A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  “I appreciate that you want to save me—and that you want a life with her. But you can’t see clearly through the curse, Cris.” She shook her head, and her voice sounded clouded with tears. “You’ll never have what you want, not like this. You’ll never be happy. You’ll never run far enough or fast enough, and it will always haunt you. All the greed, all the death—it’ll take it all. Strip you bare. You’ll lose her, if this is how you get her. You’ll lose your children, as I lost mine.”

  Rushworth stared at his sister for a long moment, his thoughts impossible to comprehend behind the careful mask he lowered into place. But then he moved the gun. It was still at the ready, but it wasn’t pressed to Ella’s head. And he loosed the arm around her waist, though he then gripped her arm. “I’ll let her go. Bring the diamonds here, and I’ll let her go.”

  He wouldn’t. And Catherine had to know that. But she eased forward. Blast her, she was easing forward.

  “You don’t really love her. That’s what you always told me about Pratt—remember? That I didn’t really love him—I loved the idea of him. What he used to be. That’s what this is too—you love the idea of her. The thought of someone who will always smile at you, always be kind. But do you really think she will, that she will be, when you force her away from her family?”

  Cayton edged away from Stafford. Just a shuffle to the side, so he could see Ella more clearly, so Catherine didn’t block his view of her. And of Brook, as it happened. She had edged just a bit behind them and was reaching for something. Knowing Brook, a weapon.

  Rushworth’s jaw ticked. “And you never listened to me about Pratt—you told me to stay out of your love life, and I did. Now, kindly return the favor and bring me the diamonds. Or I’ll make a quick stop on my way out of here and put a bullet through that little maid’s skull.”

  Catherine jerked.

  Ella sucked in a breath. “No, you won’t. That isn’t your way, Rush. Is it? You prefer quieter deaths. You’d have to slip laudanum to her. Then belladonna in her eyes to cover the signs of it. Like your father. Like your nephew.”

  Cayton watched Catherine as the words sank in, as they became more than mere words. As they became the most horrifying truth a mother, a sister could ever comprehend. Then she leapt into the air, flying across the space, keening—a sound too raw and throbbing to be called a cry. Cayton charged after her even as Brook tugged Ella away. Which of them would Catherine attack? Brook, for bringing her here? Ella, for saying such things?

  Rushworth. She landed on him like a cat, all claws and rage. He’d been distracted by Brook stealing his hostage, looking at Ella, reaching for her. But then it was all flailing arms and screams. And Ella, red hair flying out behind her, was charging Cayton’s way.

  He was there to catch her, and if he crushed her too hard to his chest, she made no complaint.

  The gun’s report tore through the meadow, bringing silence in its wake. Brook? But no, she had edged back into the stone arch of the church’s doorway, and she had no gun in her hand. Ella winced and buried her face in his chest.

  Cayton forced himself to look to see who had been hit—because if no one had, there would still be struggling, not this sudden, eerie quiet.

  Catherine staggered back, blood covering her torso, horror in her eyes. “No. No. Cris.”

  Rushworth crumpled to the ground, red staining his abdomen. The pistol was already lying there. His sister fumbled to her knees beside him and cradled his head. “Cris . . . how could you? How could you do this to me? How? He was your nephew!”

  He lifted a hand an inch, let it fall. “Diamonds. Paris. You . . . must.”

  She balled her hands in his jacket. “I don’t want the diamonds, I don’t want the money. I don’t care if he kills me—I just wanted my son.”

  Ella moved in Cayton’s arms, turned her face to look at them. Rushworth lifted his head a bit, grunted, searched with his gaze . . . then saw them. His eyes flashed with anger.

  No, with pain. Then nothing. His head fell back, his limbs went slack, and his sister’s keening filled the meadow.

  Brook slid to her knees by Catherine’s side and put an arm around her. She held out a hand. And Catherine slid the diamonds into it.

  Cayton closed his eyes and held Ella close, the words tumbling from his lips. “I love you.”

  She held him back, tight and then tighter. And her voice sounded like perfect hope, like perfect faith, as she murmured, “I know.”

