The Mercenary Major (23 page)

When she had come within ten yards of them, she slipped on the damp cobbles, caught herself, and cried out again. They were in a dark, rank tunnel of a lane between two soot-blackened buildings.

The spy turned. He was panting. “Stay back, miss . . . stay back,” he warned her between ragged breaths.

Victoria shook her head, gasping for air. Her pulse was pounding in her ears. She took a step forward.

The spy did not move. “He’s mine,” he said, pushing the barrel of his pistol deep into the flesh under Jack’s jaw.

Victoria felt her heart stop and start again. She extended her arms, pointing the gun at her adversary, hoping that her shaking hands would not betray her inexperience with firearms. Dear Lord, she did not know how far the gun would shoot.

The spy scurried around Jack, turning so that the barrel of his pistol traced a line across Jack’s throat. He smiled at Victoria, a cruel, self-satisfied smile. Jack’s body now shielded the spy from Victoria’s weapon. She saw Jack tense.

“Victoria,” he yelled, leaning forward, resisting the spy’s pull, “he’ll fire. Take cover.”

“No,” she called hoarsely. She wanted the spy to fire. If he fired his pistol, then she could get close enough to fire hers. The spy inched back, pulling Jack toward another turning. She moved with them. Her arms trembled with the effort of holding the gun steady, and still she advanced. The spy smiled a taunting smile at her.

“Afraid, Major?” he mocked. “The proud major is afraid I’ll shoot you, missy,” he told Victoria.

“Jack,” Victoria said in a strained voice she hardly recognized as hers. “I am no more than ten paces from you.” It was all she could think of to say without openly asking for help.

She thought he would not answer. Then he said tautly, “Remember the fight with the parrot-voiced man. If I—”

The spy jerked Jack backward. “No tricks,” he shouted. “He’s going to die. He deserves to die.”

They had almost reached the turn in the lane. A loud noise like the roar of a cataract sounded from around the corner. The spy’s smile turned triumphant, and he lifted the pistol from Jack’s throat and pointed it at Victoria.

“Take cover, Victoria,” Jack yelled.

He swung his bound hands back and up, jabbing the spy in his slack belly, and the spy staggering from the impact, fired wide. He shoved his gun into a pocket of his greatcoat, and, cursing, pulled Jack from her view. Victoria lowered her arms and rushed forward.

Around the turn, the lane opened onto a street choked with a raging stream of men. To her right Victoria could see Jack’s linen-wrapped head above the heads of other men. She stepped into the press and was swept along, poked and prodded, her feet trampled, her ears ringing from the welter of sound.

“Jack,” she screamed.

Somehow he heard and turned his head toward her voice. He was resisting the flow like a branch caught in a torrent, men pouring around him on either side. She shoved her gun into the back of the man in front of her, and he cursed and slanted off to one side. She spurted forward, closing the gap, waving her gun, keeping her gaze on Jack.

Abruptly the forward thrust of the mob slowed and folded back on itself, like a wave smashing up on a shore. They had reached a barricade. A line of constables was making a stand, and in their midst stood the Lord Mayor himself. In an abrupt shift of mood, the rioters cheered his lordship, who told them to disperse.

Their fury instantly revived. “Bread or blood,” they cried, scrambling about, prying up loose stones from the pavement and blindly hurling rocks and dirt at the representatives of reason and law. Victoria ducked and wove her way forward until she had reached Jack’s sleeve. She touched his arm, but the spy screamed at her and shoved Jack farther to the front of the crowd.

“Surrender your arms,” came an order from the mayor.

“Open the Exchange,” a hundred voices shouted back. Someone started up a chant of “Nature, Truth, Justice,” drowning out the voice commanding them to yield.

The crowd lurched forward to within a few yards of the line of grim-faced men with muskets and swords. Victoria crouched and squeezed beneath the arms of two men to come up on Jack’s left. She snatched at his blindfold.

The spy reached for her gun, and she twisted away from him. From behind them came a surge of bodies, lifting her off her feet for an instant and pressing her against Jack’s side, her cheek against his shoulder, the gun pointing uselessly at the cobblestones.

“Jack,” she cried.

