Marry the Man Today

by Linda Needham

  But Ross was already out the lab door and heading silently down the passage toward the tailor shop and the noises in the dimness.

  Toward the soft footfalls, moving toward him.

  The whisper of fabric.

  A familiar scent.

  And then someone crashed into him, squarely against his chest. The person flew backward, out of his reach with a bellowing shout as Drew went dashing past them, deeper into the passage.

  “I’ll go see if there are others.”

  “Come here, you!” Ross made a lucky grab in the dark for the burglar who was scrabbling away from him, and must have caught a sleeve.

  Then a hand.

  A very soft hand.

  Dismissing the distracting sensation, he hauled the little sneak thief behind him along the corridor toward the light from the lab, wondering how the devil the Factory’s defenses had been so badly breeched. How many of these ruffians were prowling through the rooms? And what could be done to keep them quiet?

  “In here, you bloody bastard!” He pulled the rumpled clump into the room at the same time he realized that he was looking at the back of a rounded woman, righting herself.

  At her skirts. An apron. Slender arms and long hair. Burnished red hair, golden tipped, tumbling out of its loosened bonds as she turned.

  Silky, shining hair.

  Elizabeth’s hair.

  Bloody hell!

  “Elizabeth?” A stupid question. He was looking right into her beautiful sea-green eyes.

  At her stunned, crimson-cheeked, open-mouthed face.

  “Ross?” She squinted right back at him, tilting her head. “What are you doing here?”

  “Me? What the devil are you doing here? I left you in Hampstead.” Left her sleeping and naked, but now …

  “I’m very aware of where you left me.”

  “How the hell did you get back to town, madam?” He reached out and lifted her hair back over her shoulder, if only to convince himself that she wasn’t simply an illusion. “And where’s that blighter Will? I ordered him to stay with you.”

  “Good heavens, Ross, he’s a boy. He hadn’t a chance. I tricked him. But you’ll not take it out on him. Really, that’s all beside the most important point. What I want to know is, what are you doing in here?” She pointed at the floor, her eyes still puzzled, flashing with exasperation. “In this place?”

  “What are you talking about, wife?” They were utterly at cross purposes, speaking riddles to each other. “And how did you get in here?”

  “How did you?” She seemed increasingly incensed, as though he had followed her here instead of the other way around.

  “I came down the stairs, madam. And you?”

  “The stairs?” She quirked her brow. Pursed her lips and looked to the ceiling.

  “How did you get past the guard?” Hell, he’d just seen the man upstairs. The two other entrances were manned by multiple sentries.

  “The guard? Oh.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean, ‘Oh’? How did you get in here?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but pulled back her words and moved away from him as Drew came bowling through the door with a lighted candlestick.

  He raised a brow when he caught sight of Elizabeth. “Well, good evening, Lady Blakestone.”

  “Wexford?” She canted her head as though she was looking at a ghost.

  “I thought you left your wife at Grousemeade Cottage, Ross.” Drew set the burning candle on the table next to the evidence box.

  “So did I.” He pointed at the candle but kept his eyes on his nervous wife. “Where did you find that?”

  “In the tailor shop. And I doubt Mr. Puckett left it burning.”

  Ross took hold of his wife’s arms and turned her around to face him full on, better to catch the nuances so alive in her eyes. “Well, madam, explain yourself. How did you get in here?”

  But her mouth took on an even more stubborn slant as she glared back at him. “Here’s a better question, Ross: where are we? What kind of place is this? And what have you and Drew to do with it?”

  Bloody hell, did she really not know that she was in the basement of the Huntsman? “Let’s just say that Drew and I have a right to belong here. We work here. You don’t. Now what are you doing in our cellar?”

  She glanced at Drew, then back at Ross. “All right, then, my lords, since I am obviously the one who found my way into this so-called cellar by way of the … unofficial route—”

  “Which is from where?” Drew asked in an overly diabolical voice, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “In … uhm, through the paneled wall of the tailor shop.”

  “The what?” Ross asked, with a glance at Drew. “How? From where?”

  She wrinkled her brow and rubbed the end of her nose with a crooked finger, as though wishing to muffle the truth. “From . .. from the Abigail Adams.”

  Impossible! The place was three blocks away. “You must be joking.”

  Drew snorted. “I’ll go check it out. If she’s right— and I’m assuming your lovely bride wouldn’t be spinning a tale for us—then I should end up at the Adams.”

  “You might as well go home from there, Drew. I’ll see you back here this afternoon.”

  Drew sent a gracious, encouraging wink toward Elizabeth, and then arched a brow at Ross. “Welcome to the husbands’ club, old man.”

  Drew stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, turned on his heel and left the lab, trailing that damned contented tune behind him.

  “Now, listen, Elizabeth—” Ross whirled back on his wife, ready to get to the bottom of all her dodging and deceptions, then realized that she was three sizes larger than she’d been when he left her. Her bosom matronly, her waist larger around, her dress oddly old-fashioned …

  He opened his mouth to ask what the devil she was up to, but the woman reached out to him, caught her fingertips in his coat sleeve as though to soothe him.

  “Look, Ross, I promise to show you everything later. But just now we don’t have much time.”

