The Secrets of a Scoundrel

by Gaelen Foley

  “Cheap,” Brou replied.

  “Problem solved.” Limarque sounded wholly relieved to have finally found a way to wash his hands of her. “If Jonathan Black or whatever his name is wants to buy the wench back at the auction, that’s up to him.”

  “You think he can really outbid the sheiks?”

  They all laughed.

  “Not my problem,” said Limarque.

  “And the book?”

  “Oh, we’re keeping that.”

  The hell you are. Gin locked the door from the inside to buy herself some time and crossed at once to the desk where she had left her father’s journal.

  “Set up a meeting with Rotgut right away,” she heard Limarque order his men. His voice sounded louder; then the door handle jiggled.

  He immediately cursed.

  Gin grabbed her father’s book and took it to the only window in the room. Slowed by her bound wrists, she fumbled with the window latch while Limarque pounded on the door, cursing at her and yelling for one of his men to bring a key.

  Heart pounding, she swung the window open, then drew back and threw her father’s book as far as she could out into the street.

  Better it should be trampled, rolled over by carriages or land in a puddle where the writing would be smeared than remain with them, knowing what they meant to do with the information.

  But it was a poor throw, a girlish throw, because of her bound wrists, and as she cursed in fury, the door banged open, and Simon Limarque saw what she had done.

  He immediately barked at his men to run out into the street and retrieve it. Then he came for her once again, a tenfold fury in his eyes.

  But there was nowhere to run.

  His fist flying at her was the last thing she saw for quite some time.

  One blow to the face, and the world went black.

  Chapter 20

  As soon as he reached Paris that night, Nick returned the hired carriage, then got permission from Monsieur de Vence to leave his wagon full of crates in the shed behind the hotel, just for a few hours.

  Though the stacked crates of rifles in the wagon’s bed were hidden under a tarp, Nick didn’t want anyone snooping around his cargo. But then came the problem of how he was supposed to be in two places at the same time.

  Somebody had to stand guard over the weapons while Nick went to register for the Bacchus Bazaar. He had only one option at this point: the red-­haired fifteen-­year-­old.

  Phillip looked at him, wide-­eyed, as Nick loaded one of the fine Baker rifles and explained his next assignment.

  If entrusting the lad with driving the carriage weren’t enough to give him a fit of apoplexy, (though in truth, Phillip had proved perfectly competent), Nick now had no choice but to leave the pup standing guard alone over their extremely valuable shipment of weapons.

  Well, the kid wanted to be an agent, Nick mused grimly, and with Virgil for a grandfather, it was hardly the first time Phillip had ever held a weapon.

  Besides, there was no one else on hand that Nick knew he could trust. Anyway, he did not intend to be gone for more than twenty minutes or so.

  Praying no disaster would befall the plucky lad in his absence, Nick locked him in the shed. His last glimpse of Phillip was him sitting atop the wagon with the rifle resting across his lap and a confident gleam in his eyes.

  You’d make your grandfather proud, he thought. “I’ll be back in half an hour,” Nick assured him, giving the boy a bolstering nod.

  He glanced at his fob watch and went.

  The Grande Alexandre across the way was arrayed in its elegant evening attire, crystal chandeliers aglow.

  The tourists and visitors to Paris bustled about on their way to the opera or some fancy ball, gentlemen in formal black and white, ladies clad in satin gowns with stylish feathers on their heads.

  Nick strode past them all across the shining marble floors. He had the game piece in his pocket, but on his way to the suite upstairs where Hugh Lowell had instructed them to go to register, he decided to take a brief detour.

  Despite all the upheavals of this day, he had not forgotten where he had started out this morning: in the café down in the lobby. He could not help Virginia directly at this moment, but each of those abducted girls surely meant as much to someone out there as she did to him.

  Though he was anxious to get back to Phillip as quickly as possible, he took a moment to investigate E. Dolan, the suspicious man he had noticed in the restaurant this morning and identified as a possibility for Rotgut.

