by Y. S. Lee
As she fitted a skeleton key to the lock, a faint growling sound seemed to emerge from the door. She paused, peered into the corridor behind her. Nothing. But the growl began to rise, from a faint rumble to a distinctly animal sound.
A dog. She nearly fumbled the key. A guard dog.
“Shhh . . .” She began hesitantly.
The growling continued, ending in a snarl. It couldn’t be long before the beast exploded into full-fledged barking.
“Be quiet,” she said with as much authority as she could muster. “I need you to be silent, dog.”
There was a momentary lull in the rumbling.
“That’s a good boy,” Mary continued, wiping her perspiring palms on her trousers. “Very nice,” she murmured encouragingly as the growling slowly subsided.
When all she could hear was its steady panting, she began to turn the key in the lock, speaking quietly and soothingly the whole time to the animal inside. The lock opened with a distinct clicking noise. As Mary tentatively pushed the door ajar, she continued to croon nonsense to the dog.
A pair of eyes gleamed at her from the darkness. Wolf eyes.
Her breath hitched in her throat. “Good evening, my dear,” she managed to croak. “You’ve been a very good dog so far.”
The eyes seemed to glow eerily. They didn’t blink.
“I’d like to come into your office,” Mary murmured, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. “I’ll begin very slowly, all right?” Crouching low to the floor, she inched across the threshold.
The animal actually seemed to pause and consider what to do.
A sudden recollection flashed through Mary’s mind. With slow, careful movements, she groped in her satchel. When her fingers closed round the cloth-wrapped object, she heard the animal snuffle with curiosity. She unwrapped the item under its shining gaze: a chunk of cold boiled mutton. She’d taken it from the larder earlier this evening, anticipating just such a moment. She simply hadn’t expected to meet the guard dog inside Thorold’s office.
The animal sniffed once, then lunged at her. She felt a blast of hot, doggy breath, a cool paw. And then the dog retreated with its prize, gnawing at it with eager greed.
Mary slithered into the office, closed the door, and went limp with relief. Her back was damp with perspiration again, and when the dog came back to inspect her prone figure, sniffing at her with open curiosity, it was all she could do not to laugh aloud.
She struck a match and lit her candle. Girl and dog surveyed each other curiously. It — no, he — was a massive black mongrel. Short-haired, with big, floppy ears and an alert expression. Not at all the usual sort of guard dog, but she liked his ungainly looks.
“What’s a man like Thorold doing with a lovely dog like you?” she murmured.
The dog seemed to shrug in reply.
They spent a few minutes getting to know each other before Mary reluctantly pushed her new friend aside. The clock on Thorold’s mantel showed twenty-five minutes past one o’clock. “I must ask you to excuse me,” she said apologetically, locking the office door. “I have a great deal of work to do.”
Thorold’s office at work was much like his study at home — no stray papers lying about, plenty of massive filing cabinets. Probably no obscene pictures, although one could never be certain. The procedure was simple enough: skim through the files, check randomly to ensure that they were correctly labeled, and replace as found. It was also quick work.
As quarter hours and then half hours slipped away, however, Mary grew frustrated. Once again, she hadn’t expected to find stacks of incriminating information in the first file. Yet all these files were neatly numbered and docketed, and they correlated with other documents she’d noticed. There was no sign of the scrappy, informal type of documentation she associated with illegal trade. Then again, what did she know? Perhaps there wasn’t any written evidence whatsoever. What then?
“What am I doing here, dog?” she asked ruefully. “It could take me weeks of nights to sift through all this.”
The clock on the desk made a clicking sound, drawing her attention to it. Four o’clock! At Cheyne Walk, the servants would soon rise. She replaced the furniture as she’d found it and said a regretful good-bye to the dog. Any worries she had about his creating a fuss vanished when she unlocked the door. He seemed to understand the need for silence. After licking her hand affectionately, he crept back under the desk and lay there quietly.
Retracing her steps, Mary nearly ran into one of the night watchmen in the stairwell. Fortunately, he was so sleepy that he failed to notice the slight bulge in the shadows on the third floor landing. In fact, she’d had uncommon good luck all night, apart from the matter of the files themselves. As she slid through the bars of the iron fence, once again mashing her breasts in the process, it was still grayish dark outside. She would make it, she thought happily. She hadn’t yet found what she was looking for, but she would —
Damn.
Absorbed in self-congratulation, she had forgotten the cardinal rule of housebreaking: stay alert and don’t let your mind wander.
“Hail, fellow, well met,” drawled a voice from the fog.
Large hands clamped around her upper arms. She sucked in a breath so sharp it hurt. She could discern only the general outline of her captor: tall, lean, male.
Instinct took over when fear might have paralyzed.
Mary struck out, stamping on the man’s instep, using her elbows as weapons, twisting hard and fast out of his grasp. His face loomed indistinctly in the gray mist, and she attacked again, landing a hard punch on his nose.
He grunted, cursed, and stumbled back a step.
She took that as her cue to run. Sprinting toward the nearest bridge, she could hear his footsteps pounding after her. He had a significant size advantage; unless he was quite injured, he would catch her. She dropped her satchel in favor of speed.
