by Baird Wells
He was right, of course. Worrying now didn't change anything. “What should we look for?”
“Truthfully, I had no idea. I had to ask Hastings.”
His confession made her laugh. “And what did you determine?”
“A cradle. One of those rocking horses with a real mane and red painted rockers.”
She stared at the ceiling, mentally placing furniture in the empty room. “It will be ages before our baby can use it.”
“Doesn't matter. I want it. You can order gowns and swaddling, or fabric if you're inclined to make them.”
“I am!” She sat up, sliding to sit against the headboard, excitement bubbling. “That hadn't crossed my mind. Something to do to pass the time.”
Spencer worked up beside her, claiming her hand. “Day after tomorrow?”
Alix held up fingers, winking. “Three days.” She raked him with a glance. “I can't recover so quickly.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
London – October 19, 1814
Only their second full day in town, and already the gossip mill churned at full speed. If Spencer had dreaded visitors before, Aix decided he would loathe them by week’s end.
Today, though, he would be spared the brunt of it. She wanted to make her round to the shops early, avoid busy streets and arrive back home before her back and hips began their protest in earnest. They had risen early, dressed in haste despite Spencer’s attempts at derailing their schedule, and breakfasted together as they always did.
It was a fuss in the papers today; Lord R., hero of the Peninsula, marrying an ‘American shipping heiress.’ Alix chuckled and slid the paper back across the table to Spencer's elbow. “A flattering account. I came with ten dollars and a trunk of smallclothes.”
“Perhaps when they talk of wealth they mean it in a biblical sense. Like wheat, or knowledge.” He tossed her a look off his own paper, making her laugh. “Anyhow,” he shrugged, folding the page, “I'm not concerned with money. You'll earn your keep, in one fashion or another.”
Money. Shipping heiress. She nodded, only half hearing Spencer's jest.
“Chas will turn up,” he promised, recognizing the worry in her face. “Grayfield has men looking. We'll find him.”
“I don't want to see him.” She met Spencer's eyes. “Is that horrible? If I could just know that he's well, that would be enough. I would be happy going our separate ways.”
“You have every right to feel that way.”
Something occurred to her, dark but nagging. “What happened to Paulina's remains?”
Spencer winced and shrugged, then shook his head. “Someone claimed them? Otherwise, they were lymed in the pit with the others.”
Bile rose up in her throat, both at the thought of Paulina and her fate. “What she deserves.” There was no fighting bitterness.
“Her father was influencing the trial, obviously. I’m certain he had someone collect her.”
Alix shuddered and pushed the whole idea from her mind. “Laurel has given me the name of a shop with good flannel. I was thinking of going this afternoon. Her directions don't seem complicated.”
“I'll take you. Grayfield has papers for Bennet, and I can collect you after.”
“Collect me? Like a glove or lost key?” she prodded.
Spencer pushed back, stood up and offered a hand with a grin. “Precisely.”
* * *
The English method of shopping was still lost on her. First, no merchant seemed to know what to do with a customer set to buy and her mind made up. Salesmanship was put to use despite her protests, their accounting of a fabric’s virtues enumerated long after she had agreed to six or seven yards. Then, no goods or money actually changed hands. A merchant agreed to deliver, she agreed to pay, and that was that. It was strange and vaguely unsatisfying. She had to admit there was a convenience to it, though. She wasn’t obliged to bundle out ten parcels and wedge herself between them in the carriage. Spencer was forever complaining about foot room, anyhow.
Not that she hadn’t enjoyed every minute of the day so far. London was new to her, recollections of her few days in town after Haywood foggy at best. Ladies drifted up and down Bond street in a pastel rainbow, like blossoms on the arms of their men, tall and straight like sticks in brown and olive green. The steady traffic of grand, eight-horse equipages, speeding curricles, and merchant carts rumbled up and down its roads without pause, their drivers shouting to and at one another. She didn’t care to make the city her home, but there was a delight in spending a few months each year in London. In London with her husband.
