Since the Surrender (27 page)

“It’s more than my life is worth to tell you, Captain Eversea.”

“Are you under the impression, Mr. Buckthwaite, that you have nothing to fear from me?”

“Ah, but you’re a man of honor…Captain Eversea.” Ironically said. As though he found honor subjective and even contemptible.

“Oh, yes,” Chase said. “Your tale of woe is quite, quite moving. I’ve an appreciation of a man who does his job in the face of danger and ingratitude. But I won’t leave you without the information, and if I discover you’ve misled me in any way…well.” Chase watched with interest as the man in front of them argued the price with an indignant prostitute, who shook her fist at him. “I shouldn’t like to be you tomorrow,” he said easily.

And he turned and smiled a slow, mad smile that left the Charley looking decidedly shaken.

“Where are they, Buckthwaite? Are they alive?”

Buckthwaite was silent for a moment. “I don’t know, Captain. I was told they wouldn’t be harmed. Better off, likely, than if the courts got to them, is what I was told. I’m not by nature a corrupt man, sir, but the job has a way…” He trailed off. “They’d be strung up or dying on a ship on the way to Botany Bay by now, and you know it. They had no one, aye? They were no one. No connections.”

No one.

“They. Have. Me.”

Chase had never known such black, black rage. It was nearly a miasma; a haze floated over his eyes. It must have done something to his face, lit him like a death’s head.

For Buckthwaite looked rattled; the whites of his eyes momentarily For Buckthwaite looked rattled; the whites of his eyes momentarily brightened the darkness.

The fury nearly prevented Chase from breathing, and made him quieter and quieter. “How many of them? What are their names?

What is your mandate? Where are the girls?” He hissed it. Buckthwaite, maddeningly, hesitated again. “I’d be obliged, Captain, if you would—”

“Take my hand,” Chase said coldly.

Buckthwaite stared at the fist Chase had extended abruptly, startled.

“I said, take my fecking hand.”

Buckthwaite did, and came away with pound notes Chase had extracted from his pocket.

“Included in the price is keeping my name from it, aye?” Buckthwaite smiled, ironically, and spat toward the ankles of a prostitute passing by, who cursed him. “My mandate is to find the prettiest of the petty criminals, Captain, and make sure they don’t go to prison.”

“Where do they go instead?”

“I quite honestly don’t know. I can tell you I’m charged with making the choice, and I’ve an eye for the pretty ones, if I do say so myself. And I’m paid for each one found acceptable. I don’t turn them over to the magistrate. There was a witness to Lucy’s arrest, so she ended up with the magistrate, and then in the Stone Pitcher.”

“How many so far have you ‘found acceptable’?”

“Three. Lucy Locke, Meggie Plum, and Cora Myrtleberry.”

Chase hadn’t the faintest idea who Cora Myrtleberry might be.

“Are they alive?”

“I cannot say, Captain. I would imagine so.”

“Who do you turn the girls over to? I want a name.”

Buckthwaite seemed to be struggling with the decision. “I’ve never seen him. I’ve only heard of him.”

“A name, Buckthwaite, or so help me God…”

His pistol was already cocked, and he made sure Buckthwaite saw it.

“Oh, my cock is big.”

Buckthwaite said this with such grim resolve that for a disorienting instant Chase thought he was simply volunteering personal information. Rather a non sequitur, if so. Or much, much worse: commenting on a current condition. A prostitute was grappling with a customer a few yards off, after all, and he’d had her bodice pulled down and a breast out, and she seemed to wish to charge him additional for this peek.

But one second later Chase understood it.

The Charley clarified it for him anyway.

“That’s the name, Captain Eversea. O. McCaucus-Bigg.”

Chase told her everything he’d learned from the Charley; he told her about McCaucus-Bigg and Kinkade and the drawings. All was tense, musing silence in the Eversea carriage. As usual, Chase refused to waste time on speculation or to draw conclusions until he knew for certain.

The lamps dimmed by the driver at his command, Chase thumped the ceiling on the outskirts of the square, and when the carriage stopped, helped her out.

She and Chase walked the rest of the way, laying their feet down as quietly as possible, hugging the walls of the museum gate to take advantage of any deep shadows thrown.

