A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (30 page)

Her
eyelashes fluttered on her cheek, and she pressed a hand to her mouth
delicately. Crediton removed himself and his hovering fork with equal delicacy.
"Well, well. How
remarkably
old-fashioned of you, sir," he
sneered. "D'you think I'm not
upright
enough to take care of your
wife?"

He
leaned back in his chair, thighs lolling suggestively apart just in case no one
had got the joke, and one of his cronies snickered at his elbow.

"On
the contrary, sir," Thomazine murmured. "My understanding is that you
are not given to
remaining
so."

Not
for the first time, Thankful Russell was grateful for a certain impassivity of
expression. It meant that he did not snort into his wife's carefully-coiffed
hair, and that his free hand, which had been feeling towards the hilt of his
sword, curled instead around her stiffly boned little waist. "Please,
dear," she said against his chest, "I find the heat oppressive, and
my stomach is queasy -"

Which
shifted Crediton, in his expensive embroidered silk, quicker than the rumours
of plague. Poor little Thomazine lolled against Russell so piteously that he
was forced to pick her up, tall as she was, and she nestled against him to
murmurs of shock and disapproval at their unconventional departure from the
party, and for once, he did not care, because she was ill and she was his dear
love and he had promised to protect her and cherish her all the days of his
life.

This
wasn't his life, not any more, even if it ever had been. If Rupert planned to
attend - if he had
ever
planned to attend - there would be other times,
because as he ordered their carriage to be brought round, he made a decision.
They would go home. He did not care what had happened to Fly. He never
had
cared
what happened to Fly. If the whole of Buckinghamshire thought he'd murdered the
godly bitch, it did not matter. What mattered was Thomazine, and home, and -

"You
can put me down now," she said, in a perfectly cheerful, happy, healthy
voice, and he didn't so much as put her down in the grand marble foyer as drop
her onto her feet.

"A
remarkable recovery, madam," he said dryly, and she put her hand on his
waist and grinned up at him.

"I
was very much afraid that our host might do himself an irreparable mischief, if
he persisted in trying to fondle my thigh under the table. Of a sort of
fork-groin nature. I did not think that would bode well for your future
prospects, Russell - your wife having emasculated one of Prince Rupert's
drinking companions. And I believe the prince is presently abed with a
recurrence of his old fever, and is not likely to put in an appearance this
night - or, indeed, for some days hence."

He
stared at her.

"If
Rupert's not coming," she said gently, "I have no intention of
spending more time with that appalling pack of loiter-sacks than I have to,
dear. I should rather be at home. With you. I believe we were discussing the
matter of vineyards and little foxes, yester'e'en."

"Oh,
you
clever
wench," he said, and he meant it. "But Zee. My
employment prospects are husband and, God willing, father. And
no more
.
Those days are done. I am no intriguer, remember? I am dismissed. What
ambitions you may be cherishing in that deceptively tricksy head of yours,
madam, forget it. I have no intention of taking up a post.
Any
post. On
His Majesty's staff again."

“Of
course not, darling.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, and he was not
so daft that he was fooled, though he enjoyed the being kissed. “Crediton is a
disgusting creature. I do hate a man in one of those absurd wigs. I should much
rather have a good, plain, honest gentleman who wears his own hair –“ she
tucked a loose wisp behind his ear, allowing her fingers to drift over his scarred
cheek with a tenderness that still undid him. “Horrid man. He was trying to
frighten me. Plague, indeed.”

“M’lord,
the carriage.”

It
was still cold, and he was glad of the stout wool of Thomazine’s plain,
countrified cloak, as he settled it about her shoulders. She settled his hat
more firmly over his eyes. A fine pair they must have made, each dressing the
other, like a pair of children. “Not a night to be keeping men or horses
standing,” he observed to the driver, who looked at him in some surprise.

“Sir?”

“Nothing.
Aldgate, sir, if you please. Fenchurch Street, near to the church of St
Gabriel.”

