“You brought in the lamp so no one would guess at the existence of a window.”
She heard the bemusement in his voice. She ignored it. He wouldn’t be the first man to attempt to understand her, to marvel at her, and there wasn’t time to indulge him. It wasn’t a game to her.
“Can you climb?” she said curtly instead.
“I can climb,” he answered just as curtly.
She leaned the broom aside and cast a dubious look up at him. Colin Eversea was conspicuously tall and broad-shouldered and—well, conspicuously Colin Eversea. No doubt the moment the two of them managed to squeeze their bodies out of the window, an abandoned broadsheet with his image sketched over it would blow up to wrap their ankles.
And no doubt they were clutched as cherished mementos in the hands of all of those filtering back to their homes, either disappointed or rejoicing in the fact that they hadn’t seen a hanging, but knowing it was a day they would never forget.
Then there was the matter of his clothes—that dark coat sewn of superfine and cut by Weston, from the looks of it; a silk cravat, limp, but silk nevertheless. Those boots of his were gorgeous, made by Hobby, no doubt, and no worse for being worn behind prison walls. The sheen of them would easily draw the eye of any opportunistic thief, who would follow them up Eversea’s legs to that decidedly memorable face, and then there would be trouble.
Still, a horned sketch was one thing. The living, breathing man was something else altogether.
“Your coat will have to—” she began.
But Eversea was a surprisingly quick study. He stripped off his coat so those brass buttons wouldn’t wink like beacons for thieves.
“And the—” she began.
But he was already working the cravat loose, and then the waistcoat came off, too, with an alacrity that made her blink despite herself and started a peculiar heat up in her cheeks. It had been some time since she’d seen a man, let alone an attractive man, matter-of-factly strip off articles of clothing.
Colin Eversea folded his clothes into a bundle, bent to scoop up both of the cords that had bound him a moment ago, bound up the trappings of his life as a gentleman, then slung them over one shoulder and announced, “I’ll go first.”
She could grow to loathe that arrogant demand in his voice. It hadn’t been a suggestion. And it was a clear indication he didn’t trust her.
Madeleine was disinclined to take orders from anyone, but she was practical, and arguing required time. “Very well,” she said curtly.
Colin tugged the window out of its frame; it came easily, and in rushed a gust of foul, warm air. The row of barrels stood before them like the plump backsides of guards.
“Mind the barrels,” she ordered sotto voce, and then Colin Eversea pulled himself out into daylight, all of about eight minutes after someone had tried to kill Madeleine Greenway.
Chapter 4
It was a near thing. Colin could just barely angle out of that window, and that was because there was less of him now than when he first went to prison. He squeezed between two foul-smelling barrels the height of his hip, used his arms to lift himself out, the frame scraping his shoulders as he did.
Once upright, he found himself standing in the shadowy light of a narrow and—from the look and smell of things—very dirty alley. He blinked in the wan sunlight.
Sunlight. Once again it rushed at him: Good God. He was unbound and alive and—
But where in God’s name were they? The rookeries?
Colin’s eyes were arrested by a glint against the dirty, peeling wood of the building before him. The glint, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a pair of eyes. The eyes belonged a man who from head to toe was nearly the same indeterminate color as the filthy wall. He was sitting on the ground, a bottle clutched in his fist, and was gazing up at Colin in a sort of fond wonder.
“Well, good mornin’, guv.” He sounded mildly pleased. Doubtless, he considered Colin one of his more benign hallucinations.
Colin hesitated. “Good morning,” he answered politely. Habit of breeding.
The man beamed. Four teeth, Colin counted. Like the aftermath of that first bowl of ninepins.
Colin glanced over his shoulder just as the top of Madeleine Greenway’s glossy dark head appeared through the window along with her pale hands, and then her muslin-clad torso began to wriggle through.
“OHHhhhhh…!” The filthy man was all delighted, singsong insinuation. He gently put down his bottle and applauded Madeleine’s appearance the way he might the conclusion of a very satisfying puppet show.
