A Sham Engagement (The Mismatched Lovers #1)

Chapter Twenty-Four

A t the top of the stairs lay a narrow, dirty corridor, hung with cobwebs and devoid of windows. Two mean doors opened off it, both so old, what paint they’d ever possessed had peeled away long ago. The light of the lantern Benjamin was still holding showed Jack that someone had slashed a daub of paint across the notice on the first door that had once said ‘Manager’ and underneath it had painted, in big, uneven lettering, ‘ GUVNER ’. The second door, though, stood naked of any sort of paint, but possessed of a rusty padlock.

Benjamin fumbled out the bunch of keys, the lantern light wavering. “I’m not sure which key it was.”

“Get on with it, man,” Jolyon growled.

Jack didn’t wait. He took a breath and shouted. “Stand back from the door!” His booted foot shot out and struck the door a resounding blow. The old wood caved in before his onslaught, splintering into several pieces. Most of it clung to its rusty hinges, but some of it fell broken to the floor, attached to the padlock. Inside lay darkness.

Jack followed the remnants of the door into the room beyond, pulling Benjamin after him, the lantern swaying back and forth. Behind him, his co-conspirators crowded in.

The room was tiny, little more than a store cupboard, perhaps once used as a secure lockup when this had functioned as a working wharf. Furnished only with a pile of dirty rags in one corner, it stank of musty decay. Benjamin’s lamp threw flickering light onto the pile of rags. Sitting on them, his knees drawn up to his chin, was Edward, unbearably small, white-faced and drawn, cowering back against the cobwebby wall and blinking like a myopic mole in the lantern light.

Elenora, quicker to react than Jack, put out a hand to the lantern, lowering it in Benjamin’s hands. “He can’t see it’s his father.” Then she was past them both, down on her knees on the stinking rags with the little boy, reaching for his hand, all reticence about touch apparently gone. “It’s me, it’s Elenora and your papa. We’ve come to save you.”

For a moment the little boy regarded her out of eyes that were pools of darkness, then, as if suddenly awoken, he flung himself at her, his arms fastening about her neck, his face against her shoulder.

Jack, his heart swelling with relief, saw her flinch at the contact, probably far more than she’d experienced for a long time, but she made no effort to disentangle the terrified child, who clung on with the determination of a limpet to a rock. The little boy seemed not to have noticed her discomfort. “Elenora,” he sobbed. “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t forget about me like the horrible man said you would.” As if she was the only one who’d effected his rescue. A nub of jealousy rose in Jack’s heart, that he was being sidelined by a woman. But Edward had long needed the love of a woman… a mother… other than the redoubtable Miss Douglas.

From behind Jack, one of Mrs. Sharpe’s girls made a clucking sound, like a contented hen. None of them had ever met Edward, yet all the girls knew about him—a secret he’d never kept hidden from them. And they knew it was due to Edward’s birth they owed their own security nowadays.

Elenora seemed to be nonplussed about what to do with her hands. They flapped for a moment before she must have resigned herself to human contact, unusual as she found it. They went tentatively around Edward’s slender body, holding him to her, then tightened, as though she might be enjoying the new sensation. A beatific expression slid across her face, her eyes closed, and she nestled her head against Edward’s as he sobbed into her shoulder.

“We oughtta go,” Ivy muttered, glancing over her shoulder at the broken door. “It’s not far back to The One Tun, and the fellers there’ll be finding you gone from there before long and puttin’ two and two together and makin’ five. Won’t take much fer them to work out that you follered that dead cove and Benjamin.”

“Hold me tight, Elenora.” Edward’s small voice came, muffled from its position against her body.

Jack tapped her on the arm, remembering the atmosphere of open threat in Sharpe’s taproom. “We don’t have time to delay. Ivy’s right. We have to get out of here. When Sharpe finds me gone from his alehouse and the window open, he’ll raise his customers in a mob to come after me. Us. They’ll forget about extortion and they’ll come straight here and find Warren’s body. None of us will have a chance. Now. Give him to me.”

Benjamin coughed. “They won’t find that feller if we gets rid of the body.”

“Good idea,” Ivy said, as though disposing of bodies came naturally to her. Perhaps it did. “Into the river with him. Tide’ll take him before morning. Even if his body’s found, nobody’ll connect it with us. Come on.”

Jack hesitated, but not for long. Too many questions would be asked if Warren’s body was found by the Watch run through with a rapier. Not the weapon of choice for the gangs of the Devil’s Acre.

The three girls returned to the smashed doorway, and he turned to where Elenora was still holding tight onto Edward, blind to the fact she was sitting on that fetid pile of rags.

She looked up at him over Edward’s head, and he held out his arms. “Here. I’m better able to carry him than you. He’s not small.”

With a look of strange reluctance, and some difficulty as he was firmly attached, she relinquished her hold on Edward and Jack took his son in his arms. Edward, his sobs finally lessening, transferred his clinging hold to Jack’s neck. Jack settled him on his hip. “Downstairs, now.”

