The Highwayman (Victorian Rebels Book 1)

For nigh on ten years, it had been the custom of Mrs. Farah L. Mackenzie to walk the mile to work. She’d leave her small but fashionable flat above one of the many coffeehouses on Fetter Lane, and stroll down Fleet Street until it turned into the Strand, London’s infamous avant-garde theater and arts thoroughfare. With Temple Bar, and The Adelphi Theatre on her left, and Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square to her right, every morning was bound to be a particular feast for her senses.

She’d often take morning coffee with her landlord and owner of the Bookend Coffeehouse, Mr. Pierre de Gaule, who would regale her with stories of famous poets, novelists, artists, performers, and philosophers who would frequent his establishment during the evening hours.

That particular morning, the conversation had been about the strange Parisian author Jules Verne, and the argument they’d had over their recently deceased mutual acquaintance, Alexandre Dumas.

Farah had been especially interested, as she was a great admirer of Mr. Dumas’s work and was ashamed to admit she hadn’t gotten around to reading Mr. Verne, but felt she should add him to her ever-growing book list.

“Don’t bother,” de Gaule spat in his thick French accent that, despite his expatriate status, had never diminished in the near decade Farah had known him. “He is another pretentious Deist novelist who considers himself a philosopher.”

Leaving Mr. de Gaule with a smile, her month’s rent, and a kiss on his considerable jowls, Farah had taken a croissant for her breakfast and nibbled on it as she made her way down the crowded Strand.

The only buildings on her route that didn’t exhibit a colorful array of patrons were the handful of pleasure houses that, like many of their employees, only appeared deceptively tempting at night when the lighting was more favorable.

Farah found her morning stroll disappointingly dull, despite the dazzling bustle of London’s most famous market street. That is, until she avoided Charing Cross by cutting down Northumberland Street to arrive at Number Four Whitehall Place through the rear entrance, notorious to all of English society as the “back hall” of the London Metropolitan Police Headquarters, otherwise known as Scotland Yard.

The mob surrounding the building was a great deal larger and angrier than usual, spilling out onto the main thoroughfare.

Farah approached the fringes of the crowd with caution, wondering if Parliament had passed another amendment to the Marriage Act. For that was the last time she could remember such an uproar at Scotland Yard, as it shared a building with the licensing commissioner.

Spotting Sergeant Charles Crompton atop the dappled gelding at the west corner of the growing mob, Farah made her way toward him.

“Sergeant Crompton!” she called, placing a hand on Hugo’s bridle. “Sergeant Crompton. May I ask you to assist me inside?”

Crompton, a burly man of maybe forty, scowled down at her from behind a bristled mustache that hung below the extra chins created by the strap of his uniform helmet. “You i’nt supposed to come frew the back hall on days wot like this, Missus Mackenzie,” he called from atop his restless steed. “The chief inspector’ll ’ave me badge. Not to mention me ’ead.”

“What is all this?” Farah asked.

His answer was lost in a sudden roar rippling through the press of bodies, and Farah whipped around in time to see the shadow of a man cross the headquarters entrance toward the basement stairs. She couldn’t make out any particular features, but caught the impression of dark hair, shocking height, and a long, cocksure stride.

The brief glimpse inflamed the crowd so intensely that someone threw a projectile through a window of the clerk’s office.

Her office.

In a flash, Crompton was off his horse and propelling her by the elbow away from the crowd and toward the front of the building that faced Whitehall Place. “They’ve the very devil in there!” he hollered at her. “I’ve sent for bobbies from Bow Street and St. James precinct to ’elp.”

“Who was that?” she cried.

But as soon as she was on the corner of Newbury and Whitehall Place, Crompton abandoned her to return to the crowd, his club raised in case of violence.

Smoothing her black wool uniform jacket over her dress, she was grateful for the lack of a bustle beneath the crinoline of her skirts. With the ever-shrinking offices at Scotland Yard, she’d never fit were she dressed fashionably.

Farah nodded to the licensing comissioner’s reception clerk, and wound her way through the maze of hallways to the headquarters’ connecting entrance, only to find the pandemonium inside Scotland Yard was barely tamer than the mob without.

