Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 22

Pale arms groped through the iron bars. Dirt black hands clawed at the air. Jessalyn bit back a scream, stepping out of reach. The face that peered down at her was hidden by a tangle of white beard. Black eyes burned, looking slightly mad.

But the voice that spoke was sane, educated. "You wouldn't perchance have a penny to spare a poor debtor, child? Nay, even a farthing to ease the lot of a benighted soul, condemned by a cruel vagary of fate to this hell upon earth."

Jessalyn fumbled in the bottom of her reticule until her fingers felt a half crown. She tossed the coin through the bars, rather than put it into the man's hands. With a cackle of glee, he disappeared after it.

She hurried across Fleet Market, but she could not help looking back over her shoulder. She felt mean for having treated the poor wretch as something less than human, but he'd had the look and stink about him of gaol fever.

Hell upon earth.

Fleet Prison. Massive walls, pitted and black with soot, looming out of the yellow fog. Somber walls, unrelieved by the small iron-barred windows of its crowded, vermin-ridden cells. Such would be McCady Trelawny's fate if she failed in her plan to save him.

At first it had been only a half-formed idea. But with every rattling mile of the mail coach ride to London; with every dawn hour spent in torchlit yards, bolting down mugs of ale and treacle; with every village passed, horses' hooves clattering on stone and the echo of the postboy's horn in the air, the idea had coalesced into a resolution. She would find a way to save him.

Still she could not shake off her grandmother's warning, given that morning, the morning McCady had left her.

She had found Lady Letty sitting up in bed, wearing a voluminous cap decorated with love knots and ribbons, and caught in the act of hiding a snuffbox beneath the sheets.

Leave it to Gram to have already borrowed or stolen a box from someone, since the few she'd had with her here in Cornwall had all been lost in the fire. Luckily, the bulk of her precious collection was still safe in the London town house.

"Gram, you are incorrigible," Jessalyn scolded. "You know what the doctor said about indulging in that bad habit, a woman of your age."

Lady Letty's snort ended with a sneeze. "Living is a bad habit for a woman of my age."

Jessalyn sat on the lemon-striped chintz bedspread, picking up the old woman's hand. "You must concentrate on getting well. You'll want to be strong enough to make the journey to Epsom next month for the Derby."

She looked up to find her grandmother's tin gray eyes intent on her face. "So he made a woman of you last night, did he?"

Jessalyn's cheeks burned, and her gaze dropped to her lap. Does it show that badly? she wondered. Had he left a mark on her like a lingering illness? A fever in the eyes, a weakness of the heart. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows, but at the moment she longed for some obscuring Cornish fog.

"Ha! At least you can still blush. He'll wed you now, gel, or I'll see him in hell."

Jessalyn said nothing. She could hardly tell her grandmother that far from marrying her, he was even now refusing to have her as his mistress.

Lady Letty pushed herself farther up the mound of pillows, dusting brown powder off her bodice. "You'll do well with Caerhays. They say rakes make the best husbands, know how to pleasure a woman. Lord knows your grandfather did." She reached beneath the sheets, pulling out the snuffbox. She rubbed the lid with her finger, a faraway look misting her eyes. "He loved me, the addlepated fool. Though he never thought to say the words—not once, till he lay dying. Nearly killed him then myself for waiting so long. Men never know whether they're thinking with their heads or their cocks."

"Gram!"

Lady Letty snorted a laugh. "In my day we knew all the words and used em, too. So how was he, eh? Did he bed you well? He's always looked at you as if he wanted to devour you. I 'spect last night he did."

Jessalyn's blush deepened. She struggled to gather her scattered wits, bringing up the original purpose of her visit. "Gram, I must go to London."

A crafty look stole into the old woman's eyes. "Chasing after him, are you? I'll countenance your going only if you take Becka with you. Appearances, gel. And though it might be shutting the paddock gate after the horse has bolted, you are to give me your word you'll stay out of his bed till he meets you at the altar."

