The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “The Persephone?”

  “Bloody hell, man, catch up! Harold practically gave my missing ship to Mr Smith and now Wickham has Eliza who is likely to be married to Sir Percival so he can have her dowry.”

  “But I thought you said Eliza was your wife.”

  Darius surged from the chair and nearly knocked Germaine over when he came to stand over him. His voice emerged low yet promising a threat all the same. “Can you rally a few men or not? I will be leaving here as soon as I have the ship’s whereabouts. Unless you have something useful to add, we are wasting time going around in circles.”

  Germaine rushed to expel what he knew. “Your Mr Smith is a sinister one. I didn’t have to do too much digging since his is a name well known in the slums. Not a one knows where he lives or even what he looks like beyond his comparison to the devil. When a man owes him money, he pays or he dies. No shades of grey with the fellow. Either Harold or Wickham lost a very large amount to him. He has been looking for the pair.”

  Despite his brother’s injuries, despite the fact he was already unlikely to survive the day, Darius marched to where his brother lay on a settee and put his hand over Harold’s throat. He held him down, not that Harold put up any fight. His brother sobbed, already stinking of death and deceit, of cowardice and shame.

  “What did you do, brother?”

  He didn’t need elaboration. “I knew of father’s plans to steal the fabrics from Montrose. I was the one who gave the details to Mr Smith. Where the ship would dock, how many were on board, what cargo they still carried. It was all me.”

  Darius squeezed as the last syllables were croaked out. He didn’t let up as he yelled, “You killed them all! They were his friends, Deklin’s family, and you consigned them to hell without a thought! Father was wrong all those years ago: I’m not the bastard here, you are.”

  Germaine intervened and pulled Darius off of Harold, shoving him back into a chair. “That isn’t helping,” he said.

  But Harold wasn’t done. He spoke only a decibel above a whisper. “Father didn’t know what I’d done. Not until yesterday. When he found out, he was furious. He blamed me. Said you wouldn’t have come back for the fabrics, that you only came back for the ship.”

  “I came back for the debts,” Darius countered through gritted teeth. “The fabrics were worth almost as much as the ship. But the men’s lives, they were worth more than all the gold in England.” And now they had Eliza. She was worth more than all the gold on the planet.

  “The men are alive,” Harold whispered. “Some of them. Enslaved on board. Sailing only east, never west. No chances to be recaptured or spotted by Montrose.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Germaine asked of his friend.

  “Have. Sources.” His voice grew weaker and once again, he lost consciousness, his features replacing a grimace with surreal relaxation, an unsteady breath rattling through parted lips caked with old blood.

  He dodged Germaine and grabbed two handfuls of Harold’s stained shirt. “Wake up, you bastard! You don’t get to die and not pay for what you’ve done!”

  When the door flew open, the doctor at the butler’s side, Germaine was forced to pull Darius away again. “Why don’t you go upstairs and compose yourself? Help yourself to anything in my wardrobe. I’ll stay with the doctor.”

  As he radiated fury mixed with desperation, the butler stepped forward to lead him from the room. As much he wanted his information, his brother needed to be kept alive for a little while longer yet.

  Only four steps down the corridor and the front doors opened with a booming slam as though the wind had blown a gale right at the front of the house. Darius cursed long and loud.

  For a few very long moments, no one spoke. Germaine’s butler was completely frozen to the spot, not a sputter or cough or anything. Tension filled the large foyer, the ticking of the hall clock marking every fraught second that passed.

  Then one of the newcomers drew a pistol from his pocket and aimed it right at Darius’s chest. “You were told never to return here,” the gentleman drawled.

  The butler scurried from the room, back in the direction they had come.

  “You don’t want to do this, Trelissick.”

  “You’re wrong, I really do want to do this,” came his grated reply.

  The woman spoke next. “You were warned, Darius. Or perhaps your brain wasn’t fully operational after I punched you?”

  “It isn’t what it looks like, Daniella. I didn’t come for trouble.”

  James Trelissick cocked the pistol and took a step forward. “You better have a good reason for being here, Darius.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was all just too much. Darius sat on the edge of Germaine’s desk and let his head sink into his hands. There wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do until his brother woke again. The party had assembled in Germaine’s study while the doctor examined his patient. Germaine sat behind the desk while Trelissick paced and Daniella eyed Darius as though he’d died and come back to life. Word had gone out to them the minute ‘a pirate’ had entered the house. Germaine was furious but they all waited for Darius to say something, anything.

  He shocked even himself with his words. “My name is actually Jonathan Meddington. I’d stripped myself of it before your father found me on that stinking ship.”

  Daniella jumped to her feet with a triumphant fist pump. “I knew you were someone. You were wearing livery and were too well turned out, but the captain wouldn’t hear it. I don’t think he much cared back then.” Triumph turned to wariness. “But that would mean you are the Earl of Wickham’s… What? Son? Brother? Who is your father?”

  “The current earl sired me. I am the shamed and rarely mentioned bastard son.”

  Other than Eliza and a handful of his crew—and before that very month—Darius had only ever admitted the truth of his heritage to his friend, Deklin Montrose. In the decade before the tale had been pulled from his lips, he’d tried his hardest to ensure no one ever made the connection between him and the man who fathered him.

