Beyond Compare

by Candace Camp

  However, they could not keep from finally reaching the study. Kyria’s heart sank when she opened the door and found her father sitting behind his desk, sorting through a stack of papers. Even worse, old Lord Penhurst was in the room, too, snoring in one of the wing chairs, his handkerchief over his face.

  The duke looked up vaguely from his work at the sound of their entry, then gaped at them. He started to speak, but the only sound that emerged from his throat was a croak.

  Penhurst snorted and awoke, saying, “What’s that you say, Broughton?” He pulled the handkerchief from his face and looked at the group by the door. “I say!” The old man sat up straighter and leaned forward, rapping his cane on the floor. “What the devil is the meaning of this?” He turned toward the duke. “Deuced queer start, I must say, Broughton.”

  “What…why…who are you?” Broughton stuttered out, rising to his feet, his face the color of his pressed white shirt. “Emmeline, are you all right?”

  “Perfectly,” his wife replied crisply, even though the bright red mark staining her cheek gave lie to her words.

  “I want the box.” The intruder with the gun came quickly to the point, motioning his captives forward into the room and pulling the duchess with him toward her husband. “Yer give me the box, or your missus ’ere’ll pay for it.”

  “Good Lord,” Broughton breathed, his usually pleasantly vague face drawing up wrathfully. He started around his desk toward the man. “You dare to put a hand on my wife?”

  “Stop right there!” The gunman made a show of pressing the weapon to the duchess’s temple. “I’ll dare more’n that, ’less I get somethin’ from yer,” he went on, looking rather smug. “Ain’t so grand now, are yer, Duke?”

  “Damned impudence!” Lord Penhurst exclaimed, punctuating his comment with a sharp rap of his cane. “Throw the rascal out, Broughton.”

  Lantern Jaw shot an angry look at the old man, then turned to the duke. “What’ll it be? Yer goin’ to give me that box, or am I goin’ to ’ave to use this on yer missus?”

  “Henry, don’t give in to him!” the duchess ordered. “You know I cannot abide bullies.”

  Her husband gave her an anguished look. “Emmeline…I cannot let him hurt you.”

  “It is a pointless threat,” the duchess responded, turning to look at her captor. “If you carry it out, then you have lost your advantage. The only way you retain the threat is to not shoot me, which means that it really is rather useless.”

  “If yer don’t shut yer gob, I’m goin’ to shoot yer, anyway!” the man exclaimed. “And don’t think I won’t. I got three other people right ’ere I can use to get the duke to give me the box. ’Ow many of yer do yer think ’e’ll let me kill ’fore ’e gives it to me?”

  “Stop it!” Broughton ordered. “I will give you the box. But it is in another room.”

  He turned and went back to his desk, pulling open a drawer.

  “Stop!” the gunman said.

  “I have to get out my keys,” Broughton explained reasonably, reaching into the drawer.

  “Dixon.” The gunman looked at his companion and nodded toward the drawer.

  Dixon released his hold on Kyria and Thisbe, and moved quickly to the duke’s side. The duke’s left hand emerged from the drawer, holding a ring of keys, but as he started to draw out his other hand, Dixon clamped his large hand around Broughton’s wrist and gave it a sharp, downward tug. A letter opener fell out of the duke’s hand and clattered into the open drawer.

  The duke sighed and looked toward his wife, his eyes eloquently sending his regret. Kyria, glancing at her mother, saw the duchess smile at him lovingly, tears gathering in her eyes.

  “Henry…”

  Broughton straightened and started toward her, but Dixon came up quickly beside him and now clamped his hand around the duke’s upper arm.

  “All right now, Duke,” the gunman said. “That was yer only chance. The next time you pull a trick like that, I’m firing this pistol. After that, it’ll be one of these young ladies—or maybe that little boy.”

  At those words, Con let out a cry and went running to his mother, grabbing her skirts and leaning against her. “Mother! Please don’t let him hurt me!”

  Kyria noticed that he still carried his cricket bat in his hand, despite his apparent distress. She had the strong suspicion that he was up to something, and she hoped that he would not act precipitately, but would wait for help to arrive.

