Angelique wasn’t the only bossy one.
“It’s a shame,” she said, her tone light, her grip firm. “I am here tonight because I came to look inside my inheritance, the building adjacent. But I’m not certain Dot and I should venture into it on our own. Since I am a bit naive and unfamiliar with the hazards that may await in this part of town. And do call me Delilah.”
Angelique narrowed her eyes.
She clearly suspected Delilah of a tactic.
The reason Delilah was so very good at hiring the best staff (with, perhaps, the exception of Dot, and the traitorous butler, her husband’s choice) was because she understood that everyone, to some extent, needed to be needed and appreciated for the things they liked best about themselves, and for fine qualities they might not even realize they possessed.
“Well, then,” Angelique finally said, “do you care to pull one of your hatpins, Delilah, so that we have a fighting chance against rats?”
Chapter Five
On his first day as blockade commander, Tristan had ordered the burning of every single sailing vessel in Hackbury.
He’d stood there, cold-eyed and stone-faced, on a gray morning in Sussex, staring down the villagers through the flames as his men torched the boats, one by one. And there had been defiance in some of the villagers’ eyes, but not one of them dared say a word. They knew their days of lending horses for late-night smuggling runs in exchange for a cask of contraband rum, of ferrying contraband tea along secret cart tracks toward London, of rowing out to reel in casks of goods sunk near shore brought in by boats painted black, of piloting their own black boats, were over. Every last sailing vessel in Hackbury had been used in smuggling somehow. They were, in fact, getting off lightly.
Next time they would not.
Hardy is ruthless. Word spread quickly: he was a different sort of blockade commander. He taught his men to be relentless. Organized. Thorough. And tactically, skillfully violent. They slashed open coiled ropes on ships to find the tobacco hidden within. They found the false bottoms in barrels where illicit liquor was stored; they once even hacked apart the mast of a cutter to find it hollow and stuffed with silks. They were everywhere, day and night, haunting the country and coastal byways on horseback and watching it in towers. They could not be bribed, like blockade runners of yore. They were zealots and they were heroes. Because while some villagers were willing participants, more of them were terrorized into silence or participation by increasingly murderous gangs. Smuggling had held them captive, and Hardy’s men were setting them free.
He was born for the job. Tristan understood smugglers. How they thought, and how they survived. Like cockroaches, when dispersed, they ran for the baseboards, the cracks of England: the tunnels, the byroads, the tributaries, the caves. And recongregated.
But they were no match for a commander who’d survived his first ten years in St. Giles slums. He was fueled by a cold hatred for those who preyed on the defenseless. In St. Giles he’d known terror and ugliness; withstanding them was the foundation of his own courage. He’d learned to fight, to hide, to steal, to strategize. And while he’d never known his father and he’d been orphaned when he was eight, from one or both parents he’d inherited a conscience and a wily intelligence and perhaps, after a fashion, luck: he’d stumbled into a position as a naval captain’s assistant when he was ten years old. He rose ceaselessly in the ranks from that point on. The navy knew what they had in him.
Hardy had nearly broken the back of smuggling gangs in England.
All save one.
He stared out at the water now, black and oily smooth, at the ship he’d arranged to buy before Lord and Lady Millcoke’s house had burned to the ground, killing them and their young children. All because Millcoke had refused to allow the Blue Rock gang to conscript their horses to transport contraband cigars.
He’d sent Massey back to the Stevens Hotel to get some sleep and to await further orders from him.
“I’ll have a word with Derring’s solicitor. And we might as well try to track down his widow, too,” he’d told him.
Massey had told him he was going to stay up for a few more hours trying his hand at writing a poem about his sweetheart.
Tristan had furrowed his brow. “What is your sweetheart’s name?”
“Emily, sir,” Massey had told him tolerantly.
Tristan knew her name, of course. Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily Emily. For God’s sake. That was the whole of Massey’s conversation when they weren’t catching smugglers.
He did like to tease his very patient and literal lieutenant.
“Sometimes it’s too much, sir, the feelings, and you just have to try to write a poem,” Massey said earnestly.
Whatever on earth that meant. Sticky sentiment was a foreign language to Tristan. His own carnal education had taken place at the hands of generous whores and willing widows, and his one foray into actual courtship had been an illuminating lesson in how one’s heart, loins, and social status could conspire to hand him a rare and shocking defeat. He was, he understood now, much better off. And much wiser.
“Do not inflict that poem upon me if you do write it,” he warned Massey.
“Of course not, sir,” Massey soothed. He’d tried that once before. He’d learned his lesson.
Massey was a brutally talented soldier and a loyal right-hand man and, after a fashion, a friend.
But he, too, dreamed of the next part of his life.
Which is what Tristan was doing here at the East India docks, staring at the Zephyr, the ship he intended to purchase. Staring into the abyss—or rather, the Thames—helped him think.
He quirked the corner of his mouth humorlessly. And to think, he’d decided last year that by this time in his life he’d be a dull, respectable merchant, running respectable cargo—silks and spices—with his own ship. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable. After all, hadn’t he nearly ground the smuggling trade into dust?
Instead he was tracking cigars.
