Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...
With a muted growl, MacHeath shook off the words of the old carol that kept repeating inside his head. In the dank, chilled warrens of London’s East End, he doubted if even the geese were getting fat. If there was one thing the men and women who loitered on the cracked pavement and straggled out of the gin shops had in common, it was that they were lean. Wolfishly lean. Made gaunt by the gnawing, perpetual hunger of poverty, and worn down by the bleakness of life in this unholy backwater of the thriving metropolis. Even the youngest of the children who gathered at the street corners, trying to cadge a penny from every passing stranger, bore haunted expressions in their pinched faces.
He hiked up the collar of his ragged greatcoat against the icy dampness, and then fingered the coins in his pocket with his left hand. He could eat or he could drink. The few shillings he possessed would not let him do both.
As he passed the entrance to a tavern with the dubious name of the Doxy’s Choice, the decision was made for him. Alf Connor, and his mate, Bully Finch, were huddled inside the doorway, well out of the stiff wind that was blowing like frozen daggers off the nearby Thames. Connor owed him five pounds, a sum that would be most welcome considering his current financial situation.
He did a half turn back to the two men and saluted them with a crooked grin that held little mirth. Connor’s narrow face fell when he recognized MacHeath.
“Mackie,” he muttered, ducking his head once in acknowledgment. “You know Bully Finch?”
“Aye,” MacHeath said. “We’ve met in passing.”
Finch’s broad cheeks tightened into a smile that was more of a grimace. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” he said, before blowing hard on his fingers to warm them. “Been out of town?”
MacHeath nodded. “I found myself an easy berth as valet to a rich Cornish cub. I passed the spring and summer with him.”
Finch chortled, rapping his knuckles on MacHeath’s shoulder. “That’s a fine joke, Mackie, you as a gentleman’s gentleman. Your cub ever notice you was missing one of your paws?”
“It occurred to him eventually,” MacHeath drawled. “He wasn’t the most wide-awake of fellows.”
“Hard to miss that stump, eh?” Finch said. “Even for a gentry cove.”
“Not a stump any longer,” Connor pronounced with a wink. “Look closer, Bully.”
Finch leaned forward, his eyes widening when he beheld MacHeath’s right hand. It was gloved, as the left one was, in tan leather. The fingers beneath the glove were set in a relaxed pose, half curled toward the palm. It wouldn’t fool anyone upon close examination, but MacHeath knew there were plenty of people who never guessed the glove covered nothing more than a carved wooden facsimile. But in spite of this clever ruse, he usually kept the hand in his pocket or tucked inside his coat front while he walked, fearful always of the despised epithets ... maimed, crippled, deformed.
“Gor,” Finch murmured as he raised the false hand into the spill of light from the tavern’s lantern. “It’s like a bleedin’ miracle.”
MacHeath resisted pulling back as the other man examined the hand. Bully Finch was not someone you wanted to wrestle in a doorway. He was six and a half feet of bulging sinew arranged over a big-boned frame that would have done a prizefighter proud. MacHeath was not a small man, nor was he lacking in courage, but he’d think twice about crossing Finch, at least over something as trifling as this. He gritted his teeth and stood still while the man poked and prodded the shaped glove.
“He had it made in Scotland this fall,” Connor pronounced with a knowing look. “Some young doctor up there messing about with soldiers who lost their arms and legs in the war. I ran into Mackie directly he got back from there.”
“And lost five pounds to me at cards,” MacHeath muttered to himself.
Finch whistled in admiration as he released the hand, which MacHeath promptly tucked into his coat front. “Ain’t that a pip. My da’ lost a leg in a wagon accident. Dragged half a mile, he was, behind his team. Poor old git hobbled around on crutches till the day he died. He sure could have used that Scots doctor.”
MacHeath nodded toward the nail-studded door. “You going inside?” The icy needles of wind were having no trouble penetrating his ancient greatcoat.
The two men exchanged a furtive glance, then Connor said, “We be waiting for someone. Business and all.”
MacHeath knew better than to inquire after the nature of their business. In this part of London, when two men waited out in the cold to meet someone, chances were pretty fair that any commerce at hand was of the illegal variety. He shrugged and brushed past them. “When you are finished,” he said over his shoulder to Connor, “come inside. We have some business of our own to discuss.”
Connor winced. His voice rose an octave. “I bin meaning to come to you, Mackie. You know I am good for what I owe. And if this cove ever shows up, why I’ll have—”
Bully Finch elbowed him hard in the ribs. Connor’s mouth snapped shut, and he looked stricken for an instant. “I’ll come inside,” he assured MacHeath. “I’ll need a dram after waiting out here in this perishing cold.”
