“You looking for a Scot?”
Rand nodded.
“Maybe I seen ‘im. Not too long ago one came through here. Mean bastard. Beat up a private. I heard somebody yell he should ‘go beat yer wife if ya need to pound someone.’ That him you think?”
The whole world seems to know what Blair does. Why doesn’t someone do something for Meggy? Rand’s ale burned in his stomach. “Sounds like him,” he replied. “Do you know the regiment?”
The waiter’s description of insignia and a few inquiries got Rand that information.
“They be gone, though,” his informant told him. “Left for Montreal yesterday.”
Montreal. Rand doubted that was their final destination. Tempted as he was to take the next packet to follow them, he knew he needed more information or he would spend weeks chasing his quarry, one step behind. The information he wanted would reside with the superintendent. That would be Daniel Bolton, now that John By had been recalled to London.
Captain Bolton had been Colonel By’s assistant during the construction of the canal. Rand had followed their progress closely, and he knew Bolton well enough, but he couldn’t waltz into his office in his travel dirt with an injured cat strapped to his chest. He needed lodging.
The following morning, shaved and in clean linen, he left Cat resting near the fire of his rooming house kitchen in the care of the good woman who ran it and crossed the bridge to Barracks Hill.
Bolton showed every sign of being pleased to see him. The routine of a remote outpost, important but no longer strategic, could be tedious. Rand doubted the army’s comings and goings provided much of a break for the captain. Army regulars didn’t always give the engineers the respect they deserved.
“Brandy?” Bolton offered eagerly. “I have some good stuff here. I keep it for guests who can appreciate it.” Rand watched him unlock a little cupboard in the office wall and fuss over a decanter and some remarkably fine crystal glasses. He tamped down his instinct to question the man and accepted the glass as amiably as he could.
“What brings you to Bytown?” Bolton asked when he finally sat.
Rand doubted Bolton had heard rumors about runaway wives or Rand’s role in the matter. He knew him as the sort of naïve officer who rarely considered the enlisted ranks. Still, he hesitated to jump into the heart of the matter.
“Just finishing up some business,” he replied with a vague hand gesture. “This is fine brandy.” He exaggerated. He found it acceptable, if not quite up to the earl’s standards.
Bolton preened. “Still trading furs?”
“For now.”
“We both know timber is the future,” Bolton said with a knowing look.
“That and land,” Rand replied. He didn’t care to reveal his plans for the timber trade to Bolton or anyone just yet. “The canal makes shipping easier.”
Bolton nodded. “We’re already seeing commercial traffic almost equal to military. Emigrants flood in, though. That grows every year. Your quiet patch of the world is filling fast.”
Too damn fast. Rand hadn’t come to discuss the success of By’s canal.
“I see you still move troops, though.”
Bolton shook his head. “You don’t know the half. Some days I think they move ‘em to Kingston, send ‘em by steamer to Fort Malden, then turn around and head them back to Quebec just to keep them busy.”
“Things have changed since By planned the canal. The Americans are spreading west. Border defenses mean something altogether different than they did in 1815,” Rand replied. He added as casually as he could, “Did I hear that a regiment traveled through here recently? I would have expected them to be sent on to Kingston and West.”
“Lucky bastards. They’re on their way to Quebec for transport home. They’ve been assigned to garrison duty. Bristol.”
“The damned Reform Act passed in June. Are they still worried about mobs and rioting?” Rand had followed the Reform Act crisis with haphazard irregularity, but even he knew about the looting and violence in Bristol when the second attempt at the bill failed.
“The Tories always worry about the rabble. That’s why they garrison troops around the country. ‘Order, my boy, order!’ they say. So the troops get soft billets and drink themselves wobbly.”
