I can’t ask her to risk herself or her children. Anyone who helps me gets hurt. Meggy nodded and stumbled toward the street. She surveyed the crooked lane of taverns, inns, and ships’ chandlers. Blair had disappeared, but all those who risked a glance at her quickly averted their eyes.
Where would Drew go? Meggy knew only one place. She limped painfully, one hand on her bruised ribs, to the shipyard but found no sign of him along the pilings where he usually perched. She stopped a few workers as they hurried by. Navy personnel had no fear of Blair but no more manners than the army. Most refused to talk. One finally said in a rush, “The boy that generally sits over yon and watches? Ain’t seen ‘im since yesterday early.” He rushed away before she could ask more.
She didn’t dare question Corporal Martin. The man’s continued attention frightened her. He hovered around her doorway when they first came to Portsmouth and tried to claim Fergus sent him, but something about his glittering eyes made her doubt it. He stopped when she threatened to tell her husband.
Drew, where are you? she wailed inwardly. What have you done?
No answer came back to her. No ideas comforted her. No insight gave her direction. All she could do was wait. She stumbled back toward the hovel with its smashed door, the only place she had to watch and wait.
He had no one to blame but himself. During the nights at sea, Rand had ample time to remember every word he said to convince Meggy she could not run.
What did you expect the woman to do? Fall into the arms of a man who wasn’t her husband? That was exactly what he expected, but his Meggy had more backbone than that—or more scruples. She made it clear from the beginning that she wasn’t available for dalliance, and he ignored her warning.
But it isn’t dalliance I want! Rand didn’t know what he wanted. She probably knew she couldn’t trust me to make up my mind. She also knew Blair wouldn’t let her go legally . . . or illegally.
Meggy had run away and put herself back under the thumb of her abusive husband. Self-recrimination wouldn’t change that. Meggy stepped back into that dog’s power, and it was my fault. The only thing Rand managed to sort out was that he had mucked it up, and he had to fix it.
The first week in Bristol he inquired about Blair’s regiment and received blank stares for answers. He sat back, satisfied that his strategy had worked and he had beaten them to England. Locals didn’t like the army much and viewed his questions with suspicion. Even when he found where the army wives were occasionally billeted and described Meggy, Drew, and Lena, he got nowhere. He finally quit asking and sat back to wait.
He identified places the army might congregate and dripped cash into the economy to make friends with locals. He lost a bit at cards, bought a round or two, ate his meals at various establishments, sent out laundry, and bought clothes. He always overpaid enough to interest people, but not so much to arouse suspicion.
When he had been in Bristol three weeks with no sign of Blair or Meggy, he began to fear he had it wrong. He worried they disembarked in Portsmouth. I’m sure Bolton had it right, though. They must be coming here. Who would know? What if Blair is already known here?
He dropped Blair’s name over cards one night.
“I was told that regiment had been assigned here, but they’re taking their sweet time getting here.” His fellow gamesters were the tavern keeper himself; a nervous stick of a man named Sylvester; Fowler, the owner of a store that mixed ship supplies with other goods of general interest; and a bruiser who worked for the blacksmith. Of the four of them, Rand thought the storekeeper or the tavern owner most likely to know rumors. What if one of them had a run in with Blair previously?
Fowler frowned. “Why are you waiting around for them?”
“One owes me money. He ran out on me,” Rand improvised. “Name’s Blair.”
“Cheapskates and rotters everywhere, Wheatly. Best get your money up front,” the tavern keeper replied and then launched into a tirade about folks who skipped out on their rooms or ran without paying for drinks. “Always get the coin before you pour, I say. Why does this lobster back owe you money?”
“I sold him a saddlebag.” He regretted that answer as soon as he said it. What would a foot soldier do with saddlebags? Flustered, he added, “Blair promised to pay, but he ran out on me.”
All four men stared at him. “Blair? Is that his name?” Fowler asked.
“Heard of him?”
“Nope,” the storekeeper answered.
“Shouldn’t have given him the goods without getting the coin,” the innkeeper repeated, looking back at his cards. The bruiser frowned as if he were trying to remember something and couldn’t. He glanced over at Sylvester as if to ask him what it was, but Sylvester just squirmed in his seat.
Conversation faded, and play continued. After the game ended, Rand returned to his room, considering it another failed inquiry. He put his winnings with his other cash in a hidden panel in his traveling bag along with the Collier revolver. Cat slept in the middle of the bed, and Rand held back from disturbing the little animal. He put the bag behind the bed, checked the knife in his boot, and let himself out to visit the necessary, locking the door to his room behind him.
I’ll head toward Portsmouth tomorrow, he thought. There seems little point in sitting on my hands here. I’m not even sure Blair is coming.
He never saw the blow that knocked him down. A pair of beefy hands had both arms pinned while other unseen hands pulled a sack, foul with the stench of chicken feathers, over his head. The beefy hands dragged him upright and pushed him forward.
They didn’t go far. Wherever they went smelled of fish, tar, and ash. The big man pushed him onto an improvised seat on the top of a barrel. The rim cut into his thighs. He heard some shuffling.
