The Rogue's Last Letter: The Rewards of Ruin

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April 1787 ~ London, England

. . . If anticipation were food, I would not be a starving man. Your promise of a kiss tumbles around my head every minute of the day. Whatever alley we need slip into, whatever carriage we need duck behind, I am ready for that kiss. Were I a king, I’d have you fetched to London sooner. Were I a bird, I’d fly to you myself. That it is yet three months till our paths will cross—I cannot bear. Time seeks to destroy me, but I will be patient, Primrose, because the rewards are so great . . .

Lady Allison Weldon refolded the letter and dragged her pinched fingers along its well-worn crease. The parchment crinkled as she set it aside.

Oh, Harry. So young, so raw, so earnest. She could pass judgment on not one of those traits because she shared them all. How was it then, that such a seemingly honest man had broken her heart?

. . . three months till our paths will cross . . .

. . . three months . . .

It was three months now. It was London now. And still not a word from her distant lover. She had responded to his last letter. Had shared her dreams of where and how they might conceal their kisses. Had told him of the notches she’d daily carved into her window casement at Tallyside—one to mark each of the eighty-six days before she would arrive in London for the peak of the social season. Now, eighty-seven days later, she blushed at such girlish folly, because no response had ever come back from the Bow Street Runner at Eight Dryden Street, London.

Perhaps some trouble with the post, she thought. Perhaps—

She’d sent another letter. But nothing. Nothing after nine months of correspondence.

To think on it overlong was to evoke an irritating queasiness. She pressed a palm to her stomacher, finding strange comfort in the sharpness of the silver spangles that adorned it. She’d done the piece herself. Had decorated it with evening primroses, the flowers that Harry had likened to her by way of their being oh so golden and bright.

Allison, darling! shrieked a voice from downstairs.

Allison winced. Her mother’s voice always cracked when she shouted. She didn’t bother answering but merely heeded the call, descending to the entry of their London townhouse.

Lucinda, Countess Weldon, was already a tall woman, yet could not resist the towering modes of hairstyle that made her taller yet. Tonight, her graying blonde locks were covered accordingly by a creamy abomination whose topmost curls might be clipped by any doorway. Allison’s nose itched as she reached the foot of the stairs. Had Mother doused herself with every perfume on the dressing table? The overpowering miasma struck Allison like a whiff of hartshorn salts and did nothing for her anxious nausea.

The countess stood in the marble-floored entry with their first footman, Hayden, who patiently held open the door. Allison was reluctant to draw any nearer than the staircase’s lowest step, so repelled she was by her mother’s scent.

My Allison, but aren’t you ready early? I worry your hair will wilt before you reach the doors of the assembly room. It is our first night back in the city and I wish for you to shine, my dear.

I promise to leave here looking as fresh as you see me now.

Lady Weldon’s powdered brow arched upward in that skeptical way her daughter knew too well.

Outside, a pair of men were lowering a sedan to the street and opening its top and front. The grand woman turned to Hayden who was pushed somewhat aside by the breadth of her burgundy skirts. It is time for me to go and make my social calls before our appearance tonight. Your father will be leaving shortly to make his own rounds and— she swiveled on her heel, Hayden, you will call a sedan chair for Lady Allison at eight sharp.

Yes, Your Ladyship.

A moment later, the door clunked shut behind Lady Weldon’s little train of taffeta.

Hayden was quick to avoid Allison’s gaze, but she swooped down the final step and blocked his egress. Hayden.

Lady Allison?

She was already palming a fat handful of shillings in the pocket that hung beneath her petticoats. She withdrew them and pressed them into Hayden’s waiting hand.

You will call a sedan chair for me not at eight but at seven.

His fingers curled around the fistful as his dark brown eyes lowered to meet hers.

Hayden had been born with a split in his lip and it had been repaired in a crooked, but serviceable manner when he was still an adolescent, working as a groom under his father. Allison was a very young child when she’d heard him crying out under the knife of the family surgeon. It had given her nightmares. Yet, once he’d healed up, she decided he had the most lovely smile, even as no one else seemed to agree. It was the smile he wore now as he acquiesced to another of her habitual bribes.

