The Bad Baron's Daughter (4 page)

Katie nodded dumbly.

“Let’s start walkin’,” said Winnie. They stepped together into the street. Katie threw a nervous glance over her shoulder, and saw Ned and company leave their place of rest and come after them at a fast walk.

“We better cut ‘n run,” said Winnie. “Follow me. It’s right around th’ corner.”

Directly in front of them a large crowd was surrounding swinging double doors, their faces illuminated from a subdued light inside the building. Clouds of clay pipe smoke were billowing out of the doors, which were in constant swinging motion as patrons made frequent entries and exits. Loud hurrahs and contentious arguments came floating into the night air. This was the cock pit. Katie had been in one as a child. Her father, experiencing a rare spasm of paternal attention, took her to one of these brutal places where she had sat rigidly, eyes averted while beautiful fighting cocks sliced each other to ribbons for the entertainment of sweating, smoking, profane onlookers.

Katie and Winnie were jostled by the crowd, then suddenly they were separated. Katie looked frantically for her companion. She could hear Winnie calling her name, but it was impossible for her to make a reconnoiter in the crush. She could see that she was near the swinging doors and ducked into them.

Katie found herself in a large pavilion. Gray smoke swirled and eddied near the low ceiling, which was held up by rough wooden pillars. The place was packed with spectators, their cheers sending a hollow roar reverberating against the dirty wooden walls. The floor was scattered with grimy sawdust. She elbowed her way toward an area which seemed not quite so congested, past young apprentices, butchers, tradesmen, sporting young bloods, pimps, and a prostitute or two. She turned and craned her neck in time to see Ned and his group breaking through the crowd, Ned’s red face scanning it—for her.

There was a door behind her. She wrenched it open and slid through it in the frantic hope that it would lead to the alley. Instead, Katie found herself in a stuffy room, its corners mysteriously veiled in regular lumpy shadows. The only available light was a subdued streak from a shuttered lamp beside the door. Katie stood still, trapped. Outside, the crowd was shouting excitedly, but much more real was the sound of her own ragged breathing. She became aware of muffled murmurs and rufflings coming from one side of the room.

“Who’s there?” whispered Katie. “Please say.” No response.

Trembling, Katie bent down to lift the shutter from the lamp. Suddenly the room’s cramped contours were rent with a shrill, earpiercing clamor that sounded as though Katie had loosed fifty screaming devils. This was the resting area for the fighting roosters of the cock pit. Along the walls were lined a score or more wooden cages, housing game cocks from every corner of the British Isles. Pirchin Ducks, Dark Grays, Spangles, Shropshire Reds, and Red Duns, indignant at this invasion of their private domain, gave shrill vent to their wrath in a manner that poor Katie was convinced could be heard as far away as Holland. And certainly as far away as the cock pit in the next room.

“Oh, don’t, don’t squawk so,” cried Katie, lifting one shaking finger to her lips. “You stupid creatures, you’re giving me away…” Katie’s voice died into the gaunt melody of angry cackles. Given away. For there, stepping into the fetid little room, were Nasty Ned and his entourage. Katie’s heart plummeted to her feet.

“Well, well. Fancy meetin’ you ‘ere wi’ all th’ other scrawny chickens,” said Ned, a menacing grin on the thick rufous face. “You ‘n me’s got ta talk, maggot. Me blackjack ‘ere’s got somethin’ real private ta say ta th’ side o’ yer ‘ead.”

Katie fearfully backed several steps and stopped. It was no good. Ned’s friends were blocking the only escape. In a pitiful little gesture, Katie dropped her hands to her sides and closed her eyes to await the blow that would bring darkness. But the blow never came. Instead, incredibly, Katie heard the casual, accented drawl of Lesley Byrne, Lord Linden.

“Turn around, toadface. I want to see if I made any improvement in your appearance two nights ago.” Nasty Ned wheeled and Katie opened her disbelieving eyes to look toward the voice.

Lord Linden was lounging by the door, negligently tossing a small box-lock pistol up and down in the palm of his hand. His head was tilted slightly to one side, his dark hair painted with the flickering lamplight. Ned looked warily at the bright steel of the gun and spoke, his voice cracking nervously.

“Now look ‘ere, guv, this ain’t yer fight. Oi was drunk ‘at night or oi wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad ‘at set-to wi’ ya ‘n ‘at’s a fact. Oi don’t want no trouble wi’ th’ likes of you. Your Lordship could go on now ‘n leave this ‘ere maggot ta me.”