Even as she fled, wisps of fog brushing her face like so many cobwebs, something tugged at her memory. Her assailant seemed vaguely familiar. Not that she was tempted to turn round to check.
The voice?
The shape of his head?
Something tugged hard at the back of her jacket — his hand, perhaps. She let the jacket slide off her shoulders without breaking stride.
Just before he caught her, she had a moment of sick premonition. It had been the same way the first time — the last time — she’d been caught. A flash of dread, of knowing. And then it happened.
A hand seized the back of her shirt, hauling her up short with a ripping sound. The seams cut into her underarms, and she went flying backward, landing with a thud against a hard, angular body.
“You damned fool!” snarled a familiar voice. “Stop fighting and I won’t hurt you.”
Mary froze, elbow poised in mid-jab. She couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or appalled. “Let me guess,” she said weakly. “You’d like to waltz?”
James Easton had never before experienced the urge to wring a girl’s neck. It was a powerful one, however, and he kept his fist clenched round her coarse cotton shirt in order to avoid acting on it.
“You and I,” he growled, swinging her round to face him, “are going to talk.”
“Perhaps later,” she suggested. “After supper and the charity raffle.”
For all her flippant words, her eyes were wide with fear. Good. At this moment, he wanted her to be terrified. He kept a firm grip on her shirt — she could hardly run off without it, could she? — and marched her alongside as he retraced their steps and retrieved her scattered belongings. Jacket. Bag.
They kept marching back toward the warehouse until they saw, looming in the mist, a large black carriage.
She stiffened as soon as she saw it. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I am not getting in that with you.”
“Why not?”
She squirmed against his grip. “It’s . . . not proper.”
He would have laughed, except that she’d
knocked his sense of humor sorely out of joint along with his nose. “But running around London in the middle of the night, dressed as a boy, is.”
She had no reply to that. A minor miracle.
He opened the door and tossed her inside like a bundle of laundry, then climbed in and barred the door.
She moved immediately toward the door on the other side.
Lunging forward, he pinned her to the bench, one hand clenched on each narrow shoulder. “Don’t bother trying. You’ll not get out until I tell you to.” Glaring at her, he rapped the ceiling of the carriage twice. The vehicle lurched into motion.
Her hair had come loose during her flight. She looked ridiculously young. And she’d lost most of the buttons on her shirt — they must have popped off when he’d grabbed it. Color flooded her cheeks, and she clutched the shirt closed with a sudden movement, making him blush and avert his eyes. “May I have my jacket?” she whispered.
He passed it to her but couldn’t manage an apology. His tongue lay like a stone in his mouth. Instead, he busied himself with drawing the curtains on both windows.
An awkward silence ensued. It was Mary who broke it. “Your nose is bleeding.”
James blinked and touched it experimentally. “So it is.” He fumbled for his handkerchief.
“Is it . . . broken?”
He couldn’t help it: the corners of his mouth turned up. “You sound hopeful.”
She began to laugh, then quickly stifled it. “Not at all,” she said hurriedly. “I didn’t intend to — that is, I meant to punch you that hard; only I didn’t know that it was you. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Does it look broken?” He lifted the handkerchief and leaned toward her.
Slender fingers traced the bridge of his nose, so lightly he could scarcely tell she was touching him. “Possibly . . . At the very least, you’ll have a bruise.”
“As long as it’s not pointing to one side, I’m not worried.”
She drew back her hand uncertainly. “You ought to see a physician.”
He grinned suddenly, then winced. “That’s what I said to you. Did you?”
She waved dismissively. “It’s healing.”
James was startled to find that he was enjoying her company. The glint in her eyes, her saucy attitude, the intimacy of the carriage . . . It was high time to return to the matter at hand. “So, Miss Quinn, what is your interest in Henry Thorold’s private affairs?”
All warmth drained from her face as she straightened her spine. “That is none of your concern.”
“Ah, but it is,” he insisted. “My family might soon be linked with the Thorolds. As such, I must know why you broke into his warehouses tonight and what you found.”
“Is that why you’re sneaking about? Spying on your future relations?”
He tried to look ashamed but failed utterly. “A sad commentary on our modern times, isn’t it?”
“Tragic,” she snapped. “I’ll leave you to mourn in private.” She banged the roof twice, sharply, and reached for the door latch.
James leaned back and crossed his arms. “I don’t recommend leaping from a moving carriage, Miss Quinn.”
He was right. The carriage continued to bowl along at a fast trot. She glared at him. “Why aren’t we stopping?”
He couldn’t repress a small smile. “Because my coachman is well trained. He knows my knock.”
She stared at him for a second, then pulled the curtain aside. “Where are we, anyway?” Because the inside of the carriage was lit, all she saw was her own face in the window.
He shrugged. “Twickenham perhaps?” What would it feel like to touch hair that silken straight? He pushed away the thought the moment it formed.
Her entire body stiffened. “This is kidnapping!”
“No, it’s not. Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Quinn.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Then what do you want?”
