Edith Layton (18 page)

Kate had only seen two people in her brief race for freedom, both looking old enough to likely expire at merely being shown a knife. She nodded. “You can’t blame me, can you?” she asked in a defeated voice.

“Nah,” the man said. “Can’t. It were the best you could do, though, remember that. You din’t need no more towels when you went to the jakes, did ye? I misdoubt you even had your courses.”

She ducked her head. It had been a bold ruse, but a terrifically embarrassing one, and now she wondered that she’d even tried it.

He laughed. “Your a canny one, all right, nothin’ like a woman’s secrets to make a feller look t’other way,” he said with admiration. “Sharky here’s a regular jemmy fellow, and ought to have twigged to your lay, but he’s still a lad. Still, he come for me fast enough when he seen you flown the coop, and he learned from it, so it weren’t a waste.”

Kate turned and walked down the broken walkways with them. “I can offer you more to let me go,” she said.

“Aye, mebbe you can,” the older man agreed. “But we got to keep our word or we don’t never work no more. And our customer ain’t going to cry rope on us, but your fine friends would, and you know it. Leastways, even if you don’t, we do.”

“‘I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you that though I am not wealthy, I have influential family and friends?”

“No, none,” the man agreed amiably enough. “Like I said, it aint the gold, it’s the job of work.”

“So, you’re going to…” she swallowed hard and her voice broke, “kill—uhm,
scrag
me?”

The man stopped short and looked at her in astonishment. “Nay, what are you going on about? We ain’t in that line. We grabs, we don’t put out no lights.”

“But why?” Kate asked.

“Not for us to know, or me to say even if I did,” the man said primly, as he started walking again, and pulled her along.

“But we ain’t got nothin’ against you,” Sharky put in quickly, looking a bit upset, because Kate’s eyes had begun to fill with tears.

She was astonished at her own tears and the boy’s reaction to them. She almost never wept, and refused to use them to win an argument, because she had three brothers and felt, as they did, that it was poor sportsmanship. But tears had done what her logic and guile had not. Both father and son were obviously disturbed by them. They were looking grim when they weren’t trying to look away. She’d invented one set of female difficulties for a chance at escape, she could certainly invent feminine frailties for the possibility of another.

“It’s hard to be stolen away from my friends and family,” she said brokenly, swiping at her eyes with one hand, because now that she’d allowed herself to use them the tears were easier to summon. “It’s not just because I’m frightened—though I am. But my cousins, the Swansons, are so good to me, Lady Swanson will be devastated by this, and my uncle, unmanned. And my…friend, Sir Alasdair, will be distraught.”

That was the wrong note. She didn’t know why, but father and son exchanged a look, and it was smug and knowing.

“I wonder if I’ll ever see my mother and father and my three little brothers again,” she went on, letting the tears roll freely down her cheeks. “They sent me to London so I could see the great city, but they’re simple country folk. They won’t understand. Who could so dislike me as to cause them—and me—such pain?”

“Can’t say,” the man said abruptly. “C’mon. Tell you what,” he added as she bravely gulped back a sob, then let out another, “cuppa tea be just the thing. We’ll fix one for you. Aye. You gotta eat, but no one said you gotta do it by your lonesome.”

He was as good as his word.

They let her sit at the tilted table while the father brewed tea. The son took a pack they’d stowed under the table and dug out a slightly green haunch of mutton, a hacked-up loaf of bread, and a slab of cheese. Kate wiped her tears and offered to help, but they just looked at her strangely before going on with their chores.

“You could fix your hair,” the boy remarked, looking up from where he was placing the cheese on a cracked plate. “You look a regular Blowsabella.”

Her hands flew to her hair.
“Blowsabella?”
she asked as she tried to comb her unruly curls into some order with her fingers.

“Aye, it’s a word we use for a lass what got hair what looks like a rag doll,” the father said, with an actual smile in his voice.

Kate took heart. “Oh. That’s why, when you stopped me from running just now, you called me a
‘blowen’
?”

Both father and son froze and exchanged a guilty look.

