by Lori Bond
Jerry’s father had narrowed the list of possible Russian agents down to twelve men. Fortunately, ten of them were still confirmed to be in London according to the message the duke had sent down last night. While booking a berth for Lady Caroline’s new identity, Wellburn had managed to obtain a copy of the ship’s manifest. Only one person on the duke’s list, Philip Kimbley, had booked accommodations on the ship, but that didn’t mean the other unaccounted-for man, Harold Bryce, wasn’t travelling under a different name.
Wellburn had already volunteered to befriend any servants Kimbley might bring as well as the ship’s stewards. Kimbley also travelled with his wife. Jerry had already asked Lady Caroline to take a subtle interest in her.
When the carriage reached the slip where the SS Adriana had docked, Jerry helped Lady Caroline alight from the carriage. She swiveled around taking in the entire dock and the teeming masses. Her face was alight with undisguised pleasure tinged with curiosity. She seemed to glow again. For a moment, Jerry wished he had lit her face with such joy. Then he wondered why he kept having such unbidden thoughts.
“Lady Caroline,” a voice called out.
Beside him, Lady Caroline’s smile vanished as if high winds had blown dense clouds before the sun. She stiffened, and the hand resting in the crook of his arm tightened. Without thought, Jerry patted the arm to calm her down. He also silently applauded the fact that she had ignored the natural instinct to turn and see who had called her name.
“Lady Caroline,” the voice said again. A girl, probably only a year younger than Lady Caroline, dressed in the simple black drab of a household servant, shoved past Jerry intent on reaching the lady. Jerry tightened his grip, but Lady Caroline pulled her arm free.
“Olive!” she cried and embraced the girl.
Jerry didn’t let down his guard despite Lady Caroline’s warm reception for the girl. He also hadn’t expected Lady Caroline’s dearest friend to be a servant even though Caroline had mentioned the parents’ humble status. Considering how isolated Caroline had been kept, he shouldn’t have been surprised.
The girl hugged Caroline back. “Oh, my lady, I thought to never see you again.”
The two broke apart although Caroline still held her maid’s hands. “How did you track me down? Even I had no idea I was coming here when I snuck out yesterday. Is Father here? I won’t go back.”
“I’m so sorry, my lady,” Olive said. She tried to pull her hands away, but Caroline held on tightly. Jerry could read the misery in the maid’s face, and he started scanning the crowd, fearing the worst. If found with his wayward daughter in less than respectable circumstances like these, the Earl might force the issue, and he and Caroline might find themselves married in truth.
Olive looked ill. “It’s worse, my lady. Your father went to Dover, and your brothers were sent to search the country estate. I was sent by your mother with Mr. Bickle.” She said the last words in little more than a whisper. Jerry had to strain to catch them. “I fear he won’t be far behind me.”
Jerry nodded at Wellburn, and the man melted into the crowd. Jerry turned to Caroline. “My lady, would your maid like to accompany you on your journey?”
“Yes,” said Olive before Caroline could even open her mouth. “I cannot return without you, and I would prefer to not endure another train ride with Mr. Bickle.” She looked off to the side, no longer meeting Caroline’s eyes. “The way he looks at a girl …” She didn’t have to say anything else. Caroline appeared to know exactly what she meant.
Jerry took a deep breath to keep himself from stomping off, finding this Mr. Bickle, and slamming the weighted top of his cane into the top of Bickle’s head. However, ridding the world of Bickle was not his priority at the moment. Spiriting these two girls away was.
“Then we had best hurry.”
Chapter 7
Her heart racing, Caroline allowed the viscount to take her arm again and lead her towards the gangway of the ship. In low tones, she gave Olive a brief outline of her new identity. She promised to explain everything that had happened since leaving the Earl’s townhouse once they were underway.
They were halfway up the gangway when a commotion began behind them.
“Pretend you don’t hear,” St. David advised both girls. “Don’t turn around unless it becomes unavoidable to ignore. I suspect I know what this is.”
Caroline suspected she knew what was charging up the gangway, too. She clutched the fabric of St. David’s sleeve, the cotton of her gloves rubbing against her palms.
