The Highwayman (4 page)

Mr. Beauchamp gave a self-important sniff, pleased to be the one to give her news she hadn't already gleaned. “Only the man whose capture could make Sir Morley's entire career. The most
infamous
criminal mastermind in recent history.”

“
No,
you can't mean—”

“Indeed I do, Mrs. Mackenzie. I can
only
mean Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More.”

“Upon my word,” Farah breathed, suddenly more than a little apprehensive to be in the same building with him, let alone the same room.

“Please do tell me you're not in danger of the vapors or some other such female hysteria. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're in the middle of a crisis, and I simply cannot cover for any missish behavior.” Beauchamp regarded her with distaste.

“When have you
ever
known me to be plagued with the vapors?” she asked impatiently as she tucked her pad into the crook of the arm that held her pen and inkwell. “
Really,
Mr. Beauchamp, after all these years!” She huffed past him in a swirl of skirts, frowning with disapproval. Though he was the senior first clerk to her second clerk, perhaps it was time she usurped his authority.

First things first.
Farah squared her shoulders and gathered her skirts to descend the stairs to the basement. Though not prone to the vapors, she did feel her lungs strain against her corset more rapidly than usual, and her heart felt like a trapped sparrow, fluttering around the walls of her chest, looking for an escape.

Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More.

Despite her apprehension, Farah realized she was taking part in something unprecedented. Certainly Blackwell had a number of arrests in his history, but he somehow always managed to escape imprisonment, and the gallows. Inwardly, she cited the information she had on Dorian Blackwell.

His countrywide notoriety had begun little more than a decade ago with disturbing and mysterious disappearances of half the criminals being investigated by Scotland Yard. During the initial inquiry, a name had amalgamated from shadows and whispers that rose from the most violent, treacherous bowels of the city such as Fleet Ditch, Whitechapel, and the East End.

The Blackheart
. A new, almost Continental sort of criminal who ruthlessly seized control of the London underworld before anyone quite knew about it. All by means of infiltration and the curious organization of what amounted to a well-trained militia.

An incredible number of wanted thieves, pimps, bookmakers, traffickers, slumlords, and the reigning heads of existing criminal enterprises had also disappeared, often reappearing as bloated corpses in the Thames.

A silent, hidden war had raged in East London, and it was only when the rivers of blood ceased flowing that the police even heard about it. According to increasingly unreliable sources, the Blackheart replaced these missing criminals with agents abjectly loyal to himself. Those who remained in their previous positions suddenly became wealthier and more elusive to justice.

Had the mystifying, so-called Blackheart stayed on his side of London, it was likely he'd never been pursued by the woefully underfunded, overworked police force. But once he'd secured the position of absolute control over squalid thieves' dens and gambling hells, the figure of a
man
emerged from the shadow and filth and blood of what was now known as the Underworld War.

And suddenly the Blackheart had a name. Dorian Blackwell. And that name became synonymous with an altogether
different
sort of carnage. The monetary kind. The police were still trying to tie together the seemingly random people Blackwell had elevated and/or broken with callous, precise efficiency. His battlefields were banks and boardrooms, with the swipe of a pen and a whisper of scandal that brought about the ruination of several of the London elite. To curb the rising terror gripping the city at all the upheaval, he smoothed some of the edges of apprehension by liberally giving to charities, especially those directed at children, sponsoring the careers of artists and performers, and stimulating the emerging middle-class economy with some very sound investments. He'd garnered somewhat of a Robin Hood-like reputation among the middle and lower classes.

He was rumored to be one of the wealthiest men in the empire. He had a Hyde Park house, numerous properties and other holdings, either invested or seized in hostile business deals, and a rather famous castle on the Isle of Mull, from which he garnered the rest of his name.

Ben More Castle it was called, a secluded place in the Highlands where he reportedly spent a great deal of his time.

Upon reaching the dank brick-and-dirt basement, Farah checked out the porthole window through the iron bars covering it, distressed to see that the mob seemed to have doubled. It wouldn't take much longer for it to reach the Charing Cross circle. And what then?