“Nay,” the father said curtly, turning his attention back to the pan where he was heating water. “Different word.
That
was because you’re the…partikilar friend of a swell, a fine gent. See?”

“Oh,” Kate said, “but I’m friends with a great many gentlemen.”

“Nah,” Sharky commented as he sliced a hunk of cheese, “he means ’cause your Sir Alasdair’s doxie.”

Kate shot to her feet. “I should say not!” she said
angrily. “No such thing! Why, I’m no man’s…mistress. There, I’ve said it plainly,” she added, her face flaming. “There’s nothing I can do about you abducting me, but I don’t have to listen to such claptrap. Why,” she added, tilting her head to the side, “did those who paid you to do this tell you that? Well, if they did, it’s a lie.

“Do you think that matters?’ she asked hopefully. “I mean, will it change things? Because if it’s some woman who has plans for Sir Alasdair, and believe me, many do,” she added, as a sudden vision of the spiteful Lady Eleanora flashed into her mind, as well as a horrifying image of the three spiteful females she was now living with. “Since it’s not so, maybe you could tell them that and they’d agree to have you let me go? Because I’m not Sir Alasdair’s
particular
friend in that sense at all. I never would or could be,” she added with regret, in spite of her efforts to be neutral.

Her two captors didn’t miss it.

“Ain’t ours to ask,” the boy said, but he looked at his father as he did.

“No, it ain’t,” his father said roughly. “Now, have a cuppa, and some to eat, and you’ll feel more the thing.”

“But how can I?” she asked, real tears back in her eyes.

“Eatin’s got nothing to do with feeling,” he said. “Just makes you feel better. Eat,” he added, not un-gently. “It’ll help your mind work so’s you can try to outfox us and lope off again.”

He flashed a crooked yellowed smile at her, but it was a curiously winning one, and she had to smile back, through her tears.

“All right,” she said. “But I must wash my hands.”

He laughed. “A good try! But that won’t help you do nothin’ but get them clean, miss, for we ain’t lettin’ you get outside again.”

“Getting them clean will help,” she answered ruefully, holding up both hands to show them how dirty they were from her attempts to break out of the window. She lowered them, looking slightly abashed, when she realized that even so they were cleaner than either of her captors’ hands.

The older man saw it, and read her mind. “Aye, but your a real gentry mort, ain’t you? We could grow flowers on our mitts and mushrooms on our dimbers and we wouldn’t mind. Sharky, get the lass some water.”

The boy brought her a bowl of water, a wafer of tan soap, and a square of towel. Kate dipped her hands in the bowl and washed her hands, obviously thinking deeply as she did.

“This just doesn’t make sense, you know,” she murmured as one hand slowly rubbed the other under the water. “My disappearance won’t matter to Sir Alasdair. Well, it will because he
is
a friend. But it won’t affect him, or anyone, really, except my parents and brothers. I do have relatives other than the Swansons,” she added. “But if anyone’s thinking of them, that’s folly. Abducting me won’t matter much to any of them. They’ll feel bad, of course, but I doubt they’ll turn the world upside down to ransom me, I don’t think. Because though I’d feel sorry for them if anything happened to them, I wouldn’t be crushed, and neither would they be for me.”

She dipped her face into her cupped hands. “So since none of my rich kinfolk would be
too
devastated,” she said when she lifted her face, “who’d profit from this? The Scalbys are my most important rela
tives in town now, I suppose, at least the most influential. But since I haven’t seen them for a long time either, why should they care either?”

She asked, but didn’t look at them for an answer because she’d picked up the toweling and was drying her face. So she missed the matching startled looks of regret and fear father and son shot to each other then.

“’E
’s gone to earth, Sir Alasdair,” the little man protested. “Lolly’s sloped off Gawd knows where. Mind,” he added, “don’t mean ’e done it or knows ’oo did. Just means ’e knows, like we all do, that you’d blame ’im for leaves falling in autumn. Fact, did ’e know who spirited the gentry mort away, ’e’d be the first to make profit from it from you, wouldn’t ’e?”

