Thornton stared a moment more and then began laughing, high, staccato barks.
“Shaddup!” a male voice from another cell yelled.
Thornton continued the odd sound, but the entire time his eyes were wide and fixed maliciously on Jasper’s face. Jasper stared stonily back. Lies or insinuated half-truths, he’d not get any more from Dick Thornton. Today or ever. He held Thornton’s gaze and deliberately dropped the coin to the floor. It rolled to the center of the passage—well out of reach of the prison cell. Thornton stopped laughing, but Jasper had already turned and was walking out of that hell-damned cellar.
o;Alas, no. I have other business to attend to.”
“Would your business involve that man in Newgate Prison?”
Jasper switched his gaze from the ceiling to his valet. Pynch’s usually wooden expression had a bit of squint about the eyes, which was Pynch’s version of a worried face.
“I’m afraid so. Thornton’s to be tried soon, and he’s sure to be convicted and hanged. Once he’s gone, any information he has dies with him.”
Pynch crossed the room with a large bath sheet. “Always assuming he has any information to impart.”
Jasper stepped from the tub and took the sheet. “Yes, always assuming that.”
Pynch watched him as he dried off, that same squint in his eyes. “Pardon me, my lord, I don’t like to speak when it isn’t my place—”
“And yet you will anyway,” Jasper muttered.
His manservant continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But I am worried that you are becoming obsessed with this man. He’s a known liar. What makes you think he’ll speak the truth now?”
“Nothing.” Jasper threw aside the towel and strode to a chair where his clothes lay and began dressing. “He is a liar and a rapist and a murderer and God only knows what else. Only a fool would trust his word. But I cannot let him go to the gallows without at least trying to learn the truth from him.”
“I fear that he is merely toying with you for his own amusement.”
“You’re no doubt correct, Pynch, as you usually are.” Jasper didn’t look at the valet as he pulled a shirt over his head. He’d met Pynch after the massacre of the 28th Regiment of Foot at Spinner’s Falls. Pynch had not fought in the battle. The valet didn’t have the same drive to find out who had betrayed the regiment. “But, sadly, reason does not matter. I must go.”
Pynch sighed and brought him his shoes. “Very well, my lord.”
Jasper sat to"0%Jasper draw on his buckle shoes. “Buck up, Pynch. The man’ll be dead in another sennight.”
“As you say, my lord,” Pynch muttered as he picked up the debris of the bath.
Jasper finished dressing in silence and then went to his dresser to comb and club his hair back.
Pynch held out his coat. “I trust you haven’t forgotten, my lord, that Mr. Dorning has made another request for your presence on the Vale lands in Oxfordshire.”
“Damn.” Dorning was his land steward and had written several appeals for his help with a land dispute. He’d already put the poor man off in order to get married and now . . . “Dorning’ll just have to wait another few days. I can’t leave without talking to Miss Fleming’s brother and Miss Fleming herself. Remind me again, please, when I return.”
Jasper shrugged on his coat, grabbed his hat, and was out of the room before Pynch could make another protest. Jasper clattered down the stairs, nodded to his butler, and strode out the door of his London town house. Outside, one of the stable lads was waiting with Belle, his big bay mare. Jasper thanked the boy and mounted the horse, steadying her as she sidled sideways, mouthing her bit. The streets were crowded, necessitating that he keep the mare to a walk. Jasper headed west, toward the dome of St. Paul’s, looming above the smaller buildings surrounding it.
The bustle of London was a far cry from the uncivilized woodland where this whole thing had started. He remembered well the tall trees and the falls, the sound of roaring water mixing with the screams of dying men. Nearly seven years before, he’d been a captain in His Majesty’s army, fighting the French in the Colonies. The 28th Regiment of Foot had been marching back from the victory at Quebec, the line of soldiers strung out along a narrow path, when they’d been attacked by Indians. They’d never had time to form a defensive position. Nearly the entire regiment had been massacred in less than half an hour and their colonel killed. Jasper and eight other men were captured, marched to a Wyandot Indian camp and . . .
Even now he had trouble thinking about it. Once in a while, shadows of that period appeared at the edge of his thoughts, like a fleeting glimpse of something out of the corner of one’s eye. He’d thought the whole thing over, the past dead and buried, if not forgotten. Then six months ago, he’d walked out the French doors of a ballroom and seen Samuel Hartley on the terrace outside.
Hartley had been a corporal in the army. One of the few men to survive the massacre of the 28th. He’d told Jasper that some traitor within the regiment had given their position to the French and their Indian allies. When Jasper had joined Hartley in searching for the traitor, they’d discovered a murderer who’d assumed the identity of one of the Spinner’s Falls fallen—Dick Thornton. Thornton—Jasper had trouble calling him anything else, though he knew it wasn’t his true name—was now in Newgate, charged with murder. But on the night they’d captured him, Thornton had claimed that he wasn’t the traitor.
Jasper nudged Belle’s flanks to guide her around a pushcart piled high with ripe fruit.
“Buy a sweet plum, sir?” the pretty dark-eyed girl next to the cart cried to him. She cocked her hip flirtatiously as she held out the fruit.
Jasper grinned appreciatively. “Not as sweet as your apples, I’ll wager.”
The fruit girl’s laughter followed him as he rode through the crowded street. Jasper’s thoughts returned to his mission. As Pynch had so rightly pointed out, Thornton was a man who told lies as a matter of habit. Hartley had certainly never voiced any doubt as to Thornton’s guilt. Jasper snorted. Then again, Hartley had been busy with a new wife, Lady Emeline Gordon—Jasper’s first fiancée.
Jasper looked up and realized that he’d come to Skinner Street, which led directly into Newgate Street. The imposing ornamental gate of the prison arched over the road. The prison had been rebuilt after the Great Fire and was suitably decorated with statues representing such fine sentiments as peace and mercy. But the closer one drew to the prison, the more ominous the stench became. The air seemed heavy, laden with the foul odors of human excrement, disease, rot, and despair.