by Jane Feather
“Aye, there’s a veal and ’am pie, a smoked eel, a goodly round of cheese, and a couple bottles of burgundy.” Ben began to unpack the basket. “Plenty for three of us.”
“There, does that feel better?” Octavia examined her handiwork with a frown. “It’s very deep. I’m sure you should have the physician to sew it up.”
“No, there’s no need for that.”
“But you’ll have a massive scar.”
Rupert shrugged. One scar more or less on a dead man was neither here nor there. He didn’t say it but he didn’t need to, and Octavia turned away abruptly, her lips compressed.
“Are there any cups for the wine, Ben?”
“Aye, I brought some from the tavern.” Ben poured wine into three pewter cups. “I never expected to drink wi’ ye in ’ere, Nick. And I blames meself.”
“There’s no need.” Rupert drank deeply.
“Someone tipped off the Runners. An’ who could it ’ave been? Someone in the Royal Oak, stands to reason.”
Ben frowned into his cup. “Morris weren’t there that afternoon, when we talked of this. But the new stable lad was. Workin’ by the wall where we was talkin’ on t’other side, now I think about it.”
“What do you know of him?”
“Little enough. But I’ll know more right quickly,” Ben said grimly.
“Locking the stable door after the horse has bolted,” Octavia remarked.
The determination to ensure Rupert’s comfort had buoyed her up so far, but now that she’d achieved what little she could achieve, a cold apprehension was creeping over her skin. This was still Newgate. The bars and walls were as thick, even in this spacious apartment. And she couldn’t begin to think how to effect his escape.
“If I brought woman’s clothes,” she said slowly, “you could disguise yourself and slip out of the prison with all the other visitors.”
“My dear, they’ll be watching me every minute of the day,” Rupert said gently. “And they’ll check everything you bring in. Lord Nick the highwayman is too precious a prize to be neglected. If I’m discovered trying to escape, I’ll find myself ironed again and back in the dungeon.”
“But you can’t just give up!” she exclaimed, shaking her head impatiently as Ben offered her the veal and ham pie. She’d suddenly lost all appetite. “They’ll hang you if they find you guilty.”
Rupert sighed. “Let’s not talk about this now. Finish your wine and Ben will take you home.” Lines of fatigue were etched around his mouth, and his eyes were heavy with strain and the pain of his crushing headache and battered body.
Octavia stood up immediately. “I’ll come in the morning.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said quietly. “Ben will look to my needs.”
“Better than I could?” The golden eyes were hurt, her mouth soft with distress.
“Not in everything,” he said with a tiny complicit smile.
Ben coughed. “I’ve stabled Peter at the tavern. Mr. Akerman, the Keeper, gave ’im up wi’out too much trouble.”
“Good.” Rupert stood up a little unsteadily as a wave of dizziness washed over him. “See Octavia safe home, Ben.”
“Aye, that I will. Come along, miss.”
Octavia stood irresolute. “Why don’t I stay here tonight? Your wound will need tending and—”
“No,” Rupert interrupted firmly. “Go now.”
Reaching for her, he drew her against him and lightly kissed her brow. “Do as I ask, Octavia, and stay away. I don’t want to risk compromising you.”
“I can’t do as you ask,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She stood on tiptoe to brush his mouth with her own. “And I’ll not be compromised. Wait till you see me tomorrow. You won’t recognize me.”
She was smiling, but she couldn’t disguise the effort it cost her. “Rest now, and I’ll bring you some laudanum tomorrow. I should have thought of it today, but there was so much …” She opened her palms in a gesture of frustration, then turned to go.
Rupert listened to their footsteps recede on the stone staircase; then he flung himself down onto one of the beds, linking his arms behind his head.
How long before they brought him to trial? A lawyer could spin the process out, of course. It would be the only advantage. But did he want to spin it out? Did he want to spend his days and nights in this room, knowing that there was no future? That when he left this place, it would be on the cart that would take him to Tyburn?
Surely it would be better to have done with it quickly. But he knew, too, that even after sentence of death was pronounced a man could languish for many months awaiting his execution. And he would languish through those months in the condemned cell.
