“The reason for my questions,” Sabine was now saying, “is that one of my late husband’s businesses is a staffing office that places seasoned sailors with boat captains. I am endeavoring to maintain the business, and we are in constant search for owners or captains who might benefit from our men. I can only guess that your location in Portsmouth means you compete with the Royal Navy for crew?”
“You are a . . . businesswoman?” Legg asked carefully.
Sabine shrugged. “I have many occupations.”
Legg considered this. Finally, he said, “I may have some need for crewmen.”
“One of the useful things about my sailors,” Sabine continued, lowering her voice, “is that they have very short memories.” She looked at him through lowered lashes.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Legg. He’d scarcely taken his eyes from her face, but his expression tightened now from appreciative to something harder. Stoker stepped closer still.
Sabine exhaled prettily and looked right and left. “May I speak freely, Mr. Legg?”
“Please,” he invited. Everything about him was a randy invitation.
“I . . . I’m afraid I have not been perfectly honest with you.” Sabine raised a gloved hand and pressed her fingers against his arm, drawing him in.
Sabine went on, “Perhaps I have heard of you, Mr. Legg. Perhaps there has been gossip here and there about certain voyages of certain ships registered under your name that have returned to port with a hull as empty as—” she held out her punch goblet “—this cup. Yet, with a crew that has clearly been worked to the bone as well as handsomely paid. Does any of this sound familiar to you, Mr. Legg?”
“Some sailings deliver goods to France but return to Portsmouth without taking on new cargo.”
“Come now. What shipper leaves a foreign port with nothing to sell in England? Not one as successful as you, I’m sure.” The words were accusing but her inflection was playful. Clearly, Legg was intrigued by the combination, and he relaxed. He traced a line from her finger to her wrist with the back of his hand. Stoker felt his stomach pitch.
Legg said, “What precisely are you saying, Mrs. Toble?”
“I’m saying that if you require sailors to staff a forthcoming voyage, especially something with a very high potential to make us all rich, I should like the opportunity to throw in my lot. The sailors that I can provide are not faint of heart, nor are they particularly watchful, or as I said, known for their long memories.”
She allowed this to sink in and then gave a little gasp, jerking her hand away. “Just to be clear, I should like to know. There are certain enterprises in which I don’t care to dabble. The nasty business of slavery, for example. But beyond that—?” She let the sentence trail off. “Does this sound like something that might interest you, Mr. Legg?”
Stoker listened to her wind him up, oozing conspiracy and a promising sort of vague illicit behavior that could mean anything. It was very effective, he had to acknowledge. A strange skill, unexpected; but his own twitchy jealousy aside, Stoker felt a new pride in how smoothly she had dazzled and duped Phineas Legg.
In the next ten minutes Legg revealed to her that he devoted two of his mother’s five ships to smuggling. He confirmed that the reason these ships returned empty was because their cargo was unloaded on the Isle of Portland, in Dorset—just as she had suspected. Finally, after they’d enjoyed another cup of punch and she allowed him to touch her arm a dozen unnecessary times, he finally revealed what he transported: two of the minerals in powder form, sulphur and saltpeter. They were purchased from mines in Italy and India respectively and smuggled through France.
Sabine listened carefully and then screwed up her face into a confused pout. Stoker could anticipate the next question—But why sulphur and saltpeter?—and he finally, after what felt like an eternity of restraint, stepped forward, and cut in.
“Beggin’ your pardon, madam,” Stoker said, “but you said to tell you when a certain lady was leaving the party?”
The intrusion was not welcome. Sabine and Phineas Legg looked up from their bent-headed conversation as if they were in the midst of solving all the problems of the world. Legg glared. Sabine feigned irritation, but Stoker knew well what she looked like when she was truly angry, and it was not this. She scolded him, which he ignored (he was not the actor she was), and put a possessive hand on the small of her back. Legg puffed himself up to his full height, sucking in a breath to protest, but Sabine went smoothly along.
