Blackstone's Bride (19 page)

Royce followed and soon began to lift up canvases at the prince’s request. Penelope took Violet by the arm and led her away from the curtained painting to look at Royce’s paintings of street vendors. Violet liked his street scenes better than his other work. He had captured the energy and eccentricities of a group of men gathered around the brawny knife sharpener with his cart. Here were all the faults of face and form celebrated. People swarmed the street around them, and a barefoot boy with a pint pot in his hand stopped to watch the man work. The painting had a naturalness Royce’s other work lacked.

“Violet, you’re not losing your nerve, are you?”

“Not at all.”

“The affair was years ago. Blackstone no longer has any connection with the woman, I’m sure.”

Violet thought how easy it was for Penelope to use the word
affair
as if such a betrayal were an everyday occurrence, the daily fare of the scandal sheets. Penelope had sources of information, gossip, others would call it, that Violet would never have. Penelope would know, as would the titled half of London, whether Blackstone was a faithful husband while his bride, whoever she turned out to be, might never know. Violet had come to face Blackstone’s real nature. She could not hide from it or pretend that he was the person she’d once thought him to be. She had to know finally for whom or for what he had betrayed their love.

She steeled herself to meet the test. She would not flinch. Looking at the painting behind the curtain would be like listening to some ancient prophet speak truth. She believed herself to be less given to extremes than those old Greeks. She could see whatever lay behind the curtain, and not stab her eyes out with her hatpins.

Royce returned with the prince and Dubusari. Money had obviously changed hands for Royce’s coarse lips wore a smirk. “Now, ladies, gentlemen, majesty, do arrange yourselves for a viewing.” He motioned them into a loose half circle facing the velvet curtain and went to stand against the wall beside the curtain. He waited until they had settled into position looking expectantly at him. “You won’t have long, because I like to keep her protected from the light.”

Then he pulled the dangling golden cord, and the curtains parted. Violet did not look at the others, only at the painting. She could hear them sigh or swear or murmur, but she couldn’t look away from the reclining woman. It was like nothing she had expected, like nothing else Royce himself had painted.

Royce had chosen to paint the two figures in an extreme close-up. Violet could think of no painting she had ever seen that suggested such a shocking intimacy between a painter and his subjects. Always in her experience the painter kept himself at a distance, but Royce had not. He had stood so close that he painted neither of the lovers’ faces, only the woman’s inviting smile.

She lay on her side on a velvet sofa in a shade of gray so deep it was near purple, with a high curving back like the curve of the woman’s hips. The light captured the glitter of the sofa’s gilded frame and the shining pearl luster of the woman’s flesh. She turned, as if waking at the touch of her lover’s hand on her shoulder, looking up at him, her breasts arching up to him, her lips breaking into an inviting smile. Her lover’s right hand with its distinctive Blackstone signet rested, long fingers spread, on the ridge of her collarbone, strikingly masculine and possessive, laying claim to the smooth golden curves of the woman’s body. The distinctive black and gold ring with the bold
B
had been captured in exact detail.

Violet turned away. She understood why the piece had created a scandal, but she felt dirty, as if Royce had invited them all to look through a peephole at a woman in her most vulnerable moment. Looking behind Royce’s curtain violated the mystery woman’s heart more than her body. She was not like Royce’s other nudes, both abstract and vulgar. Instead she had been caught freely bestowing her love. The painting showed how genuinely she had loved Blackstone. His powerful hand was so different from her warm smile. That was part of the picture’s cruel exposure of the woman. She had loved more than she had been loved. The man’s hand expressed a certainty of possession and dominance, not love.

Violet heard the rustle of Penelope’s skirts. “My dear, I’m sure that was painful, but now that you know the truth, you can judge how you wish to act.”

“Yes.” Violet turned and lifted her head. She didn’t have a choice really. Her second engagement was as false as the first. It would end as soon as they discovered Frank. But now she knew what to believe. Blackstone had never loved her, Violet, while she had loved him, as hopelessly, apparently, as the woman in Royce’s portrait.

As the prince and Dubusari discussed arrangements for shipping the prince’s purchase home to Moldova, the ladies descended the stairs. The afternoon turned cool with a threat of rain, though the street seemed busy as ever. They endured several moments of standing in the cold, as the prince expressed his gratitude, before Dubusari announced, “We have kept you long enough. Now we return to our hotel and not your kind house, but tomorrow we will see you at your ball.”

