Authors: Christine Trent
He helped her back into the carriage and said, “Wait here,” slipping back out himself. Moments later he reentered the carriage and sat next to her as the driver urged the horses forward.
“How very interesting our night has just become,” Brax said.
“More interesting than stowing a wax figure on a ship in the dead of night?”
Brax laughed quietly. “Yes, Marguerite, even more fascinating than that.”
Brax rapped on the ceiling of the carriage so the driver would stop. He opened the door and called out, “Please, Captain, permit us to give you a ride to your destination. You shouldn’t be out so late at night.”
To Marguerite’s surprise, Darden’s scowling face appeared in the doorway. He leaped into the carriage and sat across from them.
“Where to, Captain?”
Darden growled out an address, after which complete silence ensued. Marguerite could sense Brax’s exhilaration over their extra passenger, and knew he could not remain quiet for long.
“So, Captain Hastings, what do you think of the weather tonight? Or should I perhaps say this morning?”
“It’s mild, as you well know.”
“Yes, yes. I see you are out alone on this mild night. No lovely lady to keep you company, hmm?”
“No.”
“No. Well, perhaps your duties as a new captain prevent you from enjoying the companionship of exquisite damsels, such as Mrs. Ashby here.” Brax brushed a finger across Marguerite’s cheek. She refrained from her desire to jerk away.
“I suppose you’re right.” Marguerite could hear the strangled note in Darden’s voice.
What was Darden doing in the same place as she and Brax in the middle of the night? Dear God, this confirmed everything Brax had told her. Darden was spying on them. He really was a traitor to the Crown.
Oh, Darden, how could you?
She could feel his penetrating stare on her, even inside the dark carriage. She kept her face averted.
But Brax was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Marguerite—I mean, Mrs. Ashby—lately. To some extent, I must thank you. For not being in the way of our courtship.” “Right.”
“You probably don’t know that she granted me the pleasure of having dinner at my parents’ town house. They adored her. A man likes to know that his intended is well loved by his family, eh?”
Darden rapped on the ceiling of the carriage, and it slowed to a stop.
“I’ll take my leave here.” He opened the door and stepped out.
“But, Hastings, we’re nowhere near your address.”
“No, but I want to hasten the moment in which I can be as far from you as possible.” Darden slammed the carriage door and stalked off into the waning darkness.
Marguerite flinched at the slam, which seemed to symbolize a shutting of the door on whatever there had ever been between her and Darden Hastings.
She touched Brax’s arm and tried to maintain a steady voice. “What was Darden doing at our seaside location?”
“Watching us, I suppose. And isn’t that just very interesting?”
Nathaniel Ashby was also watching from atop the deck of his ship inside a nearby cove. He rubbed the week’s worth of whiskers on his plump and sunburned face. How very interesting. Two people—and one looked to be a woman!—carting off a large bundled package to a ship under cover of night. Surely they were up to evil intent. Smugglers, probably. Although the package had an unsettlingly
familiar outline. What did it remind him of? Well, no matter.
Finally, this was his opportunity to do a service of undeniable value for the government. He would accost the ship, capture its valuables, and present them—along with the smugglers, of course—to Mr. Fox.
Mr. Fox had never responded to his letter that accompanied the bottle of vintage port he’d sent. One of the loathsome rascals working in the parliament offices must have pinched it for himself.
Nathaniel had never stopped applying to the government for a letter of marque, but his requests had gone unanswered. He bemoaned to himself the incompetence and prejudice of the government that kept him from achieving recognition.
After the debacle at the French garrison, he’d licked his wounds by sailing around the Kentish coastline to Faversham and joining his men in whoring and gambling for a week. Once he was refreshed and his mind cleared of the humiliation the cursed French had inflicted on him, he was able to devise his next plan: to continue on around and into the Thames toward London so he could scour the banks of the Thames for any suspicious, unpatriotic activities.
How gratifying to have found something so quickly. Now he’d finally receive the laurel wreaths he deserved.
Nathaniel turned to his able assistant, who was watching the activities with his master. “Mr. Watson, I do believe our hopes for glory have just been realized.”