One. By. Bloody. One.
He would do it as long as it took. But it was making him, and all his men, restive. They were designed for a different sort of action.
It was a wonder the water below him didn’t begin a slow boil, such was his focus.
Of all the fatal mistakes the Blue Rock gang had finally made—the fire set in a barn meant to intimidate an aristocratic family into allowing them the use of their horses but which had gone horribly wrong; incurring the rage of the king, who had a soft spot for Lady Millcoke, an old lover; and igniting a cold, vengeful wrath in a certain Captain Tristan Hardy—the cigars were probably the biggest.
Because they were singular. Staggeringly expensive. A unique sop to the vanity and boredom of wealthy men, and wildly profitable for the smugglers. They arrived already rolled and needed to be transported quickly. Typical smuggled cargos—tea, tobacco, spirits—were so undistinguished as to be difficult to trace, if they got past the blockade men at all. And since Tristan had become commander, they simply didn’t get past the blockade.
But those cigars—created somewhere in France, by God knows who—were as distinctive as animal scat, and just as trackable.
And Tristan and his men knew the Blue Rock gang was smuggling those particular cigars.
But they didn’t know how the gang was getting them to London from the Sussex coast. Which maddened them, because they had all but choked off the flow of any contraband along that route.
And despite watching all the docks along the Thames, they’d been unable to discover how the cigars were being distributed in London, or how they wound up in the hands of the likes of Lord Kinbrook, in White’s.
Which probably meant someone considered untouchable, who could move outside the usual confines of a smuggler’s world, was funding or abetting them.
In short: some aristocratic bastard.
They’d located a few merchants who sold them in Piccadilly. Both claimed they hadn’t had any new ones in at least a fortnight.
At le
ast three of the smug, entitled, aristocratic bastards he’d had the displeasure of charming, cajoling, threatening, or coercing revealed that Lord Kinbrook always had more than one on hand.
And they’d finally learned that Kinbrook had purchased his cigars from Derring.
Only to learn that Derring was dead.
Bloody.
Fecking.
Hell.
But it made sense, somehow: the flow of cigars seemed to have stopped right about when Derring died. Which could be coincidental. Except that he didn’t believe in coincidences.
He also wasn’t accustomed to grasping at such wispy, ephemeral evidence.
Then again, he’d learned to trust his instincts.
It was just that so many people were trusting his instincts at this very moment.
The king was on his neck. And the king behaving in a kingly way was unusual, but when his stomach and his penis were involved, he took matters quite seriously. In fact, he was, Tristan understood, a man of feeling and intelligence in the wrongest possible job for him.
But he represented a country Tristan loved and believed in.
And the king had offered Tristan a reward if he could bring those bastards in.
He didn’t really need the reward. He’d bring those bastards in, no matter what.
But in a future he could read as clearly as he could read the murky ocean below, money—earned honorably—of course couldn’t hurt.
For either him or his men, who would get their share—who were counting on him to lead them to this victory, too.
Tristan’s pride and his legacy were at stake. Not to mention the future in which he hoped to be . . . ordinary? Was that what he wanted? What would life be like without fighting, strategy, and maneuvering? Who would he be?
Alive, that’s what he’d be.
And a life like Massey’s, a house in the country, a doting wife, a brat or two who looked like him—not even using the reliable Thames for scrying could Tristan conjure a home or life like that. He’d never known one; likely he wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing, anyway, a man of action like him.
Then again, he’d probably never had a prayer of being ordinary, anyway.
And that, at least, was bad news for the Blue Rock gang.
It took all three of them to shoulder open the studded oak door of Number 11 Lovell Street once she got the key to turn, and its hinges screeched like a murder victim.
Which probably wouldn’t attract much attention in this area.
It thunked shut behind them in a permanent-sounding way. Delilah felt for an instant as if they’d pulled up a drawbridge against marauders. Or were perhaps trapped inside a castle keep.
They all stood in silence for a moment, borrowed (from Frances the barmaid) lanterns held aloft. The hush was so thorough one could nearly grab handfuls of it. The building was solidly built, which was a fine thing.
Distantly they heard a thunk, as though a dragon was kept in the basement.
Doubtless it was one of the mysterious noises from outside.
“The floor is unnervingly rather soft,” Delilah finally said, carefully.
“Probably mouse pelts,” Angelique said.
Dot gave a guttural shriek and performed a sort of revolted high kick, which sent the beam from her lantern swinging in long, woozy arcs.
Delilah seized her elbow, her heart in her throat. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dot, it’s just dust. You need to be brave if . . .”
Dot’s swaying lamp beam had skipped across something dazzling.
Delilah looked up and her breath snagged.
The dust Dot had kicked skyward was sifting down, down, down in lazy, amber, lamplit spirals through the tiers of an improbably fine chandelier twinkling in the middle of the high foyer ceiling like a little constellation. The lamplight made the faceted crystals wink in rainbow colors—red, blue, green.
Dot might as well have flung fairy dust.
Their silence, for a moment, was wholly mesmerized.
