Reckless Rules (Brambridge Novel 4) (25 page)

“And I was yet another at the time,” Victoria said sanguinely. She put up her hands as Henry protested. “I know I was. You were young too; being asked to solely cope with a younger sister who many would have said had demons on the brain.”

“They went away when the doctors came.”

Victoria shook her head. “No, they didn’t. I just stopped talking about it to you because I was afraid you would bring the doctors back. They nearly killed me with the bloodletting. I think you were away on a Crown affair at the time.”

Henry winced. “What about Agatha? Was she any help?”

Victoria nodded. Her youthful friendship with Agatha had been like opening her life onto a summer’s day. Two weeks after Agatha had disappeared without answering any of Victoria’s letters, Victoria had consented to marry Colchester. He had paid her a visit whilst Henry was in Brambridge. Victoria licked her lips nervously. The first thing Colchester had said to her was, “I can make the blackness go away.”

She had thought the man was insightful, that some time with him could perhaps cure her. He had been kindness and courteousness himself. They had married a week later.

He hadn’t been kind. He had generally been courteous. But he was controlling. And he had forced her into his sordid world of blackmail and secrets. It was six months later when she threatened to leave him that he had withdrawn sheaves of paper from his desk drawer and thrown them at her. “Leave me, and I make these public,” he had declared with a cruel twist to his lips. “You’ve seen me in action before. What makes you think you were any different?”

Weeping, Victoria had gathered together the parchment and fled to her room. In her individual chambers by the light of a single candle she had read the four individual accounts by doctors of the treatment of a significant member of the ton for a ‘blackness of spirit’. It detailed their bloodlettings and strangulations, their theories. The secrets that she had told them on their instructions it would make her better.

Lord Colchester had known about Victoria’s blackness for two years. He hadn’t been perceptive. He’d researched her just like he did all of his other blackmail victims. And then he’d pounced when she was at her lowest.

That was the last night she cried since she had forced herself to on Colchester’s death. She had not cried since.

“Victoria?” Henry took her arm in concern. “You can tell me. Why did you marry him?”

There were no rules in Victoria’s arsenal that she could use to help her with her response to her brother. Neither the original ten nor the three she had added herself could protect her from her brother’s gaze.

“He offered companionship,” she said economically, studying the point on the painting where Lord Colchester leaned over her naked shoulders. “Companionship and protection from unwanted suitors.”

Henry nodded as if this was the most reasonable reason in the world. “I can see it in the painting,” he said unexpectedly. Victoria blinked and refocused on the painting above her. “I mean, it is an enormously detailed painting. You can see every line drawn on Colchester’s face. Every line of which speaks of concern for you. You might think that he was just offering companionship, but I think that he too wanted something similar.”

Unwantedly, Victoria’s eyes were drawn upwards to Colchester’s face. The familiar face looked out at her. It was strange; instead of the normal sneering look that she so often found in it, she now saw a softening at the edges of the eyes.

“And the way he is looking at you whilst you look at the table is very telling.”

Victoria frowned. She had always thought that Colchester had been looking at the skull which had been placed just to the right of the bible. The painter had kept juggling the items around as he sketched, citing ‘balance and composition’ much to Colchester’s irritation. But with the weak light streaming in from the front door, it seemed as if Colchester’s chin was cast a little higher, and his pupils were angled towards the side of her face.

“Perhaps Bill had it wrong,” Henry muttered.

Victoria flushed. Bill? What had he to do with it? She examined the white hair of her dead husband.
Oh no.
“Bill was the one that asked you why I had married a seventy-year-old?”

Henry’s normally inscrutable face twisted slightly. “I ah… well. I’ve asked you everything that I need to. I had better get back to my wife. Don’t want to leave her alone too long in the carriage.” He strode to the open front door and gave a backwards wave with his hand.

Victoria didn’t bother to stop him. She had her answer in the way he had run away so quickly. At least he hadn’t asked any difficult questions about Mr. Durnish.

CHAPTER 24

There was little to no sound coming from Pedro’s tent. Cautiously Bill pulled back the flaps tent and slipped inside.

