The Lady Risks All (11 page)

“Aye, sir.” With a jingle of harness, the driver set his cab on the trail of the black carriage.

She drew the cloak she’d found in Roderick’s armoire closer about her—about the trousers, shirt, cravat, waistcoat, and topcoat she’d borrowed from the same location—and savored the frisson, not of fear but excitement, that shivered through her. She’d never done anything so outrageously risky in all her twenty-nine years . . . and thus far she’d enjoyed every second.

She was quietly amazed by what, given just a few ounces of determination, her mind could come up with. She’d refused to accept being left at home; she’d set her eyes on a goal, and here she was, following Roscoe to his appointment at the dockside tavern.

Forty minutes later she was still clinging to the sense of mild triumph when the hackney finally rocked to a stop.

The driver leaned down so his words reached through the trapdoor. “That’s them just ahead, sir. Can’t go closer than this without drawing their coachman’s attention.”

She was already peering ahead through the murk. Sulfurous smog hung low, wreathing the buildings, adding shadows to their dilapidation and rendering the weak, distantly spaced street flares even more ineffectual. The area was every bit as insalubrious as Roscoe had intimated, but his carriage stood in the lane, more or less blocking it, solid, respectable, and reassuring. They’d drawn up just in time to see Roscoe and his men stride into the tavern, a low building slumped between two taller ones, none of which looked sound.

“Wait here.” Opening the hackney door, she climbed down—to slippery, uneven cobbles. She gave thanks she’d worn her riding boots. Quietly shutting the door, keeping her head tipped down, she walked unhurriedly toward the tavern, using the cane as if she needed it. She’d wound her hair high and tight, and anchored the mass beneath a flat-brimmed hat, her face further shadowed by the hood of the cloak she’d pulled up over the hat.

Her leather riding gloves covered her hands. As she neared the tavern, she prayed she’d covered everything that would advertise her gender.

Barely pausing to draw breath, she opened the tavern door and went in.

The atmosphere inside was even murkier than outside, but here the fug derived from a poorly drawing fire and from numerous smelly pipes various denizens were puffing. She didn’t make the mistake of standing and staring but immediately turned and claimed the single chair at a small table mere feet from the door. It was the perfect spot, tucked aside, not well lit, and close to an exit. Propping her cane against the table, she sat, leaned her elbows on the scarred surface, linked her fingers and hunched forward so her gloved hands obscured the lower half of her face, and only then allowed herself to, from the shadows of her hood, scan the room.

Roscoe wasn’t hard to find. He was leaning on the long counter that faced the door and talking to the balding man behind it. Mudd and Rawlins had taken chairs at a table further into the room from where they could see the door and keep an eye on their master’s back at the same time, but both were presently watching Roscoe; she’d entered quietly enough that they hadn’t noticed.

She stared at Roscoe’s back, stared even more at the barkeep’s face, at his lips as, while polishing a glass, he answered Roscoe’s questions.

“Damn!” she whispered. She couldn’t hear or see well enough to guess what the barkeep was saying.

Movement to one side caught her eye; a barmaid was going from table to table taking orders, but the girl had halted and was watching Roscoe. That suited Miranda; she had no idea what to order to remain true to her disguise.

A swift glance around showed that most, if not all, of the tavern’s patrons were watching Roscoe; even those chatting were keeping a wary eye on him. Everyone knew when he straightened from the bar and turned. His gaze swept the tavern; she kept her head down and held her breath as his gaze swept over her. She breathed again when that searching gaze didn’t stop, didn’t halt and return to her, but instead moved on to . . . glancing out from beneath the edge of her hood, she saw him push away from the bar and stroll to where a much older man sat in a shallow booth along the other side of the tavern.

Roscoe drew up a chair, set it down at the old man’s table, and sat.

She swallowed another muttered imprecation; he was now closer, but still facing away from her, and he and the old man were speaking too quietly for her to hear . . . and she couldn’t risk shifting nearer. Her ingenuity had got her this far, but she could see no way of furthering her aim.

Roscoe forced his mind from the cloaked figure hunched over the table by the door. He’d learned long ago never to let his temper rule him, yet in that instant when he’d sensed her—when he’d known that, somehow, she was there—and then he’d turned and seen her, his control had teetered on the very brink of failing.

