The Bride Wore Scarlet Page 8

  “I believe you are making my argument for me.”

  A sly smile toyed at her mouth. “Very well,” she said. “I am two-and-twenty, or will be soon enough.”

  “That is very young,” he said. “You still possess the impetuousness and impatience of youth, I think.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” she said. “And the optimism. That wonderful sense that all things are possible. Yes, guilty as charged. Besides, impatience is not always a bad thing.”

  Geoff relaxed against the back of the sofa, and studied her appraisingly. “Let me explain something to you, Miss de Rohan,” he said softly. “If you run the risk of accompanying me to Brussels, you will have to live with the result.”

  “To my reputation, you mean.” She managed a slightly acid smile. “I understand, Lord Bessett. And by the way, I am not husband hunting.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said, “because you won’t find one here. And the risk, of course, might go well beyond a sullied reputation. Save for what DuPont has reported, I know nothing of Lezennes or how dangerous a man he might be. I don’t even know DuPont, come to that. Our Fraternitas contact in Rotterdam will come down and do what he can, of course, but the truth is we might be walking into a lion’s den.”

  “Understood,” she said.

  “And your family,” he pressed on. “I can’t imagine what you mean to tell them, but it is up to you to deal with it. If I get a glove in the face from your father, I will not be amused, Miss de Rohan.”

  “Please, call me Anaïs,” she said, “since you are already contemplating such intimacies as a dawn appointment.”

  “I am perfectly serious,” he said. “I know the influence your father wields in Whitehall, and I don’t particularly give a damn. The Fraternitas is not without power. Power at the highest levels of government. Do we understand one another?”

  She lifted both brows and pinned him with her stare. “I counted a cabinet minister, two undersecretaries, and a member of the Privy Council under those brown hoods last night,” she said. “I am not so impetuous, my lord, that I do not understand the Fraternitas extends into the loftiest reaches of our government.”

  “Here is one more thing you need to understand,” he continued. “If we go forward, I am in charge. I will make every decision at every turn of this operation. I will not have time to argue with you, or parry words with you. I am a plainspoken man, but I am relentless, Miss de Rohan. I will get this child back, trust me. But I will not break that poor woman’s heart in the process, and I will not run roughshod over her wishes—not unless someone’s very life is at stake. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  “That I am to be a mere pawn in your master plan?” she suggested.

  “That, and the fact that I don’t even have a plan,” he said. “But I will come up with one as the circumstances warrant. And you will then keep to it every step of the way or I’ll have Dieric van de Velde carry you bodily back to Ostend and put you on that clipper himself.”

  “Aye, aye, Capt’n.” Miss de Rohan cut him a snappy salute.

  “So . . . this is acceptable to you?”

  A wide grin spread slowly over her face. “Did you think to run me off with your barks and your threats, my lord?” she said. “It won’t work. This is what I thought I was supposed to be doing all along—helping to find justice in an unjust world.”

  “As simple as that, is it?”

  “What, you thought I was in it for the wardrobe?” she said on a laugh. “Frankly, those scratchy brown things look as if they might harbor vermin—medieval vermin.”

  “So this is all you wanted?” he said. “Not membership in the Fraternitas?”

  All the humor fell away then. “Oh, I definitely did not say that.” Her low, throaty voice sent a shiver down his spine. “What I am saying is that this . . . well, this is a start, perhaps.”

  “A start,” he echoed.

  Her smile warmed like the sun. “Yes, and a rather promising one at that,” she said. “Yes, Lord Bessett, I should be pleased to accompany you to Brussels, and to heed your barking and snarling as best I can. Now, am I officially invited?”

  For a heartbeat, he hesitated.

  Wordlessly, Anaïs de Rohan thrust her hand out across the tea table.

  With grave reluctance, Geoff slid his fingers around her smaller, cooler ones, and shook it.

  In the early afternoon, a London peculiar settled in along the river; a foul, foggy haze so thick coachmen passing through it could scarce see their horses’ heads, and so odiferous the stench made a man’s eyes water.

