A Sham Engagement (The Mismatched Lovers #1)

Chapter Twenty-Two

B enjamin led Jack up a creaking spiral staircase to the rooms above the tavern crowded in under the eaves. A long, low ceilinged corridor ran along the back of the building with a few shabby doors opening off along one side, from behind which came the definite sounds of people participating in sex. Havelock’s unfortunate women at work. Would he have put his daughters into this profession to make money out of them if Jack hadn’t stepped in to save them? Probably.

Opposite these doors, high up, mean and filthy little windows stared out at the far-too-close, and sagging, rooftops of the building next door. For someone who professed to see his father only rarely, Benjamin seemed to possess an intimate acquaintance with what lay behind these doors, for he steered Jack past them with brash confidence and a knowing smirk.

At the final door, Benjamin halted and glanced back at Jack, the smirk replaced by a cocky grin on his ratty face. With one hand, he pushed it open.

Jack stepped inside.

The room contained a single narrow iron bedstead pushed up against one wall, close under the sloping ceiling, and beside that a rickety table on which stood a lantern. Seated on this bed was the man Jack had seen watching his house, devoid now of his lost sailor’s hat. As Jack came in, this man rose to his feet, and Jack was able to look him up and down in the harsh lamplight.

He stood taller than the scrawny Benjamin, but not so tall as Jack, and his build was on the light and wiry side, although well camouflaged by his loose sailor’s clothing. An air of secretive strength hung about him, honed, no doubt, by his years at sea. He stared back at Jack out of eyes puckered by long years squinting into the sun and wind on board a ship, and his skin had that desiccated, weathered look Jack had seen on the old tars of Limehouse and beyond many times before. Impossible to hazard a guess at his age, but to Jack, the man looked prematurely aged by the harshness of his life.

Jack made no preamble. “Where is my son?”

Warren, for it had to be he, gave a shrug of the shoulders as though that scarcely mattered. “Now then, boyo, no need to get all arsey.” A definite Welsh twang to his voice. He could be someone who’d known Mary, but had his lovely Mary attached herself to this venal creature in her youth? Impossible to imagine. The man was most likely lying, and Mary hadn’t been. He wanted to cling to that idea, even as inside himself he knew she had been.

Behind Jack, Benjamin had closed the door and was now leaning his narrow shoulders against it, much as he’d done in his ailing father’s office. Was he here to make sure Jack didn’t hurt Warren, or to make sure Warren didn’t hurt Jack? Whose side he was on seemed a moot point now. Had he ever made the break from his good for nothing father or had he been gulling his mother and Jack all this time, fooling his hapless sponsor concerning his new life? What did any of that matter now?

“What have you done with my son?” Jack asked.

“Don’t you mean my son?” Warren said. The singsong lilt that had made Mary’s voice so attractive sounded out of place and coarse in his. Alien. Jack itched to plant him a facer. He clenched his fists by his sides and stood silent. That could wait until he had Edward back. Then he’d deal with this cockroach.

Warren smiled, showing crooked, yellowed teeth with big gaps where some had been lost, to scurvy, no doubt. A single gold incisor flashed. Gold earrings decorated the lobes of his fleshy ears, and around his neck hung a gold necklace, peeking from between the collars of his shirt and blue sailor’s coat. Unwise to go about the Devil’s Acre showing off your riches like this. The man must be confident no one would touch him. Confident, perhaps, in the patronage of Reuben Sharpe.

“I’ll ask you once more. Where is Edward?”

“That what you call him, is it?” Warren ran a grimy finger along the groove of his chin. “Well grown the way he is, he’ll make a likely cabin boy when I take him back to sea wi’ me.”

“I want him back. He’s not your son.”

Warren threw a scornful glance at Benjamin. “You’ve fed the brat better than you have this one, with his trap stick legs, I can see. Oh yes, I know all about how you’ve treated my mate Reuben.” He laughed, a hoarse, grating sound like a saw. “You make a habit of stealing other people’s wives, he tells me. If I weren’t so pissed with you, I’d thank you for taking such good care of my boy.”

“He is not your boy.” The urge to seize the man by the throat waxed strong. It was only with great difficulty that Jack kept himself under control.

Warren grinned, and his gold tooth flashed. “In the eyes of the law, he’s mine all right, boyo. Mine to use as I want, to take where I want, to put in work as I want. And he’s big enough to put to work in one o’ they cotton mills up north in Manchester, if I’ve a mind to it. Or down a mine. I’ve been up there, seen those mills. They’ll snap him up and pay me for it. He’s mine to sell as I want. To the highest bidder… of course.” He winked at Benjamin. “Think your man here can be the highest bidder?”

Benjamin said nothing, his face a study in uninterested nonchalance. Hedging his bets, damn the boy.