Linden’s pure teak eyes were unreadable as he shifted his gaze to Katie’s disheveled form. He studied her lovely blue eyes, filled with fatigue and fear, the sculptured lips pale in contrast to her flushed cheeks. Then he looked back at Ned.

“To be honest,
mon ami
,” said Linden calmly. “I’m thinking of killing you.” Ned’s mouth opened perceptibly and he swallowed.

Linden sneered. “Yes, I can see I am gaining a reputation with you,
n’est-ce pas
? Good.” He caught up the gun and pointed it at Ned’s chest. “Listen to me, my hideous friend. I don’t care for the style of your attentions to this young person. It’s bad form, you understand? If you continue them,” he said, without emotion, “I will kill you.”

Ned nodded, a hunted look on his face. “As ya say, guv. Never meant anyone no ‘arm, oi didn’t. Jest a bit o’ fun, ya might say.”

“
Bien
. So get out, baboon, and take your
canaille
with you,” Linden stated flatly. Ned availed himself of this invitation with a coward’s haste. The door swung shut behind the last of the thugs and Katie found herself alone with Lord Linden and the twenty-odd fighting cocks.

Lord Linden redeposited the pistol into a small pocket in the lining of his jacket and smiled at Katie.

“So. Now what, child?” he asked.

Katie returned the smile shyly. “Now I make another inadequate thank you.” She lifted her palms, spreading her hands expressively. “You are goodness itself, my lord.”

“What a trusting little creature you are. And a very bad judge of character,” said Linden, amused. A high wooden platform ran across one wall, and Linden leaned back with his elbows resting on its ledge, his eyes glittering strangely in the lamplight. “You travel in dangerous company,
petite
.”

Katie sank down on the edge of an empty cage. The cocks were quiet now, peacefully pawing, stretching and rustling their feathers. “Not always, my lord. I grew up in the country, in Essex mostly, and there aren’t any dangerous people there. Except when there’s a fair in Colchester and some of the farmers have too much ale and get into fights.” Katie passed a hand abstractedly over her eyes. “London, I think, is a whole different pot of potatoes. Do you think that Nasty Ned will be frightened and decide to leave me alone?”

“No,” said Linden, who was not a man given to pretty untruths. “I think that he’s probably waiting around the next dark corner for you.”

Katie sighed, unsurprised. “That’s what I was afraid of. ‘Twould be quite in keeping with my luck lately, what with the man with the gold tooth and the butcher’s bill. But how did you know I was in here?”

“I saw you run into this room from where I sat by the pit, and I saw that you were followed. Did you drop another slop bucket over his head?”

“No,” said Katie despondently. “I suppose he is still angry about the last one. He seems to be more of a subscriber to ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ than to ‘turning the other cheek.’ I daresay you will think me sadly lacking in spirit, but I very much wish that it might be otherwise. I’m not much of a fighter,” Katie pondered this statement and then added, “at least not in the physical sense.”

The orange lamplight had spun a soft halo around Linden’s hair and etched clear shadows about his smiling lips. “No,” he said, “but then, that would be too much to expect, don’t you think?”

“Oh,” said Katie, wrinkling her nose slightly in perplexity. “I think that means… well, that you may have guessed that I am not a boy? Was it because when you asked me my name at
The Merry Maidenhead
, I said Kat and it sounded like Kate?”

“That,” he said, “and your long eyelashes. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”

“Would you really?” said Katie gratefully. “I-it would be a great relief to me if you would, though I hate to have you thinking I am a barnacle.”

“My dear child, don’t waste your energy worrying about what I think of you. I don’t think anything about you, except perhaps that you’re too damned beautiful for your own good.” He dropped his hand to Katie’s cheek, feeling the heat from her blush warm against his fingers. “Cheer up, little flower, life will get easier for you once you learn the right way to use those… long eyelashes of yours. And you will learn.”

Far from cheering Katie up, Linden’s calm statement made her feel more depressed, as it came chillingly close to Zack’s uncomfortable remarks on her first night at
The Merry Maidenhead
. Katie swallowed and put her palms on her knees, rising numbly to her feet.

“Come then, child,” said Linden, removing his fingers from her cheek. “I think our feathery friends would like to be left to their rest.” He opened the door into the cock pit and Katie bent conscientiously to reshutter the lantern.