Rand shook his head and raised his glass in salute. “Sometimes life isn’t fair.” He attempted to appear sympathetic while his mind raced. He had what he came for. He let Bolton rhapsodize over the success of the canal and its miraculous lock system at will. It took another hour and several expressions of amazement to extricate himself from Bolton’s office. He left the man with thanks, a salute, and as little information about his own private concerns as he had when he had arrived.
Rand dragged his dejected steps back toward the lower town. Blair and Meggy may have reached Montreal already. Can I get to them before they leave for England?
He kicked a stone and watched it roll downhill. Satisfied, he kicked another with savage intensity. Unlikely at the pace Blair has set, though. I might catch them in Quebec. What then?
Rand leaned on the railing of the bridge to study the lower town. The collection of hastily constructed inns, taverns, and workers’ hovels possessed only the occasional stone house to lend it respectability, so different from the English ports. Bristol had the advantage of trade. It also had centuries of decay and inbred dissatisfaction boiling beneath it. He envisioned Drew in the meandering alleys along the wharfs and gagged.
The first tavern he came to called to him. It would do and so would whatever whisky they brought at his flip of coin.
The first half bottle did little to numb his thoughts.
Most likely they have already left for Quebec by steamer. He downed another glass of the egregiously bad liquor and found he had no answer. If he made it there on time—and that felt increasingly unlikely—Blair would have them hidden away. I can go to the magistrate and demand—what? Demand that a man hand over his own children? Meggy won’t leave them even if Blair lets her go.
Well into the second bottle, he pondered where they might go. From Quebec they would take ship and sail to—where? Logic would dictate they sail directly to Bristol, that hole of slavers, press gangs, and thugs. Military logic being a different commodity, they may disembark in Portsmouth or some other naval base.
He flipped a coin. Portsmouth. Again. Bristol. He twisted the half crown over and over before he flipped it again. Bristol.
Can I catch them? Once they are in England, Blair could bring the full weight of law and army might down on my head. Then again, I would have the earl to help. His brother-in-law had let him down badly once, and yet he knew deep down he could trust in his support. I’m no use to any of them here. He poured another drink.
Rand woke the next morning with a pounding head, an uneasy stomach, and the guilty thought he had forgotten Cat in the landlady’s kitchen. Sitting on the edge of the lumpy mattress, head in his hands, he felt the previous night’s dilemma rise to haunt him.
No point in chasing after them like some panting university sprig after a barmaid carried off in a lord’s carriage. Logic reasserted itself.
Two out of three. Bristol it is. He planned to turn around, take the steamer south to Kingston, cross the lake, and head for New York. Brinkman and Wandelaer would beat any other commercial vessels and most of the navy to Bristol. With even more luck, the army would diddle in Quebec and hold them up more. He would go.
I’ll find Meggy. When I do, I’ll shake her until she tells me why she left me.
Drew was standing on deck watching the naval engineers build ships when Private Pratt found him.
“Come to check on me?” Drew’s aggrieved tone reflected what both of them knew. Ensuring Drew didn’t run had become Pratt’s duty.
“If not me, Corporal Martin,” Pratt repl
ied automatically. “Besides, it’s time to fetch laundry.” He paid Drew what he could to help with the menial tasks the army found to keep privates out of trouble in a garrison town. They waited to be called out to suppress trouble, and more often than not just created it.
Pratt shrugged. “Officers like their linen white and their tunics clean and undefiled.”
“And their boots shined to reflect a private’s ugly face,” Drew finished. It was an old refrain.
An hour later Drew followed Pratt to The Flying Frigate, temporary home to the senior officers. When Pratt stopped to chat up a flirtatious housemaid, he sent Drew up to the bigger rooms in the front of the inn. Drew trudged up carefully. These were rarified rooms, indeed, the best. Voices brought him to a halt.
“Fairweather, you said you’d get us to Bristol.”
“I don’t run Horse Guards, Blair.”
“Yet,” Blair replied. Both men laughed.
Drew clutched the linens tightly to his chest and stood as still as he could so as not to alert the two men to his presence.
