Edith Layton (19 page)

“Not as well as you do, obviously,” he said, flicking her cheek with one finger. “Very well, get
her dressed and out, and quickly. I’ll go,” he told Nell with a peculiar smile, “but don’t forget, I won’t turn my back on you. Half the joy of lying with you as well as dealing with you, sweet slut, is the danger in it. For me and you.”

He opened the door and left.

“Nell!” Camille said as soon as the door closed again. “Help me!”

“Well, I wish I could,” Nell said, “but it can’t be.”

“At least tell me if Eric is all right,” Camille pleaded, though she assumed he was, otherwise surely Dearborne would have gloated about it.

“He’s fine,” Nell said too quickly. “And so will you be. Just do as my lord says and it will go even smoother. I’m leaving with him, and we don’t want your friends following. This way, he gets to feel that he outfoxed them, and you’ll only be inconvenienced for a little while. Believe me, it’s best. You ought to have heard some of his other plans!”

“You’re leaving with a man like him?” Camille asked in astonishment. “Even knowing what he is?”

Nell smiled her small, secret smile. “Yes. I like him. I know what he is, I know what you said about him too. But he’s very rich, and he does please me in other ways. He isn’t so bad, once you get to know him. He only hates your brother and his friends because they ruined his face when they pounded on him, he says, as well as his life. He was
very vain about his looks. I don’t think he looks so bad, but he does.”

“Yes, but he did terrible things,” Camille said. “He’s lucky they used fists and not swords and pistols, or he’d be dead by now. You know that. And it isn’t just his nose that changed his appearance, he looks ill, and everyone says it’s because of his continuing debaucheries. So how can you think of leaving the country with him? You’ll be at his mercy.”

“Shall I be?” Nell asked. “That remains to be seen. But what is there for me if I stay here, even if I do become a famous courtesan?”

“Money, you said, and fame,” Camille reminded her urgently.

“But not freedom, I see that now,” Nell said. “And that’s what I said I wanted. I’ve since come to see that the courtesans I admired are not free either. Men who pay for you feel they own you for however long they keep paying. And in truth, they do. You have to be at their beck and call day and night, and you have to keep pleasing them. Even if you keep replacing protectors, you’re just getting the same thing again and again until you’re too old for the trade. And what then? Ruby has money, but she still isn’t free. She can’t go everywhere she wants.”

Nell cocked her head to the side. “I needed Dearborne to explain it to me, and he’s right. Everyone else, you and my cousin, you all talked about
morality. Dearborne showed me reality. See, I want freedom as much as money, and this way I can have it. He’s going to America,” she told Camille with rising excitement, her eyes shining. “He told me about places like New York and New Orleans. The ‘new’ he said, is the key. Those are places where a man or woman can be anything and anyone they want to be. If you have money, you can live like a king and get as much respect as one, no matter who you are or what you did to get your fortune. That would suit me.”

“And if he tires of you? What will you do all alone in a new country?” Camille asked desperately.

Nell laughed. “If we tire of each other, and I expect we will, that will be fine too. I’ll be able to find another protector even faster than I could here, because there are more men than women there.”

“But that would be no different from what you’d have here,” Camille exclaimed.

“But it is,” Nell said complacently. “They don’t have Society there, not like here. Or at least, Dearborne says it’s just getting started, and I can be part of it. There, it isn’t what you were born to be, it’s what you’re clever enough to make yourself. With manners and money, anyone can pretend to be someone, and so I shall be. Now, get dressed, Cammie,” she said, her voice reasonable and calm. “Because he has a terrible temper and he likes to hurt women too. I like it sometimes, but I know you won’t.”

Camille stripped off her gown and hurriedly donned the old gray one. She did it just in time, because the door opened again, and Dearborne, followed by two brutish-looking men, sauntered in.

“Very good,” Dearborne said. “Now, a little ride to Newgate, a shorter one to the docks, and it will be done. Nell?” he said, offering her his arm. “Come along, Miss Croft,” he said, “or would you prefer one of my assistants to escort you?”

Camille raised her head, winced at how it still ached, and went out the door with them.

They rode in an undistinguished hired hack. No one spoke.

Nell sat next to Lord Dearborne. One of his hired men drove the hackney. The other sat next to Camille. She sat up against the window, trying to ignore the way the man’s thigh touched hers.

