“Well, I’ll be damned,” Genny exclaimed, slapping her hands together. “We have him right where we want him!”
“We do?”
“You’re in a very auspicious position.”
“I am?”
Genny clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, would that Henrietta were alive. She’d be thrilled to her toes. You have one thing Henrietta could never even dream of having, and now you can use the Vicar of Vice’s desire for you to bring about his demise.”
Cecelia chewed the inside of her lip. For someone so good with formulae and figures, Cecelia felt woefully lost in a labyrinth of shadows, sex, and deception. “I’m not comfortable with causing anyone’s demise, especially a man who’s only trying to do his job.”
“Did you forget he threatened to see you hanged for something for which you are not guilty?” Francesca surprisingly threw her lot in with Genny.
“Of course not, but surely there’s another way.”
“Are you all willing to resort to violence?” Genny asked.
“No,” Cecelia stated firmly.
At the same time Francesca answered with a vehement, “Yes.”
And Alexandra chimed in, “Only if strictly necessary.”
Genny addressed Cecelia, as it was her unfortunate decision to make. “If we can’t dump his body in the Thames, then we must consider other options.”
Cecelia had a feeling the woman was only half joking. “What about proving my innocence in the disappearances of these girls? He’d have no reason to bother me, then.”
“Perhaps, eventually.” Genny made a dismissive gesture and checked her reflection in the mirror on the wall. “But his indictment of you is immediate, Cecelia. There’s no time to conduct your own inquest. I’m tellin’ you. You must find that part of Ramsay that he would show no one. That secret that would destroy him. You dangle it in front of him, then you lock it away. If you keep him at an impasse, you’re safe.”
“Like Henrietta was safe?” Cecelia locked her fists into her skirts, clutching them in frustration. “Isn’t doing precisely that sort of thing what got her killed?”
Genny sighed, slumping into a straight-backed chair. “I know Henrietta left you that letter, honey, but the truth of the matter is she was found dead in this very bed and I was the one who found her. She looked peaceful…” Genny released a troubled sigh and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, massaging at what appeared to be a gathering headache. “The old bird was a bit paranoid these past few years, and I’m startin’ to wonder if her death wasn’t exactly what it appeared to be. A woman succumbing to nothing more insidious than time.”
“What are you saying? Henrietta couldn’t have been much older than fifty.” Cecelia was stymied by Genny’s change of tune. Just yesterday they’d discussed the probability of murder. That perhaps Ramsay or his ilk had had something to do with the demise of her infamous predecessor.
“I’m saying that your immediate problem is Ramsay. He’s a powerful man in all ways, physical, financial, and legal. But you are a woman. And a woman’s power is in her sex and her secrets. And here at Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies, we collect secrets like jewels.”
Cecelia puffed out her cheeks, feeling very overwhelmed. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about discovering his secrets. We’ve only interacted yesterday, and I can’t say I behaved in a manner that would instill anyone’s confidence in my intellectual prowess in that regard.”
But then, he had been open with her. Well, perhaps open was the wrong word. Forthcoming, if not confidence sharing. They’d had a more intimate conversation than she’d ever imagined they would.
“Luckily, you have an entire stable of women who make a living of manipulating men.” Genny smiled deviously. “Every man is a puzzle of need, little doll. Find the missing piece and snap it into place, and he will do whatever you want. He’ll tell you whatever you ask. He’ll be yours to command.”
Cecelia’s first inclination was to laugh, but in the woeful manner that staved off threating sadness and the accompanying tears. She couldn’t imagine even wanting the power Genny alluded to, let alone wielding it.
The men in her life had made her feel nothing but helpless, worthless, or some strange amalgamation of both. The Vicar Teague, classmates at university, scholars, bankers, and solicitors. They either condescended to her or over her or ignored her outright. Most men made her feel more deficient than desirable. More fatuous than formidable. She was ever too much or not enough.
