I'll announce publication with a buy link on this page, on Writers Ink Books, and on my M. A. Lee Facebook page. Watch for it!
As for now, here's a first and very rough look at my chief protagonist, Clarey, who has more than a few secrets when she encounters unexpected danger in the Liverpool of 1814.
First Chapter ~ The Hazard of Secrets
“Ya hear that?”
At the harsh question, Clarey Parton pressed a
hand to her mouth and shrank deeper into the shadows behind the tall cabinet.
The flash of metal held by the bearded man had driven
her to hide before they saw her. For three nights at the Three Fishes on One
Hook, she’d asked for additional candles from the innkeeper Attley. He promised
them every evening but never delivered. Every time she fumbled her key in her
door’s lock, she silently cursed the man’s economy. With two men peering down
the corridor, she thanked Attley’s thrift with candles and oil.
“I heerd sommat.”
Clarey held her breath. Her cloak matched the
shadows. Wanting its warmth while she ventured to the maid’s room by the back
stairs, she had thrown on the heavy wool. Now she tucked her hands and the
neatly folded cottons that she’d iron under the dark wool and prayed for a
miracle.
Without that flash of knife, she might have sailed
past these men with the same cheery greetings she’d given all her fellows
guests. She had chatted with the maid and the char and the scrawny boy who ran
errands for a ha’penny. These men, though—.
They stood in the circle of illumination cast by
the sconce at the stair landing. She hadn’t spied such men in rough coats and
knitted stocking caps on any of her ventures to the common room or the entrance
hall. They likely kept to the taproom whenever they came in. What had brought
them to the third floor?
“Can’t hear nothin’,” the other growled, his
accent different.
Their conversation didn’t resume.
Clarey pushed into the wall, wanting to sink
through the wood. She dared not risk a peek but strained to hear any movement.
Her mind cast over her brief view.
They’d stood with their backs to the light,
looking down the stairs. She could identify them only by their builds—one of
flabby girth, his coat not meeting over his protruding belly, the other shorter
and stocky with a dark beard. Their accents reminded her of the dock workers
swirling around when she disembarked from the Agnes Grace, glad to have
her feet on the solid ground of cobbles. The second accent matched the smiling
maid who’d let Clarey use her iron. Innkeeper Attley had a diluted version.
Whenever she ventured to the shops, she heard more varieties. Nothing
distinguished these
two men—except that thick-bladed knife.
“Nothin’,” the second man repeated. “Rat,
probably.”
Clarey wished again that she hadn’t let Miss
Tompkins convince her to stay at the Three Fishes until the woman heard from
her brother, “a matter of days,” she’d coaxed.
After weeks and weeks at sea, Clarey had gladly
delayed the upcoming coach ride to her grandfather’s manor. She wished now that
she hadn’t given in to Miss Tompkins, hired upon Clarey’s arrival to accompany
her. Just today she’d heard Miss Tompkins tell someone in the downstairs back
hall that she knew a man at Parton Bounds. The claim should not have disturbed
Clarey, yet it kept haunting her. Why hadn’t Miss Tompkins mentioned the
acquaintance during her interview?
“I heerd it, I tell ya.”
“We got better things to do than chase a rat.”
“Ya made up yer mind `bout that man Axminster?”
Her ears pricked up. Creeping like an inchworm,
her hand lifted the cloak’s hood over her head, adding its shadow to hide her
pale face.
“Keep yer voice down.”
“Why? Past midnight. Nobody’s awake this late.”
Except for Clarey, needing to dry her hand-washed
undergarments quickly and hitting upon the flat iron to do it.
She knew a man named Axminster. His room was
across from hers. He’d helped the puffing porter manage her trunk up the
flights of stairs. Then he’d taken the trunk away from the man and carried it
into her chamber. A tall man, broad of shoulder and thickly muscled like one of
the pugilists Papa had talked about. Mr. Axminster may have been a pugilist,
for his face had been battered over the years.
After his freely given assistance, she ignored his
bashed nose and greeted him as easily as she greeted her fellow inmates on the
third floor, a minister and his wife and a clerk, all three waiting for a ship
to India. Whenever she encountered the big man, he would touch his hat as they
passed. The clerk could scarcely be bothered with such niceties.