Eric was on her trail already, she knew that. Miles too. The earl of Drummond, Rafe, and the others might be following her even now. They had worked for His Majesty, they had influential friends.

That didn’t comfort her as much as it should have done.

She was on her way to Newgate Prison, and she didn’t know what awaited her there or how soon she’d get out again.

But she had a resilient spirit and the thought of Eric to keep her heart high. Eric mightn’t look in Newgate right away, but when he didn’t find her anywhere, he’d look everywhere. He’d find her. She
had to keep hold of that thought. Nell was wrong about everything but right about one: there were worse fates she could have endured. Even though she’d been mishandled, she hadn’t been molested.

So if Camille wasn’t exactly comforted by the time the coach at last passed through the heavy gates and rumbled across the cobbles in the inner courtyard of Newgate Prison, she was at least not hysterical with fear. She was only numbed by it.

The coach stopped in a corner of the vast courtyard. It was late, the city was sleeping. Camille had thought even Newgate Prison, king of prisons, would be sleeping too. But when the door opened, Camille heard a babble of voices, the clanking of chains, and shouts. Dearborne alighted from the coach and turned back, holding out a hand.

“Come, Miss Croft,” he said. “Time wastes.”

Camille refused to take his hand. She went down the steps, blinking against the sudden glare of dozens of torches that punctuated the murky blackness of a fantastic scene. The huge dark space was filled with milling people. Dazed as she was, Camille knew something wasn’t right. Why would the people here be out in the night? Was it a rebellion? She could only hope so. She could run.

Her spirits fell when she realized it was orderly chaos. Even in the fitful torchlight she could see hordes of prisoners, men, women and children, being lined up in rows, guards surrounding them. They seemed to be arranged in marching places, as for a journey.

“Moving day,” Dearborne said at her ear, as he put a hand on her arm. “Yes, it’s to be a short sojourn in Newgate for you, Miss Croft.”

Camille began to relax until she realized the other meaning to his words. She stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Now, what would be the point of popping you in somewhere just so your fiancé and brother and their friends can come along and pop you out again?” he asked her, his lips so close to her ear that she shuddered. “I’d something rather more permanent in mind. And this will be. But I’m a man of my word, just like your fiancé, your brother, and all their noble friends. As I told your friend Nell, I won’t be the one to harm you. I won’t have to.

“It’s really brilliant,” he said on a soft laugh. “Even if they track you here, they can search every crevice of Newgate until Doomsday and never get a sniff of you. Because Newgate’s only a way station for you. They’ll never find you now. The man I’ve paid to take you will never tell for fear of his neck—nor will he be able to, because even he won’t know where you’re going. It never pays to tell the truth to anyone. Not a word,” he said, gripping her upper arm so hard she gasped. “I’ve yet another surprise. Nell?” Dearborne called. “Come, be polite. See your friend off.”

“I’ll stay here,” Nell said from inside the coach.

Dearborne chuckled. “Faint hearted? I’ll swear that’s not the sort of wench I want with me on my
travels. Come!” he said, like a man bringing a dog to heel, extending his other hand.

Nell, expressionless, slowly descended the carriage steps and came to stand at his side. Dearborne smiled. He reached into his jacket and withdrew a wallet. He raised it in his hand and waved. A guard came hurrying out of the darkness toward him.

“Here she is,” Dearborne said. He thrust Camille toward him and handed him the wallet. The guard quickly thrust it into his jacket.

“You have the papers?” Dearborne asked.

“Aye,” the man said softly, clasping Camille’s wrist in a strong calloused hand. “And the chain.” He clipped a cold band of steel attached to a chain around Camille’s wrist, released her, and then pulled the chain hard. She staggered. He nodded. “Now give me the other and be gone. I paid some to look the other way, but I can’t afford to pay all.”

“Very well,” Dearborne said. “Nell?” he said sweetly. She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone our journey, because there’s another you must take. But never fear, you’ll still be going on a nice long voyage. I’m off to America. You’re bound for Botany Bay, New South Wales, or perhaps Bermuda. It depends upon which line you’re put in, I don’t know or want to know.

