by Tracy Grant
"Got something, I think," Andrew murmured. He dropped down and scrabbled in the ground.
And then a stir to her right that was heavier, firmer, than the animal sounds. Like the fall of a foot. She spun round and leveled her pistol just as a crash sounded on the left. Two men hurtled through the trees and tackled Andrew.
Andrew somersaulted and knocked one of the men over backwards. Malcolm jumped on the other. Harry ran from the trees. Two more men ran forwards from the right, the direction from which she'd heard the noise. One leaped on Andrew. But instead of going for Harry or Malcolm, the other hit the man Andrew had knocked over backwards, who was scrambling to his feet.
Malcolm grabbed Andrew’s attacker by the shoulders, spun him round, and hit him in the jaw.
Mélanie tucked her pistol away. It wouldn't be much use in a mêlée. She picked up a large stick she'd spotted earlier instead and flashed a quick look towards Cordelia meant to remind her of her promise to stay out of a fight. Not that Mélanie would have made much of such a promise herself.
Andrew scrambled up, but one of the other set of attackers caught him by the feet. Mélanie ran forwards and hit Andrew's attacker over the head. He stumbled, but the two men who were fighting each other broke apart and both went for Andrew. Andrew tossed the box he'd recovered to Malcolm.
Cordelia let out a low whistle from the trees. Two more men ran into the clearing. One leaped on Malcolm. Malcolm tossed the box to Harry. One of the men—she could scarcely tell them apart in the dark—tackled Harry. Harry shoved the box through the leaves at Mélanie. Mélanie dived to catch it.
She dragged the box to her and pushed herself up from the leaves and dirt as her husband gave a grunt of pain. One of the men had jumped on his back and had a knife at his throat.
Another man ran from the shadows and pulled the man off Malcolm. Malcolm broke free and grabbed his attacker's knife as the man who had saved him pulled the man's hands behind him.
"Thank you, O'Roarke," Malcolm said.
Of course it was Raoul. He had a way of showing up at times like this. Though, given recent developments, his arrival raised concerns she didn't care to examine at present.
Four of the men ran off into the night. Harry had hold of the sixth. Cordelia emerged from the trees.
"Who hired you?" Malcolm demanded, looking between the man Raoul held and the man Harry held.
The man Raoul held gave a harsh laugh. "What sort of fool do you take me for?"
"I don't take you for a fool at all. I take you for a man who knows a good bargain when he hears one. Tell us whom you work for, and we'll let you go. Refuse to talk and we'll march you both to Bow Street."
Rather surprisingly, the men didn't look at each other.
"You're lying," the man Harry held said.
"Am I? Then we'd best be off to Bow Street. Assault and attempted theft carry a heavy penalty. I did mention that we have a good friend who's a runner, didn't I? And that I sit in Parliament. Colonel Davenport, who's holding you, is a hero of Waterloo."
"You may not trust us," Harry said. "But you can be quite sure the consequences will be worse if you don't comply. If you're betting men, I'd say the bet's worth taking."
The wind cut through the clearing. Another owl screeched.
"He were a gentleman," the man Raoul held said. "Leastways, he spoke like one. And dressed like one. Yellow hair. Blue eyes. 'Bout the same age as you gentlemen." He nodded from Malcolm to Harry.
"Was his hair straight or curly?" Mélanie asked. Tommy had wavy hair. Julien's was smooth.
In the shadows, she saw the man frown in an effort of memory. "Curly, ma'am. He had his hat off in the tavern. Just like a lady gets it with her curling tongs, only shorter."
"Tavern?" Malcolm asked.
"The Anchor in Wapping. A few days since. Let it be known he was looking for someone for a job. Was waiting in a room at the back. In the shadows, but his hair gleamed."
"What did he tell you to do?" Malcolm asked.
"Watch the people staying in a house in Berkeley Square. Stay back. But if they ever seemed to discover anything grab it and bring it back to him."
"Did he say what 'it' was?"
"Probably a box. Said not to open it. Asked if I could read. Seemed pleased I couldn't."
