Hades already knew. But it wouldn’t have done to have revealed it. “Missing?” He injected a questioning tone into his voice. “How does information from the War Office go missing? The war is over. Why bother trying to retrieve it?”
“Two reasons. Look, please may I sit, Hades? My legs are about to give out.”
Hades frowned. Granwich was determined to stay. He had even used his name which Hades hated. Harding was much cleaner. Less amusing. He sighed; he wasn’t the only man to know how to use strategy. Granwich was a master of the human condition.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” he muttered, stretching stiffly before moving the library chair back out from the corner of the room where it had been concealed in the gloom. He clicked his fingers and the study door opened.
“Carter, get us some coffee please?” The butler nodded and glided silently away. I want to know what she’s up to.
Granwich perched on the chair and shivered. Sighing, Hades picked up the poker by his chair and prodded at the meagre fire. The room had fallen cold whilst he had been wrangling with the beautiful Diana—no, the Viper. It happened often when he was reading. Usually Carter would come in and build the fire back up again, but he had obviously stayed away due to the unexpected visitor. Hades crouched and poked at the white coals again and added another log, causing the fire to blaze, lighting up the room. He looked up to see Granwich staring at him with eyebrows raised.
“What is it?” he asked, getting to his feet. Granwich pushed himself backwards on his chair, his eyes on Hades’ hand. Hades followed his line of sight to see the forgotten fire poker still firmly in his grasp. With a grunt he laid it back on the grate and sat back in his chair. He had let his frustration show too easily.
Granwich slumped back against the sharp wooden slats of his chair. “The choice of coffee.”
Hades grunted. “I’ve found it clears the mind more than brandy. You can concentrate more, and you don’t get the confusion.” Although the headache could be just as severe. Especially if one was reading long into the night.
Carter entered silently again through the door and steadily placed a silver tray holding a coffee urn and biscuits on the oval table. Hades swallowed, a sudden hunger gnawing at his stomach. How surprising—yet more biscuits. No matter what he asked for he always received biscuits, always different of course, of every shape and size, but most decidedly biscuits. Not that he complained—he supposed he must eat them; he had known disappointment when he had reached for the plate and found only crumbs.
He threw a biscuit on the floor and picked up the coffee urn. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thank you.”
As Hades poured, Granwich started to talk, but stopped, the coffee cup wobbling in his hand. He laid it on a side table and scratched his head before blinking and starting again. “The information that has been lost is a list of the spies who remain in many of the European courts.”
Hades took a bite of one of the biscuits. That was indeed bad news.
“A man called the Viper has let it be known that he can access the list, and he wants to sell it off to the highest bidder.”
“Hmm, you have mentioned errr… him before. Viper… did we call him that?”
Granwich shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He seems to have emerged out of nowhere. Just like the viper snake appears, he takes on prey much bigger than himself. It seems he has professed he has no allegiance to England.”
“You’ve tried the most obvious strategy?”
Granwich shook his head, furrowing his brow. “No, what’s that?”
“Cutting off the head of the snake of course.”
Granwich glanced at Hades and laughed. Hades swung a foot and waited. They never took him seriously the first time. Granwich coughed to a halt at the silence and stared at the carpet where only moments before a biscuit had lain on the floor. Hades threw another one down.
A small woof emanated from underneath Hades’ chair. Arturo rolled out, his expression firmly fixed in a lopsided grin. It almost always made Hades smile. But not on the days when Arturo decided to swap sides.
Granwich raised his eyebrows.
Hades sighed. “Lady Colchester gave him to me,” He didn’t reveal that he had kidnapped the dog after Victoria, Lady Colchester had asked the dog to bite his ankles. “Look, cutting the head off the snake is the well-known name of the military strategy whereby one gets rid of the head of an organization, and the rest of the group fall apart. I assume you have tried this already?”
