The Hidden Blade (27 page)

“Have you any idea the lengths he would go to?” Leighton went on, his voice soft but vehement. “And you don’t look like a particularly law-abiding sort to me. Within a week he will find something on you that will have you arrested, if you can’t pay him back double what you took from me. You have five hundred pounds to spare?”

Jenkins recoiled, as if Leighton had suddenly developed a highly contagious disease.

“If I were you I’d go right now, before I decide that I want to punish you more than I want to get away from him.”

Jenkins’s left eye twitched. He looked at Leighton long and hard, then rose and left without another word.

A minute later, the train departed the station.

Leighton set his face in his hands and shook the entire length of the journey.

It was only tea time when he walked back into his hotel in Southampton. He could not believe it—he could barely remember the hope that had luxuriated in his heart when he woke this morning. Now he was free by the skin of his teeth, but all his plans of a swift reunion with Herb—and with Mother and Marland—had gone the way of soap bubbles under the sun.

Four pounds, and perhaps a stray penny or two in addition—that was still enough money to get to France, but just barely. Was it better to find employment here and save up some money first—or safer to at least put the English Channel between himself and Sir Curtis?

His head pounded, and he was weak with hunger—Boxer had offered him a sandwich en route, but the thought of food had turned his stomach. He dragged himself into the dining room. He really should not be eating here, now that his circumstances had been drastically reduced. But he was tired and afraid. And his feet, to which he’d paid scant attention since his capture, were once again hurting badly.

“Oh, look, Violet,” said a thin, elderly woman in a hat trimmed with a stuffed finch. “It’s Mr. Ashburton.”

The rather well-upholstered woman next to her nodded regally.

Leighton stared at them dumbly. He had a vague memory of having spoken to them at some point, aeons ago, when the world had been an entirely different place.

Recollection jolted through him. He stared at them some more. Then he was next to their table, hunger and blisters forgotten. “Miss McHenry, Miss Violet, good afternoon. You wouldn’t happen to be still in need of a general dogsbody, would you?”

Chapter 18

The Tea Set

From Southampton, Leighton and the misses McHenry sailed to Madeira.

Given his employers’ age and ready confession that they were no sportswomen, Leighton had expected a gentle itinerary. But the misses McHenry wanted Adventure.

Each morning they rose at dawn and set out on horseback up narrow roads so steep that Leighton feared someone in the party would tumble backward. Then they would dismount, send the horses back, consume a hearty breakfast, and proceed on foot for the hike proper.

The landscape of Madeira was like nothing Leighton had ever experienced before, all sheer cliffs and precipitous gorges, unbearably breathtaking, and almost unbearably arduous for the uninitiated.

His first three days were sheer agony. Not his feet, thankfully—his blisters had healed during the steamer passage, and the misses McHenry had bought him a pair of laced-up boots made of soft, pliable leather, well suited to the demands of the terrain. But his muscles, entirely unaccustomed to the sustained exertion required for the almost vertical climbs and the equally steep and even more treacherous descents, screamed constantly in protest.

The bread, cake, and tins of corned beef that he carried on his back would feel like bricks by midmorning—and like iron ingots by the time they finally stopped for lunch. His thighs would be burning, his breaths coming in gasps, and his arms trembling visibly from holding on to his alpenstock.

And his employers, far from demanding that he look after them, would hasten to pat his cheeks with handkerchiefs that had been dipped in water. Then they would hand him a cup of coffee they had made on the Etna stove, to which a drop of cognac had been added to better revive him.

“How do you manage it?” he asked on the fourth day, fanning himself with his hat.

This day they walked along miles of narrow aqueducts, called
levada
, that carried water from the western part of the island to the east. There had been sections of the
levada
that passed through easy countryside, and other sections that required pith helmets, torches, and very sure footing for one to not slide off into the deep ravines the
levada
skirted.

It was also the first day on which he felt remotely helpful, assisting the ladies across some of the more vertiginous stretches of their path.

“Well, we are half Scotch, for one thing,” said Miss McHenry, “though of course I must admit that we’ve spent most of our lives south of the border.”

“It’s from having been cooped up all our lives,” said Miss Violet. “We are afraid that if we don’t climb every mountain and sail every sea now, we won’t have the time for it later.”

“Our mother passed away before she was our age, you see,” explained Miss McHenry. “Several of our sisters are also no more. And Miss Violet here had a rough winter herself.”

“You had it worse, having to look after both Father and me,” answered Miss Violet. She turned to Leighton. “Our father was never an easy man. He believed his children ought to conduct their lives exactly as he directed: boys doing manly things and girls settling down in marriage. But my sister and I never wanted to go down the path of matrimony, and for that we were considered failures. And the older he—and we—became, the more he considered our lives utterly wasted.”

The more Leighton knew of life, the more he perceived the strictures that ladies must endure. Not just in the paucity of choices in terms of what they could do with their lives, but in the pervasive pressure placed on them to not
desire
anything else.