He must stop Octavia’s visits. They would hurt both of them too much. How ironical it was to have achieved harmony again only because he now faced his death.
But before he met that death, he must conclude the business with Rigby and Lacross. He must write the official demands for payment. Ben would deliver them at the correct intervals, and Ben would summon the bailiffs. At the very last the bank would foreclose on the mortgage of Hartridge Folly.
Another four weeks would see the business finally completed. And he could play his part from within New-gate’s walls, always assuming he had four weeks. But the law, even without the help of defense lawyers, was notoriously slow moving.
He closed his eyes, trying to quiet the hammer behind his temples. Philip’s face drifted into his internal vision. He’d been so close to bringing an end to the business begun that day at Beachy Head. So close to exposing his twin, to avenging Gervase. So close, but it might just as well have been a million miles.
The usurping Earl of Wyndham would shortly hold his tide safe from any challenge.
Chapter 22
Rupert awoke stiff in every joint. The pounding in his head had lessened, however. Swearing vigorously, he struggled off the bed and stumbled to the window that looked down into the press-yard.
The yard was full of people—men, women, and children milling around, stall holders and barrow boys pushing through the throng, doing a lively business in the necessities of life in prison.
“Ye want some breakfast, sir?”
He turned at the sound of a female voice in the doorway. A young girl stood there, smiling tentatively, wiping her hands on a grubby apron.
“Who are you?”
“Amy. Your laundress, sir.” She bobbed a curtsy, her eyes wide as she gazed at the notorious highwayman. His clothes were torn and stained, but their original quality was still visible. And there was no concealing the physical presence of the man, despite his battered face and tangled hair.
“I could bring ye a nice mutton chop and some eggs, if ye’d like.”
Rupert debated this fare. Decided he needed all the strength he could muster and said, “Thank you, Amy.”
The girl curtsied again and vanished. Rupert gingerly stretched, his muscles complaining vociferously. He felt as if he was one enormous bruise from head to toe.
A cracked glass stood on a makeshift; dresser in the corner of the room, and he examined his countenance with a grimace. Unshaven, hollow-eyed, bruised. He was a sight to frighten children. He touched the gash on his forehead. It was no longer bleeding, and Octavia’s ministrations had cleared away the caked blood, but it was an ugly-looking cut. It probably did need a surgeon. But what was the point of stitching up a dead man?
He had to stop thinking like that. It would neither alter the reality??? make it easier for him to accept.
“’Ere we are, Lord Nick.” The girl came back with a laden tray. “An’ there’s a pint of ale.”
She placed the tray on the table. “Cooked in the Keeper’s own kitchen, sir. Just as yer friends arranged.”
Rupert nodded and sat down, realizing just how hungry he was as the aroma set his saliva running. The girl bustled around the room as he ate, straightening the sheets on the bed.
“D’ye ’ave any clothes for the wash, sir?”
“At this point I have only what’s on my back,” he said wryly, draining his tankard before pushing back his chair from the now empty platters.
“I’ll be bringin’ yer dinner at four o’clock, sir.” Amy took up the tray, offering another bobbed curtsy. “If ye needs me afore then, jest let Timson, the jailer, know. ’E’ll send fer me.”
“You could bring me some hot water,” he said. “And soap and a razor.”
The girl nodded and went to the door. As she reached it, a voice sang up the stairs. “Bring that bath carefully now, ye great lummox! Good money I paid fer that, and yer spillin’ it all over the stairs.”
“All right, all right, girl. You watch yer tongue around ’ere.”
“Pah,” came the scornful response. “Never mind my tongue. So long as me money’s good, that’s all ye’ve got to worry about.”
Rupert listened incredulously. The voice was unmistakably Octavia’s, for all that she was speaking in the vigorous accents of the street. Labored breathing, muttered curses, and heavy footsteps accompanied her continued stream of encouragement and castigation as whoever it was struggled up the stairs with some weighty burden.
“That’s right, then. Put it down over there. Look lively now, don’t go spillin’ any more of it.”
