The Highwayman and The Lady (Hidden Identity)

by Colleen French

  Higgins ducked out the door just before the glass struck the doorjamb and shattered in a rain of blood-red claret and splintering shards.

  With Higgins gone into retreat down the corridor, Percival turned around, feeling better. Then he realized Monsieur DeMoir was still there, staring at him, his eyes wide with terror.

  "Oh, what are you gaping at?" the Earl of Rutledge demanded. "Get out! Get out, and have the coat prepared by the week's end."

  Monsieur DeMoir raced for the doorway, the burgundy coat clutched in his hands.

  "I've an engagement with the king come Saturday eve and I wish to wear it then."

  The tailor made no sound as he took his leave, but for the sound of crushing glass beneath his slippers as he ran.

  Ten

  "Do you have to go out again?" Meg knelt on the bed, clutching the bed post, watching Kincaid as he dressed.

  "I have to go." He adjusted his lace cravat in the looking glass on the wall.

  "More gambling?"

  He chuckled. His sweet Meg sounded more like a wife every day. To some men, that thought might have been a burden, but to Kincaid, it made him smile. "A man has to make a living, sweetheart. How do you expect me to keep you in this finery," he indicated the tawdry bedchamber with a sweep of his hand, "without the financial means?"

  The truth was, he was not just going gambling tonight, although gambling was how he made his living. First he intended to go to the apartments he kept at Charing Cross. Actually, they were the apartments of his nom de guerre. Captain Scarlet took up residence in a variety of rooms for rent or in the bedchambers of ladies.

  Kincaid felt guilty about hiding his other life from Meg, and in time he would make his confession, but the time hadn't yet come. He had to be certain he could trust her before he revealed his dual existence.

  Tonight he wanted to go by the apartments, pick up some clothing, and then make an appearance at the local ordinary. The Pork Belly, and similar establishments, were ideal for gleaning information from drunken patrons. In such public places he discovered who was in town and who was on his way out. Eavesdropping provided him with access to the men on his list.

  When Kincaid turned from the mirror, Meg was holding his coat for him. He allowed her to help him into it and stood still while she smoothed the brocade of his cuffs.

  He watched her as she fussed with the lace cravat. His Meg Drummond was truly a wonder. She had been angry with him for forcing her into Mother Godwin's, but once she was here, she had adapted quite easily. She didn't approve of the profession of the women of Mother Godwin's, but she didn't hold their poor luck against them. Instead, in only a week's time she'd made herself available to the women to serve them in any way she could, gently urging them to find a better life. She wrote letters for the trollops, for none of them could read or write. She counseled them on illness and female ailments. She listened to their tales of woe with a gentle heart.

  "Will you be late?" she asked wistfully.

  He grasped her around the waist. She was dressed this evening in a pretty green cotton gown he'd purchased for her from a secondhand dealer in Houndstitch. She wore her rich, dark brown hair with its blond highlights loose down her back like a schoolgirl. One look at her heart-shaped face, her mouth made for kissing, and he wanted to forget about his evening's intentions and tumble into bed with her.

  Unfortunately, duty called. He had been too long in neglecting matters of business. The weeks he had spent in Newgate, though made nearly enjoyable by Meg's presence, had put him behind schedule.

  He kissed Meg's forehead. "What will you do with yourself tonight?" he asked. "Monti will go with me, so he'll not be available to play knap and slur."

  She let go of him and moved toward the fireplace to warm her hands. "I don't know. Stitch a little, perhaps. I'm making myself a shift with that linen you brought me. Or perhaps I'll read."

  Kincaid was glad he had thought to go to the bookseller in Cheapside and purchase several volumes for her. They had not come inexpensively, but she had been so pleased with his gift, that it wouldn't have mattered to him if they had cost a hundred pounds apiece.

  In talking with his Meg, late in the evening after he returned from his business in the taverns, he had discovered she was very well educated for a woman, even a woman of noble birth. She knew much of ancient history, art relics, music, astronomy. Wherever she had come from, someone had taken a good deal of time and money to see her well tutored. Her education piqued his interest in whom his mysterious Meg was, but he had held his tongue and did not question her as he would have liked. In time he hoped she would come to trust him enough to tell him her secrets. Besides, deceiving her as he was, what right did he have to demand to know anything of her true identity?

