Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 03]

by One NightWith a Spy

  Clara smiled and it was not a nice smile. “I can be rather dangerous myself, you know.”

  Julia pointed a finger at her. “No. No political cartoons about me or my fate. You must not ever let the Four think you know as much as you do. It isn’t safe.”

  Clara tilted her head. “You might have been one of them. What would you do to me if you were?”

  Julia drew a breath, then shrugged and answered honestly. “I would watch you like a hawk. If you did not show good sense and keep to your societal issues, I would probably recommend that the Four take steps to neutralize you.”

  Clara blinked. “Well … perhaps you made a good Fox, after all.”

  I helped take a throne from a king. Julia gazed at Clara evenly. “I made an excellent Fox.”

  Clara moved back a fraction. “Julia, you give me the most uncanny chill at times.” Then she smiled. “I’m rather used to it, you know. Dalton is much the same.”

  “Your husband is very fortunate. He is the only member of the Four ever to step down—unless one counts Lord Liverpool stepping sideways to become Prime Minister.”

  Clara nodded. “Dalton misses it sometimes, I think. He was not the Cobra for long, but sometimes I think …”

  “You think that he is the Cobra still.” Julia sent her a sympathetic smile.

  Clara smiled. “I suspect that Dalton always will be, a bit.”

  “Always will be what?”

  Clara turned to smile at her lord where he loomed in the doorway. “Always will be a bit tardy, darling. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I took a moment to load your pistol for you, Lady Barrowby.” Etheridge frowned at Julia. “I will give it to you as soon as my wife is no longer in the room.”

  Clara sighed. “You’re never going to leave that be, are you, darling?”

  “No,” he said, his voice grim.

  Julia raised a hand to divert the lover’s quarrel that was brewing. “Clara, I more than deserve his suspicions. The pistol was uncalled for. I did not know you, or I would simply have asked for your help.” She turned to Etheridge. “What will you say when you report this evening’s events to the Four?”

  Clara stepped forward. “Oh, Dalton won’t—”

  Julia glanced at her. “Of course he will. I would.” She turned back to Etheridge, who didn’t bother to mask the respect dawning in his eyes. “Will you give me time to get out of London?”

  Etheridge nodded. “I cannot keep it a secret forever, but perhaps I can delay my report until you’ve had a chance to disappear again.”

  Julia nodded. “Do not wait long. The Four must have this information.” She drew a breath and smiled at them both. “Thank you. I did not think I would have this chance.”

  This chance to run … forever. She would never be able to rest, never be able to live a true life—never be able to see Marcus, ever again.

  Are you sure the nunnery isn’t preferable?

  But in the convent, she would be of no use. At least this way, possibly, she might still work for England, even if it was only in the collection of useful information by way of the traveling folk. Perhaps, in some small way, she might still be a shadow of the woman Aldus had taught her to be, who Marcus had loved, who—for a little while—had held the reins of a nation in her hands.

  Clara embraced her quickly. “Go. Let us know how you fare.”

  Julia smiled, but she knew she wouldn’t dare risk them that way. She had already put them in enough danger.

  Etheridge was watching her closely. “Do not worry for us. We told you nothing. You gave Clara information, then disappeared before I could detain you. I hear you’re quite crafty.”

  She nodded. “I hear the same about you. After all, you sent Elliot to me.”

  “I knew who Barrowby was from my days in the Four. When he died, I sent Elliot to find out the lay of the land. There is a practice of keeping the spymaster on an information string.”

  He gave a sour smile. “I have learned not to take everything the Four says on faith alone. There have been too many losses—and near losses—” He gazed at Clara with fierce love in his eyes. Then he turned back to Julia. “Like you, I keep my own avenues of intelligence open.”

  Leaving the warm circle of Lord and Lady Etheridge made Julia all the more aware of the cold outside. She regained her rested horse and picked her way down the back alleys of London, eager to be free of the city yet uncertain about where she might go next.

