Chapter Sixteen
ONLY AN ASS would risk being seen visiting him, Mickey, Tommy had advised after Ashington and Rossingley departed.
Ashington had left to go and do whatever dukes did, and Rossingley to kill a few hours over at Fitzsimmons’s place, in a further effort to avoid Talybridge and an irate Mr Chesterton. You’ll be guilty by association.
Mickey didn’t care. The duke had spoken for him, thus turning Mickey into perhaps the only person in London who could visit Valentin and be beyond the arm of the law.
Even if the Frenchman now hated him for his lack of faith in Valentin’s constancy.
Even if he hated Mickey for twisting over on his ankle and impeding their escape, Valentin had still refused to name him. That counted for something, didn’t it?
The towering stone walls of Newgate prison loomed grimly over the narrow streets, its ragged silhouette cutting through fog hanging fusty and thick.
As Mickey approached, rain started to fall, piling on another layer of hopelessness.
Iron bars, fat as a man’s wrist, crisscrossed every window and, this close, the air smelled dank and rotten, of death and decay.
God only knew the stench inside. As a rule, Mickey skirted this corner of town, as if somehow those within the forbidding walls and the dismal unfortunates scrabbling a living around its edges could reach out and suck him down into it.
“I’m here to visit a prisoner. Valentin Beauregard.
” Not meeting their gaze, Mickey slid a pound across to the two bored-looking guards.
He might have escaped the seedier parts of town, but he still remembered the rules.
When nothing happened, Mickey slid across another.
Satisfied, one of them pocketed the bribe and motioned him through.
“Who shall we tell him’s callin’?”
Even with the duke’s patronage, Mickey was loathe to give his full name. “Tell the monsieur that…that Mr London is here.”
He was prepared to find Valentin in irons, of course; he hadn’t forgotten how prisons worked.
Yet it still managed to shock him. With them fastened around both ankles and attached to a chain around his waist, he heard his lover clanking and shuffling down the passageway a whole agonising minute before he clapped eyes on him.
At least Valentin wasn’t riveted to an iron ring cemented into the wall.
The guard shoved Valentin roughly into a chair. Like parched brittle bones, the chains binding his wrists rattled unkindly against one another.
“London,” Valentin rasped through dry lips. “You have a cane. Please tell me you didn’t have to walk far for this visit. You should be resting.”
Mickey’s eyes sprang with hot tears. A cut bled across the skin of Valentin’s cheek; already, his face was a canvas of exhaustion. “You are asking after my injury at a time like this? When you are so—”
A patchwork of angry bruises marred the pale white flesh covering Valentin’s shoulder, exposed to the bitter January air where yesterday evening’s linen was torn.
“Your coat,” Mickey managed, aghast.
“Was well fought over.”
A cascade of violent shivers accompanied Valentin’s reply. He coughed, then coughed again, pulling the cold deeper into his chest with every breath.
Mickey wrestled with his sleeve. “Here, you must have mine.”
Valentin lifted his useless bound wrists. Even that seemed to sap him. “Alas, I’m to be tried as a thief, not a contortionist.”
Afraid to meet the defeat in the man’s eyes, Mickey stared at Valentin’s lovely hands hanging loosely in his lap. If only he could snatch them up and warm them in his own. And then hold one, those long fingers laced in his as they strolled side by side out of this place.
As he stared, swallowing hard, Valentin rubbed his finger and thumb against each other. Subtle, yet persistent. Mickey jerked his gaze up to Valentin’s face, and the Frenchman’s dulled eyes flicked between the guard and a pocket in Mickey’s coat.
Lifting his chest and straightening, Mickey blew out a breath.
He’d come here to help Valentin in any way he could, not wallow in despair.
“You, sir.” He addressed the guard in what he hoped was an approximation of Rossingley’s imperious tones.
“I require some time alone with Monsieur le Vicomte.” He reached for his coin purse, its weight lessening by the second.
“You’ve bought yerself five minutes.”
The snick of the door closing injected Valentin with some of his former vigour. “Put your hand down my trousers, Mickey,” he demanded hoarsely. “There’s no time to lose.”
“What? I…you…” Though always happy to oblige, that wasn’t the sort of help Mickey had in mind.
“Hurry.” With a hasty glance back at the door, Valentin lifted his chained hands up and away from his body. “Before he returns.” He motioned Mickey with his head. “Here, the fastening. Please, just do as I ask.”
Mickey fumbled with the placket. At such close quarters, Valentin smelled unwashed, of fear and the stink of the prison. He pushed a layer of linen aside, unable to meet Valentin’s eyes as the back of his hand brushed against coarse hair and cold, cold skin.
“There is a pocket, long and thin, sewn into the inside left leg. Yes, there, under my ballocks. Inside is a half sheet of sealed foolscap, thrice folded over.”
“Ow!”
A sharp prick pierced Mickey’s fingertip. Cursing, he pulled away from the bloom of pain. “Foolscap with teeth?”
“Forgive me.” Valentin tossed him the ghost of a smile. “A silver tie pin is also concealed. And…um…three large pearls.” Fleetingly, his green eyes flashed. “Attached to a divine filigree brooch. Too tempting by far during a waltz last night with Lady Chalfont.”
Mickey tried again, delving lower until he pulled out a crumpled sheet.
“Take it,” Valentin urged. “Hide it. Do not let the guards see.”
Mickey stuffed the paper in his coat. “What shall I do with this? What is it?”
Valentin sank back in his chair, letting his eyes flutter closed. He inhaled deeply before answering. “It is the truth, mon cher.”
A slow smile spread across his face, and when Valentin opened his eyes again, they shone bright. “It is the truth about a shooting party held at the Duke of Ashington’s place in the country. Many years ago, before you and I were even born.”
