Dangerous Deceptions (34 page)

I’d heard about those arches. Certain young bloods thought it a great game to try to ride the roiling waters and shoot their boats through the narrow passages. They died with disconcerting frequency.

And Johnny Leroy was rowing straight toward those same arches.

“Turn!” I screamed. “We’ll hit!”

“Not yet!” he cried, and I swear upon my life, I heard a note of exhilaration beneath his fury. “The bastards won’t follow!”

But the bastards apparently would. Lord Lynnfield had turned to yell at his oarsmen. He swung the rope again and let his grappling hook fly. It hit our boat with a resounding
THUNK!
I scrabbled with both hands, but the hook had already bitten into the wood: Lord Lynnfield and one of his roughs hauled hand-over-hand on the rope to pull us toward them.

“Fools!” hollered Mr. Leroy. “Cut the line! You’ll kill us all!”

The boats were dipping and rocking wildly. Waves splashed over the gunwales, and there was no way to tell whether they were getting higher or our boat was riding lower, but the water was up around my ankles and my hems were swimming. The roaring was louder, and Lord Lynnfield and his toughs were heaving on the rope.

“Peggy, get my knife!”

Scrabbling at the trouser belt of a strange man is never a pleasant activity, but needs must when the devil drives, and I soon had a long, blessedly stout knife in my hands. I stabbed ineffectually at the sodden rope that tied us to Lord Lynnfield’s boat, gasping out my own curses. The ruffians hauled. The boat bobbed and tipped. The gunwale went under the Thames, came up, and went down again. Kneeling, the water halfway up my thighs, I hacked desperately at this new rope. We were sinking. Only a few feet separated us from Lord Lynnfield’s boat. The river tossed us harder.

I hated ropes. All of them. I would order them banned as soon as I could have a word with Her Royal Highness. Except I’d never have a word with her. We were going to drown. We were going to die.

“Duck!” bellowed Mr. Leroy.

I ducked. The boat listed sideways and something heavy whistled over my head, followed by a shout and the crunch of bone being shattered. I got my face up just in time to see Lord Lynnfield topple into the rushing river and disappear. For a single moment, Mr. Leroy towered over me, one oar hefted in both hands.

In the next heartbeat, he charged, and I ducked again, all the way under the water. The boat rocked, listed, and righted only reluctantly. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, and I shot up, gasping and shoving the filthy stinging water from my eyes.

Mr. Leroy was in the other boat, wrestling with whoever still manned it. The current had us all now, and we pitched and rolled, helplessly tangled together by the grappling rope. I clung to the gunwales, struggling to find a way to clamber across to where the men fought in that other rocking, sinking boat, seemingly oblivious to the oncoming bridge, only seeking to throw each other into the maelstrom and be the last standing.

I grabbed hold of the grappling hook where it dug into our stern and heaved with what remained of my strength. It came free with a sodden splintering of wood. I’d just torn a hole in the boat and did not care. I reached out with that rough iron hook to the other craft, crying and praying to God, who surely could not hear over the roar of the waters. I reached to the ends of my strength and fingertips, but at last caught the gunwale of Lord Lynnfield’s boat. The hook’s tip bit into the bow, and it held. I wrapped both numb hands around the shaft, and I hauled myself over the rail.

I couldn’t have done it without my corset. That hated cage shielded my body as I dragged myself—chest, belly, leaden skirts, bruised feet—into that other boat. I tumbled into the new bilge, limp, cold, without strength, and halfway convinced I had already died. Overhead, the men were cursing and swearing. One fell to his knees. The other hefted an oar. I could not tell one from the other. A wave splashed over the gunwale, and I coughed and cried out, evidently not yet dead after all. The boat listed to port, then starboard, and I curled in on myself as far as my stays would allow. Then I heard Mr. Leroy holler, and my head jerked up. Pym was bearing Mr. Leroy back, down toward the Thames’s raging waters. Any minute now, Johnny Leroy would slip, he would fall, he would be gone.

I screamed with what felt like it must be my last breath. I grabbed Pym’s boot and I twisted and I heaved.

As he fell into the boiling Thames, I dizzily thought how proud Monsieur Janvier would be.

