Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3)

by Pearl Darling

  “Certainly sir.” Carter trotted down the steps and easily hefted the cloaked Viper from the carriage and carried him through the front door. Hades winced as Carter banged one end of the cloaked form against the door, eliciting an unmanly squeak from the Viper’s trussed form. Wrinkling his nose against the smell of his boots, he strode to down the small lane to the back of the house and decided he didn’t feel too bad for the odious villain. What he had reportedly done to his victims was far worse.

  Carter waited at the back door with Hades’ new boots, his eyes scrunched up as if in pain.

  “What is it, Carter?” Hades pulled the boots from his hands. Carter never said what he thought. He just showed it through his facial expressions.

  “I think, sir…”

  “Spit it out!”

  “Err, if I might be so delicate to say…”

  Hades shook his head and, tucking the boots under his arm, pushed past his gaping butler and padded with stockinged feet through to his study.

  The Viper sat stiff-backed in the angular library chair Hades used to get books from high shelves, his hood still over his face. With a sigh of satisfaction, Hades fell back into his comfortable leather chair and laboriously pulled on the clean leather boots. It was hard to feel in control when one was loafing around with toenails on show.

  Carter entered again at a trot, but for once he bore only a tray with a large whiskey bottle on it and no biscuits.

  Hades frowned. “What are you doing, Carter? Get me some coffee.”

  “What a good idea. I’ll have some too.” The hooded Viper cocked his head on one side, the voice which had sounded low in St. Giles, now a pleasing contralto with just the slightest of shakes to it. Hades stared at the cloaked figure. The Viper was a woman? Of course. It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman had played the underworld. Monsieur Herr, the French spy that Anglethorpe had wrestled with had been female too.

  He scratched his chin as Carter remained standing by the door, the butler’s face for once carefully blank.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Carter gave no sign that he had heard. He nodded vigorously at the cloaked figure. Sighing, Hades walked softly behind the Viper and quickly pulled at his hood.

  “Thank goodness for that. I thought I was going to spend my entire time underneath that cloak,” the Viper said.

  Hades blinked and walked in a wide circle around the Viper. Staring downwards, he examined the woman in front of him. She did not present a formidable figure. Her jet black hair was piled on top of her head and she wore brass spectacles that were so smashed he could not see her eyes.

  He glanced at Carter, who waited expressionless by the door.

  “Why aren’t you going to get my coffee?” Licking his lips, Hades backed away to his chair and looked at the whisky, and back at the Viper. Apart from asking for coffee, she had said nothing else. With a thump he sat down. He needed to look her in the eyes.

  “Take off your glasses.” He was not going to do it for the Viper. Show no mercy. That was another trick of interrogation that he had read in his books.

  Wincing, the woman put her bound hands to her face and, twisting her head from side to side, unhooked the spectacle arms from behind her ears, pulling out a few strands of hair in the process. Once done she looked steadily, and what seemed to be, rather mistily at him.

  “Good God.” It was all he could force out, nearly drowning in the blue of her eyes. He dived at the whisky tray and poured himself a strong measure, throwing it down his throat fast. Slowly he poured himself another and sipped at it. Out of the corner of his eye, Carter gave a satisfied nod and closed the door as Hades sat back in his leather chair.

  “I might have known. Diana whatever-your-name-is.” Hades coughed as the burning liquid took hold. “To think that I thought you were just another scheming debutante. Using that to get close to me, and hiding your true serpentine nature by pretending to be mute.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The Viper narrowed her eyes and blinked. Hades really had to admire her form, she was an exceptionally beautiful woman. One that had been hard to forget.

  “At that ball a year ago you acted as if you were a simpleton. In reality you knew I was on to you.”

  “On to me? But my name is not Diana!”

  “Of course it isn’t. Why would any queen of the underworld give out her real name? Although Diana is an exceptionally apt name for you, Diana the huntress, just like a viper!”

  “Viper? What are you talking about? I’m not like a snake. Wait a minute—I’m the Viper? But you are the Viper!”

