Darkness was falling and, needing light, Marcus lit a pair of candles and set them on the desk on either side of the garment. Forcing himself to act calmly, in the dancing light he slowly examined the fine woolen garment. It took him several minutes, but eventually his fingers touched a section of the coat that didn’t feel right. There was no way that Whitley’s hiding place would have been accidentally discovered and Marcus gave him credit for being clever. If he hadn’t known the coat had to hide the memorandum, he’d never have found it. Only by carefully running his fingers over the welting in the lapels and noticing that one side was a trifle thicker and a bit more rigid than the other did he find the memorandum.
With a knife, he carefully slit the expertly sewn seam and his breathing quickened when his fingers touched a narrow cylinder of oilcloth. Getting it free of the coat, he brought it closer to one of the candles and almost reverently unrolled it. Inside were several tightly rolled sheets of paper, and as he read them, he realized how damaging to the British troops it would be if this information fell into the hands of the French.
His expression bleak, his jaw rigid, he stared at the memorandum in his hands. The ransom note had made no mention of the missing memorandum, but the moment his eyes had fallen upon the demand for Whitley’s greatcoat in exchange for Isabel, Marcus had known precisely what Isabel’s captors had been after. He cursed himself roundly for not realizing days ago that the very thing they searched for had been hanging in his barn office all the time.
His gaze fixed on the papers he held in his hand, he slumped down in a chair behind his desk, terror and despair tearing through him like cannon fire. How can I, he wondered dully, not save the woman I love more than life? But how many lives may be lost if I hand this over to them? Am I not a traitor if I give them what they demand? His heart twisted in searing anguish. He could not imagine a life without Isabel at his side, could not imagine allowing her to die when he had the ability to save her, yet how could he live knowing he may have gained her safety at the cost of how many lives of good, loyal Englishmen?
He took a deep breath. The possibility of changing Wellesley’s plans had already been mentioned; didn’t that make the memorandum before him useless to the French? Couldn’t he with a clear conscience hand the memorandum over to Isabel’s abductors and get his wife safely back in his arms? For a brief moment he considered it, but he knew it wasn’t that simple.
Marcus wasn’t a military tactician, but he understood how vital the landing in Portugal would be for Britain and her allies. Yes, other ports, other sites could be used, but Portugal might be the key to unlocking Napoleon’s throttle hold on the continent and he held in his hands the document that could allow those plans—plans that had been in the works for weeks, months—to go forward. If those plans were changed, there was no telling how much more difficult, how many more lives would be lost because of it.
Marcus groaned and buried his head in his hands. His choice was simple. Save his wife. Or betray his country.
Chapter 17
For several minutes Marcus let black scalding despair wash over him at the terrible choice before him, but then he straightened suddenly and his gaze narrowed as he looked at the memorandum before him. He studied the document intently for several minutes, his fingers rubbing the edges of the paper. A desperate idea occurred to him and, swiftly rerolling the memorandum and placing it once more in its waterproofing oilskin, he stuffed it back into Whitley’s greatcoat.
Blowing out the candles, with Whitley’s greatcoat slung carelessly over his shoulder, he strode from his office in the stable toward the house. He didn’t have a lot of time. The meeting was set for midnight and he had a great deal of tedious work to do before then.
I’m going to beat the bastards at their own game, he thought fiercely, and I am going to get my wife back!
Intent upon his own thoughts, Marcus was oblivious to his surroundings, and the notion that he might be watched never crossed his mind. Even if it had, it is unlikely he’d have spotted the watcher hidden amongst the shrubs and trees that were scattered charmingly throughout the area, but the watcher had him firmly in his sights. As Marcus walked swiftly down the broad avenue that led to the main house, the watcher kept pace with him, gliding invisibly through the glorious gardens and parklands tended so assiduously by the head gardener and his staff. Once Marcus entered the big double doors at the front of the house, the watcher slipped around the side of the house, determined not to lose track of Whitley’s greatcoat. He’d considered attacking Marcus and taking the greatcoat from him right then, but after eyeing the strong build of the man walking toward the house, decided in favor of prudence.
Inside the house, Marcus went directly to his office, locking the door behind him. Thompson had already seen to it that the brass candelabra on either side of the fireplace had been lit and a small fire glowed on the hearth so the room was not in darkness, but Marcus lit a few more candles on his desk. Putting down the greatcoat and taking the memorandum from its hiding place once more, he carefully unrolled and considered it again at length. He was pleased to see that his first impression had been right. The paper the memorandum had been written on was nothing out of the ordinary and he’d wager a sack full of gold guineas that he had paper of a similar nature right in his desk drawer.
The paper had been his main obstacle and, convinced his rash plan would work, he sat down behind his desk and, after rummaging around his desk drawers, found precisely what he was looking for: several pages of paper. Paper that was nearly identical to those that the plans for Wellesley’s invasion of Portugal had been written on. Checking his quill and ink bottle, he began the laborious task of copying the memorandum word for word, except for the locations and dates and the number of ships and troops—those he changed to whatever whim took him.
