Miles Before I Sleep (7 page)

Miles grinned with understanding. This was the reason she had not turned away and headed home. He remembered how irate her letter had sounded when it referred to him as a gold digger after her father’s shipping company and fortune. It was far from being true, though he suspected his experience with his own company was partially why Sebastian James had pursued the betrothal.

“I see,” Miles said, smiling widely.

“Do you?”

“I think so. You are the second or third son of a nobleman, and more capable and interested in the family business than your father’s heir. So you’re going to prove you are the better man—with a forged note, no doubt.”

Andrea’s face broke out with a smile until she felt the mustache pulling away from her taut lip. “You are very astute, sir.”

Seeing the glue come loose on the edge of her lip caterpillar, Miles quickly looked down at the ledger. “What line of business is your father in?”

When it was apparent her mind had gone blank, he wished he had not put her on the spot.

“Textiles,” she said belatedly.

Miles nodded. “Buys the raw goods there and ships them over here, does he?”

“Exactly,” Andrea said, finding the statement more truthful than she would have expected.

“Well, if it doesn’t work out for you, come see me at our New York office. I’ll see that you get a job to earn enough to get you home.”

“Thank you, but I suspect if it ever came to that, you might regret such a generous offer. However,” she added with a thoughtful smile, “I may hold you to it someday.”

Miles laughed. “I doubt I could regret it.”

When Miles caught sight of Rory and John Price coming back, he decided it was time to conclude his business with Andrea. He told her the price, and she counted out the money and handed it to him.  Although he thought about telling her that the cabin had already been paid for and she could have it free of charge, he knew Andrea would find the act suspicious, so he accepted the money with a mental note to return it to her sometime in the future.

“And your name?”

“Jim Andrews,” she said without hesitation. She had been practicing saying it so it would sound natural.  She also picked a name that was similar to hers thinking she could not forget it.

“I’ll see you on the ship, Jim.”

With their business concluded, Andrea turned to leave and paused as the door opened in front of her. The two men stopped and waited allowing Andrea to pass first. Behind her, Miles noticed the way her head suddenly averted and she strode away as quickly as her long legs would carry her.

Rory said something, but Miles was not listening. He was watching Andrea as she walked from the quay. He saw her apprehensive glance over her shoulder just before she crossed the street and began walking away from the riverfront. Before Andrea had completely disappeared from sight, Miles was following, curtly telling Rory to stay there until he got back.

8

For the past three days, the rotund proprietor of the Red Hen had noticed the man standing across the street between the two buildings. At first, he thought the man might be a footpad awaiting a victim, but no sooner had the thought occurred to him, than a likely victim passed unnoticed and unmolested.

“I tell you, Marge, the man’s up to no good over there.”

Marge tucked an errant hair into her scarf as she pushed back the curtain and peered at the man. “He doesn’t seem to be causing any trouble,” she said.

“If he’s not up to something, then why is he watching our door? The second I set foot in the day light, the man turns away.”

“Now, Danny, as big as he is, he’s probably a whore’s bully wishing he could come over and have a pint instead of standing out there in the weather.”

Danny grunted. “A whore’s bully, I had not thought of that, woman. But look where he’s standing—between the cooper-smith and the cannery. Neither place lets rooms. No, I think you’re right, but I have a feeling that we’ve rented a room to his whore. It's my guess; he’s been waiting for his runaway whore to leave so he can nab her.”

Marge drew away from the window to look at her husband, her eyes wide with surprise. “You think that girl…?”

Danny reached his hand out and touched Marge’s cheek tenderly. All he had ever wanted to do was protect his gentle country-reared wife from being subjected to the scum of London. He had strove to make his little tavern as respectable as any country inn, and with the exception of an occasional fight, he had succeeded.

“I should have never let her stay,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Governess, my arse. She’s too young and comely. No woman would hire the likes of her to keep an eye on her young ‘uns. She’s barely out of the schoolroom herself.