“So he would,” Alasdair said in a flat grim voice that made the little man back farther into the shadows of the alley they were meeting in. “But so he’d want me to think, too. And how did you know what I wanted him for?” he added a shade too gently.

“It’s all over,” the little man said plaintively. “’Oo don’t know? You ain’t got no ransom note neither, or we’d know that, too.”

Alasdair bit back a curse. So much for preserving Kate’s reputation.

The little man anticipated the next question. “’Oo knows who blew the gab?” he asked. “Mebbe a maid
at the Swanson ken spilled it to ’nother, mebbe it were a footboy telling a friend, but it’s out, and every rogue, bawd, prigger, and peddler in Lunnon’s looking sharp, ’cause they thinks there’ll be gold in it for ’em if they ’ears ought. So, ’o course, Lolly scarpered—’e knows how you feel about ’im, don’t ’e?”

“I believe you might know his whereabouts,” Alasdair said implacably. “But I can’t prove it. Could I prove it—or if I do—I tell you now you’d have to leave this country, or this earth, because I’ll be
very
vexed with you for not telling me. Lolly has influence here. I have influence everywhere. Remember that, and if you get a sudden insight into the matter, you know how to reach me.”

“’Deed I do,” the little man said, ducked a bow, and faded into the shadows.

Alasdair’s shoulders slumped. He’d spoken to every snitch and informer, every gossip and news-gatherer he knew in Whitechapel and the Seven Dials, as well as those who floated throughout London, selling secrets and surmises for money or favor. They all claimed ignorance of who’d lured Kate away.

The Runners had been at work, too. The carriage had been found, deserted. They’d found the maid, wandering about with an aching head. She remembered getting a glimpse of a man in the carriage with Kate before she’d been struck from behind. But she’d never seen him before and hadn’t seen him well. Just a man, she’d said, a dirty, evil-looking man.

Alasdair stood in the shadows and bowed his head. In that moment his face would have been unrecognizable to his friends and foes, even to himself. He was shaken to his soul. He could deal with men who committed crimes for profit, for money or personal revenge, because he himself had gone that route and
knew the levers and lures to use to manipulate and catch them in their own schemes. But if no one knew who’d kidnapped Kate, then it could have been a madman bent on rape or murder or both. No one could predict such people, they had no handles. There was no way he could find them or move them if he did, and what would happen to Kate? What had already happened to her?

He groaned low in his throat. He could imagine what might have happened. Too well. He could almost see it in his mind’s eye—the man bent over her, after beating or threatening her to hold her still long enough for him to cover her and then, with grunts of triumph, pump his vileness into her while she ran away deep in her mind, where nothing could touch her, ever again…
No!

Alasdair’s eyes sprang open and he stared wildly into the dark alley, seeing nothing, his body shaking, cold with sweat. This was different, this was now, this was Kate. He couldn’t allow himself to think that. He wouldn’t. He’d not got this far from pandering to self-destructive visions. Picturing horrors didn’t defeat them. Sickening as they were, they could seduce a man, lulling him into imagining he could rework and change the horrors that befell him, if only in his own mind.

Alasdair knew that route, that ultimate lie. It was really a sickness that made a man relive crimes committed against him. Rather than healing him, reworking the horrors became a way he could punish himself for not having been able to prevent them. That kind of thinking only destroyed his resolve, cheating him of any opportunity of winning. What was done was over, dwelling on it never changed it.

He wouldn’t imagine Kate’s fate, he’d fight for her instead. He’d search this damned city from sewer to
palace, and find her. And if, God forbid, she’d been harmed, he’d cure her. If it took him the rest of their lives, he’d do it. He took a deep breath, straightened, and strode from the alley.

Sir Alasdair St. Erth was not usually seen at London’s rat-and-dog fights, where huge amounts of money were wagered each night on which dog would kill the most and how high the stacks of dead rats would grow. Sir Alasdair was seen at them that night though. He dropped in on several of the most popular torchlit, crowded rooms featuring contests between rat and terrier. He didn’t mind the stench of tobacco, sweat, and blood as he made his way through the crowded galleries, having a word here with a beggar and there with a bored nobleman. He didn’t mind because he didn’t notice. He was wholly concentrated on news of Kate.