"I am not chasing after him. He isn't even to know I've gone. And I will not leave you here alone—"

"Caerhays's housekeeper can look after me. We get along. She grew up next to the slag heaps just like myself." Her gnarled, mottled hand reached out to cover Jessalyn's slender pale one. "He's dished up proper, isn't he? That's why he won't marry you. He's given up, and so you think there's nothing for it but to save him yourself."

Jessalyn sighed. There was no hiding anything from Gram. "I'm going to try," she said.

Lady Letty grunted. "Have a care in the saving of him, mind, that you don't damage his man's pride in the process. He'll not forgive you that."

"Then I shall just have to take care he never finds out."

... take care he never finds out.

Jessalyn turned her back on Fleet Prison. She pulled her cottage cloak more tightly around her throat, dug her hands deep into her fox fur muff, and bent into the wind. The fog was frozen and heavy, smelling fouler than a tannery. It was weather more suited to January than April.

She walked past brick houses garbed in soot and packed together like books on a shelf. Past shops selling bootlaces and tea trays. Past smells of boiled cabbage and roast potatoes.

The direction she was searching for turned out to be a seedy warehouse by the river that smelled of hemp and tea. It butted up against a gin shop, whose open door spilled raucous laughter and tobacco smoke into the chill air. Something stirred beneath the stoop, and Jessalyn pulled back her skirts, expecting a rat. Then she saw a woman crouched there, holding a screaming baby in an egg crate lined with straw. She watched in shock and horror as the woman filled a sugar-tit from a gin jug and stuck it in the baby's mouth.

Her stomach spasmed with nerves. An iron grille covered the warehouse's single window, and the black paint on the door was peeling. If it weren't for a small plaque etched with the words Tiltwell Enterprises, she would have doubted she had the right place. She hesitated a moment, debating whether to knock, then pushed down the door latch and entered a small dim room.

A row of clerks perched on stools facing the wall, quills waving madly in the air as they scribbled. It was as cold in the room as it was outside. The men all had potato sacks wrapped like shawls over their patched coats, and the fingers poking out of their ratty mittens looked blue.

One of the men creaked to his feet and came to greet her. He wiped his sleeve across his dripping nose. It was red and round, like a copper knob. "I would like to speak to Mr. Tiltwell, if you please," Jessalyn said, her breath wreathing around her face in tiny white puffs.

The clerk peered at her through a pair of horn spectacles, greasy with thumb prints. "He's out just now. Collecting the rents."

"Then I shall await his return."

The clerk snuffled a sneeze into his neckcloth and motioned for her to follow him.

The room he showed her to was somewhat warmer, for a small coal fire burned in the grate. It was sparsely furnished with a few battered cabinets, a wooden coat-tree, and a plain dark oak desk. The walls were hung with shabby paper, broken only by a single dirt-streaked window. It looked out on a dark courtyard that was empty except for a soggy ash heap and a rusty water pump.

A few moments later Jessalyn heard voices. Clarence's, the clerk's, and another, deeper voice with rough country accents.

The door opened, and Clarence entered, bringing the chill and smell of fog into the room. He looked splendid, tall and handsome in a merino greatcoat and top hat. Yet the sight of him did not make her legs tremble or her stomach tingle, and the ache in her heart came from sadness, not yearning.

He flashed a gap-toothed smile, and his bottle green eyes lit up at sight of her. "Jessalyn, what a pleasant surprise!" He removed his fur-lined gloves, slapping his hands together. "Brr. It's a mortal cold day out."

"And your clerks are starved with it. Really, Clarence, I cannot believe you're such a nipcheese that you won't provide those poor men with a fire."

"A little chill in the air keeps them on their toes. It takes hard work, Jessalyn, to get where I've come," he said even as he tipped some more coal onto his own fire. He straightened and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. "Where is your footman? Surely you didn't come here on your own."

"I haven't a footman, Clarence. You know that."

"Your abigail then. You should have at least brought that girl with you, the one with the hideous scar."