Every bone in Jack’s body cried out that it would be wrong to give this man money, that he shouldn’t submit to this blackmail, that he should find some other way to get Edward back. But he couldn’t. If Warren was indeed Mary’s husband, then Edward was legally his child. To this man, Edward was nothing more than a ticket to riches, and if those riches didn’t arrive, Edward’s life would be worth nothing. At the very least, Jack had to appear to be compliant. For now.

“How much do you want?”

Warren seemed much given to smiling, flashing that gold tooth with abandon. Even with Reuben Sharpe’s patronage, Jack knew the man couldn’t be certain no thief wouldn’t stick a knife in him for that tooth and the necklace and earrings. “That’s better, boyo. I knew you’d see the light.” He ran his fingers through his thatch of shaggy, straw-colored hair. “Only there’s not just me wants recompense now. There’s my mate Reuben downstairs, who helped me find you and my boy. Glad, he was, to be offered the chance to get one over on your high and mighty lordship.”

He grinned yet again. “All I knew when my ship docked back in London was my Mary had been working the alehouses here in London when I left with my ship for the Antipodes. Last I saw of her, she was workin’ The Angel in Limehouse, for your friend Reuben. Luck brought me back to Reuben’s door, and luck threw us together with one end in our hearts. Yours.”

He chuckled. “See? He’s got his own axe to grind, you mark my words. He tells me you prigged his missus and took her along with mine. One wasn’t enough for you.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “Make a bit of a habit of priggin’ other people’s wives, do you, boyo? All Reuben’s regulars know the story. There weren’t no shortage of volunteers to help me snatch my boy back.”

Jack said nothing. Telling this man how Reuben had beaten his wife would make no difference. He’d probably beaten Mary himself when they’d been together, or she might not have left him. Although, of course, as she’d kept her married state secret, she’d never revealed anything to Jack.

“I don’t just want money for giving up my boy,” Warren said. “I want compensation for the loss of my wife. For the earnings she should’ve been giving me. Reuben told me she was raking in a fine fortune singing for the gentry in theaters up west. You owes me for that. And for her loss when you let her die birthin’ my boy. And my mate Reuben wants the same for his wife. You deprived him of her services these eight years past.” He paused and gave an earthy chuckle. “Now, what do you suppose, boyo, is a wife worth to a man? And his children. Reuben’s lost all his children, hasn’t he young Benjamin? Savin’ this one, I hear.”

Benjamin shifted a little but said nothing.

Oh, how much Jack didn’t want to give this grasping man money. To give neither of these extortionists a penny. To see them both in Newgate Jail, or transported to Botany Bay. Though, for preference, hung. Outside Newgate Jail, in public.

“How do I know he’s still alive? I need to see Edward for myself.”

Warren shook his head. “Not happenin’, boyo. I’m no flat to be gulled by you. No money, no boy.”

An impasse.

“Prove to me he’s safe, then.”

Warren’s ferrety face crunched in a frown. “How’m I to do that, d’you s’pose? Without showin’ you my hand? D’you think I’m an idiot?”

Jack jerked his chin at Benjamin. “Show Reuben’s son my boy is safe. Living. Without proof he is, I’m not prepared to give you a single penny.”

Benjamin straightened up.

Jack dug his nails into the palms of his hands. He was depending now, on Benjamin being on his side. For all he knew, Edward was already dead, and if Benjamin came down on the side of his father and Warren, he might lie and say he’d seen Edward. But he wouldn’t think like that. He had to believe his son still lived. He had to put all thoughts like that from his head as they only bred fear, and he couldn’t falter in his resolve.

Warren shrugged. “All right. You wait here, and I’ll take Reuben’s lad to the boy. Then he can tell you he’s safe, and we can settle on a price.”

Either Warren was confident Benjamin would lie, or, more likely, or to be hoped more likely, he had Edward stashed somewhere not so far away, still alive but a prisoner. That had to be it. The germ of an idea was forming in Jack’s head.

Jack nodded. “And make it quick.”

Warren grinned again and that bloody tooth flashed. “We’ll take as long as we like, boyo. You’re in no position to order me about. You sit yourself down here and wait, and while you’re here, you think about what you did to me and Reuben.”

The room was small, and Warren had to pass close by Jack to reach the door. The strong smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air about him. Jack had to fight once more for his self-control. If he gave in now, all would be lost.

Without a backward glance, Warren and Benjamin departed, the door closing with a bang behind them. Their footsteps died away along the dirty corridor. At least they’d left him the lantern.

In the comparative silence that followed, broken only by the muted sounds of congress in the surrounding rooms filtering through the thin walls and nagging at his ears, Jack surveyed the rest of the room. The battered table with the lantern stood beneath a window thick with cobwebs and dust. Apart from that, the only other furniture was the rickety bed, strewn with dirty blankets. If he’d been going to stay, the last thing he’d have done was sit on that bed. But he wasn’t going to stay.