“Found you.” Mr. Bickle grabbed her by the shoulder swinging her around so hard, she nearly lost her balance and tumbled over the gangway’s railing into the water. “You’re not getting away from me, little missy. I bought you fair and square with your father’s debts. My brats will have an Earl’s blood in their veins and a place in Society.”
“Unhand me.” Caroline did her best to pull away from Mr. Bickle without somehow sending herself off the gangway. “My lord,” she said turning to St. David giving him a wide-eyed stare. Even with her sheltered life, she knew that helpless innocence was what a girl should present when confronted by an evil suitor. She’d read the novels. “I don’t understand. This stranger is accosting me.” She added a small tremor to her voice, so she would sound bewildered and a little scared. She struggled to make sure her voice didn’t waver too much from the real terror that consumed her. She would rather toss herself in the grimy water below than go home to be married to Mr. Bickle.
“I am aware.” St. David had never looked so aristocratic than in that moment when he stared down his nose with his full disgust raining down on the unfortunate industrialist. Caroline had been right to assume that St. David would be taller than Mr. Bickle. However, standing on an incline meant that the lord towered nearly a foot above. “Would you be so good as to remove your hand from my cousin’s shoulder?”
“Your cousin.” Mr. Bickle sneered. “I know this isn’t your cousin.”
“Are you implying that I somehow am mistaken in the members of my family? That I have somehow replaced my real cousin with an impostor?” Viscount St. David asked, the sarcasm evident in his voice. Caroline hadn’t thought it possible, but St. David seemed to become even more unflappable, as if the cheerful little lord she’d sat with on the train had morphed into his intimidating manservant in a matter of moments.
“I imply nothing of the sort.” Mr. Bickle took a step back, but he didn’t let go of Caroline’s shoulder. At least she was now far enough from him to be spared the smell of the kidney onion pie he must have consumed earlier in the morning. “I plainly state that this isn’t your cousin but Lady Caroline Stravers, my intended bride.”
Caroline managed to keep the wave of illness that welled up from her midsection from twisting her face into a grimace. She would not think about being married to a man who would eye a maid while in search of his runaway bride. Instead, she kept her wide-eyed stare on St. David’s face, focusing on the small curl on his forehead that had escaped his hat. She wanted to brush the curl away, but such an intimate gesture would be inappropriate in such a situation. It would give Mr. Bickle the wrong idea about their relationship.
A slow smile began to grow across her face. St. David glanced at her for a moment and looked a tiny bit worried, as if he didn’t know or trust what she might do.
Caroline reached up and brushed the curl off St. David’s forehead. Other than another quick glance, St. David didn’t react, but Mr. Bickle did.
“So that’s why you ran away,” Mr. Bickle hissed. His grip on her shoulder tightened until Caroline winced from the pain.
“I must ask you to unhand my cousin.” The viscount used his cane to shove Mr. Bickle’s hand off Caroline’s shoulder.
Mr. Bickle didn’t grab her again, but he didn’t go away either. “If you have been giving yourself to this whelp, no number of children in the world will save you from my wrath,” he said to Caroline
Caroline didn’t entirely understand what Mr.
Bickle meant by giving herself. She knew that touching a man was taboo. It was why she did it. She had hoped her shocking behavior would drive Mr. Bickle away. Her mother had maintained that standing too close to a man could compromise a woman, making her irredeemable in the eyes of all men. If Caroline should ever find herself in the company of a gentleman, she’d been told, she must never allow them to touch her in any manner beyond escorting her to and from a carriage. From books she had learned of the scandalous practice known as kissing, although having never seen a kiss, she only knew that it somehow involved bumping lips. It sounded rather pointless and a waste of time. Although she wanted to drive Mr. Bickle away, attempting something as uncertain as a kiss seemed too drastic.
St. David seemed to catch Mr. Bickle’s meaning though. His eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Fortunately, my cousin is under no obligations to you. I pray that you never find the one you seek, for her sake.” St. David turned to continue up the gangway. “Mrs. Wickingham, if you please.” He gestured for Caroline to move ahead of him.
