Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Another footman guarded the corridor in the south wing where Dantry was housed, though this one had dozed off. He was a large specimen, swathed in two wool cloaks. If the north wing had been cold, the south wing competed with the icy inmost circle of Dante’s hell.
The floors were bare. The windows lacked curtains but sported full complements of bars. The stink of lye and old urine laced the air—a prison smell if ever there was one—and from down the corridor, a low, miserable keening sounded endlessly.
The regulars—the insane rather than the merely inconvenient—apparently bided here, and Dantry had chosen to dwell among them.
I had to swallow back revulsion and that loyal companion no soldier acknowledged—fear. Fear out of control could lead to stupid, fatal mistakes. Fear kept in check could result in a successful mission.
Fear made me patient. I waited for Romeo and Juliet to complete their tasks and go giggling on their way. I waited another quarter hour, balancing the impending loss of moonlight with the need to ensure the dozing footman sank back into deepest slumber.
No clock chimed the hour—what need had prisoners of a clock?—and yet, I knew the night was nearly gone.
I took out my picks and crept down a corridor that grew darker by the yard until I reached the door from which Romeo and Juliet had emerged. The locks were more substantial in this wing, and the little scrapes and clicks involved in picking Dantry’s reverberated like a brass band in the gloom.
The lock gave. I tucked the picks back into my tailcoat pocket and lifted the latch.
“I already have enough coal to last until morning,” said a fellow seated on the low cot along the wall. “Please close the door. You are letting out what little heat the fire generates.”
“Lord Dantry.”
He looked up, expression cautious. “Who might you be?”
He was a thinner, more serious version of Sheldon, or perhaps a week of the Retreat’s hospitality had taken some weight off him. He rose as I closed the door.
“Lord Julian Caldicott, at your service. We need to get you out of here.”
“And if I refuse to go?”
Now came the turn of bad luck, of course. “Lord Huffnagel meant to spirit you away last evening, but I gather two of his bully boys came down with food poisoning. He has rescheduled your departure for the morning.”
The fast-approaching morning.
The earl glanced out the window. No curtains, only dingy, wavy glass and iron bars illuminated by moonlight.
“How do I know that you are not Huffnagel’s minion?
I’ve heard of you, and we were probably introduced at some club or hunt meet or other.
My cousin dwells not far from Caldicott Hall, but I don’t recall encountering a fellow with your,”—he gestured toward his crown—“appearance.”
We did not have time for protracted parleying. “I was taken captive by the French, and following their genteel hospitality, my hair turned white. The color is returning gradually. If you are spirited away to some asylum in Scotland, I doubt you will ever be seen in local surrounds again.”
“And how,” he retorted, “do you propose to free us when the place is apparently a fortress in disguise, and you are as lacking in proper footwear as I am?”
British soldiers in their thousands had marched through snow without proper footwear, thanks to Parliament’s parsimony.
“We will be running too quickly to notice the frostbite. We must leave immediately.”
“And if I leave with you, I might well become one of those unrecognizable corpses pulled from the Thames on any given morning. I am not stupid, Lord Julian—if that’s who you are.”
I wanted to throttle him. Instead, I selected the tiny blade from among my set of picklocks and began cutting up one of the thin blankets on his bed.
“What in blazes are you doing?”
“We’ll travel faster with even minimal foot protection. The snow under the pines is likely deeper than along the lanes, and we’ll need every possible advantage. As to my bona fides, Sir Clive sought my assistance when you disappeared without notice. At that point, you’d been gone for several days.”
“He waited several days before sounding the alarm?”
“He made what quiet inquiries he could, and he waited for an explanatory note from you to arrive in the post. You are passionately devoted to any number of causes. A spur-of-the-moment trip to tour mills or mines wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
The weather didn’t help. You wrap the big square over your socks and tie the lot around your ankle with the narrow strip. ”
The earl considered the fabric I’d tossed at him.
“Do it now, man, or some lackey will be up here to clean your grate, and we will both be enjoying a posthumous dip in the Thames.”
He set his foot down on the square of wool. “Anybody could have gotten wind that I’d left the Knot without notice.”
