Page 63 of A Sham Engagement

Chapter Twenty-Four

At the top of the stairs lay a narrow, dirty corridor, hung with cobwebs and devoid of windows. Two mean doors opened off it, both so old, what paint they’d ever possessed had peeled away long ago. The light of the lantern Benjamin was still holding showed Jack that someone had slashed a daub of paint across the notice on the first door that had once said ‘Manager’ and underneath it had painted, in big, uneven lettering, ‘GUVNER’. The second door, though, stood naked of any sort of paint, but possessed of a rusty padlock.

Benjamin fumbled out the bunch of keys, the lantern light wavering. “I’m not sure which key it was.”

“Get on with it, man,” Jolyon growled.

Jack didn’t wait. He took a breath and shouted. “Stand back from the door!” His booted foot shot out and struck the door a resounding blow. The old wood caved in before his onslaught, splintering into several pieces. Most of it clung to its rusty hinges, but some of it fell broken to the floor, attached to the padlock. Inside lay darkness.

Jack followed the remnants of the door into the room beyond, pulling Benjamin after him, the lantern swaying back and forth. Behind him, his co-conspirators crowded in.

The room was tiny, little more than a store cupboard, perhaps once used as a secure lockup when this had functioned as a working wharf. Furnished only with a pile of dirty rags in one corner, it stank of musty decay. Benjamin’s lamp threw flickering light onto the pile of rags. Sitting on them, his knees drawn up to his chin, was Edward, unbearably small, white-faced and drawn, cowering back against the cobwebby wall and blinking like a myopic mole in the lantern light.

Elenora, quicker to react than Jack, put out a hand to the lantern, lowering it in Benjamin’s hands. “He can’t see it’s his father.” Then she was past them both, down on her knees on the stinking rags with the little boy, reaching for his hand, all reticence about touch apparently gone. “It’s me, it’s Elenora and your papa. We’ve come to save you.”

For a moment the little boy regarded her out of eyes that were pools of darkness, then, as if suddenly awoken, he flung himself at her, his arms fastening about her neck, his face against her shoulder.

Jack, his heart swelling with relief, saw her flinch at the contact, probably far more than she’d experienced for a long time, but she made no effort to disentangle the terrified child, who clung on with the determination of a limpet to a rock. The little boy seemed not to have noticed her discomfort. “Elenora,” he sobbed. “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t forget about me like the horrible man said you would.” As if she was the only one who’d effected his rescue. A nub of jealousy rose in Jack’s heart, that he was being sidelined by a woman. But Edward had long needed the love of a woman… a mother… other than the redoubtable Miss Douglas.

From behind Jack, one of Mrs. Sharpe’s girls made a clucking sound, like a contented hen. None of them had ever met Edward, yet all the girls knew about him—a secret he’d never kept hidden from them. And they knew it was due to Edward’s birth they owed their own security nowadays.

Elenora seemed to be nonplussed about what to do with her hands. They flapped for a moment before she must have resigned herself to human contact, unusual as she found it. They went tentatively around Edward’s slender body, holding him to her, then tightened, as though she might be enjoying the new sensation. A beatific expression slid across her face, her eyes closed, and she nestled her head against Edward’s as he sobbed into her shoulder.

“We oughtta go,” Ivy muttered, glancing over her shoulder at the broken door. “It’s not far back to The One Tun, and the fellers there’ll be finding you gone from there before long and puttin’ two and two together and makin’ five. Won’t take much fer them to work out that you follered that dead cove and Benjamin.”

“Hold me tight, Elenora.” Edward’s small voice came, muffled from its position against her body.

Jack tapped her on the arm, remembering the atmosphere of open threat in Sharpe’s taproom. “We don’t have time to delay. Ivy’s right. We have to get out of here. When Sharpe finds me gone from his alehouse and the window open, he’ll raise his customers in a mob to come after me. Us. They’ll forget about extortion and they’ll come straight here and find Warren’s body. None of us will have a chance. Now. Give him to me.”

Benjamin coughed. “They won’t find that feller if we gets rid of the body.”

“Good idea,” Ivy said, as though disposing of bodies came naturally to her. Perhaps it did. “Into the river with him. Tide’ll take him before morning. Even if his body’s found, nobody’ll connect it with us. Come on.”

Jack hesitated, but not for long. Too many questions would be asked if Warren’s body was found by the Watch run through with a rapier. Not the weapon of choice for the gangs of the Devil’s Acre.

The three girls returned to the smashed doorway, and he turned to where Elenora was still holding tight onto Edward, blind to the fact she was sitting on that fetid pile of rags.

She looked up at him over Edward’s head, and he held out his arms. “Here. I’m better able to carry him than you. He’s not small.”

With a look of strange reluctance, and some difficulty as he was firmly attached, she relinquished her hold on Edward and Jack took his son in his arms. Edward, his sobs finally lessening, transferred his clinging hold to Jack’s neck. Jack settled him on his hip. “Downstairs, now.”

They crowded out into the mean little corridor and approached the rickety steps, Ivy now carrying the lantern. They weren’t alone. Two figures occupied the half-landing, creatures from a nightmare, grotesque and threatening.

“Where d’you fink you’re goin’?” one of them growled. The lantern light flickered over a cudgel embedded with six inch nails.

Jack hesitated, encumbered by Edward and unable to reach his sword.

Before he could do anything, Elenora had stepped in front of him, her pistol levelled at the men. “Get out of our way or you’ll regret it. I am considered an expert shot.” Not a tremor shook her hand and she kept her voice calm as she pointed the small pistol at the man with the cudgel. What a woman.

Jolyon and Matthew stepped forward. “As are we.” Both of them had pulled out their own pistols, bigger and more deadly looking than the one they’d given Elenora. These they also pointed at the two men, delighted grins on both their faces as though they were enjoying the danger of their situation.

A pistol had also appeared in Benjamin’s hands, and this he swung back and forth over the darkness below, where the sleepers had lately lain. “Not one o’ you lot make a move or I’ll fire. I might not be able to see yous, but I’ll get one of you for sure.”

All three girls had their knives out, the thin blades flashing in the lamplight. Did Mrs. Sharpe know they went about secretly armed like this?

Their would-be assailant’s eyes settled on the pistol in Elenora’s hand, then slid past to those in her brothers’. For a moment, they hesitated, before, as one, they stepped back, retreating down the last few steps, keeping their gazes fixed on Elenora, perhaps the one they thought most likely to shoot them by mistake. She followed them down, keeping well back. Sensible girl. Anyone would think she’d done this before.

Jack followed her and her brothers and, behind him, his female army, knives in hand, followed him. With one hand, he kept Edward’s head pressed against his shoulder lest he should see the horrors of the warehouse. If he hadn’t seen them already.