The Bad Luck Wedding Night, Bad Luck Wedding series #5 (Bad Luck Abroad trilogy)

by Geralyn Dawson

Finally, she paused in front of the mantel and considered the tall cylindrical candle Nick had previously noted. She glanced from the candle to him, then back to the candle again. Finally, she lifted it down and turned to him. "Will this do?"

  His mouth broke out in a wide smile. "It's your decision, but I think that's a fair representation."

  He took his leave of her then, and the sound of her soft laughter followed him down the hallway. He almost tripped on a rug when he heard her say, "In some ways men are so easy to please."

  * * *

  Willie Hart arrived at Glencoltran Castle at mid-morning. The only reason Nick didn't kill the young man upon learning the news was the fact that he hadn't come alone. "He showed up at Hunterbourne looking for you," the young rogue said. "Said it was important he speak with you. Old Tom at the stables said Lord Kimball was an important man, that he works for the government. When I heard him asking directions to Glencoltran Castle, I thought it my proper place to show him the way, seeing as how I've been here before and knew the way. I was doing my duty as a good citizen, I was."

  Nick eyed the young man's broad shoulders and the light in his eyes and wondered if he'd be forced to kill him yet. "So where is Lord Kimball now?"

  "That's the strange part of me story," Hart said, scratching his cheek. "Once we got close enough to see the castle, he started looking for a place to stop. I left him at the old ruins sittin' atop the great rock that stretches out into the loch. He told me to tell my story to nobody but you and to give you this." He handed over an envelope.

  Nick broke the seal and quickly scanned the contents of the note. Looking up, he pinned Willie Hart with his most deadly glare. "Stop by the kitchen and tell the cook I said to feed you, then report to the stables. Go near Aurora and I'll cut off your balls and feed them to my gamekeeper's wolfhounds. Any questions?"

  The stable hand went pale, but managed a protest "But my lord, I love her. I want her for my wife."

  "Next I'll cut off your cock and feed that to my sister Robyn's pet snake."

  The second threat drained all trace of color from young Hart's face, and he nodded. "I'll be straight for the stables, my lord. My appetite will hold till lunch."

  "I'm assuming you are referring to your appetite for food, and that all other appetites will disappear for as long as you remain at Glencoltran. Am I correct?"

  "Yes, my lord. Right as rain, my lord. Nothing but a growling stomach out of me, my lord."

  Nick nodded, waited, and finally made a shooing motion with his hand. The trouble-making young pretty-boy scuttled away in retreat. Nick left the house almost immediately himself, pausing only long enough to grab a coat. The morning air had a bite to it yet, though judging by the sunshine the chill would burn away by afternoon.

  Nick made his way quickly toward the promontory and the crumbling ruins of the first Glencoltran Castle, his mind torn between worry over that young bounder's proximity to his sister and concern as to what trouble had brought his former colleague all the way to Scotland.

  Neither one boded well for his peace of mind.

  Lord Kimball was the heir to the Duke of Halford and had been Nick's immediate superior for the first years of his sojourn overseas. More recently, Kimball had joined the Special Irish Branch of the Metropolitan Police where, Nick understood, he was in charge of coordinating anti-Fenian operations in the capital.

  Nick both liked and respected Kimball, who served his country out of a deep and genuine sense of patriotism that Nick as a Scot-turned-Texan- turned-Englishman-pretending-to-be-American and so forth never managed to match. Kimball could also be one of the coldest, meanest, most dangerous men Nick had ever encountered, and that company included some of his old friends, the Khans.

  "So what brings him to the Highlands on a sunny winter day?" Nick murmured aloud when he spied the Englishman standing on the shore, tossing gray rocks into the sapphire water. Had the so-called dynamite war waged by Irish terrorists against British cities moved northward?

  More likely, Kimball wanted to lure Nick back into service in some fashion. If that was the case, his old friend was doomed to disappointment. Nick's focus was now centered on his family, and he intended to keep it that way.

  "I should shoot you and throw your carcass in the loch," he called out as he approached. "Did you know you were bringing the horned serpent into our midst, or was that just lucky coincidence?"

