One Naughty Night2 (25 page)

“I was told he knows something I would very much like to find out.”

The girl licked her lips. “He’ll be at his boat right now. Too early to be out on the river. Under the bridge down that way, first one you come to.”

“Thank you.” Aidan handed her the money, which she
quickly tucked away in her bodice. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a man named Tom Beaumont, would you?”

Her eyes widened, and she frantically shook her head. “Not me. I mind my own business, and so should you.”

Aidan gave her a nod and turned to make his way along the riverbank, his old boots sucked in by the mud and muck of the low tide. As the girl had said, it was too early to be out on the river yet. All the dredgers, who made their livings hauling dead bodies and other detritus out of the Thames, were working on their small boats or mending their trawling nets. They watched him walk past without much interest. People came down to the docks seeking all sorts of things, and they had seen it all before.

A few mudlarks, children who scavenged in the sludge for whatever had washed in, were poking about with their sticks. The fishy, dirty tang of the river, blended with the old sewers that ran down to the water’s edge, was strong there. Pasted along the stained brick walls were posters of people missing or descriptions of those pulled from the water.

Aidan ignored all of it, intent on what he had to do. He found the riverman named Piker just as the girl had said, under the bridge as he scraped the sludge from the hull of his small boat. He was a thin man, younger than Aidan expected, his face obscured by a bushy beard and his skin weathered by years on the river. A cap was pulled low on his brow.

“Are you Piker?” Aidan asked.

The man didn’t look up from his task. “Who wants to know?”

“Marie sent me. She said you might have some information for me.”

Piker laughed. “Now what would someone like you want with me?”

“I want to find Tom Beaumont, and I was told you might know where he is.”

The man’s eyes shot up to Aidan’s face, and he dropped his scraping blade. Aidan could see it a split second before Piker ran. He took off at a flat run, but Aidan was faster. He caught Piker at the foot of the bridge steps and brought him down hard, his fist cracking on the man’s jaw.

“I don’t want trouble!” Piker shouted. “I don’t have nothin’ to do with Beaumont now. I work for myself.”

“Then why did you run?” Aidan curled his fists in the man’s coat and held him pinned down. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know!”

Aidan drew back his fist, and Piker held up his hands in surrender. “Well?” Aidan said.

“I told him I wouldn’t work for him no more,” Piker said. “But he was down here the other night, trying to get a gang together.”

“For what purpose?”

“To turn over a goldsmith’s shop. He needs money fast, I think.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I swear! That’s all I know. But my cousin Ralph went with him, the stupid tosser. You could maybe get somethin’ out of him.”

“Then tell me where to find this cousin of yours, and we’re done,” Aidan said. “But if you are lying to me, I promise you will be very sorry. I’m as bad an enemy to have as Beaumont.”

Piker nodded, his face gone ashen. “I ain’t lying, I swear. I don’t want trouble with anyone.”

Once Aidan had the information he sought from Piker, he left the docks and went in search of this Ralph in Southwark. It was time he gathered a “gang” of his own.

It was a strangely quiet night. Usually the narrow, dirty streets of that crowded neighborhood came to life in the darkness, crawling with drunks, whores, and thieves as they fought to survive for a few more hours. But people like that also seemed to have an instinct for when things were about to go very wrong, and they knew how to go to ground. Tonight only a few people scurried along in the shadows, and the cracked windows were shuttered.

Aidan slipped around a corner to a slightly wider street lined with shops that were mostly owned by Jewish proprietors who had to deal in such places. Those places were also locked up tight, but in the goldsmith’s shop that Piker said Beaumont intended to “turn over,” a faint light shone under the door. The silence felt thick and heavy, almost crackling in the darkness.

Aidan glanced down the street to see a ripple of movement beside the wall of another shop. It was Constable Morris and his men, waiting for the signal. Constable Morris had given Aidan some valuable information once or twice before Aidan went to the West Indies, and now Aidan had repaid those favors tenfold. Capturing Beaumont would make Morris’s career—if they could carry this off and emerge unscathed themselves.