  The only thing she was sure of was that the road to Barrowby was closed to her.

  She rode the day away, traveling north up the Great Road, keeping alert for signs of the fair folk, though she saw none. She was not sure she could go back, in any case.

  There must be somewhere in the world for her. She only wished she knew where it was.

  She found herself on a northern road anyway and chastised herself for a fool. What did she think Derbyshire had to offer her? Other than the opportunity to be apprehended by the Royal Four.

  Her cheerless thoughts were interrupted by the realization that the stallion had stopped his listless plodding and was now pulling at clumps of dry grass along the road. She pulled his head back. “You’ll get your oats this evening,” she said soothingly. If she let him have his head, she’d never be able to control him.

  He was too much horse for a poverty-stricken traveler like her at any rate. She’d be better off selling him to the next hosteler she saw and bargaining for a less memorable mount.

  But Marcus loves him so.

  “Which has nothing to do with the price of apples,” she told herself. If she needed to sell the horse, she would do as she must. She simply didn’t see the need to sell him quite yet.

  She heard the clip-clop of hooves behind and looked back to see another soul on the road. Although this was a post road and was well used in most seasons, she’d not seen another person for hours on this grim evening.

  Whoever it was had better places to be, apparently, for the mount was being pushed at a good steady clip. She decided to halt the stallion to let the rider pass, for the less time someone had to look at her on her very fine horse, the less chance they would remember her later.

  The stallion took to the grassy bank with some relief and the other traveler came even with them in a few moments.

  The other rider was huge, a giant man on a mount that was nearly the size of a draft horse. Julia felt a moment of natural caution at being alone on the road with such a person, until she noticed the scarred visage beneath the brim of the rough hat.

  Then icy horror drenched her gut. Kurt, the Liar’s Club assassin, was looking her right in the eye.

  Julia looked down quickly, letting her cloak hood cover her eyes. Her hair was covered and her out-sized clothing completely disguised her shape. If she was lucky, Kurt the Cook would think her no more than a rather stout old woman.

  The larger mount passed with a horsy whicker of greeting and Julia could hear the distance growing between them by the hoof beats. She held her breath and her fear in a tight grip until she could no longer hear the other mount.

  Only then did she risk looking up.

  The giant rider had halted his mount in the middle of the road and was staring back at her. Even as she watched, he turned his mount completely and kicked it into a gallop.

  No.

  Her booted heels hit the stallion’s sides with every ounce of power she had in her and the horse spun about and shot forward with a surprised squeal, stretching his high-blooded legs out in an ears-back gallop that stole the breath from Julia’s lungs.

  She lay low on his back and tangled her fingers into his mane. She was smaller and lighter and her mount was of racing stock—oh, God, give me wings!—but Kurt could pin a fly at fifty paces with one of his throwing knives!

  A smaller target has a better chance.

  The thought had scarcely crossed her mind before she was out of the saddle and hanging on the far side of the stallion’s great lunging body with only one leg cro
oked over his back. He started and nearly slowed at the peculiar shift of her weight.

  “Yah!” she screamed, nearly in his delicate ear. He flinched and put on more power, probably hoping to leave his mad rider behind. She clung to his side like a flea and lifted her head to see behind them.

  The giant charger was matching their pace, despite Kurt’s greater weight. She couldn’t believe it. If any horse could outrun the assassin’s powerful mount it would be Marcus’s stallion. Kurt had likely been riding at a good pace all day to have reached her so soon after Lord Etheridge had reported her location to the Four.

  How Marcus must have hated making that choice—and yet he’d made it. He truly was a better Fox, for she was not sure she could have killed someone she cared for, no matter what sort of security risk they posed.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to live long enough to answer that question. The stallion was maintaining his powerful gallop, but so was the charger. No advantage gained, just an exhausting race of equals until her horse dropped dead and Kurt killed her.

  A lunatic giggle bubbled up from Julia’s aching lungs. Oh, dear. She had that Jilly feeling again.

