“Holy God,” Maximilian said as the full reality of that crashed down on him. “After Hucker lost us in France, he must have come back here to resume his spying until he could find us.”
Shaw trotted along the road. “Mr. Manton spent the afternoon attempting to convince Sir Jackson Pinter, his friend in the magistrate’s office, to release Mr. Bonnaud, but that didn’t work.”
Maximilian’s heart pounded. “No, Pinter isn’t the sort to bend the law for someone who broke it, even Manton’s half brother. Besides, Bonnaud did steal a horse and sell it. The facts are irrefutable, from what I understand.”
“Then ‘the law shall bruise him,’ I’m afraid.” When Maximilian eyed him oddly, he added, “It’s Shakespeare.”
“It’s not helping. So if they weren’t successful at Bow Street, where are they now?”
“Gone to Rathmoor’s to beg his lenience.” Shaw frowned and picked up his pace. “There is no point in that. ‘For pity is the virtue of the law, / And none but tyrants use it cruelly.’ Rathmoor is most assuredly a tyrant.”
“Then tell me where I can find him,” Maximilian snapped. “I am not going to let Tristan Bonnaud hang.”
Shaw halted. “Do you have a plan to prevent it?”
Maximilian thought for a moment, and a smile spread over his face. “I believe I do. But I’ll need help in pulling it off.”
Shaw sighed heavily. “I suppose they can do without me at rehearsal for one night.” With a flourish of his long cloak, he walked back toward where Maximilian’s carriage sat waiting in front of Manton’s Investigations. “I do hope your plan is sufficient to free Mr. Bonnaud.”
“I believe it will be. Here is what I need you to do . . .”
23
LISETTE PACED THE substantial parlor in George’s town house. She turned to Dom and asked, “Do you think George has really gone out? Or is he just pretending to be gone to make us stew?”
Dom crossed his arms over his chest. “Knowing George, it’s the latter.”
“Then we should search the house for him and hold him down until he agrees to withdraw his claim of thievery against Tristan,” she bit out.
“So he can have us charged with attempted murder or some such nonsense? We’re lucky he failed at having us charged with harboring a fugitive this morning. If he’d had Tristan seized at Manton’s Investigations, or if the captain hadn’t been good enough to claim we had just boarded the ship, we’d be sitting in gaol with Tristan right now.”
Lisette sighed. Dom had a point. “But what’s to stop him from claiming that we stole something from him after we leave here?”
“The fact that we have nothing in our pockets?” Dom quipped.
She glared at him.
“I know, it’s no time to joke. Pinter is doing his best to see what legal recourse we have, but the truth is, right now George holds all the cards. So if our sitting here awaiting his leisure gives him some petty satisfaction, then sit here we will.”
“You know George will never relent. Why should he?” she said despairingly. “I’m trying to hold on to the hope that Max will respond to my note, but that hope gets smaller by the moment.”
“He may yet. Don’t count him out.”
Dropping into a chair beside Dom, she shook her head. “I dare say the minute he was back in his fine town house, he thought better of ever offering for me.”
“You can’t blame him if he did. You turned him down. Most men don’t take that well, but a duke? Might as well shoot him in the arse.”
“I always knew he would break my heart in the end,” she said softly.
Dom cast her a searching glance. “It has been my experience, dear girl, that if one goes into a thing certain of the outcome, one does everything in one’s power to ensure that outcome.”
She tipped up her chin. “What are you saying? That I brought this on myself?”
“No. I’m saying that you need to stop thinking of yourself as Claudine’s illegitimate daughter, doomed to follow in her footsteps. You can do whatever you set your mind to. Especially if you can learn to see yourself the way we do—as a vibrant, beautiful woman with a great deal to offer any man.”
Was Dom right? Had she done her best to scuttle any chance she had with Max? Had she wrapped her heart in so much protective wool that it no longer had air to breathe?
“Excuse me,” came a feminine voice from the doorway, “but are you here to call on someone? I heard talking and . . .”
