by Gaelen Foley
Connor looked askance at him.
“Well, what do we do now?” Maggie asked once she’d found her voice again.
“I hardly know,” Connor growled. “There are hundreds and hundreds of brothels in London… The city’s infamous for it, even on the Continent. Girl’s a needle in a haystack at this point. For that matter, we don’t even know if she’s still in London. He might’ve taken her elsewhere.”
“Or got rid of her altogether,” Maggie murmured grimly.
“God, I hope I’m not responsible for this,” Connor said.
“Of course not. The dragoon who targeted her is, not you.” Maggie could see by the brooding look that he begged to differ.
He looked away, glowering. “I suppose I’ll have one of my useless Bow Street fellows check to see if anyone matching Saffie’s description has turned up dead in London over the past few months. Will, you’ll have to come along to tell them what she looks like. I don’t remember her at all.”
“She was pretty,” Will said in a somber tone.
Connor sighed. “Unfortunately, it seems that, at least for now, our search has reached an impasse.”
Maggie nodded, her heart sinking, then glanced toward the road. The sun was bright overhead, climbing toward noon.
“I suppose this is where we must say goodbye.” She looked up at Connor. “I have to get back in time for morning calls.”
Penelope and Will drifted away, giving the two of them some privacy as they stood near the carriages.
Connor took Maggie’s hand and squeezed it gently. “Thanks for all your help today.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll see you Friday evening, yes?”
“Aunt Lucinda’s soirée.” Though her heart was troubled over Saffie, Maggie smiled and squeezed his gloved fingers in her own. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank God,” he muttered. “I’m counting on you to help preserve my sanity that night.” Then he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Enjoy your morning calls, my dear. Though I still don’t understand why they call them that when it’s clearly afternoon.”
She chuckled and pulled away with reluctance, sliding her fingers across his palm as they parted. “I will. You enjoy your day, too. And let’s both say a prayer for Saffie, wherever she is.”
He nodded and sketched a bow as Maggie withdrew.
“You know, if we do find her,” she said to Penelope when they got back into their coach, “there’s no way we can bring her back here to that dreadful brother of hers.”
“Not if he’s going to beat her,” Penelope agreed with a huff. “Brute.”
They lapsed into thoughtful silence as Hubert drove them home, following Connor’s town coach the whole way back.
When they finally rolled into Moonlight Square, Penelope was the first to spot the dark-haired man sitting on the front steps of Amberley House, idly whittling wood with a penknife.
“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing toward the open window on her side of the carriage.
Instantly, Maggie leaned over to look, fearing the worst. Was it the killer? Had the dragoon returned?
But when the brawny, apple-cheeked fellow jumped up, hailing Connor’s coach with a broad smile, Maggie breathed a sigh of relief.
Whoever he was, he got quite a reaction from the duke—and Will and Nestor, too.
The surgeon-turned-coachman stopped Connor’s town coach in the middle of the street, blocking the way for Maggie and Penelope, to their surprise. Even more startling, Connor immediately leapt out of his carriage with Will right behind him.
“Rory!” they both cried.
The newcomer grinned, flipped his penknife closed, twirled it nimbly in his hand, and put it away just in time to return Connor’s brief bear hug. “Major. Willy.”
“Good God, man, where’s the rest of you?” Connor cried with a grin from ear to ear as he clapped the fellow on both shoulders.
“Ha! Poisoning was good for me,” the newcomer declared, slapping his own flat stomach.
“I barely recognize you!” Connor exclaimed.
The newcomer lifted his arms out to his sides. “Gorgeous, ain’t I?”
Connor smirked. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Penelope made a low sound of possible agreement, studying the fellow, while, out on the pavement, a laughing Will leaned close to shake his hand.
“Welcome back, sarge! You’re almost as skinny as me now.”
“God, I hope not,” the man said, whacking Will on the back with a chuckle.
The boy went flying, but he seemed to have expected that.