  Their father strode out the door first, followed by the duchess, Con by her side and Lantern Jaw at her other elbow, his gun pointed unrelentingly at her head. He paused in the doorway and glanced back at the others, who were following. He started to speak, then stopped and cast an annoyed look over at Lord Penhurst, who had risen to his feet and was pounding his cane pugnaciously on the floor.

  “You young ruffian!” Penhurst shouted, and waved his cane threateningly in his direction. “I’ll see you in gaol!”

  Lantern Jaw looked as though he would have liked to leave the rest of them behind, but he apparently realized that he could not afford to leave anyone who might go for help, for he gave an irritated twitch of his head and said, “Bring ’em all.”

  Dixon looked at Thisbe and Kyria, then back at Lord Penhurst, his mind obviously taxed at the predicament of keeping hold of all three. He wound up letting go of the women and shooing them and Lord Penhurst out the door in front of him, rather like a farmwife with a brood of chickens.

  There was little Kyria could do to delay their progress, for the duke’s collections room lay right next door to his study. However, Lord Penhurst made an excellent job of it, toddling along with his cane and releasing a steady stream of invectives at their captors.

  “Young people have no respect today,” he ranted. “Why, in my day, there would have been no mollycoddling. You would be transported for this. Hanged, more likely. Which is exactly what you deserve. Broughton, you ought to be more careful who you let in the house.”

  “I say, Penhurst, that’s hardly fair,” the duke protested, stopping and turning back to address the old man at the rear of the group. “I didn’t ask them to break in.”

  “Humph! It wouldn’t have happened when your father was alive, that’s all I have to say,” Penhurst retorted. “We knew how to deal with rascals then. You’re too lenient, always have been. Always helping out the workers, always giving in to their demands—”

  “Lord Penhurst,” the duchess broke in, “this is scarcely a result of paying a decent wage for a decent day’s work. If anything, it goes to argue my point—that when people are treated unfairly and paid a mere pittance for backbreaking work, it is no wonder that there is crime. Perhaps if this man, loathsome as he is, had had the chance to earn an honest living and support his family—”

  “’ ain’t got no family,” Dixon seemed to feel obliged to point out.

  “And I ain’t no mug!” the gunman exclaimed, looking offended. “I never done a honest day’s work in me life!”

  “You see?” Lord Penhurst waved his cane wildly. “That’s what I mean. Worthless, the whole lot of them. Ought to ship them to Australia.”

  Kyria tried to glance unobtrusively around. She thought she glimpsed a bit of movement at a doorway down the hall, but she dared not look in that direction. The duke stopped in front of the door to his collections room and bent over his key ring, searching slowly through the keys. Kyria and Thisbe stopped behind their mother and her captor. Kyria noticed that beads of sweat were dribbling down the side of the gunman’s face. As it was scarcely warm weather, she could only assume that he was feeling more nervous than his obnoxious behavior let on.

  The duke finally found the right key and fitted it into the lock. Opening the door, he moved inside, the others streaming in after him.

  “’Cor!” the gunman exclaimed, glancing around him at the cases filled with ancient objects and the vases and statues and various pieces of pottery that littered the tables of the room.

  Kyria noticed tha
t her little brother fell away from his mother’s side as they walked, moving behind her and her captor and around to the other side of the gunman, the cricket bat still dangling from his hand. The gunman, still a little stunned by the profusion of objects in the room, seemed not to notice Con’s movements.

  Broughton moved across the room to the center case, key in hand to open it. He stopped abruptly and stared into the case. “Good Lord!”

  “What?” The duchess’s guard looked at him.

  “Why, it’s gone,” Broughton said, stunned. He pointed toward the glass-fronted case, at a vacant spot between a necklace on a stand and a small vase. “The box is gone!”

  “What!” their captor exploded, releasing the duchess’s arm and stepping forward in his agitation. “What are yer saying? Don’t try to pull the wool over me eyes—” He waved his pistol at the duke.