  The hesitation in Kimball's throw was so slight Nick almost missed it "Your grievance against young Hart is for the most part unfounded," the former spymaster said.

  "The little bastard attempted to run off with my sister."

  "Yes. And Miss Aurora paid him one hundred guineas for his trouble. The price of a new Worth ball gown, I believe. The canceled order called for a frilly confection in ice blue with gold trim."

  Nick didn't waste their time questioning the accuracy of Kimball's information. Instead, his mind started clicking. "Why, that little witch. What was she up... oh. Helen. This had something to do with Helen, didn't it?"

  "Mr. Hart is under the impression that your sisters thought you would benefit from having some distance from Lady Steele. They anticipated you would move to separate Miss Aurora from Hart following the elopement."

  Nick nodded. "Melanie suggested Scotland."

  A hint of a smile played about Kimball's mouth. "I should keep them in mind for future recruitment."

  "Sod it, Kimball," Nick grumbled.

  The spymaster laughed, his grin rare enough that Nick did a double take.

  "Damnation, I forget how pretty you are when you smile. I hope you'll refrain from doing much of that around my sisters, or they'll be offering you money to elope, and this time they'll mean it. Then I'd have to kill you, of course."

  "Of course. And after I've come all this way, too."

  "Speaking of which, what brings you north, Lord Kimball?"

  "Trouble."

  Nick sighed. "I was afraid of that. Where? Afghanistan? India? Tibet?"

  "Texas."

  "Texas!"

  Kimball nodded. "Pull up a rock, Nicholas, and let me ask you a few questions."

  Nick gazed out over the water and shoved his hands in his pockets. "It's a cool morning, and I have a fine bottle of Rowanclere malt in my study."

  "A bit early for me, I'm afraid, but I hope to sample it soon. But I understand that along with your potent Scotch whisky you also have a bit of Texas spice tucked away in your castle."

  Texas spice? Nick blinked. "Sarah? This is about Sarah?"

  "Sarah Simpson Ross, also known as Lady Innsbruck, also known as Lady Weston."

  "Wait just one minute. Are you trying to claim that my Sarah is involved in some sort of espionage?"

  "In a manner of speaking." Lord Kimball leveled a hard, narrowed-eye gaze on Nick and flatly said, "Your Sarah is suspected of being marginally involved in a plot to assassinate the queen."

  It's bad luck for a bride's father to cry at her wedding.

  Chapter 11

  If anyone other than Kimball had made the charge, Nick would pop him a right cross to the jaw and knock him in the loch. Since it was Kimball, the man in charge of political crime at Scotland Yard, he obeyed his suddenly weak knees and sat down. He dragged a hand down his bristled jaw, feeling as ancient as the stone wall beneath him. "Tell me."

  "In Fort Worth, your wife socializes with a group that includes four gentlemen with ties to the British aristocracy."

  Four? Damnation. No wonder she didn't want the physical examination.

  Almost as soon as the thought burst into his brain, Nick discounted it. He was willing to accept that Sarah could have fooled him to a point, but not to that degree. He might have a blind spot or two where Sarah was concerned, but he wasn't stupid. "Is she in danger?"

  "Honestly, I don't know. It depends on her level of involvement with these men."

  "Who are they?" he demanded even as a series of possibilities streamed through his mind. "Did she plan their weddings? Do they a
ttend the same church? Are they in a literary club together?"

  The slightest widening of Kimball's eyes betrayed his surprise. "A perceptive guess, Weston, but not precisely accurate. Your wife is a member of the Folio Society of Fort Worth."

  Casting his thoughts back to his time in Fort Worth, Nick couldn't recall a Folio Society. "What is it?"

  "Each month the members of the group produce works based upon a chosen theme. The works are then bound in a leather portfolio and circulated for criticism. It's a mixture of drawings, watercolors, short stories, poetry—anything that falls under the auspices of art."

  Nick thought a moment, considered what he knew of his wife, then said, "Sarah must write."

  "Sometimes poetry and upon occasion an editorial."

  "What of fiction?"

  "Some."

