“But—the pawnbrokers,” said Rosalind distastefully.
“Never recovered the ring. I gave it up for lost, and rather forgot about it.” He paused, wishing now that he had just let it go. If he hadn’t gone looking for the bloody ring, none of this would have happened. “But we went after it, and not only did we find the Black Duke, Bow Street found him, too. And in the uproar, they took Vivian away with the rest of the highwaymen, one of whom is her brother. They are headed for Newgate, and will probably be hanged in short order. And that is the sum of my latest, pudding-headed, scrape.”
“Oh, David,” she said after a moment, her voice full of dismay. He threw up one hand to stop her.
“It is my fault. All mine. I have led a woman to her death. I ought to have let Bow Street arrest me. It would have been better that way.” He closed his eyes. “I took her to the theater because she’d never been. She was enchanting that night, delighted by everything.”
He let his head fall back, staring bleakly at the ceiling. Rosalind murmured a few words, and then mercifully left him. Even she didn’t feel sorry for him anymore. David was glad.
For a while he just sat, staring blindly upward. His head hurt. It felt as though a drum had begun beating inside his skull, urging him on toward something. He must do something. He just didn’t know what.
With a lurch he flung himself off the sofa. He strode through the hall and out of the house, through the streets until he reached his own house. He climbed the steps, feeling a twinge in his bad leg again, only to almost run into Anthony Hamilton, just departing.
“Reece.” Hamilton bowed his head, his sharp eyes taking in David’s rough clothing. “I called to see how the excursion ended.”
“It’s not ended.” David led the way inside, Hamilton following. Hobbs took his guest’s hat and gloves again, as well as David’s own cap, without a word. Limping slightly, David made his way to his drawing room, taking a seat in front of the fire with a small grimace of relief.
“What remains?” Hamilton took the opposite seat, helping himself to a glass of brandy from the tray still sitting on a nearby table. “You said the excursion is not yet ended.”
“We found the Black Duke.”
Hamilton’s eyebrow arched. “Excellent work. I rated that possibility at only one chance in three.”
“The Bow Street horse patrol also found him, at the same moment.”
“Ah.” Hamilton sat back. “Who would have thought it.”
“Beastly timing,” David agreed. “It could hardly have been worse. And in the excitement, they took Vivian away with the rest of the highwaymen.”
“The rest of the highwaymen,” repeated Hamilton, laying a slight stress on the second word. “Yes, I see now.”
“Yes, yes, she’s a thief,” David said impatiently. “Or she was. How else was she to survive? If you say prostitution, I shall cut your throat.” Hamilton merely smiled and shook his head. “Now they’ve gone and taken her off to Newgate, or will in the morning, and I’ve got to think of a way to get her free.”
“Pose as your brother again,” suggested Hamilton. “Exeter could get a murderer out of Newgate.”
David grunted. “No.”
“Why not?” asked his friend in mild surprise. “Ought to be easy enough to do.”
“Enough people know he’s on the Continent.” David continued to scowl at the fire. Vivian certainly wouldn’t have a fire tonight, nor the soft feather mattress he knew she adored. “And I don’t like it.”
“What has that got to do with anything?” There was a clink of crystal as Hamilton poured himself more brandy. “Do you want the girl or not?”
David did. He wanted the girl more than anything he had ever wanted before, and he was mortally afraid he would fail her, when he was her only chance. But he didn’t want to pose as his brother again. He’d only done that once when it mattered, and it had almost gotten him killed. He couldn’t afford that this time, for Vivian’s sake; he was her only hope. The burden of that phrase sat on David’s head, and heart, like a giant boulder. He couldn’t recall any other moment in his life when he had felt such a responsibility, and such a helplessness regarding it. “I’ll have to think of another way,” he muttered.
Anthony Hamilton leaned back, stretching his legs out toward the hearth. “Bribery? Trickery? A prison break? What other choices do you have?”
