Читать книгу In Debt To The Earl - Elizabeth Rolls - Страница 10

Chapter One

Three weeks later

James blinked across the table at his opponent. ‘I make that a thousand pounds, Hensleigh. Time to settle up, don’t you think?’ He spoke with extra precision, as if without care his speech might have slurred. With seeming clumsiness, he knocked his glass of burgundy. ‘Oops,’ he said absently.

Hensleigh smiled broadly as he righted the glass. ‘Oh, come now, Cambourne! I’m no faint heart. The merest reverse! You must give me at least a chance to recoup my losses. Double or nothing on the next hand? Winner take all?’

James would have preferred to end this farce right there and then, walking out with his winnings, or at least Hensleigh’s vowels. Frankly he thought he’d spent enough time in the Cockpit.

Finding the hell had been easy. Getting in had been trickier, even with the password Nick had given him, but a crown to the doorman had worked a minor miracle. He’d noted Hensleigh on his first visit, a tall, bluff, open-faced sort, with thinning ginger hair, but hadn’t approached him. Instead he’d played dice at another table, careful not to win or lose too heavily, once he’d worked out how the dice were weighted. He’d dressed carefully, making sure he looked and behaved like a well-heeled squire fresh from the country—a pigeon ready for plucking. He’d also introduced himself as plain Mr Cambourne. In this situation his title would be a hindrance. He’d watched the card play, come to the conclusion that Hensleigh was far from the only Captain Sharp in the room, and planned accordingly.

Sure enough, the first time he’d played whist, he’d been allowed to win. Easily. Afterwards, when Hensleigh had come up to congratulate him, he’d grumbled that his opponent wasn’t skilled enough to make it entertaining. The second time he’d lost a little, but won more, swaggering away two hundred pounds to the good. Tonight Hensleigh had approached him, all “hail, fellow, well met” and “care for a hand or two?” Apparently tonight was plucking time.

James considered. Double or nothing would end the affair and he wanted it over. The dingy, smoky hell, with its complement of the desperate and the dangerous, bored him. Several women, their profession—and assets—very obvious, prowled the room, only too ready to relieve a man of his winnings if the professional card sharps at the tables failed to do it. Occasionally a woman would leave with one or more of the players. It could not be said that they slipped away. Nothing so discreet. A few times James had heard the price agreed on.

He veiled his contempt with a bleary stare. ‘Double or nothing?’ he said. ‘That would make your losses two thousand pounds, Hensleigh.’

The fellow smirked. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, with another broad smile, ‘What’s life without a little risk? Shall we have a new deck for it, eh?’

James raised his brows. ‘Why not?’ He sat back as Hensleigh signalled.

‘A new deck here, my man,’ Hensleigh said to the servant who came over. ‘And a cloth for this mess. Mr Cambourne and I have agreed to double or nothing. Winner take all.’

The servant’s gaze sharpened. ‘Aye, Cap’n.’ He scurried away.

‘Another glass of wine, Cambourne?’ Hensleigh suggested, his hand hovering by the bottle.

‘Why not?’ James plastered a vacuous grin to his face. Hensleigh had been pouring glass after glass of wine for him with a fine appearance of generosity. No doubt he assumed James was at least verging on foxed, if not well beyond it. In fact, most of the wine had been surreptitiously poured on to the carpet.

James lounged back to wait, as another servant wiped the table.

The first servant brought the new deck and glanced at Hensleigh, who held out his hand. ‘Thank you, my man.’ He cut the deck.

James waited until he began to shuffle, straightened and said quietly, with no trace of impairment, ‘It’s my turn to deal, Hensleigh.’

Several cards slipped from the man’s hands, as his gaze flew to James’s face. ‘Is it? I am sure you must be mistaken.’

James raised his brows. ‘No, Hensleigh, I am not.’

Hensleigh’s eyes narrowed, flickered to the glass of wine.

James smiled. And shook his head. He reached out, swept up the fallen cards without taking his eyes from Hensleigh’s face, and waited.

After a moment, expressionless, Hensleigh handed over the rest of the pack.

‘Thank you,’ said James, shuffling with an expertise he hadn’t used earlier. Hensleigh’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing. James ignored him, continuing the shuffle with unconcerned ease. Carefully he tilted the cards just so, as they ran through his fingers, catching the light. He didn’t really need to see, but he wanted Hensleigh to sweat.

