The Bad Baron's Daughter (23 page)

Drew went quickly to thread a sustaining arm over Katie’s shoulder, and Zack frowned at her threateningly. “That’s all that’s needed, Katie, for you to get sick in this sweatbox! Look, this is only an old lift. See, we work the ropes and soon we’ve pulled ourselves up to the second floor! We’ll be there in a minute, so hang onto your insides.”

A gray light filtered in from above and Katie could feel the shudder and pull as the floor tugged upward beneath them. She could see grafitti scratched on the walls by young revolutionists of diverse interests and read them to herself, “Impoverish the Rich,” “Hazel of Gump Street likes it with her shoes on,” and in runny whitewash letters, “Give me chastity and give me continence but not just now!” signed by an individual who styled himself “The Scarlet Tiger.”

“That’s new since I’ve been here,” said Zack, pointing to this last motto. “Who’s the Scarlet Tiger, Winnie?”

“At’s wot th’ boys call th’ admiral, fer a joke, like,” she replied, between long pulls on the ropes. “Th’ admiral ‘n some o’ th’ blokes got a little lushy one night, then came down ‘ere ‘n th’ admiral wrote that.”

“Ho!” said Zack. “If your Scarlet Tiger is really an admiral, I’ll eat my feet unsalted. Winnie, you’ve never met Katie’s father, have you?”

“Nah, ‘e was away from Essex th’ time we stayed there, at th’ ‘orse races, ya remember. Why’re ya askin’ me?”

“You’ll see,” said Zack. “Holy Mother, will you see.”

The lift came to a creaking halt. Zack helped Winnie secure the pull ropes and slid up a wooden seven-barred gate that led into an expansive storage room, with a high unplastered ceiling supported by great raw oak pillars. Dusty silver light sank in from the high-set windows to spot the room in sober smoky shadows. Across the long tar-coated hardwood floor was a partitioned corner that had been a shipping office before the building had been abandoned to the rats and the rascals.

Zack strode purposefully toward this room, his worn boots making soft sucking squeaks as each step cleared the hot tar. Katie looked uncertainly toward Lord Linden, received an encouraging smile in return, and followed Zack.

Zack was the first to reach the scarred pine door that led to the receiving office; he gripped the handle and flung it open to expose a small stuffy room, the floor littered with ancient shipping manifests; and over a ropespring cot that sagged against one wall, there hung a four-year-old calendar advertising the Universal Pill. But it was the center of the room that drew Zack’s attention. Here sat three men at their leisure around an overturned barrel topped with a warped board. That these worthies had been drinking and playing cards was obvious; evidence attesting to both these activities was strewn over the makeshift table. All three seated gentlemen had discarded their shirts in deference to the heat, but one it was seen, had retained his hat. It was a forlorn affair, with tarnished nautical insignia that sat askew on the wearer’s red, red curls. Beneath the flaccid brim, one found a pair of limpid robin’s egg blue eyes which had opened in surprise at Zack’s arrival, and a very freckled nose.

Zack was, for that moment, speechless but Katie cried, “Papa!” and flew into the hatted gentleman’s open arms.

Lord Linden leaned against the door’s unfinished frame, tipped his hat to the back of his head, and said, “Kendricks. I thought so.”

One of the three cardplayers seated around the table was a husky youth of medium height wearing a pair of loose trousers, with a black handkerchief knotted around his neck. Zack hooked his fingers through this neck cloth and dragged the youth to his feet, backing him against the wall.

“Patrick, you idiot,” said Zack furiously. “That’s not Admiral Enfield. You’ve kidnapped Baron Kendricks!”

“ ‘Ave ya cracked yer bughouse, Zackie?” said Patrick, disentangling himself from Zack’s grip.

“No! Watch this.” Zack walked around the table to stand before the red-haired cardplayer. “Sir! Is this your daughter?” he declaimed dramatically, gesturing at Katie.

The baron had pulled Katie onto his lap, tugged the pretty bonnet from her strawberry hair and kissed her soundly. They made an attractive pair that might have been more easily viewed as sister and brother than father and daughter. The baron was still four years short of forty and he looked more like four years short of thirty, with his slender graceful limbs and unlined boyish face. He set Katie back a bit and subjected her to a careful scrutiny.

“Think so,” he said, with a grin that Linden had seen before on Katie’s delicate lips. “Her mother always claimed she was and God knows she’s the living spit o’ me.” Kendricks gestured toward an empty chair. “Anchor your arse, boy, and tell me what’s toward. But first make me known to your handsome friends by the door there.”

