Authors: Elizabeth Essex
Never forget the years of hunger. Never forget the years of hard, lonely change from one life to another. Never forget the years of slights and snide, cutting remarks.
But he was a man now, and meant to put away childish, resentful thoughts. “We managed.”
But the expression on Lady Claire Jellicoe’s face was one of fresh grief. “Without your family? How cruel.”
He averted her pity by investing his voice with indifference. “I thought everyone knew our scandalous story. How my sister was discovered by my grandmother, the dowager duchess, at a ball.”
“No.” She shook her head, and frowned with sympathetic distress. “I had no idea.”
“How old are you?” It was rhetorical question—he knew to the day how old she was. But now that he was in the process of stealing her for his bride it came to him for the first time that the years might be a concrete and unbridgeable gulf—a yawning chasm between them.
And not just the years. The hunger and the slights. The savage, ungovernable pride and the cutting, unforgiving intellect. Too much experience. He was a man with a sordid, scandalous past.
She was innocent, and young in so very many ways.
“Nearly twenty.” But her voice told him she did not regard her age as young. She turned her face to the side, and although it was too dark for him to see any evidence of heat, he thought he heard something of discomfort in her admission.
He thought to supply her with an explanation. “You are too young to have remembered our old scandal.”
“I’m not young.” She shook her head again, not disagreeing with him, but unhappy. She kept her eyes averted. “Not at all. I’m getting old.” There was more than discomfort in her voice now—there was a sort of private mortification. Her next admission was no more than a whisper. “That’s probably what led me to letting Lord Peter Rosing talk me into the dark.”
Ah. Desperation. This he understood. This he knew as well as he knew hunger and pride.
How strange and how unfair he had been to think her remote, high upon a pedestal, untouched by the craven cares of the world, when she suffered from the temporal, grasping needs of their world as much as he. He had done her—done them both—a grave injustice.
But the long length of the soft night stretched before them, giving him time. Time to bridge the divide. Time to assuage the desperation.
Time to make her love him.
* * *
His Grace said nothing more, but took over for her when her too-soft hands became sore. He propelled them unerringly down the dark ribbon of the river, and on into the night. Claire had liked that little transfer of places, that moment when, for whatever reason and however briefly, he had held her hand again.
His touch had been sure and strong, and calming and kind. And in that moment she had felt that she was doing the right thing, the correct thing—the very thing that she ought do—in going with him. It was the least she could do for poor Maisy Carter.
And however dangerous he might be, the Duke of Fenmore made her feel safe.
But as the night cooled and the damp rose she could not help but second-guess her choice. A low, silvery mist seemed to roll off the dark banks, catching the moonlight and illuminating the night with pale, ghostly light. Illuminating His Grace the Duke of Fenmore, who looked altogether different up close—bending forward and then away with every stroke—than she had always pictured him. He was handsome, in an austere sort of way—all long, lean, relentless strength. All sharp cheekbones arcing across his face, all shadow and high relief. All penetrating obsidian eyes.
But his cool, nearly haughty looks were a visible contradiction to the warm, if vehement, compassion of the man.
And she was sure now that the vehemence was compassion. His kindness had been evident in everything he had done, every movement he had made toward her. And why else would he be rowing them all the way to Chelsea? For a dead maid? Why else would he have helped her—saved her from Rosing—if he were not absolutely filled with a very human, gentlemanly compassion?
How strange that she’d never suspected him of such tender feelings, never sensed any sort of deeper emotion in the silent, stoic man.
Who kept them moving silently, efficiently onward. In a few more strokes, the tree-lined banks of open farmland began to give way to more and more buildings, hulking shadows in the mist. Lights began to be visible on the north bank, wavering over the water. And then out of the fog the thin, rickety span of a footbridge loomed high overhead. “Are we there—Chelsea?”
“Battersea.” With one quick glance over his shoulder, His Grace angled the boat toward the illuminated steeple of a church shining dimly in the watery distance. “Though Chelsea is not much further.”