Too plump, tall, educated, shy, or independent. Or not pious, respectable, noble, or young enough.
Her only power had been in her wealth, and even that came with its social limitations, especially now because of the origin of said moneys and the secrets willed to her along with it. Secrets she never asked for. Secrets she might be forced to use as weapons in a fight for survival.
“Ramsay’s part of your extended family, Alex,” she pleaded. “Is there anything you can think of that could help? Any way we could get him to leave this, leave me, alone without taking such drastic measures?”
Alexandra’s freckled nose wrinkled. “I confess Ramsay has always been such a mystery to both Redmayne and me. A rather grumpy, obdurate mystery.”
“Henrietta had some of us perform a bit of reconnaissance on him in the past,” Genny supplied. “Not that it will be of any help to us now.”
Cecelia tried to picture a company of reconnaissance-gathering revelers and had to fight a giggle. “Why not?”
“He’s just so tremendously boring.” Genny slumped down and rolled her eyes. “He wakes at dawn, goes to work behind his lofty bench. Ruins people’s lives. Goes home at the end of the day, or to his club where he often leaves red-faced and sweating. Then he eats alone and retires at a disgustingly early hour.” She made a noise of antipathy. “I’d pity him if I didn’t hate him.”
“Then what makes you so certain that Ramsay has any secrets?” Cecelia fretted. “He could be as virtuous and steadfast as he claims.”
“I know he does,” Genny said. “We just have to find the evidence.”
“How do you know?”
Genny’s lovely eyes darkened to a char black, her features pinching with distaste and loathing, finally etching her forty years into her skin. “Because men like him always have secrets. Before he was a barrister or a justice, he was a Scotsman and a soldier. He has blood on his hands and shameful marks on his soul, I’d wager my life on it.” She leaned forward, her features hard with purpose. “We just have to get you closer to find out what they are.”
Did Ramsay have blood on his hands? Square and rough and mercilessly strong as they were, it didn’t stretch the imagination.
And yet they’d been incomprehensibly gentle as they’d stroked her jaw, cupped her face, grazed her lips.
Could it be that his piety was really penitence? Perhaps he’d done something so wrong once that he’d devoted his life to fixing it.
Or to cultivating a persona to hide sins he still committed under the cover of darkness.
Was she brave enough to find out the truth? Maybe, but not through dishonest means.
She opened her mouth to say so when a ripple of electric power vibrated through the air. Every hair on Cecelia’s body stood on end as a strange silence engulfed her. Then a curious rumble threw her off balance as a white light blinded her. A force as powerful as a kick from a horse’s hindquarters knocked her into the other Rogues with a thunderous sound no less than apocalyptic.
They clung together, dropping to the ground as glass bulbs shattered from the sconces on the walls, emitting electric-blue sparks. The chandelier swung violently on its chain above them, and for a terrifying second Cecelia was certain it would fall, fragmenting over them all.
Just as suddenly as the quake began, it passed.
A gentle ringing settled into the darkness for the space of three breaths before noises permeated the muffled void.
Screams. Running footsteps. Cries and chaos.
>
Not a quake, Cecelia realized with alarm.
An explosion.
“Is everyone all right?” Francesca asked, even her unflappable demeanor pale and shaken as she gripped their hands almost painfully.
An acrid scent clung to the air, like char and smoke but more bitter.
Cecelia did a swift self-assessment, checking to make certain her limbs all worked. They, too, trembled but were otherwise unharmed.
“I think so.” Alexandra struggled to her feet, dusting some of the plaster from the ceiling off her skirt. “Cecil?”
“I’m not hurt.” She and Francesca helped each other up and turned to Genny, who’d taken shelter behind the chair. “Genny?” Her voice seemed over-loud in ears that refused to unplug.
Fingers curled over the chair’s back before Genny used it to pull herself to a standing position. Her eyes were as round as saucers. Plaster flecked her hair, causing her to look like an angel in a snowstorm. “What … just…?”