“Oi’ll be damned!” cried Winnie. “That’s ‘ow ya pass it off, wantin’ th’ bloody introductions ta be made ‘ere? ‘N all th’ time pretendin’ ta be somebody ya ain’t? Ya should ‘ave tole us right away!”

“That’s bloody telling him, Win,” snapped Zack with approval. “Damn you, Morin, sitting up here on your bumfuddle for weeks on end wearing that quiz of a hat, corrupting these boobies with your cardshark trickery, leaving me to set Katie’s feet on the ground in The Sisterhood. Which, let me tell you, she didn’t like, and called me a damn Judas for it!”

“Strike me blind if I’ve ever seen you in such a peeve, Zack,” observed the baron. “Truth is, it suited me fine to play least in sight for a while. In fact, it saved my bacon. The constables are on me for my defaults, y’know. It’s to be debtor’s prison if I’m caught.”

Patrick returned to his seat by the table, gathered his disordered cards, and exchanged glances with his cardplaying cohort, a lanky, towheaded lad who was half drunk judging by the state of his bloodshot eyes and the loosely gripped, half-empty rum bottle he had in one hand.

“Damned if oi knows wot ta think,” said Patrick, shaking his head severely at the baron. “It’s th’ surprise o’ me life. Still, the government might care as much ‘bout a baron as ‘n admiral.”

“Not this baron, ya jackanapes,” said Winnie. She turned on the baron. “Ya know, it’s a very serious offense impersonatin’ ‘n admiral. Ya could get in a lot o’ trouble fer this!”

A sharp chortle came from Drew’s corner, but by the time Winnie turned to glare at him, he was innocently expressionless.

“There’s a good side ta this. Winnie,” said the towheaded cardplayer with drunken optimism. “Oi was worried ‘ere ‘at we’d end up wearin’ th’ sheriff’s picture frame fer this caper, but if th’ Scarlet Tiger ‘ere is wot they’re sayin’ ‘e is, ‘e ain’t likely ta infect us wi’ ‘emp fever.” He frowned blurrily at his cards. “Dash it all, Zack, ya’ve messed up Patrick’s ‘and there ‘n now th’ thing’s got ta be redealt. ‘N oi was sittin on two aces!”

“Ah, cork yer bottle, Whit,” said Winnie. “Yer drunk as a priest. As fer you, Baron Whoe’er-ya-are, ‘ow come ya was sneakin’ out o’ th’ admiral’s ‘ouse wearin’ th’ admiral’s clothes in th’ dark o’ night?”

Kendricks collected the discarded hands and began shuffling them with a gambler’s grace. “You wouldn’t ask how come if you’d ever seen Maria Enfield. Why, she’s the sweetest armful this side of the Atlantic. Save the one I’ve got here,” he said, tickling Katie’s cheek with his finger. “But her husband, the old admiral, is cram full of bourgeois jealousy and got his head full of nasty notions. But like I said, I was paying Maria a friendly visit one evening. I was upstairs showing her a few card tricks…” he winked, “… a little sleight-o-hand, you might say, when the admiral arrives. We heard the old fool bellowing belowstairs so she sent me out through the dressing room. I had to give the servants the go-by, so I borrowed one of the admiral’s topcoats, and this hat. I’m sneak-in’ around the corner outside, almost in the clear, when there comes a snaky blow from behind and I wake up here. Whose deal?”

“Mine,” said Whit on his left, who took the deck and began to deal, slapping the cards down with boozy deliberation. “Oi ‘ave ta say oi couldn’ta liked ya better if ya was an admiral, Scarlet Tiger. Ya brought more’na touch o’ th’ good life ta th’ place. It was a good move winnin’ our wages off us ‘n then usin’ ‘em ta send out fer some ‘igh quality moonshine. Taught our palates a lesson they won’t ferget.” He turned a lamb-like gaze on Zack. “Let me pour ya some, Zackie? Looks like ya could use it. Drive off th’ ‘eat.”

Zack snarled a demur.

The baron fanned his cards. “Ah, keep your breath to cool your porridge, Zack. Too damn hot for emotion, boy. No doubt you’ll introduce me to your friends by the door there in your own good time.”

“This,” said Zack grimly, “is Lord Linden. Yes,
that
Lord Linden. And I might as well tell you that he’s a very particular friend of Katie’s.”

The baron sent a friendly smile toward Linden. “Ho hoi Sits the cock on that fence?” He patted his daughter’s cheek. “It seems like yesterday you were playing jackstraws on the front steps.”

Katie seized the opening. “Papa, I must tell you I’ve gotten myself into the most awkward situation…”

“Sprained your ankle, have you?” guessed the baron. “Well, I suppose it had to come to that someday. I comprehend Linden here is your fellow? Well, I wouldn’t worry about the thing too much, puss, he ain’t the man to leave his bastards starving in a garret. Rich as a rent lord, they say.”

