Chapter Twenty-Three
J ack covered the light on the lantern, just in case, and groped his way across the dirty yard he found himself in. Thank God for his top boots. His feet were sloshing through mud and… other detritus he didn’t like to try to identify. The smell was appalling. All around the yard, buildings leaned over it as though desperate for their sagging roofs to meet in the center. Something ran across his foot, using it as a stepping stone through the mud, and made him jump. A rat, or possibly a cat. It was gone before he could identify it. Thank goodness.
The dim light of a distant oil lamp illuminated the gateway that led out into the street where the tavern stood. That people lived in such squalid conditions horrified Jack, but he had to push that out of his head. He’d seen it all before, of course, but that didn’t prevent him being shocked to the core by it every time. By the iron spike of the lamp, a woman lounged, her skirts dragged up to her thighs to reveal blotchy skin above filthy, gartered stockings. “Want someone to give you a good time?” she wheedled. “Only a shillin’, milord.” She sounded very much the worse for wear.
Shaking his head, Jack looked past her toward the tavern door. It banged open on its ancient hinges, and a drunk came staggering out to lean up against the opposite building where he let flow a stream of steaming urine. Where were Warren and Benjamin? Had he missed them? Surely Warren would have gone to inform Reuben Sharpe of his mission before leaving the alehouse? Not that Sharpe could accompany him. Jack doubted if the man could walk six feet in his condition.
Jack slunk into a shadowy recess and waited. The woman by the lamp post heaved a sigh and moved off into the fog, her halting footsteps echoing through the night. Josie’s pinched little face danced before his eyes. At least he’d saved the girls at Mrs. Sharpe’s from a similar fate to that poor woman’s.
He didn’t have long to wait. Only half a minute later, Warren and Benjamin emerged from the tavern, the boy carrying another lantern. Without a second glance, Warren headed straight toward Jack, who had to flatten himself back into the shadows, glad he’d hidden his own lantern’s light. They passed within six feet of him, oblivious to his presence.
Jack gave them a short head start, then headed after them.
Before he’d gone three paces, six figures emerged from the darkness, surrounding him. Four of them were wearing dresses.
“Jack!” Elenora seized his free hand.
“Milord Jack.” By the dim light of the prostitute’s vacated streetlamp, he recognized the faces of the three oldest girls who lived with Mrs. Sharpe. And two quite short young men he didn’t think he’d ever clapped eyes on before.
He took an anxious look over his shoulder into the fog. “I can’t stop. I have to follow those two men.”
“I’m coming too,” Elenora said.
“Us as well,” Ivy said.
“And if you’re going, so are we,” the taller of the two strange young men put in, his voice giving away his anything but native origins, as did his smart top hat.
“Who the hell are you?” Jack managed to get out, before Rosie interrupted him.
“If you’re follerin’ some cove, then you’ll be hard to spot if you’re in a crowd of us girls.”
Peg just nodded and seized Jack’s arm.
He had no time to object. Besides which, they were quite right in their estimate that being a mixed party would draw less attention. The one good thing was that they could keep the distance between them small, as if Warren looked back, all he’d see was girls intent on giving some upper class men a good time. But who were these two strangers who seemed mysteriously au fait with his mission? He didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“These are my brothers,” Elenora, who had a tight and proprietorial hold of his left arm, explained. “Ivy has Jolyon, and Rosie has Matthew, who is nearest me in age. I decided we needed their help and when it was all explained to them, they were delighted to accompany me and my new friends.”
“Good evening to you, Lord Broxbourne,” Jolyon Wetherby said, mercifully keeping his voice low but betraying by his jaunty tone that he saw this as some kind of jolly adventure akin to he and his friends daring one another to go and drink at taverns in Limehouse. Which it was not.
“Glad to make your acquaintance,” Matthew chimed in. “And glad to render our assistance. Do anything for our sister. She’s a good’un.”
Peg was still firmly attached to Jack’s other arm, so he had no way of resisting the onward impetus of the two girls. However, this didn’t stop him from being angry. “What part of stay behind safely with Mrs. Sharpe did you fail to understand, Elenora?” And why hadn’t her scapegrace brothers sent her packing back to safety? Were they madmen?
She tightened her hold, perhaps suspicious that he might try to send her home even now. “I sat in that little parlor with your Mrs. Sharpe worrying about you, going off on your own into the backstreets the way you have. And in the end, I could stand it no longer. I came to the conclusion I had to do something. I couldn’t let you go on your own.” She shot him a glare made crystal clear as they passed under another streetlamp. “And as you’re neither my father nor my brother, and you’re not even really my fiancé, you don’t have any right to tell me what to do.”