  Along Fleet Street, the newspapermen hastening up and down the pavements in hope of making their afternoon deadlines were slamming into one another amidst curses and shoves, while below, a loaded dray rattling up from Blackfriars failed to heed an approaching mail coach.

  This unfortunate misjudgment sent the dray careening onto its side, left the four coach horses shuddering and stamping in their traces, and left Lord Lazonby standing at the foot of Shoe Lane up to his ankle in loose coal. Cursing his luck to the devil, he shook the filthy black dust off his boot and strode past the quarreling drivers, each of whom had seized a fistful of the other’s coat.

  Picking his way across the street through the blocked traffic, Lazonby strode through the brume, then turned down the passageway that led to St. Bride’s. The curses and clatter along Fleet Street were soon muffled, as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton wool.

  With the cunning of a man who knew what it was to be both the hunted and the hunter, Lazonby moved around the church more by feel than by sight, then up into the churchyard. After picking his way gingerly amongst the gravestones, he chose his spot; a mossy little nook just behind one of the largest markers by the north windows.

  Righteous fury simmering in the pit of his belly, the earl propped himself back against the cold stone of St. Bride’s and settled in for what might be a long, damp vigil.

  Perhaps half an hour later, footfalls, muffled and disembodied in the fog, came toward him from the direction of Bride Court. His jaw set tight with ire, Lazonby watched as Hutchens—his second footman for all of three months—materialized from the gloom. The damned fool still wore his red livery. That, and the sound of Hutchens’s nervous, nasally breathing, made him impossible to miss.

  Though he generally gave no thought to his attire, choosing instead to throw on whatever his new valet had laid out upon the bed, today Lazonby had dressed with care in shades of charcoal and gray. He blended into the fog and stone like a wraith.

  Jack Coldwater, however, had worn his usual dun-colored mackintosh. The conniving little bastard came round the corner of the church, literally feeling his way past the last of the gravestones as he squinted into the gloom.

  “I don’t like the looks o’ this, Jack,” Hutchens complained when he neared. “Graveyards give me the shivers.”

  “Given what you’re costing me, you can bloody well shiver till hell freezes over,” said Coldwater tightly. “What have you got?”

  Lazonby watched as Hutchens rammed a hand into his pocket. “Dashed little,” he said, presenting a fold of paper. “He’s to go to Quartermaine Club tonight—a regular bacchanal they’re having, I hear. And I saw his valet brushing out his second-best coat, and that likely means another little pump-’n’-tickle at Mrs. Farndale’s, but whether late tonight or sometime tomorrow I couldn’t say.”

  “The man has the sexual inclinations of a panting mongrel,” gritted Coldwater, snatching the paper. “And after that?”

  “After that what?” said Hutchens defensively. “I told you when we started this, Lazonby don’t keep to much of a schedule. You’re lucky to get that.” He paused to thrust out a hand, palm up. “Now where’s my money?”

  Coldwater stuffed the paper into his own pocket, then extracted his purse. “For this, you get half,” he grumbled, poking through it.

  Hutchens opened his mouth to complain. In the gloom, Lazonby leaned forward and dropped a few coin
s into the outstretched hand.

  Hutchens shrieked and jumped, flinging the money into the fog.

  “Bloody hell!” shouted Coldwater as coins rained down. “What the—!”

  “That’s what you’re owed since Lady Day, you Judas.” Lazonby glared at the footman, now cowering behind a small marble monument. “Spend it wisely, for you’ll get not another ha’penny—nor a character—out of me.”

  “M-m-my lord?” croaked the footman.

  “Indeed,” said Lazonby coolly. “The fog can cover a multitude of sins, can it not? Now take yourself off, Hutchens. If you run all the way back to Ebury Street, you might be able to snatch up your things before the street urchins carry them off. You’ll find them in a heap out by the mews.”

  The footman hastened into the gloom, the coins forgotten. Lazonby turned to see Coldwater edging backward. He followed, one hand fisted at his side, ready to plant him a facer.

  “As to you, you scheming little blackguard,” Lazonby said, backing the reporter up another foot, “two can play at your game. And unlike Hutchens, your clerks down at the Chronicle can be had for a warm pie and a pint.”

