No Place for a Lady (19 page)

I had always known, in an intellectual way, that there were cutpurses and horse thieves and prostitutes and such people in the world, but as I had never met them before, they were a faceless tribe— the stuff of fiction. Now that I had actually been confronted with them, I found myself more sympathetic than condemnatory. As badly off as my tenants were, these petty criminals were worse. They lived hand-to-mouth, lurking about the streets like stray dogs, doing what they must to survive another day.

Still, I was frightened to be alone downstairs with such questionable callers coming to the door, so I sent for Mullard to join me. Even before he arrived, another caller came. It was another Drury Lane vestal. This one was called Florie, and she was much too young to be on the streets. About sixteen, I judged, with her charms still intact. She was a small blond girl.

“I come about Sharkey’s message, miss,” she said, curtsying awkwardly.

“Mr. Sharkey has left, but if you have any information, you can tell me.”

“I seen him and Jocko leave. I was waiting outside, screwing up my courage to come in.” Her hands were clenching her skirt in nervousness as she spoke. “I seen them take the modiste away, miss. They had her wrapped in a blanket. I only thought she was sick.”

“What time was this?”

“Oh, it was hours ago, miss. If I’d known anything was wrong, I’d of come sooner.”

“Did you see where they took her?”

Tears began streaming down her cheeks. “No, miss. They put her in a carriage. She wasn’t struggling or nothing. It was a black carriage. She ain’t kilt, is she? Her with the little baby?”

“No, we think she will be all right. They have—” I decided it was wiser to keep my own counsel.

The girl looked at me with eyes as big as saucers—such pretty, innocent eyes. “They’ve gone after her?” she asked sharply.

I immediately smelled a plot and said, “No. They have gone on other business. It has nothing to do with Mrs. Clarke.”

She heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s good then. What I came to tell you, miss—one of the men who put the modiste in the carriage was lurking outside the house, watching the comings and goings. Alfonse, it was. He’s Madame Lalonde’s fancy man. He followed Mr. Alger’s rig, but if it has nothing to do with the modiste—”

I felt as if the bottom had fallen out of my stomach. Alfonse had been spying on the house! He was following Algernon, no doubt with a pistol in his pocket.

“Miss, are you all right?” Florie said.

I willed down the panic that was rising up in me. “I am fine, thank you, Florie. Here is something for your trouble.” I gave her a guinea.

“Oh, thank you, miss. I never had a whole guinea before.”

It was such a pathetic speech that it penetrated even through my other emotions. “Come back tomorrow, Florie,” I said. I had some vague notion of reforming her, but it was just a fleeting thought.

She left, clutching her guinea and thanking me a dozen times. I ran toward the kitchen and met Mullard just coming to join me.

“What is amiss?” he demanded when he saw my ashen face.

“We have to go after Algernon and warn him he is being followed.”

Mullard looked totally confused, and I realized he was unaware of all that had passed that evening. But there was no time to tell the tale.

“Harness up the carriage at once, Mullard. I shall tell you all about it on the road.”

I ran for my bonnet and pelisse, with my heart throbbing in my throat and my stomach quaking. I knew I should tell Miss Thackery, and I knew as well that she would not want me to go. I told Mary to tell her, after I had left, that I had to go out on an emergency. I wished with all my heart that I had a pistol. We did not keep one in the carriage. It had been discussed before we left home, but Papa had not thought it wise or necessary. I grabbed up the poker and ran to wait at the door, because I could not sit still. A single second saved might make the difference.

The few minutes’ wait seemed an eternity, but at last the carriage came, and I darted out into the shadows.

Chapter Seventeen

“Where are we headed, miss?” Mullard asked, holding the carriage door for me.

“St. John’s Wood. Hurry.”

“Which way is that, then?”

I stopped dead in my tracks, one foot on the carriage step, one on the ground. “I don’t know.”

I had not given it a single thought until that moment. I only knew that Algernon was in danger, and I must go to him. Saint John’s Wood might as well have been Tombouctou, as far as Mullard and I were concerned. We hadn’t a notion of how to reach it.

“The map,” Mullard said, and hopped up to the perch to fetch it.

We read it by the light of the carriage lamps. It took us an age to locate St. John’s Wood in the upper left-hand corner, nearly off the map. “It looks very far away,” I said, my heart sinking.