There was one fatal flaw in his plan and he was chillingly aware of it. If the ransom had come from Whitley and it was Whitley he was meeting to exchange the memorandum for Isabel, Whitley had to know the contents of the memorandum and would know the one Marcus handed him was a fake. But Marcus was taking the desperate gamble that Whitley had nothing to do with Isabel’s abduction and that her captor had no idea what was in the real document.
The ransom note had given him no clue as to its author. Again, he didn’t believe that it was Whitley. Whitley was a coward—look at his fumbling attempts to regain his greatcoat—and while abducting an unarmed woman wasn’t the act of a brave man, it did entail a certain amount of verve and boldness, traits that Whitley had never displayed. And then there was Whitley’s disappearance. It was possible the disappearance was all smoke to hide Whitley’s real actions, but Marcus rather thought not. The most likely reason for Whitley’s sudden and inexplicable disappearance was because he was dead. Whether by accident, and the body not yet discovered, or murdered by an as-yet-unknown party, remained to be seen. Instinct told Marcus that whoever had engineered Isabel’s abduction was new on the scene and was behind Whitley’s disappearance. He was, he admitted brutally, gambling on a new set of players. Players that would never realize that they had been duped until it was too late.
The simplest explanation for this latest development was that this newcomer, or newcomers, had captured Whitley and, by ways he didn’t care to think about, compelled him to tell them about the memorandum. Whitley was certainly dead; Marcus could not imagine him giving up the information about the memorandum easily. He paused for a moment, remembering that Whitley had given up the gold locket... . He shook his head. But the locket had not been the sure thing the memorandum was. Whitley’s threats to Isabel had been nearly all bluff and he had little to lose by giving it up. But the memorandum ...
His gaze dropped to the papers in front of him. The French would pay a king’s ransom to get their hands on this information and Whitley knew it: he would not have given it up. Marcus was convinced that Whitley had to be dead and that he had died at the hands of whoever now held Isabel. That Isabel was in the hands of someone ruthles
s enough to torture and murder filled him with dread and rage. Unconsciously, his hand clenched into a fist and he was aware that where his wife and her safety was concerned, he was quite capable of murder himself.
Reminding himself harshly that before he could take vengeance there was work to be done, he returned once more to copying the memorandum. Some time later, the chiming of the clock on the mantel jerked him from his task and he stared down, surprised at the duplicate document he had created. To the untrained eye it looked real enough; thank God he hadn’t had to deal with seals or engravings. It had been the fact that the paper itself was of a common type and had not been altered in any way that had allowed him to take this desperate gamble. As for the contents themselves, some nameless clerk in the offices of the Horse Guards had written the original and, beyond a set of initials at the bottom of the last page, there weren’t even signatures to worry over. Which was just as well, Marcus thought, since until this moment he’d never had reason to try his hand at forgery. But critically comparing the two sets of papers, he decided that his first attempt at forgery, and pray God his last, would do—provided Whitley hadn’t given Isabel’s abductors some idea what was in the document and that Whitley wasn’t still alive and able to denounce the false memorandum. There were many things that could go wrong, but Marcus had his mind firmly closed against anything but success. He had to get Isabel back. Anything else was unthinkable.
Cloaked by the darkness outside, the watcher shifted slightly in his position behind an impressive clump of lilacs. He had a clear view of the interior of Marcus’s office and, as night had deepened, the illumination from the candles had lit up the room like a stage. With great interest he had watched Marcus’s actions and had smiled to himself when he realized what Marcus was about.
Inside the house, the document complete, Marcus carefully creased and folded it into the shape and size of the original. He undid it and refolded it several times so that the creases lost their sharp, crisp look and more resembled that of the true memorandum. When he was satisfied with his work, he fitted the forged document with all its false information back into the oilcloth and then the oilcloth into the seam in Whitley’s greatcoat.
Rising from his chair, the original memorandum in his hand, he walked across the room to the far wall and moved a large gilt framed picture of Tempest that he’d commissioned from George Stubbs more than a decade ago when he had first bought the horse. Behind the portrait of the stallion was a safe and, after opening it, Marcus placed the real memorandum in it.
Unaware that his every movement had been observed, Marcus wearily sat back down behind his desk. Even though he had created a passable forgery, the slashing claws of the demon in his chest had not abated and he could not even find solace in the knowledge that at least he had a plan to save his wife and foil the enemies who sought to harm England. His iron control cracked and he buried his head in his hands, doubt strangling him. There was so much that could go wrong and he had no reason to believe that he could actually trust the person who had sent him the ransom demand.
Isabel, he realized bleakly, could already be dead. A low, primitive moan of anguish rose up from deep inside him. He could not bear to even think such thoughts. I never even told her I love her... . She had to be alive. She had to be.
Isabel was very much alive and she had spent the intervening hours swinging between pure fury and frank terror. She fought stubbornly against the despair and fear that battered her, but it was no easy battle and occasionally her defenses were breached and wretched despair won—but only for a while. Anger kept some of the fear at bay, but she couldn’t entirely squelch the occasional flash of panic at the thought of what would happen to her when her captors came back. Equally terrifying was the possibility that her captors would never return to free her and that, for some unknown reason, she had been left here to die.