She quickened her step, ignoring the calls and excited conversations of the dozen or so inspectors who loitered below stairs near the iron doors of the evidentiary, record, and supply rooms. All of their attention was centered on one point. The barred door of the first strong room, from which a series of curses and the unmistakable sounds of flesh connecting with flesh rang through the bars.

They were all talking about Blackwell. And
not
in favorable terms.

As an enigmatic public figure, all of the Blackheart of Ben More's business dealings were generally legal, if often unethical, and
still
the police might have left him to his personal devices.

That was, until
other
mysterious disappearances had begun to terrorize the city. A few prison guards. A police sergeant. The Newgate commissioner. And, most recently, a justice of the Supreme Court, Lord Roland Phillip Cranmer III, one of the most powerful judiciaries in the entire realm.

If Farah knew anything, it was that
nothing
incited the police to action like violence against their own. She'd known, of course, that Sir Carlton Morley had been following Blackwell since Morley had been a new inspector, almost ten years now, and the men had become embroiled in a sort of cat-and-mouse game that was swiftly escalating.

The chief inspector had even brought Blackwell to charges a few times, but that was ages ago when he worked the Whitechapel precinct. Still, the Blackheart of Ben More seemed to be a particular obsession with her employer, and Farah wondered if this time he'd finally cornered his quarry. She sincerely hoped so. Her feelings for Carlton Morley had recently become much more opaque. Complicated, even.

The smell below stairs was a complex combination of pleasant and repellent. The inviting scents of paper, musk, and cool, hard-packed earth underscored the more pervasive odors of the stone and iron strong room and holding cells which, the farther one ventured, strengthened to overwhelming. Urine, body odor, and other filth that didn't bear consideration assaulted her senses as it always did before she habitually compartmentalized it in order to do her job.

“I'm surprised Beauchamp let ye come down here, Mrs. Mackenzie.” Ewan McTavish, a short but burly Scotsman, and longtime inspector, tipped his cap at her as she paused at the door. They had a good rapport with each other, as it was known among the men of Scotland Yard that her late husband had, indeed, been Scottish. “It's not every day we get someone as dangerous as the Blackheart of Ben More. He might forget to be respectful to ye.” A dangerous gleam entered McTavish's blue eyes.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. McTavish, but I've been doing this a long time, and I'm fair certain I've heard it all.” Farah gave the handsome, copper-haired Scotsman a confident smile, and took her keys from the pocket of her skirts, unlocking the door to the interrogation room.

“We'll be stationed right out here should ye be in danger or have need of anything,” McTavish said just a bit too loudly, perhaps for the benefit of those inside the room just as much as her own.

“Thank you, Inspector, thank you all.” Farah gave one last smile of gratitude, and swept inside.

The smell intensified in the strong room, and Farah lifted a lace handkerchief dabbed with lavender oil that she kept in her pocket until the usual wave of nausea passed, before acknowledging the occupants of the room.

When she lifted her gaze, she froze, stunned in place at the sight before her.

Chief Inspector Sir Carlton Morley was in his shirtsleeves, which he'd rolled to the elbows. The manicured hands clenched at his sides had blood on the knuckles, and his usually well-groomed hair was mussed into disarray.

A large, dark-haired man sat on a lone chair in the center of the room, his hands chained behind him, and his posture deceptively relaxed.

They were both panting and sweating and bleeding, but that wasn't what startled Farah the most. It was the almost identical expressions on their faces as they looked at her, an intense compilation of surprise and ruefulness, with a barely leashed undercurrent of … hunger?

Violence hung in the air between the two men with a tangible vibration, but as the prisoner in the chair studied her, all became extraordinarily silent and still.

Farah had once developed a fascination with exotic predators after seeing them on display in large cages at the World's Fair in Covent Garden. She'd read about them, learning that great hunting cats, such as lions and jaguars, could make themselves preternaturally still. Going so far as to conceal their frighteningly powerful bodies in shadows, trees, and tall grasses in such a way that their prey could pass by without even realizing a beast was about to pounce and rip out their throats until it was too late.

