The Windflower (61 page)

Merry was taking a seat in a paneled pew near the door when Raven entered, and the shawled woman took one look at his charmingly formed but obviously disreputable countenance and dropped her tin of beeswax. Raven, stopped mid-stride under the heat of her gaze, made some exclamation under his breath that was better left unheard in a church, walked lithely backward to the alms box, and then, in an expression of startling piety, deposited a guinea within. The woman seemed to content herself with being partially mollified; she returned to her waxing, though tightening the voluminous shawls virtuously around her plump bosom and casting periodic suspicious glares at Raven.

Sliding into the seat beside Merry, Raven said, "You're late, m'darling. I've been watching for you this quarter hour in the chophouse down the block." He tucked a shining jet-black curl back into his bandanna and cast a quick, dispassionate glance toward the Communion table. "Devilish place, ain't it? It's more than a body can imagine, why people think they're doing God such a service by building him a parcel of dismal houses. I shouldn't wonder if He makes the architects sit or hard wood benches for all eternity."

Merry returned him a smile, though a wan one, and he pinched her chin and said kindly, "There you go! That's better. Where've you left your carriage? Let me escort you there, and you can go home and be comfortable."

"If you think I can be comfortable until I've heard everything you discovered last night, you're mistaken!" she retorted in a whisper. "Besides, I don't have my carriage. I was set down some distance from here and sent the coachman home, so don't think I'm to be fobbed off so readily."

"You
walked?"
The words were uttered in the same tone he might have used if she'd announced that she'd ridden into the sacristy on a goat. He gazed from her pelisse of crimson velvet bordered in sable to the matching close hat with its wealth of short nodding plumes, to her soft kid gloves, her copious sable muff and her velvet half boots in the same shade as the pelisse. With something near to a groan he said, "Merry, you
innocent."

"Innocent!"

"Aye. And there's no use to be looking daggers at me, lass. There's a lot worse things a body can be than innocent. The fact is, females of your station don't go about on their own in London unless they've a desire to be taken for the game pullet of some highborn rakehell. You might at least have brought your maid."

There were some, probably, who would object to lectures on propriety from a member of a notorious pirate crew, but Merry merely said, "I'd like to know what I'd do with a maid on a chase after Michael Granville?"

"Nothing. Because there ain't going to be any chase after Michael Granville. Leastwise, not for you, lovey."

"You haven't told anyone about last night!" Quiet as it was, her voice betrayed her alarm.

"No. I wouldn't squeak beef without letting you know first, but y'know, sweetheart, I'm giving you notice now that I'm going to Devon with the whole of it. For one thing, I put some enquires to Morgan last night about Granville, and the fellow's a damned ugly customer. Granville makes it his business to own a fleet of merchant ships that he sets to sail heavily insured; then he turns over their course to pirate raiders who steal the cargo, and Granville collects twice, from the insurance and from the contraband. Some of the fleet captains are in Granville's pay and play willingly, but when they have an honest crew, if there's a chance they're suspicious, Granville has the lot of them put to death. Sails says Devon's little sister was killed in a munitions blast whilst she was traveling aboard a frigate that tried to fight back, poor lass, so don't you see, Merry, Granville's just the sort of cur that
would
make an end to you if he had the least reason. And besides that, since I traced that jackal to his lair last night, I've been followed myself, though I don't know who the devil by. Some curst rum touch, by the looks of him and— Oh,
damn."

Following the direction of his eyes with some surprise, Merry saw that the shawled woman was making her way down the aisle, swiping her dustrag at the pews and giving Raven a baleful stare. Promptly Raven shed his intensity and beheld Merry with limpid eyes.

"You have the right of it, ma'am.
Abchurch
is a corrupt of the word
upchurch,
being that this church is set upon high ground, you know," he said, with the air of one well advanced in a gently instructive discourse. "As for your notion that the steeple is of a decidedly inferior quality, I can only say that, for myself, I find it very pretty. And I can't think what makes you doubt the authenticity of the altarpiece. For my part, I don't think Grinling Gibbons has ever done a finer work."