“I want to see ‘is face,” a nasal voice said, and someone ripped the sack off his head. Rand blinked in the darkness. A bit of light came under a door to his right. He could just make out shapes cast in shadow about ten feet in front of him.
“Who is looking for Blair?” the nasal voice demanded from the shadows.
“I am.” Someone cuffed his ear from behind. He saw the bruiser from the tavern. “Obviously, someone else is too.”
“What’s yer business with him? And don’t tell me naught about saddlebags.”
“He’s a bully and a brute who torments his children.”
“If’n they’re his, it’s no business of yours.”
“Their mother—” Rand began.
An odd noise, something between a bark and a sneeze came from the shadows.
“Tasty looking mort is Meggy Blair, but himself will not be letting you have any. You some kind of knight, riding to rescue her?” The bruiser laughed. So did someone else lost in shadow. The man stepped forward, and Rand recognized Sylvester.
“Why are you here?” the nasal voice repeated. “It isn’t for the woman.”
Alas it is, but these animals wouldn’t believe it. If they knew the truth, they’d know me for the fool I am. Rand searched for an answer that would satisfy.
“What do you think?”
“I think you want a piece of the business.”
Business? What business? And what is the right answer here?
“I know better than to shove in on your territory. I just want what Blair promised me.”
Silence. They must be digesting that. Rand bit his lip to keep from leaping into the quiet with something that would get him in deeper trouble.
“If you think you can pressure Blair,” the nasal voice said at last, “you got a shock comin’. If you and he think you can cut me out, you’ll be tucked up with a spade and feeding worms before you can blink, and Blair with you.”
What the hell is Blair mixed up in?
“I have no dealings with Blair beyond what he promised me.” Death or prison
unless I get to him first. “And I can’t ‘cut you out’ since I don’t know what you’re involved in.”
It must have satisfied.
“I’m going to let you go with a message for Blair.” No sooner did Rand notice he signaled the bruiser than the beating started.
When they finally dropped Rand, trussed and blinded by the chicken sack, on the doorstep of his inn, his one thought before he lost consciousness was, I can’t do this alone. I need to get help.
The fogs and miasma of London accompanied Rand through the streets to Belgrave. Cat stayed curled in his lap. Though he would have arrived more quickly had he bought a horse instead of renting a chaise and hiring a driver, he needed time for his ribs to heal. As it was, he hoped the swelling in his face had subsided enough so as not to alarm his sister.
The horses slowed at the city limits, and they bumped and jarred their way along until they reached their destination. The driver raised a skeptical brow when his passenger, tidy but not particularly well dressed and bruised like a back alley brawler, asked to be delivered to the front door rather than the servants’ entrance. He didn’t question it, however.
Rand might have laughed were it not for the pain in his side and the morose state of his thoughts. He paid the driver, scooped Cat into his arms, and moved painfully up the steps. An ancient butler opened the door, glowered, and began to close it.
“Take a closer look, Swift,” Rand called before the man could send him away.
After a fierce examination, an intake of breath, and an “Oh dear me, Master Randolph!” the door swung open, and Rand, who hadn’t been “Master Randolph” for more than ten years, hobbled in.
A simple gesture brought a footman. Swift glanced at Rand for permission, which was given, and he relieved Rand of Cat and handed him to the footman. “See Master Randolph’s friend to the nursery,” he said with a calm born of years of experience in managing Rand’s strays.
“Please tell the earl I’m here, Swift, before my sister—” He heard steps on the sweeping stairway and knew it was too late.
“Dear God, Randy! What on earth happened!” A cloud of silk and rose scent engulfed him. He winced under a warm embrace.
“Easy, Cath. Have a pity on my ribs. Is Will here?”
Catherine Landrum, Countess of Chadbourn, formidable woman, and the only mother he remembered, took a step back, put one hand on each of his shoulders, and demanded, “Six years gone and that’s all the greeting I get? Have you seen a surgeon?”
“Yes. Nothing is broken except a few ribs, and those only slightly. Nothing is punctured. I will heal.” He pushed her hands away. “I need to talk to Will.”
“Swift, what is causing the—Rand! What are you doing in England, and where did you obtain those delightful purple bruises?”
The Earl of Chadbourn halted his march through the foyer to stare at his brother-in-law. The intervening six years had aged the earl, seventeen years Rand’s senior. Gray threatened to overrun his brown hair, and the web around his eyes looked deeper, the lines more abundant. Nothing had dimmed the aura of energy that radiated from him, however, or the sense of power he projected.
“Will! Thank God, you’re here. We need to talk.”
The earl looked him up and down and declared, “I can see that. Does your appearance have anything to do with the guests currently installed in my kitchen claiming you sent them here for help?”
“Who? What—” Rand brushed past his brother-in-law and rushed down the hall from which the earl had emerged. He skidded through the kitchen door.
Private Pratt sat at a long wooden table eating sweet rolls while the cook clucked over him like a mother hen. Drew sat at his side. Rand scanned the kitchen frantically. No Lena. No Meggy. Where are they?
