‘I can’t find that kind of money all at once. You’ll have to give me time to get it together.’
Buck studied her, her gaze sliding like a greasy finger over her face and down over her body. ‘Nah. I know that’s a lie. So we’ll start tonight, shall we? I’ll get me hundred out of your body. There’s one of me little parties here this evening. They’ll like you, my gentlemen will.’
‘Oh, no.’ Phyllida reached for the door handle, jerked at it and found herself facing Jem’s broad chest.
‘Oh, yes,’ Buck said. ‘The lady’s staying, Jem. Put her in one of the rooms upstairs and lock the door—don’t want ‘er straying and ‘aving an accident, do we?’
She tried to push past him, knowing even as she shoved at the sweat-stained frieze coat that it was hopeless. Jem picked her up and slung her over his shoulder as easily as he might a child.
The room he dumped her in was quite obviously one used to entertain clients. She wondered, as she stared around at the tawdry red velvet, the huge bed and the mirrors, if this was the one she had been taken to before. It was all a blur, the only real thing in her memory Buck’s face above her, his weight, the pain and the sheer helpless terror.
Well, she was not a helpless girl now and she was desperate enough for just about anything. Phyllida pushed up the window and leaned out, hands braced on the filthy sill. She was three storeys up, overlooking a back alleyway. There were no ledges, no drainpipes within reach. This window and the locked door were the only ways out of the room.
She took off her cloak and one half-boot, held the thick fabric in front of the mirror and hit it hard with the heel. The glass shattered into a radiating pattern of long, knife-like shards. Phyllida picked one out at the cost of a cut finger, dragged back the cover from the bed and began to cut the sheet into strips.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘You’ll do it?’ Ashe asked in Hindi.
The tall Indian smiled. ‘Of course, my brother. You are the enemy of Buck, he is my enemy. We are allies, are we not? And I do not like that man’s dealings with women.’ He used a foul word and spat. ‘Come, let us hear what my men have discovered.’
Ashe suspected that Ashok—he admitted to no other name—was as much a criminal as Buck. He might not deal in women, but Ashe could smell raw opium, and the heav
y locks and the glint of weapons everywhere he looked argued precious contraband hidden in the warehouse that was Ashok’s headquarters.
He had been remarkably easy for a man who spoke Hindi to find. The first group of Indian seamen that Ashe saw had been startled to be addressed in their own language by a man dressed in the height of fashion, but Ashe’s colloquial speech seemed to win them over and they led the way to Ashok without any further persuasion.
Ashe had explained what he wanted, had swallowed liquid opium from the other man’s own cupped palm, exchanged a number of highly coloured items of gossip about Calcutta and was now sitting cross-legged on a heap of silk rugs, drinking sherbet while using all his diplomatic training not to take Ashok by the throat and shake him into urgent action. But this was the Indian’s world, his men and, Ashe was acutely aware, his own best and only chance of getting into Buck’s headquarters and removing Phyllida.
‘Oh yes, my brother, she is still in there. I have the place watched, always, as is prudent with an enemy. Your lady went in—pale, in a dull brown cloak—and has not come out. Now we wait until evening.’
‘No. She is in danger. Even as we sit here talking they could be—’
‘Wait until evening, then customers come. That’s who they want her for. You are just another English gentleman and so the door will be opened to you. My men attack at the back door and others follow you in through the front.’ The Indian reached for a sweetmeat. ‘When you find Buck, you will have a duel with him?’
‘That is for gentlemen.’ Ashe slid the knife from his sleeve and delicately trimmed a rough edge on his nail. ‘He is not a gentleman.’
‘Ah.’ Ashok smiled. ‘No, he is not. And we do not want the magistrates getting their hands on him, he knows too much about me. Perhaps he will have an accident. While we wait, your lady admired some pearls I have, the last time we did business, but she said they were too expensive for her. Perhaps you would like to look at them?’
My lady. Is she? Ashe pushed aside the thought. The future consisted of whatever time it took to get Phyllida out of there. After that he would try to work out just what she meant to him and discover what he meant to her.
Waiting was the hardest thing, Phyllida thought as she stood behind the door. The window opposite was wide open, curtains flapping. The posts at the corners of the bed were not part of the structure, she had discovered, merely supports for manacles. With a shudder at the thought of how they had been used, she had tugged one free of the brackets that held it, then jammed it across the window opening before tying the long tail of plaited sheets to it.
The makeshift rope would not hold her weight, she knew, but it served its purpose if it drew her captors to the window and gave her the chance to slip out the door.
It seemed hours before the household began to stir. Footsteps outside had her tensing every muscle, but they passed by. Women’s voices, low male replies, a shriek of laughter, the bang of the knocker.
Then, with shocking suddenness, loud shouting, a crash from far below, screams and the report of a pistol. A raid by the magistrates? She hardly dared hope.
The door opened without her hearing any footsteps. Phyllida braced herself to run. The man strode towards the middle of the room and as he did so a big black bird landed on the sill with a harsh croak.
‘Lucifer!’
The man spun on his heel. ‘Phyllida!’
‘Ashe. Ashe.’ She fell into his arms laughing and sobbing.
‘Are you all right? Have they—?’