  “I’m not!” There was nothing false about the panic and distress in her father’s voice. “The reliquary has been stolen!”

  The gunman’s hand dropped as he stared, slack-jawed, at the empty spot in the cabinet, and in that moment Con seized the advantage and struck, swinging his bat upward with all his strength and cracking it smartly into the man’s gun arm. The man let out a howl of pain as the gun went flying out of his hand. A shot went off, shattering one of the gas lamps across the room. The ruffian turned and grabbed Con with a shriek of rage and shook him, then flung him aside.

  The duchess cried out, “Con!” and ran to her son.

  Kyria flew at the man, kicking and hitting, and he struggled to hold her off. Thisbe started toward her sister to help, but Dixon managed to grab her and hold on. Lord Penhurst brought his cane down smartly across the big man’s knuckles, and Dixon cried out, releasing Thisbe and turning toward the old man with a growl.

  At that moment Rafe burst through the doorway, a gun in each hand, followed by Alex, wielding a fireplace poker. Quickly assessing the situation, Rafe shoved one pistol into his belt and brought the other one down smartly, butt first, on Dixon’s head. He kicked the thick-set man’s knees out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor, and finished the job with another crack of the pistol butt. He started then toward Kyria, struggling in the other attacker’s grasp. But before he could reach her, the duchess whirled from her son’s side and bent down to pick up the cricket bat he had dropped, then came up like an avenging angel, her eyes lit with fire and a wild, almost inhuman cry issuing from her lips. She swung the cricket bat, striking the gunman’s head with a loud thwack. He toppled like a felled tree.

  The duchess stood over him, glaring down at him. “How dare you touch my child!”

  “Emmeline!” Broughton rushed to his wife and pulled her into his arms. “Oh, thank God. I was afraid I had lost you!” He looked over her shoulder and caught sight of his eldest daughter, who had snatched up the nearest object to use as a weapon. “Thisbe! No! Not the Etruscan vase!”

  There were a few moments of confusion as everyone turned to everyone else to make sure they were all right. Rafe crossed the room to Kyria in two quick strides and pulled her into his arms. Instinctively, her arms went around his waist and she leaned against his chest, her eyes closing in relief.

  “I knew you would come,” she breathed.

  “Of course,” he replied, and his lips brushed her hair. “Thank God for Alex. Are you all right?”

  Kyria nodded. “Yes, I’m fine.” However, she made no move to leave the shelter of his arms. “It was Mother who was in danger. And Con. Con!”

  She gasped as she recalled what had happened to her younger brother, and she whirled around to see where her younger brother lay on the floor, still dazed. The other members of her family were all huddled around him, the duchess kneeling on the floor beside him.

  “You are a hero,” the duchess was telling Con, reaching down to wipe the hair from his forehead. She twisted to put an arm around Alex and pull him close. “Both of you are heroes.”

  “You are the one who has been hurt,” Broughton said, reaching down and tugging his wife to her feet. He turned to cast a burning glance at the unconscious villains on the floor. “When I think that that fellow hit you!”

  “I survived,” the duchess reassured him, smiling at her husband and reaching up to pat his cheek.

  They were interrupted by the sound of pounding footsteps outside, and in the next moment, a crowd of servants came streaming in, all drawn by the crack of the pistol shot, followed a moment later by the few guests who were still in residence. Kyria realized that she was still standing very close to Rafe, his hand resting lightly on her back, and she took a self-conscious step away.

  “I say,” Cousin Albert remarked mildly, looking the scene over. “Why are those men on the floor?”

  “Deuced peculiar household,” Lord Penhurst declared. “Always has been. How is a fellow to take a nap around here?”

  With those words, he turned and shuffled off, leaning on his cane. There were exclamations and explanations all around, and the butler sent a footman for rope to tie up the miscreants.

  It took some minutes to get rid of their curious guests, and by the time they had done so and closed the door, their uninvited guests were beginning to wake up. Dixon let out a groan and made a move to touch his head, only to discover that he was tied up. He let out another groan and laid his head back on the floor.

  “Blimey, Sid,” he whined, “why’d I let you talk me into this? No good ever comes outta leavin’ the City. I told you.”

