It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (25 page)

Then again, it was entirely possible it was his heart singing. Poets had an unfortunate tendency to ascribe vocal chords to hearts. He was skeptical, but less of a skeptic than he might have been once.

And breathing . . . breathing was suddenly a fresh new pleasure. As if he was doing it for the very first time. The air was wine. He read the message again:

I’m contemplating something dangerous. I did promise to tell you. Care to be involved? Come today?

—Your friend, T

“What are you smiling at, Jonathan?”

His father sounded amused.

Jonathan gave a start.

He’d completely forgotten his father was sitting at the table with him. And not even the fact that he sat at the table breathing the same air could affect his mood. His father looked more colorful, too, somehow.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said simply, at last.

His father swiveled toward the window, saw clouds outside and frowned faintly.

But when he swiveled back to Jonathan again, Jonathan’s chair was empty, and still rocking a little from the speed with which he’d abandoned it.

Chapter 19

T
HEY DIDN’T SPEAK WHEN
she opened the door to his knock.

They didn’t speak on the stairs, or in the passageway.

And for an absurdly long, ever-so-awkward moment after she’d let him into her rooms, where a fire crackled and a pot of tea sat in the center of the little table, neither of them spoke a word.

At last he said softly. “Miss me, Tommy?”

A little silence.

“Didn’t we
just
see each other?” She took pains to sound bored.

He gave her a slow smile.

Then Jonathan mouthed, “Liar.”

She smiled and turned away abruptly, and she seemed, of all things, to be fidgeting. Two little spots of color sat high on her cheeks.

“You’re looking well,” she said politely. Which was funny, since she wasn’t looking at him at all.

“Of course I am. Why don’t you tell me what dangerous thing you’re contemplating now?”

And so while Rutherford thumped overhead, Jonathan listened to Tommy explain what they were about to do.

It was sheer lunacy, of course. He’d expected nothing less of her.

Mad, dangerous, foolish. Quixotic.

After a long silence to absorb, through which he surreptitiously examined her for new bullet wounds or any other marks and was relieved beyond all proportion not to find any, the first question out of his mouth was, “Should I wear an eyepatch?”

Clearly he’d already decided to do it.

“An
eyepatch?
”

“Or a wig?”

“Do you mean . . . like a barrister?”

He sighed exasperatedly. “For God’s sake. I resemble my father. At least somewhat. He’s hardly an anonymous man. A mill overlooker with a particle of intelligence might be able to piece together who I am.”

“Firstly, overlookers aren’t known for their particles of intelligence, particularly this one. And no one on the face of the earth would believe him even if he did piece that together. For what is the nature of your reputation, Mr. Redmond? In what context are you usually found? You see, everything has its uses, including a reputation you’ve found somewhat burdensome of late. Is it that you want to wear a disguise?” she asked indulgently. “Will you sulk if you aren’t allowed to wear one?”

He regarded her in cold silence for a moment.

“I don’t have to do this at all,” he proffered casually. It was very much a threat.

She arranged her features in an unconvincing expression of contrition. “I think it will all happen so quickly—it needs to happen so quickly— a disguise will not be necessary. In fact, I think it will be most effective if you look exactly the way you do now.”

“Which is how . . . ? Desire incarnate?”

She just smiled and slowly shook her head, but her cheeks did look a trifle rosier. “Like a
Gentleman,
with a capital ‘
G
.
’
”

“And what will you be do doing while I’m inspecting the mill at the behest of the owner?”

The mill, ironically, his father wanted more than anything else in the world, and wanted more by the day, simply because he couldn’t have it. The mill the Duke of Greyfolk wanted.

“Distracting the overlooker.”

“And how will you distract the overlooker?”

“Oh,
please,
” she laughed merrily.

She
was
distracting. He’d allow her that.

I
T CAME INTO
view about two hours into the ride in a hired carriage driven by someone Tommy trusted to take their money and keep his mouth shut: a behemoth of orderly red brick glowing in the sun, five stories spread out over a pretty acreage of trees and meadow, narrow rectangular windows punched in at even intervals. A benign enough looking building. Chimneys endlessly fed wisps of black smoke into the blue sky. The river shimmered alongside. A building that must have been the dormitory for the children sat a good hundred feet or more behind it. Always locked, Tommy told him. Always locked and guarded. And surrounded by a wall nearly twice the height of Jonathan.

The sort of wall no child could ever hope to scale.

It represented everything his father lived for: progress, potential, and profit.

Immense
profit. And Jonathan felt his own blood quicken with the potential of it, and a tingling begin in his fingertips.

He saw it as clearly as they did.

But surely profits fueled by the sweat and blood of children were tainted.

Surely they didn’t
have
to be fueled by the blood of children?

And did his father know that? Did the duke? Did they care?

The boy was named Charlemagne Wilkerson. Charlie for short. He was eight or nine years old, perhaps younger—no one knew for certain, Tommy told him. A scrappy little fellow who’d been beaten by the overlooker more than once. According to her contact at the Bethnal Green workhouse, Charlie been sold to the mill owner less than a year ago, and worked as a scavenger or a piecer, which meant he scrambled under the gigantic, incessantly moving frames and wheels with a brush sweep, beneath the wheels of the machines, lest little bits of cotton clog them and bring commerce to an untimely halt, or he ran between frames to tie the snapped bits of cotton.

Scavengers, Tommy explained, often must throw their bodies flat on the floor to avoid being scalped or run over by the wheels. That’s why the littlest ones were used.

Many a child had been scalped that way.

“So be careful how you get his attention. You could kill him.”

He was humbled by the things she knew.

“I might say the same of you,” Jonathan said. Except the “him” he was referring to was the overlooker.

