Mistress Firebrand

by Donna Thorland

  “Why not?”

  “Bobby forbade me to meet with Burgoyne. He will toss me out of the company if he discovers I went to the Boyne.”

  Devere raised one black eyebrow. “And just where does he think you are now?”

  “Sick in bed.”

  “Above the greenroom, in which no doubt Mr. Hallam is at this very moment entertaining his patrons.”

  “Yes.”

  It was possible that her luck had run out. Her troubles with Bobby Hallam were all of her own making and no problem of Severin Devere’s. He had gotten her off the Boyne and saved her from hanging. He owed her nothing more.

  Most men would not think that he had even owed her that. Particularly when she had gone blithely to Burgoyne after what had happened between them in the slots. Devere would be within his rights to leave her here on the wharf at the mercy of the thieves and cutpurses who roamed the New York streets at night. A lady might merit an escort to her door, but a provincial actress—a prudish would-be trollop, an overambitious barnyard player—surely did not.

  * * *

  Severin knew that Jennifer Leighton deserved better than to be cast out of her home and her profession for a folly he had engineered, and which he should have prevented.

  When she had emerged from Burgoyne’s cabin, head held high and lips pressed firmly together—if they trembled at all, she’d hid it well—he’d felt pure admiration for her nerve. Then he had seen the bruises on her wrist, and he’d felt something else entirely.

  It had been difficult to enter that cabin and handle the unconscious Burgoyne without losing control, but brutalizing Gentleman Johnny would do nothing to help Jennifer Leighton. Quite the contrary.

  “How long,” he asked, “until it will be possible to smuggle you back into your lodgings?”

  She checked the little watch pinned to her petticoat. “Two hours, possibly three. Aunt Frances plays cards late into the wee hours, but Bobby usually goes home by midnight or so.”

  He considered their options. After Fairchild’s warning, it would be foolhardy to show his face in any of the Rebel taverns. “The King’s Arms,” he decided, arranging her hood to cover her copper bright hair. If he could deliver her that far, Courtney could see her the rest of the way home.

  And if something befell him on the way back to the dock, at least Jennifer Leighton would be safely out of the mess he had gotten her into. He’d left strict instructions with Hartwell to sail without him if he did not return. Severin’s possessions were to be locked in his trunk and sent ashore to his man of business in New York, a precaution he always took when he knew his life was in danger. And Burgoyne would be safely away, bound for England.

  “With any luck,” he said, “no one will recognize you, and you can wait out Bobby Hallam in relative comfort.”

  A long stretch of shuttered warehouses lay between them and the King’s Arms. The storehouses of New York’s merchant princes were not the treasure vaults of Boston or Philadelphia, stacked to the rafters with tea and silk and spices. They were not patrolled by night watchmen or prowled by guard dogs. They held spars and cordage and rice and pots and pans, and the prosaic manufactured necessities of everyday life that the colonists were required to import from England. Very little was portable or profitable enough to attract thieves. All this made the warehouse district extremely safe for kettles and copper pots, but decidedly less so for a man and a woman on foot.

  They had gone less than a block when he began to suspect they were being followed.

  Jennifer Leighton noticed as well.

  “There are footpads behind us,” said the girl.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Follow my lead and keep step with me.” He hoped that they were ordinary footpads, street thieves with good sense who would give up when it became apparent that Devere and his companion were not easy targets.

  They were not street thieves. Twice, Severin sped up and slowed down. Jennifer Leighton kept pace with him both times. And so did the men following them.

  That was a bad sign. Jennifer Leighton’s skills from the stage, her ability to match her movement opposite other players, enabled her to anticipate and mirror him, as though they were partners in a dance.

  Petty thieves opportunistically prowling the docks for a rich purse would not have shown to such advantage. They would not have sped up and slowed down in tandem with Devere. They would not exhibit such canny caution when stalking one man and a small girl. They would not take such care to keep an even, measured distance between themselves and their prey.

  They would have pounced. The girl’s rich dress, the gold watch pinned to her gown, the silk of her petticoats would have excited their avarice. Real footpads would not risk letting such rich prizes get away.

  Which indicated that these men were waiting for something. An ambush, most likely. Severin should be able to handle two armed men, so long as they did not have pistols at the ready. If those men wished to make a nice quiet job of it, they would use clubs or knives. But he did not care for his odds against a greater number. That meant he had to engage these two and dispatch them here in this block, preferably without alerting their confederates.

  It would not be easy. If the Widow had hired them, they would be very, very good, and difficult to draw into a fight not of their making. If he had been by himself, his chances of luring them close would have been poor, but he was not alone.

  He spared a glance at his companion. Jennifer Leighton had kept her head about her on the Boyne, and she appeared to be doing so now. Growing up on the frontier and in the forests of New York, Severin had known women every bit as capable and brave as men, but when he had returned to English society he’d been introduced to a more cosseted notion of femininity. Jennifer Leighton was neither pioneer nor English lady. She might be an asset or a liability in this fight. It was time to discover which.

  “They are after me,” he said evenly, careful not to speak too loudly or urgently or give any indication that he was aware of their pursuers. “But they will very likely kill you,” he said, “to make a clean job of it.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked. There was no quaver in her voice, just genuine inquiry. That was good.