They crowded out into the mean little corridor and approached the rickety steps, Ivy now carrying the lantern. They weren’t alone. Two figures occupied the half-landing, creatures from a nightmare, grotesque and threatening.

“Where d’you fink you’re goin’?” one of them growled. The lantern light flickered over a cudgel embedded with six inch nails.

Jack hesitated, encumbered by Edward and unable to reach his sword.

Before he could do anything, Elenora had stepped in front of him, her pistol levelled at the men. “Get out of our way or you’ll regret it. I am considered an expert shot.” Not a tremor shook her hand and she kept her voice calm as she pointed the small pistol at the man with the cudgel. What a woman.

Jolyon and Matthew stepped forward. “As are we.” Both of them had pulled out their own pistols, bigger and more deadly looking than the one they’d given Elenora. These they also pointed at the two men, delighted grins on both their faces as though they were enjoying the danger of their situation.

A pistol had also appeared in Benjamin’s hands, and this he swung back and forth over the darkness below, where the sleepers had lately lain. “Not one o’ you lot make a move or I’ll fire. I might not be able to see yous, but I’ll get one of you for sure.”

All three girls had their knives out, the thin blades flashing in the lamplight. Did Mrs. Sharpe know they went about secretly armed like this?

Their would-be assailant’s eyes settled on the pistol in Elenora’s hand, then slid past to those in her brothers’. For a moment, they hesitated, before, as one, they stepped back, retreating down the last few steps, keeping their gazes fixed on Elenora, perhaps the one they thought most likely to shoot them by mistake. She followed them down, keeping well back. Sensible girl. Anyone would think she’d done this before.

Jack followed her and her brothers and, behind him, his female army, knives in hand, followed him. With one hand, he kept Edward’s head pressed against his shoulder lest he should see the horrors of the warehouse. If he hadn’t seen them already.

The lantern threw a pale circle of light around them, and, as they reached the foot of the stairs and the two men withdrew, illuminated the denizens of the warehouse. From out of the shadows and the piles of rags, they’d crept, dirty, unkempt, hollow eyed, in what seemed a seething mass of inhumanity, like something from Danté’s Inferno. How many people called this place home? Amongst the drawn faces of men and women were those of children, eyes sunken, dressed in rags no better than what they were sleeping on.

“Mistress Princum Prancium’s got a barking iron,” one of the men from the stairs said, reversing into the crowd. “And I fink she means to use it.”

“Too right I will,” Elenora snapped. “Don’t for one minute think I won’t.”

“There’s more of us than there is of them,” the second man snarled. “Or are you lot lily-livered cowards?”

Hard to tell if they were. Desperation could drive a person to reckless action.

Four pistols against maybe fifty people. Not good odds. But the girls had their knives.

Jack set Edward on the floor, pushing the child’s hand into Ivy’s empty one. “Hold him tight.” He drew his sword and held it out in front of him. “And I have this to prick you with.”

The other two girls stepped forward, the light glinting on their knives. Rosie spoke, her voice a sneer. “And we’ve got these to gut you with. We won’t go down wivout takin’ a load o’ you hedge birds wiv us.”

“Who’s to be first, then?” Peg asked, jabbing with her knife.

“Yeah, no one messes wiv our nobs,” Rosie added.

The crowd, swollen now as the other rough sleepers had arisen, shrank back toward the wall. It seemed none of them was prepared to be a sacrificial lamb.

Neither, it appeared, were either of the two men with the cudgel.

“Outside, now.” Jack jerked his chin toward the door.

Ivy, still holding Edward’s hand, stepped sideways toward it, and her friends followed her.

Jack turned to Elenora, who still had her pistol levelled at the crowd of hostile faces. “Out, Elenora, when I tell you.”

She shook her head. “I have my pistol. We go together.”

Bloody woman.

Jolyon, eyes still dancing with enjoyment, caught her arm. “Go outside and guard the boy. Give Broxbourne your pistol first. That’ll be four of us with pistols. And find something to bar the door with to stop them following us.”

Sensible suggestion. Jack nodded to him, and, for once, Elenora did as she was told and handed Jack the small pistol. Far too light for a man, but threatening, nevertheless.

Their would-be assailants had taken a few steps forward as the girls retreated out of the door. Jack swung his slender sword in an arc, pointing the pistol at them, and they fell back. None of them possessed the bravery to test him out. But would they try to follow?

“I have no argument with you. But I do with the men who trapped my child here. I know you know who was behind this and are afraid of him, but if you try to follow us, I’ll see you all hanging from outside Newgate Jail for conspiracy to kidnap. Leave us be, and I’ll not mention where I found my son, only that he was taken by Warren with Sharpe’s help.”

Would they believe him? Would this mean anything to them?

He and the other three had reached the door. Hopefully Elenora had found something to block it with.

“Get outside and see if your sister’s found some way to lock this door. Benjamin and I will hold them back. Ivy knows the way out of here.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Matthew said.

“Not a chance,” added Jolyon. “You’re to marry our sister and we have to keep you safe for her.”

