A Baron for Becky (2 page)

The redingote
she wore fit closely to a shape of amazing promise, obscured, then
disclosed, as the shawl over her shoulders swung with her
movements. Even more blood surged to his ever-hopeful member.
“Down, boy,” he told it, silently.

“Mama?” That
was the little girl, returning down the path. “Mama, I can hear
horses.”

The woman
froze, every line of her screaming alarm.

Aldridge could
hear them too, coming closer through the rustling noises of the
night. The quiet clop of walking horses, the riders exchanging a
word or two, then nothing. They must have stopped on the other side
of the house.

“Sarah.” The
woman’s voice, pitched to carry only as far as her daughter’s ears,
retreated as she crossed the summerhouse. “Sarah, we must go
quickly.”

“But, Mama! The
escape baskets!” the girl protested.

“I dare not
wake the man, my love. He might stop us.”

Aldridge
responded to the fear in her voice. “I won’t stop you. I am not a
danger to you.” The woman turned to a statue at his voice, her hand
on the framework of the arched entrance, as if she would fall
without support. He swung himself upright, wincing as the headache
closed its vice around his skull. Though he slitted his eyes
against the pain, he kept them open just enough.

“Mama?” The
girl’s fearful voice released the woman from her freeze, and she
moved to block the child’s sight of him. “Sarah. Watch the house.
Do not turn around until I say.”

Eyes open, he
could confirm his initial assessment as she spun to face him.
Spectacular. Then she shone the lantern straight on him, and he
flinched from the light. “Not in my eyes, please. I have such a
head.”

She made that
same disgusted sound again, then stripped the shawl from her
shoulders and tossed it to him, taking care to stay out of arms’
reach.

“Please cover
yourself, Sir.”

Aldridge stood
warily, and made a kilt of the shawl—a long rectangle that wrapped
his waist several times and covered him from waist to thigh. “I beg
your pardon for my attire, Mrs...” he invited.

But she was
ignoring him. While he’d been tucking in the soft wool of the
shawl, so it would hold securely, she’d crossed the summerhouse
again and lifted the lid of the bench, tipping the cushions onto
the floor, pulling various bundles, baskets, and packages from the
recess.

“Mama!” The
child sounded panicked. “They are in the house.”

Aldridge,
headache forgotten, moved to a better vantage. Yes. Lights moving
through the darkened house. And the men were not bothering to be
silent, either, calling to one another as they searched swiftly and
methodically: the ground floor, then the next, then the attics.

A rustle and
chink came from the other end of the garden, then an eldritch groan
that cut through his head like a knife.

“The gate!” The
woman’s eyes were wide and fearful. Yes, complaining hinges would
make that noise, and clearly frightened her more than any unnatural
denizen of the night.

“Sarah, come to
me.”

At the woman’s
soft command, the child brushed past Aldridge and rushed right into
the woman’s arms, wrapping herself around her mother’s waist. She
was a small thing, not quite short enough to fit under the curve of
her mother’s breasts. The delicate features, a miniature of her
mother’s, showed fear and a quite adult determination. Aldridge had
little experience of children but she was much the size of his
cousin’s stepdaughter, who was six or seven.

The woman was
holding something against the child’s temple. In a swift movement,
he was almost on her, but he held himself apart, afraid of
frightening her into pulling the trigger of the small pistol.

Outside, a
rough voice spoke in the kind of argot he’d learned when slumming
in St Giles. “Keep by t’prads, I’ll see ’tis all bob. I’ll crash
the culls if uns’ve banged that Rose.” “Wait with the horses,” he
understood the man to say. “I’ll see that all is well at the house.
I’ll kill the men if they’ve raped that Rose.” Heavy footsteps
retreating down the path. If they were quiet, they could talk.

“What the hell
are you doing?” he demanded, keeping his voice low enough to carry
no further than her ears.

Her whisper was
even lower, and he had to strain to hear. “Praying they will pass
us by. For the love of all you hold holy, don’t give us away!”

“You cannot
mean to hurt your child.”

“Better death
at my hands than what they have planned for her,” the woman hissed.
Her free hand, the one around the girl’s shoulders, returned the
frantic hug, patting and soothing even as the other hand held the
little pistol firmly in place.

