Chapter 33
Chapter
Bloody hell.
In the thin morning light, McGann can see his ankle is the awful blue-green color of the sky before the worst kind of storm.
He’s been in this hole in the ground for two days, during which his ankle has swollen to three times its normal size.
His thigh wound—on the same leg, thanks to that arsehole James—continues to deteriorate, and now his entire leg is mottled and throbbing and smelly and more likely to kill him than not.
It feels improbable that this is how he’ll go. That after everything he’s lived through, he’ll die in a root cellar surrounded by parsnips.
And that it’ll be Barclay, after all, who does him in—a man who, a month ago, he’d have wagered he’d never see again. All because Barclay wants the key. The key that Catherine has. The key McGann will make damn sure his brother never lays hands on.
Fuck.
“Good morning, brother.” Barclay’s face appears above the grate over his head. “How did you sleep?”
McGann tilts his chin up at an odd angle to better face his brother. “Your Grace,” he bites out.
Barclay smiles. “This truly doesn’t have to be as difficult as you’re making it.” He sets the lockbox down on top of the grate. “Produce the key and everyone walks away happy.”
“Are you really that short of funds?” McGann asks. “That you’d resort to this?”
Barclay sighs. “Just give me the key. This could have been so easy, and yet you’ve chosen to make it difficult.”
“I don’t have it,” McGann says.
“But you know where it is.”
McGann tries to clear his mind, but the hunger and pain and exhaustion make it hard to think straight. Should he say it’s back on The Elphame?
No.
That might make Barclay suspect Catherine—if James has told him about her. What about in Kent, with Crawford? Barclay wouldn’t hurt a marquess’s son.
Would he? Probably not.
But better not to take the risk.
“I lost it,” is what he finally says.
“I doubt that. And I should make it clear that there are two ways for this to end. One is that you die here, alone, in this cellar. You take your secrets with you, and I toss this box into the ocean. Everybody loses.”
“And the other way?” McGann asks.
“The other is that you hand over the key and I use the box to my own ends.”
“You mean you sell its contents to whomever wants them the most? Lucrative for you and for the East India Company too, I’ve no doubt.”
He pauses, his mind working furiously to form a plan. “If you’re trying to bid up the price, brother, there must be another buyer. Who?”
That’s ‘Your Grace’,” Barclay snaps, not answering the question.
“Alright, Your Grace,” McGann says. “Tell me why the Company wants it so badly now. Do you even know what’s in that box?”
He wonders if he should tell Barclay about the daguerreotype but thinks his brother must know the contents already—or he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to secure the damnable thing.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Barclay says. “It’s a matter for your betters.”
“Try me. I worked for the arseholes same as you do.”
Barclay sighs. “If you must know, there’s political pressure on the East India Company. Pressure that will be relieved in time—if no substantive proof of wrongdoing is produced. Substantive proof that you have locked in a steel box.”
“How do you know what’s in there? How do they?”
“Your betters know everything. It would be best if you didn’t forget it again. And do remember where the key is. I’ll have to keep you here until you do, and I’d really rather not.”
Barclay scrunches up his nose as if McGann’s death would be distasteful to him. Probably because his skeleton will be hard to do away with or because the smell might alert the neighbors. Not because he’ll have killed his own goddamned brother.
McGann watches Barclay’s face disappear and knows there’s no scenario where he’ll be left alive, even if he hands over the key right now. The idea is ludicrous.
The Company wants absolute assurance that the photograph is destroyed—and, he knows, absolute assurance that he is destroyed too. And his brother just wants the coin the contents of the box will provide for him. Once Barclay has that, there’s no reason he’ll keep him alive either.
McGann squeezes his eyes shut. He wishes he could think clearly. He wishes he knew who else wants that lockbox. He wishes he knew where Catherine is and that she is safe.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
He wishes he knew what the hell that saying even means. He’s heard it his entire life and it occurs to him he’s no idea. He sighs and opens his eyes.
There’s only one course of action he can think of, and that is to remove himself with all possible haste from this root cellar. He just has to figure out how.
The injuries in his leg flare at just the thought of movement, but he ignores the pain and reaches out to feel the stone walls that surround him.
They’re smooth—made of river rock, likely—and slick with moisture.
The masonry that joins them is of good quality, too.
Damnit. Evenly distributed, with few cracks or hard edges to act as footholds.
Where is shoddy stonework when a man needs it?
Not here.
It figures that even a duke’s root cellar would be made better than most people’s houses.
But well-made as it is, he has no other choice but to try and scale the wall.
He locates a small crack to wedge his fingers into and heaves his legs up to his middle, despite the searing pain the movement causes him.
But he can find nowhere to land his feet on the smooth walls, slippery with the morning condensation.
He falls back to the ground with a hard thud.
And then he gets up and tries again.
And again.
Each time, he climbs a little higher, only to crash harder when he falls.
Bloody. Fucking. Hell.
He sits down, exhausted and feverish, and eats the last of the moldy carrots. He casts a sideways glare at the parsnips. He’s not quite so low as to be made to eat parsnips. Not yet anyway.
But he will if he has to. He’ll do anything if he has to. Anything to escape this cellar. Anything to give Barclay the comeuppance the arsehole deserves. Anything to ensure Catherine is safe.
Anything.
Catherine wakes to tea, toast, and Mrs. Masters’s excited plans for a tour of the rose garden and a picnic.
“There are twenty-two varieties here,” she’s saying as Catherine takes a sip of tea in the brightly lit morning room. “Including the Victoria. Named after our queen, of course.”
“How wonderful,” Catherine replies, mustering as much enthusiasm for roses as she can. “Will Mr. Hawthorne be joining us for the picnic?”
