Tarnished Amongst the Ton Part 18

Then he recalled Phyllida asking about his name and whether Ashe was the same as Ashok. She knew an Indian trader in the docks by that name and he, she'd said, was a rogue, but a good-hearted one.

'I'll find her, Anna,' he promised. 'You stay here in case she makes it back without me.' Then he ran.

There was no-one at the Town house as he pushed through the front door, up the stairs to find his pistols and his knives. He went down again three at a time and out into the square to find a cab. 'The docks,' he snapped at the toughest, biggest driver he could see. 'Double your fare if you get me there fast.' He wedged himself in a corner and began to load the firearms. If Phyllida was harmed, someone was going to suffer.

She knew roughly where to go, somewhere in the maze of alleys and courts wedged between Butchers Row, Pillory Lane and New Street where the noise and smells of Smithfield Market did battle with the stench of human waste, over-stuffed graveyards and tanneries. She had stumbled though this area once before, shaking and sore, horrified at what had happened, her fingers cramped around the coins Harry Buck had given her.

It was only later that Phyllida realised that she had been lucky, that Buck had kept his word and used her for that one occasion only and had not simply turned the key in the door and kept her captive to use again and again.

A plump girl with a red shawl, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s uncovered almost to the point of indecency, looked a likely person to ask. 'Can you tell me the way to Harry Buck's house?'

'What, looking for a job, are you?' The girl ran a scornful eye over Phyllida's drab gown and brown cloak. 'Prime bit of crack you are, I don't think.'

'Heard 'e needs a cook.' She flattened her vowels, dropped her aitches. 'I'm a good cook.'

'Yeah? Well, his cunny warren's just up there.' The wh.o.r.e jerked her head in the direction of Smithfield. 'The best house, that is.'

'Thank you.' Phyllida made her reluctant feet move. She had no idea how she was going to get out of this, but she had to do something before Buck told the world that the Earl of Fransham's sister was a common wh.o.r.e.

The nausea came back when she saw the house, three storeys of respectable-looking brick turned black by years of soot and grime. The front door was clean, though. Red, glossy and flanked by torchere holders that would blazon its presence to all those seeking it.

Phyllida climbed the steps and banged on the knocker. A panel slid back, a broken-nosed face scrutinised her. She stared back, recognising one of Buck's regular bodyguards. 'Mr Buck asked me to meet him here,' she said.

''E did, did 'e? You must 'ave some interesting tricks if he wants you.' The panel slammed shut and then, with the sound of bolts being drawn, the door opened. 'Come on in then, the boss is along 'ere.'

He peered at her as he opened a door on the first floor. 'You're that dealing woman, ain't yer?'

'Yes,' she agreed as she hesitated on the threshold, summoning enough courage to step into Harry Buck's lair. 'I'm a dealer.' Not a wh.o.r.e.

'What's that?' Buck demanded sharply as she walked in. 'What you say, Jem?'

'It's that dealer woman from the warehouse, guv'nor. You know, bought the Chinese stuff when that Indian geezer got lippy with you.'

'Nah, this is a bit of laced mutton, this is.'

Phyllida looked up from the swirling patterns of the Turkey carpet and saw Buck lounging in a chair beside a wide desk.

'What you doing all got up like a dowd, darlin'? You wasn't looking quite so drab last night, off to dinner with your smart friends.'

The bruiser closed the door behind her. Phyllida straightened her spine and looked Buck in the eye. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing just how he made her feel. But the memories kept swirling back like thick, putrid fog to cloud her brain.

You're a pretty one. Think I'll break you in meself. Don't see why I can't have a treat now and again. Thick fingers, unwashed body. Pain and shame.

'I am here. What do you want to close your mouth?'

'Money, darlin', like I said.'

'How much?'

'Hundred.'

She could find that easily enough. But it wouldn't end there, she knew. 'And that will be that? You will keep your mouth shut?'

'Don't be a silly girl. I'll want that every month. If you ain't got it, you can come 'ere and work for it on yer back. You pay or you work and I stay quiet.' He leered at her. 'You was a scrawny little thing back then, but I remember those eyes, all big and round, just like when you looked at me in the warehouse. That mark like a heart on your t.i.t. I've a good memory, I 'ave. So I had you followed and thought about it 'til I remembered who you was.'

'Blackmail is a serious crime.' And blackmailers were never satisfied-she knew that. Buck would never go away.

'Send me to the nubbing cleat, it would,' Buck agreed, baring his teeth in a grin. 'But who're you going to tell?'

No one, was the answer to that. She needed time to think now she knew what he was demanding, time to find some kind of lever that would counteract his threats. Could she find out something to threaten him with, blackmail him in return? But Harry Buck had probably committed every crime and sin in the book and he was still out on the streets. No one seemed able to touch him.

'I can't find that kind of money all at once. You'll have to give me time to get it together.'

Buck studied her, her gaze sliding like a greasy finger over her face and down over her body. 'Nah. I know that's a lie. So we'll start tonight, shall we? I'll get me hundred out of your body. There's one of me little parties here this evening. They'll like you, my gentlemen will.'