  Nick promptly found his way to Room Fourteen, as noted on the mysterious E. Dolan’s bill at the restaurant. He knocked on the door and waited.

  No answer.

  He glanced to the right and the left down the hallway, then picked the lock. Opening the door discreetly, he poked his head into the room—­and instantly whispered a curse.

  The room was empty. He stepped inside and looked around. Nothing. No clothes, no papers, no traveling trunks. Whether E. Dolan was Rotgut or just some random traveler, Nick was too late to learn.

  Whoever he was, it was obvious he had already checked out of the hotel.

  “You caught me just in time,” a gravelly voice was saying with a tinge of a Birmingham accent, but Gin could not see the speaker through her blindfold.

  She had woken up from Limarque’s clobbering blow to find herself once more bound and gagged, rough hands holding her by her elbows. No longer locked up in the criminals’ hideaway, she could smell the Seine and hear the river’s current pouring past.

  The ground was shaky underfoot. It creaked, as well, but she couldn’t say for sure if they were standing on a dock or had already boarded a boat.

  If she was not mistaken, she was about to become a passenger aboard the infamous Black Jest.

  The gag in her mouth stifled any screams of protest she could have made; instead, she could only listen in disbelief to Simon Limarque selling her to the very man whose underworld trade in women she had been investigating.

  “You’ll have to watch her,” the Frenchman warned. “Redheaded hellcat, this one.”

  “Good! The gentl’men like a lass with spirit. More fun for ’em to break.” She jerked away violently when unknown hands squeezed her breasts. “Ah, calm down. You’re not to my taste. Just making sure these nice round globes o’ yours is real. No, no cotton stuffing here.”

  She was still cringing when Rotgut let her go. God, that man stank. But she noticed that Limarque still hadn’t seen fit to warn his vile colleague that she was a titled aristocrat with connections to the Order.

  Well, ignorance wasn’t going to save Rotgut when Nick caught up with him, she thought.

  She heard the clink of coins changing hands and wondered how much she had gone for.

  But before Limarque handed her over to Rotgut for good, he paused to give her his own cruel farewell. “Don’t worry, chérie, if your lover really cares for you, he’ll come to the auction and buy you back. If he’s still alive. Just hope that he has pockets deep enough to outbid the Arabian sheiks. With that flame-­colored hair and milky skin of yours, I’m sure they’d find you an exotic addition to any of their harems. Did you know they don’t believe in allowing women to experience sexual pleasure, by the way? Seems an abomination to me as a Frenchman. But it’s true. They’ll give you a small surgery, just there.” He thrust his fingers in between her legs, causing her to jump with revulsion. “Make a female eunuch of you. Pity, eh? Ah, well. You’ll still have your memories. I hope he was worth it.”

  She was still reeling from his horrifying words when he pushed her into Rotgut’s arms. She recognized the latter by the rank stench of body odor and stale whiskey.

  The slaver clamped her in a pitiless hold and grunted a goodbye to Limarque and his friends leaving.

  Then Rotgut slung her over his shoulder like the merchandise
she was and carried her down into the bowels of his ship.

  Her head still throbbed thanks to Limarque’s various punches, leaving her with a black eye; Gin felt sick to her stomach from the stink of her brutish captor, the swaying motion of the moored vessel, and, most of all, from fear.

  For a lady who had been so determined to remain the mistress of her own destiny, under no man’s control, this turn of events was, in short, the ultimate nightmare.

  She could not comprehend being bought and sold like an animal. But was that not why this case had got to her so badly in the first place? It was precisely because she hated the insult of such powerlessness so much that she had made it her business to help those girls.

  And now she was one of them.

  Rotgut halted. She heard a jangle of keys and a rusty lock’s turning. A heavy door creaked open. The next thing she knew, she was being tumbled off his shoulder onto a hard floor.

  He pulled the blindfold off her roughly. She winced at the jar to her black eye from where Limarque had punched her. Wherever Rotgut had brought her, probably a section of the cargo hold, it was dark.