He sighed. I will call a sedan chair for you at seven.

He delivered an exaggerated bow fit for the court, and Allison met it with a strained and teetering curtsy.

Do not twist your ankle, my lady. Your mother will have my head.

Where do you suppose she keeps the other heads she has collected? Allison tried not to laugh or break their stare. She knew this game and hated to lose it.

Hayden thought on it. One of the wine casks has taken on a strange odor of late.

Allison snorted but inched herself lower. She would make him laugh first.

Mr. Hayden! Do come!

Both of them were drawn sharply upright by the earl’s voice from the rear of the house.

He needs for you to reach something up high, I wager, murmured Allison.

Hayden nodded his agreement and heeded the call, shillings jangling in his livery pocket.

Allison returned upstairs. What a blessing that their dreary butler had been left at Tallyside to look after it while they were away. With Hayden helming the townhouse, she had access to freedoms she might not otherwise enjoy.

She had an adopted elder brother, Stefano, but he’d worked in shipping on the Mediterranean for so much of her life that she hardly saw him. So it fell to Hayden to be the target of gentle sisterly harassment, and he was quick to tease her in kind. Their conspiratorial exchange had briefly diverted her from the stirring in her stomach. Now, as she resettled on the edge of her bed, that stirring was back—a potent reminder of a plan too bold for her. A plan that would be enacted at seven.

The extra hour would grant her time to visit Dryden Street. Time enough to find Harry’s apartment—to gaze upon him and discover what emotion he might elicit now that her passion had been tainted by confusion and ire.

Of course, she hoped it might all be some misunderstanding. Hoped that one letter, then another, had been lost in the post. Perhaps Harry shared her confusion about a lack of correspondence. Perhaps they would share laughter over it. Perhaps his eyes would light up as they fell upon her, and hers would brighten too, as she heard his lips move around the word Primrose for the very first time . . .

Orrr he might be a rogue and she a fool.

She sighed. They had not met in the conventional way. After all, how conventional could it be for one of her set to cross paths with a Bow Street fellow?

She’d first laid eyes on him a year ago in Bartswell, when he was not yet a proper Runner. It had been a night of mayhem, a night where she and her cousin, Beth Clarke, had narrowly avoided grave disaster at the hands of disgruntled scoundrels. Then suddenly, there had been this young man, Harry, slicing through all of the chaos with the crack of a whip and rescuing Beth’s love, Rhys, from an unjust arrest.

He had been marvelous—a sudden star in a dark night. Inexperienced, yet brave. Young, yet wise. Surely his heroics had lent something to her attraction, but she also knew him through Beth’s stories. Of how he was the gentlest member of Rhys’ highway band of thieves. Of a distant, ill-fated mutiny . . .

Allison had approached him that night to flirt, to bat her lashes and soothe away terrible new memories with light conversation and compliments. But they exchanged no compliments. And they spoke not of favorite refreshments nor games, but of the loneliness of long journeys and the faintness of childhood memories. And all with a wistful good humor that felt like a natural state.

They spoke a mere couple of hours, yet Allison had walked away feeling known and had whispered to the young hero where he might post a letter.

He had posted nearly four score letters since.

Then nothing.

Allison took a deep breath, quelling the burn of rising tears. If only she could have her cousin’s advice.

It was because of that night in Bartswell—because of its scandal—that the name Beth Clarke was banned in the presence of Lady Weldon. Since then, Tallyside’s butler had ensured not a single note bearing the ruined name ever reached Allison’s letter tray.

Now Allison could finally write, but no counsel would be reaching her in time. No, tonight she would be crossing uncharted waters alone, seeking answers from their source.

She looked across her room to the dressing table’s mirror. Her mother was right, her hair would wilt. She replaced a sunny tendril into the strand of pearls strung through her coiffure and confronted the girl in the mirror.

Here she was, taking the matter into her own inexperienced hands. It was precisely what Beth would have encouraged.

The thin cushioning of the sedan chair’s box did little to prevent bruises as another rough jostle saw Allison’s head banging into the side.

Have a care!

The men carrying the box either didn’t hear or ignored her. What had gotten into her? She sounded like her mother.

