The Unusual Story of the Silent Duchess: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Linfield, Emma

  “Didn’t know she had a child, sir,” Randolph said. “Didn’t know she was married.”

  “She doesn’t,” Julian snapped. “She’s not! The Duke has a daughter around that age, if she was playing with her then she must be a member of the household servants.” Julian paced up and down his room, wringing his hands together. He had to hatch a plan, he had to have her. He was going to have her; he only had to figure out how.

  “What did you see of the manor when I was with the Duke?” Julian pressed. “Give me every detail.”

  “Well, sir, I was in the kitchens.”

  “Go on.” Julian snarled.

  “The man named Thomas gave me a rag, had me wipe the counters.”

  “Yes, well, what else?”

  “Well,” Randolph thought for a moment. “I met a lad named Oliver, sir. Oliver Hanson, I think his name was. Helped him set up some scaffolding for roof work.”

  “Tell me of this, Oliver Hanson,” Julian said. “What sort of lad was he?”

  “Well I’m not sure,” Randolph said, squirming. “He was nice enough, a bit older than me. Looked like he worked the grounds, but they let him in the house.”

  “A house servant?”

  “By the looks of him, sir.”

  “Interesting. What else?”

  “Was nothing else, sir. Then you came calling for me. We weren’t in there very long at all.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Julian said. “That’s fine enough, Randolph, that’s fine enough. You have done well.” He adjusted the sash around his waist.

  “You have anything else for me, sir?”

  “Refill the lamps, then you can go.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.” Randolph jumped to his feet. He ran off the find the bottles of whale oil.

  * * *

  Randolph skipped out of Julian’s offices with glee, as he always did when heading home for the day. Home for Randolph was a penny boarding house, some twenty blocks away and over the river. He stayed there most nights, for the owner had taken a liking to him, and so he was almost always awarded a bed when it came time for sleep.

  Those who arrived after all the beds had been claimed were forced to spend the night standing up, fastened between two tight pieces of cord. In the mornings, the owner would yank free one of the ropes, and the line of slumbering people would be rudely whisked awake, a noise that rose every other person of the boarding house. Some preferred the ropes, on account of the beds being infested with all manner of fleas and bedbugs, dependent on the season. To combat the pests, Randolph kept a thick sheet of folded canvas which he had found in the river. Each night he would take the canvas from the owner’s back office, lay it out on whatever bed he had been awarded, and sleep soundly for a straight seven hours on average.

  Such places were common for the London poor, in a city where the need to work seemed to overrule the need to sleep and eat properly. Randolph had a particularly good arrangement, as far as an orphan boy got: each day he worked long hours, was paid next to nothing, and slept in an overcrowded one-room house in a rough part of town. Each morning he splashed himself with water from a fountain, rubbing down his face and pits, and attempting to remove any stains on his clothes that only seemed to stack on top of each other.

  That night he was extra filthy, as he had just come off a carriage tour of the English countryside, sleeping every night with the horses.

  Randolph made his way across the bridge, dodging through the narrow alleys between manufactories and came to the door of his boarding house when a heavy gloved hand came down on his shoulder.

  “Easy there, lad,” the pea-coated inspector said in his thick accent. “We need a word with you.”

  “No!” Randolph kicked out, flailing against the large Scottish hands bearing down on him.

  “Come on you brat, just need a word is all,” the inspector said and hoisted Randolph’s tiny body aside into an adjacent wagon.

  “I ain’t done nothing I swear! Never had any reason to go down Bow Street!” Randolph protested.

  “Easy now,” the Scotsman said. “I ain’t here to hurt you or haul you down Bow Street. Now take a minute, get yourself together. Can you do that for me, laddie?”

  Randolph nodded, twitching on the bench of the wagon. The heavy doors on the back had been swung shut behind them, and he was completely trapped. The only view of outside came through bars; Randolph feared imprisonment more than death and was sweating through his shirt.

  “You are in the employ of a one Mr. Bastable, is that correct laddie?” the inspector asked, leaning close to Randolph’s face.

  “Yes, sir,” Randolph answered quietly.

  “Good lad,” the inspector said. “Now what do you really know about him, eh? Not a whole lot, I’d wager, eh?”

  Randolph shook his head slowly.

  “And now, if I were to go on and tell you that he was a criminal, what would you say to that? Would it surprise you, laddie?” the inspector leaned closer still, and Randolph could smell the oils that had been entrenched in his thick moustache.

  Randolph shook his head, not wanting to answer incorrectly.

  “Good lad,” the inspector smiled and rubbed Randolph’s filthy hair. “Now, you know that warehouse of his, down by the wharf? You know the one, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Randolph squeaked. “I know it.”

  “That’s right,” the inspector said. “And I reckon you know where he keeps the whale oil, for all the lamps, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Randolph said. He was afraid for his life and was contracting into a smaller shape as he sat there under the inspector’s oppressive stare.

