A Dangerous Man (33 page)

“It doesn’t matter,” Hart said impatiently, a frisson of anxiety racing along his exhausted nerves. “Do you know where she went?”

Phipps nodded. “Heard the toff tell the cabbie Fifty-four Rector.”

“Rector?” Hart said. Rector was in one of the more disreputable sections of Soho … an area remarkable only for the easy availability of illicit pleasures. The sole reason Mercy would go there would be to find Will. Perhaps, he thought with growing urgency, Will had even sent one of his friends for her so that he could—

Hart pushed past the doorman, racing into the hotel and up the lobby staircase to his rooms. Inside, he heaved his leather grip onto the bed and snapped it open. He dug through the few clothes to the carefully wrapped oiled wool package beneath.

He dragged the bundle out, ripping open the leather thongs. The Colt .44 gleamed lethal and expectant
from its oiled wool bed as Hart rummaged around the satchel for its attendant box of shells.

He spilled the brass cartridges into his palm and, grabbing the gun, shoved them into the chamber, clicking it shut as he raced back down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the street.

“Cab!” he shouted, fear coursing like fire in his veins. If Will had her down there, he could kill her. There’d be no witnesses. No one to help her.

A hansom rolled toward the curb. Before it had stopped, he’d jerked the door open and was halfway inside. “Two sovereigns if you get me to Rector Street within the quarter hour!”

Nathan led her around the side of the building down a narrow foot alley. Perpetually shadowed by looming buildings, the ancient brick pavers underfoot were slick with a dark, brackish mold. He motioned her toward an uneven flight of steps that ended at a scarred, heavy-looking door. He knocked thrice.

Scraping metal revealed a tiny slit in the wood. An instant later the door creaked open and a fragile-looking Oriental man, thin white wisps bobbing from gaunt cheeks, beckoned them in.

Nathan withdrew a silk handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Cover your mouth, m’dear. The stench is overwhelming.”

Mutely, Mercy complied, staring in horror
about her as Nathan led the Oriental man a few feet away and began a whispered conversation.

She stood in a dim, low hallway. A few candles, set on rude shelves, waded in pools of their own wax. They gave off a vile scented smoke that stained the rouge-colored walls behind them with black halos.

From where she stood she could see myriad little rooms opening onto the hall through crouching archways. More rooms were honeycombed behind these, some alcoves curtained, some open. In each alcove was a rough bed and between the alcoves squatted octopuslike water pipes, tubes extending from their swollen brass bellies.

The hiss and bubble of water gurgled from a dozen different sources. Their soiled, silk-wrapped tubes twined like snakes beneath the heavy draperies covering untold numbers of crannies. Moans and mutters punctuated the low, incessant bubbling sound, and worse, an occasional laugh, private and cheerless.

It was a catacomb. A catacomb for the living.

And Will was here.

“Miss Coltrane, please.” Nathan Hillard motioned her ahead of him and she fell into step behind the old Oriental man. Before long he stopped and pointed at an uncovered niche.

A low pallet crowded the wall, a candle sputtering erratically near its head. A figure lay on the pallet, curled on its side, facing away from her.

“He be no smoke, two day now,” the Oriental man complained. “No money. No smoke. Won’t
go.” He shook his head and turned, leaving her to stare at the figure, so alien and familiar. Nathan touched her arm.

“I’ll wait over here, m’dear,” he said. “Please, be quick. I don’t trust the Chinee.”

She nodded, grateful for his consideration, and stepped closer to the pallet.

“Will?”

No movement, not even a twitch. Nathan’s warning spun through her thoughts. Dear God, he could not be dead!

“Will?” Her voice rose anxiously. The man turned over.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Will …”

Her heart twisted. He was gaunt and pale and his eyes were so dark, they looked black. He blinked at her like an old man.

“Mercy?” he asked, a soft, wondering smile in the hoarse whisper. Her heart broke.

“Yes, Will. It’s me, darling.”

He pushed himself into a seated position and immediately groaned in pain. He wrapped his thin, shaking arms around himself and doubled over. She fell to her knees beside him, embracing him.

He shook. Little paroxysms rippled through him, his eyes rolled back in their hollow sockets, his lips twisted in a grimace. She clung to him all the tighter. Whatever agony he had felt passed and he squinted at her. He cocked his head to one side, grinning at her as though he did not remember the pain that had gripped him seconds before.

“Is that really you, Mercy?” He sounded as
happy as a child. His smile was just as ingratiating, just as infectious. The blond, guinea-gold curls were matted on one side of his face. She was going to weep.

“Yes, dear. It’s all right. I’ll take you home now.”

The pleased recognition died on his face.
“Home?”

“Yes,” she said, stroking the dirty hair back from his damp brow. “Back to Texas.”

He encircled her wrist and held it away from his face. There was surprising strength in the slender fingers. “I’m not going home. I’m staying right here.”

“Darling, you’re not well,” she coaxed. “You need to come home. You need someone to take care of you.”

“She’s gone,” he said with an expression of pain and loss so stark that Mercy sobbed.

“I’ll take care of you. Father and I, we’ll take care of you.”

The sorrow passed as quickly as it had come. A humorless curve cracked his dry lips.
“Father
and you?” he said. “I don’t think so, Mer. Father and I, in case you don’t remember, aren’t what you’d call boon companions.”

“I know. But that will change.” Tears fell freely down her cheeks. “It will all change. Whatever differences you two have, I’ll see you work them out. I promised Mom.”

