Mr. Ridley: A Whipping Society Novel Page 2

  Despite the warm summer night not even the stone walls of the prison could vanquish, he wore solely black attire made of bombazine that displayed a muscled figure.

  Dark chestnut hair fell into eyes he never once lifted from the desk.

  She lingered, still chained, noting this particular breed of man was quite pleasing to the eye. Nothing like the burnt-red officers and wiry-haired men Peter sat about with discussing state affairs over port and most certainly nothing like the other warders and inspectors in the prison who could barely tie their yellowing cravats.

  This one’s flawless, silk ascot was styled into a sophisticated knot that whispered of higher European status. And his great coat with its fine, wide collar propped high, outlined an ample, muscled figure that announced he understood how to showcase his assets.

  It gave her hope that she might be treated with the respect deserving of a lady.

  Or at least a person.

  He slowly chewed on something, deep in thought, but otherwise said nothing. Nor did he look up. The leather belt on his hips shifted, displaying two pistols and a blade sheathed in holsters.

  One weapon hinted he expected a fight.

  Two weapons hinted he wanted to display his might.

  Three weapons, however, announced his intention to annihilate everything in sight.

  It was like he was his own regiment.

  Disregarding the notable distance set between them, Jemdanee attempted to align herself before him with the chink, chink of dragging chains and peered over at the desk’s contents which held his attention so keenly.

  Stacks of massive prison logs binding thick parchments had been unevenly piled onto the fading veneer. Stacks. Too many to count. “I find it very disheartening to think so many people are committing crimes,” she conversationally offered.

  He paused. His trained gaze remained on the sizable ledger before him.

  That might not have been the best conversation for her to start with. “Not that I have committed any crime,” she amended, adjusting her chains in a polite attempt to address her situation. “I have always been a law-abiding citizen.” Not true. “Even when I was hip high and holding out a hand for others to feed me, I never took anything that was not freely given.” That was true.

  Shifting his shaven jaw, he paged forward and backward through stiff, warped parchments.

  No one had beat her yet. Which made her bold. “There appears to have been a most egregious misunderstanding.” Peter liked that word, so she used it. “Wrapping me in a stone’s worth of chains for close to three days seems a rather harsh punishment for a woman who had only asked for directions to a hotel.”

  He set another open ledger onto the desk with a thud. “Have they been feeding you?” His deep, husky tone filled the confining space, a subtle accent hinting of years spent in another country.

  That voice dripped with so much huskiness it scraped her own throat.

  Her stomach growled on cue. It hadn’t growled like that since… “I am a vegetarian. I therefore had to decline everything being offered except for the bread. It appears the fare here in England consists of nothing but meat, meat and more meat. Even the porridge had mutton in it.”

  She tut-tutted at the amount of grease it had leached into the wooden bowl. “The British may wish to reconsider its love for animal flesh torn straight from the bone. Plants have the ability to offer twice the amount of nutrients compared to what is found within the carcass of an animal who might have been your grandmother depending on your religion.”

  He said nothing. Nor did he look up as he intently paged through more thick bindings.

  Maybe he thought her ungrateful. “Such life-sustaining offerings were nonetheless appreciated. I did not expect to be fed at all given it is a prison. I am, however, confused as to why I am not being permitted to speak to a barrister, especially given all of the testimony I have given. Surely, it would be in England’s best interest to offer a more gracious form of hospitality to an Indian citizen whose own country has been…ah…hosting the British so openly for some time.” To be polite. “Whilst I have not seen any progressive measures in India outside of—”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” he rumbled out.

  She pulled in her chin. Peter had always said she talked too little. “Perhaps I talk too much to ensure others know that I exist. For you, phaujee, appear to be ignoring me.”

  Still paging through several ledgers, he offered in a curt tone, “This phaujee is here to help. So limit the insults.”

  Sensing he was on her side (praise be!), she smiled, ensuring the crookedness of her teeth didn’t show. “If there was any doubt, phaujee means soldier.”

  “Which, to me, is an insult. Soldiers are mindless.”

  This one needed a furlough. She edged closer with a shuffling chink, chink, chink. “Forgive the chains, but might I be granted an opportunity to contact my guardian? I have no doubt he is incredibly worried. It has been three days. I have been counting.”

  “You needn’t worry. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Watkins extensively.”

  A much needed breath escaped her. Peter had a stronghold of governmental connections to get her out. “I am ever so pleased. Does that insinuate all is well?”

  “No. He assaulted one of the constables who brought him the news regarding your incarceration and was also arrested.”

  Ay, ay. Peter did what he always did: he overreacted. No wonder women refused to marry him. That one was going to be a bachelor until dead. He needed to be reborn into something far more appealing: a goat. “Making him suffer for attempting to bring me justice would be incredibly unkind.”

  “I’ll be certain to inform the constable whose arm he broke.”

  She cringed. “I will ensure he offers to set it. Bones within the arm heal remarkably well if properly tended to. I would also be more than happy to provide that constable with a body-numbing concoction of sedatives that will cure him of thinking he was ever—”

  “Do you always show a casual indifference to what is better known as a dire situation?”