As they made their way through the crowded room, Katie trotted at Linden’s heels in a manner that reminded him of the way his springer spaniels had followed him through the lush woods and fragrant meadows on his estate when he was a child. The thought made him feel vaguely uncomfortable and he put it firmly from his mind as he elbowed his way through the crowd.

When they stepped outside, the air had cooled with night. Linden summoned a hack with an imperious movement of his hand and assisted Katie in, asking her where she lived. He followed her, directed the jarvey, pulled the carriage door shut after him, and then leaned back at his ease, his arm resting on the carriage seat.

“Why
The Merry Maidenhead
?” he asked.

“Do you mean why do I want to go there now or why did I ever go there in the first place?” inquired Katie.

“Both.”

“Well, I live there in a bedroom upstairs, or I have since I came to London. You see, Zack is the owner—oh, and he lives upstairs too—and he is my good friend,” said Katie. “Though he has some odd ways of showing it sometimes.”

“I believe it,” said Linden, without expression. “And your wearing boys clothes… ?”

“Because Zack doesn’t hire women.”

Linden tilted his bicorne to the back of his head. “I see. You put on boy’s clothes and instantly become a boy. Hocus pocus. What fun it must be to be seventeen.” There was mockery in his voice, but a trace of seductively sympathetic amusement, as well. Katie felt as though she had been stroked. She leaned her bent elbow on the smooth cool edge of the hack window and rested her head wearily on her arm.

The carriage moved forward at a slow trot through twisting streets thronged with pedestrians, carts, and carriages. The air reeked with a thousand urgencies of sight and sound. Rows of colorless tenements marched shoulder to shoulder like platoons of an ill-fed army. Once they passed a ragged group of men lounging idly beneath the marbling glow of a streetlamp, and Katie imagined for one frightened moment that she could see Nasty Ned’s lumbering form among them. It was not he, though, and Katie blinked, shuddered, and shifted her head slightly, glad for Lord Linden’s presence beside her as the horses’ hooves clicked on the brick street. She felt the light touch of a finger on her cheek and then, briefly, on her lips.

“Tired, child?” Lord Linden asked.

“I think perhaps I am. I was thinking how glad I am to be here with you,” Katie answered naively.

“Dear me,” said Linden drily. “I feel compelled, in all honesty, to point out that I am not ‘goodness itself,’ that I rarely, if ever, do anything without the strongest possible motives of self-interest, and that I am no more a fit companion for someone your age than that baboon who seems intent on delivering the
coup de grâce
to your svelte little body.”

“What motives of self-interest prompted you to save me from Nasty Ned at
The Merry Maidenhead
?” asked Katie curiously.

“You were clamped on my dicing arm. And I don’t think you could have been disengaged without some damage to my jacket. Don’t romanticize my actions, chit, I didn’t care what was going to happen to you, I just didn’t want it to happen in front of me.”

“It may not have meant much to you,” said Katie in a small voice, “but it was awfully important to me.”

“Without doubt,
chérie
, but don’t, for God’s sake, thank me again. You sound as though you might be building up to it.”

The hack took a last lurching turn and came to a jiggling halt at the stucco front of
The Merry Maidenhead
. Linden handed Katie down, and tossed a coin to the jarvey as Zack came through the door, pulling on a light jacket, followed by an agitated Winnie.

“Mousemeat! Oh, Jesus!” cried Zack. “I was coming to look for you. Winnie got here a minute ago and…” Zack stopped and looked at Linden. “What happened?”

“Nothing!” said Katie. “At least, I was almost killed, but Lord Linden saved me. I ran into the cock pit, you see, and they made the greatest roar, like lions, except that they were chickens. And Nasty Ned came in behind me and was going to hit me but Lord Linden came and…”

“I can figure it out from there, puss,” said Zack, putting a proprietary arm on Katie’s shoulder and hustling her inside. “And if you’re going to stand outside here like a target, then you might as well let me paint a bull’s eye on your chest. Winnie, take her upstairs.”

“Yes, but Zack, I’d like to tell you about…”

“You shall, pet, but later. Upstairs! And no more buts.”

Katie managed a last wistful look at Linden as Winnie dutifully shepherded her toward the stairs and out of sight. Zack turned back toward Linden and motioned to an adjacent table.