"And you hired the others?" Malcolm glanced at the man Harry held.
"Him?" the man Raoul held gave a snort of derision. "Never seen him before. Brought one mate with me tonight. Had the devil's own work following you. My mate got away. Never seen the others."
"Were a woman hired me," the man Harry held said in a sudden rush, as though eager to reap whatever benefits the other man was getting from talking. "Word on the street someone was looking to hire for a job. Went to the back of a used clothes-seller in Rosemary Lane. Place people often meet to set up deals. Fair shocked when I saw it were a lady."
"What did she look like?" Malcolm asked.
"Black hair. The bits I saw escaping her cloak. Kept the hood up. Lovely face though. Sort to get a man in all types of trouble. Blue eyes."
"Did she also tell you to watch a house in Berkeley Square?" Malcolm said.
"That's the right of it. She said the people there might discover a box or papers we were to recover at all costs."
"How many men did she have you bring with you?"
"Just one. We lost you. Only got here because we picked up the trail of that lot." He nodded towards Raoul's captive.
Malcolm's gaze flickered between the two captives. "So the other two men who ran off—"
"Never seen them," Raoul's captive said.
"Me neither," Harry's captive said. "Would have asked twice the payment if I'd known how complicated it was."
"How were you supposed to collect your payment?" Malcolm asked. "And deliver the goods you'd recovered?"
The two men looked at each other for the first time, as though testing out who would speak first.
"I was supposed to leave word at the used-clothes seller's," Harry's captive said.
"And I was supposed to be back at the Anchor and wait for instructions," Raoul's captive said.
Malcolm glanced at Mélanie. She knew at once what her husband was thinking. Tempting to try to trap whoever had hired both men, but even assuming those people hadn't had others watching the Hyde Park confrontation, their escaped confederates would have given the game away. If whoever had hired them had any degree of professional experience, they'd be on guard for such a trick. Mélanie inclined her head in agreement.
Malcolm reached into his coat. Both men tensed, as though anticipating a weapon. Instead, Malcolm drew out his card case. The metal gleamed in the moonlight. He flicked it open and pulled out two cards. "Should your employers contact you again, send me word at once in Berkeley Square. You can have someone read the direction on the card for you. You'll be generously rewarded."
Malcolm jerked his head at Raoul and Harry. They released the two men. The men stared at their former captors and then Malcolm for a moment, frozen by shock.
"I take my word seriously," Malcolm said. "And you can be far more useful to us on the street, where you may encounter your employers again."
Raoul's former captive gave a quick nod. "You ever need a job done, you leave word at the Anchor and ask for Charlie, guv'nor. I'd do a lot for someone whose word can be relied on."
Malcolm returned the nod.
Harry's former captive rubbed his hands where Harry had gripped them. "No hard feelings. I'll send word if I hear anything."
The men ran off into the shadows in opposite directions. Malcolm looked at Mélanie, at Harry and Cordy, at Andrew, then at last at Raoul. "No one's hurt?"
Mud adorned all of their clothes and most of their faces. But no one appeared to have been injured. Mélanie shook out her skirts and wiped a smudge from her face. The box was secured in the special pocket Blanca had sewn into her pelisse.
"So it was a trap," Andrew said in a flat voice.
"I don't think so," M
alcolm said. "If Gelly wanted to trap us, why send us to the place the treasure was actually buried? And the man who hired one set of attackers definitely sounds like Tommy. Apparently he's had people watching us since we got to London, as I suspcted."
"So Gelly's turned on Belmont?" Andrew said.
"Or she's been trying to play him from the beginning, as Mélanie suggested." Malcolm's voice was grim, but Mélanie caught an edge of admiration for his little sister.
"And the other two sets of attackers?" Cordelia asked. "Who sent them?"
"The woman with the dark hair and blue eyes could be Charlotte wearing a wig or with her hair dyed," Raoul said. "Though that would mean she and Tommy were working against each other."
"Changing hair color is one of the easiest disguises for a woman," Mélanie said. "For that matter, Julien's very effective disguised a woman. And he'd certainly change his hair. Though Julien could have just dug up the papers on his own."
