“Good afternoon, sir,” Madeleine replied. “Would you be McBride?”
“Aye, I’d be McBride. ’Ave ye been sent, m’dear?”
She hesitated, a bit surprised. “In a manner of speaking,” she said tentatively.
“’Ow may I be of assistance to you and…” He cast a discreet glance at Colin, who had moved on and bent to peer at something that looked like it might have been a rat once upon a time. “…the gentleman?”
For some reason, McBride didn’t seem to think it was at all unusual to be addressing the lady and not the gentleman. “’Ave ye come fer me…specialty?” he coaxed.
“And what would your specialty be?” Madeleine inquired cautiously. She wondered if this was code this particular flash house used to identify customers. She hardly resembled the typical Seven Dials thief with something to fence, which perhaps was the reason for his circumspection.
McBride studied her, and Madeleine saw not his eyes but the lamps reflected in the lenses of spectacles. He must have concluded that she was being canny, for he straightened and launched into a speech.
“Madam, I ’umbly submit that I’ve an elixir what can solve nearly every problem of a”—his voice dropped discreetly, though as far as Madeleine could tell, there wasn’t another soul in the shop apart from herself and Colin—“masculine or intimate nature.”
Over near the might-have-once-been-a-rat, Colin Eversea went utterly still.
Time might be of the essence, but this was too much to resist.
“Would the problems you refer to, sir, be of the…marital…sort?” Madeleine’s voice was a discreet hush.
“Aye, madam. Me elixirs ’ave improved many a marriage. I can brew summat fer nearly every…” He cleared his throat. “…difficulty.” And then he waved his hand about the shop, as if the very ingredients for such magic were visible everywhere. He reached behind him for one stoppered bottle and presented it to her as though offering up a fine vintage. “Fer instance—”
“But what if…” Madeleine paused. “…his—it’s—just a wee, tiny tadpole to begin with?” Just in case this was too cryptic a description, she held her thumb and forefinger apart about two inches.
Colin Eversea coughed.
McBride was momentarily transfixed by the pathetic little space between her fingers. And then he carefully lowered the bottle, cleared his throat and straightened his spine. “’Tis a wee, tiny tadpole, you say?” he said briskly. He made it sound like a scientific condition. He drummed his fingers on the counter thoughtfully.
Colin Eversea had recovered and was now experimentally opening and closing the elongated bony jaws of some unidentifiable creature. Creeeak, creak. Creeeak, creak.
“Oh yes! You can scarcely even see it in the dark,” she confirmed for McBride. The skull creaking abruptly stopped. He clearly wanted to hear. “And as I am modest, I prefer not to engage in…relations…” She lowered her eyes as though the very immodesty of the word had sapped her strength. “…with lamps burning everywhere in the room. But it seems we must, or there would be no relations at all.”
McBride rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “’Ow long ’ave ye been married, madam?”
“Well, it seems an eternity—”
“I imagine it would,” he soothed.
“—but two years, just.”
“And yer ’usband, ’e wants to please you?”
“He lives to please me.”
Colin put down the skull so hard the jaw of it clacked.
McBride made a clucking sound, part warning and part sympathy, both for Colin.
He returned his attention to the woman before him. “Admirable of him, admirable. And a challenge, fer the both of ye, to be certain,” McBride said gravely. “But I lives to satisfy me customers. I’ve brewed summat new what might ’elp the two of ye—’tis of Turkish origin. And one of me customers—I canna give ye names, ye ken, but ’e is of the ’ighest of stature—’as already taken it away, and come fer more.”
“Well, sir…if you don’t mind my asking…how does it help? Does it address size or…” She trailed off delicately.
“It ’elps wi’ inflation, madam.” McBride had apparently forgotten to be coy in his zeal for his product. “Through the magic of science and the natural world and me own skill, it will work with the gentleman’s existing equipment and give ’im more to…wield.”
“’Twould take a miracle, indeed,” Madeleine said reflectively. “And we shall give consideration to your elixir. But he will keep trying, you see, with what he was born with. He does have his pride. But I’d heard of you, you see, and wanted to come in to speak to you, and he was willing to accompany me.”
