Indeed, their eyes lit up when, rising from a graceful curtsy, she declared, “I need to pick your brains, and I don’t have much time.”
Her grandmother held up a cheek for a kiss and arched her fine brows. “And why is that—your lack of time?”
“Because if I take too long, Drake will lose what little patience he has and go off without me.” She didn’t know if he would, but he might, and she wasn’t about to risk it. She dutifully kissed her grandmother’s cheek, then drew up a straight-backed chair to the table and sat. “I need to know everything you can tell me about Lord Hubert Nagle. His name has cropped up in relation to Drake’s current mission.”
“The one you are all helping him with?” Helena asked.
Louisa nodded. “Yes. That one.”
“Nagle, heh?” Therese Osbaldestone exchanged a look with Helena. “Now there’s a name we haven’t heard in an age.”
“But you know about him, don’t you?” Louisa couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t.
Lady Osbaldestone snorted. “Of course, we do—patience, child. Now, let’s see. Lord Hubert Nagle is the younger brother of the late Marquess of Faringdale. His nephew currently holds the title.”
“Yes—I knew that. And Viscountess Hawesley is his sister, and his other sister is Alice, Lady Griswade. But that’s all I know about Lord Nagle. Was he notable in any way?”
“Whitehall,” Helena said. “He was one of the principal private secretaries for many, many years. I can’t recall what ministry.” She looked questioningly at Lady Osbaldestone.
“Home Office,” Therese Osbaldestone supplied. “Dear Gerald was Foreign Office, of course—”
Louisa knew “dear Gerald” was Lady Osbaldestone’s way of referring to her late husband, who had died many years ago.
“—so we didn’t cross Nagle’s path all that often, but he was very much the Whitehall mandarin. He wielded significant power, always had the ear of his minister—indeed, in his later years, he was known to positively guide the Home Secretary.”
“Hmm. Nagle was considered quite brilliant, as I recall,” Helena put in.
“Oh, indeed—and in that arena, ‘brilliant’ means quite ruthlessly clever and cunning.” Lady Osbaldestone frowned. “As far as I know, there was never any scandal attached to his name—not while he was in office, at least. And he’s been gone from London for, what? More than fifteen years?” She looked interrogatively at Helena.
“At least fifteen years,” Louisa’s grandmother stated. “Remember, it was when the Queen, then Princess Alexandrina, was on one of those horrendous tours her mother used to drag her around the country on that he was introduced to her, and that was what triggered all the subsequent brouhaha.” Helena’s hands gracefully swept upward, indicating an eruption. “That must have been in ’34 or ’35, and he’d been retired for a few years by then.”
Louisa sat forward. “What brouhaha?”
Helena waved dismissively. “It was all ridiculously silly. A typical piece of male conceit.”
Lady Osbaldestone snorted. “Indeed. Nothing more than injured male pride.”
“But what happened?” Louisa asked.
“That harpy, the princess’s mother, had driven the poor gel too hard, and she—the princess—fell ill.”
“And she was never one to take to all the fuss, anyway,” Helena said. “Indeed, she still isn’t.”
Louisa, who had spent a year as one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, knew that to be true.
“Quite so.” Lady Osbaldestone nodded. “But the long and the short of it was that when Alexandrina was introduced to Nagle, ill and barely able to function, she more or less cut him. Not intentionally, but from all accounts she had reached point non-plus and couldn’t carry on any longer. He, however, unaware of her difficulties, was infuriated that she didn’t acknowledge the long and valuable service he’d rendered to Crown and country. Well, with that mother of hers as mentor, I doubt the poor gel even knew of it. But Nagle…well, let’s just say that it was as well that he was already retired. He roundly denounced the princess as unfit to rule, to ascend the throne.”
“Good Lord!” Louisa could only stare; she’d never heard of this tale, and fifteen and more years on, after more than thirteen years of Victoria as monarch, she found it difficult to credit.
“Oh yes.” Helena’s pale-green eyes, so very like Louisa’s, seemed to see her granddaughter’s difficulty. “He spoke out against her, and he was exceedingly loud about it.”
