Chapter Twenty-Four
The Greenery had once been an inn; time and neglect had gutted it and left an ugly little warehouse in its place.
Its position on the very edge of the Thames made it useful for the city’s less reputable commerce—contraband men, illicit cargoes, and, if one had the stomach for it, the smuggling of people.
Neil had no doubt Victor could set two terrified captives into a boat and have them vanish in the river’s mists before morning.
He had picked his vantage at a careful remove: near enough to make out the single lantern by the Greenery’s door, far enough to keep the building from filling his entire sightline.
The lantern burned as if waiting. Neil felt the cold of a trap settle about his shoulders.
Perhaps it was already sprung. Perhaps, in the carriage on the way here, Victor had seen to both Maggie and Emma with his own hands.
Perhaps the Thames now took them, and the currents would carry them out to sea, where they would never be found.
That thought rose like bile. He forced a breath, slow and measured, until his pulse steadied, and then he walked forward.
The lantern’s light swung from his hand as he unhooked it and touched the door.
Knocking felt absurd—ritual in the face of menace—yet he struck the wood as if it were a gauntlet.
“The door’s open,” Victor called from within, voice oily in the dark.
Neil pushed the door and stepped into a narrow passage that reeked of rot and river-sour.
He moved toward the only open doorway at the far end, the lantern throwing brief, treacherous pools of light along the corridor.
Doors lined the walls: some barred, some ajar.
Beyond them, he imagined, the Greenery ran like a rat’s nest—dead ends, cellars, hidden alcoves.
It was not his task to map that maze; it was his to meet the danger inside.
He pushed the last door. Candlelight revealed two figures bound in a low stone room. Maggie sat upright in a chair, bundled against the damp; Emma crouched on the floor at her feet. Both were gagged. A single candle guttered on a table, incapable of reaching the far corners where shadow pooled.
Victor stood behind Maggie, grinning broadly. When Neil took a step towards him, he casually lifted a silvery hunting knife, its blade glinting as if it were on fire. Neil stopped walking.
“That’s far enough, I think,” Victor remarked. “You know, your Grace, I didn’t imagine that you’d come here. I thought you might be sensible enough to smell a rat from some distance. Or perhaps you did, and came anyway?”
Neil gave a brittle smile. “I suspect you know the answer already.”
“Yes,” Victor answered thoughtfully. “I do.”
“Have you given any thought at all to the price I must pay to get back my niece and her governess? It can’t be money – you have plenty of that. So, what will it be?”
It was clear that Victor was enjoying himself. He lifted the blade to his lips, delicately tapping the tip against his closed mouth.
“In games of hazard, one need not sacrifice a piece—one merely stakes and awaits fortune. You understand, I hope? May I call you Neil? This is, after all, an informal occasion.”
“Call me what you will, so long as you release them,” Neil said.
Victor’s smile widened in frank malice. Neil saw then, in the ease of the man’s posture, that release was never intended. The trap had been set for him alone.
In the gloaming corner, a movement caught Neil’s eye: a man curled on the floor, arms drawn about his knees, a thatch of hair hiding his face.
“Pay him no mind,” Victor said with a shrug. “He is nothing. I had meant to break him properly, as I do all of my debtors, but he is already quite broken.”
The man looked up. One green-gold eye, set against a face of grime and ruin, met Neil’s. Recognition struck him sharp and sudden. “Thomas Camden,” he murmured. “You are Maggie’s father.”
“Enough of him,” Victor snapped, pouting. He leaned forward and pulled the gag off Maggie’s face. She coughed, spitting to the side, and gave her head a quick shake, reorienting herself. Then she glanced up at him.
When their eyes met, a recoil of fear rushed through Neil.
I am sorry, he thought, hoping in vain that she might understand his thoughts and accept his apology. I should have made it clear that I knew about all this. If I’d only been honest with you, perhaps I could have kept you safe.
Too late now, of course.
“It’s a trap,” Maggie said plainly, voice steady. “You should not have come. His men wait in the hallway. There is no escape now.”
Victor gave a chuckle of amusement. “I knew you would come alone. I knew you wouldn’t risk their lives.”
Neil squared his shoulders. “You are right. I would not take that risk. So where are your men? Drag me off and throw me in the river if you prefer, but will you at least tell me whether you intend to parley or to murder us first?”
Victor furrowed a brow, irritated. “Pete! Matthew! Jeremiah! Now, do come and—” His voice died. The corridor returned no answer. The smile left his features, and he tightened his grip on the knife’s handle.
Neil met his eye clearly. “Huh. I guess they’ve missed their cue.”
A shuffle in the hall drew his gaze. When he stepped back into the doorway, he saw a familiar, disordered figure: Simon, clothes muddied, a cudgel in one hand and an unfired pistol in the other; a bruise stained his cheek but he stood upright.
Behind him, others—footmen and household servants, not constables—emerged to show that they had not come alone in spirit.
“We found three men in the rooms off the hall,” Simon said. “We surprised them and bound them. They’re secured.”
Neil turned to Victor; the colour had drained from his face. “My housekeeper suggested we take a few trusted footmen and men-servants rather than call the constables,” he said quietly. “They were willing to search and to act.”
Victor’s lip curled. “They risked their lives for you?”