Thrilling at the idea, Alix let herself out into the street, rubbing an aching back and happy to head home. She had browsed longer than intended, and Spencer would be along soon.
“Alexandra!” a voice rasped, nearly drowned by the murmur of afternoon crowds. She glanced left and right, not catching a single set of eyes looking her way. “Alexandra,” it barked again. Turning she startled at a figure tucked almost behind the open shop door.
“Chas!” she gasped, hardly recognizing him. “Where have you been? What are you doing?” He looked awful. If she had seen him at a distance mingled with the crowd, she would have dismissed him as a drunken tramp. Stale gin and something more foul assaulted her nose from the folds of his rumpled clothing, and he was unshaven and entirely unkempt. Black crusty scabs punctuated his lip and eyebrow, mute evidence of a wretched beating.
“You have to come with me this very moment,” he mumbled, swiping for her hand.
She darted back a step, dodging. “Not the slightest chance.”
“Ohh!” he laughed. “You’re a fine lady now. I read all about it in the papers. Whore.”
It was more than enough. Alix spun on her heel, but this time he caught her. “Wait. Wait! Alix, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you have to listen, you have to come back.” Chas rambled over himself like a madman, his words and even his tone of voice changed from just a moment before. It was as if more than one person shared his head, and they were all jockeying for position.
“Come back where?”
“With me!” He let go of her, grabbed his coat and strangled its lapels. “You have to come with me, back home. Silas is angry, Alix, furious! But we can set it right, we can still make amends if we just go home and do as he says.”
“Charles,” she snapped, leaning in and ignoring the smell, “you can kiss my arse if you believe I am ever going back to that life.”
“Stop this rebellion, Alix! Stop it!” He wrestled her sleeve, and a passing gentleman stopped to swing his walking stick, knocking Chas into the shop's wall.
“Can I help you, miss?” The man spoke to her and glared at Chas.
“I was just departing.” She muttered thanks and waved the man on his way.
“You are ruining everything,” Chas bit out, eyes wet with tears. “We'll lose Paton, the house, our fortune –”
“I don't have any of those things!” she cried, shaking fists at him. Then she gathered herself with a few breaths, and looked over the pathetic heap that was her brother. “Those things are your matters now. They should always have been your matters.”
This time when she turned away, she took a wide stride into the passersby, ensuring Chas couldn't pull her back.
“I'm sorry over it, Alexandra!” he screamed through the din. “It had to be done, I'm sorry!”
Sorry over what? Obviously not the same things she was sorry over. She yanked open the carriage door, not waiting for a tardy footman.
“Alexandra.”
She was mostly up when a voice inside broke her name into four familiar, terrifying syllables. She turned back, but moist sausage fingers grabbed her arm and hauled her into the foot well with a force which stole her breath.
“Didn't take your brother's advice,” Silas bit out in a thick Dutch accent. “Disappointing, as always.” He tsk-tsk'd.
He was bigger than she remembered, larger, maybe because she’d thought herself beyond his reach. He’d grown s
maller on the horizon as she and Spencer moved forward. But he hadn’t changed, his jowled cheeks red with perpetual ocean wind-burn, muscled arms and legs those of a farmer, though his trunk was a barrel. He glared at her now with Paulina’s eyes, hate boiling in their brown, almond depths.
I'm sorry over it, Alexandra.
Not as sorry as he would be if she outlasted Silas Van der Verre.
Silas jammed a boot into her hip, shooting lightning up her back.
“Get up, sit.” He glared down at her from the high bridge of his nose. “He cannot get your obedience, but I shall.”
She wriggled onto the opposite seat, putting as much space as possible between them.
He reached into the dark space beside him, snatched up his walking stick and cut a swath through the air with it. “You’re headstrong, like your father.” He clucked his tongue at her grimace. “I enjoy your spirit, Alexandra, I always have. One application of punishment was enough for your brother. Three?” He gasped. “Well, that’s really something. I haven’t broken you yet.”
