After she paid a man at the gate, it creaked open to admit her to what seemed a dark pit of squalor. Her footsteps echoed in a stone corridor still blackened from the fire. Noxious odors of slops, rotten food, and unwashed bodies made her gag before she stepped into the relatively luxurious keeper’s house.
“Walter Cowday,” a hard, graying man introduced himself. “Who you here to see?”
“The Black Highwayman.”
He raised a grizzled brow and held out a hand. Her heart pounding, she put a silver coin in it, and then another and another. When he remained silent, she added the one she had of gold. She clenched her hand around her few remaining coins; she’d never imagined it would cost this much.
“He went straight to the condemned hold. Lucky knave don’t have to wait. Tyburn Fair day tomorrow.”
When she failed to show the proper excitement for the public holiday that an execution meant, he pocketed the money and motioned for her to follow him back to the corridor.
He lifted a hatch door and pointed down. “There you go. If you’ve more silver, a guard will point the way.”
Holding her cumbersome skirts in one hand, she descended a ladder and dropped to a damp stone floor.
Bleak gray cells lined both sides of another corridor, moisture trickling down their walls. Each looked about eight feet by six, furnished with a wooden bench and a Bible. The iron candlesticks, one per hold bolted to the stone, apparently were saved for night. The only light came filtered though a tiny window high in each cell, covered by heavy iron bars.
She swallowed hard and began searching down the corridor. It was cold and dark, and she stumbled more than once. Men hooted at her, and chains clanked as they stuck their arms through the bars and grabbed at her in the blackness. For what seemed the hundredth time today, tears pricked her eyes.
Trick was nowhere to be found.
“Who goes there?”
She couldn’t remember ever being as relieved when a uniformed guard appeared in the corridor holding a burning torch. Blessed light.
“I’m looking for the Black Highwayman.”
Wordlessly, he held out a hand, and she gladly filled it with the last of her silver. Yet he made no move to show her the way.
Through heartache and fear, indignation rose. “Well, where is he?” she demanded.
“Doctor took him.”
Once again, hope fluttered in her breast. Maybe they’d noticed he was ill and brought him to an infirmary. Perhaps they’d let him recover and retry his case. It was possible the pardon would be unnecessary, after all.
“He’s not here?” she asked.
The man shook his head.
It was like pulling teeth to get answers from the cur, and this after she’d paid. Impatience and worry combined to make her jaw tighten and her voice sound shrill. “Where did the doctor take him to, then?”
“The graveyard, mistress.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
“THE GRAVEYARD?” A wave of dread swamped her. Her breath abruptly ceased, and her chest felt as though it might burst. She couldn’t have heard the guard right. “The graveyard? Are you sure? What happened?”
The uniformed man shrugged.
“Tell me what happened! I paid you, you blackguard!”
She rarely used such language, but it could be effective. He blinked and took a small step back. “He was ill when he came in, you see. A doctor went in to examine him, came out and said he was dead. Of the plague.”
“The plague?” She knew it could kill swiftly, but she’d seen Trick only hours ago. Ill, but very much alive.
And he’d wanted to tell her something.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I will own up I didn’t go in there. One don’t mess with the plague, mistress.”
“Did you see him at all?”
“Aye, through the bars from a safe distance. He was dead, all right. Blue spots all over him, and he was stiff as a long-trapped rat. Within the hour he was put in a coffin and carried out. I imagine he was buried just as quick.”
She sank to the sticky stones, not caring that she sat in filth shared with bugs and rats. Her lids slid closed against the tears that welled, poised to fall.
Trick was dead. Dead and buried. Along with his lies and his deceptions, his soft words and cherishing kisses.
And she was dead inside.
It was over, and she had no emotion left in her.
“Mistress?” The guard shook her shoulder. “Mistress, you cannot just sit here.”
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. No, she could not just sit here. The man reached down a hand, and she let him help her up.
Her brothers. She needed to get to her brothers. Hopefully they hadn’t made fools of themselves already by asking the king for a highwayman’s pardon.
And she needed to lean on them, too. To let them take her home. They would order up a bath, and she’d wash off the incredible stink of Newgate. Then she’d sleep and escape this horror her life had turned into.
She had no money left for a hackney, but when she tearfully asked a driver to take her to Whitehall Palace and promised to see he got paid, he agreed.
SEVENTY-NINE
THE GATEKEEPER at Whitehall was not about to let a servant girl in.
“I’m Kendra Chase, the Marquess of Cainewood’s sister.”
“Sure you are.” Dressed in red livery, the man looked her over with patent disbelief. “And I’m King Charles himself.”
“I mean…” Drawing a shuddering breath, she closed her eyes, opened them, and tried again. “I’m the Duchess of Amberley.”
“Kendra!”
The voice, heavy and seductive, came from an open window overhead. She’d forgotten Lady Castlemaine’s suite was over Holbein’s Gate. Although both of them had spent the Commonwealth years with King Charles’s exiled court, Barbara, the king’s longtime mistress, had never been her favorite woman. But this wasn’t the time to be choosy.
“Barbara!” she called up. “My brothers are here, and this gentleman refuses
