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Miss Beryl Angsley had had about enough of this nonsense. One night, she was at a ball and drinking champagne, and the next, she was lying on a bunk in a squalid room that smelled like the fishiest fish with a guard seated nearby, silent and sullen.
Even if he spoke, she doubted they would understand each other.
If the Chinaman’s eyes hadn’t been open, she would have thought he was asleep for all the expression he had. She’d tried to converse with him after he had removed the sack from her head — the blasted rice bag!
Again, her hair looked as if she’d been standing on board ship in a strong wind and then rolled around in a rice patty. She was still picking the little grains out from what was left of her braided and coiled bun.
Moreover, she had just awakened again from another fitful dream to find she was still in the strange place with her silent guard with his long black queue and his red cap. And it was dark out. Whether it was closer to midnight or dawn, she couldn’t tell. She thought it was still the night of the same day during which she’d intended to visit Eleanor, the day she would have met Philip by the pelicans. However, she wasn’t certain.
It made her want to cry, except she had no tears.
She tried again. “Water. May I please have some water?”
Her guard continued to look straight ahead, blinking occasionally.
She pointed to her mouth, then stuck out her tongue, which felt dry.
“I’m thirsty,” she said. “See, I fear my tongue is swelling.”
If only this eternal night would end. Maybe in the daylight, someone else would come in. Or maybe things would get worse.
She didn’t really care about her grumbling stomach, but she was thirsty.
“Water,” she said again. At least her hands weren’t tied. Whoever captured her probably considered she was no match for a man, so why bother restraining her? Especially when this brute didn’t close his eyes for even a moment.
Sitting up, she pantomimed choking herself, putting her hands around her own neck, coughing and gagging, then held her hand up as if drinking from a glass.
Nothing. The man didn’t even raise an eyebrow. What a fiend!
Rolling to her feet, she stood. That got a reaction out of him. He, too, surged to his feet. Sighing, Beryl wondered what she hoped to gain.
Her freedom, for one! Wouldn’t it be nice if she could save herself and wander back home to tell the tale? However, looking around for a weapon, she spied not even a candlestick. There was no fireplace, so no fireirons, though there was a brick area which appeared to be used for cooking. Directly above it, a hole had been chopped in the roof.
Cooking without a chimney? She couldn’t imagine the dangerous conditions.
It was obviously a poor family’s home. There was another bed, taking up most of the space, a small table at which the Chinese pirate sat, and an even smaller shrine in the corner with a buddha and some incense sticks such as she’d seen in the Orient.
Unless she could grab a brick and chuck it at her captor, there was nothing of use to her.
Would he stop her from exercising her legs? In truth, she thought she could sleep again but feared the frightening dreams, and she dreaded awakening to find nothing had changed.
With that in mind, Beryl took a few tentative steps toward the table. The man scowled, but there wasn’t really anywhere else to walk, so she circled the table, glancing at the door. Then she rounded the back of his pushed-out chair, close enough now he could reach out and grab her if he wanted.
As he turned, she noted a long knife handle protruding from the top of his pants, his queue dangling over it.
Shivering with the idea of the wicked blade, she passed him, heading toward the window with no covering except a tattered ... rice sack? She nearly laughed.
Glancing out into the darkness, she could see the faintest lightening of the sky in the distance, but the fingers of dawn had yet to crest the horizon.
Was that what they were waiting for? Enough light to sail away? Would she be taken aboard a junk and forced to return to the Orient?
The notion of a long voyage surrounded by pirates who couldn’t speak to her and seemed to think she needed neither food nor water, nor a privy for that matter, caused her terror to build.
Her guard was close behind her now. Even without words, she sensed standing by a window where she might be seen was the cause of his movement. Any second, he would probably lay hands on her and drag her away from it.
Could she break through the panes and hurl herself down to the street below?
Her body would undoubtedly sustain great injury, perhaps mortal.
Peering down to gauge the distance, with her eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, she spied the outline of a cat sitting in the street, fluffy and stout. Whether he was orange, she couldn’t see, but in her heart, she was certain of it. If Leo was there, then Philip was, too.
With anticipation raising the hair on her neck, Beryl turned abruptly, nearly bumping into the guard, who was only a shade taller than her but well-muscled as were all the sailors she’d encountered.