Late the next night, under his own dreams of glory, another man stood along the shore of St. Margaret’s at Cliffe, a continuation of the chain of cliffs at Dover, but far enough away from the reinforcements so as not to be seen. He held a lantern in one hand and a small valise in the other.
He held up the lantern as he picked his way across the pebbly coast and stepped quietly into the small skiff he had earlier rented from a local fisherman who was finding it difficult to ply his trade in the navy-infested waters. The man rowed quietly out into St. Margaret’s Bay. He faced the white, chalky cliffs as he glided
silently away. They glowed in the predawn sky like the apparitions in Philipsthal’s Phantasmagoria Show Marguerite had talked about.
When he was about a mile from shore, too far away for anyone there to see his lantern, he stopped rowing and looked up in the sky toward Calais, France.
Where was the promised signal?
He waited patiently in the boat as it sloshed rhythmically in the water. Was he doing the right thing? He was risking everything for this. His honor, his position. Was the recompense worth it? More importantly, what if Marguerite found out? That seemed worse than any penalty for treason.
The twinkling of a light from above the Calais landscape caught his eye.
The signal.
A hot-air balloon had been arranged for this day and time to pick up his message. The occupant dangled a light down, indicating his presence.
The man in the boat opened his bag and pulled several flags from it, using them with naval precision to convey his message to the balloon’s occupant. He hoped that between his own lantern and the slowly emerging sunlight, the balloon’s occupant would be able to read it. When he was finished, he extinguished his lamp, his signal to the other party that he was done. Moments later, the balloon did the same.
His work was finished.
The only questions that remained were what would Napoleon do with the information, and how would he be rewarded?
Marguerite’s trepidation was palpable as she arrived at Admiralty House. Why this summons? She’d done her work and been paid. Did they plan to tell her of Darden’s capture?
I don’t want to know. I just want to be left alone.
A scowling lieutenant stiffly greeted her at the entrance and escorted her to Lord Howick’s office. The lieutenant stepped aside to permit her in and followed behind her to salute his superior before shutting the door on his way out. Fox was sprawled on a settee; Brax and Lord Grey stood to welcome her formally.
Fox smiled. “Mrs. Ashby, a great delight to see you again.”
“Thank you, sir. To what do I owe the great honor of being here? I presume you were pleased with the Ferdinand figure and that it is adequately doing its job?”
“Not quite. Actually, that is why we wished to see you. Please sit down.”
Marguerite sat in a tufted, leather chair while Fox rose and turned his back to splash some amber liquid into a glass from atop a nearby sideboard.
He proffered the glass to her. “I believe, Mrs. Ashby, that this will be a brandy visit, not a tea visit.”
Marguerite believed that wholeheartedly. She took a brief swallow, letting the powerful liquor melt her insides, which were nearly frozen with fear. Grey and Brax stood by mutely.
“We’ve had a rather interesting occurrence. Something we weren’t expecting in our plan. We thought at first that someone arranged this intentionally, but it appears that you, Mrs. Ashby, may have some involvement.”
“I, Mr. Fox? I’ve done nothing since helping Lieutenant Selwyn with the Ferdinand figure except work in my exhibition.” She looked to Brax for explanation, but he avoided her eyes.
“Yes, I see. Nevertheless, we’ve apprehended a man, little more than a pirate, really, who temporarily captured our ship as she was heading down the Thames toward open water. Some of her crew were able to escape and reported to us right away, so he didn’t hold the ship more than a few hours. However, he had unwrapped the figure and presumably it scared him, for he threw it overboard and we were unable to recover it.
“Odd fellow. Kept bellowing about his letter of marque. We have no record of one. But what’s even more interesting, Mrs. Ashby, is his name. Which he shares with you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The man claims to be a Nathaniel Ashby. Do you know him?”
Nathaniel! What was that slothful, preening, pompous son of Maude Ashby’s doing?
“Unfortunately, I do. He’s my brother-in-law. Or rather, I suppose he
was
my relative, until I lost my husband in 1803.”
“And did you know he had purchased a ship and was trying to terrorize both the English and French coasts? We now have reports that he attempted to take a French garrison on his own. I might applaud his bravery if he hadn’t been so abominably stupid about it.”
