C Harris - Where Shadows Dance

“Gov’nor!” The tiger skidded to a halt, breathless. “We got somethin’! The wife o’ the under-keeper what lives in the lodge near the Corner recognized the carriage and dapple grays what come through the entrance to the park this mornin’. She says they belong to a livery stable on the Kentish Town Road. Seems Calhoun’s ma and the livery owner is real thick, and ’e tells Calhoun the rig was let to a cove by the name o’ Sullivan. Todd Sullivan.”

Sebastian frowned. “Sullivan? Who the blazes is he?”

“A weery rum character, according to Calhoun. ’Angs around the Castle Tavern!”

They took her to a wretched one-room stone cottage with a tattered thatch roof somewhere to the northwest of the city.

The cottage lay at the end of a rutted, overgrown lane, its windows broken and stuffed with rags, its yard empty and weed choked.

The coachman—a wizened little old cockney missing one ear—stabled the horses in a dilapidated lean-to, which told Hero they anticipated being here for a while, at least. Then he went to gather wood for a fire while his companions spread the crude table with bread and cheese and salami they washed down with ample swigs from a bottle of gin.

No one offered her either food or drink. But at least they didn’t tie her up. She was left to prowl the cottage’s dark, cramped confines, conscious always of Sullivan’s watchful gaze following her. Marie collapsed in a limp heap beside the grimy hearth, her body wracked with sobs punctuated by an occasional thin, reedy wail.

“There, there,” crooned Hero, going to draw the distraught woman awkwardly into her arms. “Don’t be afraid, Marie. They’re not going to hurt us. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.”

She looked up to find Sullivan smiling at her through narrowed eyes. “Feel sorry for her, do ye?”

“That amuses you for some reason?” said Hero stiffly.

“Aye, it does.” He took another deep swig of gin. “How ye think we knew where ye was going to be, and when ye was going to be there?” He nodded to the woman now sobbing quietly in Hero’s arms. “She told us. Sold ye to us, she did. For a guinea. Just didn’t know she was includin’ herself in the bargain.”

Marie lifted her head to display a pinched, tear-streaked face. “I did what you asked me to do!” she wailed, her pleading gaze fixed on their captor. “Why won’t you let me go? You’ve got her .”

But Sullivan only laughed and turned away.

Hero watched him go stand in the open doorway looking out on the sunbaked yard. Then she brought her gaze back to the abigail. “Why, Marie?” she asked, her voice kept low. “Why did you do it?”

The abigail sniffed, her features hardening into what looked very much like hatred. “You think I should have been content with your cast-off gowns and a few paltry trinkets, do you? You fancy that because you pay my wages you also bought my loyalty?”

“Oddly enough, yes,” said Hero, who paid her servants handsomely—for both philosophical and practical reasons.

The abigail’s lip curled with scorn. “You’re a fool.”

“Obviously.” Hero was tempted to add, But then, under the circumstances, I would venture to suggest that the appellation applies to you, as well. But she kept the observation to herself.

The abigail had already begun to weep again. And though Hero knew that her tears were driven as much by hatred of Hero as by fear and self-pity, Hero continued to hold the girl and do what she could to comfort her.

As the hours dragged on and the shadows in the yard lengthened, Hero found herself wondering, if Marie asked for her forgiveness, would she have the magnanimity to give it?

But the abigail never did.

They killed Marie just as dusk was beginning to send long shadows across the yard.

Nothing Hero could do would silence the woman’s incessant weeping. In the end, Sullivan simply drew an ugly, curved blade from his boot and walked over to grasp Marie by the hair. Hero saw him yank the woman’s head back and she looked quickly away. But she heard the maid’s rasping gurgle and the soft thump of her body sinking lifeless to the flagstones.

“I take it you don’t feel the need for insurance anymore?” said Hero, forcing herself to meet the tall man’s gaze.

Sullivan wiped his blade on the dead maid’s dress and slid the knife back into its sheath.

S ebastian was in no mood for subtleties.

The muzzle of his pistol pressed to the temple of one of Todd Sullivan’s cronies at the Castle Tavern solicited the information that Sullivan frequently made use of a ramshackle cottage on the outskirts of Barham Wood, near Elstree.

In the grip of a cold, driven purposefulness, Sebastian borrowed a bay hack from the nearby livery and entrusted Tom with a message for Bow Street.

“Why can’t I come with you?” asked Tom, his head ducked, his voice strained as he tightened the saddle’s cinch. “It’s because o’ the things I said about Miss Jarvis before, ain’t it? It’s because you don’t trust me no more.”

Painfully conscious of the daylight slipping from the sky, Sebastian paused to rest a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I trust you with my life, and you know it.” He swung into the saddle. “But I could be riding into a trap. I need someone I trust to deliver this message. Now go ,” he said, and spurred the bay out the livery door.

For Hero, the darkness came all too quickly.

Only a single tallow candle set at one end of the table’s rough boards lit the inside of the cottage. That, and the soft glow from the fire kindled on the hearth by the coachman.

The coachman had long since subsided into a drunken stupor in the fireplace’s inglenook. But the other two men continued to drink steadily. They sprawled now beside the crude table, the remnants of their dinner—more bread and sausage—scattered across the scarred surface. They talked in desultory tones about horses and cockfights and some colleague named Jed who had recently “made a good end” on the hangman’s noose. But all the while, Hero was aware of Sullivan’s dark gaze following her in a way she did not like as she restlessly paced the confines of the cottage.

At one point she heard the buff-coated man lean in close to his friend to whisper, “Need to keep yer breeches’ flap buttoned fer a while yet, lad. Least till we hear they won’t be needin’ her fer some reason.” Both men laughed, and Hero felt a new rush of cold fear wash over her, followed by a hot fury that left a steady resolve in its wake.

“Hey,” Sullivan called to her, raising his voice. “How about ye quit wearin’ out the floor and make yerself useful by fixin’ some more tea?”

Wordlessly, she prepared the cracked, brown earthenware teapot and set in on the boards between the two men. The butcher knife they’d used to slice their bread and salami still lay nearby; she’d noticed the handle of Sullivan’s pistol peeking from the pocket of the coat he’d hung on a peg near the door. She was careful not to glance toward it when she went to tend the water she’d set to heat in a blackened saucepan over the fire.

She was aware of the old coachman snoring softly beside her as she waited for the water to come to a good roiling boil. Then, grasping the handle of the pot with a rag, she carried the heavy pan to the table.

“Who’d have thought,” said Sullivan, smiling up at her, “that a fine lord’s daughter like ye would even know how to boil water?”

“Who’d have thought?” agreed Hero, and dumped the scalding water into his lap.

She was only dimly aware of the hot water splashing up to burn her own flesh through the cloth of her walking dress. Sullivan came roaring up off his chair, both hands clasped to his wet, burning crotch, his face snarled with pain and fury. She could hear the buff-coated man stumbling to his feet behind her. But she was already spinning toward him, the saucepan still gripped in a tight hold. Throwing all her weight behind it, she slammed the hot base of the pot into the side of the second man’s head with a sickening, searing thud. He went down.