* * *

Blackstone sauntered into Violet’s room just when Violet was close to giving up on him.

She was at her desk puzzling over the fragment of Frank’s writing. “How did the meeting with the foreign secretary go?”

“As well as could be expected. The prince was outraged by British deafness to the merits of his case. He turned in a report, by the way.”

“He did?”

“He claimed it was all in order the way your brother likes it.”

Violet showed him the bit of charred paper. “But then what is this? And if the prince had Frank’s report all along, why did he wait to see the secretary?”

Blackstone frowned. “Where did you get this?”

“The government’s maid brought it to me when I returned from the fitting this morning.” She didn’t quite meet his eye.

Blackstone was reading the document. “Your brother is determined to get a message out, isn’t he? I think he has less regard for his own safety than I gave him credit for.”

“Why did they burn it?”

“Because your brother has been using his accounts to communicate with the foreign office. He knows exactly who reads them. I wonder how long he’s been doing that?”

He set the charred fragment on Violet’s writing desk, looking down at it with a grave air. “I think this explains why your brother is missing.”

“Last night you were ready to have him arrested for murder and treason.”

He moved away from her to stand at her window looking out into the street. “The Moldovans needed a report from your brother—facts and figures—to show that England’s funds had been properly spent. That report would secure them a new loan. But your brother’s report worried them. They suspected that his report revealed discrepancies or, as you thought, something more than mere fraud.”

“So they took my brother?”

“They’ve kept him to rewrite the report. That’s why he’s not dead.”

“You think he would do that? Cover up some fraud?”

“They would pressure him to do it.”

“How?”

“By letting Frank know they were close enough to harm you. Frank knows they are capable of murder.”

“So this bit of his report is a fake to suit them?”

He shook his head. “Either it is part of the original report, or it’s a draft they didn’t like. They may have spotted your brother’s code.”

“‘Leave England’ does not seem to be a message about missing funds.”

“No. It’s about the prince. Your brother likes the prince, and he’s likely realized that the prince’s loyal countrymen won’t need him after today. He’s an obstacle or an inconvenience. Whoever really has the power in Moldova has used Prince Andre as a front, a harmless smiling cartoon prince, easily guided by England.”

“Did it work?”

“Not today. Apparently Canning hinted none too gently that the prince might retrench, and the prince vowed to set up a tent in Regent’s Park to demonstrate his frugality and willingness to sacrifice every personal comfort for Moldova—after your ball.”

“Oh dear. If he is in danger, he really is absurdly unaware of it. Will Dubusari and the crew let him pitch his tent?” Violet looked away. The quick alertness in Blackstone’s eyes signaled his mind at work, puzzling over the details, making sense of them.

“Never. They won’t let him out of their sight. But the prince talked of nothing else on the way back to the hotel, and it gave me an idea. You and I must get him out of their hands immediately after your ball.”

“You think the accidents and the attacks were meant for him?”

“I think if he leaves England with them, he’s a dead man. That’s what your brother’s message is trying to tell us.”

“So what do we do? We have no proof. I don’t imagine that the government wants to send an armed guard into Milvert’s Hotel. And what happens to Frank if we go after the prince’s people?”

Blackstone did not answer at once. The evening traffic in the street below seemed to absorb all his attention.

Then he turned back to her. “What’s on your calendar for the day after your ball?”

“Nothing.”

“Let’s change that. I’ve a friend who can help us, a Captain Rodriguez. He’s a balloonist from Barcelona, a charming rogue. You’ll like him. The prince wanted to see a balloon ascension. I think he’ll enjoy a ride, don’t you?”

“If he doesn’t fall out of the basket.”

“If I’m right, the prince’s people are looking for an opportunity to act against him. Let’s get the prince out of their reach. We’ll get the captain to take the prince up, and put him down where the government can protect him. While his people hunt for the prince, we find Frank.”

“Thank you.” For the moment he seemed her old friend who would save Frank not betray him. She wished she knew whose side he was truly on. She twisted the ring on her finger.

“Something’s bothering you.”

“I have a confession to make.”

“What?”

“I saw Royce’s painting today.”

He didn’t move, but she felt him change, close himself off to her. “Did seeing it change anything?”

“No! But hear me out.”

“You wanted to know, and now you know.”

“When have I ever not wanted to know something, to understand. You find that foolish, I know.”

“Mostly admirable, Violet, but apt to land you in the soup.”