"Becka isn't well. She says she has a gouty pain in her head. Really, Clarence," she snapped, her nerves making her irritable with him, "I did not come here for you to read me a lecture."

Clarence shrugged out of his greatcoat, which he hung on the wooden tree. Although it had only been a couple of months since she'd last seen him, he looked changed. He was wearing his hair different, brushed up to give its growing sparsity more fullness. And there was an odd tightness about his mouth.

"I am sorry to scold you," he said as he came up to her. "You know it is only my deep regard for you that—" He had started to raise her fingers to his lips, and now a look of surprise crossed his face. He turned her hand over to examine her palm. "Whatever have you done to yourself? These look like burns."

She curled her fingers over the scabbed pads. The blisters were healing, but they still pained her too much to wear gloves. "End Cottage caught fire. Gram and I were fortunate to get out alive."

"You were in the house at the time. But—" He cut himself off. Distress had darkened his eyes to the color of stone moss, and Jessalyn felt touched by his concern.

She removed her hand from his clasp and went to the window. There was a man in the yard, bent over the trough, sloughing water over his head. For a brief moment, as he straightened, he turned, and Jessalyn saw a pitted, jowly face beneath shaggy, dripping hair. Then the man spun around and walked off, disappearing through a door in the mews.

Jessalyn stiffened, sure that—but no... Dear life, since the fire it seemed that everywhere she looked she saw the face of Jacky Stout.

She turned from the window. Clarence was watching her, a frown drawing a crease between his brows. "I must say, Jessalyn, you look fair done up. Has something happened?"

"Clarence, I..." She gripped her hands behind her back and forced herself to meet his eyes. "I have come to tell you that it is impossible for me to be your wife."

He held himself very still. Then his breath left him in a gentle sigh. "I see. And what has made it impossible?"

"Oh, Clarence. I tried once to tell you... I am fond of you, you are a dear, dear friend, but I simply don't love you in that way. And I understand now that I never shall."

"You will forgive me if I do not share your certainty. I had hoped that with time—"

"Clarence, I shan't marry you. Ever."

He squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers, his eyes wincing shut. Then he flung back his head and swung away from her, his fists clenched at his sides. The room grew so quiet she could hear drunken singing coming from the gin shop next door. Jessalyn's teeth sank into her lower lip as she stared at his stiff back. As hard as that had been, this next part was going to be even worse.

She sucked in a deep breath, as if she could draw courage from the air. "I know that it is very bad form of me to turn down your offer and then beg a boon in return, but..." She swallowed around a terrible dryness in her mouth. Dear life, but this was cutting at her pride like a whiplash. "But I find myself in somewhat straitened circumstances. Clarence, I—I wonder if I might apply to you for a loan."

His fists unclenched, and he coughed. He walked away from her, toward the desk. He hitched his hip onto one corner and looked down at his clasped hands. His face was as white as the bleached linen of his shirt. "How—" His voice broke, and he had to stop to clear his throat. "How much do you need?"

Jessalyn's fingers were trying to twist knots in her skirt. "Ten—ten thousand pounds. I'm afraid I've little to give you as collateral. The Adelphi house is mortgaged from cellar to chimney pot. But there are the horses." A flash of pain stabbed at her chest, but she ignored it. "As they are, they aren't worth much, but if Blue Moon wins the Derby..."

He was swinging one long booted leg back and forth. He raised his head. Though his mouth quirked into a little smile, she saw to her dismay that his eyes shone wet with suppressed tears. "My dear. You know that if you marry me, you could have your every whim gratified, no matter how outrageous or expensive. And if you are in the suds... well, as your husband I shall be obliged to settle all your debts."

"I have explained why I cannot marry you, Clarence. The reasons for my needing the money are—are personal."

"Jessalyn, Jessalyn..." He shook his head, as if admonishing a slow-witted child. "Do you take me for a fool? You want it for him —for Caerhays. He finally has done it, hasn't he? He's made you his Trelawny whore."

A rush of heat spread up her throat. "How dare you?"

"The man is married. Have you no shame?"

