Beyond Compare

by Candace Camp

  “What? Oh! Oh, yes.” Rosalind jumped up and immediately began fussing over her mother, getting her shawl and handing the old woman her cane, calling for a footman to help them.

  By the time the two women had left the room, the duchess’s color had died down, and she said with a rueful smile, “Thank you, Kyria, dear. I am sure that in another moment I would have said something I would have regretted. I think that Lady Rochester positively enjoys making me lose my temper.”

  “She enjoys making everyone lose their temper,” Thisbe assured her. “Whenever I think of the things she said about Desmond when we got engaged, I get absolutely furious all over again.”

  The duchess turned her piercing blue gaze on Kyria. “My dear, is there any truth to what she was saying? Are you interested in Mr. McIntyre?”

  “Of course not, Mother,” Kyria responded. “I mean, well, we scarcely know each other and, anyway, well, you know I have no intention of marrying anyone.”

  “What? What’s this about marrying?” Kyria’s father walked into the room and glanced around vaguely.

  “Nothing, Papa,” Thisbe told him with a smile, and popped up to give him a kiss on the cheek. “We were simply having a few words with Aunt Hermione.”

  “She’s not here, is she?” the duke asked anxiously and cast a wary look around the room.

  “No, Henry, she just left,” the duchess assured him, and her husband let out a sigh of relief.

  “Good. She’s usually gone by this hour.”

  Kyria chuckled. “I wondered why you had started working early in the morning before you had breakfast.”

  “The woman’s a terror,” the duke said, sitting down and taking a quick swig of the coffee the footman brought him. “Do you know she asked me yesterday why I kept so much old junk around? I ask you…”

  “I know. Poor Uncle Bellard is absolutely trapped in his rooms,” Kyria said.

  “Since Uncle Bellard’s rooms consist of a bedroom, sitting room and a large workroom, an area larger, I might add, than many people’s homes, one can scarcely feel too sorry for him,” the duchess pointed out. “Besides, it’s his own fault. She is only his sister; she has no power over him. He should stand up to her.”

  “You know how conflict distresses Uncle Bellard,” Thisbe put in. “You can tell how interested he was in your reliquary, Kyria, by the fact that he ventured downstairs, despite the fact that Aunt Hermione is still roaming the halls. But tell us, what was Dr. Jennings able to tell you about the box?”

  Thisbe had been one of the few family members who had not joined them the evening before when Kyria had come in, as she and Desmond had already retired. Kyria told her about what Dr. Jennings had said, and Thisbe responded with appropriate astonishment.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked when Kyria finished. “How can you find out if this is really the Reliquary of the Holy Standard, or whatever he called it?”

  “I’m not sure what to do. I don’t know that I will ever be able to learn whether it’s the real thing. I wish we could open it, but even if we could, no doubt it is empty after all this time.”

  “Nelson Ashcombe has quite a reputation,” the duke said. “I had not heard that it had fallen off in recent years because of this obsession. His patron, you know, was Lord Walford, who was a friend of mine. I could write you a letter of introduction. I have heard he’s a terrible recluse.”

  “I would like to hear what he has to say,” Kyria admitted. “I suppose I could go to this dealer who visited us, too, and see if he can tell me any more about it. I am reluctant, though, to show him the box. There was just something I didn’t like about the man, and I cannot help but wonder if he was connected to what happened to poor Mr. Kousoulous.”

  “On the other hand, even if Mr. Ashcombe thinks that it is the reliquary that Dr. Jennings was talking about, you still would not know,” Thisbe pointed out. “I mean, Dr. Jennings was right. Without any idea where it came from, it is rather difficult to tell if it is the real thing or just some other reliquary or maybe even a fake.”

  “I know. I wish Theo had sent some sort of explanation!”

  The duchess frowned. “It doesn’t seem like Theo to send something to us that carried that sort of danger.”

  “I am sure he didn’t realize it,” Thisbe said, sticking up for her twin. “Either that, or Mr. Kousoulous’s death had nothing to do with the box. I mean, we have no proof that it was not entirely unrelated to the reliquary. I know that Theo would never put Kyria or any of us at risk.”