  Then again, what had she to lose?

  She put herself to rights in the saddle and urged the stallion off the road, sending him leaping wildly into the wood.

  She didn’t look back, although she knew from the crashing hoofbeats behind her that she was being followed. She kept low, praying that she and the stallion could squeak through the forest and lose her much larger pursuers.

  Unfortunately, the wood began to thin and she found herself racing through open pastureland. The stallion took stone wall after stone wall, uphill and down, racing through herds of sheep whose bahing protest was lost in the wind. Still the assassin kept pace.

  The stallion began to tire, and in an act of desperation, Julia set him to a wall too high for the draft horse to manage.

  It was too high for the stallion as well. They went down, taking much of the wall with them. Julia threw herself to one side. The horse landed hard and tumbled. Julia landed badly. Agony shot up from her ankle.

  The big horse leaped easily through the gap they’d made in the wall and came to a puffing halt before her. She scrambled back desperately, unable to run, unable to even cry for help that wasn’t there. The giant assassin dismounted and turned to walk toward her.

  A gunshot came from nowhere at all.

  The assassin froze. His eyes widened and he gazed at her with stern surprise. “Weren’t goin’ to kill y—”

  He fell facedown in the grass. His sturdy mount started and reared at the thud.

  Julia couldn’t believe it. For a long moment, utter silence reigned. Then, as her shock faded, she began to crawl toward him. Whatever he’d been attempting, Kurt was a valuable and loyal soldier of England. He might not be dead. She must get to him—

  “A fair bird caught in my net.” A pair of very clean but worn boots stepped into her vision.

  “Oh, thank God!” Julia looked up. “You must help that man—”

  The bottom fell from the world. Day turned to night, good switched to evil, the dead walked the earth.

  Or at least, one dead man walked the earth.

  “Now why would I render assistance when it was I who shot him?” He knelt before her, a slight smile on his rounded face. “Pretty bird. So like your mother.” He reached to gently stroke a lock of fallen hair from her face. It was him.

  Pure shock froze her too thoroughly to flinch away when his fist slammed into her jaw.

  23

  The halls of Barrowby can be so dark and chill in winter. How glad I am not to be alone here.

  Julia woke to the smell of coffee. Someone pressed a cup to her lips and she groggily took a sip. Strong and sweet and full of milk, the way her Parisian mother had made it for her as a child—

  She opened her eyes in surprise, only to see him. She jerked back, turning her face away. She spat the offending coffee from her mouth. She wanted nothing from him.

  Then again, it didn’t seem as though he were in a giving mood, for she realized that she was tied to a bed in a shabby room with the anonymous air of a cheap boardinghouse. She was sitting up against the headboard and her hands were tied to each post. Her ankles were also bound and there was a rope around her middle anchoring her tightly.

  She was helpless in the presence of evil.

  Panic threatened to consume her, leaching the strength from her spine and the starch from her soul.

  “You are more beautiful than she.”

  Julia’s fear burned away like paper as pure rage erupted in her heart. She lifted her gaze to the bastard who stood by the bed. “You know nothing of beauty. All you know is evil.”

  He smiled. “Harsh words when we have only just met.”

  Julia didn’t take her hot gaze from his. “I’ve known your wickedness for years. It isn’t too difficult to recognize it when I see it formed in flesh.”

  “Lovely and observant. That is useful.” He walked to a rickety table across the room and set the coffee upon it. Then he turned to regard her with cool consideration. “Yet much too intractable for my purposes.”

  Julia tilted her head. “It seems I was born that way.”

  “You’ve been given your head much too often, I see. Still, twenty-three years is but a moment.” He flicked away her life with his fingers. “It might take some time to retrain you to proper obedience, but I find I am at a loose ends presently.” He smiled. It was like ice down her spine. “I believe I am looking forward to it.”

