A Disappearance in Drury Lane (3 page)

I put on my hat as I stepped out into the dark passage. I was worried myself, and not happy that Marianne had chosen to tell me about Abigail’s disappearance so late in the proceedings. Many things could have happened to her between leaving in the summer and now.

Coleman seemed ready to be rid of us at the moment. He said a truncated good night and closed the door quickly behind us, shutting out the light and warmth.

“Well?” Marianne asked as she put her hand on my arm as we walked back to Russel Street. The short afternoon had drawn to a close as we’d talked to Hannah, and now the lane was nearly black, a fog seeping up from the river to chill us.

“Well?” I asked in return.

“Will you be leaving for Brighton, or maybe Bath?”

“Neither at the moment,” I said. “I will be going to Oxfordshire, to get married.”

“Your wedding’s not for two days. Surely you can stop at Bath before you run to your nuptials, and see if Abby’s there.”

I was about to snap that Marianne was sanguine about the time it took to journey around England, but I closed my mouth. She was truly frightened.

“I promise I will do what I can,” I said. “Both before I leave and after I return.”

And I would. Abigail Collins was in danger, no doubt of that. She might have decided she was safer hidden in Brighton or Bath—I hoped with friends she could trust. On the other hand, her enemy might have found her and done something irreversible. That I did not like to contemplate, but I’d seen too much evil in my life to dismiss what Mrs. Collins could face.

“I can begin inquiries at least,” I said. “Discreet ones—I give you my word I won’t put Abigail into any danger if she’s being hunted. I’ll talk to the delivery firm. They might remember something about the sender, though I have little hope of turning up new information. And Grenville must know people in Bath and in Brighton who might be able to help. But I really cannot postpone my trip to Oxfordshire.”

Marianne gave me a dark look. She knew I could not, but she would continue to be displeased about it.

Fog grew thicker by the minute as we walked along Russel Street toward Covent Garden and Grimpen Lane. Marianne shrank to me, not only for warmth but also for protection against pickpockets or robbers who might use the fog for concealment.

I believed someone followed us, but they kept to the shadows, stopping when I turned to look. A predator? Or one of Grenville’s servants, assigned to keep an eye on Marianne. More probably, it was a man or men belonging to James Denis, sent to watch me.

We reached the turnoff to Grimpen Lane without incident. Marianne signaled a landau—Grenville’s—waiting in Russel Street in the direction of Covent Garden. The coachman saw her, nudged the horses forward, and made his way toward us.

“Will you let me know what you’ve found before you rush off to your wedding?” Marianne asked as the coach stopped next to her.

“Of course. Though I doubt I will have a chance to discover much before I leave.”

“As you like.” Marianne accepted my hand to help her inside, and I shut the door for her. She put her head out the open window. “Thank you, Lacey,” she said sincerely.

I stepped back from the landau, the coachman started the team, and the carriage rolled off into the fog. I settled my coat and walked into the dark mouth of Grimpen Lane.

Fingers landed on my arm. I grabbed the wrist the hand was attached to, swung around, and brought up my walking stick.

A soft gasp came out of the fog. I stopped, startled, and stepped back, looking down into the face of a young woman I knew. She looked back up at me, alarm in her dark eyes.

“Felicity,” I said in surprise, releasing her. “Where did you—”

My words were cut off by a heavy blow between my shoulders. Not from Felicity, but from someone behind me, ready to rob me while the lovely Felicity distracted me.

I swung around with my stick, but the darkness and fog made me as blind as Hannah. A cudgel from a second attacker smacked me in the side, in my ribs. I struck out again, this time contacting a body with my stick, drawing forth a grunt.

Another blow landed on my back and then on my injured knee. I cursed as lightning pain lashed through me, and I fell.

“Don’t kill him, for God’s sake,” I heard Felicity say.

Kind of her. I swung my stick again, trained to go on fighting no matter how much I hurt. On the battlefield, fighting meant survival.

On the streets of London, it meant my attackers increased their assault. I took another blow to the ribs and then one to the head. White spots danced before my eyes. I managed to get my sword out of the cane, and I stabbed upward. I heard someone yell, and then another blow to my head made everything darker than the surrounding fog.