"We know besides the League, Carfax and at least one other person or group were after the papers Arabella took at Dunmykel," Malcolm said.
"You think Carfax hired someone from prison?" Andrew asked.
"I think Carfax is entirely capable of that," Malcolm said. He looked at Raoul. "Laura told you where to find us?"
"And Frances and Archie. They're in Berkeley Square. I could barely persuade Archie not to come with me. Not to mention Laura."
Malcolm nodded, though Mélanie caught questions in his gaze. But instead of voicing them, he glanced round their small company. "More discussion needed. But not here. Berkeley Square, I think."
Chapter 31
Laura opened the door in Berkeley Square. "I sent Valentin to bed," she said. "Frances and Archie came with me. They're in the library." Her gaze went to Raoul. "You found them."
"Fortunately," Malcolm said, though there was a faint edge to his voice.
Frances and Archie appeared in the library doorway. "I see there were complications," Frances said, surveying the mud and leaves that adorned their clothes.
"A few," Malcolm said. "No damage done. But it's as well O'Roarke arrived."
Mélanie drew the box from beneath her pelisse.
Laura released her breath. "You have it."
"Whatever 'it' is," Malcolm said.
They all went into the library. Malcolm lit the brace of candles on the library table. Mélanie set the box on the brown-veined Carrara marble in the candles' glow. It was small, the size of a necklace box, but plain black with a brass lock. She pulled her picklocks from the pocket in her pelisse and worked at the hinge. It gave in only a few minutes. The hinges were rusty and the lid crusted with dirt. Once the lock was undone, Malcolm had to use a letter opener to pry it open. He pushed back the lid to show a folded, sealed sheet of paper with no inscription.
Malcolm picked the paper up and slit the seal while the rest of them gathered round in the circle of candlelight. A series of letters and numbers, obviously code, covered the single sheet.
"It's Julien's hand," Mélanie said.
"Burying clues seems a bit fanciful for him," Raoul said, "but I assume he had his reasons."
Julien's codes were challenging and he changed them for almost every communication with a quixoticness that was entirely in key with his personality. Malcolm, Mélanie, Harry, Raoul, and Archie clustered round the paper and began to sketch tables. Cordelia, Laura, Frances, and Andrew went to the kitchen to make coffee.
They had the basic framework by the time the party returned from the kitchen. By the time Laura was refilling the coffee cups, Mélanie had sketched out the plain text. A single sheet with two words on it lay among the jumble of code tables.
Rivendell, Kent.
"Where the Wanderer can be found?" Cordelia asked.
"Presumably," Malcolm said.
"As a fallback in case something happened to Julien himself?" Mélanie said. "For someone who knew Julien had hidden the Wanderer but not where?"
"Or as one step in a treasure hunt," Harry said. "It's not very specific. Perhaps there's another clue hidden at Rivendell."
"That sounds like the sort of elaborate way Julien might have chosen to hide information," Mélanie said. "The other papers Lady Arabella intercepted were written to whoever hired him to hide the Wanderer. Which makes it likely the ones that led to this box were too. In which case, his employers wanted him to hide the Wanderer but didn't want to know where the Wanderer was."
"But wanted the information available should they chose to dig it up?" Laura asked.
"It seems a bit odd," Mélanie admitted. "But I can't figure out another explanation."
"If that's what happened, I wonder if whoever it was ever learned where it was hidden?" Cordelia said. "The paper that led us to the box ended up with Lady Arabella. Unless—she couldn't be the one who hired M. St. Juste, could she?"
Mélanie drew a quick breath. Used as she was to contemplating different scenarios, she hadn't thought of that. She cast a quick glance at her husband and then at Raoul.
"These days it's difficult for me to be remotely sure of what my mother might have done," Malcolm said. "O'Roarke?"
"It was a shock to me that she even knew St. Juste," Raoul said. "Given that, I suppose anything's possible."
"Lady Arabella climbed in through Frances's window with the papers," Andrew said. "And was at pains to hide them."
