by Лорен Уиллиг
Penelope’s jaw clenched. If Wellesley didn’t flay Alex’s little brother, she might just do it for him.
“Down?” mouthed Penelope, pointing at the hatch.
It was quite a sophisticated little hidey-hole. Rather than a simple ladder, stone stairs jutted downwards, roughly hewn, but sturdy for all that.
Putting up a hand to counsel caution, Alex dropped to his belly, pulling himself forward against the stone of the temple floor. Following his example, Penelope did likewise. Propelling oneself by one’s elbows was harder than it looked. Her muscles ached as Penelope dragged herself painstakingly forward, wincing every time the material of her dress rasped against the stone flags.
After what seemed an age, she drew abreast with Alex, and peered over the edge of the cavity, down the stone steps. Something glittered darkly at the bottom, like the carapace of a bug. Shiny. Metallic. It took Penelope a moment to realize that it was guns. Pile upon pile upon pile of guns. All the guns the Nizam had been promised. The guns she had accused Alex of stealing. The guns that the commander of the Subsidiary Force swore he had purchased, but had never arrived. Guns enough to arm a rebellion.
Among the jumbled piles of weaponry stood a man. He stooped over to inspect the pile nearest him, unwittingly leaving his back unguarded. Whoever he was, it was clear that his usual role must not be a particularly martial one. His shoulders angled forward in the habitual slouch that came of too many hours at a desk. His head was uncovered, his hat in his hand, a nicety usually wasted on criminal dens, but habitual to him.
Penelope, who had thought she had seen all there was to see, forgot herself so far as to gape in frank astonishment. She forgot that she was lying on her stomach. She barely registered Alex’s bug-eyed confusion. She simply stared, mouth open, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
The man didn’t need to turn around for Penelope to know him, but turn around he did. He seemed as nonplussed at the sight of them as they were by him.
“Alex?” the man gasped.
To which Alex mustered an incredulous “Cleave?”
Chapter Thirty
“What?” demanded Penelope, but no one paid any attention.
Alex swung to his feet.
“Cleave?” he repeated incredulously, staring down through the hole at an angle that gave Penelope a pain in her neck just watching it. “What are you doing here?”
Without a word to her, he started off down the stairs, leaving Penelope standing there, behind. Rolling her eyes at his back, Penelope scrambled after him, looping the skirt of her riding habit over one arm to get it out of the way. In the other hand, she had firm hold of her pistol. Alex might be willing to go clambering down barehanded into a potential den of thieves, but she wasn’t that trusting. Or that naïve.
But the man at the bottom of the stairs didn’t make any move for a weapon. It was Daniel Cleave, standing beside a lantern balanced on a packing crate. Rather than a hardened criminal, he looked like a fifth former caught smuggling sweets from the headmaster’s study. He looked quite as startled to see Alex as Alex had been to see him.
There was no one else in the long, low room.
“Alex?” he echoed, although Penelope would have thought that they had more than adequately established who everyone was. The two men had only known each for twenty-odd years, after all. “I thought you were in custody.”
“I would have been. Had I made it back to the Residency.” Alex’s face was completely unreadable in the uneven lamplight.
Taking a step back, Cleave gestured ineffectually around the piles of munitions that filled the long, rectangular chamber. “Quite a sight, this.”
“Indeed,” contributed Penelope.
Cleave’s gaze darted in her direction. “Lady Frederick?”
Oh no. They weren’t starting all that again. With an impatient gesture, Penelope said, “I know who you are and you know who he is, but what in the devil” — it felt good to curse, so she decided to repeat it — “what in the devil is all this?”
Cleave looked at her with shocked rabbit eyes. Treachery was one thing, profanity quite another.
“These are guns,” Alex said softly. “Guns that were meant to be delivered to the Nizam. Aren’t they, Daniel?”
“Wellesley will be pleased at this, at least.” Cleave rubbed a hand across his forehead as though it pained him. “The missing guns could have been something of a bother diplomatically.”