The cheerful man turned last to Nestor and waved. “Better move your arse, doc—you’re blocking the street. I think these pretty ladies want to get through.”
“Oh my,” Penelope murmured when the roguish fellow beamed a smile at her through the carriage window.
Maggie arched a brow, glancing at her fashionable maid.
Connor, standing behind his friend, looked equally surprised.
But Nestor duly laid hold of the lead horse’s bridle and moved the coach aside so they could pass.
“Well, that answers that question,” Maggie said with amusement. “At least now we know who he is.”
Penelope nodded and sent her a twinkling glance, blushing just a bit after having caught his eye. “That’s Rory.”
CHAPTER 23
On the Hunt
“Man, it’s good to see you! How are you feeling?” Connor stood amazed at his friend’s transformation.
“Never better,” Rory said absently, still watching Maggie’s carriage pass, and peering, in particular, at the elegant blond lady’s maid in the window.
“I’ll bet!” Connor said. “All trim and healthy. Look at your clothes hanging off you. How much did you lose?”
Rory snorted. “Three stone.”
Will sighed. “Could’ve given it to me.”
“Ha.” Rory shrugged. “I was so ill for a few weeks there, my glorious girth melted down to nothing.” He clapped both hands to his abdomen and grinned. “Once I started getting better, I just decided to keep it going. Although…now that you mention it, I am a bit peckish.”
Nestor chortled, still holding on to the lead horse’s bridle along the edge of the street, where he’d moved the carriage to so that Maggie could pass. “Some things never change.”
“Want to eat?” Connor asked all three.
“Not here!” Rory retorted.
Will laughed.
Connor winced. “Understandable. No matter. I found us a good pub.” He’d liked the one by the shopping arcade that day with Maggie. “I’ll take you lads there for a meal—my treat.”
“Say, Major?” Rory rapped him on the chest, then nodded down the street after the Birdwell coach. “You know those lasses? ’Cause I might want an introduction to the little blonde, and maybe her friend, too. Couldn’t see her very well, but you never know.”
Connor started laughing.
“Did you see her lookin’ at me?” Rory hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Women look at me now! It’s the damnedest thing.”
“Oh, I can introduce you to the blonde, mate. But you can’t have her friend,” Connor said mildly.
“And why not?” Rory tossed him a glance full of humor.
Connor folded his arms across his chest. “Because I’m marrying her, actually.”
“What?” Rory hollered.
Connor laughed heartily, as did the others, and clapped him on the back. “Oh, my friend, much has happened in your absence. I have a lot to tell you.”
“Is he serious?” Rory asked Nestor and Will. “He’s getting leg-shackled?”
They all nodded.
“Mm-hmm,” Connor said.
Rory glanced around. “Am I at the right bloody house?”
Connor chuckled and clasped his shoulder. “Come on, you lot. Let’s go eat, and I’ll tell you all about it. Well, not all about it, if ye take my meanin’.”
> Rory managed to shake off his shock at Connor’s news, but held up a hand. “Wait. Before we go get drunk to celebrate this…impossible news, I need to tell you what I learned while I was out rambling around. It’s big.”
“Oh?” Connor lowered his voice, all humor fading instantly. “Go on.”
“Well, I did some sleuthing like you asked me to once I was on m’ feet again. You’re not going to believe this. Better brace yourself, maje.”
“What is it?” Connor asked.
Rory smirked. “Turns out your ancestor, the first duke? Married a courtesan. His mistress.”
Connor’s face fell. “Oh. We already know that.”
Rory frowned, looking crestfallen for a second, then shrugged it off. “Well, I found out the name of her old pimp.”
“That’s new! Yes?”
“Not sure if the man’s still alive, but he’s called Elias Flynn. Owns half a dozen brothels and gambling hells around London. The Lucky Stud, Paradise Inn, Aphrodite’s Cove. Those are the ones I found the names of, anyway. And I think,” Rory added with a devilish glint in his eyes, “that we had better go and have ourselves a look inside each and every one of ’em.”
