“Go to Harwich,” Calton advised. “The authorities will expect you to leave from Dover or further west, so if the warrant’s out already, you’ll still have a chance. Take rooms at the Black Lion, and I’ll write to you there as soon as I know anything, one way or the other.”
By nightfall the day after the duel, Durward was walking from the harbour back to the Black Lion. He had found a ship bound for Portugal, from where he could easily find another to take him across the world, far from his friends and his sins.
It was wartime, of course, so he might not survive the voyage. He found it hard to care. In the meantime, he supposed he could get blind drunk. For his ship didn’t sail for two days...
And there was always the faint possibility Foster would recover. Though perhaps he should go anyway. God knew he was doing no one any good here...
Hell’s bells, that is a lovely girl...!
Lovely enough to pierce his armour of distance and indifference.
Incongruously, she had just staggered out of a dockside alehouse and turned up the street toward him, her arm around the waist of an older man, who was warbling some unrecognizable ditty to the stars. As they paused under a streetlamp, her skin seemed to glow, stretched tight across the delicate bones of her face. She held her full, lower lip between her teeth and Durward almost growled aloud at his sudden surge of mindless desire.
Noisily, the couple weaved their way up the street, stumbling and lurching.
It was not an edifying sight or even an uncommon one in this place at this stage in the evening. The man, his battered hat askew, kept singing his off-key song, comprehensible only to other drunks. By rights, his beautiful companion should havebeen joining in. That she wasn’t, was really what held Durward’s erratic attention.
Well, that and her slender, graceful figure. And that face... Which was now scowling. Rigid with effort, wobbling under the man’s weight, she appeared to be all that was holding him upright.
Understandably, passers-by were giving them a wide berth. Viscount Durward, hedonist, rakehell, and about-to-be fugitive from the law for murder, knew a stirring of volatile chivalry. If he wasn’t much mistaken, the girl was stone-cold sober. Young and, as he finally noticed, respectably dressed, she should not have been anywhere near her inebriated companion, let alone supporting his knee-flapping person in public.
He crossed the road to stand in front of the pair and touched his hat. The girl did not appear to see him for she kept moving determinedly past. The man, however, halted suddenly, causing the girl to be jerked backward again. They both staggered, though the man beamed at Durward in an unfocused kind of way.
Durward caught the man’s free arm to steady him. “Perhaps I might be of assistance?”
“Bugger off,” the girl snapped.
She yanked her charge forward, breaking Durward’s light hold, and they lurched together round the corner into an alley.
Durward let out a hiss of surprised laughter. He wasn’t used to women spurning him in any way, and he admired her spirit if not her good sense. With worse than no protection, she was walking up an unlit alley where deeper shadows moved in the darkness.
Asking for trouble...
Durward was only too familiar with such reckless and ultimately self-destructive impulses. Other people’s were not hisbusiness. He really didn’t need any more trouble in his life, and his assistance had been rejected in no uncertain terms.
Bugger off, indeed!
On the other hand, the beautiful girl with the foul mouth intrigued him. So, he did what he always did and followed his latest whim. He had nothing better to do for two days.
The alley was only just wide enough for the two ahead of him to walk together, but at least his proximity to the wall helped to keep the drunk upright. The problem was, their escape could be easily blocked. Durward’s skin crawled, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in warning.
Was the girl leading her drunken companion into an ambush? It would explain her lack of fear, and her instant refusal of Durward’s help. It would also explain those moving black shadows. Something stirred in the darkness at the end of the lane and vanished. Then, much closer, a man-shaped figure detached itself from the left-hand wall and stood between Durward and the staggering couple.
A Royal Navy press gang? Surely the drunk was too old for their purposes...
Durward eased nearer the right side, walking slowly and noiselessly to see what transpired. He wasn’t remotely surprised when two more men materialized in front of the lurching couple, one from either side of the passage. Something glinted in a spark of moonlight. A blade.
The man and the girl staggered to a halt.
“Empty ’em,” growled a sepulchral voice.
“Empty what?” the girl demanded, more scathing than furious. “We’ve got nothing, so just stand aside.”
Durward recognized courage born of despair when he heard it. He waited no longer. Breaking into a run, he shouted to distract the ruffians. The one nearest whirled to face him,passing something—surely a blade—from hand to hand in clear threat.
Durward felled him with one punch to the side of the head, barely breaking stride.
One of the remaining two assailants shoved his victims up against the wall, snarling like a dog defending his bone. The other lunged at Durward, his serrated knife swishing through the air.