His first blow caught her cheek. A rattle inside her skull was the worst of it. The blow should have hurt more; somehow the memory of his last beating lessened her pain. Maybe it was knowing how quickly the worst of it would fade, how long it would take for bleeding to stop and swelling to subside. She pressed a sleeve to her cheek to stem a hot trickle there, throbbing made worse by the carriage’s bounce and sway. Just until Spencer could find her; she had to survive Silas that long. Spencer would come.
“Not yet,” Silas hissed, drawing back, “but I shall.”
* * *
Ethan held one side of his desk, while Spencer squared off against Bennet on the other. He had been certain of the meeting going quickly, Ethan giving Bennet his assignment and seeing his brother off in approximately the same amount of time it would take to brew tea. He should have known better; Spencer shook his head. Nothing with Bennet was ever simple.
He noticed that Bennet was unusually intractable for a mission with so much danger attached, usually his first choice. “I received a good many sour looks at the War Office for resigning my commission,” Bennet protested
“You're not actually resigning it,” corrected Spencer.
“I know that, and you both know it…” Bennet flexed under scuffed pride.
Spencer had a feeling his brother would take to the prestige of his new role soon enough. “You'll have one of Paton's ships. It's been refitted.” Spencer placed his hands on Ethan's desk, rearranging their width and stalling. “Grayfield has arranged some things. Papers; a safe house. You're going to need help from someone there with connections.” He spoke the words carefully, preparing himself. His brother wouldn’t be sporting about being duped.
Bennet's eyes darted from him, to Ethan, and back. “Why do you say it like that?”
Ethan cleared his throat. “Because there is only one person in Barataria Bay who works with the British army and the privateers.”
“No.” Bennet got up.
“Just use your manners. Say you're sorry, perhaps?”
“Out of the question.” Bennet backed away a step. “Not at the fork tines of Satan himself am I apologizing to Miranda Clery.” He snatched his hat and his scarf, and stormed from Ethan's office.
“Have you seen her?” drawled Ethan, watching Bennet's retreating back in triumph. “They'll apologize.”
“They have history,” added Spencer. “She won’t have to.”
“Mm.” Ethan unfolded from his chair. “My stomach believes it’s time for supper, even if it is only four-thirty.”
“Old habits die hard, Major Grayfield.”
Nodding, Ethan gathered his things from the desk, while Spencer checked his watch in disbelief. “I'm tardy. Alexandra will be waiting.”
“We'll make good time. Come, I'll walk with you as far as Bond.”
When they reached the point of Bond Street and its intersection with a small alley where Ethan would normally part ways with him, they were so engrossed in a discussion of the steam engine that they passed the route entirely. Spencer didn't appreciate it until he realized they were across the street from the dressmaker’s, and only then because there was no carriage, and no Alexandra waiting.
Beside him Ethan stopped talking, and frowned, eyes narrowed. “Down the side street?”
He shook his head, searching a bustling crowd passing the shop. Why would she move? If the carriage had moved off of the main street and into an alleyway, he reasoned, she was likely still inside the shop. Anxiety twisted his insides as he looked around wildly, hoping for a glimpse of her in the crowd.
“Come,” Ethan shouldered him. “You step inside. I'll have a look around the block.”
Two old ladies examining ribbon comprised the shop's entire clientele, and the bells in Spencer’s head clanged in earnest. A diminutive, beak-nosed clerk fluttering between the printed bolts nodded eagerly at Spencer's description. Yes, he had put some yardage on credit for the lady and had taken down her address for delivery before she left. She hadn’t been back since.
A sick knot gripped his gut, and Spencer wondered at the coincidence of their not having seen Chas since the execution. He tore open the door, finding Ethan planted sideways to the entrance.
“She's not inside; any luck?”
“No, but you have a driver with a sore head propped at the rear door.” Silent, Ethan squinted into sunlight of a fall afternoon, arms crossed over his chest. After a moment, he tipped his chin and drew Spencer's gaze down the block.