  “I wonder if he is going to return anytime soon,” Kyria said.

  “If he does not come home soon, we will get a note from him,” Kyria’s mother said firmly. “He always lets us know where he is eventually. I think it might be best to wait until we hear from Theo before you go haring off to London, Kyria. I don’t like the idea of your traveling, carrying that box.”

  “Perhaps Mr. McIntyre could accompany her again,” Broughton offered. Kyria could see from the glitter in his eyes that her father was as eager as she to learn more about the reliquary.

  “I doubt that Mr. McIntyre wants to continue to escort me about,” Kyria said quickly. The last thing she wanted was for her father to ask Rafe to accompany her, thus putting him in a position where he could scarcely refuse. “Mother is probably right. We should wait to hear from Theo. Later, when we return to London, I can always pay a call on Mr. Ashcombe.”

  The duke looked disappointed, but he subsided. Kyria could feel her sister’s curious eyes on her, but did not meet her gaze. She felt sure that Thisbe wondered about her quick dismissal of Rafe’s possible escort to London, but she did not want to talk about what had happened yesterday, even to her sister.

  Kyria did not have to face Rafe again until that evening at supper, for by the time he returned from his ride, she had managed to busy herself with various household duties and did not see him. When she walked into the anteroom where they gathered before dining, Kyria felt Rafe’s eyes on her immediately, and she could not keep from turning toward him.

  He was looking at her intently, and his bright blue gaze, as always, set up a dance of butterflies in her stomach. Unconsciously, she pressed one hand to her stomach, and for an instant looked unaccustomedly vulnerable. Rafe smiled at her then, his expression warming, and she could not help but smile back.

  Gradually he made his way around the room to her and leaned down to murmur in her ear, “Am I forgiven?”

  Kyria looked up at him, her eyes searching his. “I don’t know that you are any more at fault than I,” she replied softly.

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asked. “I, doubtless, should go on to London. Your parents will begin to think that I am never leaving.”

  Kyria chuckled. “Believe me, there are several others in their own family that they would rather be rid of first. Do not leave on my account.” However odd and unsettled she felt right now, she knew that she did not want it to end. “Of course, if you wish to go, that is quite another thing…”

  He shook his head slightly. “No. I do not wish to go.”

  “And I don’t want you to.” Kyria glanced up at him, and Rafe smiled.

  “Then it’s settled.”

  The remainder of the evening, Kyria found, went much more smoothly.

  * * *

  Kyria was sitting in her mother’s informal sitting room the next morning, trying to concentrate on a piece of embroidery while Thisbe worked on her notes and their mother sat at her small, mahogany secretary, catching up on her correspondence, when she heard the heavy thud of footsteps out in the hall. She glanced up in surprise, for the servants were normally quiet in whatever they did and the steps sounded much heavier than either of the twins produced.

  Her face fell slack with surprise as two men strode into the room. One was short and heavyset, with wide shoulders and chest thrust into an ill-fitting serge jacket. His companion was taller and slimmer, with a long, lantern jaw. Kyria had never seen either of them before, and
she could not imagine what they were doing coming into her mother’s sitting room unannounced. She drew in her breath sharply, fear suddenly blossoming in her stomach.

  At the sound, Thisbe glanced up from the notebook in which she had been jotting down numbers, and her mother turned from her desk. The pen fell from her hand, dribbling ink across the letter she had been writing, as she started to rise, indignation on her face.

  “Who are…” the duchess began, then stopped as the lantern-jawed man pulled a pistol out of the pocket of his jacket and pointed it at her.

  “Never yer mind that,” the man said roughly, his voice tinged with the London East End. “Just give me the box an’ everythin’ will be all right.”

  “The box?” The duchess’s voice was as cool and collected as if she had been receiving a neighbor for tea, not rough-looking armed men. “I am afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Kyria felt a swelling of admiration for her mother.