She'd pitied and feared them at the same time. For surely a creature so dynamic and powerful could do nothing chained in such a small cage but hate and whither and eventually die. She'd watched a particularly dark jaguar tread the scant four paces behind his bars as his wild yellow eyes promised retribution and pain to the brightly dressed masses who'd come to gawk at him. Their eyes had met, Farah's and the beast, and he'd demonstrated that unnatural stillness, holding her stare for an unblinking eternity. She'd been mesmerized by that predator while hot tears had scalded her cheeks. By the terrifying fate she'd seen mirrored at her in those eyes. He'd marked her as prey, as one of the weaker and more desirable morsels in the herd of people milling about them. And in that moment, she'd been grateful for the cursed chains that held the beast in check.

That exact, disquieting affectation suffused her now as she met the mismatched gaze of Dorian Blackwell. His features were those of cruel brutality. His one good eye had that amber quality that had belonged to the jaguar. The flickering lamplight made it glow gold against his burnished skin. It was his other eye, though, that arrested her attention. For starting above the brow, and ending at the bridge of a bladed nose, was a jagged, angry scar, interrupted by an eye leached of every pigment but blue by whatever had caused the wound. And, indeed, he stared at her like a predator recognizing his preferred meal, and lying in wait to pounce until she haplessly wandered into his vicinity. His cheek was split and bleeding along the sharp line of his masculine cheekbone, and another small trickle of blood dripped from his right nostril.

Catching her breath, Farah ripped her stare from the prisoner's compelling regard and sought the familiar, aristocratically handsome features of her employer.

Sir Morley, generally a self-possessed man, seemed to be at the end of a frayed rope, clutching for control of his temper with both hands. This wasn't like Morley, to beat a man whose wrists were chained behind him.

“I see you've come prepared,” he clipped, his tone belying the glimmer of warmth and yearning in his eyes as he gave her a curt nod.

“Yes, sir.” Farah nodded, giving herself a stern shake as she fixed her gaze on the desk at the back of the room, and willed her shaking legs to carry her all the way to it without dropping something, or worse. She hid her discomfiture behind a carefully arranged mask of serenity as the heels of her boots clipped a sharp echo against the stones of the strong room.

“As much as I approve of your change in tactics, Morley, dangling this tasty piece in front of me still won't have the desired effect.” Blackwell's voice reached out to her like the first unwelcome tendrils of frost in winter. Deep, smooth, caustic, and bitter cold. Despite that, his accent was astonishingly cultured, though a deeply hidden brogue rounded out the
r
's, enough to hint that the Blackheart of Ben More might not have been London born. His neck swiveled on powerful shoulders as he followed her progress toward the writer's desk placed behind him at a diagonal. He didn't take those disturbing eyes from her once, even as he addressed Morley. “I warn you now that more brutal men than you have tried to beat a confession out of me, and more beautiful women than
she
have endeavored to bewitch my secrets from me. Both have failed.”

The desk chair came up to meet her much faster than she'd anticipated as she dropped into it, nearly upsetting the items clutched in her arms. Unutterably glad she was stationed behind Blackwell so he could not see her unease, she smoothed the pad of paper in front of her with an unsteady hand, and positioned her inkwell and pen just so.

“You'll learn, Blackwell, that there
are
no more brutal men than I.” Morley sneered.

“Said the fly to the spider.”

“If
I
am the fly, why are you the one caught in my web?” Morley circled Blackwell, jerking on the manacles imprisoning his hands behind him.

“Are you certain that is what's happening here, Inspector? Are you quite sure it is
I
who am playing right into
your
hands?” Blackwell's demeanor remained unperturbed, but Farah noted that his wide shoulders were tense beneath his fine tailored jacket, and little rivulets of sweat beaded at his temple and behind his jaw.