The Highwayman (26 page)

“Of course I did.” Farah laughed. “I was a terrible stowaway. But I told the post carrier who caught me that my name was Farah Mackenzie and my brother and I were orphans and I needed to find him in Glasgow. The man took pity on me, bought me a meal, and let me sit up front for the rest of the way beneath a blanket.”

Blackwell snorted from across the car. “You're lucky that's all he did.”

“I know that now,” Farah conceded. “I was rather na
ï
ve at the time.”

“I can't believe you were foolish enough to strike out on your own,” he continued darkly, flinging a letter to his table. “It's a miracle that—”

“I thought ye were having none of this conversation,” Murdoch quipped, winking at Farah.

“I'm
not.
But the idea of a tiny, sheltered ten-year-old girl on the streets of Glasgow—”

“If ye want to be involved, come over here and involve yerself, otherwise, kindly
shut it
and let the lady finish her story.”

Farah was certain Murdoch had signed his death warrant, but Dorian only muttered a foul blasphemy under his breath, dipped his pen in ink, and resumed his work.

“Ye were saying?” Murdoch prompted.

“Oh, yes, um, where was I?”

“Glasgow.”

“Right. I found the same story at Glasgow that I did at Fort William. The Burgh was only built to house forty people and currently incarcerated over a hundred. So they'd already shipped Dougan off to Newgate to work on the railways. The post carrier, Robert Mackenzie was his name, told me he had a cousin in London who worked as a grocery delivery man. He said that he couldn't leave a little one from his clan undefended, so he bought me a ticket on the train and sent me to London. Sweetest man,” Farah recalled. “I sent him letters every month for a decade until he passed from a heart problem.”

“And his cousin was kind to ye?” Murdoch asked.

“Oh, yes. Craig Mackenzie and his wife, Coleen, were only ever able to have one child, a rather sickly girl named Agatha. Seeing as how I boasted the same last name, no one particularly questioned my presence in their home. He needed help with his deliveries, and so I made certain my rounds took me by Newgate, where I left food and such for Dougan which was subtracted from my own wages. I worked with Mr. Mackenzie for seven or so years, and didn't mind it so much. Until the year Dougan—died. Everything seemed to change after that. Craig left Coleen for a Spanish dancing girl. They ran off to the Continent and so his business went under. Coleen's sister said she'd heard that they were hiring maintenance staff at Scotland Yard, and so, at seventeen, Agatha and I went to work there as maids.”

Dorian's quill scratched to a halt on his desk, but he still didn't look at her. “I was searching all over the damned Scottish Highlands for you, and
you
were scrubbing the cesspool floors of Scotland Yard?”

“Not for very long,” Farah announced proudly. “Before Carlton—”

Dorian's head shot up and he skewered her with his glare.

“I mean before
Chief Inspector Morley
took office, a man by the name of Victor Thomas James held his post. You see, because of Agatha's poor health, I often stayed late to finish her chores, as well. One of which was laying all the fires for the Yard offices. Chief Inspector James was one of the most decorated detectives in the history of the Yard; however, his eyesight had begun to fail, but he wasn't ready to retire. One night, while tidying his office and stoking the fire, I helped read a particularly untidy document. The next night, he had a stack for me to read and an extra ha'penny for my troubles. Over the course of two years, I became indispensable to him, and he installed me as a widowed clerk at twenty.” Farah lifted her shoulders. “The nature of the work at the Yard is rather transitory. Men come and go, are transferred, sacked, killed, or promoted. After maybe five years, Agatha had married and no one who knew me as a maid still worked at that office. I was merely Mrs. Farah Mackenzie, a widowed bluestocking. Chief Inspector James retired six years hence, Morley took his place, and there I have remained until, well, until a few days ago.”

The two very differently featured men shared identical expressions of abject disbelief for long enough to make Farah want to squirm.

“To think of the trouble we went through to find ye this wee fairy, Blackwell, and all this time she was right under our noses. All ye would have had to do is the one thing ye swore ye wouldna.” Murdoch turned to toss his employer a pained and ironic look.