Connor snorted. Will cringed. Nestor shrugged.
“Might not be a bad idea,” said the surgeon. “What else have you got?”
“Right,” Rory continued. “Though this Flynn made his fortune as a whoremonger, he’s got dreams of turning his family respectable one day. Married a lady whose family had ancient bloodlines but not a penny left to their names. Didn’t manage to find out her name. She’s dead now, I think, but they had two sons. The younger one was sent to study at Oxford. The firstborn became a dragoon.”
Connor narrowed his eyes. “A dragoon? You don’t say.” He stared intensely at Rory, weighing every word.
“Aye, but then the younger one died about two years ago. I’m not sure how. Some kind of squabble in the streets led to violence. It happened here in Town.”
“How did you learn all this?” Nestor asked.
Rory shrugged. “Following my nose. Just like always. Eventually led me to an old barmaid, who poured me pints of ale and told me all about how she used to entertain the sailors at Aphrodite’s Cove.” He winked. “You know me—I’m a good listener.”
“Good work, McFeatheridge.” Connor’s mind was whirling. He pulled the dragoon’s button out of his pocket and gave it to his friend. “Look what we found right here in my coach house.”
Nestor’s one-eyed gaze darted from Rory to Connor. “Maybe Flynn’s been blackmailing the duchess all this time.”
“Believe me,” Connor muttered, “I will get to the bottom of this when I question Aunt Lucinda after the soirée. This time, I won’t allow her to brush me off again. In the meantime, I daresay our first priority is tracking down a dragoon by the name of Flynn.”
“Wellll, not exactly,” Rory said. “Flynn’s sons took the surname connected to the mother’s upper-class family, but I wasn’t able to find out what it was. It seems Flynn made some attempt to hide his sons’ connection to his own ill-gotten gains. The whoremonger’s goal seems to have been to give his boys the benefits of his dirty money, sanitized by the mother’s high rank.”
“I see,” Connor said. “Well, sounds like visiting Flynn’s brothels is our only firm lead at the moment, so let’s see what we can find. But business only. Remember, boys, we’re on a mission.”
Rory rubbed his hands together. “I like this mission.”
“Sounds sleazy,” Will muttered.
“Here’s hoping.” Rory slung his arm around the lad’s shoulder. “Hey, Major, let’s get Willy a girl while we’re there so he can finally lose his cherry.”
“What?” Will cried, turning red and shoving him away. “What makes you think I’m still a virgin?”
The rest of them just started laughing.
* * *
“Damn,” Nestor said heavily as they entered Aphrodite’s Cove early that evening. “I really miss my other eye.”
Will kept his head down, embarrassed at all the half-naked women everywhere. “I don’t think Lady Margaret would approve of this, Major.”
“I don’t disagree,” Connor said, but in truth, he was so smitten with Maggie that no other woman alive presented the slightest temptation. Especially not the hard-eyed, paint-crusted harlots trawling this dim, low-ceilinged hellhole.
Connor shook his head. It was inconceivable to him that queenly Aunt Lucinda could have got her start in such a place. Then again, Lord Sefton had spoken of first glimpsing “Lucky Lucy Bly” in her theater box, which was how the high-priced harlots generally advertised themselves.
Apparently, Elias Flynn had all kinds of mares in his stables, from the most exclusive courtesans selling pleasure to the aristocracy, to these poor, common trollops servicing sailors on shore leave.
The sight of them depressed Connor.
Earlier, they had visited Elias Flynn’s Lucky Stud gambling hell and found it nearly empty, but that was because it had only been midafternoon.
To pass the time until these nocturnal establishments began waking up, they’d taken a meal at that good pub near the shopping arcade, and Connor had told Rory all about his little Lady Maggie Winthrop.
Rory, in turn, had regaled them with talk of his travels. They’d played darts, watched the clock. Finally, they had gone for a look around inside Flynn’s brothel called the Paradise Inn.
By then, it had been about five in the afternoon, and the women had been at their freshest, frisky and loading up on liquor to help them face the night ahead.