It had taken every ounce of his vaunted self-control to focus instead on the old man the barkeep had said was the tavern’s owner, to push away from the bar and, ignoring her, pretending his senses hadn’t locked on her, walk across and engage the old man.

The owner was a gnarly old coot, but he hadn’t lived as long as he had by being dim-witted. Beady eyes searching Roscoe’s face, the old man asked, “What’s it to you who hired me coach?”

“Sadly, it appears they didn’t mention that they intended to kidnap an associate of mine. I have reason to believe that my associate’s life now hangs in the balance, so”—Roscoe let his lips curve—“here I am, asking politely for information on who used your coach.”

The old man read the expression in his eyes. “Heard tell of you, even down here. If’n those two wanted me to keep their business secret, they should’ve paid me more, now shouldn’t they?”

“Indeed, they should have.”

“Aye, well, as they didn’t, and here you are, askin’ politely, then I can tell you it was two heavyweights, call theirselves Kempsey and Dole, strictly work-for-hire, who had me coach out that night. Hired it, and the driver, too.”

“Any idea who they’re working for or what their current project is?”

The old man shook his head. “No idea who they’re in with—they don’t usually hang ’round these parts—but I’d assumed it were burglary or kidnapping, given they wanted the coach, but o’course I didn’t ask. All I know is the coach was back in the stables the next morning, and I heard tell Millet—he’s me driver—was sleeping in, happy enough with his outing.”

Roscoe considered, then asked, “What can you tell me about Kempsey and Dole themselves? Anything you’ve heard might be useful.”

The old man shrugged. “Like I said, they’re not generally ’round here, but I’ve heard they’ll work for anyone who can meet their price.”

Roscoe read between the man’s lines. “So there’s very little they won’t do?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“All right.” Roscoe straightened. “Where can I find Millet?”

After extracting the driver’s likely location, Roscoe rose, nodded to the old man, then turned and headed for the tavern door. Nearing it, he slowed, then smoothly diverted to grasp the elbow of the cloaked “man” seated at the last table, effortlessly drew her to her feet, and, swiping up the cane that had rested against the table, thrust her before him out of the door.

Emerging into the cramped lane, still gripping her arm, he propelled her several yards deeper into the shadows away from the tavern door, then, jaw clenching, swung her to face him, locked his eyes with hers—wide and already kindling with fury—and snarled, “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Learning what’s happened to my brother!” She didn’t exactly snarl back, but she certainly didn’t cower—more like snapped. Her face set in mutinous lines, she twisted her arm, fighting his hold. “Let go!”

Lips compressing, he did—reluctantly. Some part of him felt better pleased and much calmer when he had a firm grip on her.

She glared and rubbed her elbow.

The implication of the action cut through his temper and undermined it. Not that he was about to apologize.

Inwardly sighing, he closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose to help him focus, then opened his eyes. “How did you get here?”

Miranda heard the resigned tenor of his tone; struggling to dampen the surge of sensation sizzling and singeing her nerves, she grudgingly replied, “That hackney.” She tipped her head toward the carriage, stationary in the shadows. “He’s waiting to take me back.”

Roscoe frowned. “How did you get him to wait? They rarely will, not in this area.”

“I paid him an extra guinea and promised him another if he waited.”

Roscoe turned as Mudd came up. “Give the jarvey two guineas and tell him he won’t be needed more tonight.”

She took heart at the words. As Mudd, after one quick look at her, trudged over to the hackney, she asked, “So what did you learn?”

Roscoe glanced down at her. As Rawlins, faintly stunned to see her, joined them, he said, “Your brother was kidnapped by two men called Kempsey and Dole. They’re hired thugs. So far I’ve no idea who hired them, but I know where the coach driver lives. He might have more information.”

Mudd had returned in time to hear most of that. “So are we going to go and have a word with this driver, then?”

She looked up into Roscoe’s shadowed face and waited.

Roscoe studied her features, even shaded by the hood far too feminine to ever be mistaken for a man’s. Instinctively he weighed the odds, ranked his options, but in this case one course was imperative; they needed to get on Roderick’s trail as soon as possible. “Yes.” He glanced at Mudd and Rawlins. “Ride up top—tell Cummins we want Ryder Lane in Clerkenwell.”

