MacHeath spent the night visiting every grogshop in Cudbright, which was a considerable number. He spilt more gin than he drank, knowing that he needed to keep a clear head, but by his listing walk and slurred speech, not a man in the village would have guessed he was still sober when three o’clock rolled around.
He was bellowing out an old smuggler’s chantey, feeling his way along a dark alley, after being rousted from the Capstan, his last stop of the night, when the two men came up behind him.
He turned to face them, and then appeared to lose his balance. “Sorry,” he said with a sloppy grin as he leaned into the brick wall. “Ever’thin’s spinnin’ aroun’ and aroun’.”
“Bleedin’ sot,” Finch said with a sneer. “Look at him ... he’s disgusting.” He raised one tree-trunk leg and booted MacHeath in the belly. He went spinning in earnest and landed on his stomach in a puddle. He tried several times before he was able to raise himself up onto his elbows.
“Alf!” he cried brightly when he saw the weedy little man beside Finch. “Lookee ... iss m’old frien’ Alf.”
As Finch pulled out his pistol, MacHeath rolled onto his back, his arms wrapped around his middle. He gazed up at the man with a wide smile. “Teash you a lesson, Bully ... gonna teash you ...”
“You’re not gonna shoot him, are you?” Connor asked worriedly, tugging at Finch’s sleeve. “Remember our orders, what he told us, we are not to harm him....”
Finch spat. “I recall it well enough. Our peacock wants that pleasure for himself, and he’s paid well for the privilege.” He fingered the fine gold snuffbox in his coat pocket. It was only a small inconvenience that the initials A.C.P. were inscribed on the lid. He knew a handy fellow in London who could alter those letters all out of recognition. “Anyway, we’ll get to watch. Never seen the gentry at play ... it might be entertainin’.”
Between them they hoisted MacHeath onto his feet and half carried him out of the alley. MacHeath continued to sing lustily—in a surprisingly strong baritone—as they made their way up the cobbled street, but his captors were unconcerned. To any stray passerby, they would appear to be three harmless men returning from a night on the town, the two steadier ones, in time-honored tradition, helping their jugbit friend to stay upright. It was Christmas, after all, and celebratory excesses were likely to be overlooked.
They stopped at a boardinghouse on a street near the riverfront, and Connor pushed the door open. As they dragged MacHeath, now singing lyrically about the ladies of Spain, into the front hall, the door on their left cracked open an inch, and a bloodshot eye appeared in the opening.
When the door swung wide, Finch glared at the harridan in the dingy linen bed gown. Landladies and their ilk did not rank high on his list of tolerable people.
He forced himself to smile. “Sorry, Mrs. Cloyne. Our friend’s got hisself the devil of a toothache. We called in the barber to have it out, but we figured to get him drunk first. He’s turned a mite noisy.”
She motioned to the stairwell with her chin. “Get him out of my hall, then. He’s wailin’ fit to wake the dead.”
“Once the barber gets here and starts in to work on him, there’s no tellin’ how much of a squawk he’ll make. So don’t fret yourself if you hear him screamin’ up there.” Finch passed her a coin to make sure they would not be disturbed.
She bit into it with her few remaining teeth, and then nodded once before retiring back into her chamber.
It was tough work getting MacHeath up the narrow stairs. He’d gone limp on them by the second landing, still singing his lungs out as he lay sprawled on the planked floor. Finch muttered that he was of a mind to pitch him over the railing, and have done with it, but Connor managed to get him on his feet again.
He knew that Bully could have easily carried MacHeath unassisted, had it not been for the wound on his neck, the dog bite on his thigh, the gash on his forearm, and the injury to his temple, which was a swollen, stippled bruise of red and purple, quite like the inside of a pomegranate. The bruise on his own head was painful but fortunately less visible.
Connor recalled their recent interview with their employer. Old Quincy’d sure had his work cut out for him, convincing Finch not to kill MacHeath outright once they caught up with him. Alf had never seen his mate so riled. But Quincy had soothed him with promises of an even greater reward, and had made him swear on his mother’s grave—an oath that held some meaning, even among the denizens of the East End—that he would bring MacHeath in alive.
They finally reached the top floor, where the room they’d rented earlier that evening, on Quincy’s instructions, was situated. It had several things to recommend it—it possessed a fireplace, a luxury both men were looking forward to after their shivering sojourn in the abandoned barn, and it was the only chamber on that floor. No nosy neighbors, no squalling brats, no one to ask after the identity of the blond gentleman who would be arriving there as soon as they got word to him.