The voice trailed off as Dom rose. “Jane?” he said hoarsely. Then he stiffened. “Forgive me, Miss Vernon. I forgot that you might be here.”
Lisette leaped up from her chair, too. Jane Vernon was cousin to George’s wife. She had also once been Dom’s fiancée. Until Dom had ended up penniless.
The pretty young woman paled. “Good evening, Mr. Manton. I had no idea . . . I was unaware . . .” She looked at Lisette, and that seemed to help her master herself. “I didn’t realize that you two were waiting. We’re at dinner upstairs. I don’t know why the butler didn’t send you up.”
Dom eyed her askance. “Come now, Miss Vernon, you’re no fool,” he clipped out. “You know perfectly well why the butler didn’t send us up.”
Jane steadied her shoulders, then stared at him. “I see that you haven’t changed at all, Mr. Manton. No polite niceties for a clever fellow like you.” She cast Lisette a half smile. “I will fetch George. I assume that he’s the one you’ve come to call upon?”
Lisette nodded. “Thank you.”
As soon as Jane had left, Lisette whirled on Dom. “You didn’t have to be nasty to her.”
“I wasn’t being nasty. I was being truthful.”
Seeing Jane had obviously upset the generally even-tempered Dom. Lisette’s eyes narrowed. Wasn’t that interesting?
A knock came at the front door, startling them both. The butler hurried to open it, and a tall figure brushed past him into the hallway. “Thank you, my good man,” said an arrogant voice she recognized only too well. “Please inform the Viscount Rathmoor that the Duke of Lyons is here to speak with him.”
Lisette froze, caught entirely off guard, as the butler practically knocked Max over with his bowing and scraping.
Max had come! He’d done it for Tristan, of course, because that was the sort of man he was—a man of honor and character. But perhaps a little of it was done for her?
Her blood began to pound, and she tried not to hope too much. But it was difficult when Max was standing there in the flesh, proving that he hadn’t forgotten her—or her family—at all.
The butler got a sudden panicked look on his face as he apparently realized that the entrance parlor was filled, and that perhaps he shouldn’t put the duke in with such low creatures as the estranged brother of the viscount and their illegitimate sister.
But while he was still floundering, Max looked over into the parlor and caught sight of them. “Ah, I see my friends made it here before me. I’ll just join them, thank you.”
The butler stammered, “V-very good, Your Grace,” and practically vaulted up the stairs.
“Well, that should bring George down in a flash,” Dom muttered to her.
Max strode up to them with an urgent look on his face. “I take it you have not spoken to your brother yet?”
She shook her head, unable to do more than stare at him.
“Good. Then the two of you must allow me to handle this. Do you think Hucker is around?”
“Probably,” Dom said. “He’s never far. Why?”
“Because if he recognizes me as Mr. Kale, it will only help the plan Shaw and I have cooked up.”
“Shaw?” Lisette said. “Our Shaw?”
“Yes. Good man, that. Though a little odd.”
She didn’t know whether to agree or laugh hysterically. “Do you really think you can get Tristan freed, Your Grace?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Not if you keep calling me that, dearling. What happened to ‘Max’?”
He’d called
her dearling. Tears stung her eyes. “I wasn’t sure if Max was still around,” she said, fighting a smile. “You were being so dukely just now.”
“Well, being dukely is apparently what I do best, according to a certain tart-tongued female.”
George appeared in the entrance to the parlor.
“Don’t worry, my love. Everything will be all right,” he murmured.
My love? Oh, dear, he was making it difficult for her to hold fast to her resolve not to marry him.
With her blood pounding in her ears, she watched as Max turned to greet her half brother. “Good evening, Rathmoor.”
George eyed him warily. “Have we met, Your Grace?”
“No, I don’t believe we have.” Max’s tone chilled. “Though I’ve heard a great deal about you from my friends here.”
The blood drained from George’s face. “Friends?” he squeaked.
“Yes. They tell me that you’ve arrested a man who is in my employ.”
As Lisette stifled a gasp, George scowled. “Tristan Bonnaud is in Your Grace’s employ.”