Octavia appeared in the doorway, pointing imperiously to the middle of the room. “An’ ye can fetch me up two more jugs of ’ot water.”
Reaching into the pocket of a coarse apron, she pulled out a handful of coins, saying loftily. “’Ere, that’s fer yer trouble. An’ I thank ye kindly. Look sharp about them other jugs, now.”
The two men, who had nobly borne the weight of a filled tub of hot water up the long flight of stairs, took the coins with a morose grunt and left with a nod toward the highwayman, who was staring in astonishment at his visitor.
Octavia wore a bright-orange dress that had clearly seen better days. Her breasts jounced above the low neckline edged with torn and grubby lace. Her skirt was kilted up above her ankles to show a dirty petticoat and a pair of rough wooden pattens. She had a scarlet kerchief on her head, tied beneath her chin, and what he could see of her hair hung over one shoulder in a long plait.
A smudge of dirt adorned her nose and her cheek. And her nails were encrusted with grime.
She put down a basket and a cloth-wrapped bundle and grinned at him. Putting her hands on her hips she twirled in a swirl of orange skirts and dirty petticoat. “Don’t I make an excellent tavern wench?”
“Hell and the devil, Octavia!” he exclaimed. “What is this?”
“I thought you should have two different female visitors,” she explained. “One will be the mysterious veiled lady, and the other will be the tavern wench. That should confuse them nicely, don’t you think?”
He shook his head in disbelief, but before he could say anything, Amy reappeared with the razor, soap, and a jug of hot water. She too stared at Lord Nick’s visitor. But with an air of unfriendly suspicion.
“Who’re you?”
“A friend of Lord Nick’s,” Octavia said haughtily. “If it’s any business of yours, girl.”
“’E’s my gennelman,” Amy said, her mouth pursing. “An’ ’e don’t need the likes of ye lookin’ after ’im. This is my area, an’ I’ll thank’ee to keep out of it.”
“I’ve every right to visit the prisoner,” Octavia declared, twitching her nose as if at a bad smell. “You’re ’is servant, an’ I’m his friend. So I’ll thank you to remember that. Put them things down by the bath an’ be on yer way. We’ll call if we needs anythin’ else.”
Amy puffed out her chest and tossed her head, obviously preparing to launch into a stream of invective. However, Rupert, struggling with laughter, interposed himself between the two of them.
“Thank you, Amy,” he said warmly. “I’m most grateful for your help. I know I’ll be relying on you a great deal from now on.”
Amy bridled and cast the highwayman’s visitor a glowering look of triumph. “I’ll be ’ere whenever ye needs me, sir,” she said. “Not like visitors what ’ave to go away.”
“Just so,” he said, ushering her to the door.
With a final toss of her head in Octavia’s direction, Amy left. Rupert closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, regarding Octavia with eyes brimming with laughter.
“I suppose it’s ridiculous to be surprised at what an actress you are.”
“Of course,” she said matter-of-factly. “You know what an actress I am. Haven’t we been on stage ever since we met?”
“I suppose we have. But the play’s over, Octavia.”
She shook her head. “Nonsense. Now, come and have this bath. I’ve brought you clean clothes, laudanum, arnica, all your toilet articles. So you may be quite comfortable until we can find a way to get you out of here.”
Her mouth had a stubborn line, and there was something in her voice that told Rupert it would be pointless to argue with her. If it helped her to believe that something could be done, then who was he to disabuse her? She would face the reality soon enough.
“You seem to have thought of everything,” he said neutrally.
“Yes, I believe I have.” She smiled and came over to him. “Now, you don’t have to do anything. Let me look after you.”
She gently eased his torn coat off his shoulders. Deftly, she removed his waistcoat and unbuttoned his shirt. As she opened his shirt, a little cry of dismay broke from her at the purpling bruise across his ribs.
“What did they do to you?”
“Oh, they amused themselves a trifle,” he said. “But I’m not made of glass, sweeting.”