“I’ve been to enough dig sites to recognize the percussion of a bomb,” Alexandra said unsteadily, her amber gaze fixing on Cecelia, though she addressed them all. It was the terror and the tears in her eyes that affected Cecelia more than her words ever could. “Ready yourselves for what we might find when we go out there, ladies.”
Cecelia’s limbs were jolted with energy as she surged for the door. “Jean-Yves,” she cried desperately. “Phoebe!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cecelia didn’t give in to tears as she raced through swirls of sun-sparkled plaster dust. Distraught women poured into the hallway, creating an obstacle course of hysterical humanity.
She delegated their safe escape to Genny and sprinted down to the main floor, keeping a clawlike grip on her resolve as Francesca and Alexandra flanked her. Their boots made delicate crunching sounds when they hurried over fragments of the grand chandelier and cracks in the marble floors as the cries from belowstairs beckoned them.
They fought the tide of panicked, soiled students, some with minor injuries, racing up the stairs, and directed the crowd toward the front door, praying another detonation wasn’t imminent.
A numb sense of calm engulfed Cecelia when she took in the damage to the school, protecting her from the heartrending sounds of fear, grief, and pain. Smoke and dust choked her, but she could neither feel nor see heat from any lingering fires.
That didn’t mean they weren’t smoldering somewhere.
The farther they moved underground, the more it became apparent that the damage centered on the west side of the manse, above which a crater had been carved into the structure where the office of the residence had once been.
Cecelia ached to run back upstairs and pick her way through the rubble of what had been her aunt’s home. To scream and scream and scream until all her terror and agony conjured up the two most innocent people she knew. She needed Jean-Yves and Phoebe to be alive, but she simply couldn’t step over other injured bodies to find them.
Her conscience wouldn’t allow it.
At a time like this, she couldn’t thank the stars enough that her band of Rogues were of one mind in a crisis.
That this wasn’t their first brush with death or tragedy.
Alexandra was a doctor of archeology, not medicine, but a decade of fieldwork had granted her a great deal of opportunity to learn more than her share of emergency medical training. She had her gloves off and sleeves rolled up before any of them as she checked an older woman slumped in the hallway. The duchess’s soft, doe-like features became grim as she found no breath or pulse. She closed the old woman’s eyes and moved into the switchboard room where the wall-sized panels had toppled over, trapping a few ladies inside the room and landing on the leg of one screaming girl.
Francesca, who was strong and muscled for all her wiriness, was already directing those who stayed belowstairs to help lift the panels with the strength of their flanks rather than their backs.
Cecelia joined the effort, heaving with all her might and weight, but the panel refused to budge more than an inch, which caused the poor trapped girl to yelp with pain.
“Let it go,” Francesca directed. “We’ll have to use a different strategy to move it.” She shook out her arms as though they could take no more.
“No!” Cecelia cried over the injured girl’s plaintive sobs and the pleas of the imprisoned women in the room, begging to be let out. “No, they cannot be trapped in there. You lift! All of you. Lift!”
Alexandra nearly collapsed after a herculean effort, her features red and her shoulders trembling. “It’s too heavy, Cecil, we need leverage.”
“They can’t be left in there,” Cecelia panted, turning so the entirety of the weight was pressed against her back. “You don’t know what it’s like! They can’t be trapped belowground! Help me!”
Sweat and tears burned her eyes, blurring her vision almost as much as did the steam of exertion and dust gathering on her spectacles. Something in her back twisted and seized, but she let the agony fuel her as she pushed and strained with a desperation bordering on the hysterical.
Trapped underground. Was there anything worse? To fear that you might never see the sun again. That you stood in the room where your bones would be forgotten.
She knew what it was like. The terror and despair of it.
She had to get them out of the basement.