He rowed on until they neared the north bank, where a dark stair jutted out into the silvery water, leading upward onto the dark embankment. In another few minutes, he laid them smoothly alongside.
Claire looked up at the brown bank hulking out of the mist above, and tried to overcome the creeping unease chilling her skin and making the pale, fine hairs on her arms stand up. She’d never had the occasion to venture so far south of the city as Chelsea. She’d never wanted to. The name alone was anathema to her ears. It brought to mind the hospital there—full of maimed old pensioners, like the one-legged man who leaned on buildings on the corners of Oxford Street, holding out his hat for passing pennies.
The uncomfortable shiver seeped under her skin and into her bones. All she could think when she saw one of them—the maimed men—was that, but for the grace of God, her brother Will, who was in His Majesty’s Royal Navy still, might have been one of them. Might
yet
be one of them.
She knew Will came down here, to the hospital, when he was in town—part of his duty to visit armless friends and legless comrades who had served in his crews.
But she was giving way to worry and an excess of sensibility, for His Grace had also served in the navy, it seemed, and he still had all his long, sinewy arms and legs, moving out of the boat, and onto the steep stone steps with a lithe, fluid agility that still surprised her.
He tied off the lines and came back to crouch down next to the boat, and take up the pistol she had left on the seat. “This is where we disembark.” He held out his hand to assist her, as if he could sense her unease.
Claire could only hope the darkness hid the heat in her face. But still she hesitated, putting off the moment as long as possible. “Yes. Shall I get out then? Or ought I to keep the skiff steady again, so you might get the— So you might get her out more easily?”
“Ah.” His quick brows showed his surprise. He cocked his head a bit, as if he were trying to see her from a different angle. “Good thinking. Yes. In a moment. But first, let me reload—and teach you how to load—this gun.”
He took the pistol up with his long fingers, and turned it in his hand. The dull gleam of gunmetal winked wickedly in the clouded moonlight.
“I’ve measures of powder ready for priming.” He reached into the folds of the coat she still wore, and pulled out a small sueded leather roll, much like the one in which her mother kept her jewelry when she traveled. His Grace’s articulate fingers unfolded the leather to reveal cleverly organized little compartments with all the necessities.
He took up a small square of chamois, and wiped down the pistol’s mechanism while he talked. “I have twists of paper with pre-measured amount of powder, as well as wadding”—he pulled the lock to half cock, and tapped the powder out of the paper twist; then he plucked a small piece of fabric out of the pouch, placed it over the end of the bore, and thumbed a lead ball in behind it, before tamping it down with the short ramrod—“and priming powder.”
He tipped the brass tube into the firing mechanism and pushed the cover down onto the pan before he held the loaded pistol out to her in the palm of his hand. Like a particularly lethal gift.
All in less time than it would take for her to clean her teeth, or pull the pins from her hair. His competence in this, as in the other things he had already done that night, left her confounded. What an extraordinary duke he was proving to be.
“You can load it the next time.”
Claire wasn’t sure if she liked the sound of that—the surety that there would be another time they would need this skill, and this pistol, this night. “Is Chelsea really that dangerous?”
“One never knows. You’ll have to carry the stick—to have at the ready, and keep well shut of the nypers and foysters—while I carry the body.”
“Nippers and … foysters?” Was this buckish slang, of the sort her brothers used when they didn’t know she was listening?
But the duke’s cadence and ease sounded nothing like her brothers—he slid the words on like a well-worn shirt. “Nypers be thieves who might think to steal it.”
Claire sent another wild glance into the surrounding mist. “Nypers be thieves? Are we like to be set upon?”
“Not if I can help it.” This, however, seemed to give him some pleasure or humor, for his mouth curved again into that small, almost-secret half smile before he turned that penetrating stare of his on the dark beneath the stairs. “Cry beef there.”
At that cryptic direction, a quiet, almost-disgusted voice piped up from behind the shadowy wooden slats. “You needn’t rag, Tanner. It’s only me.”
“Ah.” His Grace’s smile slid sharply upward. “I’ll tip you a scrope to watch the paddler whilst we’re afoot. And another to keep your red rag stowed.”
