Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 03]

by The Charmer

  He bit her earlobe lightly. “I think I could occupy you for about that long.”

  “Braggart.”

  “Vixen.”

  She yawned helplessly. He followed suit an instant later and they laughed at each other. “I only need a moment to recover,” she said. “Then I’ll slip out.”

  He didn’t answer, for he was very nearly asleep with his face tucked into her neck, but his disabled arm tightened around her waist. She gently eased his grip slightly, then allowed her eyes to close. Just for a moment.

  The door to Collis’s bedchamber opened. Dalton stuck his head in. “We’ve got the ship name! Time to—”

  He halted, obviously dismayed at finding the two of them so. Damn. Collis hadn’t precisely wanted their courtship announced until—well, until he’d had the opportunity to court her, for pity’s sake! Collis blinked at his uncle, then shook himself awake. “Can we catch them?”

  Dalton was very carefully looking at the floor and not at Rose’s tousled and extremely nude state. Collis appreciated the courtesy in a grim sort of way. Of course, he’d have preferred the courtesy of, oh, say, knocking.

  Rose was blushing furiously and pulling on what items of clothing she could reach without letting go her death grip on the covers pulled over her breasts. Collis turned to Dalton. “Why don’t you wait in the hall? We’ll be right with you.”

  Dalton hesitated. He did not look pleased, with either of them. Collis bristled. “For God’s sake, Dalton, I’m not fourteen!”

  Dalton frowned. “Evidently.” He left, pulling the door closed with a decisive click.

  Rose scrambled for her clothing. She kept her head down, her face hidden beneath the fall of her hair.

  “Rose, I—he isn’t mad at you.”

  She was pulling up her stockings with hurried tugs. “I wouldn’t be too sure. Oh, God, what he must think of me! Especially now—” She stopped and bit her lip.

  Collis dragged his own shirt over his head. He felt better after Rose’s ministrations and…well, ministrations, and a bit of sleep certainly hadn’t hurt. Very nearly himself, but for the fact that something seemed amiss with his left arm. Just clumsier than usual, probably, after the beating it had taken from Louis. He ordered his hand to make a fist, watching it carefully. It obeyed, somewhat. Good enough. It wasn’t as if he were going to use it anyway.

  He got his boots on while she was buttoning her own sturdy shoes. Being a gentleman, he tried not to be distracted by the glimpse of white thigh she exposed while propping her foot on the chair. He decided he was grateful that the rest of the world didn’t seem to see her beauty the way he did. Selfish, yes, but all the better to have her offer up her secrets to him alone. Naked Rose was too much for any mortal man, anyway.

  Ready, she stood, quickly twisting her amazing hair into something sensible and humdrum. Collis smiled. Just the way he liked it.

  “Ready?”

  He knew she meant more than simply being dressed. Outside that door lay the world, and that world had just pierced their lovely fantasy. Perhaps even fatally.

  No. He wouldn’t—couldn’t allow it. The world and Dalton were simply going to have to understand. He needed Rose. That settled the matter.

  Dalton wasn’t angrily waiting in the hall as they’d have expected. He was in the entrance hall, directing the gathered Liars to two large Etheridge carriages waiting on the street. Rose clattered down in front of Collis, and they both took their wraps from a visibly twitching Denny.

  Rose stared at the valet, who wouldn’t meet her eye. If she didn’t know any better she would swear that Denny looked…guilty? What did Denny have to be guilty of, other than his usual obnoxiousness? It hadn’t been his fault that the message to Liverpool had been lost, and it hadn’t been his fault that his lordship hadn’t received Collis’s note in time to come for the Prince Regent—

  But the note had been sent in good time. Even allowing for the delivery to go somewhat astray, Dalton should have made it to Mrs. Blythe’s by midnight. Unless whoever had informed the Voice of Society had somehow interpreted the message first—

  Oh, Denny, you ass.

  Rose grabbed the valet’s arm in a grip Kurt had taught her and marched him out of the general bedlam. In the nook beneath the staircase, she let him pull away from her with a grimace.

  “What’s this ’ere?” he protested. “You got your nerve!”

