Marry the Man Today

by Linda Needham

  “Please tell me the Russian courier is alive.”

  “Apparently alive and kicking, Drew,” Ross answered to the group now gathered around them. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, ladies, Drew and I have to pay an official visit to the Russian Embassy.”

  But Caro persisted, the most doggedly curious woman in the world. “Did they get the attaché case, Ross?”

  “Apparently not, madam.” Ross folded up the note and stuck it into his pocket before the woman could decide to join the hunt. “Come, Drew. And no, Princess, you can’t come along.”

  “But I can help. I know Brunnov’s weaknesses. He’s terrified of spiders—”

  “That’s why Ross said no, my love. Jared and Kate will see you get home safely.”

  Drew gave his wife the smacking good kiss that Ross suddenly wished he could give to Elizabeth, and a very few minutes later he and Drew were on their way in a hackney to the Russian Embassy to forestall a political scandal.

  “So, Ross, why exactly are we racing over to the embassy? No harm’s been done. Making more of the confrontation than it actually is will only aggravate the situation.”

  “A diplomatic mission. Clarendon’s request.”

  “Ah, we’re to soothe Brunnov’s temper. Maybe we should have brought Caro.”

  “The ambassador’s blaming Aberdeen’s government.”

  “For a simple robbery attempt?”

  “He’s making noises about an intentional act of sabotage by the British Foreign Office.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “But it’s got everyone dancing to his music. He’s demanding that Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office investigate the assault. And insists upon an apology not only from the prime minister, but Victoria herself.”

  “That’s not going to happen any time soon.” Drew leaned back against the coach seat, his longtime distinction as the queen’s favorite diplomat granting him an invaluable insight into the woman’s personality. “At least not an apology from the queen.”

  “Which is why Clarendon wants us to defuse the situation immediately—”

  “Express Her Majesty’s concern for the Russian mission in London—”

  “Without actually issuing a formal apology.” Ross rubbed at his suddenly aching shoulder. “Bloody hell, Drew, I hate this. I’m a soldier, not a nanny. How do you stand it?”

  “Diplomacy,” Drew said with a grunt, “is not for the faint of heart.”

  A quarter hour later they were met at the door of the Russian Embassy by a liveried page, then ushered into the elaborate receiving room.

  They waited the obligatory ten minutes until the deputy ambassador finally strode in with his effusive apologies for keeping them waiting, though he knew as well as they did that he had purposely lingered upstairs the prescribed length of time, and that they had been expecting him to do just that.

  “Diplomacy,” Drew had whispered again.

  The other formalities rang just as dry and hollow to Ross, and their questions about the assault on the courier were expertly deflected. As though the targeted attaché case had held something of a highly delicate nature.

  Troop movements, weapon strength, fleet conditions, the royal pearls.

  “If we might speak with the courier himself—”

  The deputy ambassador shook his nattily coiffed head firmly. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Lord Blakestone. He is indisposed.”

  Ross heard Drew’s muffled grunt beside him on the settee, but tried again. “We wish merely to ask him a few questions about the incident—”

  “You may ask me, my lord. He has told me everything.”

  “Then shall we start from the beginning, Mr. Deputy Ambassador? Were you—I mean, was your courier—able to get a description of the man who attempted to grab the attaché case?”

  “Well, now as I understand it, Lord Blakestone …”

  By the time they left the Russian Embassy, Ross’s notepad was a snarled web of the deputy ambassador’s wild-ass suspicions, pointing the blame at nearly everyone the man could imagine, including Prince Albert, and the President of the United States.

  He dropped Drew off at his town house, where Caro yanked open the door with young Andrew in her arms and pulled him inside with a quick wave to Ross in the carriage.

  They made it look so simple.

  When he knew very well that their road had been long and difficult, a road he would gladly take should the right woman ever come into his life.

  A woman with a warm, deliciously rebellious spirit.

  The sort who couldn’t be flattered.