Granwich took a sip of his coffee. “Yes, we have. And all the men that we have sent after him have disappeared. Many of them have appeared in the river Thames with no discernible marks of violence on them, but their faces hold an expression of agony. It is just adding to the Viper’s armor. No one will go after him without a hefty payment.” He turned his face away as he put the coffee cup back down on the side table. “Their wives are also understandably anxious.”
“And I don’t have a wife.” Hades bit into a biscuit. Did the Viper have a man waiting at home for her? “What about Anglethorpe? I thought he was your go-to man.”
“Mmm, he has other things on his mind at the moment.”
“Stanton?”
“Him too.”
Hades nodded. He knew all this already. Granwich had cornered him in the ballroom after Lord Stanton’s unusual wedding celebration and blathered on about the Viper, when all Hades had wanted was to ask Victoria to dance. She had finally become interesting, shown the intelligence that he had always known was below the surface. That and the fact he was avoiding Lord Anglethorpe’s new wife Agatha Beauregard. Attempting to seduce her under Henry’s nose and calling her a French spy to the man’s face had not helped relations. That was before they were married or course. He didn’t really know what had come over him at the time save that his mother had been bothering him to find someone to marry and she had been the nearest interesting opportunity.
“Look, put bluntly Hades, you are the only man who can deal with this type of conundrum.”
Hades winced. There it was, his name again. Granwich was really applying the thumbscrews.
“Surely you can use one of your stratagems, like kick the monkey or swing from the tree whilst drinking coffee?”
“There are no strategies called ‘swing from the tree whilst drinking coffee’.”
“I was joking, Hades.”
“Oh.” He wondered if Granwich would laugh if he said that he already had the Viper in custody.
Granwich pulled his chair closer to the fire and looked straight into Hades’ eyes. “Quite simply we have nobody else. We have nobody as intelligent, and as formidable as you. We have no one left alive, who can stop this man. If the other countries find our spies in their courts, then we may find ourselves falling into yet another war. We are barely recovering from this one.”
Hades leaned over and stroked the long silky fur on Arturo’s back. He lifted the small dog onto his lap and with firm fingers, caressed the dog under the ears. Arturo sighed in contentment. He was no Cerberus, the snarling three-headed dog that commonly accompanied his namesake, Hades, god of the Underworld.
“I’ll do it.”
He had already done it.
Granwich breathed a sigh of obvious relief. “The only other information that I can give you is that he operates around the Hare and Hounds in Seven Dials and that before they died, several of our informants said that he has an assistant who fronts for him. The assistant has the strange ability of disappearing into thin air.”
An assistant? Hades stared into the fire. He hadn’t seen anyone else at the St Giles Cross.
“Well I’ll say goodbye, then.” Granwich gave him a level look and stood slowly from the chair.
“What? Oh.” Hades got to his feet and followed Granwich to the door. “I don’t know where Carter has gone. Let me get the front door for you.”
Closing the door behind Granwich, Hades stared down at Arturo, listening to th
e rhythmic thumping of the dog’s tail against the hall carpet. The Viper had help. Quietly he crossed the hall and opened the door to the below stairs. The low rumble of voices and a tinkling laugh floated up the short downward passage.
Carlos’ voice boomed above the rest. “So you think this Johnnie visited Regina too?”
Hades frowned. What on earth were they doing? He’d told them to guard her. With a catlike grace that would have surprised many of his peers, he crept down the stairs before slamming open the door at the bottom.
Carter stood shaking his head by the oven, whilst Charles and Carlos, his two abominable cooks sat laughing around the table having tea and biscuits with her!
“I told you to keep her hands tied,” he roared, unable to contain himself.
Charles buried his head in his hands. “I told you I heard something. He always does this to us!”
Slowly the Viper turned to face Hades, her hands shooting below the table. He swallowed, as her cloak gaped, and he glimpsed the gentle swell of her breasts against the dull material of her dress.
“Oh dear,” she said quietly.