  “No time for what?” It never ended, this riddle of his wife. One puzzle after another. One surprise before the next one, an even larger one.

  She was flicking an impatient frown at him. “I thought you were trying to find Princess Lenka. Isn’t that why you left me to pine away in our wedding cottage in Hampstead, while you came flying back here to London?”

  “Yes, but the case of the abducted princess isn’t your affair.”

  She took a stout breath and set her brow. “Actually, Ross, I think can help.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve got plenty of help. My own operatives, the Home Guard, the Metropolitan Police, the Foot Guard, the bloody cavalry—”

  “Isn’t that going to be a little crowded for a quiet investigation?”

  God, it was late. And she was more beautiful than ever with her adventurous spirit. But he was tired enough to sleep a week, had hoped for just a few hours.

  “Please, Elizabeth, I appreciate your concern for the princess. It’s not your problem.”

  But it’s completely my problem! Elizabeth had never dreaded anything quite so much as she was dreading this. Telling Ross that she’d been responsible for the three previous abductions. That they weren’t abductions at all.

  But that the princess’s kidnapping was terrifyingly real.

  She had to tell him everything, if only to make him believe her.

  Even this new little bit of treachery. That not only had she and her operatives already been at work on the case, but that they might have broken the first clue.

  A very large clue.

  Best to just say it right out.

  “Look, Ross, I know you’re not going to like anything I’m about to tell you, but…”

  He took his time pinching out the candle flame then casting her a weary glance. “But what?”

  “I know where the princess is being held.”

  He rubbed at his temples, sighed. “Pl
ease, Elizabeth—”

  “You have to listen to me, Ross. When I got back to London, I didn’t know where you were, but I had to do something.”

  “You had to do something about the kidnapped princess? Why?”

  The full truth would surely mean a battle between them, and would slow them down, so she didn’t answer completely. “So when I couldn’t find you, my assistants and I… well, we went over to the Russian Embassy to see if we could do anything.”

  He came fully alert and plunked her down in the chair behind her. “Bloody hell! You did what?”

  “Good heavens, Ross, we didn’t knock on the door. We posted ourselves across the street, around the perimeter.”

  He towered over her, his arms crossed against his chest, as though daring her to continue. “But why?”

  She was leading up to the reason. “A short time after we arrived—one o’clock maybe—I saw a shadowy figure on the roof, skirting the eaves, in the rear of the building. Apparently he was looking for a way to get inside, maybe to drop onto a balcony or something.”

  “Well! Did he get inside?” He scowled his question at her, plainly interested, plainly not wanting to be.

  “Something must have spooked him because he listened for a moment, then scuttled down a drainpipe. He ducked through the garden shadows and then disappeared down an alley.”

  “No one else saw him, wife, none of the guards?” He stood there looking down at her, the muscles in his arms flexed.

  “I doubt it. Nobody moved, Ross.”

  “And then what?”

  Her overprotective husband wasn’t going to like this part at all. “Well, I couldn’t just let him go. So … I followed him into the alley.”

  “Bloody hell! You could have been killed!” He dropped down on his knees in front of her, his eyes flashing with dark horror. “How the hell far did you follow him?”

  “All the way to an import shop on Huggett Lane.” She swallowed hard, just now realizing that she might have been in a bit of danger after all.

  “And then what did you do? And please don’t tell me that you went inside.”

  At least the stubborn man was finally fully engaged in what she was trying to tell him. Furious, but he obviously believed her.

  And she had so many more secrets to tell him.

  But his eyes were so bright she had to look down at her fingers for a moment before she could bear the intensity. “I waited, to see what he’d do next. It was still dark, and a light flared up in the attic almost immediately. That’s when I tried the shop door and it opened. I didn’t hear a bell, Ross, so I went inside.”

  “Christ!” He dropped his head into both hands.

  “A few steps only.” She raked her fingers through his hair, just for contact, to make sure he didn’t hate her completely. “But I’m sure I heard something upstairs of the shop. Harsh voices, whispering. Angry words, though I couldn’t understand them. As though something had gone wrong.”

  When he raised his head, he was still looking at her from under a thunderous brow. “And then what?”

  “I heard someone coming down the stairs. So I ducked outside and hid in the doorway of the next shop. Then I followed him another ten minutes until he disappeared into a large building somewhere in Kensington. So we can’t wait another minute. You know how quickly things change in a kidnapping.”

  After all, her three assistants were already waiting for her in Huggett Lane, ready to put their plan into gear as soon as it got light enough.

  Though that might be a bit difficult just now, given her husband’s stare of disbelief.

  “Where do you come by this whole mad idea?” He captured her chin between his fingers and bent to her, palpably frightened for her. “Besides the danger involved in skulking outside the Russian Embassy, you haven’t any understanding of what it takes to foil a kidnapping.”

  Oh, but I do, husband. I just don’t know how to tell you where I came by that understanding.

  “Please, Ross. At least let me show you where I think she is. That’s all I’m asking. Please.”

  Ross heard himself growling. His mind a muddle. His heart rattling against his throat, terrified for his wife. Getting involved when the danger was so real.