He helped waltz MacHeath into the room, and then shut and locked the door. MacHeath slumped onto the floor the instant Finch released him, and he only grunted slightly when Finch kicked him hard in the ribs.
“He’s out,” he pronounced, before he bent down and divested his captive of both pistol and knife, murmuring in admiration over the clever sheath that held the latter weapon behind the man’s back. He’d have to get one like that ... much handier than reaching down into your bleedin’ boot.
Together they tugged off MacHeath’s cape and greatcoat, then they propped him up in a greasy upholstered chair and tied his wrists firmly to its arms.
“Go fetch him,” Finch said to Connor as he sat down at the pine table and filled a mug from a bottle of stout. “No, stop looking at me like that. I promise I won’t kill him.” He eyed the knife that lay on the table beside the fine dueling pistol. “I’ll maybe just have a little fun with him, once he comes to.”
Connor was still shaking his head as he went down the four flights of stairs. Quincy better come along lively like if he wanted to have his chance at MacHeath.
* * *
MacHeath congratulated himself on ending up exactly where he wanted to be. Most men would consider being tied up and at the mercy of Bully Finch a less-than-heartening situation, but he still had a few aces up his sleeve. William and Henry, for starters. He’d seen the two dark shadows on the opposite side of the street just before Connor had shut the front door. His loud singing had made him and his two captors easy to follow. And, as he’d hoped, his drunken placidity had kept either of them from doing him any real harm. He’d been the very essence of benign nonresistance.
He shifted his head onto one shoulder and began to snore in loud, irregular bursts. Several times Finch came over and slapped at his face, and got nothing more than incoherent mumbling for his trouble.
“Bleedin’ sot,” he muttered.
After fifteen minutes had passed, Finch finally resorted to dousing MacHeath with the dank water from the pitcher on the washstand. He watched in satisfaction as his captive returned to sputtering consciousness.
“Hello, Mackie,” he said with a grin.
“Zat you, Bully? M’eyes are all foggy. And what’s wrong with my arms?” He twisted in the chair. He raised his head and saw the bottle of stout. “Lord, Bully, I need a drink. Just a little drink ...”
Finch raised his mug and looked at MacHeath tauntingly over the rim as he took a long, deep swallow. Then leaned across the table and picked up MacHeath’s knife.
“I got my own steel,” he said, “but there’s somethin’ so satisfyin’ about cuttin’ a man with his own knife. Like a dog bitin’ his own master.”
He knelt down before the chair where MacHeath was trussed, and ran the razor edge of the knife along the bound man’s jaw.
“Not a pretty face, Mackie, but I do hear the ladies admire it. Must be those strange eyes you got. Well, let’s see if we can’t get them to look somewhere else.”
He was just raising the blade to his cheek, when MacHeath kicked out, putting all his back into the blow. The toe of his boot landed squarely on the Finch family jewels.
Finch collapsed instantly onto the floor, in a writhing ball of agony. MacHeath calmly sliced the cord on his right hand with Mr. Featherbridge’s carving knife. He’d positioned it under the leather harness on his forearm, so that an inch of steel jutted out from his shirt cuff. While Finch rolled and bellowed before the hearth, he cut his left hand free and stood up. The big man put up little resistance as MacHeath trussed his wrists and ankles together, thinking to himself that he’d performed this task far too often tonight.
He then tucked his pistol into his waistcoat and sat down to await Quincy.
* * *
Alf Connor let himself in through the front gate of Prescott’s house—which had been left unlocked as promised—and went immediately to stand below Quincy’s bedroom window. He flicked a few pebbles against the glass, and eventually the window shifted open. Alf gave the high sign and watched him recede into the room. Five minutes later, Quincy came tiptoeing out the side door, his cloak over his arm.
“You best hurry,” Connor whispered. “I don’t know how long Finch can sit there without giving in to the urge to carve Mackie up into little pieces.”
Quincy went quickly through the gate and headed for the brambly path that led down to the village. He was approaching the towering oak that marked its beginning, when he heard something rustling below him. He put his hand out to warn Connor, and together they waited in the darkness. Someone was coming up the hill—they could hear the ragged breathing over the sighing of the night wind.
Quincy caught the man from behind as he emerged into the road.
