Mr. Ridley: A Whipping Society Novel Read online

  “Because I don’t represent the Crown or the court or Scotland Yard. But I do represent justice and there is one upper tiered man in Scotland Yard who does, too. He has arranged a two-hour lockdown of the theatre starting tomorrow night at eleven. At that time, you’ll examine a tray of segmented oranges and the corpses who appeared to have consumed them. It’s my hope you might be able to provide an assessment of your own related to whatever poison might have been used.”

  She lowered her chin, astounded. “I specialize in plants. I am not an anatomical physician.”

  “But you understand the effects of poison on said anatomy, do you not?”

  This went far beyond anything she had learned from Limazah. “I have only studied deaths relating to animals brought to me by my Parsee teacher. We never studied its effects on humans.”

  “Yet Dr. Watkins insists your vast knowledge of botany is impressive enough to be applied before the Royal College of Physicians. Isn’t that why he invested all of his time and his money into bringing you to London?”

  She dragged in an adoring breath for the only soul who had ever respected what few men did in any female: her mind.

  Peter held so much faith in her and was now in jail because of her.

  She tried to demonstrate she was no longer a child, but life ruled over her like the wind blowing through a stack of papers. They never landed where they were supposed to. “I am confused as to what you are asking me to do.”

  Ridley shoved aside the remaining ledgers. “You represent a new generation capable of making the impossible possible and that is what I need right now. The question is: if I were to set the source before you, would you be able to identify the poison and how it was administered into the oranges? Could you do it? Is it possible?”

  That would require more than a double boiler and…no. “Once a plant leaves its natural state, it makes it very difficult to decipher what it is. I am able to do it with ingredients that are steeped, but only through the sampling of non-lethal plants by way of taste. The tongue. Lethal ones, as you might imagine, make that impossible. What further complicates your assumption is that poisons are plant based, but there are countless toxins that are mineral based and I only specialize in flora.”

  He paused. “So there would be no deduction you could offer?”

  “No. None.”

  He thudded a fist against the desk, still paging through ledgers.

  Sensing she had more or less hanged herself, she cringed. “Unto every god I believe in, Peter and I only arrived into London from Southampton on the morning of the fifteenth, not—”

  “I know.” His voice was resigned. “You were never on my list of suspects.”

  People were dead and Peter was in prison.

  She had to right this. “If an assessment is what you require, Mr. Ridley, I would be more than willing to attempt one. Depending on how a plant or seed is steeped, dried kernels, roots or leaves might be present, but that is still hoping for too much. I might not—”

  “You needn’t worry.” He shoved aside more ledgers, still looking for something he clearly could not find. He paged through the ledgers faster and faster.

  She eyed him. “Whatever are you looking for?”

  “Your log. It isn’t where it’s supposed to be.” He dragged over another ledger, thudding it into place, and paged through that one.

  He paused and hit the ledger. “They recorded you coming into Millbank a day later.” He squinted. “I will look into that.” Ripping out several other pages, he tucked one of them away and then slapped the remaining stack of shorn pages onto the desk. “These connect you to this prison.”

  He slung the satchel from the desk onto a chair and deposited the remaining ledgers into each drawer, slamming them shut one by one until the desk was clear. “By the time they decipher you’ve been erased from the logs, I’ll ensure this conviction doesn’t touch you. Scotland Yard was given ticking orders that everything in that theatre, including the bodies, be respectfully delivered to their families in two days. Which means tomorrow night, once you’ve rested well enough outside of this prison, you’ll have a few hours to sift through a possible assessment of what toxin might have been used. I’m asking you to try.”

  A flicker of apprehension coursed through her. “A few hours? If there is anything to be found, it will take weeks.”

  “Weeks you do not have. The trial is in five days.”

  Trial?! “What realm of logic do you live in? Assessments take time.”