I resumed slashing at the blanket. “Your brother, Sheldon, has been stealing you blind for the past several years. You caught on to his scheme and took three sets of jeweled sleeve buttons with you to the Knot, probably intent on having your solicitors trace their provenance. The matching cravat pins are in Sheldon’s jewelry box, and he claims you asked to borrow the sleeve buttons. ”
Dantry made an awkward business of tying up his first makeshift boot. “Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders is a paltry collection compared to my brother’s jewelry box, and he has more in the safe.”
“Tie the strip around your ankle snugly and tuck in the ends, or you’ll trip yourself.”
He started on his second boot. “Is Sheldon in on this wretched business?”
“He says not. I believe him. Huffnagel or Alphonse Fletcher figured out his embezzlement scheme and threatened to expose it to the law if he set up the hue and cry over your absence. He claims he was assured in writing that you would be unharmed.”
Dantry looked around his cell, for nothing in the chamber could be called an appointment. The bed was a plank cot, no mattress. The blankets thin. No pillow, no rug, no lamp on a sconce or washbasin. The fire was adequate, but blazed behind a screen secured to the hearth with a padlock.
“I am unharmed,” he said. “Thus far.”
“You asked to come here, didn’t you?” I made quick work of my first boot.
“I did. I wanted to know what these establishments have to offer. Most of them are notorious, and rightly so, but I have not been harmed.”
He’d find out later, when the nightmares started, that he was in error. “Your name protected you. I was told first names are the rule of the house, but you are Mr. Arbor. I suspect that is a warning to the staff not to knock you around.”
“They did, gently. A warning to me. I find I am still reluctant to accompany you into the night, my lord. How do you know that I am referred to as Mr. Arbor?”
“I overheard Elmer Fines and his light o’ love gossiping. She brought you some paper just before I let myself in. He brought half a bucket of coal. They both wonder how it is you aren’t fast asleep, thanks to your nightly brandy.”
“Vile stuff. I simply could not keep it down the first night, but suffered enough of its effects to realize the intent. Nobody examines the contents of a chamber pot too closely. You heard the moaning?”
“I did.”
“By day, it’s four times as loud. Some poor woman who lost a child and could not master her grief. Or that’s the story passed around among the inmates. I am still reluctant to accompany you.”
The moon was setting. A false dawn would surely follow, and in the kitchen, the undercook was probably already awake, putting loaves in the oven and mixing her next batch of dough.
I secured my second boot with a stout knot. “Miss Dulcinea Weatherby particularly asked me to see to your safe return. It was she who challenged you to put down your prolific pen long enough to take real action on any one of your myriad political causes.”
I rose, aware that Dantry was now listening to my every word.
“She fears for your safety,” I went on, “and she is also well aware that should both you and Sir Clive expire, then Sheldon—Sheldon the embezzler, Sheldon who as a boy taunted her with incarceration in this very establishment—would become the trustee of her assets. For her sake, would you please stifle your doubts and prepare to run for it?”
“Dulcie told you that?”
“You bloodied Sheldon’s nose for insulting her, and she has been in love with you ever since.
Mrs. Stoneham is also particularly concerned for you and admires the passion with which you champion various underdogs.
You make her laugh, and she is a lady much in need of laughter.
If you wish to continue impressing the ladies and vexing your political foes, please move your lordly arse. ”
“Dulcie is not in love with me.” He rose slowly, a curiously dignified figure in wrinkled gentlemanly attire and blanket boots.
“Oh, right, and you are not in love with her. We can discuss that part later.” I took the second thin blanket from the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders.
He scowled and tried to unwrap it. “I am not unused to cold, Caldicott.”
He was unused to warfare, bless his titled heart. “The blanket is dark. Your cravat is white. This place has not stayed in business for decades by allowing the inmates to regularly escape.”
“You know something of foul deeds.”
I knew that my nerves would unravel if we did not soon quit this prison.
“We must get moving now. Not a sound once we’re through the door, and if we’re separated, you keep going.
They are expecting us at the Dovecote by breakfast. Trust no one.
Not the Tamworths, not Fontaine, not Sheldon, and certainly nobody answering to the last name Fletcher.
Get to the Dovecote and make a loud, furious arrival. ”
“I trust Sir Clive and Dulcinea.”
“As do I.” And Hyperia and Her Grace.