“Let me go,” Henry cried. “Lord love us, Mr. Quincy, you know me. I work for Mr. Prescott.”
“What are you doing out so late?”
“It’s Christmas, sir,” he exclaimed. “Been down to the Mermaid, I have.”
Quincy released him slowly.
“What’re you doing out so late, Mr. Quincy? If I can make so bold to ask.”
“We’re keeping watch on the house ... in case that MacHeath comes back to bother Miss Alexa.”
Henry pointed to Connor. “He helping you, an’ all?”
“Yes, he’s one of the men from Reading I told you about. Now, off you go.”
“Aye.” Henry gave him a wide grin as he turned toward the house, but Alf Connor stepped in front of him. “Wait a minute ... I know you ... I know your voice and I seen those gappy teeth before. You were in Rumpley—you were the lad who told us where to find the livery. Have you been following me, you damned—”
But Henry didn’t wait to hear anymore. He darted around Alf and sprinted toward the house. The front gate was only yards away ... all he had to do was get inside. Surely they wouldn’t shoot him, not here, not right in front of the—
Connor’s knife lodged high in his back. He fell forward, one hand still reaching for the gate, scrabbling in the gravel of the road. And then it stopped moving.
“Drag him into the bushes,” Quincy ordered. “He might not have known anything, but I’m not taking any chances. Not now.”
* * *
Quincy and Connor had no notion that anything was amiss at the boardinghouse until they reached the second landing. A white-haired man was passed out against a doorway—a Christmas reveler, no doubt, overcome by an excess consumption of spirits. They were about to brush past him, when Quincy happened to look down. Even though the man’s face was tucked into his muffler and his head was canted against his shoulder, there was something familiar about him. Something too blasted familiar.
“Get up, William,” he uttered as he prodded him with the toe of his boot. “We’ve already dispatched Henry, so don’t look for him to aid you.”
William climbed slowly to his feet, his eyes glaring bright in the dim light of the hall. “You festering worm,” he hissed. “They’ll stretch your neck for that.”
“Phfff.” Quincy shrugged. “And who’s to lay charges against me? You won’t be around to do it, I promise you that. Now, get up the stairs.”
Connor was unlocking the door to the top-floor room, when he heard a muffled noise from beyond it. “Finch?” he called out. There was no reply.
Quincy instantly tugged William back against him, and set his pistol against the side of his head. “Go on.” He motioned to Connor. “Open it.”
The first thing he saw was Bully Finch, bound and gagged on the floor by the fireplace. When he beheld the tall man with a pistol in his hand, his guts clenched.
“Throw it down,” he growled to MacHeath. “Or William will be the worse for it.”
“Don’t do it, lad!” the coachman cried. “I’m sorry they caught me ... I should have stayed out in the street. There’s no one to help you now ... they already got to Henry, and I’m a dead man sure.”
But MacHeath knew he had no choice. He hadn’t counted on them getting their hands on his allies. He’d made no contingency for such a thing.
With a grim expression tightening his mouth, he tossed his pistol onto the table.
* * *
As weary as she was, Alexa could not sleep. She lay on her bed, the hours passing, and still sleep would not come. Her thoughts kept returning to MacHeath, and each time they did, something twisted painfully inside her. It was no use trying to curb her wayward brain—the need she felt was only partly the fault of that usually reliable organ. Most of the yearning came driving up from the pit of her stomach, where it meshed with the aching need in her heart.
Sweet Lord, she missed him ... his voice, his touch. She missed his wry laugh and the way his dark eyes danced when he teased her. She longed for the comforting scent of him, which was the essence of everything she now craved— driftwood burning in a night fire, heather sprigs trapped in a folded blanket, sea spray sparkling on a cap of dark hair, the pungent smell of horses racing across a field, the heady aroma of claret poured for a newly wedded couple who would never have a wedding night
She’d grown so accustomed to having him beside her, that his absence left her feeling incomplete and detached from everything. Her conduit to the world was gone ... she was adrift and alone. She tried to convince herself that she would see him again, that he wouldn’t leave without any word of farewell. It never once occurred to her that he might be gone already.
After five days with the man, she had come to know him as well as anyone she’d ever met. She understood the workings of his mind and the needs that drove him. Which was why she was sure he hadn’t left Cudbright.