  “Good lad,” he said. “Now, you know that if someone like me, an officer of the law, you know if they tell you to do something, you have to do it, don’t you? And you can’t tell anyone about it at all, can you?”

  “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, or no,” Randolph tried to look away, but the inspector grabbed his chin and looked straight into his eyes.

  “That’s right. Or else what will happen?”

  “Or else, I’ll go to gaol,” Randolph whispered.

  “That’s right,” the inspector whispered back. “Off to gaol, you’ll go. We don’t want that do we? Not a hard-working Londoner like yourself, no, you are far too good to die without ever seeing the sun again, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well good, I’m awfully glad we could come to that understanding.” The inspector released Randolph’s jaw and reclined against the wall of the wagon. “Now, I have a job for you, young master, and I hope for your sake you don’t botch it.”

  “What’s the job?” Randolph asked, pulling his knees together between his arms.

  “You’re going to burn that warehouse of Mr. Bastable’s to the ground,” the inspector said. “You’re going to burn it down tonight, and you’re not going to tell a soul. Do you understand?”

  Randolph nodded and paled. He was caught between his employer, whom he feared, and a Bow Street runner, whom he feared even more. For poor Randolph, it was not much of a choice, and the inspector knew it.

  “Good,” the inspector said. “And if you don’t do it, or if you tell a soul, we will shove you in a cell so far underground you will hear the devil pining for your very being. Now get! Get to it, laddie!” the inspector let out a cruel laugh and rapped twice on the back of the wagon. The doors opened, Randolph was thrown into the street, and the wagon charged ahead; Randolph watched it disappear into the maze of brick stone and smokestacks that was London.

  Randolph was gasping on the ground, trying to keep himself from exploding into a mess of anxiety and despair. How had it come to this? What had I ever done to anyone? Randolph rolled into a ball and began to cry. What had Mr. Bastable done? It had to do something with those Setons. Blast him and all! This is not my fight!

  As he wallowed in his thoughts, two clear options began to appear. He could leave London that night, perhaps stowing aboard a ship to Australia or at
least across the channel, or he could burn the warehouse.

  Randolph had no money for a new start, nor for bribing a midshipman. The longer he laid in that gutter, crying to himself, the clearer his only option became. He had to burn the warehouse, and he had to burn it that night.

  Randolph tore off through the streets at a wild run, dashing around corners and under wooden walkways, taking himself as fast as humanly possible to the river docks, then down a ways until he came finally, heaving for air, in front of Julian’s warehouse. It was a huge, wooden structure, built on a foundation of bricks. The building was empty, so Randolph didn’t understand why it should be burned. What damage will it do?

  What Randolph did not know was that Julian merely owned the building, not the pier that it sat upon. Thus, if the building were destroyed, Julian would be left without recompense. He would no longer own waterfront property. He would, however, be entitled to an insurance payout, as he double checked his insurance payments each month.

  Of course, the Setons had already found their way into that branch of the tree, and if all went according to their plan, Julian would be left with nothing.

  All this was unknown to Randolph; he only knew that if he did not torch this warehouse, then he would be killed or imprisoned for reasons he did not understand. Such was his lot, and so he clamoured up the drain pipe to the roof.

  Once atop the building, he broke the glass on an upward opening window and dropped into the room that Julian planned to use as his office, once the wool shipments began to arrive.

  Holding his breath, Randolph tiptoed through the upper levels, hugging the edge of the catwalk, until he came to a set of rooms on the second floor, closer to the river. In the third room, he went to the large wooden crate labeled Flammable and cracked it open.

  Inside there were several bottles of whale oil, shining out their strange, golden tone. They were sitting in a bed of straw, and Randolph carefully removed them one by one until he held all six bottles in his hands.

  He went down the open staircase to the warehouse floor and looked up at the hollow, wooden walls. Then he began to throw the bottles to different corners of the room, hearing them shatter and the oil splash out over the base of the wooden walls, pooling up in cracks in the mortar of the foundation.

  “What’s that?” he heard someone say from outside. Randolph ducked into the shadow beneath a window and heard the heavy steps of a night watchman pacing up and down beside the warehouse wall. “Anybody in there?” he called, and Randolph could see his shadow peering in, just above his hiding place. The watchman finally said, “Ah dash it,” and walked on.

  Randolph held his breath, not daring to make an ounce of noise, and could only focus on the feeling of the cold ground beneath his legs. And they were wet. What was that?

  His fingers came away slick with oil, and he cursed himself for being so careless. He made a note of it, and when the night watchman outside had gone on, he completed smashing the bottles. This time, however, he did not throw them. He carefully walked to each space, uncorked the bottles, and spilled them out over everything. Finally, he was ready. He walked over to one of the doors, preparing to make his run for it, and struck alight a bit of timber, well away from his oily clothes.