The man’s eyes widened.

‘Is this what they cashiered you for, Hensleigh?’ James asked.

Hensleigh swallowed. ‘The devil you say?’

‘The army,’ James said. ‘It was the army, wasn’t it? They don’t like Captain Sharps in the army. Or the navy, but you don’t strike me as the seafaring sort.’ He continued to shuffle. ‘Or perhaps I’m insulting the army and you invented your rank. Horse Guards didn’t know anything about you when I enquired.’ He smiled humourlessly as Hensleigh paled. ‘Rather clumsy, the markings on this deck,’ he went on. ‘I can feel the wax lines on the backs quite easily. The other deck was less obvious.’

Hensleigh rallied. ‘You are mistaken, sir. But we can call for another deck.’

James shook his head. ‘No. We settle up. Now.’

‘You agreed to double or nothing—’

‘With an unmarked pack,’ James said. ‘All bets are off now.’ He gathered the cards with a practised flick. ‘Do we leave quietly, or shall I make it public?’

Hensleigh looked around nervously and clenched his fists. ‘Damn you.’

James shrugged. ‘Just sign your vowels, Hensleigh, and we’ll have them countersigned by the management.’ He wouldn’t put it past the swine to disavow them if he thought he could get away with it. ‘And don’t even think about playing here again until you’ve paid me,’ he added.

Hensleigh glared. ‘You were stringing me!’

James bowed. ‘Absolutely.’

Two weeks later

Trying not to breathe any deeper than absolutely necessary to support life, James trod up the narrow, creaking stairs. The aroma of last night’s fish—hell, possibly last year’s fish—and over-boiled cabbage followed him with putrid tenacity. Another flight of stairs and he tried to persuade himself that the smell was losing heart.

A week after their card game, Hensleigh—surprise, surprise—­had neither turned up at James’s house to settle his debts, nor returned to the Cockpit. After a further week of hunting, courtesy of a chance sighting on the Strand, James had found his prey’s bolt-hole. The bolt-hole, according to what he’d been told, where Hensleigh kept his woman.

Third landing, the landlady had said.

Haven’t seen ’is nibs, but the girl’s up there.

The landing creaked, sagging ominously under his weight. He could see the announcement in the Morning Gazette... “Lord C met an untimely end collecting on a debt of honour by falling to his death when a landing gave way...”

He glanced around, wrinkling his nose; the rancid fish was just as odoriferous up here as down below. He might not need the money Hensleigh owed him, but by God he was going to break him. By the time he was done, Hensleigh wouldn’t be able to keep himself, let alone any sort of woman. If Hensleigh wasn’t home, then his mistress could deliver the warning that his vowels were about to be sold on.

He rapped sharply, noting with faint surprise that the door was actually clean...

The door opened and a girl enveloped in a grimy apron and clutching a rag stared at him. A few coppery tendrils of hair had escaped from her mob cap and brushed against a creamy-fair, slightly flushed cheek. A familiar odour that had nothing to do with fish drifted from the apartment. He sniffed—furniture polish? Yes, and something else, something sweet and indefinable that drifted through him.

‘Are you looking for someone?’

James’s world lurched a little at the slightly husky and surprisingly well-bred voice. His gaze met wary green eyes and an altogether unwelcome heat slid through his veins. How the hell did pond scum like Hensleigh acquire a woman like this one? Even as he wondered, the girl began to close the door. ‘You must have the wrong address.’

He stuck his foot in the door. ‘The devil I do.’

* * *

Lucy wondered if several foolish and altogether unlikely daydreams had become tangled with reality. The dreams where a tall, dark-haired, handsome gentleman came and swept her away into a life of safety. Only in her dreams, when this gentleman appeared at the door, she was somehow garbed in the latest fashions, with a dainty reticule dangling from her wrist. Not clad in a worn-out gown and grubby apron, and clutching a polishing rag. Nor in her dreams did the gentleman have cold, storm-grey eyes that looked at her as if she were something stuck to his shoe. Nor did he scowl. Her dream gentleman went down on one knee and offered her his heart. She wasn’t holding out for a prince, however, just a kind, respectable man who didn’t gamble and had a comfortable home. Nor did she insist on the glass slipper, which she thought would be most uncomfortable, but clearly, if she had a fairy godmother at all, the fairy’s wand had a slight flaw.