“Rand!” Drew hurled himself at Rand, and his ribs took another assault. He went down on both knees and loosened the little arms, keeping one of his own over the boy’s shoulders.
“Where’s your—” Rand began.
“Where have you been?” Drew demanded.
“I—”
“We didn’t know where to go, and Private Pratt remembered you said to come here if we got in trouble, but we didn’t know it was a palace with a real earl in it, but we came anyway because we had no place to run, and he would have sold me and prob’ly Pratt too. You weren’t here so we told them you sent us and showed them the paper, so they let us in, but we didn’t know what to do, and—” Private Pratt rose from the table, his face set in grim lines.
“Easy, easy, Drew. Perhaps I should talk to Private Pratt.” Rand led Drew back to the table.
“I did as you told me, sir,” Pratt said. He looked frightened. If he brought Drew here, he deserted. He has reason to be afraid.
“If the situation was desperate enough that you brought him here, it must be grim. I’m grateful.”
The young private bobbed his head. “Don’t know what’ll happen when they find me, but I couldn’t let ‘im sell the boy.”
Rand felt the blood drain from his face. “Sell?”
Before Pratt could reply, Drew pulled on his arm. “I didn’t mean to overhear what the colonel said. I can’t go back, or they’ll give me to a press gang.”
“That’s so, sir,” Pratt said. “We dint know what to do.”
“Where are Drew’s mother and sister?” Rand asked.
“Still in Portsmouth.”
“Rand,” a calm voice said from behind him, “perhaps we should let Private Pratt and Drew finish their treat while you clean up.”
Rand turned to object, running a shaking hand through is hair, but the earl stopped him.
“I’ve already sent messages to Sudbury and some others to look at the problem. We’ll meet in the parlor in an hour or so. Private Pratt will come with us while Drew joins the boys in the nursery.” The earl smiled down at Drew. “I hear a game of spillikins is planned.”
He looked back at Rand. “Clean up and reassure your sister.” It was a command, one Rand prepared to obey with relief. Will already called in Sudbury. The duke will see to things, or at least I hope so.
Rand put his hand on Drew’s head and leaned to speak with him. “Let’s do as the earl says, and I will see you later. It will be well. We have help.”
Drew looked back with troubled eyes. “I can’t go back there, but Rand, he told me if I didn’t do exactly what he said he would hurt Mama again. What will he do after this?”
Chapter 21
The footman pressed into service as a valet irritated Rand. He had been without one too long to welcome such services now. The man took one horrified look at the contents of Rand’s traveling bag and hustled off to find clean shirts. Rand had to admit, however, that a hot bath and more hot water for a shave felt decadent, and the man knew his task. An hour later, he managed to turn Rand out with some semblance of respectability to meet the duke and Will’s other friends.
He arrived in time to see poor Pratt introduced to the Duke of Sudbury, staunch Tory, and member of the shadow cabinet. The private almost expired. Sudbury, whose personal sense of decency and tolerance far outweighed his conservative politics, did his best to reassure the man.
“Hello, Uncle Richard,” Rand said, accepting the duke’s handshake. “Thank you for coming.” The relationship was honorary, borne of a life making free in the households of his sister’s friends. Pratt’s eyes goggled as he watched the men together.
He greeted Andrew Mallet, his brother-in-law’s other close friend. A classics scholar, Mallet held no political power, nor did he want any. “Here to be the voice of sanity?” Rand teased.
“As always!” Mallet answered with his lopsided grin.
The earl introduced two others Rand didn’t know, associates of Sudbury. “We also invited the Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies—blasted tit
le that. We need him, but I think we can start without him,” Will said.
That suited Rand, who was eager to tell his tale. He wanted the force of these men’s power, not their advice, but he suspected he would get both. He began with his fears for Meggy and received furrowed brows and confused looks.
“Perhaps you should start at the beginning so we understand how things got to this point,” Mallet suggested blandly.
Rand took a deep breath, prayed for patience, and described his first encounter with the woman and her children. When he came to the part about Cat’s injuries and his admonition to Pratt, he said, “So you see, that’s how he knew to come here.” He nodded at Pratt to take up the story.
“I met up with them in Montreal,” Pratt said with the cadence of a schoolboy reciting his lessons.
He would have given them every foul wind and gull at sea, so the duke interrupted. “And so you arrived safely at Portsmouth.” Pratt nodded.
“Damn,” Rand complained. “I cooled my heels in Bristol for a month.”
Will broke in once with an admonition. “Don’t tell your sister you’ve been in England for a month and just now came home. Is that where you got your bruises?”
“Doesn’t matter. Pratt, what happened in Portsmouth?” Rand asked.
“I suspect it matters a great deal, but we’ll leave that for later,” Sudbury cut in, waving a hand for Pratt to pick up the story.
When the private answered their question, Rand let out a string of sailors’ curses.
The duke calmly asked Pratt to repeat the conversation the boy overheard.
“I only heard a bit, but I knew Blair was pressuring Smythe afore he had his ‘accident.’ I had a fair idea what the boy heard. They were talking about getting the button fakes scattered about like. Among the navy some.”
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