“No,” she agreed, pushing the shirt off his shoulders. “But if I could get my hands on them, I’d cut out their cowardly hearts!” She glared fiercely up at him, her hands spanning his narrow waist. “Chicken-hearted bullies!”
“Very true,” he agreed, smiling at her fierceness, feeling his depression lifting under her vital presence.
Her hands were busy at his waist, unbuckling his belt, unfastening his britches. She pushed them down his hips together with his woolen drawers, then gave him a little push backward onto the bed. “Sit down.”
“This is not the most seductive disrobing I’ve been subjected to,” he grumbled, sitting on the edge of the bed as she bent to pull off his boots. “You’re behaving more like a nurse than a lover.”
Octavia looked up from her task and smiled, her tawny eyes clearly showing her relief that he was entering the spirit of her visit. “Wait,” she promised. “That’ll come all in good time.”
“Oh, good,” he said with a mock sigh of satisfaction, stretching out his legs so that she could pull his britches and drawers clear of his feet.
“Now, get in the tub,” Octavia said. “Ah, here are those men with the other jugs.”
She went to the door and greeted the arrival of her two laborers with a cheerful vulgarity that sent Rupert’s eyebrows into his scalp. Octavia had clearly not wasted her time in Shoreditch.
He lowered himself into the steaming water and groaned with a mixture of pleasure and pain as the heat stung his scratched and abraded skin. Resting his head against the rim, he let his feet dangle over the far edge of the tub.
Octavia closed the door firmly on the departure of the water carriers and came over to him, struggling with two heavy cans.
“I can wash your hair now,” she said briskly, kneeling beside the tub, hefting one of the cans. “Sit forward and put your head back.”
Rupert complied, closing his eyes as the warm water washed over him. He felt as if he were back in the nursery, being attended to by his nursemaid, and the idea both amused him and relaxed him.
Octavia’s hands were gentle on his scalp, but they were clever as they massaged and stroked. He found himself remembering how he’d once attended to her in the same way, soothing her tension. His fingers twitched, remembering in their nerve endings the suppleness of her skin, the lithe, slender body rippling beneath his
hands.
“You seem to be enjoying this,” Octavia commented casually, her hands sliding down his body to the jutting evidence of his enjoyment.
He groaned with soft pleasure, his flesh pulsing between her caressing hands. “I’d enjoy it more if you’d take your clothes off,” he murmured plaintively.
Octavia smiled and leaned over the bath to kiss him, her lips brushing over his mouth, her tongue darting across his cheeks, over his eyelids, her eyelashes fluttering against his forehead.
Sitting back on her heels, she unlaced her bodice and pushed it off her shoulders. The straps of the grimy petticoat followed; then, bared to the waist, she knelt and reached for the soap. She lathered it between her hands as she leaned over him. Her rounded breasts hung like peaches above his mouth, and he captured a nipple between his lips, stroking with his tongue, grazing delicately with his teeth while she soaped his neck with long, seductive strokes.
His hands slipped down her rib cage to the bunched material at her waist. “Take the rest off,” he directed, drawing his tongue up through the deep cleft of her breasts in a hot, languid sweep.
Octavia smiled, fumbled with a hook and wriggled out of the gown and petticoat. “Better?” She knelt upright so he could see her body, naked down to midthigh and the top of her gartered cheap cotton stockings.
“Much!” Taking a firmer grip of her waist, he yanked her over the edge of the tub, sending water slurping over the oak boards as she landed on her knees astride him in the narrow bath.
“Oh, now you’ve soaked my stockings!” she exclaimed in feigned annoyance.
“You should have taken them off,” he responded coolly, encircling her neck with his hands, his thumbs stroking the fast-beating pulse at her throat. His eyes narrowed abruptly, the amusement dying out of them.
“I’ve missed you, Octavia. More than I can describe.”
“And I you,” she said, caressing his face with her fingertips. “I so much wanted you to sweep my miseries aside. To compel me to forgive you. And yet I knew I wasn’t giving you the slightest opening. But I couldn’t help myself.”
“It was a loathsome thing to do,” he said. “My only excuse lies in the past.”
