The Duke's Perfect Wife

by Jennifer Ashley

  Ian straightened to his full height in front of Hart, and a step later, Hart could too.

  The echoes broadened, meaning that the ceiling had vaulted upward, and the air smelled almost fresh. A light, so faint as to be barely a light, came from Hart’s right. After the complete darkness of the tunnel, it seemed bright.

  “Storm drain,” Ian said, gesturing to the light. “This one empties into the Fleet.”

  The Fleet River had been covered, partly or completely, for centuries. It was mostly a sewer now, pouring into the Thames after heavy rains via drains like this one.

  “How do we get out?” Hart asked. “The hell I’m going to float myself down the filthy Fleet and get stuck halfway in a storm grating.”

  “Shafts go up to the streets,” Ian said. “But not here.”

  Of course not. “Where, then?”

  “Through the tunnels,” Ian said. “A mile, maybe more.”

  Hart swallowed on dryness. Ian’s face was a pale smudge in the darkness, but Hart could see little beyond that. “Give me the flask again.”

  Wordlessly Ian put the flask of whiskey into Hart’s hand, and Hart upended more single malt into his mouth. It was ambrosia, though he’d love a clear glass of water.

  Hart gave the flask back to Ian, and Ian pocketed it without drinking. “This way,” he said.

  Hart took two steps to follow him, then his legs buckled. He found himself on bare floor, retching again. His head was spinning like a gyroscope.

  Ian was next to him. “In the explosion, something hit you in the head,” Ian said.

  Hart gasped for breath. “Very perceptive of you, Ian.”

  Ian went quiet, but Hart knew him well enough to know that thoughts were moving through Ian’s head at lightning speed while he tried to decide what to do.

  “If we go slowly, I can make it,” Hart said.

  “If we are too slow, we can’t outrun the water. Or the gasses.”

  “I don’t see that we have a bloody choice.” Hart hung on to Ian as his younger brother leveraged Hart to his feet. The dizziness made everything go black for a moment. “Wait.”

  Hart felt his feet leave the ground as Ian hoisted Hart onto his back. Without a word, they started moving, slowly, Hart hanging on as Ian carried him out.

  He knew he’d never convince Ian to leave him behind and go for help. When Ian fixed on a course, all the reasoning in the world couldn’t move him. Just as well. Hart did not want to be down here alone, in any case.

  The sudden echoing roar was their only warning. Rains north of the city had raised the level of the water, and now it poured into the round pipes, rising over the weirs, to flow through the storm drains and down into the rivers.

  Ian yelled, his words incoherent, as he lifted Hart up and shoved him onto a tall slab of stone next to the weir. The rocks were slippery, and Hart scrambled to hold on and stay awake at the same time.

  Water poured into the tunnel. In the faint light, soon obliterated by water, Hart saw his brother be swept from his feet and carried at breakneck speed away from him.

  “Ian!” Hart screamed. “Ian!”

  His words were lost in the water. For an age it pulsed through swirling waters in the darkness. Ian had been swept the other way, caught in a surge that went back into the round tunnels. But the tunnels were full to the top.

  “Ian!” Hart shouted.

  After a long, heartbreakingly long time, the waters receded. When it had reduced to a foot flowing on the floor below him, Hart slid down from his perch. His head pounded, and he fell, landing in the freezing cold water.

  He would die in here. Ian could already be dead.

  The light vanished. Hart had no way of knowing if debris in the water had blocked the drain or whether the sun was going down outside. Or maybe it was his eyes closing.

  The next thing Hart knew, someone kicked him.

  “This ’ere’s my patch,” a man said. “What you doing on it?”

  Hart peeled open his eyes. A lantern swung in front of his face, blinding him, and the pounding in his head soared to sickening levels.

  “You know the way out?” Hart asked. His voice came out a croak, barely audible.

  “Lost, are ye? That’s what ye get for being on my patch. What did ye take?”

  “Show me the way out. I’ll pay you.”

  The man thrust his hand inside Hart’s coat and came out again, empty. “Seems like you don’t have nothing.”

  Between the blast, the fall, the desperate crawling, and the flood, Hart was surprised his clothes hadn’t shredded. His money pouch must have fallen out somewhere along the way.

  “When you get me out, I’ll pay.”

  “Right,” the man said.

  Hart saw his boot draw back, tried to grab it as it came down, but his dizziness made him clumsy. The boot struck Hart’s face, and then everything went dark again.

  Eleanor was back at the Grosvenor Square house with the rest of the family by the time darkness fell. Mr. Fellows and all the police in London had searched, but they’d found no sign of either Hart or Ian.

  Cameron was there, summoned from Berkshire by telegram, and Daniel telegraphed to say he was on his way. Mac and Cameron were about to tear the city apart. Eleanor paced the front rooms, unable to sit down. Beth perched on the edge of a chair, just as jumpy as Eleanor.

  “We have to do something,” Beth was saying.

