The Miss Mirren Mission (Regency Reformers Book 1)

by Jenny Holiday

  As the hours and miles slipped past, Blackstone occasionally found his mind wandering back to the estate, wondering if the boat would come while he was gone. He was shocked by how easy it had been, when it came down to it, to give up Le Cafard. When the veil lifted and the mist cleared, he could see that he’d given his nemesis too much power. The blackguard did not deserve the pomp and drama that Blackstone had always imagined surrounding his apprehension. Giving an enemy a king’s welcome had never made any sense—he could see that now.

  He could see everything now. He pulled the inaccurate miniature of Emily out of his pocket and pressed it to his lips. Then he leaned forward in the carriage. It couldn’t hurt.

  With a defeated sigh, Emily pulled her head back into her room. Craning her neck for the last hour to try to see what was going on in the inn’s yard had done nothing but give her a crick.

  Honestly, Mr. Talbot was worse than Eric. He’d refused to allow her to accompany him to the ship. He’d only been going to do some reconnaissance, he’d said, to find out who was guarding the ship, where Mr. Manning was, and, he hoped, whether Billy was aboard.

  It didn’t seem that he planned to let her do anything besides wait in this tiny, dingy room. She plopped onto her back on the lumpy bed. As annoyed as she was, she kept catching herself grinning. Kicking her legs in a little jig in the air, she shivered. Soon, Billy would be free! Sally would be able to embrace her son again, and they would all be together.

  She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her chin on her hands. She hoped Eric hadn’t been too angry when he read her note. What was he was doing right now? The one thing that would make everything perfect was if he would just—

  No. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  She must be ruthless with herself—she was not some green girl. She’d had her chance. A chance she very rightly didn’t take because he’d been asking for all the wrong reasons.

  Back at the window, she massaged her neck as she stretched again to watch the square. Billy and Sally. They were her family, and they would be enough.

  They would have to be.

  As he made his way through the docks, Blackstone feared his hastily assembled disguise was not as convincing as he’d hoped. He’d traded his coat for that of a seller of meat pies, and though the coarse woolen fabric covered his fine lawn shirt, he hadn’t been able to do much about his legs. Not wanting to spare the time to beg, buy or steal a full getup, he’d settled for roughing up his breeches with dirt and scuffing his previously gleaming Hessians. Though Stan would have had a fit of the vapors, the way people stared at him suggested that his haphazard efforts had fallen short.

  It wasn’t that he feared anyone would recognize him—no one would expect a peer to be strolling the docks, which stank to high heaven since the new floating harbor functioned as an open latrine—it was more that they would know he didn’t belong. His few attempts to initiate conversation that might have steered him in the right direction fell short.

  It was the slight change in the air that alerted him. He whirled just as a boy was about to make off with his coin purse. Allowing himself a small flash of admiration—the boy was good—he grabbed the lad and hauled him over to the edge of the dock. He didn’t have time to be slowed by pickpockets, so he only intended to scare the little criminal as he dangled him over the water.

  “I can swim,” the boy said defiantly.

  Blackstone huffed a laugh and set the captive back on his feet. “You can swim, fine, but can you survive that sludge?” He inclined his head toward the dirty water.

  “It’s not very deep here, anyway. I know everything about these docks, and I’m telling you, if you want to drown me, this is not the right spot.”

  “All right.” Blackstone pulled a guinea out of his purse. “If you know everything about these docks, show me which ships are bound for America, and you can have this.”

  The boy’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He’d probably never seen a guinea before. But just as quickly, those eyes grew wary. “Why would you pay that much?”

  Blackstone answered with the truth. “Because there is something on one of these ships that is worth more to me than a guinea.”

  “How much more?”

  “Show me the right ship, and you might find out.”

  Grinning, the boy motioned Blackstone to follow him. “There’re two ships docked now headed for America. One is a passenger ship, set to leave next week. The other—the Ruby—leaves tomorrow. It’s full of glass and textiles mostly. And some furniture.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “They call me the mayor.”

  “Who does?”

  The boy shrugged. “Folks.”

  Blackstone marveled as “the mayor” led him directly to what had to be Manning’s ship.

  “It’s a Baltimore Clipper,” said the mayor. “Small, but fast.”

  “I thought the slavers used Baltimore Clippers,” Blackstone probed. “The better to outrun the West Africa Squadron?”

  Another shrug. “They’re also good for fragile cargo, and there’s a lot of glassware on this one.”

  “You’ve done well.” Blackstone flipped the boy a coin. “You have two choices now. You can take your money and disappear, or you can stay here and watch this ship until I get back, and I’ll give you another guinea.”

  Blackstone took the boy’s astonished grin for assent. “If you see a lady coming or going—either of her own volition or under duress—you come find me. Give me the name of an inn nearby. A decent one.”

  “Llandoger Trow. It’s on King Street, north off Queen Square, near the Customs House.”

  Blackstone nodded and turned on his heel. It was time to turn himself into a proper sailor.

  Blackstone didn’t have much use for God. As far as he was concerned, the devil was the chap with his hands in human affairs. He might have changed his mind, though, when he walked into the taproom at Llandoger Trow and saw John Talbot nursing a pint at one end of the bar.

