Miles Before I Sleep

by Byrd, M. Donice

  Andrea was nearly giddy with relief. Not only did she now have a cabin, but also he did not recognize her! What irony that she should have his cabin. Andrea did not realize until she saw the clerk looking strangely at her, that she had laughed aloud. She blushed slightly and said the first thing that came to mind. “I was just thinking about what I heard someone say once about how passenger business is more lucrative than shipping cargo.”

  Either the clerk already knew the joke, or he was not interested; he merely nodded and opened the large book in front of him, slowly turning the pages until he found what he wanted.

  Andrea did not remember when she had heard that before, but Miles, in the small office could not help but overhear, remembered exactly where he had heard it before, just as he remembered everything about that night. His eyes were instantly drawn to the slender, bookish young man on the other side of the counter. His immediate response was to dismiss what he had said as a coincidence, but after a moment, when his gaze went beyond the narrow glasses on his nose to the man’s pale blue eyes, he realized he was looking at the male version of Andrea James.

  “John, I’ll book his passage, if you’ll be kind enough to help my cousin find passage to Ireland.”

  John Price hesitated a moment, but quickly said, “Anything you want, Mr. Huntington.”

  Cousin? Huntington? Andrea suddenly realized the identity of the man who entered with the toad. Miles Huntington, the other man with whom she had danced in America. That meant the ship she was booking passage on was one of his ships. He must be the H in H & O.

  Andrea groaned inwardly as she looked into the tall man’s hazel-gray eyes. She had been avoiding looking in the direction of the redheaded man to keep from drawing attention to herself, but now she stood face-to-face with a man who could recognize her at any moment.

  Unwittingly, she reached up to make sure the fake mustache she wore was still affixed securely to her upper lip. For once, she was thankful her mother had been an actress and had told her how they made theatrical whiskers. It did not particularly look real, but anyone who realized it wasn’t, would just assume the barefaced lad she appeared to be, was only trying to make himself appear older.

  When Andrea realized she was staring, and he was staring back with equal intensity, she forced her eyes down, straight to the picture of herself on the front page of the newspaper he had set on the counter next to the large ledger.

  Several sets of eyes riveted on her at the sound of her gasp. “Have you seen her?” Miles Huntington asked.

  “No!” she said quickly, a bit too emphatically to be believed.

  Not wanting to frighten her, Miles pretended not to know her. He wanted to put Andrea at ease, so he could find out why she was there. If she intended to book passage, the last thing he wanted to do was capture her and return her to her parents.

  “That’s Andrea James,” he said casually.

  Andrea slowly let out her breath. “No, I haven’t seen her. I wish I had. I could use five thousand pounds.”

  “Ten thousand,” the clerk, interrupted. “The man in front of you added another five thousand to the reward. In fact—”

  “Enough, John! Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing?”

  His cousin and John blanched at the sound of his raised voice and quickly left to find passage to Ireland for his cousin.

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m a bit on edge. This whole incident has gotten out of hand. Everyone is worried sick about her. No one knows if she is dead or alive. I keep thinking she will at least send a note to her parents, but so far, there’s been no word.”

  “How thoughtless,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  “Worst of all, it was just a misunderstanding.”

  “How’s that?” Her eyes were wide as she peered over the top of her glasses.

  “No one was going to force her. All she had to do was refuse, and my cousin and I would have been on the next boat home. No one ever wanted to see Andrea unhappy, but that is all we have accomplished. That’s the reason my cousin and I are leaving England, so Andrea can go home without fear of being forced to marry.”

  Miles looked up casually and took note of her carefully schooled expression.

  “Ah but you came here to book passage, didn’t you? I really didn’t mean to go on.”

  Andrea hesitated for a moment realizing she could go home if she wanted, but she found she didn’t want to. She wanted to prove she could run her father’s company. Reaching in her pocket, Andrea pulled out her money.

  “Going to New York to live?”

  “I plan to work in my family’s New York office.”

  “Taking over, are you?”

  “Starting at the bottom,” she conceded ruefully. “I have a letter of introduction, but I will get no more help from my father.”

  Miles grinned with understanding. This was the reason she had not turned away and headed home. He remembered how irate her letter had sounded when it referred to him as a gold digger after her father’s shipping company and fortune. It was far from being true, though he suspected his experience with his own company was partially why Sebastian James had pursued the betrothal.

  “I see,” Miles said, smiling widely.

  “Do you?”

  “I think so. You are the second or third son of a nobleman, and more capable and interested in the family business than your father’s heir. So you’re going to prove you are the better man—with a forged note, no doubt.”

  Andrea’s face broke out with a smile until she felt the mustache pulling away from her taut lip. “You are very astute, sir.”

  Seeing the glue come loose on the edge of her lip caterpillar, Miles quickly looked down at the ledger. “What line of business is your father in?”

  When it was apparent her mind had gone blank, he wished he had not put her on the spot.

  “Textiles,” she said belatedly.