  “Lift your hands,” he ordered.

  She looked up at him in wide-­eyed terror as he took out a large knife.

  “Calm down. You don’t need these bindings down here,” he said impatiently, pausing to frown at her black eye. He shook his head in disgust, but only because such bruises were unflattering to any woman’s beauty and might bring down the price that he could get for her.

  Then he slit the chafing rope that bound her wrists. Putting his knife away, he straightened up, turned around, and headed back for the door.

  He left her to pick apart the knot on her gag herself, so he wouldn’t have to hear whatever she might want to say when she could talk again.

  Not that pleas to let her go were anything new to him.

  He had probably learned how to ignore them long ago.

  The heavy door slammed shut, and the keys jangled again as he locked her in. By the dim glow of the lantern in the passageway, she got her first glimpse of Rotgut’s stone block of a face when he peered through the little, barred window on the door. “The rest of you, look after her,” he ordered before tromping off.

  That was the first moment Gin realized there were others in the room with her.

  She slowly looked around as her eyes adjusted and could just make them out. About a dozen figures huddled in the dark, cowering up against the walls around her.

  Beaten and terrified.

  Nick let himself out of the vacant Room Fourteen and pulled the door shut furtively behind him. He was too late to confront the mysterious Rotgut, but he fixed his sights on the next task: registering for the Bacchus Bazaar.

  He strode back to the staircase of the Grande Alexandre and headed for the Imperial Suite on the top floor.

  They had two large men on security duty at the door, but when Nick presented the game piece from Hugh Lowell, they let him in.

  Inside the opulent sitting room behind the door, three bland, quiet, respectable men with the air of bankers waited to take down his information and ascertain that he was qualified to take part.

  He gave his name as Jonathan Black, noted his cargo, and informed them where he was staying.

  “Everything appears to be in order,” one of the men said. “Very good, sir. The location will be sent to you by midnight.”

  “I wonder if I might leave a message with you here for one of my colleagues. I understand he checks in on the registration list from time to time.”

  The comment made the bankers nervous. They glanced uncertainly at each other.

  “I don’t know about that, sir. But, of course, you are welcome to leave a message if you like.”

  “Thank you.” Nick accepted a small piece of paper and leaned across the desk to dip the quill pen in the pot of ink. His message to Limarque was simple but ominous: three small words charged with dark promise.

  I am coming.

  It was amazing how much easier it was to ignore one’s own terror when one had to be brave for others.

  Down in the cold, damp cargo hold with the abducted girls she had set out to rescue, Gin had somehow managed to rally, and had gathered her fellow prisoners around.

  Exchanging whispered introductions, she soon found that just getting them to talk helped everyone to fight back the atmosphere of choking fear in that dark, floating dungeon.

  She did her best to encourage them not to lose heart. ­“People are looking for us. It’s going to be all right,” she told them with more conviction than she felt.

  Sometimes hope was everything.

  Still, she chose her words carefully, for the girls knew nothing about what their captors had in store for them.

  “Please, ma’am, are they going to kill us?” a bedraggled young blonde choked out.

  “No. As long as we are reasonably cooperative, we should be all right. Have they been feeding you?”

  “Gruel,” said another.

  “Do you know where they’re taking us, please?” the little one, Rose, asked.

  She was no more than twelve, much to Gin’s rage.

  She put her arm around the child. “We’ll find out when we get there, love.”

  All of sudden, the frigate groaned and began to slosh slightly from side to side.

  “We’re moving!”

  They could hear a great rumbling of chains in the deep.

  “What is that?” the sloe-­eyed brunette asked anxiously.

  Gin stared into the shadows, listening. “They’re pulling up anchor,” she murmured. Rotgut and his men must have received notice of the location for the Bacchus Bazaar.

  Her heart sank. Oh, no.