David frowned at the implication. “It has to be legal,” he said. “I can’t get her out, only to have the Runners swarm London looking for her. We’d both end up in Newgate, and as you have already pointed out with exceedingly helpful clarity, Marcus is hundreds of miles away and unable to save my neck yet again.”
“Indeed,” said Hamilton in tones of wounded surprise. “It seems to me then you might as well just walk into the place and ask for her back.”
David’s scowl slowly eased. The instinctive rude retort faded from his lips. Like an oracle from on high, a plan sprang to life in his mind. He’d been thinking too hard, he realized; the best plan was not complicated, but very, very simple. He thought quickly, trying to catch any fatal flaws before he committed himself to a course of action, but didn’t see one. There were flaws, to be sure, but none fatal—he thought. He hoped. He didn’t really have much time to think of something better, but he must use his head this time. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I think I might just do that.”
Chapter Twenty
Vivian sat on the floor, curled into the corner of the holding cell. She, Simon, and Flynn were locked in a small, filthy country jail, apparently for the night. The constables and the horsemen, who were, she believed, from Bow Street, had departed in a roaring chorus of self-congratulation, no doubt for the local pub. Vivian had feared they would be taken straight to Newgate and hanged at the dawn, but this was only slightly better. The floor was wet, and she could hear the wretched scratching of mice nearby. She thought they were at the other end of the narrow room, in the pile of straw covered with a thin blanket that passed for a bed. She refused to go near it. After so many nights in a warm soft bed and no mice to be seen or heard, she preferred the hard cold floor to that vermin-infested straw.
She wondered where David was, and what he was doing. When they locked the irons on her wrists and ankles, then tossed her onto the wagon like a hog for market, she hadn’t been able to look back, not wanting to feel the shame of being seen like that. Now she wished she had. It might be the last she ever saw of David, and she oughtn’t to have let pride steal those last few glimpses from her. She closed her eyes against the squalor of her current situation and tried to summon up the memory of last night instead. Last night, when she had been warm and secure and loved.
“Viv?” She opened her eyes at the soft query. Simon sounded tired and worried. She scrambled across the floor to the wall that divided the holding cells, and ran her fingers over it, looking for a hole. “Are you there?” His voice cracked. “Are you awake?”
“I’m here,” she whispered back, locating a seam where mortar had crumbled away between the bricks. “Are you hurt?”
His sigh was faint through the wall. “Not compared to what comes next.” Vivian shuddered. There was a scuffling on the other side. “Viv?” he asked, slightly louder. “What are they going to do with us?”
She ground her teeth together, thinking about what to say. Her heart ached for him; he sounded scared, but he was trying to be brave. She had failed them both, but especially him. Simon never would have joined Flynn’s band if she hadn’t brought him into it when he was a boy. And if she had managed to escape David’s house earlier, she might have found her brother and warned him of the danger and gotten him away. “I don’t know, Si,” she said at last, hating that she had nothing else to say. If only David…But no. What could he possibly have done?
He was quiet for a long moment. “Where’ve you been, Viv?” he finally asked. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the wall. The stone was rough and cold. “That bloke, he was on the other job, wa
sn’t he,” Simon went on when she said nothing. “The one I hit. The time I knocked you down.” His voice cracked again, in anguish. “He caught you, didn’t he?”
Vivian sighed. “In a way,” she said softly. Caught her, and caught her heart. “He’s a good sort,” she added, not wanting Simon to worry. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, Viv,” her brother whispered back. “If I hadn’t been such a sapskull, I wouldn’t have taken his ring. You were right, I shouldn’t have done it. Aw, Viv, I’ve gone and got us all killed!”
“Simon, it was a small mistake, and you haven’t gotten us killed,” she said firmly. “We’re still talking, aren’t we? Dead people don’t talk, so we can’t be dead.” Whether that would still be true tomorrow, she wasn’t sure, and didn’t mention. “It doesn’t matter now that you took his ring.” She paused. “Flynn’s got it, I expect? What happened after I…left?”
