13. Treacherous Waters

TREACHEROUS WATERS

“ T he bastard no doubt took for granted these records wouldn’t survive down here.” Baxter grimaced and then let out a low whistle. “How could Rudolph not have realized what his brother was up to?”

“Rudolph never would have sold if he had.”

Jeremy carefully examined a faded record and then tossed it aside. He’d suspected the records might be in Ludwig’s half flooded basements but hadn’t expected this.

Each mildew-ridden box required meticulous care while opening; the first one having practically fallen apart in his hands when he’d moved to carry it to the offices upstairs.

He flicked his gaze around the soggy basement. Considering the waterlines on the walls, as well as the bog-like floor, it was a wonder any records remained intact.

That was why they were opening them in place and documenting items of significance in the shadowy light of a few lanterns.

He, Baxter, and a few of his clerks had been at it for hours, and an alarming pattern was beginning to emerge. With Arthur on the front lines, Jeremy had followed the progress of both sides of the conflict diligently, religiously even, and each cluster of losses Ludwig Bros. incurred had preceded unprecedented enemy victories. The timeline of events was too uncanny to be a coincidence.

“So they were paid by the government to ship them and then took a second payment after handing supplies over to the insurgents.” Baxter shook his head. “Here’s more payments from Leo to Farley.” He set the receipt on an increasingly growing pile. Periodically, one of Jeremy’s trusted clerks would climb down the rickety steps to transport them upstairs.

With each receipt found that didn’t list Arthur’s name, Jeremy was that much closer to his goal. He rubbed the back of his neck and carefully extracted another file just as the door at the top of the narrow stairway opened and closed. Rather than his clerk’s etched and tired-looking face, however, Lord Westerley appeared.

He and his countess, as importers of American Whiskey, were very interested in wiping the docks clean of the current gang activity, and last night, the earl had offered up any assistance he could provide.

“Damn, Tempest. I thought you’d be out by now.” Westerley had to bend over in order to avoid the overhead joists as he moved deeper into the dungeon-like room. “Why don’t you just have them brought upstairs?”

In answer, Baxter lifted the corner of one of his rejected receipts, which promptly tore in two. “They might not make the trip that way.”

Jeremy glanced at his time piece. He was going to have to send word to Lydia that he couldn’t escort her to the warehouse today. He could not leave this task unfinished. They were over halfway through the boxes and he’d not yet found any evidence that Arthur had been involved.

All would be settled by tomorrow. And then he could ask her that all important question. She would understand.

Jeremy cast off the receipt in his hand and took up another. It was dated almost two years ago, April 12th, 1828, and listed names that had become quite familiar to him by now. But there was a smudged one that he had not seen on any of the others.

Jeremy lifted it closer to his eyes and squinted. His heart sank.

Coming awake, Lydia opened her eyes and saw… nothing. Confused, she blinked, and her eyelashes brushed against rough fabric. It took her a moment to understand what that meant.

Was this a nightmare? She was blindfolded!

And her hands were bound!

Familiar sounds, that of a bell ringing, distant voices, and water splashing against the pier hinted that she was somewhere near the docks. The pungent scent of tar, fish, and filth made it all but a certainty.

The memory came rushing back to her—finding Ollie and his brother in the warehouse courtyard, being grabbed from behind and?—

Lydia winced, feeling where the blindfold pulled across bruised skin. She licked her lips and was thankful to find that at least she wasn’t gagged.

A sensation of motion, of rocking softly, gave away that she must be on some sort of vessel, perhaps one of the abandoned ships. It had to be where the gang bosses were hiding.

How long had she been here? Hours? A day?

Had only one night passed since she’d been sitting down to a lovely dinner with Mayfair’s elite?

“Hello?” She tested her voice, even though she was fairly certain she was alone. It came out little more than a croak. “Can I have some water, please?” She waited, half afraid someone would answer her, but also half afraid that no one would.

She was a woman who had been captured by unscrupulous individuals. Never had she been so aware of her own powerlessness. Never had she felt so vulnerable.