Colin moved swiftly to help her out of the window, another force of habit, thinking perhaps to cup her elbow? Take her hand? But something like surprise or uncertainty flickered over her face. She glanced at his extended hand, her fine dark brows diving in a little frown.
He retracted the hand, abashed, and a little insulted, and amused at himself for feeling insulted.
Madeleine Greenway got herself upright, shook out her skirts and instantly began assessing her surroundings. She had a few splinters in her glossy hair, shrapnel from the fired shot. He was tempted to pluck one out to present it to her as a souvenir, but her hands were brushing them out of her hair before he could surrender to that unwise temptation.
“Wait…Might I…might I ashk a question of ye, guv?” The request from the man against the wall was wistful.
Colin’s eyes darted to Madeleine, who looked poised to bolt. “Very well.”
“Ye’ll need to come closher.” The man crooked a languid, filthy finger. Once, twice.
Colin glanced back at Madeleine, and he gained an impression of snapping livid dark eyes, fair skin, and very pink cheeks. Impatience, it might have said beneath her image on a woodcut.
Colin leaned over. “Yes, sir?”
That filthy hand came up to entreatingly grip his shirt. “Tell me…” His friend wondered mistily. “Yer doxie…wash she…wash she…good?”
“Was she good?” Colin was all stern indignation. He paused eloquently. “Good God, man. I don’t pay her to be good.”
It took a moment for this to soak through the gin.
And then the man released Colin’s collar to slap his thigh and he gave a great shout of phleghmy laughter. His breath was like the vapors of hell, and Colin reared back, but he couldn’t help but laugh, too. God, it felt good to laugh at something ridiculous.
The man stopped laughing abruptly. “Ye’ve very fine teeth, guv,” he said shrewdly.
Well, then. Time to be off.
“Take his hat,” Madeleine Greenway hissed. She wasn’t amused, judging from the color in her cheeks.
“What? Why…? Oh. We can’t just take his hat,” Colin protested, also on a hiss. Though he heard how ridiculous it sounded even as he said it.
“He’d rather have gin than a hat.” She knelt, held a penny up before the man’s eyes, watched them light, then snatched it back. “For your hat,” she said firmly.
“Take it, me dove,” he said with tender gallantry.
She left the penny next to the man’s knee, snatched the hat from his head, and gave it Colin, who took it gingerly.
“A hat full of lice,” he said. “Your very first gift to me. I shall cherish it.”
“It looks clean enough,” she said darkly, and turned on her heel, walking away from him. “Put it on.”
Colin sniffed at the hat tentatively; shockingly, it didn’t reek. He patted it down over his head; it fit, and then some, covering him to his eyes. Still, he was aware that his own shirt was as blinding as a sail on a frigate in this particularly grimy neighborhood.
He followed her to the end of the lane, dodging a large and suspicious-looking puddle. In this part of London it could be a puddle of nearly anything at all, none of it good.
Colin glanced over at his prickly new partner, wanting details about her, getting them only in fragments out of the corners of his eyes, as she was moving too quickly. He noted her shoes, flashing beneath her hem as she walke
d: good brown leather walking boots, in fine condition and of current fashion. She wasn’t suffering from poverty, then. Her dress was a shade of light muslin, and also fashionable—he knew these things, as he had sisters, after all, and had delivered more than one detailed order to the modiste for one of his mistresses. The dress was conservative without being plain: two frills at the hem, snug sleeves, a tasteful fichu of some sort wrapped about her throat and tucked into the low rectangle of the bodice. Then again, he doubted anything would succeed in looking plain on this crackling woman. She looked clean, if not entirely crisp. Her skin was very fair and fine-grained; even in this grimy, filtered light it was luminous. Two tiny, almost imperceptible round scars sat low on her jaw. Pockmarks. Her mouth was generous, a soft pale pink.
He inventoried her features, one by one, in quick glimpses, and knew regret that such singular beauty—and it was beauty—should exist seemingly exclusive of charm. She seemed a creature comprised of intent and resentment.
