Never a Duke, page 26
What that boy had nearly done for a crust of bread…
“Bob was taken up, because I fumbled the handoff. He kept the take, though the crowd was already shouting. He could have passed me the goods, and I would probably have been shown leniency because of my age if the constables had thought to arrest me. I didn’t see him again until he was hanged.”
“You saw that?”
“I did not want him to be alone. I owed it to him to be there, but I could not get to the front of the crowd. I saw enough. I heard enough. I hope he knew I was there.”
As spindly as Ned had been, as thick as the crowd had been, he hadn’t seen the actual hanging, but he’d heard the platform drop, he’d heard the crowd. Some had decried the execution of a boy, most had jeered.
“I cried,” he said, very softly. “I cried for a good brother who’d only done what he’d had to do to keep us alive. I cried because it was my fault. I would gladly have switched places with him. I was a burden to him, and Bob never once complained. I cried, and Rosalind, it didn’t matter. I did not matter, Bob did not matter, my father, my mother.…We simply were of no moment to anybody in a position to make a difference.”
Rosalind glanced around the common, then rose.
Ned accepted that he’d asked too much of her. It was one thing to know in theory that a man had a criminal past, it was quite another to learn that his bungling had seen his brother dead at the end of a rope. Ned stared hard at the bread, denying himself the impulse to reach for Rosalind’s hand and call her back.
He’d walked away from her, after all. Tried to, anyway. He was no better at leaving her than he’d been at picking pockets.
Rosalind came around to Ned’s side of the table and slid onto the bench beside him. “Damn them all. Damn them, damn them. You were a pair of hungry boys, no parents, no family. The Royal Navy snatched your father away, and you had nobody to take you in, nobody.…Oh, just…” She wrapped her arm around Ned’s waist and laid her head on his shoulder. “Damn them all to eternal, flaming hell.”
The sight of the bread blurred. Ned put an arm around Rosalind’s shoulders and closed his eyes. He did not know how long he sat there in the humble tavern, where lovers being too familiar was of no moment, but something inside him eased at the feel of Rosalind tucked close.
Sorrow, rage, guilt, despair…he did not have to name the burden to know that it would never again weigh on his heart so heavily.
“I grew mean after that,” he said. “Tough and determined. It helped.”
Rosalind took his hand. “Tell me the rest of it.”
Chapter Sixteen
How much heartache and injustice could one man endure? Ned’s story put Rosalind in mind of the animals tormented for sport. The dogfights, cockfights, bear baitings…Perhaps there was something fundamentally wrong with the human character, that it could ignore the suffering of children and delight in the abuse of mute beasts.
What manner of society could end a child’s life, because he sought merely to eat in a city that claimed to be the wealthiest on earth?
Ned kissed her fingers. “The rest of it is equally ugly and not half so excusable. I grew bolder and graduated to stealing property. I had a talent for getting into and out of dwellings undetected, and I had a nose for where valuables would be stored. I began to work alone and was too adept at my trade. My competitors saw me taken into the keeping of a house of ill repute that caters to a certain clientele.”
Rosalind sorted through blunt translations. “A molly house?”
“Ladies aren’t supposed to know of such places.”
“I read Latin, Ned. I hear my brothers gossiping. Aunt Ida is not one to mince words.”
“I hope to meet your Aunt Ida one day, if you’ll still have me.”
Rosalind looked around. A pair of old sailors sat knitting in the snug, and a bag of canine bones snoozed before a cold hearth. In the corner, a gent of no particular description wearing a hat of equally unimpressive provenance nursed a pint, and at the bar, a maid wiped down tankards and hummed a tune that probably had bawdy lyrics.
“I will have you, Ned Wentworth, at the next available opportunity.”
He laced his fingers with hers. “Will you, Rosalind? Will you have me? I spent one night in that molly house. I was too stupid to realize the soup would be drugged. I woke up in the same bed with an older boy. He had a pretty little speech all rehearsed, about regular meals, warm blankets, nobody the wiser, and why work like a dog only to end up in jail, when a little frolicking would result in all the security a boy ever needed?”
