“Here we are.” Wortingham stopped at the door of a drab building that ran the length of the block. They must be in Shadwell or Wapping. Becky had never been in this area of London before. It was grayer and darker than the angry sky, and the stench of sewage and rot steamed up from the street and filtered through the air.
Where was Josie? Still Becky didn’t dare look behind her. Had Wortingham done something with her? Had she run away as soon as she saw the stranger accosting her mistress? But Josie wouldn’t do that… would she? Becky had thought her more spirited than to shrink away at the first sign of trouble. Yet Becky had never really seen her maid in a precarious situation before. There was no telling what she had done or where she was. Becky was tempted to ask Wortingham if he’d done something to her, but that would only put Josie in more danger, so she kept her lips sealed.
She glanced up at Wortingham’s long face again. For whatever reason, he didn’t frighten her as much as William had at the end. He didn’t mean to rape her, she thought. He didn’t even mean to hurt her, although hemight threaten to, to be certain Garrett sent him the money.
But those were foolish thoughts. It certainly was possible he did mean to rape her and to kill her afterward. She didn’t know him from Adam. He could be more evil than even William had been.
Yet he’d been Jack’s friend for many years. They’d grown up together in Kent, had counted on each other. Until, apparently, a woman had come between them.
“Come along, my lady.” Wortingham unlocked the brown-gray door and pushed her inside. She stumbled into a dark entry hall, ripe with the stench of urine, and he slammed the door and locked it behind them.
“You are not going to hurt me.”
Even in the dim light, she could see that he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll do whatever I must do. If your brother proves troublesome—”
“He won’t,” she assured him quickly. “You’ll get your money. Whatever you want.”
He pushed her toward a narrow flight of stairs. “You first, my lady. I’ll be right behind you.”
Keeping the pistol firmly trained on her lower back, he nudged her up the stairs and down a long, narrow, poorly lit corridor. At the end of the corridor was a door that was in even worse repair than the rest of this dismal place. It hung crookedly on its hinges and was splintered near the handle.
She hesitated, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder. “I could scream,” she said quietly. “Someone would hear me. Help me.”
He shook his head. “Sure you can scream, but no one will come. No one pays attention to such things in places like these.”
Against her will, her teeth began to chatter. She clenched them together, hard.
“But I’d advise you not to scream at all,” he continued. “The sound tends to grate on a man’s nerves. If you find it necessary to scream, I shall have to devise a way to silence you.”
He fumbled with the broken door. Finally, he forced it to open with a loud, complaining squeal of bent hinges.
She saw the gun for the first time as he waved her inside. She knew enough about weapons to know that it was an expensive, well-made pistol, with an ivory grip and an engraved brass barrel.
“Sit down,” he said.
The room was tiny, with a desk at one end and a dingy bed at the other and little space to move between the two. She stepped toward the desk, but he gave a harsh laugh. “No, not there. I require the chair. I’ve a letter to write.”
Keeping her back straight, she lowered herself on the edge of the narrow bed, folding her hands in her lap.
“How did you know where I was going?” she asked.
“Oh, I didn’t.” Holding the gun in one hand, he pulled out the desk chair with the other. The chair was a spindly thing, with a frayed cloth seat and mismatched legs. “I’ve been waiting at your brother’s house since yesterday morning. As soon as Jack sailed away, I knew you were my only remaining hope.”
She tried not to flinch at his mention of Jack’s name. She sensed that he watched her carefully even as he readied a sheet of stationery and dipped his pen into the inkwell.
“There must be another option. Something that doesn’t entail a hanging offense. Something legal, perhaps.”
He laughed heartily at that. “No, ma’am. I am far past that kind of hope, I’m afraid.”
“Do you owe money?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” was his ready answer.
“To whom?”
“People it’s best you know nothing of, my lady.”
“You’re a gentleman. How could you become involved with such a breed of people?”
His lips curled downward, but then he shrugged. “Why not? What is a gentleman with nothing? No money, no woman, nothing to call his own. One hides behind his demons, because to come out is to expose oneself, to face the disaster of one’s life, isn’t it?”
“But when you hide behind demons,” she murmured, “you risk becoming one.”
“Perhaps that is better than facing a failed life.”
“And now they threaten you, these demons. They want money from you, but you cannot pay.”
His features pinched. “That was Jack’s responsibility.”
She just stared at him, unable to argue.
“You cannot understand how deeply he is indebted to me,” Wortingham continued. “He took everything from me, and then I protected him, for years. He was foolish to expect to owe nothing in return.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “And now he is gone again. Vanished, like a coward. Again.”
Becky pressed her lips together until they felt tight and bloodless. “Are you being threatened?”
He paused in the middle of scrawling, cocking his head at her and once again pointing the barrel of the gun in her direction. “I require the funds by the first of the year, or…” He shook his head. “Ah, but you ask too many questions, my lady. I daresay none of this is any of your concern.”
She stared at the pistol. “I suppose not. I suppose you should write that letter quickly, for it seems we’re both in a hurry. I’d like to be home with my family in time for dinner.” She paused. “It is Christmas, you know.”
