by The Spy
“But then he’ll catch you for sure!”
“I don’t care, darling. I love you. I don’t want you to be hurt.” He looked up to meet her eyes then, wonder in his gaze. Encouraged, Phillipa smiled and stretched toward him once more. “Come take my hand, Robbie. This is not for you. You don’t have to be like James. He’s a grown man. You’re just a little boy.”
It was the wrong thing to say, she knew it the moment the words left her mouth. His chin went pure Cunnington and he took his first step, sliding one foot along the ledge.
Fear turned Phillipa’s blood to ice. “Robert James Cunnington, you don’t move again, do you hear me!” She raised one knee to the sill. With shaking hands clinging to the window frame, she straddled the window, clinging to it with her thighs like a horse. Even stretching as far as her single-handed grip would allow her to dangle out, she couldn’t reach him. “Please, darling, come back closer,” she gasped. “Please take my hand!”
Gaining confidence as his small feet balanced easily on the ledge, Robbie only grinned back at her. “Follow me, Flip. If we go this way, we can shinny down the drainpipe.”
Phillipa looked down the length of the ledge to see the pipe in question bracketed to the building. Heavy and black, it looked reassuringly sturdy despite the layers of rust. One very likely could shinny down it, if one could only make it all the way there without falling.
She shook her head. “Robbie, just come back.”
“But it’s easy! See?” Totally comfortable, a city boy quite in his element, Robbie danced farther down the ledge. He reached the drainpipe and stretched one hand out to take firm hold. “Watch me, Phillip. Watch—”
Beneath his grasp the old pipe crumbled into a handful of rust. Robbie teetered for a moment, his mouth open in surprise at the sudden lack of stability in the metal. Then he looked over at her in horror as the pipe pulled away from its rusted brackets above his head. His small figure cartwheeled through the air, hands outstretched in an impossible attempt to break his fall to the ground below.
Chapter Twenty-seven
A woman’s scream tore the air, causing James to come to a startled halt as he stepped into the carriage he’d hailed. It was a terrible sound, full of dread. James turned his head, searching for the source. From the alley? He dashed into the narrow opening.
He rounded the corner of the alley before being slowed by the scattered rubbish. He ran farther into the dimness, leaping piled litter with the ease of long practice.
A familiar figure crouched in the alley, sobbing openly and struggling with a fresh pile of debris. Flip? James hurried forward. The figure turned. “He’s hurt—he fell—oh, God, James!”
Oddly reddish curls tumbling over smooth forehead, tear-filled green eyes surrounded by spiky lashes—
Female. Despite his suspicions, cold shock swept through James as he staggered to a halt. “Flip?”
It was Flip. And yet it wasn’t. James blinked, his perspective shifting oddly from past to present, then back again. The clothing, the mannerisms . . . and yet those eyes. How could he have been blind to the audacious beauty of those stunning eyes? Something dark twined within him—further warning.
Those eyes.
Then he saw the tiny figure lying so still beneath the length of iron drainpipe that Flip was trying desperately to move. “Robbie!”
James threw himself to his knees on the ground alongside Flip and heaved violently at the old iron. Urgency robbed his breath but thankfully only added to his strength. He pulled the heavy pipe from the boy and knelt carefully to touch his little round face. “Rob? Can you hear me, Robbie?”
No reply. So still. So white. The pain in his breast took James quite by surprise, even as he tenderly gathered up his heir. His boy.
His son.
James was scarcely aware of Flip hurrying alongside him as he made for the mouth of the alley. Collis had followed him partway and now stood openmouthed on the street.
“Robbie has fallen,” James informed him tightly. “Fetch the physician.” Then he looked down at the blotchy tear-streaked face of the woman he’d thought his friend. “And when you’ve done that,” he said from between gritted teeth, “lock up this spy.”
As James cradled Robbie gently against the motion of climbing the stairs to the upper rooms, his only thought was of getting aid for his son.