“Ain’t the button fakers in Bristol?” Blair demanded.
“There and in Liverpool, but distribution is here. I thought you had things under control in Bristol anyway. I need you here. No point in manufacturing false coin if we can’t slip it into commerce.”
“I thought we planned to put it in pay and—”
“We can’t dump it all in one port!” Fairweather shouted. “We need friends in the navy.”
“Thought you had a purser or two in your pocket.”
“It’s hard to recruit associates when our own won’t cooperate, Blair. You were ordered to convince Captain Smythe.”
“Didn’t his mishap at the Chain and Anchor convince him?”
“Far from it. We intercepted a letter of complaint to the Horse Guards,” Fairweather snarled.
Blair loosed a bark of laughter. “You think the government will care about some clumsy captain?”
“Don’t be a fool, Blair,” Fairweather shot back. “Smythe knows too much. Take care of him.”
“You want him gone?”
“If you can’t do it, I’ll find someone who can.”
“Now who’s a fool, Fairweather? He’ll be gone tomorrow. Didn’t Corporal MacRae have that mishap at the locks in Bytown? Portsmouth is just as dangerous.”
“See to it quickly before he tries to—”
“What are you doing there, Drew? Move sharply, deliver the colonel’s linen, and let’s be on our way.” Drew jumped at Pratt’s interruption.
Before he could react, a fist grabbed his collar and yanked him into the colonel’s sitting room.
“Sniveling little spy. What do you think you’re doing?” Blair bellowed.
“Nothing, Pa. Delivering the colonel’s linen.” The boy held up the neatly folded laundry, and Blair slapped it out of his hands, strewing it across the room.
“Don’t lie to me.” He shifted his grip from Drew’s collar to the back of his neck, his huge hand circling the boy’s neck two-thirds around.
“Can’t control your own, Blair?” Fairweather demanded. “You assured me you could.”
Blair’s face loomed inches from Drew’s. “Trying to make me look a fool, boy? What did I say would happen if you got out of line? What did you hear? I know you were listening.” Blair seethed and glanced uneasily over his shoulder at Fairweather.
“Nothing. I promise. Nothing.”
“Can’t trust it, Blair. He’s yours. You shut him up permanently,” the colonel snapped.
“There are them that would pay for a willing boy. Pity to forgo the money and waste an asset,” Blair mused.
“He’s yours to sell, Blair, but don’t take time. Press gangs are thicker on the ground than the right kind of brothel keeper this far from London,” the colonel retorted.
“Pratt! Take ‘im to the Chain and Anchor. Lock ‘im in the store room in the basement. Martin knows where. Dump ‘im there. For now.” Blair glared daggers at the private who had gone white in the face.
“Yes, Sergeant,” he choked.
“Good man. Do it and don’t fail, and I may overlook this. It was your job to watch him. Fail and you may take his place.”
Pratt avoided Drew’s eyes and stood to attention.
“I won’t fail,” he said. “I’ll see he’s locked up tight.”
Chapter 20
When Drew failed to return for supper, Meggy’s heart sank. Why can’t he learn? I’ve told him time and again not to provoke his father. She fed Lena watery stew but didn’t help her with her letters. Ferguson Blair didn’t hold with learning for girls. She sat on the straight-backed chair, held the girl, and told her stories of the animals in the wood, stories she learned from Grand-mère, to comfort them both.
When her husband failed to appear that night, her relief outweighed her ongoing worry as to Drew’s whereabouts. She tucked Lena into her pallet in the corner of the room that served for sitting, cooking, and sleeping. The little one’s hand came up to cup her cheek. “Don’t worry, Mama. Drew can take care of himself.” She kissed her daughter and went through to the closet-sized room that held the only bed. She lay through the night staring at the ceiling and praying the girl had it right.
The son of one of the camp followers ran into her room the next morning, gasping for air. “Sergeant Blair be coming, and he’s mad as ever was.” Meggy braced herself for the worst.
