Charlie blinked at him. "Pool of London, Execution Dock, as a matter fact."

Gabriel released him. "You're sure?"

Charlie nodded. "I was getting some air-terribly stuffy in there-and struck up a conversation with the sailor by the carriage." He was talking to two departing backs; Charlie started down the steps in their wake. "Here-where are you going?"

"After your sister," Gabriel ground out He shot a glance at Chillingworth. "Which carriage?"

"The small one." Chillingworth was striding along, scanning the ranks of carriages drawn up along the road.

"I might have known," Gabriel muttered.

"Indeed you might," Chillingworth retorted. "I, at least, had plans for the night."

Gabriel had had plans, too, but-

"There it is!"

Together with a score of other coachmen, Chillingworth's coachman had left his master's unmarked carriage in the care of two of their number while the rest adjourned to a nearby tavern.

"I can run like the wind and 'ave your man here in a jiffy, guv'nor," one of the watchers offered.

"No-we haven't time. Tell Billings to make his own way home."

"Aye, sir."

The carriage was wedged between two others; it took the combined efforts of Gabriel, Charlie, and the two coachmen to clear the way sufficiently for Chillingworth to ease his carriage free. He waited only until Gabriel swung up to the box seat alongside him and Charlie leaped on the back before giving his blacks the office.

"Billings is going to have a heart attack." Chillingworth glanced at Gabriel. "But never mind that. What's going on?"

Gabriel told them, omitting only the extreme extent to which the Morwellans were at financial risk.

"So she thinks she's going to meet this captain?"

"Yes, but it's all too pat. Why tonight, the last night before the petition is lodged? I spoke with his shipping line only last Friday and they had no expectation of the captain sailing so soon. Struthers himself didn't expect to sail for weeks."

"This Crowley character. What's his caliber?"

"Dangerous, unprincipled-a gutter rat grown fat. One with no known scruples."

Chillingworth glanced at Gabriel, taking in the cast of his features, the granite-hard expression thrown into harsh relief by the street lamps. "I see." His own expression hardening, Chillingworth looked back at his horses.

"Alathea'll be all right," Charlie assured them. "No need to worry about her. She's more than a match for any rogue."

Unslayable confidence rang in his tone; Gabriel and Chillingworth exchanged a glance, but neither made any move to explain that Crowley was no mere rogue.

He was a villain.

"Pool of London," Chillingworth mused, reaching for his whip. "Vessels can leave directly from there."

With a flick of his wrist, he urged his horses on, clattering down along the Strand.

Chapter 20

The coach carrying Alathea rocked and swayed as it rumbled along the dock. Clutching the window frame, she peered out on a world of dark shadows, of looming hulks rocking on the wash of the tide. Ropes creaked, timbers groaned. The soft slap of black water against the dock's pylons was as inexorable as a heartbeat.

Alathea's own heart was beating a touch faster, anticipation high but in this setting, tempered by caution and a primitive fear. She shrugged the latter off as the product of a too-vivid imagination. For centuries, convicted pirates had been hung off Execution Dock, but if ghosts walked, surely they wouldn't haunt a site so steeped in justice? Surely it was a good omen that it was to this place in all the dingy sprawl of the London docks that the captain had summoned her. She, too, sought justice.

The coach jerked to a halt. She looked out, but all she could see was the black denseness of a ship's side.

Tags: Stephanie Laurens Cynster Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net