Chapter 12
“I’m sorry.” Elf made herself meet his shocked eyes, trying to send a message of love.
He let her go as if she burned him. “No wonder your voice seemed familiar! What a wonderful night you must have had, my lady. Not only do you get me to serve you as if I were a penny whore down on the docks, you have me blubbering my secrets like a maudlin boy!”
He lunged for her. Her two men fell on him, dragging him to the rough ground.
Legs and arms flailed in the flaring light of Roberts’s fallen torch.
Curses and grunts flew out of the writhing mass.
Elf winced at the horrible sound of fists on flesh.
“Stop it!” she screamed at all of them, but they paid no heed.
She slashed at the raging heap with her whip but no one even seemed to notice. They were going to kill each other!
Then the barefoot man came running and in moments they had Fort overpowered, though still writhing like a madman. Singeing the air with curses, Roberts used belts and strips cut from the habit with his knife to truss Fort up.
He staggered to his feet, lip swollen and bleeding, and shirt town. “Now what, milady?” He sounded as if he’d like to throttle her himself.
Shaking, Elf sank her head in her hands. She had no idea.
She felt as exhausted and bruised as the men must be, and her mind floated, empty of all rational thought.
She could have him delivered to his house and leave matters to fall as they would, but she remembered the look in his eyes. God knows what mischief he’d do.
Then there was the matter of treason. In all her probing, she’d forgotten to dig into that.
She took a deep breath and looked up. “What about the Scots?”
“It’s a long story, milady, and we’d best not tarry here.”
“True enough.” Elf badly needed time to think. “Put him up here and guide me to Lady Lessington’s.”
Though silent, Fort resisted any attempt to put him in the seat, so in the end they laid him across beneath her feet. Elf even had to put her feet on him. “And it serves you right,” she snapped, clicking Bianca into motion. “What a foolish demonstration.”
He said not a thing.
They lurched out of the derelict area into a mean and narrow street, Roberts walking ahead with the torch, the other men behind, drawn pistols in hand. Since Fort didn’t need the shoes anymore, they’d been reclaimed.
Doubtless woken by the fight, a few people peeped from behind tattered curtains or around slightly open doors, but no one interfered with them.
Elf looked down at the bundled body under her feet and fought tears. Yet again she’d created a problem, and must try to solve it.
“I never meant any harm,” she said softly to her captive audience. “It was a complete accident, that meeting at Vauxhall. But I did overhear something about your plans. I couldn’t let it go by.”
He might have been a corpse for all the response she got. She persevered.
“I only played this masquerade tonight because I wanted to find out what you have hidden in your cellars. And I hoped to flush out Murray and his men. I thought they’d try to attack me if they saw me or at least follow me.
Perhaps they did, and that’s why they seized us.
But I don’t know why they didn’t kill me . . .”
She was chattering again.
I love you, she could have said, but what point in that now?
What point in any words? He was doubtless too angry to listen.
Perhaps later.
If there was a later.
Lud, but she ached with tiredness. Her eyes itched with it, and exhausted chills shook her. She could hardly organize her mind for thought, but she must.
“Roberts,” she said wearily. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
As the horse clopped along the muddy lane, Roberts told his story.
“Well, milady, we kept close eye as you left the ball and walked to the earl’s house. Nothing ’appened, though, and no one seemed to be much interested in you. Though Sally, God bless her, spotted some street urchins following close.
“So, we set about rounding some of ’em up.
And it’s like trying to catch eels, it is, with those little blighters.
But in the end one of ’em told us as they’d been hired by a clergyman at the Peahen over near Cow Cross Street to watch Lord Walgrave.
Since nothing else was ’appening, like, I went over there to see what I could find.
Now I admit, milady, we didn’t keep close watch on the earl’s house, since we reckoned—”
He broke off there and gave her an embarrassed look. Elf could only pray the misty light hid her flaming cheeks.
“Well anyway,” he continued, “we didn’t expect anyone in or out for ’ours, you see. So when I got back, I was fair shocked to find such mayhem.”
“Did you arrive as we were being taken away?”
“Oh no, milady. We’d surely ’ave stopped ’em!
No, it was long over by the time I got back.
You see, Sally and Ella ’ad ’overed near to the ’ouse.
Woman’s instinct, Ella said it was. When they saw some goings-on down the back of the ’ouse, they knew something were up.
