Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Having said their farewells, and having made a point of not taking up the matter in front of their hosts, Emily turned on Jo once they were safely ensconced in the carriage.

‘I tried to insist we rejoin the rest of you in the drawing room,’ Jo said, almost in tears, ‘but she wouldn’t have it. And Felix was so happy playing with all of the toys…’

‘Didn’t you suppose I’d be worried?’ Emily said, shaking her head. ‘After all, you were gone for almost an hour.’

Reddening, Jo stared down at her shoes and mumbled another apology.

‘And that’s another thing,’ Emily snapped. ‘Why does she have all these children’s toys and what are they doing in the attic?’

Felix was sitting on Pyke’s lap and had started to doze off. He was exhausted and Pyke kissed him on the top of his head.

‘I don’t know if you noticed it too,’ Emily said, this time to Pyke, ‘but she kept on staring at you. That is, when she wasn’t fawning over my son.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Well, I did.’ She turned to Jo. ‘Did you get that sense, too?’

‘She seemed very determined to keep us up there in the attic.’

Emily shook her head, as though Jo’s innocuous remark confirmed her suspicion. ‘You had a brief conversation just after we arrived, Pyke. What did she say to you then?’

‘I don’t remember having a conversation.’ He looked at Emily and shrugged. ‘She might have said something about the cold weather and the fact that the nights are drawing in.’

‘Well, I can’t go to her party,’ Emily said, folding her arms, ‘and I hope you don’t go, either.’

‘I hadn’t given the matter any thought.’

‘Well, I don’t want you to go. I can’t stop you, of course, but there’s something about that woman I don’t trust…’

‘You don’t trust her or you don’t trust me?’

Jo looked away, embarrassed that they were talking this way in front of her, and Emily stared out of the window, making a point of not answering his question.

Pyke woke up while it was still dark outside, the treetops swaying in the wind and rain beating against the windowpanes. His body was lathered with sweat and his heart was pumping. He sat upright and was considering returning to his own bed when Emily asked him what the matter was.

‘What did you make of Abraham Gore?’ Pyke said, still puzzling over something in his mind. When she didn’t answer him straight away, he added, ‘You knew right away he was chairman of the Birmingham railway, didn’t you?’

Emily pulled the blanket over her shoulders. ‘Is that why you’ve been tossing and turning all night?’

‘How did you recognise him so quickly?’

‘He’s a well-known figure. I’ve seen him at charity events.’

‘And it’s got nothing to do with your association with Julian Jackman?’

‘Why bring Julian into this?’ Emily waited for a moment. ‘You didn’t tell me you fought alongside the navvies in Huntingdon.’ She was sitting up and ran her finger across the side of his cheek. ‘Is that how you got this bruise?’

‘The fact you know means Jackman’s returned to London,’ he said, not bothering to temper his indignation.

The silence hung between them like an invisible barrier.

‘It’s obtuse and a little sad,’ Emily said, eventually, ‘that I have to learn about my husband’s exploits from another man.’

‘And that I have to learn about my wife’s fortitude in the face of a crew of strike-breakers from the same source.’

Briefly they lay there in silence, listening to the wind buffeting the windows. ‘So what was Jackman doing in Huntingdon?’ Pyke asked.

‘What were you doing there? You told me you were attending a business meeting in Cambridge.’

‘The disturbances you read about were orchestrated. Until now I suspected a local landowner, Sir Horsley Rockingham. He’s dead set against the railway crossing his land. But it suddenly struck me that Gore has also got a good reason for wanting to damage the prospects of the Grand Northern.’

Emily was quiet for a moment. ‘Because he’s in charge of a rival venture?’

‘If the Grand Northern fails to reach York, or has its terminus at, say, Cambridge, it’ll leave the London and Birmingham Railway with a monopoly on freight and passenger traffic between the capital and all of the Midlands and the North.’

‘That could be worth a lot of money.’

‘I know.’

A while later, just before she drifted back to sleep, Emily whispered, ‘Pyke?’ And when he turned over to face her, she added, ‘Does this mean we’re on the same side?’

Lying on his back, Pyke stared up at the ceiling and listened as the rain continued to beat against the windowpanes, thinking about the question she had just asked and what side, if any, he was on. Soon he could hear her quiet snores, but Pyke knew that sleep was beyond him and after a few minutes he slid out from under the sheets without waking her up and went to retrieve the laudanum that he kept hidden in a cabinet next to his own bed.

At a quarter past seven the following evening, Pyke met Jem Nash in the banking hall. Having apparently put their altercation of the previous afternoon behind them, they had agreed to share a hackney carriage to the Colosseum in Regent’s Park where Morris was hosting his charity ball.

While Pyke hadn’t bothered to change his frock-coat and trousers — he had always disliked evening wear and a shirt with a frilly front was the only concession he’d made — Nash’s outfit was typically extravagant: a knee-length grey woollen coat with shiny brass buttons over an embroidered waistcoat made of white cotton and a matching white linen neckcloth wrapped several times around his throat and tied in a loose knot.

‘Tell me. How’s William seemed these last few days?’ Pyke asked as they left the building.

‘He sulked a bit after the last meeting but he seemed all right when I talked to him this morning. I think he’s still worried about the scale of our debt, though.’ He waited for a moment. ‘You don’t think we’re in trouble, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

They’d walked through Sweeting’s Alley to Cornhill, the Royal Exchange directly in front of them. Pyke was looking for a cab to hail and didn’t see the elderly woman until the last moment, by which time she’d taken his hand and stripped off his glove. He tried to shoo her away but her grasp was surprisingly strong and she seemed intrigued by what she’d seen in his palm. Under the hissing gas lamp, he could only see her beak and jaw, since the rest of her face and head was covered with a black lace bonnet, but her features looked foreign. Perhaps she was some kind of gypsy. While Pyke wanted to push her away and find a cab, when she finally looked up at him there was something in her eyes which unsettled him.

‘I can see you’re a powerful fellow, sir, and you’ve achieved great things but the signs…’

Pyke tugged his hand away and went to put on his glove. ‘Move out of the way, you dishclout.’

‘I fear a terrible tragedy lies ahead.’

That stopped him dead. She’d hooked him and she knew it. ‘What do you mean, a tragedy?’

‘If you’ll cross my palm with silver…’

Pyke felt himself relax. She was just a con artist, someone trying to trick him out of a few coins.

‘I can see you’ve a beautiful wife and a young son, five years old.’ Her accent was indistinct but it had a lilting, almost hypnotic quality.

‘How did you know that?’ Pyke stared down into her wizened face.

Next to him, Nash tried to shove her to one side, but Pyke held out his arm. ‘What about my wife and child?’

‘Come on, Pyke. She made a lucky guess. That’s how these harridans make their money.’