She put a shaking hand on her daughter’s head. “Lena darling, would you go home with Billy, please. Mrs. O’Sullivan could use help with the baby today.” Billy O’Sullivan didn’t wait for Lena to respond. He grabbed the girl’s hand and dragged her to the rear of the shanty, out into the back lane, and off toward the sailor’s inn that housed camp followers and wives. Praise God they’re both out of the way.
The flimsy door shattered under the force of Blair’s arm slamming it into the wall. “Where is your son, woman?” he roared.
“Drew? What happened to him?” Stomach acid burned her throat.
“Don’t play games with me, woman. He’s run off with Pratt.” He spat on the floor. “That shamble-legged hellhound had his eyes on the boy all along.”
“Pratt would never hurt Drew!”
His hand was on her throat before she could blink. “Stupid woman. Pratt is a walking dead man. He and your son are mucking in my business. Are you in on it?”
She sputtered, “I don’t—” Before she could say anything else, he began to squeeze her throat. Black spots danced in front of her.
“Don’t lie to me, Megs. You know what happens when you lie.”
He eased up enough for her to gasp a breath and croak out, “I haven’t see Drew since noon yesterday. I thought you put Martin and Pratt to watch him.” He gripped the back of her neck and tossed her against the wall.
“Martin has nothing to do with it. I gave ‘im to Pratt. Told ‘im to keep the brat quiet. Told him to lock ‘im up at the Chain and Anchor. They never went. Martin never saw ‘em. When I get Pratt, he won’t even make it out of the black hole long enough to be shot for the deserting coward he is. I’ll see to something slower and a hell of a lot more painful.”
Blair clamped an iron fist on Meggy’s arm and dragged her into the street, pulling her through gutter muck to the seedy inn Meggy knew housed other army families. She prayed Bridey O’Sullivan thought to hide Lena. Blair stood in the courtyard and bellowed.
“Listen up all you whores and trulls. My boy has given aid to a running coward. The two scampered last night, but they got no place to go. If one o’you here hides or helps ‘em, you and yours are dead. Hear me? If you know something, tell me now.” The force with which he shook Meggy’s arm made her think her shoulder would give. She watched as his eyes scanned the rickety balcony across the public r
oom and all the windows above. People peered from behind curtains and across the square from the laundry tubs; each and every pair of eyes stared back with fear. None spoke.
Blair shoved Meggy to the filthy cobbles. She pulled her arms up to protect her face. “The army shoots deserters,” he growled when he kicked her ribs. “They aren’t so nice to those that help ‘em neither.” He kicked her again before he grabbed the front of her dress and rolled her over to face him. “I’ll be back to deal with you.”
The sound of shuffling feet moving away didn’t surprise Meggy. None dared help her; most of them huddled together. She knew they all felt grateful their men weren’t as bad as hers.
“Don’t move too fast,” Bridey O’Sullivan breathed in her ear. She ran gentle hands down Meggy’s side. “Ribs feel whole, but they’ll hurt like the devil for a few days.” She helped Meggy sit and frowned at the bruises forming on her neck. She shook her head. “You were a damned fool to come back, Meggy Blair,” she said through pursed lips.
“He found me. I had no place to go.” And I couldn’t drag Rand down with me. “Lena?” Meggy groaned.
Bridey pointed to her son peering down from a second story window. “She were under the bed. Billy’ll give her an all clear.”
“Can she stay for a day or two?”
“One at least. You know I’d take her more permanent, but I can barely feed my own.”
Meggy did know. She always tried to send whatever food she could when she sent Lena to the O’Sullivan’s. Bridey risked Blair’s wrath as it was.
Meggy rose painfully to her feet, glanced furtively around the courtyard, and whispered, “Have you seen Drew?”
“No!” Bridey waved a hand as if to ward off the question. “Don’t know and don’t want to.”
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