“Forgive me, Mr. Legg,” she said briskly, “but my guard only follows expressed instructions from me. There is a certain woman that I must speak to on another matter. I came tonight for the purpose of catching her unawares. I’m afraid that I cannot afford to allow her to leave. But I am urgently interested in this business we might do together. May I seek you out later in the evening? Perhaps on the terrace, where we can be more private?”
Stoker slid his hand from her back to her waist, scooping her along.
Mr. Legg agreed reluctantly, and Stoker hustled Sabine into the crowded party, plunging them through dancers who swallowed them up in whirling silk and ostrich feathers.
“What?” asked Sabine breathlessly. “What’s happened? I almost had it. He was just about to tell me the great mystery of what the smugglers are doing!”
Stoker kept walking, shouldering around old women with two heaping plates of food and three debutantes comparing their fans. “He doesn’t need to tell you the bloody mystery. I already know.”
“You do?” She took two steps to his one, scrambling to keep up. Her face was flushed with excited exertion. It was her authentic face, the face that he thought of as only for him. She laughed anxiously. “What is it?”
“They’re making their own gunpowder, Sabine,” he said lowly, dragging her through a line of dancers. “Sulphur and saltpeter, when mixed with charcoal from your kiln in Hampstead, create the type of gunpowder that ignites hunks of rocks and the sides of mountains. It blasts open mining shafts. They’re not smuggling in any one thing, they are buying minerals and mixing them with elements they procure here in England.”
“On the Isle of Portland?” she surmised.
“Why not?”
“They’re mixing it themselves on this uninhabited island,” Sabine deduced, “then loading it on wagons in Dorset.” She looked at Stoker. “Is gunpowder mixed?”
Stoker nodded. “That’s the most rudimentary way to do it. Liquid can also be added to the mix and a little brick can be formed and dried. They call it a mill cake.”
“Could this process happen on a deserted island, perhaps inside a cave? The Isle of Portland is riddled with caves.”
“Absolutely,” Stoker said.
Sabine thought about this. “But gunpowder wasn’t on the list of things smuggled into this country,” she said. “I’m not aware of any tax on gunpowder at all.” She tried to stop walking, but he ushered her along.
She went on, “Where’s the great profit in that?”
“There is no profit in importing gunpowder, because it’s against the law to bring it into the country. The government stiffly regulates the gunpowder trade. There is an abundance of it in Britain, but the crown controls who makes it, how much, and who may buy it. It’s nearly impossible to procure it if you are not a trained expert, cleared to work in mining, in the army—or . . .”
And now she did stop walking. They were at the edge of the ballroom, near double doors that led to the family rooms of the Courtlands’ house. Sabine strode out of the way of lingering couples to a dark spot behind a large potted fern. She waved him over.
“Or . . .” she said, almost giddy, “unless a high price is paid to smugglers?”
He stepped up to her, shoving a palm frond out of his face. He was breathing hard after winding their way across the ballroom. “It’s more than smuggling, Sabine, it’s treason. Concocting illegal gunpowder and distributing it outside the bounds of crown regulation is considered treason in England. You have them.�
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Her expression opened up, happiness and relief and justification shining in her eyes. She raised both hands and squeezed, like she wrung victory from the air. “Treason,” she marveled. “Of course. I never dreamed of a result so damning. My uncle . . . my uncle might be hanged. But to prove it and turn them in might save lives.”
“Undoubtedly it will do,” Stoker said. His hands slid to her waist and he fought the urge to pull her to him. He wanted to peel off her gloves and fling them away; he wanted to touch her everywhere that Legg had touched, imprinting her with his own hands.
She looked up, happiness and satisfaction and something like expectation in her eyes. She seemed to be holding her breath. She let her hands fall and moved backward deeper into the small forest of ferns. He could either follow or leave her to her personal triumph. He followed.
