Wicked Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (16 page)

      
"Now, gov, I don't know nothin' 'bout—" His whining voice was cut short by increased pressure from the knife. Now several drops of blood ran free, staining the dingy ruffles of his shirtfront.

      
"You'd best answer truthfully. If I must, I'll extract the

information with this blade, and let me assure you, I've been taught to wield it with great skill by my family in America—my red Indian family. I know tricks that can keep you alive for days while you pray for death ... you could ask Jem Barker ... if he were still alive to answer."

      
"It's 'ere! I got it, gov. I—I'll give it over, only promise ye won't cut me." Slocum's eyes were totally focused now, all effects of the drugs and gin dissipated by stark terror.

      
"Very well, I give my word not to cut you," Alex said, releasing him. "Produce the timepiece."

      
From the doorway, Drum observed the exchange with one eye still on the alleyway outside. Slocum scrambled to the mattress and slipped his arm into a hole concealed in its side. When he pulled it out, the pocket watch gleamed softly in the dim light of the room's lone candle.

      
"Place it on the table," Alex commanded coldly. As soon as the assassin did so, he reached out with one hand and seized the man by his red coat, yanking him off his feet. When Slocum stumbled forward, Blackthorne's arms wrapped about his neck turning it with one powerful twist until it snapped. As the man dropped lifelessly at his feet, Alex said, "I promised I would not cut you, John, but not that I would spare you."

      
Drum watched him examine the gold timepiece, murmuring softly, "At least Joss will have this."
 

      
He stood staring down at the inscription until the dandy cleared his throat and said gently, " 'Tis best we quit this place, Alex. Some of the denizens of this pesthole might try to relieve us of Slocum's ill-gotten gains."

      
Coming to himself, Alex placed the watch in his waistcoat pocket and turned to Drum. "Thank you, my friend, for assisting me in this ugly enterprise."

      
The two men walked away from the noisome alley without incident. Drum hailed a hackney and they climbed aboard. Alex remained deep in thought, staring down at the timepiece, which he had extracted from his pocket.

      
Drum studied his friend in silence for a moment, his keen green eyes riveted on Blackthorne. "Whatever the fascination of that bluestocking, she certainly has you in thrall," he commented, almost to himself.

      
Alex looked up distractedly, only half hearing Drum's remark. "Were you speaking of Joss?"

      
"Your very own prim long Meg ... but considering your own estimable height—from which I would borrow a few inches were it possible—perhaps Miss Woodbridge is not so overtall." He stroked his chin in amusement, a wry smile bowing up his elegant lips. "Yes, you would make up a pair nicely."

      
"What on earth are you rattling on about?" Alex asked incredulously.

      
"Why, you and the preacher's daughter, of course," Drum replied innocently.

      
"As in a love relationship!"

      
Drum only nodded, then said, "My boy, I always knew you were an original. Now I have proof. You've fallen in love with a female for her mind.
^r

      
"Why, that's the most lack-witted, addlepated absurdity I've ever heard!"

      
Drum tsked chidingly. " 'Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.' "

      
"I certainly do not." Alex replied indignantly, unaware that his hand clutched the timepiece tightly.

      
"If you squeeze that watch much harder, you're apt to melt the thing down to a shapeless lump, old chap," Drum said, pointing to his friend's hand.

      
Alex unclenched his fingers as if the timepiece had suddenly scalded him, and hastily replaced it in his waistcoat pocket. "Joss is my friend ... an unconventional one, to be certain. Look, I understand that friendships between men and women are unusual—rare, even, yes, but Joss is just a comrade, someone I enjoy talking to and exchanging quips with. She is not some bloody bit of muslin, for heaven's sake!"

      
Drum waved one gloved hand in remonstrance. "No, no, my friend, I did not mean to imply such a transient, not to mention immoral, role for the prim Miss Woodbridge."