*** *** ***

I awoke cold, wet, hungry, and very, very angry.

The light in the room was weak, but it stabbed through my eyes when I opened them, increasing the fierce pain in my head. I let out a groan between dry, cracked lips.

A glass landed against my mouth, and fiery liquid trickled inside. Gin. Foul stuff. But at the moment, the only thing that wet my tongue. I swallowed, feeling the gin burn all the way down to my stomach.

“Thank the Lord,” a woman’s voice said. “I thought they’d gone and hit you too hard.”

“Felicity.” At least, I tried to say the word. My tongue blocked my mouth, and very little came out.

“They made me.” She sounded angry. “I didn’t want to do it, Captain, but he said they’d kill you, and me too, if I didn’t bring you along.”

“
He
who?”

She didn’t enlighten me, or perhaps my words came out an incoherent jumble. The light in the room was feeble, a rush light that did little to illuminate.

I concentrated on staying awake, though the gin engulfed me with waves of sleepiness. I’d seen enough head wounds on the battlefield to know that going to sleep could be deadly. I reached out, surprised when my hand worked, and managed to touch Felicity.

“Why?” I asked.

Felicity bent over me, her hair hanging down in a straight black swath. “I didn’t ask him.”

She might be lying, and she might not. Felicity was a game girl, but she had intelligence and was a little more observant than the other girls of the streets. She hadn’t picked up the Cockney or other London dialects of her colleagues, speaking with more care and less slang.

From what I understood, Felicity’s mother had been a slave brought here from Jamaica; Felicity’s father English or European. Her mother, freed in England, had become a housemaid, raising Felicity to be the same.

Felicity hadn’t fared well in service. She’d told me the man of the house at her last place had taken plenty of liberties with her, threatening her with dismissal and ruin if she denied him. She’d decided that, if men wanted such things, she might as well make some profit from it, instead of spending her days hiding from her employer. Her dark skin, smooth black hair, and large brown eyes made her sought after on the streets, though of late, she’d taken up with my old sergeant, Pomeroy, now a Bow Street Runner. I did not think Pomeroy would approve of her helping to snatch his former captain away in the fog, however.

“I’m getting married, damn it.”

Felicity leaned closer. “Don’t try to talk. You’re hurting, but it will soon be over.”

With what? My death?

I’d spent the last two years angering dangerous people—easy for me with my hot temper, my stringent views of right and wrong, and my tendency to poke into things that were none of my business. I’d annoyed Bow Street and its magistrates as well as high-placed gentlemen in army regiments, lordships, underworld criminals, the headmaster of a prestigious school, a powerful woman who ran brothels, and various other men about town.

I also knew many secrets of one very dangerous man, James Denis. Perhaps he’d decided I knew too much about what he’d done in Norfolk.

“Denis,” I said.

Felicity understood. “I told them. I told them what would happen if Mr. Denis got word. But they wouldn’t listen.”

Hmm, perhaps not Denis then. Upon reflection, the abduction was all wrong for him. Denis had captured me once before but known I’d get away. I’d come to understand that if Denis wanted me dead, he’d kill me before I realized it had happened.

I found if I took my time and had patience, I could form words that were somewhat discernible. “Who has brought me here?”

The trouble was, time had lost meaning for me. I paused so long between words that minutes went by before I could form the complete sentence.

Felicity didn’t answer. The rush light burned out, the straw of it crumpling into nothing, and I was in darkness.

Much later, after more hunger and thirst, another light made me open my eyes again. This light was made by a tallow candle—I smelled it—and its glare illuminated the eyes, nose, and mouth of a man.
Only
his eyes, nose, and mouth, a disembodied face in the darkness.

The sight was so terrifying I began to laugh. I could hear Lady Breckenridge’s cool voice, admonishing me for being late to my own wedding—
You were waylaid by a bulbous nose, bleary eyes, and slash of mouth? Really, Gabriel, why did you not simply lay him out and climb out the window?

I had no idea who the face belonged to. I did not recognize him from my wanderings about London, or as a friend of my many acquaintances. He was, as far as I knew, a complete stranger.