MacHeath passed into the dark, smoky interior. He studied the layout of the place for a moment before claiming a seat on the high-backed settle beside the fireplace, where he stretched his long legs out toward the hearth with a sigh of relief. He noticed with a sour grin that someone had hung a ragged garland of pine boughs over the mantel in a failed attempt to add a bit of seasonal cheer to the seedy tavern. Christmas was coming, but the merriment and gaiety that would spread through the prosperous sections of London would never permeate the mean walls of the Doxy’s Choice.
The barmaid, a wraith in faded muslin, brought him a bottle of gin and lingered a moment to smile down at him, displaying her discolored teeth! At least she still had most of them. But he was impervious to the open invitation in her eyes or the brazen posture of her angular body. When he refused to respond to her whispered offer, she took herself off, muttering loudly about men who acted above themselves.
He was just beginning his onslaught on the gin bottle when he heard Finch’s gruff baritone come drifting up from over the high back of the settle. “I promise you, we’re safe as houses. They know me and Connor here ... know better than to bother us.”
Connor’s reedy voice added, “There’s no point in us freezing our tails off outside. Just sit yourself down there, against the wall. All cozy and private.”
MacHeath shifted on his seat until he was at the end of the settle nearest the wall. Tucking his head back into the corner, he pretended to be asleep.
Another man was speaking now, his voice a sibilant whisper that MacHeath was barely able to make out. When the man raised his voice at one point, the hair on MacHeath’s nape stood right on end.
Good God! He’d recognize that voice in the farthest reaches of hell. Even though it had been ten years since he’d heard it, it had been seared into his memory. Darwin Quincy, the only man MacHeath had ever taken the trouble to hate, was sitting behind him with two of the rookery’s most unsavory denizens. Like always harkened to like, he knew, so it was no surprise that Quincy was trafficking with Connor and Finch. What did surprise him was that Quincy, who had been a notorious nipfarthing all those years ago, had chosen these two as accomplices. Their services never came cheaply.
He hitched closer to the tiny opening between the wall and the settle, listening intently.
“You have to make sure she’s terrified once you’ve gotten her away from the coach,” Quincy was saying emphatically. “Though I don’t want her actually harmed. I trust you two know the difference.”
“Happens we do,” Finch said. “But how can we put the fear o’ God into her, if we don’t manhandle her a bit?”
Quincy laughed softly. “She is a gently bred young woman, Mr. Finch. I expect the mere sight of you two will be quite enough to send her off into a swoon. She’s a plucky chit, but her father’s kept her well away from riffraff.”
“Plucky, eh?” Connor said, and then asked, “What if she puts up a fight?”
“Can we cosh her?” Finch’s tone was almost anticipatory.
Darwin Quincy sighed. “Take whatever measures it requires to frighten her out of her wits. Shoot one of the coachmen, perhaps ... that should set the proper tone. And then, once you’ve made off with her, you can tie her up or gag her if you must. But don’t mark her. She is to be my wife, after all.” He paused and added silkily. “I hope you take my meaning, gentlemen.”
Finch guffawed. “You don’t want us tumbling her. Now, that’s a pity . . . always hankered to bed a lady.”
Quincy made a disparaging noise. “Trust me, Mr. Finch, they are never worth the trouble. Though the woman in question is hardly a real lady ... her father is nothing more than a glorified merchant, a shipbuilder who puffs himself up like a gentleman.”
MacHeath’s head jerked up slightly in surprise. The shipbuilder had to be Quincy’s uncle, Alexander Prescott. MacHeath had worked for him a time back in Exeter. He knew full well that the man only had one child, a rag-tail hoyden of a daughter, who hardly had the makings of a gently bred lady. He’d always suspected she’d end up disguising herself as a boy and sailing off on one of her father’s merchant ships. Somehow he doubted the passing years had turned the minx into a paragon of virtue.
She had to be, what … twenty-five now. And she’d obviously never married, not if Darwin Quincy was plotting to make her his wife. Or perhaps she’d been widowed. Alexandra Prescott was exactly the sort of female to drive a man to an early grave.
The men behind him let their conversation lag when the barmaid came over to refill their glasses. While Finch bantered with the woman, MacHeath let his mind wander back thirteen years, to the fateful summer’s day when he’d first met Alexander Prescott’s daughter.
