Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 03]

by The Charmer

  As he swung over the brown and dirty Thames, the wind rushing into his face until his eyes watered, he thought he heard Rose’s voice call out to him.

  “Collis, you ass!”

  It occurred to Collis belatedly that he had no idea where he was going to end up. Smacking into the side of the ship didn’t appeal, but the pitted and stained wood grew very large in his vision—

  Until he landed, or crashed really, sprawling on the deck amid men and casks and coils of thick, smelly rope.

  Impact. Pain. Ow.

  Blackness quickly faded to light and his breath filled his lungs. He’d made it! Now he must persuade the captain quickly, likely an impossible task. Rolling onto his left shoulder, he reached into his waistcoat and pulled free his pistol.

  With breathtaking swiftness, he found himself the center of a thorny hedge of bristling firearms of every make and era.

  Lying breathless on his back, with a riveting view up at his circle of righteously suspicious captors, Collis broke out in a gust of laughter. “Stand and deliver?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The ship was halted, its anchor dropped against the river’s current. After Collis had convinced the vastly disgruntled captain that his keepers were waiting onshore, Dalton and Simon had managed to convince the captain that Collis was only slightly mad and not really dangerous. In addition, they had persuaded the man to give up his cargo. With a written receipt and Lord Etheridge’s personal financial guarantee, of course.

  The crew wasn’t so sure, especially after the Liars began to break open the crates to account for every last firearm. “Cor, what a pretty thing!” they said when the first musket was lifted to the daylight. The crewmen were obviously dazzled by the brilliant damascening and the intricate lock-plate castings. It made Rose wonder if that had been part and parcel of the plan, to make the guns irresistible to the British soldiers.

  Rose thought the crew would riot in earnest when the first of the weapons hit the river, where they sank until the brilliance disappeared beneath the churning silt.

  “What you do that for?” cried the most belligerent fellow. “I coulda used a pretty musket like that!”

  “Bad guns, lads,” growled Kurt, and that put paid to further protest, although the shocked grumblings continued until the last of the carbines and muskets went to the bottom of the Thames. Dalton held back a few random samplings from the crates for Forsythe to test and for evidence against Louis Wadsworth.

  It was over. As she stood with her feet braced on the mildly rocking deck, the fresh breeze making the rigging slap and ring above her, Rose felt the burden of responsibility slip deliciously off her shoulders. For the first time since she’d recognized Louis Wadsworth’s portrait, she felt the muscles of her neck relax. Her fine leaders were in charge at last, and she could go back to being an ordinary soldier. Her eyes found Collis, wanting to share the vast relief.

  He was standing to one side with wind-tousled hair and his clothing much the worse for his careening impact with the grimy deck. He didn’t meet her glance but stood there rubbing his shoulder with a curious expression of dismay on his face.

  She was at his side in an instant. “What is it?”

  He blinked at her. “I’m not sure. When I was swinging, I think I—or perhaps it was when I landed—but it hasn’t been quite right since Louis beat on it….” He trailed off, then took a deep breath. “At any rate, I can’t move it at all now.”

  There was quiet panic in his gray eyes. He made no move, but Rose could feel the terror shimmering from him. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

  He forced a sickly grin. “Never thought I’d wish it to be the way it was, but at least I could move it. Now—” He swallowed. “Now, they may as well cut the blasted thing off.”

  She wanted to reach for him, reassure him. A cry from nearby them cut her off.

  “My lord! Sir Simon!” Button was scrambling up the main companionway to the deck waving a sheaf of papers in his hand. The ship’s captain followed him up at a more leisurely pace.

  Button ran to where Simon and Dalton stood not far from Rose and Collis. “My lord—sir! I think you need to see this!”

  Dalton took the papers and flipped through them. “Copies of the manifest and shipping orders? Yes, thank you, Button. We’ll add this to our evidence.”

  Rose started to turn back to Collis, but Button was not done.