  “Because I am in the same trade. If you will trust me, I can deal with these two before we find ourselves outnumbered.”

  “You think there are more of them.”

  “I’m rather sure of it.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Giggle, stumble, and then follow my lead.”

  “Actresses hate being given line readings, Mr. Devere,” she said, and then giggled, her convincing laughter a counterpoint to her tart retort.

  She stumbled, throwing her whole body into it fearlessly, and he felt a rush of genuine admiration for the girl. Indeed, she would have fetched up on the cobbles if he had not caught her. Her performance was as convincing as any spy’s imposture.

  He steadied her, hands gripping her waist, the stays firm beneath his grasp, and swung her into the shadows of the nearest warehouse door.

  “What is my motive in the scene?” she asked quietly.

  He had not done this in so very long, worked side by side with someone else. Not since he and his brother had hunted together as boys, tutored by Ashur Rice in the dense forests of New York. They’d shared the thrill of spotting and tracking deer, of bringing home meat for the table.

  His hands were still on her. Unnecessary, but gratifying.

  “Your motive and aim, Miss Leighton, is that of a mercenary trollop: to distract me with the promise of passion, and then to liberate the gold in my pocket.” He backed her against the door, as a man might a cheap harlot he meant to enjoy quickly, and he was shocked when he felt her small, capable hands sliding into the pockets of his waistcoat.

  His body responded. To her touch, to the scenario he himself had suggested, and to the threat of dang
er. He well understood how often violence and passion marched hand in hand. Images flashed through his mind, of Jennifer Leighton, gown unpinned, head thrown back, spine arched, his. He swallowed and banished such visions from his thoughts.

  And he listened. To booted feet on cobblestone, to the men who had been following them, drawing closer.

  He pulled his coat open, exposing the hilt of his foil. From behind it would look as though he was dallying with the girl and vulnerable to attack. “Take the sword,” he said quietly to Jenny.

  She complied at once, wrapping her hand around its hilt in a practiced grip and drawing the blade silently from its scabbard.

  “When I turn and step away,” he instructed, “lunge at the man nearest you as you might at Mr. Hallam in a duel onstage, but do not—on your life—cheat your blade to the side. Drive it home beneath his ribs. Do not flinch at the consequences—make to drive it through his body and clean out the other side.”

  She nodded wordlessly. He said a silent prayer that he was not about to get her killed, and then the men were upon them and he could not spare her another thought.

  Nine

  Jenny grasped the foil. Devere’s weapon had a comfortably worn leather-wrapped hilt that seemed to mold to her hand. It was a light blade, not unlike the kind she was used to practicing with onstage, and she knew that if she wished to live to see the morning, she must throw herself entirely into the moment—the scene—and think of it as a role. To think of it as murder would stay her hand, and she did not want to die.

  Devere moved with elegance and economy, pivoting out of her way to confront one of their attackers.

  Which left her facing a tall, sallow man with a long face and cold, glittery eyes. He brandished a heavy cudgel in his hand and wore a stained leather vest that smelled of the slaughterhouse and a knitted cap pulled down to cover his ears. Those cold eyes turned—for an instant—to follow Severin.

  She did not think. She lunged. She was aware of the hard silvery light of the moon on her blade and the round shapes of the cobbles beneath her slippers and the object in front of her that had to be dealt with, and nothing else.

  It was like skewering meat, only meat did not howl. Her blade pierced the leather doublet and the man’s stomach and kept going. He crumpled with her sword in his belly and his weight pulled her blade—and her—down with it. His cry—ragged, almost plaintive—was loud in her ears.

  She flung herself back and her blade slid free with a wet pop. Her shoulders hit the brick wall behind her. The man kneeling on the cobbles continued to whine, his hands clutching his stomach and blood pouring out between his fingers, turning the alley’s cool air harsh and metallic. She knew she must do something to quiet him or risk bringing more assassins down upon them, but she could not.

  Devere stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the sobbing man. There was a sound like a turkey’s wishbone being cracked. Then Devere stepped away, and where once a man had been, there was now only a twitching corpse. And another—she saw now—on the ground, a few feet away, its limbs bent at unnatural angles.

  Her blade glistened in the moonlight, slick with blood. Devere took the foil from her hand, wiped the steel clean on the dead man’s shirt, and gave it back to her. “You did well.”

  His praise filled her with unexpected pleasure. It was like receiving applause from the gallery, always the hardest audience to please.

  She knew she ought to feel remorse, not satisfaction. She had taken a life. Or at least she had dealt a man a mortal blow. But the two dead men had been rogues—more, paid killers. Devere had been certain. And innocent men did not fall upon you silently on a dark street.

  That wasn’t why she felt so sanguine, though.

  Then it came to her, why she had been able to do as she had done, why she had not frozen in terror. “Only because I have rehearsed the part,” she replied.

  Devere nodded, seeming to understand, and then said, “One killing, in self-defense, does not a callous murderer make.”

  He had protected her from harm, in the theater, on the Boyne, and just now, and the two bodies in the street told her she had nothing to fear from him tonight. But his words raised the question: how many killings did it take to become as coldly effective as Severin Devere?

