by Kate Moore
She assumed that no one knew where she was, at least no one who would help her. Hazelwood’s plan to come for her had failed. Allegra and Phoebe might worry about her, but she now knew that Clive would lie to them as he had been lying to her. They would go to bed imagining her somewhere safe, perhaps with her grandmother, or with Mrs. Lowndes. It was a lonely thought to think of her friends ignorant of her situation curling up in their beds as if she too were as warm and safe as they were. She ached suddenly for her father and the loneliness he must feel. Of course, he would be strong and clever. He would make his captors laugh. He would keep his mind keen and always look for an escape. She straightened her spine. Her captor picked up his pistol again as a door opened and footsteps echoed across the bare floor.
Count Malikov strode up to Jane and looked her over, coolly. He reached up and pulled away the gag. Jane swallowed and worked her aching jaw. Instantly, her teeth started clicking with the cold.
Malikov crossed to the fire and gave his henchman a clout on the ear. “Is that the best you can do? It’s colder than St. Petersburg in here.”
She did not catch the man’s mumbled reply. It was the first speech she’d heard from him, and it was not English. She had assumed the man was a London ruffian hired for his muscle, but now she realized he might be something else. His features were hidden under his hat and the muffler around his face.
Malikov settled in the chair at the green baize table. She supposed he must be thought handsome with his fair looks and blue eyes. Until this evening, she had only seen him as an older version of the young men around Allegra. Now the smooth, languid manner was gone. The dropping of the pretense of civility sent a different sort of shiver through her. “Come here, girl. You have questions to answer.”
Jane stepped forward. At least she would be closer to the fire.
“Where’s your father?” Malikov demanded.
The unexpected question made her blink. “According to the B-B-British government, he’s dead.”
Malikov shook his head. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”
“He may be alive and held captive in the East. K-k-kidnapping merchants for ransom is not uncommon there.”
“But he’s no merchant, and there’s been no ransom demand, has there? Why is that? One must wonder, and one imagines that instead there was a plan.”
Again he puzzled her. She had assumed that her father’s enemies knew where he was. “I do not understand you.”
“Oh, I think you do. A year ago your father smuggled a stolen map out of Khiva. He sent you to London to retrieve that map, didn’t he?”
She shook her head. She tried to keep her gaze uncomprehending, but it was one of those moments when a different explanation of the facts appears and causes one to rearrange the details. The puzzle pieces suddenly fit together. The scrambled ivory letters make a word. Her father’s enemies did not have him. “The government brought me here when he disappeared.”
“Miss Fawkener, I do not think you understand the gravity of your situation. The Russian government does not take kindly to the theft of vital information.”
Jane wished she had a curse to banish quaking limbs and chattering teeth. The count was not, after all, a bandit, with whom one could bargain for safe passage. “Count Malkov, you overestimate m-m-me. No one in government entrusts a young woman with imp-p-portant information.”
“It is not through the government, however, that you received a message from your father, but rather through his bankers.”
In spite of herself Jane could not conceal a small start. Malikov watched her narrowly.
“You see, Miss Fawkener, I know a great deal about your movements since you arrived in England.”
There was little chance then that she could convince him he was mistaken, that she was just a girl enjoying the Season. She could deny him the information she possessed. She could delay him, and hope that Hazelwood had a way of finding her. “The only information my father’s bankers imparted to me was the meagerness of my fortune. By restricting my funds until such time as I marry, my father encouraged me to become a husband hunter.”
“Yet you are seen everywhere with the disgraced Viscount Hazelwood.”
“I was. Until my cousins explained the danger of such a connection. I have not seen the viscount since the Walhouses took me in.”
“So, you claim that you have no information to give me.”
“N-n-none.” She doubted he believed her.
“An unfortunate answer, Miss Fawkener. If you have no information, we will have to find another use for you.”
There is inevitably in the Husband Hunter’s search for her partner in life a moment when it appears that she will fail in the quest. It may be that a heart she believed to be turning her way is captured by another. It may be that she has smiled and danced and listened and attended and worn her loveliest gowns in vain for no one has singled her out as worthy of his special notice. She is liked. She is admired. She is not loved. The end of the Season approaches, and happier girls confide in her the professions of love they have received, while she alone imagines a future of wearing lace caps and tending the sickbeds of nieces and nephews with no one to observe her tender ministrations or share her anxieties. If she is wise, the Husband Hunter will immediately cease to imagine her bleak future, offer her friends her heartiest wishes for their health and happiness, and consult her dressmaker for how best to appear at each of the weddings she will soon attend.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Twenty-four
Nate did not like the way things were going. Hazelwood had shared no plan with him. The clocks in the coffee room ticked forward indifferent to Nate’s dilemma. The quarter hour would chime, and the two men in front of him would turn to him. He would have to decide where to lead them.
Harry Clare had armed himself in his customary way with a pair of Land Pattern pistols and a Mameluke sabre, the British cavalry’s preferred sword. As he donned his greatcoat, he glanced pointedly at Blackstone.
“Shall I see what’s keeping our friend?” Blackstone asked.
He returned grim-faced in less time than Nate expected. “The fool’s gone off on his own, Clare.”
