This Duchess of Mine Read online

  He pulled his watch from his waistcoat and glanced at it. He had forty minutes to board or the Peregrine would launch without him. The king had a mind to take his revels into the middle of the Thames and then float downstream, the yacht blazing with light and music pouring through the open windows.

  At that very moment the carriage lurched and came to a halt. Elijah summoned his patience. London streets were crowded, and obstructions were common.

  He waited two minutes before he banged on the roof. “What the devil is going on, Muffet?” he shouted.

  “We’re through Aldgate, but the street is blocked ahead, Your Grace!” came the shout back from his coachman.

  Elijah groaned and pushed open the carriage door. The grooms were off the vehicle and standing at the horses’ heads. A crowd was milling about the street, making it hard to see the source of the disturbance. “What’s going on?” he demanded, pushing his way to the front.

  “We’re not entirely sure,” Muffet said. “See, Your Grace, they’ve barricaded Sator Street. And they’re still working on the blockade.”

  Sure enough, entry to the street was barred by a growing wall of furniture, beer barrels, and debris. People milled about cheerfully, handing up a stuffed armchair, ducking out of the way as a barrel came free and bounced around the street. There were a couple of small fires burning to the side, and what looked like a lively trade in baked potatoes.

  “Anyone in charge?” Elijah asked.

  “Not that I can see,” Muffet said. “And Your Grace, it’s going to be a proper mess getting ourselves out of here.” He jerked his thumb, and Elijah realized that their carriage was merely the first of a tangled mess of carriages streaming in from outside London, now caught inside the city gate. Some people appeared to be backing their carriages, or trying to, but they were hampered by others who had apparently decided to scold their way to the front of the line.

  Elijah glanced down at himself. He was dressed in full court attire, as befitted an event held on the king’s yacht. His coat was a deep yellow-gold, embroidered with mustard flowers. His buttons were gilded. He would stand out in the crowd like a damned marigold.

  He strode toward the flickering but bright light cast from the fires at the foot of the barricade.

  The moment he came into the light, the cheerful calls and shouts died. A young man with lank black hair and a mouth like a trout’s froze in the very act of hoisting a wardrobe to the top of the barricade. The sturdy fellow hauling it up recovered faster. “Evening!” he shouted down.

  “Good evening!” Elijah shouted back. “May I ask for the reason for the barricade?”

  “Riots in the city tonight,” the man shouted back. He jerked a thumb behind him. “Limehouse ain’t never been rioted in, and it ain’t going to happen tonight either. We’re not letting any of those hellhounds into our houses, nor yet into the square neither.”

  Elijah eyed the barricade. “It looks remarkably sturdy.”

  The man beamed. “Like I said, we’ve never been rioted in yet. I learned me barricading from me pa. We can put it up in under twenty minutes and we does it whenever we thinks it needful. The Watch knows,” he added a bit defensively. “They’re all back there behind the barricades.”

  “Is the rioting sure to happen tonight?” Elijah shouted.

  “We’ve never been wrong yet. You’d best get your carriage out of sight. There’s many a bastard in these parts would love to snatch those matched grays of yers, yer lordship.” He started to haul on the wardrobe again.

  “You put that up in twenty minutes?” Elijah bellowed.

  “That’s right,” the man shouted back. He had the wardrobe now, precariously balanced on top of the armchair.

  It was going to fall. Elijah moved back. It fell, with a great, splintering crash. Luckily the fish-lipped boy scrambled out of the way.

  Elijah cast a glance behind them. The narrow street was entirely blocked by vehicles. Aldgate would be jammed for hours, if not all night.

  If there was a riot, he would lose his horses. Unless…he eyed the blockade. Minus the wardrobe, it wasn’t as high as it might have been. Six feet perhaps. He could smell the riot coming, smell it in the excitement of the men, in the frenzy with which they were piling up furniture, and in the utter absence of children.

  “You!” he shouted up at the stout man, who was staring down at the wardrobe and cursing in an extremely creative manner.

  “Got no time for chatter matter!” the man bellowed back.