“Admirable, as I said. Admirable,” McBride approved of Colin’s gallantry.
“Thank you, sir, for your advice. And while I’m here, I’ve another matter,” Madeleine concluded.
“Verra good.” McBride sounded cautiously optimistic. Her first problem was nearly insurmountable; God only knew what her second would be.
She swiftly slid the brass coat button onto the counter.
McBride slowly lowered his head to look at it, then looked up at her sharply, and now she saw a pair of blue eyes glinting behind his spectacles.
“I’d like six shillings for it,” Madeleine said, again cautiously, in case they’d been misinformed by their friend in the alley.
“One,” McBride countered instantly.
Ah, very good. “What manner of fool do you take me for?” she said coolly. “Five shillings.”
“Five!” McBride was incensed. “If ye were not ’and-some, madam, I would…” He was spluttering. It was a fine bit of acting. “Three shillings ha’pence.”
“Four shillings, and not a farthing less. You know ’tis a fine, rare brass button.”
They glared at each other across the counter.
Then McBride sighed, reached into his coat and produced a velvet pouch. He counted four shillings out of it into Madeleine’s outstretched palm.
“Invigorating, madam. I thank you.”
“Think nothing of it,” Madeleine demurred. “We’ll also need a large coat in blue or black. Or a greatcoat or a cape. Have you anything of the sort?”
“Oh, ye’ve far to go fer that, I fear. I’m only buttons and fobs and fine metal, madam. The occasional book, perhaps, and those I do come upon I keep for a friend. Things small but grand, primarily, that’s me specialty. Mrs. Bandycross in Lorrimer Lane will sell ye a shirt or an ’andkerchief, but coats…” He shook his head. “I canna think of where ye’d find a coat, unless it’s Bond Street.”
They both laughed at the absurdity of that. Bond Street was a universe away from St. Giles.
“Thank you, sir. I thought I’d ask.”
“’Twas a pleasure, ’twas a pleasure, madam.”
A bow and a curtsy were exchanged, and they parted company, each thinking they had gotten the better deal, which is always the sign of a satisfying negotiation.
Colin followed her silently out of the shop, back into noise and daylight.
They slipped back into the crowd and neither spoke for a time.
“Well, I’m humbled,” Colin Eversea finally said.
“I doubt that,” she retorted dourly.
He laughed at that, and she shushed him.
“Well, it was your objective, wasn’t it? Do you really think my ego is so very impenetrable, Miss Greenway? That it’s impossible to wound me?” He still sounded amused.
“Stop it,” Madeleine said through teeth all but clenched.
“Stop what?”
“Stop trying to win me over, Mr. Eversea. It’s…unnecessary.”
“Because you’re already won?” he suggested hopefully.
“Because it’s not possible.”
“But we might as well be friends, should we not? If we’re to help each other, that is.”
“This isn’t a lark. And I don’t want a friend, and you don’t want a friend, Mr. Eversea. You want to prove something to yo
urself by winning me over.”
This observation caused an abrupt silence.
And then Colin Eversea smiled an enigmatic little smile, and tipped his head back just a bit, as though attempting to swallow her words.
And then the bloody man actually began to quietly whistle.
He was two bars into his tune when the brace of soldiers striding up the street opposite them stopped it abruptly.
Twenty or so yards away, but vivid as cardinals in this gray place, bayonets in hand, heads turning this way and that, eyes sifting through the faces in the crowd, moving inexorably but not with any noticeable purpose toward them.
There were no doorways or alleys to duck into; sudden movements would only make them conspicuous. Madeleine touched Colin’s arm; they slowed their pace. She surreptitiously dragged the fichu from around her throat, tugged her bodice down to tart levels, swept a hand over her hair to muss it from its pins, and hissed, “Hold the gin bottle in your hand and act just slightly inebriated, for God’s sake, no more—and lean on me.”
