Linda Needham

Everingham Hall
Hertfordshire, England
Late September, 1819

“Y
our prisoner’s arrived, my lord. Summerwell’s just pulled him round back of the courtyard.”

Charles Stirling, 7th Earl of Everingham, paused as he entered his front door. His heart actually paused as well, and now it thrummed in his ears.

Success! So near, it was difficult to credit; even more difficult to believe that it meant so much to him.

“You’re absolutely certain, Mumberton: Summerwell’s got that bastard Captain Spindleshanks in the wagon with him?”

His starch-collared butler nodded, though there was a cautious cast to his old gray eyes. “That’s what he said, my lord.”

“Good, Mumberton.” Extraordinarily good.

Charles wanted nothing more than to bellow in triumph, to drink a fiery toast to the bloody end of Captain Spindleshanks’s seditious nonsense and his reign of terror, but he merely handed off his hat and gloves to Mumberton, then strode past him into the dim foyer. “Fetch Bavidge for me. I want to see him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Oh, and what of…uh, the other?” He had no words yet for the new resident at Everingham Hall, stumbled over the very idea. “The…”

“Your son, sir?”

My son. Where’s the bloody proof of that, I wonder?

“The boy” was the best he could manage. He shrugged off the unfamiliar and irritating twinge of guilt and heaped his scarf and his cloak across the man’s outstretched arms.

“He’s abed, my lord. Finally.” Mumberton’s graying frown drooped, as though the process had required a team of roustabouts and a load of grappling equipment. “Though, sir, if I might be allowed to say so, I’m not suited in the least to the position of nanny.”

Nor am I suited to fatherhood
. And certainly not when it came to the capricious antics of a six-
year-old. After three days, the title of father still pinched like an unjust accusation; it would always fit badly, if he allowed it to fit at all.

“I’ll take care of the matter, Mumberton.” One way or the other.

Charles shoved the problem from his mind entirely, tried to ignore the bedeviling image of the wide-eyed, thin-limbed boy who’d been left on his doorstep by that damned attorney.

“Tell Bavidge to meet me in my office in three minutes. And send Summerwell to me with the prisoner. Immediately.”

“I’ll do my best, my lord.” Mumberton started away with his teetering load.

“Your best, Mumberton?” Charles caught the man’s arm and turned him, plagued suddenly by a dark suspicion that all was not as well as it seemed. “Is Captain Spindleshanks in my courtyard, or is he not?”

“In your courtyard, yes. That’s where your prisoner is, sir.”

A sideways answer, if ever there was one. “He’s still securely shackled and about to be delivered to me?”

“All appeared to be in order, my lord, last I looked.” Mumberton’s eye twitched as he backed up a dubious step, and then another.

God only knew what the hell had happened during the arrest. Spindleshanks was a large man, according to the local legends, agile as a cat, shoulders of an ox—mythical to the tip of his
pointed tail. Blood might have been spilled; Charles could only guess whose and how much.

He’d know soon enough, and that felt damned good. “Then fetch Bavidge now. We’ve got work to do.”

“Right away, sir.” Mumberton scudded off down the hallway toward the cloakroom.

Charles freed a gloating smile once the man was gone. Captain Bloody Spindleshanks, at long bloody last. What a great pleasure it would be to finally meet the cowardly bastard face to face.

He’d memorized every word of every seditious broadside and placard that Spindleshanks had strewn about the countryside in the last two months.

And on and on went Spindleshanks’s familiar harangue. As clever as it was incendiary, but entirely and maliciously untrue.

Charles’s charter from the Home Office was to inquire into the facts in evidence, to study the depositions and magisterial reports, and then to submit an impartial finding about the tragedy. Another three weeks, and he would be done
with the matter, and peace would once again reign in his life.

He’d be damned if he’d allow the bastard to call his honor or his integrity into question. But far worse, the people could too easily be shaken to the point of rebellion with madmen like Spindleshanks riding through the night, spreading sedition, believing they could indiscriminately incite unrest and then outrun the law.

Charles was incorruptible, was his own man in all things. Captain Spindleshanks would pay dearly, and for a very long time.

Charles shrugged out of his coat, relieved to be home after that endless dinner with Liverpool and Sidmouth in London and the two-hour journey back. He strode into the orderly quiet of his office, where he had just enough time to rouse the oil lamp at his desk and light the chandelier above the circular table before Bavidge made his coat-tail-streaming, bleary-eyed entrance.

“Yes, yes, my lord. What can I do for you?” Bavidge hastily righted his cravat, drew his long fingers through his sandy-gray hair, and then stood at attention as though still in the army and prepared to do battle.

Charles retrieved the arrest warrant from his desk drawer and dropped it onto the tabletop, savoring the moment before he said, “We’ve caught him, Bavidge.”

Bavidge blinked at him. “Who is that, my lord?”

Great God.
“Spindleshanks, Bavidge. Get me the reports on the case. Every scrap of evidence.”

“Yes, my lord.” Bavidge went to the file shelves in the next room and returned hefting two large boxes, thick book files, the accumulation of the investigation into Spindleshanks’s activities. “How did you find him, my lord?”

Spies. Charles didn’t approve of them, the shadowy men who thrived on suspicions and terror and were wrong more than half the time. But his deputy commissioner had pleaded for quicker action on the matter, and it seemed the expedient thing to do. Anything to snatch Spindleshanks off the street and out of the way of his inquiry. And now, all had turned out well.

At least so far.

“I learned of his whereabouts this afternoon through a reliable source. From there it was a simple matter of sending Summerwell and Haskett to pick him up.”

“Excellent news, my lord.”

Yet Charles couldn’t shake the memory of Mumberton’s edginess.

