“Susan, have you seen my book?”
“Your book, madam?” Susan squinted at her across the top of a pile of freshly laundered chemises.
“My book. You know the one. The one I don’t want Lady Margaret to see.”
“Isn’t it there, where you usually keep it?”
Fury prayed for calmness. The book represented years of dirty-little-secret gathering. Everything in fact that gave her leverage. And the drawer was empty except for a few hairpins, some scraps of paper, and the key for some cabinet or other. How could it be empty? Look again, the voice in her head whispered.
“You mean you haven’t packed it?”
“Madam, I wouldn’t touch it. Not with some of the stuff in that.”
That was just it. Not just leverage. But safety. No matter what she felt about the dubiety of what she did, that book was vital. It was vital now to her very survival. Not just a barkeeper’s daughter from Jamaica, masquerading in society as something she wasn’t. A barkeeper’s daughter from Jamaica, with a child in her womb that had been conceived under highly unusual circumstances.
Of all the years she had feared discovery, surely this moment was the worst.
“But I assure you, Lady Margaret’s not been in here.” Susan set the chemises down on the bed and crossed the floor to look for herself. “I’ve kept tabs on her.”
Panic rose and swamped. “Then who?”
“Now, just think a moment, madam, if maybe you took it out yourself and maybe, just maybe, misplaced it, as can happen, even with something so valuable as that book is to you.”
“No.”
“And especially the house as it is just now. Everything topsy-turvy.”
“I assure you, no matter how topsy-turvy. I have been a little busy. A little preoccupied. But that book and all the letters and things that were in it, the things I’ve paid for, isn’t something I’d let vanish from my sight.”
“All right then. Just think when you were last in that drawer.”
“Last in that—” Fury did think about when last someone was in that drawer. Or rather, who. She shut her eyes and tried to banish the thought from her mind. It was stupid of her.
“Flint was the last one in there.”
“Well, there you go then, madam,” Susan spoke in that way she always did. As if there were no difference between the house falling down or winning a hundred lire. “Problem solved.”
“But Flint didn’t have it. I was there—”
But the thought thudded, as loudly as her heart: He didn’t have it then. Was it coincidence he returned here that night, took his pleasure, and then departed? With her book?
In the glass she saw herself whiten, the color seeping down from her face as if someone had pulled a plug on it and washed it all away. In fact, as if it were hemorrhaging.
The room and all its contents seemed to shrink. Even Susan’s fussing sounded far away. She had kept the recollection of that night pressed like a flower in the leaves of her memory. And he, just like before, had…had…
She thought she would fall, what surged through her body was so devastating. Like a roaring tide.
“Madam, are you all right?”
She barely managed to speak. “Fine.”
“It’s just…you don’t look it.”
“Yes.”
“Madam…” Susan moved toward her.
“No! I don’t want to sit down.” She clawed a breath into her tortured lungs. What was she doing, when Susan had been so kind, had rescued her that day on the wharf, after she had sat there for hours? She had even taken Fury to her brother’s inn. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t speak to you like that. I just—”
Susan’s cool hand clasped Fury’s arm. “Madam, listen to me. That book will turn up, I’m sure.”
Like the bad doubloon?
She straightened, the terrified pounding in her heart blocking out everything else. Even the consideration of how bad this must be for the baby.
“Perhaps.”
But she knew pigs would encircle the Lanterna first. On beautiful gilded wings.
She need make no mistake.
She would never forgive Flint for this.
Chapter Thirteen
Fury stared at the rain gleaming down the uneven glass of the café window, obscuring almost all of the bustling harbor front. Not that Fury felt able to take in much of her surroundings. It had taken Lady Margaret less than a minute to recommence berating her. The instant they sat down in fact. Something about a delay finding a porter.
“Of course, it is all my fault, Mama.”
After all, they had traveled for over five months across France. Most things were.
A wonder though Lady Margaret hadn’t just boarded the bags herself, the rest of the Julie-Anne’s supplies too, then piloted the vessel across the sea to Dover, fanning it there with her large black ostrich feather fan. It would have been nothing to a woman of her sterling capabilities.
“Did I say that?”
“A first, then,” Fury murmured to herself, smoothing a tendril of damp hair back from her forehead.
“You said something?”
“No, dearest, Mama. Certainly not of interest.”
Ignoring Susan’s flicker of amusement, she raised the coffee cup to her lips. She longed to lie down. Perhaps even fall asleep before the ship set sail. After the nightmare of the last five months, the thought of getting on a boat made the gorge rise in her stomach. She would be sick again, she knew it. As she had for almost every day of the past seven months. Like its father, this baby caused nothing but trouble. Still, they were here now at Calais. Soon she would be at Ravenhurst.
“It is just taking so long.” Lady Margaret set up an indignant gust from her fan. “We do not need another delay. We should have been home weeks ago.”
“My fault too, I am sure.”
“I am sure some women cannot help being burdens.”
Fury shuddered, feeling the tiny kick of life inside her. Maybe it was because she was past this now, but Fury did not care what she said to Lady Margaret. After what Flint had done to her over five months ago, was it any wonder?