They reached the end of the alley and both stopped abruptly, doubtless arrested by the same thought. Soldiers would be fanning out like the aforementioned lice all over London, looking for him. And Colin had been a soldier. He knew they had their flaws, soldiers did, but most were dogged, because that’s all they knew how to be, and many were ruthless.
No doubt his family was being thoroughly questioned by authorities right now. An image of his father, Jacob, strutting with glee, restored to his usual state of enigmatically confident bonhomie at having once more cheated fate, bloomed in Colin’s mind. He almost smiled. But that image opened a door on a great rush of impatience and longing. For his family, Louisa, Pennyroyal Green. All the things he loved, had been denied, had thought to never see again. And in that moment he didn’t think he could bear another second of the world thinking he had done murder, and his lungs seized.
Moments later he took in a deep, long breath just to remind himself that he breathed free air. “Have you any more blunt, Miss Greenway?” Impatience made the question curt.
He, of course, had nothing, because he’d paid the hangman to bind him more loosely and tug on his legs to kill him faster, and that was the end of his blunt. That thought made him look down at his legs now with a sense of vertigo. He could still feel the ghost of the shackles on them, feel the chafe of his boots where they’d ringed his ankles, but he could still feel his legs, and this meant he was alive.
He hadn’t realized he’d so accustomed himself to the idea of dying that he now needed to accustom himself once again to living. The sensation wasn’t comfortable. It was akin to circulation returning bit by bit to blood-deprived limbs.
He glanced up then and caught Madeleine Greenway’s dark eyes on him, an unidentifiable expression fleeing from them.
“I would have had more blunt,” she said meaningfully, sharply turning her head back toward the street. He did like her voice, he decided—its richness and confidence. Even if the resentment in it was all for him. “But now I haven’t enough for a hackney to take us to the Tiger’s Nest. And we can’t have you walking these streets looking like…like…”
She concluded her sentence by shaking her head roughly, as if to clear it of a nightmare.
Perversely, this amused Colin. He was the nightmare in question. He looked like a damned gentleman. And this was the problem, when this had never before in his life been anything other than an asset.
A hackney rolled by the end of the lane as she spoke, the privacy and speed of it a taunt to the two of them who stood trapped there in the gray, filthy lane. A tattered broadsheet came cartwheeling gaily across the ground and made a landing, graceful as a swan, atop that puddle. COLIN EVERSEA, it said in large dark letters. Right above a boldly inked woodcut of the scaffold.
Well, then. Colin jerked his head away from that. But the view at the end of the alley was hardly better. Like a droplet of blood, a red-coated soldier appeared in the crowd.
And where there was one soldier, there were typically more.
His heart gave one sickening thud, and then continued on considerably accelerated.
“Your coat,” Madeleine Greenway said, her voice low with urgency.
Without thinking, Colin handed over his corded bundle, and he watched, half bemused and half with a sort of pleasure, as her quick hands worked it open, unfolded the coat, and pulled—and pulled and pulled, as the tailors at Weston were rigorous and thorough and the threads unwilling to give way—a brass button free.
She closed it in her fist triumphantly. “We’ll pawn this.” She turned on her heel and returned to their now hatless friend against the wall.
“I knew ye’d return to me, me dove,” their friend said sentimentally.
Madeleine knelt. “Do you know of a fence near here?” She kept her voice low.
If she’d asked the question in Pennyroyal Green, anyone might have pointed out Gerald Cutter’s fence. It was built of stone from crumbling castles and driftwood collected from the sea and sagged like Gerald Cutter’s jowls, and it did very little to actually keep the sheep in.
But this man said:
“Ah! ’Twould be McBride. Heesh a…” His hand waved in front of him for a bit, as though he was clearing a fogged windowpane in order to see his next word. “…a possecary,” he finally produced triumphantly. Spittle rained out with the s. “’E ’as a flash ’ouse, ’e ’as.”
Madeleine brushed the spittle out of her eyes in a businesslike fashion and said nothing. She seemed at a loss as to what a possecary might be. Colin was at a loss as to what a flash ’ouse might be.
