A Royal Likeness (3 page)

“Mr. Emmett at your service, mistress.”

“Yes, I have that figured out, Mr. Emmett.” Hoots of laughter were interspersed with calls for Mr. Emmett to “get to it.”

“Well now, mistress, we’ve just heard some disturbing news. News that might have a serious impact on your little trade here.”

“News? What news?”

Reggie’s voice rang out again. “She’s a liar, Mr. Emmett. She knows all about it!”

The other men grumbled their agreement.

Marguerite stared steadily at Mr. Emmett with her arms crossed in front of her. “Hurry up with what you have to say so I can be about my business. I’m a law-abiding woman running an honorable shop with her husband.”

“Is that right?” Mr. Emmett stepped closer and his frame filled the doorway. Up close, Marguerite could see that his eyes were bloodshot from drink and hidden rage, and he stank of a laborer’s sweat. She calculated whether or not to scream for Nicholas but was unsure whether he would hear her, and as of yet she was not sure what might infuriate these men further.

“So is your husband here right now, mistress?” Mr. Emmett’s gaze was thoughtful.

“He is. Shall I get him for you?”

“She’s still lying, Mr. Emmett! Ain’t no one else here except probably some spies hiding out.”

Mr. Emmett’s darting eyes spoke his indecision over whom to believe.

“C’mon, Mr. Emmett, are we going to do what we came here for? We’re almost out of ale and I’ve a powerful thirst.”

Marguerite maintained her own gaze. “And what did you come here for?”

“We’re here to put a stop to the French intrigues coming in through Ireland, and that would include Colonel Despard and his bunch, plus all the French rabble like
you.”

“What French rabble? I’m an Englishwoman. Who is Colonel Despard?” Marguerite was trying desperately to figure out what he was talking about.

“Not with a fancy name like Marguerite you’re not. A good Englishwoman would be Margaret or Margery. Your name has you dead to rights a lady Frog.”

Marguerite drew in a breath in an attempt to be patient. What was taking Nicholas so long in the attic? “My mother was French. I have lived in this country all my life and am married to an Englishman.
What is this nonsense about French infiltration through Ireland?”

“Ever since the French peasants started their revolution, the Irish have been hoping for a chance to bring popery back to England. Stinking papists the French and Irish are. They’ve been looking for a way to bring down the right noble house of Hanover so they could bring in French rule and turn us all into foppin’ Frogs. So they found a half-wit in Colonel Despard to do their work. He stole over here from Ireland slippery as an eel and planned to kill our good King George. But the Irish and French are no match for smart Englishmen and he was found out. So today we all went and watched him and his gang swing from the gallows and get their heads chopped off, and now we’re going to help out the Crown by getting rid of the rest of the French influence in England, starting with
you,
Mrs. Marguerite Ashby. We know all about this shop’s wicked dealings.”

Mr. Emmett’s speech seemed to momentarily exhaust him, but it reenergized his mob with shouts of “fire the store” and “kill the French whore.”

“So you see, mistress, we have two choices here. Either you can leave peaceably while we can look for hidden messages and contraband, since we didn’t ’spect to find you here anyway, or if you want to be bothersome we may have to take further measures. And we’re not opposed to those further measures.” He reached out a hand and roughly caressed her right breast.

Marguerite instinctively slapped his face. A grave mistake. Mr. Emmett’s face was now mottled red to match his eyes over the insult, while his cronies both laughed and urged him on to despoiling her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her close.

“I’ve half a mind to teach you manners right here, mistress, even though you’ll probably give me the pox.”

“What the devil is going on here?” Nicholas came striding into the room with a small crate under his arm. He tossed it to one side to confront the group of men.

“Who are you and what do you want here?”

Mr. Emmett reflexively dropped Marguerite’s arm to face his new adversary.

“We’re doing work on behalf of His Majesty, ridding England of what you might call subversive French influences.”

“I would call it no such thing. And if you’re looking for local French residents to accost, what are you doing here?” Nicholas was cautiously approaching the intruder.

“Your little wife here was born a Frogette, wasn’t she? We think she’s probably helping ol’ Boney infiltrate England. Wasn’t she once arrested for sending good English coin over to France?”