She didn’t want this baby. There were times when she hated it. It was not the baby’s fault. It was hers for almost believing him. Where she would be now, had she been stupid enough to run off with him, was the least of it. His use of her that last night, to get that book, had emptied her soul.
She hoped he rotted in hell with it. As for what grew inside her—a means to an end, wasn’t it? To think she had worried about Flint. Never once that night had she thought he had come to hurt her.
Fury set the coffee cup down. “I tell you what, Mama, I will go and sort this out.”
“In your condition?”
Fury rose to her feet. She could not face another glowing report on when Lady Margaret had been pregnant with Thomas. How robust she had been and what a shoddy weakling Fury was by comparison. Lying about in bed, dying, half the day. Her head in some basin, bucket, sink, or other. For months now. If she heard that she would do something silly, like tell the woman this wasn’t a first pregnancy.
And all she had suffered with that one had been a broken heart.
“I don’t see why not. It’s not catching, is it?”
“But that man who examined our papers was adamant we wait here, until he sent for us. You cannot wander a dock, like some…some common creature—”
Fury knew she meant hussy and suppressed a bitter smile. If only she knew. The docks she had wandered on and why.
“—bringing the Beaumont name into great disrepute.”
That too.
“Already, I have found your behavior with that Captain Ames to be exceedingly questionable.”
“Only exceeding, Mama? I would have thought—”
“He carried you up the stairs.” Lady Margaret fanned herself harder, as if something in the memory made her hot enough to faint. “Fortunately that was in Genoa.”
“That’s normal there.
May I remind you, since it seems you have forgotten, I was indisposed and Susan was present? I am sure she would have seen if there had been anything unseemly going on.”
How strange. Even the recollection that Flint had opened the neck of her gown raised no flicker of heat with her.
“That is as it may be. I insist you stay here and raise no more gossip about yourself.”
“In my condition I think it’s most unlikely I would be taken as a whore. At least, I doubt any man would want to pay for me.”
Susan sprung to her feet, smothering her amusement. “I’ll come with you, madam. The one who examined our papers was more interested in dealing with the Palerna. He’s probably forgotten all about unimportant people like us.”
“I don’t see how.” Lady Margaret fingered her throat, indignant.
“Anything’s possible, Your Ladyship. Madam’s right. You wouldn’t like the Julie-Anne sailing off and us stuck here another fortnight or something?”
“True.”
“Old boot,” Susan whispered the moment the café door clanged shut behind them. “Who does she think she is, talking to you like that?”
“My mother-in-law.” Fury stepped into the cobbled, rain-slicked street.
“I vow I could swing for the old toad myself. Doesn’t she understand how ill you’ve been?”
“She is grateful. Probably for that too.” Fury smiled wanly. “But there is an heir or heiress.”
“You watch she don’t take that off you and do you out the money. There’s never any saying with an old cow like that.”
“There’s never any saying with anyone. Now let us find that man.”
They ducked beneath an archway into a narrow passageway. The stench, despite the rain, of rotting fish guts and sea brine overpowered her. Although the exit stood only a few yards away, Fury delved in her reticule for her handkerchief. “My God, I must have left it in the cafe.”
“Madam, I’m sure I have one.”
“No. It’s—”
Fury didn’t finish. A figure stepped from behind the soaking barrels. She was still drinking in his extraordinary menace when, with a suddenness that defied her, he clamped something across Susan’s mouth.
A handkerchief? Fury’s thoughts slowed in bemusement. Why did he have the very thing she didn’t? Had he somehow taken it from her to place it over Susan’s mouth, behind which she made wild, protesting sounds? And—oh good Lord—what was that across her own?
She tried to jerk her head around to see who held her. But she had walked too fast and lost her breath. So the one she gasped was deeper than she had meant to take. The white muffling handkerchief was her last clear, conscious thought as the acrid smell sank into her throat, then down into her lungs.
* * *
A voice pierced Fury’s consciousness.
“Madam! Madam! Please, God, wake up. Please. Please. We need, we need to—”
What they needed to do was lost in the maelstrom rising about her. Actually, the maelstrom didn’t just rise about her. It heaved. She had never felt sicker in her life. As if she swayed over mid-ocean. Except even in mid-ocean she had never felt as though she were sick and drowning. With an effort she pried an eye open. Then she pried the other.
“My God, Susan.” Seeing the familiar, if somewhat blurred figure, Fury tried to rise. “What are you—let me lie down again. I’m going to be—”
“Oh, madam, thank God.”
That she was sick? Fury thought not.
“I wouldn’t trouble you.”
Please God, would Susan stop shaking her like this?
“But, madam, you have to wake up. We’ve been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?” Fury sat up, striking her head on a wooden beam. It did nothing for what was in it. Her head that was, although she suspected the beam also suffered.
“Oh, God, madam. We’re on a boat.”
“A boat? How can we be on a boat?” Her voice sounded muzzy. Her tongue felt as if it didn’t belong to her. She tried sticking it out of her mouth to make sure. It tasted so disgusting she pulled it back. No one should breathe that.
“Listen, madam.”
