A Case for Christmas (The Lords of Bucknall Club Book 2)

by J. A. Rock

“Why do you smile?” Gale asked.

  Chant shook his head. “But do you not think we ought to speak to Darling? Or perhaps one of his superiors, even. Why, there are several members of the House of Lords within spitting distance, any of whom might be able to offer us assistance. Why must we go and speak with de Cock when there is probably someone here inside Bucknall’s this moment who could send the navy instead?”

  “Because de Cock is an enemy of the French,” Gale said, “which makes him a friend of ours. Without any evidence against him, we would be advised, very strongly, to leave Admiralty House and not return.”

  “The Runners, then?” Chant pressed.

  Gale looked at him sharply. “Do you think there is a man among them who could be trusted to make the same observations I can? I swear this isn’t vanity speaking, Chant, only the truth.”

  “Gale, the man has already threatened your life!”

  “And I do not intend to get close enough to allow him to do it a second time,” Gale said. “I mean to observe his movements only, and to see where they might lead us. Once we have more information, I will go to Darling.”

  Chant felt his face twitch.

  “Or any Runner,” Gale added. “It need not be Darling.”

  A trickle of unease ran through Chant’s gut, but he held Gale’s gaze and nodded. “Only to observe then.”

  “Of course,” Gale said, arching a thin, aristocratic brow. “To observe.”

  Chant took a cab home to Mayfair, having wrested a promise out of Gale that he would not go dashing madly off to the dockyards alone. He did not like Gale’s plan a whit, but, having found himself at a loss to provide an alternative, he had agreed to accompany him if only he could first go home. The wind off the river could be cold, and Chant wanted to fetch his greatcoat. And, he could not deny it, he had hoped that the detour to collect his greatcoat would allow him some time to come up with an opposing strategy to offer to Gale, but as he alighted from the cab in front of his house, he still had not come up with one.

  He paid the driver and then stood for a moment in the street, pinching the bridge of his nose, until some compulsion drew him not to his door, but around the corner to the churchyard he could view from his window.

  It was a neat little churchyard, restful and pleasant, decorated in the fresh green shoots of springtime. Chant headed for the angel, brushing his fingers against the planes of its marble face as it wept over a grave.

  It was not Jenny’s grave. Jenny’s grave was not in Mayfair, and it had no angel. Yet it was there that Chant felt closest to her. It was there that he sometimes came to speak with her, imagining he could hear her responses.

  “He is mad,” he told the angel, his mouth quirking as he thought of smashing the jug the night before. “And he makes me quite mad as well. He is… he is not like Reid. He is like no one I have ever met before. You would like him, I think.”

  He listened for her answer in the faint clatter of traffic on the street beyond the churchyard wall and the chatter of a pair of sparrows. He heard the crunch of boots on the gravel path behind him and turned in expectation of having to explain his presence to some parson or rector.

  Instead, his vision was filled with a man so tall and broad he was almost a giant—a giant with a shock of white-blond hair that appeared as coarse as twine, eyes a cold, flat sort of blue, and a mouth that, as Chant recognised him, pulled into a gruesome smile.

  Chant’s blood ran cold.

  De Cock.

  There was no hope of bolting, but Chant tried anyway. De Cock caught his arm and spun him so his back was to the captain’s chest and put his blade to Chant’s throat. The steel was brown in places—dried blood, Chant realised, his gorge rising. When the captain spoke, his voice was higher than Chant had expected. Softer. “You’re going to take me into your home, Mr. Chant, and you’ll give me that fucking beast you’ve been harbouring. And anything you might have taken off the mongrel as well.”

  It took Chant a moment to understand.

  Miranda. He tried not to breathe too rapidly for every breath pressed his neck harder against the blade. Glancing down, he saw the two globes on the dagger’s hilt and had the absurd urge to laugh. De Cock thought Miranda was Flummery. Anything you might have taken off the mongrel as well. He believed Chant had the jewels. The thought of the captain harming Miranda was enough to break through Chant’s terror and prompted him to raise his arm, then ram his elbow backward into the captain’s stomach.