  “I specialize in defying logic. It’s how a mind can crawl into the abyss and solve a crime without having ever been there.” Removing a box of match sticks from his waistcoat pocket, he struck one against the attached flint. Hovering his bare hand unnervingly close over the flicking flame he cradled, he gathered the entire pile of parchment he had ripped from the ledgers and held their corners to the flame.

  It smoked, curled, ignited and singed all the pages, smoke rising toward the low ceiling.

  Jemdanee gaped at the fire and him, her pulse roaring. It was obvious he wasn’t removing her legally. Which meant…they were going against the entire British government.

  A government that didn’t require very much to hang a Hindu who already had prior convictions.

  Her mouth made an O. “Whatever are you doing?!” she rasped. “Unburn it. Unburn it, lest they think I have something to hide. Unburn it!”

  “Trust in what I do, not how I do it.” He tilted his head, observing the flames he still held in his bare hand before tossing it to the stone floor, scattering embers. “Accountability is in the eye of the beholder, and in this particular instance, I have to gouge out the eyes of those who disagree with me. The governor denied my request of issuing you a two-hour release to examine evidence in that theatre, so I am hereby arranging it myself. Trust me, Watkins. I have done this before.”

  She didn’t like the way he kept calling her Watkins as if they were long-time colleagues in agreement as to what was about to happen next. Furthermore, his indifference to his own government superiors and an indifference to the fire on the floor made it very difficult for her to conclude that he was in any way trustworthy.

  Optimism only went so far. “What level of deranged are you? There is no need for a fire parade that will bring in the brigade! You could have easily tucked those parchments into your coat and walked us out.”

  “Carrying evidence that proves I assisted in the escape of a convict is not advisable.”

  She gasped. “Turning me into a fugitive and burning down a building full of women is not advisable, either!”

  He rounded the remaining flames of curling parchment on the floor, using his large boot to gather the fiery chaos into one neat pile. “Oh, yes. Heaven forbid we should ignite a building full of prisoners who deserve to die. That would be criminal.” He half-nodded as if seeing it all in his head. “Though highly entertaining and it would reduce the taxes.”

  ‘Twas obvious he saw humor in the suffering of others.

  It riled her. It riled the anger of the eight-year-old scrapper she had always, always tried to bury but never could. “No. That would be murder,” she choked out, rattling and rattling her chains for emphasis. “For I have seen and spoken to these women. Women, who I can assure you, are here for crimes that involve a desperation to crawl out of a poverty few will ever understand. You with your-your…expensive coat. A coat that could easily feed twelve people, yet one you hoard like a pig by wearing it on your back. We are not animals you can cook into the porridge you so openly eat. I have no need to be rescued by a man wearing two pistols and a dagger but no heart. Let all of England file its charges and call me a Hindu witch. Let them! I am not the first Indian to hang for such an injustice and won’t be the last, you son of an owl. Now take me back to my cell. Take me, take me. For I want no part of this. No part!”

  Raking his hair back with a rigid hand, he swung his massive frame back toward her.

  She froze.

  The harsh lines of
his rugged features strengthened as he stared her down.

  Her body and mind rippled from unwanted awareness.

  She might have overreacted.

  Knee-high leather boots slowly thudded against the stone floor toward her. Holding her gaze, and one by one by one, he fastened the brass buttons on his great coat, burying the two pistols and dagger on his leather belt beneath the expensive fabric, announcing a man of his power needed no weapon at all.

  She braced herself for the strength the back of his hand would bring.

  He rounded her, looming like a temple, the tensing of his jaw hinting at too many unspoken thoughts. “Never accuse me of being heartless, Watkins. Although I drip calm, inside my rib cage is splintering. All twenty four bones surrounding my heart, not including the sternum. They cracked because of your unkind words.” His overly flat tone hinted he wasn’t joking.

  She swallowed, her palms growing moist as she attempted to shut out any awareness of him lest the weakness in her knees give way to the trembling in her soul. Had he yelled, had he grabbed her, had he shook her, had he swore, had he acted like every man she had ever met who sought to claim power over her using any physical means, she might not have been so…affected.