“That was her aunt—”

“No difference. She probably taught your wife how to stuff them dolls, and we mean to inspect them to be sure she isn’t sending money or messages to Bonaparte.”

Nicholas remained calm, although Marguerite could see one small vein throbbing over his left eyebrow, the only sign that his normally benign temper was on the verge of eruption.

“My wife’s aunt was falsely accused of these activities, evidenced by her subsequent marriage to Lord Greycliffe, an honorable man.”

“Maybe that’s so, maybe it’s not, but we’ve walked a long way from the hangin’ and we plan to do what we came to do.”

“Sir, you and your followers will leave these premises with haste. I will not have my wife plagued and threatened.”

“We’ll leave when we’ve a mind to. After our mission is finished.”

“You’ll leave when
I’ve
a mind for you to do so. Which is now.” Nicholas’s voice was still calm, but his resolve was unmistakable.

The mood began to alter noticeably among the crowd outside. It was amusing when a defenseless little woman sassed back, but it was an entirely different thing when some coxcomb started making threats, now wasn’t it? The men became restless, pacing like jackals back and forth, waiting for their leader to make the kill so they could each have a share.

Mr. Emmett moved imperceptibly forward, just enough that Marguerite stepped back reflexively, allowing him fully into the shop. He put a hand forward to move her out of his way and Nicholas reacted instinctively like a lion protecting his pride. But
the jackals were waiting for such a move. He stepped forward to push Mr. Emmett away from Marguerite, eliciting a sharp yelp of surprised outrage from the man. It served as the attack signal for the rest of the pack.

Marguerite was roughly elbowed and jostled as several men lunged into the shop, their eyes full of expectant treachery. Nicholas took several steps backward, knowing he had become prey.

Marguerite felt, more than saw, the splintering crack that accompanied the connection of a broken wood beam against her husband’s left arm, sending him sprawling to the floor and sliding across the dark oaken surface into a tiered display of fashion dolls.

The grouping of sixteen dolls had been created as a tribute to King George’s family. On the top tier were the monarch and his wife, Queen Charlotte. On the next tier were his married children, and the bottom shelf displayed his remaining spinster daughters, who were probably destined to retain their single status.

As Nicholas careened into the display, the dolls crashed into a heap around him. He brought his hands up to protect his face from the descending silk-encased wooden projectiles, but not before the princess Augusta fell against his nose on her way to landing next to him, her head turned toward him as though to survey the damage she had done.

Mr. Emmett barked at the others and pointed. “That’s just what a French spy would do, boys—hide her traitorous goods inside playthings made up to look like the good king’s family. She’d think that right funny. Those dolls are where we start looking.”

Nicholas’s nose was askew and bleeding profusely, yet he valiantly brought himself up to one elbow.

“You will not destroy—”

Another mob member silenced him by kicking him in the stomach. Nicholas doubled over, groaning.

Please, Nicholas, Marguerite silently prayed. Show them your secret might and strength.

As though encouraged by his wife’s silent entreaty, Nicholas rose to all fours, then shakily stood, his waistcoat stained with a mixture of blood and floor dust.

The jackals were stunned by his fortitude and stopped long enough to watch his progress from the floor to an upright position.

Between clenched teeth, he fearlessly addressed Mr. Emmett again.

“You … and your boys … have been warned for a final time. I want you … out of this place of business … now.”

Marguerite crossed wordlessly over to his side and leaned against him. To the onlookers it appeared that she was showing unity with her husband, but in reality she was supporting him, with one arm around him and the other gently holding his injured arm.

Nicholas gratefully leaned against her. The interior of the doll shop was now at a taut standstill. The hungry mob, having all slipped inside the premises, still looked to Mr. Emmett for orders, ready to pounce when he gave the go-ahead. Mr. Emmett, though, seemed a bit unsure of himself.

His next words startled Marguerite. “Well, I s’pose we can leave well enough alone, can’t we? No need to rough up a lone shop owner and his wife. After all, they’ve been warned about what happens to traitors in this country, right?” He drew a finger across his neck for emphasis.