  Thirty

  Night had fallen, and Kira couldn’t remember ever being so tired. She sat on the hard, bare chair in her hard, bare room and could only stare at the hard, bare wall across from her. A baby cried, in the corner of the room. A baby laughed, in the kitchen. A baby slept, upstairs in a duchess’s arms.

  But Felicity didn’t move. Wouldn’t move. And the night was dark and colorless because of it.

  Dr. Fields rested his hand on Kira’s shoulder. They had been red with blood ten minutes ago, from where he’d had to perform an emergency surgery to save the child. Felicity had already been gone. Another seizure. And bleeding, so much bleeding. They could have lost them both, but the doctor had been quick. Just quick enough to pull a blue little boy from his mother.

  Kira had done what her hands had done before, when it was Mamochka’s voice giving quick instructions. “Rub the chest. Slap the back. Clear the nose. Rub the chest, slap the back again.” He had squalled, flushing pink.

  Her hands felt useless now though. Her knee didn’t ache. But her heart . . . her heart would never feel quite whole again.

  In the corner, Catherine sat on Kira’s bed and held the baby close. Tears still streamed unchecked down her face. She had been crying when she entered the room, crying for her brother. Kira wasn’t sure if she had never stopped, or if she had started again.

  “You would be a welcome addition to these parts, if you stay here,” the doctor said. “Felicity isn’t the only one who didn’t want to call Martha.”

  Kira shook her head. If she could somehow avoid Andrei, there was only one place she would go—home.

  Mrs. Higgins sniffed from the door. “She can’t be gone. My sweet Felicity. What will I do?”

  Kira lifted a hand, and the older woman gripped it. “You will live. You will remember her. You will tell her boy how she loved him, how his father would have loved him.”

  “That wasn’t what she wanted though.” The housekeeper sniffed again and gripped her hands together. “She knew I was too old to raise a child. We all heard her—we all know what she wanted. We will honor her wishes.”

  Kira settled her gaze on Catherine again. She held the babe as she would have her own—probably as she had her own. She couldn’t nurse him, of course, but Tabby would help with that, for now. Until another wet nurse could be found. “She wanted you to take him, Catherine.”

  The lady looked up, tearstained and grieving. “Pardon?”

  “After the last seizure. She knew she was fading. She said to give the child to you, if you would take him.” Kira slid her hand free of the housekeeper’s. “She said her babe would need a mother, and that you needed a child.”

  Mrs. Higgins sidled into the room, over to Catherine. “You can give him a better life than I could. So long as you let me be a part of it, my lady.”

  Catherine turned her face into the woman’s apron and wept. She would take him—Kira was certain. She would love him, she would tell him of his mother. She would let what family the babe had left come whenever they pleased, stay however long they liked. Or perhaps she would stay here, near them. Assuming she avoided prison.

  Kira pushed to her feet, nodded to the doctor, and slipped from the room. She hadn’t heard what all had happened after Brook and Catherine left. Just that Rushworth was dead. That everyone else was unharmed. That Brook’s father had returned sometime during the aftermath.

  She headed up the stairs and nearly turned toward the next set of them and all the people crammed into Catherine’s bedroom in the guest hall
to check on Rowena and her child. But she went to the kitchen first. No one here would understand—she knew that. But Felicity had been a friend. In some ways a sister. And Kira would honor her as she knew how.

  Addie and Tabby had been in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but now it was quiet. Kira pinched off a crust of bread from the loaf on the counter and slipped a piece behind the stove. Pinched another off and tucked it behind the spices on the windowsill. Went to the door and threw the rest into the wind. “For your soul, my friend,” she said in Russian, softly. “On its way to heaven.”

  When she stepped back inside, Brook was there, hand outstretched. “Will you come up, Kira? We need to speak with you.”

  She had never been so tired. She had just lost a friend. But her knee didn’t ache, and Felicity’s boy was healthy, and Rowena’s daughter too. And Brook looked at her and didn’t judge. Just held out a hand.

  She slipped hers into it and went with her up the stairs.

