A boy of only nine, Rory smiled eagerly, still young enough to enjoy the occasional treats Alexandra saved for him, yet old enough not to clamor about her skirts.
“What is it?”
“A whole handful of scones with fresh strawberry jam inside.” Throwing back her shawl, she revealed the handkerchief that held these treats.
The boy’s eyes went wide with pleasure. “Yer the best, Alexandra.”
Alexandra smiled. “Just don’t tell Mrs. Wright I gave them to you, or she’ll blame me if we come up short tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t tell that old bag anythin’.”
“Rory!”
Alexandra’s chastening tone provoked a scowl. “Well, she made me scrub behind my ears this mornin’.”
“No doubt they needed a good scrubbing.” She laughed and ruffled his hair before returning to the house.
Mrs. Wright was gone when Alexandra entered the kitchen. She sat down to her sewing, but was interrupted again when Harry came in.
“The carriage is ready. I’m taking it around front now,” he told her.
Alexandra started up to the study to tell the duke, but by the time she arrived, he’d already gone. She heard his voice in the entry below, just before the door closed behind him. Had Lord Clifton gone, too? She passed through to the balustrade to see for herself, but when she looked down at the front door, she found the marquess standing there, staring up at her.
She gave him an uncomfortable smile before hurrying back the way she had come, praying he would retire soon. Trenton was coming in less than two hours.
Alexandra entered the kitchen just as Clifton came through the green baize doors. “My lord, is there something I can get you?” she asked, more than a little surprised that the marquess would venture into the servants’ domain.
Taking a seat at the table, he asked, “Why do you avoid me at every turn? Abbey or any of the others would love to trade places with you.”
Alexandra sat across from him and took up her sewing as she fished for an appropriate response. She wasn’t Abbey or any of the others. She didn’t care about the marquess’s position in society, or his money. She was already in love.
Alexandra gulped at this admission. Was she in love?
How could she deny it when the mere thought of Nathaniel left her breathless?
“My lord, we are not well suited,” she said. “You’ve mentioned before the difference in our social status. That is reason alone.”
“But I am willing to overlook that. Such things only matter in a wife.”
“And I will be nothing less than a wife.” She tried to return to her work, but being alone with Nathaniel’s half brother made her nervous.
“A mistress is treated better than a wife,” he insisted. “You have none of the demands placed upon a wife, only the benefits. If you weren’t interested in me, why did you come here?”
“I told you. I needed a job. Unlike you, I must work for my living.”
“You could have worked elsewhere.”
“I was having difficulty. I’d met you before, and I hoped Lady Anne would let me work off the dress I took from her. How many times must I explain? Why do you persist in making it more complicated than it is?”
“What about the earrings?”
“What about them, my lord? I’ve tried to give them back to you, and you won’t accept them. What am I to do?”
“Are you hoping for words of love? Would that soften your virtuous heart?”
Alexandra stood at the sarcasm in Clifton’s voice. “I’m sorry, my lord. Gifts can’t buy my affection. Not for anyone. Not even for you. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to bed.”
She tried to brush past him, but he blocked her path to the stairs. Pulling her to him, he bent his head to kiss her, but she twisted in his arms so that his lips brushed her cheek instead.
“My lord, what are you doing?” She squirmed out of his grasp.
“Call me Jake. I want to hear my name on your lips. I want to convince you.”
“Convince me of what?”
“That you want me as badly as I want you.”
Alexandra couldn’t hold back the laughter that burst from her. “I have no feelings for you whatsoever, my lord.”
The look that suddenly descended on his face frightened her, making her wish she could reclaim her hastily spoken words.
“There will come a time when you will beg for a crumb of my attention,” he vowed, and he struck her across the face.
Alexandra stumbled back, surprised and momentarily dazed. “My lord, I never meant to offend you.” She reached out to put her hand on his arm, but he jerked away, and she fell silent.
Giving her one last smoldering glare, he turned and stalked out, leaving Alexandra rubbing her cheek in astonishment.