They had hung on Rory, petted Nestor and praised his cleverness, and squeezed Will’s cheeks, calling him a baby face.
They had made themselves abundantly available to Connor, as well, but he had remained coolly aloof, watching everything.
He remained so now, noting that the second house of ill repute, Aphrodite’s Cove, a sailor’s haven, was just a stone’s throw from the docks where he had been attacked by the “cutpurse” that first night, moments after stepping off the boat from Ireland.
Rory elbowed him, breaking into his musings. “Let’s get a drink and I’ll chat up some of the ladies. They might know Flynn’s son.”
“Be careful,” Connor warned him, giving his friend a look that reminded him that the man in question could be the killer.
Rory started toward the bar, but Will put up his arm abruptly, blocking the way. “Hold on!”
Nestor looked at him. “What is it?”
“Look!” Will pointed. “It’s Saffie!”
“Where?” Connor asked.
“Right there, sir! In the red gown. Criminy,” the boy added in awe.
Every muscle tensed, Connor followed the direction of Will’s pointing finger, past a cluster of women sashaying by.
Amid the swirls of smoke, a pert young blonde in a red dress leaned against one of the tavern’s wooden posts with her hands flat behind her. She was pretty enough but looked entirely bored, staring upward into space as though she was counting the ceiling rafters.
“Are you sure that’s her?” Connor asked.
“I’m certain of it, sir.”
“Doesn’t look like a scullery maid to me,” Nestor mumbled.
“I’ll say,” Rory said.
But it was Saffie, all right. For, at that moment, her wandering gaze fell upon Will.
She jolted, jumped forward from the post like a startled cat, and then waved eagerly to him, a look of joy breaking across her face.
“Will? Will? Private Duffy! Is it you?” She started forward—but then spotted Nestor, and when her vapid gaze swung to Connor, she froze, gasped with obvious recognition, then whirled around and fled.
Will looked wryly at Connor. “Told you.”
“See if you can catch up to her,” Nestor ordered the lad, gesturing after the girl. “Get her to come and talk to us.”
“Tell her not to worry, that I’m not angry at her,” Connor said. “Say we’v
e only come to see if she’s all right. Hurry, don’t lose her.”
“Do my best,” Will replied, then rushed off after Saffie, trying not to look at the bosoms that were thrust at him along the way.
The others went and ordered pints of ale for the sake of blending in while they waited for Will to coax Saffie back out.
It took ten minutes, but he finally led her over by the hand. The girl half hid behind Will’s slight frame, eyeing the others from over his shoulder with fear and resentment.
But she must’ve trusted the lad, for she followed, wide-eyed, as Will led her down to the far corner of the bar, where the three of them had sat down on long-legged stools.
“Fellows,” Will announced as the two joined them, “Saffie has something she’d like to say to sarge.”
Rory raised his eyebrows. “Yes, dear heart?”
The girl wrestled visibly with the notion of admitting to anything concerning the poison; guilt and angst were written all over her guileless face.
“Go on, Saffie,” Will said gently. “It’s all right.”
“But he’ll send me to Newgate!” she whispered.
“No, no, he won’t. I promise.”
Saffie gazed at Will with eyes full of innocence and trust, then gulped and looked again at Rory. “I’m sorry you got sick, sir. It was never meant for you.”
“Ah, no matter,” Rory said with a cheerful wave of his hand, putting her at ease in that particular way of his. “As you can see, I’m right as rain now. All’s well that ends well.”
She stared at him with uncertainty, then glanced warily at Connor.
For whom the poison had been intended.
He wanted to know why, but kept his mouth shut for fear of scaring her away, especially now that he knew she was slightly soft in the head.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Nestor spoke up, “it would interest me as an apothecary to hear what the potion was.”
Saffie shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. He just gave it to me.”
“Who did, dear heart?” Rory asked with his most mesmerizing smile.
Saffie flinched and backed away a bit. “I’m not tellin’. Never.”