  They should have all given Rowena some privacy. Kira probably ought to have insisted, or Dr. Fields. But other things had stolen their attention, and Rowena didn’t seem to mind the teeming life filling the chamber. She was nestled beneath the covers of Catherine’s bed, pillows propping her up and her daughter sleeping in her arms. Her husband sat beside her, gazing down at the newborn with reverent awe. Cayton and Ella stood by the window, hands linked together, and Whitby leaned on the wall near to them. Stafford greeted his wife—and Kira—with a smile.

  He held his hand out to her. “Brook has told me about you over the years—I never dreamed I’d make your acquaintance quite this way.”

  She let him take her hand, as plenty of dukes had before, and kiss it. But he wasn’t like any of the other dukes, and she wasn’t the same girl who had smiled at them and ducked her head and judged just how much to flirt and when to retreat. She offered what smile she could and curtsied as was polite. “I have heard much about you as well, Your Grace. Back when you were Lord Harlow and Brook was not, she insisted, in love with you.”

  Brook laughed and shooed her husband out of the way. “I have no recollection of such a time.”

  Stafford chuckled and positioned a chair in front of her. “You look exhausted, Kira. Please, have a seat. We have much for which to thank you. And a few questions besides.”

  Nodding, she sat, glad when Brook took the chair beside her. “I do not need your thanks. But I am happy to answer your questions.”

  “Start with Varennikov, if you would.” Brook positioned herself sideways in the chair so she could see her. Though she still looked like the princess. The duchess. “He is the buyer Pratt struck a deal with two years ago?”

  Kira nodded and filled them in as best she could—she told them of the statue for sale in the museum basement, Andrei’s impatience, the deadline he had apparently set for Lord Rushworth and then moved up in that recent letter.

  Lady Ella stepped forward when she had finished, her lovely brows pinched. “We know the threat to Catherine if the diamonds are not delivered—but what will he do to you, Kira?”

  Kira. She drew in a breath and shook her head. “I cannot say. Perhaps he will deem it beyond my influence and not punish me for it. Perhaps he will be in a bad mood and . . .” She shrugged.

  Ella looked at her brother, at Brook. Quickly at Cayton. “They didn’t win—that’s what we wanted to avoid, isn’t it? They didn’t profit from their crimes. Rushworth is dead, Dorsey in jail and likely to hang for the murders of his aunt, Hannah, the valet at Delmore . . . and Stew—and they were the ones who had done all this. Catherine knew about the crimes, but she never took part in them. I don’t see the point in punishing her more. Do any of you?”

  Brook shook her head. “She has enough grief to deal with, especially after today. I know it was an accident, I saw it all, but still—it will not seem that way to her. Her brother’s death will haunt her. And I don’t exactly want to sic Varennikov on her.”

  Stafford sighed. “What do we do then? Go to Paris with the diamonds? Sell them to him as he wanted? It would keep Kira safe.”

  It would do more than keep her safe. It would get her that flat she didn’t want anymore. Baguettes and café au lait and all the jewels she once coveted. A view of the Eiffel Tower stretching to heaven, and shopkeepers who put aside their ancient brooms to kiss her cheeks whenever she passed by.

  “No.” She leaned her head back. “No, what I should do is tell him I found exactly what he wanted me to find—information. And that information is the simple truth: they never had the jewels. They had rubies.”

  Frowning, Brook reached for her hand again. “But if he’s in a bad mood. If he would hurt you—”

  “I do not think he will.” Not if she handled it right. He would just refuse to reward her. And she was happy with that.

  “What then, with the diamonds themselves? I don’t want them in my safe anymore.” Brook reached over to a side table and picked up two dangling earrings. Rubies and gold and . . . probably not rubies, given the conversation. She held them up to the light, and a scarlet rainbow shot onto the wall.

  Kira sucked in a breath. They were lovely, and that rainbow . . . but they were just two little gems. What had made Andrei willing to kill for them?

  Stafford leaned into the side of the wardrobe. “I vote we toss them in the sea—as we should have done two years ago.”