Two men built like bear wrestlers flanked a lamp post at the corner, incapable of being more conspicuous in finely tailored suits that lacked enough fabric to wrap their tree-trunk arms and legs. Thick, jowled faces, slitted eyes, and lips sneering almost to the cusp of spitting made them stand out.
“You have your pistol?” murmured Ethan.
“No.”
“Good. They would gut you if you did.” He straightened, tossing a surreptitious glance off his shoulder. Then he patted Spencer's shoulder.
A sharp point registered against his arm, the fine tip of a lock pick being driven into his coat lining. “Go with them,” instructed Grayfield. “Mister Tilton is just there, by the flower cart. He will be your tail.”
Spencer dared a glance without moving his head and noticed a white-pudding sort of man reading a newspaper, the sort no one would notice let alone recall later.
“Burrell and I will work from outside; meet you in the middle.”
How was it that they had walked to the shop seemingly without design, and Ethan had already scrounged up an agent?
Spencer swallowed, eyeing his new companions. What if they didn't take him to Alix, if she had already been hurt? He shook off the idea; at the moment he had no information, and no choice. “Be hasty,” he muttered, stepping away. “I would hate for either of us to miss supper.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
London Docks -- Evening
It was nearly sunset, and despite her coat Alexandra was already freezing. When Silas had her dragged in from the carriage, it had been midday, though fear had chilled her even then. Now a damp breeze from the Thames bit through the warehouse's crumbling brick and rotting timbers, and its earthen floor chilled her legs and backside. Her hips ached at sitting upright for so long, but she didn't dare lean back against the wall and sacrifice more body heat.
Silas waddled across the long room at angles, stopping now and then to check a pair of ropes hung from the ceiling, poking his walking stick into the nooses and tugging for emphasis. She ignored the implication, just glad to see the cane applied to something other than her face for a change.
Throbbing, above her eye and across her mouth, hinted at damage that would be long in healing. Mold and tobacco tickled her nose; Alix prayed more fervently than she had in her entire life that she wouldn't sneeze and split her lip for a second time.
A freight door at the far end of the large room rumbled open, allowing just enough space fo
r a person and spilling thin amber shafts of sunlight into the shadows between stacks of crates. Alexandra wondered absently if it was the last sunset she would ever see. She dared a hand inside her coat to cradle her belly.
One hulking form sidled through, and another behind, goading a silhouette she could recognize immediately. Spencer. She would have felt relief, except that his hands were obviously bound like her own. Gratitude filled her at being together, though in the immediate she failed to see how they were much better off.
“Over there,” Silas ordered, indicating a stack of discarded pallets across from her. “Don't put them together. I don't want them concocting ideas.”
One lumbering goon drove Spencer with a meaty arm, throwing him to the dirt where he produced a terrible, deflating sound. Alix held her breath until he finally groaned and rolled over. When no one made a move to interfere, he worked himself up to sit against the pallets, staring at her across the narrow space.
She answered his eyes with a bare nod, which was all she dared without risking Silas’s wrath. Spencer's reply was a slow blink. She sensed more than an acknowledgment; maybe a reassurance, but she dared not hope. Only one thing was certain in that moment: she would put a musket ball in Silas at the first opportunity, if it ever came. Then she would deal with Chas.
“Where are my papers!” Silas shouted at no one in particular, swinging his stick, cutting the air with a quick zip. It was a fine line; she sensed things would escalate quickly for her and Spencer when the 'papers' arrived. Too long a delay though, and Silas was bound to grow bored, turning idle attention to his captives. He had dumped Emily in the river, pregnant, bleeding, and broken. Alix shivered at the memories. Emily had been helpless, unaware. She, on the other hand, knew Silas for what he was, what he could do, and would fight him every step of the way.
The issue was quickly rendered moot. Hooves thudded on cobblestones along the wharf and ended with a sharp whinny that echoed through the door. Silas immediately left, leaving his two hulking golems to keep watch.