by Nicole Byrd
“Mind if I take a turn?” he asked.
The men huddled on their knees on the stone floor glanced up. A couple scowled, but the one who seemed to control the game shrugged. “Let’s see your coin,” he said.
Colin withdrew a few pennies from his pocket and let the man glimpse them. No need to flash too much blunt—he’d have his throat slit before he could leave the place. Then he knelt on the cold flagstones with the other men and accepted the greasy squares of ivory and bone.
He rolled them between his palms, judging just how unbalanced they were—no question as to whether or not this was an honest game—and then tossed them toward the floor. The rough-hewn cubes bounced across the hard surface, and when they stopped, the crowd around him guffawed at the mishmash that showed on the upturned faces of the dice.
“My loss,” Colin agreed without heat. He passed over a penny and surrendered the dice, settling down to bet sparingly and observe closely. By the time the throw came his way again, he had a better idea of who was winning, who was losing—with many curses—and how the dice were being manipulated.
Most of the men appeared to be common laborers, if they were honestly employed at all, but one wore the leather apron of a blacksmith or a farrier. A big burly man with arms knotted with muscle, he had lost every time his calloused fingers touched the dice. By the time Colin picked up the bones again, the smith had already forfeited most of his small cache of coins, and he watched eagerly, hoping for another bad throw from the newcomer.
Colin rolled the dice in his hands, feeling their weight and their balance, and selected the one that was most obviously weighed. He put it down “This one is bad,” he said.
The leader of the game, a thick-set man with scowling dark eyes, snorted. “Poor loser, are you? I’ll take it ill if you cast aspersions on me honor, mate!”
“Then I cast them more easily than I will this weighted die.” Colin met the man’s baleful stare with steady eyes. “I think I’d rather use the other one.”
The men around them muttered.
The thickset man frowned. “What other one?”
“The die in your left pocket,” Colin answered calmly. “The one you’ve been replacing this one with, when it’s your turn to roll.”
“You’ll pay for that—” the scoundrel began, but he didn’t have time to finish.
The other men in the circle growled, and the smith reached for the speaker and gripped him with strong, smoke-blackened hands. “You been cheating us, Grimby? I’ll crack your ’ead like a walnut, I will!”
“No, no, he’s lying—” the man tried to argue, but Colin interrupted with another suggestion.
“Check his left pocket.”
With one wide hand, the smith kept the smaller man firmly in his grasp; with the other, he reached into the pocket indicated and pulled out a small cube of ivory.
“Try rolling with that one,” Colin suggested, his tone pleasant. “I’m sure you will have better luck. You can even take my turn.”
The smith roared and shook the owner of the weighted dice in one hand till the man’s teeth rattled. “You lyin’ cheatin’ whoreson!”
The other men were shouting, too, but it was the smith—his angry glare daring anyone else to dispute his right—who reached to scoop up the cheater’s pile of blunt.
No one else protested, but Colin said, his tone mild, “I’ll not argue over the winnings if you allow me to decide his fate.”
The smith took a moment to think about this, then nodded reluctantly. “Since you cottoned to ’is cheating, I guess that’s fair.”
Face now damp with sweat, the man still gripped in the smith’s big hand stuttered, “I d-didn’t—I wasn’t—”
“Oh, put it by,” Colin advised him. “I’ll deliver you from the beating you so amply deserve for the right price.”
“ ’ow much? ’E just took all me blunt,” the swindler argued.
“I don’t want money, just a nugget or two of information,” Colin told him.
Looking relieved, the man tried to nod without much success—his throat was still caught up in the folds of his coat, which was locked in the blacksmith’s implacable grip. Colin motioned to the blacksmith, who reluctantly lowered the man back to the stone floor and released him.
Pocketing the coins, he cast a baleful eye upon the owner of the dice. “You’d best not show your face in ’ere again,” he told the bonesman, then headed toward the front of the tavern to buy himself a drink. The rest of the circle followed, perhaps hoping for a moment of generosity from their mate.