“More than a bother if they fell into the wrong hands,” said Alex thoughtfully. “How did you know to find them here?”
“A tip,” said Cleave vaguely, before Alex’s meaning caught up with him. “You can’t think — you don’t think . . .”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Alex frankly. “I heard the Marigold was meeting here tonight with a local contact.”
“So did I. What are you doing here?” challenged his old school-mate. “Did Jack — ”
“No.”
“Dash it all, Alex — ,” began Cleave, and then blushed as he remembered Penelope’s presence.
“Don’t mind me,” said Penelope with a wave of one hand. “I’ll just amuse myself playing with the weaponry.”
Alex’s lip curled.
Cleave looked alarmed.
“They, er, they might be loaded,” he said hesitantly. “Not that I would know. I just got here, you see.”
A man could stutter and stutter and still be a villain. He could
blush at a curse and still be a traitor. But was Daniel Cleave? He did seem to be exuding guilt the way a rose did fragrance, but he always exuded guilt, as though he felt it necessary to apologize to the world for his very existence.
“I received some intelligence,” he said, with more confidence this time, raising his head to look Alex in the eye. “I heard a report that Jack — ”
Alex made a swift, instinctive move of negation.
Cleave winced, but he refused to back down. “It’s no use, Alex,” he said apologetically. “You can’t go on protecting Jack from the consequences of his own actions. I can make sure that you’re not implicated, but . . .”
“How do you know I’m not?” said Alex tautly. “You can’t have a rotten apple without tainting the whole bushel.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Penelope crossly. “Yes, you can. None of us are responsible for our family members.”
Alex looked at her sideways. “Or spouses?” he said softly, so softly that Cleave didn’t even hear it.
“Whatever the case, you’re about as likely to commit treason as . . . as Queen Charlotte,” Penelope blustered.
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Queen Charlotte?”
“Little. Royal. German,” said Penelope. “I’m sure you’ve heard of her.”
“Well said, Lady Frederick,” said Cleave heartily, tugging at his cravat with nervous fingers. “And now I suggest that we report back to the Residency. This is no place for a lady.”
Penelope folded her arms across her chest. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not much of a lady, isn’t it?”
“Even so,” said Alex.
Even so? What sort of a phrase was “even so”? The sort of phrase that said absolutely nothing, that was what it was.
Alex compounded his foolishness by adding, “Cleave can show you back. I’ll wait here.”
Penelope didn’t budge. “And leave you to the mercies of goodness only knows how many French spies? I think not.”
“They’re named after flowers. How frightening can they be?”
“Very,” interjected Cleave, but no one paid the least bit of attention to him.
“If you face them, I face them,” said Penelope, knowing she was talking about far more than French spies. “Mr. Cleave can go.”
“And leave you unchaperoned?” Earnestly, Mr. Cleave said, “No, I couldn’t do that. I’ll stay, Lady Frederick. Reid can escort you back.”
“I’m a widow. I don’t need chaperonage,” snapped Penelope. “And I fail to see why I shou
ld be any safer from Captain Reid’s advances on a dark road than I would be in this room. Unless you intend to suggest that there are hitherto unrecognized amorous properties to the presence of large quantities of gunpowder?”
“I didn’t mean — ,” Mr. Cleave began, but whatever he had meant or hadn’t meant was lost in the horrifying sound of footfalls overhead.
Without saying a word, Alex grabbed Penelope by the arm and hauled her back into the lee of the stairs. It was really quite impressive. One moment she was standing at the foot of the stairs, the next she was jammed against Alex’s side in an impromptu alcove created by a keg of musket balls on one side and the stone side of the stairs on the other.
Cleave made a move to extinguish the lantern, but he was too slow. A pair of scuffed boots appeared on the stairs. They seemed too small to support the girth of the man who followed them. It was a belly that wobbled its way down into view, a massive belly, buttoned into, but not contained by, a blue wool coat with tarnished brass buttons. The coat might once have been of some military order, but now was barely clinging to its usefulness. Beneath the straining wool, the man’s legs looked absurdly skinny, rather like a chicken’s, if chickens wore boots.
