Unmasking the Thief, page 18
“Well, well, well, what have we here, gents? Not so very young, but skin like that don’t need no paint. And I bet that dress buys a few bottles of gin!”
Of course, he wasn’t alone. Two ruffians loomed on either side of him. Of her.
“Come on, love,” one of them said cheerfully, hauling her with terrifying ease. “Come with us!”
Chapter Eighteen
Francisco had never in his life hung around after a ball or any other function just on the chance that he might catch a glimpse of a woman who enchanted him. But then, no other woman ever had enchanted him, not like this. He had much to think about before tomorrow, and much to do just to have a hope of preventing disaster. And yet here he stood in the shadows of Wenning House like a besotted adolescent.
He had not gone near her since the waltz after supper. Just by dancing with her twice and taking her into supper, he must have alerted the tabbies to gossip possibilities. Thankfully, neither he nor Matty were well known to the ton, so she might avoid talk since he left her alone for the rest of the evening.
From his place in the shadows beside the Mount Street house, he had watched Sir Anthony Thorne await his carriage in the company of Mrs. Mather and Miss Marion Mather. Further along, nearer to him, Mrs. Dove and her daughter sat in their carriage, peering out of the window occasionally, presumably to look for Matty. Once, the young relative who was their escort got down and strode toward the steps of Wenning House, but Mrs. Dove summoned him back.
“Henry, don’t go back in, we shall just lose you, too. The servants will send her to us.”
Thorne handed his ladies into a carriage, which set off at a decorous pace, but still, he could see no sign of Matty. Unease had him taking two paces back toward the house—and then he saw her, hurrying beside a footman in the wrong direction.
Something was definitely wrong.
He walked faster. But the footman boosted her through an open carriage door and swung it shut. The carriage shot forward immediately, away from Francisco and at a spanking pace both unnecessary and unusual. His stomach twisted ferociously, but he could not catch the carriage, not on foot and with all these people holding him up.
He swung back toward the Doves’ carriage and suddenly glimpsed Emma Carntree, one elegant foot on the step of her own carriage, a smile on her lips that he did not like. As if she sensed him, she shifted her gaze to him. Her smile broadened, and he knew.
She stepped inside, and her footman closed the door.
Fear threatened to paralyze him, as it had not since he was a boy, and nothing he could do could save the people he loved.
Not again. Dear God, not again, not her…
He would not allow it. Ruthlessly, he forced down the fear and the horrors of his memory and his imagination, and at last, his brain began to work. He strode up to the Doves’ waiting carriage and tipped his hat.
The young relative opened the window. “Sir?”
“Ah, Mrs. Dove,” Francisco said amiably, looking beyond the young man. “I bear a message from Mrs. Mather, who apologizes profusely for keeping you waiting. She insisted on taking both her daughters back to Grillon’s.”
“Drat the woman,” Mrs. Dove said below her breath before adding more civilly, “Thank you, Mr. Francis.”
Without waiting to hear any more, Francisco tipped his hat again and strode off in the direction of Bruton Street.
*
Emma was rather pleased with herself. On the brief carriage ride home, she amused herself by imagining the governess’s face when she found herself among the thieves and courtesans—to call them no worse—who haunted Covent Garden at night. She imagined Thorne’s face when he realized his precious sister-to-be was ruined. And Francisco’s when he realized his so innocent lady in blue was nothing but a whore.
And all accomplished with the briefest word to her favorite of Thorne’s footmen. It was really quite brilliant.
Stepping down from her carriage, she was admitted to the house by the sleepy night porter, who bade her goodnight and began to lock the door behind her, preparatory to going to bed himself. Emma swept on toward the stairs but quite suddenly was hauled into the dark reception room to the left.
A hand was clapped over her mouth, and she was held motionless in a terrifyingly strong grip. The porter clumped along the hall toward the servants’ stairs at the back of the house, humming tunelessly to himself as he went. His candlelight flickered briefly in the doorway, and Emma found herself staring into the hard, pitiless eyes of her one-time lover.
It’s Francis. It’s only Francis. But somehow, the knowledge did not comfort her. There had always been something only semi-tamed about him, and now he wasn’t tame at all. Dragging her with him, he softly closed the door, locked it, and pocketed the key.
“I’m going to let you go now. But if you scream, if you even move, I’ll snap your pretty neck before any of your servants have as much as wakened. Do you understand me?”
Dear God, even his voice was different. Cold, clipped, merciless. The blood chilled in her veins. She nodded desperately, and keeping hold of her, he slowly took his hand away from her mouth.
She gulped in air. “Francis,” she said shakily. “There’s no need for this. The servants still have orders to admit you anytime.”
“Where did you send her?”
“What are you…?” Before the question was even out, he had spun her around so fast she was dizzy. Both hands closed around her throat, appallingly strong and immoveable.
“Don’t, Emma. Don’t even try. Where did you send her?”
“Oh, nowhere very far away. No one will hurt her, for God’s sake. I only wanted to give her superior person a little fright. Go and fetch her for all I care.”
“From where?” he repeated.