“And where does a governess get the money to pay for a room one week in advance for two weeks straight,” he continued. “If she were waiting for her father’s ship to come in, wouldn’t she be paying a day at a time? She robbed the bastard before she ran away.”

“Danny, have you noticed that every time she goes out, she wears mourning clothes and whenever we bring her meals up to her room, she’s wearing that same dress she wore when she arrived?”

Danny gave his wife a blank look as he tried to fathom her point.

“She has two portmanteaus full of something, but we’ve never seen her in anything but those two dresses. Not only that, but the few times she has gone out, she has come back with purchases: books, stationery or sewing whatnots. And fruit! Where does the mere governess get that kind of spending money? I’d say she’s been doing more than tutoring a lordling or two.”

“I know where.”

Marge took in the narrowing of her husband’s eyes. “There was a man up in her room,” she said, indignantly.

“When!” he demanded.

Marge shrunk back from his angry countenance. “The day she paid you for the second week. Daisy told me she saw a man entering her room just as she got to the top of the stairs. When I confronted her, she said he was from the stationery shop and she had accidentally left her change. She said he must have followed her back, but I had not seen her go out that day. She claimed that she had forgotten to use the back stairs and had gone through the common room and that was why we hadn’t seen her.”

“The lying hussy! Her friend out there has been sending men up to her room. I’ll put a stop to it!”

The man stormed up the stairs and pounded on the door until an alarmed Andrea opened it.

“I told you this was a respectable place,” he shouted as he forced his way into the room. “I told you I would not rent to you if you were a whore. Out of the goodness of my heart, I went against my common sense and let you under my roof.”

“I-I don’t understand,” Andrea managed as she backed away from the enormous man.

“Are you denying that man who has been keeping a vigil across the street for the last three days isn’t your bully?”

Andrea gasped. “Are you saying that there has been someone watching the Red Hen for three days? Oh my.”

“Isn’t that what I just said? Are you denying he’s your bully?”

Andrea stared at the man too stunned to speak. Of course, he was not her bully, but it was more than a good chance that whoever was out there was watching for her. But why? If someone had found her, they would have either come in to get her, or would have at least informed her father.

Before Andrea could find her voice, the man scooped up her room key off the table where she left it. “I’ve already sent for the runners. They will be here shortly to haul you and your friend off to gaol.”

With surprising speed, the man sashayed through the door, slammed it closed behind him, and locked her in. Andrea sat on the bed for several minutes resigned to her fate before she realized she did not have to accept what had befallen her. She knew all she would have to do was tell them her identity to keep from going to the quod, but she would rather it not get that far.

~*~

Miles leaned against the brick wall of the cannery wondering if he should just go across the street and confront Andrea if she was, in fact, still there. He had been keeping a dawn to dusk vigil ever since he had followed her there. The establishment had but one door and he had watched it for so long that he was surprised he was not seeing it in his dreams. But he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Andrea unprotected. With the reward of ten thousand pounds offered for her return, he didn’t trust anyone else to do it.

Once again, he wrestled with the idea of going in and getting her, then taking her home to her parents. Nevertheless, he wanted to sail with her to America. He wanted her to get to know him without the pressure of this damn betrothal getting in the way. As badly as the whole matter had been handled, if she knew he was the man she was supposed to marry—that
he
was Shamus—he would begin with a black mark against him. She had seen him with Rory already and that was going to be hard enough to overcome.

The sun was beginning to lower in the sky casting most of the street into shadows. Miles was surprised that the proprietor’s wife was not back yet. He had thought it strange when the woman had run down to the corner and hailed the hack. It was the first time he had seen her leave alone or in a hurry. Miles felt slightly worried about the woman, mostly because he felt a certain gratitude to her and her husband. It wasn’t often in this kind of neighborhood, one so close to the waterfront docks, that one could come across a respectable tavern.