There were no home comforts. Three cots were laid out in a row at the far edge of the tent, butting up against a desk and a larger unmade bed. Each cot held a reclining figure. Bill turned hastily to leave. Even so, something pulled him back. He tiptoed through the center of the tent and froze as his eyes were caught by another’s.

The woman, nay a girl, in the third cot next to the desk lay on her back, her arms flung outwards. She stared at him hazily, without moving her body, just her eyeballs tracking his movement down the row of cots.

“Have you brought me some more?” she slurred. Bill stopped, one foot off the floor. Gently he eased it back down to the tarpaulin covered ground.

“Some more what?” he whispered.

The girl closed her eyes and opened them again. Her gaze stared right through him. “The food that makes you float away as if on wings,” she said dreamily.

Bill shook his head, but she ignored him. “Mostly I drink it all up.” She struggled slightly to pull herself up on her elbow. “I’m a good girl, you know.” She nodded earnestly. “I’ve done everything they’ve told me. And soon I’ll go back to where I came from like the others.”

Bill dropped to his knees beside the woman. Her eyes fixed on his in a dull fashion. “Oh. You’re not him,” she said, falling back on the cot.

“Where have you come from? What is your name?” Bill said urgently.

The girl groaned.

Bill tugged at her arm, but she flinched away. After several seconds she mumbled something. He got to his knees and leant over the cot. She was singing to herself.

“Dumb dumb dunbar, dumb little Tessa Dunbar, Dumb dumb dunbar…”

“Is that your name?” Bill asked again. But the woman turned away from him and was silent.

Suddenly Bill dropped to the floor. As the woman had turned away from him, he had notice the tent lightening. Someone else was coming into the tent, and as all the cots were eerily but silently full, it wouldn’t have been one of the women. He looked down his body, as a booted foot appear at the entrance to the tent. If the person stepped in any further then he would be discovered.

The lightweight of the woman made hardly a dent on the low cot. As quietly as he could, Bill slid himself sideways and under her makeshift bed. The bed was only just as wide as his shoulders, and half a foot shorter than his height. He tucked his head into his body and held his breath.

The owner of the booted foot walked silently up and down the row of silent cots and giggled. “Oh, my lovely chickens. I have a new life in store for you. Something unimaginable to you all, floating away on your sea of opium.”

Bill lifted his head cautiously. It should have been obvious. Even Freddie had spoken to him about it, the use of opium, the way it made people crave more, the way they became dead in the eyes. The girl in the bed above him, in her comatose state, exhibited all the same symptoms and he hadn’t noticed. Bill tucked his head in as the silent visitor began to giggle again.

“Poor dumb Tessa Dunbar. You see, she was the first one of you. I know that you remember her. ‘Dumb dumb Tessa Dunbar’,” the voice sang through the darkness. “She didn’t quite make it to the Heracles Club, but you all will. Who shall we have next tonight?”

Gods. Tessa Dunbar. The name was familiar. Where had Bill heard that name?

This time the light touch of the visitor’s boot on the tarpaulin floor was more audible as he stood and peered into each of the cots.

“Oh ho. Maisie. Lazy Maisie. You might be a late addition to my little stable of poor ponies, but you are easily one of the most untouched. You’ll do nicely for what I have in mind tonight.”  A rustle and a moan filled the tent. Bill turned his head to the side. Two cots along he could see the shadowy figure bend down and lift the sedated woman off the bed and over his shoulders.

Another manic giggle resounded. “If only Bertrand Lisle could see me now. He would be proud of me, I know he would.” The figure put a free hand to its lips and pirouetted around. Bill hastily tucked his head back in under the cot but it didn’t stop him hearing what the figure said next.

“Just don’t tell Father. I wouldn’t want to spoil his
other
activities or his good opinion of me. Good night chickens. Happy dreams.”

As the figure opened the flap for a second time to leave, Bill risked rolling out from beneath the cot. The full light of the moon fell on Pedro Moreno’s grinning face as he effortlessly lifted his charge from the tent and through to the outside. But suddenly he turned.

Cursing violently in his head, Bill rolled back under the cot and tucked his head under again. He listened as Pedro stepped heavily beneath Maisie’s weight towards the desk. Bill, heart in his mouth, watched his feet coming closer.

