A Thoroughly Compromised Lady

by Bronwyn Scott

  He strapped on an arm sheath and slid a small dagger into it. He leaned down and slid another knife into his boot. Ortiz was coming. Jack just hoped he had guessed correctly and Ortiz was coming for him. He would be ready. He had no intention of dying simply because Ortiz meant him to. Still, he’d played this game long enough to know death came in many forms: a hired thug on the street, a discreet poison in a glass. Some attempts could be thwarted with a quick blade. Other attempts could not.

  Jack reached into his dresser drawer and rooted beneath a pile of cravats until he found what he wanted: travel ling papers and a packet of money. He faced himself in the mirror, slipping his arms into his jacket of blue super fine.

  He studied the reflection, deliberately forcing his mind to slow and focus, reviewing. He’d taken all the precautions he could. He’d left Dulci in her home, surrounded by the finest bodyguards the Foreign Office could provide. He’d armed himself for a physical attack. He had money and papers in case he had to flee, a ruby ring on his little finger and a matching stick pin in his cravat to pawn. If it came to it, he could sell the buttons on his coat one by one. He was an expert when it came to survival.

  Satisfied that he’d taken all measures possible to ensure Dulci’s safety and his own survival, Jack grabbed up the ornate walking stick from the stand by the door and strode confidently out into the morning to face life or death, come what may, with only one regret. He knew men who had died with more.

  There were no regrets, only choices, Dulci re minded herself force fully, struggling to concentrate on the artefacts spread out before her. She’d set up a temporary workshop in an old green house at the back of the garden while she waited for new cases to arrive and the windows to be repaired. But her energy was divided between the items spread before her and the items on her mind—the shocking revelations of the night before.

  Jack was worried, so worried he’d attempted to draw Ortiz’s fire and divert attention from her. She was not sure how she felt about that. She was used to fighting her own battles, but never had she faced a battle like this. This was not a battle over social acceptance, but about life and death. She was out of her depth when it came to secret assassins and hidden maps.

  She’d spent a restless night and a restless morning trying to put the image of Jack out of her mind without success. The guards placed around the house had told her the negotiations started today.

  Jack would be there by now, seated at the long table with other men, Calisto Ortiz across from him just a few feet away, close enough to strike with a dagger if Ortiz didn’t mind the publicity. Why should he if he had immunity and the argument of honour on his side? Not that it was any better assuming Ortiz would refrain from a public spilling of blood. Covert activity was far worse, where even the simplest cup of tea became a weapon in an expert’s hands. One sip and Jack would be gone, taken from her, sacrificed for her, just when she’d discovered she loved him.

  She loved Jack. The realisation was so fresh, so new, she hardly knew what to make of it. But she did know where to start and that was with the question: Did she dare give in to it? She wasn’t exactly sure she had a choice. Could you control whom you loved? But assuming she did have a choice, Dulci wasn’t sure she could afford to love Jack. In the end, it might cost more of herself than she was willing to give. She would not tolerate living on the periphery of his world, even if that was the only way she could have him.

  There were terrible consequences to loving Jack, she was beginning to realise with a new level of clarity. He might die. She might have to give him up and not act on her affections for the sake of saving her own soul. Either way, she’d be left alone with her love—alone and apart from Jack.

  Dulci’s pen slipped, smearing ink on the care fully written card. At this rate she wouldn’t get any work done. Dulci flopped down into an old wicker chair that had been left or forgot when the green house had been abandoned. A little cloud of dust puffed up from the faded cushions and she sneezed. Damn. She allowed herself the luxury of swearing. Would nothing go right today? Even the simple act of sitting down irritated her.

  It was all Jack’s fault. She’d never asked him to protect her, never asked him to stand between her and Calisto Ortiz. He did not owe her anything. But he’d stood her champion none the less and it had complicated things immensely. The thought she didn’t want to think surfaced, unable to be contained by denial and anger—why had Jack done it? Had he done it out of fraternal affection for Brandon? Because Brandon would want him to protect her in his absence? Or maybe this wasn’t about Brandon at all, but because there was something more between the two of them? Was it possible that he might reciprocate the intensity of feeling she carried towards him?