Her own bravado shocked her. She was completely at this man’s mercy, but even though her trembling had betrayed her, she’d shown very little fear. She’d changed in the past four years. Perhaps she had truly become brave, after all.
“Is it Christmas? I’d quite forgotten.”
He was a rather poor liar, for a criminal.
He’d finished the letter. He folded it carefully. “Here’s the challenging bit, my lady. There’s a boy who lives with his mother down at the other end of the corridor. He’s willing to run odd jobs for me for a penny or two when the occasion calls. We shall walk down the passageway, knock on his door, and give him an urgent missive to be delivered to the Duke of Calton. Will you be able to stand there, quiet as a mouse, while I relay the instructions to him?”
“I… think so.”
“I’ll count on your honesty, my lady.” He hesitated. “In truth, I’d expected you to have fainted by now, or at least succumbed to screaming for help. I suppose I can see what it is that Jack saw in you, after all.”
She didn’t have time to question that statement. They both turned to the sound of pounding footsteps outside, Wortingham swinging the gun toward the door just as it crashed inward.
A man leapt into the room, and Becky’s breath caught in her throat. She’d expected the running feet to belong to her brother. Garrett wasn’t the man who’d burst through the door, though.
Jack.
Tom Wortingham didn’t even have a chance to get a good aim at Jack before Jack kicked the gun out of his hands. The gun went flying past Becky’s legs and slid under the bed. Wortingham lunged out of the chair as if to retrieve it, but Jack was on him.
It was no contest. In less than five seconds, Jack had him down and was throwing punches at his face. Holding his injured right arm tight against his body, he pounded the other man w
ith his left fist.
Blood flew out in a spray from Wortingham’s mouth, and he moaned loudly, now completely defenseless against Jack’s onslaught.
Oh, God. Jack was going to kill him.
“No!” Becky leapt toward the two men and grabbed Jack around his waist. He tried to throw her off, but she wouldn’t let go. She clung to him, refusing to release him,pulling with all her might until they half rolled off Wortingham. “No, Jack! Please, stop!”
Suddenly, he clutched her shoulder and stared into her face, his light brown eyes wild with rage, with fear. For her, she realized with a jolt. He’d been afraid for her.
“Did he hurt you?” He shook her. “Did he hurt you, Becky?”
“No,” she gasped out. “No. He didn’t hurt me.”
Some of the pressure released from her shoulder, and Jack wrapped his good arm around her and yanked her against him. “Oh, God,” he said brokenly. “He had a gun… he might have…”
“No,” she soothed, burying her face in the curve of his neck. “No, he didn’t touch me.”
Tom Wortingham, his face bleeding, was trying to crawl around them, his long arm reaching beneath the bed. Slipping his arm from around Becky, Jack thrust him away. Tom crashed against the chair, and a chair leg snapped as man and furniture went down in a flailing heap.
Jack retrieved the gun. His face took on a grayish hue when he pulled it from underneath the bed.
He turned his gaze to Wortingham. “So this is what you’ve been threatening me with? My father’s pistol?”
Tom struggled to a seated position on the floor. “You know I retrieved it from the alley that night. I meant to hand it in as evidence against you, Jack, but I had enough evidence for a prosecution without it. And it’s all I’ve got now, really.” He waved his hand around the tiny, gray room. “You see I haven’t got much.”
“And you believe that’s my fault.”
Pressing his fist to his bloodied mouth, Tom stared at Jack, his shoulders shaking. “You’re not supposed to be here. You sailed away on the tide. I saw you go.”
“I didn’t go anywhere.” Jack looked at Becky. “The moment I boarded the Gloriana, I knew I couldn’t leave England without being sure… I knew he might come after you. I couldn’t… leave you.”
Before she could respond, he turned back to Tom, rage inflating his shoulders. Tom cowered on the floor, staring at Jack with true fear in his gray eyes.
Becky laid a hand on Jack’s arm. “Jack?”
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
He sighed, long and low. “Nor do I.” His eyes were sad, and weary. Still holding the gun, he pressed his injured arm closer against his chest, wincing as he did so. “I know what we must do.”
Chapter Twenty-four
All three of them looked up at the sound of shouts and footsteps in the corridor. Jack’s good hand tightened around the gun. He hoped it wasn’t one of Tom’s agents. He hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. He didn’t even know if he could shoot a gun left-handed.
They all looked through the doorway, past the sagging door, which was now beyond repair.
“It’s Garrett,” Becky whispered two seconds before her brother burst into the room. Jack lowered his weapon as the duke reeled to a halt, looked from Becky to Tom to Jack.
“What…?”
Becky rushed to him and grabbed his shoulder. “Garrett… is Josie all right? Where is she?”
“She’s at home.”
Becky released an audible breath of relief. “What happened?”
Still keeping a wary eye on Jack and Tom, the duke explained. “She ran into the house, wheezing for lack of breath, and said you’d been abducted from the street. She followed you and the man—” he narrowed his eyes at Tom, “—him?—as far as this building. She was able to describe exactly where he had brought you. I rode out here immediately. Once I was able to get inside, it wasn’t difficult to find you.”
Jack shook his head. Tom Wortingham was completely lacking in common sense. He hadn’t even considered the fact that a lady would always bring a companion with her when she went for a walk.
