A Proposition for the Comte

by Sophia James

  The innkeeper was cagey and brusque when he answered the door.

  ‘We have a large party coming so you would be better travelling on, sir. There’s a posting house on your right three miles north which should be able to see to your needs.’

  Lian looked up at the peeling façade and noticed a curtain twitching on the second floor.

  ‘I’ll go and try my luck there, then. Good evening to you.’

  As he walked back to the carriage he signalled to Tucker to stay where he was inside and called out the new directions to his driver. Within a moment they were off and he made a point not to look back. He didn’t want to give any impression that he knew things at the inn they’d just left were unusual.

  ‘Things don’t add up. I’m sure Lady Addington is there,’ he said to Tucker as soon as the carriage began to move and the man beside him nodded.

  ‘The mounts were not freshly ridden when I checked them over in the stables, my lord, and the carriage was unmarked. Strange there should only be the one conveyance, though, with the road being as busy as it is.’

  ‘They are expecting others in the next few hours from what I can gather. There were many clean glasses left at the bar when I glanced in and the fire was still banked.’

  ‘They are waiting up, then?’

  ‘I should imagine so.’

  ‘Where is Lady Addington?’

  ‘Only God and these ruffians know that for sure but we will pull in at the next bend and double back because instinct tells me she is there.’

  He could not panic. Every decision he made from now on had to be well thought out. For Violet’s sake. If he scared them they might just kill her and flee.

  No one had followed them and for that he was grateful. Leaning out the window he called for the driver to pull well off the main road at the next opportunity. If the visitors were coming from the north he did not want to be seen, but he had the feeling they would travel up from London.

  Tucker beside him took a pistol from his pocket and checked the piece. ‘We are to expect trouble, then, my lord?’

  Lian nodded. ‘She is there somewhere. Hidden no doubt. I think there is a basement so if they are keeping her a prisoner that’s probably the best place to do it.’

  He tucked his own gun through his belt and slipped a long knife into the sheath in his boot.

  ‘If we can do this quietly it will be better, but if we can’t...’

  He left the rest hanging.

  He should have brought more men but it was stealth he needed and Tucker at his side was as good as they got. Once again he was grateful for Charles Mountford’s advice.

  A few moments later they were cutting through the fields behind the inn. There had not been dogs when he had walked up to the front door the first time and it still looked quiet, a few lights on upstairs and the bottom room fully lit.

  Gesturing to Tucker to watch the movements from outside Lian crawled through the undergrowth and searched for a way to get in. Finding a window, he pried the fastening open and slipped through.

  It was much darker here than outside. With his hands against the walls for direction, he walked on, the skitter of feet and the gleam of eyes to both his left and right. Rats. If they had put Violet down here...

  He shook off fury and listened. The drip of water close by, the further call of a nightbird. Shallowing back his breath he tipped his head and heard it. A small sniff followed by another. He crept forward.

  A man was asleep on a chair, a candle at the desk beside him. He dealt with him silently and grabbed the light.

  ‘Violet?’

  Whispered into the dark even as he rummaged through the pockets of the one lying down before him. No keys? A further glance noted a thick and solid cell door. He swore under his breath and looked through a tiny grate and she was there on the other side of the metal when he raised the candle to look, her face bruised and her eyes red.

  ‘Aurelian?’

  He made himself take a breath. ‘I will have you out in a moment.’ Already he’d found the wires he always travelled with, unravelling them from his pocket and bringing them up to the substantial lock.

  * * *

  The door opened before she could even say more, the stillness in him blended with the shadows, his hands sure and firm. His warmth and solidness wrapped about her fright, the candle he held flickering but staying alight.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I have seen three.’

  ‘Have they hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  The bruise was smarting on her face though she forced down the tears as he asked his questions. He did not need a watering pot to distract him. It was dangerous here and these men were fully armed. She wanted to ask how he had found her and who was with him but he’d moved forward already out of the cell past a man on the floor who was either dead or unconscious. She did not want to look at him properly to know, but felt no sorrow for either state.

  ‘Stay behind me.’

  His ring glinted in the light as they passed a window. So he had found the signet ring at Lackington’s and then come for her.

  He moved like a big cat might, sure and fleet-footed, as though the semi-darkness was nothing. She wondered how many times he had done this, rescued someone needy from dire circumstances, killed a man and held a knife in his fist as though to welcome violence. Many, many times she imagined for the dangerous edges of him here were well on display.

  Her fingers laced now into his own, and she relished the strength of him as he blew out the candle and discarded it.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her words came small and whispered and she thought he might bat them away until later but he did not.

  ‘Thank me when we are safe, sweetheart.’ His lips fastened across her own in a rapid surge of warmth and then let go, the cold reclaiming her.

  Sweetheart. She held on to the word turning it over and over until all the translations were tangled.

  ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.’

  She recited these words as they walked towards a light at the far end of the corridor, part in fright and part in hope. There in the bowels of hell he was her heaven, a man who had risked his life to save her and was still risking it.

  The footsteps above were louder, running now, clattering across the floorboards in haste, the shouted words of fury accompanying them. A voice she knew was there, too, her guard at the town house, Tucker.

  Aurelian took a pistol from his belt swearing roundly in French as he raced up a set of stairs to one end of the room.

  ‘If they come, you are to run. There is a wood behind the inn to the west. Go there. Stay low and hide. I will find you.’

  ‘West?’ Which direction was that. All her faculties were frozen in the fear of what he said.

  Her own knife had been lost in the darkness when the man had hit her and she had nothing to help her rescuer with. Leaning over she picked up a heavy silver chalice from a table near the doorway, her fingers clawing around the missile.

  This was all her fault. She could not run and leave him to deal with the mayhem, a man who had been sent to patch up the political rifts her husband’s missing gold had caused between two nations.

  Harland had always run. Away from responsibility, duty and obligation and any other thing that called him into account for his insatiable greed. Consequences and liability had meant nothing to him and his word was as full of holes as a sponge.

  But here was another sort of man, one whose troths were given in integrity and honesty, one who might lose his life for the good instead of for the questionable. Fighting alongside a man like this would be an honour.

  They came suddenly and without warning, three men with murder in their eyes and sharp blades. Aurelian pushed her over into a corner, hemmed in by a table on one side and a door on the other, his voice sounding nothing lik
e it did a moment ago when he had spoken to her.

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  The man closest laughed, showing off a set of teeth that were missing many members. ‘Those who object to your interference in a matter that is a very English one.’

  ‘Cummings, then? And his department?’

  The eyes of the other flared and then hardened.

  ‘Did you know that your bitch here was the one who started it all, the one who stole the first settlement of gold?’

  ‘I did.’

  That brought on a slight shift in the room, an awareness that all was not quite as it seemed.

  ‘I had also heard that some of the gold had been changed into things that were easier to move. More untraceable if you like.’

  The silence allowed Aurelian to continue on.

  ‘Sapphires. Rubies. Precious jewels.’

  He was like an angler with fine bait on his line and dangling it over a small pool containing hungry fish.

  The first man bit. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Kill Lady Addington and you will never know for she has hidden it.’

  ‘But you are a different matter. Your life will be a pleasure to take and the master will be here soon.’

  ‘Or he won’t be?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Surely you do not think the one who pays you would walk so blindly into a trap? You are surrounded and he will know it. Men like him are too clever to be implicated in the messy world of murder and treason. Whereas you...’ He tailed-off but he had caught their attention now, Violet could tell that he had.

  ‘You are the bait. You are the ones the law will deal with while he gets away free though there is something you could do that might change it...’

  ‘What?’

  The man came closer, his knife momentarily lowered, and it was then that Aurelian struck. Without mercy and with a speed that was unforgiving. The first man lay at his feet as he reached for the second, a hard slash across an unprotected throat. The third man ran, the big one who had hit her, his cry cut off even as he reached the doorway, a blade thrown across the room to lodge deep into his lower back.

  Silence echoed as pooling blood seeped into a tattered rug. An owl outside called across the night. Violet watched as Aurelian kneeled to each body, emptying their pockets and removing their shoes to search them before retrieving his knife.

  ‘People like this always leave clues,’ he said, tucking a sheet of paper away in his jacket.

  ‘Will others come?’

  ‘Perhaps and we don’t want to be around when they do.’ He stood then and took her arm and she could see the quick calculations for safety in his eyes.

  ‘We will make for Essex. They won’t expect that. Addington Manor is just south of Colchester, is it not?’

  ‘Yes? But there is nothing there...’ She broke off. ‘The list? You want it?’

  ‘There are still things that don’t make sense and until I see the written list I can’t be certain of who is behind it.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s Cummings?’

  ‘Did you ever meet Antoinette Herbert? A Frenchwoman who lives here in London?’

  ‘The name is familiar.’

  ‘Tall, blonde hair, with a mole just here.’ He leaned over and touched the skin under her bottom lip just as a flash of recognition filtered through.

  ‘She was at George Taylor’s studio once. He was an artist and the woman was sitting for a portrait.’

  ‘Was Harland present?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think she was his mistress until she became Cummings’s.’

  ‘That explains things a little bit. Amara said she witnessed a fight between her brother and Douglas Cummings.’

  ‘A fight?’

  ‘She heard her brother threaten him. They stopped though when they realised she was in hearing distance but she told me she felt that they were arguing over a woman.’

  ‘I think Cummings is guilty of taking some of the gold but I don’t think he is the one killing people. I think the list you found was one showing the hands in which the gold lies.’