  The stranger, however, was irritated. He shook the gun at the duchess, saying, “Yer know, all right. Don’t go tryin’ to pull the wool over me eyes. I want the box—the fancy box—and I’m not leaving till yer give it to me.”

  “She doesn’t have it,” Kyria announced, standing up. “She doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Oh, is that right?” The man turned his attention to Kyria. “Well, now, maybe yer can tell me where it is, then, seein’ as how you know so much.”

  As he spoke, the larger of the two men moved over to stand beside Kyria, his face grim and threatening.

  “It is locked away,” Kyria said, ignoring the heavyset man. “For safekeeping. None of us can get to it.”

  “Somebody’s got the key,” the lantern-jawed intruder growled.

  “Well, it isn’t one of us,” Kyria replied levelly. She didn’t know what to do. Obviously she and her mother and sister had little hope of overcoming two men, especially with one wielding a gun. But if they could just delay them, keep them talking, surely someone—a servant or a guest—would notice and get help. Someone would tell Rafe. She did not question her certainty that Rafe would rescue them.

  “It isn’t here,” Thisbe added, arranging her face in a vapid expression that Kyria would never have believed possible. “We are just the women of the household.”

  Kyria glanced at her mother and saw on her face such a look of horror as she gazed at her eldest daughter that Kyria had to press her lips together to hold back an inappropriate giggle.

  “That’s right,” Kyria said. “Surely you cannot think that we know the whereabouts of something so valuable.”

  “That may be,” the gunman agreed, then strode quickly across the room and grabbed the duchess’s arm, pulling her to him and holding the pistol to her head. “But I’m thinkin’ yer know who does, and yer goin’ to take me to him ’less yer want to see yer mother’s brains splattered all over the room.”

  “No!” Thisbe and Kyria cried in unison, stepping forward, and the large man reached out and wrapped his hand around Kyria’s arm, jerking her to a halt.

  “Take your hands off me, you fool,” the duchess said crisply. “Unless you wish to find yourself in worse trouble than you already are. If you think that I am going to give in to such threats…”

  The man let out a snort of laughter. “Yer don’t have to, Yer Highness. They’ll do it for yer.” He nodded his head toward her daughters, both standing across the room watching them, eyes huge in their pale faces.

  “Only my father can enter the room…” Kyria began.

  “Kyria!” the duchess exclaimed.

  “…and he is not here,” Kyria finished. “I am terribly sorry, but the keys are kept locked in his study. So you can see that it’s impossible.”

  “Not if you want your mother to live, it ain’t,” the man retorted, giving a nod to his silent companion. He wiggled the gun provocatively against the duchess’s temple. “Now take me to that study.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The large man, still gripping Kyria’s arm, pulled her toward the door. Such a bizarre procession down the hall surely would not go unnoticed, Kyria thought. She and Thisbe exchanged glances, and she knew that her sister’s thoughts ran along lines similar to her own. Kyria hoped that her father would prove to be anywhere else but his study.

  “I cannot imagine why you are so interested in that old box, anyway,” Thisbe remarked, continuing her pretense of empty-headedness. “Personally I would much prefer to have something new, wouldn’t you, Kyria?”

  “Of course,” Kyria replied, glad that Thisbe was trying to distract the men. The more they kept the men’s attention on the three of them, the better chance they had of someone, perhaps down one of the halls or in a side room, being able to help them.

  “Shut yer yap,” the man holding the duchess growled. “What do I care what yer think of the box?”

  “Well, I should think that the opinion of a woman of taste and breeding would be invaluable concerning an object of art,” Kyria replied. “I am simply saying that you would likely get more money for something newer and more attractive—a jeweled necklace, for instance.”

  “It’s the box. I got me orders,” he told her shortly.

  “Yes, I am sure you do,” Kyria said. “I hope your master instructed you—”

  “Ere!” the man exclaimed. “’E ain’t no master of mine. I’m me own man, see.”

  “You mean you are the one interested in the box?” Thisbe asked.

  “No! ’Course not. But I work only for meself, see. He has a job, and I takes it. We’re equal, like.”