  “No, my lord—this!” Button extracted a sheet from the pile and thrust it beneath Dalton’s nose. Dalton took it and held it a few inches farther away. Simon leaned over to peer at it.

  “What is it?” Simon asked.

  Dalton read it. “It looks like a special undocking dispensation for the ship to leave ahead of schedule.” He looked up and grinned. “Wadsworth sped up the order. He shipped the crates as soon as possible after the break-in occurred.” He looked down at the sheet again, his eyes scanning rapidly. “Oh, bloody hell,” he breathed, then handed the sheet to Simon.

  Rose was startled at Lord Etheridge’s horrified tone of voice. Sir Simon’s quiet curse wasn’t reassuring. “Signed by Lord Liverpool himself,” Simon said slowly.

  Rose was stunned. Liverpool?

  “Are you positive it’s Liverpool’s signature?” Simon asked.

  Dalton rubbed his neck. “I know it like my own.”

  Rose couldn’t believe it. She might personally find the Prime Minister ruthless and unpleasant, but she simply couldn’t imagine the man as a traitor.

  “What would be the point of such a thing?” she asked, stepping away from Collis.

  Dalton shot her a don’t-be-presumptuous look, but he answered all the same. “Well, we thought before that the plot might have something to do with discrediting George…but the only ones to benefit from the removal of George would be those within the British government who find him to be an obstruction.”

  Well, that did make sense. “Does Lord Liverpool consider him to be an obstruction?”

  Dalton sent Simon a look she couldn’t decipher, but she recalled the Prime Minister’s very vocal doubts in the study about George’s sanity. Dalton seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

  “If Liverpool is trying to have George declared mad,” Dalton mused, “then this sort of capricious negligence might be just the sort of thing to win his case.”

  Rose shook her head. “But Lord Liverpool is fanatically loyal to the Crown, isn’t he?”

  Another one of those looks between the two men. What were they thinking? They couldn’t truly suspect Lord Liverpool, could they?

  “Fanatical…yes,” Dalton said quietly. “Precisely.”

  “We’ve always wondered when he might go too far,” Simon said quietly, as if reminding Dalton of something they’d previously discussed.

  “Indeed.” Dalton’s expression was grim and—she was horribly afraid—quite convinced.

  No. Her mind spun. There was more here. What had Lord Etheridge said a moment ago? “The only ones to benefit from the removal of George would be those within the British government.” Yet who would benefit the most from the removal of the most powerful and masterful Prime Minister England had ever seen?

  Why, Napoleon, of course.

  Rose felt the devious hand of Louis Wadsworth at work here. That was what he did, after all—tie one’s mind in knots until one doubted one’s own motives and sanity!

  Confidence rang through Rose’s next words. “My lord, that signature is a forgery. This is all part of Louis Wadsworth’s plan to rid England of the Prime Minister.”

  Collis clutched his wounded arm, lost in his thoughts. Images crossed his mind. His arm, being truly dead now, turning to rot while still on his body. In the hospital, he’d seen the gangrene take healthy, strong men, turning them to rotting corpses while still breathing.

  He felt lost, spinning off-center. Turning quickly, he scanned the ship with desperate eyes. He needed Rose.

  There she was, arguing with Dalton and Simon. Even that stunning sight could not dis
tract him from his breathless dismay. Rose. He moved toward her like a compass needle turning north.

  Rose’s voice was raised above the crew’s noise, above the wind and the water. “I’m telling you, I know Louis Wadsworth! He had this all mapped, a plan within a plan. He knew you would find the manifest! He forged it. He planted it here!”

  Simon folded his arms. “Dalton, what if she is right about Wadsworth? If this is a plan to make us act against the Prime Minister, then it very nearly worked. Think about it. I know you suspect Lord Liverpool tried to have Clara eliminated a few months ago, but there were logical reasons at the time. What would be the profit in declaring George mad? If nothing else, you must agree that Liverpool is eminently logical.”