  But bloody hell, she sounded so sure of herself, her story so plausible, he had to look into it. And if she came along with him, at least he would know exactly where she was at all times.

  “Very well, madam, we’ll take a drive past the import shop.” If there was anything to it, he’d take it from there.

  “Wonderful!” She grabbed his arms, lifted up onto her toes and kissed him. Then she picked up the large fabric satchel she’d dragged in behind her, grasped it in front of her in both hands and waited for him.

  Not a patient bone in her body. And if she was right, if the Russian princess was locked in an attic in Huggett Lane, then she’d just possibly saved the day.

  “This way, madam.” He closed the lab door and led her up the stairs through a series of locked doors, a vestibule, past two guards, and finally into the back hallway.

  “The Huntsman, Ross?” She stopped and touched his shoulder. “Is that where we are?”

  “You’re very good at secrets, Elizabeth.” Too good, it seemed. “Please keep this one. Because a whole lot of people are depending on it.”

  She snorted as if he’d just accused her of treason. “I’ll carry it to my death, Ross. As if you didn’t know.”

  The sun was up and the morning beginning to bustle as they left in a carriage from the rear of the Huntsman.

  “To the Russian Embassy, Henry.”

  Ten nearly silent minutes later, with his lunatic wife tucked under his shoulder and his heart rammed up against his throat, the carriage came to a halt in a narrow street a block short of the Russian Embassy.

  “There, Ross.” Elizabeth slipped to the seat across from him and tapped on the window glass. “I was posted in the doorway of that flower shop, just opposite the northwest corner. It was dark at the time, but that’s how I was able to see the man on the roof.”

  He followed the point of her finger, hoping she’d been wrong about the whole thing, or delirious. Yet knowing in his gut that she was rarely wrong about anything.

  Russian guards were everywhere. His own operatives posted quietly out of sight. But her story was becoming all too credible. And that could only mean trouble.

  “Which direction did he go when he left the grounds?”

  “Through that alleyway. There, next to the bakery on the corner.”

  “Then use this to tell Henry which way to go.” Feeling as though he was putting his wife directly in the line of fire, Ross handed her the speaking tube, then sat back against the seat, to watch out of sight of the window.

  “Thank you, Ross.” She smiled at him, suddenly, suspiciously, looking every bit the commander in the field as she spoke into the bell. “Are you there, Henry?.. .Oh, good.”

  The route led from the embassy along the most narrow of snickleways, perfect for a conspirator. Through two squares, then finally into Huggett Lane, a street lined with small, well-cared-for shops.

  “He went in there.” His too clever wife had instructed Henry to pass the shop before she stopped him, and pointed farther down the street. “With the green awning. An import shop, as I said. Foodstuff and fabric and porcelain from the continent.”

  A tidy, bayed display window. A floor above and an attic.

  Nondescript.

  It could be anything. Or everything. Making him wonder who the devil he’d married.

  “Show me where the man went next, Elizabeth.” He wanted to get this over with quickly. Wanted it to end without involving his wife in the danger that he felt prickling the back of his neck.

  She picked up the speaking tube again. And Henry followed her directions.

  But in the midst of her instructions he was struck by a thought. The perfectly logical reason that Elizabeth had felt compelled to rescue the princess!

  My
God! Why hadn’t he thought of it? His heart gave a wild thump.

  “Elizabeth . .. ?”

  “Two more blocks, Henry, then to the left.” She looked from the window back to Ross, the bell of the tube stuck against her ear. “Yes?”

  “Princess Lenka.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his heart slowing with relief. “Is she, by chance, a member of the Abigail Adams? I didn’t think to ask because—”

  “No, no, she isn’t, Ross. I’ve never met the woman.” Yet her face went white, her eyes filled with dread again. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, her voice growing quiet as the carriage rattled on along over the cobbles. “But if you think about it, that’s … uhm … that’s a problem with this case, isn’t it? The common factor among the other abductions that’s missing this time.”

  “The Adams.” Or Elizabeth herself.

  She looked stricken. “It’s more than that, Ross, much more.”

  “But if we’re not dealing with a—oh, bloody, bleeding hell.”

  “What is it, Ross?”

  He hadn’t been paying attention to the route or their surroundings, but now he pressed his face closer against the window, praying he was wrong.

  “Elizabeth, is that the building you saw the man go into?”

  She peered through the window on the other side of the door as their carriage approached from the south. “The large limestone, with the grounds taking up the whole block. Yes.”

  Bloody hell! He grabbed the speaking tube, called out for Henry to stop, and the carriage swung up against the curb.

  “You’re absolutely sure, Elizabeth? It was dark when you were here. You might have missed him entering. It’s very important that this is it.”

  “Definitely. Someone greeted him as he entered from the porte cochere. Why? What is it?”

  His heart and his hopes fell. “The Austrian Embassy.” Christ Almighty.

  The Austrians had invaded the Russian Embassy and kidnapped a princess of the blood.

  And, bloody hell, he would never have known about it if his confounding wife hadn’t pointed the way.

  “That’s the Austrian Embassy?” She peered more closely, then looked back at him, her forehead deeply fretted. “How do you know? There’s no sign.”