  Or cajoled.

  Who wouldn’t turn from a challenge.

  Or walk away from an injustice.

  Bloody hell! What was it Drew had said about diplomacy? That it wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  But then neither was protecting Elizabeth Dunaway.

  ******************

  “Oh, I hate jam pots!” Elizabeth held her breath, gripped the lid of the jar with all her might, then put all her weight into a grunting twist.

  “Blast it all!” She let up on the pressure. The lid was glued down by its own sweetness. And she dearly wanted to top off her late night crumpet with the last of the cook’s brandied cherry preserves.

  It was after eleven; all the staff was in bed. However, Blakestone’s guards weren’t. They never slept.

  But they were always hungry, always courteous and ready to help.

  She quickly set up a tray for the night man in the drive up, including the stubborn pot of preserves, and slipped from the kitchen through the darkened tea room and into the foyer. But as she approached the front door, she noticed a light flickering around the door frame of Blakestone’s makeshift office and couldn’t help looking inside.

  Now, here was a man who could open a jam pot! Among other feats of strength and daring.

  She set the tray on the entry table, took the pot with her to the door, then peered through the cracked opening.

  He was bent over the desk, his fingers raked through his dark hair, his arm propping up his forehead. He was shuffling papers across the surface.

  “Lord Blakestone?”

  He whirled around and shot to his feet, looking so vulnerable in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

  “Can I help you, Miss Dunaway?”

  She felt utterly ridiculous now, with the pot of preserves and her petty request. But she held out the pot anyway.

  “Can you open this please, my lord?”

  “With the greatest pleasure.” He smiled like a rogue, then drew himself up, even flexed an arm muscle for her, before he got a grip on the lid and opened the pot with ease.

  “Thank you.” She felt even more ridiculous as he handed it back to her. “Sorry. I had a craving for brandied cherry preserves.”

  “Please, I appreciate the friendly face.” He leaned back against the desk and winced slightly as he began to absently knead a muscle in his shoulder.

  “Working late I see.”

  “There’s never enough time during the day.” He yawned and rolled his shoulder. “If it isn’t a diplomatic uproar, it’s the Lord Mayor wanting to know how far I’ve come in the investigation of the abductions.”

  “No luck?”

  “It’s the most frustrating case I’ve ever worked on. Utterly useless evidence.”

  She felt like a traitor asking the question. “Useless?”

  “Our serial kidnapper has used the same manufactured glove in each of his three crimes. Made by a factory in Manchester. As undistinctive as a copper penny.” He dropped into the desk chair, looking weary and pained by his shoulder.

  Which made her feel even more guilty. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  He snorted a laugh. “A little over a year ago. Took a bayonet across my shoulder, and it sometimes stiffens up.”

  “A bayonet?” Dear Lord, she’d forgotten he was a soldier. In constant danger. “How did it happen?”

  “Carelessness on my part. I put myself in a
sticky situation and I lost. Well, nearly so.”

  Feeling like she ought to do something for the man’s obvious pain, she put down the pot of brandied cherries and went to his side. “Can I try something?”

  He cast her a doubting look. “Be my guest.”

  “It might hurt at first.” She stood behind him, fit her hands around his shoulder, and the first squeeze of his muscles bucked him backward with a groan of obvious relief.

  “Oh, God, thank you!”

  “My pleasure.” Distinctly so. She smiled as she worked at the muscle, amazed at the power contained beneath her hands. Ashamed of prodding him about the abductions, but unable to stop herself.

  “I’m sorry the culprit has given you such trouble.”

  “Trouble is putting it mildly, my dear. The blackguard uses a standard mixture of chloroform, obtainable in large quantities from any one of a thousand chemists in London alone.”

  She kneaded slightly deeper, lower on his arm, and her patient let out a long, low groan, went lank and loose, then slumped and stuck his legs out in front of him.

  “A pity, my lord.” But all for the best. “Is the other evidence as troublesome?”

