Ian did let them get the coach. They piled into it, Ian holding Beth on his lap, she not minding that her husband was filthy and stank to high heaven.

They rode toward Euston station but went beyond it, to Chalton Street. Ian jumped down from the coach as soon as it stopped, opened a grating, and said. “He’s here. By the storm weir. I will show you.”

Fellows rounded up constables and Hart’s men still searching the area, as well as the work gang who’d been helping them search the tunnels. Fellows poured them all down through the street, Ian leading the way.

Eleanor waited on the pavement above, refusing to return to the coach. She paced here as she had in the drawing room, but now hope had come back, and fear, with a vengeance.

An hour later, her hopes were still there, she waiting at any moment to hear a shout that they’d found him, followed by Hart’s growl that he wanted to be pulled out of the shit hole. She could imagine it so strongly that she was certain, so certain it would happen.

After an hour and a quarter, Fellows’s constables and the pipe men started coming up, dirty and defeated.

Fellows spoke to the head of the gang and returned to Eleanor, followed by Ian. Fellows’s brows were drawn, though Ian’s jaw was tight with determination.

“He’s not there, ma’am,” Fellows said. “Ian led us right to the place, but it’s flooded down there, and he is gone.” He looked at Eleanor with eyes so like Hart’s. “They’re going to keep looking once the water has receded, but they’re afraid he’s washed into one of the rivers and is on his way to the Thames.” Fellows’s voice went quiet. “No one survives that journey, Your Grace.”

Ian, still dirty, shook his head. “I’ll find him.” He looked at Eleanor, holding her gaze for once, his eyes even more like Hart’s than Fellows’s. “I can always find him.”

Chapter 20

Eleanor.

Hart swam out of dreams to a gentle rocking. He opened his eyes, his head still pounding—sleep hadn’t helped.

He stared for a moment at the board ceiling a few inches above his eyes before he realized that he lay on a pallet with a quilt over him. A threadbare, dirty quilt, but a quilt nonetheless.

The space that held the pallet was narrow, cramped, and filled with oars, ropes, and a tangled net. A crawl space, really, one someone had decided to tuck him into as well.

Hart ran his hand over his face, feeling the scratch of a deep beard. How long had he lain here? One day? Two?

Eleanor. Ian.

He tried to sit up in alarm, and cracked his head on the low beam above his head. He dropped back to the thin pillow, head spinning again.

Hart made himself lie still. He needed to find out where he was, what had happened, how much time had passed, and what he could do. And most of all, he needed to get rid of this be-damned headache.

Taking stock, Hart realized that his coat was gone and so were his waistcoat and shirt. He could feel the warm folds of his kilt around his legs, but the only thing covering his torso was the thin linen shirt he wore under his garments. He wriggled his toes and found woolen socks, boots gone.

Whoever had robbed him were fools. The handspun wool of the kilt was more valuable than the cashmere coat and lawn shirt put together. Tartans, at least for his branch of the Mackenzie clan, were spun in the mountains near Kilmorgan by a family who allowed no one else to get their hands on the wool, not even other Mackenzies. A true Mackenzie tartan was a rare and valuable thing.

At this moment, though, if shrewish old Teasag Mackenzie had crawled in here, scolding Hart for getting her plaid dirty, Hart would kiss her.

He carefully got himself off the pallet and crawled toward the square of light at the wider end of the space. He looked out at the rain, a narrow, rocking boat, and the River Thames.

The light was gray, foggy, like a film over a window. Through it he saw the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the line of buildings to its right that was the city, and to its left, the Strand and the Temples. The river surrounded the boat, and the south bank was shrouded in mist.

Eleanor was out there in that city somewhere. Safe at home in Grosvenor Square? Or lying hurt, or dead? He had to know. He had to leave. He had to find her.

A child sat on the gunwale of the boat, picking through a net. Not mending it, Hart saw after a moment, but pulling things out of it. The lad would study what he’d found and either toss it behind him on the boat or throw it back into the river.

Hart moved, and stopped. His head still hurt like fury, and he couldn’t suppress a groan.

The lad saw him, tossed down the net, and scampered to the front of the boat and the cabin there. He returned in a moment with a man in a long coat and boots, with a lined face covered by a two-day beard.