“Why were you at the theatre?” he asked me.

The question brought the buried laughter to my lips. Two eyebrows joined the rest of the face as they came down over his nose, which made me laugh harder.

A kick to my ribs made me cough, but I couldn’t stop laughing. “Why were you at the theatre?” he repeated.

“Seeing a play,” I managed to gasp out. Why else did one go to the theatre?

“I meant today. Drury Lane. Through the back. No performances tonight.”

With effort I drew a breath and forced my laughter to quiet. I raised a weak hand and beckoned him closer, coughing a little, which wasn’t feigned. My mouth was dry, and the kick to my ribs had radiated pain.

The man bent down. Now I could see wiry side-whiskers growing on his cheeks, shaved off before they reached his upper lip.

I opened my mouth and shouted as hard as I could, “None of your business.”

The answer got me a blow across the face. The man swung on Felicity. “Get it out of him. Any way you can.”

He walked away. The glow of the candle illuminated a compact figure, the man not tall. Strong, though. My face and side ached.

He disappeared, taking the candle with him. While I lay still, trying to quiet the waves of pain, I assessed what I’d learned of the man in the short moments. His speech and accent put him as middle-class or even a gentleman, not a ruffian from the gutter. I hadn’t seen his clothes, but he’d smelled of soap and clean wool. His side-whiskers had been carefully trimmed, as had been his thinning hair.

I still had no idea who he was or why he was interested in me or Drury Lane theatre. Had I just met the man who’d put together the incendiary device meant to kill Abigail Collins?

Felicity rummaged in the darkness, struck a spark, and lit another rush light.

I hated rush lights. The smell of them reminded me of my miser of a father who’d refused to pay the tax on either wax or tallow candles. Not that he wouldn’t turn about and spend a fortune on his mistresses or gaming, but the rest of the family lived under the sputtering gloom of rush lights. Good lighting and his family had not been as important to my father as women or cards.

Felicity sat down on the cot with me and smoothed her hand over my chest. The gesture, as light as it was, hurt. I’d likely broken a rib.

“Tell me,” I said to her.

“Well, I don’t really know, do I?” Felicity settled in beside me as though she were a lady come to take tea. “He thought you fancied me and would come when I beckoned. I told him he was wrong about that, but he doesn’t like to listen.”

“Why is he interested in the theatre?”

Felicity opened her brown eyes wide. She was a striking woman, the bone structure in her face and the color of her skin displaying both her African and European ancestry. “I told you, I don’t know. He snatched me too.”

“You were walking about freely on the street,” I said, anger allowing my words to flow past the pain. “I struggle to believe you’d be obedient to a man you didn’t know.”

“I obey him because I’m trying to
avoid
chains,” Felicity said. “If I don’t help him, he said he’ll sell me onto the first ship to Jamaica. Not why would I want to go there? After all the trouble my mum took to get away from there in the first place?”

She spoke lightly, but I read fear in her eyes. Laws now prevented the slave trade in England, but the unscrupulous still sold human beings onto ships that would take them to the Indies or Americas, where slavery was still legal, and slaves were in abundance. Felicity would be bought and sold like chattel, and I did not need to be very imaginative to understand what she’d be bought for. She sold her own body on the London streets, true, but that was her choice, and she collected and kept the money. She was owned by no one.

If Felicity disappeared into slavery, her life would be impossibly harsh, and likely short. She was intelligent and wily, so perhaps she could convince an owner to treat her better, but the odds were not good. In the end, she would have no rights, no redress, nothing to prevent her captors using her as they wished and disposing of her when they were finished.

My voice was still weak, but my convictions were strong. “I won’t let that happen, Felicity. Never.”

Instead of falling into a swoon and declaring me her savior, Felicity laughed in true mirth. “Fine words from a man tied to a pallet. You couldn’t run a step.”

“Fetch me my swordstick, and we’ll see.”

“Can’t. Left it in the street.”

“In the street?” I half rose, anguished. The walking stick with the sword inside it had been a gift from my lady, bought to replace another stick I’d lost in dire circumstances. The new walking stick had a gold head, engraved.
Captain G. Lacey. 1817.