by Eva Devon
As well he might. Toby slipped into his room, letting the door lock fall with an audible snap—immediately, he could hear the Runners start to creep up the creaking stair.
Perfect—they were so easily led.
When he judged they had crept about halfway up the long flight, Toby opened his window and fired off his gun.
A cry instantly went up from below, “Jeesus God! He’s kilt hisself!”
Immediately, their feet began to pound up to the top of the staircase.
Toby propped the smoking gun on the open window sill, and whisked himself up the hidden staircase cleverly concealed behind wood panels, heading for the roof, from whence he could see that the Runners who had been stationed outside guarding the drive had abandoned their positions, and were running into the house toward the source of the sound.
They really were so easily led.
Within the house, the sounds of the fellows throwing themselves at the bedchamber door grew until the wood surrounding the locked bolt gave way with an audible crack, and the Runners crashed through the door in a din of flailing limbs and scraping boots.
“Where is ’ee?” one of them howled.
“Gone, dammit—out the winder.”
“But I thought he’d a-shot hisself? There be the gun.”
And while they were doing their utmost to parse together the disparate clues, Toby signaled down to his housekeeper, who waited in the stable block, and who immediately set off down the now-abandoned drive in a covered carriage.
The Runners heard the clatter of hooves upon the gravel, and ran to the window. “By jove! He’s scarperin’!”
“After ’im, lads.”
And away they all went, thumping back down the staircase and out of the house in full cry. “Get after that carriage!”
Which gave Toby all the time in the word to do exactly as he had said he would, and change into appropriate clothes—appropriate for a nice long row downriver to London.
To get some bloody better answers.
Chapter 3
Toby rowed easily, riding the tide running downstream as if he were an idle undergraduate up from Oxford out for an afternoon’s chilly but invigorating exercise. Within the hour, he had fetched up handily at the Adelphi Wharves below the Strand, where the warehouse of Grindle Brothers Wine & Coffee Merchants perched on the quay like a fat cat next to a goldfish bowl.
It had been almost a year since Toby had visited the place. The dim confines looked just as prosperous and seedy as ever. And populated with the same seedily prosperous fellows—a number of his former shipmates in the Millbank Prison as well as on His Majesty’s Royal Navy frigate Vanguard.
All of whom eyed him with something rather stronger than disfavor.
“Well now, would ye look what the cat drug in?” Bolter—a former landsmen, or unskilled sailor, aboard the Vanguard, whose injuries had been even more severe than Toby’s, costing him his leg—hitched up his woolen pants, and spat into the sawdust at Toby’s feet. “Come down in the world enough to visit uz, have ye?”
“I haven’t come down yet, Bolter. And I won’t, if I have anything to say about it.”
“Runners chase ye outta yer plushed-up riverside pad, now did they? Been nosin’ round ’ere, they ’ave, making life a misery for uz that still has to work fer a livin’. All cuzza ye.”
“I have done nothing to invite or warrant such nosing around, Bolter. You can tell the rest of our mates that it isn’t me robbing these Mayfair kens. Got out of the business and stayed out of the business just like I promised I would. Just like we all promised.”
“A likely story, McTavish.” It was Grindle himself, former assistant purser aboard Vanguard—hence his knowledge of both cargoes and wine—moored up against the doorframe in his scarves and mittens.
His open disdain for Toby seemed to embolden the hostility of others—Mott, another thick-armed landsman from their ship, stepped forward and drew out a rather wicked looking blade from his heavy boot. “I’ll ’ave a go at ’im,” he muttered. “I’ll carve ’im up handsome like.”
“Easy, Mott.” Toby immediately backed away, holding his hand out as a caution. He had come here looking for help, not a knife in his back. “Handsomely with that sticker—someone’s liable to get hurt, and I don’t want any trouble.” But Toby slid his own knife down his cuff and into his hand as sweet and silent as a snake—if Mott wanted trouble, Toby was prepared to help him find it. He might look like a toff, but under his gentry togs, he was still a hard man.