  Randolph threw the match.

  Whale oil burns with incredible efficiency, and as such made for such a successful and practical lighting application. In great quantities, however, it burns like wildfire, as it did in this instance.

  The fire raced over the floor and up the walls, brightening the room so suddenly that Randolph fell back, hitting the ground hard.

  He got up fast, reacting to the rapid destruction around him, and slammed against the door.

  A thick lock and chain on the outside of the door stopped him, and he tried again, but to no avail. He was trapped.

  No! No! No! He screamed inside, looking wildly around for an exit. The only way he saw was the way he came in and began to run for the stairs.

  People hurried to the scene, watching in awe as the fire hopped to several other wooden structures on the waterfront. The blaze lit up the whole area with brilliant light, and many watched from their apartment windows across the river.

  Everything was on fire. The structure began to rapidly disintegrate into ash and hot air, sending huge, charred chunks of wall crashing down, sparks circulating in a whirlwind of chaos, and Julian’s warehouse collapsed into the river Thames.

  Chapter 21

  Julian was about to settle in for the evening when a knock came on his door. He was just about to douse all the lamps and lock way his papers for the night, and that crashing pound of an inspector’s hand came screaming through the office.

  “Mr. Bastable! Open up! It’s Bow Street! Open up, sir!”

  “Yes, yes,” Julian called down, waddling down his stairs as fast as he could. “I’m here, I’m here,” he unlocked the door and swung it open. “What is going on, inspector? It’s late.”

  “Mr. Bastable?” the Scotsman asked.

  “Yes, what is this about?”

  “There’s been a fire, sir, a dreadfully terrible fire.”

  “Where?” Julian exclaimed, becoming hot-tempered. “Must I evacuate? I was on my way out I assure you.”

  “No, Mr. Bastable, you misunderstand,” the inspector said. “The fire was down on the wharves. I’m here because your warehouse was one of the buildings destroyed.”

  “What?” Julian looked at him in disbelief.

  “The fire,” he said again. “It took down a lot of property. Your warehouse is gone.”

  “My warehouse,” Julian repeated the words, swimming in them. This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, he thought. The insurance will pay out triple the cost of that building! The Duke’s wool is no longer an issue! He let out a long sigh, digesting the information.

  “It’s gone, sir. Have you been here all night, Mr. Bastable?”

  “All night? What are you insinuating?”

  “Just answer the question, Mr. Bastable. Have you been anywhere else tonight?”

  “No!” Julian protested. “I’ve been here all night!”

  “Anyone that can confirm that?”

  “I have an employee, a Mr. Randolph, he’s a young lad, thirteen or fourteen. I send him off a few hours ago, but he was with me until then.”

  “But he wasn’t here with you all night, is that right, Mr. Bastable?”

  “Well, no, I’ve only just said,” Julian was flustered. Pieces were beginning to align in his mind.

  “It’s alright, Mr. Bastable, just getting your initial statement,” the inspector said. “Look, come by Bow Street tomorrow, we’ll take your statement. Don’t leave town, alright then, sir?”

  Julian nodded, stunned.

  “Alright, you have a good evening Mr. Bastable,” the inspector said, snapping shut his notebook, stowing his pencil in his hat, and turning off into the night.

  “You have a good evening as well,” Julian said, his throat drying up. When the inspector was gone entirely from sight, Julian shut the door and sank down to the floor.

  He held his head in his hands. The warehouse was gone. This was good and bad. On the one hand, the insurance could pay out a healthy sum that would not only buy him a new building but cover the cost of the Duke’s missing shipment.

  On the other hand, if he were a suspect, the insurance would take forever to clear the solicitors, possibly becoming a process that lasted longer than he had funds to allow for. This could break him, financially, but it shouldn’t, he figured. Everything was going to be alright. He dragged himself back up the stairs, wincing at the effort, and pulled a bottle of cognac from his desk. He sat down at his chair and began to drink heavily until the night washed away into the morning.

  * * *

  Julian woke at his desk to the morning light streaming in his east-facing window. He opened his eyes slowly, not entirely understanding that he was in his office and fell with a thud from his chair to the floor.
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br />   “Bugger!” he shouted, rubbing his bruised rump, and looking about his surroundings. He had drunk himself silly the night before, and two empty bottles of cognac lay haphazardly on his desk.

  “One was half empty,” he said to himself and tried to stand, only to find his left foot catch on yet another bottle, sending him back to the floor. “Two and a half,” he shook his head. At least they were small bottles.

  As he swayed upright and took in a deep gush of air, he found that he was still quite drunk, and steadied himself against his desk. The feeling of awaking and still being drunk was an unsettling one, and one that threatened the operations of his entire day. Nevertheless, he would persevere. It would not be the first time he had conducted himself in such a manner.