Swallowing, Charity asked if he had any mutton bones. She wondered if he could hear the wobble in her voice, and the urge to dash out of the shop was almost overwhelming.
‘Reckon I might have a couple out the back,’ he answered. ‘They for the dog?’ He tipped his head towards Freddy, currently drooling through the window.
Charity nodded. As he disappeared behind an old, tattered curtain, she silently berated herself for her cowardice. Her behaviour was that of a chit still in the school room. Certainly not that of a woman walking out on her own. She took a few deep breaths, and by the time he returned a couple of minutes later, she’d managed to get her heart rate under control.
‘Not much meat on them,’ he observed, holding the two bones up for her inspection, ‘but plenty of good marrow.’ She coolly nodded her acceptance and busied herself opening her purse as she waited for him to wrap them up in some old newspaper.
‘That’ll be three pennies.’
Handing over the coin, she thanked him courteously, and even managed a small nod as she took the package and calmly made her way out of the shop. Once outside, her composure began to crumble as she fumbled to untie Freddy as quickly as possible. Indeed, she was so focused on her task that she did not see the smugglers’ leader step round the counter to stare after her thoughtfully.
Walking swiftly, she arrived at the Fisherman’s Rest earlier than the allotted time, but after hesitating on the threshold for a few moments, she finally decided that as a woman grownshe would be foolish to remain outside in the cold and risk an ague or worse when she would be perfectly cosy inside.
Indeed, as she pushed open the door, she determined she would go one step further and treat herself to a hot chocolate while she waited for the three men to arrive.
∞∞∞
On waking, Jago had realised he dared not return to work. He had until sunset to supply Jack with some kind of useful information, but somehow, he didn’t think he’d got that long. Especially given that he was pulling the wool over the smuggler’s eyes. In reality, he had nothing.
Jago had played it all wrong. He’d tried too hard and come to Jack’s attention for all the wrong reasons. He’d survived two of the gang leader’s ruffians, but he wasn’t sure he would manage to outwit a third. And the last two attacks had merely been warnings.
He had to discover Jack’s real identity. Today. If he left without knowing who the smuggler really was, he wouldn’t get another chance. Once he had that information, he could take it to the authorities and let them deal with the bastard. He forced his mind from the possibility that Jack was likely in the pay of someone much higher up. Someone who might well thwart every effort to see the murderer hang.
Jago had finally acknowledged that he couldn’t do the deed himself. Vengeance had kept him on this path since Genevieve’s death. He hadn’t cared what happened to him if he was caught and convicted for putting an end to Jack’s reign of terror. But that had changed since his chance meeting with Charity Shackleford. After so long, he finally dared to hope that he had something to live for.
But now was not the time to be thinking about happy ever afters. They had to survive the day first. Climbing out of bed, he splashed his face with cold water and threw on his clothes, his nose wrinkling at their slightly musty odour. It had been so long since he’d given any consideration to how he looked or indeed smelled. To the people he’d mixed with for the last two years, washing was something that happened if you fell into the sea.
He left everything but the clothes he was wearing. He wouldn’t be coming back. He laid the keys along with the coin for his rent on top of the small cot and slipped out of the door.
As he began the long walk back to town, he concentrated on what he needed to do. Identify Jack, find a way to free the curate’s disreputable mother and get all of them to a place of safety. But even if Charity was unable to identify Jack, Jago had to leave Dartmouth before dusk, and he could not leave Charity and her father behind.
Their connection to Mary Noon, and more tenuously to him, would eventually bring them to Jack’s attention. And as Jago had learned to his cost, the smuggler did not allow any loose ends.
∞∞∞
‘Sir, Sir …Sir,’ Percy’s frantic whispers finally penetrated the fog, and Augustus Shackleford opened his eyes. ‘Oh, thank God,’ the curate responded fervently.
Blinking, the Reverend stared up into the grimy face only inches away from his. The meagre light cast from the open trap door above gave the curate an almost demonic appearance, and for one horrified second, the Reverend thought he’d cocked up his toes and ended up downstairs.
‘Thunder an’ turf,’ he muttered when Percy finally came into focus. ‘What the deuce happened?’
‘We fell,’ Percy answered gruffly, hoping his superior might have forgotten the bit that came before it. The Reverend struggled into a sitting position and looked round. Fortunately, they’d fallen on an empty pile of sacks. Though bruised and battered, neither man appeared to have broken anything. ‘How long have we been here?’
‘A few minutes, I think.’
Climbing unsteadily to his feet, Reverend Shackleford waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Gradually, he began to make out barrels and boxes, all stacked on top of one another. ‘God help us, Percy,’ he breathed. ‘This is where they stash the deuced contraband.’
‘What are we going to do, Sir?’ Percy’s voice wavered as he fought to control his panic.
‘Well, we can’t go back the way we came in,’ the Reverend retorted, ‘so we just have to hope that once we’ve found Mary, there’ll be another way out.’
‘Do you really think she’s here, Sir?’
Reverend Shackleford nodded. ‘She’s here, lad. If that Joseph Smith isn’t a deuced ivory turner, I’ll eat your next sermon.’ He looked round, ‘Right then, there’s got to be a door. That hole up there can’t be the only way in. The tub men would likely have an apoplexy if they had to carry the barrels up those steps.’
A minute or so later, sure enough, they spotted a low door in the far corner. ‘Stay behind me,’ Reverend Shackleford ordered. Unsurprisingly, the curate didn’t argue.
Fortunately, the door was unlocked, and after cautiously easing it open slightly, the Reverend peered through the crack. There was a tallow candle stuck in a crude sconce high on the wall. ‘Well, someone’s here,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t imagine they’d risk leaving a candle burning otherwise.’ He pulled the door wider and stepped out into the narrow corridor, Percy almost attached to him from behind.