  Tension easing to an extent, Nick asked, "Is that what happened? Did Sarah write a fictional tale that involved the assassination of the queen? I can imagine the folio falling into the hands of one of your men and being taken as a threat. Assassination plots are not as rare as we'd like to think, are they?"

  "This is the fourth my office has fielded in recent months, and I am afraid it is not as simple as you would hope. Your wife wrote no tale of political intrigue. In fact, her stories of late involve the antics of a group of young boys in Fort Worth known as the McBride Monsters. After reading her work, I don't doubt the youngsters capable of causing mischief. However, the ability to disrupt the Queen of England's golden jubilee is still a bit beyond them, I would think."

  "The jubilee? That's what this is about?"

  Kimball nodded. "I hope it will prove to be nothing more than a hoax. However, the information we have pieced together to this point is suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. Hence my visit to Glencoltran Castle."

  "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

  Kimball flung a stone across the water and watched it skip once, twice, three times. When it sank beneath the surface, he said, "My office received a letter from a judge in a little Texas town called Weather... something."

  "Weatherford. It's west of Fort Worth."

  "That's it. The judge had received an anonymous letter claiming knowledge of a particularly nefarious Fenian plot." Kimball skipped another stone, then said, "The plan, apparently, is to explode a bomb in Westminster Abbey dining Queen Victoria's jubilee ceremony on June twenty-first."

  Nick absorbed the information, then muttered a particularly vile curse.

  "Precisely," said Kimball. "The judge wrote that he received the letter naming as the source of the information a man from Chicago—"

  "A Fenian stronghold."

  "Exactly. The anonymous letter claimed this man had come to Fort Worth to recruit the assistance of an Englishman who was an outspoken critic of the British system of primogeniture."

  "A remittance man," Nick logically concluded.

  "It would seem so. To complicate matters—and give them a sense of credibility—the man from Chicago was found dead in his own bed, having been shot once through the forehead."

  "Executed," Nick murmured.

  "Two days after the judge received the tip and began making inquiries. I think it's safe to assume the fellow spoke out of turn about the plot and paid for it with his life."

  "What of the Englishman? Was he successfully recruited?"

  "That we do not know. His name died with the Fenian. However, the judge was sufficiently concerned to forward the names of any British citizens residing in Fort Worth at the time, along with their occupations and—"

  "The clubs they belong to. My Sarah knows them."

  "There were four names on the list. We believe she knows all of them and is particularly close to two of them."

  "Particularly close?"

  "One is Viscount Wexford, who, though he holds the title, has never actually lived in Britain. He is known in Fort Worth as Mr. Tye McBride."

  "The McBrides are Sarah's business partners. I know something of the man. He may be an English viscount, but McBride considers himself American. He has no motive to commit such a crime. Who are the others?"

  "Lord Trevor Chambers. He's the Marquess of Blakely's younger brother. He... um... called upon your wife for a time."

  Energy flowed back into Nick's knees, and he rose quickly to his feet. Kicking at a stone, he sent it sailing into the loch with a plop.

  Kimball waited a moment, then, when Nick failed to comment, continued. "The other two who concern me were also members of the Folio Society but are not as closely connected to your wife. Mr. Thomas Sheldon and Lord Robert Endicott."

  "Sheldon?" Nick's head came up, and he dragged his thoughts away from his bride's beau. "Baron Yardley's son?"

  Kimball nodded. "I believe he was in Texas at the same time as you?"

  "I knew him," Nick said with a grim smile. Tom Sheldon had helped Susan Harris save Nick's life that rainy winter night so many years ago in Fort Worth. Tom had been the one to actually kill the man about to skewer Nick and, in doing so, earned from Nick a promise. Six months later, fulfilling it helped change the course of Nick's life. "I didn't know he'd returned to Fort Worth."

  "Eight months ago, so I understand."

  Eight months? Nick should have been told. Obviously, the investigator he'd been paying to find Tom Sheldon for the past year had not done his job. Damnation, I hate incompetence.

  Nick's thoughts raced. Tom was back in town. What would he have heard? What would he have believed? Could Tom have become so bitter as to plot against his father? Against the Crown?