  Dulci picked at a loose seam on the pillow. She wondered if it had ever been just sex for her, no matter what logical justifications she applied. That day in the artefact room, she’d trusted Jack with her body and he’d not let her down. Even now, he was protecting her body with his distance, his bodyguards, his attempt to direct Ortiz away from her. Jack had never pre tended to offer more than a few nights of unconditional pleasure.

  Yet if she knew one thing about men, it was that they protected what they loved. Was it possible that, against the odds, Jack had fallen in love with her? Had he slipped into it just as she had? If so, what did they do now? Anything? Nothing? Was it possible to be in love and do nothing? Someone would have to be brave enough to make the first move, declare their feelings and weather whatever storm came.

  ‘Lady Dulcinea!’ One of the bodyguards burst into the green house, the door banging behind him. ‘There’s news from the negotiations.’ Ah, even love would have to give way in the wake of the empire’s needs. Jack wasn’t even here and she was being interrupted, her thoughts called away from their feminine daydreams to Jack’s world.

  The man was breath less and the look on his face was not one of excitement. ‘What has happened?’ Dulci’s anxiety rose.

  ‘Viscount Wainsbridge has been accused of framing Señor Ortiz in regard to presenting a forged map of boundaries.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Dulci said in consternation. The in credible claim was wildly untrue; a bigger lie she could not imagine, especially when the exact opposite was true. ‘Who accuses him of such a thing?’ She was on her feet, pacing. She had to do something, take some action. Jack would need her.

  ‘Señor Ortiz himself.’

  Ah, like the witch trials of old where only the afflicted was able to bear testimony against the accused. A cold thought indeed.

  Calisto Ortiz was inordinately pleased with himself. This plan had hatched itself flawlessly. The negotiations had opened and the British had asked he be excused from the negotiations. They had concerns about his ‘objectivity’, that he was associated with the murder of an importer who’d carried cargo from Venezuela and had been in possession of a certain map. That map had fallen into the hands of a British citizen and been the source of an attempted burglary of the citizen’s home. Since the map was a forgery, it appeared Señor Ortiz had a hidden agenda to swindle land from the British government. It would be best to excuse him due to a conflict of interest.

  It had been nicely said, but Vargas had clearly understood the message. The old diplomat had sputtered, voicing embarrassed protests to save face. Then he’d jumped in, adding to Vargas’s protests. He’d merely said, ‘I’ve been set up by Viscount Wainsbridge, who is in possession of the map and who has a personal grudge against me over a woman. It seems to me that if I were trying to pass off a map I would have the map in my possession. Yet it is Wainsbridge who “found” the map, not in my quarters, I might add. In fact, not once has the map been in my possession since arriving on English soil.’

  His claims were audacious, but the bigger the lie, the more easily believed. He didn’t have to have anyone believe him. He needed only to cast enough doubt to cloud the discussion. He watched Gladstone spear Wainsbridge with a look of disgust. Ah, good, a potential ally then. Wainsbridge showed no
emotion, managing to look cool, as if people levelled charges of this magnitude against him daily. For all Ortiz knew, maybe they did.

  Señor Vargas turned to Ortiz. ‘You swear this is the truth?’

  Vargas was so damned honourable he couldn’t conceive of dishonour in anyone. Ortiz stifled a smile and manufactured a look of chagrin. He laid his next layer of argument, the layer meant to distract and confuse. ‘I swear this is the truth. I would encourage you, señor, to ask yourself why would Britain want to put a forgery into play that shows them losing land? It is to start a war.’ There was a general outcry at the table. Ortiz raised a hand for silence.

  ‘I posit Britain wants to use the false map as a chance to whip up public support for a war in which Britain is fighting to take back what Venezuela has “cheated” them out of. It would be no difficult feat for Britain, an empire with an enormous army at its disposal, to defeat Venezuela and in the end grab more land. These talks are merely a prelude to war. We’ve been called here to be straw men. These talks mean nothing. Britain is using them for a larger, more sinister purpose and Viscount Wainsbridge is at the heart of it.’