In an immediate change of front, the beshawled woman gave Raven a glance of warm approval and, frowning at Merry, shuffled off muttering under her breath about impertinent hussies who were no better than they should be.

Her lips quivering with nervous laughter, Merry turned back toward Raven and gasped, "Oh, you—you
devil.
How dare you make that horrid woman think I don't like her church! I never heard anything like it."

He grinned. "It was a little in Morgan's manner, wasn't it? I do it a bit from time to time to amuse Will, though I suppose I'll have the captain's boot in my seat if he catches me at it. As for the nonsense 1 talked about the church, it comes out of a pocket guide, which was the worst two shillings I ever spent in my life, because all it does is to describe a lot of places that no one in his right mind would want to see, like museums and government offices and lunatic asylums."

Perceiving that the woman was making her way up the opposite aisle, he broke off to say, in the voice of an earnest student of architecture, "You've noted, perhaps, that the cupola is supported by groined pendentives?" but rather spoiled this impressive utterance as soon as the Shawls had passed out of earshot by adding, "Whatever the devil that means. Not that it's here nor there. Come on, then, I'm taking you home."

"In a pig's ear!" she returned inelegantly. "Either you tell me where you found Michael Granville, or I've a coach to catch at five o'clock on Finsbury Square."

"Now, see here-—"

"I won't see here! All Devon needs to hear is that Granville made a threat to me to drive him to do—some desperate thing. He's not himself on the subject of Michael Granville. For all I know, if Devon discovered Granville had made threats on my life, Devon would gun him down like a dog. I won't let that happen, Raven. Do you think I'll stand by and see my husband hanged for killing a man like Granville? And I don't mean to let my brother die!"

"Damnation!" he said in a low tone. "Do you have to be so hot in the spur?"

"When it comes to protecting the people I love," she said fiercely,
"yes."

The determined set of her small chin was beginning to give Raven a sinking feeling. "What you've got no business doing, lovey, is protecting two grown men." Then, on a sudden note of inspiration: "I'll tell you what. What d'you say we take things to Morgan? You can depend on him for a cool-headed judgment."

"When pear trees bear peaches, I'll go to Morgan!" she said bitterly. "If he found my brother, Morgan would probably turn him over to the Army and, if they hanged him, say that it was character-building. And don't suggest we tell Will or Cat either. Telling them would be the same as telling Morgan because that's just what they'd do."

From that position she was not to be moved. Tears trembled on her eyelids; she was plainly terrified, but she was no less stubborn for all that. When Raven threatened to carry her by force to Morgan, all she would do was give an angry laugh and invite him to try it. And while he was admitting to himself that the citizens of this civilized metropolis were hardly likely to allow him to waltz through the streets bearing off a struggling woman of her obvious beauty and youth, Merry teld him, in a voice no less firm for its being overset by tears, that if he didn't take her to the place he had followed Granville to, she would approach a constable and tell him Raven had tried to steal her purse, thus keeping him in gaol until she arrived for her five o'clock appointment at Finsbury Square. The queer thing about it was, Raven could see she meant it. Which was why half an hour later he found himself in a hackney carriage with Merry on the way to the dockside address where he had seen Granville disappear.

Raven was furiously angry with her—an emotion rare for him— and scared half-witless that some harm would come to her, and it seemed that with all that emotion on Ms side he ought to have won the battle of wills. After he'd given the driver the correct address, he realized what he should have done was deliver her to a disreputable inn (how would she have known Granville wasn't there?), locked her in a room, and gone to fetch Morgan. He knew Morgan, or even Cat, would have said that even now it was his duty to knock her unconscious and carry her to one of them. But looking down at the proud blue eyes and harmless little nose, he couldn't find in himself the resolution to harm her. Once, when she turned her head to catch her first glimpse of the Thames, he did raise his hand, but it faltered. In his mind he felt the impact of the blow and heard her soft cry of pain and saw her body crumble; and he knew no fist of his could cause that to happen. Raven lowered his hand and with a heavy sigh began to load his pistol.