  “As for the Wallace hat—oh, God, that feels good.” He sighed and rolled his head. “There’s not a shop within a fifty mile radius of the city that will lay claim to its apparently unfashionable design. The same goes for the hats from the other crimes.”

  Because Jessica makes all the distinctively ugly hats in the workroom of the Abigail Adams, not three dozen steps from where they were.

  “We do, however, know that—oh, yes, right there, Miss Dunaway.” He groaned and sighed and made her want to kiss the back of his neck and his temple. But she had to keep her senses about her as she quizzed her opponent.

  “What is it you know, my lord?”

  He roused some, tried to sit up, but slumped again. “We know that the feathers of the Wallace hat were pheasant.”

  “Well, that’s something, my lord.”

  This time he groaned in exasperation. “But only if our kidnapper happens to be a pheasant.”

  “We’ll just have to hope for the best then, won’t we?”

  Though she hadn’t the faintest idea what the best could possibly be.

  ******************

  In the course of the next three days, Ross made dozens of trips between the Russian Embassy, the Austrian Embassy, the French Embassy, and the Foreign Office, and the world was still on the brink.

  His own world had come to a halt. He’d seen Elizabeth all of four times in passing. Each time leaving his thoughts more battered and bruised than the time before.

  She’d begun to fill his dreams and the quiet part of his days. He craved her touch and her scent. Looked for her around every corner.

  And prayed that she wouldn’t do anything foolish while this madman was still on the loose.

  Now he was sitting in the map room of the Huntsman, preparing still another report for the late night session of Parliament. Where he would spend hours in a stifling room, just off the Commons, on call with nonsecret facts for the Foreign Secretary and the Lord Admiral about French and Russian ship movements in the Mediterranean. The ministers would then use these facts as they were needed in the open debate over the possibility of war in the Crimea.

  A war that seemed ever more probable as the tsar played his games so near the brink.

  And the Austrians dithered.

  And Napoleon watched with glee.

  By eight o’clock he was finished and gathering up his reports when Pembridge appeared at the door, his collar and cuffs as crisp as morning.

  “Excuse me, sir, but there’s a young lady here to see you.”

  Elizabeth! He steadied his rocketing pulse and tried to sound cool-headed. “Green eyes, Pembridge? Hair a reddish-blond, unruly?”

  “Bluish eyes, sir. Hair tending toward the golden from what I could tell from beneath her bonnet.”

  Not Elizabeth? “Did she give her name?” Ross stuffed his portfolio with the ship reports.

  “She did, after I calmed her down and put her into the receiving room.”

  “Calmed her down?”

  “A Miss Jessica Fallon, from the Abigail Adams, sir. In quite a panic. Said something about a Miss Dunaway needing your help.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  Ross arrived at the receiving room at a dead run, terrified to find the normally unflappable Miss Fallon, wringing her hands inside her apron.

  “There you are, sir!”

  Ross grabbed her by the upper arms. “Where’s Elizabeth? Is she all right? Please tell me she hasn’t been abducted.”

  “That’s it exactly, my lord!” Tears welled, then streamed out of her eyes, spiking her lashes. “Stolen right out of the tea room at the Adams!”

  Christ! Resisting the urge to bolt after the woman— which would do no good without more information— Ross plunked the startled Miss Fallon into a chair. “Sit. Now, tell me exactly what happened.”

  She snuffled back her fear and spoke clearly. “We were closing up the shop about an hour ago when three officers from Scotland Yard came bursting through the front door, demanding to see Miss Elizabeth.”

  From Scotland Yard? Or were they kidnappers in disguise. “Are you sure the men were actually policemen?”

  She narrowed her eyes as he’d so often seen Elizabeth do. “Oh, yes, sir, they were definitely policemen. We demanded to see their identification before they went a step farther. Then one of them asked for Miss Elizabeth again, and when she came out of the kitchen, he stuck a piece of paper into her hand and told her she was under arrest.”

