The Ugly Duchess (15 page)

Twenty

On board the
Poppy
s

I
n 1814 the
Poppy
s sailed to India without taking a single
ship on the way; they did so merely to prove that their captains would have no
problem grappling with monsoon winds. But since they were there, they wandered
around until Griffin decided that Sicilian noblewomen whom he had known
(intimately) would fall in love with gilded birdcages; he filled the hold with
them. James discovered a passion for a flavoring called curry, so he filled all
the birdcages with packages of turmeric and cumin.

On the way home a pirate crew was ignorant enough
to try to take them down, so they sunk that ship, dropped off the men on an
inhabited island (as was their custom), and sailed on, a pile of emeralds in a
corner of Griffin’s cabin revealing that the
Poppy
s
were not the first boats those particular ill-fated pirates had approached.

They sold the birdcages in Sicily at an outrageous
profit. They sent the curry to England, where their man there (for they now had
establishments to manage their assets in five countries) reported that it was
slow to take on at first, but by the end of three months, it had sold at a neat
seventy times the cost.

Jack had learned to control his temper. He had even
come to thinking of his father with equanimity. When one kills enough men—albeit
pirates who had killed hundreds themselves—embezzlement seems like the crime of
a child. Perhaps more importantly, guilt became something that he refused to
allow to rule his life.

And Daisy . . . he found himself
irritatingly unable to forget the enchanting way her eyes had widened when he
first touched her breast, not to mention all the childhood years when they
played and fought together. But he told himself over and over that those were
the memories of a boy named James, and Hawk prided himself on forgetting
everything to do with his life in England, marriage included.

Then his luck ran out.

It was early 1816, and they had just taken down the
Groningen,
on special request from the Dutch
king; the naval boat had been stolen and was being used to rob trading vessels.
Everything was well in hand; the pirate captain had gone to his just reward, and
only a few men from the
Groningen
were still
fighting hard.

Jack was about to bellow an offer for surrender
when there was a rush of movement to his right, and a pirate came up fast and
hard with an open blade.

He felt the knife slice his neck, just below his
chin. It didn’t hurt, oddly enough, but there was a terrible sensation of flesh
parting, followed by a warm rush of blood down his throat.

He reeled back, dropping his weapons and collapsing
to the deck. There was a crack from a pistol, and the pirate with the knife
pitched backward, landing on the deck with an audible thump.

Then Griffin fell on his knees by Jack, swearing a
blue streak, screaming orders.

Jack squinted up at him, seeing his cousin against
the sun as if he had a halo, a fuzzy halo. “Good run,” he said, but nothing came
from his lips. Of course men who had their throats cut couldn’t speak. He and
Griffin had come to love each other like brothers, though being men, they never
expressed it. They didn’t need to.

Now Griffin was bending over him, stuffing cloth
under his chin. James met his eyes and discovered they were terrified. He had
known the truth before he saw it in his cousin’s eyes. Men with cut throats do
not live.

“You will
not
die,”
Griffin ordered through white lips, as ferocious as only a pirate king can be.
“Damn it, James, hang on. Dicksling will be here in a moment, and he’ll sew you
back together.”

James shaped the words slowly. “Tell Daisy.” No
sound escaped, and the pain had flooded his body now, making black dots swim in
his vision. But there was only one thing in his heart, one thing he had to say,
shocking though it was to discover it.

“Daisy?” Griffin said, leaning even closer. “Your
wife. Tell her what?”

But the black dots were connecting together and
rushing at him as if a sandstorm suddenly rose from the sea.

And at that very moment the felled pirate made one
last violent effort: the man thrust himself to a sitting position and slashed
his knife at Griffin. With a howl, Griffin clapped his hands between his legs.
Blood flew in the wind and splattered all over James’s face.

It was over, it was all over. It was only then that
James realized what he surely knew all along.

He couldn’t shape the one word he desperately
wanted to say.

And there was no one to hear it.

Twenty-one

April 3, 1816

T
he petition to declare a formal end to the life of the Earl of Islay was wending its way through the Courts of Chancery when Theo received a message from yet another of the twenty Bow Street Runners who had returned to England.

But this message was different: it claimed news.

She sat quite still with the note in her hand, staring at it.

If James was alive, the Runner, a man by the name of Mr. Badger, surely would have written
I found your husband,
rather than
I bring news.
Desolation felt like a palpable thing in her stomach, like another heart beating under the first.

She summoned her new butler, Maydrop, and instructed him to request that Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn visit that very afternoon. Mr. Badger turned out to be swarthy and hirsute, a bow-legged and fierce-looking individual. One had the distinct impression that criminals would be quite sorry to find that Badger was on their trail.