He must be quick.

He pulled the rickety table away from the window and seized the catch. It didn’t want to open. The old, dirt encrusted metal was rusted solid, but Jack’s fingers were desperate. Warren and Benjamin would be in the taproom by now, pushing through the crowd and heading for the front door. He scrabbled at the catch, nails breaking as he fought to open it. If he didn’t get out in time, he’d never see which direction they’d gone in.

At last, after what felt like forever, it gave, and the window creaked open a bare crack, letting in the smoky fog of the slums, a thick miasma of polluted air. No wonder Reuben Sharpe had the consumption. Jack forced the window wide and put one leg through it. Below lay the shadowy yard of the inn, silent in the freezing cold, cobbles dirty and damp. Remembering to pick up the lantern by its wiry handle, he said a thankful goodbye to The One Tun’s dubious hospitality.

As a tall man, although not heavily built, the window was a tight squeeze. For just a moment, he felt his body jam, but with a convulsive wriggle, he prised himself free to wriggle round to hang by his hands, still clutching the swaying lantern, from the crumbling sill and drop down into the noisesome yard below.

Now, where was the door Warren and Benjamin would be exiting?

In Betterton Street, Martha had gone to tuck her brood of youngsters into their beds and make sure they said their prayers, leaving Elenora sitting alone in the little parlor, nibbling her nails to the quick. This was a habit her mother had forced out of her as a child by dint of painting the offending fingertips with something bitter, but it returned with a vengeance in moments of stress. Now, she couldn’t stop herself.

The walls of the room seemed to press in on her, every detail of their decoration imprinting itself on her mind: where the wallpaper curled loose in the corners, the worn patches and small burned spots on the rug in front of the fire, the crumbs on the tea tray and the smell of coal smoke in the stuffy air. She glanced at the window, but only foggy darkness lurked out there, threatening and featureless.

Jack had been gone such a long time. Was she to sit here all night waiting for him? Suppose he never came back? Suppose this was all a trick by whoever had taken Edward just to get Jack into his power? She folded her hands in her lap in an effort to stop chewing at the nails. Mama would be furious when she saw the state they were in. Elenora was even a little bit angry with herself for succumbing to her old habit. Would gloves prevent her?

Her eyes roved the crowded room yet again. The furniture was too close together, chairs and tables jammed in, with too many ornaments on every surface, as though with respectability Mrs. Sharpe had gone quite mad with emulating her social superiors. Nothing like Aunt Penelope’s neat and spacious home, and a thousand miles from the faded opulence of Penworthy.

Where was it Jack had gone? Benjamin was taking him to The One Tun, a tavern in the Devil’s Acre. A common tavern in what sounded like an extremely dangerous part of the city. Such an odd name for any location. Not that Elenora had any experience of taverns or their names, nor the parts of London where they might be found. Jolyon and Matthew probably did though, and Matthew, who was closest to her in age, and for whom she’d always been a confidante, had more than once told her about his forays into the Oxford backstreets whilst he’d been at university in that town. Not that he was there any longer though, with this latest misdemeanor of his. He’d not been specific this time about his supposed crime, but knowing him, she could hazard a guess.

Jolyon and Matthew.

Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner? She could ask for their help. What time was it? Would they be at Jolyon’s lodgings? Probably. Too early for them to be out at some soirée, gambling and flirting with the young ladies. She had to get a message to them. They, the playmates and co-conspirators of her Penworthy youth, would know what to do. And they might even have pistols or know where to get them.

She prided herself in not being a missish girl in any way, and had never been one to sit about whilst others took action. Jack needed help, and she might be able to provide it. With the assistance of her brothers. If only she’d thought of them earlier.

But how? This tavern lay within the backstreets of London, a place she’d never been to before. However… Her eyes narrowed and focused. The girls here in Betterton Street must have been there, for that was where they’d come from. They’d been born into those mean streets, and only rescued from it by Martha and Jack, so surely they remembered their old haunts.

She got up and, on silent feet, padded to the door. She would try the kitchen.

The corridor passed a steep and narrow staircase to the upper floor before opening into a warm and cozy kitchen.

There, she found three girls seated around a well-worn kitchen table, drinking steaming mugs of hot chocolate. None of them was Ruth, who would anyway have been far too young for this adventure, and all of them, although younger than Elenora, looked old enough to perhaps have outside work they’d returned home from. She breathed a sigh of relief. Martha must still be safely upstairs getting the younger ones to bed. Hopefully, a long-winded operation.

All three girls stared up at her from their seats with open curiosity, although without any shock at seeing someone like her in their house. No doubt young Ruth had spread the word.