Rogers has said he’ll come today and let her know what he’s found. His Mr. Hawthorne to her Miss Hope. It really is a wonder she’s managed to keep all the names straight, considering how distracted she is.
She’d wanted to tell him last night that Barclay is here, but she didn’t have his address to send a note. And she knows well enough that a spinster governess can’t just go around asking where bachelors might have taken their lodging.
Drat it all.
She wants to do something—anything—to help find Andrew. And she doubts a tour of the rose garden is the thing. But it’s what she has for the moment, so it’s what she’ll work with.
“Now that I’m settled properly,” Catherine goes on, “due to your largesse, of course, I’d like to express my gratitude to Mr. Hawthorne as well.
For his assistance,” she adds hastily at the delighted look Mrs. Masters is shooting her way.
She certainly doesn’t want the woman to get the wrong idea about that.
She does not need her host to play matchmaker with her and Rogers, of all people.
“Not that I’m aware,” Mrs. Masters says. “Although, I don’t believe I know what Hawthorne had planned to do for the day. He is quite the enigmatic character, is he not?”
“Am I?” Rogers asks as he’s shown into the morning room, clearly having overheard part of their conversation. “I certainly don’t mean to be. And my apologies for calling so early.”
Catherine watches as Mrs. Masters’s cheeks turn crimson in embarrassment, but Rogers goes smoothly on.
“I won’t be at the picnic, I’m sorry to say. I was rather hoping to give Miss Hope a tour of the island instead.” He smiles charmingly. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Masters?”
Catherine glances at her companion and watches her face recover from its red tinge only to fall again at this suggestion.
She rather does mind, Catherine thinks, and it occurs to her that Mrs. Masters is lonely here, on this island.
That she’s surrounded herself with all the makings of England but none of her own friends or family to keep her company.
Heavens above, Catherine realizes with a start, her host is in the cage too. She’s unwittingly hauled it all the way to Jamaica and settled herself into it, watching the world go by outside her bars.
In so many ways, Catherine thinks, the wealth and societal standing and aristocratic system they’ve surrounded themselves with has only ever served as a method of isolation, particularly for women.
The higher up one goes, the more exclusive company one keeps, and the lonelier one becomes.
She wonders how many would opt to stay in their cages if they knew there was another option.
She has to go with Rogers to find Andrew, but—
“I would love to tour the rose garden with you this evening,” she says. “And perhaps we could dine together tonight, Mrs. Masters, and discuss the upcoming Yule Ball? If I could be of help in the planning, I’d be delighted.”
The smile that returns to Mrs. Masters’s face lightens Catherine’s heart. At least a little.
“That was kind of you,” Rogers says when they’ve made their way out into the bright sunshine of the Jamaican morning. Catherine blinks—this is a far more powerful sun than the one she’s accustomed to in London.
“It wasn’t really,” she says. “It was the least I could do.” She turns to him. “Did you know that Barclay is here? In Jamaica.”
Rogers helps her into the waiting carriage. “I did, yes. We’d word he was planning a trip here.”
“It cannot be a coincidence.”
“No.” Rogers’s face is unreadable. “I don’t imagine it is.”
“It’s how you knew,” Catherine says, “that they were headed to Jamaica.” She stares at him. “You know exactly what’s happening, don’t you? Barclay’s involvement isn’t… how did you put it… an unexpected development.”
She glowers with her best imitation of an irritated doyenne’s face. If that doesn’t work, she can always threaten to get rid of the key, although he’ll likely see through that charade. She’ll keep that key as long as she has to and as safe as she has to until she finds Andrew.
Rogers sighs. “I have an idea of what his role is, yes.”
“Well,” Catherine prompts, impatient, “what is it?”
“James approached a colleague of mine some time ago with an offer to sell the Home Office information vital to our case against the East India Company. He used a fake name and credentials, but it wasn’t terribly hard to track him down.
James was, until a year or so ago, a vagrant laborer.
When the agricultural opportunities dried up in Scotland, Barclay hired him on.
We’d suspected for quite some time that Barclay was in the Company’s pocket, so it wasn’t hard to imagine that Barclay was the keeper of the information we needed. ”
“That’s why you were on The Elphame,” Catherine says. “You were tracking James, not Andrew at all. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you,” Rogers says. “Or at least the parts you needed to know. That we were not specifically tracking McGann. That Barclay was somehow involved. That I thought they were headed to Jamaica. The Home Office begs your pardon if—”
“Oh, do shut up,” Catherine cuts him off, “and tell me what happens next.”
The tip of Rogers’s mouth turns up in what might be a smile.
“It will be tricky. A duke is, after all, a duke—and largely beyond the law. Even here.”
The carriage rounds the dusty road to a travellers’ inn and pulls to a stop.
“What are we doing here?” Catherine asks.
“We’re collecting McNeil. And then we’re going to find McGann, along with, God willing, whatever information Barclay is holding onto.” He turns to examine her. “You do still have the key?”
“Of course I do,” she says. She can feel it now, tucked into her bodice.
“Will Barclay cause trouble for you?” she asks.
“I imagine he’ll try,” Rogers answers. “But don’t worry about me. He won’t be the first to try and cause me trouble, and I highly doubt he’ll be the last. And my orders stand, no matter his inclinations or his title. There is something comforting about orders in that way.”
Catherine nods. She can understand his point, she supposes, although she knows she would hate being given commands she has to follow, no matter what.
And with that, the carriage door swings open and McNeil shoves his way inside.
“Are we ready then?” he asks, and both Rogers and Catherine nod. “Grand. Because it’s hotter than Satan’s armpit on this island and I’m already ready to leave.”
The corner of Rogers’s lips tips up again and he knocks on the carriage roof to proceed.