  Kyria let out a little laugh. “I doubt that. How much did he pay you? Did he tell you that in certain circles, this box is worth thousands and thousands of guineas? Maybe more?” She hoped that the man wouldn’t notice that she was contradicting what she and Thisbe had just said. But she wanted to seize on the weakness she had spotted in the gunman—his pride in being his own man. “I suspect that he is paying you a mere pittance, whereas he intends to sell the box to a client for a hundred times, nay, a thousand times what he is offering you. And you are the one who is doing all the dangerous work.”

  Her words were met with a blank silence as the intruder appeared to digest what she had said. Kyria had little hope of talking the man out of what he was doing, but she did hope that the new thoughts she had planted in his mind would distract him. As best she could tell, the other man, the one gripping her own arm tightly, had no thoughts whatsoever.

  Just at that point, they crossed an intersecting hallway, one that ran back through the house. Kyria automatically glanced down it, and to her horror, she saw Con coming around the corner, a smile on his face and a cricket bat in his hand. He stopped abruptly when he saw them, his mouth dropping open. Kyria shot him a fierce look, silently begging him to understand and run away for help.

  Con apparently got the mental message, for he spun on his heel and ran back around the corner, disappearing from sight. But beside her, the intruder holding her arm let out a roar, and Kyria knew with a sinking heart that he had spotted her brother.

  “There’s a boy!” he shouted, pointing. He dropped her arm and started to go after Con, but his companion stopped him with a gesture.

  “Boy!” Lantern Jaw yelled. “Come back ’ere.” He paused and the seconds ticked by. “If yer don’t, I’m pulling this trigger, and it’s the last yer’ll see of yer mother!”

  “Constantine! I forbid you!” the duchess called out.

  “Shut up!” The man reached up with his free hand and slapped the duchess.

  With something like a snarl, Kyria started toward him, her hands coming up like claws. The large man grabbed her arms, pulling her back. The other man dug his fingers into the duchess’s hair, jerking her closer to him and pushing the pistol hard against her temple.

  “Oh, yer a feisty one, eh?” Lantern Jaw said, leering at Kyria. “Go ahead, come at me, girlie, and she’ll be the first to go.” Then he raised his voice. “Yer ’ear that, la
d? If yer want to see your mum alive, yer come to me.”

  To control herself, Kyria curled her fingernails into her palms so tightly they drew blood. The large man was too strong for her to break free of him, anyway, but it took all her self-control not to scream with rage.

  For a long moment, they remained in their silent tableau. Then there was the sound of footsteps, and they all turned to see Con walking toward them slowly, the cricket bat still dangling loosely from his hand. His eyes were huge in his pale face, and he looked somehow smaller than usual.

  Con looked up at the intruder as he drew near, and tears swam in his blue-gray eyes. “You aren’t going to hurt me, are you, mister?”

  Kyria, who had never heard her brother express even one concern over getting hurt, felt a spurt of hope. She knew one thing their tormenters did not—that wherever Con was, Alex was never far away. With any luck, he had been behind Con, out of sight, but had heard everything and was even now on his way for help.

  “There, there, Con,” Kyria said in sugary tones, taking a handkerchief out of her pocket and bending to wipe away her brother tears and thereby block the boy from their captors’ view for a moment. “I am sure the man will not hurt a little boy.”

  Con, looking up into her face, gave her a conspiratorial grin before he drew his face back into lines of terror and said in a quivering voice, “Are you sure? He looks so fierce.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Just do what he says and everything will be all right.”

  She put her hand on Con’s shoulder, pulling him to her side, so that the cricket bat was more or less hidden in her skirts. Even though the men had already seen the bat, she thought it best to keep it out of sight, in case they might begin to think about it and realize what an admirable weapon it would make. The large man took her arm in one hand and Thisbe’s in the other, and they started once again down the hall. Con continued to snivel and whine as they walked along, contriving to stumble and fall once, slowing their progress even further. Thisbe and Kyria kept the pace as slow as they dared, and their mother stalked along in icy contempt for the man who matched her pace and held a gun to her head.