Page 52 of A Sham Engagement

“This is where we gotta go. This is my pa’s alehouse.”

Jack nodded. Into the den of the man he’d bested eight years ago. A man who would not be happy to see him return. In fact, a man who’d promised to kill him if he ever saw him again. But that had been eight years ago…

Chapter Twenty

The hot stench of unwashed mankind met Jack at the door of The One Tun. That and the noise of the occupants. Even this early in the evening, they must have been there for some time, for drunken shouts filled the air, mingling with screams and screeches from the women, doxies all of them. Thank God he’d saved little Josie and her fellows from a fate such as this.

The beamed ceiling hung low, and Jack was glad he no longer had his tall top hat. He took off his grubby cocked hat and, holding it to his chest, followed young Benjamin through the crowd as he elbowed his way toward the bar. To right and left stood tables crowded with the source of all the noise, the knives and forks chained down. What sort of a place needed to prevent the theft of eating utensils in this way? And did they ever wash them in between uses?

Despite the hat, it bore in upon him that he stood out the way a woman in a ballgown would have done in White’s, that bastion of male dominance. Every head turned to stare and, as he progressed behind Benjamin, silence fell as if from the wake of a boat to spread out behind him. These were a people deeply suspicious of anyone who wasn’t a part of their world, and Jack could not have looked more so had he tried. The temptation to glance back over his shoulder or from side to side burgeoned, but he fought it off. He must betray no lack of confidence in front of them, or they would pounce on it.

Benjamin reached the bar, by dint of everyone falling back as though afraid to catch some disease of the rich Jack might be carrying, and leaned upon it in an attitude of casual arrogance. His sharp, street-wise face fitted in here as though he’d been born to it. Which he had.

“Ben Sharpe,” the innkeeper said, without pausing in his wiping out of tankards with a less-than-clean rag. He was a swarthy individual with bushy brows that met above his nose and a thatch of matching dark hair hanging so low over his forehead as to have almost joined in. A rash of dark stubble covered his lantern jaw, and a couple of gold teeth glinted in his mouth as he spoke. “What brings you down here to The Tun?” But his gaze was on Jack even as he posed the question.

The silence in the room bristled with tension, suspicions bouncing around the walls as though given living substance. If Jack looked over his shoulder, he’d find the customers pressed up close behind him in open threat, probably fingering whatever weapons they had about them. Was everyone in the tavern agog and listening?

“Come to see my pa,” Benjamin announced. “I b’lieve as he can help this cove.” He gave an expressive shrug of his scrawny shoulders. “If he’s a mind to, that is.”

An indrawn gasp at Jack’s effrontery hissed around the low rafters.

Everyone was indeed agog and listening to his business.

Jack had never felt quite so intimidated. His sword stick would be no use whatsoever against so many, and his pistols were hidden in an inner pocket and, if an emergency arose, could only take out two at most. A quick glance around at his audience showed him that most of the women had melted away, and in their place a motley array of characters as threatening as the innkeeper were standing, eyeing him with suspicion. Most worryingly, all had set aside their tankards of drink, and a good few of them clutched knotted staffs in their equally knotted hands. One of them gripped a piece of rope on the other end of which a scarred bullterrier strained, piggy eyes fixed on Jack as though he were a piece of prime steak. Or a rat.

The innkeeper rubbed his sizeable nose, from which sprouted hairs as dark and bristly as his eyebrows. “Your pa know you’re comin’?”

The crowd edged half a step closer.

Jack determined not to give them another glance.

Benjamin shrugged again. “I don’t know what business you think it is o’ yours, Tom Havelock, but so far as I’m concerned, ’tain’t nothin’ to do wi’ you. I’ve gotta speak with my pa, an’ you ain’t stoppin’ me.”

Havelock drew himself up to his considerable height, puffing his chest out. “Mr. Sharpe don’t give an audience to jus’ anyone, and well you knows it. You can go in, young Benjamin, and no question. I ain’t arguin’ with that. But this cove’s a swell’un by the look of him, an’ he don’t go in unless he states his business an’ gets searched, or I’ll be in trouble with the guv’nor.”

A battle of heavy stares ensued, but Havelock carried the day, as age and experience triumphed over brash youth. Benjamin shrugged yet again, as if to imply his setback was of no importance. “Awright then. If you has to know. My gen’leman cove thinks my pa might know somethin’ to help him find his little nipper wot’s been taken ’gainst his will.”

A young woman in a low cut scarlet dress that might once have graced a more salubrious establishment than this one, shouldered her way to the front of the audience of men. Auburn hair hung in unruly curls down her back. At any other time she would have aroused Jack’s interest, but not now, for more than one reason. “His little nipper, eh?” She surveyed Jack from head to foot, a speculative look in her eyes. “A swell’s little nipper, no less. What’s Reuben Sharpe got to do with nippers? He ain’t got nothin’ to do wiv anyone as’d snatch littluns, nor no bands of pickpockets, if that’s what you’re implyin’.”

“No one said he did,” Benjamin snapped. “Keep yer nose out, Molly Bragg. Ain’t nothin’ to do with you, neither.” He turned back to the innkeeper. “He’s here, then, I s’pose?”

The innkeeper pulled a face not unlike that of the scarred bull terrier. It didn’t improve his appearance any. “He’s in the back room, where he always is. But I got to search your swell cove before he can go in.”

Another shrug. “Help yerself then. It ain’t no skin orf my nose.”

Havelock shot Jack a challenging look and stumped out from behind the bar. Like Jack, the top of his head brushed the low, soot stained roof beams. “Arms out.”

What Jack would have liked to have done was plant the man a facer to knock him flat, but that would have got him nowhere, possibly even killed by the looks on the faces of his audience. So what he actually did was to lift his arms while the man ran his beefy mitts over his body. Not unexpectedly, he found the two dueling pistols straightaway.

“Wot’s this then?” He held them up delicately between thumbs and forefingers, like a duchess with a teacup, fixing Jack with a low-browed scowl. “Thinkin’ of goin’ in to see the gov’nor armed, were you?”

“I always travel armed when I enter the Devil’s Acre,” Jack said, enunciating his words clearly for the benefit of the watching crowd. “I’d be a fool not to.”

“Then I think I’ll keep ’em here for you, while you’re seein’ the guv’nor. He don’t take to coves who bring weapons to the table. Hidden weapons.” He laid the two pistols on the bar.

Jack fixed him with a hard stare. “They’d better be here when I return for them.”

Havelock gave a snort. “If I says they’ll be here, then here they’ll be. You think we’re all thieves in The One Tun?”