Rosalind was breathless with fear.

The muffled strike of Chase’s stick against the cobblestones was scarcely a tap; in the dark, it seemed to echo like something hurled down an empty well. The voice of the watch was carried to them on the night air, but the time he marked was indistinct. All Rosalind could hear was the “o’clock.”

At night the museum courtyard fairly yawned behinds its bars—far too large and empty, offering nothing by way camouflage, no movement, no other people, no trees or shadows. Clouds milled nervously about a bright half-moon.

The spiked fence could have skewered them, indeed, had they intended to climb it. And the journey to the mews seemed endless, with nothing to break the silence but breathing, which took on far greater volume and meaning in that silence. That, and the careful tread of their feet. Measured as clock ticks.

A shorter gate surrounded a small, neglected garden—one very large old mulberry tree presided over overgrown shrubs that could have hidden all manner of attackers.

She seemed to be all heartbeat: the hammer blows of it rang everywhere in her body, and it made her blood whine in her ears. Never in her life did she dream she’d be breaking into a building brandishing a pistol.

But Chase was there, and her own pistol was cocked, and she wasn’t certain she wouldn’t shoot the very first thing that stirred other than Chase.

It was a very good thing nothing else stirred.

She was able to scale the small gate with a decidedly inelegant hike of her gown, exposing her stockinged legs to the night air and, of course, to Chase. She avoided tearing her stocking, of which she was absurdly glad in the moment.

She fumbled for the latch in the dark, and it gave easily in her hand. She jubilantly gave the little gate a push.

The hinge screamed as though she’d plunged a knife into its heart. Sweet Christ.

Her heart stopped for a painful instant. Keeled over with a thud, truly, like a stone.

She closed her eyes, her breath dangerously shallow with terror. From the other side of the gate Chase seized her hand; hers was all ice, his all heat and strength.

He clung to her for a breathless moment, pulling her close to him across that gate, and together, wordlessly, they listened hard, and he willed heat into her.

At night, sounds carried oddly, and she thought she imagined hoofbeats off in the distance. She thought she heard the rant of a drunk somewhere, and two voices raised in a fruitless shouting match. The watch had better things to do than watch the museum, it seemed, which after all was surrounded by a spiked metal gate. She opened her eyes again, still clinging to Chase’s hand. She could feel his pulse: it was hard and steady and remarkably normal. It soothed her.

He was very still, simply watching her. Arrested by her face. Or perhaps his long, long view of her long legs. His blue eyes glittering as surely as stars in that starless night.

And his face—hard, fierce, uncompromising, enthralled—made her heart leap again with a primal anticipation. I want you, he’d said earlier this evening.

She didn’t doubt for an instant that he always got what he wanted. She wondered how he would go about getting it.

And whether she did indeed intend to give it to him. He gave her hand a quick squeeze; it was a query. It broke the spell.

She nodded: I’m all right now.

He edged through the gap in the short gate, lifting up his coat to avoid catching it. They forbore to close it, lest the bloody thing screech again.

She spared it a disgusted look as they passed, as though it were a traitor.

Five feet later they were on the threshold of the service entrance, and Chase spent long moments kneeling, the lock pick inserted. His ear to the door. A quiet click later the lock tumbled. He turned and made a “voilà!” gesture.

He gave the door a poke with just one finger. It gave just a little. He poked it again. It swung wider by inches.

Bless the maids who make a point of oiling hinges, Rosalind thought.

And then Chase drew in an audible breath and pushed it all the way open. Silence and darkness and stale air rushed out at them. Instantly, it seemed to rob them of their voices the way a vacuum might.

Delicately, they closed the door behind them, slowly, slowly. The door eased shut with a click.

Blackness engulfed them.

She fumbled for him; a stray shred of moonbeam caught the gleam of his cocked pistol, and she held onto his coat. She heard a snick. A spark flared against the glint of a blade

—Chase had struck a flint against his knife to light a nub of candle scarcely as high as his thumb. It flared weakly. It was a wholly inadequate light, but was the only light that wouldn’t cast shadows up to the ceiling, which could then be seen, if someone were to look, through the arch of those great windows. The candle could light an inch or so in front of them, and so they would creep along. As agreed, they each drew their already unlocked pistols. The sound of unlocking could crack like a gunshot itself in a place this quiet.