  Rose leaned in close. “You got the note early, didn’t you? You knew where we were, where the Prince Regent was, and you couldn’t resist the chance to make trouble.”

  Denny tugged at his collar, his eyes sliding away. “Don’t know what you mean,” he muttered. “Crazy mop.”

  Rose poked him in the chest with one finger. “You went to the Voice of Society and you sold us out! Because of you, the Prince Regent was put in terrible danger!”

  He slapped her hand away feebly. “Did no such thing. You can’t prove nothin’.”

  “The Sergeant said you came home with the note early in the morning. Where did you go, Denny?”

  He stepped back and tugged at his waistcoat. “That’s my business and none of yours. I got the note as I was coming into the house, just like I told his lordship!”

  Rose crossed her arms. “You’re a dead man, Denny. How could you be so stupid? Don’t you realize what will happen to you when I tell them?”

  Denny paled but kept his chin aggressively high. “Why would they believe you? I been here for years, workin’ for Sir Simon, and for Mr. Cunnington, and for Master Collis—you been here for a few months! D’you really think they’ll believe you over me?”

  He had a point. Then Rose shook her head. No, she belonged now. “Of course they will, Denny. I’m a Liar.”

  Red fury washed Denny’s cheeks. Rose almost felt sorry for him. Until she remembered Collis and George hanging bruised and bloody in that factory cellar. Denny’s days might very well be numbered. The Liar’s Club was on the side of right, but they didn’t shy from doing what was necessary to preserve their secret existence. “You’ve gone too far, Denny.”

  Denny lifted a shaking hand to brush a sandy lock from his forehead. “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  Dalton was shoving Liars out the door as fast as he could. “Miss Lacey, come along!” he called from across the entrance hall. Rose hesitated. There wasn’t time for the spymaster to deal with Denny right now. “He has to know, Denny. Perhaps…perhaps if you told him yourself, confessed…it might go easier on you.”

  He rubbed his hands down his waistcoat. “D’you think so?”

  She didn’t, not really. But she shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Denny nodded shortly. “I’ll do it.” He peered around her at an impatiently waiting Dalton. “When this has passed.”

  Rose tugged her shawl tighter and tilted her head warningly at him. “Don’t wait too long, Denny.” Then she turned away. She carefully avoided meeting Dalton’s eye at the door.

  Outside, Feebles handed her into the waiting carriage with the respect he’d always shown her, and she took her place among the Liars seated there.

  At last.

  Collis stepped up to speak to Dalton privately for a moment. It certainly wasn’t the time, yet he had to dispel the chill disapproval that shrouded Dalton’s expression. His uncle-nearly-brother was the only family he had. Collis had to make Dalton understand.

  But Dalton spoke before Collis could. “Clara isn’t feeling well,” Dalton said absently as he watched the Liars climbing into the carriages.

  Collis blinked, surprised. “I hope it will pass,” he ventured.

  A sudden boyish grin broke over Dalton’s face. He looked very nearly giddy. “It will,” he announced with pride, “Until tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh?” Collis frowned. “Oh!”

  Dalton pasted his usual cool demeanor over his joy as they stepped up to the first carriage, but Collis imagined he could see it shining through the cracks. He clapped Dalton on the shoulder. “Well done, you old sod!�
� he whispered.

  Dalton nodded shortly. “Thank you. I thought you should know.”

  Indeed. Collis felt unadulterated relief rush through him, like a cleansing wave.

  “I must congratulate you as well,” Dalton continued. “I hear the Liars will be calling you the Phoenix. Appropriate, I’d say.” Dalton’s expression held mingled worry and pride. “You have risen from the ashes indeed.”

  Collis’s breath left him in a gust. The Phoenix. Now that was a dashing alias!

  The world was suddenly finer and more glorious than he ever remembered. He was a Liar. And he was free, free to be an ordinary man. A spy. A husband.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Rose.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  In the foremost carriage, Collis wanted to sit by Rose—damn, he was like an infatuated schoolboy—but she squeezed in between Kurt and Button. Probably a good idea to have the two smallest Liars sit with the largest, ballast-wise.