They locked gazes as she eased around him and returned to her place on the bed.
Sitting upright, hands on her lap, feet on the floor, she waited for history to repeat itself.
***
“THE FAMILY WASN’T TOO thrilled about being displaced. They were paid enough to do it but not enough to keep quiet about it.” Lord Cambrey had uttered those words in Lord Angsley’s parlor, and then the three men had taken off for the Chinese district of Limehouse, just past Whitechapel.
Lord Angsley had armed himself and lent a pistol to Cambrey, and Philip had his pepperbox revolver concealed under his civilized London coat, with extra shot in his pocket.
As they jumped into Cambrey’s coach, Beryl’s father exclaimed in surprise when Leo leaped in, even as he was closing the door.
“What in the hell?” Cambrey asked, as the cat sat on the seat, staring out the window, unbothered by the occupants.
“My cat,” Philip bit out, feeling sheepish. He hoped to say no more on the matter, but both men were staring at him, clearly confounded.
“He keeps company with me,” he added. “If he hadn’t made it inside, he would have ridden on the roof. He prefers the interior.”
Glancing at his brother’s cat, he lifted his hand to stroke it, but the cat’s head whipped around, daring him, and his tail flashed.
Thinking better of it, Philip dropped his hand to his lap. The only person since Robert who could touch its soft fur without injury was Beryl.
“The cat took a liking to your daughter when she was on my ship,” he finished lamely, as if that explained everything.
Cambrey stared at Leo with more interest. “Do you think it knows we are this very minute traveling to rescue her?”
“Don’t be absurd!” Lord Angsley said, but they all continued to look at the feline, who began to wash its paws and face as if preparing for ... battle.
The journey to Limehouse and into the heart of the docks area of Limehouse Hole, where the Isle of Dogs jutted out into the Thames, seemed to take an eternity. In reality, with the streets being empty at five o’clock in the morning, their ride took less than half an hour.
“Your driver didn’t spare the horses,” Philip said with appreciation as they got out of Cambrey’s carriage a block away from where Beryl was being held over a fishmonger’s shop. He watched while Leo sauntered along the street in the dim light, sitting down on the pavement as if he’d been designated the lookout.
They had a short window of time. They needed the cover of darkness but not the pitch-black of night when terrible mistakes could be made. As long as it wasn’t sunrise, they weren’t too late.
They’d discussed the plan during the journey. Knowing from the Chinese sailor, who worked for the East India Company and who’d accepted a handsome amount from Cambrey to tell him everything, only three pirates were there. The rest were on board the junk at the nearby Limehouse docks.
Lord Angsley would stay on the street in case any of the pirates escaped with Beryl, whereas Cambrey and Philip would reach her via two routes. The earl was going through the fishmonger’s, breaking in as it wasn’t yet open and then rushing up the stairs. Philip was scaling the back of the building, and, to that end, he quickly disappeared into the alley.
His heart was thumping as if he were boarding an enemy’s vessel with cannons exploding and pistols firing. The stakes were far higher than any adventure he’d had in China, except when he found Beryl the first time. He simply hadn’t realized then how important this woman would become to him.
Now, she was the greatest treasure he’d ever gone after.
The back of the building had no trellis to assist him, but he was near the docks and this was a sailor’s home. The man knew the dangers to his family of being trapped on the second floor. Thus, a crude ladder made of thick, knotted rope dangled from above, where there was not a proper balcony so much as a wooden ledge. No doubt the sailor’s wife hung her laundry from it on dry days.
For Philip, it was nothing to climb and gain access to the two-room home, as he’d been told it was. Trying to peer inside, however, through the grimy window, half covered in cloth was pointless. If he jimmied it open, it would take too long and make too much noise, alerting any pirates on the other side.
With a deep breath, using his shoulder and foot, he simply crashed through the window, revolver drawn.
Everything happened at once. He heard a scream from the next room — Beryl! He saw two men arise from mats on the floor, their weapons coming out as they did. Then Cambrey broke in the door from the stairwell, and the pirates’ attention was divided.
Hearing the click of a trigger, he started shooting at the same times as each of the other men in the room.