He’d deal with the deceitful bitch later.
The physician came. Dr. Westfall was the Prime Minister’s own physician and a man of impeccable discretion. The Liars used him rarely, preferring to patch up their own if possible, but even Kurt had turned to a quivering mess at the sight of a wounded child.
James was waiting outside the door when Dr. Westfall emerged from Robbie’s room. The only distraction he’d had while waiting most of the day had been the various and painful means of punishing the traitorous woman who had been contained in the room just next door to Robbie.
At least she had finally stopped pounding on the door and calling for help. Her pleas and protestations of innocence had begun to wear at James, even muffled as they were by the heavy oak door.
By the time Dr. Westfall left Robbie, all was quiet and James had been alone with his thoughts for far too long. Immediately, James moved to peer into the room.
Robbie lay very still, a small heap in the center of the man-sized bed. His continued lack of consciousness was testified to by the pristine condition of the counterpane. Never had the energetic Robbie slept so still. Carefully, James closed the door on the sight of his son, lying so vulnerable in the silent room.
The stout elderly physician stopped to mop his face with his handkerchief before turning to face James. “Your man stoked the fire a bit high in there. All to the good, however. Wouldn’t want the little nipper to catch a chill as well.”
James couldn’t bear to be polite any longer. “How is he? Will he recover? He was so pale—”
Dr. Westfall held up one hand to halt James’s urgency. “His arm is broken, as you know.”
James did know, for Stubbs had aided the doctor in setting the bone. James had not been able to stand the thought, and even Stubbs had left the room a bit green.
“But has he yet waked?” God, don’t let him be like Ren.
Dr. Westfall sighed. “No, not yet. But that could be from the laudanum we had to give him to relax the muscles so we could set the bone. It was a clean break, and other than the knot on his head, he seems uninjured.” The doctor stuffed his handkerchief back into a pocket and hefted his bag. “My wife has held my breakfast and my lunch, young man. It would behoove neither of us to ask her to hold my dinner.”
James stepped back, only now becoming aware that he had blocked the good doctor’s path. He passed a hand over his face, trying to bring himself under control. “My apologies, sir. I’ve not been a father long.” No more than a day.
Yet he could not now imagine his life without Robbie in it.
Dr. Westfall nodded as James showed him to the door. “Parents do take it the hardest. Mothers, usually, although I have seen a few fathers shaken as well. I’m glad to see you’re one of those. The little lad will need you, when he wakes.”
James nodded tightly. “I will be there for him.” He would be. Forever.
Downstairs at the door of the club, Jackham approached James as Dr. Westfall boarded his carriage. “Cunnington, you had a message come, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” Jackham grinned. “But it is good news for you.”
James felt impatient to go to Robbie. He’d been kept from the room for hours, thanks to an apparent new tendency to overreact. “What is this news?” he said absently.
Jackham put a hand on James’s arm. “Ren Porter is awake.”
James stopped and turned to Jackham with a disbelieving smile. ‘Truly? When did this happen?”
“This mornin’. The news came hours ago, but Himself wouldn’t let anyone visit Ren, thinkin’ the watchmen might take note of all of them in one place like that.”
James
nodded, appreciating Dalton’s discretion. Wanted thieves would never congregate in that way outside of home ground. And the Liars made a ragtag bunch in any setting. Likely not the best guests for a convalescent. But someone should visit Ren to catch him up on matters.
Only a day ago, the news would have sent James on a scramble to Ren’s side, more to beg forgiveness and to absolve himself of guilt than to greet a friend. James sneered at himself. His own self-absorption bid fair to sicken him.
Tonight, James had more pressing matters to attend to.
“Go in my place, would you, Jackham? Tell Ren I’ll come to him tomorrow. In the meantime, keep the men from crowding him. You can take their greetings as well.”
