Page 22 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

T he cab moved swiftly, but not swiftly enough for Phoebe’s feelings. She leaned forward, urging the horse to pick up his pace. He seemed a patient old fellow, his hips above his sagging middle. Horses survived but a short while in harness in London traffic. Phoebe wanted to be catapulted forward, shot like some kind of rocket where she could already reach Andrew and hold him and let go of fear. It was fear that had been her closest companion for a year, always at her side, and when she dared to hope they’d find him, whispering that he must be dead, that her search was futile, that she was a mad woman to continue to look for him.

When the driver left Mayfair traffic, she leaned back against the seat. The horse trotted quickly, and her thoughts turned to how unprepared she was to welcome Andrew home. The wind was cold, and it would be dusk by the time she collected him and they returned to Marchmont House. She did not know what he wore. She had no coins in her small bag. He might need a coat or shoes or something to eat, and she had nothing. The message had been short and direct, typical of Jones. Perhaps he meant to provide whatever Andrew needed. Or he had taken Andrew to an inn or a coffeehouse. But none of that would matter when she could hold her brother and hear his voice.

If Henry spoke with Mrs. K as Phoebe had asked, Mrs. K would know what to do. Things would be in hand by the time she and Andrew returned. Phoebe’s hasty departure had alarmed Henry, but she would explain it later. Thoughts and plans consoled her for several minutes until she realized that they had passed Soho and were heading farther east. At the Holborn end of Chancery Lane, a pair of law clerks flung themselves into a cab going west. She opened the message in her hand. It said nothing about where Andrew was. She had assumed Andrew was in Soho, but supposed he could be anywhere.

The cab moved rapidly, but now its speed made her uneasy. She tried to open the trap to communicate with the driver, but found it stuck. A new thought occurred. She opened the message again, and realized that she did not know the writing. In her haste, she had not even asked the driver how he knew where to go.

Abruptly, the message no longer seemed right. Jones would have sent his note to Marchmont House. Then Thomas from her own staff would have come to the park. No one knew she was going to the park except her cousins. Her stomach pitched. A terrible conclusion was inescapable. Mary’s slip about Lucy Walker made sense. Her cousins had betrayed her to Bolton. It was Bolton who’d sent the message and arranged a cab, and now she was hurtling toward a meeting, not with her brother, not with Jones, but with someone from the league. She had nothing with which to defend herself.

She considered whether she could jump from the cab, and decided she could not. To attempt to stand and talk with the driver or interfere with the speeding horse seemed foolhardy. She kept her eye on the traffic. With luck, the driver would be obliged to slow down, and then she would attempt a jump. There would be a shop or a public house from which she could send a message, if not directly to Jones, at least to a constable. She could get help. At a bend in the road, the cab veered toward the river, and the dome of St. Paul’s came into view, late afternoon sunlight on its cupola. Still the cabman did not slow down.

At last he did, in a decidedly unsavory neighborhood of narrow grimy streets, raucous public houses, and establishments devoted to sail making and ship supplies. The cab came to a stop at the opening to a narrow alley overshadowed by towering brick warehouse walls. Iron bollards blocked the cab’s entrance into the alley itself.

“As far as I goes, miss,” the driver said. “Yer party waits for ye on the river stairs.”

River stairs. Definitely not Jones then. Jones would not choose river stairs for a place to meet Andrew. Phoebe looked around. Breath streamed from the horse into the cold air. The neighborhood smelled of river and fish and some sweet and cloying smoke. She expected to see sailors or working men, men on their way to or from a public house, but the street was nearly deserted. A door opened and closed in the distance, and a heavily bundled figure staggered away.

She stepped down from the cab, but kept hold of the apron, prepared to throw herself back into the seat. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. I need to go a bit farther. Can you take me to the offices of Greenwood’s Almanac ?”

“Mistake? No mistake, miss. This is where ’e said.” The driver was muffled in a great brown scarf, so that only his eyes showed between the brim of his hat and the wool around his jaw.

“I will pay you,” she offered.