The affrontery of the girl. But wasn’t that why he liked her so much? The way she didn’t beat about the bush but jumped straight in with what she was thinking? The dangers of her forthrightness bore down on him. “These streets are more than dangerous for a girl like you, and could well be for your brothers, too.”
“For everyone,” Peg, who must have been listening, put in.
Jack nodded. “She’s right.”
“Safety in numbers,” Elenora said, with defiance. “There are four of us girls, and now we have Joly and Matt, three of you gentlemen. And my brothers both have pistols like you, and have given me one which is safely stored in my reticule, which is happily just the right size for it. Ivy said we should be safe if we have pistols.”
Only of course, Jack no longer had his pistols, nor much likelihood of ever seeing them again.
“Ivy doesn’t know.”
“Ivy does,” Ivy put in. “Who was dragged up round here, Milord Jack, you or us?”
“You shouldn’t have encouraged her,” Jack snapped. “She’s not like you girls. She doesn’t have the wisdom of the streets you all do.”
“Wisdom of the streets, is it?” Rosie mocked. “That’s what you’re callin’ it now.”
Jack fumed. But he couldn’t deny that four girls together were a lot safer than one or even two on their own. And when you added in three men as well, all armed, even if he now only had his swordstick, that made their odds of safety much higher. He peered through the thickening fog. The alley had narrowed and was going downhill, Warren and Benjamin just shadowy figures in the gloom. Were they approaching the Thames?
The way through the maze of dirty backstreets had confused Elenora’s country sense of direction and she now had no idea which way she was facing, so when the alley they’d been traversing suddenly emerged onto the damp and foggy embankment of the River Thames, she came to an involuntary halt, pulling Jack to a stop as well. The smell of mud and… other far less savory things… rose up in an almost tangible barrier to hit her in the face.
“Tide’s out,” Ivy remarked as she tugged Jolyon along the narrow path beside the river. Up ahead the slinking shapes of the two men Jack had set himself to follow flitted from one pool of smoky light to the next, like wraiths in the mist, their lantern bobbing. Who were they and where were they heading?
Beside her, Jack hurried his pace and she had to almost run to keep up with him. Little Peg was running in truth. Then, as if suddenly hitting a wall, Jack ground to a halt, and Jolyon and Matthew and their girls almost cannoned into him. “Get back.” The two words emerged from his lips as a barely breathed whisper. Elenora flattened her body against the wall on her left, holding her breath and far too aware of the noisy tumult her heart was making.
The two men, one of whom, now they were a little closer, looked as if he might be Benjamin Sharpe, had stopped where a tumbledown warehouse overhung the muddy riverbank as part of a deserted wharf, and at last taken time to peer over their shoulders.
Ivy nodded at the warehouse. “I know this warehouse. We’re in Devals Wharf, just off Abingdon Street.” Her warm breath made shadowy statues in the cold air. “It’s fallin’ down now and outta use. I know the gangs used to use it to store stuff they’d prigged. What’s the bettin’ they still do? There’s lockups in there where you could hide anything you wanted. A boy, easy.”
She glanced from Jack to Elenora. “No one there’d ask any questions, nor do nothing to save a boy locked up in there. An’ plenty of people wi’ nowhere else to sleep’re probably in there all right. They used to crawl inside of a night for a bit of shelter.” She gave a dismissive shrug. “Done it meself a few times before I met Lord Jack an’ he took me to Ma Sharpe’s. If they’ve got the lad stashed in there, he’ll be upstairs where there’s a few rooms you could lock, what was once offices for the wharf. Like I said, be easy to keep someone there a prisoner.”
Had she been kept in there herself, as a prisoner? When she’d been little more than a child herself? The possibility made Elenora’s blood freeze in her veins, accompanied by the thought that she herself had led a very sheltered life, never dreaming that people lived in this terrible way. Never again would she take for granted the luxury of her family’s life. Mama had thought herself poor because Papa had gambled away their money, but this was what being poor truly was. Sleeping in a disused warehouse on the banks of the River Thames in fear of your life.
How long had it been since these back alleys were the haunts of her three new friends, and for how long had they been living respectable lives with Mrs. Sharpe? She’d ask them later, if there was a later.