And as reassuring as it was to know he was still close by, it also made her fear for him. It was totally irrational, that fear. Quincy’s men were trussed up in a barn, where they would remain until her father sent his men to release them. Quincy himself was under this very roof. It was possible he could have gone out during the time she was closeted with her father, but he was here now. She’d peeped into his bedroom on the way to her own chamber and had been reassured, by the sibilant sound of his light snores, that he was fast asleep. Dreaming of her vast fortune, no doubt.
For all she knew, MacHeath was still with Mr. Featherbridge, drinking his fine brandy and watching him write out his sermon for Christmas morning. There was absolutely no reason for her to feel so troubled, and yet she couldn’t shake off the premonition that he was in danger.
Finally succumbing to her unease, she pulled on a day gown and buttoned Mr. Gable’s wool coat over it. If there was something wicked afoot tonight in Cudbright, she was not going to be blithely lying in her bed while it occurred. She brushed aside her own fears, she’d seen plenty of action this past week, and had become as seasoned as any recruit.
Furthermore, it was not in her nature to sit back and wait while someone she loved was in danger, real or imagined. MacHeath had come to her rescue often enough, and maybe now she could return the favor.
She checked Quincy’s room before she went downstairs. This time the bed was empty. A peek into his wardrobe revealed that his cloak was missing. Damn it! How long had he been gone? She felt his pillow with her palm ... and thought it might still be warm. Not too long, she prayed.
She crept along the hall toward the front door and nearly screamed in alarm when her father stepped out of his study.
“Something’s wrong, Papa,” she whispered intently. “Quincy’s not in his room.”
“I was drowsing in my study ... I thought I heard something out in the road.”
They went out the front door and along to the gate, listening for any strange noises. It was Alexa who heard the groans coming from the bushes across the road.
Her father pushed aside the bare branches, and then knelt down. “It’s Henry Wilkins, I think. Good Lord, the fellow’s covered with blood.”
Henry grabbed Prescott’s arm. “Was comin’ to warn you ...” he groaned. “They have MacHeath. Boardinghouse on Fuller Lane, next to the farrier ... top floor, I think ... William’s there waiting ... please ... go.” He lapsed into unconsciousness.
Alexa ran back to the house to rouse the servants, and watched anxiously as Henry was carried inside. Her father meanwhile, had ordered two horses saddled.
“I’ve learned it’s better not to leave you out of my sight,” he said as he boosted her into the sidesaddle.
“I can look after myself,” she declared, patting her coat pocket. “I found a primed pistol in Quincy’s wardrobe.”
Though the road to the village was more roundabout than the path, they made it into Cudbright in mere minutes, riding at a hard gallop. Alexa knew the boardinghouse Henry had spoken of. It was a rickety old firetrap that the city fathers had been threatening to condemn for years. But she was surprised when her father slowed his horse before the shipyard, reining in beneath the high iron gate.
“Wait here. I want to alert the night watchmen,” he said. “I suspect we could use a few able-bodied men.”
She watched him ride onto the grounds, and then turned her own mount toward the boardinghouse. The panicky feeling in her gut was inexorably drawing her there. She dismounted a block from the place, and tied her horse to a railing, before proceeding along the dark cobbled street. She kept on the lookout for William, but if he was anywhere nearby, he did not make himself known to her.
The only light showing on the facade of the boardinghouse was at the top window. It had to be where they’d taken MacHeath. Quincy was up there with him, she knew it in her bones, and her teeth showed white in a tiny snarl of fury.
She drifted back into the deep shadows on the opposite side of the lane and muttered a swift prayer that her father would hurry.
Then her head snapped up, and a tremor ran through her as a fearful, prolonged scream rent the still night air. It rose up and up, a sound of such indescribable agony that she had to cover her ears. No sane person could have made such a bestial noise. It was inconceivable.
But that scream had a human origin. Her whole body began to shake with sick fear, because she knew instinctively from whose throat it had emerged.
She had stumbled to the middle of the street, eyes intently focused on the top-floor window, before the last echo of that rending scream had died away.
She raised her pistol and aimed at the light.
Connor was already untying Finch when MacHeath relinquished his weapon. The big man came up off the floor and threw himself at MacHeath, forcing him back against the wall, grappling to get ahold of his lethal right hand.
“You’re mine now, Mackie. I don’t care what Quincy says ...” He caught him by the throat with one huge hand and shook him like a lion savaging a gazelle.