“I need your help,” she opened with.

They looked the sort of girls she’d seen working as kitchen maids, or sewing seams in dressmaker’s establishments, here in London, or behind the counter in a shop. A little rough around the edges, dressed in clean but not smart dresses, with their hair confined in neat plaits down their backs; their homely, freckled faces reminded her of the dairy maids at Penworthy, only pastier in appearance. “Yes’m?” asked one, whose mousy hair had released pretty, curling tendrils around her forehead. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than Elenora.

“I need someone to take me to The One Tun tavern and to take a message to my brothers in Jermyn Street.”

They regarded her in shocked silence. They must know where she meant, probably regarding both locations.

She pressed on. “Do you know where the tavern lies?”

All three nodded, eyes wide.

“What d’you want to go there for?” asked the first girl, who appeared to be the oldest and their ringleader. “That’s not a nice place for a lady like you.”

“It’s a matter of life and death. I need to help Lord Broxbourne. Jack. My betrothed. He’s gone there on his own. Well, with only Benjamin Sharpe to keep him safe.”

The girl, the one with the mousey hair, set down her empty cup of cocoa and drew her fingers across her lips to wipe them. “Lord Jack? What’s he gorn there for? Has he gorn barmy in his old age?”

Elenora ignored the suggestion that Jack was old, even though it was what she had at first also thought. He’d ceased to be that a long time ago for her. “To rescue his son who’s been kidnapped by some terrible villains.”

The girls exchanged anxious glances, betraying no surprise that Jack possessed a child. “What d’you think you’re goin’ to do?” one of the other two, a younger girl with a good crop of spots, asked. “You’re a girl for a start, an’ you don’t know the rookeries like we do.”

Stupid question. “I want to help him, of course.”

“By doin’ what?” the first one put in, sounding incredulous. “A girl like you… goin’ to The One Tun…” She pulled a dismissive expression. “You don’t know what you’d be gettin’ yourself into, down there. Those streets aren’t for the likes o’ you.”

“I don’t s’pose you’ve ever been further than your own front door, or Rotten Row in Hyde Park, at the most.” This came from the third girl, smaller than the other two and sporting a decided squint that made her look shifty. Or perhaps she was shifty.

Elenora bristled. These girls clearly were taking a dim view of her abilities, no doubt due to her appearance. If only she’d been wearing her old clothes from Penworthy, although even they were much smarter than the girls’ workaday apparel. “I came here on foot from Portland Place, Lord Broxbourne’s house, quite safely.”

“Not on your own you didn’t,” the first girl said. “I saw you comin’ in orf the street. You was with his lordship. And anyways, these streets’re nothin’ like the Devil’s Acre.” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s he to you, then? You his doxy?”

This was not going as Elenora had envisaged. The girls sounded somewhat less than helpful. Aggressive, even, and this last felt like an insult. “He and I are engaged to be married.”

Eyebrows rose en masse.

“He’s got himself leg-shackled at last, has he?” The first girl gave a snort of laughter. “Well, if you’ve got him ready to be yoked, you’re to be admired. We didn’t none of us think we’d ever see the day.”

The little squinting girl leaned over to her friends. “She is very pretty.” Her hushed whisper carried.

Elenora looked from face to face. “Will one of you, or perhaps all of you, for safety’s sake, please take me to the tavern where Jack has gone? Please? I beg of you. He’s been gone too long, and I’m very worried.”

The first girl looked upwards at the ceiling. “Ma Sharpe’ll be mad with us if we do.”

Her two friends nodded.

A light glinted in the girl’s gray eyes. “But if we all go, that’d be four of us, countin’ her ladyship here. Ma can’t be mad with all of us at once, an’ she won’t be mad with’is lordship’s lady friend.” She grinned. “His intended.”

“And I’ll tell her I made you do it,” Elenora said, hoping she’d be given the chance to do so, and this wouldn’t be the last time she saw the house in Betterton Street and Martha Sharpe.

The three girls stood up as one, the first girl their spokesman. “We’ll do it, miss. Together. Because you’re marrying our Lord Jack. And because we want to help him like he’s helped us. Not one of us’d be here now if it weren’t for him.”

Her friends nodded.

Elenora held her hand out. “Thank you, but first we need to get to Jermyn Street and persuade my brothers to come with us. And I’m not a ‘her ladyship.’ My name is Elenora. Ellie, in fact, to my friends.”

The first girl took her hand and shook it with vigor. “Ivy’s my name, and these two’re Rosie and Peg.” She glanced upwards at the ceiling again. “We’d best get out of here now if we’re going to. Before Ma finishes gettin’ those little heathens upstairs to say their prayers. Can take her a while. Come on.”