‘I’m looking for Hensleigh.’

For a moment the deep, velvet-dark voice froze her so that she just stared dumbly. It wasn’t so much that he was tall, although he was, but that there was something about the way he stood. The way he seemed to fill the landing. Perhaps it was his shoulders? They seemed very broad, much broader than Papa’s. Whatever the reason, her mind had scrambled.

She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry, sir. There is no one—’ Her mind cleared and her stomach chilled at her near mistake, at the cold eyes that raked her. ‘That is, he’s not here.’ She clutched the polishing rag to steady the sudden trembling of her hands. Hensleigh, not Armitage. Papa had drummed it into her years ago not to use their real name. Ever. The name he used changed periodically, but it had been Hensleigh for weeks now. Before that it had been Hammersley and before that...well, something else starting with H. According to Shakespeare, a rose would smell as sweet by any other name, but she thought the rose might find it confusing to be renamed every few months.

Cold eyes narrowed and her pulse beat erratically. His voice, lethally soft, curled through her. ‘Of course a rose by any other name may smell as sweet.’ She flinched. Was the man a sorcerer? ‘Although I’m sure it does become confusing.’

She bit her lip. Neither confirm, nor deny. Explanations are dangerous. There was only one reason such a man would be looking for her father. How much this time? A question that was none of her business even to think, let alone voice.

‘He isn’t here, I’m afraid. Please move your foot.’ She wished she hadn’t used that word, afraid. It nudged too close to the truth.

The visitor cocked his head to one side. ‘And when do you expect his return?’

His foot didn’t move. Lucy forced breath into her lungs. A cold knot, not entirely composed of hunger, twisted in her belly. ‘I... I don’t know.’ And for the first time in a very long while she wished that her father were about to walk through the door. This man had every nerve prickling the way he looked at her...as though he didn’t believe her.

‘I’ll wait.’

Let the wolf over the threshold? Alarm bells clashed.

‘No. He’s—’

Powerful hands seized her shoulders, lifting and dumping her out on the landing. Her breath caught and her senses whirled in panic, as he stalked into the apartment. For a moment she considered leaving him to it and racing downstairs to the relative safety of Mrs Beattie’s kitchen. Coward! Find your backbone, for God’s sake! He’d dumped her out here like yesterday’s rubbish! Anger drove out the fear and common sense flooded back. A man with designs on her wouldn’t have pushed her out on the landing. Ergo, she was safe. Gritting her teeth, she went after him.

‘How dare you! I don’t care who you are! Get out!’

His glance flicked over the room and back to her. ‘How do you propose to make me?’ he asked, as if he really wanted to know.

She had no idea how, but— ‘This is my home!’ she retorted. ‘I have every right to ask you to leave!’ As homes went it was pathetic, but that didn’t mean she had to accept this...this thug’s presence in it.

Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. ‘Your home, madam? Not much to defend, is it? Or are you defending Hensleigh? Or is it Hammersley this week? Where is he?’

She had spent the morning dusting and polishing. The floor was clean. Every stick of furniture gleamed. And she had never been so bitterly aware of the rickety table and chairs, the chipped looking glass over the fireplace, the bare floorboards or the threadbare curtain hiding the corner where she slept, as that scornful gaze raked the room.

‘I already told you, I don’t know!’ That he knew the last name they had used sent a chill slithering down her spine.

‘So you did,’ he said. ‘Are you going to invite me to sit down?’

‘No.’

He shrugged and sat down anyway on the battered chair by the cold, empty grate. There hadn’t been a fire in it for weeks. There was barely enough money for food, let alone luxuries.

She dragged in breath and let it go again. There was nothing she could do to shift him and she refused to rail at him like a Billingsgate fishwife. She stuffed her fury behind a solid door and slammed it shut.

‘You will excuse me if I continue my work,’ she said calmly and swiped her polishing rag back into the open jar of beeswax on the table. She could not afford more, but despite that she started all over again in the corner furthest from the fireplace, taking her time, hoping he would get bored and leave if she ignored him.

Unfortunately he didn’t ignore her.

