Texas Viscount (2 page)

      
“Also play the devil with the other powers' China trade, wouldn't it?” Josh asked rhetorically. “The Japanese could provide a counterbalance to Russia...if you can control them.” He slouched back in an overstuffed chair and took another pull on the whiskey bottle, studying Roosevelt closely. When he offered to pour a glass of the amber liquid, the colonel declined as Cantrell knew he would. Nothing stronger than beer or wine had ever passed his lips in the decade Josh had known Teddy, a nickname he knew the colonel detested.

      
“We can control the Japanese. I went to Harvard with an excellent chap, Kentaro Kaneko. He's highly placed at their court. I know what their objectives are in the Far East, and right now they coincide with ours—and with Britain's.”

      
“What's that have to do with me?” The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end now. He knew something was afoot, to bring Roosevelt halfway across the country, in secret, only weeks after he'd assumed office.

      
“A cabal of Russians in London is contriving to disrupt the negotiations between the British and the Japanese. There's even been an attempt to assassinate the Japanese minister, Hayashi. All hushed up, but if another is made...well, it will break the deal.”

      
“So, let that prime minister, Salisbury, handle it. He's the galoot in charge over there.”

      
Roosevelt gave a toothy grin. “You always did love playing as though you had no more brains than a balloon, but I saw through you in Cuba. That's why you're the perfect man for this job.”

      
“What job?” Josh sat forward in his chair and set the whiskey bottle on the table.

      
Roosevelt fixed Cantrell with a steady gaze, made more penetrating by the thick lenses of his glasses. “A member of the royal family may be implicated. King Edward's brother Leopold's second son, George Clarence, a ne'er-do-well if ever there was one.”

      
“From what I've read, the Wettins never had a shortage of those,” Josh said dryly. “How's Georgie tied to the Russians?”

      
“He has a Russian mistress.”

      
Josh whistled low.

      
“Yes, a pretty kettle of fish, isn't it? No sooner has this Jack the Ripper nonsense died down after the king's nincompoop son Albert Victor died, than they are faced with one of Edward's nephews possibly involved in high treason. Very touchy”

      
“Why rope and drag me into this fracas? I'm an outsider. There's nothing I can do. Hell, Colonel, I barely speak English, according to your Harvard friends. I sure as shootin' don't speak Russian.”

      
TR smirked. “Ah, but you do speak Spanish.”

      
“What in blue blazes has that got to do with anything?” Josh's head was beginning to spin, and it wasn't from the whiskey.

      
“You're considerably smarter than you let on. Just play the part of a ripsnortin' cowpuncher to the hilt. You possess a rare talent for espionage. Remember how you posed as a Spanish soldier and slipped into Santiago to assess their troop strength?”

      
Josh was forced to smile reluctantly. “I had to hold my arm across my left side the whole while so they couldn't see the bullet hole in the uniform. I was damn lucky my border Spanish was good enough to fool those drunk guardsmen. So now you want me to be a spy for the British.”

      
It was not a question. Roosevelt didn't treat it as such. ‘‘And for the United States. Since the late war, we have a great deal at stake in the Pacific. I know you've never been one to shirk when duty calls.”

      
Cantrell knew he was fighting a losing battle. Teddy was about to charge up another hill, and the devil take any man that got in his way. He sighed in resignation, but before he could negotiate some conditions, the president bucked him off another horse. “Lord Hambleton is your only living kinsman. He's eighty and in failing health, else he'd have made the journey here to Texas to convince you to become his heir. Springy says he's a grand old fellow. I think you should give this whole viscount thing a chance as well, Josh. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

      
Cantrell stiffened. “I'm not afraid of any old man—I don't care if he eats a steer for breakfast every morning, hide and all. All right, I'll try to catch your assassins.”

      
“Bully! Then let me fill you in on the details Secretary Hay's received from the British ambassador...”

      
Joshua Cantrell, soon to be the seventh Viscount Wesley and heir to the Earl of Hambleton, took a deep drink of whiskey and thought things over as Roosevelt talked. He had agreed to go to England. However, he had not agreed to remain there after the job was done.

* * * *

      
“Sabrina, you simply must help me! This is the best position I've ever had. I should hate so to lose it,” Edmund Whistledown implored his cousin. The cadaverously thin young man wrung his hands, ready to go down on his knees if necessary.

      
Miss Sabrina Edgewater sat primly on the edge of the well-worn Chippendale chair in her modest sitting room. She'd wanted to have all the furniture re-upholstered but could not afford it on her modest income. And now here came dear, hapless Edmund, once again in trouble, begging her for money which she could ill spare.

      
“I saw him staring at this wretched suit the day he took me on as a clerk. And the tailor won't release my new clothing unless I pay him, and I can't do that until Friday next when his lordship pays me. Crikey, Lord Hambleton will dismiss me without references if I appear in his office with frayed cuffs another day!”

      
Sabrina sighed as her young cousin suppressed tears. He'd always been an emotional child, thin and frail, picked upon by the other boys in school. After his parents died when he was seven, he had come to live with her family. She was fourteen then and had immediately become his self-appointed protector. As the eldest daughter of Squire Edgewater's large brood, she possessed, her father was fond of saying, the presence of a drill sergeant. Stern discipline worked well with her own wildly rebellious brothers, but she'd sensed immediately that the orphaned Edmund required a gentler hand.

      
She'd been redeeming him from tribulation ever since. Trouble seemed to follow her twenty-year-old cousin as naturally as mongrels chased a butcher wagon. Sighing, Sabrina asked, “How much will the tailor require for your suit?”

      
“Five pounds,” he whispered in trepidation.

      
She sprang to her feet. “Five pounds! What did he make it of—wool or gold?”