“Indeed he is. I hired him and Miss Bonnaud and Mr. Manton to find my lost cousin and return him to the arms of his loving family. They succeeded admirably. Victor Cale, the man who was the reason for their being on that ship you boarded, is now ensconced in my town house.”
Lisette could scarcely contain her excitement. What a brilliant scheme! And it helped that he could use his title like a bludgeon when necessary.
He was quite dukely as he stared George down. “I only regret I was not there when you arrived to carry off Mr. Bonnaud. My cousin is recovering from a nasty bout of pneumonia, so I had to get him into a doctor’s care immediately. If I had known that you were going to show up and arrest my best investigator, the man who is primarily responsible—”
“You’re saying you hired Tristan, a known fugitive, to find your cousin,” George put in, a vein throbbing in his temple.
“I didn’t know he was a fugitive. I am rather shocked to hear it. He worked for the Sûreté Nationale in France for some years.”
That seemed to give George even more of a shock. “The French secret police? All this time?”
“According to Eugène Vidocq, he’s a very competent agent. What is Mr. Bonnaud accused of?”
“Stealing a horse,” George said tersely.
“That is rather difficult to get around. When did this happen?”
George tugged nervously at his cravat. “Twelve years ago.”
“I see. I suppose he stole it from a prominent citizen, too.”
“He stole it from me.”
Max feigned shock. “But aren’t you his relation?” He let that sink in, then added, “Ah, I see. A young boy taking a horse for a ride. So this is more a matter of a family spat than of actual thieving.”
George bristled at that. “It is not a ‘family spat,’ Your Grace. He stole a very expensive Thoroughbred and then sold it for his own gain.”
“You have witnesses? Evidence?”
“I have a witness,” George said uneasily. “And the evidence is the missing horse, which was never recovered.”
Max lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like a flimsy case to me. Especially given that it happened twelve years ago. I’m not sure you’ll be successful in having it prosecuted. And it seems a damned shame to ruin a man’s life and future over a misunderstanding.”
“It is not a misunderstanding!” George growled. “And forgive me for my impertinence, Your Grace, but it is also none of your affair.”
“Ah, but it is.” Max shot George a thin smile. “He is in my employ now. And I would hate to think that after all he’s done for the dukedom, he would end up hanged. I would take that as a personal affront.”
At that moment, Hucker walked in. When he caught sight of Max, he hurried over to George to murmur something in his ear.
George glanced over at Lisette, then narrowed his gaze on the duke. “Hucker tells me that this entire tale of yours is made up out of whole cloth. You didn’t hire them at all. He says you’ve been traveling alone with my half sister under an assumed name.”
“Was Mr. Hucker following us?” Max said in pretend outrage.
That made George a bit uncomfortable. “Only so it would lead him to the fugitive.”
“Your half brother, you mean,” Max said in a hard tone. “We did travel together, Miss Bonnaud and I, to the Continent to find Mr. Bonnaud after we heard no word from him on his mission. We didn’t know that he’d been detained in quarantine here with my cousin. I couldn’t use my title on our trip—I didn’t want to alert the press to the fact that my possible heir had been found, not until I was sure of the facts.” He picked lint off his coat. “Of course, Mr. Manton was with us. I assume Mr. Hucker neglected to tell you that.”
“That’s a damned lie!” Hucker cried. “Mr. Manton weren’t with you at all. He went to Scotland.”
“Did he really? You saw him there?”
Hucker blanched. “Well, no, but . . . I heard . . .”
“You heard. I see.”
Lisette fought to keep a straight face. For a man who hated deception, Max could be very good at it when he needed to be. Although most of what he said was the truth—just creatively realigned into something else.
“He weren’t with you on that trip,” Hucker persisted.
“Not on the coach ride to Brighton, but he was waiting for us there inside the inn. Surely you saw him.”
“Well . . . no . . . I . . . I didn’t go into the inn.”
“Did you not?” Max arched one eyebrow. “How odd for an investigator. In any case, Manton left London early so he could travel to Brighton to secure us inn rooms and tickets for the packet boat. Surely you saw him on the packet boat.”
