by Baird Wells
She reached for Spencer's hand, watching Ty's retreating back. His fingers squeezed in answer.
“En fue! En fue!” Ty called out in French, jostling and pointing through the fracas of at least twenty men. Their blood was up, and they went right on slugging; it was the masterminds who were the first to take notice.
DuFresne caught on first, his neck craning, the dancing flames reflected in the discs of his spectacles. Alix expected him to run, but he backed into the fighting, unperturbed. When he was nothing more than a hand and papers above the swearing, straining men, DuFresne waved his prize at Silas, who swore furiously. In a final coup, DuFresne disappeared out into the night. She was torn between relief and anger that he’d got away.
Something stung her cheek, and she looked up once more. Smoke filled space between the timbers overhead, fire roiling back on itself in a hungry inferno, then fanning lower in a spray of hot ash.
“We can’t wait any longer!” Spencer sprang to a crouch, casting about wildly for something. “Alexandra, get behind these crates and stay put. Those bastards are both going to get away, and we still can't get out past this mob.”
Nodding, Alix pressed behind the boxes and peered out just enough to follow Spencer’s path.
He ran for Ty, who was ducking and weaving the blows of a man twice his size with impressive dexterity. Watching their exchange, she grasped Spencer’s caution: if Ty tried running now, the man fighting him would give halfhearted chase, and then turn his efforts to a target closer at hand. If she ran through the fighting, men on both sides would make a grab for her, pursue her.
A groan started somewhere farther back in the warehouse, a single deep report which peaked as several shrill protests. Ships and wharves made a similar sound; it was the cry of creaking wood. The first timber crashed into shadow, a deafening noise and spray of hellish sparks flying up into the dark. She bent one leg to plant a foot on the floor, braced hands against the dirt and prepared to run. She would take her chances with the crowd, if it came to it.
The men went on fighting, ignoring the peril around them.
Silas had a head start on Spencer, thanks to the fire. She lost sight of him well before Ty had extricated from the mob's center, before Spencer's long strides had put him at its edge. He lumbered between the crates, behind the fighting, and through their fingers.
Heat cracked the glazing of a narrow window above where she'd earlier been kept. The explosion of glass penetrated the hoodlum’s awareness as nothing else had. Shouts went up between the men. A few hung stubbornly from each other’s necks, striking or choking, but in short order they flooded outside.
She stood, catching Spencer's gaze and he nodded: Time to go. Pausing just long enough to snatch up a discarded pistol, Alix grabbed her skirts and ran.
* * *
He came outside nearly shoulder to shoulder with Ty. Van der Verre and DuFresne's men were milling about in a confused mass, being herded by the very English sounding shouts of “Halt for his Majesty's army” and equally English sound of muskets being cocked. Privates had scrambled into position and a half-circle of redcoats two men deep were formed up into a choke point, forcing their adversaries to spill against one another, fold on themselves, and, finally, to surrender. Any fight they might have had in them drained at the sight of three dozen cocked muskets. Hands were already up, and iron shackles clanged from soldiers' belts as they detained both sets of men. Spencer searched the crowd as he emerged from the smoky darkness. Of course, Silas and DuFresne were nowhere to be found.
“What did I tell you?” panted Ty, drawing up next to him. “I told you the army would be here.”
Only Burrell could reasonably get away with jokes at a time like this. “General Webb was correct,” said Spencer. “You do have a keen imagination.”
Farther down the docks, Spencer could hear a bell's anxious chime and the cries of a fire brigade, too late now to do much more than pour water on a smoking foundation. “Thank God we decided to run when we–” he turned, reaching for Alix to share his relief. There was nothing behind him but empty space, all the way to the warehouse.
He lunged for the freight door, circled now by a hungry wreath of flame. He was an arm’s length away when it slammed shut. A rusted latch thudded from the inside while he gripped its iron handle, pulling fruitlessly. Panic gripped him. “Alexandra!” He drove a boot into the stout planks, ignoring chunks of burning wood that seared his hands and face. “Alexandra!”