“Yes, you were stupid to believe me,” he told Nell. “But you never were as clever as you thought you were. The world is wide and filled with women. Why should you think you had anything
to offer that I couldn’t find elsewhere? One female’s much the same as another, you know. Still, you were a sweet bitch,” he told her, chucking her under the chin. “You were a joy. But all joys must end.”

He thrust her at the guard so hard that she fell against the man.

Dearborne turned to go back into the carriage. He went up the steps and into the coach and slammed the door. The coach drove the way it came quickly into the London night.

“S
he’s here in London somewhere. I know she lives, I know she’s waiting for me,” Eric said. He was sitting slouched in a chair in Miles’s library. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to rest all day. He’d been coursing through London like a hound on the scent, but every direction he went in came to a dead end. He’d come back to Miles’s house to rendezvous with the others, hoping they’d had better luck. They had not.

Now Miles, Drum, and Rafe sat comparing notes with him. There was little to compare. Camille had vanished. Nell was gone too, but they didn’t worry about her, believing that she, somehow, was the reason for the disappearance.

“I know it sounds bizarre, even supernatural,”
Eric went on wearily, his long fingers rubbing his aching forehead, “but it’s as if I can feel her in my mind. She’s frightened but confident that I’ll find her. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Miles said, “and no. It doesn’t matter. The whole thing doesn’t make sense. It’s obvious that Nell’s part of this, but why? No one’s sent a note. No one knows why they left. It’s as though they dropped off the face of the earth.”

“She didn’t,” Eric insisted, dropping his hand and glowering at his old friend. “I’d know if she had. I’m not a fanciful man or a particularly religious one, but damned if I’m not sure of that!”

No one spoke. His other friends glanced away from him.

There was a cough from the doorway.

“Your lordship,” the butler said as he stepped into the room. He held out a note to Miles. “This has just been delivered.”

The men leapt to their feet and crowded around Miles, trying to read the note he snatched from his butler’s hand.

“The boy who brought it began weeping when we detained him,” the butler added. “He says he was given a shilling for his services and doesn’t know anything else. He’s in the kitchen awaiting your pleasure.”

“No pleasure in it,” Drum said as Miles hissed a curse through his teeth.

“I’ll kill him!” Eric said tersely, his eyes scanning the note.

“You and I both,” Miles said bleakly. “But we’ll have to swim to do it. He says he’ll be long gone by the time we read this.”

“Yes, Dearborne can wait,” Eric said. He raised his head, his eyes were bright, his posture suddenly erect. “The thing is that now that we know who took her, we can find out where he took her.”

The others looked at him blankly.

Eric’s smile was tight. “A man’s desires are his weaknesses,” he explained. “Dearborne thought he’d be taunting us, and that helps us. He doesn’t ask for ransom. All he wants is his pound of flesh. He wants to hurt and humiliate us. He says he knows where she is and wants us to know he’s responsible, but he could have waited to let us know that. The fact that he didn’t may make all the difference. I don’t think he’s gone from England yet. There’d be no point to his revenge if he couldn’t savor it.”

“Yes!” Miles said eagerly. “That makes sense.”

“But it doesn’t matter right now,” Eric said. “What does, is that we at last have a clue.”

The others looked at him blankly.

“It’s like the difference between hunting rabbits and foxes,” Eric muttered as he began pacing. “Once you know what you’re looking for, you have a chance to catch it.” He stopped and faced his friends. “Every animal has known traits and habits, every man has a signature. Dearborne has companions, if not friends. His haunts are known, as are his companions. Now at last we know where we can start looking. What taverns does he frequent?

Where does he game? Does he have a mistress? Where does he spend his time? If we can discover those things, we can find those who know him—and we are that much closer to finding Camille.”

Drum smiled. “Your intellect is the size of your shoulders, my friend. You’re absolutely right. I’ll quiz the unfortunate messenger and find out where he was hired, if not who hired him, because I’m sure he doesn’t know that. But where he comes from should give us some clues.”

Rafe nodded slowly. “Aye. I have some old acquaintances who might know about Dearborne. By God! Gilly must too! That’s where I’m bound.”

“I’ll come with you, Eric,” Miles said, as he saw Eric heading toward the door. He paused. “But where are we going?”

“To find Camille,” Eric said over his shoulder as he strode from the room. “She’s waiting.”