“Mott.” Grindle growled. “Enough.”
“Not e’nuf, if’n he gets uz all stretched.”
“We’d all have to be doing something to get ourselves stretched,” Toby reasoned. “And I, for one, am not.”
“My eye,” the big fellow swore, and advanced.
“Enough, I said,” Grindle barked. “Come in here.” He motioned Toby into the window-lined office overlooking the warehouse floor. “Back to work, the rest of you.” Grindle regarded Toby with a sour, dissatisfied look upon his beaked face. “Why’ve you come?”
“You know why I’m here—everyone in the city, including the Runners, thinks that I’m the one behind these Mayfair jewel thefts.”
Grindle shrugged as if such a conclusion were entirely forgone. “Are you not?”
“No.” This was one of the drawbacks in being a former thief—no one believed former, not even his friends. “The last time I stole anything was for the benefit of His Majesty’s Navy, and we all benefited then.” The prize monies Toby had helped to earn for Vanguard’s crew had allowed them all to buy shares to start the business under Grindle’s direction.
“And we all benefit now, if we hew to the straight and narrow,” Grindle observed, gesturing to the stevedores working below. “I have beat it into their thick sculls like a bosun. But it will all be for naught if you don’t keep your nose clean, as well—we’ll all be tarred with your brush of pitch.”
The thick skull that had saved Toby on more than one occasion was still fully functioning—no one in Grindle’s warehouse did anything without profit, including accusing a former shipmate of theft. The suspicions that had buzzed at the back of his mind flew to the fore. “I tell you,” he swore, “it isn’t me.”
“Then who could it be?” Grindle threw up his hands. “We all read the broadsheets—these thefts bear your mark, the sprig of heather.”
The damn sprig of heather—it had been a stupid bit of pride, that long-ago impulse to make the white heather his calling card, so the rich Englishmen he robbed would know they had been bested by a Scotsman. “That is what they say, isn’t it?”
But what the broadsheets were reporting now was that the current thefts were marked by a bloom ‘as purple as the Scottish hillsides from whence McTavish hailed.’ So whoever was behind the new thefts knew a great deal about him, but they did not know all.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was the only sliver of advantage he had at the moment.
The other advantage was that he distrusted Grindle implicitly—Toby had learned the hard way that no one could betray a man like his friends. “But clearly you believe the broadsheets, Grindle, and have said as much to the men. No wonder Mott and Bolter want to carve me up.”
Grindle turned aside the question of his flexible scruples with a shrug. “They think you have broken your word, your bond.”
It wasn’t the thievery that counted against Toby with these men—they couldn’t care less if some rich toff were robbed—it was the breaking of his word, his very honor. But if he could not convince his friends, what chance had he with the magistrates, who would see the few years he had spent as a prolific thief as evidence of his guilt, no matter the many more years he had spent expiating his sins in the Royal Navy? His heroism would be forgotten in the rush to judgment.
And whoever was robbing Mayfair of its best baubles certainly knew that. “What I can’t understand is how this thief could imitate me so perfectly,” he mused. “How they know my techn
ique so well as to duplicate my methods.”
“Perhaps it is a former Runner,” Grindle offered with a shrug. “Bow Street made a study of you before, to capture you. And now perhaps they use this knowledge.”
It was likely enough for Toby to consider the possibility—and reject it. “The Runners who laid information against me in the old days were old men even then—and thievery of this variety is a young man’s game. People our age fall and die coming down from ladders, not going up drainpipes.”
Grindle laughed. “You’re only nine and twenty.”
“It’s not the age, but the sea miles, Grindle.” They all had fathoms of aging experience under their belts. “And I shall use that experience to catch this thief—the devil knows the Runners won’t.”
“You?” Grindle’s mouth gaped open in shock before he gave way to laughter. “How will you do that? Especially if, as you said, you’ve been out of the game?”