When he had first seen Andrea go into the Red Hen, he had asked a few passersby about the little inn. He quickly learned that the owners and the people of the neighborhood, had made the establishment into a nice place where families could go together. Whores were not allowed and sailors and other unsavory riffraff were made to feel unwelcome.

When a carriage slowed in front of Miles blocking his view of the inn, he automatically moved away from the wall to get a better view of the doorway across the street. As the carriage came to a stop, four men jumped out and grabbed him by the arms, punching him in the stomach a few times for good measure. At first, Miles thought he was being set upon by thieves and did his best to fight back. However, the second he felt the manacle on his wrist, he realized these men were London’s famous Bow Street runners. For some reason he was being arrested—not that, from what he heard, they needed a reason. To Miles, it seemed like total mayhem, the men shouting, and his own shouts as he tried to ascertain the reason behind it. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw the proprietor of the Red Hen, leaving his small establishment, coming straight for him. He was apparently the man with the answers, so he ceased his struggles with the runners to wait for the man to join them.

Breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath, Danny arrived. “I-I’ve got the girl locked in the room,” he gasped out.

“The girl?” Miles gritted. “You’re not having her arrested, are you? We haven’t done anything.”

Miles received a punch in his gut for his protest, doubling him over.

“It wouldn’t be right to send a bully to gaol without his whore,” the man said with righteous indignation.

“There’s been a mistake made here.”

“’Eard that afore ‘aven’t we, lads,” one of the runners said, with a humorless laugh.

“My name is Miles Huntington. I own the H & O—”

“’Untington?” interrupted the same man. “Like the one who added five thousand pounds to the reward for Andrea James?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Then the girl is…?”

Miles kept his mouth shut until he saw one of the men ball his hand into a fist and rear back. “Yes,” he spat, reluctantly.

“Surely, you don’t believe him, Frank. Seems a might convenient.”

“What’s this all about?” Danny questioned, not able to follow the conversation.

“Andrea James,” Frank said impatiently, as if that explained the matter. Danny continued gaping blankly. “Can you prove it?”

“Who is Andrea James?”

All eyes turned to Danny as if he were daft. The entire city had been searching high and low for the young heiress, and the one man who was in a position to turn the girl over to her father and collect the reward, had never heard of her.

Miles pulled his arm free of Frank’s grasp and reached into his coat pocket for the picture of Andrea that he had clipped from the newspaper. Is this the girl?” he asked the proprietor.

No one missed the acknowledgement in the corpulent man’s jowled face. He turned his questioning look to Miles. “There’s a reward out for her? What she’d done, murdered someone?”

“She’s a runaway worth ten thousand pounds, guvnor. Now, don’t you get any ideas about keeping that reward money all to yourself. We all had a hand in catching the girl.”

Miles cringed. He understood where the conversation was heading. Not only did he foresee the ensuing unpreventable fight, but he also did not want to see Andrea turned over to her father for the reward. Short of bribing every man there, there was nothing he could do.

“Just wait a minute. It might not be Andrea James at all. I only saw her from a distance and followed her here. It could be someone else. I’ve been waiting for three days for her to show herself again.”

“There’s one way to find out,” Danny said as he turned on his heel and led the men to her room.

Miles was prepared to claim it was not Andrea, but doubted anyone would believe him. He was spared his lie when they arrived to find the room empty, the window open, and no sign of Andrea or anyone else in the room.

Aloud, Miles cursed the men for letting Andrea get away, all the while silently cursing himself for not confronting her when he had the chance. He could have offered to let her stay on the ship under his protection until it sailed. Or at the very least, he could have told Sebastian that she was here. Sebastian would have brought the girl home, but at least he would know that she was safe.

Damn his selfishness.

Miles considered suggesting that all the men in the room begin an immediate search for her, knowing she could not have gone far. But the last thing Andrea needed was to have these men, and whomever they questioned, close on her trail. Miles wanted to protect her, not put her in more danger. He only hoped Andrea would be able to find another safe place to wait until the ship sailed in one week.