  Eleanor couldn’t answer. She wanted to rush through the streets, turning over every stone until she found Hart. Inspector Fellows and his men had explored the service tunnels under Euston station, but had found nothing. Fellows was here now, in the dining room with Cam and Mac.

  Eleanor glanced out the window, but not much could be seen in the heavy fog, barely penetrated by the gaslights on the square. She felt numb, sickeningly so. This can’t be real. He’ll come striding home, deriding us all for worrying.

  Beth joined her at the window, her arm around Eleanor’s waist. Two women, watching and waiting for their beloved men who might never come home again.

  Beth stiffened suddenly, a small gasp emitting from her mouth. She was staring straight into the fog, intense and alert. Eleanor tried to see what she did, but the fog remained dense.

  “What is it?”

  Beth didn’t answer. She broke away from Eleanor and rushed out of the room and down the stairs.

  Beth flung open the front door and ran straight into the night, Eleanor after her, Ainsley and Isabella and the men following to see what was the matter. With a cry of joy, Beth launched herself at the giant of a man who materialized out of the fog and opened his arms to sweep her into them.

  “Ian!” Eleanor shouted. “It’s Ian!” she called back to the others.

  Ian looked terrible. He was covered from head to foot in mud and slime, his face coated with it, but his eyes shone like golden fire. Beth held on to him, tears streaming down her face.

  Eleanor reached them. “Dear heavens, Ian,” she asked breathlessly. “What happened to you? Where is Hart?”

  Ian kept his arms around Beth, but he looked at Eleanor. “Come with me,” he said. “Come with me.”

  He started off, Beth at his side. Eleanor did not bother to ask questions. She hurried after him, calling for the others to come.

  Fellows and Mac caught up to them as they reached Grosvenor Street. “Ian, what are you doing?” Mac demanded.

  “He’s taking us to Hart,” Eleanor said. Ian hadn’t said so, but she knew. “Where, Ian?”

  Ian pointed, vaguely north and east.

  “At least wait for a coach,” Mac said. “Cameron’s bringing it.”

  Ian did let them get the coach. They piled into it, Ian holding Beth on his lap, she not minding that her husband was filthy and stank to high heaven.

  They rode toward Euston station but went beyond it, to Chalton Street. Ian jumped down from the coach as soon as it stopped, opened a grating, and said. “He’s here. By the storm weir. I will show you.”

 
Fellows rounded up constables and Hart’s men still searching the area, as well as the work gang who’d been helping them search the tunnels. Fellows poured them all down through the street, Ian leading the way.

  Eleanor waited on the pavement above, refusing to return to the coach. She paced here as she had in the drawing room, but now hope had come back, and fear, with a vengeance.

  An hour later, her hopes were still there, she waiting at any moment to hear a shout that they’d found him, followed by Hart’s growl that he wanted to be pulled out of the shit hole. She could imagine it so strongly that she was certain, so certain it would happen.

  After an hour and a quarter, Fellows’s constables and the pipe men started coming up, dirty and defeated.

  Fellows spoke to the head of the gang and returned to Eleanor, followed by Ian. Fellows’s brows were drawn, though Ian’s jaw was tight with determination.

  “He’s not there, ma’am,” Fellows said. “Ian led us right to the place, but it’s flooded down there, and he is gone.” He looked at Eleanor with eyes so like Hart’s. “They’re going to keep looking once the water has receded, but they’re afraid he’s washed into one of the rivers and is on his way to the Thames.” Fellows’s voice went quiet. “No one survives that journey, Your Grace.”

  Ian, still dirty, shook his head. “I’ll find him.” He looked at Eleanor, holding her gaze for once, his eyes even more like Hart’s than Fellows’s. “I can always find him.”

  Chapter 20

  Eleanor.

  Hart swam out of dreams to a gentle rocking. He opened his eyes, his head still pounding—sleep hadn’t helped.

  He stared for a moment at the board ceiling a few inches above his eyes before he realized that he lay on a pallet with a quilt over him. A threadbare, dirty quilt, but a quilt nonetheless.

  The space that held the pallet was narrow, cramped, and filled with oars, ropes, and a tangled net. A crawl space, really, one someone had decided to tuck him into as well.

  Hart ran his hand over his face, feeling the scratch of a deep beard. How long had he lain here? One day? Two?

  Eleanor. Ian.

  He tried to sit up in alarm, and cracked his head on the low beam above his head. He dropped back to the thin pillow, head spinning again.

  Hart made himself lie still. He needed to find out where he was, what had happened, how much time had passed, and what he could do. And most of all, he needed to get rid of this be-damned headache.

  Taking stock, Hart realized that his coat was gone and so were his waistcoat and shirt. He could feel the warm folds of his kilt around his legs, but the only thing covering his torso was the thin linen shirt he wore under his garments. He wriggled his toes and found woolen socks, boots gone.