They were almost to Bow Street and Dryden was not far. Her stomach tightened. The inside of the little box was suffocating, yet she found herself equally disturbed by the prospect of being free of it—of being alone at sunset in Covent Garden.

The fear was confronted sooner than expected as the floor of the box, rather unceremoniously, met with the pavement. The front opened up and one of the carriers offered a hand to help her from her seat. No sooner was she standing than the men hurried off to find their next fare.

Allison stared up the brick facade of Eight Dryden Street. She could feel how her golden gown drew the gazes of the passersby. She stuck out like a gilt flower, so decorated she was for the ball. Conscious of her visibility, she lowered her head and knocked on the tall green door.

A full minute seemed to pass before it cracked.

Who want? The words uttered by the meek feminine voice made no sense at first and Allison stammered.

I—I am here to see—I wonder where Mr. Plymouth might reside, if you please?

Tired eyes examined her from the shadows inside. Flicking up and down, they approved enough of what they saw that the door was flung open. A thin, neatly dressed woman with gray curls jutting from beneath her mob cap pointed at the staircase.

U’stairs, she said, but I don’t want trouble. The woman slammed the front door behind Allison and ducked into the nearest room, slamming that door too.

The building appeared quiet and well-kept. Allison stepped onto the staircase and looked up past its many turns and landings. She forced a swallow of courage past her dry throat. Harry had once written about the view from his dormer windows. ‘U’stairs’ must mean the garret.

Each upward step increased the tremors in Allison’s hands. Never in her life had she fainted yet felt suddenly bared to the possibility. Her thoughts grew layered and chaotic. What if—? What if—?

She found only one door at the top.

She raised a fist to knock, and her eye caught the glimmer of the garnets on her bracelet. This was absurd. She was dressed to draw the eyes of the ton’s finest bachelors. Yet here she was in a tidy lodging house, seeking a Bow Street Runner who might have deliberately discarded her.

A memory of his smile flitted through her thoughts. His smiles started in his lips but ended in his deep blue eyes, which became so lit by his spirit that they dazzled like fireworks. She could not fathom such eyes being insincere.

With that one fleeting image of a smile, the garden of her hopes was watered. Her nerves settled and her bile retreated. If she were to be a victim to her own naiveté, so be it.

She knocked.

A little gasp puffed from her throat—the door had moved away from her knuckles at the first gentle rap. It opened with a well-oiled whisper and stopped when it was but a few finger-widths ajar.

Allison glanced over her shoulder, toward the staircase, as though someone might be there to offer reassurance.

She rapped again, this time against the doorjamb.

No sound came from within.

Mr. Plymouth? she called. She lowered her voice to try again. Harry?

No answer.

She flattened a palm against the door and eased it open, only for it to be stopped by something on the other side. She jumped back. Something was not right.

Somewhere downstairs, a door opened and closed loudly, startling her again. She wished to be anywhere else but in the stairwell where she felt so exposed and out of place.

She pushed the door slowly until, again, she met with resistance. There was almost enough space to push her head through the crack and have a peek, but the idea of putting any part of herself through the portal before she knew what lay on the other side was wholly unsettling. She shut her eyes and reopened them with a surge of courage. Then she put a shoulder to the door and shoved.

The resistance began to give, but there was a cascade of disturbance on the other side: the tinks of broken glass, the shuffling of papers, the groaning of heavy things against the plank floor . . .

Her progress struck another more solid blockage. The door would give no more. No matter. There was room enough to slip through.

Her next cautious greeting was swallowed up by the sight that confronted her.

It was difficult to absorb it all at once. The carnage.

Golden twilight cut through the two dormer windows to Allison’s left, flattening each layer of the room’s destruction into its own shadowy, twisted shape.

It was a toppled bookcase that had blocked her entry, its documents and tomes scattered far into the room’s center. Pages, ruthlessly torn out, were thick on the ground. They were disturbed by her skirts as she entered.

A rug was scrunched against one wall. Chairs, splintered to bits, were haphazardly strewn before the little fireplace. A flipped table. The bed’s mattress was decimated—fiber and down erupting from its insides in a gory manner.