“I have been out of the game,” Toby admitted. “But I may have a way or two to get back on terms.”
But he wouldn’t get any help doing so at Grindle’s. Toby saw now that there was always going to be an unbridgeable chasm between him and his shipmates after he had risen out of their ranks to become an officer—even a high-ranking warrant—though he had paid for the privilege in lead.
Yet, he had recovered from his wounds, unlike others—Bolter’s uneven gait on his peg was pronounced. They had all kept their distance from one another for their own reasons.
Toby’s reasons had him speaking to Grindle with every appearance of candor. “The old ways haven’t left me entirely.” Toby had kept his hand in, practicing his skills in the comfort of his own home, picking locks and breaking into strong boxes for his own amusement—a gentleman ought to have a hobby.
Which was now catching the thief. All he had to do was reckon where the crafty fellow was going to strike next, before the man himself had even thought of it.
But the problem was that Toby no longer had the information he needed about society—about just who had jewels worth stealing. He needed to know where they lived, in which rooms they kept their jewels, and what time they went to sleep. He needed to know if they had dogs, or guns, or vigilant servants, or took extraordinary precautions against theft.
And he wasn’t going to find that information at Grindle Brothers.
“I’ll see myself out, Grindle. Thank the lads for not carving me up, will you?”
“You’ll stay away?” the merchant asked. “So there won’t be Runners sniffing around here daily, putting people off? Makes my men nervous, puts them on edge. Makes customers think I’m not running an honest establishment.”
Toby felt a wry smile carve up his lip. “And we certainly wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Chapter 4
Cally all but stuck her head out the window of the Balfour town coach as it maneuvered its elegant way through the carriages, carts and drays coming and going, jostling for position in the yard of Grindle Brothers Wine & Coffee Merchants like bees busy at the entrance to a hive.
She was more thankful than ever that her kind mama understood her need to be up and about and doing—being useful while also exploring all of London, not just the hundred acres of Mayfair frequented by the Ton.
But being frequented by the Ton was also what had led her to Grindle Brothers—the wine merchant was fast becoming the purveyor of choice to the Beau Monde. Grindle's would not only supply and deliver the vast quantities of wine and spirits needed for her mama’s Christmas masquerade, they would also provide the raft of trained extra footmen that such an evening required. The strain on the Balfour House staff would therefore be minimal.
Cally alit from the coach with the assured assistance of Balfour House’s most imposing footman, Tom Dancy, who attempted to shield her from the fray. “If you’ll come this way, ma’am.”
But Cally delighted in the fray. She loved the hurly-burly atmosphere—especially when the cacophony of sights and sounds was made more dramatic by the arrival of a coach of foaming, tossing horses that disgorged a bevy of rough looking fellows all attired in red waistcoats.
Bow Street Runners!
“You’ll want to steer clear of those Robin Red Breasts, ma’am,” the poor footman advised, trying in vain to herd her back toward the coach.
“Nothing of the kind,” Cally insisted as she deftly sidestepped him to plunge after the Runners, who had spilled into the open building like rats seeking grain, and were greeted and treated as such by the even rougher-looking denizens of the warehouse, if the shouts and curses assaulting her ears were any indication—she was surprised to see no one swinging a shovel.
Cally made for a nearby stair in hopes of gaining a vantage point from which to view the warehouse floor, when a peg-legged fellow clambered hastily past, gripping the wooden railings hard enough to make them shake as he hoisted himself upward, toward a glass-fronted office that overlooked the floor.
“Mr. Grindle!” The man called out while he was only half-way through the office door. “They’s Runners ‘ere now.” He shot a vicious glare at a dashing-looking bearded gentleman seated at his leisure in a chair before the desk. “Poking around, lookin’ fer ’im”—a thick finger jabbed at the gentleman, who eased to his feet, unperturbed by such bristling hostility—“an’ no doubt. Makin’ trouble for uz, he is.”