  “Get off the blockade. I’m bringing my horses over and my men as well. Clear space on the other side!”

  Muffet appeared at his shoulder. “Your Grace, a carriage tried to back through Aldgate and the fool hit the wall and shattered his undercarriage. The way out is entirely blocked. You’ll have to climb the barricade. You’ll be safe on the other side, and the grooms and I will defend the coach and horses.”

  “Absolutely not,” Elijah said. “I won’t leave my men or horses behind. Given the situation on the street behind us, there’s likely to be a riot started by this very blockade, if for no other reason. There’ll be blood at some point.”

  “They’ll never take down that blockade to let us in,” Muffet said.

  “They won’t—and they can’t,” Elijah said, examining the complicated maze. It held everything from chairs to dining room tables, all bound together with rope in a haphazard way that looked as if it would take days to untangle.

  “Take the horses out of the leads. I’ll be damned if I allow them to be lost in whatever riot is about to happen. Pull the carriage over against that building. It’ll probably burn, but I don’t mind that so much. How many grooms do we have? Two? Send them together. Tell them to climb over that barricade and wait for the horses.”

  “We can’t get the horses through,” Muffet protested.

  “I can defend them, Your Grace. I have my pistols.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Elijah said. “And I must be on the king’s yacht within the half hour. Take the horses from the coach and we’ll get them to the other side.”

  “You can’t mean to jump them!”

  “Galileo will have no problem with the barrier, so you’ll take him over. I’ll go first with Ptolemy.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Your Grace! Neither horse is trained for jumping. What if Ptolemy stumbles?”

  “Nonsense,” Elijah said. “I don’t have time to quibble about it, Muffet. I have to ensure that these horses and yourself are safe, and then get to the yacht before she launches. If Ptolemy makes it over, you should have no problem; Galileo is the stronger horse.”

  A moment later the coachman returned with both horses. “James grew up in Limehouse,” he said, “and he can talk his way through. I’ve sent him over.”

  “Good man.”

  “Your Grace—” Muffet began desperately.

  But Elijah was already slicing the leads, cutting them to the length of reins. Then he was swinging up on Ptolemy. “I’ve an appointment with the duchess,” he shouted down at Muffet. “Follow me.”

  He began backing Ptolemy, to give them enough space to gain speed. He felt like a boy again, riding bareback with Villiers through the meadows behind his estate, leaping anything they could find, turning around, and leaping it again.

  Ptolemy was trained to draw a carriage, not be ridden, let alone bareback. He pranced madly, trying to pull his head free. Elijah wound the leads around his right hand and calmed the horse with his left. Once he’d backed as far as he could, he turned the horse’s head back toward the barricade. It rose, a tangled maze against the houses, lit by leaping flames.

  Ptolemy tried to buck again, but Elijah brought him down. Both horses were beloved and expensive, and he’d be damned if he would sacrifice them to a riot, let alone expose his men to the danger of trying to protect them.

  “Steady,” he whispered. “Steady.”

  Then he loosed the reins and Ptolemy leapt forward, obediently dashing straight for the barricade. El
ijah judged the distance, accounting for possible defects in his abilities due to the shifting light, reached the exact spot, signaled—

  Ptolemy leapt up, powerful rear legs throwing them into the night air. For a moment it seemed as if the snarled furniture was rushing toward them instead of the other way around; Elijah caught sight of a brass pole sticking out at an angle that could impale a horse’s stomach. And then they were clearing the furniture, coming down with a hard jolt, a rush of wind, and a sharp snap of his teeth.

  James was there, reaching up for the leads. Elijah tossed him the reins. “Keep them safe,” he told the footman, who was quickly pulling Ptolemy out of the way so Muffet and Galileo could join them.

  “It’ll be no problem, Your Grace,” he said, tugging his hat. “There’s a mews just two streets over.”

  “I thought they were blocking a square?”

  “Oh no, sir. They’ll be barricading all of Limehouse, with a good eight thousand souls inside. Limehouse doesn’t welcome strangers. It’s known for that. Everyone who lives here knows that it’s safe. See, there’s the Watch.”