Despite her fears and terror, she was not idle and, once she was convinced that she was well and truly alone, she struggled to free herself. She wasted time and energy fighting against the bonds that held her before admitting bitterly that she was unlikely to escape from the ropes that held her fast; her captors had tied her well. Undaunted, she tried another tack and, sliding off the chair onto the floor, she tried rubbing the gag and the blindfold against the rough, wooden surface of the chair, hoping to loosen or remove one of them, but to no avail. Forcing back tears of frustration and anger, panting from her efforts, she finally lay on the floor and considered her next move. Her hands were tied behind her back with a length of rope running from them down to her ankles where her feet had been tied together. She couldn’t walk and she couldn’t get her hands in front of her where she could remove the gag and the blindfold. For a moment despair claimed her.
Exhausted from struggling, she lay there on the floor and fought the bleak emotions that crowded through her. She could not escape, at least not at the moment, and having swallowed that unpalatable fact, she cast about for a reason for her predicament. Understanding why she had been captured might give her something to fight with—if her captors returned.
Abductions, highwaymen, and footpads were uncommon, almost unheard of in this area, yet in broad daylight two men had brazenly abducted her in the middle of Lord Manning’s lands. There had been nothing about either man that gave her a clue to their identity, although from his speech she had concluded that one of them spoke like a gentleman. The other man had clearly been of a rougher sort, but beyond that she could not describe either man.
But why, she wondered, why did they abduct me? Her abduction was like something one would read in a novel from the Minerva Press: things like this didn’t happen to women like her. She was a respectable woman, a member of the gentry, her life mundane and predictable ... until Whitley had appeared. Behind the blindfold her eyes narrowed. That bastard!
Impatiently, she struggled into a sitting position and half leaned against the wall of the hut. It wasn’t comfortable, but she felt less helpless than simply lying like a trussed hen on the ground.
Frowning, she reasoned that Whitley had to be behind her abduction. Could this all be tied somehow to her days in India? Was it connected to Edmund? Panic flooded through her. She took a deep breath, fighting back a flood of fright. No. It could have nothing to do with India or Edmund. Marcus had seen to that. All evidence had been destroyed. And Whitley, she reminded herself uneasily, had disappeared, and while she could not identify her captors, she knew that neither one of them had been Whitley. She bit her lip. He might not have been one of the men who abducted her, but Whitley was involved somehow—of that she was convinced.
She wasted several minutes in wild speculation, before coming back to the one thing she was convinced was true: this went back to Whitley. And if it was not connected to India and Edmund, then what? It had to have been something that occurred here in England. Something recent ...
Her brow furrowed, she considered the problem. Whitley had retired from the military. That was recent, but she could make no connection with his retirement and her situation. Something occurred to her and she sat up a little straighter. Whitley wasn’t the only newcomer to the neighborhood who had recently retired from the military. Jack Landrey, Lord Thorne, Marcus’s cousin, had also retired from the military not too long ago... . Her breath caught. And then there was the mysterious meeting the other night between Marcus, Jack, and Garrett—a meeting whose purpose Marcus would not tell her. Could that meeting have had something to do with Whitley? Was that the common denominator? She nodded slowly. It had to be. Nothing else made any sense. There was something that tied Whitley to her abduction ... and whatever Marcus would not tell her about his meeting with Jack and Garrett.
It was thin, she admitted wryly, but she didn’t dismiss it as she had several of her other more outrageous ideas. But even if she was right in her deductions, and she wasn’t entirely convinced that she was, it didn’t change her circumstances: she was still bound, gagged, blindfolded, and held captive and she knew not why.
> Like a viper unwinding from behind a rock, it occurred to her that she could be in grave danger and that her life could be at stake. If she was being held simply for ransom, what if something went wrong? What if her captors had never had any intention of exchanging her for whatever it was they wanted so desperately? Again the ugly question crossed her mind: what if she had been left here to die? Stonily, she considered the knowledge that she might not survive this ordeal, that she might never see her husband or her son again.
Isabel flinched, recoiling from the very notion of never seeing Marcus or Edmund again. Choking terror reigned for a moment, but once again she fought it back and forced herself to believe that all would end well. She would not allow fear and hopelessness to beat her. She would survive this. She must! She had too much to live for, and she thought of those gray-eyed, black-haired little boys and girls she’d been dreaming of before her abduction, and Edmund, and most of all Marcus... . Yes. She had every reason to live.
Stiffening her resolve, she tried to calculate how many hours had passed since she had first been taken captive. It seemed like an eternity since she had been dumped here and her captors had left, and while an eternity might not have passed, she knew it had been a very long time. Blindfolded, she had no sense of the passing time, but she’d been aware for some time that the air felt cooler and she was certain that darkness had fallen. Someone would have realized hours ago that something had happened to her. If her captors had turned her horse loose, and she suspected that they had, eventually the mare would have ambled home. The alarm would have been raised. People, Marcus, would be looking for her.
Surrender Becomes Her Page 29