Her left shoulder was pressed up against Jack’s body, his imposing bulk reassuring. The practical part of her was glad of this, although she also felt a yearning not to have to feel beholden to a man for her safety. That she could look after herself without his help. That, in fact, he needed her. Whatever would Mama say now, if she could see her here cowering in the shadows while two villainous denizens of the slums conferred. That Benjamin was villainous, she’d already decided.
A door creaked and the two figures disappeared into the dark cave of the warehouse.
Elenora stood on tiptoe to whisper in Jack’s ear. “Now what?” A curl of his hair tickled her nose and the scent of sandalwood caught in her nostrils. How could a man smell so… what was it? Tantalizing. Yes, that was it. She’d never smelled anything quite so alluring, and to her surprise it had turned out to be the scent of a man. How very odd.
He turned toward her, much closer than he’d ever been, apart from when he’d kissed her. His breath was warm on her cheek. “We wait.”
“Want me to foller’em?” Peg asked. “I’m small an’ no one’ll notice me. I was always good at that.”
Jack shook his head. “No. Too dangerous. I think we’ve found where they have Edward hidden. If we go blasting in after them, they’ll have chance to hurt him. So we’ll wait for them to come out and jump them. I’m assuming Benjamin to be on our side, but we can’t be certain. Don’t hurt him. Just hold him down. There are seven of us and only two of them so we should have the upper hand. After that, once we have them in our hands, we can go in and rescue Edward.”
“A good plan,” Jolyon whispered.
Matthew heaved a sigh as though he’d have liked to have stormed the warehouse all guns blazing.
Elenora bit her lip. It did indeed sound like a good idea. But only if the capture of Warren didn’t make a lot of noise and there weren’t a lot of people guarding Edward. Would there be, or wasn’t this more likely to be a one man enterprise? She had no idea. And from out here in the dark, how were they to know? Perhaps they should let Peg do her spying.
“All of us?” Ivy asked. “We’ll go in together?”
Rosie nodded. “If Warren’s still alive, one of us’ll have to stay and guard him.” She lifted her skirts to reveal the top of her boot, from which the bone handle of a knife protruded. “I c’n do that if you want. We’re all armed. As usual.”
“’Cept her.” Peg nodded at Elenora. “I bet she don’t have no knife hid in her boots nor anywheres else.”
Miffed at their dismissal of her lack of preparation and more than a little shocked that they’d clearly been armed like that while they were at work, Elenora pulled the small pistol out of her reticule. “I do have this, and make no mistake about it, I know how to use it.”
“Well, strike me down with a feather,” Ivy hissed. “Where’d you get that from? Was it in there all along? Do fine ladies go about with pistols in their bags?”
Elenora shook her head. “Matthew slipped it to me. And I think some ladies do.”
“You sly cove,” Rosie whispered to Matthew, to whom she seemed to have taken a shine. “Never saw you do that. And she’s tellin’ the truth? She knows how to use it?”
Matthew, eyes shining in the dark with untoward excitement, nodded. “I can assure you my sister is a crack shot. Better than me and Joly.”
“You got your toasting iron?” Ivy tapped Jack’s cane and he nodded.
A toasting iron? What did she mean by that? Elenora soon found out, as Jack slid a long, deadly looking blade from inside the cane. She’d heard of sword sticks but never seen one before. Perhaps a wise thing to carry if you were a young blood roaming the less salubrious areas of London of a night. Maybe all young men had them. Older ones too. Although neither Jolyon nor Matthew possessed such a weapon. Perhaps she should suggest they get one each.
Elenora checked her pistol was loaded, which, of course, it was, but you should always check if you intended to use it to defend yourself. She’d learned that early on. She hadn’t grown up in the country close to her two older brothers without having joined in with their pursuits whenever she could, whenever Mama was otherwise engaged with her sisters or visiting friends. She weighed the pistol in her hand. It was smaller and lighter than any she’d handled before when she and her brothers had been target shooting in the woods. “I forgot to ask you, Joly, why you have such a small pistol about you.”
“It’s called a Queen Anne Pistol,” her brother whispered. “Or a Muff Pistol, if you will, as so many ladies keep them hidden within their muffs in case they’re attacked. That’s why it’s so small. Not particularly accurate, but enough to put an assailant off if you point it at him.”
Elenora examined the decorative silver handle. That this had belonged to a lady, she had no doubt. But who? Could it belong to some lady her brother knew… well enough to have her pistol in his house? She’d quiz him about that later. “I see it’s loaded.”
“I’m not walkin’ behind her, if you don’t mind,” Ivy said, and her friends muttered agreement. “Don’t want to be shot in the back by mistake.”