The rest of him did little to counter that impression. An impressive wattle fell over his neck cloth, the fifth of several chins, and the remaining reddish hair on his head had been combed straight up in a futile attempt to disguise its thinning, like the crest of a rooster.
“Guignon,” Alex mouthed, his face so close to hers that Penelope could feel his breath on her lips.
Penelope inclined her head to show that she had understood, angling her face away in a desperate bid at self-preservation. She was sure the signs of heightened awareness must be written all over her face, in the color in her cheeks, the quickening of her breath, the odd tingling of her lips, as though that accidental exhalation had been the prelude to a kiss. She had kissed him too many times in the past. She knew exactly how it felt and her treacherous body was intent on reminding her. Penelope found herself painfully aware of Alex’s arm clamped tightly around her waist. Admittedly, his arm was only there as a means of keeping her pressed back out of sight, but her body wasn’t interested in insignificant details. It just registered arm. Alex’s arm.
What was it that Charlotte had said? That she could never do anything in the normal course? Naturally. That would be why her body decided that being cornered by a French spy — a French spy who could probably squish them both in one go just by sitting on them — was an excellent time to contemplate a little bit of light dalliance.
The Frenchman clumped his way down to the bottom of the flight. Spotting Cleave, he raised a hand in a genial greeting. “Ah, you are here. Good. I hate the waiting, me.”
Next to her, Penelope could feel Alex stiffen into complete immobility as his eyes narrowed on his old schoolfellow.
Cleave’s eyes slid sideways towards the corner in which Penelope and Alex were hiding. “I think we should go upstairs. The air in here. Close, you know.” Cleave tugged at his collar in illustration. He did, indeed, seem to be feeling the heat.
“You do not want to check the inventory?” Guignon lumbered down the last few steps. His belly wobbled like a bowl of blanc mange as he indulged in a hearty chuckle. “I should not be so trusting, me.”
Sound sense on the Frenchman’s part, thought Penelope. Trusting often got one in trouble, as she could tell from the stunned expression on Alex’s face as he stared at his childhood playmate. Bewilderment warred with disbelief on Alex’s countenance as Guignon dealt Cleave a hearty slap on the back that sent the younger man staggering forward. Penelope found herself wanting to squeeze his hand, to touch his cheek, to offer some small gesture of comfort, whatever it might be. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and drag his head down into the crook of her shoulder and promise him that at least she was always what she was, no matter how the rest of the world dissembled and betrayed him. But she couldn’t. They were mewed in their corner like mice in a hole. Any movement might be fatal.
There was still always the chance that Cleave was what he claimed; that it was Guignon he had lured to the cavern under false pretenses; that he had lied to the Frenchman, and not to them. Penelope found herself hoping, for Alex’s sake, that it would be so.
Lord, she must be going soft in her old age. Much more of this and she’d find herself thinking like Charlotte, all hearts and stars and fluffy bunnies.
“It all seems to be accounted for,” said Cleave stiffly, making a doomed attempt to herd the Frenchman back towards the stairs. “As you promised.”
Guignon bumped Cleave out of the way with one casual wiggle, making an expansive gesture that encompassed the pile upon pile upon pile of munitions stacked against the stone walls. “An impressive sight, non ? Musket, powder . . . Par dieu! Who are they?”
“No one,” Cleave said hastily. “No one at all.”
Penelope did her best to look like a musket. Alex seemed to be doing a bit better with his stone pillar impression, but it was still not enough.
“You cannot fool me so easily,” said Guignon. “That ” — he nodded to Alex — “is not a keg of powder. And that ” — his gaze traveled appre ciatively over Penelope — “is most certainly not — ”
Penelope rose smoothly to her feet. “A loaded gun?” she said sweetly, training hers on his midsection. It was the largest target in the room, after all. As an extra precaution, she added chillingly, “All of the others are empty. I can shoot you long before you load.”