A few minutes later, she heard a door open, and light filtered through the fabric covering her eyes. Footsteps approached, and then…

“’Ere.” A cup was pressed to her lips, and she had no choice but to tilt her head and swallow, spilling a good deal of the water in the process.

It dribbled down her chin, onto her chest and gown. She was no longer wearing her coat. Someone had taken it off of her while she’d been unconscious.

She shivered, not daring to allow herself to think about that.

“Are you Ollie’s brother, Buck?” She lifted her chin, trying to sense where this person was so she could “look” at him. There had to be some goodness in him if he was Ollie’s brother.

“What’s it to ya?”

“Where’s Ollie, is he all right?” She hadn’t been able to save him. In fact, she’d made matters worse. But she couldn’t focus on that right now.

“He needs to learn ‘is place,” the boy grunted. He sounded so cold. Did he really not care for Ollie at all?

Lydia struggled to gather herself again. “Why are you keeping me here? You should let me go before you end up in even more trouble than you’re already in.”

“Ha,” he scoffed, but then lifted the drink to her mouth again. A breeze landed on her face as the door opened once more, and Buck turned away before she could attempt another sip.

“She’s the one, ain’t she?” Ollie’s brother asked whoever had entered.

“So pretty. Maybe we won’t have to off her.” Cold, rough hands grabbed ahold of hers. “We need to untie her though, so she can sign the note. Won’t do any good if Tempest doesn’t believe we have her.” The loosening around her wrists brought relief, but as she realized their intentions, fear shot through her like a knife.

They were going to ransom her. But for what?

“You gonna kill the Earl o’Tempest, Farley? He right deserves it, for all the trouble he’s makin’.”

And then something hard and cold pressed against her forehead. Not having seen it, nor ever having held one, she knew instinctively that this despicable person was threatening her with a pistol. But he’d just said that he didn’t want to kill her!

“When that meddling nob shows up, Buck, I’m gonna shoot him—” He jammed the barrel into her head with even more force. “Right.” He pushed harder. “Between. The eyes.” He made a shooting sound with his mouth and then chuckled.

Lydia stopped breathing. They meant to kill Jeremy!

She couldn’t allow that to happen. She’d rather die herself.

She’d been so stupid to go outside alone!

The person named Farley removed the gun from her head. But this only provided temporary relief. Buck was laughing as he moved behind her. He loosened the blindfold and then allowed it to drop.

The light coming through the open door beat onto her pupils almost as though she was staring into the sun. She blinked and forced herself to stare down at the floor, but the fact that she could see daylight meant freedom couldn’t be too far away. With the door open, she could hear the usual din of the dock more clearly.

With watering eyes, she focused on her hands, unbound now, and flexed them in her lap.

“We’re gonna need you to write a sweet letter begging your lover to save you.” Farley thrust a pencil into her hand.

More laughter from Buck, and she glanced up. Farley wasn’t as young as she’d thought he would be. But perhaps, just as living on the docks had caused Ollie to look younger, it had aged Farley prematurely.

She hovered the tip of the pencil over the blank sheet of paper, but as she went to write, Buck asked Farley a question that stopped her in place.

“Is he really Arthur’s brother?” he asked, his tone somewhat derisive, disbelieving.

The way he said it, it sounded like… like they knew Arthur, like they were familiar with him—possibly friendly. Jeremy’s younger brother, who’d died a captain of the British military.

Thoughts and memories started clicking around in her brain like pieces of a puzzle, things she’d heard in passing along with the few scraps of information she’d been told outright.

“That he is. Got a right long stick up his arse though.”

Arthur Gilcrest had been captured in an ambush. An ambush where a fortune’s worth of ammunition had been stolen.

Jeremy had cut off her family shortly after Arthur’s death, over a year later.

Click.

This. This was the answer. All these months, she had never known why, what had happened between Jeremy and her brothers. These questions had plagued her for so long.

Lucas had been Arthur’s commanding officer, and he had been the one in charge of investigating the ambush. The military had eventually come to suspect treason.

These thugs, gang members who were part of a smuggling operation, knew Arthur.

The day Jeremy came to offer for her, Lucas must have told Jeremy he suspected Arthur was a traitor.

