Page 22 of The Duke of Ruin
There was not a sinner to be seen as the pair made their way up the steep hill toward the boarding house, watched only by the silent houses of the village.
"Have you been in St. Jarvis for long?" Liv ventured as they walked.
"Only arrived this evening," Polly said in reply, her grey eyes scanning the buildings as they strolled past.
"And what brought you so far south?" Liv asked, wondering how such a lively creature had ended up in such a remote part of Cornwall. Polly did not seem like a woman who wished to while away her life in a sleepy backwater like St. Jarvis.
"My husband passed," Polly avoided Liv's eye, instead focusing on the road ahead. "He was a sailor and he left me widowed in Bristol, but the city's no place for a woman alone."
"You're right, it's no place for a widow."
As she spoke Liv glanced down at her companion's right hand. There was no ring there, though when Polly saw where Liv's eyes rested, she arched an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Liv's own bare ring finger.
"Did you love him, Mrs Black?" Polly asked quietly, as they neared the boarding house. "Your husband, I mean."
Liv pondered the question for a moment; perhaps it was a normal exchange between women who had lost their husbands, but it unsettled her a little.
"I barely knew him," she finally answered, for it was the truth.
Ruan's hand was itching to form itself into a fist, and thoroughly punch the recalcitrant man seated before him. They were in the small, damp gaol near the docks, where George Beattie -- the tar who had blown upThe Elizabeth-- was being held. Ruan had been informed that Beattie hailed from Bristol, and was a well known thief, who often acted as hired muscle for local criminal gangs.
"I'll ask you one more time," Ruan said, in a voice so low and menacing that even the magistrate who had accompanied him to Beattie's cell, quaked upon hearing it. "Who paid you to wreckThe Elizabeth?"
"And I told you," Beattie sneered, "I don't bloody well know."
Whack.
Ruan delivered a blow so forceful to the sailor's chin, that he fell from his chair to the floor.
"Are you going to let him punch me like that?"
"Punch you like what?" the magistrate replied blandly, to Beattie's outraged protests. "I didn't see a thing."
Ruan suppressed a grin; if he was so inclined he could have strangled Beattie to death and the magistrate wouldn't have blinked an eyelid. Such was the power of his title. But Ruan wasn't there to kill Beattie, he didn't need to for he would surly hang on the gallows for his crime; Ruan just wanted to know who had paid him to commit the act in the first place.
"Once again Mr Beattie," he said softly, advancing on the young man, who was still sprawled on the cold, hard ground of the gaol cell. "Who paid you to wreckThe Elizabeth?"
"I don't know."
This time Beattie sounded scared, as he made his reply, his eyes darting around the cell, as though searching for a means of escape. "If I knew I'd tell you, but it was dark when I met him. Alls I know is that he sounded like a toff. He spoke just like you did, your Grace."
Ruan frowned; this information didn't narrow down his list of suspects by many. Every aristocratic male of thetonspoke with the same clipped vowels; the product of an Eton education.
"Where did you meet with this man?" he asked.
"The alley behind The Seven Stars, in Redcliff, your Grace," the prisoner offered reluctantly. "I was relieving myself after a couple of pints, and he approached me from behind."
"Brave man, to approach a man engaged in that particular act."
Beattie snorted with laughter; "Aye, he was, but he came ready with a bag of coins the weight of a small calf, and the promise of another once the act was done."
"And you were to collect the second payment here, in Southampton?"
"Aye," Beattie grimaced, "And then I was to take a boat to France and disappear."
"You'll disappear alright, young man," the magistrate interjected, "In a few weeks time you'll hang for this, and the world will forget that George Beattie ever existed."
At these bleak words, the young man paled, and Ruan knew that he would get no more answers from him. Still, he ventured to ask one final question.