What did two men, one armed with a knife, have to
do with Mr. Axminster?
“I don’t like standin’ out here like this.”
“Like I said, nobody’s out an’ awake this late,
`cept the likes of us.” After a long minute, the man added, “We could sit in
that little room Berta pointed out to us.”
“We will. I’m waitin’ on that signal.”
“Then what ya think about that Axminster? We’ll
get good coin fer a big man like him.”
“Bigger risk. He’ll fight us. Ya seen the size of
his fists? Like a great club they are.”
“Not if he drinks that special rum Berta’ll give
`im. That rum’ll put `im out, guaranteed. Then we git `im down the back stairs,
hauled him to the ship and we’ll git good coin while he wakes up far out to
sea. Then it’s work or the sharks.”
The other man hissed a warning. They waited then
murmured back and forth while Clarey goggled at the wall opposite, with its
flickering shadows cast by the candlelight.
Impressment, that’s why they were planning.
She’d heard of press gangs, taking men for the
Royal Navy, even off American ships. The Navy was desperate for sailors as the
war with Napoleon dragged on. And yesterday, as she sipped her soup in the
common room and wished she had the table near the hearth, she overheard two men
complaining about the lack of men to hire on to merchant ships. One had lowered
his voice and hissed, “Press them like the Navy does.”
“—split the money fer the pretty lady, with never
a mention to the boss. Won’t have to turn over a cut fer her.”
A dry chuckle agreed with the plan that gripped
Clarey with talons of fear.
“What he don’t know won’t hurt him. All to the
good fer us.”
“We can have a little play with her `fore we turn
her over to the madam. Those big eyes, blue as can be—ya should’ve seen her
lookin’ and tryin’ hard not to look when I bumped her on the street.”
Me! They’re talking about me! And now she
remembered the bulky man who had jogged into her as she came back from the
apothecary with a tisane for Miss Tompkins. Above the unshaved whiskers were a
flattened nose and piggy eyes. When she hurried an excuse as she sidestepped
him, he grinned, gap-toothed. He gave an up-and-down sweep of his eyes then
showed her his tongue.
Appalled, she had swept past. His guffaw followed her.
Prophet-like, Papa had seen to his daughters’
broad education, letters and ciphers as well as the nefarious deeds of the world.
Never knowing how long he would have to leave them alone, he’d taught Clarey
and her half-sister Rissa to load, prime, and shoot the dead center of a target
with a variety of weapons.
His disappearance and Rissa’s death were nothing
that could be defended against with a weapon.
These men said “play”, but Clarey would endure
torment and degradation. A solitary woman had to defend herself against the
world. She had hired Miss Tompkins to accompany her to Parton Bounds for that
very reason. She also carried Papa’s pistol. Tonight, though, she’d left the
weapon in her room. She had expected only a brief trip down the hall and a
quick return.
Mr. Axminster press-ganged. Herself thrown into a
brothel.
No. She wouldn’t allow this.
“We get more if she’s untouched.”
“So she will be, where they want her to be. An’
never have to bring Berta’s name into it.”
Berta? Roberta? Roberta Tompkins?
Who had presented herself as a genteel lady forced by circumstance to seek
employment as a companion.
Roberta Tompkins, who had begged this
afternoon for Clarey to fetch a tisane form the apothecary for her migraine.
“The herbs will make me very sleepy, Miss Parton. No sense knocking on my door
after I drink the concoction.” She had pressed steaming cloth to one temple. “I
do promise that we will soon be able to journey to your grandfather. I know how
he is anxious to see all his living descendents.”
Only now did Clarey wonder how Roberta knew of the
event when she was days and days from Parton Bounds.
“My headache will be eased by morning, I am
certain. And once the letter comes from my brother, we can leave for Parton
Bounds.”
Had Roberta delayed in order to set up Clarey’s
disappearance? Had she hired these two men?
Miss Tompkins, her gingery hair subdued in a
chignon, clad in a high-collared grey gown that turned her pale skin a waxy
yellow, had purported to be a former governess seeking employment as a paid
companion. She claimed her brother would write to her at the Three Fishes on
One Hook and convinced Clarey that the accommodations would be less expensive
than the coaching inn. She swore only a little inconvenience would occur.