The man casually pulled back his coat to show Hart a foot-long knife sheathed in his belt. The lad went back to the net, unconcerned.

“Awake are ye?”

Hart remembered the voice from his underground tomb. “You kicked the hell out of me,” Hart said. “Bastard.”

The man shrugged. “Easier to move you if you were out. Water was coming back.”

“That, and I offered you money.”

Another shrug. “Didn’t hurt. I could see you were rich, in spite of you not having any money on you. Me wife thinks you have plenty more at home.”

Home. I need to get there.

“You think I’ll pay you after you stripped me and sold my clothes?” Hart asked in a casual tone.

“Clothes were in tatters. Got a couple shillings for them from the rag and bone man. That pays for your passage on the boat. For saving your life, I’ll ask a bit more.”

Hart pulled himself all the way out of the hole. That effort took his strength, and he sat down hard on a chest shoved against the cabin’s outer wall. “You have amazing compassion.” Hart rubbed his temples. “Do you also have water? Or better still, coffee?”

“The wife is brewing some now. You let her have a look at that head of yours, then you’ll tell us all about who you are and where you want to be dropped off.”

Home. Home. Eleanor. But caution stopped his tongue. The bomb in Euston station had been planted when someone had known he would be there, meeting his wife. Ian had said that the man who’d set the bomb had died with it, but there would be others. The attempt coming after Darragh’s failure at Kilmorgan could mean more Fenians Inspector Fellows had missed, or another group deciding the Fenians had a good idea. If whoever it was discovered that the bomb had failed to kill Hart, they’d try again, or perhaps go after his family to flush Hart out of hiding. That could not happen. He would not let it.

The bank of the Thames was tantalizingly close. Hart rubbed his whiskered face again as he looked at it. His chances of reaching it if he swam for it, especially with the dent in his head, weren’t good. Plus, he could not be sure that the denizens who trolled the water’s edge for valuable flotsam wouldn’t simply shove a knife through his ribs as he lay recovering from the swim. His rescuer might be eager to stick him too. Men who ran up and down the river and combed the tunnels under London for treasure were a law unto themselves, standing firm against those who tried to come between them and their livelihood. Hart needed to wait, to watch, to plan.

A look at the man’s unconcerned face as he disappeared into the forward cabin told Hart that his rescuer had no idea who he was—a wealthy man, that was all. Hart would need to make certain he never did find out.

Hart watched the child a little longer, then he reached down and picked up part of the net. He extracted a copper coin from the thin rope and tossed it to the boy’s growing heap. “You missed this.”

The boy snatched up the penny, peered at it, nodded, and let it drop. He’d collected coins, links of chains, a tin box, a necklace of shells, and a tin soldier. Hart picked up the soldier.

“Highland regiment,” he said, tossing it back down. He continued looking through the net, and the lad didn’t object.

“You’re a Scot?” the boy asked.

“Obviously, lad.” Hart played up his accent. “Who else would be lost in the sewers in a tartan?”

“Dad says they shouldn’t come down here if they don’t understand the streets of London.”

“I agree w’ ye.”

By the time Dad returned with a mug of coffee, a handkerchief over it to keep the rain out, Hart had added another shell, a ha’penny piece, and a broken earring to the boy’s pile.

The wife came out with him, a sturdy woman in a bulky sweater with black hair under a fisherman’s cap. She sat down with a bowl of water and a cloth and started dabbing Hart’s head.

It hurt, but his skull throbbed less now than it had underground. Hart gritted his teeth and got through it.

“Now, then,” the man said. “Who are you?”

Hart had decided what to tell them—exactly nothing. At least for now.

He exaggerated a flinch as the wife probed the wound at the base of his skull. “That’s th’ trouble,” he said in a careful voice. “I don’t remember.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember nothing?”

Hart shrugged. “It’s a blank. Perhaps I was robbed, hit on the head, and shoved down a shaft. You said I didn’t have money with me.”

“That be true.”

“Then that’s likely what happened.” Hart fixed his gaze on the man, telling him without words that it would be to his benefit not to question the story.

The man looked back at him for a long time, his hand on the hilt of his knife. Finally he nodded. “Aye,” the man said. “That’s what happened.”