by KJ Charles
“How can you say that?” Mr. Conroy sounded worryingly breathless. “How— What—”
“The advertisement in The Times today was a message.” Martin showed them the newspaper, explained the simple code, repeated himself till it sank in. “I am concerned she has followed the instructions, gone to meet him there.”
“But this was published this morning! Why did you not come earlier?” Mr. Conroy demanded.
“I didn’t realise its import any more than you did,” Martin said, with all the patience at his command. “I came as soon as I understood it.” Which was true, if incomplete. He felt strongly that the Conroys would not wish to hear that anyone else knew of their daughter’s indiscretion.
“And too late,” Mr. Conroy said. “She’s gone, perhaps to this accursed inn. Why did you come here instead of there? Why did you not go after her at once?”
“He can’t read minds, Peter, don’t be absurd,” Mrs. Conroy snapped. “You must go to this place. Take Martin, go now, and when you find that—that wretch she is with . . .” Her mouth worked. God knew what scenes would be passing through her mind. Her uncontrollable daughter, too young and too pampered to understand that anything could harm her, alone in an inn with an unscrupulous man.
“I have someone there already, looking for her—with her description, not her name,” Martin assured them. “He is an agent I trust.” That was an even less complete truth; he could not claim that he trusted Swann at all. But he was quite sure that the fellow would act shrewdly and to his own benefit, and that would certainly involve putting a stop to Miss Jennifer’s escapade, since Martin had assured him that the reward would be lavish. “I am sure that if he finds her, he will act.” He saw Mrs. Conroy’s little sag of relief and felt a pang of compassion as he added, with reluctance, “My only fear is that she may no longer be there.”
“Where else could she be?” Mrs Conroy’s pitch rose on the words. “You can’t be suggesting she has gone to—to—”
“She wouldn’t go to some fellow’s house,” Mr. Conroy said flatly. “Not my Jenny. Not my little girl.”
“No, sir,” Martin said. “I’m concerned Troilus may be taking her to Gretna.”
The words dropped into the room like stones. Mrs. Conroy’s mouth opened and closed.
“We must assume he’s a fortune hunter,” Martin went on. “If he needs money urgently, a rich wife—”
“I won’t give him a penny,” Mr. Conroy said violently. “Not one. I will see him starve in the gutter first, and her with him.”
“Poppycock,” his wife told him. “You know very well you’ll give her whatever she wants, you always do. Martin, you don’t think . . . a special licence—”
“Still requires your consent. She could only marry without that in Scotland.”
Mrs. Conroy nodded. “Then if she is not at this inn, I suppose we have to assume she has gone to—to marry. Or been taken by this man . . .” She rocked forward over her joined hands. “Oh, heaven help us.”
“We don’t know any of this for sure,” Martin said. “We don’t know what she’s done or why. It is all guesswork, I could be wrong. Only, there is this message.”
“This message, this man, my money.” Mr. Conroy’s jowly jaw was set. “Of course he’s a fortune hunter. Oh, Jenny, Jenny.” His voice cracked.
Mrs. Conroy looked up, face tightened in thought, then she rose with a decisive movement. “Martin. You must go after her.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You can surely catch them, get there first even, if you travel fast enough. Peter cannot.” She waved a hand in the vague direction of her portly husband. Martin well knew that a coach journey at even the gentlest pace left him in agony for days. “She will listen to you, I’m sure of it. Obstinate little wretch that she is—but she has always been so fond of you. And we cannot ask anyone else, there is nobody we can trust. If word of this gets out, that she has been corresponding secretly, let alone that she has—has eloped . . .”
She didn’t have to spell it out. The news would be ruinous for Miss Jennifer, even if the runaways were recovered. The Conroys were not in the slightest well born; their only recommendation was their wealth, and there were other rich cits, merchants and slave owners with marriageable daughters. As a scandal-stained commoner she would doubtless still snag a husband by virtue of her inheritance, but he was unlikely to be a man of character, and she would never be received in the circles of which Mrs. Conroy had dreamed.
It was a matter of utmost delicacy on which all their hopes depended, and the Conroys were confiding it to Martin. Because they trusted him with their child’s secret, her life; because they knew he would do his utmost for Miss Jennifer; and because it did not occur to either of them that he was able to refuse.
Well, he could. He was no longer bound to their orders, not obliged to accede to their requests. He could not be compelled to lift a finger, far less abandon his own business to go on a wild-goose chase the length of England for the sake of the little girl he’d once dandled on his knee.
“Martin, you must,” Mr. Conroy said urgently, seizing his hand. “She won’t listen to anyone else, she never does. You can surely make her change her course before anything happens to her. Or if—if it is too late, she will need someone she can turn to, and who else is there she will trust in this but you or I? I am too damned old, too slow. Act for me, please. Bring our girl home.”
He could refuse. He was under no obligation except the obligation of any person to save another from misery, if he could. The obligations of his faith, and politics, and humanity.
Martin gave an inward sigh and tightened his grip on the soft, smooth fingers he held. “I will do what I can.”