“In advance?” he countered, unhelpfully.

“When we arrive.”

“Nothing doin’, miss.” Abruptly, he backed the horse, and she lost her hold on the apron and stumbled back.

“Lady Phoebe,” a familiar voice called, sending a shiver of alarm through her. “You should not be here.” Phoebe turned to see the count. “You have come to seek your brother, but I fear you are out of your element.”

Phoebe wholeheartedly agreed. The voice confirmed the suspicions that came to her in the cab. She was in the wrong place with the wrong person. Her heart pounded. Her knees were not as steady as she wished. In the alley, she saw only the count, and heard the tap of his cane against stone. If he had no accomplice with him, she might run. She hoped she could speak without a tremor in her voice. “I did not expect to meet you here.”

“Oh, I think you did, my dear.”

Phoebe’s spirits sank another notch. She wanted him to believe that she knew nothing of the league, but he guessed that she did, and that could not be good. “I received a message that led me to hope. If I’ve been misled, I shall simply continue the search elsewhere.”

“Do you think that wise?”

“Are you offering to help me?”

A few more taps of the cane brought the count closer. He stopped in the narrow lane on the other side of three stout iron bollards. His face was pale in the gloom. She could smell his cologne and realized that she had smelled it in the empty offices of the league with Jones.

“Alas, I cannot help you. I find myself rather inconvenienced by your search. You’ve made it necessary for me to change my plans.”

“You must pardon me, Count, I am at a loss to understand you.”

He leaned on his cane. “But you see, I understand you. Your search has brought the police down upon a humble enterprise of mine that has been quietly doing its work for years.”

“Surely, you have nothing to fear from the police.”

“Ah,” he said. “You are like other girls, after all, adept at feigning an innocence you do not possess.” He took another step forward. “Come, Lady Phoebe, your clandestine search efforts are known to me. You led your hapless policeman to Shattuck and, one suspects, to Leary. So do not toy with me.”

He wanted to frighten her, to make her cower. She held her ground. “I want only to find my brother. What can you want with me?”

“My business thrives because I am attentive to detail. And now I must clear up the last few trifling details of this matter.”

“Is my cousin Mary one of your trifling details?”

He laughed. The sound echoed off of the high brick walls. “My dear young woman, apparently, I have credited you with more intelligence than you possess. It is your cousin Mary who engaged me to help her recover property that rightly belongs to her father and brother.”

“Rightly?”

Phoebe glanced down the way the cab had come. Long walls of brick stretched in either direction. She saw no opening, no public house to which she could run. Still, she must run. Against all odds, she prayed for a drunken sailor or a thief to come along. She tried to estimate the advantage of having the bollards between them.

“Words in your late father’s own hand prove the boy to be another man’s bastard. I could not stand by and see my friend defrauded of her rights.”

“Surely, if my cousin had a case to make against my brother, she would make it in the courts.” Phoebe had to keep him talking. He seemed to take pleasure in having power over others, and to take offense at any sign of womanly intelligence. He considered himself smarter than any woman.

“Ah, how English, this faith in the law. The law is tediously slow and unreliable for those who are oppressed by injustice.”

“Is that how my cousin feels?” she asked. It was just what Jones had said. He had understood what Phoebe had refused to see in her cousin.

The count shook his head. “Your tenderhearted cousin is in need of consoling. It has not been easy for her to watch you continue your fruitless search.”

“And you will console her?”

That drew a thin smile. “Paris is a most consoling city. Shall we get down to it? There’s a seat in my boat where you will be more comfortable.”

Getting into the count’s boat sounded like a very bad idea. Phoebe did not know how high the tide was or whether it was coming in or going out, but she knew how dark and cold the river was. “Forgive me, Count, I’m afraid I cannot help you.” She nerved herself to run.

“How unfortunate. I must persuade you then.”

She did not perceive any signal and yet two men appeared at the count’s side. She pivoted west and ran.

*

Robin was watching the duchess win the trust of the two children when he was summoned to Wenlocke’s door. Henry Marchmont stood in the entry, red-faced and flustered, the door behind him open, a pair of fine bay horses and a striking yellow-wheeled curricle at the curb, a servant standing at the horse’s head.