“What's that?” she asked.

“Get arrested.”

“That
is
how you found me.”

Murdoch chuckled. “Aye, but we orchestrated that, so it doesna count.”

Farah thought a moment, wondering whom they had on the inside who would have helped with said orchestration. “Inspector McTavish?”

Murdoch laughed and slapped his thigh. “Dougan always said ye were a witty lass!”

She remembered the beating Blackwell had taken whilst locked away in the strong room. The echoes of a bruise and the all-but-healed cut on his lip reminded her of the lengths he must have gone to. “I am sorry you were mistreated by Morley,” she offered. “I don't know what got into him.”

Dorian's gaze touched her in places that made memories dance along the nerves of her skin until she was overwarm and aching. “I do.”

As her face heated, she ducked it down and retrieved her own cards. “Just a point of curiosity, were you responsible for the deaths of those three Newgate prison guards Morley accused you of?”

Her husband didn't lift his head from his work, his pen never pausing in its relentless scratch across the page. “No, I wasn't
responsible
for their deaths,” he said darkly.

Farah blew a quiet but relieved sigh.

“I killed them each, myself.”

 

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

London certainly looked different when one knew their life was in danger. Though street mobs obeyed and shadows parted for her influential new husband, Farah still found herself shrinking from dark alleys and checking around corners for a murderer, or for Warrington, himself, to seize upon her.

“Stop that,” Dorian ordered from the shadowed corner where he watched Madame Sandrine turn her into a human pincushion.

“I haven't moved one iota in nearly three hours' time. I'd first have to be
doing
something in order to cease doing it.” The endless standing had made Farah irritable, and after this fourth garment, the novelty of such fine apparel was beginning to wear off.

“You keep checking out the window for danger,” he accused.

Drat, she
had
been doing just that. Eyeing the richly attired citizens of the West End in a ridiculous search for a would-be assassin. Gritting her teeth against an itch on her collarbone, she fought the overwhelming urge to scratch at it. How would she even know what an assassin might look like? “Can you blame me under the circumstances? Perhaps being a target for powerful enemies is all very typical for you, but I've still yet to adjust to it.”

“And you won't have to,” he said casually. “It won't be long before we have Warrington's head displayed on a spike from the London Bridge.”

“Not—literally?” Though the image didn't disgust her as much as it should.

He cast her a look of droll exasperation.

“Well, one can never tell with you, can they?”

Her infuriating husband looked pleased with himself, and Madame Sandrine chuckled. “You picked a good wife, Monsieur Blackwell. She is, as we say, a
femme forte
.”

Farah inwardly felt guilty for all the discourteous thoughts she'd been having about the woman whilst submitting to her ministrations. “You are too kind, Madame Sandrine.”

“Hah! Your husband knows better than that,
n'est-ce pas
?”

Farah's smile disappeared at the sly look the lovely brunette slid toward Blackwell. A few extra discourteous thoughts stunned her as Dorian awarded the dressmaker a civil nod, which was akin to an all-out declaration of affection for him.

Farah's eyes narrowed at the woman, who didn't notice because she was calculating the remarkable breadth of Blackwell's shoulders. Just how
well
did they know each other? Had the lady put her hands on him? Had he allowed her to take his measurements and dress his impressive physique? It seemed oddly galling that, though she'd coupled with her husband, whoever tailored his clothing would still be more intimately acquainted with his body.

He was regarding Farah with the queerest expression when she couldn't stop herself from lifting her disapproving gaze toward him. Could he read the odd mixture of curiosity and suspicion on her face? The knave's own look hovered between disbelief and satisfaction.

He almost seemed contented. Most men wouldn't dare think of accompanying their wives to a dress fitting, let alone refuse the distractions of a paper or book.

But not Dorian Blackwell. True to form, he
watched,
looking on with mild interest as Madame Sandrine tucked, pinned, measured, wrapped, and hemmed. Sometimes it seemed he couldn't stop himself from staring, as if he drank her in with his gaze. Savored her. The intensity of it left her more than a little discomfited.