  He should have spread the word far and wide to discredit his father but it was always the bastard who came off second best in London.

  “You never said,” Daniella accused but the accusation was light. More disbelief than anything else.

  “No, I didn’t.” And for good reason. Daniella’s father probably would have dropped him at the first port after rescuing him. He would have been as good as dead anyway. Exactly as Wickham intended all those years ago.

  “Why did you come back? You told James and I that we would never see you again.”

  He raised a brow. “I said no such thing. You punched me in the nose and then threatened to, what was it now, kill me and then dance on my grave beneath the moon?”

  “I was upset.”

  “I won’t apologise for what I did,” he told her.

  “Nor will I,” she countered.

  This was why he’d always liked Daniella Germaine. She had been like a sister to him before he’d staged the failed mutiny.

  Any further nostalgia was broken by the butler’s very serious manner as he re-entered the room. “The men have arrived, sir.”

  Germaine nodded and gestured for him to let them in. Pretty soon, their party numbered forty men and one woman.

  Who would have thought convincing a room full of men to believe the Duke of Penfold had killed himself was the easiest of Darius’s arguments that day? Convincing the same room full of men to let him go alone to find the Persephone had been completely impossible. The one woman in the room was the most vehement of all.

  Darius sent a half smile in her direction. “Is it because you worry for me, Daniella, or are you scared to miss out on the fun of a fight?”

  She huffed and shook her head. “You have no idea what you are stepping into. There could be a hundred armed men on that ship. What do you plan to do once you are aboard?”

  This time a full smile tilted his lips but once again ther
e was no humour behind it. “I’m going to kill them all, starting with my father, and then anyone else who has laid even one finger on my wife.”

  *

  “I am so very thirsty,” Ethan complained in the tired way a child does before dozing off into a nap.

  Only he wasn’t going to sleep; he was still trying to shake off the cloying effects of the laudanum they had been drugged with. Eliza squeezed her brother a fraction tighter and kissed his forehead. “Only a little longer, dearest.”

  She locked eyes with Nathanial over Grace’s hair and he nodded. So they were to offer hope to the little ones even though it felt so wrong. Eliza didn’t want to upset her youngest siblings any more than they already were but should they be more prepared for their fate? Whatever that may be? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore.

  The room was still so dark, very little light spilling in from the fires lit along the docks now that rain misted over the timbers along the water’s edge. But it was enough to see they were doomed. If a once strong ox of a captain, now reduced to skin and bone, had been held captive for so long, then the five Penfolds shouldn’t present too much of a challenge. Only, Eliza would fight. She would use her nails and her teeth again if she had to, but she would not give in willingly while she remained conscious.

  But it was the vile things Wickham and Sir Percy did when she was not conscious that worried her. “What happened to me?”

  Nathanial’s voice drifted quietly to her over the children’s heads in answer. “You do not want to know.”

  She met his gaze. “I need to know. How far did it go?” She wanted to ask if she was ruined for any other man but then what did that matter? She only needed to know if she had been violated while unconscious. The days of her passion with Darius were soured now but she was glad in a way that she had given herself to him when she had and not just to seal their vows. She had enjoyed him as much as he had enjoyed her. She might have even carried his child. A sob tried to work its way up her throat. If she did fall pregnant, how was she to know who had fathered the babe? Oh God, just when she thought it couldn’t possibly get worse.

  Nathanial looked away but he answered eventually. “I tried to stop it. I really tried to stop it but my hands were bound…”

  “Stop what?” she asked as he trailed off. “The truth, all of it, Nathanial. I need it.”

  The captain in the corner scoffed and drew all their attention. Like they could ever forget his presence. “You don’t,” he muttered. “You’d be better off never knowing.”

  “You’re wrong,” Eliza said, her own voice rising along with the turmoil in her heart and the contents of her stomach.

  Nathanial gasped at what the stranger implied as though he hadn’t yet caught up to the conversation. “You weren’t raped,” he said, indignation making his tone harsher than it should have been. The children between them cowered.

  “Now you’re lying,” she accused.

  Nathanial stood and then crouched before her. “Those sick bastards had a doctor perform the test on you, but no one touched you other than that. I swear, Eliza. They discovered you had already…” His face turned crimson against the darkness. “They then moved to Gabriella. If she was not…” He flicked his glance to her. “If she was not confirmed chaste, then we would all be dead. Wickham said since you were no longer a… You were both unmolested, so to speak, and you must take my word for it.”

  “I sense a but,” Eliza said, hoping to be wrong.

  “You aren’t going to be the one married off to Percival.”

  Eliza stood, the pieces of the puzzle becoming clearer. “Over my dead body will they be taking Gabriella for their sick purposes.”

  *

  Before the next hour was out, forty-five men had snuck in and then out of Germaine’s townhouse and made their separate ways to the filthy docks. Anthony, it seemed, had contacts with the Bow Street runners and Trelissick had men of his own to call in. They made a ragtag crew of mostly misfits, sailors, soldiers and men paid to uphold what little law they could.