Clare turned to Wilde. “Well, whelp, do you know his plan?”
“No, sir.” Nate squared his shoulders.” The thing is, sir, Hazelwood’s a man in love.”
“That explains it, then,” said Blackstone with a dry laugh, and Clare winced. “Let’s hope we’re not too late to stop him from sacrificing himself.”
“And England,” Clare added under his breath.
The quarter hour chimes sounded, and Nate steeled himself to lead the way when below them the club doors opened, and the sound of angry voices and tramping boots rose up to meet them. The three men appeared, blocking the coffee room entry, Goldsworthy, Chartwell, and a third man Nate had never seen before. Clare and Blackstone exchanged a look. They had a problem.
Round-faced, bespectacled Chartwell was the smallest of the three men, dwarfed by Goldsworthy’s great bulk, but he immediately took charge. “Gentlemen, where’s Hazelwood?”
Blackstone looked around the coffee room as if his friend might be lying on one of its sofas or lounging in one of its chairs. “He’s not here. May we help?”
“Of course, you can lads,” Goldsworthy said. “Just tell us where he’s gone.”
“Upstairs?” Blackstone shrugged. Nate appreciated the man’s cool. “You don’t mind if Clare and I take off, do you, Chartwell? We were on the point of leaving.” He made it sound as if they meant to go around to a club or a pleasure house.
“Upstairs! What sort of answer is that? I do mind.” Chartwell seemed to puff up under his coat. His pointed gaze took in Blackstone’s pistol and Clare’s sword. He turned and signaled behind him, and a troop of red-coated Horse Guards filed into the club. Chartwell pointed
to the stairs, and the captain led his men up them. The tramp of boots filled the club.
“Lads,” Goldsworthy said, frowning severely, “no use trying to disguise the thing. Hazelwood’s gone off on his own, I expect.”
“And you’ve brought a unit of the Horse Guards to back him up?” Blackstone asked. He could be as pointed as anyone.
Goldsworthy looked grim, and Chartwell, furious. The third man, a bearded fellow, who looked to Nate as if he belonged in the Canadian wilds, watched the proceedings with a curious, detached expression. “A precaution merely,” said Chartwell.
The troops came tramping back down the stairs, and the captain reported that there was no sign of Hazelwood.
Chartwell spun on Goldsworthy. “By God, man, he’s selling secrets to that Russian scoundrel. I’ll have him hanged, and I’ll have this damned club shut down!”
Goldsworthy looked as if he might bat Chartwell away like an annoying insect. “Lads,” the big man said, “time to finish the mission. Where are we headed?”
Clare and Blackstone exchanged another look, and Nate felt better. Whatever Lord Hazelwood had got himself into; his friends would not let him down. Still Nate’s stomach clenched when Clare turned to him.
“Well, whelp, lead on.”
* * * *
Hazelwood stood at the gate of the deserted house, where Nate Wilde had earlier seen the watcher enter and leave. He had walked by the place for years without giving it any notice. Now he saw that one of the iron gates was no longer chained shut. With a little shove the gate moved enough to admit his entry. A pitted gravel drive made a short arc from gate to gate past the portico. To his left a horse nickered softly where a carriage waited in the deeper gloom under some trees. Oddly, a pair of lamps sat on the front step, as if Malikov expected visitors. And a large figure waited there in a hat and greatcoat, and no doubt, armed.
In his swift passage up the club stairs to his room and out again through the chemist’s shop, Hazelwood had considered and rejected a half dozen schemes for recovering his love. He had quickly decided that his pistols had no part in the plan forming in his head. Instead, he returned to his old claret-stained waistcoat and cravat. Only one part of the plan mattered, after all, the rest he would contrive as he went along. He would rely on his wits. And his friends. They would arrive with plenty of firepower, he was sure.
Malikov’s henchman reacted with swift and brutal efficiency to the sound of Hazelwood’s footfalls on the gravel drive. Hazelwood was searched for weapons and brought before Malikov as rapidly as he could wish. It took considerable self-control to refrain from expressing his feelings at the sight of his love bound and shivering. A second henchman, smaller than the first, but equally concealed by a greatcoat and muffler, stood by the hearth holding a pistol pointed directly at her.
“You!” Malikov did not conceal his obvious surprise.
“You were expecting someone else?” Hazelwood wondered for whom the lamps had been lit. The fellow with the pistol at his back reported that he’d found Hazelwood lurking outside.
“Not lurking, surely. I came right up the drive.” He took his first look at Jane, trying to judge how cold she was by now. He could see her breath in the frigid air.
Malikov had his guard up again. “Hazelwood, you interrupt my business with Miss Fawkener.”
“My mistake, Malikov, I heard you were hosting a card game.” He looked at the green baize table. “You know I’ve never been able to resist deep play.”
“Ah, but when your pockets are to let, you can hardly expect to join the game.”
“My pockets are not entirely empty. I have something you want.”
“What could you have that I could possibly want?” Malikov’s usual affability was strained.