  Perhaps.

  Nick shut his eyes and swallowed a groan.

  Kimball continued. "However, Sheldon is no longer in Texas. Nor are Chambers and Endicott, who is the second son of a Derbyshire viscount. Within the past six weeks all three men have returned to London."

  After a moment's pause Nick observed, "Now that is not the best of news."

  "An understatement, Lord Weston."

  Nick scowled, shoved both hands in his pants pockets, and rocked back and forth on his heels. "I imagine you wish to interview Sarah."

  "Yes."

  Nick had no problem with that since he had some questions for her, too. Questions about this Chambers fellow and why she'd neglected to mention him. But before that happened, he wanted one thing perfectly clear. "I confided the circumstances of my marriage to you years ago. Can I assume that you are now aware that I sent for her, in effect forced her to make the trip? She is in Britain because of me and nothing else. She is in no way a suspect, correct?"

  "Correct. I look to her simply as a source of information."

  "Good." Nick kicked one more stone into the loch, then turned toward the castle. As the two men walked through the winter gloom, Nick asked, "By the way, Kimball, why did you bring that blackguard Willie Hart with you? You didn't need a guide, especially not one who has tried to ruin my sister."

  "He might prove useful to me in the future," Kimball said, grinning. "He has quick hands."

  "That better be all he has that's quick," Nick grumbled. "Anything else he'll lose to my knife."

  As they walked toward the castle, his thoughts returned to the reason behind his old friend's visit. "Do you honestly believe there's anything to this rumored plot?"

  Kimball shrugged. "Royalty and heads of state from all over the world will be in Westminster Abbey that day. Security plans for the event have been in the works for years. I would like to think this was no more than the fantasy of a bitter man who met his end for unrelated reasons. However, the circumstances of his death are troubling. Too, we are investigating every threat that comes our way. We cannot afford to do otherwise. All this, I might mention, leaves us short of manpower. I'm hoping you'll help, Weston."

  Having anticipated the request, Nick had an excuse at the ready. He didn't use it. The moment Sarah's name had been mentioned, Nick Ross, intelligence agent in Her Majesty's secret service, had come out of retirement.

  Sarah, after all
, was family.

  * * *

  The fire flickered invitingly in the library's marble hearth as Nick introduced Sarah to a darkly handsome man whose steady, assessing stare proved unnerving. Something about Lord Kimball made her want to shudder, but she hid her reaction behind the handy facade of extreme politeness. Until Nick began telling her his story, that is.

  Sarah sniffed with disdain and interrupted the tale. "Who is this judge who supposedly heard this nonsense?"

  "Boyette. Judge S. R. Boyette of Weatherford," Kimball offered. "I believe he is prominent in the community."

  "Maybe so, but that doesn't mean he can't be an idiot, which is exactly what he is if he thinks Tye McBride is involved in such a scheme. He couldn't care less about the queen. The only plotting he is apt to do is how to steal his wife away for private time together. You are fools if you think otherwise. And as for Trevor being a terrorist? That's almost as ludicrous. He is an upstanding man and a talented artist, I'll have you know. His drawings are outstanding."

  Nick's crooked smile was more sneer than grin as he propped a hip on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. "All the better for copying floor plans."

  Sarah shot him a look of disgust, then addressed Lord Kimball. "I should think Sheldon or Endicott are much more suited to such a thing. Sheldon in particular. He's been an absolute grouch since he returned to Fort Worth from the West. He made a fortune in California, but that doesn't seem to matter to him. He's a perfect example of how money doesn't buy happiness. If this plot does exist, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was the culprit."

  Kimball crossed the room and took the seat behind the desk. She was compelled to fidget, locked beneath the stares of two such imposing men, and it took a conscious effort on her part to remain still.

  Especially when Kimball arched a brow and commented, "You were close to Lord Chambers?"

  Sarah glanced at Nick. Accusation gleamed from his narrowed eyes. She thought of Lady Steele, gave her chin a toss, and said, "He wanted to marry me. Of course that couldn't happen because of this pesky little marriage Nick and I have."