That grey, assessing gaze remained on her as she re-polished the table with painstaking thoroughness.

‘I must say I envy Hensleigh,’ murmured her unwelcome guest after a few moments. She stiffened, but continued polishing so that the table wobbled noisily. ‘Lucky fellow,’ he went on, ‘having a wench willing to clean his lodgings twice in one morning and warm his bed.’

Everything inside her stopped as well as the polishing rag. And the temper her grandparents had tried so hard to curb slipped its leash. Slowly she straightened and faced him, the dusting rag clenched in her fist. ‘Wench?’ She restrained the urge to throw the rag in his face.

His brows rose. ‘A poor choice of words,’ he said. ‘You’re certainly a cut above wench-dom, even if your taste in men is execrable. You could do better than Hensleigh or whatever his name is this week.’

‘Really?’ Rage slammed through her, but she kept her voice dulcet. ‘You, for example?’

He smiled, reminding her of the wolf down at the Royal Exchange. ‘If you like. If you tell me where he is.’

‘They say it’s a wise child who knows its own father,’ she said, her stomach twisting. ‘It would be an interesting set of circumstances that permitted her to choose him.’

James wondered if he’d been hit on the head with a brick as the implications slammed into him. No one had suggested that the woman in Hensleigh’s lodgings was his daughter! He had assumed...

‘But,’ the impossible girl continued, ‘if you are prepared to acknowledge me as your natural daughter I’ll be very happy to have it so. Although...’ she looked him up and down in a way he found oddly unnerving ‘...you must have been a rather precocious child.’

James collected his scattered wits and found his tongue. ‘You’re his daughter, not his—’ He stopped there. If she was Hensleigh’s daughter—

‘Correct.’ The chill in her voice would have shaken an iceberg.

‘Do you expect an apology, Miss... Hensleigh?’ Hell’s teeth! Men did have daughters, even Hensleigh could have one. But—

She stared at him. ‘What? Do I look stupid?’

He took a careful breath. Delicate features, and the small fist gripping the polishing rag as though she’d like to shove it down his throat was gracefully formed, if grubby. She looked furious, not stupid. And her voice was well bred, even if it had an edge on it fit to flay a rhinoceros, and there was something about the way she held herself, and that damn polishing rag—an air of dignity. He’d meant it when he said that she could do better than Hensleigh. She was not a beauty, not in the strictest sense of the word, but—those eyes blazed, and the mouth was soft and lush—or it would be if it weren’t flat with anger. Damn it! There ought to be nothing remotely appealing about her! She was a redhead with the ghosts of last summer’s freckles dancing over her nose, the whole shabby room smelt of furniture polish, and the truth was that he didn’t want to believe that she could be Hensleigh’s mistress. Which was ridiculous. It didn’t matter a damn if she was Hensleigh’s mistress or not. Or did it? Stealing a man’s mistress was one thing, seducing his daughter quite another. And selling Hensleigh’s vowels if it might condemn this girl to an even worse situation was yet another thing.

His gaze fell on a narrow door on the other side of the room. Had he been so intent on the girl he’d nearly missed that? Without a word he rose and strode across, shoved it open and looked in.

‘He’s not here!’ The girl’s voice was furious now. No fear, just raw fury. He had to admire that.

A neatly made bed, washstand and small chest were the only furnishings. He closed the door and turned back to the girl.

‘Are you satisfied now?’ she demanded. ‘Or would you like to look under the bed?’

‘One bed, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘And where do you sleep?’ Talk about stupid! He’d damn near believed her!

Her eyes spat green fire in an absolutely white face. She stormed across the room. ‘It’s none of your business, but—’ Reaching the far corner he’d assumed held a chamber pot, she flung back the curtain across it.

His shocked gaze took in a thin, narrow pallet on the floor, covered with a totally inadequate blanket. A folded nightgown lay on top of the blanket and with it what looked like a violin case.

It convinced him as nothing else could have. Any man with this girl for a mistress would have her warming his bed, not shivering there in the corner.

‘You sleep there?’ It was all he could find to say. What sort of man let his daughter sleep in a draughty corner on a pallet that would scarcely do for an unwanted dog, while he took the relatively comfortable bed?