It was too soon, so she tried a smile.
His fingers tightened, actually choking her.
“Covent Garden,” she gasped. “She’ll only be left there, not harmed.”
“Not harmed?” He flung her from him as though she was too loathsome to touch. Though released, she only cringed before the savage contempt in his face. “Do you expect me to believe you have really no idea what harm could befall an unprotected woman at this time of night? Would you like me to send you to fetch her?”
Every word felt like a lash, and she had no real idea why. “Francis…”
He didn’t even pause in his stride as he unlocked and wrenched open the door. She stumbled after him, intent on retrieving her position with him, making him forgive her. But he pounded down the hall, unbolting the front door without any care now as to noise. An instant later, he was running down the steps and away, leaving the front door wide open for the chill wind.
*
Dragged down an alley she hadn’t even seen, a filthy hand over her mouth, Matty had one moment of hope. A young woman with a shawl over her head slunk past them, pressed as far into the wall as she could get, head down.
Matty made a noise behind the suffocating, stinking hand, not quite a scream or even a wail, but it should have been enough to at least make the girl look up and see. She didn’t. She kept her head down and hurried on, all but clinging to the wall. Not that the poor creature could have done anything against three grown men, but if she had been prepared to acknowledge the abduction, she might have brought help…might she?
Matty didn’t know what awaited her as they dragged her through a door opening onto the alley. They shut the door behind them and bolted it.
She could die, which seemed so cruel when she had only just met and loved Francisco.
Francisco, Francisco…
More likely, the men would steal her gown and reticule and leave her to limp home in her underwear. Unless they took that, too, for it was new and fine and could probably be sold easily, too. Rape was another possibility. They could sell her on to a brothel from which she could never escape. Not because she wouldn’t try but because she would have nowhere to go. No decent family, including her own, would want her after such a fate. For it was the way of the world to blame female victims.
She was shaking when they let her go, and she had to summon the pride to stand straight, to cast all her fearful thoughts aside, and concentrate on the current situation. If she could not get out of it, she could surely buy herself some time.
She was in an ill-lit room off the poky front hall, and her three captors stood between her and the closed door.
At first, all she could hear was the thundering of her own heart, her own rapid breathing. Then she realized there was noise above the ceiling, a few desultory voices like the humming of a bee in the distance. She doubted, however, that those above would be her friends. Her captors were clearly prepared to let her scream, secure in the knowledge that in this place, no one would come to her aid. So she didn’t give them the satisfaction.
The lantern was set on the dirty table. A couple of tallow candles were lit, giving off their evil smell but at least showing Matty her surroundings: a bare room with two old, upholstered chairs leaking their stuffing.
Matty regarded her advancing captors and coughed as though it could dispel her own terror. At least it might serve to stop her voice from shaking.
“You have made a dire mistake in taking me in such a way,” she informed them. “But if you stand aside now, I might be persuaded to say no more.”
One of them, thinner and smaller than the others, grinned in clear admiration. “Lor’, can’t she talk? Got a posh one here, Gerry.”
“You have no idea,” Matty said grandly. “So, whatever you were planning when you laid your filthy hands upon me, think again.”
She had their attention, if only because they were admiring her speech. They stood in a still row, between her and the door, all looking amused to a greater or lesser degree. The leader, he of the side-whiskers and the thick lips, gave her a mocking bow.
“Your highness! In our shoes, then, what would you do?”
She let herself appear to consider, though not too long in case they got bored and… “As I see it, you have two reasonable choices,” she said determinedly. “The most sensible, as I’ve said, would be to simply stand aside and let me go. Such gentlemanly behavior would reap its own reward, in that I would not go to the authorities or even describe you to my extremely large brothers and their host of ferocious footmen.”
“It’s true it pains us to pass up such generosity,” the thin man began in accents meant to imitate her own. “But—”
“My second suggestion would be ransom,” she interrupted. “You would lose my goodwill, of course, but you could rake in a much larger fortune than the pittance yielded by selling my clothes. Or the pennies Madame Whoever upstairs would be prepared to pay for me.”
“Got to allow, no one likes an unwilling whore,” said the largest of them, scratching his head.
The others regarded him with scorn. “She’d be willing,” the leader said. “By the time old Madge has finished with her, she’ll be—”
“I gather you don’t want to be rich?” Matty interrupted, trying to hide her desperation in her best governess voice. “This—” She waved a disparaging hand about the room. “…is the sum of your ambitions? Hasn’t it entered your head that my family would pay dearly to have me returned safe and sound?”
Of course, it was already too late for that. She was already ruined, and all she could do was postpone any assault as long as she could.
“How much?” the big one asked. “Hundreds of guineas?”
“Easily,” Matty replied grandly.
“She’s got a point,” the big man told his compatriots.
“Don’t be a bigger ass than you were born,” his leader snapped. “A guinea in the hand is worth more than the hundreds in your dreams!”
“Don’t know that it is,” the thin man said judiciously. “Ransom is risky but rewarding.”
“What would you know about it?” the leader demanded with contempt.
“I’ve heard, and you’ll be a fool if you don’t listen, too!”