He
thought he might grow to like carriage travel, with his girl sitting opposite
him with her feet in his lap and her slippers off, while he rubbed some warmth
and some blood back into her poor pinched little toes. He did not look at her,
nor she at him, for the last time he had warmed her feet between his hands in a
carriage he had ended up losing a hair ribbon, and a certain degree of his
naiveté. They both concluded they did not take to fashionable life. Russell
would not, in this lifetime or any other, wear high-heeled shoes, no matter
what the reigning fashion dictated. It seemed that my lord Crediton was a
victim to that particular vanity. “Which must mean he barely comes to your
shoulder, husband, in his stockinged feet,” she mused.

“Indeed?”
And should he, or should he not, take her stockings off? He could then tuck her
poor little feet inside his coat, in the warm –

“Thankful,
you are looking very pensive. Perhaps I should re-christen you Thoughtful.”

“Hm?”
He kept hold of her foot, but looked up, and she wriggled her toes obligingly.
The carriage swayed, the horses’ hooves skittering and slipping on the wet
cobbles, and then started to pick up speed.

“You
are looking thoughtful. Are you planning some kind of vengeance on my lord
Crediton, in which case I –“

He
set her feet back down, and leaned forwards. “I am thinking, my tibber, that we
could have
walked
from that house to Fenchurch Street by now. And I am
thinking that perhaps I did not put up with your uncle’s poeting all the way
through the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, to be murdered by some ungodly
ne’er-do-well in a London slum.”

He
leaned forward and rapped on the roof of the carriage in an instruction to
stop.

It
did not stop. Instead, he heard the crack of a whip, and suddenly the carriage
lurched as the horses startled into a gallop. Rocking and pitching from side to
side at a speed that was almost unthought-of in these city streets, creaking
like a ship in a gale. "He does not mean to stop," Thomazine said,
and she looked up at him as if he would know how to make it go away.
"Thankful - what does he intend should happen to us?"

"I
suspect we are being carried off," he said, and smiled at her
reassuringly. "Ah well. Over my dead body, tibber." She stared at
him, for a second. And then she shook herself, quite briskly, because she was
the daughter of a fierce and inventive soldier and she was, he thanked God, the
wife of another. Unhooked her skirt, and kilted up her petticoats between her
legs, which gave her the faintly comical appearance of a baby in clouts, but
which freed her from six yards of clinging heavy silk. Her face was dead white,
her eyes enormous.

He
lifted the leather screen of the window, and looked out at the rushing night.
“I’ve not a clue where we are, tibber. Which means we’re out of the City.
Choose your weapons.”

She
looked down. Swallowed. Looked up. “Pistols. Russell. Must – “

“You
can load and fire?”

“Whose
daughter am I?” she said scornfully, and put out her hand for his pistol. His
own hand was shaking.

“Tibber.
This – “ Her eyes met his. “I love you. Give me your hand. We do this
together.”

“As
ever,” she said. And smiled, shakily. And put her hand into his, as the door
cracked open, swinging wildly on its stiff leather hinges.

54

She
thought that he meant that she should hit the cobbles on top of him, and she
hadn't, she had twisted like a cat by reflex and they had gone down in a
sprawling tangle and for a minute when she heard something crack she thought
she was dead, everything gone white in a blinding flash of pain.

And
then she could breathe again, and she realised it was a snapped bone in her
stays, and it was jabbing into her flank like a dagger, and she was not dead
after all, though she feared from Russell's stillness that he might be. And
dared not panic, but had started to rifle his clothes, trying to find a
heartbeat, blood, a bruise -

"Jesus
bloody
Christ
!" he gasped, sounding so utterly unlike his decent
upright self and so much like her father in one of his more temperamental
moods, that she giggled, and he rolled over onto his front and tried to get up.
"Thomazine, lass, I reckon I've broke my ankle," he added, quite
conversationally, and then she thought he might have fainted, because he
dropped flat to the wet cobbles with a weird whooping yowl and did not move
again.