He was just about to let himself let go of everything but her. She was so very happy and he’d played some small role in that. The moment felt pure and almost sacred. He could kiss her to celebrate. He would not let it get out of hand—
“Johnny?”
Stoker froze at the sound of the name he had not heard in more than thirty years. Sabine jumped.
“Johnny Stoker? Marie’s boy?”
It was a male voice. Close. Too close. Sabine scuttled up beside him.
“Are you the son of Marie Stoker?”
The familiar intonation of his mother’s name filled him with a hurt and a longing he’d worked a lifetime to block out. He squeezed Sabine against him.
No, he thought. Not here, not now.
He shut his eyes.
“Johnny Stoker?”
Of course he could not have a single moment of sweetness with Sabine without some intrusion. It had been far too much to ask, just one kiss.
“The note from Bryson Courtland said he’d invited me on your behalf, so I know it’s you,” the voice said again. “Come on, give us a look. Don’t try to hide it.”
Stoker was a coward not to step into the light, but he found himself unable to move. He was a boy again; he was Johnny. The street-hardened toughness of Stoker had not yet locked around his body or his heart.
A very old man with white hair and pale green eyes stepped heavily toward them, squinting into the ferns. Sabine sucked in a little breath. The sound broke Stoker’s reverie and he slid his hands from her and stepped away. He was not a boy, he was battle-hardened, and the only man who scared him was himself.
Stoker considered the man. He’d known, of course, who he was. The voice was unmistakable. The childhood name he invoked. This was Sauly New, one of his mother’s old customers. What he was doing here, at a society ball, Stoker could not guess. Stoker had seen him often enough as a boy, although he looked so very old now. He’d dressed finely once upon a time, but now his suit was faded and tight.
Stoker told him, “I have no business with you, sir.”
Sabine stepped to his side. “Stoker?” she whispered.
Stoker made a low wave, trying to push her back.
“Stoker?” she persisted, her voice still low. “Do you know who this is?”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“You know him?” Sabine tried to confirm.
Sauly New swayed crookedly, old or drunk or blind in the dim light. He huffed out sawing breaths like a man who’d climbed a thousand steps.
“This is a ghost from my other life,” Stoker said. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Right,” said Sabine, drawing out the word. She grabbed his hand and began to tug his head down, to whisper in his ear.
The man slurred. “I thought I saw you dart through the dancers. I . . . I would know you anywhere. You always were running.” He coughed violently, his lungs drowning in fluid. “I’m too old and sick, damn you.”
“Sabine?” Stoker said calmly. “Will you go to Bryson and Elisabeth? Just for ten minutes? Do not leave their side, do not speak to Leg—”
Sabine cut him off with a noise of frustration and yanked on his arm hard.
“That,” she whispered harshly, “is the Duke of Wrest.”
Stoker shook his head, barely hearing. “No, he is a man from my boyhood. I’m afraid that my old life has the uncanny tendency to crash in on my new. Generally, it happens when I am the least able to manage it. It was always meant to be far removed from you. I never wanted it to touch you.”
“Stoker, you’re not listening,” Sabine said, all but climbing up his arm. “I mailed you a description of the Duke of Wrest when you had me follow him around. Did you not read it? I even made a sketch. This is the man.”
Stoker simply stared. Sabine made a noise that was half shout, half scoff and clapped both hands on either side of Stoker’s face, turning his eyes to stare into hers. “That man,” she whispered, “is the man”—and now she barely mouthed the words—“you had me follow. His name is Lord Saul Newington, the Duke of Wrest.”
Stoker staggered back, jerking his face from her hands. “Him?” he rasped.
But this man had been no duke, Stoker thought. He’d referred to Stoker as Johnny and given him sweets and broke his mother’s heart again and again for years.
This man, who (it was no use in denying it) looked like a very old, very swollen, very stooped version of himself, had not been the man in Sabine’s beautiful sketch.
This man was the bloody Duke of Wrest?
“No,” Stoker gritted out, shaking his head, his mind racing with memories and misunderstanding and lies, lies, lies, so many lies.