She concluded by pushing her bosom up against a surprised Colin Eversea and looping an arm through his. She caught a glimpse of darkening pupils in a sea of blue-green as his startled gaze met her cleavage. She did have an excellent bosom.
He recovered from his bosom glimpse quickly enough; his posture obediently became looser, his shoulders dropped, one hand swung free at his side with the gin bottle gripped in it. Arm in arm they fell in behind three men in lively conversation, close enough to appear part of a group, or perhaps not. Colin’s gait shambled but he didn’t succumb to any temptation to overact.
This was all very good. Strictly speaking, if one needed to be saddled with an escaped murderer, it was better to be saddled with a clever one.
“Lean your head in to talk to me,” she ordered sotto voce.
“What should I say?” he hissed.
She laughed as though he’d said something mildly witty. “And now I say something,” she added conversationally. Her heart was thumping in her ears.
“And then I say something in response,” he murmured, catching on.
“And then I say something else?” This one she’d made a question, to mimic the rhythm of a conversation.
And in this manner, walking arm in arm and exchanging meaningless sentences, they blended with the crowd, disguised by not seeming disguised. The sharp-eyed red-coated soldiers barely spared them a glance when they passed even with the pair of them. But Madeleine felt the graze of their eyes over her as surely as if her skin was burnt.
Long minutes passed in silence, and they walked on. They were each recovering, perhaps in their own way, from the moment.
“So odd to hide in plain sight,” Colin finally murmured. Sounding dazed.
“Don’t say things like that aloud ever again. Not even in a whisper. Not even here in St. Giles.” She was strangely furious, strangely exhilarated, strangely more terrified than she’d ever been. “In other words, don’t be a bloody fool.”
She released his arm abruptly.
Madeleine was the one who hailed the hackney, which had made its way up the street in fits and starts, threading its bulky way through the crowd. Hackneys were rare enough in this part of London. Not a lot of paying customers to be found in St. Giles.
The driver took one look at the two of them and made as if to crack the ribbons again.
“I’ve the fare, mate,” Madeleine protested in her best St. Giles patois.
“Show me,” the driver ordered bluntly, extending an open, gloved hand and raising his gray eyebrows. Clearly she was a little too convincing as a gin-addled doxie.
She showed him by dropping a shilling into his palm. The driver grunted and waved them inside with his chin.
“The East India Docks,” she told him.
He gave a bark of humorless laughter, and then a sigh, as if she’d confirmed something for him.
Then Madeleine closed the door and pulled the curtain shut over the miniature window, and they were alone in the relative dark. The hack lurched forward.
It was better somehow to be moving, away from St. Giles, but still nothing felt safe about the enclosed space. Madeleine released a long breath. Her heart still rabbit-kicked inside her chest, so she breathed steadily as she tugged her bodice up once more, rewrapped and tucked her fichu around her throat and bosom, and leaned back against the seat, which was a bit like leaning against the previous passenger, as it still smelled of rum, sweat, and poor-grade tobacco.
The wheels ground over the cobblestones, making slow progress in these narrow streets. It would be faster going soon.
They sat in silence for quite some time. Colin Eversea was looking down at the gin bottle and turning it about in his hand gingerly, slowly, as though it were an artifact.
“I do know it’s not a lark,” he said quietly.
And that was the extent of their conversation during the trip to the Tiger’s Nest.
Chapter 5
Every one of the Everseas gave a start when they heard the hoofbeats thundering toward the house out in the square. The women closed their eyes tightly. Hands reached out for other hands and gripped, and Marcus had an impression of white knots against black clothing. The folded hands.
And then it suddenly occurred to him that urgency to deliver the news about Colin was unseemly, to say the least. Dead was dead, after all.
His father apparently had the same thought. He strode to the window with Jacob, Chase and Ian behind them. They looked down in time to see the messenger fling his reins out of his hands and bolt up the town house stairs.
Marcus could see the man’s brilliant, face-splitting smile from the upper floor.
Good heavens. Well, that was definitely inappropriate.