“Bastards, Papa?” asked Katie, confused.

“Your father,” explained Linden kindly, “has arrived at the conclusion that you are about to make him a grandfather.”

Katie gasped. “Papa! I am not going to have a child!”

Whit studied Katie’s trim form with polite lust. “Course yer not, sweet’eart. Lead, Scarlet Tiger.”

“Papa,” said Katie, with an urgency brought about by fear of a long series of card-game interruptions. “This may surprise you, but I’m being pursued by a man who means to kill me if he can.”

“Oh, that’s the tale, is it?” said the baron, capturing the first trick. “Sounds like the devil of the thing! Best tell me about it. Come to think, your shoulder has a bandage on it. You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?”

“I have,” said Katie, “but that doesn’t matter. Papa, do you know Ivo Guy?”

“What? A rum-phyzed, pig-eyed cove that was your mother’s cousin? I remember him. We used to call him Garbage Guts. What’s the fellow to do with you?”

“He’s the one that wants to kill me,” explained Katie patiently. “He took me to a house in the country and tried to make me marry him.”

“Were you kidnapped too? Damme if it doesn’t run in the family. But what’s this you say? Marry you or kill you? The fellow will have to make up his mind for one tack or the other, can’t have the thing both ways.”

“No, Papa, I know,” said Katie, tolerantly inured to the difficulties of explaining anything to her father. “That’s why it was so important that I find you because Ivo Guy is claiming to be my guardian.”

The baron flipped another card to the table. “Looniest thing that’s ever come to my hearing! Now you’re telling me the fellow wants to be your guardian. Damned confusing. Tell you what, though. Settle the thing easy—stick with your Lord Linden here, that’s the ticket. He’s the fellow to set you up in style. Tell you what, let’s take a glass of cognac on it. What do you say, Linden, can I fetch you a snort o’ this eyewater?”

Linden left his position by the door and came to rest the heels of his hands on the table near the baron. “Kendricks,” he said softly, “if you think I’ve compromised your daughter, you ought to be calling me out instead of offering me your damned cognac.”

The baron looked hurt. “Not damned cognac, rather good cognac,” he corrected. “And I’d have to be crazy to call you out—everyone knows you for a dead shot and I’m no more than average myself. ‘Sides, you don’t find me worrying about my little Kate.” The Baron gave his daughter a hug with his encircling arm. “She can take care of herself. Lands on her feet like a cat.”

“I know that you’ve successfully instilled in Katie the false notion that she can take care of herself,” said Linden, in unloving accents. “But a more apt comparison would be to a kitten stranded on the highest limb of an oak tree. Never have I met a girl more in need of a father’s protection and getting it less!” And then Lord Linden treated himself to the blistering denunciation of the quality of the baron’s parenthood that he had been longing to deliver ever since he had learned Katie’s identity. When finally he finished, Kendricks, who had been surveying him blandly through the whole, bunked like a badger, played his queen of hearts, stared straight at Linden and said, “If you don’t like the way I’ve done with the chit, then you’d better protect her yourself.”

“I intend to,” snapped Linden.

“Good. You’ve got my permission, not that I think you give a damn.” The baron pulled a jack from his hand and tossed it on the table. “My trick, Patrick. And give me thirty points for the pic.”

Katie had listened to the last exchange with her alarm rippling like water in the rain. She wriggled to her feet and laid an unsteady hand on her father’s shoulder. “Papa,” she whispered in a stricken voice, “is that… how do you mean that? Don’t you want me anymore?”

The baron drew Katie back onto his lap. “Poor old Katie,” he said, laying her head against his chest and lacing his fingers gently through her satin curls. “God knows how a sweet little sprout like you pulled such a damme boy as m’self for a father. I’m sorry about a lot of things but sorry won’t get the horse back in the stall, will it? It’s too late, honey, there’s nothing I can do for you. No money, no house, the law on my scent…” He rested his cheek on her head. “Take Linden, won’t you, princess? You could do a whole world of worse. Katie, Katie, I’d be doing you more harm than good if I didn’t tell you that there’s no chance anyone but a no-noodle like Guy’ll want to marry you, not with me posed as your pa. You’re the pick of the litter, but ain’t no decent man’s ever going to like the look of your kennels.”

Katie’s shoulders drooped in despair, causing her small puffed sleeve to slide down her arm. There was a gasp of startled pleasure from Whit who was moved to exclaim, “I’ll marry her!”

Patrick roused himself from the scoring sheet. “Aye, half-Whit, and yer wife’d love that!”