He gave her the candle to hold and motioned her ahead. He wanted to protect her from anything that might creep upon them, and so she would determine the path of their reconnaissance of the place. The service hallway allowed them out into a hall lined with Renaissance paintings, lush colors washed on canvases hung in frames surely unnecessarily heavy and luxurious. The candle lit fragments of faces, hands, horses, angels, trees, as they passed. The hallway poured them out into the museum proper. Chase following her, his gait uneven, his walking stick touched down delicately, one hand at all times lightly touching her waist. And despite the delicacy of his touch, she could feel his angry, focused determination. In the heat of his body. In the staccato breaths that fell softly against the back of her neck.

He wanted to make things right for her, for Liam, for everyone ever wronged, for himself.

And she wanted to pay attention, to look for clues to what the museum might have to do with Lucy or any of the other girls being gone. But she saw nothing. And the scent of Chase behind her began to drug her senses. The floral of the lavender soap had faded to astringency; now she smelled man, and the cigar smoke clinging to his coat, and perhaps a bit of horse…and the musk of desire.

Around a corner they stumbled upon a room full of insects. It was a large room, and it featured one of the high, half-moon windows that would have shed light had other buildings and clouds not interfered. A cloud scudded clear of the moon for a moment, and the insects were particularly dreadful in the moonlight that found the windows: enormous motionless butterflies still iridescent in death, fragile wings spread out for everyone to admire. Great dark scarab beetles, their spiky legs looking like towering thorns and their antennas many feet long, thanks to the magic of shadows. The tiny hairs at the back of her neck tingled as though a beetle were actually crawling about there.

The smell of snuffed candles lingered here, caught in the dense and near motionless air. She thought she detected smoke from a cigar, separate from the scent that clung to Chase. It smelled, in fact, nearly like her late husband’s cigar.

She stopped. She frowned.

He paused, alertly, radiating a silent question to her: why had she paused?

They listened. For what could very well have been eternity. It seemed to Rosalind that they would never have known, for time itself seemed literally embalmed inside the museum. They heard nothing at all but their own breathing. She fancied she could hear her hair growing. She prayed she wouldn’t need to sneeze, and then of course she nearly needed to, and her eyes poured water from the effort of holding it back. She shrugged. Soundlessly, of course. They moved on. Through the Egyptian rooms now, with their solemn-faced sarcophagi looking gray and tired and somehow not at all frightening in shadow. They peered behind them; saw nothing but wall. No mummies emerged from cases.

Past the stone slabs of ancient words. Someone’s shopping list? A poem? Regardless, it was forever profound now that it had been etched in stone.

Still they saw nothing at all of any interest.

She stopped suddenly again. But this time it was purely for the pleasure of feeling Chase’s hard body bump into hers. And this time he lingered, touching her. As though he couldn’t bear to move away. For a moment they stood in mutual, helpless, motionless thrall. His fingers still only lightly brushed her waist. Any other man might have attempted at the very least a throat nuzzle. Odd, but just when she decided patience was not Chase Eversea’s long suit, she remembered that war was half waiting for something to happen, and that control comprised a goodly portion of his character. And honor, too. She knew he wanted her to come to him. To decisively choose.

I want to decide what I want, she’d told him.

He would be leaving soon. The thought of this opened up a gulf of peculiar panic.

She moved on.

They inched down the hallway toward the room of gleaming suits of armor and pikes. None of the suits of armor suddenly sprang at them; no eyes glittered through the visors.

Still, she slowed. And stopped again.

In…out. In…out. The sound of their breathing. It could just as easily have been the sound of the night, because she felt indistinguishable from it now. And the nature of the tension in him had shifted, like a wave, into a different kind of tension altogether. had shifted, like a wave, into a different kind of tension altogether. With a great, great effort—it was like combating gravity, for her body knew precisely where it wanted to linger—she moved on. From the armor, they found their way down the hall lined with the hideous puppets—their garish faces caught in erratic moonlight crossbeams. Rosalind noticed she was urged along a trifle more swiftly by Chase here.