Mr. Leroy was on his knees in the water beside me, gathering me to him. “I’m sorry, Peg,” he gasped.

I made no answer. I am ashamed to say, I cowered against him.

In the next heartbeat, we were at the bridge. The bows slammed against a wall of water, and our boat tipped up, and the waves came down, and the force of it all washed away the remainder of the world, and it seemed there was nothing to be done at all.

Except drown.

THIRTY-ONE

My assessment that there was nothing left to do was made under great duress. Like most such assessments, it eventually proved incorrect.

Across an unknown space of time, I found there were several items left to be accomplished. There was a significant amount of pain to be felt, along with cold like the end of the world. There was a buffeting from all directions to be withstood, and the memory of a pair of arms strong as bronze and leather holding on to me.

This was followed by a space of darkness when I sincerely believed that not breathing was the most peaceful feeling in the world and that I should never bother with such nonsense again. It is entirely possible that if I had not seen my old nightmare ghost waiting for me at the end of that darkness, I might have given up my own.

Then the air hit with all the force of a storm wind, and I was gasping and crying and vomiting up Thames water onto an expanse of stinking mud. I will never in my life forget the indescribably foul taste.

But I was alive. Each painful breath against what felt like a great, granite stone under my chest told me I was alive, as did my corset stays, which seemed to have become deformed and were digging into my aching ribs.

But I was alive.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the sky for a time, doing nothing but breathing. It was cold—colder than I have ever been and it is to be hoped colder than I ever will be again. The first gray hints of dawn glimmered above the great sleeping bulk of London town. Despite cold and pain, I laughed for the delight and wonder of it all.

There was a groan beside me. Johnny Leroy rolled weakly onto his side. He was black with mud and Thames water, but his eyes opened, and they were clear and focused as he looked at me.

“Stout lass,” he croaked, and coughed. I suspect that had there not been so much waterlogged beard concealing it, I might have seen a smile. “Stout lass, Peggy.”

“Why?” My throat was so dreadfully raw, even that one word hurt, but I couldn’t remain silent. “Why did you . . .”

He did not speak in reply. He just fumbled at his shirt collar until his trembling fingers got hold of a chain and pulled it out. On the chain hung a ring. How the bauble had stayed about his neck, I will never know. I could barely feel my own fingers, but I lifted that ring to my eyes.

It was a signet ring. The gold surface was carved with two letters, twinned tightly together:
J
and
E
. My heart stopped. Because I knew this ring. I had played with it as a child.

This man—this wild-haired, greasy ruffian turned river pirate, lying in the mud, perhaps coughing his last breath away—this was my father, Jonathan Fitzroy. That was why he called me Peggy. That was why when he grew so agitated, his voice and diction changed. That was why he had risked himself to save me not once, but over and again.

I thought about him being in the warehouse owned by my uncle and the Jacobite Lord Lynnfield, with a load of silver coin hidden in barrels of oatmeal. I thought how Mr. Tinderflint wrote me that the jewel he sought had been sent from Paris overseas.

My father was a spy, and the natural haunt of a spy was a nest of Jacobites and traitors, of course, and the nearest destination overseas from Paris was England’s own shore.

I thought of impossibilities and coincidences, and why had no one
told
me? But this made my head hurt even worse, so I tried not to think about it anymore. There did remain the question of what I should say now. How did a fond and tender maiden properly greet her father upon his grand reentrance into her life?

“I promised myself I’d slap your face if ever I found you.”

My father received these words of esteem and affection with a grave demeanor. “I’ll endeavor to stay alive long enough to give you the chance.”

“Mother is dead,” I told him.

“Yes, I know.” He spoke these words so softly, I could barely distinguish them from the lapping of the Thames nearby.

“I was eight. They sent me to live with Uncle Pierpont.”

“I do know, Peggy, and I’m sorry.”

“But you didn’t come back.”

“I’m here now.” He gestured weakly. “Such as I am.”

It was a statement I could not argue with. I had, however, a thousand other things I intended to say to this man, a thousand questions to ask him, and a thousand curses to level against him. I wanted to yell and cry and explain to him in exacting detail what his absence had cost me and my mother. But I had no strength, and in the end, I just lay there and stared at the signet ring.

