Proper Scoundrel (29 page)

Jade sidled up to a deserted table in a far corner, hoping to catch the barmaid’s eye. She intended to question the woman, whose breasts spilled nearly from her bodice and whose apron hadn’t seen a wash since Victoria took the throne.

While Jade awaited the server’s arrival, she scanned faces, ravaged by indigence and dissipation, and saw almost at once, a visage that stood the hair at her nape and sent a shudder racing through her.

What would Neil Kirby be doing in a place like this? Her former man of affairs was as fastidious as he was dishonest, possibly more so.

By the dressmakers’ earlier description—short, beady eyes, pug nose—Neil Kirby could very well be the stranger carrying information about her grandfather, but Jade doubted it.

While in her employ, Kirby had lived at Peacehaven for nearly two years. Why would he wait until now to show his hand, and why not come to her front door?

Yes, she’d discharged him, but they were both civil, though she supposed, now that she thought on it, he might have been affronted enough to seek revenge.

Or perhaps he wasn’t through with cheating her.

Perhaps he’d learned something about her grandfather ... from her grandmother? Jade shivered. It had never occurred to her before, but Gram, in her disoriented state, toward the end of her life, might have been confused enough to tell the snake her secret. But why wait until now to reveal it?

The possibility alone made Jade ill. What would she do if Kirby had uncovered the truth?

If that viper had stumbled across it, others could as well, including her greedy cousin, Giles Dudley. If he did, she’d lose everything her grandmother had worked so hard to attain, and the women who needed her, now and in the future, would suffer.

Jade tried to remember if Giles Dudley’s threat had arrived before or after Neil Kirby left her employ, but she couldn’t be certain. Either way, if Neil Kirby held such information, she would pay.

Perhaps his information concerned the railroad. Then again, in a roundabout way, Gram’s secret concerned the railroad ... and now she’d closed the circle. She’d best stop driving herself mad with speculation, and move close enough to hear what her former man of affairs had to say to the lecher ogling the barmaid.

Jade rose unobtrusively, she hoped, to change to a table near the object of her concern, while attempting to remain unnoticed by said object.

A man with forty hands, all grabbing her at once, seemed to come from nowhere. She’d been so busy watching Kirby, she’d not seen what or who stood about her.

Bald as a turnip and reeking of onions, her captor must have seen through her male disguise, for he held her in his unrelenting clutches. With a grip like iron, he steered her out of the common room and halfway up the stairs before Jade caught her breath and tried to resist, her heart drumming a wild beat.

Fighting him, however, seemed like trying to stop a steam engine with less than a stuffed dress on the tracks.

When Jade stopped caring about making a scene and gave voice to her silent scream, the man’s stinking mouth swooped down on hers and she gagged.

He jumped back so fast, she might have laughed, if not for her fast tumble down the stairs, her balance having flagged with his support. Before she could stand, Onion Breath caught her by the seat of her pants and the collar of her coat, with those beefy hands of his, and shoved her back up, her collar cutting her windpipe and severing her air.

Despite the black dots dancing before her eyes, Jade caught him by surprise when she turned about and used her knee to best advantage, a move she had discovered by accident, to the detriment of Marcus’s manhood, or so he’d said.

It worked. Onion Breath took the stairs the fast way now, in an unexpected rush of a howling rumble, and Jade screamed like a madwoman. The way her luck had been running, ’t’would be Kirby come to her rescue, if only to save his blackmail mark.

The man who pulled her into his arms from behind did not surprise her but he did infuriate her. Pushed beyond bearing, Jade pummelled, kicked, bit and scratched the detestable man who’d sold her land and started her problems. “I will not—” She punctuated her words with kicks, “be touched by the likes of you! You thieving lout!”

Her harried rescuer evaded her every attempt to back-kick his soft man parts. “Let me go!”

He stepped back, arms raised in surrender.

Turning, viewing him through a haze of red, Jade gaped then gasped. “Marcus!” Flying into his arms, she burst into tears, and was no sooner enveloped in his blessed embrace, than her relief ended.

Without warning, Marcus, the only bulwark between her and ravishment slid to the floor in an unconscious heap.

However entertained Garrett might once have been by such a solicitous, bountifully-endowed barmaid, such overtures now disgusted him, and he wanted nothing more than to meet with Marc’s Bow Street Runner and depart these squalid premises.

Where had Marc gone?

When the investigator failed to arrive well beyond the specified hour, and Marc remained absent more than half that time, Garrett called to the calf-eyed barmaid.

She came, overeager and ready to play, and he pushed her off his lap and gave her a guinea to stop her attempts to, “’arden ’is dally-boy.”

Despite his annoyance, Garrett couldn’t wait to relate the tale to Abby, for his dally-boy needed no assistance with her nearby.

“I need your help,” he said to the barmaid, and cursed himself for the light in her eyes. “I’m looking for my ... cousin. We came in together. Did you see where he went? ’Twas about half an hour ago.”

“Saw nobody but you, Guv.” She tested her guinea’s authenticity and whooped in delight to find it real. “Regular Lonnon dandy, arn’cha?”

“Can you find me a cane?”

“Wot?”

“Fact is, if I were a dandy, I would already own one. Wait, make that two.”

Confusion pure and simple transformed the wench’s features.