She knew it, and gave a smile that bordered on the sultry.
Her
job was to keep the overlooker, a nasty piece of work named Mr. Tabthwaite, occupied, if not enthralled, while Jonathan found Charlie somewhere on the factory floor and slipped out of the building, child in tow.

What could
possibly
go awry?

Fortunately, he had a plan. Or rather, two plans.

The first was a mad plan, but could nevertheless work well, indeed. He had little Sally to thank for the inspiration.

The second plan involved his pistol and a lot of running and dodging.

And he wasn’t certain whether he was doing this mad thing for Tommy, or doing this for himself, or whether there was any distinction anymore.

All he knew was that he wanted her to admire him the way he admired her. He wanted to be brave for her.

“
G
OOD DAY,
M
R.
Tabthwaite. I’m Lord Ludlow of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, and this is my assistant, Miss Edwina Burns. You’ll be expecting us, I believe.”

He concluded this with a faint, politely imperious smile.

The man stared up at him. One of his eyes was strikingly smaller than the other, and both had that peculiar, flat lightlessness of the truly cruel. His eyebrows were half an inch wide, and curled in an unruly fashion upward, like the antenna on an insect. Tabthwaite’s hair was oddly glorious, a mane of carefully tended brown.

Jonathan was reminded of the children who were scalped beneath the machinery.

He saw Tommy’s eyes looking in the same direction.

“I dinna ken a Lord Ludlow.” Tabthwaite said it with an abruptness that bordered on insolence, but his eyes kept wandering toward Tommy, as surely as if they were magnetized. Tommy rewarded him with a smile that was as demure as her neckline was dangerous. The man smiled faintly in response. A reflex. It was what men did when they saw Tommy.

He jerked his attention forcefully back to Jonathan when Jonathan spoke again.

“Mr. Romulus Bean, Esquire, your current employer and payer of your wages, will have informed you of our visit today. He is the very model of efficiency, so I’m certain he has done his duty. Perhaps it has slipped your mind?” It had the faintest whiff of censure, delivered in cutting aristocratic tones. “Miss Burns, if you would please make a note of this.”

The name “Romulus Bean” straightened the man’s spine. He cleared his throat.

“What be the nature of your visit, Lord Ludlow? Are you wishin’ to buy the mill, then?”

“Miss Burns,” Jonathan said crisply. “If you would show Mr. Tabthwaite our papers.”

Tommy produced a sheaf of frightfully crisp and official looking documents, decorated with gleaming seals, enormous important looking signatures scrawled at the bottoms, and thrust them into the hands of Tabthwaite, who accepted them, puzzled.

“By order of his majesty, we are here on a matter of public safety. Our visit regards a redheaded boy named Charlemagne Wilkerson, who is employed here. Our research has revealed that he is the last surviving member of a Scottish village, which perished in a strain of plague known as Chrysanthia Pestis, or the Violet Plague. You may know it more commonly as the collywobbles. Young Mr. Wilkerson is most certainly a carrier of the disease.”

Both of the man’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Collywobbles . . . but . . . but . . . I thought collywobbles was just nervous stomach!”

So
that’s
what it was.

“Perhaps the word has evolved to mean such in your part of England,” Jonathan said smoothly. “I can assure you the condition is quite serious, name aside. Will you tell me, please, on what floor of the factory I can find young Charlemagne? I’ve been instructed to remove him from the premises for quarantine and study.”

Tabthwaite frowned.

“Are you . . . reluctant, Mr. Tabthwaite, to cooperate with an order issued by Mr. Romulus Bean?” Jonathan said it softly. It was a threat.

“I’ll . . . I’ll go and fetch Charlie for you.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Tabthwaite, it’s wisest you stay here. If you haven’t yet had the collywobbles, it is best not to put yourself at any further risk, despite the fact that you’ve experienced some exposure. Miss Burns will stay behind to query you about the child whilst I fetch him. I am quite immune, having been exposed some years ago, and I am familiar with the care needed to transport the diseased.”

“W-w-w-hat about the
rest
of the children?” Mr. Tabthwaite was genuinely alarmed now. “What about
me?
”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, if you would be so kind as to watch them for symptoms. A tendency to rebellion is one of the early signs. This tendency is caused by a fever of the brain.”

“That be Charlie! Many’s the day I’ve broken a stick over the boy’s hide. Was forced to knock him senseless once.”

Jonathan went silent.
How very, very much I would like to break a stick over your hide and knock you senseless now.

Mr. Tabthwaite must have sensed his thoughts, for he took an unconscious, infinitesimal step back. The hands holding his sheaf of entirely invented official documents rattled a little in his hands.

“The trouble with beating the infected child,” Jonathan mused, “is that the disease tends to rise from the child’s skin and attach to whoever’s nearest. We therefore don’t recommend beating an infected child as a form of discipline, unless one is eager for an early death. And undue exertion, such as laying a stick upon a recalcitrant child, can cause a latent disease to manifest. In other words, if you beat a child, you are more likely to fall prey to the disease, and it kills adults more quickly than it does children. Now, on which floor will I find Charlemagne?”

It was a moment before the man could speak.

“Third,” Tabthwaite choked after a hesitation. His face was gray now. “The stairs be that way. He’s a ginger. Freckles, too.”

Jonathan nodded shortly, then turned to Tommy. “Miss Burns, will you kindly stay here and complete our query while I fetch the subject?”

“Yes, of course, my lord,” she said very quietly, eyes downcast.

Which was the most abiding Tommy had ever sounded.

Fifteen minutes, they’d agreed. She’d distract him for fifteen minutes, then return to the carriage.