"Emily is dead!" Jessalyn blurted, guilt making her shout the words.

Clarence straightened with a snap, and his pale face took on a sudden animation. "Dead, by God! And the brat? Would it have been a boy?" He threw back his head and hooted a laugh at the ceiling. "Poor cousin, to be so close and then phit" —he snapped his fingers—"it's gone." He paced the bare plank floor, chuckling to himself. Suddenly he swung around and his gaze refocused on her. "And you think he'll marry you—teetering as he is on the verge of ruin and disgrace? He hasn't a hope or a prayer of escaping prison, now that his little heiress is dead."

Jessalyn stared at him, seeing the fair, slender face of the boy she'd ridden bareback with across the moors, the boy she'd challenged to a diving contest in Claret Pond, the young man who had given her her first kiss before a Midsummer's Eve bonfire. Surely that Clarence would have emptied out his purse to save his cousin.

She lifted her hand to him, as if reaching across time to the boy he had been. "Oh, Clarence, I can understand why McCady's pride has forbidden him to ask it of you. But what has stopped you from offering to lend him the money he needs?"

"My dear, he owes it all to me in the first place. It is my bank that holds his notes." He paced the room, pumping his arms, then grasping his hands together as if in prayer. "By God, I have waited years to bring McCady Trelawny to his knees. If there was truly any justice in this world, he would soon go the way of his brothers, and I could come into the title, but as it is, at least I can have the satisfaction—" He stopped, swinging around, and a crafty look narrowed his eyes. "He must be getting quite desperate now if he has sent you to me."

"He didn't send me. And you mustn't tell him, Clarence, please. You know how he is, his pride. He would never forgive me if..." Her voice trailed off. She was speaking to him as if he were the old Clarence. But she didn't know this man.

A withdrawn look had settled over his face. He adjusted his neckcloth, smoothed down the lapels of his coat, as if regretting now his earlier outburst. He went back to his desk and settled into the chair. He shot his cuff, dipped a quill into the inkpot, and began to write in a red leather ledger.

Jessalyn drew in a breath to speak, then expelled it in a silent sigh. She retrieved her cloak and muff off the coat-tree and went to the door.

"I shall give you the ten thousand pounds, Jessalyn."

Her hand fell from the latch, and she turned. She stared at his bent head, not daring to breathe. He continued to write, the pen scraping roughly across the paper. "Will you, Clarence? And what must I give you in return?"

He tossed down the pen and leaned back in his chair, fingering the coins in his fob pocket. His gaze was as cold and merciless as a winter wind. "You will give me yourself, of course."

"I see." Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back. She lifted her chin. "I know all about these sorts of transactions, for someone once explained them to me in great detail. I am to become your ladybird. For one night? Or do you wish for a more permanent arrangement?"

"Oh, no, my dear. I still want you for my wife. I will have you for my wife."

Jessalyn's breath caught in her throat like a clap of bellows. It was odd, but the thought of being this man's wife was a hundredfold more intolerable than being his harlot. "No," she said.

He raised one languid blond brow. "Not even to save your lover's life? It costs to live, you know, even in Fleet Prison. Warm blankets and food and gin and the rope mats they give you to sleep on—they all must be paid for. You must even pay to have the irons struck off your ankles; otherwise you are left chained to the floor. They all cost, Jessalyn, and he'll not long survive if he doesn't get them."

Jessalyn's mouth tasted like burned paper. She did not want to listen to Clarence's words. She did not want to have to make such a choice.

He picked up the quill and began to rub the feather back and forth across his palm. "And what is it the philosophers say—one cannot live on bread alone? One needs plans, ambitions, dreams. Already he has had to grovel, to sweat and bleed to lay those forty miles of track. He's even swung a pick himself if the stories are true." His voice turned soft and menacing. "You would be preserving his dream, Jessalyn."

"But I don't..." Slowly she shook her head. She felt weighted with a great inertia, like a butterfly trapped in a bucket of treacle. It seemed to be taking all of her energy just to think. "I don't understand. Why do the very thing that will save the man you've set out to destroy?"