  Impossible to be jealous of Button. The Liars’ costumer extraordinaire was more puckish than roguish. Impossible as well to be jealous of scarred man-mountain Kurt—yet Collis managed, in a buoyant, reckless way. At the moment, he’d be besottedly envious of a butterfly lighting on her shoulder.

  For pity’s sake, man, keep your mind on your job. A rush of pride went through him. His job. He had a place in this mad crew now. An earned place.

  He looked at Rose, his lover and partner, and all his odd lot of comrades, and all was right in his world for the first time in a very long time. He and the Liars would stop the ship, the muskets and carbines would be seized, and the nameless, faceless British soldiers fighting on the Peninsula would not face that particular horror.

  Yes, by God, he and Rose had earned their places.

  The flush of the hunt carried him for a while. Then, after the first hour, the tight quarters of the carriage became arduous. Dalton would not allow Hawkins to slack in speed once they were out of the city proper. With clean hard-packed road ahead, the coachman let the horses run full out, sending the coach on a jarring, careening pace.

  The passengers within were forced to brace themselves however they could, a draining exercise that left feet trodden, arses weary, and even heads knocked.

  After the umpteenth time Stubbs’s elbow contacted his sore ribs, Collis could bear it no longer. He leaned around Stubbs to speak to Dalton, who was gripping the hand strap with white-knuckled determination. No undignified bouncing for his lordship, of course. Dalton, you truly need to unbind your lordly arse.

  “This is too slow!” Even yelling at the top of his lungs, Collis wasn’t sure Dalton could hear him over the jangling, creaking carriage. “We’ll never catch the ship this way.” It took time for a ship to navigate the Thames, but that time was running out.

  It was true. Even now, Collis could tell the coach horses were slowing, losing their fresh edge.

  “What do you propose?” Dalton shouted back.

  Collis was about to propose dumping half the Liars by the roadside, Stubbs in particular, when he spotted a hostelry sign on a post by the road.

  THE WHITE CHARGER INN AND HOSTELRY.

  Horses. Yes. He pointed silently at it as it flashed by. Fortunately, Dalton saw it as well.

  With one fist, Dalton pounded on the trap in the roof of the carriage. Hawkins flipped it open but only glanced down, for he was keeping the four at a gallop. Dalton shouted for him to stop.

  It took a long moment for the carriage to slack its speed. The momentum of the overloaded burdens could not be allowed to overrun the tired carriage horses. With one last arse-bruising jolt, the carriage pulled to a halt. The sudden lack of clatter left their ears ringing. Collis was sure he wasn’t the only one subtly letting go a sigh of relief.

  The carriage behind them was already slowing, Collis saw when he thrust his head out the window. Simon must have seen the sign as well. The coaches couldn’t turn, of course, so the Liars piled out, right there on the narrow, dusty road.

  “What are we doing?” Button yawned. Of all of them, Button had been the most comfortable, drowsing on Rose’s shoulder. How anyone could have slept through that brutal jouncing was beyond Collis.

  He took Button by one arm and Rose took the other. Together the Liars marched back down the road and up the deep U-shaped drive of the inn.

  The burly leather-aproned hosteller went wide-eyed at the sight of twelve dusty and intimidating travelers marching en masse up his drive.

  “We likely look like highwaymen,” Collis muttered to Rose over Button’s natty beaver hat.

  “What do you call highwaymen who hold up ships?” she sent back with a flash of smile.

  Collis grinned fiercely. “Pirates.”

  Whether the man was more impressed by their intimidating appearance or the pound notes waved by Dalton, the horses were brought out in very short order. Not all the Liars were experienced riders, something Collis thought Dalton ought to attend to.

  Rose went up behind Collis, for “the closest I’ve ever been to a horse is fetching the bottles in from the milk cart.”

  Ethan Damont was fitted with a fine hunter, which he received with an ironic bow for the hosteller. The only horse in the establishment large enough to carry Kurt was a heavy-boned gray plow horse. Mounted on the great beast, which didn’t look nearly so large with Kurt on his back, the club’s premiere assassin looked like a knight of old on his destrier. “The Green Knight,” Ethan said blandly when he noted Kurt’s unusual pallor.