She’d been ambling along one of the piers where her father’s tall ships were berthed, a black-and-white spaniel puppy capering beside her. The spaniel kept nipping at her long skirts and making her laugh. MacHeath was testing the lines on one of the new ships, and when he heard a workman call out to her in greeting, he’d gone to the ship’s rail to watch her pass by.
Everyone who knew Alexander Prescott had an opinion about his daughter. They swore she was a miracle child, borne to two people both well into their forties. They also proclaimed her a changeling—this being the usual explanation when fair-skinned, towheaded parents brought forth a swarthy, black-haired child. Some whispered that she was the devil’s own spawn, reckless and spoiled, and yet as full of impish charm as Old Nick himself.
MacHeath had worked for her father for nearly a month, but had not yet set eyes on the remarkable Alexa. He’d watched her progress down the dock with a dawning smile. There was surely nothing conventionally pretty about her. Her dark curls were tangled into an unruly mop, and her wrinkled white pinafore looked as though she’d had it off a vagrant. But there was a spirit there—in the way she danced along the wooden planking and in the boyish lilt of her voice as she playfully chided the puppy. It showed in the tilt of her head and the bright gleam in her eyes. He felt his heart swell.
In spite of her unkempt appearance, she moved with assurance and grace, a child secure in the knowledge of her own consequence. Neither proud nor arrogant, merely at ease. Since MacHeath rarely felt at ease, he’d found himself envying this girl. Not for her father’s wealth or for her bright future, but for her sheer, brimming confidence.
As she drew even with the side of his ship, his pleasure in watching her turned to dismay. The gamboling puppy had finally managed to trip her, and she stumbled onto her knees, perilously near the edge of the pier. When she scrambled to her feet, he saw that the hem of her skirt was still caught beneath her slipper. He leaned forward and called out to warn her. As she spun to look up at him, she staggered. The next instant, she overbalanced backward and tumbled into the water with a startled cry.
MacHeath didn’t hesitate. He vaulted over the railing in one fluid motion, aiming his dive for the few feet of clearance between the ship’s side and the dock. He hit the water in the exact spot where the girl had gone under, praying he could find her in the murky river water. A pale billow of white floated below him, and he reached for it. His fingers closed tightly over her arm, then he tugged her swiftly to the surface, stroking with his free arm, while she struggled against him.
A small crowd of workmen had gathered at the edge of the dock. Eager hands reached down to draw the pair from the water. MacHeath knelt there on the sun-warmed planking and swiped his wet hair back from his brow. The girl was on her feet now, surrounded by her father’s men. In the distance, the commanding figure of Alexander Prescott could be seen hurrying along the dock, his nephew, Darwin Quincy, trailing behind him.
MacHeath rose and took a step toward the girl. “Are ye all right, miss?”
She pushed past the men encircling her, came right up to him, and swung her small fist at his face. The blow connected with his nose hard enough to make his eyes water.
“Aow!” he cried, staggering back more in surprise than in pain. “What th’ devil was that for?”
“For making me look like a fool,” she said between her small white teeth.
He rubbed gingerly at his nose. “What else was I tae do? Ye gave me such a fright, pitchin’ into the water like that.”
“I gave you a fright?” she exclaimed hotly. “How do you think I felt when something grabbed onto me under the water and wouldn’t let go?”
“I was trying to save yer life,” he muttered, fighting to restrain his temper. As usual it didn’t work. “And if ye had better manners,” he growled, taking a step toward her, “ye would thank me for not leaving you there tae drown.”
“I wasn’t drowning,” she proclaimed with a scowl.
Prescott now loomed over them, his shaggy white brows bristling with concern. He wrapped an arm around his dripping daughter and tucked her tight against his side. She looked up at him, into eyes that were the same shade of clear, bright blue. “Tell him, Father. Tell him I wasn’t drowning.”
“She swims like a fish, actually,” Prescott said with overt pride. “Learned how three summers ago in Barbados. But I believe you’re one of the new lads, so you wouldn’t know that. As for her manners ...” He tugged on one of the girl’s wet tendrils. “She is young yet. There’s plenty of time before I need to spoil her nature with propriety and such.”
He smiled at MacHeath then, and held out his hand. “But it’s never safe to be in the water so close to a ship, so I will thank you for your efforts, Mr.—”
MacHeath offered his name to the man, the name he had been born with. The one he hadn’t dared to use in the past ten years.
Prescott shook his hand enthusiastically. Behind them Darwin Quincy fussed with the watch fobs on his elegant waistcoat and muttered to his uncle that they would miss their luncheon if they tarried.