  She gave him a pointed look. “Would panicking alter my reality? Would it erase what I already know to be true? I can assure you, sahib, I am fully aware of my own reality and that I am in a prison surrounded by other unfortunate women whose circumstance made them an aggressor. Unlike these British women, however, I am well-trained for this. For whilst they only ever see what is, I stand before you grateful for what is not. No one has taken a fist to my skull quite yet. If and when that should happen, we will revisit this conversation.”

  He said nothing.

  She might as well have been talking to herself. “Where is Dr. Watkins being held?” She waited, but he didn’t answer. “Is he here?”

  “No. Unlike him, you are in a specially designated prison.”

  Of course she was. Peter breaks an arm, yet she is the one being doubly punished. “How kind of the British government to think of me. Do I get a water cabbage to go with the honor?”

  A muscle quivered in his jaw as he flipped through more pages.

  She pinched her lips and lingered, watching his large hands grip the leather binding. White scars of varying sizes covered the knuckles of each masculine hand hinting he used them often to break windows.

  Or teeth. She eyed him. “Might I humbly plead for an audience with my guardian?”

  “No.” He continued to page through the ledger. “You belong to me until further notice. It’s for your safety.”

  Her throat tightened. Whatever did that mean? Those scars and his inability to engage her beyond the ledgers hinted he was overly dedicated to work. “Are you a constable?”

  His rugged features tightened as he kept paging through ledgers. “No. I work for the dead.”

  She lowered her chin. “I did not realize the dead hired the living.”

  “Oh, I have a steady clientele,” he replied sharply between his teeth. “They pay me in bones.” He paged through the ledgers
more intently.

  That dry indifference further faded what little optimism she had left. Especially with Peter now in prison.

  The dolt. If not for her, he would have had a katar stabbed into his jugular years ago by her people for thinking a stethoscope was the equivalent of being Field Marshal. “Not to excuse Peter’s brash behavior, or the arm he broke, but he has always been abnormally protective. I call it doctor syndrome. The need to help everyone. After all, what unwed white man of an upper class origin willingly takes in a brown child that only brings him trouble? Save me from saying it, but that one lost the last of his rational mind well before he ever met me and my woes. Was it the heat? I dare not fathom, but he abandoned wearing English clothes whilst donning a mustachio in some deranged attempt to be a native. Only...his Hindi is worse than my French and his skills as a father are over compensative. Not that I ever made it easy. Kali knows I have always been too curious for a mere one ayah. I needed four. And after this? He may employ a hundred and seven.”

  He paused. “Are you referring to Dr. Watkins?”

  “Haan. I used to call him pita, which is Hindi for father, but he grouches that it makes him feel old. So now that I am a worldly age of eighteen, I call him Peter. Which is amusing, for it sounds the same given my accent.” She dipped her voice. “He succumbed to his first grey strands and has yet to recover. I continue to assure him that forty-three is incredibly young and that forty-four is when it all ends.” She smirked at her own humor.

  Setting aside a ledger, he dragged over a new one.

  Silence pulsed.

  This one had no humor.

  Curiosity getting the best of her, she leaned toward him trying to better see his face and eyes which had never once looked up. Why was he so anomalously focused on those logs? Hopefully, they didn’t have access to the government logs back in Calcutta.

  She had been arrested two other times for very stupid things when she was younger and still adjusting to her life with Peter.

  Once for smashing a bottle against the balding head of an officer who backhanded a servant (she got on a chair to do it) and another for setting fire to a fern hut used by local Indian men for fighting roosters they refused to let her buy.

  Forty-seven aggressive roosters ended up taking over several streets and Peter was forced to pay damages for the furniture and the hut. Late though it was to admit, setting a fire to any building in India was incredibly stupid.

  The whole country could have burned.

  But it didn’t.

  “Is this about my passport or documentation?” she queried innocently.

  “No. I already have both.” With the turn of boots that sent his great coat billowing around his broad frame, he rounded her and the desk and yanked open six drawers one by one by one.

  He glanced up and paused, their gazes locking.

  She almost shrank back, the intensity of his stare crawling into her skin and mind.

  Mercurial amber eyes skimmed her appearance, weighing her for the first time since she entered the room. The harsh lines of his rugged features strengthened as he continued to asses her from face to hand to elbow to shoulder to head and back to the hem again.

  It was as if he were ticking through every finger and every toe and every strand of hair on her head to decipher what sort of a person she was.

  Methodically returning to and removing more and more ledgers, which he piled onto the desk, he flipped through its warped pages. “Either you are incredibly deranged or you are utterly oblivious to your own peril. I genuinely hope it is the latter. You mentioned being denied a barrister. Has anyone informed you of the extensive charges filed against you?”

  She felt her booted feet sinking into the stone floor, especially given the way he had earlier surveyed her like a display window in need of rearrangement. “I am confused as to what you mean by extensive.”

  A ragged breath escaped him. “Jesus, what a mess.” He shifted from boot to boot and eyed her.