“We have this situation under control,” he told the duke.
“Fulton.” Calton’s voice was dry, and his gaze rested on the sling holding up Jack’s injured arm, telling Jack he knew exactly how that injury had come to be there. “Thought you were en route to the West Indies.”
“No.”
The duke’s cool gaze slid to Tom. “And you are…?”
A bead of sweat rolled down Tom’s cheek. He looked frantically from Jack to Becky, unable to meet the duke’s cold eyes, much less answer him.
Jack glanced at Becky, and she gave him a subtle nod. The small gesture of trust flooded him with hope. “This is Tom Wortingham, an old friend of mine. He has unfortunately found himself in desperate circumstances and has been on the verge of taking desperate measures.”
Understanding dawned on the Duke of Calton’s face. Tom made a strangled noise. Jack’s old friend had no idea what he was about to do. He probably thought Jack would throw him to the wolves.
Well, that was exactly what he was going to do. But certainly not in the way Tom expected.
“Fortunately, we have a solution. He needs to get out of London immediately, you see,” Jack continued, “and Becky and I have a plan to help him.”
“Is this true, Rebecca?” the duke asked.
Becky gave her brother a grave nod.
“However, we are in need of your assistance, Your Grace,” Jack said.
The duke’s brow creased. “Oh?”
“Yes. The use of a carriage, perhaps? And one or two burly men to ensure Mr. Wortingham arrives safely at Gravesend.”
In anticipation of poor weather tonight, Captain Calow planned to anchor the Gloriana at the bottom of the Thames. As soon as the weather promised to hold fair, the captain would haul anchor and be on his way. Calow was a strict disciplinarian, and always in need of more men. He especially enjoyed reforming weaklings into strong, resilient sailors, as he’d done once upon a time with a downtrodden eighteen-year-old Jack Fulton.
Tom would join the crew of the Gloriana. The experience would either kill him or save him from himself. Either way, Tom would be given the choice. If he proved strong enough, he could begin anew.
The duke studied them all. Jack, who met his icy blue gaze head-on. Tom, who shifted from foot to foot and mopped blood and sweat from his face with a dirty linen handkerchief. Last of all, Becky, who didn’t speak, but moved to stand at Jack’s side in a clear gesture of solidarity.
Tom Wortingham spoke little beyond the necessities. He went without complaint, packing a sheaf of paper and his pen and ink into a sack, along with a shirt, pairof trousers, and nightshirt. They left Wortingham’s lodgings together and took a hackney coach back to Mayfair.
They went directly to the stables at Garrett’s house and arranged for the carriage and men to escort Wortingham to Gravesend. Garrett retired into the house as one of the men nudged Wortingham inside the carriage. He sat, staring grimly at the rear-facing seat, as the man climbed in beside him and slammed the door shut.
Becky stood at Jack’s side at the Curzon Street gate and watched the carriage carrying Tom Wortingham disappear around a bend in the road.
Becky turned to Jack. The streetlamp cast a pale glow over his long, dark coat and the black hat he wore low over his forehead. Yet she knew his eyes were latched on to her. She could feel them.
They gazed at each other, not touching, not saying a word.
It was really Jack, in the flesh. He was here, in London. He hadn’t sailed away. His handsome face stared down at her, his eyes dark. For the first time since he’d burst back into her life today, she soaked him in.
He’d come back for her.
Finally, she blurted, “When you were sick… I tried to pay Mr. Wortingham. I sent my servant to London with a letter authorizing the delivery of the funds.”
“But I didn’t know you had only until the fifteenth of December. I was too late. I’m so sorry.”
“I am the one who is sorry.” His voice, low and smooth, soothed the lump of emotion welling in her throat.
The world narrowed to a tiny capsule of space surrounding them. There were no pedestrians annoyed by them taking up space on the pavement. There were no rattling wheels or clomps of horses’ hooves. The city tang of London disappeared to be replaced by Jack’s salty, masculine scent.
There was only Jack and her. And Becky never wanted it to be any other way.
“I thought you had gone,” she whispered, staring into his deep brown eyes. “Sailed away.”
“I couldn’t go. Not… not without seeing you one more time. To be sure—” He stopped abruptly.
Becky clenched her fists at her sides. “To be sure of what?”
“To be sure that there was no chance of your forgiving me. No chance for us. To be together.”
“I was so angry with you,” she said. “I thought I could never forgive you. But… oh, God, I have forgiven you, Jack.”
“I’m not the man I was when I first met you.”
“I know.”
“I love you. So much.”
She suddenly felt shy. It was hard to say, to admit to it after so many days of anger and hurt, and guilt. “I love you, too.”
Once the words escaped her mouth, she felt light. Lighter than she had in years.
Slowly, a smile curved his wicked, handsome lips. She glanced at his arm, which he held protectively against his torso. “Is your arm—?”
“It is better.”
“Did you hurt it when you fought Mr. Wortingham?”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry I shot you.”
“I was never angry at you for it, Becky.”
“I know.” She tried to smile, but her lips wobbled, and the expression disintegrated before it could take shape.
A Season of Seduction Page 29