Several of the men protested with moans and grumbles. Reggie spoke up the loudest. “T’isn’t fair, Mr. Emmett. You agreed with us that they were foreigners dressed in English wool and needed some comeuppance. We should be breakin’ up those dolls. Who knows what they might be hiding in ‘em. Why are you turnin’ your mind?”

“Because, you balmy idiot, it just don’t seem right to rampage on a lady whose husband is standing right here. Maybe we’ll come back some other time if we hear that she’s making an agitation.”

“Aw, Mr. Emmett, you’re not afraid of her husband now, are you?” Reggie was whining now.

“I’m not afraid of anything. C’mon, pints of bitters for the lot of you at The Lamb and Flag. Let’s go.”

The men, now deprived of their quarry, were deflated, but Marguerite did not dare let out her breath yet. To her surprise, Nicholas held out a hand in friendship to Mr. Emmett, and he
clasped it in return, softly mumbling an apology for the disturbance. She stayed at Nicholas’s heels as he escorted the men out.

As the last of the men were leaving, Nicholas shut the door forcefully. An enraged howl burst forth from the other side followed by muffled arguing.

“I told you, Mr. Emmett! He did it on purpose. My foot, he slammed the door on my ankle. I won’t have it—I won’t have it. Look, it’s already looking busted up.”

“Reggie, let’s go. You won’t even feel your foot after you get a little more to drink and Sadie sits in your lap.”

From inside the shop Marguerite and Nicholas could sense discontent stirring in the crowd over how Mr. Emmett was handling the insult to Reggie. Nicholas said quietly, “Let’s go through the back and step into the shed until this rabble is gone.”

“You didn’t shut the door on his foot on purpose, did you, Nicholas?”

Nicholas put a finger to his lips, his face expressionless. “Let’s go, before Reggie bursts something in his constricted little brain.”

Marguerite took his uninjured arm and they turned away from the door. In an instant, their world was a cacophony of splintering wood, shouting, and the clomping of shoddily clad feet on the shop’s floor. She was separated from Nicholas by the men stampeding in through the broken door and found herself crushed against the shop’s counter, across from where the royal family display had been overturned.

Several men addressed their attentions to those dolls, as well as others on shelves lining the shop. The artfully draped satin fabrics that created platforms on each shelf for the dolls to live upon were whisked away and their residents went tumbling to the ground. Disappointed that this did not cause most of the dolls to break apart, men began picking up individual specimens and hurling them against walls in order to separate their heads and limbs from their torsos.

In the distance, Marguerite could hear a plaintive wailing, but realized it was coming from her when one of the men shook a dirty hand in her face and snarled, “Quiet, or I’ll settle you down with this.” He gestured lewdly, but was too excited to return to the fracas
to pay her that much attention. He abruptly turned away from Marguerite to grab a miniaturized flower-seller from the hands of someone else, and began slamming it repeatedly on a display table, hoping for some secret treasure to come out of it.

All around Marguerite swirled a confusing pattern of fabrics, doll parts, and sweaty bodies, reeking from their wild activity. The scene was cloaked under a heavy layer of smoke settling into the room from the torches the men were brandishing over their work. She remained paralyzed against the counter, too terrified to move in any way that would bring attention back to her.

Mr. Emmett no longer had control of his troupe of troublemakers, and as such was joining into the melee as heartily as the rest of them. Marguerite watched helplessly as he picked up the box Nicholas had thrown to one side and dumped the tiny contents onto a table. He picked up a doll from the pile and began fingering its clothing.

“Hey, look at these! They aren’t any longer than my finger. No one would suspect something this small of holding contraband, so I bet it does.” He held up the blond-haired figure for the others to see before using a club against it on the table, as though trapping and killing a wild pig. In one swing the tiny doll was obliterated.

It was the doll Marguerite wanted to take to Rebecca.

She looked around the room, trying to find her husband through the acrid gray plumes and the ongoing tumult.

He was near the entry to the workroom at the back of the shop, standing but shaking. His nose looked like a large knot on his face and his usually neat attire was rumpled and bloody. She caught his eye and he gave her the briefest nod, indicating that she should follow him.