“He has the whiskers of a catfish,” Cecil whispered, but Theo was too nervous to smile. They were sitting together on the couch, Mr. Badger in a chair opposite them. Theo was so fidgety that she felt as if flies were dancing on her head, yet Mr. Badger methodically plodded on without getting to the point. He took forever explaining precisely where he had been assigned by his superiors, how many men he took with him, how many he hired in the islands, how long it took him to sail to his first port of call.

For the first time in years Theo had the impulse to chew on her fingernails, a habit she had broken in the schoolroom.

“The West Indies,” Mr. Badger continued, “is not civilized by our standards, and I’m afraid that I employed a great deal of bribery in order to obtain the information I sought.”

“
Have
you found my husband?” Theo interrupted. She could wait no longer.

“No, I have not,” Mr. Badger replied.

She swallowed. “But you found news of him.”

“I am of the opinion that he was not dead as of 1810,” Mr. Badger said, returning to the sheet of foolscap he had balanced on his knee. “He was . . . well . . .” A look of distinct disapproval crossed his face.

“He was living with another woman,” Theo said flatly.

“He was a pirate.”

Cecil gasped, and Theo gave a cry—whether of horror or surprise, she couldn’t say.

“That’s impossible,” she managed a second later.

Mr. Badger licked his finger and turned to another sheet of foolscap. “He was called the Earl by various members of the criminal establishment. I might remind you that at this point James Ryburn was possessed of the courtesy title Earl of Islay. He worked in concert with another pirate known as Griffin Barry.”

“That name does sound familiar,” Cecil said.

“Barry is actually a member of the peerage”—Mr. Badger gave them a lowering glance, as if they were personally responsible for this reprobate member of their class—“and it is my considered opinion that the said Sir Griffin led Lord Islay into impudent and ill-conceived, not to mention criminal, ways.”

“Criminal!” Cecil gasped again. “My cousin James would never do anything criminal! I’d stake my life on it.”

“I would not advise you to do that if I were you, sir,” Mr. Badger stated. “There was some confusion about the actual activities of the Earl and Barry; there were those who maintained that Barry attacked only the ships of other pirates, at least, after he joined forces with the Earl. There is ample evidence for Barry’s piracy before 1808, but after that date, he specialized, if one can use that term, in attacking his fellow reprobates, which makes him a ‘privateer,’ rather than a pirate.” He paused. “To law-abiding men, there is only a slight distinction.”

“Impossible!” Theo said, feeling glad for the first time that her mother was no longer alive.

“If this ‘Earl’ is any connection to my cousin,” Cecil said, “then I am quite certain that he would indeed attack only pirate ships. His Grace is a man of honor and would no more think of harming innocent lives than he would of . . . of cheating in a game of cards!”

Theo put her hand in his and squeezed. If only James were here to listen to Cecil’s fervent defense of him. “What happened to the Earl?” she asked. “Was he killed?”

“There’s quite a legend built up around the man’s vessel, the
Poppy Two,
but no one could tell me of its fate,” Mr. Badger said, “though, of course, I left men there with instructions to find out. They are sailing from island to island making extensive inquiries at each place, while I returned here with all speed. All we had determined by the date I returned to England was that the said Griffin Barry once had a partner known as the Earl. But not very long thereafter the Earl was replaced by a fearsome character known as Jack Hawk.”

“Jack!” Theo cried. “Jack is not so far from James.” At the same time she wanted any shred of evidence that he might still be alive, she wasn’t sure that she liked the idea. It would mean that her James was a pirate, a bloodthirsty criminal who walked innocent people down the plank. “Though I still don’t believe it,” she added.

“I agree there is a similarity in names,” Mr. Badger said. “But the resemblance stops there. I had two people draw pictures of this Jack Hawk, as he’s well known in those parts. He has a passel of women fond of him, if you’ll excuse the indelicacy, Your Grace. There’s not a chance that the Earl and Jack Hawk are one and the same: from descriptions of him, Hawk is a monstrously big fellow, with a shaved head and a tattoo under his right eye.”

“A
tattoo?
” Cecil repeated.

“What on earth is a tattoo?” Theo asked.

“Decoration pricked into the skin with the use of pigment and a needle,” Mr. Badger said. “I find it most unlikely that an Englishman, let alone a nobleman, would submit to such a barbaric procedure, which is both painful and indelible. I saw some examples while I was on the islands, and they were distinctly savage.”

“I agree with you that we can discount the possibility that this pirate and Lord Islay are the same,” Theo said. “In fact, I find your former supposition unlikely as well, Mr. Badger. The fact that Griffin Barry is a member of the peerage is insufficient evidence to presume that a criminal named Earl might have any connection to my husband.”

“I’m afraid that we cannot offer even a partial reward for this information,” Cecil agreed, chiming in. “Lord Islay was never a pirate; I find the supposition unlikely, not to mention insulting to his memory.”