“God, Victoria,” he answered. “Hold on.”

When her feet touched pavement again, she pulled the blindfold from Jack’s eyes.

At that moment the spy butted into Jack’s back, sending him staggering forward. As the spy gathered himself for another shove, Victoria screamed and pointed the little gun at his feet and pulled the trigger. At the shot the spy yelped and wobbled, and the crowd swept forward, charging the line of constables and bearing the spy along with them.

For a few minutes the world was thuds and screams while Victoria clung to Jack. Before them the spy wrestled another man for possession of a musket, and the man swung the gun, knocking the spy forward.

The mob fell back. Across the open space stood the Lord Mayor with his arm around the spy’s neck, holding the man as a shield. The spy struggled, writhing and shouting, “Not me, not me.”

Someone from the crowd yelled out, “Let us in or we shoot.”

“Fire away,” was the reply.

A volley of shots exploded, echoing against the stone walls of the narrow lane, and the spy slumped in the mayor’s arms, a red stain blossoming on his chest. The mayor released the body, which fell to the ground. He raised his own musket, and the crowd fell back.

“More arms. More arms,” was the cry.

Jack leaned down and urged Victoria, “Hold on.”

She dropped the pistol and grabbed one of his arms with both her hands. With his shoulders and body he angled their way through the crowd toward the opening of a lane.

“Now run,” he told her.

Jack kept them moving north, away from knots of rioters, down lanes and empty streets as long as he could, until their path crossed a churchyard.

“In there,” he indicated with a nod of his head.

She fumbled with the latch on the iron gate and limped into the grassy enclosure with its rows of tombstones.

“A little farther,” he urged, leading her to a hump of dry grass beside a tall slab of weathered marble that would shield them from the chill wind. She crumpled to the ground, shaking and breathing hard, and he fell to his knees beside her, cursing the rope that still bound his hands and kept him from taking her in his arms.

She struggled to her knees and pressed her body to his, her arms encircling his ribs. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. She lifted her face, and for a minute he took her mouth in a deep kiss, heedless of their need to recover breath.

Breaking the contact, Victoria slipped her arms from Jack’s body and rocked back on her heels. He was shaking with anger, his eyes blazing with it, and she knew it for the anger that follows fear. He had been afraid for her. She had felt that fear-driven fury, too, but had spent it against the spy. Later she would recall the horror of his death.

She stood and went to kneel behind Jack, tore off her gloves, and worked at the rope. It was the coarsest sort of fiber, and it pricked her skin. She hated to think what it was doing to his wrists.

Madre de Dios. Mother of God
, Jack thought as he felt her fingers begin to work the rope, he had been afraid for her. A cold, gut-tightening fear had stolen over him while he was pushed through the stinking streets, blind and bound. Thoresby’s mad threats had all been about her. Thoresby would shoot her. No, he would give her to thieves. No, he would sell her to an abbess.

Now the icy fear yielded to hot rage, at the spy for using Jack’s weakness, at himself for drawing Victoria into a danger he could not protect her from, at her for making him want her so much. He tipped his head back, giving words to his wrath in the tongue she did not understand. In answer her cold fingers fumbled at their task, and he flinched. Something was cracking inside him like stone exposed to extremes of heat and cold, and he had to hold her.

Tears blurred Victoria’s eyes, and she blinked them away, concentrating on the stiff tangle of rope. At last it yielded, and she unwound the coils from his wrists. She collapsed with her legs folded under her, but he turned and in a fluid motion pulled her against him in a fierce hold.

Lightly she said, “I suppose you blame me for entering Wallen’s.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then he asked, none too gently, “When you opened that door and saw the situation, why didn’t you run?”

It seemed an awkward moment for her to reveal her love. “I only regret that I had not the foresight to bring a pistol with me,” she replied.

A single word with a long rolling r, expressive even without translation, was the reply. “You do like danger, don’t you?” he said.

“No more than you,” she said. “In that we are equal.”

He did not answer. His rigid stance was eloquent enough. He might love her, she thought, but he did not want to.