"And we've been assuming that meant she stole them," Malcolm said. "But it's possible she was meeting with St. Juste on the Dunmykel grounds, that she wanted to keep evidence of whatever job he'd undertaken for her, but that she didn't want anyone else to find it."
"Bringing us back to the question of who or what the Wanderer is," Harry said.
"A trip to Rivendell is in order," Malcolm said. "But not tonight."
Andrew was leaning forwards in his chair, frowning at his hands. "If Belmont's the curly-haired man who hired two of the men who attacked us, and if he learns Gelly sent us that message, he'll know Gelly's deceiving. And she's still with him."
"We don't know that he knows about her message," Malcolm said. "He had us followed in any case."
"But if he learns—"
"If Gisèle has put herself undercover with Tommy Belmont, we have to assume she can take care of herself." Lady Frances's voice was level but had an undercurrent of iron.
Andrew swung towards her, gaze raw with fear. "Ma'am—"
Frances's fingers closed on his wrist. "Believe me, Andrew, I'm as worried as you are. But I think we've all been failing to remember that Gisèle's taking after Arabella may not be entirely something to fear. Arabella was a formidable woman."
Raoul turned his coffee cup in his hands. "Yes," he said, "so she was."
Frances and Archie and Harry and Cordy went home with promises to return early in the morning. Andrew went up to bed, voice contained, gaze haunted but at the same time indicating he wanted to be alone to think. With the unerring instinct that had served her so well as a governess, Laura murmured that she'd go upstairs and check on the children. Mélanie had no doubt that Raoul would have preferred to follow her, both to look in on the children and to escape further talk, but he made no move to leave the room. He, Mélanie, and Malcolm were alone in the library. It was, Mélanie realized, the first time the three of them had been alone since their talk after the visit to Sancho, the talk in which she and Malcolm were sure Raoul had lied to them.
Raoul had returned to the Queen Anne chair where he'd been sitting. Malcolm was on the sofa beside Mélanie. A fire glowed in the grate. Two lamps were lit, as was the brace of candles on the library table. The edges of the room were in shadow. Malcolm surveyed his father. Malcolm's face was neutral, but something in the set of his shoulders took Mélanie back to a time, less than a year ago, when Raoul's presence in their home and in their lives—particularly Malcolm's life—had been by no means a settled thing. "We need to talk, O'Roarke."
Raoul returned Malcolm's gaze, his own pleasant, yet more armored than it had been of late
. "By all means. What about?"
"You've been lying to us."
Raoul lifted a brow. "About?"
"You said you just happened across Julien St. Juste in the Chat Gris."
Raoul picked up his cooling coffee and took a sip. "Which I did. Improbable as that may sound. If I wanted to make up a story, surely you know I could make up a better one."
Malcolm held his father's gaze. "I know you, O'Roarke. Mélanie knows you. We're both sure you were lying."
"And it was very convenient that you returned to Berkeley Square just in time for Laura and Frances and Archie to send you after us tonight," Mélanie said. "Did you hire Julien?"
"Did I what?" Raoul clunked his coffee cup down on its saucer with unexpected force. "No, of course not."
Mélanie regarded her former spymaster. "There's no 'of course' about it. You might very well not tell us if you had hired him."
Raoul blotted out a splash of coffee on the silver-rimmed saucer. "What are you accusing me of? Hiring Julien to overthrow the British government?"
Mélanie cast a quick glance at her husband. They had been thinking something of the sort, though put like that it sounded a bit mad. Which of course was precisely how Raoul would have made it sound had he truly been embroiled in such a plot.
"You tell us," Malcolm said.
Raoul took another sip of coffee. "I won't deny my quarrels with the British government, but I've never tried to actually overthrow it. I have my hands full in Spain at present. And even that is on hold, given the search for Gisèle."
"You know more about the Wanderer," Malcolm said. "Don't pretend you don't. Did you and my mother hire St. Juste to hide the Wanderer?"
"Did we—" Raoul stared at Malcolm for a moment. Mélanie would swear a shade had slipped from his eyes. "No. Whatever Arabella knew about the Wanderer, she didn't share it with me."