Hazelwood looked into the man’s smooth countenance. At the moment the curled lip, the flared nostrils, and the fingers drumming on the arm of his chair suggested that Malikov was thinking of how to rid himself of an irritation. He saw the old Hazelwood, the sot, the wastrel dismissed as a bird-witted thrall to drink and gaming. Hazelwood was about to open the man’s eyes. Of course, he would betray his friends when he did it.
“A map.”
Malikov’s manner changed instantly. He sat up very straight in the chair. Hazelwood knew that look, the look of a man being undeceived, seeing for the first time what he had overlooked or underestimated. Malikov did not quite believe what he was seeing, but he reached for his henchman’s pistol and signaled for the man to search Hazelwood. The fellow stripped off Hazelwood’s greatcoat and made a rude and thorough search of his person. The man stepped back and shook his head at Malikov. The pistol changed hands again.
“Hazelwood, I am in no humor for games.”
“Did I mention that I have a condition for sharing this map with you?” Hazelwood said. He risked a second glance at Jane. Her eyes were watchful even as her body shook with the cold. Her cheeks bore two red streaks like burn marks where something had pressed against them. A gag, he realized.
“A condition?” Malikov’s voice was contemptuous. “I think you misunderstand your position.”
“Do I? I’m the only man in London who can lead you to the map you’ve been seeking.”
“Have I been seeking a map?”
Hazelwood nodded. Without his coat, he could feel the warmth leaving him. “I know where this map is.”
Jane made an odd strangled protest in her throat. She was shivering hard now. Hazelwood did not imagine she could talk.
Malikov did not even glance at the girl. “What an odd thing for an English gentleman to propose—to give a map to a subject of the Czar. I wonder what moves you to make such an offer.”
“Money, of course. Treasonous of me, isn’t it?” Hazelwood shrugged, at least he hoped it looked like a shrug. The careless pose was difficult to manage with a pistol still pointed at Jane. “As you pointed out, I’m a man with pockets to let. Humor me.”
“What is this condition you mention?”
Hazelwood looked briefly at the floor. Malikov had taken the bait. “A thousand pounds would suit me.”
Malikov laughed. “Really, Hazelwood, you do not understand the situation here.”
“No ready cash available? Suppose we settle on something else. Jane Fawkener leaves your company now. When her friends report that she’s safely among them, I take you to the map.”
There was a silence in which Hazelwood thought he could hear the coals hissing in the grate before Malikov laughed, a hollow unpleasant sound. He stood. “I fail to see the advantage of your offer, Hazelwood, but you do give a man ideas.” He nodded to his henchman, who steadied the pistol in his hand, and left the room.
* * * *
As soon as Malikov’s footsteps retreated, Hazelwood crossed to Jane’s side and pulled her to him. Their guard reacted with a snarl of unintelligible words and a threatening wave of the pistol.
“I don’t think he speaks English,” Jane told him. “Turkic, perhaps.”
“Interesting. I noted the coffeepot. Let me warm your hands,” Hazelwood suggested, ignoring another outburst from the guard. He began to chafe her hands, keeping her gaze on him, trying with his fingers to determine whether he could loosen her bonds at all.
“H-H-Hazelwood, don’t provoke him. He’ll shoot us.”
Hazelwood glanced at their guard. “He won’t shoot without orders. Malikov wants the map, so he still needs us. Let me warm you, love, before Malikov returns.”
“You don’t believe M-M-Malikov will let us go in exchange for the m-m-map, do you?”
“Sadly, not at all. He can’t risk either of us talking. But I’ve made him think. We may get out of this yet.” He didn’t know how long Blackstone and Clare would delay. So far he had avoided involving them in treason.
“H-h-hurts,” she said, as he warmed her hands.
“I imagine.�
� He kissed the top of her head. The imperfect moment was of a piece with the way his life usually went. Something he very much wanted was his briefly under threat of being snatched away.
“Hazelwood, Malikov betrayed my father, didn’t he?” her voice was a low shaky whisper.
“With help from someone inside Chartwell’s office.”
“Clive.” She said it sadly. “He worked there. He knew my father’s plans. He gained from my father’s death.”
“Clive is a proper scoundrel. You didn’t suspect him before tonight, did you?”
“No. But at the ball Allegra said something. I hardly had time to think about it before Count Malikov came to tell me she needed me.”
“You didn’t get my message?” There was a mystery there, but he would think about that later, if there was a later.
“No,” she said. He could feel her spirits reviving. “I don’t want Malikov to get away with betraying my father.”
“I share the sentiment, but unless we catch him dealing in secrets with something in his possession that more rightfully belongs to the government, he walks.”
“Like our map? But you don’t have our map.”
“Malikov doesn’t know that.” Hazelwood felt her hands begin to warm.
Jane was shaking her head. “Malikov will be looking for a specific map. He will spot a fake or a copy.”
“True. The plan has some flaws. But it should work well enough for you to get away. My friends are coming. They’ll create a distraction. Promise me you’ll leave.”
She shook her head.
“There is an unguarded back door,” he said gently. “Use it when the time comes. You can go your grandmother or to the chemist’s shop.” He hated to confess that the whole of his plan was to save the one thing that mattered to him, even if she would never be his.