Camille never knew so many people could be so still. She was sitting flank to flank with dozens of strangers, and yet all she could hear was the sound of the wagon’s wheels going over the cobbles and an occasional muted cough or stifled sob from those in the darkness beside her. She’d been loaded into the wagon along with other wretched, ragged souls, who sat like bags of produce or bales of hay on the bare floorboards.

She sat on the floor of the open wagon as it trundled along the city streets. Her anger and frustration had been too immense for her to notice much
else when she’d come aboard. She was cold and frightened, and the night sky above her was as dark as her fears. Her head ached too.

“You can’t do this!” she’d shouted as she was led away. “I’m being abducted! My name is Cam—”

A heavy hand struck the side of her head, silencing her. She would have fallen if the guard who had slapped her hadn’t been holding the chain attached to her wrist. “Be still, wench!” he snarled, catching her arm and twisting it hard. “Unless you want more.”

“This is a new one to me,” she’d heard an interested male voice comment through the ringing in her ears. She’d opened her eyes to see herself being eyed by another guard, this one a stout, bewhiskered fellow.

“Yes!” she said eagerly. “Because I don’t belong here. I’m not a prisoner, I haven’t done anything.”

“Oho, lass, who does belong here?” He laughed, lifting a lantern and peering at her. “No one. Just ask any of ’em. No one belongs here but us, according to them we watch over. Howsoever that may be,” he added in a low voice, “I can do you a world of good, even where you’re bound. I think you can leave this one behind for tonight,” he told the guard who held Camille’s arm. “She’s no beauty, but she’s clean and looks healthy as a horse. I like a lass with meat on her bones and some spirit left to her. Don’t know how I missed this one. A fine, big girl who can give a fellow a ride to remember.”

Camille shrank back.

“Aye, a ride to remember, all right,” the guard who held her said bitterly. “This one’s for Higgins, on the
Eurydice
. Special order, a gift from a friend. Higgins won’t be happy to hear you had a taste of his treat before he did. You know him.”

The fat fellow threw up a hand. “Aye, I do! Never mind, then! Well, it’s like him to get himself some sport, ain’t it?” he said bitterly. “Too bad he don’t care for boys, like some of the others on board his ship, there’s enough of them there. But he likes his breasts and bums, don’t he? What happened to the last lass he requisitioned? She was a lively one. No, on second thought, don’t tell me! Least known, less said. Sorry,” he told Camille. “Good luck—you’ll need it,” he added before he walked away.

“Now belt up!” the guard told Camille, pushing her toward the wagon. “Another word and no man will ever make merry with you again. Get in there, and keep your mummer shut!”

The wagon had no seats. It was open to the sky, with a lip made of staves all round that held its unhappy cargo inside. The guard waited until Camille had clambered up into it, then he secured the linked chain he’d been holding to the side of the wagon where she sat and left her, with a curse.

“Ready! You’re off!” he called to the driver.

The prisoners around her hunkered down and crouched low as the driver set his four carthorses moving. The great wagon slowly lumbered out of
Newgate and off into the night, a guard up front with the driver and an outrider on either side to keep an eye on its wretched cargo as it moved on.

It was that peculiar hour before dawn when London was momentarily still. The denizens of the night, the nightwalkers and stalkers, the women of the street and men about Town, had all gone to their beds. The early risers, milkmaids, mongers, and lower servants, hadn’t yet begun their work. The city smelled fresh, of river and rain, a cold breeze was blowing the clouds away. It was quiet. Even the gulls were still sleeping on the river. The only sounds were the creaking and the turning of the wagon wheels, the horses’ hooves clomping, echoing on the cobbles, their fittings and brasses jangling. If anyone in the silent houses around them heard their passage, they didn’t look out to see. Theirs was a passage to ignore, like that of the dead wagons as they removed those who had passed on in the night.

Camille took stock. Nell was gone. Where didn’t matter, because Camille knew the girl would be able to fend for herself. Now she was on her own.

She shivered. But she wasn’t alone, she thought, taking a steadying breath. Eric would find her. She believed it implicitly. Closing her eyes, she could almost feel his presence, feel his big hand covering hers, his warmth and love surrounding her.

Her eyes snapped open. Yes, he’d find her. The problem was what would happen to her until he
did. She couldn’t just wait for him. She wouldn’t. So then, she thought, what now?