Why had he run out ahead of her? A distant, rational voice reminded him that they hadn’t known that the army was waiting outside, and that sending Alix out into two groups of hostile, armed men would not have improved matters. He’d made a split second decision, and it had been wrong. If she was hurt, or worse…
Those were thoughts of his rational mind. His primal, animal mind, the one in charge now, hungered to maim, squeeze, crush. He fought the door, channeling his anger and fear into every wild kick.
Ty's hand gripped his coat. He expected the major to try and stop him, and started to wrestle away until Ty waved a hand. “Around the side!” Splitting the air with a whistle, Ty swirled his hand at soldiers. “Keep working on this goddamn door!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Alix writhed against the dirt, struggling to pull air into starving lungs.
That damned walking stick. She had recognized its shape hooking her ankle a split second too late. It hadn't occurred to her that Silas would have the cunning, the guts to lie in wait. She’d counted on his sense of self-preservation to take him away from the fray, but obviously his hatred had won out.
Silas had closed and locked the door. Outside, men beat at it violently, making no real headway. It was solid oak, and she didn't believe them capable of budging it. Worse, the efforts of their shoulders brought down more searing ash, leaving her no choice but to get up and move further into the burning building, struggling to conceal her pistol in the folds of her coat.
Silas smirked at her, back to the door, and knocked two sets of crates with his walking stick, crates set at an angle to the exit. “I realized I didn't need his pages.” Silas tipped his cane to her chest, menacing her with its silver lion, a pistol dangling from his other hand. “I have the means to craft more.”
Spencer was safe; she would sign anything now, anything he wanted. The contract would be a short lived one, when her husband finally caught him. “You can have it, if you let me go. Open the door; I'll sign all the pages you want.”
A whoosh seared her back, sucking air from the room and leaving her face and hands hot and dry. Timbers popped, and smoke invaded their small pocket.
“And all those soldiers outside will let us go?” He shook his head. “I'm no fool.”
“Us?”
“Yes, us! You authorized the sale of Paton's ships to French spies. I have half the evidence and DuFresne has the other.” Cold dark eyes caught the flames rising behind her, demonic.
“Tell them whatever you like. You'll still hang, and like Paulina, it's better than you deserve.”
His scream was a reeking cloud of hot breath propelling unintelligible words into her face. “She never betrayed me! Never,” he panted. “She kept you and your imbecile brother obedient. Managed the books. She did precisely what I told her with the poisons. I forgive her.” He slumped, eyes half closed as though he would fall asleep. “For getting herself caught. I forgive her now. Your father, he betrayed me.” Silas's eyes snapped open, voice rasping at the smoke. “I have never forgiven him. His enterprise, his seed.” He leaned into her face again, eyes wild, whispering through trembling lips. “I had to be patient though, so patient. Your sisters were the only ones who ate the cakes, you see. But that was all right. I decided you could wait, could be of use before I took care of you.”
Sisters? Despite the inferno, her body and mind went calm, all emotion but one evaporating. His words were a string, a tripwire, closing the world to anything but hatred. They snapped up her arm, drew back her finger. Powde
r smoke stung her cuts and burned in her nose before Alexandra comprehended that his face was gone, some of it now painting hers. His lifeless body fell to its knees, then the floor. Crimson pooled from shattered bits matted in his wiry hair, soaking the dirt.
Nothing came to her, no emotion touched her as she stood over the man who had terrorized her and ruined so many lives. She worried for her baby, harmed by the poisons they’d forced into her. She thought of Chas, reduced to a shell of a man. Even Paulina, whose only crime, at first, was that she’d been born to the monster lying lifeless now before her. And she thought of herself, and Spencer, and the wonder they’d found in each other, almost snuffed out. At what she’d been forced to do to survive. Grief gripped her heart, at what Silas had done to her family, and what he’d forced her to do.
Grief, and rage.