She’d been in these kinds of situations before. There was the Irish riot of ’68, and the time an explosive detonated outside of Parliament, not a stone’s throw away, not to mention a constant barrage of criminals, thieves, and whores parading through Number Four Whitehall Place on a daily basis. And yet, as Farah elbowed her way through the Scotland Yard reception office, she couldn’t remember a time she’d sensed such imminent disaster. A thrill of unease trembled through her, disrupting her usually infallible composure.

“Mrs. Mackenzie!” She heard her name rise above the din of constables, journalists, criminals, and inspectors all crowded within the back hall. Farah turned to see David Beauchamp, the first clerk, struggling toward her from the hall of offices. His slight, wiry build didn’t meet the minimum physical requirements for an officer of the Metropolitan Police, so he’d been hired as a clerk, to his everlasting regret.

Farah pushed toward him, excusing herself along the way. “Mr. Beauchamp.” She took his offered elbow and together they pressed toward the relative safety of the hall. “Would you please tell me what is going on here?”

“He’s asking for you,” Beauchamp informed her with an imperious frown.

Farah knew exactly to whom Mr. Beauchamp referred. Her employer, Chief Inspector Sir Carlton Morley.

“Right away,” she replied, removing her bonnet and tossing it onto her desk. She grimaced at the shards of the window on the office floor, but felt guilty at the relief she felt when she realized most of the damage had been done to Mr. Beauchamp’s desk, as hers was positioned closer to the door. Errol Cartwright, the third clerk, had yet to arrive.

“You’ll need your instruments,” Beauchamp needlessly reminded her. “There’s to be an interrogation. I’m to stay here and deal with the press and coordinate the extra bobbies.” He used the street name Londoners had dubbed the Metropolitan Police, which Farah found ridiculous.

“Of course,” Farah said wryly, as she gathered her pen, inkwell, and pad of thick parchment upon which she took down minute notes, confessions, and drafted affidavits for criminals and coppers alike. Ignoring the sound of the mob outside the broken window took nerve, but she managed. Her office was high enough that they couldn’t see her head as a target, though she could look down on theirs. “Will you kindly tell me just who is the reason for all of this hullabaloo?” she asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

Mr. Beauchamp gave a self-important sniff, pleased to be the one to give her news she hadn’t already gleaned. “Only the man whose capture could make Sir Morley’s entire career. The most infamous criminal mastermind in recent history.”

“No, you can’t mean—”

“Indeed I do, Mrs. Mackenzie. I can only mean Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More.”

“Upon my word,” Farah breathed, suddenly more than a little apprehensive to be in the same building with him, let alone the same room.

“Please do tell me you’re not in danger of the vapors or some other such female hysteria. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in the middle of a crisis, and I simply cannot cover for any missish behavior.” Beauchamp regarded her with distaste.

“When have you ever known me to be plagued with the vapors?” she asked impatiently as she tucked her pad into the crook of the arm that held her pen and inkwell. “Really, Mr. Beauchamp, after all these years!” She huffed past him in a swirl of skirts, frowning with disapproval. Though he was the senior first clerk to her second clerk, perhaps it was time she usurped his authority.

First things first. Farah squared her shoulders and gathered her skirts to descend the stairs to the basement. Though not prone to the vapors, she did feel her lungs strain against her corset more rapidly than usual, and her heart felt like a trapped sparrow, fluttering around the walls of her chest, looking for an escape.

Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More.

Despite her apprehension, Farah realized she was taking part in something unprecedented. Certainly Blackwell had a number of arrests in his history, but he somehow always managed to escape imprisonment, and the gallows. Inwardly, she cited the information she had on Dorian Blackwell.

His countrywide notoriety had begun little more than a decade ago with disturbing and mysterious disappearances of half the criminals being investigated by Scotland Yard. During the initial inquiry, a name had amalgamated from shadows and whispers that rose from the most violent, treacherous bowels of the city such as Fleet Ditch, Whitechapel, and the East End.