“Naturally,” Lady Osbaldestone said, “several ladies of the court tried to explain what had happened—that the princess had not been properly briefed as to his past contributions, and that she had been ill and, indeed, had later been forced to take to her bed—but Nagle would have none of it. He continued to trumpet her inappropriate behavior—meaning her lack of recognition of him—as clear evidence she was unfit to rule.”
Helena snorted and managed to make the sound both French and elegant. “That Alexandrina was female had more to do with it than anything else. I firmly believe Nagle would have found fault regardless—Alexandrina’s illness and poor preparation simply played into his hands. Lord Hubert was definitely of the old school—he would have recommended patting ladies on their heads and advising them—nay, instructing them—to stick to their embroidery.”
Lady Osbaldestone humphed. “You will have noticed he remains a bachelor to this day.” After a moment, she went on, “As I recall, Nagle created sufficient noise by way of letters to the news sheets that William—the King—dispatched several gentlemen to explain to Nagle that speaking so of his future sovereign came perilously close to treason.” Lady Osbaldestone squinted at Louisa. “Indeed, I suspect Wolverstone was one of those sent. I can certainly imagine he would have been most persuasive. And after that, Nagle shut up, and as far as I know, he sank back into complete obscurity somewhere in the Home Counties.”
“Berkshire,” Louisa supplied. Something clicked in her brain. Reading was in Berkshire. According to the bill she’d found in his pocket, Lawton Chilburn had visited Reading in the very middle of managing the plot. Suddenly, facts and thoughts were whirling in her brain. “Thank you.” To her ears, her voice seemed to come from far away. She rose. “I think that’s all I need to know.”
Both her grandmother and Lady Osbaldestone eyed her intently, then Lady Osbaldestone said, “Just be sure to come back and tell us the whole story once you and that dragon of yours get to the bottom of it.”
“Incidentally,” Helena said with a gentle smile, “do bring him with you next time. You may tell him we wish to interview him.”
Not even the prospect of telling Drake that and seeing how he reacted was enough to pull Louisa free of the whirlpool of conjecture swamping her mind. She nodded woodenly. “Again, thank you both.”
She curtsied, then walked quickly to the door.
Her mind continued to spin. She tried to pulls facts free, tried to order them, tried to list those she had to tell Drake—those he didn’t as yet know.
She made it to the head of the stairs before, like a kaleidoscope swirling, then clicking into position, the various facts she’d gathered swung and revolved one last time and snapped into place.
She saw the whole—the horrendous whole—and she gasped. She reached out blindly and gripped the bannister while, in her mind, she searched the picture that known facts, thoughts, and conjecture had shaped, desperately seeking a weakness—a break in the fabric that would indicate the picture wasn’t true. Instead, the harder she looked, the more closely she studied it, her mental image only gained in clarity; within it, every single fact fitted and locked into place.
She’d solved the riddle of the mission.
What she saw chilled her to her marrow.
She jerked back to reality, to the here and now. Frantic, she pulled open her reticule, hunted, and hauled out the list of Hunstable’s deliveries and scanned down the list… Her heart literally stopped.
Then it started
thumping furiously.
“Oh dear God!” She picked up her skirts and all but flew down the stairs.
Startled, Crewe looked at her. “My lady?”
She skidded to a halt on the tiles. “Drake—Lord Winchelsea?” Close to panic, she searched the hall. “Where is he?”
“The marquess went to Wolverstone House to speak with—”
She reached the front door, hauled it open, grabbed up her skirts, and raced onto the porch—
Straight into Drake. He’d been climbing the steps when she’d rushed out, but had braced himself so when she barreled into him, they didn’t go tumbling to the pavement.
“Oof!” She rebounded and staggered.
He caught her and steadied her. “What’s happened?”
She flung back a curl that had tumbled forward, seized his sleeve, and looked into his eyes. “We have to stop her. Now!”
“Stop whom?”
“The Queen!”
Drake glanced around. A few startled passersby had heard. “Inside.” He didn’t give Louisa a chance to argue; his hands on her shoulders, he propelled her backward into the front hall.
