The Reluctant Reformer

by Lynsay Sands

  "What for?" Maggie asked. "I am glad to have you here, and to know help is on the way."

  "Aye. But no doubt finding me has warned that animal that help is on the way. It will make a rescue harder."

  Maggie had opened her mouth to reassure him, when the door suddenly opened again. Light splashed into the room, bright and stabbing. Maggie shielded her eyes with one hand, blinking rapidly and hoping they would adjust. Footsteps and a shadow, then brighter light, told her someone was entering the room and bringing a lantern with him.

  It seemed their time had run out.

  Feeling extremely vulnerable on the floor, Maggie got shakily to her feet. She forced her eyes to open, determined to face her enemies.

  "You are sure this is the right place?" James asked, peering about the deserted buildings with a frown.

  Robbie--they had learned that was the boy's name--nodded solemnly. "Aye, m'lord. I live right over there, and I was playing with me mates when that old fellow waved me over."

  James felt himself grimace as he took in the length of street. He found it hard to believe that anyone could live in these decrepit and deserted-looking structures. James decided he would visit this lad's parents after he rescued Maggie and see if he could find jobs for them.

  Perhaps at Ramsey. The boy was too thin and pale by half; some time in the country would be good for him. James had to rescue Maggie first, though. He must not focus on anything but succeeding at that task.

  "I don't see this Banks fellow anywhere," Johnstone said.

  James scowled. He had been waiting and watching for the butler, expecting him to step out into the street and hail them. "Neither do I," he said. His gaze dropped to the boy. "Where was he when he waved you over?"

  "Right there." The child pointed at the building their carriage had stopped before, and James scanned every nook and shadow hopefully before admitting to himself that the man wasn't to be found. He only hoped that didn't mean that they had moved and the domestic had followed.

  "Which of the buildings was he watching? Could you tell?" James asked.

  Robbie hesitated, then scrambled off the bench seat and made his way through the legs of the men filling the coach. He peered out the window at the buildings opposite where he claimed Banks had been. His face scrunched up in concentration as he considered the matter.

  "I think he was watching that one," he decided at last, and James leaned across Johnstone to look out the window at the building in question.

  "I don't suppose ye saw a woman bein' dragged into it before ye noticed the old man, did ye?" Johnstone asked hopefully.

  They all sighed in disappointment when the lad shook his head. "I just come out to play when the man nipped me."

  "All right, Robbie," James said grimly, reaching into his pocket. "Take this, and go on home now. And thank you for your help."

  Robbie's young eyes brightened at the sight of the coin held out; then he snatched it up. Gasping a thanks, he scrambled out of the door James opened.

  "What do you want to do, m'lord?" Johnstone asked quietly.

  James pulled the door closed again. "I think we have to check all three buildings: the one the boy pointed out, and the ones on either side. She could be in any of them."

  Johnstone nodded, his glance moving over the three other runners with them. "Jack, you and Bob take the house on the left; Jimmy and meself will take the middle, and m'lord--"

  "No. I take the middle house," James said firmly.

  Johnstone hesitated, then nodded. Glancing at the youngest of the group, he said, "Jimmy, ye'll have to take the house on the right on your own. I'll accompany his lordship."

  "No," James said again, frowning at the nervous Jimmy. The boy was young and obviously the least experienced. If James was wrong and the middle building wasn't where Maggie was, if she was in the building on the right, he didn't want this fidgety pup going in on his own and possibly getting her killed. "You go with Jimmy. I can manage on my own."

  "Oh, m'lord, I don't think..." Johnstone began, but James didn't stay to listen. Opening the carriage door, he stepped out and moved toward the building in the center, his heart pounding with rage and fear: rage that someone had dared to touch what was his, and fear that he would be too late to save her.

  Maggie had thought that seeing the "she" behind these attacks would clear matters up. Much to her consternation, however, the woman hanging the lamp from the hook by the door was a complete stranger.