The Blackheart. A new, almost Continental sort of criminal who ruthlessly seized control of the London underworld before anyone quite knew about it. All by means of infiltration and the curious organization of what amounted to a well-trained militia.

An incredible number of wanted thieves, pimps, bookmakers, traffickers, slumlords, and the reigning heads of existing criminal enterprises had also disappeared, often reappearing as bloated corpses in the Thames.

A silent, hidden war had raged in East London, and it was only when the rivers of blood ceased flowing that the police even heard about it. According to increasingly unreliable sources, the Blackheart replaced these missing criminals with agents abjectly loyal to himself. Those who remained in their previous positions suddenly became wealthier and more elusive to justice.

Had the mystifying, so-called Blackheart stayed on his side of London, it was likely he’d never been pursued by the woefully underfunded, overworked police force. But once he’d secured the position of absolute control over squalid thieves’ dens and gambling hells, the figure of a man emerged from the shadow and filth and blood of what was now known as the Underworld War.

And suddenly the Blackheart had a name. Dorian Blackwell. And that name became synonymous with an altogether different sort of carnage. The monetary kind. The police were still trying to tie together the seemingly random people Blackwell had elevated and/or broken with callous, precise efficiency. His battlefields were banks and boardrooms, with the swipe of a pen and a whisper of scandal that brought about the ruination of several of the London elite. To curb the rising terror gripping the city at all the upheaval, he smoothed some of the edges of apprehension by liberally giving to charities, especially those directed at children, sponsoring the careers of artists and performers, and stimulating the emerging middle-class economy with some very sound investments. He’d garnered somewhat of a Robin Hood-like reputation among the middle and lower classes.

He was rumored to be one of the wealthiest men in the empire. He had a Hyde Park house, numerous properties and other holdings, either invested or seized in hostile business deals, and a rather famous castle on the Isle of Mull, from which he garnered the rest of his name.

Ben More Castle it was called, a secluded place in the Highlands where he reportedly spent a great deal of his time.

Upon reaching the dank brick-and-dirt basement, Farah checked out the porthole window through the iron bars covering it, distressed to see that the mob seemed to have doubled. It wouldn’t take much longer for it to reach the Charing Cross circle. And what then?

She quickened her step, ignoring the calls and excited conversations of the dozen or so inspectors who loitered below stairs near the iron doors of the evidentiary, record, and supply rooms. All of their attention was centered on one point. The barred door of the first strong room, from which a series of curses and the unmistakable sounds of flesh connecting with flesh rang through the bars.

They were all talking about Blackwell. And not in favorable terms.

As an enigmatic public figure, all of the Blackheart of Ben More’s business dealings were generally legal, if often unethical, and still the police might have left him to his personal devices.

That was, until other mysterious disappearances had begun to terrorize the city. A few prison guards. A police sergeant. The Newgate commissioner. And, most recently, a justice of the Supreme Court, Lord Roland Phillip Cranmer III, one of the most powerful judiciaries in the entire realm.

If Farah knew anything, it was that nothing incited the police to action like violence against their own. She’d known, of course, that Sir Carlton Morley had been following Blackwell since Morley had been a new inspector, almost ten years now, and the men had become embroiled in a sort of cat-and-mouse game that was swiftly escalating.

The chief inspector had even brought Blackwell to charges a few times, but that was ages ago when he worked the Whitechapel precinct. Still, the Blackheart of Ben More seemed to be a particular obsession with her employer, and Farah wondered if this time he’d finally cornered his quarry. She sincerely hoped so. Her feelings for Carlton Morley had recently become much more opaque. Complicated, even.

The smell below stairs was a complex combination of pleasant and repellent. The inviting scents of paper, musk, and cool, hard-packed earth underscored the more pervasive odors of the stone and iron strong room and holding cells which, the farther one ventured, strengthened to overwhelming. Urine, body odor, and other filth that didn’t bear consideration assaulted her senses as it always did before she habitually compartmentalized it in order to do her job.