“Better we all
live,” he retorted. “Who are they?” He needed information. Damn his
current state of undress. A fat billfold solved most problems.

“My... Mr
Perringworth owes their employer money. He owns... he
used to
own
the cottage. He came down this morning, said he had given
them the cottage and everything in it, and it wasn’t enough. He has
fled the country. He said...” She fell silent, her face bleak, but
the little girl piped up. “They are very bad men, sir. You should
hide until they are gone.”

“Why did you
not run with this Perry person? Or after he left?” Aldridge was
glad he had been woken by the woman rather than the bullies—the
heavies of a criminal loan shark, unless he missed his guess.

“He locked us
up,” the woman said. “We were to be part of the ‘everything’ he
gave this man. It has taken us the whole day to break through the
wall into the next room.”

Before she had
finished, Aldridge was calculating his next move. The pistol was
next to useless. Good enough to execute the child, but against at
least four men, maybe more?

“I don’t
suppose you have a sword or another gun in that seat of yours?”

She shook her
head.

It would have
to be his tongue, then. Well, many a woman had called it his finest
weapon.

“Help me drop
your bundles out into the garden,” he ordered. “I have a plan.”

She watched him
warily, not moving, as he suited action to words and dropped a
covered basket, then a hatbox, then a tied bundle, one from each of
the arched sides so they would be hidden in the low shrubbery
around the summerhouse.

“Now, let’s see
how much room there is.”

The space
inside the bench seat was big enough for a slender woman and a
small child. He began clearing out the clutter that accumulates in
such places. The woman suddenly seemed to realise what he intended,
and bent to whisper in her daughter’s ear. Together, they silently
moved around the small room, collecting the bits and pieces he
found and dropping them out into the garden.

Aldridge put
one of the cushions into the space for their heads, and offered his
hand to help the woman in. She ignored it, lifting her skirt with
her free hand to show one shapely leg, and then the other, as she
climbed inside the space and lay down.

“Here, Sarah,”
she whispered. “On top of me.”

It crossed
Aldridge’s mind that he would welcome the self-same invitation.
Perhaps the woman might be inclined to reward his act of knight
errantry in what he had always suspected was the time-honoured
manner. “Focus,” he told himself.

“Whatever you
hear,” he told the woman and child, “don’t make a sound. Trust me.
I’ll get you out of this.” He closed the seat lid and retrieved the
scattered cushions, then opened the woman’s lantern to blow out the
candle, and lay back down.

Just in time.
Multiple boots on the path; voices talking, complaining, or so he
understood, that furniture was all well and good, but the real
treasure had flown.

He hoped the
child couldn’t understand what they said. He could, all too well,
and the woman—Rose? Was that really her name? It seemed too
appropriate to be true. Rose was right to be frightened.

They might get
away free and clear, if the thugs believed she was long since gone.
One of them suggested the cove had taken the two with him. The
cove, this Perringworth, presumably.

But Aldridge’s
momentary hope was immediately dashed. Another laughed. He and his
mate had Perringworth safe and sound, his legs broken so he
couldn’t run again. And the cull swore he’d left this Rose and her
get safely locked up, tied for good measure.

“Swore afore ya
bruk ’is munch bones. Won’t do no yammerin’ now,” grumbled one. A
broken jaw? Good to know Perringworth couldn’t deny whatever lies
Aldridge spoke.

The group
stopped on the path and argued about what to do next.

The boss was
expecting to sell the woman and her child to recover the money he
was owed, and more. And breaking Perringworth an inch at a time
might act as a lesson to others, but it wouldn’t replace the
money.

The London
bullies were anxious to get back to the safety of their verminous
slums. This wide-open countryside made them nervous. But they were
more frightened of their master than the strange environment, and
when one of them mentioned a name, Aldridge understood why.

Smite
.
Whether the single syllable was a given name, a surname, or a
nickname that described the terrible power of his fist, nobody
knew. But Smite was the uncrowned king of large swaths of the
underbelly of London.