“Well, I won’t deny it. I wanted to know. I have wanted to know forever it seems, who it was that you loved so much that you would endure scandal and disgrace for her sake.”

“Now you know.”

“I think I do. So why does it feel as if I’m the one who has committed an unpardonable act, not against you, but against that woman. It was wrong of me to go. I cannot speak to her, but I can apologize to you for intruding on a private moment.”

“I believe Royce’s presence made the moment distinctly unprivate.”

“You are a better judge of that than I. I thought it was a painting of woman’s love. I thought a woman should be free to look at her lover without the whole of society censuring the moment.”

“In that we agree.” His gaze did not meet hers. “Anything else? We have a plan.”

“I do not require that you attend the ball tomorrow.”

His head came up. He fixed her with his mocking gaze. “Oh, you do not have a choice in that, my love. Until we have your brother safe, you have a fiancé, however false.”

Chapter Seventeen

He had followed them purposely to town . . .

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice

Nate was back in the docklands, his collar up, his hat low, and his hands shoved deep in his pocket, one hand around a knife. This time Blackstone had sent him, and he was acting alone. Neither Goldsworthy, nor Goldsworthy’s other scouts knew where Nate was. It was a chance, following Blackstone’s lead, but Nate had taken chances before. To his way of thinking, Blackstone meant to give Frank Hammersley a chance, too.

The hour was late, and the great daytime bustle of moving ships and cargo had been replaced by nighttime activities of seeking comfort or oblivion of various sorts. The target of Nate’s vigilance was the taproom of the King Edward public house where the Spanish banknote had turned up. For the neighborhood, the King Edward offered the relatively tame amusements of getting roaring drunk, breaking the heads of one’s rivals or detractors, or finding a willing woman to pay for a different sort of sport.

Nate had found a place in the shadows from which he could see the public house’s two doors. They stood on either side of a central window from which a good bit of light shone out into the street. The face of a man leaving by either door would be briefly illuminated as he stepped outside. Nate felt himself close to a breakthrough in the case, and he knew it mattered. They needed to know with certainty where Frank Hammersley was if they meant to save him.

As the evening wore on, the prospect of Nate’s success dimmed. Face after face emerged from the public house with all the marks of a seaman’s life and no sign of anyone connected to the prince. Most of the patrons leaving the King Edward lurched or staggered up towards the high street. Nate shifted his feet to keep off the cold of the evening and the damp of the river. Then a man emerged who didn’t lurch. He stopped in the doorway and glanced up and down the street, giving Nate a thorough look at a face he knew, the prince’s valet.

Nate felt his pulse pick up and cautioned himself not to move. The valet let the door close behind him and turned up the street with a steady, purposeful stride. Nate listened to the footsteps, waiting for the moment when it would be safe to follow. The King Edward’s other door opened, a second sober man stepped out, glanced after the first and turned the opposite way. The second man took a couple of steps before he commenced to whistle in a jarringly off-key way. A lovesick cat sounded more tuneful, but Nate recognized the sour whistle from his first trip to the docklands.

In another minute he realized the whistler must be headed for Frank Hammersley, and Nate decided to follow.

* * *

Late as it was, Frank knew it was the hour when fashionable London came alive with music and the rustle of silks and the flutter of fans. The silence around him reminded him as sharply as any other circumstance that he was far from Hammersley House. He sat at the battered desk with fresh pages and mended his pen. He believed he had satisfied his captors with his latest effort, which meant that they could now dispose of him. He might never know whether his messages had gone through.

The river was quiet. The street below his prison, if it was street, was dead. Only the sound of some animal rummaging about came through the grate. A distant church bell sounded faintly the passing quarter of an hour. Frank knew his keepers’ treads on the steep narrow stairs. Sackett, a broken-down pugilist with a spongy red nose, eyes sunk in rolls of fat, and fists that didn’t close, made the stairs quake and the door rattle in its frame when he came to relieve Glover, his former trainer. Glover, a short, spry fellow, daily slipped in and out of Frank’s prison whistling a sour off-key tune. Glover, who had known all the great fighters and shaken the king’s own hand, felt his fall in the world.

“You had Cribb on the ropes,” he liked to remind his former charge. “If you’d a done ’im, like I told you, we’d be in bloody Leicester Square instead of this hole. But you had to have your drink and your doxies. The ruin of us both.”

“Being paid, now, ain’t we?”