“I’m surprised Beauchamp let ye come down here, Mrs. Mackenzie.” Ewan McTavish, a short but burly Scotsman, and longtime inspector, tipped his cap at her as she paused at the door. They had a good rapport with each other, as it was known among the men of Scotland Yard that her late husband had, indeed, been Scottish. “It’s not every day we get someone as dangerous as the Blackheart of Ben More. He might forget to be respectful to ye.” A dangerous gleam entered McTavish’s blue eyes.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. McTavish, but I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m fair certain I’ve heard it all.” Farah gave the handsome, copper-haired Scotsman a confident smile, and took her keys from the pocket of her skirts, unlocking the door to the interrogation room.

“We’ll be stationed right out here should ye be in danger or have need of anything,” McTavish said just a bit too loudly, perhaps for the benefit of those inside the room just as much as her own.

“Thank you, Inspector, thank you all.” Farah gave one last smile of gratitude, and swept inside.

The smell intensified in the strong room, and Farah lifted a lace handkerchief dabbed with lavender oil that she kept in her pocket until the usual wave of nausea passed, before acknowledging the occupants of the room.

When she lifted her gaze, she froze, stunned in place at the sight before her.

Chief Inspector Sir Carlton Morley was in his shirtsleeves, which he’d rolled to the elbows. The manicured hands clenched at his sides had blood on the knuckles, and his usually well-groomed hair was mussed into disarray.

A large, dark-haired man sat on a lone chair in the center of the room, his hands chained behind him, and his posture deceptively relaxed.

They were both panting and sweating and bleeding, but that wasn’t what startled Farah the most. It was the almost identical expressions on their faces as they looked at her, an intense compilation of surprise and ruefulness, with a barely leashed undercurrent of … hunger?

Violence hung in the air between the two men with a tangible vibration, but as the prisoner in the chair studied her, all became extraordinarily silent and still.

Farah had once developed a fascination with exotic predators after seeing them on display in large cages at the World’s Fair in Covent Garden. She’d read about them, learning that great hunting cats, such as lions and jaguars, could make themselves preternaturally still. Going so far as to conceal their frighteningly powerful bodies in shadows, trees, and tall grasses in such a way that their prey could pass by without even realizing a beast was about to pounce and rip out their throats until it was too late.

She’d pitied and feared them at the same time. For surely a creature so dynamic and powerful could do nothing chained in such a small cage but hate and whither and eventually die. She’d watched a particularly dark jaguar tread the scant four paces behind his bars as his wild yellow eyes promised retribution and pain to the brightly dressed masses who’d come to gawk at him. Their eyes had met, Farah’s and the beast, and he’d demonstrated that unnatural stillness, holding her stare for an unblinking eternity. She’d been mesmerized by that predator while hot tears had scalded her cheeks. By the terrifying fate she’d seen mirrored at her in those eyes. He’d marked her as prey, as one of the weaker and more desirable morsels in the herd of people milling about them. And in that moment, she’d been grateful for the cursed chains that held the beast in check.

That exact, disquieting affectation suffused her now as she met the mismatched gaze of Dorian Blackwell. His features were those of cruel brutality. His one good eye had that amber quality that had belonged to the jaguar. The flickering lamplight made it glow gold against his burnished skin. It was his other eye, though, that arrested her attention. For starting above the brow, and ending at the bridge of a bladed nose, was a jagged, angry scar, interrupted by an eye leached of every pigment but blue by whatever had caused the wound. And, indeed, he stared at her like a predator recognizing his preferred meal, and lying in wait to pounce until she haplessly wandered into his vicinity. His cheek was split and bleeding along the sharp line of his masculine cheekbone, and another small trickle of blood dripped from his right nostril.

Catching her breath, Farah ripped her stare from the prisoner’s compelling regard and sought the familiar, aristocratically handsome features of her employer.

Sir Morley, generally a self-possessed man, seemed to be at the end of a frayed rope, clutching for control of his temper with both hands. This wasn’t like Morley, to beat a man whose wrists were chained behind him.

“I see you’ve come prepared,” he clipped, his tone belying the glimmer of warmth and yearning in his eyes as he gave her a curt nod.