      
A look of dawning horror etched Alex's face. "A wife?" He practically choked on the words. Then looking again at Drum with narrowed eyes, he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. "Lord, you bloody well had me going there for a while, Drum. The very idea that I would consider marriage at all is beyond absurd. If I wouldn't leg-shackle myself to Helen of Troy, why would I consider Joss, of all females?"

      
"Perhaps you'd best answer that question for yourself," Drum replied musingly.

* * * *

Marry? Joss? Alex sat in the library of the Caruthers's city house, staring at the brandy snifter in his hand, deep in thought. He intended to deliver the timepiece to her in the morning, but first he had to muddle through his thoughts and set them in order. The fact that strong drink and clear thinking did not mix well had not occurred to him in this instance. The tall case clock on the far wall struck midnight.

      
He ruminated about his unusual relationship with Jocelyn Woodbridge. Drum's flippant remarks about his being in love with her were utterly preposterous, of course, typically Drum in one of his infernal hoaxing moods. Yet by the time they had parted company at the end of the hackney ride from Eastcheap, Drum had no longer been affecting droll humor.

      
Love Joss? Preposterous. Since the day they had met, his paramount urge had most often been to strangle the chit. Of course, he had come to admire her intelligence, her keen wit and gentle sense of humor, her courage, her compassion. In spite of her frequent clumsiness, she possessed a genuine grace for living. Even though she was tall, thin and forced to wear ugly, thick spectacles, he had never heard her complain about what nature had allotted her, except to make jokes at her own expense.

      
As time passed and their relationship developed, he had ceased to think about her unflattering appearance—unless someone else made a disparaging remark about it, which increasingly annoyed him. It was unfair to value a person only for how he or she looked on the outside. After all, it was one's mind and heart that truly gave one worth. That was a firm teaching of the Muskogee that he had learned at Grandma Charity's knee.

      
Joss's heart was good. She was brave, honest and caring. The thought that his grandmother would admire her had never occurred to him before. Unbidden, it did so now. But that was the stuff of friendship, not romantic love.

      
He loved her as he loved his sisters, who also frequently exasperated him. No, that was not quite right, for she was far stronger and more clearheaded than any of that flighty crew, more logical and intelligent—like his mother. But he certainly could not compare their relationship to the one he shared with his mother either. Joss was a friend who just happened to be a woman, that was all.

      
She was Joss. Dear and disheveled, truly an original... but a woman he would fall in love with? He shook his head, positive that was absurd. She would laugh at the idea—laugh at him for even thinking it. Joss had never evinced the slightest interest in playing silly games to catch a husband, any more than he wanted to dance to some female's whims to woo her to wife.

      
Alex never intended to marry. At least not in the foreseeable future. He had never given any real thought to the matter, save to dismiss the idea of a wife every time his parents brought it up. Now he forced himself to confront his feelings. Outside of his natural bachelor's affinity for unfettered access to the high life, he had no reason to dread matrimony.

      
Indeed, he had every reason to look forward to it if Devon and Barbara Blackthorne's happiness was an example. His entire family was riddled with felicitous marriages—Uncle Quint and Aunt Madelyne, as well as his sisters. Only his favorite cousin Beth, like him, resisted matrimony because she was determined to pursue an art career. Even her brother Rob had leg-shackled himself to the girl of his dreams.

      
Of course that was on the other side of the pond. Marriages here were usually arranged for political, social or economic reasons as had been the case in the unhappy union of Octavia and Monty. Yet he was forced to admit that it was not here in England that his aversion to marriage had originated. Deep in his heart he'd always shunned the idea. Why? He swirled the brandy about in his glass and took another sip. It was not the casual, unemotional relationships of the English that put him off, but rather the intense, passionate bonding that characterized the Blackthorne men that frightened him.