Swann knocked on his door near nine o’clock that night. Martin had begun to hope that his lengthy absence meant he’d found something out, but it seemed that was not the case.
“What did you find?” he asked, pouring Swann a glass of port. He needed one himself, with the prospect of the next few days looming over him.
Swann grimaced, leaning back in his seat. “Well, they’d been and gone, I fear. A veiled lady meeting your description met a young gentleman in the early afternoon. He’d had his own chaise waiting and horses commanded since ten that morning. They spoke for some little while and then set off together.”
“Hell’s teeth. Did you get anything more? What he looks like, who he is?”
It seemed not. According to Swann, nobody had given a better description than “young gentleman,” “light-brown hair,” and “popinjay.” Troilus had not left a name; nobody had known who he was, where he had come from, or where he had taken the young lady. Nor had anyone remembered details of his chaise.
“Nothing?” Martin demanded, incredulous. “You didn’t hear a single word to identify him?”
“It’s a busy inn,” Swann said apologetically. “I asked everyone I could find, but no luck at all. Even the postilion who drove them on the first stage was his own. It’s quite possible he chose a bustling, unfamiliar place on purpose, in order to make pursuit difficult. Or maybe he just bribes lavishly. But I could not find any clues to their destination.”
“That was no damned use, then.”
Swann’s eyes narrowed. “You’re welcome to go and ask yourself if you think you could do so more effectively. And discreetly.”
Of course Martin couldn’t. Swann was infinitely forgettable, born to be overlooked or dismissed. Unremarkable of height and build and manner and, most of all, complexion. A black man asking questions about the whereabouts of a genteel young white lady would stick in anyone’s mind. The White Horse Cellar was one of London’s busiest coaching inns, always full of travelling gentry, probably bored already and looking out for entertainment, and gossiping staff. Martin’s all-too-noticeable presence could set off the very scandal that had to be contained; whereas he would wager most of the people Swann had interrogated would forget they’d been asked anything within a day.
“Very well
then, we have nothing to go on,” he said. “We don’t even know for sure if he’s taking her to Gretna. What if he’s taken her to some place of his own, some house in the country?”
“Then you won’t find her,” Swann said bluntly. “But, then her parents would have grounds for an action of rape, whereas a Gretna marriage can’t be challenged. He’s better off marrying her by her choice than forcing the issue to leave her with none. And for her to make that choice, a trip to the border is required.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “So where does that leave matters?”
“I’m going to Gretna Green.”
Swann’s brows went up comically. “La, sir. Who’s the fortunate fair?”
“You are,” Martin said.
He hadn’t precisely intended to say that. In fact, he hadn’t thought about it at all. He had thought about a long, solitary, uncomfortable race to the border, how he’d need to command the best post-horses at every stage and be obeyed with alacrity, all the questions he’d need to ask and the cooperation he’d need to receive, and the speed at which Swann’s mind worked.
And just a little bit about the way Swann had asked about earning those ten shillings and the look in his rain-coloured eyes. Which was not Martin’s motive, was more like a reason to bring almost anyone else. But he needed help, and Swann already knew Miss Jennifer’s secret. This way Martin would have the man under his eye, and get the assistance he needed. It made perfect sense.
Swann’s expression did not suggest he’d reached the same conclusion. “What was that?”
“I am going to Gretna, in the hope of overtaking or stopping Troilus before he gets there. And you’re coming with me. You can earn your pay.”
“But—”
“I need someone with me, and you must see I can’t bring in anyone off the street in a matter of this delicacy.”
“You can’t bring me in in a matter of delicacy,” Swann objected. “I am off the streets. And this is a wild-goose chase if ever I heard one. You don’t even know she’s going to Gretna!”
“The Conroys have asked me to go, so we’re going. Come on, bustle. You need to pack a bag; we’ll leave at dawn tomorrow.”
“I’m not doing anything of the sort!” Swann snapped. “I’m not going to Scotland, and you can’t make me.”
“I’m not making you. I’m asking you.”
Swann stuttered with outrage. “You did nothing of the sort!”
“Well, consider yourself asked.”
“That is not asking. And I’m not going.” Swann folded his arms. “I have a business to run, the Advertiser to publish. I can’t just hare off to Scotland.”
Martin sighed. “Would five pounds change your mind?”
Swann hesitated, and then said, almost smugly, “Forty.”
It was an outrageous sum. It was also Mr. Conroy’s money, he had plenty to spare, and without Swann spotting the advertisement’s cypher, they would have had no chance at all. “Done.”
“What?” Swann looked startled, and not particularly pleased, considering the small fortune on offer.
“Forty pounds for perhaps a week of your time,” Martin said. “You won’t be paid like that again in a hurry. Now get on and make yourself ready to earn it.”
Theo braced himself in the corner of the chaise, clutching the leather strap and wishing he’d asked for fifty pounds instead. If St. Vincent was spending Mr. Conroy’s money so lavishly, he might as well have got his hands on more.