“Aye, but pretty straightforward,” Mullard pointed out.

We went over the directions a couple of times until we had memorized them. Once we were on Oxford Street, we felt we knew what we were about. It was getting to Oxford Street that was more difficult. The map was a veritable maze of streets, none of which appeared to be where they should when we were actually driving. Mullard had to stop twice to ask directions, and both times I was in an agony of impatience. I wished I could sprout wings like a bird and fly above all the busy thoroughfares.

We did eventually find Oxford Street, however, and when we had finally turned on to Edgeware Road, the traffic was light enough that I felt I could in decency join Mullard on the box to tell him what was going on. Talking about it helped to ease the anxious thoughts crowding my mind. The wind and the open sky above helped, too. I had felt like a prisoner, locked alone with my fears in the dark carriage.

“You shouldn’t ought to have come, missie,” Mullard said, when I had apprised him of the situation. “Nor would I have brought you, if I’d known what mischief you were up to. I could have come alone. I fear to think what your papa will say when he hears.”

“He shan’t hear of it from me, Mullard.”

We exchanged a small conspiratorial smile. “Nor from me, unless I have to report your death. Which I won’t. You’ll stay in the carriage while I go after Lord Algernon to warn him.”

“If we are not too late. We have no hope of overtaking him with these tired old nags.”

“Nay, the nags are fresh as daisies,” he said, whipping the team up as fast as they could go. Mullard had set a good pace once we hit the open road. “They may never make it home, but they’re fast enough on a shortish haul.”

The traffic grew thinner and the trees thicker as we proceeded farther from town. At times we drove through a veritable forest; at other times, we had a vista of starlit meadows. Occasionally we spotted a carriage ahead. Mullard would whip up the team, but the few rigs we managed to pass were heavy country carriages. We saw no trace of either Alfonse or Algernon. There was a sign announcing St. John’s Wood. The area was still well wooded, but with the city beginning to reach its tentacles out in the form of houses and some commercial buildings. At Grove End Road Mullard turned left.

“You might keep your eyes peeled for Abbey Road now,” he said. “ ‘Tis less than half a mile away, according to our map.”

“I doubt Algernon would have driven up to the door. His carriage will be parked somewhere along here, in a laneway or under a cluster of trees.”

“We’ll do likewise. You get in the rig. I’ll ankle along and find the house.”

“I cannot stay here alone, Mullard! Some prancer prigger might come along to steal the horses. I would be safer with you.”

“Where did you pick up such language!” he exclaimed in the very accents of Papa, but he agreed to let me accompany him.

We drove on for a few hundred yards, until we found a spreading elm with room to hide the carriage beneath it, out of view of a casual observer. From there we proceeded on foot, I clutching my poker, Mullard a stout branch he had picked up from the road. A sign showed the beginning of Abbey Road, where yet another problem faced us. There were two cottages, kitty-cornered.

“Which one would it be? I wonder.” Mullard said.

“That one,” I said, pointing to a plaster-and-timber cottage. “It has an empty field beyond. Jocko said a balloon ascended from there. It would not have gone up from the middle of a forest.”

We studied the cottage for signs of action. There were lights in the front rooms downstairs. The back of the lower story and the whole upper story were in darkness.

“We’ll sneak up and take a peek in the windows,” I said. “But we must be careful. They might have someone on guard outside.”

“One way to find out,” Mullard said.

We advanced closer, hiding behind trees, and he threw a stone. It landed with an audible sound at the doorstep. No one came out of the shadows to investigate. He tossed a few more stones, and when he was assured that the house was not guarded from the outside, we crept closer. The curtains were all drawn, making it impossible for us to see what was going forth inside.

“It seems we got here before the others,” Mullard said.

“With our late start and slow progress through London, I do not think it at all likely. They must be inside already. Why would it be so silent, unless—” My voice broke on a hiccup of fear.

“Nay, miss. This is no time to put yourself in a pother. I’ll try to get into the house by the back way.”

“Let us put our ear to the door first,” I said. Now that the actual confrontation was upon us, I found my spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. The courage required of a cleric’s daughter is seldom of the physical sort. The bravest act I had ever performed in my life was to rescue Ginnie Simpson from a dog that was nipping her ankles. I had been ten years old at the time.

