The Duke's Perfect Wife
Page 88

Ian pointed, vaguely north and east.
“At least wait for a coach,” Mac said. “Cameron’s bringing it.”
Ian did let them get the coach. They piled into it, Ian holding Beth on his lap, she not minding that her husband was filthy and stank to high heaven.
They rode toward Euston station but went beyond it, to Chalton Street. Ian jumped down from the coach as soon as it stopped, opened a grating, and said. “He’s here. By the storm weir. I will show you.”
Fellows rounded up constables and Hart’s men still searching the area, as well as the work gang who’d been helping them search the tunnels. Fellows poured them all down through the street, Ian leading the way.
Eleanor waited on the pavement above, refusing to return to the coach. She paced here as she had in the drawing room, but now hope had come back, and fear, with a vengeance.
An hour later, her hopes were still there, she waiting at any moment to hear a shout that they’d found him, followed by Hart’s growl that he wanted to be pulled out of the shit hole. She could imagine it so strongly that she was certain, so certain it would happen.
After an hour and a quarter, Fellows’s constables and the pipe men started coming up, dirty and defeated.
Fellows spoke to the head of the gang and returned to Eleanor, followed by Ian. Fellows’s brows were drawn, though Ian’s jaw was tight with determination.
“He’s not there, ma’am,” Fellows said. “Ian led us right to the place, but it’s flooded down there, and he is gone.” He looked at Eleanor with eyes so like Hart’s. “They’re going to keep looking once the water has receded, but they’re afraid he’s washed into one of the rivers and is on his way to the Thames.” Fellows’s voice went quiet. “No one survives that journey, Your Grace.”
Ian, still dirty, shook his head. “I’ll find him.” He looked at Eleanor, holding her gaze for once, his eyes even more like Hart’s than Fellows’s. “I can always find him.”
Chapter 20
Eleanor.
Hart swam out of dreams to a gentle rocking. He opened his eyes, his head still pounding—sleep hadn’t helped.
He stared for a moment at the board ceiling a few inches above his eyes before he realized that he lay on a pallet with a quilt over him. A threadbare, dirty quilt, but a quilt nonetheless.
The space that held the pallet was narrow, cramped, and filled with oars, ropes, and a tangled net. A crawl space, really, one someone had decided to tuck him into as well.
Hart ran his hand over his face, feeling the scratch of a deep beard. How long had he lain here? One day? Two?
Eleanor. Ian.
He tried to sit up in alarm, and cracked his head on the low beam above his head. He dropped back to the thin pillow, head spinning again.
Hart made himself lie still. He needed to find out where he was, what had happened, how much time had passed, and what he could do. And most of all, he needed to get rid of this be-damned headache.
Taking stock, Hart realized that his coat was gone and so were his waistcoat and shirt. He could feel the warm folds of his kilt around his legs, but the only thing covering his torso was the thin linen shirt he wore under his garments. He wriggled his toes and found woolen socks, boots gone.
Whoever had robbed him were fools. The handspun wool of the kilt was more valuable than the cashmere coat and lawn shirt put together. Tartans, at least for his branch of the Mackenzie clan, were spun in the mountains near Kilmorgan by a family who allowed no one else to get their hands on the wool, not even other Mackenzies. A true Mackenzie tartan was a rare and valuable thing.
At this moment, though, if shrewish old Teasag Mackenzie had crawled in here, scolding Hart for getting her plaid dirty, Hart would kiss her.
He carefully got himself off the pallet and crawled toward the square of light at the wider end of the space. He looked out at the rain, a narrow, rocking boat, and the River Thames.
The light was gray, foggy, like a film over a window. Through it he saw the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the line of buildings to its right that was the city, and to its left, the Strand and the Temples. The river surrounded the boat, and the south bank was shrouded in mist.
Eleanor was out there in that city somewhere. Safe at home in Grosvenor Square? Or lying hurt, or dead? He had to know. He had to leave. He had to find her.
A child sat on the gunwale of the boat, picking through a net. Not mending it, Hart saw after a moment, but pulling things out of it. The lad would study what he’d found and either toss it behind him on the boat or throw it back into the river.
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.