“Steady, Finch,” Quincy cautioned him. “I believe a little finesse is called for. And, no, I won’t deprive you of your fun. I think you’ve earned it.”
Finch grabbed a handful of MacHeath’s shirt and flung him toward the chair. “Tie him up again, Alf,” he ordered. “And the old man, too.”
“No, wait on Hastings,” Quincy said, stepping forward. He handed his pistol to Finch. “Here, keep this trained on him. There’s something I’ve been longing to do.”
MacHeath steeled himself for the blow, and was perplexed when Quincy merely reached out and took his right hand. “Very nice,” he said as he pried off the tan glove and shaped his fingers around the wooden hand. “Ah, but what’s this. He’s got a knife up his sleeve. How very clever.”
He removed the weapon, and then tapped it against MacHeath’s chin. “I always win in the end, Hastings. You ought to have learned that by now.”
“That’s not what I hear back in London,” he drawled. “Your bad luck at cards is legendary.”
“That’s of no matter now,” he said with a delicate shrug. “I’m to marry my cousin ... and will soon be rolling in the ready.”
MacHeath’s face darkened. “Prescott wouldn’t give her to you ... he can’t be that bloody blind.”
But Quincy made no reply. Instead he tightened his hold on the false hand and twisted it. MacHeath bit back his cry of pain as the leather harness dug into his arm.
“Look at you,” Quincy snarled. “With your fine gloves and your fine sense of honor, pretending to be a gentleman.” He twisted even harder. “But even with this, you’re still a pitiful cripple. You’re not fooling anyone, Hastings.”
“Leave him alone!” William cried. “For the love of God—”
Connor smashed his pistol over the old coachman’s head, knocking him back against the fireplace, and then smiled up at the other men.
Finch was now fairly dancing with frustration. “When’s it to be my turn?”
“Patience, my friend. I am only stoking the flames a bit for you.” His gaze then drifted to the hearth, where a small fire crackled, and his eyes lit up.
He turned back to MacHeath. “You should never have crossed me. It was a mistake.” And then he gripped the false hand tightly with both his own hands, and wrenched it right off MacHeath’s arm. The leather straps bit wickedly into his flesh before they snapped, and he staggered almost to his knees.
“No!” he cried, reaching forward as Quincy flung the wooden hand into the fire. The next instant he was throttling Quincy, the fingers of his left hand digging deep into the skin of his throat.
“Kill me,” he breathed against his ear. “I don’t care anymore.”
Finch pulled him off the blond man, and wrestled him down into the chair. “You’ll be dead soon enough,” he said. “Here, Alf. Give me that rope.”
This time he not only tied MacHeath’s arms to the chair, but his legs as well. And as a precautionary measure, he looped the remaining length of rope around his chest, affixing him to the chair back.
“You know,” Quincy said, stepping back to observe him, “something occurs to me.”
Finch spat. “What occurs to me is to carve him up till his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.”
“That’s too predictable.” His eyes drifted over MacHeath, the hatred in them like a living thing, coiled and vicious and eager to strike. He shifted his head and whispered to Finch. “What would a one-handed man fear losing the most?”
Finch’s face broke into a wide grin of understanding. He reached down into his boot and drew out his knife. It was a heavier weapon than MacHeath’s blade, made more for dirty work than splicing ships’ lines.
MacHeath felt the sweat start to bead on his forehead. He knew they were going to kill him ... he’d accepted that the moment he threw down his pistol. But how they were going to do it, and what they were going to do to him beforehand, was making his whole body quake. He wasn’t sure how long his nerve would hold out, and the last thing he wanted was to give Quincy the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.
Finch knelt down beside the chair. He gripped MacHeath’s left hand and laid the blade against the top of his wrist, pressing down hard enough to draw a thin line of blood. MacHeath’s heart surged up into his throat and his insides went liquid, when he realized what Finch intended.
“Beg me,” Finch crooned. “Beg me not to do it, Mackie.”
He increased the pressure, and MacHeath felt the blade slice into his flesh. He shut his eyes and willed himself not to cry out. They’d be doing him a favor, he realized, if they killed him after this. He’d have no desire to live with both hands gone. It was too hellish to contemplate.
“You’ll never touch her again,” Quincy whispered silkily from beside him. “Never feel her skin beneath your fingers, never caress her face. Christ, do you think she’d even look at you after this, except to feel revulsion?”