Jackham looked startled. James couldn’t imagine why, since Jackham had known Ren for years. In fact, the three of them had spent many a night sharing tales of adventure over whisky and cigars—carefully edited, of course. It still astonished James how tales of thieving and tales of spying resembled each other. The difference lay in the goal, presumably.
Tonight James’s goal was to tend his son and question a certain lying spy who had turned his life and his family upside down.
Phillipa sat upon the bed in the small room in which she’d been stored away. She was able to sit now only because she had long ago exhausted any other action.
Pounding on the door had not gained her anything. Trying to wrest open the small window to cry for help had not worked. Pacing restlessly had only exhausted her. Even sleep upon the narrow bed would not come, not with her desperate worry and guilt about Robbie twisting her gut.
She watched the day pass through the window until the gray edge of darkness tinged the city. From the circle of James’s arms she had seen the sun rise in this place, and now she saw it set. Alone.
A part of her wondered if she would ever see it rise again. “If I can get you out before Himself sees you, likely they won’t kill you.” Robbie had said that in complete seriousness. He would likely know better than she. In all their time together, she’d never known Robbie to exaggerate.
Robbie. Phillipa rose, forced to pace once more in restless distress. Dear God, he’d been so still and pale. She wrapped her arms about her chilled gut but could not warm it. She ought to have snatched him from the sill of that window the moment he opened it.
She ought to have climbed right down on that treacherous ledge and tossed his stubborn little body right back into the club.
She ought never to have contacted James Cunnington in the first place. All of this—Robbie’s accident, James’s bitterness, her own imminent danger, not to mention her broken heart—had begun the day she’d walked through the doors of that house.
Now she was imprisoned here in this mysterious club.
The door finally opened. Phillipa blinked against the light streaming in, for the room had grown full dark and she had not been given a candle. A broad-shouldered figure moved into the rectangle of light, casting Phillipa into shadow once more.
“Miss Atwater, I presume?”
Ren Porter would have gladly journeyed back into the darkness if he could. Unfortunately, God and Mrs. Neely wouldn’t let him. The kindly nurse was so grateful for every move he made, every muscle he twitched. She praised him like a toddler for eating a spoonful of mush and wept when he sat up unaided in the bed.
The only way to banish the motherly woman was to feign sleep. So Ren did so, as much as possible. Still, the first day of awareness seemed to stretch into ten.
A familiar voice came from the dimness to rouse him from the weak half-slumber he was reduced to. Too much pain for real sleep, too much weariness for real acuity.
“There’s a lot that’s happened down at the club since you’ve been out.”
Ren rolled his head to blink at the blurred figure standing beside his bed. It was still difficult to bring images into focus. Finally, the outlines that continuously shifted and wavered coalesced into clarity for a brief instant. Jackham. Ren let his head fall back onto the stabilizing safety of the pillow. The slightest thing made him dizzy.
Cursing the weakness and the pain was his primary entertainment today, but he was weary enough of it by now to welcome the raspy and familiar company of the club’s manager. He reminded himself to keep up the façade of thieves’ den even through his fog. “Hello, Jack.”
Odd that it was Jackham who had come, however. Ren would have expected Simon or at least—
James.
Ren turned his head once more and opened his eyes to blink at Jackham. “Why isn’t James here? He isn’t . . . he isn’t wounded, is he?”
Jackham snorted. “Not a bit of it. He’s right as rain. Saw him myself, not an hour ago.”
“Is he coming?”
Jackham cleared his throat, apparently uncomfortable. “Well, now you have to understand something, Ren. James is in a difficult position. Here you are, alive after all, and now he’s got to face you down, knowing that he was the one to put you here.”
Put him here? Cold began to twine through Ren’s bruised gut. “I don’t follow you, Jack.”
Jackham heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Ren, but the fact is that James sold you out to a rival outfit, you and some others. You should thank your stars you’ve still got enough brains to know your name. Most of the lads that James informed on are growin’ grass these days. Why, Weatherby lay here for weeks right beside you, until he passed away a few days ago. We thought you were done in as well.”