Aidan turned his attention to an upstairs window across the street, where the moonlight gleamed on a flash of steel. Nick kept watch there, pistol at the ready, but he hadn’t indicated that he saw anything of Beaumont and
his gang yet. Aidan drew out his own gun and held it at the ready, his whole body tense and alert as he waited.

Tom Beaumont had hurt Lily for the last time. Aidan was going to make very sure of that now.

Suddenly the night was shattered by a loud crash from the alley that ran beside the shop. A light flared in the darkness, and Aidan felt a wild excitement leap inside of him. The battle was on.

There was a startled shout and a woman’s high-pitched scream. Aidan surged forward to kick down the front door of the shop, and the constables rushed into the darkened store behind him. The back door to the alley hung open, and lamplight spilled down a narrow staircase. The noise came from up there, a torrent of screams and crashes and the sound of breaking glass.

Aidan ran up the stairs to find a scene of chaos, the floor littered with coins and shards of glass and furniture overturned. Two women huddled in the corner, cowering back from two men, while a tall figure wrapped in a long, black coat fought with a skull-headed walking stick.

“Beaumont,” Aidan shouted as he cocked his pistol. His blood burned hot now, ignited by the violence and by facing Beaumont at last. The man would pay for what he had done to Lily.

Tom slowly turned and let the hapless shopkeeper collapse to the floor. Dark blue eyes shone like coals in a scarred, ruined face as he looked at Aidan, and a terrible smile spread over his thin lips. Aidan was aware of the men behind him, the fighting, but this moment was between him and Tom Beaumont.

“Ah, it’s Lil’s fancy man,” Beaumont said with a laugh. “I should have known it would be you.”

“You’re finished, Beaumont,” Aidan said quietly. “You might as well surrender now and go peacefully.”

“I did that once when they came for me,” Beaumont said. “And look what happened. Won’t do that again.”

Beaumont stepped away from his fallen victim and tossed aside his stick. There was a sudden flash of lamplight on metal as he drew out a knife. He and Aidan circled each other warily, never taking their eyes off each other as Aidan waved the constables back. This was his fight now, and the fewer people who were hurt the better.

Suddenly Beaumont gave a terrible grin and lunged forward with his knife raised to strike, as if he cared not at all that Aidan held a weapon or that a flood of men waited to seize him. Beaumont let out a guttural shout, and Aidan slid to the right and behind him, driving him back as anger rose up in him like a crimson tide.

Aidan drove Beaumont toward the wall with a furious series of strikes and feints. He hardly noticed the vicious blows Beaumont landed, the blood that trickled down his arm from a lucky strike. Beaumont lashed out with his foot and tripped Aidan, sending him crashing to the floor.

Aidan seized Beaumont’s arm as he went down and dragged him along with a violent crash. In a fight that seemed to last an hour but surely only went on for only seconds, they grappled for Aidan’s gun. It went off with a deafening roar and a blinding cloud of smoke. Aidan twisted the man’s arm sharply and pushed him off with one great heave as the gun clattered to the floor. Blood and sweat hung heavy in the air as Aidan became aware of the other men shouting and the women sobbing.

He scrambled to snatch the fallen gun, and just as Beaumont reached for his throat, he brought the grip of
the pistol down hard on his head. Once, twice, until at last Beaumont collapsed unconscious.

Aidan leaped to his feet and stared down at the fallen man. He remembered Lily’s white, frightened face, and the fury that had been ebbing away roared back. He leaned forward as if to kick Beaumont once more, but a hard hand caught his arm and dragged him back. He spun around to see it was Nick who held him as the constables swarmed around Beaumont.

“Aidan, it’s done,” Nick said.

Aidan scrubbed his hand over his face as exhaustion claimed him. It was done—Lily was safe now. Safe from Beaumont anyway.

She would never truly be safe from Aidan, or he from her.

S
T
. G
ILES MONSTER CAPTURED
!

Lily ran her fingertip over the screaming black headline splashed across the newspaper. Just beneath it was a sketch of Tom Beaumont being hauled to Newgate, his weathered face twisted into a snarl. Somehow the artist made him look even uglier and more menacing than in real life, a monster in truth. She shuddered just looking at the dark gleam in his eyes.