'Oh, no.' Phyllida reached for the door handle, jerked at it and found herself facing Jem's broad chest.

'Oh, yes,' Buck said. 'The lady's staying, Jem. Put her in one of the rooms upstairs and lock the door-don't want 'er straying and 'aving an accident, do we?'

She tried to push past him, knowing even as she shoved at the sweat-stained frieze coat that it was hopeless. Jem picked her up and slung her over his shoulder as easily as he might a child.

The room he dumped her in was quite obviously one used to entertain clients. She wondered, as she stared around at the tawdry red velvet, the huge bed and the mirrors, if this was the one she had been taken to before. It was all a blur, the only real thing in her memory Buck's face above her, his weight, the pain and the sheer helpless terror.

Well, she was not a helpless girl now and she was desperate enough for just about anything. Phyllida pushed up the window and leaned out, hands braced on the filthy sill. She was three storeys up, overlooking a back alleyway. There were no ledges, no drainpipes within reach. This window and the locked door were the only ways out of the room.

She took off her cloak and one half-boot, held the thick fabric in front of the mirror and hit it hard with the heel. The gla.s.s shattered into a radiating pattern of long, knife-like shards. Phyllida picked one out at the cost of a cut finger, dragged back the cover from the bed and began to cut the sheet into strips.

Chapter Twenty-One.

'You'll do it?' Ashe asked in Hindi.

The tall Indian smiled. 'Of course, my brother. You are the enemy of Buck, he is my enemy. We are allies, are we not? And I do not like that man's dealings with women.' He used a foul word and spat. 'Come, let us hear what my men have discovered.'

Ashe suspected that Ashok-he admitted to no other name-was as much a criminal as Buck. He might not deal in women, but Ashe could smell raw opium, and the heavy locks and the glint of weapons everywhere he looked argued precious contraband hidden in the warehouse that was Ashok's headquarters.

He had been remarkably easy for a man who spoke Hindi to find. The first group of Indian seamen that Ashe saw had been startled to be addressed in their own language by a man dressed in the height of fas.h.i.+on, but Ashe's colloquial speech seemed to win them over and they led the way to Ashok without any further persuasion.

Ashe had explained what he wanted, had swallowed liquid opium from the other man's own cupped palm, exchanged a number of highly coloured items of gossip about Calcutta and was now sitting cross-legged on a heap of silk rugs, drinking sherbet while using all his diplomatic training not to take Ashok by the throat and shake him into urgent action. But this was the Indian's world, his men and, Ashe was acutely aware, his own best and only chance of getting into Buck's headquarters and removing Phyllida.

'Oh yes, my brother, she is still in there. I have the place watched, always, as is prudent with an enemy. Your lady went in-pale, in a dull brown cloak-and has not come out. Now we wait until evening.'

'No. She is in danger. Even as we sit here talking they could be-'

'Wait until evening, then customers come. That's who they want her for. You are just another English gentleman and so the door will be opened to you. My men attack at the back door and others follow you in through the front.' The Indian reached for a sweetmeat. 'When you find Buck, you will have a duel with him?'

'That is for gentlemen.' Ashe slid the knife from his sleeve and delicately trimmed a rough edge on his nail. 'He is not a gentleman.'

'Ah.' Ashok smiled. 'No, he is not. And we do not want the magistrates getting their hands on him, he knows too much about me. Perhaps he will have an accident. While we wait, your lady admired some pearls I have, the last time we did business, but she said they were too expensive for her. Perhaps you would like to look at them?'

My lady. Is she? Ashe pushed aside the thought. The future consisted of whatever time it took to get Phyllida out of there. After that he would try to work out just what she meant to him and discover what he meant to her.

Waiting was the hardest thing, Phyllida thought as she stood behind the door. The window opposite was wide open, curtains flapping. The posts at the corners of the bed were not part of the structure, she had discovered, merely supports for manacles. With a shudder at the thought of how they had been used, she had tugged one free of the brackets that held it, then jammed it across the window opening before tying the long tail of plaited sheets to it.

The makes.h.i.+ft rope would not hold her weight, she knew, but it served its purpose if it drew her captors to the window and gave her the chance to slip out the door.

It seemed hours before the household began to stir. Footsteps outside had her tensing every muscle, but they pa.s.sed by. Women's voices, low male replies, a shriek of laughter, the bang of the knocker.

Then, with shocking suddenness, loud shouting, a crash from far below, screams and the report of a pistol. A raid by the magistrates? She hardly dared hope.

The door opened without her hearing any footsteps. Phyllida braced herself to run. The man strode towards the middle of the room and as he did so a big black bird landed on the sill with a harsh croak.

'Lucifer!'

The man spun on his heel. 'Phyllida!'

'Ashe. Ashe.' She fell into his arms laughing and sobbing.

'Are you all right? Have they-?'

'No. No, just very frightened,' she admitted.

'But not so frightened you could not think,' he said with a glance at the open window, the shattered mirror and stripped bed. 'Clever. That could have worked.'

'You!' Buck burst into the room behind them, blood on his face, a wicked knife in his hands. He waved it at Phyllida. 'You b.i.t.c.h, I'll gut you.'