  Button plunked himself behind Ethan, because, as he proclaimed, “he is the best dressed.” Simon and Dalton took their own mounts, with a pale Stubbs clinging behind Simon, but there was no persuasion in the world strong enough to get Feebles on horseback.

  “Sir, you can shoot me now if you like, but I won’t do it. Not a bit of it. Anyway, someone orta stay here with the carriages, like.”

  The Sergeant looked very fine and martial on a sturdy mare, and Collis was reminded that the man had not always run a lord’s house.

  Rigg and Fisher were put up on careworn mounts that the hosteller assured them would simply follow the others. With a wave to the unmounted Feebles and a great whoop of, “To the river, lads!”—and a few startled cries as the horses responded—the eleven very unlikely horsemen laid a trail of dust down the road to the Thames.

  A fine day, a grand mission, a fairly acceptable horse—and Rose behind him, clinging to his waist with all her supple strength. What more could a man want? Collis nearly laughed aloud at his own mawkish thoughts, yet truly, he was happy. It had been so long, he scarcely recalled the warm sensation that now grew within him.

  The thundering herd—or was it horde?—passed through a few tiny river towns, which they galloped through too quickly to glimpse more than a number of startled faces and weathered alehouses. Then the hard-packed road began to follow the river itself, trailing up and down the uneven land that banked it. Barge road, Collis realized. Large barges without steam or sails were pulled by chains attached to draft horses on the banks. The hard-packed road gave the Liars’ own horses excellent footing as the miles flashed by.

  Along this route, the Thames seemed cleaner and less like a glorified sewer, although that might have been an impression given by the refreshingly grassy banks. Coming from London, the water itself was likely as filthy as ever.

  The river stretching ahead and curving out of sight was dotted with ships and boats of all types, but the Clarimond was a double-topsail schooner. Ethan claimed he could spot the distinctive sails from behind the trees.

  They had been racing for what seemed like hours, but surely wasn’t, when Ethan raised one arm and shouted out. Ahead, just past the last slow bend before the sea, was a schooner, double topsails shining in the sun. They pushed their mounts to run up the slope to the top of the rise of the embankment that had pushed the river to such a bend.

  From there they could see clearly. It was the Clarimond, sails full, heading for the mouth of the Thames and the open sea.


  Dalton turned in the saddle and shouted, “Hurry, lads!”

  The ship picked up speed even as they did and bid fair to outrace their tired mounts. Rose pounded on Collis’s thigh to get his attention.

  He turned his head to hear her over the pounding hoofbeats and the wind rushing past his ears.

  “Is this bank too high?” she shouted. “Could we jump in and swim for it? Surely they’d notice that and stop to help.”

  Collis looked down at the distance from the grassy bluff at his horse’s feet to the turgid river below. It wouldn’t work. The crew of the Clarimond had their faces to the sea, busy with their sails. A man could drown waiting for them to notice.

  But the bluff just ahead was even higher—

  Even as the idea occurred to Collis, he acted. Without a word, Collis grabbed Rose by the waist and deposited her on the ground. She landed on her feet, staggering a little. “What—”

  Collis didn’t hear the rest. With a fierce jab to his poor mount’s sides, he raced directly through the galloping Liars to follow the barge road down and then up the farther swell. As his horse bunched powerful haunches to push them up the steep path to the bluff, Collis wrapped the reins around his left hand and reached his right into the bag slung beside him.

  The grapple hook sprung open with a simple flip of his wrist—thank you, Forsythe—and the rope that was knotted to it came easily from its coil in the bag.

  With an unruly yank of his left arm he stopped his poor hired horse at the highest point of the bluff. Using even his mount’s added hands of height, he kicked free of the stirrups and swung one leg over to sit sidesaddle.

  The Clarimond was nearly out of range. There was no time for fine aim. He made the hardest crude throw he could manage—

  The hook tangled in the rigging. He only had an instant to wind the rope around his left arm and jump clear before the speed of the ship could yank him down and drag him over the edge of the bluff. Still, terrific pain shot through his bruised shoulder as his weight came full on the rope, but his wrapped grip held.