“We could have left to live on our own,” said Miss McHenry, a trace of regret in her voice. “We had a sister who married well. Her husband had left her a considerable dower, and when she passed away she provided amply for all her siblings. But our father was vehemently opposed to the idea, even though we were both well past thirty at that point. We acquiesced—we had grown accustomed to yielding to him.”

“We also thought he wouldn’t live much longer,” added Miss Violet.

In the beginning it had seemed that Miss McHenry was the more open of the two; but as it turned out, Miss Violet was far more likely to speak the blunt truth.

“Well, there was that,” admitted Miss McHenry. “But he had the constitution of an ox, and at one point we feared he was going to outlast us all.”

“And it was terrible to think that we had wasted our entire lives as a spiteful old man’s marionettes,” said Miss Violet.

Leighton had not realized it before: He never had to wrestle with any attachment to his captor—it had always been revulsion, pure and simple. But for the ladies it would have been a long and painful struggle, disillusionment alternating with hope that perhaps their father could still change.

“But you outlasted him instead,” he said.

“By the skin of our teeth. At one point Violet was in a bad way. And I thought to myself, if the influenza spared him, but took her…” Miss McHenry drew a deep breath.

Miss Violet patted her hand. “We promised each other that if I recovered, we would leave him and finally start our own lives, whether he survived or not. In the end we didn’t need to test our resolve, but trust me, we would be here today even if he were still fuming daily over his afternoon tea about how nothing is as it was or as it should be.”

Miss McHenry smiled at Leighton. “And now you know how we do it. We are driven by this insatiable desire to see and experience everything. I love every mile of ocean I have crossed and every step I have taken on Madeira, even if I sometimes feel as if my skeleton is about to rattle apart.”

Their guide came and said something to Leighton in Portuguese. Leighton had never studied Portuguese before, but it was similar enough to Italian that during their steamer journey, he had picked up quite a bit from the Portuguese sailors.

He thanked the guide and turned to the misses McHenry. “Senhor Lima says that three miles ahead there is a very nice waterfall.”

“Then let’s not dawdle anymore,” Miss Violet rose. “I do believe we set out from England with the express purpose of seeing every waterfall in the whole wide world.”

The tea set was quite beautiful, the silver teapot at once heavy yet delicate, the silver filigree pattern on the tea glass holders as intricate as the finest lace. Miss McHenry and Miss Violet whispered to each other, debating whether they really ought to acquire anything that was both expensive and liable to break during their travels.

Miss McHenry pointed out that the bottle of Madeira that they had acquired on the island itself had arrived in Tangier—via the Canary Islands, three cities on the coast of Maghreb, an excursion into the Sahara Desert and one to the Atlas Mountains, no less—without any mishap. Miss Violet ceded that particular victory but reminded her just how much trouble it was to lug said bottle of Madeira around for the pleasure of two small sips every evening.

Leighton listened to their exchange with half an ear. All about them, merchants haggled with potential customers and laughed with one another. Grains and spices were weighed and wrapped, yards of wool and silk draped around shoulders to show off their color and texture.

He paid attention because he found everything fascinating. And because ever since his capture in Southampton he couldn’t help but be acutely aware of his surroundings, sometimes excruciatingly so in crowded places.

Miss McHenry was about to capitulate to Miss Violet’s argument in favor of practicality when Leighton saw the shabbily dressed boy slinking through the bazaar. As the misses McHenry moved on from stall to stall, the boy came closer and closer.

A poor boy who appeared unlikely to afford the wares wasn’t necessarily a criminal. But this boy had lingered too long to be an apprentice on an errand for his master, or a houseboy sent by the cook to buy a handful of prunes for the evening’s tagine.

Leighton caught the pickpocket by the wrist as the latter reached toward Miss Violet’s reticule. The boy jerked, stilled, and stared at Leighton, his eyes huge with fear. He was Leighton’s age, but almost half a foot shorter, with chapped lips and hollow cheeks, a boy who probably didn’t eat every meal—or even every day.

Still holding on to the boy’s hand, Leighton dug into a hidden pocket in his waistcoat with his free hand and extracted two three-falus copper pieces.

The boy only looked more afraid when the coins dropped in his palm.

Leighton let go of his wrist.
“Salaam.”

The boy gaped at him another moment. Before he could get away, their guide clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Is this lowlife bothering you, sir?”

The misses McHenry always introduced Leighton as their nephew, and he was thus treated as a patron, rather than a fellow servant.

“No, not at all,” he said.

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure. Let him go. He is harmless.”

The guide glared at the boy before releasing him.

Leighton exhaled. In his most desperate hour, had Miss McHenry not smiled up at him and said,
Of course we are still in need of a young man like you
,he too might now be a petty criminal, existing at the edge of hunger.

There but for the grace of God go I
.

Leaving his employers for a moment, he returned to the merchant who had the gleaming silver-and-glass tea set for sale. After some negotiation, they settled on a price. Later that day he returned with sufficient coins and purchased the entire set.

He wanted to give his present to Miss McHenry after dinner. But he felt too shy. The same the next evening. At the end of their stay in Tangier, he packed away the tea set in his luggage.

He would say nothing of it to Miss McHenry until it was time for him to leave their employment.