  Sure enough, London’s finest were warming their hands over a fire. “I need to get to the Thames,” Elijah told James, just as Muffet landed behind him, Galileo having sailed over the barricade with no problem at all. “I don’t have the faintest idea where we are.”

  James chewed on his lower lip. “You’ll have to go out by the barricade at Bramble Street,” he said. “I’ll give the horses to Muffet, Your Grace.”

  “You needn’t—”

  “You’ll never make it without me,” James said.

  “These streets aren’t like the ones you’re used to, Your Grace. They’re scrambled up and people like it better that way. It’s not far, but it’s messy.”

  Elijah followed the footman from one knotty little street to another. There was a holiday spirit inside the barricades. The windows were all open, and people spilled out of the narrow tip-tilting houses, singing songs in a cant dialect that Elijah couldn’t follow, shouting things to each other. They fell silent when they saw him, but not in a unfriendly way.

  For the night, their enemies were not the rich, like himself, but the violent. The riot held everyone’s attention, from the old men sitting outside boasting of foregone days and foregone barricades, to the young women frying up sausages in a lively trade.

  Elijah had a strange, sudden wish that Jemma was with him. His expensive, delicious duchess would enjoy this strange evening. She would love to be following him through these streets.

  The barricade at Bramble Street was a better one than the first. It was intricate but ordered. Men were handing up long pointed objects.

  “What the devil are those?” Elijah asked.

  “Spears,” James said, weaving his way through the excited crowd toward the looming barricade.

  “Spears? Spears?”

  “They’ll have a few guns, but in the dark, spears are a better deterrent. Though no one has attacked a Limehouse barricade in some twenty years. You’d have to be mad to do so,” James said. “Stark mad, so most rioters hove off in other directions. It makes the men around here quite disappointed, really. They keep extending the barricade, in the hope that someone will prove foolish.”

  “How are we going through?”

  The footman grinned, his face wild in the leaping firelight. “You’ll see,” he said.

  It wasn’t until they were in the shadow of the barricade that Elijah realized that there was, in fact, a small trickle of people making their way through a man-shaped hole in the bottom. “They’ll only block the hole when they get word that the riot has started,” James said, worming his way through the people. “Make way!” he shouted. “It’s a duke here. Make way!”

  Elijah felt like a fool, walking through the crowd in his brocade—not to mention his high heels and wig—but that was life as a duke. He’d resigned himself long ago to looking and acting in ways that most men found incomprehensible and that he, in the inner sanctum of his study, often found just as foolish.

  He strode along, the heavy silk of his coat swinging around him, and the people fell back, letting him pass.

  “We’d best make hurry,” James said, almost pushing him through the hole. “They say it’ll start soon.”

  “How on earth do they know?” Elijah asked. He checked his pocket watch. The yacht had taken up anchor. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—miss his appointment with Jemma.

  “They know,” James said. “There’s the Thames, Your Grace. I’ll just ask one of the mudlarks about a boat. Wait a moment.”

  Some minutes later Elijah sent James back to guard the horses, in the unlikely event that one of the barricades failed, and he climbed into a rowboat owned by a man with the less than inspiring name of Twiddy.

  Even hadn’t he known of the Limehouse blockades, he could have guessed that something was afoot in London. Fires burned all over the city: not huge, uncontained fires, but small glowing ones, the kind that crowds of men gathered around to warm their hands, to talk and gossip.

  Twiddy was a tired-looking fellow in a ripped coat who seemed to have only half his mouth at his disposal, since the other half was frozen by a nasty scar that split his face in two. “You’re wanting the king’s big boat,” he said now, out of the right side of his mouth.

  “Yes,” Elijah said. “That is correct.”

  “Riots’ll start any minute,” the man said. His face seemed to sneer, though it was perhaps only because the left side was immobile.

  Elijah thought of asking whether the authorities had been notified, and dropped the idea. They’d be dunces not to have noticed, even if they weren’t officially informed. Oh, by the way, Mr. Constable, sir, there’s a riot due to start at ten o’clock tonight.

