“Do you ever feel as though Mother Nature is tossing you around?” he interrupted. Not that he wanted the rogue’s advice, but anything was better than inconsequential babble.
“Hardly,” Jack said with a grin, “but if you mean in terms of love, no. Ladies enjoy my company. I enjoy theirs. End of story. They never feel anything deeper and vice versa.”
Rakecombe wondered if that was because the marquess only showed the world his annoyingbonhomieand rascal smile, rather than the warrior he’d seen that night in St Giles or the gentleman who’d pledged a fortune to a charity hospital.He considered saying so, but his own life was in too much of a mess to be spouting forth.
Once, he recalled stating he’d be ten feet under before taking Winterbourne’s advice. Well, metaphorically, he now was.
A scotch mist was falling and he wrapped his coat close, wishing he’d requested the carriage drop them nearer. It was not the weather for Shanks’s pony as the drizzle soaked into your very bones and there was only one way he could ever imagine warming up.
“If you want my advice, I’ve a pertinent rule,” Jack began, and all at once, Rakecombe regretted opening his mouth, as he now remembered the chap’s rules came in two varieties: useless and downright useless.
“Number twenty-four, in case you are noting them down for future use,” Jack continued, spreading his arms as though issuing an eleventh commandment. “If your leg is stuck in the jaws of a trap, you have two options: writhe around and cry out or lay still and conserve energy, but either way, you’ll lose the leg.”
Rakecombe halted his stride so hastily, he almost slipped on the damp cobbles, the cane saving his arse and pride. “That’s ludicrous and it’s not even a rule.”
Pursing his lips, Winterbourne shook his head wearily. “The rule is don’t get trapped in the first place, but once you are…you’re buggered. Accept it.”
Grumbling, Rakecombe wheeled left and made his way down the back of Charles Street.
His leg wasn’t stuck. No, his whole blasted body, head and soul were stuck and Aideen’s jaws were formed of iron.
Bluey’s skin had taken on a flush and his eyes glittered with fever, but he was vaguely compos mentis.
“I got word,” he rasped, “that a couple of foreign fellas ’ave been seen over the river at some Southwark warehouse, so I done a bit o’ inn-hopping there before I came to yer. It were in the Nag’s Head I overhead some fellas nattering French.” He shifted and winced. “I could only understand a bit o’ their parlezvous lingo, and me nous-box feels like it’s stuffed with wool, but I ’eard the name Stafford mentioned and” – he swiped a sweaty hand over his brow – “they got somethin’ important at that warehouse.”
“Documents? Or something more sinister? Gunpowder?” Rakecombe frowned: the plot thickened.
“Dunno. Sorry, guv. It were noisy and…”
“No, I’m indebted again, Bluey. You did well.”
“Not that well, I got bleedin’ stabbed. Must have heard about my nosing around and followed me. Ta for saving m’bacon, by the way.” A female giggled from the adjoining room. “Guv?” said Bluey, frowning. “Can that Jack the lad be trusted?”
“With your life, yes,” answered Rakecombe.
“But not with me wife, eh?” He chuckled but instantly regretted it, holding his stomach in pain. Indeed, Winterbourne had disappeared to help the pretty blonde prepare Bluey’s laudanum.
“When did you marry? I didn’t even know.”
“We keep it hush. For the best in our line o’ work. Been hitched seven years now.”
Over time, he’d chatted with Bluey about their lives, but never had he thought to ask about female companionship. “And have you never…worried about her, considering your employment?”
“She’s got a better aim than me with the pops, but I did nearly end our courting at one point.” He twisted onto his side, and those blue eyes of his nickname dulled. “Yer know I was born within screaming distance of St Giles’ Church, but I had no intention of dying there. Hard to get out the gutter, it sucks you down.” He grimaced. “But I’ve always been good at…hearing things. She were a touch above me, a teacher, and I told her, I told her I could get her hurt but yer know what she said?”
Rakecombe shook his head. At last some decent advice, even if it was from a dubious character with even more dubious morals. Although whether his were lower than Winterbourne’s was disputable.
“She told me her mother died when she were thirteen. Some coxcomb trampled her with his flash rattler and prads. Then her sister died when she were fifteen – the lung sickness. And her father drank himself to death before her sixteenth birthday.” He closed his eyes as though the candle lamp was too bright for them. “She said there was just as much chance of Mr Grim carrying you away whilst you lay content and unaware in a soft feather bed than of a blade to the heart. And I couldn’t really argue with that.”
He nodded. Those words concurred with Jack’s advice at the soirée the other night and he silently cursed, loathing it when other people were right.
“Yer have to be careful,” continued Bluey, “and we are, very. I’ve another gaff in the Rookery and I don’t introduce her to no one in my work. In fact, yer the first. But my life wouldn’t be worth living without Harriet. And I trust her to take care of herself.”
That shook Rakecombe to his core.
Did he trust Aideen? His worry was that she would do something perilous like Gwen, who’d been similarly headstrong and wilful.
“I treasure your confidence in me, Bluey. But what of the future?” he asked. “I know you have that farm in Kent but I thought it only for income.”