Frank had heard that exchange or some variation of it at every passing between the two men. If his count was accurate, he’d come to in the rough, windowless room five days ago under the watchful eye of Glover. Even before Glover opened his mouth, Frank realized he was in England and not far from the Thames where the
Madagascar
must have docked. He’d made the crossing trussed up in darkness and unconscious, except for brief moments when he heard voices speaking Russian.

In his present room he’d wakened to a headache as if an army of smiths had taken over his brain and begun hammering out their wares. Glover had stood him on his unsteady feet and led him to a rough table, assuring him that he was pretty well fixed where he was until he did as he was told. He pointed Frank to a supply of paper, pens, and ink and told him he had a job to do or else. Frank briefly considered stabbing Glover in the eye with the pen, but his own fuzzy head and weakened body vetoed the plan.

A note was given to him to copy in his own hand. The words swam before him. He was to promise his dear sister that he had been delayed, but he knew that Violet would spot the language as not his usual style. The message would likely have the opposite effect of the one his captors intended. His clever sister would be thoroughly alarmed. She would consult Preston, and they would look at his trunk, but Frank had not seen his trunk for days. Anything could have happened to it to disarrange his message.
Don’t let Moldova leave England
.

Since the moment of that dismal realization, Sackett or Glover, one or the other, had always been in the room or directly outside the door. Glover liked to have a smoke on the stairs before he entered, and Sackett had a weak bladder and a fondness for ale that made him step outside to relieve himself with some frequency.

It had been a full day before Frank’s head had cleared enough to catch the footsteps of his captors. As soon as he had figured out from listening to their comings and goings that he was on the third floor of a derelict warehouse, he started to look for a way out.

The room had been an office with a wall of open pigeonholes for storing orders or bills. Someone had once worked at the battered desk, and a narrow sagging bed and two chairs had been added apparently to accommodate Frank and his guards.

The only access to the outside was a high round window covered with slats that let in air and faint light. It had rained twice, and somewhere the building had a leak. Frank could hear the steady ring of drops hitting standing water somewhere beyond the rough board enclosure, and he could smell the ashes of a dead fire. The sound suggested the cavernous interior of a warehouse. Apparently the building was not in use. There was no daytime activity, and his guards seemed to be the only persons who came to the place. Frank positioned himself to catch glimpses through the open door whenever Sackett and Glover shifted their duties. What he saw was a dark expanse of shadowy piles illuminated in patches where a broken window or an opening in the roof admitted some light. He waited for them to get careless or tired of guarding him.

The second day he’d been there, Glover arrived for the evening shift with a glove of Violet’s and a note explaining that Frank had erred in his report of the Prince of Moldova’s use of English funds. If he could write a proper report of how the funds had helped to build the prince’s own royal guard, he could buy his sister’s safety.

His head was somewhat steadier by then, and he faced the desk and the papers on it. The glove bothered him. He told himself that the Prince of Moldova and his party were to stay in Milvert’s Hotel. The foreign office knew there was a problem. Two dead agents could not be ignored. So how had his captors come to have Violet’s glove? They couldn’t simply snatch her from Hammersley House with her father and a score of servants around.

He needed some way to let the outside world know where he was. The first idea that came to him was selling his buttons. Glover admired them and lamented the injustice of Frank’s finery.

“’Ere’s you going nowheres, dressed like a royal prince with buttons the size o’ coppers, and ’ere’s me that once shook the king’s own ’and practically in rags.”

Frank had offered Glover his buttons for a pint of porter. The fellow had looked distrustful, but Frank had talked him round to cutting the buttons off his coat and concealing them from Sackett. It was a gamble. Maybe no one was looking for him. But the foreign office had expected him on the
Madagascar
and would have had a man on the dock to meet him. They wanted his report, and they would want to know what happened to the funds he was authorized to give directly to the prince.

He had to get some message out into the world. His next ploy had been better. He always kept money hidden on his person. While Sackett nodded, Frank had taken a banknote from a pocket in the lining of his coat and slipped it in among the papers on the table. Later when Sackett left the room for a visit to the piss pot, Frank had written on the note. He’d bargained with Sackett before Glover arrived. Sackett had been puzzled by the Spanish banknote, but Frank had feigned surprise about its location. The conversation had unexpectedly revealed the information that he was in Wapping.