  “Arrested?” Not abducted. “Arrested for what?”

  Surely not for marching in the street.

  “She didn’t say, my lord; it all happened so quickly. But she went white as a ghost when she read the warrant. And then they just took her away. In handcuffs! Though she didn’t resist at all.”

  Damnation! “Please, Miss Fallon, are you absolutely certain these men were from Scotland Yard?”

  “Believe me, my lord, I know what a policeman’s uniform looks like close up. Besides, Skye and I followed the cart all the way into Whitehall. And that’s where they took her.”

  Thank God for resourceful young women.

  And for the strong cell doors in Scotland Yard, because, for the first time in the few weeks that he’d known her, Elizabeth Dunaway was safe from herself.

  And doubtless she was spitting mad.

  Which made him ask, “Did she tell you to find me, Miss Fallon?”

  “Not likely, my lord. She wouldn’t then, would she? Not you. But the three of us thought you’d know just what to do for her. Whether she likes it or not.”

  Indeed. “Thank you for coming to me, Miss Fallon.” He picked up his nearly forgotten report case and headed toward the door. “Come along with me.”

  She followed on his heels. “Are we going to go break Miss Elizabeth out of jail?”

  He had no doubt the charming young woman would jump at the chance to try. “I’m going to drop you at the Adams, my dear, and then I’m going to pay a call on Miss Dunaway.”

  “You’ll make them release her, won’t you? Please, sir!” The girl grabbed two bold fistsful of his lapels and held him in place with a strength he couldn’t have imagined. “She’s done nothing wrong!”

  Nothing, except to taunt authority with a march down Whitehall in front of hundreds of witnesses. As well as that dust-up in Parliament.

  Someone in power might just be trying to teach uppity women a lesson in humility. And he damn well wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Miss Elizabeth will be home tonight, Miss Fallon, if I have to saw through the bars myself.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir!”

  Though the real question was: where would home be?

  Should he let her stew in jail while he was attending the debate in Parliament, or rescue her immediately, permanently, as he yearned to do.
<
br />   In any case, just to be safe he made a quick visit across the Thames to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And by the time he left Lambeth Palace for the debates at Westminster, he was armed to the teeth with all the tools he would need to deliver his bewitchingly troublesome rebel from the evil clutches of Scotland Yard.

  Right into the hands of her worst enemy.

  Chapter 13

  Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.

  Abigail Adams, to her husband, John

  March 31,1776

  “Excuse me, please! I’d like a blanket.” Elizabeth clutched at the familiar bars in the cell door, her fingers as bloodless and cold as the iron rods. “Anyone there?”

  But her voice carried down the empty, dimly lighted hall like a reedy echo, spending itself long before it could reach the front desk.

  Not that rousting one of the officers would help. It was well after ten and there was a small but watchful contingent of men on guard against her escape. No one had offered a single shred of compassion or concern when she was brought in. Why would they care now if she was a little cold? A little scared. For all they knew, she was just another woman picked up off the street for selling herself to keep food in her children’s bellies.

  At least that would be a simpler crime to explain than the litany of legal trouble she’d stuck into her pocket. A warrant so long that she might never again see the light of day.

  Worst of all, she would never see Blakestone again.

  Except possibly if he ever felt charitable enough or curious enough to come visit her in prison after her multiple convictions.

  Disturbing the peace!

  Bank fraud!

  Distributing salacious materials!

  Charges that were complete exaggerations. Merely her petty efforts to enlighten the ignorant and emancipate the imprisoned.

  And yet here she was, imprisoned herself, her teeth chattering with the cold. In sore need of one last chiding by her unforgiving earl, one last chance to look into those coal dark eyes.

  But one thing was certain: she’d never survive if she allowed herself to succumb to this sudden weepy feeling. She banished it and climbed up on the narrow plank bench for a glimpse out the window.