“What?” Mickey blinked, his mind running in circles. “You…you know about the shooting party?”
“Ah.” Valentin nodded slowly as if things were starting to make more sense. “And you do also.” He nodded again. “After discovering you in the study last night, I deduced that you might.”
“What’s it to you?” Mickey was astounded. Things were becoming stranger by the second. “What on earth could you know about it?”
“Probably more than even Ashington himself,” Valentin ventured. “Last night, I stole that letter from Talybridge’s safe, seconds before you appeared to do your own bit of thieving. As I promised you, it was the only item in there of interest to me.”
“That’s what you were after? A letter?”
Who risked being caught with his hand in another man’s safe for a letter? And how the devil did Valentin know about the Ashington shooting party?
Valentin’s chains rattled as he rubbed a hand across his drawn, ashen face. “That damned letter is the reason I returned to England.”
“But…what…? Is the letter about the duke?”
Valentin shook his head. “There is no time to explain. But if I…if I do not make it out of here—if they hang me by the neck—then make sure that letter reaches Ashington. He’s a fine duke and a decent man. He deserves to know the truth. I trust he’ll do the right thing.”
Cold fingers of dread brushed against Mickey’s spine. Not make it out? Ashington, the letter, and whatever history with Talybridge was wrapped up in them both, could wait. Because Valentin sounded awfully like a person arranging his affairs, believing he’d never see his precious Verdille again.
“Nonsense,” Mickey declared. “You shall not be hanged because you didn’t steal the parure.
And I should have believed you when you gave your word.
” Mickey clutched Valentin’s icy hand between his own, hardly caring if the guard returned and saw it.
“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I never told you my intentions of robbing Talybridge myself.
It was…it was not my secret to reveal; I was not acting alone.
More than that, I’m sorry that I doubted you.
But I believe you now, with all my heart.
And the judges and the magistrates shall believe you too. ”
Valentin shuddered again, wracked with cold. “My sweet, sweet London. How can they? I was arrested fleeing the scene of a crime.”
“But without the parure!”
Valentin gave a defeated shrug. “They shall try me on the basis that my accomplice escaped with it. They will need to show justice being served. Talybridge will demand it, more than ever when he discovers his letter has vanished, though he won’t make mention of that.
” He stared at their joined hands, clasped so tightly their knuckles were white.
“And even if the missing parure were to miraculously turn up, what then? The safe was opened and robbed. A key, stolen from the Chubb and Sons workshop, was found in my waistcoat, matching Talybridge’s key.
What more proof is needed to show that my intentions were nefarious? ”
“But…but…” Mickey ground his teeth in frustration. If only he could locate that goddamned parure. Valentin hunched forward.
“Listen, Mickey. When the sharp sword of the law comes down on me, I trust you and Ashington will see that justice is served. They may kill me, but they cannot ever truly hurt me. Not now…not now that letter is safely in your possession.”
“Do not speak like that! This is not the end! We shall find the parure, and if Talybridge doesn’t admit the theft of the letter, as you say, then we can show that you are not guilty.
An open safe and you placed at the scene is no proof at all if someone else has pilfered the parure.
” He recalled Tommy’s reassuring words. “You inadvertently took a wrong turn down a dark confusing passageway and ended up detouring home across a few flowerbeds. That’s all.
You paused to take the air and…and to admire a drystone wall. ”
Valentin chuckled, low and gravelly. “I applaud your optimism. But you and I both know that men have been hung for far less.” With a fettered, clinking hand, he rubbed tiredly at his whiskery jaw.
“You have slept?” Mickey asked, already knowing the answer. “You have eaten?”
Valentin shook his head. “Ah…no. My bedmates are…a rather interesting bunch. And far less welcome than you.” The curve of his mouth was a tense, taut line.
“They have turned the threat of tearing a man limb from limb into an art form; one cannot close one’s eyes for a moment.
The guards are worse still. And even starving French peasants are hard pushed to swallow what, several days ago, might just about have passed for soup and potatoes. ”
Visions of a fetid, dark dungeon filled Mickey’s head, filthy and overcrowded.
Ten or more men—violent, lice-ridden men—packed together like rotten sardines in a fishmonger’s barrel.
And in the middle of them, poor hungry Valentin defending his warm coat for as long as he could.
Everyone knew the few that survived Newgate crawled away half-starved.
Thin strips of mutton once a day if the governor’s gout was quiescent, two-penny worth of bread if not.
Mickey’s fingertips dug into his palms. “They say there is typhus fever amongst the men here.”
Valentin’s dry lips twitched. “Cheery sort of visitor, aren’t you?”
“How much blunt will ensure you are safe and fed?”
The Frenchman blew out a long breath and shifted as if no longer caring. “The prison is overflowing. Decent accommodations are sparse and only secured at an enormous price.”
“I can pay,” Mickey insisted. If he had to go begging to Tommy for blunt, he’d get down on his knees and do it. “Tommy Squire recompenses me well. I shall find whatever it takes.”
“That would be”—Valentin blinked hard, the briefest tremor in his eyelids, a flicker of something raw—“so very kind. At this present moment, all I have to recompense you with for your troubles is a silver tie pin, sitting far too close to my ballocks for true comfort, and three large pearls.”
“Keep them. Who knows when you may need to trade them. I don’t need your coin or your pearls.”
There was a rattle at the door. Too soon, Mickey thought. Too soon.
“It is I who should be I sitting there in shackles, not you,” he urged in a low whisper. “I’m the one who was trying to steal the damned parure. Selflessly exchanging your own freedom for mine is recompense enough.”