Chapter Two
Outside the door of rented rooms in London
“S hutter the light so it shines only on the lock, sir,” Jacob Flynn told Captain Philemon Harraway, his employer, “then stand so your body blocks the light and what I am doing.”
It had been years since he’d used lock picks, and this was a new set of tools he’d managed to acquire this morning.
He spared a thought for the lovely girl who had his old set.
He had loved her, back in those days when he had been first a boot boy and later a junior footman.
He had always intended to look her up, once he returned to England.
Darling Kat. Where was she now, he wondered.
Knowing Kat, he figured she would have made a break for freedom as soon as she finished her indenture, which had been about fifteen months ago.
Jake had had his own private celebration of Kat’s birthday at a local inn, drinking so many toasts to the girl he’d left behind that the captain had to come and collect him in a hand cart.
He and Captain Harraway had still been stationed in northern France when he’d over imbibed on Kat’s birthday.
Though Waterloo was over and done, British and other allied forces remained to ensure peace.
Nine months after Jake’s private celebration, a runaway dray sent the captain home to recuperate from multiple broken bones .
As his servant, Jake had been released from the army to accompany him home, and to care for him, since the captain had no living family. And Jake had been caring for the captain ever since, for even after the man finally recovered physically, he still needed someone to watch out for him.
“Live well, Kat,” he muttered under his breath.
“When I get the captain settled, I’ll come to find you.
” Or he would try. She might be anywhere in the country.
She might have chosen to emigrate. She might be married.
But he would try anyway, for he owed her that.
And besides, nowhere in all the places he’d visited in the past eight years had he found a woman who came close to matching her.
Meanwhile, the captain had decided to play Good Samaritan, and that had brought him and Jake here.
It took Jake a few more minutes to open the door than it would have, long ago, in his days as a promising burglar, but soon enough the remembered skills came back, the tumblers dropped to his command, and he rose from his crouch, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.
“Captain,” he said, with a bow and a sweep of his free hand. Captain Harraway nodded and passed him. He had the sense to keep the thin stream of light from the partially shuttered lantern directed into the hall they were entering. The captain would have been a good accomplice, back in the day.
Jake followed the captain to the second room on the left. The study. When they had planned this mission that afternoon, Jake had explained that the man’s study and his bedroom were the most likely place for Lieutenant Waterford to keep the incriminating letters he had somehow acquired.
Waterford was an old antagonist of Jake’s. Of Captain Harraway’s too, thanks to his intervention on Jake’s behalf.
Back when Jake had joined the army, they said he had no sense of his place—and Jake supposed it was true.
He’d nearly been flogged to death because of his conviction that he had more sense and just as much right to his opinion as some toffee-nosed prat who was only in charge because his ancestors had stolen for the king.
The toffee-nosed prat who had nearly killed him that day was Lieutenant Waterford, and the point of contention had been a plan to send the entire patrol to fetch water for the horses from a river within rifle shot of the enemy.
Jake had told him he’d get the lot of them killed.
The lieutenant had not been amused, and he had spent five minutes dressing Jake down in a rant that pointed out all of the defects of Jake’s ancestry, social status, and education.
Jake hadn’t minded that. Nothing the lieutenant had said was untrue. But then the man had finished by insulting Jake’s intelligence, asking Jake, “Given your total lack of class, Flynn, why should any of us listen to you?”
Jake—who had been suffering with his patrol under the man’s incompetent leadership for three months—had responded with honesty. “Sir,” he had said, “I have the wits God gave me. You have excrement for brains.” Although the term he used was considerably less refined.
The lieutenant had ordered him flogged as an example to the others. Jake would have died that day if Captain Harraway hadn’t happened upon the scene and put a stop to it. Put a stop, too, to the ruinous plan to collect water under the enemies’ noses.
Even better, Captain Harraway had taken Jake as his personal soldier-servant. “You’re an insolent fellow, Jake Flynn. But as long as you follow my orders, I don’t care what private opinions you might hold about me or anyone else.”
And he was true to his word. Captain Harraway proved to be a good officer. Also, a good man, who had somehow managed to grow up in England’s upper classes without assuming his birth made him superior to the rest of the universe, bar those few raised with his own privileges.
The captain treated everyone much the same—his men, his fellow officers, the Spaniards and Austrians they fought with, even French prisoners-of-war.
He was always courteous, fair, firm when he needed to be, and scrupulously honest. Before long, Jake would have followed him into Hell.
In fact, in the remaining years of the war, he often had.
This expedition could prove to be the entrance to another kind of hell, if it went wrong.
Captain Harraway was determined to retrieve the incriminating letters Waterford was using to blackmail the captain’s friend, Captain Matthew Podger.
When they had discovered that Waterford’s servant had been given the evening off to see the funeral procession for poor Princess Charlotte and her son, Jake and the Captain had seized the chance for a foray.
As long as nobody comes home, we’ll be all right .
The study was locked, too. Jake knelt before the door. The captain, without further prompting, shone a beam of light on the lock. It was a simple device and succumbed to Jake’s ministrations without protest.
The most probable place for a safe or other hidey hole was behind paintings or bookshelves.
Jake began a systematic search, while the captain headed straight for the large ornate desk.
Jake could hear him sliding open the drawers.
No locks, so probably not there , he mused, but it was keeping Captain Harraway occupied.
Jake was wrong. The captain struck the jackpot in the third drawer he opened.
“Jake, I think this might be it,” he whispered, waving an envelope in the air. “This one has Podgy’s name on it.”
He fished in the drawer again. “There’s more.” Jake checked over his shoulder, as the captain lifted out envelope after envelope, all neatly labeled with a person’s name, their sins, and their likely worth to a blackmailer.
“We’re going to have to take the lot,” the captain decided. “We can then decide whether to get them back to the people involved, or to just burn them.”
Jake didn’t bother to argue. The captain’s tone made it clear that he’d made up his mind.
Jake had hoped that Waterford wouldn’t notice that Captain Podger’s incriminating evidence—whatever it was—had been taken, but the man couldn’t possibly miss the disappearance of the contents of the entire drawer.
The next one down, too, for the captain checked all the drawers before he declared himself satisfied and began stuffing envelopes into the pouch they’d brought with them.
“After all,” said the captain, “I don’t suppose they deserve to be blackmailed any more than old Podgy.”
Which was probably true, but put paid to any chance that Waterford would overlook their visit.