in darkness.
The men struck. I dodged swiftly and felt a breeze brush my face. I wrenched my sword from my walking stick and clenched the scabbard in my other hand. I heard a strike coming, and I lunged out. A man grunted in surprise and pain.
They grappled with me in the darkness, trying to get under the reach of my sword, trying to get behind me. I put my back to a rubbish heap and struck hard and fast. Sometimes I hit, sometimes I didn't, but it kept them at bay.
But for how long? I could not fight here forever; already I was tiring. I couldn't depend upon Nance to run for help. She was crying loudly off in the darkness, making no effort to get away. She might be hurt. One of them might have her.
A blow got through and landed on my chest. I exhaled sharply, but kept my feet and struck back with my fist and scabbard. I felt teeth. The man I hit cursed and spat.
A sudden light blinded me. A lantern shone in my face, dazzling my eyes. I quickly closed them and looked away, but too late. A sharp blow fell on my left knee, and hot fire streaked through it. I struck out. In the light, another blow landed on my sword arm, then three men closed on me and wrenched the sword from my grasp.
"Hurry."
I recognized Jemmy's voice and sensed his flat face behind the lantern. I fought on. Another kick to my bad leg wrenched a cry from my lips, and then my hands and face struck the pavement, rough cobbles stinging.
They kept pummeling me. I curled inward, protecting my face and belly. My knee was a mass of pain, and I could feel little else. When the numb haze receded a little, I realized they'd stopped hitting me. I moved my arm, and heard myself groan. Sticky blood tickled my cheek.
I opened my eyes. In the light of the bright lantern, I saw a slender foot in a soiled slipper inches from my nose.
"It's a fair turnabout, ain't it, Captain?" Nance asked softly, and then she kicked me in the face.
*** *** ***
When I came to myself again, a long time later, I lay on a thin mattress and had a blanket thrown over me. Light--daylight--trickled through the broken slats of a wooden-shuttered skylight. My limbs felt curiously heavy, and the fiery pain I'd expected was now a dull, distant throbbing.
I tried to move and discovered my hands joined behind my back, the cords that bound them tight and biting. My feet were likewise tied, my boots gone.
They had not covered my mouth. I licked my dry lips, and drew a breath to call out, but only a whispered creak emerged, like a breath of wind through branches on a summer afternoon. My bed--no, the entire room, rocked gently, and I smelled mud and brine and filth. Shadows danced below the skylight, up and down, up and down, telling me that I was afloat. Somewhere. The air held the stink of the city, not the clean smell of open water, so I assumed the Thames, still in London.
Was I alone? Or did someone man the tiller? Perhaps the boat would sink, taking me down alone to the bottom of the river, my body lost forever.
I was thirsty and hungry and terribly sleepy. Even in my alarm, my eyes drifted closed, my body seeking the oblivion from which it had risen.
When I opened my eyes again, the light was fading from the skylight. A day had gone by. Only one? Or two, or more? My befuddled mind had an inkling this was important, but I couldn't make myself care. At least the boat was still afloat. I heard a man's voice outside the cabin door, then another answering. So I wasn't alone. Perhaps they'd shoot me first, before they scuttled the boat.
I went through my fuzzy memories. I could not recall much of what happened after I'd been pummeled by the four men and Jemmy behind Covent Garden theatre. I did remember lying in a darkened carriage, groans escaping my lips, and I remembered a hand forcing me to drink something bitter and burning. Opium. That would account for my numb heaviness, my indifference as to my plight. When the opium wore off, I'd be wretched indeed.
My cracked lips formed a smile. I'd explain to Louisa, if I ever saw her again, that I'd missed her supper party because I'd been drowned while trying to rescue a sixteen-year-old prostitute from her own stupidity.
Nance had tricked me, and I'd walked right into it. She'd known I would not be able resist trying to keep her out of my business, and she and Jemmy had laid a simple trap. Jemmy worked for Denis, and the four men who attacked me reminded me of the bully in Denis's library. Denis must have assumed I wouldn't be able to walk away from him without an attempt at retaliation. He must have seen in my eyes the stupid idea of trying to shoot him before it had even formed. So he'd struck first.
The rickety door opened, and two large men entered--I assumed to kill me.
They beat me instead. Soundly, thoroughly, with fists and cudgels, they pummeled my body until pain stabbed me even through the opium. Hoarse screams I could not control leaked from my mouth. I looked straight at one man, into the same flat, uncaring eyes that Denis possessed.
They departed, and I lay in a daze.
They say that opium promotes clarity of thought. Poets and musicians are said to use it to inspire great works. I read little poetry, but music gave me joy, and it seemed to me that the strains of violin and pianoforte slid through my brain now, circling my thoughts. The drug lifted my mind above the pain, divorcing feeling from thought. While my body soiled itself and I lay there in the stink of my own blood and urine, the events of the last days sorted themselves out and lined up neatly and clearly.