  He would make his way onto the Peregrine, inform the captain of the impending riots, and manage to get the yacht steered to a safe place. Then he would take his wife, bring her safely home, and that would be that. London could—nay, London undoubtedly would— burn, but if he could save Jemma, it would be enough.

  That was what his world had shrunk to: from his grand plans for the poor and the disenfranchised, to a desperate desire to be home in bed. With his wife.

  Twiddy pulled up his oars. “The yacht’s gone toward the Tower of London,” he said.

  Elijah leaned forward. “The royal yacht?”

  “It’s down where the hulks are.”

  “Then make all speed after it.”

  Twiddy shook his head. “I can’t do that, Yer Grace.” He bent over and spat into the dark water lapping greasily at the small boat. The only light came from a torch burning at his back, affixed to the prow.

  “I will pay you double,” Elijah said, realizing the moment the words left his mouth that he’d made a mistake.

  Sure enough, the man’s face darkened and the immobile left lip pulled savagely down. “I stand to be arrested if I goes near the hulks, and I can’t do it. Not for yer gold, not for nothing. I got two daughters at home.”

  “My wife is on that yacht,” Elijah said. “Why will you be arrested?”

  He spat again. “I’m demobbed.”

  A former soldier, Elijah translated. Which explained the damage to his face, but not why he couldn’t venture near the hulks.

  “Iffen a former soldier even goes near the hulks, they shoot him,” Twiddy said. “Because it’s me friends on those boats. Me brothers-in-arms. I stood with them, out there, and now they’re shut up worse than chickens in a coop. I don’t do nothing with the riots.”

  “The riots are coming from the hulks? Tonight?”

  But Twiddy hadn’t meant to reveal that, clearly, and his face closed like a trap.

  “I must get to that yacht,” Elijah said. “I will personally guarantee that you are not thrown in jail. I am the Duke of Beaumont, one of the highest in the land. I must get my wife off that ship!”

  Twiddy stared at him, the left side of his face twitching slightly.

  “I h
ave a large estate in the country. If you wish, I will employ you there, and your children and wife can come with you.”

  “Wife’s dead,” he grunted.

  “Then your daughters will be all the better for fresh country air and safety,” Elijah said. “You sound like someone raised in the dells. Look about you, man! Is this the place to raise children?”

  “Are you askin’ me if I choose to raise my girls here?”

  Elijah cursed himself silently. For someone with a reputation for a silver tongue, he was certainly awkward tonight. “I’ll take you out of this,” he said, sitting back. His heart was thumping in his chest, and he didn’t want to think about that. “I’ll take you to the country and give you decent work for decent pay. But you must get me to that yacht, and get myself and my wife off it.”

  “How’s we to do that? Likely they aren’t going to let someone like me draw up alongside the king’s yacht. Not on a night like this.”

  “They don’t know,” Elijah said. “They don’t know about the riots, or they’ve decided to ignore them.”

  Twiddy spat again.

  Elijah felt like spitting too, but dukes didn’t spit, and it was too late in life to start. A second later Twiddy picked up his oars and started silently moving them upstream again. He stuck close to the banks as they turned into the main cleft, clearly unnerved by the great floating prison ships anchored in midstream. There were redcoats on all the decks, Elijah was glad to see. Perhaps they would head off the riots.

  They tooled silently along, the drip from the oars drowned out by the frequent howling shouts coming from the shore.

  “It’s up ahead,” Twiddy finally said with a grunt.

  Elijah leaned forward, braced on the gunwale, and caught sight of the golden pearl that was the Peregrine. From this distance it seemed to be a glistening dream from a fairy tale, shimmering from the touch of a magic wand. But between them and the yacht floated two broken-down hulks, prisons for men who rotted in chains.

  “Most of them don’t live the first year,” Twiddy said. It was like a curse under his breath.

  Elijah had argued against the hulks for years now. “In fact, one-fourth die in the first three years,” he said.