Chapter 16
The harbor at Portsmouth was cold before dawn, the kind of cold that came off the water with intent and found every gap in a man's coat without apology.
The sky had not yet decided between night and morning — it hung above the docks in a deep, uncertain grey, the first suggestion of light pressing against the eastern edge of it without yet committing to anything.
Alexander stood at the end of the dock beside Jack and said nothing for a long moment. Around them the harbor moved with its pre-dawn industry — ropes, provisions, the low voices of men for whom this hour was simply another working one.
"I was careless Jack, our enemies have made their move and I was not prepared. They know. Not everything — not yet. But enough to look for more." Alexander said at last. "I compromised her."
Jack was quiet for a moment. Then: "You did.
Though I would say London did that more than you.
" He looked out at the water with the equanimity of a man who has made peace with the things he cannot change.
"You forget what this city is. Out there a man can move without every drawing room in a ten mile radius noting his whereabouts.
Here everything is seen and discussed before the week is out.
It was always going to happen. The moment you began meeting with her the clock was running. You could not have stopped it."
"That does not make her situation less difficult."
"No," Jack agreed. "It does not. But what has been done cannot be undone by standing on a dock feeling responsible for it." He glanced at Alexander. "What can be done is what we are both about to go and do."
Alexander was quiet for a moment. The water moved against the pilings with its patient, indifferent rhythm.
"It will not be simple," he said. "What you are going into.
The deal we are trying to establish will disrupt everything currently in place out there.
Every corrupt intermediary, every man profiting from the current arrangement will feel it the moment you begin.
Once you have struck the agreement they will know what it means.
" He paused. "They will come for you, Jack. "
"I have already thought about how to manage it," Jack said. "When the deal is done and the men with grievances start asking questions they will not find me on any road between the mines and the coast." He paused. "Do you remember the village? Three days inland from the port. The eastern ridge."
Alexander looked at him.
"The necklace," he said quietly.
"The necklace." Jack nodded once. "They made one for each of us, if you recall.
The elder said we were welcome back at any time, in any circumstances, for any reason.
" A brief pause. "I have never forgotten that.
A village that size, with what they have and what they face — the other tribes give them no peace, they are too small to fight back and too proud to leave — and still she opened the gates and fed us and made us gifts.
" He shook his head slightly. "I have been in a great many places, Alex.
I have never encountered kindness of that quality anywhere else.
It is not naive kindness either. That woman knows exactly what the world is. She chooses it anyway."
"She told us to listen to our instinct," Alexander said.
He was not looking at Jack. He was looking at the necklace he had drawn from inside his coat without quite deciding to — the simple cord, the carved bone pendant, worn smooth along one edge from years of handling.
He turned it once in his fingers. "When she pressed this into my hands she said it would bring me home safely. "
"It did," Jack said simply.
Alexander looked at the pendant for a moment longer.
"The only tribe in that region with a woman as elder," he said. "Getting bullied by every larger force around them. Surviving anyway through — what? Generosity. Community. The refusal to become what is being done to them." He almost smiled. "Yes. She reminded me of someone."
Jack studied his old friend's face in the grey morning light with the attention of a man who had learned to read people in conditions considerably less forgiving than this.
Alexander held it a moment longer. Then he returned it to his coat.
"Go and finish it," he said. "Come back."
"I always do." Jack lifted his bag and turned toward the ship. Then he stopped, without turning back. "She chose this, Alex. Whatever it costs her — she chose it with her eyes open. Do not waste it by losing."
He walked toward the gangway without looking back, which Alexander had long since learned was simply how Jack Morrison departed from things — without ceremony, without the backward glance that would have made leaving harder than it needed to be.
Alexander stood on the dock until the ship was small in the harbor mouth. Until it was a shape against the morning. Until it was gone.
He thought of a morning twenty-five years ago — same harbor, another departure, his father's hand and his mother's silence and the particular weight of a gangway lifting behind him.
He thought of standing at a stern rail watching England disappear and asking himself who he would be when there was nothing left of his name to stand on.
He knew the answer now.
He turned from the water and walked back up the dock toward his horse, and London, and everything that remained to be done.
◆◆◆
Two days had passed since the ball, and Alexander had not slept properly through any of them.
He had written four letters to Catherine.
He had burned all four. He had walked twice past the gates of the Fairfax house at hours when no respectable gentleman walked anywhere, and seen nothing — the curtains drawn, the windows dark, no movement, no sign whether she was inside that house or had been sent somewhere else.
He had not dared go to Beatrice. Whatever Cornwall knew, he could not afford to confirm by visiting her again.
He had sat in his study and turned the same problem over and over without finding the back of it. Cornwall knew. What Cornwall would do with what he knew was the only question that mattered, and Alexander had no information at all.
On the third afternoon, the maid knocked at his study door.
"Your Grace. A lady to see you. Lady Beatrice Ashworth. She says it is most urgent."
Alexander was on his feet before the maid had finished speaking.
"Show her up."
Beatrice came in still in her travelling cloak, which she had not bothered to surrender at the door. The maid withdrew. Alexander crossed the room and was at her side before she had reached the chair he had meant to offer her.
"Have you news of her? Is she safe?"
"I have not seen her, Alexander. No one has. She has not been outside her father's house in three days." Beatrice met his eyes. "But I have learned what they intend to do with her. And with you. And I came directly here because we do not have much time."
Alexander felt the room tilt very slightly. He gestured her to the chair without speaking. She sat. He did not.
"Tell me."
"A story has been delivered, unofficially, to two newspapers and a society sheet.
I have it from a printer's apprentice who owes me his sister's school fees.
The story is not yet set to run. It is held, waiting on word from one man.
" She paused. "The story is about you. It says that during your years abroad you fell under the influence of a native shaman in Africa.
That you returned to England carrying that influence, and that you have used it — spells is the word, Alexander, in print, in three columns — to draw the Earl of Derby's daughter into a clandestine and improper attachment.
That you have been meeting her in secret at the home of a notorious eccentric in Bryanston Square.
That her father has at last discovered the matter and put a stop to it. "
Alexander did not move.
"The story will run when the engagement is announced," Beatrice said quietly. "And the engagement is being arranged. Catherine is to be married, Alexander. Quietly, within the month. To Edward, the Duke of Cornwall's son."
The clock on the mantel struck once. Alexander did not appear to hear it.
For a long moment he simply stood there, his face perfectly still in a way that Beatrice recognized, because she had seen the same stillness on him in her sitting room the night he had named the slave trade. The stillness of a man absorbing a thing he could not yet permit himself to react to.
"How long," he said at last. His voice was very even.
"I do not know, but I assume they will not wait for long."
Alexander turned and walked to the window. He stood with his back to her, his hand on the frame, looking down into the street where carriages passed and people went about a London that had not yet been told the story it was about to be told.
"He has not announced it yet," he said. "We must act before they release their story."
"Indeed. In this game we must strike first, otherwise we lose the element of surprise."
"Then I will do it now. Tonight. Tomorrow.
I will go to the papers myself, with everything I have.
He cannot run his story if mine runs first. The evidence is enough.
It has been enough for some time. I have been waiting because Jack is not yet back, because the supply line is not yet secured — but I cannot wait.
If she is married, she is gone. I will not let her be married into that house. "
He turned back to face her.
"I will do it now."
"We will do it now."
Alexander shook his head. "Beatrice, no. You have done a great deal. You have brought me this. That is more than enough. The men in this story will not forgive whoever stands beside me when it breaks. I will not bring that down on you."