Slowly, as the crack lengthened, the two halves of it drew apart until, with a final sharp sound, they fell to lie separate, rocking gently on the floor.
Now, all she had to do was get one of those pieces into a suitable position. Broken china was sharp – she had proven that often enough in her life, and bore the small scars to prove it – so it should be possible to use it to cut the rope. Carefully, she lowered herself to her knees, and twisted awkwardly to bring one hand close enough to grasp one half of the broken pot. It immediately proved its sharpness, by cutting her palm.
Anna sucked in a breath, ignoring the pain and slowly pushed herself, wobbling, upright again. She turned, and sank to sit on the rough bed, the broken pot curled into her lap. Laboriously, she worked her arms until she could just get both hands to touch it. Then, she began to edge it under the bottommost rope which ran around her. It might take hours, so small was the amount of movement she had available to her, but she would move the rope against that jagged edge for as long as it took – until she was free, or until they came to do with her whatever they might choose to do.
Which, she was more and more certain, might well be death. For she knew who they were, knew what they planned, and they had to have realised that. The question was, could she escape in time, and, if not, would they choose to have their meeting first, or get her out of the way first?
Fear was an icy presence in her stomach, but she refused to allow it to rule her. One tiny movement at a time, she rubbed the rope across the sharp edge. With each movement, she brought to mind Lord Setford and her determination to live, to see him again.
~~~~~
For the first time in his life, Cecil found it impossible to be still. For the last few hours, a steady trickle of men had come to him at Bigglesworth’s, been handed their orders, and departed. Then some of them had returned, confirming that a scatter of street vendors and others had seen Charteris’ chaise yesterday, following the route that they had expected.
Now, with the knowledge that it was almost completely certain that Lady Farnsworth was at the same location as the conspirators’ planned meeting, he was finally able, himself, to gather up the last of his men, and go there. The conclusion of months of work was at hand, and he would have been more than glad of it, but for one thing – he did not, at that point, know if Lady Farnsworth still lived.
As his carriage rolled down the packed earth of the road towards the conspirators’ meeting place, men stepped out from concealment, and spoke to him when he paused – every one of the known conspirators, and a few more that they had not suspected, had passed along the road. They were all there.
All of his own men were in place, surrounding the old house, well-armed and ready to deal with whatever the conspirators might do. He had to admit that they were far more prepared than he – Lady Farnsworth’s fate hung heavy upon him as they drew to a halt, a few minutes walk from the unremarkable cottage.
~~~~~
The rope was nearly worn through, her wrists and fingers bloodied from where she had slipped against the sharp edge, and Anna had begun to believe that she might succeed, when sound came to her. She stopped, freezing in place, and listened.
Carriage wheels. Then voices. They were here – she was too late. Despair rolled over her, a dark blanket of sorrow. Then she drew herself up, and rejected that feeling. If she could weaken the rope the final bit, she might wait her chance – if the rope was weak enough that a sharp jerk might break the final strands, then she could, perhaps, escape, when they opened the door to speak to her. She did not examine the improbability of success, she simply went back to working on the rope, her movements now tinged with desperation.
More carriages. More voices – voices she knew, after months of investigating them. She prayed that Setford’s men were in place, that the conspirators were doomed to failure, but she could not know.
Footsteps in the hallway outside the door. She froze again, letting the weight of her hands bear the rope down onto the sharp edge. At first, she thought that the rope still held, then, with a tiny jerk, the last threads broke. The men’s voices came to her, through the door.
“I brought her here and locked her up – what else could I do? I couldn’t risk her discovering the truth – or revealing it to anyone else – not this close to the conclusion of our plan, Partmann – you know I couldn’t!”
“True, but what are we to do with her? Tomorrow, we’ll have our chance, and the Prince Regent will die – we can’t risk everything now!”
“Even so. But… must we kill her? It is one thing to put to death the man that is paupering our country, quite another to do so to a woman!”
“Charteris, unless you want every one of us to die, I believe that we must.”
Anna felt, for a moment, dizzy with fear – it was one thing to consider that, logically, they might wish to kill her, it was quite another to hear the words spoken.
“I am still not happy with it. Leave it for now – let us meet, and set all of the details in place for tomorrow. We can deal with the busybody once that is all done, and everyone knows their role.”
“As you wish – an hour is neither here nor there – she will die anyway.”
The footsteps moved on, and the voices faded from her hearing. Anna waited until the shaking passed, then stood. She placed the broken pot upon the bed, and began to twist and squirm, using her increasingly free hands to unroll the rope from around her, to untangle the knotted parts further up, now that her hands were free to do so. Her arms and shoulders ached, as the rope fell away and she could finally move properly, but the sense of relief that came with movement was enormous.
She kicked the fallen rope under the bed, and took up the broken pot. It had done good service so far, it could do more. She gathered up its other half as well, and went to stand where the opening door would conceal her. A broken pot might not be much, but smashed over the head of a man, it might at least stun him long enough for her to escape the room.
A chamber pot was not the sort of weapon that the heroines of novels wielded, she thought with a twist of dark humour, but who was she to complain?