  Miles nodded. “Buys the raw goods there and ships them over here, does he?”

  “Exactly,” Andrea said, finding the statement more truthful than she would have expected.

  “Well, if it doesn’t work out for you, come see me at our New York office. I’ll see that you get a job to earn enough to get you home.”

  “Thank you, but I suspect if it ever came to that, you might regret such a generous offer. However,” she added with a thoughtful smile, “I may hold you to it someday.”

  Miles laughed. “I doubt I could regret it.”

  When Miles caught sight of Rory and John Price coming back, he decided it was time to conclude his business with Andrea. He told her the price, and she counted out the money and handed it to him. Although he thought about telling her that the cabin had already been paid for and she could have it free of charge, he knew Andrea would find the act suspicious, so he accepted the money with a mental note to return it to her sometime in the future.

  “And your name?”

  “Jim Andrews,” she said without hesitation. She had been practicing saying it so it would sound natural. She also picked a name that was similar to hers thinking she could not forget it.

  “I’ll see you on the ship, Jim.”

  With their business concluded, Andrea turned to leave and paused as the door opened in front of her. The two men stopped and waited allowing Andrea to pass first. Behind her, Miles noticed the way her head suddenly averted and she strode away as quickly as her long legs would carry her.

  Rory said something, but Miles was not listening. He was watching Andrea as she walked from the quay. He saw her apprehensive glance over her shoulder just before she crossed the street and began walking away from the riverfront. Before Andrea had completely disappeared from sight, Miles was following, curtly telling Rory to stay there until he got back.

  8

  For the past three days, the rotund proprietor of the Red Hen had noticed the man standing across the street between the two buildings. At first, he thought the man might be a footpad awaiting a victim, but n
o sooner had the thought occurred to him, than a likely victim passed unnoticed and unmolested.

  “I tell you, Marge, the man’s up to no good over there.”

  Marge tucked an errant hair into her scarf as she pushed back the curtain and peered at the man. “He doesn’t seem to be causing any trouble,” she said.

  “If he’s not up to something, then why is he watching our door? The second I set foot in the day light, the man turns away.”

  “Now, Danny, as big as he is, he’s probably a whore’s bully wishing he could come over and have a pint instead of standing out there in the weather.”

  Danny grunted. “A whore’s bully, I had not thought of that, woman. But look where he’s standing—between the cooper-smith and the cannery. Neither place lets rooms. No, I think you’re right, but I have a feeling that we’ve rented a room to his whore. It's my guess; he’s been waiting for his runaway whore to leave so he can nab her.”

  Marge drew away from the window to look at her husband, her eyes wide with surprise. “You think that girl…?”

  Danny reached his hand out and touched Marge’s cheek tenderly. All he had ever wanted to do was protect his gentle country-reared wife from being subjected to the scum of London. He had strove to make his little tavern as respectable as any country inn, and with the exception of an occasional fight, he had succeeded.

  “I should have never let her stay,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Governess, my arse. She’s too young and comely. No woman would hire the likes of her to keep an eye on her young ‘uns. She’s barely out of the schoolroom herself.

  “And where does a governess get the money to pay for a room one week in advance for two weeks straight,” he continued. “If she were waiting for her father’s ship to come in, wouldn’t she be paying a day at a time? She robbed the bastard before she ran away.”

  “Danny, have you noticed that every time she goes out, she wears mourning clothes and whenever we bring her meals up to her room, she’s wearing that same dress she wore when she arrived?”

  Danny gave his wife a blank look as he tried to fathom her point.

  “She has two portmanteaus full of something, but we’ve never seen her in anything but those two dresses. Not only that, but the few times she has gone out, she has come back with purchases: books, stationery or sewing whatnots. And fruit! Where does the mere governess get that kind of spending money? I’d say she’s been doing more than tutoring a lordling or two.”

  “I know where.”

  Marge took in the narrowing of her husband’s eyes. “There was a man up in her room,” she said, indignantly.

  “When!” he demanded.

  Marge shrunk back from his angry countenance. “The day she paid you for the second week. Daisy told me she saw a man entering her room just as she got to the top of the stairs. When I confronted her, she said he was from the stationery shop and she had accidentally left her change. She said he must have followed her back, but I had not seen her go out that day. She claimed that she had forgotten to use the back stairs and had gone through the common room and that was why we hadn’t seen her.”

  “The lying hussy! Her friend out there has been sending men up to her room. I’ll put a stop to it!”

  The man stormed up the stairs and pounded on the door until an alarmed Andrea opened it.

  “I told you this was a respectable place,” he shouted as he forced his way into the room. “I told you I would not rent to you if you were a whore. Out of the goodness of my heart, I went against my common sense and let you under my roof.”

  “I-I don’t understand,” Andrea managed as she backed away from the enormous man.

  “Are you denying that man who has been keeping a vigil across the street for the last three days isn’t your bully?”

  Andrea gasped. “Are you saying that there has been someone watching the Red Hen for three days? Oh my.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said? Are you denying he’s your bully?”

