you’d get there sooner. You got there every night earlier this whole past fortnight.”
“You ain’t never been late for nothin’, Cap’n,” Billy’s tenor piped.
“Picked a fine night to dilly-dally.” This in Matouba’s bass.
Jin pivoted slowly, restraining the laughter building in his tight chest.
“You are a pack of imbeciles.”
“We might be imbeciles.” Mattie crossed his thick arms. “What we ain’t is blind. Not nearly so blind as you, at least.”
For a series of moments Jin stared at his crewmen. Then he hailed a hackney and went home to sleep.
Chapter 30
He awoke midafternoon, washed off the salt and stench of his prison sojourn, and sent a message across town by courier.
He waited.
Three quarters of an hour later a reply arrived. In illiterate phrases, Pecker explained how he had taken advantage of the bishop’s absence that morning (when His Lordship went to Newgate to check on his prisoners) to remove the box from his employer’s bedchamber and hide it. In the intervening hours, however, he had grown overly anxious to rid himself of his prize. Jin was to meet him at a specified location at the London Docks, where he would exchange the box for gold.
The location was Jin’s hired berth.
Removing Mattie’s knife from his boot, he set it on the table. He was not willing to harm another person again. Not gravely. Not since he had set eyes on Viola Carlyle standing in a dark parlor in the middle of the night dressed in breeches and a man’s shirt.
He rode to the docks, stabled his horse, and made his way down the quay. Looking toward his ship, he could not resist smiling. Amid her distress in those last moments at Savege Park, she had paused to marvel over the exorbitant amount he was spending to dock at the busy port for so many weeks. She had a quick, relentless spirit, and a madness that twined about his heart and made him thoroughly hers. Whatever happened with the box, and whatever treasure it held for him-or did not hold-he would not let her go. He would rather forgive himself and ask the rest of the world for forgiveness every day of his life than lose her.
The quay was settling down to quiet for the evening, lumpers hauling cargo onto ships that would depart in the morning and sailors busy with tasks on board vessels stacked two deep at each berth. The bishop’s footman was nowhere in sight. But a sailor leaned against the base of the gangway on the vessel before Jin’s. The angle of his hat brim revealed a face uncannily like Pecker’s.
“Thought it was you,” he greeted Jin. “Told my brother Hole it was. But he was suspicious. Thought I just wanted to take all the money and run.” In the warm September breeze that clanked lines in blocks and fluttered banners atop masts through the failing sunlight, he wore a heavy overcoat, especially bulky at one side of his chest. “But I wouldn’t do that to kin, you sees. And I was curious.”
“Do you expect me to know you?”
“No. But I know you, Mr. Smythe. Or should I say, Pharaoh?” He grinned smugly. “You bought a girl off a bloke I was working for a few years back. Pretty little girl, that one. A real screamer, too. Have some fun with her, then, did you?”
“Have you brought the casket?”
The sailor straightened. “Well, now don’t be getting all high and mighty with old Muskrat. Can’t blame a fellow for trying to make a bit of friendly conversation afore transacting business, like.”
“Your brother agreed to my price. Produce the casket now and I will give you the gold.”
Muskrat rubbed his ragged whiskers and looked thoughtful a moment. “Now here’s my problem, Mr. Smythe: Hole, he ain’t no genius. I got me all the brains in the family, you see.” He tapped a fingertip to his hat. “And I been needing a little task taken care of that I- Well, you see, Mr. Smythe, old Muskrat just don’t have the heart for it.” He shook his head sorrowfully.
“I haven’t time for theatrics. What do you want?”
“You see, I got me a little problem I need out of the way.” He wrinkled his brow. “As in dead out of the way. You see.” The wind picked up for an instant, pressing the overcoat against the bulge beneath his arm. “I heard you was partic’arly good at getting little problems dead.”
“I am no longer in that line of work. I have, in fact, come to this meeting unarmed.” It felt remarkably good to admit that. Insanely imprudent, too. But perhaps she was having an even greater effect on him than he knew.
“You don’t say?” Muskrat scratched his chin again. Then he pointed up the dock to the base of the gangway of Jin’s ship where a boy sat with a lantern. “That’s Mickey. Me and Hole’s youngest brother. Now, Mr. Smythe, Mickey there is going to take you to the place I know that little problem is guzzling gin right now, you see. Then you’re going to take care of my problem, and when you’re finished, old Muskrat will be waiting right here for you with that box. What do you say to that?”
“I say you haven’t any idea with whom you are dealing.”
Muskrat’s face pinched. “They said as you was a tough one.”
“They said right.”
“Also said you ain’t hurt a fly in years. But I thought if you was properly motivated…”
“On that account, they were wrong. I may no longer be in that line of work, but a man may do anything for simple amusement.” Merely suggesting it wouldn’t damn him. “Properly motivated, of course. Give me the casket, Muskrat. Now.”
“My soul,” the sailor cooed. “The mighty Pharaoh’s asking me favors, without even a pistol or knife on him, eh?”
“But I do have my bare hands. Give me the box and you needn’t have concern over that soul quite yet.”
Muskrat narrowed his eyes. Then his gaze flickered to the side, and widened. The boy leaped up, the lantern jiggling light across the dock’s shadowed planks, his gaze fixed over Jin’s shoulder as well.
“Well, I’ll be. Looks like an angel coming my way.” Muskrat wiggled his brows. “Guess it’s old Muskrat’s lucky day.”
“Not today, I am afraid.” Viola’s satin voice came just behind Jin; then she appeared at his side. “Now, what have I missed?” She wore a gown of spring green, a delicate shawl and gloves, and her hair was swept up beneath a neat little hat. She lacked only a parasol to be fit for a stroll in the park. Jin had never seen anything so beautiful and his heart had never beaten so hard.
“You were not invited to this meeting, madam,” he said as evenly as he could. “I suggest you retire from it now.”
“Oh, phooey.” Her dark gaze darted between them. “By the by, the bishop is hopping mad. You should have seen him storm into the house this morning demanding justice. It seems he went to Newgate and, discovering your absence there, decided to accuse Alex of disloyalty to both church and crown.” Her lips curved into a grin of perfect pleasure. “Alex pretended he’d never seen the bishop before, when they had spoken mere hours earlier in the middle of the night! I had no idea my brother-in-law was such a proficient actor. Or you, for that matter.” She slanted him an acute look. “In any case, when Alex insisted that I had spent the entire night tending our dear old maiden aunt at her deathbed, the bishop turned six different shades of red. He left believing himself quite addled. It was all remarkably great fun.”
“Do not tell me you came here alone.”
“I must! For I did. I did not wish to involve Billy, Mattie, and Matouba, not after last night, so I didn’t tell them I bribed Mr. Pecker to tell me everything. What good fortune that he actually had something of worth to tell me, all about your meeting right here with his brother, Muskrat. And Hole, can you imagine? I think their mother must have been a very peculiar person. But then I worried I would not arrive on time. Am I on time?”
“Violet, leave.”
“No. I am here to help.”
“Can you not stay out of anything, woman?”
“Probably not.” She reached into a pocket and produced a dagger. “Here. Billy said they commandeered your