  Hades laughed, setting his whisky glass down on the table with a sharp click. He snorted and laughed again. These were the kind of jokes he liked. When the villain pretended to be something other than what they were, when in reality they were trapped. It was good to have so a worthy opponent.

  Carter staggered back in with the coffee and biscuits, followed by the audible sounds of Arturo’s pattering paws. Hades clicked his fingers; however, instead of going first to Hades, the comical dog clipped straight up to the Viper and laid his head on her knee.

  The Viper blinked and, in an uncertain fashion, brought her face down close to the dog. Arturo yipped and licked her on the nose. Sneezing, she fumbled stiffly at her skirts and with a surprised look, wiped her face on her cloak.

  Blasted dog. Hades huffed and swept up a coffee cup. “He likes biscuits.” He shook his head. What was he saying? He slammed the cup back down on a delicate saucer on the coffee tray. “I will keep you here until you tell me where you keep the documents. Don’t think I won’t harm you if you try to escape.”

  The Viper squinted at him a little above Arturo’s head and in a very small voice said, “Earl Harding? Is that you?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Miss Melissa Sumner took a shallow deep breath in as she narrowed her gaze and squinted again at the powerful form of the earl. He levelled a gaze at her that spoke of irritation and disdain. Oh dear, not again. She smiled weakly and tried not to move as the library chair dug into the back of her trussed legs.

  “Where are the documents?” he demanded again, sitting forward in his seat, a lock of brown hair falling down across his forehead. Melissa blinked as the memory of dancing with him swept over her. He had been as irate then as he was now.

  A warm head pressed gently against her thigh. The funny looking spaniel that had entered the room after the earl laid his ears against her knee and proceeded to nuzzle her calves.

  “Arturo, come here!” The earl frowned and clicked his fingers. “She doesn’t have any biscuits.” He clicked his fingers again.

  But Arturo didn’t stop. He turned his head to his master and with a small woof laid his head on Melissa’s knee. Slowly lifting her bound hands, Melissa rested her shaking fingers on the little dog’s head and pushed them into his silky fur. The dog rumbled at the back of its throat as if in comfort.

  “Arturo, that is the Viper! She has killed many men… do stop… cuddling her.”

  The dog looked back at its master and woofed again.

  “Yes she is. Just look at her. The beautiful temptress. You know she tried to trap me before, tried out her feminine wiles and novelty by pretending to be mute, but still giving me her name… I nearly fell for her dangerous game… Diana.” The fire in the earl’s voice was palpable, a rage simmering just below a full storm.

  Feminine wiles? “I am not Diana, as I have told you before.” Fumbling with her bound hands, Melissa slipped her brass spectacles back on and hunted for a part of her lenses to look at him through, but the knock the butler had given her when hefting her through the front door had very much shattered the already partially broken glass. “I only said Diana, because you were wearing a red carnation at the time and it was the only thing I could see. Dianthus Carrolus if you must know. I happen to like flowers.”

  “Devil take it then, why did you pretend to be mute?”

  Melissa shook her head blindly and stopped stroking A
rturo’s ears. “Isn’t it obvious now? Didn’t the lack of glasses give it away?” An unfamiliar defiance filled her as the remembered humiliation swept through her body.

  “Errr…”

  “I’m blind without them! Have you ever tried dancing a waltz without knowing where you are going because you are too blind to see, whilst some large angry handsome man mutters disparaging comments about Machiavellian debutantes in their ears?”

  “Handsome? Ahem. Are you sure you weren’t plotting ways to kill me?”

  Melissa huffed. “If I wasn’t then I am now!”

  “So how do you do it? How do you kill all of those men? Tell me!”

  “What men? What? I am not the Viper!”

  A cough at the door silenced her. Melissa shut her mouth with a snap. Some of the bravado that had carried her through before left her suddenly and her shoulders slumped. The butler that had carried her into the house coughed again.

  “Sir, Lord Granwich is here to see you. I’ve put him in the morning room.”