"Because more than his ruin, my dear, I want you."

Memories came to her one after the other, like chains of paper dolls. McCady riding a wooden horse, his face alight with laughter while lights whirled around his head like stars; his long, scarred hands cradling a tiny baby, Babies and winsome virgins always put a quiver in my knees and a quake in my heart; steam wreathing around his dark head as he shoveled coal into a firebox, I should like to come along with you, Lieutenant Trelawny....

Dark eyes, sun-bright with passion, seeing beauty in her body, touching her, I have wanted you since you were sixteen....

Jessalyn clasped her hands behind her back and held herself tall. She lifted her chin and stared down her nose at this tutworker's grandson. "Then you may have me, Mr. Tiltwell," she said. "But ten thousand pounds is not enough. You are to settle all his notes, not simply forgive the interest. All of his debts, down to the last farthing."

His head flung back. "But you're talking about over forty thousand pounds!"

"That is my only offer. Take it or leave it."

He stood up and came to her, trying to intimidate her with his man's authority. A frown thinned his mouth, and a muscle tightened along his jaw as he stared at her, gauging her resolution. Jessalyn stared back at him. Beneath her corded muslin skirts, her legs were shaking. But she didn't blink.

He pursed his lips, pushing out a breath. "Very well, Jessalyn." He held up his hand, and the soft menace re- turned to his voice. "But I have a condition as well. Once you are my wife, you will not go near him. Nor will you mention his name, to me or within my hearing. To us it will be as if he has died."

It felt as if a bone were caught in her throat. Unable to speak, she jerked her head in a sharp nod.

"We have an agreement then. You will become my wife, and I will give you his promissory notes, fully settled, on our wedding night."

She looked up at the pale, thin face of the man she had once thought of as her dearest friend. Tears blurred her eyes. She tried to hold them back, but they overflowed, spilling down her cheeks. "Why, Clarence? I thought you loved him. I thought you loved us both."

He caught her tears with his fingers, and his face softened. "I can make you happy, Jessalyn. You'll see that I can make you happy. In time you will forget him. You will cease loving him and come to love me instead, as you were always meant to."

"I will never forget him. Or stop loving him."

Clarence's thin nostrils flared slightly, but he went on, as if she had not spoken. "We shall be married immediately. I should have no trouble obtaining a special license—"

"No. We will be married the week after the Derby."

He pressed his tongue between the gap in his teeth and slowly shook his head. "Jessalyn, what purpose would it serve—what would it serve him to wait?"

She backed away from him, her fingers fumbling behind her for the door latch. She had to get out of this miserable room before she was sick. "Because the Derby is my dream, and I will not have it sullied by living it as your wife."

He brought his face toward hers, but she turned her head aside. His fingers spanned her jaw, holding her still, while he planted his mouth on hers in a hard, punishing kiss. "You had no right to give him something that was mine," he said, his breath hot against her mouth. "It shall be a long time before I forgive you for that."

She jerked out of his grasp, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "You do not own me, Mr. Tiltwell."

"On the contrary, my dear. I have just bought you for forty thousand pounds."

Topper walked down Fleet Street, feeling on top of the world. He whistled through the hole in his teeth at an apple-cheeked maid, who had stepped out of a tavern to empty a slop bucket. He tossed a penny into the lap of a legless man who rolled by on a three-wheeled chair, playing a pipe. A lamplighter appeared around the bend ahead of him, reaching up with his long pole, and soon small points of light began to appear, one after the other in the misty dusk. Topper fancied they looked like a string of pearls.

Tipping his hat, he stepped aside for a gentleman, who was preceded by a liveried footman with an ivory-handled cane. Someday I'll be like that swell, Topper thought. Someday he, too, would be rich and wear flashy togs and ride in a coach with postilions and matching pairs. And if he felt like hoofing it, well, then, he'd have a footman go before him to pave the way.