Hades flicked a glance up to her face and stopped, caught. Her blue eyes stared out at him clear, focused and intent through a new pair of silver spectacles. Oh dear indeed. Hades shivered as a dart of desire coursed through his body. He leaned against the door jamb for support and folded his arms tightly across his chest.
“Where is your assistant?”
The Viper, Diana, frowned. “Assistant? I don’t have an assistant.” She lifted a small hand out from under the table and in a fluid motion picked up her tea cup from the table and held it in front of her body. “Um. If you mean the Hobbs, then they are back at home, I think. Although I wouldn’t really call them assistants as such.”
Hades blinked as she brought the teacup to her plump rosy lips and took a sip of tea whilst keeping her eyes on him above the cup’s rim. He almost groaned as her eyelashes swept down and back up again.
“Put the tea down,” he ordered. She was a witch. He knew it. This was how she had slain all those men.
With a gasp, she turned back towards the table, fumbling with the tea cup. It fell from her hands and tumbled down her dress to the floor, smashing across the stone flags into hundreds of tiny pieces.
“Oh I’m so terribly sorry!”
Henry watched, time slowing as the Viper rose unsteadily from her chair and started towards the broken china, the folds of her cloak parting to reveal her dress beneath.
“Enough!” He stooped and caught her under her elbows before she could pick up any more of the broken tea cup. She looked up at him, her brilliant blue eyes wide, the barest form of moisture tinging the bottom of her eyelashes.
Hades took a deep breath and looked away, his hands tingling as he continued to gently hold the warm, smooth vulnerable skin of her underarm.
“Carter.”
“Yes sir?”
“Please take Miss Diana away and put her in one of our guest rooms until she tells me everything she knows.”
“Yes sir.”
Slowly Hades let go, immediately stuffing his bereft hands in the pockets of his undercoat. He stared at the ovens as Carter drew the Viper away.
He turned sharply as a small audible snort rent the air behind him. Carter gave a groan like cough from the stairs as the Viper pushed her head defiantly back round the kitchen door, all traces of tears gone.
She touched a hand to her spectacles and glared at him with a look that would have caused a phoenix to burst into flames. “My name is not Diana!”
CHAPTER 4
Melissa watched dully as wild rain splattered against the glass of her bedroom. The room was warmer than her attic bedroom in Bayswater, and much more sumptuously furnished. If being a prisoner meant living this sort of lifestyle, Melissa would gladly have changed places with the Viper for just a few days.
Perhaps the rain would help the seedlings she had planted with Mr. Hobbs in an effort to rejuvenate the garden that Eliza had ravaged with burning oil as her parting gift. That was if the earl ever allowed her to leave. Melissa shivered as she put a hand to the cold glass of the window. The close proximity of the powerful man was very unsettling, even though she hadn’t seen him since her measly act of defiance through the kitchen door. To think that they thought that she was dangerous!
She had been terrified as she walked into St. Giles. And waiting by the stark St Giles cross that paid gloomy homage to death had unnerved her even further, reminding her of what a precarious position she was in. Of course it hadn’t helped that she had mistakenly put on her cracked brass spectacles instead of her silver ones which were in the pocket of her skirts, too distracted and frightened by the note that one of her many customers had given her.
‘Bring thirty thousand pounds to the cross in St. Giles tomorrow at noon. Bring the book if you have it. Otherwise prepare to face a fate worse than you have ever known.’
She had carried nothing in her hand—how could she have done? She had no money. And all the books her father had written on flora and fauna had been given to the butcher by Eliza to pay his bill after the coalman debacle. Of course, she had one book, but that was one that she had written since from memory to replace those Eliza had given away.
Eliza. Melissa sighed, glancing cursorily at the opulence of the bedroom around her and looked out through the glass again, drawing her hand away from the cold pane. Never again would she be bent or controlled to do the cursed woman’s bidding, or anyone’s bidding for that matter, unwittingly or no. Her will was her own.