  Above the rims of her shattered spectacles, Melissa could just see the earl’s arms lift in the air in seeming frustration.

  “Bring him in.”

  “What shall I do with the Viper, sir?”

  “I am not…” Even to her ears her voice sounded feeble.

  “Take her down to the kitchen and let Carlos and Charles guard her. I don’t want Granwich to see her just yet. I want it to be a surprise for him.”

  “Goodness what a lovely surprise,” Melissa muttered. “Here what are you doing?” The black hood that had been hung over her face before, was quickly hooked over her head again. “I…” With little ceremony her body was picked up and carried out of the room. Although the hands gripped her firmly and impersonally underneath her knees and shoulders, Melissa still couldn’t stop the tightness that held her body rigid away from the butler’s torso.

  Carter’s feet echoed down a passageway and clumped rhythmically down a small flight of stairs into what must have been the kitchen. Delicious smells of food wafted through the thin fabric of her hood as she bit her lip.

  She hadn’t eaten since the large cooked breakfast Mrs. Hobbs had prepared that morning. Mr. Hobbs had been out tending the garden. It had been the least she could do since he had lost his job. Quite when she had ended up employing them both full time was a mystery. It could have been on the day that she had had so many customers queuing at the garden gate for cures that she had had to ask the pair to work for her on a more permanent basis. Or when one night the ghosts of Melissa’s past, living and dead, seemed to walk endlessly through the house as she shivered in her room upstairs in the empty attic.

  For despite putting the house on the market, no one had seemingly wanted it even though other houses in the street sold for more. And although she had thought that she would disappear, without the money from the house she couldn’t. She had fallen back into her old routines, growing her flowers and herbs, pressing them, distilling their essences and then attempting to shorten the ever present queue of people behind the garden wall. Helping those that couldn’t help themselves gave her back a small semblance of comfort that balanced against the lonely nights of fear and memories.

  Her stomach rumbled alarmingly as she was set carefully down in a chair. Oh gods, what a time to happen.

  “Do you think we should take the hood off?”

  Melissa sat up straighter as a shadow crossed her vision.

  Carter’s voice came from behind her. “Um, the earl says that she’s very dangerous.”

  “Oooh.” A third voice joined the conversation. “Then we definitely should take the hood off to see who we are dealing with.”

  Slowly, the black stifling hood rose, brushing against Melissa’s cheeks. Instantly the shattered glass of her spectacles steamed up.

  “Gosh!” the first voice said. “She even has the power to create mist!”

  Melissa coughed. She couldn’t help it, the terrified giggle burst forth as she clasped her bound hands into her skirts.

  Behind her, Carter gave a long sigh. “Please excuse Carlos my… err... miss. He is a trifle impressionable.”

  The giggle passed, leaving Melissa with a tear in her eye. She still couldn’t see, and she was still bound.

  “Would you mind awfully, umm, allowing me to put on my other glasses?” she asked in a low voice. “These ones seem to be rather broken.”

  A rustling of cloth passed to the left of her, and a hand touched her arm. Quickly she shrunk away, shuddering, as the hand withdrew.

  “Ah, about,” Carter’s voice appeared from the direction of the hand. “Um about that—”

  Melissa bit her lip and stilled the shudders. “Don’t worry. You were only acting on orders.” Something she knew a lot about. “Would you allow me to get them myself?”

  “If you don’t I will. Poor girl, sitting there having endured the master and one of his bad moods—”

  “Enough Carlos. Really!” Carter’s hands tentatively touched hers, and this time she held them steady with an iron will as he severed the bonds that tied them together.

  Slowly she felt in her skirts and pulled out her new spectacles, switching them with the brass ones on her nose. Immediately the kitchen came into focus, a kitchen table in front of her, and at the other end of the room by the ovens, three men, leaning away from her as if she was going to explode.

  “I am quite harmless,” she said quietly.

  Slowly the men unbent; Carter, the butler stayed where he was, but one of the cooks inched forward and pushed a plate of biscuits towards her with a hand bound in a large yellow stained white rag.