And, in some
sort, Aldridge’s debtor, since the night Aldridge had waded into a
fight for the sheer joy of battle, foiling an assassination attempt
on Smite by a rival gang. If he could convince these men of his
identity, he might pull off the rescue.

But they’d
never believe him if they found him hiding. “Shut your noise,” he
shouted. “I’m trying to sleep in here.” Instant silence on the
path, then the moonlit entrance was blocked as several large men
tried to enter at once.

“Don’t shine
that lantern in my face,” Aldridge ordered, with all the hauteur of
his generations of ducal ancestors, and the men—like the curs they
were—responded to the voice of command and turned the lantern away.
In the returning shadows, six large male shapes loomed over
him.

“Who the hell
are you, and what are you doing here?” Aldridge demanded. “Do you
know where Perry’s gone?”

“It be the
Merry Marquis,” said one of the men, pushing his way through from
the back. Now there was a stroke of luck! Smite had sent one of his
chief lieutenants. What did they call the man? Tiny. That was it. A
typically laconic comment on his enormous size.

“Hello, Tiny,”
Aldridge said. “You’re a step away from your usual haunts.”

Big Tiny might
be, but he hadn’t come unscathed through a life of violence. His
nose had been broken several times, was flattened and twisted
towards his right cheek, which bore a livid knife scar from the
outer edge of the eye to the corner of his thick, misshapen lips.
He’d been beaten around the ears, too, many times, leaving them
swollen and deformed.

Aldridge knew,
though, that the rough appearance hid an incisive mind. Smite
looked for intelligence in his lieutenants, and Tiny’s presence
here, who knew how many days from London, and Smite’s control, was
evidence of how much Smite trusted him. In this instance,
intelligence was all to the good, if Aldridge played his game
well.

One of the
other men grunted a question. ‘Shall I take his head off?’ Aldridge
translated. Thankfully, Tiny shook his head. “Smite likes ’im.”
Useful to know, but not something to count on. Rumour had it,
Smite’s rise to the top had been aided by a childhood friend,
killed by his own hand when the friend dared to disagree with
him.

The crime
lord’s lieutenant turned back to Aldridge. “Whacha doin’ here,
m’lord?” he demanded. “And whassat ya got on?”

Aldridge looked
down at his improvised shawl kilt as if he’d never seen it
before.

“This? The
piece of perfection in the garden was most insistent. Didn’t want
her daughter seeing my...” he waggled his eyebrows and made a
graphic gesture with one hand, prompting a guffaw from the man who
wanted to decapitate him.

“A skirt wiv a
little un? Where is she?” Tiny wanted to know.

“Gone. She was
in a hurry, said she and the little girl had a ship to catch. She
couldn’t tell me where Perry was, either. Bastard. He’ll be sorry
when I find him. Drugged me, the lowlife, treacherous cur. Stole my
horse and my clothes. Swine. Exquisite female, though. Worth the
trip, if she’d have had me. Pity she wouldn’t stop to... chat.”

Another guffaw
from Decapitator, and a pungent comment about a better use for a
female than chatting.

“’ow long?”
Tiny was not to be distracted.

Enough
friendliness. Time to remind them of their place again. He trotted
out the ducal manner. Nostrils flared, chin lifted, a glare infused
with scorn and disdain.

Tiny flinched,
but persisted. “I needs to ask, m’lord; ’ow long since ya seen the
skirt? She belongs to Smite. ’Er and the little un.”

“Really?” said
Aldridge. “Dammit, that’s the last straw. I was promised first
chance. Perry, damn his cowardly, lying eyes, said he was leaving
the country, and she needed a new protector. And all the time...
Smite? Really? I say! Do you think he’d consider an offer?”

“We ’ave to
find ’er first, m’lord. ’Ow long since ya seen her?”

Aldridge
sighed. “Really, I don’t know. It was around dusk. How long ago was
that? After she left, I... I suppose I passed out again.”

Tiny let out a
string of profanities, some Aldridge had never heard, and several
that sounded painful, if not impossible. “Doxy’s got ten hours on
us, but we ’ave to search,” he told the others, and began
organising his men to search the garden, the house, the nearby
village of Niddberrow, and the surrounding countryside.