“Jones,” Marchmont demanded, “explain what’s going on. You send a message, and my cousin hares off in a cab for George Alley, where no lady belongs. Then I go to her housekeeper who says that it’s not your message and that I’m to go to you and you’re to go after Phoebe. What’s happened?” He thrust a note at Robin.

Robin read. At Mrs. Kendall’s words, comprehension froze his blood. He stared at Henry’s absurd yellow rig. It might be his best hope. “Your cousin is in grave danger. How fast can you get me across London?”

“Well, I… fast if you need me to.”

“Faster without the servant?”

“Well, yes.”

“Good. Leave him here. They’ll take care of him. One minute and we’re off.”

Robin pulled Wenlocke from the little room with the children into the entry. “I must go. Bolton has lured Phoebe into a trap. Her housekeeper tells me that she received an earlier message and left the park in a cab. Her cousin says the cab was headed for George Alley.”

Wenlocke glanced at the waiting curricle with a grave expression. “Swan Lane stairs then,” he said, already in motion. “Bolton must have a boat there to get to the steam packet. Go. I’ll follow with reinforcements.”

Robin ran down the stairs and sprang into the carriage. The servant let go of the horses’ heads, and they were off. Henry Marchmont, might be foppish and confused, but he knew how to drive. He had fast horses, and the flashy yellow vehicle was well-made. He made a neat turn and urged his horses into a brisk trot that drew stares and curses from ordinary citizens as they flew by. In spite of their speed, Robin had a sensation of the distance expanding and their destination receding before them. It was less than a five-mile span, and he’d crossed it not two days earlier, but today each familiar stretch seemed interminable. Phoebe. Phoebe with her fearlessness, with her determination to find her brother, with her wit, had somehow fallen into Bolton’s power. Bolton would want to know what she knew. Robin doubted Phoebe would tell. How long did she have before Bolton decided that she was useless to him?

His imagination had him already at the river stairs. The river would be Bolton’s weapon. The water would be cold and dark, the tide swift, and no one likely to spot her if she were in trouble. Could Bolton force Phoebe down the steps and into a boat? She would resist him with all her strength. Bolton had so far kept himself at a distance from the bloody work of slitting throats. A man with a cane would have only one hand to use a pistol, but Bolton would have watermen waiting and perhaps some hired fists with no scruples. Could a woman stay afloat in all those skirts and petticoats?

At last, Marchmont’s carriage entered the darker, narrower streets near the wharves, where the walls made a perpetual shadow and Marchmont suddenly began to question Robin. “You are sure you know where we’re going?”

“Phoebe’s in danger, and we’re going to rescue her.” Robin hoped that saying it would make it so.

“What is the plan? We don’t have weapons.” The horses were tiring, and Marchmont slowed the pace.

“We’ll find something.” Robin was already thinking.

“Where do I turn?” Marchmont asked.

“There.” Robin pointed to three bollards in the distance at the end of a street that followed the snaking line of the river. “Walk the horses now. Bolton will hear our approach, so let him think we’re passing by in no hurry.”

“Do I stop?”

“Yes. Block that alley if you can. You’re going to talk to Bolton and offer to take your cousin home.”

Marchmont shook his head. “Can’t leave my rig. It will be stolen.”

“You can replace a rig. You can’t replace Phoebe.”

“Good point.”

“Just keep Bolton talking.”

“I’m confused. Who’s Bolton?”

“He’s your sister’s count.” Robin leapt down from the slow-moving vehicle and walked along beside it, keeping himself hidden from the alley.

“What? Where will you be?” Marchmont’s head spun toward Robin.

“Keep your eyes on the horses, Marchmont. Bolton must not see me or know that I’m here.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Very. Remember, Wenlocke is coming. Just keep your man talking. And, Marchmont, tell Phoebe that Andrew is alive and safe.” As Marchmont halted his rig, Robin stepped into the shadows. He had a plan.