This meant the same man who’d sent an assassin to kill him was standing here in a bloody ballroom, saying . . . saying. . . .
But what was he saying?
“How are you enjoying your evening, Your Grace?” Sabine asked flatly, taking hold of Stoker’s arm.
“I’ve had better nights, to be honest,” he said. “But you must be my son’s doxie?”
My son?
Stoker saw red. He lunged but Sabine squeezed his arm with all her strength, tethering herself to him. “Let us be thoughtful about this,” she said calmly. Her voice was a cool splash of water in the inferno of his anger, but he ignored her. He tried to shake her off.
“Stoker,” she said again, louder this time, “wait.” She would not let go.
“There’s nothing to think, this is a lie,” Stoker ground out, trying again to pull free.
“Your Grace?” she called to the teetering old man. “May I call you, Your Grace?”
“Of course. And what shall I call you? You’re a pretty little thing.”
“You will not speak to her!” Stoker growled, his voice breaking.
This was not the way the night was meant to go. Stoker had not spent his life running, and rescuing, and sailing the bloody backside of the world to stand in a ballroom, facing down a man who used to tie his mother’s heart in knots. His beautiful Sabine was not conversing with a belligerent, inebriated, caustic shadow from his past—the same man who put a price on his head.
For the first time in his life, Stoker felt like he might actually howl—scream like a madman, shout down the walls because of the bloody, futile defeat of it all. He’d worked too hard and made too many correct choices for his life to circle back to this. While Sabine witnessed it all.
“Tell him,” Sabine snapped to the old man. “Tell him that you are the Duke of Wrest. Let us begin there. So that we are all perfectly clear.”
“Oh yes,” sloshed the old man. “I am he.”
“And you are claiming to be Jon Stoker’s father?”
“Well, I supplied the living-giving essence that got his mother breeding. There was no union, save a mutual affinity for—”
“You blackguard!” Stoker raged and lunged.
Chapter Nineteen
Sabine let out a cry and scrambled after Stoker, catching him around the waist and pushing him like a large piece of furniture, through the ballroom door.
“Leave it,” she ordered, her voice ringing with authority. “Leave it for now.
Let us be the reasonable ones.”
Behind them, the duke warbled, “I must speak to my son . . .”
Stoker made a growling sound and Sabine tugged him toward the rear of the house. They walked a few steps before Stoker pulled free and reversed back into the ballroom. Sabine shouted again and scrambled after him, catching him by the arm and pivoting, spinning them back into the hall.
“And you said you didn’t want to dance,” she said, straining with effort.
“Let me go.”
“I will not. Walk. Where does this corridor lead?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, but he began to walk.
“We will discover it, then.”
He seemed to have abandoned the idea of returning to the ballroom, striding away at a fast clip. She hustled to keep pace with him.
“Slowly, Stoker,” she said, “your wound, your ribs.”
“I feel no pain,” he said.
“We are not being pursued. We need not sprint. I merely wanted to prevent a scene.”
“Then why ask Bryson to invite him?”
“I can see now,” she confessed, “that this was a terrible mistake. But please remember, I did not know you actually knew this person. How could we know his claims of paternity were . . . were—true? Or, how could I know, Stoker? Is it possible that he actually sired you—”
“That is the man . . . ?” Stoker demanded, ignoring her question. “That is the man I asked you to follow around London for a month last year?” He glanced at her.
“I’ve said yes—the Duke of Wrest. He was not difficult to discover. He is not out in society but he is hardly a recluse.”
They reached glass doors that appeared to open into a garden, and Stoker turned right, stalking down a second long corridor.
“I knew him,” Stoker said. He sounded like he spoke to himself. Or the furniture. The paintings on the wall. “But I had no idea he was a bloody duke. And I had absolutely no notion that he was my—That he’d known my mother before—” He couldn’t finish.
You May Kiss the Duke Page 20