“Did he violate you?”
Ned pulled Rosalind close and kissed her temple. “The windows were nailed shut, so I broke the glass with my fist. Tossed my clothing and boots out before me and left that place mother-naked in the dead of winter. I have never been so frightened in all my life. Not when Bob went before the magistrate, not when I landed in Newgate, not when I was sentenced to transportation. The last thing that was mine on this earth—my very body—was to be taken from my control.”
He hadn’t put that into words before, hadn’t admitted the depth of his fear.
“This,” Rosalind said, “is why I could talk you into looking for missing women, because you were nearly forced into the flesh trade yourself.”
He took a sip of ale, though his hand shook slightly. “You did not talk me into anything. You asked, and I could not countenance the notion that you’d go poking around the stews on your own.”
Rosalind covered his hand with hers and brought his mug to her lips. “They serve good ale here. Exactly how did you end up in Newgate?”
“I was set up, of course. The same people who’d turned me over to the molly house arranged for stolen goods to be found at my lodgings. My sentence was transportation, but I well knew what that would mean for a boy on a long voyage. The whores did what they could to protect the children, but I’d heard the stories, and I wasn’t about to…I stopped eating.”
“You excelled at going without, I suspect.”
“Precisely. If the great and the good of London thought I was not worth feeding, then I would simply oblige their pious wishes that I be admitted into heaven’s benevolent light. I exercised the one right left to me, the right to abandon the hell to which I’d been consigned. I missed my family, and all I could think was that a benevolent Deity would surely allow me to see them again. If Walden hadn’t come along, looking so fierce and so lost…”
Ned offered Rosalind a bit of cheese, then finished the slice himself. “I knew the bewilderment Walden hid so well, knew the utterly paralyzing confusion of a life knocked arse over ears. I could not leave him to the tender mercies of the Newgate regulars. I decided I could always starve myself to death later.”
How different Ned’s feelings for his family were from Rosalind’s. “I want to see Aunt Ida again,” she said, “but as for the rest of the Kinwoods…”
“If you marry me, Rosalind, Woodruff will likely ensure you’re ruined. He’ll get only close enough to you to give you the cut direct.”
“Ruined.” Rosalind disentangled herself from Ned’s embrace. “Is that when I no longer have to flatter aspiring cits who think marriage to a titled lady, any titled lady at all, should be the zenith of their ambitions? When I’m ruined, will I be spared the speculative leers and execrable dancing of the aging widowers?”
She waved a hand in the general direction of Mayfair. “In a ruined state,” she went on, “will my evenings be my own, or will I have to continue to hare about at my father’s whim—my father, who is not my father—and will two brothers continue to gossip about my many shortcomings behind my back? Explain this dire state of ruination to me, for I suspect ruin has much to recommend it.”
The fellow in the corner had glanced up at this tirade, as had the dog. The old sailors paused in their knitting, and the barmaid was no longer humming.
“That sounds about right,” Ned said, as several other patrons paused at the entrance to the common. “And in your ruined state, you might not even be married to a banker. A banker’s fortune rests upon his reputation, and my clients tend to be folk of middling means and sound morals. If Lord Woodruff digs deeply enough into my past, I could well end up out of a job, Rosalind. Walden destroyed the documents, but he can’t destroy people’s memories.”
Rosalind buttered a slice of bread and passed it to Ned, then buttered a second one for herself. The bread and butter, like the ale, were exceptionally good at this humble inn.
“I doubt Papa has the tenacity or connections to unearth the worst of the traumas visited upon you. What will your ducal family do if Papa proves difficult?”
Ned took a bite of bread. “From your tone, I gather they’d best take my part against Woodruff.”
“You gather correctly. Given that Papa is a mere earl, and the Wentworths are a ducal family allied with the Rothhaven dukedom as well, Papa had best tread lightly.”
Though to a surprising degree, Rosalind did not care how Papa trod, provided his steps took him someplace far, far away. And may George and Lindhurst join him in that distant location.