That day, when she’d told him that Ollie shouldn’t have to turn his back on his brother, Jeremy had said… That’s why … But then he’d stopped. He’d told her he’d never wanted her to have to decide, that it wouldn’t have been fair. She’d been half-right to guess that Jeremy had not wanted her to have to turn her back on her brothers—which hadn’t made much sense in the context of that conversation. But the choice wouldn’t have been between her brothers and herself. It would have been between her brothers and Jeremy .

Jeremy hadn’t wanted her to have to choose between her family and the man she loved. That was why…

Oh Jeremy!

Arthur had always been Jeremy’s weak spot. And when faced with something so contemptable as the accusation that Arthur had betrayed his own countrymen, Jeremy hadn’t been able to believe it.

Lydia nearly sobbed as she grasped the truth. The purchase of Ludwig Bros. Shipping hadn’t been about cleaning up the docks at all. It had been all about clearing his brother’s name.

And that was not going to happen. Because Arthur had been a traitor.

“What are you waiting for?” Farley nudged her arm, his foul breath nearly making her gag. She shook her head.

Lydia’s realization had left her stunned and unable to think about anything else.

“I… I don’t know what to write.” The sound of her own voice jolted her back to the present.

A plan. She needed a plan, and in order to come up with one, she needed to keep her wits about her.

Farley drew up a chair and sat down, crossing his legs and lounging in a manner that was far too relaxed for the situation.

“To my Darling Earl of Tempest,” he dictated and then dropped his foot and leaned forward. “Go on, now. Write it.”

She did just that, in flowery, looping letters. She realized as he watched her that his eyes had an unfocused quality whenever he glanced down at her words.

He was uneducated.

“Now what?” she asked innocently.

“If you wanna see me alive again, you go to the Tuesday warehouse at sunset tonight. Alone. If ya do anything stupid, they’ll kill me.” And then he sniggered. “If ya ever wan’ another taste o’ me you best do what they want. And sign it, yer loving lady.”

Lydia wrote instead: I’m being held captive on one of the abandoned ships near the broken pier. Farley and his men will be waiting for you at the warehouse at sunset but that’s a trap. He wants to kill you. Please be careful and if anything happens to me, know that I’ve always loved you. Yours forever, Lydia.

Feeling hesitant, and a little concerned that Farley could read it after all, she glanced up. “Anything else?”

“Na, just fold it up and seal it with a kiss.” He waved his gun in the air, laughing.

Lydia did precisely that and handed it over.

“Noah!” he shouted out the door and someone who looked like an older version of Buck appeared in the opening. “Make sure this gets to Tempest. An’ don’t ya let no one follow you.”

She breathed a sigh of relief when Noah tucked the note into his shirt and disappeared. And another when Farley handed the gun to Buck.

“Take this.” With his hands free, Farley then grasped her wrists and tied her hands in front of her again. “If she does anything stupid, shoot her. But not in the head or the body. She’s more use to us if she’s alive for now. If anyone else comes, though, shoot them in the head.”

“Not the heart?” Buck asked.

“Wherever.” Farley sent Buck an annoyed look over his shoulder. “Just be sure they end up dead.”

“Understood, boss.”

Farley strode toward the door and then halted, jerking around to pin his gaze on her. “You nobs should have minded yer own business.”

She wanted nothing more than to scream back at him. Because when the thieves had begun stealing the soldiers’ supplies, they’d put the entire country in danger, making it everyone’s business.

“How did you get Arthur to do it?” she asked instead.

“Bought ‘his vowels, how else? Every man has his weakness. Funny thing is, Tempest’s little brother wasn’t loyal to no one. Fickle as ‘ell, he was.” And with that, Farley stepped outside and closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with Buck again.

With Buck and the gun.

Lydia exhaled a slow breath. If Arthur hadn’t been loyal to Farley, it meant he’d regretted his actions at some point, right? That had to mean something.

She glanced over at Buck, who was staring down the barrel of the pistol as though he was trying to see how it worked.

Perhaps knowing Arthur had been coerced into his treachery would help Jeremy reconcile himself to it. She only hoped she’d stay alive long enough to tell him.