She wandered far enough into the room to find one of the strips of waning sunlight and stand in it as though it might comfort her.

The words the landlady downstairs had uttered clanged like an alarm bell in Allison’s skull: I don’t want trouble.

What trouble happened here? Was Harry safe? Was she?

She drifted to the next window, to where the glitter of something caught her eye. There, a little clerk’s desk lay on its broken face with a dagger standing upright from its wooden back. Allison crouched down to study its gleaming brass pommel and a grip inlaid with a checkered pattern of nacre and lapis . . .

Her hand went to touch it, but something stopped her. A dark awareness was coalescing; if she let it take hold, she would not retain her senses.

Her knee gently bumped the desk’s side drawer, which was thrust out like a little tongue, spilling stationery all around her where she knelt. She swept a hand through the papers, finding them mostly blank, but for one—she unburied it. It was a letter, or the start of one, with Dear Primrose, sitting lonely at the top. She brushed the words with her thumb only to see the word Dear disappear beneath a jet smudge.

On examination of her fingertips, she found several of them stained with ink. Daubing them on the paper did little to clean them. She dropped the letter and stood, snatching up her gold skirts in a sudden panic for her hem. A toppled ink pot rolled around near her toe.

So absorbed was she in the little mess, that she almost did not catch the click of the pistol behind her.

Don’t move. The male voice was gentle but authoritative. I don’t know who you are, but you are going to tell me everything, including who sent you.

Allison heard the door close. Footsteps.

Her heart clenched as she awaited further instruction, as she hoped she might be asked to turn around before this stranger was upon her.

I only came for Harry, she said.

The footsteps halted on a crunch of broken glass. They didn’t move again and the absence of sound was hard to bear.

Why? asked the voice.

Because he—he promised me something.

Harry Plymouth’s mind was addled from many nights without good sleep. Reality was hard to separate from the nightmares of mutinies and murders. It was enough to worry a man that any moment might be a dream. Was this?

One golden curl tumbled down the woman’s neck from where her coiffure had lost hold of it. That seemed right. As did the rich and sunny concoction that enveloped her. Her petite stature—that too. Her voice—he did not quite remember her voice from a year ago, but he remembered he liked it. He thought he might like this voice too. Though he hated now to hear how it trembled.

Yes, from the back, she was every bit his Lady Allison—his distant Primrose. Yet he expected at any moment that she might turn and reveal some villain’s face instead. Such were his nightmares. Such was his life now.

What did he promise you? he asked, lowering his pistol.

She turned then.

And it wasn’t some wicked face that greeted him. It was hers. It was her green eyes, bright and gentle, shimmering in the sun’s waning rays. They danced as she assessed him. Then they flared, widening at the very moment recognition struck.

He flinched as she moved toward him. No. She can’t be here. It isn’t safe.

But his arms betrayed his judgment, folding around her as she collapsed against him. For a moment, he was lost—blessedly, lost. Then his senses awoke to the crispness of the taffeta beneath his fingers. He gently extracted her.

Allison. You should not be here.

Is that all you have to say?

Not remotely. But now was not the time.

The urgency of the situation wrapped around his neck like a tightening noose, and now here was his lovely Allison standing dangerously close to the same gallows.

Her fingers threaded through his, bringing with them a veil of peace, rescuing him from hell, for just another moment.

Harry. What is all of this? What has happened?

Her face was the shape of a heart and her lip trembled over a small and pointed chin.

You look very lovely, he said, as though all sense had fled him. There was an echoing emptiness to his thoughts—a mind full of cobwebs.

For one second, her eyes lit up in the way he hoped they might, but then her expression collapsed into one of pity as though he were a senile man who needed to be led to his dinner plate.

Another thought—useless in the moment—escaped the cobwebs. I’m very sorry.

He wandered away from her and picked up a book of no consequence. He placed it in a deliberate position on the mantel, as though the one gesture might render his whole room back in order.

Harry, you are frightening me.

He turned on her.

Am I? His thoughts, his actions—they all felt so nebulous amid the deprivation of sleep. It’s no wonder. I’m rather frightened too.