“Rosalind,” Ned said, “I am not a good bargain as a husband. I have a wicked past, my own family died in penurious and scandalous circumstances, and I have prospered only because of the charity of people who owe me nothing. But I promise you this…”
The other four occupants were goggling at him, as was the dog, and the newcomers remained in the doorway half-obscured by the afternoon shadows.
“I will love you to my dying day,” Ned said, “and I will bend my every effort to keeping you safe and making you happy. You might not have the finest coach, but you will have my constant devotion. I will never forsake you, and if we have differences…”
“We will resolve them,” Rosalind said, “and without anybody being banished, imprisoned, arrested, or starved.”
“Marry him,” the barmaid called. “Marry him quick, or I’ll steal him away for meself. A man talks to you like that, you don’t let him get away.”
“Heed the lass,” one of the sailors added. “And lad, get yonder miss before the parson posthaste.”
“Will you marry me, Rosalind? For I most assuredly do want to marry you.”
The setting was all wrong, with strangers for an audience, bread and ale for a meal, and an old dog presiding over the whole scene, but the right man was asking.
“I will marry you, Ned Wentworth. And if we end up keeping body and soul together by opening a tailor’s shop, that will suit me splendidly. Your embroidery alone should fetch a fortune.”
Ned kissed her, a sweet, sumptuous press of his lips to hers, which inspired a round of applause from the onlookers.
“Took ya long enough.” Artie swaggered forth from the door, plucked Ned’s bread from his hand, took a bite, and set it back on the table.
“Artie.” Ned got to his feet and offered Rosalind a hand. “And Walden and Lord Stephen. My lady, we have company, or possibly, reinforcements.”
“You are damned right you have reinforcements,” His Grace said. “My lady, good day. Ned, what the hell is going on?”
Lord Stephen was looking about with unabashed interest, while the dog had risen to sniff at Artie’s boots.
Ned kept Rosalind’s hand in his when she took the place beside him, which was just fine with her.
“The situation is complicated,” Ned said, “and more than a little dangerous.”
Walden swept the room with a gaze that should have left ice on the exposed surfaces. “You propose to a genteel lady in surrounds like these, abandon your duties at the bank without a word, and send young Arthur back to us spouting mendacious nonsense. Then Arthur lapses into lurid tales involving abductions, ears, and known felons, and we find you here, swilling ale and announcing your past to Wapping’s hapless denizens. Her Grace will not be best pleased with this state of affairs, and I am more than a little dismayed. Explain yourself, and be quick about it.”
Ned seemed amused at this tirade. “Thank you for Her Grace’s concern, but—”
A gent with a battered hat had sidled up to Ned. He took off his hat and speared Walden with a look that promised dire consequences to loquacious dukes.
“But you do not harangue my little brother like that in public, sir, I don’t care who you are. The lady said yes, and her opinion is all that matters. Ned, tell this fancy bugger to sod off, or I will. The Taylor boys don’t tolerate disrespect. That hasn’t changed. Apologies for my language, Lady Rosalind.”
Ned’s grip on Rosalind’s hand became desperately tight. “The Taylor…Robert? Robert?” The silence in the inn became as vast and fraught as the open ocean. “You are dead. I attended your hanging.”
Robert stood a little straighter. “I was sent to New South Wales. Earned my ticket of leave, though it took half my life. I never forgot you, Ned, never forgot how hard you scrapped, how loyal you were. Broke my heart to think I’d abandoned you to the wicked streets of London. Then I come back to find you’re a fine gent, toolin’ around Town in your own coach, and I wasn’t sure you’d want your convict brother calling on you.”
“Your buttonholes,” Ned said, fingering Robert’s lapel. “You finish them counterclockwise and never start in the corners. I have only ever known one person to sew them in that style.” Ned closed his fist around Robert’s coat and pulled him close. “I thought you were dead. I thought…”
A long moment passed while Ned and his brother held tightly to each other. Rosalind fished out her handkerchief while Walden and Lord Stephen looked anywhere but at the embracing siblings.
