Page 58 of A Sham Engagement

Warren shrugged. “All right. You wait here, and I’ll take Reuben’s lad to the boy. Then he can tell you he’s safe, and we can settle on a price.”

Either Warren was confident Benjamin would lie, or, more likely, or to be hoped more likely, he had Edward stashed somewhere not so far away, still alive but a prisoner. That had to be it. The germ of an idea was forming in Jack’s head.

Jack nodded. “And make it quick.”

Warren grinned again and that bloody tooth flashed. “We’ll take as long as we like, boyo. You’re in no position to order me about. You sit yourself down here and wait, and while you’re here, you think about what you did to me and Reuben.”

The room was small, and Warren had to pass close by Jack to reach the door. The strong smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air about him. Jack had to fight once more for his self-control. If he gave in now, all would be lost.

Without a backward glance, Warren and Benjamin departed, the door closing with a bang behind them. Their footsteps died away along the dirty corridor. At least they’d left him the lantern.

In the comparative silence that followed, broken only by the muted sounds of congress in the surrounding rooms filtering through the thin walls and nagging at his ears, Jack surveyed the rest of the room. The battered table with the lantern stood beneath a window thick with cobwebs and dust. Apart from that, the only other furniture was the rickety bed, strewn with dirty blankets. If he’d been going to stay, the last thing he’d have done was sit on that bed. But he wasn’t going to stay.

He must be quick.

He pulled the rickety table away from the window and seized the catch. It didn’t want to open. The old, dirt encrusted metal was rusted solid, but Jack’s fingers were desperate. Warren and Benjamin would be in the taproom by now, pushing through the crowd and heading for the front door. He scrabbled at the catch, nails breaking as he fought to open it. If he didn’t get out in time, he’d never see which direction they’d gone in.

At last, after what felt like forever, it gave, and the window creaked open a bare crack, letting in the smoky fog of the slums, a thick miasma of polluted air. No wonder Reuben Sharpe had the consumption. Jack forced the window wide and put one leg through it. Below lay the shadowy yard of the inn, silent in the freezing cold, cobbles dirty and damp. Remembering to pick up the lantern by its wiry handle, he said a thankful goodbye to The One Tun’s dubious hospitality.

As a tall man, although not heavily built, the window was a tight squeeze. For just a moment, he felt his body jam, but with a convulsive wriggle, he prised himself free to wriggle round to hang by his hands, still clutching the swaying lantern, from the crumbling sill and drop down into the noisesome yard below.

Now, where was the door Warren and Benjamin would be exiting?

In Betterton Street, Martha had gone to tuck her brood of youngsters into their beds and make sure they said their prayers, leaving Elenora sitting alone in the little parlor, nibbling her nails to the quick. This was a habit her mother had forced out of her as a child by dint of painting the offending fingertips with something bitter, but it returned with a vengeance in moments of stress. Now, she couldn’t stop herself.

The walls of the room seemed to press in on her, every detail of their decoration imprinting itself on her mind: where the wallpaper curled loose in the corners, the worn patches and small burned spots on the rug in front of the fire, the crumbs on the tea tray and the smell of coal smoke in the stuffy air. She glanced at the window, but only foggy darkness lurked out there, threatening and featureless.

Jack had been gone such a long time. Was she to sit here all night waiting for him? Suppose he never came back? Suppose this was all a trick by whoever had taken Edward just to get Jack into his power? She folded her hands in her lap in an effort to stop chewing at the nails. Mama would be furious when she saw the state they were in. Elenora was even a little bit angry with herself for succumbing to her old habit. Would gloves prevent her?

Her eyes roved the crowded room yet again. The furniture was too close together, chairs and tables jammed in, with too many ornaments on every surface, as though with respectability Mrs. Sharpe had gone quite mad with emulating her social superiors. Nothing like Aunt Penelope’s neat and spacious home, and a thousand miles from the faded opulence of Penworthy.

Where was it Jack had gone? Benjamin was taking him to The One Tun, a tavern in the Devil’s Acre. A common tavern in what sounded like an extremely dangerous part of the city. Such an odd name for any location. Not that Elenora had any experience of taverns or their names, nor the parts of London where they might be found. Jolyon and Matthew probably did though, and Matthew, who was closest to her in age, and for whom she’d always been a confidante, had more than once told her about his forays into the Oxford backstreets whilst he’d been at university in that town. Not that he was there any longer though, with this latest misdemeanor of his. He’d not been specific this time about his supposed crime, but knowing him, she could hazard a guess.

Jolyon and Matthew.

Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner? She could ask for their help. What time was it? Would they be at Jolyon’s lodgings? Probably. Too early for them to be out at some soirée, gambling and flirting with the young ladies. She had to get a message to them. They, the playmates and co-conspirators of her Penworthy youth, would know what to do. And they might even have pistols or know where to get them.

She prided herself in not being a missish girl in any way, and had never been one to sit about whilst others took action. Jack needed help, and she might be able to provide it. With the assistance of her brothers. If only she’d thought of them earlier.

But how? This tavern lay within the backstreets of London, a place she’d never been to before. However… Her eyes narrowed and focused. The girls here in Betterton Street must have been there, for that was where they’d come from. They’d been born into those mean streets, and only rescued from it by Martha and Jack, so surely they remembered their old haunts.

She got up and, on silent feet, padded to the door. She would try the kitchen.

The corridor passed a steep and narrow staircase to the upper floor before opening into a warm and cozy kitchen.

There, she found three girls seated around a well-worn kitchen table, drinking steaming mugs of hot chocolate. None of them was Ruth, who would anyway have been far too young for this adventure, and all of them, although younger than Elenora, looked old enough to perhaps have outside work they’d returned home from. She breathed a sigh of relief. Martha must still be safely upstairs getting the younger ones to bed. Hopefully, a long-winded operation.

All three girls stared up at her from their seats with open curiosity, although without any shock at seeing someone like her in their house. No doubt young Ruth had spread the word.

“I need your help,” she opened with.

They looked the sort of girls she’d seen working as kitchen maids, or sewing seams in dressmaker’s establishments, here in London, or behind the counter in a shop. A little rough around the edges, dressed in clean but not smart dresses, with their hair confined in neat plaits down their backs; their homely, freckled faces reminded her of the dairy maids at Penworthy, only pastier in appearance. “Yes’m?” asked one, whose mousy hair had released pretty, curling tendrils around her forehead. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than Elenora.

“I need someone to take me to The One Tun tavern and to take a message to my brothers in Jermyn Street.”

They regarded her in shocked silence. They must know where she meant, probably regarding both locations.

She pressed on. “Do you know where the tavern lies?”