Virginia Henley (15 page)

There was only one possible place he could conceal it and that was down the back of his canvas pants, with the sharp blade resting in the valley between his bottom cheeks. It would be almost impossible to hide it there all day, but Sean O’Toole was up to the challenge.

During the long hours of his labor the blade cut into his flesh more than once, but each time he felt the sharp stab he
wanted to shout with exultation. After five hours dragged by he was seized by a cramp from continually clenching his arse cheeks, but not by word or action did he reveal that he was in pain. Rather, he embraced the agony, relishing the acute spasms that told him he was alive and that this was the last day of his imprisonment.

A thought skittered through his brain:
How many will I have to kill to gain my freedom?
He banished the thought instantly; it did not matter how many. This time he could not fail.

He did not sit down for the noon food break. He stood while he wolfed down the stale bread and the tin cupful of odiferous cabbage soup. In that instant Sean O’Toole vowed never to eat cabbage again.

“Take a load off yer feet,” one of the guards offered casually.

“No, thanks,” Sean replied with a twisted grin. “If I squatted after your cabbage soup, I’d shit myself to death!” The guard guffawed, deciding to forgo the soup today.

    
T
he interminable workday finally came to an end. Before they were chained for the night, the inmates were served gruel and ship’s biscuit à la weevil. The man O’Toole had been chained to for the last month again showed no interest in food, so Sean consumed the double rations eagerly.

At last the men lay down; the guards shackled them in pairs, then screwed down the hatches, leaving them in blackness. Sean O’Toole curbed his impatience. He had waited almost five years for this night; he could wait another five hours. The top level of prisoners only one deck down fared better than those lower in the ship because of two portholes, which were protected by iron bars. It wasn’t long before Sean’s eyes adjusted to the darkness so that he was able to see everything.

He counted his breaths to pass the time and control his
impatience. He breathed fifteen times a minute, nine hundred times an hour. When his count reached four thousand breaths, most of his fellow inmates had been asleep for three hours.

Holding on to the chain so it wouldn’t rattle, he stirred and quietly shook the man whose wrist was manacled to his own.

Nothing.

Again he shook him and, for good measure, jabbed him in the ribs. When there was still no response, Sean peered into the man’s face. His pallor was clearly ashen, even in the dim light. On further examination Sean O’Toole was stunned to realize he was shackled to a corpse. It took him a minute to get over his shock, then he tried prying the wrist manacle off with the knife. The iron would not give. He did not want to risk breaking the blade, so he ceased what he was doing and gave his total attention to ways he might free himself.

Nothing brilliantly clever came to mind, so he simply took the knife and cut off the dead man’s arm at the wrist, which at least gave him freedom, though the shackles now hung loosely from his arm. He lifted the dismembered hand, carefully carved off the thumb, and took it with him.

As he made his way to the nearest porthole, he gave each prisoner he passed a quelling look that effectively silenced him. Before he had loosened the bars across the porthole, the convicts watching began to pull for him. Though they themselves could not get free, they knew that his escape would somehow be a great victory over oppression.

It was an extremely tight fit through the small hole and at one point Sean panicked that his shoulders would prove too wide, but his determination was so set that he knew he would manage even if he suffered a broken shoulder to accomplish it. When he silently slid through the opening and dived down into the black water, a great cheer went up.

E
mma Montague sat passively before her mirror. Today was her twenty-first birthday, yet she felt little excitement. Her life was narrow, monotonous, and downright dull and she had no expectations that her birthday would be different from any other day.

For over five years she had suffered the rigid guidance of Irma Bludget, and as a result everything about her had changed. Emma’s personality had been subdued, turning her into a passive, almost puppetlike creature. In the beginning she had rebelled, but a combination of Bludget’s and her father’s corporal punishment had brought forcibly home that life was infinitely more bearable if she conformed.

Her dark, vivid looks had been declared
too Irish
and had been covered by powdered wigs and pale face powder. The clothes selected for her were always in pastel shades of pink or blue so that she resembled a Dresden shepherdess. She knew it delighted her father that she looked like a young English lady, all milk and water.

Emma tried never to think of her mother because it upset her too much. How could a woman abandon children who worshiped her? The thought that her mother had never loved her was unendurable, so she stopped thinking of her. Emma was not allowed to attend Almacks’ or other assemblies, since her father and Mrs. Bludget considered the young ladies who frequented such places forward and vulgar. Her
social life was restricted to taking tea with respectable pillars of society and an occasional dinner party with her father, when he considered it politic to his career.

Her hatred for the ugly brick mansion in Portman Square had been tempered to mere dislike; hate was too strong an emotion for a well-bred young lady to display. Sometimes she daydreamed of marriage, which was her one hope of escape. Her night dreams were another matter entirely. Often she awoke covered with blushes and guilt after dreaming of Sean FitzGerald O’Toole. He was wicked, and she felt shameful that she sometimes dreamt of him. What a naive little girl she had been when she first met him and thought of him as her Irish Prince. She told herself that she was not like her mother. She could never be a wanton, tainted by depraved Irish blood.

As Emma stared in the mirror, to her horror she saw a tear slip down her cheek. She brushed it away impatiently, determined not to cry on her birthday. How wicked she was to indulge in self-pity when she lived in a mansion, furnished with priceless antiques, with servants to do all the work.

She heaved a tremulous sigh and rang for her maid. When Jane arrived, Mrs. Bludget was on her heels and Emma hid her annoyance. No matter what she chose to wear for her birthday dinner, Mrs. Bludget would disapprove and make her wear something else. Emma’s shoulders drooped; what did it matter? One pastel satin gown was much like another.