Slowly, my father, Jonathan Fitzroy, sat up. He took the ring from me and tucked it back beneath his shirt.

“We need to go, Peggy.” He looked behind us. “There’ll be those combing the docks who would be glad to find such fresh pickings as you and I.”

This sober and believable statement rallied my spirits enough that I found myself able to sit up, broken stays and all.

“We are not done,” I told him.

“I hope that’s true.” My father took hold of my forearms and heaved me once more to my feet.

My readers will, I hope, forgive me if I pass lightly over what followed—how, shivering and mud coated, we stumbled through the meanest, filthiest streets London had to offer. How we fetched up in one blind court after another, trying to find our way. How a gang of drunks almost dragged me from my father’s side, on the assumption I must be a whore. How we discovered that I still had one gold pin tangled in my hair, and with that treasure clutched in my fingertips, we all but toppled into a tavern that smelled roughly as foul as the Thames. How it was my begging and my father’s threatening that got the tavern keeper to send a boy running with a message to Great Queen Street.

That was my choice. Wherever in the depths of London we might be, Matthew was still my closest and surest friend. Also, I wanted him to know I was alive. More than that, though, I wanted to know
he
was alive. I wanted above all things to fall into Matthew’s arms and know that I had not escaped a river a thousand times worse than the Styx only to find myself alone in the world.

I could barely stand to think what might have happened to Olivia.

After the boy took to his heels, there was only waiting. We did this slumped on the bench before the fire. Eventually, it occurred to the tavern keeper that there was something out of the ordinary wrong with us. With a grunt, he stuffed wooden mugs of a hot, strong drink I could not even begin to identify into our hands. I drank this murky, anonymous beverage as quickly as I could swallow it, grateful beyond measure for the warmth and the taste of something besides Thames in my mouth.

I cannot say for certain if I slept, but time did seem to proceed in fits and starts. Despite this, when the battered coach came lurching over the rutted dirt street, I came instantly and fully awake. In fact, I was on my feet and halfway out the door without memory of how I got there.

But it was not Matthew who leapt down from the postilion’s perch. It was his friends from the academy, Heathe and Torrent, and both of them reeled back as I ran to them.

“Where is he!” I shouted. “Where’s Matthew! Where’s Olivia!”

“My God, Miss Fitzroy!” cried Heathe, covering mouth and nose with one great ham-hand. “It is you! The world’s been searching for you! Soldiers in the streets and all of it! There’s a reward.”

“And you can claim it if you live long enough!” I told him. “Where’re Matthew and Olivia!”

“Miss Pierpont’s at Leicester House writing advertisements and offering more rewards. Matthew’s abed with a broken skull and a foul temper. We didn’t dare tell him about your message for fear he’d try to get up—”

“Take me to him! Now! No! Wait!” I staggered back into the tavern and shook my dozing father. “We’re leaving.”

“I can’t be seen at the palace,” he said groggily.

“Good, because we are not going there.” I tossed my gold pin to the tavern keeper and hurried out, leaving it to my father to decide whether he would follow.

I will say this for the students of art. They are an easygoing lot, and those vibrant imaginations let them accept all manner of possibilities that would drive the strongest man of the court to distraction. As my wild man of a parent followed me out, Heathe and Torrent initially attempted to spring to my defense. But as soon as I told them to never mind him, they shrugged and did not mind. There may have been some extra odd glances shot between them, but for this, I cannot blame them.

The ride that followed was long. The poorly sprung coach pitched and rolled as badly as our boat had when caught in the flood of the Thames. All my bruises and pains were doubled and tripled with each rattle and jounce as we crawled through the warren of narrow streets and alleys. But eventually, we did reach Great Queen Street and the academy. This time I made no protest at being led in the back way. Neither did I refuse the arm Heathe offered to help me up the stairs to the low, dim dormitory room where Matthew lay in bed.

He was pale as the sheet that covered him and with a bandage around his skull. My knees gave way. It was fortunate Heathe had shoved a stool underneath me.