“They did.” Neil’s voice was calm, almost flat. “It appears my reputation as the ‘Gambling Devil’ does not frighten my own household. You are, I think, out of options here, Victor. Lay down the knife and come quietly—there is no need to make this harder than it must be.”
For a moment, the room held its breath. Maggie’s foot moved against Emma’s back, a tiny, urgent pressure. She would shove the child clear. Neil noted it in the same instant Victor lurched forward—whether to seize the girl or to snatch Maggie was impossible to tell.
Maggie’s foot flicked. Emma rolled away into a dark niche, still bound but out of Victor’s immediate reach. Victor roared, fury loose in his throat; he seized Maggie by the arm, hauled her erect, and pressed the keen edge of the knife to her throat.
“Stand still, or she dies,” he snarled.
Neil did not dare take his eyes off Victor, not even to glance at Emma. He was aware of Simon rushing forward, snatching Emma up from the ground and into his arms.
Emma is safe, he told himself firmly. She is unhurt, as far as I can tell. Stay calm and focus on Maggie.
“You have no case against me,” Victor hissed. “No evidence. To convict a man like me, you’ll need evidence. Nothing ties me to the murder of Pemberton’s son, nothing except her testimony. Which, of course, is why she cannot be permitted to go on. You must see that, Neil.”
Maggie stilled, eyes wide but composed. If she struggled, she might cough and bleed; if she moved, she might be stabbed. She stayed as still as stone.
“She was meant to be mine,” Victor went on, voice flat.
“What right had you to interfere? I should have been able to deal with my debtor quietly—marriage, settlement, no trouble. But she vanished; her father fled. I am generous with life where it profits me, but I will not endure embarrassment. I caught her father about to board a boat to France, did I tell you that? He would have left his only child to face me. I might have sheltered her, had he but shown a spine. A wretched coward, he is.”
Neil glanced at Thomas, who knelt the length of a man’s guilt and shame; the old man’s face was drawn and pale.
“Do not speak of him so,” Maggie said, hardness threading her voice. “He did what he could for me.”
“Silence,” Victor snapped, but his tone carried a tremor; he knew too well that a scene of blood would complicate his position.
Victor has killed before, Neil thought, and his mind filled with the knowledge of what the man was capable of.
As if reading the thought, Victor met Neil’s eye.
“She must not be permitted to speak against me,” he said with appalling calm.
There was no passion in it—only the flat conviction of a man arranging the next move.
“Without her testimony, you are powerless, Neil. I am a survivor; that is the end of it.”
Neil’s mouth felt suddenly dry; his throat clicked as he swallowed. He took a tentative step forward, raising his hands in a helpless, desperate gesture. “I will do what you want, Victor,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Don’t kill her. Please.”
A slow, contemptuous smile spread over Victor’s face. “My word—love? How quaint. But no amount of begging, tears, or devotion has ever swayed me from what must be done.”
At that moment, Thomas Camden lurched to his feet, one hand on the wall to steady himself.
“Don’t hurt my girl,” he rasped, his throat thick as though he hadn’t drunk even a drop of water for days. “I owe you my soul, you wretch. Don’t hurt my daughter.”
“Silence,” Victor returned, scarcely glancing his way. “I thought my men had beaten whatever spirit remained from you when you arrived. Evidently, they were not thorough.”
Maggie remained motionless, eyes wide but composed, every muscle controlled so that the knife’s razor edge would not nick her skin.
Behind Neil, he could hear feet shuffling in the passage—perhaps the approaching footmen—and a muffled sound of Emma crying, her face likely buried against Simon’s shoulder.
Then a new factor entered the perilous account.
Thomas Camden moved again, pulling away from the wall and stumbling toward Victor and Maggie. From where Neil stood, it dawned with a cold jolt that Thomas was on the man’s blind side.
Do not look at him, Neil told himself, forcing his gaze to stay fixed on Bramwell.
“We can surely come to some arrangement,” he began, voice trembling only a little.
Whether Victor’s instincts pricked or fate simply obliged him, his eyes flicked to the side. He caught sight of Thomas—nearer than he had expected. If the old man had frozen, the moment might have passed. Thomas did not freeze.
With a strangled cry born of despair and love, Thomas threw himself at Victor.
Victor reacted on reflex, whipping his knife arm up. In the scuffle that followed, Maggie flung herself forward to get clear. The pair crashed to the floor, bodies rolling, hands scrabbling for the blade.
Neil seized the chance. He lunged, hauled Maggie free, and dragged her back with him, pulling her entirely out of the struggle. Victor tore an arm free and thrust his knife into Thomas’s shoulder—once, twice—each blow drawing a pained cry before the old man was flung aside.
Before Victor could steady himself, Neil’s fist met his face with a hard, decisive blow. The impact rattled the man; he collapsed, the knife clattering across the flagstones, and a stunned silence followed.
“Papa!” Maggie cried, scrambling across the cold floor to her father, who lay curled in a heap, his wounds bleeding darkly. Neil felt his own blood race so fiercely that he shivered; the adrenaline left him hollow and raw.
Emma, safely seized by Simon, clung trembling in his arms. Around the doorway, the household men stood, cudgels ready but watchful, their faces set to act if need be.
Neil looked once more to where Victor lay, still and breathless. The man who had stood menacing only moments before was now motionless on the straw.
“Simon,” Neil said, voice shaken though steady, “perhaps now is the right time to call the authorities.”