“Yes, sir.” Farah nodded, giving herself a stern shake as she fixed her gaze on the desk at the back of the room, and willed her shaking legs to carry her all the way to it without dropping something, or worse. She hid her discomfiture behind a carefully arranged mask of serenity as the heels of her boots clipped a sharp echo against the stones of the strong room.

“As much as I approve of your change in tactics, Morley, dangling this tasty piece in front of me still won’t have the desired effect.” Blackwell’s voice reached out to her like the first unwelcome tendrils of frost in winter. Deep, smooth, caustic, and bitter cold. Despite that, his accent was astonishingly cultured, though a deeply hidden brogue rounded out the r’s, enough to hint that the Blackheart of Ben More might not have been London born. His neck swiveled on powerful shoulders as he followed her progress toward the writer’s desk placed behind him at a diagonal. He didn’t take those disturbing eyes from her once, even as he addressed Morley. “I warn you now that more brutal men than you have tried to beat a confession out of me, and more beautiful women than she have endeavored to bewitch my secrets from me. Both have failed.”

The desk chair came up to meet her much faster than she’d anticipated as she dropped into it, nearly upsetting the items clutched in her arms. Unutterably glad she was stationed behind Blackwell so he could not see her unease, she smoothed the pad of paper in front of her with an unsteady hand, and positioned her inkwell and pen just so.

“You’ll learn, Blackwell, that there are no more brutal men than I.” Morley sneered.

“Said the fly to the spider.”

“If I am the fly, why are you the one caught in my web?” Morley circled Blackwell, jerking on the manacles imprisoning his hands behind him.

“Are you certain that is what’s happening here, Inspector? Are you quite sure it is I who am playing right into your hands?” Blackwell’s demeanor remained unperturbed, but Farah noted that his wide shoulders were tense beneath his fine tailored jacket, and little rivulets of sweat beaded at his temple and behind his jaw.

“I know it is,” Morley said.

The hollow sound of amusement Blackwell produced yet again reminded Farah of the dark jaguar. “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

The man quoted Confucius? How unfair that a man such as he could be so clever, dangerous, rich, powerful, and well read. Farah stifled a sigh, then, alarmed by her reaction to him, straightened her spine and took up her quill, ready to swipe the efficient shorthand across her paper.

“Enough of this.” Morley crossed to her. “Are you ready for the interrogation to begin, Mrs. Mackenzie?”

Her name seemed to zing about the room like an errant insect, hurling itself against the steel and stone and echoing back to the man chained in the middle.

“Mackenzie.” Farah couldn’t be certain, but she thought the word may have been absorbed by Blackwell and then uttered by him. But as she glanced through her lashes at a scowling Morley, she noted that he hadn’t seemed to detect it.

“Of course,” she murmured, and made a show of dipping her pen.

Morley turned back to Blackwell, his square face set with grim determination. “Tell me what you did with Justice Cranmer. And don’t bother denying it was you, Blackwell; I know he was the magistrate that sentenced you to Newgate fifteen years hence.”

“So he was.” Blackwell didn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

Fifteen years ago at Newgate? Farah’s head snapped up, her pen creating a loud scratch against the table. It couldn’t be that he was there at the same time as—

“And those missing guards,” Morley continued, his voice louder now, more desperate. “They were assigned to your ward during your stay there.”

“Were they?”

“You bloody well know they were!”

Blackwell lifted a shoulder in a helpless gesture that seemed to say, I would help you if I could, which enraged Morley to no end. “All you bobbies look the same to me. Those ridiculous mustaches and unflattering hats. It’s almost impossible to tell you apart, even if I wanted to.”

“It’s too much coincidence for the courts to ignore this time!” Morley said victoriously. “It’s only a matter of time before you’re dancing at the end of a rope from the gallows in front of Newgate, the very hole from which you slithered.”

“Confirm one shred of evidence in your possession.” Blackwell’s soft challenge was threaded with steel. “Better yet, produce one witness who would dare speak against me.”

Morley maneuvered around that pitfall. “The whole of London knows your penchant for swift and fierce vengeance. I could pick any half-wit off the street and they’d raise their hand to God and swear you’d done in the judge who’d sentenced you to seven years in prison.”