She jerked the walking stick out from under his bulbous frame, raising it high with every intention of smashing what remained of his skull. She stood there a moment, frozen. First in a trickle, then a flood, Alix recalled where she was. That the tears trickling her cheeks were more from the smoke than anything else now, that the warehouse rocked and caved behind her. A fluttering in her belly, faint and maybe even borne of desperate imagination, reminded her of what was at stake, insisting that it was time to go. She brought the lacquered wood down onto her knee, snapping it in two and throwing them atop Silas's corpse.
Flames raced over the door. Thoughtless and desperate now, she grabbed the iron bale, crying out and pulling her scalded fingers away. Alix wriggled from her coat, wrapping both hands in its plush fabric, and grasped the lock. It scraped, then stuck, refusing to budge in either direction. Heated metal had expanded against itself, and there was no way to open it. Coughing violently as flaming roof fell in against the sidewalls, Alix searched the fire-lit room for another exit and refused to accept a growing truth: she was trapped.
* * *
He raced ahead of Ty, along the warehouse’s north side. They tugged coats up over their heads against a rain of ash and hot soot. The roar of flames was deafening, and something exploded inside the warehouse, cargo or a crumbling section of its roof. Ty propped a ladder they’d scrounged beneath a lone section of wall nearly halfway down, where flames licking through the eaves had yet to spread lower.
Toes braced for all he was worth on the ladder's top rung, Spencer leaned into the window. Sucking in a breath, he pulled back, hacking at smoke and seared lungs, face burning from the inferno inside. “Alexandra!” he cried, forcing himself to lean further.
“Spencer! I'm here!”
His heart stopped at the sound of her voice, relief a torrent in his mind. “Alix, get up on these crates! Hurry!” Planks against his chest creaked and began to buckle. Ty, steadying the base of the ladder, called out a warning. “Make time, Reed! We have flames at the ground.”
“I can't see you!” called Alix, voice sounding farther away than before.
“This way! Keep coming! Feel for the draft!” He kept calling out instructions, encouragement; anything to lead her through the smoke. At last, there was a stomping sound below, punctuated by worryingly harsh coughing. “Climb as high as you can,” he ordered, peering through the haze.
“The crates are on fire!” her words were desperate.
He leaned further through the window, risking buckling wood. “Climb as fast as you can!”
The top of her head appeared, and she looked up at him. Time froze for a second as he took her in, her beautiful face spattered with blood from her from neck to hairline. Black bits clung to her cheek and temple. She was alive, and she was here. Still, his relief was tempered by fear. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she panted, wiping a path through blood and soot with her sleeve. “No, just pull me up.”
“Both hands.” He leaned in as far as he dared, already precarious on the rickety ladder. He grasped her wrists, praying his dry hands would compensate for her wet ones. “Push off as hard as you can on three.” The warehouse shook. “Nevermind, go!”
She pushed hard with her legs and inertia got her over the sill to the waist, but at that point her belly halted progress. She turned sideways and he moved down a rung, pulling. He repeated the process over an achingly long expanse of the ladder until Alexandra could finally swing her legs around and follow him down.
The walls heaved. A gust rushed past them and fire belched from the window above. Ty's hand pressed his shoulder and they ran for the wharf, his hand in Alexandra’s. He wasn’t sure he’d let go for a long, long time.
Out front, the fire brigade ran buckets to and from the river, lobbing pail after pail on a hopelessly blazing warehouse that was imploding faster by the second. Across the way, soldiers were prodding off the last of DuFresne's men.
Ty gripped Alexandra's arm. “Van der Verre?”
Her face hardened in a way Spencer had never seen, not even when discussing Paulina. For a moment it seemed she would remain silent, but then her expression softened, and she simply looked exhausted. “Not enough left to go in for, if that's what you're asking.”
Ty's nod was grim, and Spencer caught the pat-pat of his hand on Alix's back. “No DuFresne, either. Though I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again.” Then he tipped his chin at shadows past them down the docks. “Here he is.”
Ethan materialized from the darkness, a face between black hat and coat, eyes piercing the activity around him.