  Maggie forced herself to look closer, sure she was missing something. Her eyes slowly absorbed the generous figure in the red dress, the blond hair piled on the woman's head, little curls free to frame her pretty face, but it didn't help. Maggie had no clue who she was.

  "Who are you?" she asked quietly.

  The blonde turned to survey her captives. Her eyebrows rose with amusement. "Come now; you don't really expect me to believe that you do not know who I am? Not the famed G. W. Clark."

  Maggie stiffened, her blood running cold. "I fear you have me at a disadvantage. It also seems that you have more to blackmail me with than I have on you. I haven't a clue who you are." She thought that last bit a touch of subtle brilliance. Perhaps it would give the woman the idea of blackmailing her rather than killing her, as she feared was her captor's ultimate objective.

  The woman's eyes narrowed as if suspecting a trick. "You do not recall me?"

  When Maggie shook her head, the blonde's mouth twisted with disbelief. "Think! Think hard."

  Maggie stared at her silently, still shaking her head until a memory exploded in her mind. Just a flash, like a bolt of lightning quickly there and just as quickly gone, but her head slowed its shaking. The woman smiled.

  "You do remember."

  Maggie hesitated, then asked uncertainly, "Madame Dubarry's? In the room I climbed into? I was putting on Maisey's mask. You were on the bed."

  "There you are!" The woman smiled brightly, but Maggie still didn't understand.

  "I am sorry. I saw you in Lady Dubarry's, I think. All right. Briefly, when I was trying to escape...but I still do not see what this is all about."

  "Yes, you do. You know exactly what this is all about. And so do I. How long until I would have opened the Daily Express to find the article?"

  "The article on what?" Maggie asked in amazement. "Mr. Hartwick has already published my article on the interviews I did with you women at Dubarry's."

  The blonde hesitated, then frowned. "You really do not know."

  It wasn't a question, rather an amazed realization the woman was voicing aloud, and Maggie felt a touch of hope tingle through her. This was all a mistake. They would let her and Banks go, because this was all a huge mistake.

  "What were you doing in my room that night?"

  "I climbed out of Maisey's room via the window," Maggie answered. "I'd traded my gown in exchange for hers and information on which way to go to avoid running into anyone else. She said Lady X and Lord Hastings were in the room on one side, but the room on the other was empty. She said the left was the empty room and I went that way, only to recognize my mistake when I reached that room and found it occupied. I realized then that she must have meant her left. I had gone to my left, but she had been facing me through the window and her left would have been my right, so I had to turn and go back the other way. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to the right window, you were in there. Though I didn't realize that until I stopped to put on my mask and glimpsed you."

  "Dear God." The woman sagged like wet cloth. "You really did not know. All this time, all this fear and...It was a mistake. Just a terrible, horrible mistake, and all because Maisey actually told you the right way."

  "The right way?" Maggie was totally bemused. She pushed the feeling aside. What did the explanation matter? She just wanted out of here.

  Waiting in that dark prison with Banks, Margaret hadn't dared reveal her fear that she might be living her last moments. That, perhaps he was, too, thanks to his loyalty to her. She had kept those thoughts t
o herself and suffered with them.

  It wasn't death itself that frightened her, so much as the idea of never seeing James again. That very possibility caused her unbearable anguish. Now, she felt hope spring to life within her. If this was all a mistake, she might yet live to see him, might hold him in her arms and be sheltered by him once more. Trembling with this new possibility, Maggie asked, "Will you let us go?"

  A bewildered expression crossed her captor's face. She seemed to struggle briefly, then shook her head unhappily. "Nay. I cannot."

  "What?" Maggie stared at her in frustration. "But--"

  "You could still write about all this," the woman interrupted quietly. "If you had nothing to write about before, you do now."

  "No, I don't. Besides, I couldn't if I did. My fiance has forbidden me to write as G. W. Clark anymore." Maggie almost rolled her eyes at her own words. She sounded so plaintive, like a child begging.... But she was begging--for her life and for Banks's.

  "I am sorry," the woman said, and Maggie almost believed her. "But I cannot risk your telling."