  "Well, give us a kiss and I'll be on my way," Kincaid called, putting his hand out to her.

  Meg came to him, pressing a kiss of promise to his lips. "I'll wait up for you."

  He squeezed her hand as he let her go. "Don't. I prefer waking you up when I return."

  She smiled at his sexual intimation, walking him to the door. "Take care and watch for the constable," she whispered.

  The concern in her voice made Kincaid hate to go and leave her. But he had to. If he was going to attempt to strike up a new life with his mystery woman, he first had to put an end to the old life.

  Another kiss from her lips and he was out the door.

  Meg leaned against the paneled door, listening to the sound of Kincaid's footsteps as they died away. The first few nights he'd left her, she'd been so frightened that she'd barely been able to breathe the entire time he was gone. But, as in Newgate, that passed. Now, after a fortnight, she almost looked forward to spending a few hours alone.

  Meg wandered to the chair next to the fire, trying to decide what she would do with herself. She did have stitching to do, but sewing had never been one of her favorite pastimes. She could read, but she wasn't in the mood for that, either.

  Her gaze strayed to the quill and paper Kincaid had left on the table near the fireplace. Perhaps she would write. Kincaid knew nothing of her scribblings. She never told him for fear he would laugh and make light of it. But to her, they had become important.

  It had all started in the lonely hours Meg had spent alone in the Press Yard cell when Kincaid went to the taproom. Meg's heart had ached so for her dead son that the quill and paper had been a means to ease that suffering. At first all she had written were jagged thoughts scrawled across parchment that she immediately burned. But later, when the pain had eased, she began to write poetry. Some were about the pain of the death of her son, but others were simply about the sunshine that sprinkled fairy dust onto the pine floor.

  Now she was working on a satire. She had come up with the idea last week when Kincaid had brought her the most recent lampoonery being passed at Whitehall. It was about the king, his mistress, Castlemaine, and her cuckolded husband—and quite amusing. Meg's satire was about a deformed earl and the twisted heart beneath his breast.

  She crossed the room to her clothes press. Inside she kept very little, simply because she possessed so few belongings. Beneath her cloak, tucked inside a book of Chaucer's poems, she found her own parody.

  Rereading what she had written, she walked to the hearth and sat down, pulling her skirts up to her knees to allow the heat of the fire to warm her. Nodding to herself with approval, she reached for Kincaid's quill and ink. She already knew what the first line to the next stanza would be.

  Meg became so lost in her thoughts and the words she put down on paper that time passed quickly. Before she knew it, the case clock beside the bed was chiming midnight. Sprinkling sand on the ink to dry it, she rose with a yawn. Kincaid usually didn't return until three in the morning, so maybe she would lay down for a few hours.

  Carefully removing the dress Kincaid had bought her, she stripped off her underthings and pulled a sleeping gown over her head. It was another of Kincaid's gifts, delicately embroidered with green leaves and
pink rosebuds across the bodice.

  Padding barefoot across the cold floor, she returned her satire to Chaucer's pages and tucked the book back into the clothes press. She stoked the fire and then climbed into bed, snuggling into the soft tester. She was just reaching to blow out the candle at her bedside when she heard a soft rapping at the door.

  Meg sat up, pulling the counterpane to her chin. "Kincaid?" He had added a lock to the door more than a week ago, but he had his own key. "Is that you?"

  The knock came again.

  "Who is it?" Meg called.

  "Mrs. Drummond?" came a quivering voice. "Mrs. Drummond, it's Saity."

  "Saity?" Meg climbed out of bed. Through the door, she could hear the young woman crying. "Saity, what's wrong?" But the moment she swung the door open, she could see what was wrong.

  Saity, a blonde who once must have been pretty, no more than seventeen, stood barefoot in her smock and stays, her tiny breasts thrust above the bone undergarment so that her pink nipples were bared. Tears ran down the girl's cheeks. She had been beaten. Severely. Her eye was blackened and already turning a sickening color of purple and green. Her cheekbone was already so swollen that it protruded, making her face lopsided. Across her immature breasts were bite marks where some bastard had drawn blood with his teeth.