      
“Well, you see, it isn't just the suit...I required a whole new wardrobe. The roof on my flat leaks, and during that storm last week every stitch I own—including my shoes—was utterly ruined.” He paused a beat. “I'll lose my position, Coz.”

      
“Very well, but I shall have to write a bank draft for such a large sum.”

      
He brightened visibly, then immediately grew despondent once more. “Oh, but I have an assignment at eleven. That's why I'm supposed to be in good form. Lord Hambleton's dispatched me to meet the ship from America bearing his heir. I'd barely have time to change and be there if I can't pay the tailor immediately. See, his lordship's coach is outside.” He gestured through the shabby drapes to a handsome landau bearing the Hambleton crest.

      
“Then why did you wait until now to ask me, Edmund?” she retorted, struggling for patience.

      
His narrow face twisted as his pale eyes shied away from hers. “I...I know what a burden I've been to you, Coz. I tried to borrow the sum from some chums, but they're down on their luck, too.”

      
“Then I don't know what I can—”

      
“Crikey, I have it! You can take the coach and meet his lordship's heir while I cash your signed draft and retrieve my clothes. Then I can meet you at Hambleton House and escort Mr. Cantrell inside. You know ever so much more about dealing with fine gentlemen anyway. You've rubbed elbows with the peerage ever since coming to London.”

      
“I don't know, Edmund. Meeting the earl's heir—”

      
“Oh, please say you'll do it. After all, you've had dealings with Americans before and I have not. They're an odd lot, from what I hear.”

      
“My only dealings were rather indirect. I was hired by Lady Rushcroft to tutor her granddaughter's young friend. I only met the baron quite by chance when she interviewed me for the position, and I must say that he was not in the least odd.”

      
“There, you see. You'll know just what to do. The driver knows the ship's berth. The gentleman's name is Mr. Joshua Cantrell, soon to be Viscount Wesley,” Edmund said, rooting through scraps of paper he dug from his coat pockets. He handed her the hastily scrawled note with the name and time on it, smiling pleadingly.

      
“Oh, very well, since there's no way you will be able to arrive in time,” she said crossly, relenting as she always did with her baby cousin.

      
“You're an absolute trump, Coz! I shall be at Hambleton House by one, 'pon my honor.”

      
Sighing as Edmund dashed off with her bank draft in hand, Sabrina walked briskly into her bedroom and selected her best hat and cloak. After all, one could not greet a gentleman such as Lord Hambleton's heir unless dressed properly for the occasion.

* * * *

      
The wharves down the Thames from London Bridge were crowded with people and merchandise from around the globe. One had only to watch the varied parade of solemn Indians, ebony-skinned Africans and deferential Chinese to realize just how far the British Empire stretched. The stench of wharf rot was almost obliterated by fragrant spices from Ceylon blended with the pungent aroma of West Indian molasses. Over all hung the miasma of coal smoke belching forth from the factories and furnaces of British industry.

      
Sabrina never came to this part of town and was alternately awed and appalled by the contrasts of opulence and poverty that surrounded her. An emaciated beggar girl offering a grimy little fistful of wilted pinks for sale was almost run down by a young buck driving an expensive gig that nearly overturned as the nattily dressed driver swerved to avoid a cart loaded with melons.

      
Because of this terrible congestion, she was late. But a ship the size of the
Galveston Star
surely would not disembark passengers before she could locate Mr. Cantrell. According to the scribbled notes her cousin had given her, the gentleman was tall with black hair and green eyes. He would be wearing the Hambleton signet ring and looking for his great-uncle's coach near the foot of the gangplank. The driver assured her he knew the direction.

      
When they pulled up to the berth, cargo was being unloaded and it looked as if all the passengers had already disembarked. Sabrina bit her lip in vexation. It would serve Edmund right if his lordship dismissed him. She scanned the crowd, searching for a tall, aristocratic gentleman, but the only tall, dark man she saw was well down the wharf, engaged in an altercation with two ugly ruffians over the affections of a perfectly horrid-looking street doxy. He was dressed in some sort of fringed leather coat and the oddest boots with heels nearly as high as her own. That certainly was not Lord Hambleton's heir! Why, he looked positively shabby and dangerous.

      
“Let the girl go,” Josh repeated as the skinny young prostitute huddled behind him, using a filthy handkerchief to stanch the blood from a blow delivered by her pimp.

      
“Whot's it to ye, bloody foreign bloke! Mitz is me gel, she is. You got no claim on 'er...lest ye wanna pay,” the heavier of the two men said with a cunning leer that revealed he'd lost two of his front teeth.

      
Too bad he might soon lose the rest. “You were beating her,” Josh said, realizing he was drawing a crowd, hoping it would include a member or two of the local constabulary. “Where I come from, men don't hit women.”

      
“Then go back where ye come from,” wheezed the little skinny fellow with the beaked nose. “Mitz's been 'oldin' out on ole Pepper. She's ‘is preacher's daughter.”

      
Odd slang, but Josh knew that it meant she was a whore. Young. Alone in a big city, frightened and hungry. Just like the girls Gertie had taken in at her place. Ones like his own mother. “You're not taking the girl,” he repeated stubbornly. “I'll pay for her services,” he added, reaching for his money clip, then thinking better of it with so many thieves and pickpockets surrounding him. Where the hell was that much-vaunted English law enforcement?

      
Before he could decide whether or not it would be wise to draw the Colt Lightning covered by his long jacket, the big beefy fellow with the missing teeth swung at him. His well-chewed ears gave further testimony to his time as a prizefighter—a bad one. Josh easily ducked the roundhouse swing and came in low and fast, landing a left-right combination to the tough's ample gut and face. Yep, more teeth gone. Oh well. He was poised on the balls of his feet, ready to finish the job, but then saw his opponent's greasy little companion pull an ugly blade from inside his filthy coat.