  Scarcely listening, Collis wanted Rose away from them. He wanted her alone. The argument before him scarcely penetrated his disorienting fog. His arm was swelling. He could feel it under his right hand. It was already nearly filling his sleeve. He’d have to cut his sleeve off.

  Cut it off. The thought wouldn’t stop running through his mind. Cut it off.

  There was something wrong with his vision—the world had turned sharp and glassy….

  “Rose.” Was that his voice? It sounded rather far away.

  She turned to him with relief. “Collis, tell them! I know Louis!”

  Louis. Louis who? The traitor. Yes, that was it.

  When he didn’t answer, she turned back to Simon and Dalton. “You must listen to me. Lord Liverpool is not plotting against His Highness. That’s what Louis wants you to think!”

  Dalton frowned. “That’s a bit of a stretch, Miss Lacey. What would be the profit in such an intricate plan? How could Wadsworth know that we would see this manifest?”

  Rose threw up her hands. Her frustration penetrated even Collis’s sickened fog. “The profit is that now you wish to put the Prime Minister on trial for treason!”

  Dalton and Simon glanced at her, then exchanged a look, as if to say, What trial? Of course. The Liars didn’t try their targets in public. If the Liars decided that the Prime Minister was a traitor, it was a sure wager the man would meet with an accident in the next week that would never raise a single suspicion.

  “God. You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” Rose looked from one to the other in horror. “Don’t you think you ought to at least consider my suspicions first?”

  Dalton narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin. “Miss Lacey, I certainly hope you can supply me with some reason to excuse such insubordination. We have no evidence to support your accusations of a man whose father you served many years ago—”

  “I know him,” she burst out.

  No. It couldn’t be. Not his Rose. No, Rose, don’t say it. Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.

  “I experienced his convoluted planning more times than I can recall!” Her furious voice rang out over the entire ship. “Louis Wadsworth and I were lovers!”

  “No!”

  Rose flinched from the anguished tone in Collis’s voice. He looked terrible, she realized, from much more than simple bruising from his impact with the deck. She reached a hand to him. “Collis? My God, what’s wrong—”

  He only stared at her. “That’s—that’s disgusting.”

  “Collis.” Lord Etheridge’s barked command must have reached Collis, for he visibly pulled himself together, though he still swayed where he stood. Then the spymaster turned to her. She recoiled from the judgment and disappointment in Dalton’s eyes.

  “We,” he said in a cool, level voice, “do not allow our past…dalliances…to rule our reason, Miss Lacey. You are obviously too close to this case. I’m afraid your assessment of the situation may be unduly influenced.”

  He thought her no more than a scorned woman, taking revenge on her former lover. Rose felt her belly turn to ice, black spikes of ice that threatened to pierce her lungs. “You do not trust me, my lord?”

  He raised a brow. “I do not trust your emotional state, no.”

  All activity near them had ceased, she realized. Liars and sailors alike openly gaped at the four of them. She didn’t need to look at her fellow Liars to know what she would see. She’d seen it before. She wouldn’t look at Collis. She wouldn’t.

  She took a step back. “I see. I will not put you through the distress of having a Liar in the club you cannot trust, my lord.”

  She took another step. She would not look at Collis. She should never have done so in the first place. Never should have raised her eyes so high, never should have reached—

  She turned and ran down the length of the ship, away from curious and accusing eyes.

  She ran to where the Liars were preparing the small boats to return to the bank. Kurt was there, doing the work of two men, as usual. She reached for his huge, hard hand. “Help me,” she whispered.

  He didn’t question. With a barked order, he had the small boat pulled close, and lowered her into it as if she were a child. With a careful drop, he joined her. He pushed off with a giant heave at the oars and they were at the bank in a matter of moments. So quickly her new life was left behind.

  When she leaped from the boat, Kurt said only one word. “Careful.”

  She turned to him, the silent killer who had taught her more than all the others put together, and smiled tightly at him. “Do you mean careful on the bank or careful in the world?”