He was earning it just by being in this awful conveyance. It was a light travelling chaise for two passengers, owned by one of Mr. Conroy’s equally wealthy but more dashing friends, and drawn by four horses, such was the urgency of their mission. They would change horses every ten or twelve miles in order to keep up the terrifying speed that was making the chaise lurch and swing as though it might topple over. The Conroys’ postilion, who had driven them the first stage, had claimed they would reach the speed of fourteen miles an hour on good stretches of road. Fourteen! It was absurdly dangerous. Theo was beginning to feel unwell from the swaying, bounding motion. And frankly, if he was going to end up with an arse that felt as though it had been cudgelled, he could think of better ways to get there.
He could definitely think of them now. The chaise was not wide, Martin St. Vincent was a broad-built man, and they were no more than four inches apart. The jolting of this absurd conveyance could easily send Theo sprawling across his lap at any moment, a thought that sustained him for the next few miles of silence and discomfort.
“You think Gretna Green,” St. Vincent said at last, his deep voice startling Theo out of the pleasurable fantasy he’d been indulging.
“If you don’t, why are we in this blasted contraption?”
St. Vincent sighed. “There are other towns in Scotland where one can marry.”
“Well, obviously, but Gretna is the closest to the border, is it not?”
“And the southernmost town of Scotland, yes. But the Great North Road doesn’t go there directly, it runs up the east of the country. Gretna Green is to the west,” St. Vincent explained, in a somewhat schoolmasterish manner. Theo adopted a look of intelligent interest. “To reach Gretna from London, one must follow the Great North Road to Boroughbridge, which lies about two-thirds of the way along our route, and then take a westerly road, travelling north through Carlisle. If our travellers stay on the Great North Road all the way, passing through Newcastle to reach the Scottish border at, say, Mordington, they will add a good forty miles to their journey, perhaps an extra day. But, if they do that while we go to Gretna Green, we will not stand a chance of catching them.”
“Ah.”
“It’s some eighty miles from Gretna to where the Great North Road crosses the border, and there are half a dozen border towns where they might marry. If we take the wrong route from Boroughbridge, we’ll have lost them.”
“I did say this was a wild-goose chase,” Theo said. “We don’t know they’re going to Scotland at all, and if we did, we don’t know where. Are you really going to be rattled the length of the country on a whim?”
St. Vincent didn’t dignify that with an answer. Theo waited a little longer, then gave a defeated sigh. “How do you know so much about flights to the border, anyway?”
“I read something on the subject recently. They have half a day’s head start, but at this speed we must surely make the time up and arrive at the border first, even catch them on the way. If we take the right road at Boroughbridge. All depends on that.”
“But that’s if they continue in their private carriage,” Theo pointed out. The tension in St. Vincent’s voice and face suggested that he cared about the outcome of this absurd chase, and Theo felt the urge to offer a reassurance, even a false one. “If they have to go on the stage, through accident or lack of funds, say, they will be travelling at half the speed of this wingèd chariot. We should pass them well before Boroughbridge. We might wait for them there, even,” he added hopefully. Cutting a hundred miles off the journey was already something he’d pay to do.
“If they’re on the stage.”
“Well, even if not, if we haven’t overtaken them at Boroughbridge, we won’t be far behind. Surely we’ll be able to pick up their trail if we ask around, and learn which road they took. The people up there probably recognise eloping couples as soon as they step out of the carriage. I expect it’s an industry of its own.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” St. Vincent tipped his head back, resting it against the padded leather of the interior. “Thank you. I should doubtless have fretted over that for the next half dozen stages.”
“Really?”
St. Vincent sighed. “I don’t wish to go back to the Conroys without good news, and I could worry myself into a decline, sitting here with nothing to do. So I appreciate your reassurance. Your help.”
“You’re paying for it.”
Theo wished he hadn’t said that as soon as the words left his lips, and he scrabbled for some jest to soften it, but St. Vincen
t had already nodded and turned to look out of the window.
The journey rattled and shook on. They changed horses and again, stage after stage. The posting inns near London—near, indeed; they were already at Stevenage by the time they stopped for a brief nuncheon—were far too busy for anyone to remember travellers, but Theo asked his questions anyway, and felt St. Vincent’s look of gratitude.
That wasn’t the only look he felt, and it rapidly became clear to him why the authoritative, confident Mr. St. Vincent had wanted company. Of course Theo had known that men of colour were fewer outside London, but the significance of that fact had entirely passed him by. Now he saw. By the Stevenage stage, St. Vincent was already the only dark-skinned man present and, judging by their stares and whispers, the first most of the chawbacon patrons of the inn had seen in their lives.
St. Vincent’s face was closed over as they sat with their meal. He gave no sign of noticing the gapeseeds, but he didn’t speak either, keeping his attention on his food. Theo glanced around, making sure his own face showed nothing but mild interest, watching for trouble. Nobody said anything; the looks weren’t even hostile, for the most part. They were simply . . . well, even intrusive overstated it. Just unsubtle, unrestrained by courtesy or discretion, as though St. Vincent were a spectacle for their entertainment and they were entitled to gaze their fill.
The looks weren’t directed at Theo, but he felt them all the same, and spooned his stew into his mouth hastily. It was a relief, despite his aching back and arse, to get in the chaise again.