Allison approached, the need for answers swimming in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak—

A sound from downstairs, though—

Harry cut off her words with a finger to her lips, finding them warm and tremulous. He turned an ear toward the door. Someone was downstairs. A man. Arguing with another in the stairwell.

Allison’s lips flinched beneath his finger and he responded with a whole hand across her mouth. He hoped the desperation in his eyes conveyed his regrets before he whispered his instruction.

Someone’s coming. It is very dangerous. Do you trust me?

The sight of her wide and glassy eyes above his firm grip would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his days. If anything should happen to her, fear would be the last expression he would ever know to grace her face.

He could not let that be.

She nodded beneath his hand and he removed it, taking her wrist instead. He raised his pistol and led her silently to the far dormer where his desk was toppled. He slid the sash upward and helped Allison to it, using the desk as a step. For a moment he panicked that she might not fit with her enormous skirts crowding the way. But her frock collapsed miraculously, the way a cat seemingly loses its bones whilst creeping beneath a gate.

He joined her on the roof outside and closed the window until only a small gap at the bottom was left.

Allison had already flattened her body to the roof’s slope, bracing her heels against the short parapet that made any falls unlikely.

Harry stretched an arm around her.

We must move away from the window, he whispered.

She nodded and crept away with him close at her heel—too close, apparently, because he stepped on her dress, disturbing her footing. Before her chirp of surprise could become a scream, his hand was across her mouth again. There was no time to linger on the anguish it caused him to handle her in such a way, but rather than having to force away the thought himself, it was eased when she settled her body against him.

There was a bang as someone inside flung the door open, only to be met with the immovable toppled bookcase.

Harry raised his half-cocked pistol and waited for the sound of a footstep to conceal the click as he pulled back the flintlock’s hammer. He slid his hand from Allison’s mouth and stroked her cheek instead, all while keeping an ear to what was unfolding inside.

He expected to feel her shake apart in his arms like a clockwork toy rattled by an over-tight spring. But, no. She was utterly still, as though she dared not even breathe.

Two pairs of steps entered the room. One, heavier, like boots. The other, detectable by their carelessness as they shuffled through broken ceramic on the floor.

I don’t think he’s been back, said a man.

No, I don’t suppose he has. This voice was more refined than the other and nearer the window. It was the voice with the boots. But he left your blade out for you, how kind.

Harry heard the groan of the desk against the floor as the dagger was plucked forcibly from it.

Anything else you’ll want me to be looking for?

No. The letter you found is enough. It is a mere souvenir, besides. We knew he was our man.

Harry’s flesh went cold. The letter. He had pushed away the fear for days, but now the final thread of denial was cut. This hell. This nightmare. It was about the mutiny of years ago.

How he wished he were free to curse, to shout, to rush the men with his pistol and strike them down—it would have been the perfect chance but for Allison. Instead, all he could do was listen when the men neared the window again:

Shall we leave a note?

A note? The question was laced with casual disdain.

You know, a threat?

Yes, Giddy, we will leave a threat but not on paper.

The clumsier steps crossed to the back of the room, near Harry’s destroyed mattress, then crossed the length of the room again, toward the mantel.

They continued their conversation, but Harry could not hear clearly until the clumsier man passed by the window.

Almost done. We’ll get you to your Willis’ soon enough.

There came the sound of wood knocking against wood. For a moment, it was just another innocuous detail, then Harry realized what sort of threat was intended. His heart twisted in his chest. There were more snaps and knocks as the legs of Harry’s broken reading chairs were committed to a pile of firewood. He wondered whether Allison could hear it, if she understood the outcome as he did.

The men inside worked quickly and exchanged no further pleasantries. Minutes passed. The sounds of footsteps either disappeared or were deadened by new sounds. A whiff of smoke reached the window. It was too dangerous to wait any longer, even if the men were still about.

Harry rolled away from Allison’s side and threw up the sash, leading through the window with his pistol hand.

Dropping into the room, his eyes softened with relief even as they burned against the smoke. The men were gone. They’d not waited for their fire to take hold.

Harry scooped up his ruined counterpane and dashed to where the pile of burning rubbish trailed from