The bell in the little church rang the hour, and Jack leaned back against the marble monument, settling Victoria in a gentler embrace. He had not yielded to his hunger for her, and he could not lest he lose sight of his purpose altogether. He had to get her back to Letty’s. His wrists burned, but his hands were functioning again, no longer numb or stinging with fiery pricks of returning sensation.

“I want you safe,” he said to the top of her head.

“I am safe now,” she answered, snuggling closer in his arms.

“Your father would not think so,” he pointed out. “My God,” he said with a trace of his former anger. “Why did you come to Wallen’s?”

She traced his scraped knuckles lightly with her cold fingers, and he closed his hands over hers. “The
condesa
told me you were there. I thought you at Bow Street.”

“The
condesa
?” he asked.

Victoria nodded. “She came upon me just as I left Letty’s and told me you were leaving England and wished to see me and that I would find you at Wallen’s in Snow Hill. I had no idea of the danger until I opened that door.”

Jack imagined his hands closing around Cida’s lovely throat below the diamond choker. “You were coming to Bow Street?”

“I could not let you remain under suspicion when you had the proof of your identity with you.”

For a heartbeat he felt stupid with joy that she had wanted him vindicated, and then he remembered. “You did not give me away last night.”

“Among the Favertons it was your choice.”

“You think I chose poorly?”

“Letty and Katie and Reg love you. Even the countess is fond of you, and Dorward . . . Dorward can be avoided or ignored.”

“But if I claimed my place among the Favertons, you would think me the ‘Mercenary Major’?” He kept his voice light.

“Please, forgive me,” she begged. “I should never have called you that.”

“Do not blame yourself. I wanted you to think it,” he confessed. “I wanted you to love me thinking the worst.”

“You wanted me to love you?” she said, straightening in his arms and twisting in an attempt to look at him, but he held her nestled tightly against him.

“From the moment you leapt out of Reg’s carriage.”

She was silent, but he felt a change in her, and without his consent his heart raced in answer. “Suppose I did fall in love with you?”

“What I told you the day of the gale is still true. We are not on a desert isle. Our marriage would make me look greedy and you, foolish.” Jack thought his voice sounded steady. Maybe he was stronger than he thought. Maybe he had strength enough to leave her. He had arranged his passage to America so that he could sail on any ship of the Ludlow line. He could get away tomorrow before he weakened any further.

“I think you should speak to my father at once,” she said.

“What?” He sat up abruptly, and she wriggled free of his hold, turning to face him and bracing her hands against the marble slab at his back on either side of his face. She was kneeling between his legs, and only a few inches separated her lips from his. Her eyes had softened to their smokiest gray, and her lashes veiled them, but the steel was there. He heard it in her voice.

“You’ll marry me when money is no obstacle to love?” It was hardly a question.

He grinned at her. “There is my past. Your father will object.”

“Exactly what have you done that my father will object to?”

He had to tell her. “Lived by my quick fingers in the streets of Madrid for four years, fought over scraps of bread and meat like a dog for a bone, stole grander sums for two years to support my paramour.” He paused, noting the flicker in Victoria’s gaze. “Turned bandit to escape her, slit French throats, blackmailed my way into the British army with French secrets and a bandit’s insight into the weaknesses of the lines of Torres Vedras.” He halted, studying her face, but her gaze did not waver. “It’s not Eton and Christchurch. And I have no acres in Dorset to recommend me to your father,” he finished.

“Tell Father everything. Later, you can tell me.”

“Victoria,” he began, and at once regretted that he had allowed himself the pleasure of saying her name and her the satisfaction of hearing him say it. She looked entirely too sure of his submission. He pulled her face down to his and kissed her until she fell against him, and then he kissed her until intemperance banished reason. The church bell tolled again, and he drew back. Solemnly he told her, “I won’t marry until I’ve a fortune of my own.”

She pushed herself up, shook the grass from her skirts, restored her hair to its smooth coil, and walked off toward the gate. When she had opened the latch, she looked over her shoulder at him. “I can wait.”

**** 19 ****

A
t Letty’s Jack showed Victoria a sturdy, bare vine that snaked up a corner at the back of the house, a way to avoid questions that their appearance at the front door would inevitably raise.