He left with no news, but let it be known he’d pay for some.

Sir Alasdair was also spied at several exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, drifting through the gaming rooms, stopping to talk, pausing to listen. He also visited some of the worst gambling hells, or best ones, depending on how mad a man was for the highest stakes and greatest risks. He wasn’t a gambler, but he knew their ways and the games they played. So he waited until the croupiers were raking in their chips, gathering their dice or shuffling their cards before he asked questions. He left each establishment after letting it be known that he’d pay higher winnings for answers, and ask no questions himself.

The bordellos of London seldom saw Sir Alasdair. He usually made his own arrangements for pleasure. But tonight he visited a score of them, from the finest, those that looked like a lady’s salon, where only the
customers and upstairs maids knew what the merchandise was, to the lowest, where rows of curtained partitions couldn’t hide the sounds and smells of the trade. In every one he left his card and his question. Every so often he’d grimace when he pulled out his watch and saw the hours ticking by. Each time he did, he also asked if there were any messages left for him, if any of the lads he’d hired to find him and tell him if there was news had left word. There never was.

Alasdair had spun an invisible web, an unseen network stretched across London that night. Kate’s cousin Lord Swanson was making inquiries backstairs at fashionable homes where there were balls and musicales. Leigh was doing the same at the theaters, just as Lord Talwin was at the public masquerades. Other associates and friends of Alasdair’s, as well as several of Kate’s relatives, were at social affairs. They attended everything from public readings to prayer meetings, searching for clues.

Night was blurring into morning when Alasdair returned to his house. He paused on his doorstep for a moment and closed his eyes, hoping there’d be a message waiting for him there. It was the closest he’d come to praying in decades.

Alasdair hadn’t slept all night, but the next morning the only evidence was the shadowing under his eyes and the grim set to his mouth. Otherwise, he looked like himself: spotlessly neat, expertly barbered, cool, aloof, dressed in his usual impeccable clothes. He wore a dark blue jacket and buff pantaloons, with high-polished boots adorned with small gold tassels, every inch the powerful nobleman. Only his friend Leigh could guess his pain, from the bleak and lost look in the back of his eyes.

“Nothing,” Alasdair reported, as Leigh entered the study where he was sitting. “She may as well have dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And no demands from her abductor?” Leigh asked.

“No,” Alasdair said softly. “This is very bad, Leigh, very bad.” He gazed out his window. “But perhaps it’s not the worst. I’ve been thinking about it.” Alasdair paused and laughed bitterly. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else since I found out about it. We’ve heard nothing, but some things begin to fall into place anyway. A madman wouldn’t have plotted so well,” he said, rising to pace the room.

“Or at least I choose to think so. Because some madmen can lay elaborate plans, and this certainly was one. Still, usually those men leave a trail—in advance of their actions. They don’t suddenly take a fancy to a female and then go to such lengths to abduct her with this kind of finesse. Rapists snatch women on the spur of the moment. Elaborate plans are the work of rejected suitors or lovelorn admirers. They write letters, send messages to the object of their affections, pester them in public long before they resort to force. I’d have known if Kate had such an admirer. She’d have said something because the woman is nothing if not candid. Her family would have known, Sibyl, certainly. There was no such fellow.

“So,” Alasdair said, locking his hands behind his back, facing Leigh, his face cold and set, “we’re dealing with someone who’s acting with some other purpose. An enemy, in short. Kate has no such enemies.
I
do. I have legions of such enemies, Leigh. That’s Kate’s misfortune, but maybe her salvation. Because her abductor must have seen us as we enacted my damned plot. He must have believed us and thought that tak
ing her would hurt me. If that’s the case, my knowing is important to him because if I don’t know it and see what he’s done, it has no meaning. So she may still be unharmed. I know how revenge works. Too well.”

“But if that’s the case, why hasn’t anyone communicated with you?”