Mr. Bickle though had no plans on giving up that easily. “The chit is mine. I’ve paid for her.”
Caroline wanted to argue back, to point out that slavery had been abolished a generation ago. The real Caroline would have pointed out the fallacy in Mr. Bickle’s argument, but Mrs. Wickingham was the perfect Society miss—ignorant and dependent and the exact daughter Caroline’s mother had always wanted and that Caroline had never been able to provide.
“You seem to be confused as to which country you are currently standing in,” said St. David with a sigh. He pulled out a pocket watch to consult the time. “England abolished slavery over twenty years ago.”
Mr. Bickle began to sputter and turn red, but Caroline suspected it was from anger rather than embarrassment. “I am not leaving here without my bride,” he yelled at them.
“Is there a problem?”
Caroline turned to the uniformed man that had appeared behind St. David. “Oh please, sir,” she said in a breathless voice she no longer had to fake at all. Her stays seemed to be collapsing in on her, robbing her of her breath. Not for the first time she missed the boy’s clothes she had worn yesterday. With unconstricting trousers and jacket, she would not have been in danger of falling into a swoon.
“And who are you?” bellowed Mr. Bickle.
“I am the purser for this vessel,” the man said, declining to provide his name. Behind the man, Wellburn stood, apparently having a silent conversation with his employer. Whatever he told St. David seemed to please the lord.
“This boy is trying to flee the country with my underage fiancée,” Mr. Bickle said. “I demand that she be returned to my care.”
“This man seems to have mistaken my cousin for his absconding bride,” said the viscount.
“And you are?” asked the purser.
“Viscount St. David,” St. David said, “travelling with my cousin, Mrs. Fitzgerald Wickingham.”
“Fitzgerald,” snorted Mr. Bickle. “They couldn’t even come up with a convincing name.”
St. David’s eyes narrowed, and Caroline realized he was no longer play-acting the irate lord. He had legitimately become one. “Fitzgerald has long been associated with the more distant branches of my family. After all, my father and I are both Geralds.”
“And who is your father?” Mr. Bickle tried to sneer again, but he was beginning to lose confidence in the face of St. David’s self-assurance.
“The Duke of Danvers.”
Mr. Bickle’s blotchy face drained of all color. The duke was one of the most powerful men in the empire. Besides controlling a large faction in the House of Lords, he was a favorite advisor of the queen. And that was only the public power he wielded. Caroline doubted Mr. Bickle was aware of the man’s secret network of informers that had set St. David, and by extension her, on the trail of Russian agents.
The duke’s name sent Mr. Bickle stepping back until he ran into the passenger waiting behind him. That woman stood gawking at the whole spectacle and guaranteeing that Caroline and St. David would be the subject of gossip for the duration of their trans-Atlantic trip. So much for not standing out.
“The gentleman and his cousin are booked on this vessel,” the purser said, consulting the list in his hand. “Their passages were arranged several weeks ago.”
Caroline wondered how much Wellburn had bribed the man for that blatant lie.
Mr. Bickle looked less certain, but then his eyes landed on Olive. “If this woman is really kin to the Duke of Danvers, why is my bride’s maid with them?”
Olive shrank back further until she was fully hidden by the viscount. Wellburn discreetly moved to stand behind her. He placed one hand on her shoulder in solidarity. The reminder that she was no longer alone with Mr. Bickle seemed to lend her strength. She stopped half crouching and stood at her full height, a good head shorter than Wellburn. She gave Mr. Bickle her haughtiest look that only a well-placed lady’s maid can achieve. She didn’t deign to respond.
She didn’t have to.
“Is that who the waif is?” St. David asked in a tone that conveyed to everyone around him his absolute boredom with this conversation. “She approached my cousin begging to be taken on.” Here the viscount glared at Mr. Bickle down his nose, and his tone changed from bored to barely restrained fury. “It seems she did not enjoy your company either. There seems to be a pattern.”
Caroline tried not to laugh or even smirk. She tried to catch Olive’s eye, but the girl continued to stare straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard a word. Behind her Wellburn also stared, but at Mr. Bickle. It was not a pleasant stare.