“You know, a walking stick. I’ll give you five pounds if you bring me two.” Garrett held up two fingers, then he opened his pocket watch. “Two canes within the next five minutes for five pounds.”

She was gone like a shot. Money, she spoke fluently.

Marcus awoke in a dim hole on a hard floor, a gag in his mouth, his feet hobbled, hands tied, head aching.

Penned in. Unable to move.

Awareness came to him in slow measure until memory intruded and alarm raced his heart.

Jade.

Knowing his panic would do her no good, he took a deep breath and tried to think rationally. It was then he caught the scent of the pelt near his face. Lavender.

Jade. And he could hear her breathing. Safe. With him.

In a blink, his heart’s rhythm calmed and he considered the hovel in which they lay. At his back, a wall—immovable. At his head, a wall—movable?—a door then. At his feet, a wooden box, or ... the underbelly of a stair-step. A closet beneath a set of stairs, perhaps. Jade along his front, crushed against him, bound as well.

Jade. His perfect match. His heart. Safer tied and locked away with him than with the bastard who’d tried to abduct her. When he got them free, Marcus vowed, he’d not rest until he caught the brute and beat him to a pulp.

In any other circumstance, he’d ask Jade what the hell she was doing in a hovel like this, and in no soft voice, either, but his gag prevented anything more than a grunt, to which she did not respond. Bloody hell.

Jade, quiet, too quiet. The aspect frightened him, pricked his arms and legs with needles, and brought a lump of fear to lodge in his throat.

He grunted again, louder, more urgent, but received no response.

With her hair against his cheek, he couldn’t tell if she faced away from him or if her hair covered her face.

With his chin, he attempted to move some of the silk aside and managed to find her ear, beside which ran a sticky substance with a metallic scent. Blood.

Injured? Oh, God how bad?

Not knowing from whence the blood flowed, or how much she’d lost, Marcus feared moving, feared causing further damage, but he had to get her out of here.

On the off chance the door at his head would give, or that someone might hear it rattle, Marcus head-butted it a good one.

Stars danced before his eyes. Awareness blurred and faded.

Garrett sat wishing he’d started walking ages ago. Damn. “Stubborn fool,” he called himself as he scanned the crowd of thugs.

He caught sight of a huge bald brute with a bloody nose and vile disposition, judging by the sneer with which baldy eyed the crowd. His fresh injury worried Garrett. Perhaps Marc had been involved, and hurt. Or he got caught in a scuffle with that Dudley character, Jade’s supposed cousin.

Garrett realized that the Bow Street Runner’s absence should have alerted him sooner. “Damn.”

Holding to a raw, dusty beam Garrett rose to scan the crowd for further signs of pugilism run amuck, but only two other fellows bore bruises and they looked to be healing.

With no other choice but to approach the bald brute, Garrett made a disjointed journey from table to table, holding to chairs, beams, the tables themselves, as he went.

When he arrived, he dropped into the chair opposite Baldy. “Buy you a draught?” he asked with feigned affability.

Baldy grunted.

Garrett took that for assent and remained silent until the giant took another long pull on his ale and appeared less hostile.

“I seem to have misplaced my cousin,” Garrett began. “A real troublemaker; always in the stew. Saw your injury and thought perhaps he’d struck again.”

“He alone?” the brute inquired, threateningly.

“Yes. Yes he was.”

“Ain’t seen him.”

“He could have been with a serving girl, of course; that’s a given.” Though Garrett doubted it.

“Bloke who attacked me—from behind, mind you—has him a taste for prissy boys.”

Garrett raised an incredulous brow. “A prissy—” Finally, the dim-witted dally-boy champion of the Dragon and Claw, canes in hand ambled up to halt Garrett’s response. He thanked her and handed her a five-pound note, tipped his hat to both her and Baldy, and threw down a handful of coins to pay for Baldy’s drinks. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

Carefully distributing his weight between the canes and his legs, Garrett made reasonable progress across the floor and in the direction of one of its several private parlours. He might be rusty, but he could walk, by damn.

A little man, bony and bent, palsied hands and shuffling feet, reached the first parlour at the same time he did. “Not there,” the old man mumbled as he plodded toward the next, Garrett right behind him.

“Here neither,” the little man muttered turning to Garrett and scratching his head. “You seen a Missy not fittin’ here, Sur?”

“A Missy? No. May I ask your name?” Garrett asked, his curiosity peaked. Perhaps they could search together. He wouldn’t mind company, however feeble, if truth be told. Between the two of them, they might make one able-bodied man.

“Stodges,” the old man said as he tipped an invisible cap and bowed barely lower than his natural stoop. “Yur, serv’nt, Sur. Them wot makes the French frocks be wurr’d ’bout the Missy.”

“Let’s talk in here,” Garrett said, indicating the second empty parlour, for his legs begged to stop for a bit.

Stodges sat as well, as relieved as Garrett, judging by his sigh.

“Tell me about this Miss you’re looking for,” Garrett said. “Does she have a name?”

His shaking head spoke of disapproval. “’T’aint nat’ral ’ur wearin’ breeches and comin’ t’such a—”

“Breeches?” Garrett sat forward, afraid to inquire further. “A woman wearing breeches, did you say?”

“That’s so. Bold as brass.”

“It can’t be Jade,” Garrett disallowed, more to himself than his companion.

The old man tossed him a hopeful look. “Mebbe.”