Merry's face and figure would have made her conspicuous even if she hadn't been dressed at the height of modishness. When an attempt to talk her into stopping at the inn where he was lodged to change into men's clothing failed, he had to direct the hack to a corner he considered to be dangerously close to their destination to avoid too long a tramp with her along the waterfront.

The door where he had seen Granville disappear and then, much later, reappear was located in a courtyard of muddy pmk brick inside a quadrant of tall warehouses with granite portals. Yawning black entrances emitted the scent of molasses in quantity enough to grab Merry's throat as she slid stealthily behind a row of cerecloth bales beside Raven. A handful of burly watermen were rattling barrels aboard a tilted carrier's dray under the shouted direction of a Warehouseman in a bent top hat.

She didn't need Raven's whispered admonition, "Have a care! They might be in Granville's hire," to make her dive obediently to his side and sit quietly trembling. Spilled sugar carpeted the yard so thickly in places that she saw men sink to the ankle in it, and the wind pranced off the river in damp gusts to throw the dirty grit in glittering patterns against the buildings. Beyond, the Thames was green, smelly, and busily absorbing greasy reflections. A mass of sails in different sizes made the river as crowded as the streets.

She felt Raven's tension beside her and was sorry for it, though there wasn't anything she could do about it. Her entreaties in the hackney carriage that he leave her (with the pistol) to take care of matters on her own had made up in nobility what they lacked in sincerity, and she was ashamed of the ignoble relief she had experienced at his shocked refusal. The remainder of the trip he had spent alternately glancing out the window trying without success to decide whether they were being followed and endeavoring with austere gentleness to convince her that the only existence her brother had in England was in Granville's evil mind, and if Granville in fact did have her brother, and if he did know anything to Granville's detriment, the lad would be long dead. It never occurred to her to guess that Raven was doing his best to talk himself into hitting her over the head, but if anyone had told her this, she wouldn't have been surprised. She could see he was mad as fire. All she could say in her own defense was that she had a feelfng, as real and keen as any truth, that her brother was alive and hidden nearby, and she was the best person to preserve his life, and not any of the men who cared much for her and nothing for him.

Or perhaps she was losing her mind. She was almost convinced of it in another moment. The men loading the dray had begun a good-naturedly bantering exchange of insulting jests about each other's mothers. As she stole a glance around the must-scented edge of her bale her eyes for some reason swept toward a far group of barrels, and while she watched, Henry Cork rose to the shoulders from one with a barrel lid on his head.

Merry sat back with her eyes tight shut, taking deep breaths.

"My mind's snapping," she breathed.

"Tell me something I don't know," Raven grated under the covering thunder of barrels. "Keep your head down, or we're dead, lovey. If those rascals catch an eye of those feathers of yours, it's all the world to a handsaw that they'll know they've got either a female back here or an ostrich. And let me tell you, it's more than probable they'll want to explore out which."

Pushing down her offending plumes, Merry peered again at the far barrels, saw nothing, blinked, and when a time passed with no further appearance, decided that the shadow of a soaring gull must have combined with some errant fancy of her imagination to serve her eyes such a trick.

It took a further half hour for the yard to clear. The heavily loaded dray rattled off into an alley; the warehouseman and his helpers disappeared into a near door speaking eagerly about sharing a flagon or two of porter.

Another opportunity might not come soon, and another wagon might arrive at any moment to gather cargo or discharge it, so there was nothing for Merry and Raven to do but dart across the yard, dodging heaps of discarded packaging fabric, frayed twine, and broken cooper's hoops. The immense oak double door was locked, but it would have taken a gem of the locksmith's art to resist the insistent mangling of Raven's dagger. He dragged open one dark, dust-grouted panel of the door, glanced inside, thrust Merry within, and followed quickly. She had time for only a glimpse of a wide room lined in pitted stone, and a plunging staircase beyond before Raven drew shut the doorway. The closed portal blocked out daylight with eerie efficiency. A bitter chill pervaded the atmosphere, its bite sharper than even the unheated stone and the autumnal briskness outside. She shivered, digging her hands deeper into her muff as she listened to Raven locate by touch the lantern and tinder on a small bench against the nether wall that he had marked on his first glance inside.