Page 105 of A Bride for the Devilish Duke
“Elsie? You came all the way from Redmane? Is Harold well?”
“No, I am afraid he’s not, though he will not admit it. He has a fever and I have persuaded him to take to his bed. But, I'm not just here to tell you that. This is the first chance I've had to get away. You must know what your husband is planning, Lady Emma!”
Ice gripped Emma's heart. She clapped her hands together in front of herself, bracing for whatever news was now to come.
“I believe he owns property at Wapping, here in town. If it is Wapping, and that's what I heard him say, then it's warehouses and wharves owned by his father. Lady Emma, tonight he means to go there and destroy it. He's going to burn it all down!”
Emma clutched Elsie's shoulders in alarm.
“How do you know this? You say that you heard? How? Where?”
“At Redmane, yesterday. I was sent out of the room while tending to Harry. But I listened at the door. They talked about there only being one property left of the old Duke and that was at Wapping. After that, Harry will renounce his claim to the Dukedom and Redmane will be sold. The Duke will be going to live in America or India or somewhere.”
He once said as much to me. Does he intend to take me with him? Was all of this a dalliance to entertain him while he awaited the chance to complete his revenge?
Emma could not bring herself to believe that. But she would not have said that Damien was a man who broke promises easily. It had taken a lot for him to break the promise he had made to his brother after all.
“Do you know where Wapping is?” Emma asked.
“Of course. It’s in the east end. Why?”
“We'll find a map in the library and you can show me. I am going there when Damien does. I believe it will be tonight.”
“It will, they said as much. Wapping will burn, they said,tomorrow night. And that's tonight,” Elsie concluded, “but you're not going there alone, Lady Emma. It’s a rat's nest, them wharves, especially at night. It’s not safe.”
“I don't care. I intend to stop him doing what he plans. I will not see my husband dead or hung for an arsonist. This madnessmust stop tonight. And if preventing it means that he rejects me...”
Emma could not complete the sentence. Elsie took her hands.
“I'll come with you. I can't read maps anyhow. But I know the streets. Harry will be angry with me that I aided you. So maybe we'll both be rejected by Redmane men, eh?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Damien walked a rickety wooden staircase that rose up the side of a tall building of moldering brick. It had rows of small windows, though only one, at the top, was lit. Far below him was the Thames, inky black and stinking.
The warehouse was one of five at Wapping docks. Over the past few weeks, Damien had personally arranged for all of them to receive shipments of wool, timber, and whale oil. Those shipments filled every inch of the warehouses, including the largest of the complex which he ascended now.
Those buffoons at tea today were keen to find out why I am holding onto my shipments instead of selling. Do I expect the market to rise? Am I waiting for something that they do not know about? They scramble to deduce some strategy for making money in my actions because that is all my father was notorious for.
The reality was that he wanted these warehouses to be a tinderbox. The workers had been dismissed, paid handsomely toleave their posts and seek employment elsewhere. The amount they had been paid would be sufficient to sustain them for months even if no work was to be found. When the warehouses were little more than a charred hulk, Damien would have them pulled down and the land sold. Let the new owners build their own legacy and let the Fitzgeralds be forgotten.
He reached the door at the top of the staircase. It led to a room beyond which was a walkway of wood, attached to the wall and circling the warehouse, allowing a supervisor to look down on the mountains of crates, barrels, and sacks that filled the vast hall below.
Damien paused, breathing deeply of the acrid tang of whale oil, mixed with the greasy odor of raw wool.
Once, the fire would have started here and quickly engulfed the other buildings. The Fitzgerald docks were separate from the rest of the docklands on the eastern reach of the Thames and the wind was from the west. The sparks would have been blown out over marsh and heath, not into the densely populated east end.
But now, there was nothing for him here. Nothing except…
“Emma, this is for you and for your family. Forgive me,” he muttered.
“What's that?” Silas Sutherland said as he stepped into the building from the same staircase that Damien had just ascended. Damien had been so lost in thought that he had not heard the other man following him.
“Talking to myself, Sutherland,” Damien called out into the dark.
He opened a door and stepped into a windowless storeroom in which the nightwatchmen kept a brazier for warmth and an assortment of liquor for warmth of a different kind. He used a battered tin containing flint and tinder to light an oil lamp and placed it on a stained wooden table. He reached into his coat for a leather-bound sheaf of papers, thumping them to the table too. Waving to them, he stepped away.
“Peruse the proposal to your heart's content. We will not be disturbed tonight. I have sent away the nightwatchmen. Best what we do here is unobserved.”