  Chapter 17

  An ugly clock ticked away in the Blue Room of Bucknall’s, its pendulum swinging underneath a darkly polished case. Gale glanced at it and wondered how long it would take Chant to get back with his greatcoat. He thought about going home to collect one for himself. Then he thought about running into his mother and sisters and decided against it.

  He drummed his fingers on his knee.

  “Gale.” Soulden slipped into the room, looking as suspicious as an alley cat.

  “Soulden,” Gale said with a nod.

  “You look dreadful. Did you sleep in those clothes?”

  “Yes,” Gale said and lifted a hand in a vain attempt to straighten his cravat. “You’re not looking terribly chipper yourself. Are you still being pursued by that Rivingdon fellow?”

  Soulden sighed and collapsed in the chair opposite Gale’s. “There are two of them now, can you believe?”

  Gale raised his eyebrows.

  “Rivingdon and also Warry’s cousin Notley.” Soulden made a face. “They’re like two little puffed-up bantam roosters shaking their feathers at one another, and for some reason, they’ve both set their ambitions on me.”

  “Don’t be modest, Pip,” Gale said. “It doesn’t suit you. You’re wealthy, titled, and unmarried. You must be the most eligible bachelor in all of London now that Hartwell’s taken himself off the market.”

  “You think Hartwell was more eligible than I?”

  “Your father is an earl. His is a duke.”

  “I’m more handsome though.”

  “If you insist.”

  Soulden cast a narrow look at the doorway as though he was expecting one of his unwelcome paramours to burst through it at any moment. “How are things going with you?”

  “With my what?”

  “Well, with life in general,” Soulden said. “Your investigation, of course, but also these rumours I’m hearing about you and Chant.”

  “Only one of those things is your business.”

  “The other is all of Society’s,” Soulden said. “And the fact you have been spending so much time with Chant since you danced together at the Harringdons’ ball has not gone unremarked.”

  “Nothing ever goes unremarked by the ton,” Gale said. “It’s why I hate it. Unlike you, Pip, I am not comfortable wearing a mask.”

  Soulden took no offence. He only smiled. “I know, Christmas.”

  “Chant and I are going to watch de Cock’s ship today,” Gale said to change the subject.

  “Do you think you will learn anything?”

  “I have no idea,” Gale said, “but it seems a better use of our time than doing nothing at all.”

  “I shall make no comment on your willingness to spend all day with Chant.”

  “Good. Please don’t.”

  “Still, I’m surprised he’s not here with you.”

  “He’s gone to fetch his greatcoat.” Gale glanced at the clock again. “How long does it take to fetch a damned greatcoat from Mayfair?”

  One of the boys slipped into the room. He was an apple-cheeked little fellow, and Gale was fairly certain he’d last seen him wrestling with a dog on Chant’s floor. “My lord,” he said, hastening forward and holding out a note. “A message for you, sir.”

  Gale took the note and unfolded it. He read the words there, and felt the floor fall away from underneath him.

  Chant.

  De Cock had Chant.

  “Gale?” Chant mumbled in the darkness some time afterwards and was suddenly overcome w
ith the stench of something fetid and rank. “Good God, what is that smell?”

  Gale’s voice came to him, distant and strained. “That would be bilgewater, I believe. How is your head?”

  “What?” Chant blinked, but it was still pitch black.

  A warm hand found his shoulder, and long fingers squeezed. “Take a moment to catch up, my dear fellow. You’ve had quite the crack on the head.”

  “What?”

  The last thing Chant remembered was breakfasting at the Bucknall Club. He’d had cake. It had been delicious. So what on earth was…

  Oh.

  He had gone to fetch his greatcoat, and he had been in the churchyard when de Cock found him. He remembered something—something about a dog? And then everything else was a mystery. His head throbbed, which gave him some indication as to what had happened.

  And now he was in the dark with Gale but, unlike last night at Russell Street, the situation was not a comfortable one. Everything stank, and Chant’s body ached in unpleasant ways, and it felt as though his head had been split open. He raised a hand to touch his jaw, somehow misjudged the distance in the blackness, and slapped himself in the mouth instead.

  “Ow!”