“I wonder where they have the lass,” Mullard said in a sad voice. “Locked in a room abovestairs, I daresay.”

With a thought of Anne’s courage and Algernon’s danger, I took myself by the scruff of the neck and crept up the two wooden steps to the front door. I was about to place my ear against it when an explosive sound reverberated from within. Not a pistol shot as I first thought, but a heavier, muffled thud, as of a body being hurled to the ground.

In my mind’s eye, it was Algernon who was being treated so roughly. Another banging sound followed the first. That one was sharper, perhaps a chair breaking.

“We must go in, Mullard,” I said, and put my hand on the doorknob. It did not turn. “It’s locked!”

“I’ll try the back. You stay here,” Mullard said.

I knew he was only trying to protect me, and followed him. The back door was unlocked. I felt certain they would have locked it, and equally sure that Sharkey had had his way with the mechanism, which hung loosely. Once in the house, the sounds of violence increased greatly. A woman was screaming in French. A shot rang out, followed immediately by another. I ran through the kitchen to the parlor and saw Algernon pummeling Vivaldi, while a blowsy blond female screamed and tried to get at Algernon with a water jug. Algernon was in no danger from the older, slimmer Vivaldi. Looking around, I saw where the real danger lay. A man, a dark, handsome man, presumably Alfonse, was pointing a pistol at the fighting men, waiting his chance to shoot without hitting Vivaldi.

When I saw that pistol taking aim at Algernon, all thoughts of fear fell from me. I ran forth like a demon, brandishing my poker. Alfonse spotted me as I went for him. He turned his pistol on me. The others saw me then. Algernon shouted “Cathy!” in a high, incredulous voice. Then a dead silence fell on the room. It was Alfonse’s innate sense of decorum that saved my life. For a fraction of a second he hesitated to shoot a lady. It was long enough for me to hit him one good blow on the side of the head with the poker. It did not fell him, but it stunned him for an instant, which allowed Mullard to grab his hands and wrench them behind his back. Alfonse’s pistol clattered to the floor. I snatched it up.

“Something to bind this rogue’s wrists,” Mullard said.

I tore off Alfonse’s cravat and held the gun on him while Mullard bound his hands behind his back. Madame went from shrieks to tears. Vivaldi’s strength was spent. He rattled off a cannonade of French that sounded like curses, while Algernon pushed him into a chair and tied him up with Madam’s lace shawl. They did not bother tying Madam up. She had flung herself at Alfonse, whom she subjected to verbal abuse, alternating with crying and occasionally bestowing moist kisses on his cheeks.

“Where is Anne?” I asked Algernon.

He looked at me in confusion, still not believing his eyes. “How did you get here? What are you doing?”

“Later, Algernon. Where is Anne?”

“Sharkey and Butler went upstairs to look for her. They both went; we had no idea how many might be guarding her. We hoped we could get her out without this crew knowing we were here. I was standing guard in the kitchen to stop them if they overheard and came to stop us. It seems Alfonse was lurking about outside and saw us come in.”

“He followed you from London.”

“Ah ... That explains why you are here. But it does not excuse it! Why the devil—?”

He was interrupted by the sound of thumping feet descending from above. It was Sharkey. He took a look around and said, “I see you don’t need my help, folks. There’s another one tied up upstairs. I left him on the bed, where they had Annie laid out. Miss Irving, what—?”

“Laid out!” I shouted. “Sharkey, is she—?”

“Drugged. Butler’s hauling her down. Here he is now. Can I give you a hand, Butler?”

Butler came down slowly, cradling his beloved Anne in his arms. His left eye was purpling and puffy, but he was smiling softly. “She is breathing. I think she’ll be all right,” he announced. “We must get her to a doctor at once.”

“I’ll fetch the carriage,” Mullard said, and went out.

We found Butler and Anne a seat on the sofa, and I examined her. Her color was good, and her breathing steady. As she was unconscious, we could not feed her wine. I agreed with Butler that she would be all right in the morning.

“Perhaps now she will have me,” he said shyly. “I mean to say, I am not a war hero like her husband, but demme, I would walk through fire for her.”