Bavidge unlatched the lid of one of the boxes and lifted out a motley stack of papers. They shifted as he set them down on the polished mahogany, and then slid across the tabletop as though on a mission to escape.

Charles caught the stack before it went sailing off the edge. “Re-sort the lot of it, Bavidge. The St. Peter’s Fields Commission, Spindleshanks,
reports, news items. When Spindleshanks stands there on my carpet, protesting his innocence, I’ll have plenty of evidence to show the bastard to the contrary. Let him know that the Crown’s case against him is unshakable. He’ll confess and—” Charles stopped as he recognized Lord Rennick’s crest of ewe and fleece emblazoned at the top of an unfamiliar letter. “What the devil is this?”

Bavidge peered over his arm, lifted his spectacles. “It came this noon, my lord. After you’d gone off to Whitehall.”

Charles hated being ambushed, hated that panicked foundering while he scrabbled for facts and strategies. He shook off his anger and jabbed the page into Bavidge’s chest, then turned away to the spirits table and poured himself a brandy. “Read it then, quickly.”

“‘Rennick Hall, 26th September—’”

“The details only, Bavidge. The bastard will be here any minute.” Charles paced to the window and the many-paned blackness lurking beyond.

“‘I write, my lords, to inform you of still another secret union meeting that occurred at my Leeds Woolen Mill three nights past. Organized by Spindleshanks, attended by him, but he got away.’”

“Obviously.” But a temporary reprieve. God, he was going to enjoy this.

“Seems your captain ran the length of the mill roof in his escape, leaped onto the carding shed, over a fence, then disappeared through the lanes
and into the night. Oh, and this also came with Lord Rennick’s report.” Bavidge held up another broadside. “Another personal attack on you, sir.”

Charles turned away from the bold black lettering, the shouting of more abuse. “Read it.”

“‘Surrender the truth, Lord Everingham, if you dare,’” Bavidge read, “‘else we’ll take it from you by cudgel and you shall rue the name of Spindleshanks as you do Peterloo.’”

At the moment he rued only his position on the bloody commission of inquiry.

And the boy. He rued that, too—the rakehell part of his past and the reasons for it.

“What else?”

Bavidge opened his mouth, but a pale knock sounded on the door and the right side panel opened a crack.

“My lord?” Mumberton peered inside, mustache first and then his nose, as though to guard himself against a thrown projectile.

“Bring him, Mumberton.”

“Actually, my lord, it’s, uhm…” Mumberton opened the door just far enough to let himself inside.

“My prisoner. Yes, bring him in, Mumberton,” Charles said.

“Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord. That is exactly what I mean to speak with you about just now. A detail.” Mumberton pinched a gap between his thumb and his index finger. “A small detail.”

“The only detail I care about is Captain Spindleshanks.” Charles tried to ignore the rankling apprehension in his gut. “Do they have him or not? Bloody hell, Mumberton, if they’ve bungled this, I’ll—”

“Oh, no, my lord, it’s not that.” Mumberton fluttered his hands in front of his chest. “It’s just that—”

“Stop your blasted fidgeting, Mumberton, and bring him to me!”

The man flinched. “At once, my lord. But I think I ought to explain that there’s been a slight…uhm…”

“A slight
what
, damn it all?”

“A slight misimpression about—”

“Bloody
hell
, I’ll do it myself.” As Charles started for the door, he heard the approaching sounds of voices, and the rattle and drag of chains against the marble corridor floor.

He nearly laughed in relief; satisfaction surged through him and settled in his chest.

Captain Spindleshanks, chained and stumbling under the burden of his guilt. Summerwell and Haskett were arguing like boys, yet there was something else…

Another voice dodging lightly among the others, a springtime scent, a melody out of place—one that left him suddenly expectant and exposed.

And then the pair of doors swung open fully.

Charles expected to see a cocky Summerwell
standing there with Captain Spindleshanks cowering beside him, manacled and abased.

But only Haskett filled the opening, as big as a barn, his eyes oddly soulful.

“Your prisoner, sir.”

Charles savored the relief, the pure triumph. Despite all the stammering and stalling, Spindleshanks was here after all, though unexpectedly shy and cowering behind Haskett. He had expected a river of picturesque curses to flow from the man, just as they had from his broadsides.

A coward after all.

“Show him in, Haskett. I’ve a few choice words I’d like to say to the bastard before he’s taken to the jail.”

Mumberton gasped and turned crimson. “Please, sir! Your language.”

“My what?” Charles would have laughed if his butler’s remark hadn’t been so absurd.

“Please, sir, you shouldn’t—” Mumberton’s brows were arched high, his color high, as Summerwell shoved his way out from behind Haskett.

“You see, it’s like this, my l—”

“You’ve lost the bloody son of a whore, haven’t you, Summerwell?”

“Sir, I repeat, you mustn’t speak like—”

“Damn it, Mumberton, I’ll speak as I bloody well like. The prisoner, Summerwell!”

Summerwell gulped, staggered backward into Haskett. “Yessir.”

A singular voice came from nowhere and sent Charles’s heart spinning and stopped his breathing.

“You’ve just made the greatest mistake of your life, Lord Everingham, and mark me well, you shall pay dearly for it.”

It was the same buttery-soft voice he’d heard a moment earlier in the corridor, sunlight mixed in with Haskett’s stammering and Summerwell’s grumbling, lifting above theirs like an air. Even now it wreathed his senses.

Not a man’s voice. A melody, coming from somewhere behind the nervous louts who’d been in his employ for decades. Men that he trusted.

Then, as though tumbling gray clouds had parted just in time to beam a ray of sunlight down upon a particularly spectacular miracle, a magnificent young woman wedged herself through the small breach between Haskett and Summerwell and came to stand before them.

Shackled in iron, hands and ankles.

Barefoot. Clad only in her nightgown.

And her eyes lit with balefire.