She tried to make out faces in the crowd around her. “Where are we bound?” she whispered aloud.

It seemed to her that the night grew even quieter.

A small voice finally spoke in a hushed whisper. “To the
Eurydice
, I thinks.”

“It’s the hulk they sends the boys to,” another voice whispered.

“And then they send you on to Australia?” Camille asked.

She heard a muted choking. It took her a moment to realize it was laughter. “Mebbe some gets to go there,” another voice said. “Them what lives. Won’t be many.”

“But it could be a different ship?”

“It could be,” someone else agreed.

“And where is this ship?” Camille whispered, after a moment. “How far away?”

“Shut up back there!” A harsh voice commanded. An outrider trotted up to the wagon, held his lantern high, and glowered at the wretches inside. Satisfied by the sudden breathless quiet, he wheeled his horse around and rode on alongside the wagon.

As Camille’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she tried to see how many prisoners shared the wagon with her. She could make out heads and eyes among the welter of rags. There seemed to be at least two dozen souls, all small. She realized they
were all children and youths of many sizes and ages. She didn’t see any other adults or any other females. She swallowed hard and tried to take further stock of her situation.

The guard up front with the driver seemed to be dozing. The two outriders sat their horses as though half asleep themselves as they rode on either side of the heavy wagon as it moved on through the dreaming city. They didn’t have to be watchful, because there were, after all, three guards, plenty against helpless children and a female in irons. The boys, Camille noted, were tied to one another with hemp. She wore her cuff and chain, perhaps because she was the oldest or because Dearborne had paid for the extra caution. She moved her wrist and heard the chain clank, and for the first time realized it was securely fixed to the outer edge of the wagon, and so, then, was she.

Her heart stuttered, her mouth went dry, her stomach cold. She’d been hit on the head, carried off, had woken to nightmare, and still lived in one. But only now was she afraid. It was as if she hadn’t really believed any of it until this moment. For the first time she felt a surge of sheer panic, knowing she was now part of the great lumbering wagon and so whatever its fate, that would be hers. If it tipped over, she’d go with it. Where it stopped, she must too. She was linked to it as sure as she was linked to an unimaginably hideous future.

Another sudden thought came to her. She took a quick shuddery breath to keep her heart from leap
ing out of her throat. They said she was meant for this Higgins fellow on the hulk. She didn’t know if he was a reasonable man or a monster, only that she was meant for him. Whatever he was or was not, she was bound for a prison ship. She didn’t need much imagination to think about the pain and shame that would await her.

Camille tried to steady her nerves. She could deal with anything, and would until Eric found her. But how would he deal with what might happen to her before he did? Should she expect him to? She felt sick to her stomach and thought for the first time that like any brave soldier, she’d take death before dishonor. But would she even be given that choice? It seemed to her that all her choices were gone, she no longer controlled her destiny.

She wouldn’t let that happen. She blinked back debilitating tears and turned her attention to her options. She had to have some. She wriggled her wrist and found the iron circle held fast. She pulled on the chain that held her to the lip of the wagon until it rattled sharply, ringing out in the silent night.

A cold little hand, thin and light as a monkey’s, touched hers. “Naw, don’t do that, miss,” a soft voice said. “It won’t do naught but hurt your wrist, and it’ll get them vexed with you, which’ll hurt more.”

She looked down. A thin boy looked up at her sadly.

“I must,” she said. “I can’t stay here.”

“No one wants to.”

“But I will not!” she said in a harsh whisper.

“Where would you go?” he asked in a sad, flat voice, no louder than a spider’s sigh. The outriders would never hear him. She had to strain to hear him herself. It occurred to her that, young as he was, he must have spent a long time in a prison to learn to speak so softly yet clearly. “Even if you could get free, they’d be on you in a minute,” he told her.

“No, they might not,” she said. “I’m very strong, and I’m fast and agile, and I’m smart.”

He seemed to weigh her before he spoke again. “Aye,” he said consideringly. “Mebbe so. But even if you give ’em the slip here in the dark, they’d nab you the minute you set foot back in Lunnon again.”

“No, they won’t.
They’ll
be nabbed, and punished. I was kidnapped. Last night. They stole me away from my home, took my clothes and my name, and sent me here. But my family and friends have money and power. If I can get back to them, I’ll be safe.”