  "Telling what?" Maggie snapped in frustration. "I know what you look like but not who you are."

  "You know I am one of Aggie's girls, and that I kidnapped you and have tried to have you removed several times," the woman said patiently.

  "I will not tell," Maggie promised. Her blood was like ice in her veins as she watched a sad expression come to the other woman's face. "I wish I could believe that."

  "You can," Maggie assured her. It was no use; the blonde raised a gun. Maggie's thought then was to stall as long as she could, hoping the boy Banks had paid would bring James here in time. Or, failing that, that some plan would come to her mind. "All right. At least tell me why I am dying. I deserve to know that much. Who are you?"

  "I am nobody."

  Maggie blinked. "What?"

  "I am nobody," the woman repeated. "My name is Elizabeth Drake. I was an actress, and not a very successful one. Then I had this idea to don a mask and set myself up at Madame Dubarry's...or some other establishment. Always in a mask. That would lend me mystery, and mystery is a powerful aphrodisiac."

  "Lady X," Maggie murmured, understanding. She never should have doubled back that night on the ledge of the brothel, at least not to avoid Lady X. She had gone the right way after all. The first room was the one that was supposed to be empty. Maisey had been in error about its occupancy.

  "Yes," the blonde acknowledged.

  "They say you are a lady of nobility."

  "That was part of my plan. I dropped a hint or two with my first few customers. They thought what I hoped, and were quick to spread the rumors; a lady of nobility selling her body in disguise. Being naughty is as much an aphrodisiac as being mysterious. The men came in droves, reaching deep in their pockets to have just a half hour with me, hoping to figure out who I was. As Lady X I can command ridiculous sums, and often do not even have to do much to earn it. Most of them just want to talk to me in the hopes of discovering my identity--which member of the ton has fallen so low."

  "Brilliant," Maggie complimented with unfeigned admiration. "As a woman who has had to make her way in the world, I admire the brilliance of your plan."

  "Yes. I believe you do." Regret crossed the blonde's features. "If things had been different, I think we could even have been friends. I know you are not a snob about such things. You are friends with Agatha, after all."

  "It was you at the men's club, not Maisey," Maggie realized, recalling what she should have noticed at the time. Maisey was about Maggie's own height, but the woman she had thought was Maisey that night--the woman who had locked her in the room--had been several inches shorter.

  "Yes," she admitted with irritation. "I expected you to come dressed as a woman, but you dressed as a man and gave Bull the slip." Her aggravation turned to amusement. "I was livid when you arrived without him on your tail. I paid the doorman to go to my carriage and tell my driver to take him to where Bull was watching Lady Barlow's residence, and fetch him. Then I locked you in the room until he returned. It should have been easy. I did not expect you to knock him out and escape," she added dryly.

  "How did you manage the letter she sent?" Maggie asked, wondering what the devil was taking James so long. "Maisey said she wrote that letter, and that there was nothing in it about meeting at a men's club. Was she lying? Did you pay her to help you?"

  "I did not have to." Lady X shrugged and explained, "Maisey cannot write. I offered to write it for her."

  "Ahh." The sound came out on a gust of air. She should have thought to ask. It should have been obvious the prostitute probably wouldn't have that skill. Very few of the working class did. For someone who liked to claim that she had an investigative mind, Maggie really had let a lot of details slip by.

  "And how did you manage today?"

  In the process of raising her gun again, Lady X lowered it once more and tilted her head in confusion. "Today?"

  "I presume my disguising myself as a servant worked, else your man there would have grabbed me on the way to Dubarry's rather than on the way back. I trust he was still skulking around looking for his opportunity?"

  "Yes." The blonde nodded slowly. "I have had him watching Lady Barlow's since he failed to take care of you in that fire. Your disguise did work. But there are no secrets at Aggie's, and the doorman, Ralph, was rather distraught at being reprimanded for not showing you in immediately. I was in the kitchens and heard him telling Cook about it."