She jerked the curtain back into place. ‘As you see.’ Her cheeks were crimson. ‘I don’t care what you think of me,’ she went on, ‘and I doubt you care what I think of you, but you have forced your way into my home, insulted me in every conceivable way—I would prefer it if you left. I will tell my father you called.’

‘But you won’t tell me where he is.’ Why would she? The man is her father, for God’s sake. Even if he doesn’t look after her.

‘I don’t know where he is.’

He cocked his head. There was something there in her voice. Fear?

‘Would you tell me if you did know?’ he asked gently.

‘He owes you money, doesn’t he?’

He stiffened. No, she wasn’t stupid. But neither was he. If he told her the truth, what were the odds that he’d lose his quarry? ‘So quick to assume the worst, Miss Hensleigh?’ he said. ‘The boot might be on the other foot.’

She stared. ‘You owe him money?’

He hesitated only a moment. ‘Is that so surprising?’ It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t said outright that he owed Hensleigh money. His conscience squirmed regardless.

She looked at him uncertainly. ‘I see. Well, I still don’t know where he is or when he will return. But if you leave your name I will let him know that you called.’

And the instant Hensleigh heard his name, he’d bolt again. However, at least he could be fairly sure now that she really didn’t know where her father was. ‘Remington,’ he said. Another half-truth. He quashed his conscience’s mutterings with the reminder that neither she nor her father had seen fit to share their real name, either. Remington was his family name, after all. Unless she described him, hopefully he’d think it had been Nick. No one would view Nick as a threat.

‘Very well, Mr Remington. Good day to you.’

‘You really don’t know where he’s gone?’ James pressed. ‘Your landlady mentioned that she hadn’t seen him for several days.’

Scarlet washed into her cheeks again. ‘No. At least, not exactly. He may be with a...a friend.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘There is a woman he visits, but—’

‘What?’

Her chin went up. ‘A mistress. I thought you knew all about mistresses!’

He cleared his throat. ‘I know what a mistress is for!’ It was the concept of a father who didn’t keep that sort of knowledge from his daughter that startled him. And the concept of a daughter who didn’t pretend ignorance of such things. Although he supposed under the circumstances that would rank with stupidity.

‘Quite.’ Her voice spat scorn. ‘I don’t know her name, or where she lives. If you knew he wasn’t here, why bother coming up?’

She was quick enough, he’d grant her that. ‘Because your landlady might be mistaken, or you might have known where he was.’ He rose. ‘I’ll call again, Miss Hensleigh.’

There was no point staying any longer. He had as much information as he was going to get on this visit.

* * *

James reached the bottom of the stairs without falling through them. The stench of cabbage and fish had gained ground while he’d been upstairs. Or perhaps it was the contrast with the beeswax. Plain beeswax. Mama had always insisted on a touch of lemon in the furniture polish...his grandmother had favoured lavender.

There was no reason, logical or otherwise, why a girl wielding a beeswax-scented polishing rag should interfere with his plans to destroy Hensleigh. He was not responsible for the fate of Hensleigh or his daughter.

He stepped out into Frenchman’s Yard. A shabbily dressed man snored fitfully in a doorway, an empty bottle beside him, while several ragged boys played some sort of game with pebbles. One of them eyed him hopefully. ‘Got a copper, yer worship?’

Aware that it might be a monumental error of judgement—men had probably been mugged for less—James fished out a sixpence and held it up. ‘Information first.’

The sight of this untold wealth had the attention of all the boys. They crowded around and James kept his other hand in his pocket, firmly on his purse.

‘Hensleigh. Anyone seen him recently?’

The boys exchanged glances. One of them, clearly the leader from the way he stood forward a little, spoke. ‘The cap’n, you mean?’

James let that pass. ‘Yes.’

The boy shrugged. ‘Not for three, mebbe four days. Lu bain’t seen ’im, neither.’

‘Lu?’

The boy’s eyes narrowed and he glanced up at the window of Hensleigh’s lodgings. ‘You was up there with her long enough. She’s ’is daughter. Lucy.’

‘Right.’ If she was anything else, these boys would know it. And then there was the hair. Hensleigh’s fading ginger hair must once have been red. Those few tendrils drifting from the confines of the girl’s mob cap had shimmered copper.

‘Fitch might know where the cap’n is.’ One of the smaller boys spoke up. ‘Fitch’s real friendly with Lu. Gives ’er money sometimes, ’e does.’