“An apothecary?” Colin translated, winning a look of surprise from Miss Greenway. But if there was anything he knew well, it was gin-speak. And whiskey-speak, and ale-speak, and champagne-speak, and the like.
“S’what I said, sir.”
“Where can we find McBride?”
“’Ave yer another penny?” he asked shrewdly. “Me dove?” he added flirtatiously.
“Sadly, no.” She said this with no hint of regret. “But I may bring another to you if you tell us.”
“’Tis sad t’ be wi’out pennies, ’tisn’ it?” the man commiserated fervently. “Verra well. McBride, ’eesh in the nexsht street. Near the lass wi’ the…” Another eloquent swipe of the hand through the air, as though he were trying to catch an elusive butterfly. “…posies.” A fresh shower of spittle emerged with the p.
This time it was Madeleine Greenway who understood what he meant, because she stood upright immediately, brushing her eyes.
She looked at Colin, the tall man with his improbably clean shirt and the secondhand hat pulled down over his forehead.
“We’ll just have to brazen it,” she said, half to herself, half to Colin. She sounded grim.
Madeleine and Colin ventured out of the alley and merged into the lively if dirty and monochromatic crowds of St. Giles. They sidestepped more puddles, were nearly knocked over by a pig and then by the three boys chasing it, walked by a crowd singing about Colin Eversea, and had dust rained over them by a woman beating a carpet from the upstairs window of an ancient lodging house, which rather solved the issue of Colin’s offensively clean shirt. He shook off the worst of the dust, and Madeleine shook her fist up at the woman, because to do otherwise would be almost to call undue attention to them.
“Sorry, lass,” the woman called down unapologetically.
“Head down,” Madeleine reminded Colin on a hiss when he looked as though he might look up. She was unnervingly aware of his height
“It is down,” he muttered. “Because that’s where all the more interesting piles of things are.”
It was Madeleine who kept her eyes on the front of buildings, crammed together as tightly as a crowd at a hanging, filthy and weather-beaten as the denizens of the rookeries.
The girl with the basket of paper-wrapped violets stood out nearly as vividly as the soldiers. Their eyes bounced from the girl up to a sign swinging on a pair of chains, the word APOTHECARY ornately lettered on it.<
br />
Madeleine and Colin dove into the shop with some relief.
Inside, it was pungent and dark but for a pair of tall globed lamps burning like the moons of Mars on opposite ends of a wooden counter. They illuminated very little, but did a marvelous job of casting eerie shadows, which was doubtless the point. Things in varying stages of preservation—green-leaved stalks, roses and chamomile and lavender and hellebore and other herbs she had no hope of ever identifying—were bound with bits of string and suspended from the ceiling or floating in labeled jars lining the shop walls up to the ceiling. Other unidentifiable things bobbed in jars on the upper shelves. Eye of newt? Dragon’s teeth?
Small skeletons and skulls belonging to animal species Madeleine also had no hope of identifying were posed on shelves or suspended on cords from the ceiling, their empty eyes and harmless teeth somehow more poignant than eerie.
The proprietor stood behind the counter and between the lamps, and was handing a dark bottle to a gentleman whose turned-up coat collar and pulled-down hat brim made it clear he was no more eager to be seen than Colin was.
“Good day,” the man gruffly said, patting a jingle of coins into the proprietor’s hand.
He turned abruptly, nearly clocking Colin in the ankles with his walking stick, and Colin turned swiftly toward the wall to admire the dark bobbing things.
Madeleine frowned slightly. She’d seen little more than a pair of eyes and part of a nose, but the departing man seemed familiar. In fact…well, she might have sworn he was an MP.
Interesting customers, McBride had.
Colin dutifully remained turned away from the proprietor, hat pulled down. He sidled down the wall a ways to examine a skeleton.
His gait was a trifle careful, Madeleine noted. Shackles, she thought, jarred. He’d been shackled for weeks. He was still accustoming himself to walking without them.
“Good day, madam.” The proprietor’s voice was cheerful and Scottish, and the man was bony and bespectacled. Sparse gray locks swung in long, gay streamers from his otherwise naked pate.
The Perils of Pleasure Page 5