  Whoever had robbed him were fools. The handspun wool of the kilt was more valuable than the cashmere coat and lawn shirt put together. Tartans, at least for his branch of the Mackenzie clan, were spun in the mountains near Kilmorgan by a family who allowed no one else to get their hands on the wool, not even other Mackenzies. A true Mackenzie tartan was a rare and valuable thing.

  At this moment, though, if shrewish old Teasag Mackenzie had crawled in here, scolding Hart for getting her plaid dirty, Hart would kiss her.

  He carefully got himself off the pallet and crawled toward the square of light at the wider end of the space. He looked out at the rain, a narrow, rocking boat, and the River Thames.

  The light was gray, foggy, like a film over a window. Through it he saw the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the line of buildings to its right that was the city, and to its left, the Strand and the Temples. The river surrounded the boat, and the south bank was shrouded in mist.

  Eleanor was out there in that city somewhere. Safe at home in Grosvenor Square? Or lying hurt, or dead? He had to know. He had to leave. He had to find her.

  A child sat on the gunwale of the boat, picking through a net. Not mending it, Hart saw after a moment, but pulling things out of it. The lad would study what he’d found and either toss it behind him on the boat or throw it back into the river.

  Hart moved, and stopped. His head still hurt like fury, and he couldn’t suppress a groan.

  The lad saw him, tossed down the net, and scampered to the front of the boat and the cabin there. He returned in a moment with a man in a long coat and boots, with a lined face covered by a two-day beard.

  The man casually pulled back his coat to show Hart a foot-long knife sheathed in his belt. The lad went back to the net, unconcerned.

  “Awake are ye?”

  Hart remembered the voice from his underground tomb. “You kicked the hell out of me,” Hart said. “Bastard.”

  The man shrugged. “Easier to move you if you were out. Water was coming back.”

  “That, and I offered you money.”

  Another shrug. “Didn’t hurt. I could see you were rich, in spite of you not having any money on you. Me wife thinks you have plenty more at home.”

  Home. I need to get there.

  “You think I’ll pay you after you stripped me and sold my clothes?” Hart asked in a casual tone.

  “Clothes were in tatters. Got a couple shillings for them from the rag and bone man. That pays for your passage on the boat. For saving your life, I’ll ask a bit more.”

  Hart pulled himself all the way out of the hole. That effort took his strength, and he sat down hard on a chest shoved against the cabin’s outer wall. “You have amazing compassion.” Hart rubbed his temples. “Do you also have water? Or better still, coffee?”

  “The wife is brewing some now. You let her have a look at that head of yours, then you’ll tell us all about who you are and where you want to be dropped off.”

  Home. Home. Eleanor. But caution stopped his tongue. The bomb in Euston station had been planted when someone had known he would be there, meeting his wife. Ian had said that the man who’d set the bomb had died with it, but there would be others. The attempt coming after Darragh’s failure at Kilmorgan could mean more Fenians Inspector Fellows had missed, or another group deciding the Fenians had a good idea. If whoever it was discovered that the bomb had failed to kill Hart, they’d try again, or perhaps go after his family to flush Hart out of hiding. That could not happen. He would not let it.

  The bank of the Thames was tantalizingly close. Hart rubbed his whiskered face again as he looked at it. His chances of reaching it if he swam for it, especially with the dent in his head, weren’t good. Plus, he could not be sure that the denizens who trolled the water’s edge for valuable flotsam wouldn’t simply shove a knife through his ribs as he lay recovering from the swim. His rescuer might be eager to stick him too. Men who ran up and down the river and combed the tunnels under London for treasure were a law unto themselves, standing firm against those who tried to come between them and their livelihood. Hart needed to wait, to watch, to plan.

  A look at the man’s unconcerned face as he disappeared into the forward cabin told Hart that his rescuer had no idea who he was—a wealthy man, that was all. Hart would need to make certain he never did find out.

  Hart watched the child a little longer, then he reached down and picked up part of the net. He extracted a copper coin from the thin rope and tossed it to the boy’s growing heap. “You missed this.”

  The boy snatched up the penny, peered at it, nodded, and let it drop. He’d collected coins, links of chains, a tin box, a necklace of shells, and a tin soldier. Hart picked up the soldier.

  “Highland regiment,” he said, tossing it back down. He continued looking through the net, and the lad didn’t object.

  “You’re a Scot?” the boy asked.

  “Obviously, lad.” Hart played up his accent. “Who else would be lost in the sewers in a tartan?”

  “Dad says they shouldn’t come down here if they don’t understand the streets of London.”

  “I agree w’ ye.”

  By the time Dad returned with a mug of coffee, a handkerchief over it to keep the rain out, Hart had added an
other shell, a ha’penny piece, and a broken earring to the boy’s pile.

  The wife came out with him, a sturdy woman in a bulky sweater with black hair under a fisherman’s cap. She sat down with a bowl of water and a cloth and started dabbing Hart’s head.

  It hurt, but his skull throbbed less now than it had underground. Hart gritted his teeth and got through it.

  “Now, then,” the man said. “Who are you?”

  Hart had decided what to tell them—exactly nothing. At least for now.