“Hmm?” Battling the awful ache in her forehead, Fury stared. The floor did seem to be swaying. Although the way she’d hit her head, anything would. That beam, the narrow bed, even the smell, what she could discern of it through her clogged throat, were all familiar.
But a boat? How had they come to be on a boat? She didn’t remember, and the way the room swam and swayed didn’t aid her ability to fill the gaps.
“Lady Margaret?”
“Lady Margaret?” Susan shook her harder. It was not a question Fury should ask, obviously. The venom it engendered. “Never mind that old frog. She’s probably the one who’s done this. Oh, madam, please tell me you remember. That alleyway? And what happened in it?”
It would be nothing exciting in her condition. “The alleyway?”
“Oh, madam, please tell me the baby’s all right.”
“The baby?”
Baby? Was she having a baby?
Fury’s hand edged to her stomach. Sure enough there was a bump. A solid one, and it appeared to be attached to herself. It also appeared to move. At least, something unfurled beneath her skin.
She was pregnant. How revolting. Especially in her current state.
“Oh my God.” She pushed the woolen blanket aside.
“Oh, madam. You remember.” Tears ran down Susan’s cheeks. “And we will get out of here.”
Out of where? They had been at Calais. And now? That handkerchief had been doused in something. Again she stuck her tongue out. Something so horribly mind-numbing, she struggled to fight her way back from it.
“Of course we will.” Although she hadn’t the last idea how.
“You don’t know how scared I’ve been. Wondering who would kidnap us.”
“Who would? It doesn’t make sense. None of it. We can’t have been kidnapped.”
Of course, she was a little ashamed that her first thought was for that and not the baby. But the baby was all right, wasn’t it? A damn sight better than herself right now. She lowered her feet to the creaking wooden floor. And that was as much as she was prepared to give it, the damned trouble it had been and who its disgusting thief of a father was.
“Then why is the door locked, madam?”
“Locked? Don’t be silly. Jammed maybe. But locked?”
“Why is everything swaying?”
So it was, Fury realized, feeling as if her right leg had been chopped short at the knee with the way the floor tilted up to meet it. Locked? Even the way Susan spoke sounded as if she gurgled. For a second Fury thought she’d misheard. Locked was too horrible to contemplate. Why would the door be locked?
“I’m sure it’s a mistake. Lady Margaret wouldn’t do this to us.”
“Why wouldn’t she if she knows about Thomas?”
“Because she’d have done it already.”
“What if she means to have us thrown over the side? Or—”
“Now you’re being silly. Get out the way. Lady Margaret would do no such thing, no matter how much she hates me.”
It was a consideration of course. But one Fury refused to accept, although the door…was locked. From the outside. She drew back as if it had bitten her.
“You see. Madam, what if it’s white slavery?”
“White, what?”
“You read about these things all the time.”
Fury grasped the door handle and shook it. Not in her book you didn’t. Although she wondered at her maid’s choice of literature. She’d never have marked Susan down for such salacious nonsense. Yet, she supposed it made an interesting change from Susan reading her book’s secrets. And of course now her book was gone it would give Susan something.
“Open the door.” She hammered on the panel. “Do you hear me? Right this instant.”
“Madam, is that wise?” Susan tried to pull her hand away. “You’ll only bring them in here. And th
en—”
“Then let them come. And welcome.” Fury shouted at the top of her lungs. She was not going to be intimidated by this. Hadn’t she been all over the Caribbean? Parts of it anyway. “Because I’ve things to say to them, whoever they are. Keeping us locked up like this.”
Besides if she did not find her way up on deck she would be sick. And even if she did, she would be sick. It—how could she think of what she carried as otherwise, given who its father was—was awake. She just couldn’t bear to be sick here in this wormhole of a place. It would make it very unpleasant for both of them. She wiped a hand across her mouth.
“Madam, look. The handle. It’s moving.”
“Open the door.” Fury resumed hammering. “Help me, Susan.”
Susan froze. “Madam. I’m not sure this is such a good idea—”
“For God’s sake, will you stop worrying? A maid and a pregnant woman. Just ask yourself, will you? Who is going to want to kidnap either of us?”
It was true, wasn’t it? And it was madness to think otherwise. Unless Lady Margaret hated her so damned much, she planned to sail her some place. Some awful place, until perhaps she gave birth. Susan had wanted her to be careful about that.
But then the door creaked open, bit by bit, forcing Fury to step back. She did so with a prescience of doom that yet only increased her impatience to know the answer.
Then the one man in the world who would want to kidnap a maid and a pregnant woman stood framed by the dim light beyond, satisfying her curiosity.
“Fury, Susan.” Flint strolled into the cabin. Dockside whores, for his perusal. Both of them. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Fury parted her lips. The desire to strike him overwhelmed her so, she clenched her fists. But the waves slapping against the ship’s sides seemed to rise higher all of a sudden. And that wasn’t all that rose up. She tried covering her mouth but—
“I just don’t know how you dare face me.” She wished the contents of her stomach were not spattered down his shirtfront. Except he had drugged her with some foul-tasting concoction, so there was no hope of that wish being granted.
It was just Flint always became derogatory about things like that. How could she have given him the advantage when she needed to face him on an equal footing?
The Unraveling of Lady Fury Page 22