  Nick’s window of opportunity to find her was fast closing, especially now that Limarque had transferred her to Rotgut. As frightened as she still was for his safety, the time had come to consider her own—­and these girls’.

  Presuming, God willing, that Nick had survived the treacherous attack in the alley, what if his injuries and any period of unconsciousness had caused him to miss the deadline to register for the auction?

  Then he would not be privy to their destination. As soon as we leave Paris, he’s not going to have the slightest idea where to find me.

  God, she could not let herself think like that. Nevertheless, she realized that help might not be on the way. Any rescue of herself and these girls might truly come down to her, alone.

  Then the ship lurched, leaving its moorings, and despite the dangers of a moonlight sail, the slavers’ vessel entered the main channel of the current.

  Soon, the Black Jest was gliding down the Seine, leaving Paris behind.

  Destination unknown.

  Chapter 21

  Phillip’s reaction to the announcement of their final destination was a puzzled, “Corfu? Where’s that?”

  “The Ionian Islands. Northern Greece,” Nick told him. “Gorgeous place. Horrible reason to go.”

  Then came the mad dash in the wagon full of crates, barreling southeast from Paris to Dijon. There, he had the crates of weapons loaded onto a river barge and took the River Saône south through the lush countryside of Burgundy, all the way to its confluence with the Rhone at Lyons.

  Nick was well aware that if they had attempted the overland route with their heavy cargo, they would have had to choose to contend either with the Alps to the east, the Midi-­Pyrénées to the west, or the wild, rugged country of the Massif Central down the middle. To say nothing of the temperamental weather in that high country and the early snowfalls and the unreliability of finding fresh horses as needed. Instead, the rivers of France allowed them to float right past these mighty obstacles with all due haste.

  Still, though it was the fastest route, Nick found it agonizingly slow and much too quiet, considering that Virginia’s life
was at stake. He sat restlessly on the barge hour after hour, watching the graceful landscape of France drift past like his life passing him by. Thirty-­six years old, and what did he have to show for it but a lot of scars?

  He tried to ignore the churning uncertainty about where his life was really going to go from here as the scenery slowly unfurled: quaint towns and tiny villages; picturesque bridges under which they glided; sleepy vineyards brown and spindle-­branched, tucked in for the winter; glorious chateaux where the haughty local lords presided; ancient forts and castles in the distance; Roman ruins; spectacular mountain peaks that loomed against the skyline.

  All the beauty merely pained him without her by his side.

  Never in his life had any woman ever affected him this way. She had turned him inside out, and if Limarque hurt her while she was his captive, Nick also vowed the most savage sort of revenge on the man and his whole gang.

  Bloodthirsty fantasies of doom and dismemberment seemed just a tad excessive as the Rhone finally carried them down to Avignon, past the palace of the popes. From there, it was an easy journey to Marseilles on the Côte d’Azure, where he hired a plain but fast vessel whose captain was willing to take his gold (well, Phillip’s gold) without asking too many questions about what was in the crates.

  As the French vessel pulled up anchor among the cloud of squawking seagulls, Phillip turned to him, the sea breeze running riot through his Virgil red hair. “Finally, we can head for Greece!”

  “We go by way of Italy,” Nick replied. “It’ll be faster.”

  “Oh! I’ve never been to Italy before.”

  He clapped the boy on the back in wordless encouragement, then they stood at the rails and watched the fishing boats farther out working their nets.

  Nick looked askance at Phillip, studying him with a watchful eye. He wondered how the boy was doing. They had become great chums on their journey, and Nick was doing his best to keep the lad’s spirits high and his own dread to himself. He did not want to scare him any worse about his mother’s safety.

  Probably should have sent him back to England, he reflected, but figured he could keep a better eye on her son this way. There was no telling what the baby would-­be Order agent might do if he were left unsupervised. No doubt, it would be something rash and foolhardy, more likely to get the little cork-­head into some new scrape and only cause more headaches for him. Beyond that, well, truth be told, Nick was glad of the pup’s company.