“Aye, Flynn kept the ring,” said Simon. “He fancied it, you see? So he took to wearing it, and admiring it…Well, you always knew he weren’t too clever, but he started telling people he was a duke’s bastard, a proper gentleman, just on the wrong side of the blanket. Crum, he didn’t care, because Flynn took to paying for ale and such when he was wearing that ring.”
“What did he do to you?” she wanted to know.
“Nothing he hadn’t done before,” said Simon, avoiding the question. “It didn’t matter. I was sore sick about you, though. I feared the bawds had got you, or you’d been murdered by some ruffian. And Flynn wouldn’t let me go to look for you, nor would he send Crum. He said you’d run off and taken the profit for yourself and we were well rid of you.” In spite of herself Vivian scowled. She and Simon might end on the gallows, but at least Flynn would, too. It was cold comfort, but solace nonetheless to her vengeful heart. Simon’s voice dropped. “I missed you, Viv.”
Guilt speared her. “I missed you, too,” she replied, trying not to think about the theater, the long days exploring David’s library, the long nights spent in David’s bed.
“So that cull,” he said, homing in on the topic she didn’t know how to discuss. “He didn’t hurt you, you say; what did he do?”
Thinking hard, and trying not to grow maudlin at the same time, Vivian shifted. Tiny feet skittered nearby, and she sprang back to her feet, shaking out her skirts before kneeling down by the crack in the wall again. “He caught me trying to sell the goods, and said he wouldn’t let me go until I returned his ring.” But then he had let her go. At any time in the last fortnight, Vivian knew she could have walked out of the house, and he wouldn’t have stopped her…or at least not on account of his ring.
“So why’d you turn up on the stage with him?” Simon asked.
Vivian sighed. “It’s complicated, Simon.”
“You let him hump you, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
Vivian bristled. “Don’t you speak to me like that! Mind your tongue, Simon!”
“It’s true, isn’t it,” he shot back. “When they put the irons on you, he argued with the charleys. A man don’t argue over a filching mort for no reason.”
“Well, he’s gone now, and it’s not your concern,” she said, brutally putting down the small thrill of happiness that David had made some effort to help her. But of course there had been nothing he could do.
“It would’ve been bloody useful to have his help,” Simon mumbled. “A flash cove like that ought to have the ready to spring us.”
“Aye, and why should he? So you can hit him again?”
“I wouldn’t knock him around if he got us out of here,” Simon retorted. Then he heaved a sigh. “I’m just…Well, I’m not scared, you ken; just a bit nervous, is all.”
Vivian gave a dry laugh. “I’m scared.”
There was a pause. “You are?”
“Bloody scared enough to cry,” she admitted. “It’s my fault you’re here, Si. Mum told me to look out for you, and look where I brought you. Into a gang of no-account ruffians without enough wits to rob a coach properly. And now…Well, I haven’t got a plan just yet, but I don’t know what to do. Flynn went and made certain they’d be quick to tie the hangman’s rope, and I don’t know how to stall them until I can think of a way out.” She sighed. “So, aye, I’m scared.”
A long silence was her only answer. Vivian leaned against the wall, exhausted. What was the point in consoling Simon when she really didn’t see any hope for them? In all the tight spots she’d ever been in, Vivian had always refused to give in to the despair and panic. That only ensured a bad ending. So long as she kept her calm and her wits, she always thought she had a chance—until now. She was tired. Her brain felt sluggish and fogged. She’d gotten soft, sleeping in a warm, cozy bed, because now she felt stiff and cold and so miserable she wanted to cry. Something ran across the toe of her shoe, and she kicked it in frustration. Let the ruddy mice wait until she was actually dead before they nibbled at her.
“Where’s Flynn?” she whispered, when she couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “Si?” Nothing. “Simon?”
“He’s in another cell,” mumbled her brother. She heard a faint snuffle. “He’s likely proud, being treated like a real duke, and all…” Vivian wanted to laugh, incredibly. “He was talking at me through the wall for a bit, but he’s sound asleep now,” Simon went on. “I can hear him snoring.”