Taking her arm more gently than before, he turned and led her to his carriage. Mudd opened the door on his way to speak with Cummins, the coachman. Roscoe caught the swinging door, held it while she gathered her cloak and the cane, then steadied her as she climbed inside. Releasing her, he followed her up and in, and with commendable restraint quietly shut the door.

M
iranda hung back in the shadows of the fetid runnel that was Ryder Lane and listened as Roscoe questioned the coach driver, Millet.

From her position against the opposite wall, with Mudd’s shoulders partly screening her from the doorway where Millet, a pasty-faced little man with thinning hair, stood facing the three large men on his stoop, she watched Roscoe impress on the hapless coach driver why answering his questions quickly and honestly would be in Millet’s own best interests.

Until then she hadn’t seen even a hint of anything frightening in Roscoe, but in the tiny lane, everything about him—his stance, his voice, his every movement—projected a lethal menace that made her shiver.

It made Millet quake. “Yessir.” Wringing his hands, he bobbed. “I understand—I do.”

“Excellent. So, Kempsey and Dole—the men who hired the coach and you to drive it—where did you pick them up?”

“They was waiting at the Blue Jug, at the stables out back, when I arrived. They helped me put the horses to, then had me drive all the way to Pimlico.”

“You pulled up where?”

“End of Chichester Street, it was. Past the square and where it meets the next street—Claverton, that’d be.”

“So you halted there. Then what? Tell me what happened, everything you saw and heard.”

“The pair o’em—Kempsey and Dole—they didn’t talk much. Once I pulled up, they climbed down, told me to wait just there and not move, and then they sloped off. I thought at first they’d gone under the trees in the square, but later—when they lugged the baggage, whatever it was, to the coach—they came from the other side of the street, so p’rhaps they hid in one of the doorways along there.”

“Most likely. What was the baggage they put into the coach?”

Millet looked nervous. “The truth, guv’nor, is I can’t be sure.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it were dark, for a start—no street flares along there. All I could see was they were lugging something—looked like a lumpy rug rolled up—with one o’em at each end. Seemed heavyish, but not so they was straining under the weight.” Millet paused, as if reviewing a memory. “Dole put his end down, opened the coach door, then Dole picked up his end again and backed up and into the coach and Kempsey followed.”

“So their baggage could have been a man wrapped in a cloak or blanket?”

Millet nodded warily. “Aye—could’ve been.”

“Very well. What happened next? Where did you take them?”

“That was the strangest bit. I’d assumed I’d be driving ’em back to town, but no—Kempsey sent me north. They had me drive ’em up Paddington way to a lane where they had another coach waiting.”

“Another coach?”

“Aye—it were a traveling coach, see? Just a local lad watching it for ’em—no driver or groom. They sent the lad packing, then they moved the baggage from my coach to the other one, then they sent me off with the rest of m’ pay.”

Roscoe paused, then asked, “Any idea which way they went?”

“I didn’t stick ’round to see, but the coach was facing northwest-ish. Away from the city.”

“You know coaches and horses—tell me what you can about this other coach.”

Millet scrunched up his face. “Couldn’t see much—there weren’t any lights—but I’d say it was just an ordinary, average, run-of-the-mill traveler, not new, much the same age as the one from the Blue Jug. No great shakes, most likely another hire. As for the horses, they was jobbers, sure as eggs. Slow plodders, I’d say. . . .” Millet paused, then went on, “Just remembered why I was so sure they were heading out of town—there were bags in the boot. I spotted ’em as I was turning my rig around.”

Roscoe searched Millet’s unprepossessing face. “Very well.” He held Millet’s gaze for an instant, then nodded. “Good night, Millet.”

Millet all but sagged with relief.

Roscoe turned away; reaching for Miranda’s arm, he drew her with him as he strode back up the lane.

“D
o you have any idea who might want Roderick dead?” Sitting facing Miranda in his town carriage as it rocked through the city on the way back to Pimlico, Roscoe scanned her features in the faint light cast by the coach’s interior lamps. He’d drawn the curtains over the windows and lit the lamps so he could better question her. Leaning forward, his elbows on his thighs, he watched her wrack her brain.