“You go on to the house without me,” Prescott said, motioning to the carriage that waited at the end of the pier. “And take Alexa with you. I’ll stay here and get this young fellow cleaned up.”
As he turned to follow Prescott, MacHeath didn’t miss Quincy’s piqued expression. He couldn’t resist smiling when Alexa tossed her wet hair over one shoulder, spattering her cousin’s pristine coat with a shower of water droplets.
Prescott had taken him back to his office and given him one of his own shirts and a pair of dry breeches, all the while engaging him in conversation about shipbuilding and hull design and rigging. He’d listened calmly while MacHeath spoke of his life with his late father, a shipwright in Clyde, and of his own dreams of designing fast ships.
The old man must have liked what he heard, because from that day on MacHeath had advanced rapidly in the shipyard. Before a year had passed, he found himself working with the old man’s select team of shipwrights, designing the fleet merchant ships for which the Prescott name was famous. For the first time in his life, he felt as though he’d found a safe harbor.
In some strange way, his success had been due to that willful child.
He’d tried to befriend her, even brought bones for her spaniel whenever the old man required his presence at the manor house on the hill above the village. But whenever he and Alexa Prescott were face-to-face—and she always seemed to be underfoot after the incident on the dock—she would just glower at him and refuse to say a civil word. Eventually they achieved a sort of truce, but she was likely to dart away from him in a temper at the slightest provocation.
Connor and Finch would have their work cut out for them, he reckoned, if they really planned to carry her off. Especially if she’d retained that pugnacious streak.
Behind the settle, chairs scraped on the oak floor. He heard Quincy utter a few final instructions, and then he watched as the slim blond gentleman crossed the floor of the tavern, holding his arms close to his sides. From the back, Prescott’s nephew hadn’t changed much, still the delicate tulip of fashion. MacHeath suspected his face would have shown the passage of time—the bland handsomeness now marred by ten years’ worth of excessive drinking, Quincy’s own particular vice.
MacHeath waited until the blond man was through the door before he moved from his seat. He scuttled away from the fireplace, keeping his head below the raised settle, and found a deserted table near the tavern’s back door. He eased into a chair and resumed his onslaught on the gin bottle.**
Over the next hour, he watched the barmaid carrying pints of ale to Connor and Finch. He knew it wouldn’t be long until they’d need to avail themselves of the privy behind the tavern. When Connor at last came stumbling across the floor toward the back door, MacHeath placed one booted leg in his path. Connor banged up against it and glared at him resentfully. “Let me through, Mackie ...”
“Not until we settle your account. I gather your, er, business went smoothly.”
“Can’t say that I’m happy,” Connor whined. “Finch set up this rig ... so he’s claiming the larger cut. But I’m one step from the noose, and if I get nabbed for carrying off a lady, I’ll swing for sure.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” MacHeath said, and then added softly to himself. “And these are most desperate times.” He cocked his head up at Connor. “So Finch’s gentleman is arranging the abduction of a lady. Not my idea of romance, but then I’ve always had traditional notions in that department. You know … flowers, carriage drives, music, and moonlight. But who am I to quibble if abduction is the latest rage in the ton?”
“It ain’t the latest rage.” With a grumbling sigh Connor sank down into the chair beside MacHeath. “Finch’s gentleman tried all those other things. The lady wants nothing to do with him.”
Smart girl, Alexa, he thought approvingly.
“So he’s fixed it that Bully and me will carry her off while she’s traveling down to her da’s house for Christmas. A few miles outside Reading we’ll waylay the coach.” He cast a nervous look over his shoulder, but Finch was obscured behind the settle.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me this,” MacHeath said idly. “None of my concern.”
“Aw, I’m not giving you any of the particulars. The thing is, I’m not sure I can trust Bully not to tup the chit. He’s always had a weakness where females are concerned. And the gentleman won’t pay up if the lady is ... well, you know.”
“Compromised, I believe is the word.”
“Right. Because, you see, the gentleman is the one who’s goin’ to do that. We’re to take her to some hedge tavern, where he’ll rescue her, pretend to chase us off like a fine, brave lad. Of course, he and the chit will be forced to spend the night together, which will leave her reputation in tatters.”
MacHeath caught himself before he blurted out, But he’s her cousin. Still, it made no sense; a lady traveling with her cousin, however loathsome the individual, was hardly compromised.
In his next breath, Connor offered an explanation. “If she don’t throw herself into his arms in gratitude—which I take leave to doubt—I expect he’ll have to resort to a bit of coercion. And now Bully’s gotten spleenish ‘cause he wants to be the first one in.”