The purser shifted uncomfortably. “The maid’s passage has been paid,” he added.
Mr. Bickle had flushed at St. David’s insult, but to Caroline’s surprise he didn’t deny it.
“Of course,” continued St. David, “my kindhearted cousin could not help but be moved by such a plea. Having not brought her own maid on this journey, she agreed to bring the girl with her to New York.” St. David gave Caroline a genuine smile. “Her generosity knows no bounds.”
Caroline bowed her head graciously in acknowledgement of the compliment. Then, in an effort to secure in the minds of everyone present the utter vapidness of Mrs. Wickingham, Caroline tilted her head to one side and with the brightest smile possible said, “And my new maid has the prettiest jet-black hair.”
St. David stared at her for a moment as if she’d suddenly come over feeble-minded. He looked as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to laugh. “Indeed,” he said with only the faintest hint of a smile.
Mr. Bickle looked as if he was no longer certain that he had found Lady Caroline. After all, Caroline had never once smiled in his presence or said anything quite so inane.
“Come, my dear,” St. David said to Caroline. “We are delaying the ship’s departure.”
“This isn’t over,” Mr. Bickle said. His voice had gone low and cold, causing the fine hairs on Caroline’s neck to stand on end. This new side of him chilled her more than his blustering from the moments before.
“Perhaps,” said St. David with a magnificent show of absolute indifference. “But it is not continuing here. Cousin,” the viscount said again with a small bow in Caroline’s direction. He gestured that she should resume boarding the ship. Caroline stepped past him and took the arm the purser offered her.
“Welcome, Madame,” the man said to her. “We hope you find your stay with us enjoyable.”
She gave him a shy smile in reply but didn’t answer. She didn’t trust her voice. Her heart still raced, and she half expected Mr. Bickle to try to grab her again. He had promised this wasn’t over, and Mr. Bickle struck her as the kind of man who kept his promises.
Chapter 8
Jerry paced back and forth in his stateroom. Although appointed with little luxuries, the stateroom couldn’t be described as anything other than … little. Jerry stood taller than nearly every man in his acquaintance except Wellburn, so it to
ok him no more than six steps to cross the entire room.
Jerry couldn’t decide if bringing Lady Caroline had caused his mission to irretrievably veer off course or if it had still been a spark of genius. Thanks to their altercation with the unpleasant Bickle fellow while boarding the boat, they were undoubtedly the source of much of the ship’s gossip. He and Caroline could expect turned heads and hushed whispers every time they entered a room for the duration of the voyage. However, since Jerry was traveling under his own name, he was never truly going to go unnoticed. His quarries would have been suspicious when he turned up on the same boat as them anyway. Surely a Russian agent would consider the duke’s son on the same ship more than a mere coincidence.
At least they would have considered that before the little scene they had acted out on the gangway. In that respect, the advent of the despicable Bickle had served them a rare turn of luck. Wellburn’s quick thinking and generous bribe to the Purser had ensured that their supposed pre-arranged passage was almost certainly being gossiped as well. He also had no doubt that the wide-eyed woman standing on the gangway behind Bickle had been all but drooling at the chance to tell her fellow passengers that the Duke of Danvers’s heir was in the midst of an apparent elopement, possibly with the Earl of Wickshire’s not-so-ailing daughter.
Jerry paused his pacing to shake his head over Lady Caroline’s behavior. What had possessed her to brush that lock of hair away? It had been the gesture of a lover, and she had brazenly made such a move in full view of God, that reprehensible Bickle, and every other man, woman, and child in Bristol. Had the girl even realized what she was doing? Jerry reached up and scratched his head with both hands, roughly, as if trying to scrape off the memory of the feather light touch of her fingers on his brow. The movement had been so soft, the look so tender, Jerry didn’t know what to think. It was true that Caroline had spent most of her life sheltered in almost total isolation, but surely, surely, even someone as secluded as Caroline had to know the effect of such an action on a man. Hadn’t she said something about reading novels?