  “You’re going to beat me into submission?” Julia felt wild laughter rising within her. “Oh, dear, I hope you have nowhere to be in the immediate future!”

  Her defiance clearly angered him. A voice within cautioned her, but Jilly was back at the reins. “You probably ought not to break my jaw,” she said conversationally. “I require a great deal of feeding. And of course, if you want to keep the ‘lovely’ intact, you probably should stay away from my face altogether.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. She went on cheerily. “I’m simply trying to help, you understand. Let’s see …” She gazed at the cobweb-strung ceiling as she mused. “Whipping might leave permanent marks … and broken arms and legs never do seem to heal straight …”

  His fist crashed into her stomach. She bent double, sagging from her bindings as she wheezed.

  The next strike caused her to vomit on her gown. The following blows strung together like a nightmare until she thankfully lost consciousness at last.

  Standing on the cold, gray shore of Barrowby’s lake, Marcus was beginning to feel the impossibility of taking over for the Fox. It seemed that the key to all the Fox’s intelligence was locked away in Julia’s mind, for there was nothing in the house, nothing on the grounds, nothing contained within the boundaries of Barrowby.

  Now it seemed there was nothing under the lake as well. Marcus had hired several sturdy fellows from the village to swim the chill water in search of the records of the Fox, even taking to the water himself until his bones ached and his fingers wrinkled.

  Then he’d had the bloody thing dragged. Boats pulled a heavy iron rake along the bottom, finding the bones of livestock, wildlife and a few people, but nothing that could possibly contain written records. Barrowby itself seemed to mock him, winter dead and unbeautiful as it was.

  “Sorry, milord. Whatever you’re lookin’ for, ‘tisn’t there.” The village smith, who’d forged the rake for Marcus, gazed dolefully at the pile of debris dragged from the lake.

  Of course, the man’s sympathy and sorrow might have much to do with missing out on the obscenely high reward Marcus had offered to the man who found the “object.”

  Marcus clapped the big smith on the back. “My thanks anyway.” He turned to walk away from the fruitless effort.

  “Milord?” The smith caught up with him. “Milord, is our lady coming back to us?”

  Marcus stopped. “The search for the heir of Barrow
by is still underway,” he hedged. “I’m sure you’ll have a master in place soon.”

  He moved on. The smith stubbornly kept pace.

  “But our lady—do you know if all is right w’her? She wouldn’t leave us without a farewell, not if all was well.”

  Oh, really? Seems to me she makes a habit of it.

  The smith went on, but Marcus put his head down and strode away. He couldn’t bear to gaze into one more inquiring face, to look into one more set of wondering eyes.

  Where is our lady?

  He could show them, if they cared to look, for she was everywhere. She sat in the front parlor, she was in the stables—she haunted Barrowby like a specter. Her scent lingered in the halls and her gamine smile shimmered just out of his vision.

  She danced in the temple in the barren garden, kissing him back with sharp and surprising hunger. She walked the front hall, her brow crinkled, telling him that Elliot was missing. She stood on her balcony in the night, her lovely face raised to the stars with the wind cooling her flush.

  Where is our lady?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Wherever she was, he wished her free and happy. For himself, even his ascension to the Four was simply another dreary day in what looked to be a long and colorless future, his achievement tainted with guilt and loss and mind-bending regret.

  A band tightened about his chest as he remembered her last words to him. “Today was the most glorious day of my life.”

  One bloody day. One in which he’d spent much of his time covered in privy diggings and lion spittle. The hell of it was, there was no denying the fact that it had been the best damned day he’d ever known.

  So where did that leave him—other than alone?

  “Milord, you have a visitor!”

  Or perhaps not as alone as all that.

  It was Elliot, but a completely different man from the effete dandy Marcus had previously known. Soberly clad in black, with only the deep blue of his weskit to break the darkness, he was a far cry from the peacock of old.

  Elliot performed a crisp bow. “Good afternoon, my lord.” Gone were the languid gestures and the heartfelt ennui.