Just like always. She shook her head. “What about Crum?”
“Don’t know. He took off like a rabbit, didn’t he?” Simon gave a shaky, choking laugh. “Back to Alice, probably.”
That was fine with Vivian. If the constables never caught Crum, she wouldn’t care. Alice needed him. At least they all wouldn’t suffer for Flynn’s idiocy. “Get some sleep, Simon,” she said gently.
“What for?” He snuffled again, and her heart clenched. He was crying. “I expect we’ll get enough sleep tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that.”
Another truth she couldn’t counter. She hunched her shoulders and propped herself against the wall more securely. When the mice ran past again, she didn’t move.
It looked bleak indeed. She at least had had a taste of heaven before the end; her poor brother had not.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” she whispered again. “So sorry.”
More sniffles, and a scraping noise. “Me, too, Viv,” came her brother’s voice, a little louder than before. “Me, too.”
Chapter Twenty-one
David found the Moresham jail without much difficulty. He pulled up his horse, and Harris, the Exeter coachman, brought the Exeter town coach in all its lumbering glory to a halt behind him. David had judged it a necessary part of the show he intended to put on, but couldn’t bear to be trapped inside it. He studied the building that held Vivian. It was an old dingy building with stone walls and small windows. It was certain to be damp and cold inside. David dismounted, handing the reins to one of the footmen who sprang off the back of the coach. He glanced at the man climbing down from the coach.
“Do you remember what we discussed?”
Mr. Adams shook his head eagerly. “Yes, sir. Every word.”
“Good.” David took a deep breath. “Let’s to it, then.”
He paused in front of the coach, tugging at his gloves. Adams handed him a walking stick. Then David walked up to the door of the jail and began rapping as loudly as he could.
After several minutes it opened, revealing a pudgy, yawning constable scratching his belly. “What the bloody hell do you want?” he complained. His barely-open eyes were bloodshot and his breath reeked of ale. David judged it had been a night of celebration.
“You are the constable, I presume.” David leaned elegantly on his walking stick.
The man blinked at him a few more times. “Aye, sir, that I am, sir. Constable Chawley.”
“Excellent.” David made no attempt to hurry things along, letting his appearance and manner work on the fellow. The man’s eyes flitted around, taking in the heavy town coach, the liveried footme
n, and Adams standing a respectful step behind David. He noticed the man’s eyes lingering on one point for a moment; the crest on the coach door, no doubt. The constable’s throat worked, and he gave a little bow.
“How can I serve you, sir?”
David arched one brow. “Must I discuss it on the front step?”
Chawley jumped. “Aye! I mean, nay. Right this way, sir.” He held the door open and David strolled inside, Adams at his heels. Chawley trotted around in front of them, hitching up his trousers as he went, and showed them into a small office.
David took a seat without waiting to be invited. Chawley, now flushed, repeated his earlier question. “How can I serve you, sir?”
“You have something of mine, I believe.”
The constable’s mouth opened, flapping once, twice, like a fish’s. “I’m sure not, sir,” he said in a tone that was not certain at all.
“A ring,” said David. “Made of gold, bearing my family crest. It was stolen from me in a robbery on the Bromley stage some weeks ago and has not been seen since. Or rather, I have not seen it since. Bow Street informed me a villain…” He paused, head cocked.
“The Black Duke, my lord,” supplied Adams.
David raised his eyes to the ceiling for a moment before focusing on the constable again. “Yes. Just so. This…person has been wearing my ring, calling himself this preposterous name, and then robbing stagecoaches.” He pulled a slight grimace of distaste. “I should like to have it back now.”
The constable’s ruddy color had faded from his pockmarked cheeks. “Ah…well. Erm, right, sir. Could—could you describe the crest?”
David inclined his head again. On cue, Adams stepped forward and drew out a sheet of paper from his folio. “The arms of His Grace the duke of Exeter,” murmured the secretary.
What a Rogue Desires Page 24