~~~~~
Cecil’s men slipped steadily closer to the old gatekeeper’s cottage, drawing into an almost unbroken line as they did so, surrounding it. One, sent in early, had made sure that the one groom who stood in the half fallen stable, dealing with ten or more horses and carriages, was caught, bound and held silent. Cecil wondered which of the men was fool enough to have brought a servant along, to witness their conspiring – all of the others had driven themselves. It did not matter – they were all fools.
When the cordon had closed around the building, he gave the signal, and they moved forward – some to burst in through the doors, some to stand ready to capture any who tried to escape. Cecil himself went with the first surge, unable to stand back any longer – he had to know if she lived. As he arrived in the main room of the building, amongst a horde of his men, he was amused to see the shock on Partmann’s face – had the man truly believed that they were undetected? On the table in front of the men lay a diagram, maps and a series of documents.
“I say! How dare you break in upon us like this! What is the meaning of this?”
“You, Baron Partmann, and all of you gentlemen present here, are hereby arrested for treason. Your plot to assassinate the Prince Regent is foiled.”
“Plot, what plot?”
Partmann blustered, but his face had gone deathly white.
“The plot that I believe is detailed in those documents before you. The plot that you have been overheard to speak of, at various of your houses – most careless of you, to let yourselves be overheard, gentlemen.”
Setford’s men had moved forward, intending to take hold of each of the conspirators, taking advantage of the shock which had held them still, but Charteris recovered faster than the others, and sped into the hallway. Expecting him to run for the door, and be caught by the men who waited there, they let him go. Lord Setford fo
llowed at a leisurely walk, to witness his capture. But, instead of continuing as far as the external door, he turned the corner of the hall, and stopped, pulling out a key and unlocking a door. Setford rounded the corner just in time to see him slip inside. For a moment, fear gripped him – what other reason could the man have, to go into another room, but that Lady Farnsworth was there? They had not seen her anywhere yet…
He surged forward, suddenly filled with terror. If he lost her, so close…. A loud thump, and a strangled cry urged him forward faster, and he almost skidded as he turned in through the door. Something hard glanced off his shoulder, just as he tripped over Charteris, who lay upon the floor, groaning. Catching his balance, he spun around.
Everything stilled for a moment, as his eyes met hers. Their blue depths swallowed him, and his heart took flight at what he saw there. She was alive! And her face most clearly said that she cared for him!
“Oh, Lord Setford! I am so sorry! As soon as I realised it was you, I tried to divert my blow…”
“My dear Lady, do not apologise for your actions – for you have, I see, felled this miscreant rather effectively. With…?”
Cecil looked around, puzzled for a moment as to what Lady Farnsworth had used as a weapon, then burst into laughter.
“A chamber pot! How appropriate. The only thing which might have been more appropriate, was if it had been full at the time.”
It was her turn to laugh, a sound full of giddy relief and edging on hysteria.
“I held the full one in reserve, should things have become dire.”
“Then I am most glad that I saw only a glancing blow from half of an unused pot. Now, let me deal with this scoundrel.”
Cecil bent to haul Charteris to his feet, and passed him to one of his men, who had just appeared in the doorway. He turned back to Lady Farnsworth. She was leaning back against the wall, as if somewhat unsteady, and what he saw in her face made him step forward, and draw her into his arms. She sighed, a shaky, breathy thing, and slid her arms around him, as if afraid he would disappear.
After a moment, she raised her head, and met his eyes.
“I am so glad that you are here, my Lord. I feared…”
“…that we would not arrive in time? That they might decide to have done with you?”
“Yes. I had overheard them say they intended my death.”
“I feared that also. When I discovered that you were missing… It made me review everything. If I had lost you…”
He watched her eyes widen, and suspected that, for the first time since his childhood, everything of his thoughts and feelings was writ clear upon his face. He could resist no longer. He bent his head, and brought his lips to hers, a gentle, savouring kiss, that became much more. A kiss that drove his blood through his veins, heating it, and driving out the deep chill of fear that had resided there since the moment he had learned she was gone.
She sighed, her lips opening to him, as her body pressed against him. When they finally drew apart a little, her eyes glittered with unshed tears. He lifted a hand, and gently cupped her cheek.
“Anna… I have been a fool. This courtship has long since ceased to be a fiction for me, but I have been afraid to speak of that to you, lest you turn away from me. I respect you far too much to ask anything of you that is not wholly what you desire. But this last two days has shown me how foolish I have been to hesitate. Anna, I love you. Do you… could you… come to care for me, truly?”
She laughed, that delightful cascade of joy, although still edged with the hysteria of fear only just removed.
“My Lord… Cecil, if I may… we make a fine pair. For I could say the same words to you, exactly. I have hesitated for the very same reasons, and have, in this miserable room, come to see just what I could have lost, through that hesitation. I love you already – there is no doubt, no slow creep towards that moment needed. I believe that, if I am honest with you, and myself, I have loved you for some years now.”
His lips sought hers again, and she melted against him. he allowed to himself the possibility that he was happy, and might even be able to stay that way.