“Merely a brief conversation. I’ll return you to Cheyne Walk once we’ve had our talk.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
His lip curled. “My dear Miss Quinn, if I wanted melodrama and cliché, I would go to the theater. I am not kidnapping you. I have no ulterior motive. And yes, I expect you to believe me. Now let us talk. It will be to our benefit to share information, and possibly even work together. Or at least, not against each other.”
He expected more indignation. Instead, she folded her arms and eyed him coldly. “Fair enough, I suppose. You first.”
“I recently learned that some private investors lost heavily in several of Thorold’s trade expeditions over the past few years. Apparently, Thorold claimed that the ships were either wrecked or lost at sea. However, these investors have since come to believe that, contrary to his claims, the ships were not actually lost. They think that Thorold has kept the profits for himself instead.”
She looked skeptical, and he hurried on, anticipating her questions. “Normally, it is difficult to dispute these sorts of events: each ship is registered and its progress charted. It is quite a public event when ships are lost or capsized, and it does happen. However, the goods on these particular passages were smuggled and the investors expected to receive a high return on their investments by avoiding duties and taxes. For the same reasons, Thorold was able to be vague about the details. It would have been easy for him to lie about the shipments.”
James noted with satisfaction that she was listening in earnest now. The girl was infuriating, but at least she wasn’t a ninny. “You appreciate, of course, the position I am in: it’s potentially very embarrassing.”
“Is it the smuggling itself that bothers you or merely the double-crossing? Honor among thieves and all that.”
“There’s no need to sneer. I object to both.”
“And so you decided to investigate. . . .”
“Yes.”
“Why do so yourself?”
“Discretion isn’t a good reason?”
“One can buy discretion.”
He nodded. “It’s also a matter of time. George wants to propose to Miss Thorold very soon, and I need evidence in hand if I’m to stop him.”
That made sense. “What was the cargo?”
He paused reluctantly. “Opium mainly. But I’m told that Thorold is also interested in gemstones.”
“And when was this?”
“Between two and seven years ago, according to my source.”
She thought about that. “It’s quite likely that all the records from those journeys have long been destroyed. If they existed in the first place.”
He scrubbed his face with his hands wearily. “I know. This is also why I’ve not gone to the authorities.”
“I take it you’re interested mainly in the China route, then.”
“I’m not sure. . . . Opium is also cultivated on the Indian subcontinent, and the bulk of Thorold’s trade lies there.”
Mary stared at him in disbelief. “So you’ve no idea where the ships originated or what route they might have taken?”
“I’ve just begun my research,” he said defensively.
“And you expect to learn all this . . . how?” She gestured incredulously. “By following me around London?”
His left eyebrow rose. “Melodrama again?”
She sighed. “I simply don’t see why you think I might be useful to you.”
“Frankly, I’m more concerned that you might be harmful to me. Now that I’ve explained myself, what’s your interest?”
“It won’t take long to tell. You’d better tell your coachman to drive for Chelsea; I need to be back before the servants are up and about.”
“Not till you’ve explained yourself.”
She fixed him with what she obviously thought was a withering look.
He shrugged amiably and glanced out the window again. “Then again, it’s a lovely day for a long drive in the country.”
“Oh, very well,” she sighed. She paused, appearing to collect her thoughts. “I b
elieve you know about the Thorolds’ last parlor maid, Gladys.”
He kept his face very still, his expression neutral. “Yes.”
“Her sister hasn’t heard from her since she was dismissed, which is unlike Gladys. The sister is a friend of mine. She is extremely concerned and asked me to try to find out what’s happened to her.”
He waited for several seconds, but it seemed she was finished. He stared at her in disbelief. “A vanished servant?”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“Now who’s indulging in melodrama?”
He frowned. “It sounds like a task for the police.”
“Rather like yours?”
He frowned but didn’t pursue it. “What did you find tonight?”
She sighed. “Nothing.”
He thought about rifling through her small satchel to be sure, but that was too rude. (A strange idea, considering how he’d manhandled her earlier.) “What were you looking for?”
“Everything, really. Letters. Instructions. Records of payment. Anything that refers to her or to homes for fallen women or brothels or workhouses or any of the places she might have ended up.”
“But why would Thorold have those documents? Mrs. Thorold is in charge of the domestic staff.”
“Mrs. Thorold doesn’t appear to have any files; she dislikes putting pen to paper. And really — do you think that a man like Thorold could ask his invalid wife to deal with the fate of a maid whom he’d seduced?”
“But why would he keep records concerning her? Wouldn’t he just kick her into the street?”
Mary looked scornful. “You would suggest that. And I admit, it’s quite likely. However, Gladys was pregnant. Thorold lost his son a few years ago, and he has a sentimental streak. There’s a slight chance he may have tried to help the girl, perhaps even maintain contact. He could never acknowledge the child publicly, but that doesn’t seem to stop some men.”
“I see.” He was silent for a minute.
“Will that affect your brother’s attitude toward Miss Thorold?”
“No. George has absolutely lost his mind over her. Besides, the old pregnant mistress plot won’t affect us legally.” He caught the look on her face. “No disrespect intended toward your friend Gladys, of course.”