'You'll go through me to do it.' Ashe drew a long blade from his sleeve. Feet pounded along the corridor, voices shouting in a foreign tongue coming closer.

Buck looked like a cornered rat. He bared yellow teeth at Ashe. 'Some other time. You'll pay.'

He was at the open window in one long stride, threw a leg over the sill and ducked out, his big hands grasping the sheet rope. Lucifer gave a sharp caw and flapped away into the alley.

'No! It won't hold,' Phyllida shouted as Buck vanished from sight.

There was a sharp cry from the bird, a scream of 'Get away from my eyes, you-' from below the open window, then a sickening thud.

The room filled with silent, turbaned men. One man leaned out of the window and spoke to Phyllida in a language she did not understand, then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they melted back, leaving her alone with Ashe.

'Oh, G.o.d. I've killed him?' She had never meant it as a trap, had never meant to do more than create a diversion.

'You are responsible for nothing. He lived the life he chose and he died of its consequences,' Ashe said harshly. 'If anyone killed him, it was Lucifer. Come on.'

'Where are his men?' She followed him into the corridor and down the stairs.

'Engaged in a battle royal with your friend Ashok and his followers in the bas.e.m.e.nt, by the sound of it.'

She saw the way his eyes went to the head of the lower stairs, the tension in his body. 'Go. I will be all right here now.'

'No.' He turned away and led her to the front door. 'That is Ashok's fight now. We agreed he would deal with Buck and his men, and he'll take the spoils of that. My part was to find you.'

'What would you have done if Buck had not fallen?'

Ashe took her arm and strode up the street towards Smithfield. A hackney carriage stopped at the top of the road and he hailed it, then turned to look down at her, but he answered only obliquely. 'He touched you, threatened you, put fear in your eyes. Now we get clear of here before someone calls the law.'

He would have killed Buck, she saw it in the cold, hard glitter of his eyes, the set of his jaw, and offered up a silent prayer of thanks that in the end it had been an accident and there was no blood on Ashe's hands.

'Now what happens?' she asked as they sat back on the battered squabs of the carriage and it rattled into motion.

'I take you home and we say nothing to anyone of this. I will speak to Ashok in the morning, make certain everything is tidied up.'

Make certain Buck is dead, you mean, she thought, but did not say it. 'I had not realised that Ashok was more than a trader,' she ventured. It seemed that Ashe was not yet ready of speak of what now lay between them.

'In his way he is as hard and as ruthless as Buck,' Ashe said. 'You will not go into the East End again, too many people have taken notice of you now.'

Part of her wanted to defy him, simply because he was giving her orders, but she knew he was right and she would have come to the same conclusion herself. 'I was going to get a manager for the shop, once Gregory was settled. I will do that now; there is a man at one of the auction houses who I have in mind.'

'And what will you do to occupy yourself?' Ashe asked.

The tiny flame of hope that had flickered into life when he had taken her in his arms in that sordid room wavered and died. Ashe was not going to say they could put it all behind them, carry on as they were before she had met Buck again. But then, how could he? He had learned that she had sold her body, had been prepared to keep that from him at the risk of a scandal that would tarnish his whole family if it came out. And she had always known, deep in her heart, that a marriage was impossible.

'I will do what I always planned, go and live in the Dower House.' There was silence between them, a heavy stillness that felt physically hard to break. After a minute she said, 'I will tell you what happened, when-'

'No. I do not want to hear. It is not my business.' Ashe was looking out of the window as though Leadenhall Street was of abiding fascination.

'You saved me just now. You know what he was going to do.'

'I would have done the same for any woman I knew to be in that danger,' Ashe said politely, as though she had thanked him for rescuing her parasol from a gust of wind.

I love you.

They sat without speaking until the hackney turned into King Street and pa.s.sed Almack's. They would be in Great Ryder Street at any moment.

'I would not have married you. I never intended to,' Phyllida said hurriedly. 'I knew I could not because of what had happened, how it happened. I was wrong not to have been stronger right from the start, never to have allowed you to kiss me, never to have let this farce of a courts.h.i.+p go on as it has while I let myself dream.

'You will not hear my story and I understand why not. You are very angry and I have put you to a great deal of trouble, let alone embarra.s.sment and danger. But I want you to realise that I would never have compromised your honour by becoming your wife. I could never have married you and kept this a secret from you, even if your honour had not mattered to me.'

Her house key was in her hand now as the carriage drew to a halt. Phyllida pushed the door open and jumped down before Ashe could move. She stood on the pavement and took a last, long look at his face. 'I love you, you see. Goodbye, Ashe.' Then she turned and hurried up the steps, thrust the key in the lock and was inside before she heard his booted feet hit the pavement.

I love you, you see. The door slammed shut. Goodbye. That had been final.

'You getting back in, guv'nor, or is this it?' the cabby demanded.

Ashe gave him the address and climbed inside again. Is this it? the man had asked. Was it? He should be glad. Phyllida was safe, he was saved from a highly unsuitable marriage, the slums were free of Harry Buck, an unsavoury predator upon women who had met his just desserts.