The scream rose up from inside him and would not be denied. All the pain and all the loss he’d experienced in the past ten years came roaring out of him. Agony and loneliness and desolation all mingled together in that piercing sound. The two men beside him actually reeled back, and Connor fell against the hearth.
Quincy recovered first. “Do it!” he cried, his face twisted into a maniacal rictus.
Finch raised the knife in a hatcheting motion, his elbow cocked.
The next instant a pistol shot shattered the front window. Glass flew into the room as though it had exploded from a cannon. The three men who were not bound immediately ducked for cover, Connor beneath the table, and Quincy and Finch scrambling to get under the bed. They all cowered, unmoving, awaiting the next salvo.
MacHeath slewed the chair closer to the window. “Come quickly!” he shouted in his carrying, quarterdeck voice.
There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs, and then the door cracked open. “On the table,” MacHeath called out. Alexa flung the door wide, ran in, and snatched up the pistol he’d thrown down earlier. She kicked Connor square in the chest when he tried to grab at her skirts.
“Get up, all of you,” she snarled. She was breathless and wild-eyed, and MacHeath thought that there wasn’t a more beautiful woman on all seven continents.
“Well met, cousin,” Quincy said as he climbed to his feet and brushed a legion of cobwebs from his coattails. “Still defending this rogue, I see.”
“What I see,” she said brusquely, “is something I’ve prayed to witness for five long days. And that is you with these ugly customers. You’ll have a hard time explaining this to my father.” Her gaze darted to Finch, who was sidling toward her.
“Get Quincy’s gun,” MacHeath said quickly. “And hold it on him. They won’t touch you if you’ve got him.”
She drew his weapon from his waistcoat, and then stepped behind him and set his own pistol against his ear, keeping the other one trained on Finch. She ordered Connor to untie MacHeath.
“You won’t shoot your own cousin,” Quincy said evenly.
“No, not if you tell me what really happened in my father’s office ten years ago.”
“I’ve told you what happened. I caught that scoundrel stealing, and he sliced my head open.”
“I’ll tell you, Alexa,” said MacHeath as Connor freed him. He stood up, and rolled his shoulders to get the feeling back into them. He then took the second pistol from Alexa and motioned Connor to join Finch on the other side of the room. “I’ve kept it from you long enough.”
He spared a glance at the blond man. “Now you’re the one who’s sweating, Quincy. You see, I knew you would come after me tonight—I saw your face in the church when I said I’d remembered a great deal about you. The pity of it is, when it happened I didn’t recall any of it until days later. Too late to keep me from Exeter jail.”
“Go on,” Alexa said. Her gaze drifted momentarily to something out in the hall, and her eyes brightened.
“I was working late, and I’d fallen asleep at my drawing table. The candle must have gone out, because when I awoke it was dark in the workroom. I thought I heard someone moving about in your father’s office. When I went to investigate, I found Quincy in there, at the open safe. I’m not sure which of us was the more surprised, but he acted first. He leaped up and struck me on the head, with something from the desk I assume, a paperweight or a bottle. He hit me several times ... there were at least three lumps on my head when I finally came to.”
“This is utter nonsense,” Quincy hissed. Alexa jabbed him with the gun and told him to keep quiet.
“The next I knew, I was being roused by the constables. They’d already bound my hands, and when they carted me away, I still had no idea what I’d done. I suppose I was in shock.
“I sorted it all out while I was in Exeter.” He added ruefully, “You have a lot of free time when you are sitting in a prison cell. The thing was, Quincy knew I could identify him, and so he turned the tables and made me the scapegoat. But to do that, he had to strengthen the case against me. I would guess he went directly to my quarters at the shipyard and planted more money there, plus some things he’d taken from your father’s desk. Then went back the office to rouse the watch.”
“I was cut on the head,” Quincy protested. “How do you explain that?”
“You tell me. What did you use?”
“What do you mean? You think I faked an injury to myself? No wonder you had to escape from Exeter ... no judge would have believed that sorry tale.”
“No, but I would have,” Alexander Prescott said as he stepped into the room. Three men filed in behind him, each of them carrying a carbine.
“I was wondering when you were going to stop loitering out there on the landing,” Alexa said.
“I had a mind to eavesdrop,” Prescott responded. “And you looked to have everything well in hand.” He gazed around him with distaste. “Though it looks like someone’s been up to no good in here.”