  The lethal and feral calm he exhibited was unnerving.

  It was like a jaguar resting on a boulder high above her with its paw hanging over the edge, seeing her, yes, but having just eaten, decided to spare her from the intentions it had been born for.

  He lowered his chin. “Are you calm enough to have a conversation?”

  Jemdanee focused on the five brass buttons of his coat to keep herself calm. “Haan.”

  “Good.” He lingered for a pulsing moment. “You haven’t been on the streets, but London is writing stories worthy of a gothic penny novel and they all think it’s you. You. A brazen, nefarious, magic-wielding savage out of India carrying enough poison in her mystical carpet bag to take out an entire theatre full of ‘respectable’ people. That is the only evidence they need to put before a jury. Because barristers will do what they do best – lie – and…off to the rope you go. Do you understand?”

  She averted her gaze, sensing her life was about to spiral toward a place she preferred not to mentally crawl into. For it was a morose place where pain was far greater than what her limbs were capable of holding. One that harbored a wretched helplessness of a time when people blankly walked past her outstretched hands, ignoring her existence and her suffering.

  Whilst she had always, always tried to see the light and the good of people and in life by drowning in the beauty of nature’s foliage and its vast wilderness that yielded so much promise, this was the reality she’d been born unto.

  That she, a Hindu, could be hanged at any moment.

  Ridley tilted his head downward and toward her. “Breathe.”

  Her vision blurred, mentally reliving when she was a child and her head was being held into a bucket of water against her will on the street and she couldn’t breathe and she knew she was going to die. If it hadn’t been for Peter, an Army surgeon, who had been passing through in his rickshaw when he hollered and staved off the group of adolescent Bengali boys who had been holding her face into water until she lost consciousness, Jemdanee knew she wouldn’t have lived past the age of eight.

  It was one of many teeth-clenching junctions of her life that threatened to shatter the strength of what held her soul together.

  Everything compacted into a single breath that hit her like marble at full speed.

  A disbelieving sob she’d been holding in for too many years escaped her, as she staggered against the chains holding her. People were dead and everyone thought she did it. A flurry of Hindi escaped her, a part of her needing to cling to all she had left: herself.

  Ridley lingered, then leaned his head further downward and in, tapping up her chin. “Ey, ey. None of that. Look at me.”

  The genuine thaw of his deep voice made her lift her blurring gaze from his waistcoat up to his broad shoulders and up to his rugged face.

  Remarkable amber eyes further restricted what little she had left of her own breath, prolonging a painful but intimate moment that could have taken place, not in a prison, but in a vast mosaic hall behind a banyon-carved screen.

  The heated scent of peppery woodland cologne overtook her half-breaths between the wafts of burnt parchment that still smoked the air and made it hazy.

  The gold in his soulful eyes flickered with intensity. “I already have two names and a motive. I’m merely hoping for a hatchet to drive it all into the wood. So stay calm and do your best to make an assessment, but don’t panic if you can’t.”

  Tears traced her cheeks and dripped toward her trembling lips and chin, realizing her life depended on naming a toxin out of a list of thousands. She fought against another sob, doubting what fate had planned. Very little water and too many useless hardened crusts of bread brought on a sudden delirium she could no longer fight.

  Her knees buckled and she fell.

  Ridley jumped and caught her in the bulk of his arms, jerking her upright with the rattle and whipping of iron. He swept her close, thudding her hard into the solid warm of his chest.

  Chains draped between them, she quietly sobbed, collapsing all weight against him.

  Large hands firmly held her in place. He smoothed her hair but said nothing.

  Jemdanee pressed her cheek harder into his coat, trying to dig through blurring emotions of knowing proof of her innocence lay within a theatre hosting dead bodies. “What if I…cannot…find the source or…how it was…administered?” she choked out.