“Done,” came the swift, low answer. “I’m no peach.”
“Right so,” the duke answered. And then he slanted that secret smile at Claire. “Friends are everywhere if you know how to look for them. You steady the boat. I’ll get the girl.”
It was as if he were a different man—a different man entirely from the aloof duke in the ballroom. Even different from the kind friend of the boat. He sounded to Claire’s untutored ears as if he were quite at home. At ease in cryptic chats with thieves, and transporting a corpse across a dark city in the dead of night. It took him only a moment to collect poor Carter’s lifeless body up in his arms, and then, with a sharp nod in Claire’s direction, he set off up the stairs.
Claire clambered onto the bottom of the stairs in his wake, but found herself reluctant to leave what felt like the sanctuary of the boat. Which was silly. Because she did not particularly want to remain, alone on the misty riverside with whoever was sheltering under the stair. But neither was she ready to discover exactly what the bloodless word
postmortem
might mean.
And in his omniscient way, he saw her hesitation. “Lady Claire? I’ll keep you safe, but you’ll want to keep close. It’s not a particularly unsavory neighborhood, but neither is it savory.”
“Yes. I understand.” But still she didn’t move, hovering on the cusp of the decision. Feeling it would be irrevocable.
“The mudlark will keep a close eye on the skiff, Lady Claire. And this may take … some time.”
Some time more than they had spent away already.
Claire could only hope her reputation could withstand the blow if the truth of the evening came out. The duke had said that no one would talk. And he had kept all of his promises, so far.
And in the grand scheme of the night, she was alive. Poor Maisy Carter was not.
And Claire wanted to have something more than a penchant for the dangerous. She wanted to have that agile competence. This was her chance to be brave. Braver than she ever had before.
Claire gathered her resolve, as if it were His Grace’s coat, still wrapping her in its comfort and protection, and firmed her grip on the pistol. “I understand.”
His Grace gave her his quick almost smile—a pleased tug at one corner of his mouth. “All right then? Are you ready?”
She swallowed her trepidation. “Yes.”
“Good. Then follow me.” And away he went into the mist.
Claire had to shove her arms through the overlarge sleeves of His Grace’s coat so she could gather up her long skirts to hurry after him. But when she reached the level of the embankment, he had paused in a crouch, waiting for her, and looking around—though how he could see anything in the eerily shifting, rising damp from the river, she did not know. But he was absolutely still, and in another moment she realized he was listening, gathering information from the sounds, just as he had urged her to do earlier.
She made herself crouch down, and listen with him, and found herself sorting out the sounds. The regular lap of the river against the bank was there, but there were city sounds now, as well—the creak of a door being opened, and the splash of a bucket being emptied onto the street, followed by the closing of the door. The low rumble of a carriage off somewhere. The thin scrape of a fiddle even farther away.
“Right then.” His Grace shifted poor Carter’s body up and over his shoulder, and then nodded to Claire. “Hold close.”
He set off across the dirt street at a steady but fast pace, moving purposefully, as if he had every right, as if there was nothing remotely wrong or sinister or tragic about him carrying a poor dead girl’s body through the night.
Claire didn’t know whether to be amazed or appalled by his audacity and seeming lack of compassion now. But compassion was likely to do them no good should they be caught by a night watchman or constable. This strange amalgamation of buckish swagger and ducal audacity would have to do.
Claire held her skirts up higher, away from the muddy dirt of the street, and followed as closely as she might—though she didn’t like to get too close to him, with poor Carter slung over his shoulder like so much grain. But neither did Claire want to let him out of her sight. She had no sense of place slinking so quickly along these narrow lanes, no way to get her bearings.
“Where are we going?” Her voice sounded strident and overloud in the emptiness.
He turned and put a finger to his mouth, and then whispered, “Round the back and down the alley.”
He led her down a varied row of tall, prosperous houses that towered over them out of the dark night, and around a corner, before he ducked into a dark, unlit alley. He steered her tight against a low brick wall, and paused again.