  Blackstone slid onto the stool next to the man. “Where is she?” He kept his tone neutral, assuming that his mere presence would be enough to convey the urgency of his query.

  Talbot’s face registered no surprise beyond a slight lifting of the eyebrows. When he did not answer, Blackstone abandoned neutrality and slammed his fist on the bar. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  “How could you just take her here? Lead her into danger?”

  The man remained unruffled. “You might as well say she took me. I’m the one risking everything to get that bloody slave of hers off that ship.”

  “Then why do it? Why are you here at all?”

  “I might ask you the same question.” Talbot took a sip of his ale, as if they were old friends out for a night at the pub.

  Reminding himself that throttling the man wouldn’t further his cause, Blackstone said, “I have my reasons.”

  “Lord Blackstone, I find myself rather pressed for time at the moment, but allow me to make one thing abundantly clear. If those reasons don’t culminate in your marriage to my wife’s oldest friend, I will call you out. I don’t care who you are.”

  Blackstone had to give the man credit—he had backbone. And he seemed to have Emily’s best interests in mind. What he didn’t understand was why. “So you’re Miss Mirren’s champion all of a sudden? Why? And don’t tell me because she’s your wife’s friend. Where were you before? Where were you when he was—”

  “Sometimes a man snaps, Lord Blackstone,” Talbot interrupted, his voice finally beginning to sound agitated. It rose as he added, “A man can only stand by and watch so much until one day, he just can’t do it anymore.”

  The honesty of the declaration rendered Blackstone mute.

  When Talbot spoke again, he’d gained control of his voice. Turning to face Blackstone straight on for the first time, he said, “Now you.”

  Looking straight into Talbot’s brown eyes, Black
stone said, “Because I love her. Because I’m going to marry her. Because I’m going to help her rescue her best friend.”

  Talbot smiled.

  Discomfited, for that was the last reaction he’d expected, Blackstone opened his mouth to say more, but found he didn’t know what came next. It didn’t seem to matter, because Talbot slid back from the bar and laid a coin on it. “I’d better go get her then. She’s upstairs. Wait here.”

  She’s upstairs. Blackstone nearly sagged against the bar in relief. His worst imaginings had been just that—imaginings. Flagging down the barkeep, he ordered a tumbler of whiskey and let its fire streak down his throat before letting his mind revisit what he’d just said.

  I love her. I’m going to marry her. I’m going to help her rescue her best friend.

  It was true. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, only that it was inevitable. They would prevail: they would get Billy off that damned boat, and then they would marry.

  “Another?”

  The barkeep’s intrusion drew Blackstone out of his reverie. He pulled out his pocket watch. “How long has it been since the gentleman I was with left?”

  “About ten minutes, I’d wager.”

  Something was wrong. He slid a coin across the bar and stood. The barkeep started to make change, but Blackstone shook his head and slid another coin forward as he glanced at the empty stool next to him. “Where is his room?”

  The man hesitated only a moment before nodding toward a door at the back of the room, “Third floor, last door on the left.”

  As Blackstone mounted the stairs, he tried to tell himself there was a logical explanation for the delay. But even as his mind cast around for one, fingers of doubt began to grasp at him. By the time he reached the door, panic had set in, and he didn’t bother knocking. Please let her be there. Please.

  The room was empty. Empty of people, that is. Clothing was strewn across the bed—he recognized the coat Talbot had been wearing downstairs—and a half-drunk cup of tea sat on the bedside table.

  He turned, tamping down panic, and his gaze snagged on a folded piece of paper resting on an otherwise-bare desk.

  His own name was scrawled across the front, in an angular, neat hand.

  He knew that hand.

  I have her. You lose.

  He unfolded the paper fully and watched with horror as a dead cockroach fell out of it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “He’s here!” Mr. Talbot had burst into Emily’s room, and after hunching over the desk for a moment, herded her into the corridor and down the inn’s back stairway.

  Then they had run. When her lungs protested, she pictured Mr. Manning at the inn, missing them by a hairbreadth. So she kept running, propelled by fear as she imagined how violent her ex-guardian’s rage would be this time. But she was also driven by excitement. To know that Billy was so close was the fuel she needed to keep moving. As they ran down the pier, time folded in on itself, and she felt like she was running through the forest all those years ago.

  Except this time they would escape. They had to. It was all she had left to hold on to. If Billy sailed for America, she couldn’t face Sally. She couldn’t face life.

  “This is for show,” Mr. Talbot said as he unsheathed a knife. “If we’re caught, I’m going to have to pretend I’m apprehending you, that you’re acting alone. If that happens, I’ll take you off the boat, and we’ll regroup.”

  And so she walked the gangplank with a knife at her back. The steel pressed against her muslin dress as they made their way down a companionway, but they did not meet anyone else.

  It was only after they stepped inside a small cabin that she realized she’d made a horrible mistake.

  “Billy!” Her heart leaped with wild joy at seeing him again. She had hoped—prayed—they would find him aboard, but she hadn’t been prepared for the visceral blow of seeing him again after so many years. Her hands shook, her stomach churned, and tears began leaking out of her eyes. “Billy,” she cried again.