  ‘You went to see Cummings? When you were away?’

  Lian nodded. ‘I didn’t see him but I saw his mother.’

  Aurelian had left London to visit the Cummings country house. He thought Douglas Cummings would be there and wanted to meet him alone.

  The manor was old and run-down and the maid who had answered the door showed him through to a room after he gave her his card. An older woman was sitting in a wing chair with a knitted blanket tucked in across her knees.

  ‘Comte de Beaumont? You are a friend of Douglas’s? I am afraid he is not here today though I imagine I will see him tomorrow.’

  ‘I am not sure friend is the right word, Mrs Cummings. I am here in a more official capacity.’

  ‘Then he is in trouble. I told him all this would lead to no good, all his help and worry, but he felt it was his duty and so...’ She petered off, dabbing at her eyes.

  ‘Duty?’

  ‘His sister. My daughter. This house. The servants. He has a good heart, but our well-being has taken up his whole life.’

  ‘Is your daughter ill?’

  ‘No, she is worse than that. She is simple and requires good attention so we have to hire two maids to see to her needs for she is too strong for me to manage any more. If my son has one failing it is that he is too concerned for others. I have told him that again and again but he will not listen and I wonder sometimes where he gets the sort of money needed to pay for it all.’

  ‘Do you know the names Stephen Miller and George Taylor? Were they friends of your son’s?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘He does not have many friends but I do remember him speaking of those two. I think they were jewellers, if memory serves me well.’

  ‘It does and thank you.’

  The fire was low and he crossed the room to add more wood, making certain the fire guard was in place as he finished.

  Douglas Cummings’s mother was old, his sister was sick and he had a property that was in need of urgent attention.

  If Cummings had some of the gold, then there would be an element of blackmail in the mix, as well, for it would be easy to discover that he worked for the Home Office.

  Antoinette Herbert had visited Stephen Miller in custody but had left before he had died. Had she administered some slow-releasing poison? The froth at his mouth could be explained by that. Perhaps she had administered it to stop him from confessing some fact that might implicate her?

  Violet’s voice brought him back from his thoughts.

  ‘If anyone traces us to the inn and what happened there, will there not be questions?’

  ‘I will protect you.’

  ‘From the law of England?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, even from that.’

  She had worked out the implications so very quickly. He did not know at that second if that was a good thing or a bad one but what he did know is that he needed to get her away from everyone.

  Cummings had probably taken the gold as a way out of debt and hardship but all instincts told Aurelian that he was not the killer. However, if he was wrong then Mountford could well be in on it, too. What had the Minister replied when he had asked him once if he trusted Cummings? With his life, he had said. Aurelian frowned. Well, it might indeed come to just that if he was not careful.

  He’d seen the fear in Violet’s eyes as she had looked at him after dealing with her kidnappers but he had got so used to allowing his enemies no leeway that he could no longer change himself.

  He was who he was, the softness in him long since disappeared after years of being enmeshed in political intrigue. He was the end point of violence, the final adjudicator.

  Shay had said that to him once in France as he’d helped him escape.
He had also offered a warning.

  ‘I did not care if I lived or died, Lian. When you reach that point there is a danger.’

  Well, he could have said the same to Violet on the night she rescued him from the freezing street in Chelsea. He’d just killed again under the guise of politics, but he had held no true heart in the business.

  Now he did, and protecting Violet from harm was as different as night and day to all that had come before. He could see the bruises on her face and arms in the light and he knew what the three men’s intent had been for the note he had taken from the pocket of the man who had run confirmed everything.

  ‘Rough her up if she becomes difficult. Kill her only as a last resort.’

  He swallowed down bile and tried to contain the fury, but he was shaking with it and Violet’s face did nothing to help that. Why would they not want her dead? Because she knew something or at least they perceived that she did. Her cheek was swelling and the mark under her left eye was darkening. He did not want to ask her of it, either, not now, not when he knew he still had not caught the main perpetrator and that the culprit was out there somewhere.

  ‘It is my fault this has happened...’

  He shook the words away. ‘I would put the blame firmly on the greed of your husband.’

  He sounded stern and he could not change that. They were miles from home, it was dark and he knew that whoever it was who had paid to kidnap Violet was coming north.

  She nodded and swallowed away saying more, but he could tell she was not only frightened but disappointed. In him. In the killing. In the blood, violence and fury.

  * * *

  He hurried her away, his hand falling from her arm as soon as she was in the conveyance waiting on a side road within ten minutes walking distance from the tavern.

  He turned to Tucker who was standing beside him.

  ‘I need you to stay here and watch to see who it is who will arrive. If there is no one here still by the morning then take a carriage back to London and I will send instructions as to what I want you to do next.’

  ‘Very well, my lord.’