  Fleetingly, Coldwater was speechless. Eyes wide, he backed up another pace, but caught a heel on the base of a headstone that had nearly found its own eternal rest. The marker rocked precariously, sending Coldwater backward, arms wheeling.

  Lazonby lashed out, seized his upper arm, and jerked the lad physically against him. “Now listen to me, and listen well, you little shite,” he growled down at him. “If ever I hear of you so much as looking cross-eyed at one of my servants, I’ll have your job. I’ll buy your bloody newspaper, and make sure you never work again. Do you hear me?”

  Coldwater was trembling, but not cowed. “Oh, aye, you and your St. James Society think you can own the world, don’t you, Lazonby?” he spat. “Well, I’m on to the lot of you. I know something’s going on in that house.”

  “You don’t know a damned thing, Coldwater, save how to stir up gossip and innuendo,” Lazonby snarled.

  “Oh, no?” said Coldwater. “Then who was the big Frenchman at the Prospect of Whitby? The one you didn’t want me to see?”

  “If there was a Frenchman, you’d do well to forget it.”

  “Oh, I don’t forget anything,” said the reporter silkily. “I already know the man sailed into Dover on a French clipper carrying at least a dozen armed men. And he carried something else, too—forged diplomatic papers in a folio marked with that strange symbol of yours.”

  Rage and a strange mix of emotions were beginning to swim in Lazonby’s head. He drew in a steadying breath. “You . . . you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That mysterious mark,” the reporter insisted. “The one etched in stone on your pediment. I know it means something, Lazonby. You led me a merry chase for reason.”

  “What the devil is your problem?” Lazonby yanked the lad so hard his teeth clacked. “For whatever reason, you seem determined to make my life hell.”

  Coldwater’s eyes narrowed. “Because you, sir, are nothing but a murderous thug in a fine silk waistcoat,” he rasped, “and it is the newspaper’s responsibility to pursue you if the government cannot—or is afraid to.”

  And in that instant, Lazonby wanted to kill him. To wrap his hands round the man’s neck and do . . . Good God, he didn’t know what he wanted to do to him. Those vile, appalling emotions were surging inside him again.

  Was he always to feel like this every bloody time he spent an instant in Coldwater’s company? The air seemed suddenly thick with the young man’s scent—fear mixed with soap and something almost familiar.

  Lazonby swallowed hard, then forced his hand to let go. “No,” he said quietly, stepping back. “No, this is no longer about the follies of my youth, Jack. This is about something personal.”

  Coldwater shrugged his coat back into place. “Perhaps I simply think the reading public has a right to know how a man who was sentenced to hang for murder is now strolling around free, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful of London.”

  “And by that you mean Ruthveyn and Bessett, I suppose.”

  “Do they any come richer or more powerful?” Coldwater returned. “By the way, I hear Ruthveyn has taken half a deck on the Star of Bengal. Care to tell me what the St. James Society is up to in India?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Coldwater.” Lazonby bent over and snatched a shilling from the ground. “Don’t you even read your own society pages? Ruthveyn got married. He’s taking his bride home to Calcutta.”

  But there was nothing but silence.

  Lazonby straightened up to see he spoke to no one save the dead. Jack Coldwater had melted into the fog.

  Chapter 5

  The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Two days after Anaïs’s little contretemps at the St. James Society, a small but intrepid party set off before daylight on the first leg of their journey to Brussels. They traveled by private carriage as far as Ramsgate—which was to say Anaïs went by carriage, with Lord Bessett’s footman and coachman upon the box. The earl himself rode alongside, mounted upon a great, brown beast of a horse with a nasty temper and a tendency to bite—all of which put Anaïs rather in mind of its master.

  For the sake of preserving their ruse, Anaïs had insisted that no servants accompany them for the crossing. Her philosophy agreed with the Iron Duke’s—in for a penny, in for a pound—and no lady’s maid was going to be enough to save her from the impropriety of what she was about to do.