Crewe had been holding the door; Louisa jigged with impatience while he shut it. She barely waited until the latch clicked before stating, her voice tighter, her tone more rigid and absolute than Drake had ever heard it, “Lord Hubert Nagle, a now-ancient, once-exceedingly-powerful ex-Whitehall bureaucrat, is your mastermind. He’s plotted to blow up the Queen, but not tomorrow. Today! Now—this afternoon. In fact”—she glanced at the clock on the wall—“within the hour.” Her gaze swung back to lock with Drake’s. “If we don’t stop her.”
He blinked, trying to envisage such a scenario. “Calm down. There’s no way they’ll get the gunpowder into the palace.”
“Not the palace!” Her tone was beyond adamant, and he realized that whatever she was saying, she didn’t just believe it was true—she knew it was. As if to prove that, she brandished the list of Hunstable’s deliveries in his face. “He’s going to blow her up at the Tower.”
“What?”
She pointed to one entry on the list. “See? A delivery to the Waterloo Block officers’ mess of fifteen barrels of Bright Flame Ale.”
He felt his features blank. “There was nothing there yesterday afternoon. Sebastian checked.”
“The delivery”—she poked at the list—“was this morning.”
“But the Queen—”
“Is on her way to the Tower as we argue!”
He frowned. “Why, for heaven’s sake?”
Louisa felt giddy, but this was no time to swoon. She forced herself to draw in a deep breath, and with her eyes fixed on Drake’s, succinctly said, “Parliament has commenced sitting, so there’s a state banquet to mark the occasion tonight. That’s a permanent feature in the court calendar. It’s sheer luck that this year, it’s fallen so close to Guy Fawkes Night.”
He nodded. “And the banquet is at the palace.”
“Yes, but this afternoon, as she always does before a state banquet, the Queen, accompanied by Prince Albert, will go to the Jewel House in the Tower to choose which of the crown jewels she’ll wear tonight.”
Drake paled. “The officers’ mess…it’s in the cellar beneath the Jewel House.”
“I know! We have to stop the Queen before she reaches the Tower.”
Drake seized her hand and strode for the door. “You can tell me the rest on the way.” Crewe was at the door; he opened it, and they rushed down the steps and across the pavement to where Henry had the carriage waiting.
Drake all but flung Louisa up into the carriage and called to Henry, “The Tower! As fast as you can.”
When he tried to get into the carriage, Louisa pushed him back and twisted to call up to Henry, “Go via the Strand.”
Drake didn’t contradict her. To Henry and the footman beside him on the box, he said, “We need to intercept the royal coach.”
“It’ll be the small black one,” Louisa added, “but it’ll have outriders—guardsmen. Look for the helmets.”
She pulled back into the carriage, and Drake dived in. He fell onto the seat as Henry, an ex-jarvey and nothing loath, obeyed Drake’s orders and literally whipped up his horses in Grosvenor Square.
Drake straightened and clutched at the strap swinging by his head.
Beside him, Louisa was clinging to the strap on her side for dear life. “Obviously,” she gasped, as Henry took the first corner at speed, “if we don’t catch them before the Tower, it won’t be for lack of trying.”
Drake quashed the impulse to demand Louisa tell him the whole from the beginning; if her conjecture was correct, they didn’t have time. And if she was correct, they’d have plenty of time later—after they saved the Queen.
Of course, that meant he was accepting that she’d got everything right, but if he’d learned anything of her, it was that when she was this clear, when she felt this strongly and spoke so adamantly, she wouldn’t be—wasn’t going to be—wrong.
Accepting that, the first thing he needed to do was work out what lay ahead. “You know the Queen’s movements from your time as one of her ladies.” Like all the daughters of the higher nobility, she had served a year in the royal household as lady-in-waiting to the Queen.
She nodded. “And one thing you can say about Victoria, she stringently adheres to established protocols.” She glanced at him and briefly met his eyes. “It’s after two o’clock, so she’s already left the palace and is either on or almost on the Strand.”
The carriage rocked violently, and he caught her against him. Only when the carriage had righted and shot forward again did he ease his hold.
“We have to catch her carriage before it reaches the Tower.” Louisa peered out, noting the streets they were passing. “It’ll be much harder to send her back to the palace if she gets past the entrance—you can trust me on that.”