She quickly skimmed the rest of the story, a dramatic and no doubt overblown tale of the hunt for the “notorious criminal madman” through the slums after he was blamed for the robbery and near-murder of a goldsmith in Southwark. “Informants” were of “great assistance” in the search and in the arrest which had resulted in the wounding of two constables. “Business proprietor” Nick Riley gave a statement on the great relief felt among his patrons at the apprehension of such a menace.

Informants.
Lily heard Aidan’s voice in her head, telling her he knew many people in many places. That she no longer had to fear Tom Beaumont. She remembered
her anger the last time she was with Aidan, but this made their fight seem small and petty now.

She slowly folded up the paper and placed it next to her untouched breakfast plate. It seemed Aidan had been busy in the days since she had last seen him at the Devil’s Fancy. He had sent her a few notes telling her “progress” was being made, and she was to stay safely with her family and not worry.

She had wondered so many times what he was doing, where he was. Now it appeared he had been engineering an arrest.

And she couldn’t help but smile. Tom Beaumont was locked away in Newgate. No matter how he got there, he wouldn’t appear in her life again. She was free of him, and her family was safe.

Oh, Aidan
, she thought.
What did you do?

“You look disgustingly happy this morning, Lily,” Dominic suddenly growled from across the table.

Lily glanced up at him and smiled. Dominic had looked distinctly rough around the edges for the last few days, his golden hair rumpled, his eyes shadowed, his features sharp and almost feral. After rehearsals at the theater, he would disappear, not returning until breakfast time, if then. Now he sat slumped in his seat, his plate pushed away, nursing a cup of strong coffee. His clothes looked as if he hadn’t changed them since last night, his fine coat creased and his cravat hanging loose.

He glared at her, which only made her laugh. “I am happy this morning,” she said. “The sun is shining, I’m going off to buy a new hat after breakfast, and the receipts at the Majestic and the club have both been excellent lately. Why should I not be in a good mood?”

“That makes quite a change,” Dominic said. “You’ve been all quiet and broody. Why the sudden change?” He frowned at her suspiciously. “There must be a reason.”

A reason like a man? A Huntington man? Lily refused to be baited, not this morning, when she finally dared to begin to hope that things might be all right after all. She just shook her head and reached for her fork to taste her eggs.

“You are hardly in a position to complain about anyone being broody, Dominic,” she said. “You’ve been a complete bear these last few days. What is the matter with you?”

Brendan laughed from his seat at the end of the table. Brendan hardly ever laughed, and it sounded a bit deep and rusty. Lily turned to him, startled.

“It’s probably a woman,” Brendan said, and calmly turned the page of his own copy of the paper. A faint smile lingered around his mouth, softening the harsh, ascetic lines of his scarred face. “I knew you would take a fall eventually, Dom. Was it the mysterious card player from the club last week?”

“A woman?” Lily said. She stared across the table at Dominic, astonished by the sudden angry flush that appeared on his unshaven cheeks. “Was it the woman in the black gown? Who was she?”

“Shut up, both of you,” Dominic said, his voice full of barely leashed fury. “You know me better than to think I would ‘take a fall’ over a woman. Especially not a teasing witch like that one.”

Lily raised her brow in question at Brendan, and he shook his head. She burned with curiosity to know what had happened between Dominic and the lady in black
to make him behave like this. Dominic never lost control over a woman—they always fell right into his arms, and then he had them and moved on. But she could see very well she would learn nothing more about it today, or ever. She suspected Dominic would smash his coffee cup against the wall if she pursued the topic.

She took another bite of her eggs and said calmly, “What about the assembly at Holland House tonight? We shouldn’t waste the invitation. There is sure to be some potential members for the club in attendance, and Father will want to promote the new production at the Majestic, even if he’s too busy to attend himself. We need to accept whenever we receive respectable invitations like this.”

William St. Claire’s chair at the table was empty, as it had been ever since Katherine, Isabel, and James left for the seaside. He was deeply involved in preparing the new
Much Ado About Nothing
and dealing with new difficulties with his actors and the sets. But Katherine had written to remind Lily about the assembly and urged her to attend.