Anabelle Bryant: The Last Gamble

She smiled against Biscuit’s warmth and dropped a distracted kiss to his fur. She was four and twenty, old enough to understand life didn’t always proceed as planned. Her mother and father meant well but remained locked in tradition, and while leaving behind her younger sister caused her heart to ache, it would all be for the best in the end. At least that was the lie she sustained each day with strength and determination.

She needn’t have worried over money. With the full purse she’d brought with her and immediate employment as a governess, she wanted for little, at least for the time being. Life in London was vastly different, her family active in a high-standing social sphere, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find peace here. Hope stayed with her. She wasn’t one to bemoan her situation overlong.

No, things weren’t as dreary as she’d feared, and at least she’d escaped London undetected. London. Just thinking the word made her shudder. London was the very last place on earth she wanted to be.

Luke startled awake. He lifted his head from the desk where he’d fallen asleep after accomplishing the most important theft of his life. As promised, the journal held a bounty of information, most interesting, some amusing, one page vital. He’d come to The Underworld, the gaming hell which was more a home than his bachelor apartments at The Albany, and rifled through the pages with desperate acclivity. His half-brother’s handwriting left much to be desired, a scrawled mess similar to the manner in which the viscount led his life, but with perspicacious acuity, Luke deciphered a notation seemingly connected to where Nathaniel was possibly held. After collecting his thoughts and formulating a plan, he’d downed a brandy and slept through the earliest hours of morning.

Now he glanced at the wall clock and huffed a breath. Clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts. The hell would be vacant aside from the working girls who let apartments on the upper floor. He’d need to discuss his proposed trip with Max and Cole, but that conversation would keep, his friends aware he would travel at a moment’s notice if information surfaced concerning Nathaniel’s whereabouts.

Smoothing a palm down his face to rid the last vestiges of slumber, he shoved his chair backwards and unlocked the desk drawer spanned against his waist. He’d taken no chances with the journal’s safety, however paranoid that might have seemed, and secured it away before he slumped over the desk in protection. Now he flipped the book open to the desired page he’d marked with a worn playing card, the five of hearts, and examined the notes left by his half-brother.

Georgina Smith, governess.

Smith. It was likely a false name, the most popular in all London, and he knew that from a life spent on the streets. Every gel and bloke became a Smith when they wished to remain anonymous, lost, unfound or otherwise undetected. If it wasn’t for the address printed below the name, he’d have wasted his time sneaking into Dursley’s bedchamber, impossible to locate one chit named Smith in an infinite population.

Instead, and foolishly, his half-brother believed his methods infallible, and with ill-conceived confidence upheld that his title would protect him, never to be questioned, in turn committing to the journal all the information Reese needed.

Things were about to change.

He passed a fingertip over the looping script.

17 Hill Street, Coventry

It had to be true, this single piece of damning evidence he’d searched for for months, because he refused to believe any harm had come to Nate, effectively ignoring any unspeakable paths that suggested the child had come to danger or worse.

Coventry was less than two days’ travel if he rode alone on horseback in good weather. It proved no challenge. His Arabian, Snake Eyes, was the finest breed of expensive horseflesh, fourteen hands high and built for speed and endurance. Once Luke had seen the animal’s white coat mottled with a streak of black down his back, he knew the stallion was meant to be his, the name conjured by the dark markings which portrayed a snake slithering atop the horse’s spine.

As soon as Luke had collected his things, he planned to set out. Resolved in this, he rose from the chair, slid the journal into his pocket, and locked the hell behind him. He would have liked to travel this morning at first light, but despite his desperate yearning to reunite with his son, a few matters needed to be attended first. He wouldn’t jeopardize his son’s safety. Nathaniel remained the only thing left in his life of any worth.

Chapter Two

The first thing Luke noticed upon entering Coventry and locating a stable for his horse was the diminutive size of the main thoroughfare and adjoining roadways. He’d spent sufficient years in London that the city’s energy lived in his blood. One reason he preferred time whiled at The Underworld was the frenetic pace, the pulse of action and risk through the night hours while most of London slept, rather than the staid predictability of The Albany where he kept bachelor rooms.

Upon securing Snake Eyes in a stall, he spent no time on a brush-down and instead paid the stable hands generously to perform the task. He took a room at the only inn available and noted the second obtrusive difference in the modest town centre. Pedestrians were friendly. Strangers passed with a smile and the population appeared cheerful despite, as far as Luke could see, the town offered sparse entertainment or amusement. A different world, as it were, only two days’ travel away.

He crossed through the main square on foot, past a tall cathedral and closed mercantile, and followed the directions supplied by the vociferous innkeeper to arrive at the corner of Hill Street only twenty minutes later. Two jackdaws startled from the walkway as he approached, cawing in objection like lackadaisical guardsmen who’d drunk too much ale.

On his two days’ journey, he’d contemplated a variety of ways to approach Miss Smith in an attempt to locate Nathaniel and at the same time not alarm the woman. Any governess worth her salt wouldn’t allow a strange man to approach their charge, nor would a genteel woman speak to a man of his ilk. He’d changed his clothes at the inn and washed the dust from his face and hands, but even now he wavered in his tactic. He couldn’t mount the steps to house number seventeen and simply knock on the door. A governess wouldn’t have her charge with her. At least, that’s not how such arrangements worked in London. Who knew what his half-brother contrived here in this remote country town?

Still, alienating Miss Smith was out of the question. If the woman perceived him as a threat or danger to her person, she’d dismiss him without question, or worse, summon reinforcement to have him removed from her property. Unlocking the most beneficial approach to Miss Smith would take shrewdness and intelligence. Lucky for Reese, he could manage both.

He positioned himself in the shadowy copse of a few alder trees fifty paces from the location to watch and wait. Miss Smith’s address led to a charming cottage, almost storybook-drawn, with smoke coming from the chimney and a whitewashed picket fence that encircled the property. If only he knew Nate played within those walls or ran in the yard fancied with wildflowers and a small vegetable garden, he would storm the door and demand his son’s return, but the matter proved far more complicated. He had no desire to be carted away as a madman, or worse, shot by a pistol-wielding governess. One never knew. He’d risk his own safety in a heartbeat, but his son’s better welfare, absolutely not. Nate had experienced far too much danger in his short childhood already.

After forty-five minutes, he closed his eyes and envisioned Nathaniel as he’d last seen the lad, a chubby four-year-old with more energy than Luke had possessed in what seemed like forever. Alerted by a sound, he was pulled from his fond reverie. He opened his eyes to notice the cottage door ajar. He stepped closer and angled to remain hidden with his line of sight unobstructed.