  “Did you—” Gale sounded startled. “Did you just strike yourself in the face? To what end? Have you gone mad?”

  “Days ago, I think,” Chant muttered. “When you first appeared on my doorstep in the middle of the night and asked me to come with you to find Elise. Yes, I think I was most certainly mad then.”

  He sensed Gale moving, rather than saw him, and felt the press of lips against his forehead. “Yes, you are probably mad. If we escape from this, we will certainly both end up in Bedlam.”

  Chant pushed him away, a chill running through him.

  “I did not mean…” Gale’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “Forgive me. I spoke without thinking. I meant it as a joke.”

  “They say madness is hereditary, do they not?” Chant murmured, his eyes stinging.

  “Nobody dares say it much nowadays at all, actually,” Gale said, his tone wry. “Not in front of the Prince Regent, at least.”

  Chant couldn’t help his snort. He sought Gale’s hand in the darkness. “I know you meant no offence, Gale.” He drew a breath. “What are you doing here? You weren’t with me in Mayfair. How… ?”

  “De Cock was good enough to send me a message telling me he had you,” Gale said. “Such manners for a pirate. Or perhaps it’s quite normal in his circles. I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve ever met a pirate before. I’m afraid he doesn’t quite meet the expectations I set of them as a child, reading accounts of Blackbeard.”

  “I’m sorry for your disappointment,” Chant said.

  Gale squeezed his hand. “Perhaps next time you are abducted by pirates, you might pick one with the common decency to fly a flag with a skull on it.”

  “I shall keep that in mind,” Chant murmured. “About the jewels… I think you’re right.”

  “I usually am.”

  “He wanted Miranda. He thought she was Flum.”

  “Oh no.”

  “So I fought him.”

  “Over a dog.”

  “Mm-hmm. I think that’s when he struck me. Did he get Miranda, though?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Are we… are we on the Condor?”

  “Yes. How is your head? Are you back with me?”

  “Mostly,” Chant said. “I think.”

  “Good,” Gale said, and for the first time, Chant heard a waver in his voice. “Because I am not ready to lose you, Benjamin Chant.”

  “Even if you were, I probably wouldn’t leave you alone anyway.”

  Gale’s laughter was faint and breathy. “Good,” he said again, taking Chant’s hand and raising it to his mouth. He pressed his mouth against Chant’s wrist, and Chant felt his pulse beat rapidly. “Good.”

  Gale’s mind raced, which was nothing new to him, but the total lack of light in the little hold beneath the deck of the Condor made the sensation a bit dizzying. He was seated on the floor, his back pressed up against the damp, cool wall. Chant lay curled on the floor beside him, and Gale grasped his hand. Chant’s hand was cold—he had lost his gloves somewhere en route to Rotherhithe, and Gale had left his at Bucknall’s—but it was solid, it was real, and it anchored him in the darkness when his madly racing thoughts might have sent his mind spiralling into a fathomless pit.

  There was a rhythm to being on a ship that Gale did not like. He was no fan of the water and no fan of ships. Everything seemed too precarious on a ship—even on the sheltered Thames where the Condor squatted like a black fowl—and the world lifted and sank, lifted and sank, as the river breathed underneath them. Wood groaned and creaked, and the bilge, the stench of it apparent from the moment Gale had been brought under deck, sloshed back and forth, back and forth. Gale heard distant shouts on occasion, carried down from the decks above them, and sometimes the creak of footsteps over their heads.

  “You were senseless when I was brought aboard,” he said, rubbing his thumb against Chant’s. “It has been some time now, I think, although it is hard to tell exactly how much.”

  “Ah.” Chant’s slow exhalation was heavy. “And de Cock?”

  “I haven’t seen the man yet,” Gale said. “But I am quite sure he will make himself known to us.”

  Chant shifted, his coat whispering against the boards of the floor. “I suppose now would not be a good time to remind you I suggested you tell Darling where you were going?”

  “No,” Gale agreed. “Now would not be a good time. Perhaps you can save your recriminations for when this is all over.”

  “Very well,” Chant said. “My head is killing me. I feel as though I’ve been kicked by a horse.” He blinked in the darkness. “I don’t understand why you are here.”