  After a long argument, Bessett finally yielded, and wrote ahead to Mr. van de Velde to ask that he employ a maid and a valet to meet them in Ostend. And so it was that Anaïs spent the whole of one day alone in Bessett’s well-appointed traveling coach with nothing save a pile of magazines for company.

  Given that she’d just spent a great many days journeying from Tuscany, the travel was mind-numbing. It also forced her to admit that she had secretly hoped for Lord Bessett’s company—merely to lessen the boredom, of course. She hadn’t a thought to spare for his shock of gold-streaked hair or strong, hard jaw. And those glittering eyes—well, she scarcely noticed them now.

  But the weather held fine, the roads remained dry, and Bessett did not deign to dismount save for their occasional stops. He seemed intent upon keeping his distance.

  They arrived at a ramshackle inn near Ramsgate’s port to find that a stiff breeze had kicked up. Anaïs watched the inn’s sign swing wildly in its bracket, and began to dread the crossing.

  In keeping with her new role as a dutiful wife, she waited impatiently in the carriage until Bessett returned from having made their arrangements. In the inn yard, he helped her down, his ever-present scowl already in place.

  “You do not know anyone in Ramsgate?” he asked for the third time in as many days.

  Anaïs looked up at the inn’s entrance. “Not a soul,” she answered. “How is the kitchen here?”

  “Passable, I think,” he said. “I’ll have dinner sent up to you at seven.”

  “You will not dine with me?”

  “We are still in England. And I have things to do.”

  “Very well,” she said evenly. “Just something light. Soup, perhaps.”

  He narrowed his gaze against the afternoon sun, and scanned the empty inn yard for the fifth time. “I chose this inn because it’s not especially popular—which means it isn’t the best. But they have a small suite of rooms, so Gower can sleep in a chair in your parlor.”

  Anaïs tossed a chary glance at Bessett’s fresh-faced young footman, who had begun to unstrap the baggage. “I’m sure you mean to be kind,” she said, “but mightn’t it be better if I slept in the parlor to look after Gower?”

  Bessett insulted her with a blank look.

  Anaïs poked out a foot, and tugged up her skirts a few inches. The barrel of her small pistol winked up at him in a shaft of su
n. “I think I’ll manage.”

  Bessett drew his gaze back up slowly. Perhaps a little too slowly. And those eyes—eyes she’d long ago realized were ice-blue—had the oddest way of glinting both hot and cold all at once, and sending an odd frisson down her spine.

  “So I see,” he finally said. “But—”

  “But?” Anaïs looked at him impatiently, and dropped her voice. “Look here, Bessett, do you think I’m qualified to do this or not? If we begin this mission by your worrying about me at every turn, I will be a hindrance, not a help.”

  “I only meant that—”

  “I know what you meant,” she said firmly. “Thank you. You are every inch a gentleman. But I am not much of a lady, and I can assure you poor Gower has seen nothing of the world compared to me. Now, I have a flick-knife in my reticule, a stiletto up my sleeve, and the hearing of a well-trained watchdog. But poor Gower—frankly, he looks like he just fell off a Dorset farm cart. Besides, there isn’t apt to be trouble in Ramsgate.”

  A hint of color rose across his hard cheekbones, and Anaïs could literally feel Bessett fighting down his temper—and his concern. “Very well,” he snapped. “But if you get yourself killed, I’m not waiting for the funeral.”

  “I should hope not,” she returned. “Your only concern—and mine—must be Giselle Moreau.”

  Just then, Gower handed down her portmanteau to the coachman. Anaïs moved as if to cross the inn yard. “Come, walk in with me,” she ordered. “I want to know where you are going and when you mean to return.”

  Bessett followed, his color deepening. “Playing the role of overbearing wife already, are we?”

  Anaïs kept moving, but tossed him a frustrated glance. “No, I am acting like your partner in this business,” she whispered. “We must both of us know what the other is doing at every turn—beginning this moment. To do otherwise is to court disaster, and you know it.”

  He did know it. She could see the reluctant acknowledgment in his eyes. “I’m going down to the port to check out DuPont’s clipper and make sure of his men,” he finally answered. “I’ll be back before dark.”