“No, I did not,” Hucker said stiffly. “He weren’t there.”
“There were sixty people aboard. You looked at them all?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“What you mean is, you didn’t see him.” He cast his eyes heavenward. “Surely you saw us on the road to Paris.”
Hucker blinked.
“And followed us to Monsieur Vidocq’s house? No?” Max acquired his best arrogant tone. “What a competent investigator you have there, Rathmoor. If he had been doing his job, speaking to the people we spoke to, et cetera, he would have learned that we consulted with Vidocq and the Sûreté. Thank God Mr. Manton and Vidocq were able to piece together the fact that my cousin was being held incommunicado on a quarantined boat.”
A lump filled her throat. Max was lying with a vengeance. For her.
George glowered at Hucker. “You said you followed them. You said Manton wasn’t with them.”
“I didn’t see him! I-I mean, he wasn’t with them.”
“Begone, you fool,” George growled. “I should never have left you in charge of something so important.”
“But what about the note!” Hucker cried. Fumbling in his pocket, he took out a folded message and waved it wildly in the air. “You see? Miss Bonnaud sent a note to Mr. Manton! She wouldn’t have sent a note if he’d been traveling with them!”
She suppressed a gasp. Max didn’t know her note had been purloined by Hucker—but he showed no sign of surprise. He took the note, looked at it, then tossed it back to George with a huff of impatience.
“It’s not addressed to Manton, but to his servant. And all it says is, ‘I am safe and well and tell Dom to beware Hucker.’ There’s no mention of Mr. Bonnaud, nothing that implicates anyone for anything.”
A muscle ticked in George’s jaw. “Leave us, Hucker.”
“But my lord!”
“Leave us! I don’t need you making things worse.” As soon as Hucker left, George glanced beyond Max to where Lisette and Dom were keeping very quiet. “Don’t think you’ve fooled me for one moment, Your Grace. I see what you’re doing. You’ve trumped up this entire tale about Tristan’s being in your employ in a vain attempt to save him.”
He cast Lisette a withering g
lance. “I suppose you want to impress my half sister, to get her into your bed. If she hasn’t been there already. She’d be a fool not to fall into the bed of a man as rich as you.”
Dom stiffened beside Lisette, but she put a steadying hand on his arm.
Max had gone dangerously still. “Actually, she has turned down two of my marriage proposals. But don’t worry—I mean to make sure that she accepts the third, if only so she can look down her nose at you at every social occasion.”
“Marry her!” George said with a sneer. “Don’t you know she’s the bastard daughter of my father’s French whore?”
This time Dom had to put a steadying hand on her arm.
“Whore?” Max said in a deceptively soft voice. “I was under the impression that her mother was a retired actress.” He glanced at Lisette, his heart in his eyes. “Isn’t that right, my love?”
My love. He’d said it again. And he was defending Maman. He was trying to make amends for what he’d said earlier. “Yes, that’s right,” she managed, though she could hardly speak for the thickness in her throat.
Max turned a malevolent look on George. “In my world, we don’t consider a woman who is faithful to her lover for her entire life a whore—we consider her a rather fine mistress.” He smiled grimly. “Of course, I can always hire investigators to learn the truth of all that, too. I would want to make sure that the facts are straight for the newspaper.”
George paled. “Newspaper! What are you talking about?”
Max lifted his head. “I believe that’s the press I hear approaching now.”
As if on cue, a clamor was heard in the streets in front of the town house. George flew to the window and looked out. “The press! What the hell? What are they doing here?”
“Mr. Shaw invited them here on my behalf,” Max said coolly. “I thought they might find my ‘trumped-up tale’ interesting, especially when I announce that Mr. Manton and his brilliant team have found my long-lost cousin. Of course, the reporters will also be very interested to hear that one of those investigators now languishes in gaol because his own half brother is holding a twelve-year-old crime over his head. They’ll find that very newsworthy, I expect.”
The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires Page 28