  “I told you already,” Gale said, his fingers finding Chant’s hair and tugging a few strands gently. “De Cock sent a message to me.”

  “But why did you come?” Chant asked, and Gale hated the sheer disbelief in Chant’s voice as though he honestly thought Gale could have made any other choice and perhaps should have.

  “Well, I can never resist a fool’s errand,” Gale said. “I am eminently qualified for them, after all, as my mother often tells me.”

  “I am cold,” Chant said.

  Chant sounded half addlepated still, and Gale swallowed down his worry. When the sailors who had let him aboard had brought him under the deck and into this dank little storeroom and he had seen Chant senseless on the floor, his heart, an organ most of the people who knew him would argue he did not possess, had seized. “Yes. I am sorry.”

  “But what are you doing here, Gale?” Chant asked. “How did you come to be in their clutches too?”

  “You fool,” Gale said. “Did you think I could leave you to be abducted alone?” He pressed his finger to Chant’s mouth. “Now hush a moment and let me think.”

  Gale listened to the rhythmic sounds of the ship again. He caught some of Chant’s hair between the pads of his finger and his thumb and gently rubbed to tease the strands apart. Chant made no complaint.

  When he’d been brought aboard, there had been no sign at all of de Cock, but his men were a menacing enough bunch that Gale had no doubt they did not intend for him and Chant to leave the Condor alive. De Cock’s sailors were a motley collection, but all of them narrow-eyed and closemouthed. When they spoke amongst themselves it was in Dutch, in short, sharp undertones and with none of the joking and ribaldry that Gale had overheard before from sailors. They were cognizant, he supposed, that they had just abducted two Englishmen on English soil, and that a noose awaited them if they were caught.

  And all for a damn dog.

  Well, no, not for the sake of the dog, and yet somehow the dog was the key to the whole business. If that poor wretch Howe had not seen the beast to begin with and decided to take it home to Elise, he would have been alive today.

  No.


  Gale exhaled.

  No, it was not as simple as that, was it? Gale remembered how enthusiastically Howe had approached him, and how delighted he had been to discover him that night on the banks of the river. And how his daughter followed all of the stories about Gale in the news sheets. No, this wasn’t just about Howe looking for Flummery at all. This was about the fact that he’d got Christmas Gale involved, and de Cock must have been following him and witnessed their meeting and thought that Gale had agreed to help him. De Cock might not have cared if some old drunk was searching for his dog, because how could such a man be a threat at all to him, but Christmas Gale? Christmas Gale was exactly the sort of man who would begin by searching for a lost dog and end by uncovering treason.

  Or did de Cock think Howe had the jewels?

  No. De Cock had killed Howe and continued searching for the dog. He must have had reason to believe that Howe was ignorant of the dog’s value.

  Gale’s mouth curled into a self-satisfied smile. “Oh, I think I almost have it now, Chant.”

  “Have what?” Chant asked faintly.

  “I almost have de Cock where I want him,” Gale said. “And, for the love of God, please do not ask if that is in my arse.”

  Chant laughed softly in the darkness. “Gale, are we really to be murdered over a dog?”

  “Of course not,” Gale said. “Well, it’s very likely we’re to be murdered, but it’s certainly not because of a dog. It’s because of jewels. ”

  “That is not very comforting, you know.”

  “I know.”

  They were both silent for a long time.

  When a faint glowing line appeared in the darkness, Gale at first wondered if it was some trick of his mind, a sort of delirium brought on by sitting in the pitch black for too long. And then, as the line brightened and sharpened, Gale heard the creak of footsteps, and realised that someone was approaching, and lighting the way with a lantern or a candle.

  A moment later a latch scraped, and the door to the dark little storeroom was pulled open.

  Gale held up a hand against the sudden shocking glare of the light. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and then he was blinking a teenage boy into existence. He had dark curls, glinting eyes, and was barefoot and rather ragged like some artist’s inspiration for an Arcadian shepherd boy; lovely and innocent in a rough, uncultured sort of way. He was, more importantly, slender enough for even Gale to attempt to fight, and he was unarmed. He had a jug in one hand and a lantern in the other.