Jolyon grinned. “She won’t shoot you by mistake. She’s not an idiot. I can vouch for that.”
Jack nodded. “Don’t fire it unless you have to, though. Now, all of you, hush. And wait in the shadows until you get my signal.”
They had all by now retreated down a small alley full of muck and rubbish and no lighting, which was just as well, as right then the two men emerged onto the street again and started their way, the light of their lantern illuminating a circle around them. That the lantern carrier was Benjamin was now obvious.
As they drew level with the alley, Jack stepped out of the gloom to stand in front of them, legs planted wide apart, the sword glittering in his hands.
Everything in the next few seconds happened at top speed, yet, oddly, also in slow motion as though all the participants were wading through treacle.
Benjamin must have seen how the land lay immediately, for he fell back six rapid paces, hands up in the air in defense, the lantern swinging wildly. “I seen your boy, milord. He’s not been hurt.”
Warren shot him a furious glare, his hand going to his belt. It came up with something dark clutched in it. Jack lunged forward with his sword, a terrific bang reverberated around the old stone buildings and the sword found its mark, driven deep into Warren’s chest. The lantern fell from Jack’s left hand, clattered across the cobbles and went out.
Warren’s eyes widened in something between terror and shock, and Jack wrenched the sword free. The kidnapper stumbled to his knees on the dirty cobbles.
Had Jack killed him? Elenora’s free hand shot to her mouth. Had she just seen someone killed? The hand holding her own pistol dropped so the weapon was pointing at the ground.
“Oh my Gawd,” Rosie said.
Time moved back to normal speed.
Warren toppled forward face down, a pool of blood spreading around his body, black and glistening in the dim light of Benjamin’s lantern.
Jolyon bent and put two fingers under the man’s jaw. “He’s dead as a doornail.”
Elenora looked at Jack. His hand was gripping his left upper arm, his fingers stained with blood. “He shot you!” She ran to him, forgetful of the man he’d just killed.
He shook her off. “It’s nothing. He just winged me. We have to get Edward. Whoever’s inside will have heard the shot. Quick before someone hurts him.”
Benjamin held up his lantern. “There’s a lot of folks in there sleepin’ but no one was in with the boy. The door’s locked, so I think he’s safe.”
Jack waved him forward. “Show us the way.”
The boy, his colors now firmly pinned to Jack’s mast, held up his hand and bent over Warren’s body. “Like I said, the room he’s in is locked. Here’s the keys.” He tossed a sizeable bunch to Jack, who caught them deftly, his bleeding arm forgotten.
As one, Jack’s little army, now increased by one, headed for the warehouse doors, Elenora staying as close to Jack as she could, her eyes transfixed by the ragged tear in his coat and the dark stain of blood on it. But he was right. It wasn’t affecting him at all, so it had to be just a flesh wound. Much as Matthew had sustained that time Jolyon had shot him by mistake while the three of them had been out after pheasants.
The thought that she was now in a part of London where violent self-defense was required had Elenora’s breath coming fast and her heart pounding, but that she was also part of a gang raised her spirits.
At the door into the warehouse, Jack held up a hand. With a finger touched to his lips, he gently pushed the door. It swung open in front of them.
He held out his sword in front of them. “Keep behind me.”
Elenora followed him in, along with Jolyon and Matthew. The girls, evidently still mistrustful that she might accidentally discharge her firearm into their backs, brought up the rear.
Once, this warehouse must have been part of the roaring trade in commodities that passed through London, but time had taken its toll, and the spaces that had once held spices and tea and coffee and silks from all over the world now lay empty of all but heaps of rubbish.
Only they weren’t heaps of rubbish. They were people.
From under piles of rags, pale faces peered and eyes glittered in the feeble light of Benjamin’s lamp, most of them uninterested in the arrival of yet more people to disturb their sleep, some wary, some angry, some resigned to interruption.
“My goodness.” Elenora couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. “I can’t believe people have to sleep in this dreadful place.”
Jack caught hold of her hand. “Don’t look.”
But she couldn’t avert her eyes.
Benjamin stopped in the center of the room, the light from the lantern spilling out across the fetid floor toward the cowering shapes of the sleepers. Grunts and groans echoed in the darkest recesses, scuttling noises sounded, and the stink of unwashed humankind clogged Elenora’s nostrils. “Up them stairs. The room at the top.”
Jack caught her arm. “Upstairs, then.”
A rickety wooden staircase leaned against the farthest wall, the handrail broken and some of the treads missing. Above, darkness lurked. Darkness and silence.