  “We should alert the watch,” Jenny said, turning away from the bodies.

  “Unfortunately, the watch is unlikely to rush to our aid. I’m a British officer, of a sort anyway, and out of uniform—which, in the eyes of the Liberty Boys who control the city, may suggest under the circumstances that I am a spy. And an actress will be presumed to be my ardent Tory accomplice.”

  He was right, though she’d felt her loyalties shifting like sand beneath her feet since she had left Burgoyne’s cabin on the Boyne.

  “It seems I am destined to end this night in shackles,” she said.

  A whistle sounded behind them and was answered by another from the west, in the direction of the fort. Devere surprised her utterly by smiling—as sly and winning an expression now as before—and putting out his hand. “I promise you that together we are equal to the obstacles in our path and that no one else”—his eyes moved to the bruises on her wrists and she knew that he alluded to what had happened earlier with Burgoyne—“will hurt you tonight.”

  She believed him. She had lived in New York long enough to know the danger they were in, had seen bodies pulled out of the river and men stabbed in brawls, but she had just seen him deal with two armed men, and because he had made room for her on the stage, she herself had taken no small part in that victory.

  She took his hand, and he tugged her gently forward, and they ran.

  Their pursuers kept to the south and west of them, cutting off any possible retreat to the boat and the waterfront. The villains were clever about it too, staying between Jenny and Devere and the main thoroughfares, where lights blazed in the houses of the rich. She knew better than to fly to that false safety. The noise she would make pounding on Van Dam’s or Van Cortland’s door would bring their pursuers down on them before it would bring the Dutchmen’s dozing servants.

  Instead they were forced up the narrow lanes of the working poor where no one would be foolish enough to open their home to a man and woman fleeing armed attackers in the middle of the night.

  Devere led them from stygian archways to darkened alley mouths, testing doors and garden gates, until finally he found one that was unsecured. It was a great batten affair, all broad planks and iron bands, and that must have been why it had survived the fire that had gutted the house. Devere opened it carefully, beckoned Jenny inside, and closed the door as quietly as possible.

  The bar on the inside was missing, but the brackets on either side of the door were still there, and Jenny watched as Devere fitted a length of charred timber in its place. It would not hold anyone for long, but it might buy them some time.

  They felt their way through the dark house, the charcoal tang of the fire still heavy in the air, to a courtyard littered with household debris, bordered on three sides by a soot-stained brick wall and dominated by a reeking cesspit whose extraordinary breadth suggested equally remarkable depth.

  The whistle sounded once more, this time from the street they had just left behind. If their pursuers were clever, they might guess that Devere had gone to ground in the burnt-out structure.

  “I’m afraid that your gown must be sacrificed,” said Devere, taking hold of the neck of her polonaise and ripping it neatly down the middle so the pins bent, then tore through the fragile dimity.

  She was well used to the casual dishabille of the theater, to scampering around backstage between costume changes, but that was at John Street. It surprised her that she felt almost equally unconcerned here and now, but then she realized that it was Devere who made her so. He was brisk and businesslike about the disrobing, the destruction of her gown. Neither his hands nor his eyes lingered. Ther
e was nothing salacious about it. In one economical gesture he ruined fifteen yards of very dear sewing and stripped her down to her chemise and petticoat, leaving only a few colorful shreds of the striped fabric pinned down the center of her stays.

  The polonaise looked a sad and mangled rag in his hands, but she found she could not mourn a gown she had worn to impress Burgoyne. “It does not exactly hold happy memories,” she said.

  “Yet I promise you it will shortly fix itself forever in the memory of our pursuers,” said Devere, with that sly smile she was coming to recognize.

  Jenny had no idea what he planned to do with her gown, but she suspected it involved the foul pit they were so carefully skirting, and she doubted any memories Devere intended to bestow on their pursuers would be pleasant.

  She watched him disguise the nauseating pool, working quickly and quietly, listening for any sign of their pursuers from the street. Devere chose purposefully, a board here, a beam there, until the pit looked just like the rest of the yard, strewn with debris, and the shortest distance between the house and the south wall at the back of the garden, where he draped her poor striped polonaise to look as though it had been caught and abandoned during the climb over.

  “A dunk in that pit, awful as it might be, probably won’t kill anyone,” she said.

  “Have a few hours in my company turned you so bloodthirsty?”

  “Not in your company, no.”

  That was when Jenny heard it, the sound of the batten door being forced.

  “Quickly,” said Devere. He led her to the west side of the garden and helped her over that wall and into the neighboring yard. She landed in an herb garden, the parsley and basil still struggling on under the frost and giving up their cleansing scent as her slippers crushed their tender leaves. Devere followed a moment later, landing less luckily in the woody rosemary; branches and boughs broke noisily beneath him.

  It was no matter. The clamor from the yard they had just left drowned out his arrival. There were shouts when the men spied her gown and the clatter of booted feet over rotted boards. And a snap, a yowl, a squelching, liquid sound—such as the whale might have made when it swallowed Jonah—that made Jenny cringe and forced Devere to bite his fist to hold back laughter.