Chapter 11
Horsemen Safe House
Leicester Square, London
Warrick had his coachman drop them several streets away from Con's former mistress's townhouse on Leicester Square.
He was fairly certain rolling up in a noisy carriage and dragging their belongings into the house in the middle of the night would attract plenty of gossip.
In his experience, there was always some ancient crone or nosy old man who would be watching from their windows, no matter the house.
And so, clothed like lowly servants, they carefully picked their way in near darkness, carrying their travel bags, to the servant entrance of the townhouse.
Warrick shoved Con's slender key into the lock and turned carefully to avoid any sound that might raise the alarm for a night watchman who might be strolling the paths around the square.
He held his breath as the lock turned, and then abruptly, the door swung open on its own.
A solitary, but solidly built woman stood there in a mob cap and night rail with a heavy shawl around her shoulders, holding a lighted candle.
"Get in here," she said in a loud hiss, and jerked both of them into the bowels of the townhouse.
He felt as if ten years had just been hacked from his life considering the sudden plummet of his heart. "Sally? What in all the saints' names are you doing here?"
"I was summoned, and when the Horsemen summon, you better show up.
" She moved ahead through the darkness of the lower level of the house, opening doors to either side as she went.
She directed Beatrice toward the first bedchamber they came upon, and nodded to Warrick at the next bedchamber down the hallway.
As he strode past her and began yanking the coverings off the furniture, she added, "We'll talk in the morning, but for tonight, I'd advise a good rest for both of you.
No tramping back and forth for strenuous activities.
There'll be plenty of time later for the beast with two backs.
For my sake, not to mention Missus Rowe's, could we just try to stay alive until morning? "
Warrick was too tired to argue. He merely grunted in agreement and collapsed onto the bed.
Safe in the knowledge that most of The Horsemen's men, including his, would be guarding them through the night from somewhere out in the gardens and the square, his eyes closed nearly as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He sat back up suddenly, remembering to shuck off his boots, and then plunged back onto the bed.
By the morning light, Beatrice lay in the tiny servant's bedchamber and stared at the plain, painted ceiling.
Her first reaction on waking had been to rebel at the mess Warrick Dyer had forced her to accept.
And then when she opened the simple wardrobe where two dull, gray work dresses hung, the urge to cry nearly overcame her.
Get over yourself, Beatrice Van Dijk, she said, and pinched her arm in punishment.
Who did she think she was? This man was risking everything to help her find out who was stealing from her and trying to destroy her business.
She probably owed him for not only the preservation of Rowe Shipping, but the very lives of her son, her sister, and herself.
Who knew how far her evil brother-in-law would go to get what he wanted?
In search of a way to show her gratitude, she sought out the kitchen where she found a young woman who'd already laid a fire in the fireplace as well as the huge iron cooking stove. For all Beatrice knew about cooking, the giant, black monstrosity of a stove might as well have been a dragon.
Her pride didn't allow her to ask the young girl about where things were, so she set about finding the makings for breakfast. When she began opening cupboard doors and swinging her gaze around all of the corners of the kitchen, the girl gave her a pitying look and pointed toward a huge metal box on short legs at the far end of the kitchen.
Beatrice could have hugged her, but instead, opened the hinged door and found several dozen eggs in a large bowl and a huge side of bacon next to a block of ice inside the box.
She had not the first idea of how to make muffins, so discarded that idea. But she thought she could boil the eggs the way she'd watched their old housekeeper cook them when she was a child. And how hard could it be to fry bacon in a skillet on a stove burner?
She'd found a threadbare kerchief in her bedchamber and had wound up her hair in that, since she didn't have a lady's maid to help her do anything fancier with her long curls.
Beatrice turned to the young scullery girl who was by now washing out pots and pans. "Do you know how to make muffins?" That simple question was answered with a look of terror and a fierce shaking of the head.
"Oh," Beatrice murmured, "that's too bad.