Without looking, the leader cuffed the boy on the head. ‘Stow it.’

‘Fitch?’

But the small boy took one look at the other boy’s face and shook his head.

The leader shrugged. ‘Just a cove.’

James reminded himself that it was none of his business if Miss Hensleigh was real friendly with anyone. Even a cove who gave her money sometimes. It happened. Yet in his pocket, his hand balled to a fist.

From above the sound of a violin being tuned floated down. James listened, arrested as first the G string was tuned, then the D and A in turn were coaxed into harmony. Finally the E string. A moment’s silence and then the instrument sang, a lilting, dancing tune that somehow brightened the dingy yard even though the sun sulked behind its gloomy defences.

Dragging his attention away from the music, James tossed the original sixpence to the leader, plucked another out of his pocket and gave it to the small boy who had mentioned Fitch.

‘If anyone does know where the captain is, I’d be interested.’

‘Took a bag, ’e did,’ volunteered another boy. ‘Saw ’im wiv it right down on Fleet, by the Bolt.’

‘Did you see him get on a coach?’ James asked. The Bolt-in-Tun, on Fleet Street, was the departure point for some of the Bath coaches. Bath would be a very likely destination for a card sharp looking to recoup his losses.

The boy hesitated, finally shrugged. ‘Nah. Just happened to see ’im there. Wasn’t that int’rested, was I?’

James fished out another sixpence and flicked it to him. ‘Apparently not. And you’re also clever enough not to tell me what you think I want to hear. Thank you.’

The lad nipped the coin out of the air with startling dexterity. ‘Could nick down there an’ ask around if you like, guv.’

James considered that. ‘No. Never mind. Does the name Kilby mean anything to you?’

The boys went very still and furtive glances were cast at their leader. He shrugged. ‘Nah. Never heard of ’im.’

James nodded. ‘Thank you.’ Fairly sure he had just been lied to, he strolled out of the yard and headed west, towards Fleet Street and the Bolt-in-Tun. The lilt of Lucy Hensleigh’s fiddle remained with him long after it had been drowned by distance and the rumble of wheels and hooves.

* * *

Lucy played until the light slid away from the window, leaving her in the shadows. Wrapped safely in the music’s enchantment, she could pretend for a little while, hold out the terrifying reality of her life. She played from memory. He had sold her music months ago, along with her last three books. The only reason he hadn’t sold the violin as well was that she had been out with it when he came home looking for things to sell. Slowly she let the spell unravel, knowing that even music could not keep out the world for ever. Shivering a little, she set the instrument back in its case and closed the window. She had practised for long enough and Fitch would be along soon.

Her stomach growled.

If only Papa had been home when Mr Remington called! Then they’d have some money. Money for the rent, money for food. Unless he owed it all to someone else. Over the four years that she’d been with him after Grandma’s death the gentleman’s code of so-called honour had been drummed into her—debts of honour were paid first, no matter if your daughter was hungry and you weren’t using your real name.

Perhaps he wasn’t out of town after all. Surely he wouldn’t have gone right away if someone owed him money...unless he owes more to someone else...

The gaming was a disease, holding her father in a fevered grip. Nothing else mattered to him. No logic, no reason could reach him. Nothing but the game. He was charming about it, naturally. Papa was always charming. Even when he was lying. In fact, especially when he was lying. He had reassured her at first. There was nothing to worry about. Everything was quite as it should be. All proper gentlemen played. He would stop as soon as he had made their fortunes. And she had believed him. Or perhaps she had just wanted to believe him. That he would stop. Just one more game to set all right, get the dibs in tune. Always just one more game. To get the dibs in tune. To oblige a friend. A matter of honour. Just one more.

She supposed she had wanted to believe him. What sixteen-year-old girl, with nowhere else to turn, wanted to believe that her father had them on an irreversible downward slide to destitution?

She looked at the worn-leather violin case. Thank God she’d had it with her the afternoon Papa had sold her books and music. He’d been furious that the violin had not been there to sell as well.

Luckily he had won that night and had forgotten about selling the instrument the next day. Now she either took it with her or hid it. And she hadn’t told her father the truth—that, courtesy of Fitch, she had found a way to earn enough money to feed herself.