      
Although only whispered about, he knew the secret story of his great uncle Robert Blackthorne, who had been so in love with his wife, the beautiful Lady Anne Caruthers, that he had become insanely—and unjustifiably—jealous of his own brother. The rift had torn the family apart for a whole generation. Alex did not want to love that way. Or even the way his parents did. They were so devoted to each other, so intensely close that he had always felt...closed out somehow, a reaction to which his sisters had all been cheerfully immune. He alone, the only son, came to feel that he never wanted to be so wrapped up in a single person that his whole life was entrusted to her hands. What if something happened to her?

      
"I'm getting maudlin," he muttered to himself. This much introspection was simply not healthy for a man. Should he lay the fault at Drum's feet—or Joss's? He did not desire her, nor did he want her for a wife. He simply loved Joss because she was Joss, and that was that, he concluded, downing the last of the brandy. He would ponder the nature of the relationship no further.

      
Montgomery Caruthers stood in the doorway, observing his nephew's brown study. He had just come from a winning night at White's card tables and was feeling expansive.

      
Demned if he had not become fond of the boy, even if he was a wild colonial, with an unorthodox ancestry on his father's side. Still, in a strange way, Alex had become his surrogate son, a fact he had never been able to confess to the lad. A pity he could not invest his title on Alexander Blackthorne.
What a royal uproar that would cause about the ton!

      
Seeing his nephew begin to arise from the chair, he glided into the room. "Mind if I join you in a drink, my boy? You may pour... since it would appear you've already had ample practice tonight," he added, eyeing the nearly empty decanter of his best brandy.

      
Alex ignored the remark and rationed out the last of the amber liquid between two cut-crystal snifters. "You're out late."

      
"You're in early," Monty countered. "I must say you've exceeded even my wildest expectations as successor to my rather dubious claim to fame as a cock of the game. But then, I have tutored you well." He raised his glass in salute.

      
Alex chuckled, returning the toast. "I served quite an apprenticeship in Georgia with my cousin Rob. Even though he's the eldest, my Uncle Quint used to say—"

      
"Quintin Blackthorne is not your uncle. I am your uncle," Monty interrupted sharply, then caught himself as Alex stared at him, startled. "That is to say," he continued more urbanely, "he is merely your father's cousin, hence your own, two degrees removed."

      
"He and my father were raised as brothers," Alex replied, amazed at this most uncharacteristic outburst of jealousy. He could see Monty was embarrassed by the revelation and hastened on to add with an affectionate grin, "I've always called him uncle, milord."

      
"You've no need of shirttail backwoods kin," the baron replied with a nod of appreciation for Alex's wit. "You now reside in the Great Wen. By the by, where the deuce have you been keeping yourself the past few days? I ran into Chitchester and Forrester, who were lamenting at Whites this evening that they haven't seen a whisker of you in nearly a week."

      
"Well, they wouldn't have found me at Whites in any case."

      
"I'm aware of your penchant for the ... shall we say, more gamey side of London," Monty replied with amused disdain. "I'm only surprised that you have deserted your sad bluestocking's side so soon."

      
"My absence was on Miss Woodbridge's behalf, but why should you be interested?" Alex replied with an edge in his voice. Damnation! He was heartily sick of everyone speculating about his relationship with Joss.

      
"No particular reason, other than the gossip that's begun over what Suthington will do with her."

      
"Suthington? What the hell does that old goat care? He never before evinced a grain of concern for her or his only brother. He could not even be bothered to attend Elijah Woodbridge's funeral."

      
"Yet he has taken her in. Speculation is rampant about how the two of them shall deal together, old Everett the tight-arsed Tory and Miss Woodbridge, the crusading Whig."

      
Alex set down his glass and looked at Monty. "What do you mean, he has taken her in?"

      
"You didn't know? You must have been far underground in your delicious dens of iniquity. It seems Miss Woodbridge was to be put out on the streets. Something about her landlady receiving a more lucrative offer to let her apartment. And the Methodist mission officials declined to leave a female without proper male guidance in charge of the charity school. Without some sort of family backing, her sources of largesse for the poor were cut off."