" She grabbed a large, clean pot from the pile by the sink and pumped vigorously with the pump handle at the sink.
When the pot was half full of water, she set it atop the stove, which was already hot from the scullery girl's ministrations.
When steam started to rise from the pan, Beatrice did a little jig in the center of the kitchen.
"I'm cooking. I knew it couldn't be that hard. "
When she turned to the mound of eggs in the bowl, her confidence slipped a little. Did she really remember from her childhood how her father's housekeeper had cooked eggs? Well, everyone loves bacon, so if she cooked enough of that, perhaps they wouldn't notice what the eggs looked like.
When she turned to deal with the slab of pork bacon, she was filled with gratitude for the scullery girl once again. She'd already neatly sliced the meat into thick portions. She'd also hefted a large iron skillet to the top of the frightening stove Beatrice was gradually getting used to.
She scraped all the bacon slices into the skillet along with a large blob of lard from a bucket in the metal cabinet before returning to dealing with the mystery of the eggs.
By then, the water was boiling vigorously, so she began breaking the eggs into the pot.
However, they had a disturbing tendency to break up with the whites racing everywhere before coming together as one.
Oh, well, maybe she could put the whole congealed mass of eggs on a plate and cut it into squares?
She was so absorbed in trying to control the trajectory of the eggs in the pot that she forgot the bacon.
At an acrid smell, she turned back to check on the slices but was overcome by rolling black smoke.
The scullery girl was using a white linen table cloth to try to beat out the flames.
At that moment, Warrick raced into the kitchen in his stockinged feet with a bucket of water and pushed the scullery girl out of harm's way. After that, he inundated everything on the stove to douse the flames.
His hair hung in wild disarray around his face, and Beatrice noticed he hadn't managed to shave before rescuing her, the scullery girl, and the kitchen from disaster. This was not the way she'd envisioned the ending of their first morning together in hiding.
Warrick couldn't decide where to let his gaze wander first: the smoke-filled kitchen; the terrified scullery maid still slapping at the smoldering bacon with what must once have been a fine linen tablecloth; or Beatrice hovering near a huge pot full of something undefinable and dreadful with clouds of steam rolling out.
He wondered if their neighbors had seen the smoke, or gods forbid, heard the women's screams. This was not his idea of disappearing from view for a few weeks.
"This isn't what it looks like," Beatrice insisted.
"So you really didn't try to burn down our safe house?"
Her lips quivered. "I wanted to show you how grateful I am for all you've done for me."
Four hulking guards who had been standing watch in the kitchen garden chose that moment to break down the rear door and race into the kitchen with weapons raised.
"Stand down, if you please," Warrick intoned calmly. We're merely cooking breakfast. Would you all like some?"
They shook their heads violently and three of them retreated back to their guard posts whilst one of them went to work repairing the damage done to the door.
Warrick turned back to Beatrice. "Did you put all of the eggs into the whatever you were making in the pot?"
"Um, no."
"Praise be to Poseidon." With that he retrieved the bowl with the remaining eggs and found another heavy cast-iron pan.
"You can cook?" Beatrice's eyes widened in amazement.
"We took turns at sea, preparing whatever we had to supplement what Elias cooked for the entire ship." He slapped a generous measure of lard in the skillet and began breaking the eggs into the pan, one at a time.
Beatrice crept up behind him and peered over his shoulder, wonderment on her face. "So that's how you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Cook eggs."
He whirled suddenly and pulled her to him for a long kiss. When he finally released her, he set her near the edge of the skillet and placed a long-handled tool for turning over the eggs in her hands. Warrick stayed close behind her and made sure there were no further conflagrations.
Just when he thought they were sufficiently alone and contemplated perhaps giving one of her kissable breasts some sorely needed attention, Sally Big'uns shuffled through the hallway door, her mobcap still on her head with stray silver hair escaping down her back.
Her sleeping mask still hung at her neck from twin black ribbons.