  “Optimists die first.” Ridley’s taunt muscles shifted her against himself. “Once you accept and imagine the worst, everything else is easy. I do it all the time.”

  “Imagining the worst…helps…with…nooothing.”

  “Imagining the best won’t prepare you for Armageddon.” He smoothed her hair. “Worry not, little one. You will survive.”

  Little one?

  Jemdanee paused, realizing the tensing bulk of his muscled arms were still around her and that her wet cheek was mashed into the solid warmth of his waistcoat as if she a lisping lady out of Belvadere in the anteroom of a Chowringhee district mansion with her pale feet on the sofa demanding the ‘natives’ tend to the swelling of her ankles.

  She awkwardly pulled away and blinked away the wetness coating her lashes. “I am not little.”

  “Says the little one. You don’t even reach my shoulder.” Hooking fingers into his inner waistcoat pocket, he snapped out a handkerchief and angled it toward her. “Dig into that chatty optimism I earlier saw. Whatever it takes. Rattle it.”

  She half-breathed between lips that still quaked. The harsh set of that jaw and the lines of his rugged face bespoke of a man who had seen far more of life than she had.

  Yet…he remained calm.

  It was inspiring.

  With a sniff that was anything but dainty, she attempted to lift her hands to take the handkerchief he offered, but winced against the heaving weight, unable to bring the chains above the thighs of her wool prison gown. “I cannot lift my hands.” Her words sounded as pathetic as she felt.

  His eyes grew surprisingly gentle. “Allow me.” Angling closer, he set the soap scented linen near her cheek and smoothed it, his large knuckles guiding it. “I’ll be removing your shackles in a moment. I am merely waiting for the key to arrive. It wasn’t in the custodian box where it was supposed to be.”

  The grazing of soft linen against her skin and the soothing yet peppery scent of his cologne tinged with cigars made her keenly aware that this one was extremely regimented and removed, but not unkind. His presence whispered of a dominating man with very high standards of sophistication edged with unnerving patience and…darkness.

  She sensed many women found him attractive and knelt to that alone.

  Flashes of a taunt, muscled torso dewing with perspiration that slowly, slowly evaporated his cologne gripped her imagination into p
ressing her knees together beneath her wool skirts.

  Despite her own attraction to the mysterious darkness that ominously clung to his words, his tone and his eyes, hinting of an unending strength no human ought to possess, she knew that cross pollination with the likes of this one was not advisable.

  She had trouble taming her own life.

  What made her think she could tame this one?

  Not wanting to engage the thought of how an overly serious man like him reached his crest during lovemaking, she edged back and back, rattling her chains in doing so. “I sense you are full of compassion and I thank you,” she managed.

  “Never thank me,” he rumbled out. “In truth, compassion is a damnable flaw in my line of work. If offered to the wrong person, the result is a slit throat and hard landing at the bottom of a well.”

  And she thought Peter lacked the optimism to get through the hour. “It would seem you only ever think about Armageddon.”

  “Which is why I’m good at what I do.” The subtle emotion in his rugged features faded. Removing a pocket watch by its fob, he noted the time with the flick of his thumb that opened the gold casing.

  Rotating the watch back and forth against his thumb as if thinking, he shoved it back into his waistcoat. Brows still drawn, he scanned her designated prison gown and tsked. “How have you and that tiny, tiny frame not fallen over beneath all the weight of those chains and the wool?”

  She tried not to grouch about being called tiny twice and little once. “If only the chains and the wool were the problem. A female prisoner was tasked to lace me into a most ill-fitting corset that is burning into my skin like red ants.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I never understood the preoccupation with corsets. There are countless other ways to restrict a woman’s breathing and it doesn’t require money at all.”

  She paused.

  “That was a grand attempt at humor. Feel free to laugh in an hour.”

  She gave him a withering look. “You may want to avoid humor, Mr. Ridley. It does not suit the pessimism you cling to and only insinuates disrespect.”