A knock on the door marked the entrance of Carter and a tea tray, as well as the happy patter of Arturo’s paws.
“Hello Carter.” The flutter of anticipation that had unexpectedly lit in Melissa’s stomach died as he closed the door behind him.
The butler nodded silently.
Uncertainly, Melissa smiled. “Um. How is Carlos’ hand?”
Carter looked furtively behind him at the closed door. “Better.”
“Oh, that is good.” Of course it was. “I was worried that without treatment it would turn into something worse. He is lucky that it cleared up by itself.”
Carter sucked in a breath and pursed his lips. “I told him not to.”
“Told him not to do what?”
“Told him not to put on that paste that you recommended. But he refused to listen to me. He said that anyone that had eaten his biscuits couldn’t be bad.”
“Oh.”
“The wound cleared within a day.”
Melissa nodded. “That is good news.” She stared at the butler as he put down the tray. “Carter, do you think you might send a message out for me?”
The butler’s expressive face showed a small amount of horror. “It depends what it is, Miss Diana.”
“Please stop calling me Diana. My name is not Diana, it is Melissa. Melissa Sumner.” Melissa stopped suddenly as a loud bang sounded in the hall behind her bedroom door.
“Ah,” Carter stuttered, lurching a step backwards, his eyes on his tea tray.
“Excuse me please.” Melissa got up from the chair and walked across the thick carpet to the doorway as Carter hurriedly put her tea tray down on top of a chest of drawers.
“Miss Sumner!”
Melissa didn’t listen. Laying her hand lightly on the handle, she waited and yanked open the door.
There was no one there.
She put her foot out to step into the hall, but stopped as the butler coughed behind her. “I’m afraid you can’t leave the room, Miss Sumner,” he said. “Earl Harding would be a trifle upset if you did so.”
Melissa barely heard; as her heart raced, her gaze caught on the fast moving reflection of a large figure striding away in the hallway mirror. The large, handsome figure of an earl.
Swallowing, she retraced her steps back into her room and paused as her stomach fluttered again. “I…err…”
Carter coughed. “The note, my lady.”
“
Of course.” Rubbing her hand quickly against her strangely heated cheeks, she picked up the note that she had written earlier and laid it on Carter’s tray.
“It’s to the people that look after my house. I need to tell them that I am alright. You can speak to them and read the message if you like. I have nothing to hide.”
Nothing except the fact that she was seeking the Viper and that Earl Harding was too.
“I’ll discuss it with the earl.”
“Thank you.” She licked her lips and swallowed. “Please could you also ask him if I might use his study, or at least have the run of the house? This room is terribly confining.”
And as she wasn’t the Viper she might be detained in the room for years.
Melissa drew in her skirts and sat back down in her chair, sighing as the coolness from the window drove the warmth away from her face. Carter nodded silently and, picking up the tray, walked out of the room.
Melissa stood again quickly. “Carter!” Oh goodness. She hadn’t thought. If she was given the run of the house then she might come up against the earl again and—
“The earl says you can use his study, miss, and he would like you to dine with him every evening.” Carter pushed his head around the door. She hadn’t realized he had left it open.
Melissa gulped in a large ball of air. It wasn’t quite what she had expected. “And the message?”
“He sent it off himself.”
Melissa nodded. Drawing in a breath, she pushed her silver spectacles firmly onto her nose and examined the tea stain the dribbled down the side of her bodice and onto the skirts of her dress. “Carter, I… I think I will need some new clothes.”
The dresses that Carter brought up were fifty years out of fashion and had necklines that stopped right under the chin. They shimmered in the light as Melissa stroked a hand through them. Sharply she pulled her hands away; the colors reminded her too much of how her father’s garden in Buckinghamshire had looked, filled with flowers of all different hues. That was before his untimely death of course, on an expedition high in the Pyrenees mountains, looking for the elusive Corona del Rey that only flowered once every five years.
Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) Page 3