  “Err, we thought you might be hungry.”

  Delicately Melissa took a biscuit. She choked as a peppery taste filled her mouth.

  Three pairs of eyes watched her every move.

  They gave out a sigh as she took another bite. “Very ’ice,” she said, gulping in air as her tongue caught fire. “Ot happened ooo your ’and?”

  “She ate one of the biscuits!” the other cook whispered audibly, and then gave a hacking cough before continuing, “And she took another bite… she can’t be that bad!”

  Carter groaned. “Carlos burnt his hand on one of the pans when the kitchen boy moved it and the wound hasn’t stopped weeping since. He has refused to see a doctor.”

  “Mmm. Have you tried a paste of Urtica Urens?”

  “Urtica Urens?”

  “Oh. Sorry, stinging nettle paste.”

  Carter narrowed his eyes and stared. “If this is one of your ways of killing people we are not going to fall for it.”

  Melissa sighed and bit into another biscuit. Good heavens, ginger. Thank goodness.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lord Granwich sneezed loudly and pressed a monogrammed handkerchief to his nose.

  “Can’t you get anyone to dust in here, Harding? It’s demmed strange to sit surrounded by moldy old books.” The lord sneezed again and looked balefully over his handkerchief at Hades.

  Hades crossed one long muscular leg over the other and gave Granwich a long hard look, attempting to quell the unsettled feeling the beautiful Viper had given him.

  He hadn’t invited Granwich to come to his house. Hardly anyone was ever granted entry. He shifted in his well-worn leather chair, feeling his body press into its familiar folds. Damn the man. Hades had intended to continue reading a particularly good book by the Roman historian Polybius about Hannibal and his war against the Pergamums whilst he let the beautiful Viper sweat in the kitchen, but Granwich’s visit had put paid to that.

  “I like it like this. And those ‘moldy old books’ are what got your men out of trouble in Corunna.” Hades tapped the heavily scuffed book that lay on the oval table next to him. “If you don’t want my help, go away. I did not invite you here.”

  Granwich stepped from side to side, looking round the study with quick glances. Hades scratched at his eyebrows; he hadn’t asked Granwich to sit. The study still sat in a gloom, with only a s
mall oil lamp burning on the oval table by Hades. It was the way he liked it. And of course it was good for intimidating people he was interrogating.

  Hades frowned. He didn’t seem to have been as good as usual at interrogating the insufferable Viper—

  Granwich let out an audible sigh. “I know your strategies allowed us to triumph at Corunna.”

  “And Leiria, and Vimeiro, and to think of it, La Bisbal,” Hades pointed out. “You said you wouldn’t need my help again now that the war was over. What was it that old fool said, “We don’t need armchair warriors anymore, we need men on the ground?””

  “I, err, privately think that he was perhaps a little peeved, err, shall we say delicately, that you were able to make sense of the battle plans sent from Portugal and—” Granwich wiped his nose again—“provide a strategy from an ancient Chinese script that allowed our army to lure in the French and beat the hell out of them from behind.”

  “Those strategies have been used for years in warfare. What’s wrong with using them again?”

  “I think if you had been a little less successful, you might have triumphed in the political arena more.” Granwich sniffed.

  Hades fell back into his seat. He should have seen it coming. He had only just finished reading a Latin text about Cicero that he had found tucked at the end of his old university texts. The man had had much to say on the art of success, and the strategy of politics. He tapped the book by his side again with an outstretched finger.

  He had to admit, he had been hurt when he had saved the day again and again, and then been given the figurative pat on the back and boot out the door as the war ended. He had only just started to regain a sense of peace. It had been badly shattered after his dalliance with Lady Dalston. None of his books had been able to help him there.

  “If I had been less successful, more men would have been killed.” He swung his foot and rubbed his thumb over the nub of his forefinger. How is she doing down in the kitchen?

  Granwich nodded. “Which is why I am here to see you now. Some information that was held at the War Office is missing.”