The housekeeper let the man in, and he barreled up the stairs before being announced. They heard him shouting on the way up, and then the shouts became coherent words. “He’s gone! He’s bloody gone! Explosions! Vanished!”
Actually, they weren’t so much words as whooped syllables, accompanied by flailing arm gestures.
Jacob got the man by the arm and gripped him. “Slow down. What in God’s name—”
“Good God, but you should have seen it, Jacob—”
The family ringed the messenger now, and hope was an agony. Breathing suspended entirely.
“Why don’t you come to your point?” Jacob suggested, in a tone that implied a certain underlying glee. As though he already suspected what the news would be.
“Oh, you should have seen it,” the man said on a hush now, his face positively fulsome with the story. “Colin was on the scaffold. The crowd was cheering. And he was tied—” He saw the faces of the women and decided to forgo that part of the description. “And then there were explosions—behind the scaffold, and in the crowd, and smoke, and chaos, and screaming—and then…” He paused for effect. “…Colin bloody vanished.”
Resounding silence.
Those damned birds were still singing, Marcus noticed. As though they had suspected all along.
“So he didn’t hang?” Jacob said slowly, finally.
“He didn’t hang. And he’s not dead. At least, he’s not dead from hanging. Hasn’t been seen, Jacob. He bloody vanished.”
“Smelling salts,” Marcus murmured to the housekeeper who had trailed the messenger into the room. She was just as pale as everyone else, and breathing just as hard as everyone else, but she wasn’t going to faint, and it looked like half the women in the room were about to. The color had fled Louisa’s face
Not his mother, however. She’d been through too many harrowing things with Colin in her life already. His mother’s face was bloodless, her dark blue eyes bright, despite the puffy arcs beneath them. But she looked almost unsurprised.
He thought Jacob would go to her. But Jacob and his mother had seemed strangely separate this morning, as if they each knew a different kind of grief about the occasion and didn’t trust that the other would understand.
So rivers would not reverse course, the sun would not rise in the west.
The Everseas had once again prevailed.
“Some are saying Satan took him back,” the messenger elucidated. “Some are saying he really is innocent, and the Angel of Death came down to take him instead. The army is in an uproar. They’re more inclined to blame the Everseas than heavenly interference. I imagine they’ll be here any minute,” he added on a practical note.
Hoofbeats out in the courtyard bore this out. Soldiers were already descending upon the Everseas.
Jacob had begun to look thoughtful. “So Colin isn’t dead. This you know for certain.”
“Not by hanging,” the messenger confirmed.
And before their eyes, Jacob, who had seemed diminished over the weeks…took on that preternatural glow of confidence and joie de vivre that was uniquely his. Colin was the tallest of all the children, but one never seemed taller than Jacob Eversea, because the very presence of the man commanded so much room.
All the boys, Ian and Chase and Marcus, were staring at their father.
“I swear I had nothing to do with it,” he murmured to Marcus. “Don’t you think you would have known?”
Colin wondered where on earth the authorities would begin to look for him. Soldiers were often bored and underemployed in the wake of the war, and he’d had his haunts, but then again, it wasn’t as though he was a migrating sparrow. He didn’t return to the same places over and over. He enjoyed sampling things. It would take several battalions to fan out over all of London, and soldiers had other duties, too. This is what he told himself, anyway, by way of comforting rationalization.
Stone cold sober, it was hard to imagine he’d ever sampled the Tiger’s Nest, though he knew he had. The front wall of the inn was almost entirely a window, and the customers were on display. And what the clientele of the Tiger’s Nest lacked in the way of limbs and teeth they generally more than made up for in weapons. Pistols of every vintage and knives of every length and strength gleamed and glinted on the men crowded into the pub, all much better maintained than the customers themselves. Hooks curved at the end of arms, wooden legs were parked next to booted legs beneath tables gouged and scarred from countless knives, and here and there a stump of an elbow, jauntily tied off at a sleeve, waved about in fierce debate. These were pirates of the streets, of the seas.
The Perils of Pleasure Page 6