His nose twitched at the aroma of fresh hot-cross buns wafting from a pastry cookshop. He bought a mutton pie but passed up a strawberry tart for dessert. The Derby was coming up, and a knight had to watch his weight when he was riding the horses. Someday, though, he'd be able to stuff his face with strawberry tarts till he shot the cat. He'd be that rich.

Now the guv'nor—he was that rich, Topper thought as he turned off bright, noisy Fleet Street and began to wend his way through dark, narrow streets toward the river. His gaze darted to the shadows, searching for footpads; they'd as soon bludgeon your head in as spit at you in this part of town. Rich as a king was the guv'nor, though you wouldn't know it to look at where the man conducted his business. But then it wasn't smart to flash the ready when you were sitting cheek to jowl with boozing kens and tenements. 'Course, a lot of the guv'nor's money came from those same boozing kens and tenements. Two shillings a week he got from every man jack who dwelled in this particular rookery.

Topper knew well what living in those places was like: the dark, dank rooms lit only with stinking tallow dips; the walls alive with wood lice. Just as he knew what it was like to be so hungry you'd eat a rotting apple core off a sidewalk slimy with spittle. Or melt the stubs of candles into your gruel to make it thick enough to fill your belly.

A door swung open, and a sweep's boy stumbled out into the street, nearly knocking Topper down. The lad was bent double under a bag of soot, and his master was flailing at his legs with a broom handle. Topper hurried away from the sight. He knew what that was like, too. Being roused at dawn out of a cold bed of soot bags and straw and set to work cleaning rich folks' chimneys. To have your knees and elbows made tough as leather by rubbing them with brine, till they streamed with blood and you were screaming from the pain of it. To be forced into a flue too narrow for a rat, forced to climb until you were trapped, unable to go up or down, trapped in the dark...

Topper's mind shied away from these memories. Those days were over now and best forgotten. And besides, as bad as being a climbing boy had been, Topper knew there were other, worse ways of starving. Like spinning catgut in the workhouse or working for a molly-house where you had to sell your body like a girl. Or you could get caught cutting purses and be sent to gaol. Topper shuddered at the thought. The idea of being shut up in a small dark cell made his belly go all over queasy. Those times he'd been trapped, the walls squeezing in, the air black and thick, had left Topper with a mortal fear of small dark places.

There was only one thing he feared worse, and that was getting the sooty warts. It happened sometimes to climbing boys, those who managed to grow old enough to bed girls. Not that they were able to bed girls for long after they got that hellish disease. Their privates were usually entirely eaten off by the time they died.

He'd noticed the sores six months ago.

Topper's mind slammed shut on the thought. They were nothing to worry about. Just something he picked up from that dolly-mop he'd bedded the night of the Crombie Sweeps, when he'd gotten stew-eyed drunk on Strip-Me-Naked gin. If they were sooty warts, they would hurt, wouldn't they? And these sores didn't hurt. They were hard and scalylike; he could poke them with a pin and not feel a thing. No, they weren't sooty warts. Just something he'd picked up from that dolly-mop.

The gin shop was busy tonight, with men standing three deep at the bar to wet their whistles with a glass of ninepenny. Topper entered the warehouse through the back way and slipped into the clerks' room. Light shone beneath the closed door of the guvnor's office, causing the tall stools to throw weblike shadows onto the wall. A cultured voice, cold with anger, said, "You bloody fool. You weren't to have set fire to the house while she was in it."

"When else was I supposed t' do it 'cept at night?" came a whining answer. It was Jacky Stout, the bullyboy the guv'nor used to collect his tenement rents and do other dirty jobs. "A man can't go around puttin' a torch to a house in the bright light o' day."

Topper hesitated. He didn't want to walk through that door with Stout in there. Topper had never understood how a man like the guv'nor, so posh and educated, had connected up with a bullyboy like Jacky Stout. But then Stout claimed he and the guv'nor went back a long way together. Back to Cornwall, when the guv'nor was but a lad and had once paid him to peach on a smuggling pitch, only to turn chicken at the last minute.