“You, Maisie, almost made me forget,” Pedro said in a light voice. “It’s nearly time to auction off that list. Even if that doesn’t work I’ve found a very good buyer indeed. Just don’t tell Father. He would be
very
surprised.”

Bill grimaced as a drawer opened and paper rustled. He shouldn’t have stopped to examine the cots. He should have gone straight to the desk and found the list. And now he was on a timeline. Pedro was going to auction the list and he didn’t know when or where. He couldn’t grab Pedro now, firstly because he wasn’t sure if Pedro would best him again, and secondly because the lives of the girls would be put in jeopardy.

As the flap fell back down behind Pedro Moreno, Bill wriggled on his shoulder blades out from under the cot. Gods, where had he heard that name Tessa Dunbar? It niggled at him. He had just brought himself up to sitting position when a tight claw-like hand gripped his shoulder. As he turned his head, he came nose to nose with the girl who had asked him for ‘more’ earlier.

This time her eyes were less dead. They were frightened, the pupils whirled, growing bigger and smaller. “I’m Rosie, help us please,” she whispered. “Stop them.”

“Where are they taking you?” Bill whispered back urgently. “Help me so that I can help you.”

But the moment of lucidity had gone. The clarity slid from the woman’s eyes, and she fell back on her cot. “Dumb dumb Dunbar,” she sang off key.

It was so frustrating. Bill got to his feet, wincing. Every night after his act his muscles ached. Normally a long sleep would cure all the pains, but with the accumulation of his effort, the aches were taking longer to go away. His act was much tougher than general smithing. If he wasn’t careful, soon he would not be able to do either.

None of the other women stirred as Bill slipped from the tent. He padded silently across the peaceful encampment back to his own cart. However, it was not in the darkness with which he had left it. A lantern hung above the entrance to his sleeping quarters, and a shadow sat on the bed beyond.

Bill smiled. He should have known that she would come back for more. He stopped suddenly. That’s where he had heard the name, Tessa Dunbar. Victoria had mentioned her in connection with the disappearance of young girls from the pauper establishment. And if Pedro had got her. Bill did not want to think about her fate. Or the fate of the other girls. Especially not after hearing about the way Dana had been found in a ditch.

Bill crept up the steps and burst into the tent.

Pablo Moreno sat on the straw bed, circling his hands around his top hat. He stared at Bill and back at his top hat.

Bill turned and pulled the flap down on his sleeping quarters. He swiveled back to find that Pablo Moreno had silently got off the bed and was now only three inches behind him, holding a large hunting knife to Bill’s lower torso. Pablo Moreno raised his eyebrows at Bill’s expression.

“The strongman is afraid of a small knife?” he jeered quietly. “Surely you could just lift me up and throw me out, eh?”

What the man said was true, but Bill did not want to blow his cover. He hadn’t found out everything he needed to know yet. What was the Heracles Club? Where was it? Where had Pedro taken the list of secrets and just what were Pablo Moreno’s other activities if he wasn’t aware of what his son was doing?

“What is your connection to Lady Colchester?” Pablo Moreno jabbed at Bill’s stomach with the knife. It made a small rip in the linen chemise that Bill had thrust on hurriedly earlier. Bill sucked in his stomach. He cocked his head on one side. What did the man want with Victoria?

“Lady Colchester?” he said with his best Brambridge burr. “Sounds like quality. Ain’t she the one that the dwarf makes fun of in that cart?”

Pablo Moreno jabbed his knife at Bill again, this time cutting a small half inch slice into Bill’s belly. “She is. I’ll be having words with them about that. It does her an injustice.”

“Ain’t got no connection to her. Fed the dwarf’s pig though once.” Bill said brightly, his fingers itching to soothe away the sting in his belly.

“You’ve got more than that. You were seen taking out her hair pins and kissing her all over in front of a hundred people this evening.”

It wasn’t hard to feign his shock—that he had been seen. “That was Lady Colchester?”

Pablo Moreno narrowed his eyes and drew the knife away from Bill slightly. Bill let out a breath. “Cor she’s a prime un. Great kisser too.”

“Do not say that!” Pablo Moreno shouted. His knife jabbed back at Bill, who sucked his stomach in just in time. “You are not to touch her again. She is mine, you hear.
Mine
.”