Clarey agreed to wait the necessary days for the
brother’s important letter. Her grandfather, Bennett Howell Parton, had waited
months to meet his descendants. Clarey was his granddaughter by his second son.
The solicitor’s representative had found the sisters in Philadelphia. With
those few weeks before the many weeks of her passage to England adding to the
time before she met her grandfather, Clarey had reassured her new employee that
she slight delay of a few more days did not matter.
Only Roberta’s effusive thanks made her uneasy.
Now she knew the woman had set a trap and blithely waited to spring it.
If the men would move on, Clarey would barge into
Roberta’s room and confront her.
A better plan would be to feed her the drugged rum
that the woman planned to take to the unsuspecting Mr. Axminster.
Can I manage that?
She knew Mr. Axminster only in passing, but to
hear the plans hatched against him and do nothing—her soul revolted.
“Hsst!”
Clarey heard the click and snick of a lock, the
creak of a door sounding nearby. She pressed deeply into the corner against the
cabinet. She dared not look out.
“There y’are,” the talker said. “Time ya got here.
Nigh on midnight. That him?”
“Hush you. Just a satisfied customer.”
Clarey recognized Roberta’s voice. Her fists
clenched on her tightly held clothes.
“We need to get moving.”
“We have time enough,” she drawled.
Those genteel words were at odds with the men’s
dockside accents. Clarey risked a peek.
Roberta Tompkins had joined the men at the
landing. She stood in profile, giving a clear view of her loose hair with
golden lights in the ginger tresses. Her high brow and hooked nose could not be
mistaken. Nor the little sag beneath her chin. She no longer wore that dowdy
grey gown but had on a loose-necked gown of vivid blue.
“Time enough fer you,” the bearded man retorted.
“We got to carry him down the backstairs and then trundle him to the docks, all
before he wakes up, and then come back for the girl.”
“Time enough and plenty.” Roberta patted
his arm. “I need to fetch the rum from the taproom, then we’ll be about our
business. And if the lady stirs up a fuss, well—what goes down his gullet can
go down hers. But—.” She wagged a finger. “I want my cut upfront, Bob Cribbs.
You shorted me last time.”
“I got shorted m’self. That’s the reason we’re
going after that pretty lady tonight.”
“Still, I want it now, or nothing doing, Bob.”
“Take it out of his pocket. He won’t be needing it
where he’s going. The lady, too. And what we got shorted last time, we’ll get
from her.”
“Joan’s wanting her by noon tomorrow.”
The bearded man rubbed his hands. “Maybe dusk
tomorrow,” and his mate cackled.
“Sh-h,” Roberta warned. “There’s others on this
hall. A dried-up parson and his shriveled wife. Don’t wake them.”
“What they gunna do? Go squeaking to Attley?” and
another cackled joined his muffled laugh. “He’s had his cut already. Let’s get
a move on.”
“I need to get the rum. Got what will make it
special right here.” She touched her bodice. “You two wait in that workroom I
showed you, right next to the backstairs. I’ll give you the signal when he’s
knocked out. Go on.”
Clarey nearly dropped her freshly ironed garments
when the men started toward her.
They would pass by. She heard Roberta hurry down
the stairs. Turning her face into the cabinet, she hoped the deep shadows
caused by the weak illumination hid her from the two thugs.
She smelled them before they reached her, rancid
sweat, strong ale. They hustled past her, not stopping until they reached the
end of the hall. One of them tried a door—the stair well with its steep flights
turning quickly upon themselves. As he shut the door, the other tried the door
opposite, the maid’s room where Clarey had ironed her cottons, hoping to pack
and leave in the morning.
The men crowded inside.
As soon as the door shut, she flew, silent as an
owl, up the hall. She wanted to hide in her chamber—but as soon as the men
finished with Mr. Axminster, they’d come for her. Her strength was nothing
against the men. The pistol would be—but she didn’t want to rouse the whole
inn, especially with the innkeeper apparently working with this press gang.
And Roberta added another felon to the danger.
Her only hope was to alert Mr. Axminster before
Roberta returned with the spiked rum.
His room was directly across from hers. Clutching
her folded garments to her breast, she scratched at his door.
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