“Is she such a beauty, then?” he asked, toying with the bottle cork. “That the gentleman can’t live without her?”
Connor blew out a breath. “Pull the other one, old sod. Money’s the lure here ... it always is. Chit’s father is rolling in the ready, and she’s his only get. Finch’s gentleman’s got hisself in deep with the bloodsuckers ... so he told them he was betrothed to the girl to keep them from pounding him into the next year.”
“Next year’s not far off,” MacHeath said softly. He quite liked the image of Darwin Quincy being beaten to a pulp by outraged moneylenders. He did not, however, like the image of Alexa Prescott being ravished by her cousin.
Connor pushed back his chair abruptly and stood up. “I better go….”
He took a step toward the back door, and MacHeath’s left hand snaked out and grabbed him by the wrist. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Connor winced. “Lord, Mackie, you got a wicked grip for a cripple.” He dug around in his breeches pocket and pulled out a pile of sovereigns, tossing them onto the table. “Good thing Finch’s gentleman paid us sommat in advance.”
As he staggered away toward the door, MacHeath swept up the coins with his good hand, Connor had paid him something over what he’d owed—in sovereigns and in information. Which was fair, considering the debt was over a month old.
He left the tavern before Connor returned. The night air was frigid, but with gin in his belly and gold in his purse, MacHeath hardly noticed. He tucked both hands into the deep pockets of his greatcoat and turned into the wind.
It was chiming midnight when he reached his rooming house; the booming bells of St. Mary-le-Bow echoed across the clear night. At the doorway, he paused to look up at the sky. Orion and his hounds coursed the heavens off to the east. In the northern sky the two Dippers hung suspended, with Polaris visible in the smaller constellation.
Once, in another lifetime, those stars had been his guide, the beacons he followed with as much certainty and awe as those three wise men who had followed a lone star to a stable in Bethlehem. He’d never been a religious man, but that particular story had always appealed to him, the timeless tale of a wondrous light shining down from the night sky, leading weary travelers to their goal. There wasn’t a sailor born in any century since, whose heart didn’t quicken to that image.
Sailor. He gave a dry laugh. Damned pointless to even think that word.
He avoided, at all costs, any thoughts of the time when the sea had been his life. But seeing Darwin Quincy, being reminded of Alexa Prescott and her father, had brought it all back to him—those three blessed years when he had designed ships for the old man. But that happy time hadn’t lasted. Nothing good ever did, he knew that now. He’d been cast out in disgrace, left without the good name he’d been born with.
So he’d taken on another name and another life, as a Channel smuggler. And though the choice had placed him on the far side of the law, he had the solace of a life at sea. Eventually he’d inherited a ship from an aging smuggling captain whose arthritis forced him to retire.
The Siren Song he’d named her, though she’d been called the Black Bess under old Tarlton. He knew it was bad luck to change a ship’s name, but by the time he’d finished making modifications on her, she was hardly the same ship. The Siren had brought him only good luck. And good profits.
That was before he’d met up with an English spy in a tavern in Dover. The man had gotten him drunk, and had somehow convinced him to work for the British government carrying intelligence officers to France. No one knew the Channel better than he did, the fellow had insisted, no one had a faster ship.
MacHeath had been flattered, but there was more to it than that. He’d realized that night—or more truthfully, the next morning when his head cleared—that he wanted more than anything to reclaim the part of himself that he’d lost, his sense of purpose and some small particle of honor.
So he’d agreed to work for the Home Office, though in a most unofficial capacity. For the first time since he’d left the shipyard, he felt he was doing something worthwhile.
But that had ended abruptly two years ago. The Siren Song had been waiting off Calais to pick up her usual human cargo, when a French man o’ war had appeared around the headland. The French ship had the weather gauge and, after a short chase, she’d blasted the Siren from the water. The sea was no longer an option for MacHeath after that, not only because he’d lost his ship. His hand had been crushed by a falling mast, and a French surgeon had been forced to amputate it.
Now there was only pain when he thought of the sea … pain and an incredible sense of loss.
And he blamed it all, every wretched course his life had taken, on one man—Darwin Quincy. It was Quincy who had been responsible for his disgrace at the shipyard, and his hatred of the man had festered for all those years since. Now, he realized, he had the means to pay him back. In spades.
Ah, but what was the use of it? It wouldn’t regain him his lost hand or the good will of Alexander Prescott, the man he’d once thought of as the best master in the world.
With an oath he pushed the door open and went into the dim hall of the rooming house, still fighting off the strains of the cheerful carol that refused to leave his head.
“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.”