He was in a warehouse in Wapping and his captors—he suspected Dubusari—wanted him to produce a doctored version of his report on the finances of the Moldovan army. He knew why, as he knew why he’d heard Russian in his dazed state on the boat. He had discovered that there were those in Moldova who believed the prince too weak to save them from inevitable submission to the tsar. Those forces would sacrifice the weak prince to the much more powerful tsar without a qualm.

Frank had figured that he could delay giving them what they wanted for a week perhaps. In days his actual report and the money would reach the foreign office by the special courier to whom he had managed to slip them on his last day in Spain. The problem was that he didn’t know how near to his family the prince’s enemies were. The message of Violet’s glove was plain; if Frank made a wrong move, they would hurt Violet. Two men were already dead just for being willing to receive his report. Another would be dead if Frank’s information did not reach the right hands, and somehow his sister had ended up in the middle of Moldova’s lethal politics.

On the third day he sent a version of the report he hoped his unseen captors would buy. He received back a garnet earring of Violet’s and a curt note explaining that time was short. He decided that he had to get out of his prison. He considered what he had learned about his surroundings.The building was three or four stories high with a brick exterior. His room was on the southwest side of the building. No street noise came up from directly below the building, and the pervasive odor of the place was of ash and damp. At night it smelled like a damp cellar. In the heat of the day it had a kitcheny smell of steeping tea. A night escape from Sackett was his best hope. The man always came smelling of ale and often dozed as Frank worked. Frank had gone that far in his thinking without any opportunity to act, but he was ready.

Sackett was moving restlessly about, fidgeting as he waited for Glover, complaining that the man was late. He opened the door once or twice, listening for Glover’s tuneless whistle. Frank positioned himself. His only weapon, if he got a chance to use it, would be the chair he sat in.

In the same instant, he and Sackett heard Glover on the stairs, and then a shout and pelting footsteps. Sackett heaved himself up and threw open the door. He thrust his head out and looked down the long stairs. Frank was up in a flash. He barreled straight into Sackett, knocking the bigger man towards the stairs.

Frank charged off into the dark, reasoning that there would be another stair at the other end of the building. Behind him he heard Sackett stumbling and cursing and Glover shouting from below. He kept moving as rapidly as he could, his hands in front of him, his boots hitting the bare floor like fireworks exploding. He collided with a metal post. The blow spun him round, and he stumbled, trying to correct his path and tripped over something knee high and sharp edged. He regained his balance, wincing at the blow to his shin. He corrected once more, feeling the outline of a rough pile of wood, and moved forward. Behind him Sackett shouted down the stairs for Glover to come on up. He could hear Glover shouting as well and some kind of a scuffle.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom in front of him, he could see the faint outline of an arched opening. He made for it until a board gave under his right foot and, with a sudden unexpected plunge, he sank up to his thigh. He caught himself with his hands and hung there, braced, one leg through the boards, the other folded under him.

Pain shot through the leg that had penetrated the floor. He pushed himself up out of the hole. His heart pounded in his chest, and his breath rasped in his ears. He could feel something broken. Once he regained his feet, he stood on his good leg, leaning against an iron column. The open archway was about twenty feet away, but the injured leg would not bear his weight.

Behind him the door of his little prison stood open, casting a beam of light into the cavernous space. Sackett appeared, framed by the light of the small room, peering into the darkness. Frank had not even hidden himself. Sackett stepped out into the gloom framed by the open door. He shouted down the stairs.

Frank shifted, dragging his useless leg, so that he stood behind one of the iron pillars. The water drip sounded loud as a church bell in his ears. He waited for Sackett to descend the stairs. No luck. Sackett came to the edge of the darkness and peered out into the gloom. His big head tilted to one side, as if he listened intently.

“Glover! Come up ’ere, man. ’Ammersely’s flown the coop.”

Frank waited for Glover’s reply from below, but none came. There was only stillness and the usual drip of water.

After a long pause Sackett disappeared, mumbling, back into the room, and Frank dragged himself through the arch. No light penetrated, only a cold musty draft that wafted up from below. He could hear a skittering noise below him. He slid along the wall, dragging his useless leg. Then Sackett’s heavy footfalls began to crunch along the floor, and Sackett’s lamp sent a beam of light swinging wildly across the open arch. Each swing of the light gave Frank a glimpse of the narrow space—no stairs, but a crude lift for goods, a flat platform with an iron cage around it. He lurched towards it and looked down the dark well of the shaft. It had to be three floors down. No light penetrated.