  He nodded. Both. Then he turned the small boat with a few deep strokes of one oar, turning his back on her, turning back to the Liars.

  Rose walked back to the barge road and stood for a moment in the dust. Stubbs was back down the path gingerly holding the horses. But riding one herself…no. She turned to face the road back to London. She didn’t belong with Collis. She didn’t belong with the Liars. She felt as though the light that had shone on her these past months had suddenly gone out.

  To be invisible again might very well destroy her.

  If that was so, then by God she was taking Louis Wadsworth with her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Collis’s confused gaze followed Rose as she hurried down the length of the ship. Then he blinked as his sight seemed to narrow and the ship began to tilt dangerously beneath his feet. “Oh, bugger—”

  Dalton caught him as he fell. “Collis!”

  The dimness receded to the edges of his vision, but the ringing increased. He was lying on the deck, looking up at the sky through bound sails and rigging, and wheeling seabirds. It wasn’t the ship then. It was him.

  How odd.

  Dalton’s voice faded in and out of his hearing. He felt his coat being pulled from him and tucked under his head.

  “Collis? Good God, Simon, look at his arm!” Dalton sounded genuinely appalled.

  Simon swore softly. “He must have broken it when he landed on the deck. I think he’s gone into shock.”

  Dalton shook him, then rapped him across the cheek. It took Collis a moment to focus on his uncle.

  Dalton looked bloody well panicked. “Where is Rose?” Collis asked him.

  “Collis, you have to stay awake.” Dalton turned away to shout over his shoulder. “Simon, get a small boat ready! Captain, do you have any stimulants—”

  The bustle went on about him. Collis noticed that the gray edges were creeping back. The Clarimond and the Liars all seemed very far away. Collis’s last thought before he passed out was, Where is Rose?

  Collis came awake suddenly, with no dreamy edging toward alertness. His eyes opened instantly, his vision focusing clearly on the tester above his own bed at Etheridge House. How had he come home?

  Then the various aches and complaints of his body made themselves heard. From the shoulder of his numb arm to his knees, he throbbed. He felt as though he’d been dropped from a great height to smack on the cobbles like a thrown egg.

  His swing from the bluff to the ship came back to him. In a sense, he had been dropped, hadn’t he? Now he felt every plank of that decking as if it had imprinted itself onto his very bones. Rose was right. What an a
ss he was.

  Rose. Rose and Louis. Unbearable.

  He struggled to sit up, only to find his left arm immobilized in a splint from armpit to wrist and bound to his chest with strips of linen.

  “Broken,” came a voice from beside the bed.

  He looked up to see Clara sitting there in his chair, silhouetted against the gray light of dawn coming through his draperies. The hell-cat was draped across her lap, purring like the orange-furred shedding mechanism it was. It opened one baleful green eye.

  “Mrow,” uttered the beast.

  “I love you, too,” muttered Collis, then turned his attention to Clara. In the dim light, he could see the alleged resemblance to Rose that had allowed Clara to pass as a housemaid in Edward Wadsworth’s house.

  Of course, Clara was prettier and softer and most definitely friendlier. Rose was prickly and defensive and no one would ever call her merely pretty—in fact, she reminded Collis very much of Marmalade.

  Like the cat, she had survived much and had the scars to show for it. Like the cat, she stood her ground in the face of the enemy, claws extended.

  Clara leaned forward to plant her elbow on the arm of her chair and grin at him. “Yes, you broke your arm again—in at least two places which may have healed badly from your first injury—and dislocated your shoulder joint as well, according to Dr. Westfall. He seemed to think it was already broken when you leaped off the bluff.”

  Dr. Westfall was Lord Liverpool’s personal physician and one trusted implicitly by the Liar’s Club. They didn’t use him often, especially with Kurt knowing so much of human anatomy and Button so handy with a needle and thread, so for the great doctor to be called, the situation must be quite serious.

  Collis swallowed and reached to grip his left shoulder with his right hand. “Will I keep it, then?”