Fishing out his handkerchief, he handed it to MacHeath. “You’re bleeding, sir. And is that my good William there on the floor, all trussed up like the Christmas goose?” He motioned one of his men to untie him.
“Uncle!” Quincy cried, trying to push away from Alexa. “Thank goodness you are come here. Your daughter and that madman have been holding us here—”
“Us?” Prescott asked in a voice like ice. “Are you referring to these two ruffians? The ones you claimed you knew nothing about?”
“I ... uh ... that is ... you’ve got to see that—”
When he approached Quincy, his blue eyes had gone black. “Somehow I doubt you can talk your way out of this, nephew. But if you are inclined to try ... I suggest you do it to a magistrate.”
“No!” Quincy cried, thrusting past his uncle and running to the door. “You don’t understand ... none of you understand ... I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You were caught stealing—”
“It wasn’t stealing!” His fingers clutched the worn door frame. “I didn’t break into the safe ... I had taken the key off your watch chain ... you’d fallen asleep in the library after dinner.”
“So you stole the key, as well.”
“I was planning to put the money back ... it was just a loan.” His eyes darted around the room, seeking one face that was not looking at him with harsh judgment in their eyes. Even his hirelings were gazing at him with scorn, though perhaps more for his loss of control than for his larceny.
Prescott shook his head sadly. “And for that you let an innocent man get sent to prison? I am ashamed that I ever offered you a crust of bread, Darwin Quincy, let alone years of charity.”
“Charity!” Quincy snarled. “It wasn’t charity, it was what you owed me. You were nothing compared to my family, just a self-inflated merchant.”
He pointed a shaking finger at Alexa. “She was nothing. No beauty, no breeding.” His eyes nearly bulged out of his head as his gaze fell on MacHeath. “And him. A wretched, worthless Scot come begging at your door, who ended up gaining all your favor.”
“Take him out of here,” Prescott muttered. “I won’t listen to his slander.”
But before anyone could lay hands on him, Quincy ran up to Finch. “It’s all your fault! You and that weasel Connor. Inept, dunderheaded fools. You brought me to this—”
“It’s not my bleedin’ fault, you poncy, clutch-fisted leech!” Finch cried, breaking away from the man who was guarding him.
He launched himself at Quincy, and together the two men careened out the door and onto the landing. As they slammed into the ancient railing, there was the sharp crack of wood breaking. Quincy’s eyes widened with sudden awareness as he and Finch teetered there, and then Finch’s weight sent them crashing through the damaged barrier and into the open core of the stairwell.
Their screams mingled as they tumbled the three stories to the hallway below.
Prescott instantly wrapped his arms around Alexa. “Sorry, sorry,” he whispered raggedly into her hair. “I could have avoided this if I’d only listened to you.”
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Papa,” she said weakly. “Nobody’s fault.”
From over her father’s shoulder, her eyes sought out MacHeath, but he would not look at her. His face was pale and drawn, his mouth a grim slash.
The men from the shipyard muttered their condolences before they went out, a bound, shaken Alf Connor in their midst. MacHeath started after them, assuring Prescott that he’d see to removing the bodies, and suggesting that perhaps he and Alexa should remain in the room until that grisly task was accomplished.
Prescott’s voice stopped him at the door. “Hastings,” he said slowly. “Words have little merit ... but for now that’s all I can offer you. I am very sorry.”
MacHeath met his eyes, and then drew in a long breath. “So am I, sir. So am I.”
William was sitting up now, holding the false hand in his lap. “I plucked it out of the fire,” he said in a dazed, faraway voice. “It’s only a bit scorched, though the leather is damaged. Pity they killed my Henry ... the lad could have repaired it.”
“Henry was still alive when we left the house,” Prescott said. “They’d knifed him in the back, but I don’t think it hit anything vital.”
“Praise be,” William murmured.
Alexa sank down into the greasy armchair, which was still wrapped about with rope. She had a fair idea, from the seeping wound on his wrist, what had made MacHeath scream. And knowing that, she could not find it in her heart to mourn her cousin. She certainly wasn’t going to waste a second mourning Bully Finch.
There were footsteps out in the hall, and one of the watchmen came into the room. “He’s still alive,” he announced breathlessly. “Mr. Quincy, that is. He landed on that big rogue ... must of broken his fall.”
“Oh, blast,” Prescott muttered.
“His back’s all twisted, though. Don’t know that he’ll ever walk again.”