Philip had told me everything I'd needed to know. I'd focused my wrath on Denis, the man who discreetly acquired things for his customers; his only consideration being how much they were willing to pay and how desperate they were. No matter how Denis dressed himself up, he was filth, and I knew it. But through my disgust with him, I had blinded myself to a simple truth--that not one person had visited Horne's house that day, but five.
Bremer had nothing to do with Horne's death, had been as surprised as anyone to find him. I'd always known that in my heart. But among those five people--Denis, Denis's bully, two men making deliveries, and one woman with a basket--was the culprit. Mrs. Thornton had carried a basket the day her husband had been shot in Hanover Square. Alice no doubt had a basket for shopping in the markets. And who noticed a maid?
Who noticed a man who delivered things, for that matter? If Mulverton, Horne's cousin, had been in a hurry for his inheritance, he could have dressed himself as a working-class man and come to the house with a bushel of turnips simply to see how things lay.
That was far-fetched; I did not suppose for a moment that a gentleman from Sussex would conceive of putting on shabby clothes and dirtying his face merely to see if he could put his cousin out of the way. But I turned the possibility over in my mind, because what I truly believed was terrible, and I did not want to examine that belief too closely. Bremer was a better culprit. An old man, who'd been willing to do his master's disgusting bidding, who would achieve fame on his way to the gallows.
I still did not know where Jane Thornton was, but I had a good idea of what had happened to her. Philip had seen someone take her away that night, and I feared in my heart that she was dead. I also knew who would know for certain, and my wrath moved to that person and smoldered there for a time.
As the light faded, I thought about the secondary problem of Charlotte Morrison. I thought about her letters, and I thought about the look I'd seen in her cousin's eyes, and I realized what she'd feared. I'd known it in Hampstead, but I'd not wanted to believe the loathsome conclusion, and so had not let myself draw it.
The opium helped me to see clearly what I had already known. Just as it had happened years ago when I'd concluded which officer and his sergeant had decided to rid the army of Arthur Wellesley, I'd known the solution right away and had not wanted to look it in the face. A night alone, fearing for my life, had forced me to acknowledge the truth. During that chill night in Portugal, I'd not had the comfort of opium to dull my fear, but my life had been just as much in danger then as it was now.
But the secrets of Jane, Horne's death, and Charlotte's disappearance would die with me. No one would find them in my water-rotted brain when they fished me from the bottom of the Thames. My own fault for avoiding painful truths and keeping my confidences to myself.
I lay in twilight now, my eyes open, watching the last shadows drift across the scarred and tar-encrusted floor.
Sometime later, the door opened. The flare of a rag light pierced my widened pupils and sent fingers of pain into my head.
Black Nancy closed the door and moved to the bunk. She set the lamp on the floor and smoothed my hair from my forehead. Her fingers smelled of tar and mud. She may have bathed all over for me a few days ago, but she certainly hadn't since. "Don't worry, Captain. Nance will take care of you."
I said nothing, s
till too weak to speak.
She continued to stroke my hair. "He's going to give you to me, did you know that?" she crooned. "I help nab you, he said, and he fixes it up so you'll always do everything I say. Black Nancy will always have what you need."
She leaned down and kissed my lips. I lay, unresponding. She thrust her tongue into my mouth, forcing my blood-caked lips open, but I didn't answer her insistent pressure. Her hand snaked down to touch my arm, my chest, my groin. Her smile widened. "There now, I knew you was awake. You like me in truth, don't you?"
The drug that suppressed my pain seemed to heighten my physical response. I grew stiff under her hand, but the excitement stopped there, never reaching my head or heart. My trousers were damp where I'd wet myself, but Nancy did not seem to notice or care. She flashed a satisfied smile at me and began popping open the buttons.
On a sudden, the door thumped firmly shut, and a bolt grated into place. Nance gave a shriek, whipped her hand from me, and scurried to the door.
She stared at the barricade for a stunned moment, then she pounded her fist on the door. "'Ere. You let me out."
No answer came. Nance pummeled the door again. I rolled onto my side and tried to force myself into a sitting position. Nance shouted and screamed until her voice went hoarse.
"They are not going to let you out, Nance," I said. "They are going to kill me, and you with me."
She whirled. "No, they ain't. They promised."
I shook my head, which only made it pound with nasty pain. "They used you, Nance. They aren't going to let us go. They will likely scuttle the boat."
Tears streaked her dirt-caked cheeks. "They can't do that. I just wanted you, that's all. I'd a done anything to get you."
I wanted to hate her for doing this to me, but the only thing I could feel for her was pity. Denis had used Nancy's silly childlike need to get to me. I'd used her desire to please me to find Jemmy the coachman. I knew who was to blame for landing her square in this business in the first place.
I tried to speak sternly. "Come here and untie my hands."
Her eyes went wide. "If I untie you, you'll beat me."
"I wouldn't do that, Nancy. I promise. Untie me, and I'll think of a way to save us."