  The plan was simple. James and Darius were to take a handful of men and try to determine how many opponents they would face aboard the Persephone, if indeed the vessel could be found. Once this was determined, they would then steal onto the ship and take control.

  It sounded so easy in Darius’s mind. He knew it wouldn’t be. Impatience bit at his heels and made him want to run straight into the fight. But he was a captain and not a pirate, not anymore. He’d reined in the majority of his impulsiveness the day Deklin Montrose had handed him a ship to call his own.

  “Five more on the starboard side by my count,” Marcus whispered, crouching next to him in the dark behind an enormous shipping crate.

  Darius turned to Trelissick. “That makes only fifteen above deck.”

  Trelissick agreed with a nod. “The dock master reported fifty or so had filed off some three hours ago and have not returned. He thinks he overheard one sailor say they wouldn’t be back until the wee hours of the morning.”

  Darius sure hoped so. Twenty-odd men they could handle. Close to one hundred and they would be hopelessly outnumbered. His original plan had comprised only two men: he and Marcus, on a mission of stealth and murder, but Germaine wouldn’t hear it. He’d sounded rather like Eliza, who liked to point out the flaws in his plans and how ill equipped he was to carry them out. God, he already missed the way she questioned his battle prowess. Had it been a fellow, he would have knocked him on his arse for unmanning him, but with her, it had become almost endearing, in a frustrating sort of way.

  Darius had argued with Germaine and Trelissick but no one wanted to listen to him. The only one thing all the men could agree on was that the women and children had to be their priority. Darius and his men would die trying to save them. Not a one would like to live with themselves if something went tragically wrong.

  Germaine had been the only man to stay behind since his ankle still pained him so much. If they all died, he would tell their story to a journalist, to a gossipmonger, and then to the Regent. Anyone who would listen would be his first target if they didn’t arrive back at his home.

  “So, what now?” Trelissick asked, pulling the lapels of his coat closer around his neck. His eyes seemed to search the darkness, probably for Daniella. His pregnant wife was to keep a safe distance away and shoot anyone who tried to leave the ship before the battle died down.

  “You’re the army man, what do you think?” Darius only wanted to rush in with guns blazing and sharpened steel slicing through the blackguards.

  Trelissick was saved a response when Marcus slashed a hand through the air for quiet. On the almost empty decks, now bobbed five lanterns held aloft by another five sailors that they hadn’t accounted for. The unmistakable figure of Wickham stood in the middle of a pool of light, conversing with a tall thin man who was accompanied by a hooded figure, shorter in stature and plumper in size although that could have been the cloak. A fine drizzle began to fall and Darius had to squint his eyes to try to make out if any more sailors stood beyond the lanterns. It was too difficult to see that far in the drizzling sleet.

  As the seven newcomers gained the plank, Darius, Trelissick and Marcus shrank back further into the shadows. It seemed the lantern bearers weren’t sailors at all but were with the two strangers, and one carried a decided limp as he nearly overbalanced and fell. At once Darius recognised the fellow as the one who had been shot, one of the ones who had taken Eliza from him.

  Carriage wheels pierced the night’s silence, drowning out the creaking of ships along the dockside and farther out on the water. Darius thought for a moment that they would be discovered but the carriage stopped and blocked their position. The murmur of voices came closer and then the carriage rocked. He strained to hear what was being said but then wished he hadn’t.

  A man’s voice came first. “That man is an ass.”

  Surprisingly, a woman’s voice followed, soft, alluring, controlled. “He has been in
strumental in the past months, my love.”

  “And now?” The carriage rocked again. “What say you, Mr Smith?”

  A pregnant pause. “Now he has gone too far.”

  As the lantern light reached the inside of the carriage, Darius could make out a couple in a lover’s embrace silhouetted against the thin curtains and clean windows.

  The two kissed until the woman pushed him away. “Not here, Frederick. I want to be gone from this odious situation before that fool sinks us all into ruin.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Another pause and then a tinkle of laughter as the woman pulled the man back towards her. “Set fire to the ship. I want nothing left, no witnesses, no loose tongues or talk of any kind is to make it off those decks.”

  “And the children?”

  “Unfortunate casualties of this war, I’m afraid. They have nothing left now anyway. With their father gone, and then their guardian, they’ll finish up in a workhouse. They’d be better off dead.”

  The man seemed to consider the argument. “Don’t we need this ship? It has been very profitable since we acquired it.”

  “We don’t need it that badly. Montrose’s man has been sniffing around so it’s only a matter of time before they try to take it back. I don’t need more enemies knocking at Mr Smith’s door.”

  “Once again you’ve thought of everything, my clever one. But how will I get back on the ship? Wickham believes he has won.”

  “And he also believes you to be Mr Smith. Tell him your mistress’s finer sensibilities didn’t belong aboard. Tell him you want to be present to ensure all goes to plan. I don’t care what you tell him really. If you wait a few more hours, the crew will be unconscious. The belladonna in the swill will take care of the majority of them. If you have to bash their skulls in and then set the fire, then so be it. At least there would be little chance of anyone jumping over the side to escape the flames.”