“A very good question, because it narrows the field considerably. It’s someone who wants me to come to them, Leigh, someone who wants to see me beg and crawl, on their terms.”

Leigh grew still. “And will you, if you must??”

Alasdair smiled, it was a true smile, if a weary one. “Would I indeed? I’ve thought of little else and so I can honestly tell you that if they demanded a finger of me, or a leg, or my liver and lights, they could have them all. They could open my veins and bathe in my blood if they wished. Not only because Kate’s innocent in this, and I never intended to involve an innocent in my schemes to this extent—but because…I have a care for her.”

It was such a cool thing to say after such an immoderate statement that Leigh almost smiled. But he couldn’t, because he realized what an enormous declaration about the state of his heart it was for Alasdair to make. “And so who have you narrowed the field down to?” he asked instead.

Alasdair gave him a quizzical look as answer.

Leigh recoiled. “You made sense until now! Damnation, Alasdair, the world doesn’t revolve around the Scalbys! Your obsession does, but that can lead you to look in the wrong places. You worked for His Majesty during the war. It could be an enemy you made in his name then. You’ve twisted noses in England, too. A man can’t build your fortune without stepping on toes.”

“Toes and noses, Leigh?” Alasdair asked with a small smile, “You’re tangling your metaphors.”

“Here or abroad, it could be anyone,” Leigh went on angrily. “The Scalbys are old now, they’re recluses too. Why should you still think of them?”

Alsadair’s smile disappeared. “Because I promise you, they still think of me. I made sure of it. Because I have them now, and they know it. I uncovered their vile schemes, and best—or worst—of all, I learned they were enemies of His Majesty, too. Believe me, they think of me every day, every hour, as they wait for me finally to bring them to account. They’re old, yes, but so is evil, and it’s no milder because of it. They’re no less a menace than old serpents hiding under a stone. Turn over that stone, and you
will
be bitten. I’ve been courting Kate because she’s their relative. That must sting. I wanted it to, but I didn’t know it would cause Kate harm. I thought even they would draw the line at hurting a relative. I regret that more than you can know.”

“But she
is
their relative. So there was no need for them to abduct her. If they summoned her, she’d have gone to them.”

Alasdair gave Leigh a patient look. “And I’d have immediately known who’d taken her, wouldn’t I? Clearly, they wanted more amusement out of the situation.”

“They say that madmen can involve the sane in their mad schemes because they grow so persuasive,” Leigh said sadly. “Almost, you persuade me. What are you going to do?” A sudden surmise widened his eyes. “Give up your plans for revenge? That would be very good, Alasdair. It would be the making of you, I think.”

“The unmaking, trust me. But I’m a serpent, too. I’ll
win her back. It
will
cost me a lot, but I’ll bring down their house even if I have to be in it when I do. I’ll see her safely out of it first, though, I promise you.”

“But what good will that do her?” Leigh asked. “Because I’m convinced she has a care for you, too.”

“What good will it do her?” Alasdair shrugged. “If she discovers my whole scheme and finds out just what kind of man I am, it could do her much good, or at least that’s what most people would say. They’d probably be right, too. But you underestimate me. I intend to win. It won’t be easy. It will probably be very painful. Victory never comes cheap. Maybe Kate will never have to know. I’ll go to them and negotiate. That will be the hardest part, believe me, because my self-respect and pitiful attempts at dignity will be demolished. So what? A man can live without dignity and self-respect. Just look at me.” He chuckled. “That’s just what worries you, isn’t it? Stop worrying, I’m not done yet, I’ve more than a few tricks left to play. While there’s breath left in me, they’ll have no peace.”

“But if you’re wrong and they had nothing to do with this?”

Alasdair lifted an eyebrow. “That would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it? Then I’d just be pathetic. Well, at least it will brighten their day.”

“You’d degrade yourself so for Kate’s sake?”

“I can’t think of a better reason.”

“She means that much to you?” Leigh asked. “Alasdair, that’s wonderful.”

“Wonderful? Hardly,” Alasdair said with a sneer. “But it would be detestable if a man refused to save an innocent young woman if he had it in his power to do so.”