Left alone, the man rubbed his throat and shivered. “You did me a bad turn, you did,” he said to Colin, his tone resentful.
“I also saved your wretched hide,” Colin reminded him. “You’d have been caught with your loaded dice sooner or later. Now, this is what I want to know.”
A few hours later, Colin was ensconced in the corner of the tavern, nursing only his second mug of ale—he might need a clear head before the night was done—and watching the doorway without seeming to. Eventually, his patience was rewarded. When the small, scrawny man with the dark coat and thinning hair combed across a rapidly balding crown entered, going straight to the counter to order a tankard of brew, Colin felt his pulse quicken.
This was the man, he was sure of it. Temming looked slightly more prosperous than most of the tavern’s habitues, but just as furtive. Glancing around him, he took the mug of ale and gulped it down quickly as if he waited for something.
To Colin’s increased interest, the man behind the counter handed over a slip of paper, and Temming pushed it quickly into an inner pocket of his coat, and only then did he pass over a coin—he must be well-known to the landlord if he did not have to pay before he obtained his brew—and then turned to leave.
He looked around again before he moved toward the door, but Colin’s gaze was on his own mug, his body relaxed despite the pounding of his heart. Colin noted from the corner of his eye as the solicitor’s gaze passed over him without pausing.
Colin waited until Temming had turned his back and pulled open the heavy door, then he stood and strode over the threshold after him.
Colin knew—from the information he had wrung out of the dice player—in which direction to look, and a good thing, too. In the darkness, he could detect only the barest hint of motion as the man’s dark coat blended easily into the blackness. Determined not to lose him after all this, Colin walked even faster.
Temming must have heard the sound of his pursuer’s footfalls. He broke into a scudding run, like a beetle disturbed when one turned over a stone.
Colin ran, too, and his legs were longer and younger. Just as the smaller man ducked into a side alley where he would have disappeared into the blackness, Colin narrowed the distance between them. He reached out and grabbed the back of the man’s coat, jerking him up without regard for his dignity or his thin neck.
“We’ll have just a word, if you please!”
“I didn’t do it!” the little man squealed.
Colin marched him back down the block until they stood in the faint circle of light that slipped past the grimy windows of another tavern, so he could see the man better. Temming’s thin face quivered. He looked so much like a rat caught by the tail that Colin could almost forget how dangerous he truly was.
“And what did you not do?” Colin inquired, his tone icy. “Other than pay a couple of street thugs to put a bullet through my side?”
“T’wasn’t me,” the man insisted. “You got the wrong man.”
“And your name is?”
“Smith,” the man said quickly.
“Really? I believe I have met one of your relatives,” Colin told him. “And you have a card on you with that name engraved upon it, I have no doubt?”
The solicitor hesitated and licked his lips.
“Ah, yes. Perhaps you also answer to the name Temming?”
“Don’t matter, I didn’t do it,” the solicitor repeated sullenly. “You got no pro
of.”
“I suspect that we will find proof enough,” Colin told him. “And if not, at least I can give you a sound thrashing. Let me see that paper you got from the landlord of that vile establishment we were just in.”
Temming’s narrow eyes widened in alarm. “I got no paper!”
It was something significant, then. Colin reached inside the man’s coat with his other hand.
Temming lashed out and delivered a blow that struck the just-healing wound. Colin cursed as pain surged up his side and shoulder, but he kept his grip, and, unable to do much with his weakened arm, ended the man’s brief but frenzied struggle with a swift kick to the back of his shin.
Temming swore. “You’ve broke me bloody leg!”
“Not yet, but that could be arranged. Let’s have it,” Colin said again.
The man quieted. For a moment he looked fearful, then his expression eased into a sly smirk.
Colin had heard it, too, the sound of footsteps behind them, stealthy footsteps coming closer. He frowned, but he maintained his grip.