She
knew how he felt, and yet she thought they must, because she could hear the
clattering of hooves crashing on into the night, with a slapping that sounded
horribly like flesh on flesh as the door swung to and fro on its hinges, fading
into the dark. And then hooves on the cobbles again, echoing between the
houses, and between her white underlinen and Russell's pale hair they were
sticking out like a pair of sore thumbs, and all she could do as she heard the
sound of hooves joined by the rumble of wheels was to drag herself and her limp
husband into the shadows between the looming houses, and crouch down, and throw
her cloak over the both of them. Disguised as a midden, she thought wildly, and
pressed her face into his shoulder, with the broken bone of her stays tearing
at her belly and a warm stickiness running down her flank, feeling as if all
her bones had been smashed like eggshells.

"Major
Russell - ah, Mistress Russell - I
do
apologise. Most profusely. All a
terrible misunderstanding."

Indeed,
Thomazine thought, and felt her husband stir underneath her, and clamped her
hand over his mouth before he was moved to pass comment. At least he was still
breathing. Very fast, and very shallow, and his breath was hot and wet against
her hand, but it was constant. "Be
still
, Thankful," she
hissed, and he went limp again. But kissed her palm, in token of his continued
awareness.

She
could hear a stick tapping on the cobbles. A stick, or the click of high heels.
One of them was shivering, and she wasn't sure which of them - she, with her
legs and her feet indecently bare and her shift tucked up between her thighs
like the worst slut in London, and her bare skin pressed unpleasantly against
the rough, gritty, slimy stones of the alley, or Russell, in pain. "I
really ought to have made the effort to attend that soiree this evening,"
that cool voice went on. "I had not realised you wished to discuss a
matter with me of such urgency. Mistress Russell, I may offer you a token of my
good faith, though I would beg of you, consider an ageing man's infirmity. I
knew your father, madam. Knew him and respected him greatly, though I suspect
he might not acknowledge the recognition."

The
speaker coughed, and spat with an audible splat. "God
damn
, I hate
these wet nights. The damp gets to my chest. I met your father at Bristol,
Mistress Russell. He asked me if I thought it was worth it. I said no. Does
that satisfy you as to my good intentions?" Prince Rupert of the Rhine
blew his nose noisily. "And may we now repair to my carriage, as my head
is giving me hell?"

55

The
rain had stopped, and the moon was riding high above scudding silver clouds,
and Thomazine was long abed.

It
had been an accident, Rupert said, and he had been so distressed about it that
Russell had had to accede. He had not meant to attend Crediton's supper, with
the pain in his head from the old wound that always flared up in the damp and
gave him grief, and a wretched cold in the head that hurt him like the very
devil when the wind was in the east quarter.

-
To which Russell, who had taken a pike in the cheek at Edgehill in a battle
against this man, twenty-five years ago, and who likewise found that all the
bones in his head throbbed when the wind backed, could only agree, with
heartfelt sympathy.

And
then, late, Rupert had thought that actually, as the man was a friend, and
might have gone to some trouble for this, he would endeavour in courtesy to at
least attend briefly, even walking with a stick and in considerable pain. It
was a matter of streets away. He could be home before midnight to seek his own
bed, and the comforts of it. Had called for his own carriage, and as he was
drawing up to the house, had seen the Russells getting into a carriage of their
own.

"I
knew your wife, you see," he said simply. "By the hair. There are so
few ladies at court with such bright hair."

-
except, of course, that it was not a carriage of their own, but a hired
vehicle. The driver of the hired carriage must have panicked, at seeing
Rupert's own vehicle clattering in pursuit. That was all he could think. A
plain man, a common hired carriage, suddenly pursued with intent by a very
official, crested, gilded, expensive-looking vehicle - such a man would not be
unreasonably afraid.