The greasy, nip-cheese looking fellow who must be Grindle was up and out of his chair, and at the window in a shot. “Where are they?”
Cally pressed herself into the wall at her back to make herself as invisible as possible as a lady could while eavesdropping in a fur-trimmed pelisse and a feather-capped hat.
“Swank carriage out the front.” The peg-legged fellow hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
Grindle was all efficient alarm. “Best leave by water.” He turned and pointed the still self-possessed gentleman the way down a back stair. “Bolter will ensure you aren’t seen.”
They were gone from Cally’s view within moments, but so determined was she not to miss a moment of the drama playing itself out across Grindle’s warehouse that she snatched up her skirts and ran around the outside of the building, past the astonished footman—“Come on, Tom!”—and through the maze of stacked sacks of aromatic coffee beans, to reach the quayside at the river.
She was just in time to see the intriguing gentleman—such a look of keenness in his bright blue eyes—descend into a serviceable wherry minded by a cherub-faced imp of indeterminate age.
“Take ’im up river, quick-like, Betty,” the man Bolter ordered her.
“Wot? All the way to Islewerf?” the girl protested. “Tide’s turning, and besides, I’m meant to take Grindle’s scribbles downriver, to Vinner’s Hall.”
“No, not to Isleworth.” The rather dashing bearded gentleman took command as he jumped nimbly into the boat. “Three Crane Stairs will do nicely. Just give Grindle’s orders to me.” He held out his hand. “I’ll take them and save you the trip, Betty. Smartly now.”
But the contrary child scampered to the oars. “Ain’t givin’ you nofink. And whatchu want ’ere? And why should we help ye, when yer giving everyone such trouble with yer thievery?”
The keen-eyed gentleman looked none too pleased with that declaration. “I’m not about to argue with a gamin barely out of pig-tails.” He took his place at the front set of oars. “If you’re coming, just put your back into it without any lip.”
The girl Betty did so with a flurry of batted lashes. “Ye outta like my lip—I like yers. Yer ’andsome enough. For a toff. And a thief and a rogue.”
And so he was handsome enough, with his bright, mischievous eyes, and well-formed lips nearly hidden by a rough beard. Especially if he were a thief and a rogue.
Most especially if he were the thief and rogue she sought. Along with all of London, it seemed.
“Tom?” Cally asked without ever taking her eyes from the departed wherry. “Where is Three Crane Stairs?”
“The City, ma
’am.” He pointed eastward. “The stairs give out to the gates of Vintner’s Hall.”
“Excellent. Fetch me a wherry, if you please.”
“But what about the wine, ma’am?”
“Bolter!” she called to the astonished giant who nonetheless turned obediently to her service. “Here is my order for the Viscountess Balfour.” She thrust the folded foolscap with the listing she had made of bottles of claret and Madeira to be purchased. “Pray give it to Grindle and have him wait upon Mr. Withers, the butler at Balfour House, tomorrow morning.”
“Very good, madame,” the giant stammered.
“Thank you.” She turned back to the footman, poor lad, who gaped at her like a dumbfounded Cheviot sheep. “Well then, Tom, let us get off to Three Crane Stairs with all due speed.”
He handed her into the wherry even as he muttered. “Sure to cost me my job, this is.”
“Don’t be silly or lily-livered, Tom,” Cally assured him. “I take full responsibility.”
She always took all responsibility for her adventures. Because if there was one thing she had learned in the long, lonely course of her widowhood, it was always easier to ask for forgiveness than it was for permission.
Chapter 5
Toby kept his eye on the warehouse as he rowed away, diverting his mind from his imminent peril with the sight of the beautiful young woman who had appeared out of nowhere on Grindle’s quay. There was something about her, besides her beauty. Something strangely familiar.
Behind him, in the forward seat, Betty seemed determined to turn his attention with chatter. “So, are ye gonna flee off to the continent to escape the beak of Bow Street, for ’e’ll surely give ye the noose?”