Guignon appeared to take her threat at face value, which was a very good thing, since Penelope wasn’t at all sure whether any of the muskets, rifles, and assorted instruments of destruction were loaded or not. Instead of reaching for the nearest firearm, he turned to Cleave, with a look that would have turned Medusa herself to stone.
With great dignity, he looked the other man in the eye, and pronounced, “You have betrayed me, Monsieur.”
Cleave opened his mouth in an immediate negation — and snapped it shut again as Alex stepped forward, his gaze as hard as Guignon’s. Harder, even.
“You’ve betrayed one of us,” Alex said. He said it in a conversational tone, but Penelope could hear the rough edge beneath. They had grown up together, she remembered. Played together. Studied together. He held tightly to his loyalties, as did Alex, and every betrayal was like a little fall of man. “Which one is it, Daniel?”
Cleave looked from one to the other, from Guignon’s threatening bulk to Penelope’s pistol and back again. “I didn’t — I mean — dash it, Alex! I had to. I had no choice.”
His voice was low and pleading. From the corner of her eye, Penelope could see Alex wince, as though pierced by a sudden, acute pain. And then it was gone and his face was under control again, but for a certain bitterness around the lips that hadn’t been there before.
“Had to?” Alex repeated. Shrugging, Guignon seated himself heavily on the bottom step, removed a squashed pastry from his waistcoat pocket, and proceeded to rip off a hearty bite. “Had to do what ?”
Cleave looked away. Penelope could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up over the edge of his cravat as he swallowed hard. “This,” he said in a low voice. “These.”
“You,” said Alex, in a hard voice. “You were the Marigold.”
“There is no ‘were’ about it,” contributed Guignon, spitting puff pastry as he spoke. With his accent thickened by a mouthful of doughy treat, it came out more as dere eez noo werr . “M. Cleave is the Marigold.”
“And the attack on Fiske?” demanded Alex, his eyes never leaving his old friend. “That was you?”
Cleave’s head moved in a barely perceptible nod.
“My handkerchief?”
Cleave pressed the back of his hand to his lips. “It was the handkerchief gave me the idea,” he said, in a barely audible voice. “I had one among my things. Kat” — he faltered on the name of Alex’s sister before pulling himself together — “Kat had given i
t to me. She said she had made you too many anyway. Not that it would have been hard to take one from you. I had — have — a man in your household. I would never have let them hang you,” he added desperately. “You have to believe that. It was just until — just until this was all over. And then I would have done everything I could for you, I promise.”
“Forgive me if your promises carry little weight at the moment,” said Alex dryly, and Cleave turned a deep, unbecoming red.
Penelope heard her own voice, as though from very far away. “You planted that cobra in my room, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean — ” Cleave took a stumbling step back in reflex as Alex tensed like a spring waiting to uncoil.
“You left a cobra in Lady Frederick’s room,” said Alex, in a voice so low and deadly that even Penelope shivered at it.
“Not me,” said Cleave hastily. “Mehdi Yar. The groom. He did it. And it was never meant for you,” he added, turning anxiously towards Penelope. “It was meant for Lord Frederick. It never occurred to me that — ”
“We might share a bed?” Penelope said dulcetly.
Cleave blushed.
Penelope drew in a shuddering breath as a host of seemingly unrelated incidents tumbled into place. “And when that didn’t work,” she said, watching him closely, “you tried again. On the road to Berar. You knew no one would connect you with it, because you weren’t there. That was the groom again, wasn’t it?”
Cleave nodded.
“You planted him in our household in Calcutta,” recalled Penelope. “Even then you were planning this. But why? Why kill Freddy?”
“I didn’t really want to kill him,” said Cleave hopefully.
“Fine way you have of showing it,” said Alex, and Penelope knew that he was remembering, as she was, a certain cut girth.
Cleave swallowed hard. “It was Fiske, you see. He said he’d told Staines. No one would have believed Fiske, miserable little opium eater that he was, but Staines? He was the son of an earl. Who wouldn’t believe him over me?”