  "And you sent someone to fetch..." Maggie gestured to the scarred man, her gaze moving slowly over his blank face. There was no sign of mercy there; if anything, he appeared to be looking at her with deep dislike. She could only think that was because she had survived his various attacks and made him look bad.

  "Yes." There came a click as Elizabeth Drake cocked her gun, and Maggie's attention was drawn away from such trivialities to the matter at hand: her death. She stared wide-eyed at the barrel of the pistol, her mind gone blank of any way to delay any longer. The barrel seemed to grow, filling her entire vision. She couldn't believe this was the last thing she would see in her life, the black hole at the end of a gun. And all because of poor directions.

  A soft thump drew Maggie's eyes from the gun to the hallway beyond the door. She saw the shadow of a crouching figure cast on the opposite wall from the light in the room next door, and knew at once that it was James.

  "What was--" Lady X didn't get to finish the question. Overcome with panic that James might be caught, Maggie leapt forward and grabbed the cocked pistol. It was an instinctive action, a desperate attempt to save Banks, James, and herself...and a wholly stupid move. A shot rang out, deafening her, and Maggie felt as if some invisible tree trunk had hit her in the chest to throw her backward.

  "My lady!" Banks cried.

  She saw James lunge through the doorway as her back slammed into the wall. Their shocked gazes met, then her legs seemed to lose their strength. Maggie began to slide toward the floor. Her last thought was that he looked terribly pale, and she wished she'd had the chance to tell him she loved him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  James moved carefully toward the front of the building and the stairs waiting there. The first floor had a stench he didn't want to identify, and was littered with various bits of rubbish. It had also proven to be empty. He was beginning to suspect that he had chosen the wrong building and that Maggie, if she was anywhere on this block, would prove to be somewhere else. This building appeared empty and was as silent as a tomb.

  He shuddered at the thought, then pushed it away. She wasn't here, he assured himself. He would not believe that her death was the reason this place felt so empty and cold. Maggie was alive. He would sense it if she were gone. The world would seem different, he was sure. It certainly had seemed different since she had entered his life.

  James paused at the base of the stairs and peered up into the yawning darkness. He was really starting to think that Maggie was in one of the other two bui
ldings and, for a minute, he considered giving up on this one and going to join the others. Then he changed his mind. He should check this building out, at least. Johnstone and his men would check the others, and he couldn't not search here, simply because of a hunch. It was just that he wanted to be the one to find Maggie, and he had a dreadful feeling that time was running out. She was in great danger. If the man who had attacked her and set her town house on fire was the same one who had her now, he would kill her; James didn't doubt that for a minute.

  It was better to do a thorough check, then he could go join Johnstone and young Jimmy in the next building. With that decided, he started up the steps, walking as close to the wall as he could to avoid too much creaking of the stairs.

  As he reached the last couple of steps and was able to view the long hallway at the end of it, he spotted a light. It spilled out of two rooms at the end of the long, dark corridor. James's heart squeezed painfully, then started beating at an accelerated rate. He hesitated only briefly, his hand tightening around the dueling pistol he'd taken from his aunt's library. Drawing some comfort from it, he straightened his shoulders and went determinedly onward.

  He was halfway down the hall before he heard the voices. They were drifting from one of the lighted rooms ahead, and he couldn't make out what was being said. Still, he recognized one of the voices as Maggie's. He moved a little more swiftly while still trying to creep as silently as possible.

  He paused at one side of the first door, took a breath, then eased around the frame for a quick peek inside. When he saw that it was empty, a beat-up chair and small rickety table the only furnishings, he relaxed. The light came from a lantern on the table, which also held a deck of cards, one dented metal cup, and a half-empty bottle of something. James supposed this was where Maggie's abductor waited. The single cup suggested there was only one man, probably the scar-faced man. Which was perfect. James would be more than happy to deal with that animal. He had been eager to meet that bastard since seeing Maggie's bruised and battered face after the fire. He wanted to return the favor and wouldn't pass up the opportunity to kill the man responsible.