“I could use a pint,” Artie said, a little loudly and to no one in particular. “And some tucker. This is a nice dog.”
“Have you a private dining room?” Rosalind asked the barmaid as Ned and his brother simply stared at each other, Ned still gripping Robert’s coat.
“Fine notion,” Lord Stephen murmured. “Let’s withdraw to less public surrounds and feed the boy. Could use a pint myself.”
The barmaid dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “Back this way. Cost you extra. The dog’s name is Nelson.”
Nelson trooped along with them to the private parlor, where Ned took a place at a settle with Rosalind on one side and Bob on the other. Walden and Lord Stephen appropriated the chairs opposite, and Artie repaired to a window seat, the dog accompanying him.
Was there any greater joy than finding a lost loved one thought long dead? Rosalind could feel the wonderment radiating from Ned, at the same time she mourned for brothers separated so long ago. So much had been taken from them, and yet, Robert had come halfway around the world in the hope that his brother still lived.
No other lady being present, and the gentlemen appearing to have no clue how to go on, Rosalind posed a question when the ale had been served.
“You were sentenced to hang, Mr. Taylor. Was your sentence commuted?”
“’Twasn’t.” Bob blew the foam off his ale and the dog ambled over to lick it from the floorboards. “Ned, you recall Coffin Tommie?”
“Had consumption,” Ned said, “coughed all the time, hence a rather unkind nickname. You switched places with him?”
Robert nodded. “Tommie had a mortal fear of burial at sea, or worse, burial in a heathen land. The whole thing was his idea. We traded clothes, the guards kept mum if they even noticed, and I was hauled off to the hulks at Deptford to await the next transport ship. Tommie got a quick end on the gallows and burial on his home soil. I had no time to get word to you, and I wouldn’t have known where to send a message anyway. Haven’t known where to send a letter, for that matter—assuming you were still alive.”
“How bad was the voyage?” Ned asked.
“The voyage was long. Took us the better part of a year with layups in Rio de Janeiro and Table Bay. Our captain was a decent sort, and when the first mate realized I could sew, he assigned me to assist the sailmaker. The sailmaker gave me the officers’ uniforms to look after, and when we landed, the captain put in a word for me. I was spared the worst of the hard labor and have my own tailor’s shop in Port Jackson.”
“How did you recognize me?” Ned asked.
“I asked around. The tailor’s boy turned nabob has a reputation in certain circles. Then there’s your walk. You have this half-strutting, half-sauntering walk. You have the same eyes, Ned. You still observe the world from a careful place. You’re a damned sight better looking than I thought you’d be, but we both know what good tailoring can do for a fellow.”
Rosalind watched this exchange and realized she might well have found Ned only to lose him. Banking was a job to him, not a calling, and his only blood kin now dwelled in the Antipodes. Would she travel that far to stay by Ned’s side? Would he give her that chance?
“Neddy has gone thoughtful,” Lord Stephen said. “This bodes ill for somebody.”
“Women are scarce in New South Wales, aren’t they?” Ned asked.
“Scarce puts it mildly,” Robert said. “It’s not as bad as it was twenty years ago, but still…Bachelors outnumber the available ladies by a considerable margin.”
Walden swore softly, and Arthur looked up from entertaining the dog.
“You think the missing maids are bound for transportation?” Rosalind asked.
Ned nodded. “They are young, healthy, comely, unmarried, have no family on hand to object, and they can be substituted for women too old, young, or sickly to manage the challenges of transportation, or for women already married. Some of those bachelors in Botany Bay have significant means, and somebody here in London is being paid handsomely to put the wrong women on board the transport ships.”
“And,” Lord Stephen added, “the women spared transportation are not about to complain to anybody in authority. They are probably told the court has allowed them clemency owing to their age or infirmity, and off they go, remembering the mercy of the court in their prayers.”
“This is corruption,” Walden growled. “Corruption in the governance of the penal colony, corruption in the administration of justice here in England.”