  “Emily!” He struggled toward her, but was tied up in one corner.

  She lunged for him, but instead of dropping the knife now that there was no chance of anyone seeing them, Mr. Talbot jabbed it harder against her back. “Reunited at last,” he sneered.

  Reunited. Yes, finally, thankfully. She turned to him, confused. Why did he sound so angry?

  “The two of you will have plenty of time to catch up on the journey to America. Assuming you survive it,” he continued.

  In a decidedly French accent.

  No. She had been at Sarah’s wedding. Watched as the happy couple kissed in a corridor at the wedding breakfast when they thought no one was watching. “No.” This time she spoke the word aloud, as if her almost brother could somehow see the wild, impossible thought that had arisen in her mind and assure her she had misunderstood. “No.”

  “Oui.”

  “Le Cafard.” The truth constricted her throat and made her skin burn.

  “Oui,” he said. “Mademoiselle is smarter than her lover.”

  It all made a horrible kind of sense. Le Cafard had indeed come off the boat at Clareford, just as Eric had predicted. “I hate him,” he’d said in the coach on the way here. She’d thought he was talking about Manning, but she understood now he’d been speaking of Eric.

  Emily’s heart wrenched when she thought of Eric, waiting in Essex for the boat, never knowing he’d made his enemy welcome as a guest in his home. Never knowing that she had run off with his tormentor.

  Then she thought of Sarah and had to concentrate so as not to cast up her accounts. “Your wife?”

  “Ah, yes, the lovely Miss Manning. You will appreciate how convenient it was to have a bride whose father sails between England and France with impunity. Do you know that I’ve made seven crossings on his boats? It used to be such a problem before I married her.” He barked a triumphant laugh. “And to think that Mr. Manning believes silk and champagne is all that’s making the journey with me. The man is a snake, I’m sure you’ll agree, but I’m certain that even he would not agree to be the agent of death I have made him.”

  Emily put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear any more. But of course that didn’t stop Le Cafard. “You will remember Corunna? Your General Moore’s epic retreat?” He grinned. “One of my proudest moments.” He paused and cocked his head, smiling. “Though, I think perhaps it will pale against the time I finally destroyed the Earl of Blackstone.”

  “Let her go.” Billy spoke quietly from the corner. “Let her go, and you can have me. You can kill me right now.”

  “No!” Emily cried.

  “Now, now, my friends, be calm. I thought about killing you, I must admit. They would find your bodies together. There would be a scandal.” He turned to Emily. “It would break his heart. But now that I’ve met him, now that I know how he feels about you, I see that ambiguity is worse—much, much worse. Did you know that when we send slaves to America, many of them don’t arrive alive? And America is such a big place! Wide, endless prairies, mountains so high a man can’t begin to think of crossing them. A man could spend his life searching America for a missing person. Sending someone he loves to America with nary a clue left behind?”

  “It will kill him,” Emily whispered.

  “Exactly,” said the spy. “But slowly.”

  Blackstone ran into the mayor on the way back to the pier. The boy had been doing as told, running to fetch Blackstone with the news that a lady had boarded the ship.

  “Was she in distress?”

  “I can’t rightly say. The man escorting her was holding her arm something fierce, but she wasn’t crying or calling out.”

  “I need to get onto that ship without anyone seeing me.”

  The boy hesitated and Blackstone flipped him another coin.

  The mayor did not reach out to catch the coin, instead let it clatter to the wooden planks beneath their feet. “What’s on that ship that’s worth such a risk?”

&nb
sp; Blackstone stared at the ragged, dirty boy, who could have been no more than ten. “A woman.”

  “Who is she?”

  Blackstone considered the question. She is an abolitionist. She is loyal to a fault. She is an excellent swimmer. She reads too many books. She has the most amazing blue eyes—sometimes they look almost violet. She has been disappointed by so many people, yet she persists in seeing the best in those around her.

  In the end, he settled for the only thing he could think of to summarize the sea of emotion churning in his chest. “I love her.”

  The mayor pocketed the coin and produced a coarse sack. “Take off your coat and boots and stuff them in here.”

  Blackstone obeyed, then followed the boy to the edge of the pier. There was a ladder inset against it—no one would notice it if they hadn’t already known it was there.

  “We’re going to have to swim.”

  Blackstone would have laughed, except at this moment it all seemed so inevitable. She had appeared at his lake, his absolving angel, and she had kissed him until he could let his brother go. She had taught him to swim again. And now he would swim to her.

  The mayor was already halfway down the ladder when Blackstone stepped over the edge. No one expected to see swimmers here, and so they made their way through the murky water unnoticed. The swim was difficult because Blackstone held two oilcloth-wrapped pistols above his head, using only his legs and injured arm to propel himself. The boy led Blackstone to a rope ladder that was almost impossible to see, so well did it blend in with the side of the ship.

  “The sailors are stealing from the man who owns this boat,” the boy said, answering Blackstone’s unasked question. “They lower goods down this ladder and onto a rowboat. I figure, if they can come down it, we can go up it.”