“You and I both know that it will take more than heresy and reputation to convict one such as I, Morley,” Blackwell scoffed. Craning his neck to look at Farah with his good eye, he addressed her directly, which caused her stomach to clench and her hands to tremble with even more violence. “Add my solemn, official confession to the records, Mrs. Mackenzie, and note that I swear by its absolute truth.”

Farah said nothing, as always demonstrating her professionalism to the prisoner by ignoring him. Of course, though, he had her absolute undivided attention. That face. That savage, masculine face. All angles and intrigue and darkness. Handsome, but for the scar and the startlingly blue eye, which she found both repellent and compelling.

“I, Dorian Everett Blackwell, never have had any emotional antipathy toward High Court Justice Lord Roland Phillip Cranmer the Third. I was guilty of the crime of petty theft, for which he sentenced me to seven years in Newgate Prison, and I solemnly swear that I have learned my lesson.” This was said, of course, in that ironic way that made one doubt the veracity of every word.

Farah could only stare at him, completely absorbed, trying to unravel the message burning at her from his one good eye with a foreign and alarming desperation. She felt as though the very devil was both toying with her and warning her. “You understand, don’t you, Mrs. Mackenzie?” Blackwell murmured, his hard mouth barely moving as the intensity of his regard pinned her to her seat. “The deeds of a willful youth.”

A thrill of danger kissed her spine.

“Horseshit!” Morley roared.

Dorian turned back to face him, and Farah was able to let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding as the black spell he’d woven over her suddenly dissipated.

“For shame, Morley,” he mockingly chided. “Such language in front of a lady?”

“She is my employee,” Sir Morley gritted through clenched teeth. “And I’ll thank you not to bother about her if you want to keep the vision in the eye you have left.”

“I can hardly help myself. She’s such a ripe piece of skirt.”

“Bite. Your. Tongue.”

Farah had never seen Sir Morley so angry. His lips pulled back from his teeth. A vein pulsed in his forehead. This was a man she’d never met before.

“Tell me, Morley,” Blackwell calmly but ruthlessly persisted. “How much time does she spend at her own desk, as opposed to beneath yours, with her lips affixed to your—”

Sir Morley erupted, driving his fist into Dorian Blackwell’s face with a force she’d not thought him capable of.

Blackwell’s head snapped to the side, and an angry split tore into the corner of his lower lip. But to Farah’s astonishment, the large, dark man made no sound of pain, not even a grunt. He simply brought his head back around to face the wrathful inspector before him.

Sir Morley glanced over Blackwell’s ebony hair at Farah, a glint of shame touching his gaze.

“Gather your things, Mrs. Mackenzie. You are dismissed.” His blue eyes lit with an anticipatory rage when he looked back down at his prisoner. “You don’t need to see this.”

Farah stood suddenly, her chair scraping with a jarring screech as she protested. “But sir, I—I don’t think—”

“Leave, Farah! Now,” he commanded.

Breathlessly, Farah gathered her paper, pen, and ink, surprised that her cold, shaking hands obeyed her. As she passed Dorian Blackwell, he turned his head toward her and spat a mouthful of blood onto the stones beside him, though it didn’t reach the hem of her skirts.

“Yes, Farah Mackenzie, you should run.” The voice was so savage and cold Farah thought her mind might be playing tricks. That she may have imagined that when he said her name, a note of something like warm recognition thrummed through the words. “We’re going to be here yet a while.”

Turning back to him with a gasp, she was surprised to see that Blackwell wasn’t watching her leave. Instead, his face lifted toward Morley, who stood over him, hands fisted at his sides.

Of all the evil Farah had had a chance to glimpse in this room, Dorian Blackwell’s smile, full of his own blood and teeth and challenge, had to be the most frightening Farah had witnessed in her entire life. His eyes were dead, devoid of any hope or humanity, the milky blue one utterly motionless but for the reflection of the torchlight lending it an unnatural pagan gleam.

Farah turned from the sight and swept out of the room, past the silent inspectors who followed her progress with rapt attention.

It took everything she had, but she kept her trembling hidden until she was alone.