  So this was how it was going to happen. Not with a knife in the alley or poison in the tea, at least not yet. Jack watched Ortiz spin his case with steely eyes. There would be discrediting first, the maligning of a reputation, the casting of doubt until people might believe with enough certainty that he’d commit suicide over the shame of it. Of course, it wouldn’t truly be a suicide. That would be when Ortiz would arrange a violent end and his body would float up from the Thames a few days later. People would whisper knowingly behind their fans that he’d had no choice really, disgraced as he was, and what could be expected when one came from such lowly antecedents, a squire’s son after all?

  The difficulty came in making his case. He could not say Britain had advance warning that a map might exist without exposing the intelligence network that had brought the news. He could not say Ortiz had gone to the warehouse without exposing that he’d followed Ortiz and spied on him. There was only one piece of evidence he could legitimately draw on.

  Jack steepled his hands. ‘Your claims are outrageous. There is no interest in starting a war with Venezuela. Your scenario is intriguing, but it does not account for the testimony we have from the one burglar who says he was paid, by you, Señor Ortiz, to retrieve a map from Lady Dulcinea’s residence.’

  Ortiz shook his head sadly. ‘That was poor judgement on my part. I was so distraught over the news of such a map and Señor Vasquez’s death. I had just heard and I was desperate to preserve my reputation. I acted hastily and foolishly. I thought if I could get the map, I could destroy it and none of this nastiness would materialise.’

  ‘How did you know the map would be at Lady Dulcinea’s?’ The question seemed to flummox Ortiz for a moment before his eyes narrowed and his mouth quirked into a smirk.

  ‘Perhaps I should ask you the same? How did you happen to be there?’

  ‘You’ve been suspected from the start,’ Jack growled, his anger overriding his sang-froid.

  ‘Lying in wait for me? No doubt it’s because you knew I’d come, that I’d have no choice in order to save my reputation.’ Ortiz rose from his seat, his hands braced on the table. ‘You’ve had me framed from the start, since the first night you tried to make a fool of me at the ball, all because Lady Dulcinea was taken with me, and not you.’

  Gladstone coughed furiously at the far end of the table.

  ‘I prefer to have Lady Dulcinea, who is nothing but an innocent by stander in this, left out of the discussion.’ Jack rose to meet Ortiz across the table, all his instincts firing: protect, protect, protect. Protect Dulci. Protect the crown.

  Gladstone rose and cleared his throat. ‘Gentleman, there must be a suitable resolution to this misunderstanding. Let us take a brief recess to sort this out. Wainsbridge, a word, please?’

  Jack shut the door of a small blue salon behind him. The place was quiet and private, a chance to talk. ‘The man is talking nonsense,’ Jack declared the moment they were alone.

  ‘Is he? How do we prove that?’ Gladstone shook his head and paced the floor. ‘Can we produce the map?’

  ‘Yes, I can get it,’ Jack said evasively. If Gladstone did not leap to his defence, then Gladstone could not be trusted. The man should have done more for him back there besides cough in disbelief. ‘What good will that do? It will only prove I am in possession of a map that contains boundaries unlike the ones on the Humboldt map.’

  ‘Hmm. That would only make you look guiltier, I suppose.’ Gladstone stopped to fiddle with the top on a crystal decanter. ‘Wainsbridge, did you plant the map? It would have been ingenious. You hear the king and I mention the potential for the map’s existence and then you decide to make that potential reality.’

  Jack whirled on Gladstone incredulously. ‘You heard the king, he said he needed me to stop a war, not start one.’

  Gladstone shrugged. ‘There’s more glory in war than in peace, Jack, and you’re a man who hungers for adventure.’

  ‘I did not plant the map. Everything happened as our intelligence said—the map was hidden in Vasquez’s cargo. It was a stroke of luck that Dulci happened to have it. Otherwise, the cargo would have disappeared into London.’

  Gladstone nodded, cringing a bit at his easy use of Dulci’s first name. ‘You under stand I had to ask.’