* * *
Alexandra reached up to touch him. Her fingers skimmed through his hair, making his blood stir and his heart pound. Mesmerized, he reached out and hooked the small of her waist, pulling her to him. Her arms encircled his neck, and her lips parted in invitation as her eyes fluttered shut. Nathaniel quivered to feel her breath on his face, but just as his lips were about to drink from hers, Alexandra’s sigh became nothing more than the fetid exhalation of the man sleeping next to him, her fingers, the cockroaches that slithered about the place after dark.
Nathaniel shivered, leaving the dream unfinished as his mind returned by degrees to full awareness. He was sharing a narrow bunk with another man aboard the creaking, stinking hospital ship—one of the hulks reserved for those too ill to work, where dying men were sent but from which they rarely returned, receiving too little medical help, too late. Still, it was an improvement. There were no chains, and the fare, though mainly broth, was better than the slop served on the other hulks. The doctors were unfeeling, perhaps numbed by the great number of patients they lost, but apathy was preferable to antipathy.
At least they weren’t like Sampson. Because of him, Nathaniel had already spent more time in solitary confinement than any other man in the history of the
Retribution,
but it was the last few days that had nearly broken him. Riddled from the flogging they had given him when he attacked the guard, his back refused to heal, and a raging infection had taken hold. Finally the chaplain had intervened and had the guards move him to the hospital.
Since then, he had tossed miserably about in his bunk, breathing the stale air so common to the hulks. Mold and mildew combined with the pungent body odors of the other sick men, who were never bathed, until he would have traded his last meal for one breath of fresh air.
The voices of the doctors hovered above him during their three routine visits each day. Though the sores on Nathaniel’s back oozed pus and blood, he had hardly felt them until today, which was why he imagined himself to be getting better. At least he knew that he hurt, and he knew where.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Nathaniel fought his awakening and tried to recall the dream, but it was gone. He could remember those things Alexandra did or said, but he could not conjure up the feel of her, not like it was. So he channeled his thoughts to her letter. At least that was real.
Prisoners’ mail was unreliable and heavily censored; it was not uncommon to receive only a portion of one paragraph, or half a page at most. In fact, Nathaniel had received just a few lines from Alexandra:
… am living in Berkeley Square with your beloved father… found you as Trenton and I planned and am doing all I can… it shouldn’t be long now… Trenton is coming soon… stay alive and well…
Alexandra
Nathaniel groaned. As if he didn’t have enough on his mind, Alexandra was now living on Berkeley Street with the duke and his half brother—which was like sticking her head into a lion’s mouth. Still, she might not have found him otherwise, and he was infinitely grateful that someone knew of his whereabouts. That was the only thing that helped him to hang on, to fight Sampson’s cruelty a little longer.
His thoughts having made a complete circle, Nathaniel sighed in frustration and shifted to his side. He was damp with sweat, his back pained him no small amount, and a constant hunger gnawed at his gut, which the watery broth did little to relieve. Sleep was ever more appealing than consciousness, for only then was his misery forgotten—if not completely, then at least it was merely represented in some strange or fantastical way in his dreams.
Today, however, something more concrete disturbed him and kept him from returning to that blissful labyrinth of sleep. Though sickness and fever dulled his senses, danger signals penetrated his brain: hushed whispering, a number of men moving as a group, and finally, the voice of Sampson, the clerk.
“Watch that, you fool…”
In the next instant, three men rushed him. One carried a black bag, another, a strong, thick rope, and the third, what could only be a knife. Nathaniel caught the gleam of its blade a split second before someone forced his head into the bag and bound his arm to his body.
The sharp prick of metal at his back confirmed his first impression. They had a knife.
“Take it easy now. Struggling will only get you killed,” Sampson warned.
“Isn’t that the idea?” Nathaniel asked, but he didn’t fight. His limbs felt as though they were made of wood, and the knife at his back provided a convincing deterrent.
“If you so choose, I wouldn’t mind,” the clerk whispered, “but you’re too smart for that, eh? Now move.”
Half pushing, half dragging Nathaniel from his bed, the three men hauled him through the corridor and up the companionway. It was cool and soggy outdoors, and Nathaniel pictured a delicate, low-lying fog moving on top of the water like shiny white satin. He’d seen it a million times before, but he couldn’t see much now. Only vague shapes and deeper shadows. He stumbled again and again until a familiar voice halted their progress.