  Andrea stared at the man too stunned to speak. Of course, he was not her bully, but it was more than a good chance that whoever was out there was watching for her. But why? If someone had found her, they would have either come in to get her, or would have at least informed her father.

  Before Andrea could find her voice, the man scooped up her room key off the table where she left it. “I’ve already sent for the runners. They will be here shortly to haul you and your friend off to gaol.”

  With surprising speed, the man sashayed through the door, slammed it closed behind him, and locked her in. Andrea sat on the bed for several minutes resigned to her fate before she realized she did not have to accept what had befallen her. She knew all she would have to do was tell them her identity to keep from going to the quod, but she would rather it not get that far.

  ~*~

  Miles leaned against the brick wall of the cannery wondering if he should just go across the street and confront Andrea if she was, in fact, still there. He had been keeping a dawn to dusk vigil ever since he had followed her there. The establishment had but one door and he had watched it for so long that he was surprised he was not seeing it in his dreams. But he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Andrea unprotected. With the reward of ten thousand pounds offered for her return, he didn’t trust anyone else to do it.

  Once again, he wrestled with the idea of going in and getting her, then taking her home to her parents. Nevertheless, he wanted to sail with her to America. He wanted her to get to know him without the pressure of this damn betrothal getting in the way. As badly as the whole matter had been handled, if she knew he was the man she was supposed to marry—that he was Shamus—he would begin with a black mark against him. She had seen him with Rory already and that was going to be hard enough to overcome.

  The sun was beginning to lower in the sky casting most of the street into shadows. Miles was surprised that the proprietor’s wife was not back yet. He had thought it strange when the woman had run down to the corner and hailed the hack. It was the first time he had seen her leave alone or in a hurry. Miles felt slightly worried about the woman, mostly because he felt a certain gratitude to her and her husband. It wasn’t often in this kind of neighborhood, one so close to the waterfront docks, that one could come across a respectable tavern.

  When he had first seen Andrea go into the Red Hen, he had asked a few passersby about the little inn. He quickly learned that the owners and the people of the neighborhood, had made the establishment into a nice place where families could go together. Whores were not allowed and sailors and other unsavory riffraff were made to feel unwelcome.

  When a carriage slowed in front of Miles blocking his view of the inn, he automatically moved away from the wall to get a better view of the doorway across the street. As the carriage came to a stop, four men jumped out and grabbed him by the arms, punching him in the stomach a few times for good measure. At first, Miles thought he was being set upon by thieves and did his best to fight back. However, the second he felt the manacle on his wrist, he realized these men were London’s famous Bow Street runners. For some reason he was being arrested—not that, from what he heard, they needed a reason. To Miles, it seemed like total mayhem, the men shouting, and his own shouts as he tried to ascertain the reason behind it. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw the proprietor of the Red Hen, leaving his small establishment, coming straight for him. He was apparently the man with the answers, so he ceased his struggles with the runners to wait for the man to join them.

  Breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath, Danny arrived. “I-I’ve got the girl locked in the room,” he gasped out.

  “The girl?” Miles gritted. “You’re not having her arrested, are you? We haven’t done anything.”

  Miles received a punch in his gut for his protest, doubling him over.

  “It wouldn’t be right to send a bully to gaol without his whore,” the man said with righteous indignation.

  “There’s been a mistake made here.”

>   “’Eard that afore ‘aven’t we, lads,” one of the runners said, with a humorless laugh.

  “My name is Miles Huntington. I own the H & O—”

  “’Untington?” interrupted the same man. “Like the one who added five thousand pounds to the reward for Andrea James?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Then the girl is…?”

  Miles kept his mouth shut until he saw one of the men ball his hand into a fist and rear back. “Yes,” he spat, reluctantly.

  “Surely, you don’t believe him, Frank. Seems a might convenient.”

  “What’s this all about?” Danny questioned, not able to follow the conversation.

  “Andrea James,” Frank said impatiently, as if that explained the matter. Danny continued gaping blankly. “Can you prove it?”

  “Who is Andrea James?”

  All eyes turned to Danny as if he were daft. The entire city had been searching high and low for the young heiress, and the one man who was in a position to turn the girl over to her father and collect the reward, had never heard of her.

  Miles pulled his arm free of Frank’s grasp and reached into his coat pocket for the picture of Andrea that he had clipped from the newspaper. Is this the girl?” he asked the proprietor.

  No one missed the acknowledgement in the corpulent man’s jowled face. He turned his questioning look to Miles. “There’s a reward out for her? What she’d done, murdered someone?”

  “She’s a runaway worth ten thousand pounds, guvnor. Now, don’t you get any ideas about keeping that reward money all to yourself. We all had a hand in catching the girl.”

  Miles cringed. He understood where the conversation was heading. Not only did he foresee the ensuing unpreventable fight, but he also did not want to see Andrea turned over to her father for the reward. Short of bribing every man there, there was nothing he could do.