He was trusting her over a great deal more than that, but halting the Queen’s carriage before it reached the Tower fitted well with his evolving plan of how best to spike Griswade’s gunpowder and end the threat from Lord Hubert Nagle.
They hadn’t yet reached the Strand. “Papa was out, so I didn’t learn anything about Nagle, but clearly you did. Tell me.”
Her nerves unbelievably tight, Louisa took a moment to order her thoughts—to strip her mental picture to its bare bones. “For years, Nagle was principal private secretary to the Home Secretary. He became one of Whitehall’s most powerful mandarins. For various reasons, he believes that Victoria—Princess Alexandrina as she then was—snubbed him years ago. He publicly declared her unfit to rule. He was already retired and was told to shut up. Was more or less told that not doing so would be treason—and it’s possible your father was involved in that telling.”
“Ah.” Drake felt his jaw set. “This always felt like it had a…personal aspect to it.”
“In Nagle’s mind, it probably does. He would want to outwit you—you’re your father’s heir in more ways than one.”
“So Nagle set out to blow up Victoria?”
“It might not be just Victoria but Albert as well. A lot of Nagle’s generation didn’t approve of Victoria marrying a German prince.”
“True. Presumably, he’s planning to remove both Victoria and Albert and establish a regency with Edward on the throne.”
“That might be why he’s waited this long to act—to be sure Edward was going to survive childhood and to have sufficient other heirs that there’s no chance of the line failing.” She paused, then went on, “Who knows what his reasoning was? The important point is that if you put Nagle into position as the mastermind, everything else falls into place. Every skill and talent, all the experience you’ve hypothesized the mastermind must have, Nagle surely possesses. We knew we were looking for someone with a deep understanding of the Young Irelander and Chartist causes, who knew how each organization is run, how to hoodwink their members into doing what he wished and so implicating both organizations,
and for all that, Nagle qualifies—arguably better than anyone else.”
She drew breath. “On top of that, Nagle is a bachelor and has no immediate heirs—his estate is his to leave as he pleases, and I imagine it’s not inconsiderable. Lawton told his sister that he was expecting to inherit from someone—that’s what Nagle offered him for his help, a part of his estate. Griswade is also one of Nagle’s nephews and, as another fourth son, might also be in need of funds. Nagle plotted and planned, and then once he was sure his plot was perfect to the last degree, he needed two henchmen to carry it out. Who better than two younger relatives, both with military backgrounds, both hungry for funds, and both—as Nagle almost certainly knew—with very few scruples and no qualms about killing in pursuit of their goals.”
She looked at Drake and met his eyes. “That’s how it was done—Lord Hubert Nagle planned his revenge, and Lawton Chilburn and Bevis Griswade executed it.”
He held her gaze, then nodded. “Yes, that fits.”
She flung her arms wide. “Everything fits. Down to the smallest detail. You’ve said many times that this plot didn’t follow the usual patterns—that’s because Nagle expected to have you as his…well, opponent. He knew you would become involved and planned for that, too. For instance”—she turned toward him, her features animated—“his latest piece of misdirection was killing Hunstable’s deliverymen. Not after they’d done what he wanted, as had been his habit until then, but before—that made us concentrate on the Saturday deliveries. We sent Sebastian and Michael to check those, rather than the deliveries on Monday. If we hadn’t realized it was Nagle behind this, possibly none of us would have got to the Tower in time to seize the gunpowder before it’s used.” She sobered. “We still might not be in time.”
“You said Victoria always adheres to her schedule. What time does she usually reach the Jewel House?”
Louisa thought, then replied, “For once, I find myself grateful for Her Majesty’s majesty, so to speak. She’s a monarch and behaves as one—she never rushes. She invariably stops to talk with the guards at both entrances—the Middle Tower and the Bloody Tower. The Keeper of the Jewels will meet her just inside the Bloody Tower, and she’ll chat to him before the carriage rolls on at a walking pace and stops outside the Jewel House. Then she usually spends a few more minutes chatting to Mrs. Proudfoot, the Keeper’s wife. Victoria is quite fond of Mrs. Proudfoot.”
The Greatest Challenge of Them All Page 35