Bloody chivalric pair. The suspicion that neither of Elenora’s brothers were taking this seriously burgeoned. Were they a pair of idiots? Couldn’t they tell the mood of this crowd of poverty-stricken and desperate people?

Elenora appeared in the doorway. “Found something. Quick. Get out now.” She glared at the ragged crowd. “Come after us and you’ll regret it. My brothers will blow your heads off without a second thought. It’ll be like shooting rats in the barn.”

What a woman.

Jack believed her. And most importantly, so did the crowd.

The man with the cudgel held up his arms in front of his fellows. “She’s a right vixen. Let’er go. Tain’t worth riskin’ our lives over.” As the mood of the crowd deflated, Jack, Benjamin and Elenora’s brothers retreated out of the door and he slammed it shut behind them.

Peg and Rosie slid an ancient but still solid beam into place across the door.

Jack hesitated. There was still the matter of Warren’s body. However, the Wetherby brothers seemed to have that well in hand.

“Grab his legs, he’s heavier than he looks,” Jolyon said, indicating Warren’s body lying where they’d left it. “Can’t leave any evidence behind us.”

Matthew grabbed the legs and the two young men heaved the inert mass to the edge of the wharf.

“Tide’s out, damn it,” Jolyon grunted.

“I told you it was before. Chuck him onto the mud,” Ivy snapped. “Tide’ll be in before long and roll him down to the sea if we’re lucky. Now, stop dawdlin’ and run.”

Elenora ran, aware that beside her Jack had hold of Edward’s hand again and the child was running between him and Ivy, his little legs pounding through the darkness and the mud. Fog swarmed in all around them, damp and cold and cloying in her straining lungs, bringing with it the stench of soot and dirt and the filthy waters of the Thames.

They ran for what seemed like forever, her feet slamming against uneven cobbles or splashing through mud and other liquids she didn’t want to discover. The soaked skirt of her gown flapped cold against her legs and moisture formed on the wool of her pelisse.

“I can’t run anymore,” Edward gasped before long. Jack sheathed his sword in its camouflaging stick and scooped him up in his arms, and they ran on, keeping as silent as they could, only the sound of their breathing rasping in the cloaking fog. At least that might stop anyone pursuing them. Or at any rate, finding them in it.

Ivy, who was leading the way now, led them through a winding maze of narrow, dirty alleyways and streets. They passed through shadowy courtyards overhung with tumbledown buildings and lines of smut-covered washing, where scarcely any light showed from filthy windows.

Elenora, whose sense of direction had been thrown akimbo early on, had no way of telling which way they were going until, at last, they emerged as if from a nightmare, onto a street whose lamps made it seem like daylight after the dark gloom of the slums. Fog still clouded the street, but it was not a slum, there being decent, red-brick houses in a row, their faces calm and welcoming. Not yet the streets Elenora knew as home, but nearer to Betterton Street in form.

“This way,” Ivy said.

Although he was now carrying Edward, Jack still had the swordstick in his hand, and both her brothers still gripped their pistols. They might be out of the slums, but that didn’t make them safe. Hadn’t Mama told her often enough that the streets of London, wherever you were, could not be considered safe after dark? And it must be getting late now.

Twenty minutes hurried walking brought their party back to Betterton Street, but it appeared they were not going in. Jack set a sleepy Edward on his feet. “You girls and Benjamin go in. I have you all to thank for tonight, for fetching Elenora’s brothers with their pistols. I couldn’t have done this alone, even though I thought I could.” His gaze slid to Elenora. “You are all very brave.”

The girls exchanged glances. “It were nothin’ compared wiv what you’ve done fer us,” Ivy said. “Otherwise, it’d have bin us you’d have seen in that warehouse, sleepin’ rough, sellin’ ourselves for the price of a meat pie.”

Peg and Rosie nodded. Had any of them been forced to do that in their past? Before Jack had rescued them? And what about all the other girls still in that position? Elenora shuddered.

“Will you be safe, milord?” Ivy asked. “We can come back wiv you if you needs us to? Or Benjamin can.”

The look on that young man’s face said that he’d had enough of escorting nobs about the dangerous backstreets of London.

Jack shook his head. “Elenora and I have her brothers to see us home. Have no fear. Although your knives would be a handy addition to our munition. You’ve seen us out of the Devil’s Acre and that’s all you needed to do. I have my sword and I’ll give Elenora back her pistol, just in case, and her brothers are armed to the teeth. We’ll be safe. You’d best go inside and explain to Mrs. Sharpe where you’ve all been.” A smile lit his face. “My brave soldier girls.”

“I’m cold,” Edward said.

Ivy had her shawl off in a moment and was wrapping it around his shoulders. “There, my little lord, that should keep you warm till you gets home and into your bed.” She dropped a kiss on his curly head.

Edward smiled and made a little bow. “Thank you, miss.”

The girls went inside, not without noticeably longing looks at Jolyon and Matthew, who seemed to appreciate their attention, and Jack scooped up Edward again. “Back to Portland Place.”