Help me. Help them. Please. Please … Please! Cecelia didn’t know if she prayed or screamed or both, but a beam of light appeared in her periphery and a tremendous blur of dark blue and gold flew forward and took the place at her side.
Cecelia didn’t register the terse, growling words, but the women behind the panels backed away, and Alexandra and Francesca joined in the effort once more. She could only make out male thighs the size of Stonehenge boulders bunching beneath fine blue trousers as they took up the burden next to her and heaved. The weight disappeared from her shoulders a few seconds before a mighty crash shook the basement.
Cassius Gerard Ramsay scooped the injured girl from the ground as if she weighed no more than a sack of grain.
The panels lay where he’d heaved them to the side, allowing the women trapped in the room to file out one by one beneath Francesca’s direction into the hall, where those who were able dashed toward the stairs.
Ramsay stepped out of the rubble and made for the exit, pausing only to lock and hold gazes with Cecelia for a breathless moment. He made a very quick assessment of her body from head to toe that left her still and trembling before returning his striking gaze back to hers.
Fire and ice. Fury and … distress? Relief? Vexation?
She hadn’t the chance to interpret before he strode away with all the alacrity his wounded burden could tolerate.
One of the other women, a middle-aged mother with the bones of a bird, leaned heavily on the wall as she fell behind the others making their getaway.
Cecelia did what she always had in a crisis, wiped her mind of all but the task at hand. Reaching for the woman, she draped the thin arm around the back of her neck and half carried, half dragged her up the stairs and out onto the lawn.
It might have been all of ten minutes, an hour, or perhaps an eternity before they’d sifted through the carnage of the manse to make certain everyone was out.
Cecelia wiped dirt and sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, panting with exertion as she went back in once again after depositing a dazed and only partially dressed girl from upstairs on the front terrace. A cigarette girl, Melisandre, had fallen into her own wardrobe, cracking her head on a corner when the blast had occurred. But it seemed her confusion had as much to do with shock and a general personality trait than a head wound.
Though one could never be certain.
Cecelia thought she heard Ramsay say her name on the lawn, but her spectacles were too smudged with dirt and ash and possibly blood to see much in the bright afternoon.
Despite her growing sense of panic, she couldn’t leave anyone behind. So each time s
he deposited someone to the safety of the yard, she dove back into the manse with an increasing sense of doom.
She had to find Jean-Yves and Phoebe. Every time she searched, someone else reached for her, needed her, distracted her from her aim.
The aftermath wasn’t as dire as she’d initially feared.
And yet it was worse than she’d ever imagined.
Four dead. Four poor souls lost. Because of her, because of enemies she didn’t even know she had and had done nothing to cultivate.
The old woman Alexandra had found, then a French instructor named Veronique, her student, Jane, and a young footman who’d been in the residence.
They’d only found bits of him.
Nine others were wounded enough to need ambulances, which had been sent for and were, even now, racing up the drive in a thunder of hooves and masculine voices along with the police and the fire brigade.
Beyond that, minor cuts, abrasions, and burns seemed to be less cause for complaint than the emotional devastation of having undergone such an ordeal.
Cecelia paid no heed to the arriving armies of men and the gathering gawkers as she raced through the hall toward the rear of the main level, careening for the secret door that separated the residence from the business.
A familiar form limped out from the dust-clogged hallway amalgamating slowly through the filth on her spectacles.
“Winston!” she cried, running to him and letting him lean heavily upon her. He was caked with dust, dirt, and soot, and his wig was nowhere to be found.
He’d taken her family back to the residence. And if he’d survived, then … perhaps there was hope. “Winston, are you all right? Where are Jean-Yves and Phoebe?”
“The littl’un wanted to dig up a treasure in the gardens, madame!” The butler hollered as though the blast had taken away his ability to hear. “I don’t think they came back inside yet!”
Cecelia frantically called for help, handing the poor butler over to the first faceless person who could take him before picking up her skirts and dashing down a side hall toward the courtyard.
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