Her husband. A thief, a highwayman, a criminal.

A coldhearted killer.

But she'd known that, hadn't she? Somehow, it seemed excusable for him to take down the dregs of society. To disappear men more villainous than himself; monsters, crime lords, and pimps. But officers of the law? Men she might have known and maybe even befriended.

She remembered their first conversation back in his study at Ben More. His devastating description of the hellish tortures he and Dougan had endured as boys.

And that was just what the guards did to me.

Swallowing strong emotion, Farah locked eyes with him. The wounded one glimmered with blue fire from the shadows. Swirling with things he would never say out loud. He couldn't bear to be touched. Couldn't relinquish a modicum of composure or control.

It was difficult to imagine the strong, lethal predator in front of her as a small boy, let alone a victimized one. Somehow, with a man such as Blackwell, it would be easy to assume that he'd always been the force of nature he currently was. That maybe, through some Olympian feat, he'd appeared on this earth in his mature, powerful body, birthed by a potent, mystical darkness.

But that wasn't the case, Farah thought, her chest clenching for him. He was as much a product of the past as she, more so even, and he'd spent many of his formative years helpless, wounded, and afraid.

In a clever strategy, he'd crafted his vengeance around hers, so that she couldn't separate herself from him if she wanted to achieve it. Dorian Blackwell wasn't the sort of man to kill needlessly. Those guards whom he'd confessed to killing, if they'd mistreated Blackwell, they'd also likely victimized Dougan and countless other incarcerated boys. How many of those children had been innocent, as Dougan was? If that was the case, then Farah not only understood his lethal actions, she fought back a dark sort of approval. It was surely wrong, but she couldn't bring herself to condemn him for it.

How strange that she felt more indignation for the genial tilt of his lips toward Madame Sandrine, than the deaths of three people. What sort of woman was she becoming?

“Madame Sandrine's father, Charles, is my tailor,” he explained, a pleased smile toying with the corner of his mouth. “He spent a span with me in Newgate. I've known the family for some time, including Sandrine's
husband,
Auguste.” He put undue emphasis on the word.

“Before we were tailors, my family were smugglers,” Madame Sandrine announced proudly. “But my father was wounded by the police and incarcerated. He always tells me that he could not have survived in an English prison without the Blackheart Brothers. And even after that, Monsieur Blackwell bought and leased us this palace in the West End, and now we are among the most elite tailors and dressmakers to the
ton.
The only payment he accepts is the
exclusivit
é
of my father's expertise, and now, mine for you, Madame Blackwell.”

“Merci,”
Farah murmured, swinging back to regret for her ire at the French woman as she still stared into the eyes of her husband. How was it that she was beginning to consider him more of a philanthropist than a philistine? Was he corrupting her somehow? Or was she finally seeing the truth? That the Blackheart of Ben More just might have a very big heart, indeed.

“I think this dress will stun the nobility, and leave them stupefied with envy and lust,” Madame Sandrine announced with relish.

“I'm just glad it's not crimson, like everything else you drape,” Farah said to her husband as she glanced at her transformation in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors across from the raised podium on which she stood. The creation of blue silk evoked the midnight sky, as it wrapped her bosom and waist in bejeweled gathers before cascading from her hips in a dark waterfall. The shamelessly cut bodice was lent a hint of respectability by folds of a shimmering diaphanous silver material draping from a choker of gems about her neck and flowing down her shoulders like moonbeams. To call them sleeves would have been a mistake, for all they concealed.

Madame Sandrine threw a teasing look over her shoulder at Blackwell. “How fitting that the color of blood is the one you prefer the most.”

“Not for
her,
” Dorian rumbled.

The seamstress lifted a winged eyebrow, but didn't comment. “
Voil
à
.
I believe that is all I'll need from you today, Madame Blackwell. I can have these finished in the morning, and in the meantime I have a lovely soft gray frock hemmed with tiny pink blossoms that will bring out the color in your cheeks.”