As always happened in a battle, Philip waited to feel hot lead tear through his flesh. When it didn’t, and the gunfire stopped, the earl was still standing on the other side of the room and the pirates were writhing on the floor.
After Beryl’s scream, there’d been only silence from the next room. If she wasn’t alone, her captor had been given all the warning he needed. Nodding to Cambrey, Philip did the only thing he could think of, he broke the door down.
The room was empty.
How in blue blazes?
It took only a moment to see the outline of a trapdoor to the fishmonger’s below, situated in the middle of the floor, a common enough apparatus for when the room had been storage instead of a family’s living quarters. A table that must have stood over it, was now tipped on its side.
Bloody Hell!
“She’s gone,” he said to Cambrey.
Flinging the hatch open, Philip slid down the ladder below. As his feet hit the sawdust of the shop floor, he heard the earl behind him. The two of them went crashing into the street.
It was deserted, save for Lord Angsley a few yards down and Leo on the crude wooden sidewalk directly opposite. In a flash, the cat crossed the street, running like the lion he was named for, slipping past both men and into the alley.
“Which way did they go?” the earl yelled toward his uncle.
“They didn’t come out!” Lord Angsley returned.
Philip and Cambrey stared at each other a moment.
“We’ve been tricked,” Philip said, turning and running back into the fishmonger’s. Over his shoulder, he added, “We should’ve known Beryl couldn’t get down a ladder that quickly, not in a dress.”
Like a monkey, Philip scampered up the ladder and back into the room above. Then he saw it, a panel in the wall gaped open.
“Dammit! She was right here the whole time.”
“Not anymore,” Cambrey said, dodging past him to the other room where the pirates remained, either passed out from loss of blood or dead.
“Go right!” Philip yelled, and the earl hurried to the broken window.
Cambrey climbed out on the wooden ledge, and Philip was directly behind him. Then, for the first time in an eternity, he saw her, though in the dim light before dawn she was merely a shape. Beryl was being dragged along by her arms toward the end of the alley, kicking and struggling the entire way.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t making a bit of difference. The pirate continued as if she were no more than a flopping fish, a nuisance but not a deterrent. Once they went out into the warren of small streets and doorways of Limehouse Hole, Philip would lose her forever.
The earl was already on the rope ladder climbing down, but Philip couldn’t wait. The love of his life was about to vanish, and there would be no point to his life if she did so.
“Sorry,” he muttered to Cambrey as he climbed onto the ladder, too, and when he reached the earl’s shoulders, he slid down the man’s back and jumped the rest of the way. Then Philip began to run as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.
Hearing the noise behind him, the pirate quickened his pace, hampered by Beryl’s flailing gown and arms.
Chasing him nearly to the alley’s end, Philip decided he’d have to risk taking a shot, though the distance was far and the narrow lane between the buildings was even darker than the street.
He’d spent three shots in the small room, leaving him three more. Without breaking stride, he fired, thinking to warn the man by shooting into the ground to his right. The man didn’t hesitate.
Philip dared not aim too far left in case he hit her. Firing another shot, he missed again.
And then the pirate stopped short, with Beryl crashing into him and her captor nearly losing hold of her.
Philip couldn’t see what was at the end of the alley until he was a mere ten feet behind. Then he saw him — Leo, puffed up to twice his size, standing sideways in a perfect arch, tail like a flue brush, and hissing like oil on a flaming fire.
“Móguǐ!” yelled the pirate, which Philip knew meant either devil or demon.
True enough, Leo looked as though he could be both.
In the blink of an eye, the cat ran and leaped upon the pirate, undoubtedly shredding the man’s shirt as he climbed his body to his head, knocking off his cap in the process.
Releasing Beryl, who staggered backward and fell to the ground, the Chinaman was scrabbling with both hands to pull off the animal.
Philip aimed but hesitated. After all, Beryl was safe, and there was no reason to kill the man. Then, still screaming and frantically clawing at Leo, the pirate reached behind, grabbing for the knife handle protruding from his cloth belt.
“I’ve got her,” Cambrey assured him, and out of the corner of his eye, Philip saw the earl helping his cousin to her feet.
And then the blade was in the pirate’s hand, and Philip, with only one shot remaining, fired.