Theo let the reference to “memory” go by; Cecil found it increasingly difficult to speak of his cousin in the present tense. She could understand; after all, James had been gone for nearly seven years.

“I was interrupted before I could present you with a piece of evidence,” Mr. Badger said, looking as satisfied as a cat with nothing left but a mousy tail. He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small flannel pouch, which he proceeded to open.

It held a locket.

And inside the locket . . . a curl of hair whose color ranged from bronze to brandy.

“I fail to see the significance of that object you hold,” Cecil said, leaning back with a wave of his hand. “A tarnished locket with a piece of hair—” He looked sideways at Theo and broke off.

“It is my hair,” Theo said, her lips moving with difficulty. “James cut it on our wedding night. Actually, the following morning.” She reached out her hand. “May I have it, please?”

Mr. Badger handed it over. The locket was, as Cecil said, a tarnished and not particularly valuable one. Yet there was no mistaking her own hair. She’d spent too many years deploring its odd streaks to mistake it.

“That need not be your hair,” Cecil said, peering down at her hand. “I agree that there is some similarity, but your color is much lighter than that, my dear.”

“James cut it from underneath so that no one could see. The hair is darker, but you see it has all the oddness of my hair. Like a yellow zebra, James always said.” To her distress, she heard her voice quaver.

“Where on earth did you find this?” Cecil said to Mr. Badger, simultaneously giving Theo’s arm a little squeeze. “Not that I consider the hair necessarily to be Lady Islay’s.”

“Apparently, it was stolen from the man called the Earl. I had made it clear that I would pay a hundred pounds, a small fortune in those parts, for any evidence of the duke’s existence. In the course of my inquiries, I extended the offer to include any details about the pirate named the Earl. This was brought to me in response.”

“And yet no one knew what happened to the man?” Theo whispered. Her fingers shaking, she clicked the locket closed again. Even looking at that hair brought back the extreme joy of that day. She had never felt anything like it again.

Mr. Badger shook his head. “
The Flying Poppy
wasn’t seen in those parts again for a good three to four years, which is not so extraordinary. Griffin Barry operates all over the seas, Your Grace. There’s talk of him around India and then near Canada. They call him ‘a flying fish’ and the like.”

“And when the
Poppy
returned, the Earl was gone.”

“Exactly. And the devil of it is that the
Poppy
hasn’t been seen in the last couple of years, and I didn’t hear stories of it, either. So there’s a chance that Barry has gone to the bottom of the sea, taking the truth of what happened to Lord Islay with him.”

A silence ensued; Mr. Badger had at last come to the end of his narrative. It was Theo who said what had to be said. “He’s gone.” Her fingers closed hard around the trumpery little piece of tarnished metal. “James is dead.”

Mr. Badger nodded, his gaze not unsympathetic. “I fear that is the case. Piracy is a terrible business, and I find myself amazed that his lordship survived even for a month or two, let alone as long as he did. Lord Islay would have been at a distinct disadvantage, surrounded by lawbreakers who would as soon shoot you in the back as issue a civil greeting.”

“This is a rather disgraceful question, but I fear it must be asked,” Cecil put in. “Is there a chance that my cousin left a child somewhere on the islands? I much dislike the idea of a Ryburn growing up under such disadvantageous circumstances.”

Theo’s heart skipped a beat.

But Mr. Badger was shaking his head. “ ’Twas Jack Hawk who has a way with the ladies. For all I know, that reprobate has scattered children all over the East Indies; he has a reputation that suggests it. But the Earl had a quite different character.”

“What was it?” Theo asked, her heart feeling crumpled and helpless somewhere under her breastbone.

“He was never known to have visited a woman at all,” Mr. Badger said, his eyes distinctly sympathetic now. “That fact suggests that when he embarked on this rather unusual career, Lord Islay did not discard all the qualities that distinguish an English gentleman. And, of course, he did keep the locket.”

“I’m glad that the old duke didn’t live to hear this,” Cecil muttered. “It would have put him in the grave.”

A sob rose up Theo’s throat with such force that she felt her mouth distort. James was dead, killed by a pirate, his body likely thrown into the sea. And he had kept her lock of hair with him when he left England. She couldn’t bear it . . . she couldn’t bear it.

She rose, and Cecil’s hand fell from her arm. “If you’ll forgive me,” she managed, feeling tears sliding down her face.

Mr. Badger came to his feet, nodding. He had the look of a man who had delivered terrible news before.

Cecil was fighting his way up from the low settee. “Go,” he said, panting a little. “I’ll just talk with Mr. Badger for a few more minutes. I’ll call on you later, my dear.”

Theo ran from the room, the locket clenched in her hand.