  Meg put out her arms to Saity, her heart going out to the woman still barely more than a child. Philip had never broken any of Meg's bones, or brought more than a trickle of blood from her lip, but she knew the shame of being struck. She understood the frustration of being physically incapable of fighting back against a man's brute strength.

  "Oh, Saity," Meg breathed, hugging the girl. "What happened?"

  Saity sniffed back her tears, resting her head on Meg's shoulder. "Sorry son of a cur, that Jack. He don't get feisty often. And he always pays me extra. I just don't know what gets into him." She wiped her running nose with the back of her hand. "Only this time it was worse. His wife run off with a haberdasher, and he was sorely nettled."

  Meg led Saity into the room by her arm to get a better look at her injuries. "You mean he's done this before?" Meg helped her into the chair before the hearth and went to the wash basin for a cool rag.

  Saity lifted one thin shoulder in a shrug. "Don't they all?"

  Meg went down on one knee on the cold floor in front of Saity and pressed the wet cloth to her bruised cheekbone. Already the eye was swelling shut. "No," she said firmly, thinking of the kindness Kincaid had shown her since they'd been together. "Not all men strike women. Some are of a better ilk. That's one thing I've learned as of late." She smoothed the girl's wispy hair. "Isn't there anywhere you can go, any relatives, to get away from here?"

  "I got no one since my ma got drowned. A girl's got to make a living." Saity took the cloth from Meg. "At least here I got a nice bed to sleep in and food fer my belly. Afore Mother found me, I was sleepin' on the docks and tradin' tail fer bread."

  Meg stood, so angry she wanted to break something, hit someone herself. "I cannot believe Mother Godwin allows this to happen!"

  "She says it ain't allowed in her 'stablishment. But she asks us what we expect, us bein' whores."

  Meg glanced at the door, her indecision lasting only a second. "Come with me, Saity," she said, striding toward the bed to grab her dressing gown. Kincaid had replaced the black silk gown Mother Godwin loaned her with one of creamy flannel with lace cuffs and a ruffle at the high neck. She stuffed her arms into it, not even taking the time to button up the buttons.

  "What'd you say, Mrs. Drummond?"

  Meg was already headed toward the door. "I said come with me." She stopped and waited for Saity.

  "Where . . . where we goin', Mrs. Drummond? I . . . I didn't mean to make no trouble for you. Only I was scared and hurtin' and you said if I ever needed ye—"

  "It's all right," Meg soothed, putting her arm around the slender girl and leading her out the door and down the hall. "I just want to get to the bottom of this. There's no excuse for this happening. It's bad enough you have to sell what shouldn't be sold, you ought to at least be safe while you do it!"

  Saity stared at Meg with frightened, round eyes. "Yes, Mrs. Drummond."

  Meg walked up the hall toward the staircase, stopping at the last door before the steps. Still keeping one arm draped over Saity's shoulder, she beat on the door with her fist. "Mother Godwin?"

  "Go away. I've got company."

  Meg turned the knob and pushed her way in, not caring that she'd not been invited. To her surprise, Mother Godwin was bare-breasted and seated in the lap of a man in a chair before the fireplace.

  Meg was too angry to be embarrassed. "I have to speak with you." Saity ducked from under Meg's arm and took a step back behind her.

  "Can't you see I'm busy?" Mother Godwin indicated the big man beneath her. He had a face like a steer and he smelled of hay.

  Meg nodded to the man who was obviously well into his cups. "Pardon, sir, but I must have a word with Mother Godwin."

  Mother Godwin leapt up from the steer's lap and reached for her black silk dressing gown. Meg noticed that in the place where she normally lacked eyebrows, thick, black ones had been carefully painted in. She covered her large, sagging breasts. "How dare you burst into my chambers when I'm entertaining!"

  Meg pointed to Saity. "Look at her. Look what some man has done." She pushed the girl's hand down from where she held the rag so that Mother Godwin could see the damage.

  Mother Godwin barely glanced at Saity. "It happens. Mary come up! These girls aren't milk maids."

  "Well, it shouldn't happen. You're in charge here." She pointed an accusing finger. "You have a responsibility to see these women are not hurt."

  Mother Godwin tied the sash on her dressing robe and reached for a glass of wine left on a sidetable. "Who was it, Saity?" she asked with a sigh.