“Best to let me go,” Temming muttered. “If you want to live another hour.”
Without answering, Colin moved to put his back to the wall of the dwelling behind them, holding the solicitor’s body in front of his. He strained to see past the faint glow of light, and in a moment, made out Temming’s confederate. And, oh, a true pleasure, it was the second man from the encounter in the alley near the Inns.
“Old friends, ain’t we, gov?” the newcomer sneered. He held a cumbersome pistol in one hand, the muzzle pointed straight at Colin’s heart. Despite the smaller man blocking him, the assassin still had a fair shot, and he was too close for his aim to waver. “Me mate was a poor shot, but me bullet won’t go astray. I’ll see you bleedin’ and lifeless in the muck of the street.”
Thirteen
“Oh, I think not,” Colin said, his tone polite. “But you have no idea how happy I am to see you again.”
Startled, the hired killer hesitated an instant, and that was enough.
From the darkness that surrounded them, another voice spoke, deep with purpose and a cool controlled ferocity.
“Put down the pistol—if you wish to live another minute.”
Matthew Fallon stepped into view, and behind him was the Runner who had taken Colin’s message back to the hotel after he’d forced the information out of the dice thrower. The Runner uncovered a lantern. Both were armed, and both guns were held at the ready.
Temming’s face sagged, and the other ruffian looked panic-stricken. He lifted his gun, but Matthew was too quick.
A shot rang out, and it was the thug who slumped this time, against the near wall.
“See to him,” Matthew snapped to the Runner. He stepped forward to reach into the solicitor’s pockets, patting each until he could pull out the paper that Colin had been seeking.
He read it aloud, his tone heavy with disgust. “Fair hair, age ten to fourteen.” He put one hand to the solicitor’s throat. “Procuring, are you? Is that what you did to my sister?”
“No, no,” the other man protested in a muffled voice.
“Tell me the truth, or I will kill you here and now!”
Even Colin, who had witnessed more battlefield violence than he cared to remember, was impressed by the savagery of the captain’s voice.
No wonder that Temming’s voice was little more than a whine. “I swear, I don’t know what you mean.”
“My name is Matthew Fallon—surely you remember me? You were entrusted with my family’s care, empowered to pass on the money I sent home during the war. When my mother died, my sister vanished, and you kept the rest of the funds—you were likely taking a good part of them all along. And shortly after, my sister disappeared from the foundling home to which you sent her. I want to know where she is!” His grip tightened.
“I’m an honest man,” Temming croaked out. “I never—”
“Tell me the truth, damn you!” Matthew thrust him against the building until the man’s head cracked against the wall and his eyes rolled briefly back in his head. “Or I’ll pluck your heart out of your chest here and now!”
“Won’t do you any good,” the small man whispered. “You’ll never know then, will you?”
“Is she dead?” Matthew demanded, his tone still savage.
Temming shook his head. “No, but if you kill me, you’ll never find her! In less than a week, she’ll be out of England, and you’ll never see her again—unless you let me go now!” His head was forced back by the captain’s grip, but he managed a grin that was more grimace than smile and seemed to radiate evil.
“Oh, I will find her,” Matthew said, though even in the faint light, Colin could see that he had paled. “And I’ll see you hang at Newgate afterward!”
He shook him again, but the little man pursed his thin lips and refused to answer more questions.
And later, when they took him and his hired thug before a magistrate, Temming denied any knowledge of Clarissa Fallon, denied he had been involved with the matron at the foundling home, and denied he had made any statement to Matthew Fallon about his sister’s fate.
Colin observed the grim set of the captain’s jaw with real sympathy. After Temming and the other man had been taken away to jail cells, Fallon wiped his face. His expression was still set, but he looked gray with desperation and despair.
“Perhaps after all, I should have tried to buy him off,” he told Colin.
Colin shook his head. “That kind never deals fairly,” he told the ex-mariner. “He may have made the whole thing up, you know.”