"What is going on down here?" She clamped her hands at her hips. "You two were carrying on like to raise the dead."
"Why don't you go back to bed, Sally? We have everything under control now."
"Didn't sound like it to me. And besides, you two are supposed to be working for me. If you don't start acting like competent servants, I'll turn you in to the Runners myself." With that, she turned and shuffled back toward the steps to the upper level.
Warrick gave Beatrice a wicked smile and shouted for one of the guards posing as a footman. When the man raced into the kitchen from his post near the front entrance, he gave him instructions to make haste to St. James Square to Carrington-Bowles' home he shared with his Aunt Camilla.
"Ask for Mister Nathaniel Charpentier. Tell him we'll pay a phenomenal amount of money for the temporary services of a cook from his kitchen that we can trust."
As Beatrice plopped the perfectly cooked eggs out onto a plate, he implored the scullery maid, "Could you possibly find us a loaf of bread somewhere in this kitchen?"
The girl bent in a half-curtsy before running to a cabinet with punched tin inserts in the doors. She found a fresh loaf of bread which she proceeded to rapidly cut into perfect thin slices.
"She seems awfully adept with knives," Beatrice observed.
"That she is," agreed Warrick. "Which is why she's here. And by the way, her name is Lucy...Lucy Beckett."
Once Warrick had prepared edible eggs and toasted the bread in the oven, Beatrice put together a tray to take up to Sally who'd made it clear she was not budging from her bedchamber until all the chaos of the smoke-filled second level of the townhouse had been cleared out.
She'd let them know in no uncertain terms that she was used to much better surroundings at the Grosvenor Square home of the Duke of Chelmsford and the terrifying Captain El.
At the last minute, Beatrice ducked outside into the kitchen garden and picked a few tiny things that looked like partially dried flowers left over from summer.
After putting them in a bud vase for Sally's breakfast tray, she climbed the precarious servant stairs that one had to access from a door at the rear of the kitchen.
The steps, carved from stone, wound in steep, tight circles up to the third floor where the main bedchamber was at the rear of the house, overlooking the garden.
When she finally reached Sally's bedside, she was puffing from exertion and huffed out a sigh of relief when she put down the tray with a clatter onto a small wooden support above Sally's commodious lap.
Her erstwhile mistress welcomed her with an evil grin. "Wot's it like doin' wot your poor servants have done for years, my fine lady?"
Before Beatrice could think of a proper set-down, Sally demanded, "Who cooked this?" She'd cautiously lifted the silver platter warmer and was peering onto the plate below.
"Um, Mister Dyer and young Lucy."
"Thank Croesus he dragged you away from the stove."
"My cooking wasn't that bad," Beatrice insisted, but her voice cracked toward the end.
Sally suddenly turned a warm smile on her and covered Beatrice's hand with her own, which all of the cream treatments Captain El had provided could not totally soften.
Like a badge of courage, all the wrinkles of age and scars of hair-raising fights she'd had to wade into during her days of owning a tavern on the Thames. ..they remained for all to see.
"There's something you need to know about Warrick Dyer. He does not suffer fools, but he protects what's his."
"But, you see--." Sally cut off Beatrice's attempt to interrupt the flow of where her speech seemed to be headed.
"You're in a Horseman safe house with the man who rules over the docklands. None of those brothers trusts easily." She paused to take a bite of the golden, buttered toast before continuing.
"If you're here, you're under his protection, and Warrick Dyer would never undertake to protect a woman lightly. He must care for you. Get used to it, because ridding yourself of one of those boys is nigh well impossible."
After polishing off one of the perfectly fried eggs and slurping a sip of her steaming cup of cocoa, she continued, "And a word of advice from someone who has survived a veritable army of men.
..a woman can be good in only one room at a time, and I'm thinking Warrick Dyer now knows it's not the kitchen for you, Missus Rowe. "
Beatrice's traitorous body and mind leaped with self-destructive joy at the thought of just which room he might choose.