“Then shall we cast aside our foolishness, my dear Anna, and seize the chance that we have?”
“Most definitely, Cecil. If this is what wielding a chamber pot gets me, then I am most happy to have done so!”
~~~~~
Anna’s head was spinning. Not simply from a lack of food and water, nor from the shock that follows unexpected fear and exertion, but from the words that had just been spoken. From the touch of his lips on hers.
It was as if she had gone through a nightmare, so that she might reach the dream on the other side of it. For surely it was a dream – he had said that he loved her! But then, she had said that she loved him too. There was a sense of clarity in the moment, borne of that fear and focus which had existed in the seconds before the chamber pot came down upon Lord Charteris’ head. She now understood what the Hounds had spoken of, when they had talked of what battle did to a man’s perceptions.
He led her from the room, to where the conspirators were being bound and readied for transport to where they would be incarcerated, until their crimes were tried. She looked at them sadly. So many families to be destroyed by the taint of treason, all because one man, Partmann, had felt the petty need for revenge.
Partmann’s face paled when he saw her, going even whiter than it had been.
“Yes, Lord Partmann, I heard your discussion of my fate. Doors are not soundproof, you know. Even without all of this other evidence,” she waved her hand at the table full of documents and maps, “You most thoroughly indicted yourself with your words in that conversation.”
The man said nothing, simply turning his face away. She could not pity him, for he had led all of these others towards their deaths with him.
Lord Setford issued a few orders, then began to gather up the papers from the table. She stepped forward to assist him, and only then did she truly look at her arms. Her wrists were cut and scraped, chafed with rope burn, and soiled with her blood. Her eyes flicked to him, to his immaculate clothing, worrying that she had sullied that perfect presentation when she had embraced him.
He raised an eyebrow at her, and gave a little shake of his head. She puffed out a breath in relief, and went back to the papers, careful not to smear any of them with blood. Soon, they were settled in his carriage, and on their way back towards the city, the papers piled neatly into a box he had produced from the storage under the seat. The previous contents of that box, being a large flask of wine, and a plate with a collation of food, he had handed to her, and watched, somewhat amused, as she had fallen upon them with all the elegance of a ravenous wolf.
Once she had eaten, she had rapidly drifted into sleep, cradled against him, safe in the curve of his arm.
Chapter Fourteen
Anna came awake as he lifted her out of the carriage, and carried her into her home. The trees on the street shed a drifting of red gold autumn leaves down upon them, and she watched the slow fall of each leaf as if in a dream, unwilling to be truly awake. For if she were truly awake, then she might discover that it was all a dream.
Jenks had opened the door, his face full of shocked concern, and as soon as she had been carried through the door and into her parlour, a whirlwind of her concerned staff had appeared. Lord Setford had gently but firmly assured all of them that she was not seriously harmed, and asked for food, drink, and a maid with a basin and salves to wash and care for her wrists. Once they were alone, she reached for his hand, needing the reassurance that he was real, that she would not, in a few moments, wake in that dark and dusty room again.
His fingers closed on hers, and he leant forward to press his lips to hers gently, smiling, those piercing grey eyes full of the love that she had hoped for.
“I must retrieve the papers from my carriage – I should not let them out of my presence, until I hand them to the relevant authorities. I will be quick. And then I will stay with you, my love
, until your injuries are cared for, and you are ready to rest in your own bed.”
She nodded, and internally chided herself for being so weak. She had never been one for the vapours – what was she doing now? She was safe, a good man had declared his love for her, and she was home – what was there to be vapourish about?
“Of course, do what you must to ensure that those scoundrels pay for their intended treason. I am sure that, once I have eaten again, I will be restored to myself.”
“I most sincerely hope so! I could not imagine you as anyone else.”
She laughed, suddenly feeling the world come back into sharper focus in the face of his dry humour.
He returned shortly, depositing the box of papers on her side table, and said nothing while she ate, and drank, simply sipping the coffee he was given and watching her. Once the food had been cleared away, he met her eyes and spoke, softly.
“My dear Anna, I know that you need to rest, but I must ask one more thing of you. I need you to tell me everything that you can remember of what happened, from the time that you left here yesterday morning. Every word that you heard spoken by the conspirators, and everything you saw. I will write down what you tell me. We need to do this now, while it is still fresh in your mind, so that it is as accurate as possible.”
She shuddered a little, then composed herself.
“Whilst I do not, truly, want to relive the last two days in detail, I know that this must be done. Where shall I begin?”
“From the moment that Fred let you down a block or two from Lord Charteris’ home, if you would.”
Anna nodded, and began. It took some hours, and left her feeling exhausted all over again, but she was glad that it was done. When he had written down the last word, he deposited the papers he had written into the box, on top of the rest, and came to her. She stood, finally feeling strong enough to behave more normally, and looked up at him when he took her hand.
He drew her gently into his arms, and kissed her again, his eyes alight with a kind of wonder, which echoed her own feelings.
Attracting the Spymaster: Sweet and Clean Regency Romance (His Majesty's Hounds Book 15) Page 10