So Sally, she stayed to keep an eye on things, and Ella ran to get help.
By the time Ella got back with Roger, the place was in uproar. ”
“Oh no.” Perhaps matters were even worse. It was horrible that Fort knew her identity. It would be disaster if the whole world did.
“People thought it was just ’ousebreaking, milady. The earl’s servants had woken to find rascals in the ’ouse, and fought with them. Mostly in the cellars.”
He put no emphasis on the words, but Elf registered them. If the Scots had been in the cellars, it had been to steal whatever Fort had guarded there. She glanced down at him, seeing no sign of life, except perhaps an extra tension.
“Did they get it?” she asked.
“I reckon so, milady.”
Fort twitched and Elf thought he might at last break his silence, but he didn’t. What was this important item? And if the Scots had it, what were they doing with it?
“The man who’d been guarding it was bad ’urt,” Roberts continued.
“ ’E’d put up a fight, though. There was a corpse, presumably of one of the villains.
But in the end it seems they did make off with whatever was in those cellars, and you and the earl, too.
The earl’s servants were running around like panicked chickens with their ’eads chopped off! ”
Elf was absorbed in trying to make sense of the story when Roberts spoke again.
“We found Sally in the garden, milady. Knifed.”
Elf turned to him. “Dead?”
“Dead.”
All other thoughts vanished. One of those women she’d spoken to in the office that day was dead.
Because of her.
This must be how it feels to be an officer, she thought, and to find that the soldiers you sent into battle are dead. She wished Cyn were here to tell her how to handle such a sickening responsibility.
“I’m sorry,” she said, inadequately.
“We moved ’er,” Roberts said gruffly. “Didn’t seem wise to have ’er found there.”
“I suppose not.” Elf didn’t think she could bear the pain of her suppressed tears.
They tore at her chest, and stabbed pain all around her face, but she couldn’t cry yet.
If she started crying she’d fall apart, and there were things to do.
Things to do if Sally’s death wasn’t to be in vain. “What happened next?”
Roberts cleared his throat. “Well, Roger and Lon ran to try to track the villains, leaving Ella behind to report to me. As soon as I ’eard her tale, I rousted out some more of our people and we spread out through the area looking for any ’int of you.
I tell you true, milady, I were fair trembling at the thought of what might ’ave become of you. ”
And of what my brothers would have to say about it, Elf knew.
“I’m sure you did the right thing, Roberts,” she said, because she had a commander’s duty to encourage the troops.
They turned onto a wider street and she prayed they were close to Warwick Street.
The sky was brightening, and already some people were about.
Sooner or later, someone might notice a trussed-up monk hanging off either end of the floor of her carriage.
Not to mention the fact that she was bare-legged, and dressed in little more than a man’s coat.
“I tried, milady,” said Roberts. “We didn’t find anything particular, but then I thought of those urchins.
I dug another one of ’em out of his ’ole, and a flash of gold shook lose some facts.
They’d been curious, you see, about the clergyman who ’ired ’em.
A Scots minister, a Reverend Archibald Campbell.
Very prim and pious, but they ’ad their suspicions.
So, when they didn’t ’ave anything better to do, they followed ’im around.
Went to Westminster Abbey a lot, ’e did, which perhaps was suitable.
Also went to a crone’s hovel, and she too old to be his woman.
But ’e also went down to a burned-out area near the docks, and that struck ’em as fishy.
So they kept an eye on ’im, ’oping to catch ’im whoring or something so they could demand more money to keep quiet about it.
Anyway, that’s ’ow we come to check the area out, you see. ”
“But what is Murray up to?” Elf asked, mostly to herself. “And who is this Scots minister? Westminster Abbey? Could they be planning to kill the king in the Abbey?”
Roberts swiveled his head, staring. “Kill the king?”
She couldn’t bear to get into that now. “Oh, I don’t know. Thank heavens. Here’s Warwick Street! We must come in round the back.”
Still shaking his head, Roberts guided the chair to the lane behind Amanda’s house. All was quiet here, but as Elf drew up the rig in a quiet corner of the back lane, she saw the kitchen door open and a tousled, yawning scullion toss some slops outside.
She’d need Amanda’s help to smuggle Fort in and stow him somewhere safe. Wishing desperately for a skirt, Elf climbed down. “Don’t let him get away,” she told Roberts and ran down the garden to the house.
The scullion—a lad of about ten—gawked at her.