Fallon grimaced. “I am afraid he was, for once, being truthful. If I have only days to locate my sister—” His voice faltered, and he seemed unable to finish. “England is a large country, and there are so many places for one girl to be hidden!”
“We will not give up,” Colin told him. “We will find her.”
Fallon put one hand on Colin’s shoulder, but he had to clear his throat before he spoke. “Thank you.”
Squaring his shoulders, he drew a deep breath. “I shall go at once into the West Country. I have not yet heard from the Runner I sent to Cornwall. It’s possible it could be a village there where my sister is secreted away. There are seaports enough, if someone is planning to take her abroad. And I will send out inquiries to all the major ports. You could help me write out the letters.”
“Of course,” Colin agreed. And if he thought the captain was grasping at straws, it seemed they had nothing more substantial to build their hopes upon.
Louisa had planned a simple dinner party for the next evening, but her hopes for a quiet, congenial evening faded quickly. First, there were notes from Captain Fallon and Lieutenant McGregor, explaining that the captain was about to leave for the West Country and McGregor was supervising the dispatch of Runners to several seaports as they continued the search for Fallon’s missing sister.
Then shortly before sunset, she got a note from her fiancé. Unwrapping the single sheet of paper, Louisa saw that he, too, was making his apologies, for the second time this week.
Frowning, Louisa pulled the bellrope to pass on the news to the kitchen that they would be short several guests for dinner.
While she waited for the footman to appear in the doorway, Louisa turned the paper over in her hands and suddenly noticed that, hidden by the folds, a line of scrip was written on the other side. She glanced at it, then gasped.
“What is it?” Gemma asked from the other side of the sitting room. She had been rereading Captain Fallon’s note for the third time. She folded it and put it down. “Is something wrong with Sir Lucas?”
“No, except that he has begged off for dinner, again. But look at this, Gemma! It says, “On my way to Clapgate for the evening.”
“Clapgate? That is the name that was written next to Captain Fallon’s sister’s name on the matron’s secret list,” Gemma exclaimed. “We thought it was a village. But how—has Sir Lucas gone out of town?”
&
nbsp; “He doesn’t say so, only that he is unable to come tonight. And he usually informs me when he is leaving London,” Louisa said. “Besides, I don’t think this is Lucas’s writing. The script does not look at all like his usual hand.”
Gemma jumped to her feet, and Miss Pomshack, who had been nodding off over a collection of sermons, looked up. Gemma hurried across to look at the few words written on the paper, turning it once to compare with Lucas’s own message. “I think you’re right. Look at the e’s and the l’s; the loops are quite different. But then who wrote this, and why is it on the back of Sir Lucas’s correspondence?”
Louisa frowned at the paper. “It might be from his friend, that fellow, Mr. Harris-Smythe. Lucas has been spending a lot of time lately in his company. If he sent Lucas a note, perhaps Lucas, without noticing, picked up one of the sheets to write to me.”
“That would make sense,” Gemma agreed. Her gaze was far away. “But is it possible that we have overlooked another place named Clapgate? Could it be much closer at hand than we knew? If so, I must let the captain know, at once, before his departure. His note says that he was about to leave for the West Country!”
Louisa looked up. The footman had appeared in the doorway.
“You rang, Miss Crookshank?”
“Yes,” Louisa said, though all thoughts of tonight’s dinner had flown from her mind. “Smelters, do you know of a place in or near London called Clapgate?”
To her astonishment, the usually impassive footman paused, and a deep blush crept slowly up his face all the way to the edge of the powdered wig. Even his neck—what she could see of it beneath his neckcloth—had reddened.
“Smelters?”
He blinked. “Ah, that is not a place that ladies would visit, miss.”
“What kind of place, precisely?” Gemma demanded, her tone sharp.
He looked downright alarmed. “A place that ladies would not visit,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Are you quite sure?” Louisa asked.
He nodded vigorously.
“But if I took a hackney and was quite circumspect—” Gemma argued.