  Dread dragged its fingers down the length of her spine. Peter only ever said ‘Jesus’ when there was a problem and divine intervention was needed from the Christian side.

  The silence tore through her chest like a cannon shot.

  Leaning over the desk in exasperation, his dark hair fell further into his eyes as he intently compared the ledgers with the impatient thudding of open palmed hands. “The name is Mr. Ridley.” He squinted and paged through more ledgers, scanning written notes. “A higher placed contact at Scotland Yard which I cannot name, given he is violating the law, asked that I get involved due the complexity and severity of the crime.”

  She gaped. Severity? Complexity? She tried not to panic. “What charges could have possibly been invoked? Are you insinuating that asking a constable for directions to legal lodging is illegal?”

  “I’m insinuating you were carrying a sizable amount of death-dealing substances that have never passed into our borders before.”

  Oyo. This was about her indigenous collection. “I wish to assure you, Mr. Ridley, every one of those jars were handled responsibly. They were collected seven months earlier from the Madhu forest west of Yamuna for the sole purpose of showcasing its effects to the Royal College of Physicians here in London. Peter insisted on parading my talent in the hopes of nudging me into a university. ‘Tis a fanciful dream of mine and Peter is enough of a fool to think he can actually influence the professors into considering me as a student. To better explain his mind is this: when he points to a stallion and announces to all it is a pig, by Kali, it has to be a pig. Stallion? What stallion? All he sees is a pig.”

  He surveyed her for a prolonged moment. “Him and pigs in a pen aside, Watkins, Scotland Yard believes otherwise. Hence the charges and why I’m here.”

  This did not bode well. He was calling Peter a pig and her a Watkins. “Are these charges being crudely based on my being an Indian?” she demanded, knowing full well it was.

  “It doesn’t help.”

  “I do not understand,” she argued. “I have done nothing! Nothing, nothing. Why would Scotland Yard think I have?”

  Ridley’s large hand tapped the desk. “Because none of them have an ounce of intelligence even in their pricks. Pardon the language. Rest assured, I am on your side and will get you out of this mess. The Royal College of Physicians where Dr. Watkins was scheduled to present your findings on uncategorized indigenous seeds has been verified. Apparently, you tinker with botany.”

  How typical of yet another man to think her plants were a hobby.

  Hobbies didn’t save lives. “Tinkering is for fairies, Mr. Ridley. I specialize in medicinal botany. Haphazard and nefarious though it may seem to those outside my horticultural sphere, one cannot offer solutions in reversing the effects of a poison without understanding the poison itself. Much like humans, nature savagely protects itself from predators, and plants are no different. I have studied and recorded well over eighty-seven instances in which—”

  “No need to cite numbers.” His voice grew ominous. “Here are the real ones: A gentleman and his wife walked into their viewing box to see a theatrical and never walked out of said box after what appears to be a lethal poisoning administered before the eyes of several hundred people. How does this relate to you? Their deaths occurred at the Surrey Theatre on Blackfriars Road, which happened on the fourteenth and you strolled into Scotland Yard on the fifteenth with a sizable bag of poisonous substances inquiring about a hotel across the street from that same theatre.”

  Her eyes widened.

  The cackling accusations of superstitious women cradling fruit baskets as they whispered to each other, Challo—her eyes are of the white man, scraped into her head.

  Everyone had always judged her for reasons that went far beyond her culture. She belonged to neither side. Her mother, whose dark, beautiful face had long bedimmed and disappeared like the veil of hers found floating in a river with no body, had once admitted to Jemdanee as a child that her father had been a British soldier who ‘d
ied’ before he could offer marriage.

  Being older, Jemdanee now knew her mother had knelt to what so many women in the hovels did to supplement a non-existent income: sold sexual favors.

  So here she now was: a walking sexual favor being accused of murder.

  Life had a very morbid sense of humor and she was no longer laughing.

  Determined not to let the accusations or the panic crawl into her head, she remained what a street urchin of time gone by would be: calm. Deny, deny. “I would never use the secrets of the natural world against anyone. Not even those who deserve it, and there are quite a few that do.”

  She…probably should not have said that last part.

  Cracking his knuckles one by one, Ridley angled the ledgers before him. “You appear relatively calm. Usually, this is about the time women sob profusely and drape themselves on the stone floor.”

  This one was accusing her of murder. “Why are you here, Mr. Ridley? Did Scotland Yard send you to further interrogate me?”

  He snapped up a hand, whilst still paging with the other. “Let us be clear in one thing. I don’t work for Scotland Yard. I only step in when their oversized thumbs no longer fit up their rears. They have an annoying tendency to do things differently here in England than they do in France and have too many regulations preventing them from doing what I do best: slamming heads against walls.”

  That explained the scars.

  He gathered more ledgers. “I’ve been following a spattering of deaths over these past few weeks similar to what had occurred over on Blackfriars Road. They share one glaring common element and it isn’t you.”

  Her stomach churned.

  “A case like this has to be done right. Which is why I’m here. I know you didn’t do it.”

  That was a touch reassuring coming from someone she didn’t know. “Then why am I being held?”