Marguerite held her tongue, despite wanting to ask what Nathaniel had done. If he was involved, then of course it was done in a brainless way.
“Because that idiot assaulted our ship and lost the figure, we wasted precious hours in reaching Ferdinand’s followers on the Spanish coast. They waited at the appointed time, but naturally our ship did not show. Suspecting some kind of trap, they left before we could arrive to tell them what had happened. Now our credibility is ruined and our secret alliance will more than likely crumble.
“We’re holding him at Fleet Prison. We plan to charge him with treason. Or at least piracy. But I find it decidedly interesting that he is your relative by marriage. When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“Just after my husband died. He and his mother decided that I should move to the family home with them, where they could supervise me.”
“Supervise you? Weren’t you a mature widow?”
“Yes, but it was possible that I was a mature widow carrying my husband’s son, and they wanted to make sure I wasn’t.”
“Fascinating. And did you go live with them?”
“Certainly not. I became Madame Tussaud’s apprentice shortly thereafter and went to stay with her in London, then Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin.”
“So you haven’t had contact with him since entering Tussaud’s service?”
“No.”
“Very well. We didn’t truly think anything was amiss with you, Mrs. Ashby, but you can understand that we needed to ask you about the man.”
“Yes, sir. Tell me, what will happen to him now?”
“He’ll rot in prison for a while until we can bring him to trial.
Whether we charge him with treason or piracy makes no real difference, I suppose. The penalty is the same.”
Marguerite shook off Brax’s offer to escort her home and hired a hackney to take her to the Fleet, stopping along the way to purchase a small basket of oranges from a fruit vendor.
“Yes, madam, he’s being held here,” said the warden. “You can visit him, but I just took someone else down there to see him.”
A guard led the way with a lantern through a maze of dark, dank, crumbling brick hallways. Foul water seemed to be oozing from every crack and crevice in the building. Marguerite put one of the oranges to her nose and took a deep breath of its sweet, citrus smell to try to block out the revolting smell of the prison. With her free hand, she lifted her skirts to keep them from trailing over the grimy, wet floors, which were far worse than any London street.
“Here.” The guard stopped in front of one of many barred iron doors inset in the hallways. He unlocked it and threw the bolt back. The clang echoed in the hallway. He opened the door to let her in, saying, “I’ll be back for you in fifteen minutes, miss.”
When she saw what was waiting for her in the cell, Marguerite momentarily considered turning on her heel before the door shut behind her.
In the tiny cell with its straw pallet, chair, and a small wooden table with a lone candlestick atop it, stood Nathaniel Ashby. He had a scraggly beard struggling to fill in, a bruised eye, and the dried remains of blood below his lip. He was downright filthy. But it wasn’t Nathaniel’s appearance that made her want to flee the room.
It was Maude Ashby.
Marguerite hadn’t set eyes on either of them in several years, but her mother-in-law still set her teeth on edge. Maude was as regal and brittle as ever, but was dressed in widow’s weeds. Mottled spots of color rose in her cheeks at seeing Marguerite.
“You!” was her former mother-in-law’s first word to her, spat on the ground with venom. “Well, if it isn’t the unsung heroine of Nelson’s great victory. How dare you come here! Did you come to see poor Nathaniel in his sorriest state? I’m sure you’re simply rapturous over my poor boy’s misfortune.”
“That’s not true. Actually, Nathaniel nearly caused
me
great misfortune.”
“How ridiculous. You’ve had no contact with him whatsoever since you ran off like a servant girl in the face of my kind invitation to live with us. And didn’t you go traipsing off to Edinburgh?”
Marguerite ignored the irrational barb. “I’ve been to many places, but now I reside in London. And apparently one doesn’t need to have contact with Nathaniel Ashby to be troubled by him.” She turned to the prisoner and held out the basket.
“I’ve brought you some oranges. I thought you might like some fresh fruit.”
Nathaniel took the basket and inhaled its scent. “Heavenly. Thank you, Marguerite. I knew you’d eventually come to me. I just didn’t plan for these deplorable circumstances. But now that you’re here—”