The dinner party was attended by her uncle John, Earl of Sandwich, and his son Jack. All throughout the evening Emma had the impression that her father, brother, uncle, and cousin shared a secret to which she was not privy. Later on, when Jack Raymond escorted her to the conservatory, she learned what that secret was. Jack asked for her hand in marriage.

She was so surprised, she was speechless; and yet she knew she should not have been the least surprised. None
was closer to her father than Jack; their mutual admiration was apparent. Emma did not wish to marry Jack; she knew she could never love him. Yet what was her alternative? She had no other suitors, nor prospect of any. The thought of remaining a spinster all her life in this ugly mausoleum of a house made her blood run cold.

If she accepted Jack’s proposal, she would at least be able to get out from beneath her father’s dominant thumb and Irma Bludget would leave to ruin some other unfortunate’s life. The alternative was to refuse Jack outright, and she blanched at the thought of defying her father. When she compared Jack with her father, she thought him the lesser of two evils.

She desperately needed someone to love her, whom she could love in return, and Emma believed children would fill this need in her life. She would adore her children and be the best mother who ever existed.
No force on earth could ever make me abandon
my
child
, she vowed.

The decision before her proved so difficult, she sought counsel from her only ally in the world, her brother, John. Jack Raymond was forced to cool his heels in the conservatory until Emma returned with an answer for him.

“Jack asked me to marry him,” Emma said quickly, knowing they could be interrupted at any moment.

“Ah, I’ve seen it coming for ages,” John said.

“Then why didn’t you warn me?” she asked.

“Em, I thought you knew. He’s dangled after you for years, it can’t be a complete surprise.”

“I suppose I did know, I just didn’t want to think about it.”

John understood exactly what she meant. It was so much better to leave some thoughts alone so that they settled to the bottom of your mind undisturbed. The trouble was, every once in a while you poked a stick into the murky depths,
making all your thoughts turbid. “Did you accept his proposal?”

“Not yet; he’s waiting in the conservatory,” she said lamely.

“It’s something you should decide for yourself, Em.”

“Well, if I do accept him, it will get me out from under Father’s dominance, but on the other hand I don’t love Jack and fear I never shall.”

“It’s your decision, Em,” he repeated.

“Is it?” she asked wistfully. “I think it’s Father’s decision, and I haven’t the courage to refute it.”

John was silently appalled. Where had that spirited girl gone who tossed her wig to the wind and the sea? She’d always had twice his courage when they were children, even though she was three years his junior. He had wished a million times he’d had the guts to defy his father the night Joseph O’Toole had been murdered. He thought that if he had it to do over, he would stand beside Sean O’Toole and deny the lies that his family concocted.

He had admired Sean so much and wanted to emulate him, but when put to the test, he had failed miserably. John despised his own cowardice. He had never been sure whether his father had killed Joseph or whether Jack had done the deed for him, but it was assuredly one or the other. From the accusations hurled by Sean O’Toole that night, John realized his mother’s faithlessness was at the root of the murder. He wondered briefly if she, too, was dead. His mind shied away from the thought; he preferred to think her free and living in Ireland. He was glad she had escaped from his depraved father.

The first years after she’d gone, his father had tried to make an officer of him aboard one Admiralty vessel after another. He’d suffered from seasickness every miserable day. Then miraculously his father had done an about-face and put him behind a desk in the office, while at the same
time promoting their cousin Jack from his position as secretary to that of naval lieutenant.

John now excelled at what he did, though he still had to lick his father’s boots because his sire was in charge of the Admiralty Office. Lord God, how he hated him! John scanned Emma’s pale face, hoping against hope she would decide to defy their father and tell Jack Raymond to go to hell.

“Well, I suppose I can’t put this off any longer,” Emma said with quiet resignation. Then she brightened. “As a wedding present I shall ask for Irma Bludget’s dismissal.”

    
S
ean O’Toole swam from Woolwich to Greenwich, then waded from the Thames. From there he walked the five miles to the City of London. He had never felt so euphoric in his life. Thoughts of having real food, a bath, and a woman speeded him on his journey. They were the first thoughts he’d had apart from revenge for a long, long time. The pleasure would be in the pace. He would eat slowly, savoring every morsel. He would bathe at leisure, soaping, sponging, and soaking; and he would never again take a woman in haste as long as he lived.

He cut through the back streets of a section of the city where gaming hells vied for space with expensive brothels. The first cloak he saw, he snatched from the owner’s back in a flash. When the man turned to protest, one look at the thief was all he needed to silence him.

Sean shrouded himself in the black cloak that covered a multitude of sins and proceeded to St. James’s Street. With a discerning eye he chose his marks. All that his victims had to be was wealthy and drunk, which at this time of the morning in Mayfair was just about everyone on the street.

He lifted three bags of gold coins with little difficulty. One glance at the black-cloaked figure with beard and wild black mane unmanned his victims.

As he made his way to a less fashionable part of town, Sean smiled to himself. He had managed to escape and line his pockets with gold without actually having to kill anyone at all. His luck had turned. Satan helps his enemies.

Sean O’Toole went into the George and Vulture by the Blackfriars water-stairs and sat at a table with his back to the wall, facing the door. The smell of food and ale affected his taste buds so acutely, his mouth began to water with anticipation. He ordered a steak, kidney-and-oyster pie, and a pint of brown ale to wash it down.

When the serving wench set the steaming dish before him, he gazed at it for long minutes admiring the golden crust, the juice oozing through the slits on top, and the way the smoke curled into the air from its piping-hot depths. Then he bent over it appreciatively to inhale its aroma. His eyes narrowed with expectation of what it would taste like, then he lifted the first mouthful to his lips, his eyes closing in blissful satisfaction.