“Oh, for—”
Fight, Matty prayed. Go on, fight among yourselves, and maybe you won’t even notice me go…
The trouble was, they still stood between her and the door, so she merely shuffled a few inches forward and to the side, waiting for any moment.
“Never mind the bloody ransom!” the leader, Gerry, uttered in frustration. “Just go and get Madge!”
Matty poised. If one left the room, it might give her more chance…
“Not until we’ve decided on our best course,” the thin one said stubbornly. “Madge will want her share, of course.”
Gerry cast his eyes up to the peeling ceiling. “You want to hold a woman like her for ransom? The whole place will be swarming with the law in no time!”
“Same if we sell her to Madge,” the big man pointed out.
“Yes, but then we have our money, and Madge pays any consequences. But do tell, how does your massive brain suggest we screw this imaginary ransom from her family? Pay a morning call, perhaps? Sure, the butler would be happy to offer us tea and crumpets. Or maybe we could get the reformers—or the vicar!—to write a note for us!”
The thin man, who had looked indignant at such sarcasm, ended by scratching his head in a crestfallen manner. From which Matty gathered that none of them could write.
“Madge can write,” the thin man offered at last, though without much hope.
“Yes, but we’d never know what she’d written,” Gerry pointed out.
Matty took a step nearer the door. “I could write your note.”
“We’d never know what you wrote either!” Gerry exclaimed, though it was, Matty hoped, a step forward that he seemed to be regarding her in the same light as his mutinous companions.
“What reason would I have to thwart you? I want to go home.”
“You could write where to find you.”
“I don’t know where to find me!” She swallowed. “Why don’t you bring me writing materials now? The sooner you deliver the note, the sooner you’ll get your money.”
They all regarded her with varying degrees of hope and skepticism while Matty’s insides twisted.
“We can do both,” Gerry said cunningly. “Take off the cloak.”
The order was to his underlings, but as the big man took a step nearer, she began to unfasten it herself. The big man merely swept it back, so he and his fellows could see the silk ball gown beneath.
“That’d fetch a fine packet,” Gerry observed. “Get it off her, and then we’ll talk ransom.”
“My family will only pay my return undamaged,” Matty said desperately, backing away again. “They’ll never believe that if you take my clothes.”
Gerry grinned as though lapping up her fear like gin. “You can tell them what story you like when you’re free. We ain’t going to argue. Now, boys,” he added harshly, “if you p—”
A mighty crash drowned out his final word—a splintering of wood and an explosion of glass as something large catapulted through the window and the flimsy curtains and rolled across the floor toward her.
Matty had just grasped that it was a man when it lashed out with its feet, bringing the large man crashing to the floor, too. In almost the same movement, he sprang to his feet, spun, and swung his fist into the thin man’s chin, knocking him into the pile of limbs that was the large man trying to stand.
Francisco.
The stunning realization drowned every other thought, hope, and fear.
He found me… And she would not let his rescue fail for the want of a little spirit on her part.
While Francisco faced Gerry, charging him with head lowered like a bull, Matty lunged to the table and snatched up the lantern. Francisco side-stepped Gerry and seized one arm, twisting it hard up his back. Gerry scrabbled over his shoulder with his free hand and kicked back with his heel. The blow missed his knee but scraped punishingly down his shin.
The other two had managed to disentangle themselves and were now advancing menacingly on Francisco. A blade glinted in the thin man’s hand.
This was the point Matty had hoped for earlier, the moment she could walk out the door without anyone noticing. Now, it didn’t even tempt her. She rushed at her abductors, swinging the lantern, and brought it down on the large man’s head.
He staggered, swinging around to face the unexpected new danger. Even dazed, with blood beginning to ooze down the side of his head, his eyes were murderous. Matty raised the lantern again, this time in self-defense.
“Enough!” The single word cracked through the air like two pistol shots, causing everyone to glance at Francisco, though the large man raised one arm protectively over his head.
Francisco held Gerry in an armlock, a curved, wicked-looking dagger at his throat. The man breathed heavily, furiously in his grip, but did not make the mistake of moving.
“I’ll slit his throat, and the fight will be more even,” Francisco offered. “Or you can drop your weapons and wave goodbye pleasantly.”
Matty understood without instruction. Her entire body might have been shaking, but she could still hurry to the door while Francisco followed her, dragging Gerry with him. The other two, still armed, followed, but very slowly.
Matty opened the door a crack and peeked through. The tiny, dark corridor, leading to stairs at one end and the front door at the other, was empty. There seemed to be no sound from upstairs now. Were they preparing to attack, or had they simply fallen asleep?
Matty threw the door wide and stepped out into the hall. “There’s a bolt on the outside of the door,” she murmured.
“Perfect,” Francisco replied, moving in her wake. At the last moment, he thrust Gerry hard back into the room, and as the other two charged him, he slammed the door and bolted it.
This would have been my prison, she thought numbly. God knew for how long, subjected to what abuse…
Francisco’s fingers curled around hers, drawing her to the front door. Behind her, she heard movement rustling on the stairs.