Ren’s stomach had gone to ice, but he could only blink at Jackham as the man went on.
“Of course, James made up real sorry for the whole thing, and the new owner took him back on. I, for one, think he meant every word of that regret, but there’s some . . .”
Ren swallowed, fighting to make sense of Jackham’s report. “New owner?”
“You should know that Simon Raines was bought out. Seems he bargained himself a knighthood with all the money he made thievin’, and when he decided to get married he sold the club to a real fancy gentleman by the name of Lord Etheridge. Now, his lordship seems a decent bloke, and he’s a right good rooftop man, though I never heard tell of him on the streets afore he bought the club. But the lads have taken to him well enough.”
Ren could not contend with James’s betrayal. “So James can’t face me now?”
Jackham reached out a consoling hand, but stopped before he touched Ren. “Don’t be too hard on him now. He’s had a real tough time of it. I know some of the lads are thinkin’ he’s gone straight now, what with being the hero that saved Lord Liverpool and getting gold medals from the Prince Regent and all—”
“Medals.” The word was acid on Ren’s unwieldy tongue. “They’ve given him medals.”
Jackham blinked at him, worry plain in his eyes. “I know it don’t look good, Ren. But I know he’s still our James. It’s only the responsibilities that are weighin’ hard on him. He’s practically runnin’ the whole operation down at the club. No one gainsays James Cunnington, exceptin’ me, I guess. But I just had to see how you fared, us bein’ mates and all.”
“He told you not to come.”
“Not just me. Told all the blokes. Can’t think why. Unless you can? Maybe it has somethin’ to do with you gettin’ attacked. Do you remember anything about that night?”
“I was working the . . . the dockside pubs.” Keep the club’s cover. The warning suddenly didn’t seem to ring as deeply as it used to. “There was a fight, I wasn’t part of it, but when I left the place someone motioned me to duck down the alley, away from the ruckus. I think . . . I think it was a woman.” He screwed up his eyes against the throbbing behind them. “Perhaps. I don’t know.”
Jackham leaned back in his chair. “Well, likely it doesn’t matter. Have you a thought to what you’ll be doin’ with yourself now? A thief who can’t steal ain’t much use to anyone, now is he? I should know.”
Ren thought of Jackham’s life of bone-deep pain from his fall, and how the man was old bef
ore his time, reduced to running numbers and counting pennies for the club. Revulsion shuddered through Ren at that, and more so at the following thought.
He himself might not be so lucky.
Jackham dusted at his hat. “Might be you should get out of London for a bit, once you’re up and about.” With a sigh and a habitual groan, he stood. “I know it still hurts me to see the heights I used to dance on, when I can hardly climb the steps.”
Away. Emotions threatened to pull Ren apart at his badly healed seams. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I will,” he managed to choke out.
Ren felt sick from more than the pain wrestling with the laudanum. He had been sold out to the French by his best friend, and now James was a decorated hero while Ren lay crippled and discarded like a broken sword.
Bitterness welled within him, laced with a dark fury that Ren had never before experienced. He’d lost everything. His strength, his work, and like as not any real clarity in his sight.
The thought crossed his mind that Jackham could be lying, but why would he? Jackham knew nothing about the real purpose of the Liars, nothing about Ren’s efforts to be recruited by French intelligence in order to expose their network in London.
No, Jackham was simply reporting what he had observed, oblivious to its larger significance to Ren.
Ren was dizzy with the bitterness of his own fury. His life was a ruin, his friends were dead—and James, the bloody traitor who had caused this damage, was a national hero.
Seeing that Ren was lost to conversation once more, Jackham quietly left the room. Once outside the door, he paused to press one palm to the paneled wood and to pass the other shaking hand over his face.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he whispered. “But it’s for the best. There’s them that will want you too dead to tell tales, now that you’ve woken. Best you disappear and take your memories with you.”
It wasn’t much, but it was the least he could do.
