The Duke’s Perfect Wife (MacKenzies & McBrides #4)(75)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Hart moved, and stopped. His head still hurt like fury, and he couldn’t suppress a groan.

The lad saw him, tossed down the net, and scampered to the front of the boat and the cabin there. He returned in a moment with a man in a long coat and boots, with a lined face covered by a two-day beard.

The man casually pulled back his coat to show Hart a foot-long knife sheathed in his belt. The lad went back to the net, unconcerned.

“Awake are ye?”

Hart remembered the voice from his underground tomb. “You kicked the hell out of me,” Hart said. “Bastard.”

The man shrugged. “Easier to move you if you were out. Water was coming back.”

“That, and I offered you money.”

Another shrug. “Didn’t hurt. I could see you were rich, in spite of you not having any money on you. Me wife thinks you have plenty more at home.”

Home. I need to get there.

“You think I’ll pay you after you stripped me and sold my clothes?” Hart asked in a casual tone.

“Clothes were in tatters. Got a couple shillings for them from the rag and bone man. That pays for your passage on the boat. For saving your life, I’ll ask a bit more.”

Hart pulled himself all the way out of the hole. That effort took his strength, and he sat down hard on a chest shoved against the cabin’s outer wall. “You have amazing compassion.” Hart rubbed his temples. “Do you also have water? Or better still, coffee?”

“The wife is brewing some now. You let her have a look at that head of yours, then you’ll tell us all about who you are and where you want to be dropped off.”

Home. Home. Eleanor. But caution stopped his tongue. The bomb in Euston station had been planted when someone had known he would be there, meeting his wife. Ian had said that the man who’d set the bomb had died with it, but there would be others. The attempt coming after Darragh’s failure at Kilmorgan could mean more Fenians Inspector Fellows had missed, or another group deciding the Fenians had a good idea. If whoever it was discovered that the bomb had failed to kill Hart, they’d try again, or perhaps go after his family to flush Hart out of hiding. That could not happen. He would not let it.

The bank of the Thames was tantalizingly close. Hart rubbed his whiskered face again as he looked at it. His chances of reaching it if he swam for it, especially with the dent in his head, weren’t good. Plus, he could not be sure that the denizens who trolled the water’s edge for valuable flotsam wouldn’t simply shove a knife through his ribs as he lay recovering from the swim. His rescuer might be eager to stick him too. Men who ran up and down the river and combed the tunnels under London for treasure were a law unto themselves, standing firm against those who tried to come between them and their livelihood. Hart needed to wait, to watch, to plan.

A look at the man’s unconcerned face as he disappeared into the forward cabin told Hart that his rescuer had no idea who he was—a wealthy man, that was all. Hart would need to make certain he never did find out.

Hart watched the child a little longer, then he reached down and picked up part of the net. He extracted a copper coin from the thin rope and tossed it to the boy’s growing heap. “You missed this.”

The boy snatched up the penny, peered at it, nodded, and let it drop. He’d collected coins, links of chains, a tin box, a necklace of shells, and a tin soldier. Hart picked up the soldier.

“Highland regiment,” he said, tossing it back down. He continued looking through the net, and the lad didn’t object.

“You’re a Scot?” the boy asked.

“Obviously, lad.” Hart played up his accent. “Who else would be lost in the sewers in a tartan?”

“Dad says they shouldn’t come down here if they don’t understand the streets of London.”

“I agree w’ ye.”

By the time Dad returned with a mug of coffee, a handkerchief over it to keep the rain out, Hart had added another shell, a ha’penny piece, and a broken earring to the boy’s pile.

The wife came out with him, a sturdy woman in a bulky sweater with black hair under a fisherman’s cap. She sat down with a bowl of water and a cloth and started dabbing Hart’s head.

It hurt, but his skull throbbed less now than it had underground. Hart gritted his teeth and got through it.

“Now, then,” the man said. “Who are you?”

Hart had decided what to tell them—exactly nothing. At least for now.

He exaggerated a flinch as the wife probed the wound at the base of his skull. “That’s th’ trouble,” he said in a careful voice. “I don’t remember.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember nothing?”

Hart shrugged. “It’s a blank. Perhaps I was robbed, hit on the head, and shoved down a shaft. You said I didn’t have money with me.”

“That be true.”

“Then that’s likely what happened.” Hart fixed his gaze on the man, telling him without words that it would be to his benefit not to question the story.

The man looked back at him for a long time, his hand on the hilt of his knife. Finally he nodded. “Aye,” the man said. “That’s what happened.”

The wife stopped dabbing. “But if he don’t remember who he is, how is he going to pay us?”

“He’ll remember, sooner or later.” The man took a pipe from his coat and shoved it into his mouth, showing missing teeth. “And the longer it takes, the more he pays.”

“But we ain’t got room,” the wife said in worry.

“We’ll manage.” The man took his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at Hart. “You stay, but you earn your keep. Don’t care if you’re a lord. Or a laird, I guess the Scottish call them.”

“Not the same thing,” Hart said. “A lord has been given a title by a monarch. A laird is a landholder. A caretaker of his people.”

“That so?” The man brought out a pouch of tobacco and stepped under the cabin’s eave to fill his pipe without rain dropping in it. “How do you remember that but not your name?”

Hart shrugged again. “It came to me. Maybe my name will too.”

The man slowly filled the pipe, then put the pipe into his mouth. He took out a box of matches, struck a match against the cabin wall, and touched the spurting flame to the bowl. He sucked and puffed, sucked and puffed until smoke rolled from the pipe, pungent against the smell of the river.