  “No, donate them. Loudly, publicly—and with a lot of private security.” Nottingham took his daughter from his wife’s arm, as carefully as if she were made of glass.

  Kira smiled. There was nothing like seeing a doting father hold his new babe.

  “No.” Ella grinned, wrapped her arm around Cayton’s, and leaned into him. “No, we have a much better idea than that. Don’t we, Drat?”

  Cayton angled a crooked smile down at her. “I dare not guess what you’re thinking, love. But I’m with you, whatever it is.”

  Thirty-one

  PARIS, FRANCE

  APRIL 12, 1913

  Cayton stood back, well out of the way while the Duke and Duchess of Stafford performed the glad-handing they were such experts at. Brook had been to the Musée National des art asiatiques Guimet before, as it happened. She had met the director, who had first greeted her today as princesse—and then launched into a very long congratulatory speech when he learned she was now a duchess. He beamed when he heard she had the most brilliant little boy now—who, no, wasn’t with them here, at the museum, but was indeed in Paris. His first trip abroad.

  Cayton leaned against the wall. This could take a while. His eyes traveled over the pieces on display, half his mind wondering if Tabby had gotten Addie down for her nap, or if she and Abingdon were keeping each other awake. Or if Mother and Aunt Caro were doing the keeping-awake, as the case may be—they’d been in raptures at the early reunion with their favorite little ones.

  Ella returned from her “prowl” around the first room in the museum and tucked her hand into its spot against his forearm. “Stop it,” she whispered. “You look suspicious. Stand up like an earl instead of slouching like an art thief.”

  He chuckled and slouched a bit more. “I am an earl. I’ll slouch if I want to do.”

  Her eyes twinkled up at him, her dimple winking. “You have the worst posture I’ve ever seen, Drat. I can’t believe your mother let you get away with it.”

  “Neither can she. You two can bemoan my spinal failures when we’re done here.” Not surprisingly, his mother had adored Ella on sight. She probably would have begun planning the wedding whether he’d given her leave to do so or not.

  Which, of course, he had done. His only whispered request was that she wait until he’d had a chance for a proper proposal, after all this was behind them.

  Ella tugged him upright. Though apparently it was because Brook had progressed the conversation and was motioning them forward. She made introductions to the still-beaming director of the museum, and then said, “Do you remember, monsieur, when you let the prince and me into
the basement? Do you think . . . ?”

  The director, somehow, beamed even brighter. “Of course, of course! And if anything catches your eye, know that it is all for sale—for you, that is. Right this way.”

  “That was far too easy,” Ella whispered. “No doubt there are booby traps. Hidden doors. Monsters waiting to spring from the walls. Tread carefully, dearest.”

  She would be telling stories about this for decades to come. Their great escapade—the grand adventure—the fitting finale to the tale of the Fire Eyes.

  She would probably conveniently leave out the complete lack of excitement about it all.

  He would let her.

  They followed the director down the stairs. He chattered on about something or another from Nepal, and Brook replied as if she knew exactly of what he spoke. Who knew? Perhaps she really did. Stafford piped in here or there, but mostly his job in this grand adventure was to subtly prod the director toward the north end of his large basement, while Ella and Cayton headed for the south.

  Monsieur Director didn’t say anything when they slipped away. And if he did notice at some point, Brook would chime in with some offhanded statement about how they were exploring. He would think nothing of it, she had assured them as they hatched the plan. This was Paris, after all. They rather expected two young people in love to sneak off for a kiss now and again.

  Not a bad idea, once they took care of business.

  “Oh!” Ella batted at something, shook her head wildly.

  Cayton chuckled and caught the strand of spider’s silk that she had walked through. He could just barely see it in the light of the bulb overhead. “Careful. You walked straight into a monster’s trap.”

  “Luckily you were there to untangle me, my valiant knight.”

  “Lucky indeed.” He took her hand and led her to the end of a row of shelves, around a corner.

  Ella tugged him to a halt. “It’s not that way—I studied the diagram.”

  “Ella . . .” He shook his head and pulled her forward. “You’d have us back at the stairs in no time. This is my part. You get the diamond bit. Remember?”