It felt, somehow, like a sign, this hidden, shambly, fine beauty. And it’s mine, Delilah thought, with wondering exultation. That beautiful thing is mine. The filthy floor we stand upon, that staircase in front of us, all the rooms we have yet to see—mine.
Dot sneezed like a wolf trying to blow down a pig’s house of straw.
Angelique tugged her gently out from beneath the chandelier. “One sneeze too mighty and that thing might crash down.”
The spell was broken. “You’re quite right,” Delilah concurred. “And no more shrieking unless we see a murderer, Dot. No, do not faint,” she said, as Dot’s eyes seemed about to roll back in her head. “You’re sturdier than that and we both know it and seeing a murderer is unlikely.” She wished she was more confident of this. “Have you your hatpin?”
“Sorry, Lady Derring. Yes, Lady Derring.”
“She probably frightened the vermin good and proper with the shrieking,” Angelique said. “Well done, Dot.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Breedlove.” Dot beamed.
“But the vermin are very determined here by the East India docks,” Angelique added, wickedly.
“Brave,” Delilah growled, cutting Dot off mid-whimper. “Angelique, you’re not helping.”
“I feel braver when I can make light of something.”
Delilah cast her a baleful sidelong look. A sardonic Angelique was at least better than the one who wanted to wade into the Thames. “Let’s see what we have on this level.”
They aimed their lamps in various directions—east, west, up, down. They soon determined they were in a foyer, in front of a staircase, flanked by what appeared to be two sitting rooms.
Everything was so blurred with dust and laced with cobwebs it was like seeing everything through a haze of laudanum.
The banister and balustrade of the handsome staircase before them seemed to be carved in bulbous shapes and vines, but it was impossible to know quite what those shapes were. Delilah toed the floor to clear some dust; it felt like marble.
“Looks just like a townhouse like ours, Lady Derring, don’t it? Only bigger.” Poor Dot sounded infinitely relieved, as if she’d fully anticipated that the studded oak door opened onto the Gates of Hell. And yet she’d followed Delilah through anyway. What had Delilah done to deserve that kind of loyalty?
“I do believe that’s precisely what this is,” Delilah said brightly. “How very interesting. Let’s have a look, shall we?”
She led the way to the right, where they found a modest sitting room. The fireplace was blacked with soot, and its corniced mantel and carved pilasters had been in vogue around the time King George III was still sound of mind; likewise, the balding rug—it was Savonnerie, if she had to guess—the peeling wallpaper, and the two deteriorating settees on spindly legs—Chippendale, or copies. All seemed to be in various shades of red. They’d probably been home to generations of mice. Cobweb bunting swung from the windows and corners.
It was snug—the shuttered windows let in no drafts—and had once been gracious.
Who or what had occupied it? Why was it empty now?
Why on earth had Derring owned it?
They moved across the foyer and discovered the room opposite was twice the size, dominated by a fine fireplace of the same vintage. It was bald of rug and bare of furniture.
Except for a pianoforte.
“Ohhhh,” Delilah breathed.
She moved toward it slowly, almost on her toes, like a hungry leopard stalking an antelope.
No sarcophagus creaking open had ever sounded quite so eerie as the dusty, closed lid when she lifted it.
Dot muttered something that sounded like a string of prayers.
Delilah touched a dirty key. A G note echoed, like a ghost of long-ago parties.
Behind her, Dot visibly shuddered.
“Do you play?” Delilah asked Angelique, her voice dreamy.
“Yes,” Angelique confirmed. Sounding as mesmerized as Delilah.
And maybe it was wearin
ess, maybe it was the spell cast by the chandelier, maybe it was the sherry, but Delilah could have sworn she could hear very faint voices raised in song and laughter, as if from a parade approaching from miles and miles away.
Something stirred in her. She could not have put it into words if asked; it was more a feeling than an actual idea. But the feeling glinted like one of those chandelier crystals. An idea was forming.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said.
The fourth stair creaked, but no one vanished through any of the steps with a scream and cloud of dust. Their lanterns threw giant shadows of the three of them on the wall opposite, which made Delilah feel as though they were going up with reinforcements. Oddly, this made it just a little easier to go down strange hallways when they could light only a few feet ahead at a time.
Which she supposed was rather a metaphor for life.
Some of the fourteen doors on the two floors opened with a twist of the knob; most of the locks, however, needed oiling and required finesse and fussing, except for the one for the largest suite on the first floor, which seemed to have been recently oiled. The rugs and wallpaper in the rooms and halls were shredded ghosts of their original selves. The rooms were empty save for a few toppled pitchers, a washbasin, and several surprisingly decent wardrobes in the larger suites.
Each sealed-up room released a stale gust of air but no other untoward smells or entities. Until the last room, which released something sporting a long, skinny tail and tiny, shiny eyes.
It vanished with such startling speed no one had time to scream, but they all certainly wanted to.
“Well. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Dot announced in a voice that wobbled up and down the scale.
“I’m very proud of you,” said Delilah. Her voice was none too steady.
Angelique shimmied her shoulders as though the creature had crawled right down the back of her dress.
Rat or no rat, by the time they reached the kitchen the feeling that had begun next to the pianoforte had crystallized into an idea, and Delilah’s heart picked up a beat.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 5