“What goes here?”
It was the chaplain, Reverend Hartman. Nathaniel was sure of the soft, almost effeminate voice.
“Father, what are you doing about at this ungodly hour?” Sampson demanded.
Nathaniel nearly fell as the clerk’s beefy arm shoved him back behind the others, but he knew he was much too large to escape notice. No doubt Sampson was betting on the reverend’s mild manner, and more than that, fear. Chaplains generally held considerable power in the hulks, second only to the overseer’s, but not on the
Retribution.
Here the pecking order was clear. Reverend Hartman was allowed to go about his business of saving souls only so long as he did not interrupt with discipline or any other weighty matter. No one dared thwart Sampson.
“There’s a man who’s dying. I promised I would sit with him,” the chaplain explained.
“‘Tis a rare man indeed who takes his job so seriously, Reverend,” the clerk mocked.
“It’s no more than you would do. I see you have already begun the vigil of caring for another brother who is similarly afflicted.”
“Mind your own business,” Sampson snapped. “Things that go on here are best left as they stand—for your own good.”
“So I’ve heard,” Hartman replied calmly.
Then Nathaniel heard the sound of his retreating steps.
No help there,
he thought in despair.
The prick of the knife at his back prodded him into motion once more. He blindly struggled to keep his footing on the grimy deck, despite the ropes and other obstacles that lay in his path, until Sampson stopped him at what had to be the ship’s side. Someone bent to lift him over a shoulder, grunting with the effort, then began to carry him down into what Nathaniel could only assume to be a dinghy.
After lowering him partway, whoever struggled beneath his weight dropped him. He fell about eight feet to land on his shoulder, and winced in pain as the clerk cursed his companions.
“Would you capsize us, you idiots?”
“He’s a heavy bugger,” a voice grumbled from above.
Nathaniel managed to right himself as the others climbed aboard.
“How much time have we got?” someone asked.
“When is he coming?”
“Midnight.”
“Then we’re fine.”
“Good. Let’s get us out of here before the doctors make a stink.”
The others took their places, and the slap of the oars on water resounded as the boat began to move. Nathaniel, tense with worry and anticipation, wondered what was happening and why. He knew Sampson’s voice, and recognized one other as the guard who had clubbed him at the Warren on the day he had seen Alexandra, but he couldn’t identify the third.
Three. He considered the meager possibility of self-defense. He was sick and weak and outnumbered.
The boat reached the shore, and two men hauled Nathaniel out. They pulled the lighter out of the water, half dragging him through the soft sand to the pavement where he could walk more easily. Straining his eyes, Nathaniel tried to see beyond the black fabric that covered his head, but the dark night kept all except a few pale shapes from his perception.
He stifled a groan of frustration. When would they remove the blasted hood? He could do nothing without his eyes.
Sampson and the others stopped, and a key turned in a lock. Nathaniel guessed they were entering the building in which the prisoners picked oakum by day.
As they shoved him inside, the smell confirmed it. Since the prisoners rotated between stacking shot and picking oakum, he had spent many days in the shed already.
“Shut the door.” Sampson’s voice echoed through the cool, damp room. “Now we wait till he comes.”
Someone lit a candle.
“Until who comes?” The guard Nathaniel recognized as James voiced the question clamoring in his own mind.
“The Duke of Greystone, no less.” Sampson kicked Nathaniel viciously. “That name mean anything to you?”
Unable to mask a groan, Nathaniel teetered for a moment before regaining his balance. His leg throbbed where Sampson’s boot had landed. He attempted to ignore the pain and concentrate instead on what he could do to escape before his father arrived—before they added any more strength to their numbers.
“Why? What’s happening?” Nathaniel demanded, when he could speak.
Sampson pulled the hood from Nathaniel’s head and jeered into his face. “How should I know? His Grace has paid for the opportunity to speak to you, and we’re accommodating him. Simple as that. But if you try anything, or refuse to cooperate, it won’t be so simple anymore.”