  Saity hugged herself "Jack. Jack Creel, the ink man."

  Mother Godwin let out another one of her impatient sighs. She glared at Meg. "I'll talk to him about it again. He knows we don't allow this kind of thing in my place. He knows he has to go to the Red Roost for that foolery."

  Meg tapped her bare foot. She'd still not taken the time to fasten her dressing gown and was covered hardly better than the two whores. "You'll talk to him when?"

  Mother Godwin swallowed the last drop of her wine and started for the man again. "When I'm done here, Mrs. Drummond." She put out her hand to the steer with a smile. "Now why don't you go back to bed and let Saity get back to work. I'm certain you-know-who would not approve of your wandering about this time of night."

  Meg stared at Mother Godwin, who was already climbing back into her customer's lap. She couldn't believe that was all she was going to say. She couldn't believe she didn't care.

  Meg turned to Saity, grabbing her hand and pulling her out of Mother Godwin's room. "Where is he now?"

  "What?" Saity still held the wet rag to her cheek. "Who?"

  Meg stepped into the hall with Saity at her side and slammed Mother Godwin's door behind her. "Where is the man who did this to you? Jack whomever?"

  "D . . . downstairs I s'pose. Havin' another drink. He likes a drink after his pecker's spent."

  Meg grabbed Saity's hand and went down the staircase. If Mother Godwin wasn't going to do anything about this, damned if she wasn't. At the bottom of the stairs Meg pushed through heavy red crimson drapes and into the public room where Kincaid had brought her that first morning.

  Light blazed in every corner of the room, showing off the lewd murals that covered the walls. There were too many men and women for the size of the room. Some played cards. Others were eating and drinking while a fiddler played a lively tune. Most of the women were in some state of undress. One young girl Meg knew, Maria, lay stark naked on her back on a table, two men playing a hand of cards on her flat belly.

  The room was so full of smoke that Meg could barely breathe. "Where is he?" She stood in a wet puddle, of ale no doubt.

  Saity hu
ng behind Meg, peeking over her shoulder. "There." She pointed. "The back table. With Mary Theresa."

  Meg scanned the room until she spotted Mary Theresa perched on a table beneath a parrot cage. She was wearing nothing but a pair of men's fashionable wide-legged breeches and a cocked hat with a lime-green cockade. Across her breasts she'd written her name and her price with red lip pomade.

  A man sat in a chair beside her. They were feeding bits of bread dipped in ale to the green parrot in the cage that swung overhead.

  "There?" Meg asked, pointing. The man with Mary Theresa was no taller than Meg, with a pox-scarred face and sparse, peppered hair.

  Saity nodded her head, grabbing Meg's arm. "But you don't have to do this, Mrs. Drummond. I'm all right. Really, I am. I was just scared. That's why I bothered ye. I was just scared!"

  Meg started across the sticky, wet floor, her hands planted on her hips. "Jack Creel," she shouted.

  The man looked up, popping a bit of ale-bread meant for the parrot into his own mouth. His eyes were glazed over from drink and poverty. "Yea?"

  "Jack Creel," Meg sidestepped a drover's hand as he reached into her open gown. She was too angry for modesty. "I've need of a word with you."

  Some of the patrons chuckled. Someone shouted that Meg must have been sent by Jack's wife.

  Meg headed straight for Jack Creel, dragging Saity with her when the girl wouldn't come of her own accord. "Did you do this?" she demanded, even before she'd reached his table.

  Mary Theresa climbed off her stool, but stood beside the table, a captive audience.

  Meg held Salty firmly by her frail shoulders. "Did you?" she demanded.

  Jack Creel stared bleary-eyed at Saity. "M . . . might 'ave."

  Meg let go of Saity's arm, stepping up to the accused. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You should be riding a cart to the gallows for this."

  He stumbled to his feet as Meg shoved her face into his. He stank of ale and mutton but she didn't care. She was so damned mad, she wanted to rip those last few sparse hairs out of his bald pate. "What is wrong with men that they think they have to beat up women?" she appealed. "Look at her! Look at her!" She pointed at Saity. "God's bones, man! She's young enough to be your daughter. Why would you hit her? Why would you break a pretty face like this?"