  “Shurrup,” the lantern-jawed man replied in a slurred voice. “Yer took the money well enough, din’t yer?”

  “Not really enough, though, was it?” Rafe asked pleasantly, striding across the room and squatting down beside the men.

  None too gently, he grasped the gunman, Sid, by the arms, jerked him to a sitting position and leaned him against the wall. He looked straight into the man’s eyes, and his voice was flat and hard as he asked, “All right, who hired you?”

  Sid sneered back at him. “I ain’t tellin’ yer nothin’.”

  “You aren’t talking to an English gentleman now, Sid. I don’t believe in fair play. I believe in taking care of my own, and you have gotten in the way of that. Do you understand what I’m saying? Now, you can talk right here and now, where you have a well-mannered, upright duke watching the proceedings, or you can talk later to me—when we’re alone.” He paused, then added, with a faint smile, “Trust me, you’ll end up telling me.”

  Something in his eyes must have convinced Sid of the truth of his words, for the man squirmed, looking away from Rafe, and said, “I can’t tell yer nothin’. I don’t know nothin’.”

  “You were hired by someone. What was his name?”

  “I don’t know.” Sid shrugged. “These ropes are too tight.”

  “You’ll wish they were as loose as this later if you don’t start answering my questions.”

  “I don’t know nothin’.” Sid’s voice took on a whine similar to that of his companion’s. “’E didn’t tell me no names. ’E just said as ’ow ’e wanted the job done, and I agreed. ’E paid me ’alf and said I’d get the rest when I brought him the box.”

  “What did he tell you about the box?”

  “Just that it was small and white, made of ivory, like, and it ’ad a giant black stone on the side of it.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. Just a gent, you know. A foreign gent.”

  “A foreigner?”

  “Talked funny.” He paused, then added, “Not like you. More like a Frenchie or summat.”

  “Was he French?”

  “’Ow should I know? ’E was just foreign, like.”

  “Was he dark? Fair?”

  “Dark, I guess. I din’t pay much attention.”

  Rafe grimaced. “You certainly are an unobservant fellow. It’s a wonder how you would have managed to hand the box over to the right man.” He turned to the heavyset man. “What about you, Dixon? Can you give me any be
tter description of the man who hired you?”

  Dixon looked at him blankly. “I didn’t see nobody, mister. It were Sid ’ere as ’ired me. I told ’im it would come to a bad end. It’s no good leavin’ the City.”

  Rafe studied him for a moment, then turned back to Sid. “All right. How did he find you?”

  “I don’t know wot yer mean.”

  “The man who hired you could scarcely have put an ad in the newspaper for a thief. How did he know that you would do the job?”

  “Oh. ’E asked the barkeep, Tommy, and Tom said as ’ow I was good for nickin’ a few things.”

  “What barkeep?”

  “Down at the tavern. The Blue Bull.”

  “Where is that?”

  “London, ’course.” Sid looked at Rafe as if he were daft. “Where else?”

  “What part of London?”

  “Cheapside. Down by the docks.”

  “And did you meet your employer there?”

  Sid nodded, then winced at the pain the movement brought. “Yeah. Tommy told me to come by, and this bloke was waitin’ fer me.”

  The Morelands had all been watching the interrogation with interest, and Kyria moved forward now, saying, “Where are you supposed to meet him? You must have set up some way of meeting him after you got the box.”

  Sid’s gaze flickered over to Kyria for a moment, and his lip started to curl into a sneer, but then his eyes went to Rafe, who was watching him steadily, one hand tightening into a fist, and Sid dropped the sneer.

  “I’m supposed to meet ’im tomorrow night, after I get back into the City. At the Blue Bull.”

  Kyria turned to Rafe. “We could go there. We could intercept him and find out who it is.”

  Rafe nodded and stood up. “I’m afraid that’s all we’re getting out of him at the moment.” He flicked a glance at the man on the floor and added, “I may have another little talk with our friend later, but for now I reckon Smeggars can lock him up. Do you have any handy dungeons?”