Spencer brushed knuckles over Alexandra's cheek. “We have words with each other. Wait here.” He released her hand, breaking the promise to himself already.
Ty, understanding that ‘wait here’ meant ‘don't follow,’ took Alix gently by the arm and led her towards fresh air near the river while she barked out a ragged cough.
Ethan tipped his hat. “Reed. Glad to see all's well.”
“I've a mind to cock you here and now, Grayfield.”
Ethan removed his hat entirely. “Then do so. I want no hard feelings between us.”
Spencer relaxed his fist, swatting the air, mindful of all Ethan had done since the trial. “How long did you know? Tilton waiting on the street, Burrell conveniently at hand when he is never made available by Whitehall. Do me the courtesy of at least telling me how long you were planning this.”
Sighing, Ethan moved to a stone ledge bordering a narrow jetty, sat, and placed his hat just so atop the wall. “When you came to me with accusations against Mrs. Paton, naturally I began to dig. Always digging.” He shrugged at the phrase, tacit acknowledgment that it had stuck of late. “I kept that up until I found what you'd asked for. And then, as is my wont, I continued. It was mentioned to John that Paulina handled many of the documents for both companies, but Charles Paton's name was on the scant few papers they'd produced since they’d arrived in England. They were meaningless papers, too. He has a terrible head for business.”
“Hm.” Temper simmering, he joined Ethan on the wall, watching men stab down the warehouse with their pikes.
“Isn't it odd that such a controlling woman allowed her husband to take the reins, and then for him to do so little?”
He began to comprehend. “Silas had already made arrangements with DuFresne.”
Ethan smacked his thigh with a gloved hand. “So he had. A deal with the enemies of a free France. And for an obscene amount of money, too. Silas kept Chas Paton occupied, too busy to note larger dealings, and believing that a sudden increase in revenue was nothing more than the fruits of his labor here in England.” Ethan made an airy whistle between pursed lips. “Silas would take on Paton's sleek new ships, and sell Van der Verre's old hulks to the revolutionaries. Dutch merchant ships trolling up and down the European coastline. Who would bat an eye?”
“Trolling doing what, exactly?”
A shrug. “Let's say 'information', and keep it at that.”
He gave up prying for anything but bland details from Ethan. “Paton & Son would cease to exist. Chas and Alexandra would lose their shares and their father's company.”
“Just laid out like a dinner menu?”
Ethan huffed a laugh. “No. Encrypted, God bless her, and with an old French code. Clearly she had no idea who would be searching her rooms.”
Something still dug at him, something he could not let rest. “I'm still not clear on you using my wife as bait for Van der Verre.”
“He wrote Paulina during the trial, making it clear he was coming to England. He seemed to think Lawrence would stall and that he could buy Symonds. That she would still be here and he could coach her.”
“And?”
“And my men never saw him arrive, or take lodgings. It wasn't even he who claimed Paulina's body. But I knew he was here by the movement of others around him, like ripples in a pond. A female acquaintance of DuFresne's arrived in town, a countess from Germany. Merchant sailors with French accents who didn't seem to belong to any particular vessel milling about in random places. Chas Paton went to ground and he couldn't be flushed out.”
He understood now, but his simmering anger hadn’t cooled at the realization. “And you knew from the documents I gave you that Silas would need Alexandra to close the deal he’d made. I still don't see why you couldn't at least tell me.”
“I think you do, Spencer.” Ethan stood and claimed his hat. “You know that is just not how my business is transacted.” He placed his hat back atop his head. “God save the king.”
Cryptic son of a bitch. He had come to blows with Bennet over less, but Ethan was not the sort of man one crossed so easily.
Spencer stood and offered Ethan his hand. “A decade of friendship can weather a great deal. Even so, don't use my wife again.”
“Would it comfort you to know that I had a man on her almost the whole time? His only error was intervening when Chas accosted her outside the drapers. My agent assumed that she was safe once inside the carriage.”