Topper mopped his suddenly sweating face with his sleeve and lifted the door latch.

The guv'nor, who was sitting behind his desk, looked up, and his handsome face broke into a bright smile. "Ah, Topper, here you are.... You may congratulate me, my boy. Miss Letty has again promised to become my wife."

Topper tried to smile. "So the wedding's to be after all." He cast a swift glance at Stout. The pock-faced man was tossing a spalling hammer—his favorite weapon for rent collection—back and forth in his beefy hands. Stout grinned, showing teeth that put Topper in mind of a sewer rat.

Topper jerked his gaze back to the guv'nor. He forced himself not to think of Miss Jessalyn and what her fate would be married to such a man as made his fortune off boozing kens and tenement rents. "I'm to be getting me blunt then. Me five hundred quid."

"I'm afraid you haven't finished earning it yet," the guv'nor said.

"But ye was t' pay it to me on the day she gave up racing and promised t' be yer wife."

Jacky Stout laid the spalling hammer in his lap and cracked the knuckles of his big hands. Topper's spine roached up at the grating sound, but he didn't look in the bullyboy's direction. He wouldn't give the man the satisfaction.

He kept his face straight ahead, his eyes on the guv'nor. The man was leaning his chin on his folded hands, biting his thumb in thought. A fancy silver candle branch sat on the desk, and the flames guttered in a sudden draft. A thick silence smothered the room; Topper thought he could hear his heart beat.

"For one thing, she's still racing," the guv'nor finally said. "Which is why you are to nobble Blue Moon before the Epsom Derby. And make it permanent this time. If that bloody nag ever gets so much as a whisker across a finishing post again, I'll have your balls."

"But if she's agreed to marry ye, why should ye be wantin' to wish her any more 'arm? I thought 'twas the point of all this." Topper waved a hand, encompassing all the nobbled horses and crimped races of the last two years. "Making her life a misery so's that she'd turn to you."

The guv'nor's mouth lifted in a gentle smile, a smile that Topper didn't believe for a minute. "It is what's known as insurance, my boy."

Topper's head jerked back and forth. "I ain't doin' it. Not no more. There ain't enough blunt in all the world to make me do it." It made him feel good to say it and sick because he knew he didn't mean it.

The guv'nor leaned back. He reached into his pocket and took out two gold guineas. He began to turn them over and over in his pale, slender fingers. "You ever seen a spalling hammer crush rock, Topper my boy." Jacky Stout began to toss the hammer back and forth in his hands. Thump-thump... thump-thump... and the breath expelled from Topper in a whine through the hole in his front teeth. "Think what it could do to a jockey's hands," the guv'nor went on in his soft voice. "They say a jockey's talent is all in his hands—"

The hammer slammed so hard into the floor that the building shuddered.

Vomit rose in Topper's throat, and he lurched over, spewing mutton pie all over his fancy plate-buckled shoes. He remained bent over, gasping, as runnels of sweat ran down his sides. He wiped off his mouth with the sleeve of his bright yellow coat. "I'll go to the coppers," he rasped.

The guv'nor laughed. "Come now, boy. Do you think they would put any credence in your story, that they would take the word of a jockey over an MP? No, they are more liable to put you in prison. In a cell. In the dark."

Topper couldn't control his shudder, and Jacky Stout snorted, sounding like a pig feeding in a trough. The guv'nor snapped his head around. "Stubble it, Jacky. I've another job for you."

The laughter slid off Stout's jowly face like melting tallow. "Eh? But I took care of everything, sur. Her house is burnt to cinders, an' his bloody lordship's mine is shut fer good. It'll cost more as he's ever got t' get it going again."

"Do you know what a locomotive is, Jacky?"

"Eh?"

The guv'nor heaved a put-upon sigh. "Never mind, I'll work out all the details and explain them to you later."

"What'd ye want me to be doin' to this loco-whatsit?"

"The same thing you did to his tin mine," the guv'nor said, a faint, wintry smile on his mouth. "Blow it up."