He stared at her a second and then he began to laugh. He laughed until pain filtered through the
horrifying, broken sound, ending it in a fit of coughing. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve and shook his head as he regarded her, amused and sickly and tragic.

“Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Mercy,” he said. “Why in God’s name would you think you could fix what was wrong between Father and me?”

“Because I helped make it wrong!” There. She’d said it. “Forgive me, Will, but I did. I was happy he didn’t … didn’t …”

“Like me?” Will supplied with more interest than shock.

Mutely, she nodded.

He groaned suddenly, slouching against the filthy wall. Desperately she searched for some way to ease his pain. “What can I do?” she asked.

His eyes were squeezed in thin lines. “Money for another pipe.”

“No, Will!”

“No? Then go away.”

“I won’t.”

He opened his eyes. “Yes. You will. Because I’m not going with you. I don’t belong in Texas. You don’t belong here. I do. Now go away, Mercy.”

“But I promised!” she wailed.

“Like I said. You can’t fix what you didn’t break,” he said, his mouth set as he forced the words past his lips, past the pain that was squeezing the sweat from his pores. “You take too much credit. My relationship with Father didn’t have anything to do with you, no matter what you
think. The only times he and I got along at all were when we all three were together, riding, shooting … You still a good shot, Mercy?” He turned and she could see the glimmer of tears—pain? sorrow?—shimmer in his eyes.

“Yes, I guess.”

“Good. I was always kinda proud of that.” The unseen demon stretched him tighter on its invisible rack. Every muscle tensed in his body, sweat dribbled from his brow. He leaned away from her, curling into a ball on his side, his hands clamped between his knees. “You sure you don’t have any cash, honey? Few bucks?”

“No.” She dashed the back of her hand across her damp cheeks. She wouldn’t feed the animal. She’d steal Will from it.

“Oh,” he answered vaguely. “I gotta rest.”

“Come back with me, Will. Please.”

“Not yet.” His voice sounded weak, distant. “Maybe someday. You get, now, Mer. Nothin’ there for me.”

“But I miss you.
I
want you back.” She wept. “I want my brother back.” From behind the curtains other unseen petitioners added their voices to hers. The twining corridors reverberated with their chorus in a cacophony of shattered dreams.

She laid her head against Will’s shoulder and sobbed. It was true. Beyond the guilt and the duty and the promise, that was finally the deepest truth. She missed her brother. She wanted him back.

He didn’t respond. His breath was shallow, his gaze unfocused.

“Miss Coltrane,” Nathan said in a low, urgent voice. “We have to go. It’s not safe in a place like this. There are men here who’d kill you for a pair of boots, let alone the price of a pipe. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. We have to go.”

She lifted her tear-streaked face. Nathan Hillard was bending over her.

“But Will …”

He shook his head. “He’ll just fight us if we try to take him out now. We can’t do anything. Not yet. We’ll have to return later, with additional aid.”

Beside her, as if to validate Nathan’s words, Will began to thrash and groan. His eyes flew open and he looked around. Horror seeped into his dark gaze. He grabbed her arm, pulling her close, wildly looking beyond her.

“Mercy, did
he
bring you here?” He panted, his eyes glazed and staring.

“Who, dear?”

“Him,” he whispered, licking at his dry lips. “That devil.”

She shook her head, biting her lip to keep from sobbing. “There are no devils, Will.”

He laughed, bitterness tinged with hysteria. “Oh, yes, there are. Oh, yes.” He kept saying it, even after he had shut his eyes, mumbling as he fell into some semiconscious state.

Nathan took her hand and pulled her up. “Please. I don’t trust that Chinee fellow. He could be rounding up a band of thugs to rob us even as we speak.”

“We can’t just leave him!”

“We must. I promise well come back later.”

“As soon as we can find the authorities? In under an hour?” she demanded.

“Yes, yes,” Nathan said, looking around nervously.

“One second, then,” she said, pulling loose and returning to Will’s side. She reached into her pocket and pulled the little revolver from within. Carefully, she tucked the firearm beneath the single twisted blanket. She pushed a few cartridges into his pocket. “Will,” she whispered, “I’m leaving you my gun so you can protect yourself. I’ll be back, Will. I won’t abandon you. I won’t be gone long.”

She stood up and Nathan took her arm and led her out of the opium den and into the milky haze of the back alley.

Chapter 28

“D
amn cabbie,” Nathan muttered. “I told him to wait.”

Mercy looked around the deserted brickyard. She had to get Will out of here. “Where are we?” she asked. “I have to get back to the hotel. I have to find Hart.”

“Hart?”

“Hart. Lord Perth,” she said, looking one way and then the other. A stack of half-rotted barrels angled away from where they stood, blocking what appeared to be the egress into a lane. In the opposite direction the small yard ended in a wall where a low archway crouched in the corner. Above it an ancient tattered handbill fluttered wearily against the smoke-stained brickwork. Mercy started toward it.

“Why would you want to find Perth?” Nathan asked. Mercy looked over her shoulder. He was not
following her. He was standing in an attitude of unnatural attention.

“He’ll help us,” Mercy explained. “Is this the way out?”

“I can help you. I am, after all, the one who found your brother.” There was a petulant quality to his tone.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“You know”—he came forward, a perplexed frown on his handsome face—“there was the suggestion when I left Lady Acton’s that something not quite proper had occurred between yourself and Perth. I discounted it as the malicious talk of jealous people, but now I find myself asking … was there?” He looked up. There was nothing casual about his too-bright eyes. “Was there, Mercy?”