  Jack met his gaze evenly. ‘I under stand that you’re willing to sacrifice me for the sake of these negotiations.’ He saw what Gladstone wanted. Gladstone wanted him to grace fully bow out of the negotiations, but that wouldn’t stop the rumours circulating as to why he’d left. Such a gesture wouldn’t stop Ortiz’s tongue from wagging. Worst of all, if he bowed out, then Ortiz would be entirely vindicated while he would be all but ruined, the banner of scandal firmly affixed above his head for the rest of his life: the man who tried to start a war with a lie.

  ‘I won’t do it, Gladstone.’ He had worked too hard to lose it all like this. It was one thing to want to give it up. It was another to be stripped of it in shame. What would Dulci think of him? He could not stand to lose her so soon after realising what she meant to him. But he’d rather give her up to protect her from his scandal than drag her down with him.

  Gladstone moved towards the door, his hand hovering over the knob. ‘There are a lot of ways to serve your country, Wainsbridge. Consider this yours.’

  ‘No,’ Jack said defiantly. ‘I will go to the king. I will prove the map is a fraud, drawn up at the behest of Calisto Ortiz.’

  Gladstone gave a hoarse laugh. ‘How will you do that? You’d have to go all the way to Guiana. You’d have to find the map-maker and wring a confession from him. You’d have to sail down the river and prove its course runs counter to the drawing.’

  ‘Then that is what I’ll do,’ Jack said with grim determination. Hercules had his twelve labours, Jack had his.

  Chapter Twelve

  A more regal king would have sided with Gladstone and, with a show of great reluctance, washed his hands of Jack Hanley, the first Viscount Wainsbridge, a man of no account when compared to the generations of service provided by Gladstone’s family. There was no one, no great family or genealogical history to offend by doing so. But William IV was of a more plebian mind. He defined his rule by his support of reform, by lessening the gap between the entitlements of gentlemen and the entitlements of the common man. As such, he felt it unnecessary to sacrifice Jack for the good of the order.

  William fixed his gaze on the two men sitting before him shortly after midnight. ‘This is unbecoming of you, Gladstone. I am disappointed you have not championed Wainsbridge publicly. The Venezuelans must not suspect we can be so easily divided and conquered. If they think we will break ranks over this, they may think we are easily manipulated on other issues as well.’

  ‘I had to be sure of Wainsbridge’s actions, your Majesty.’ Gladstone went red in the face.

  William offered him a
look of disbelief. ‘An Englishman does not need to doubt another Englishman. What was there to be sure of? We do not make a practice of disgracing viscounts. By disgracing Wainsbridge, you disgrace me and my good judgement.’

  Jack disliked having to involve the king, but when faced with utter ruination, he needed an advocate. Left to Gladstone’s mercy, he’d have ended up under house arrest and no recourse. It was a petty victory to see Gladstone red as a rooster, but a victory none the less and Jack would take it.

  ‘Your Majesty, I appreciate your support,’ Jack began humbly. ‘However, there is still the issue of the map. It is not an accurate representation of land ownership on the border. Until a definite, first-hand study of the border can be made, my greater fear is that this map is only the first. We make our selves weak if we haven’t the proof to defend our selves. Venezuela will come again. There will be others like Ortiz, even if we scotch this particular effort. Humboldt’s map is only a suggestion. He did not explore the Essequibo region.’

  William looked thoughtful, a hand caressing his soft double chin in contemplation. ‘I see your point. Undefended borders have historically been problems for all empires. What do you suggest, Wainsbridge?’

  Jack leaned forwards in his excitement, careful with his words. ‘I suggest we map the area immediately.’

  ‘And who should do the mapping? Do you have anyone in mind?’ A glimmer of a smile played on William’s lips as if he under stood the direction of Jack’s thoughts.

  ‘Robert Schomburgk, with whom I worked on the Anegada exploration, is already over there, but I would willingly offer myself to work in tandem with him, although I would gladly do it alone if he is too busy. This must be done in a timely fashion.’