This Duchess of Mine(10)

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.”