Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 02]

by Dangerous Angels

  Looking warily at Charley, Elizabeth said to her in a low, rather tense voice, “Does it displease you, Cousin, our betrothal? I know you expected to marry our dear delightful Rockland, and after the shameful prank he played, tricking you into marrying Sir Antony, he must seem dreadfully fickle now. Indeed I should not be surprised if you are quite livid with the pair of us. I know that you have always disliked me.”

  Caught up short by Elizabeth’s distress, Charley experienced a prickling of remorse. She had felt relieved, if anything, to find that Rockland had looked elsewhere, and now that she saw them together, she could see that they were right for each other. Summoning up a warm smile, she said, “Elizabeth, I have behaved wretchedly. I don’t dislike you at all, but after the way I’ve treated you in the past, I can’t blame you for believing I do. Please forgive me, and know that I wish you both only happiness. Look,” she added, seeing a stir of movement on the docks, “here comes the Duke with his party now. Just to prove that I am not distressed by your news, I want to make you a special betrothal gift. You must take my place in the ceremony.” When Elizabeth looked shocked, she added firmly, “Please, do say that you will.”

  Flushing to the roots of her hair, Elizabeth exclaimed, “I couldn’t possibly do that, Cousin Charley. Mr. Gabriel wants you to have that great honor, and I daresay he will be unhappy enough when he learns that I have become betrothed, without my upsetting his arrangements for the ceremony. Perhaps you do not know this, but he has become most particular in his attentions to me.” Blushing, she smiled at Rockland. “Indeed, I think that is what caused my darling William to speak up when he did.”

  When Rockland grinned, Charley said in amazement, “William? Is that your given name?” He nodded, making her grimace, but then she shook her head and smiled at them both, saying, “Mr. Gabriel will not see you open the coffer, Elizabeth. He felt obliged to escort a host of villains to the castle prison in Launceston today instead.”

  Elizabeth looked more gratified than regretful. “He won’t be at the ceremony?”

  “No, he won’t,” Charley said. Producing Gabriel’s key from the sensible reticule she carried and pressing it into Elizabeth’s hand, she added, “Here is the key. The dean or one of the deacons will tell you exactly where you must stand, what to do, and when to do it. Of course, if you truly don’t wish to …”

  “I shall be deeply honored,” Elizabeth said, smiling in obvious delight. As they moved toward the approaching group, Charley heard her say in an awed undertone to Antony, “Is it true, sir, that you are personally acquainted with His Grace?”

  “To my sorrow,” Antony answered with a wry smile.

  Striding forward ahead of the others, Harry Livingston grasped Antony’s hand tightly and said, “Well met, Tony. Have you got everything in hand?”

  “I believe so,” Antony told him. “There was a spot of bother last night—”

  “We heard all about it,” Harry said, turning his attention pointedly to Charley. When Antony presented him to her, Harry laughed and said, “Your servant, ma’am. Tony wrote that he’d got married, but not that his wife is a raving beauty. Here, sir,” he added, turning to the Duke, “Tony neglected to tell us the best part of his news, and to punish him, allow me to present Lady Foxearth to you in his stead.”

  Antony saw with relief that Harry’s antics did not disturb Charley in the least. Nor did she stand in awe of Wellington, whom she doubtless had met in London. She smiled and made her curtsy and was soon talking easily with the Duke.

  Wellington had dressed simply but elegantly, as had been his habit since his days in the Peninsula. He had always worn civilian dress in the field, his blue frock coat and light pantaloons making him easily identifiable. Only for formal military ceremonies did he don a uniform. Today he wore a drab cloak and a simple cocked hat, cream-colored knee breeches and stockings, and a dark coat. He flirted with Charley—and with Elizabeth when Antony presented her—as easily as if he were thirty years younger.

  They made a tour of the village, allowing its citizens to pay their respects. Then the Duke and his entourage piled into the several carriages awaiting them. Antony and Charley followed in theirs, with Rockland and Elizabeth just behind, and Hodson and Kerra riding in their wake. Charley settled back against the squabs with a sigh.

  Chuckling, Antony said, “I hope you aren’t exhausted. It will take us another couple of hours to reach Truro, and the ceremony begins at two. Then we’ve the journey to Tuscombe Park, and dinner with Alfred and the others to get through.”

  Her eyes twinkled. “If you must know, I was just glad to get away from Elizabeth and Rockland.”

  “I thought you were pleased by their betrothal,” he said, aware of a small knot forming in his stomach.

  It disappeared when she laughed and said, “I am delighted, but I got just a little tired of hearing Elizabeth continually referring to our dearest Rockland and our darling William. I have just as much regard for Rockland as anyone … well, nearly as much, but—” She broke off suddenly with an arrested look in her eyes.

  “What?”

  She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know exactly. Something I said just then stirred a notion in the back of my mind, but it won’t come forward.” She thought a moment longer, then grimaced with exasperation. “That’s the trouble with trying to catch hold of a thought that doesn’t want catching. It disappears as if it had never presented itself at all. Talk about something else, Antony. Maybe it will come to me.”

  They talked of nothing and many things, passing the journey in easy comfort with each other, but whatever the niggling thought had been, it did not reoccur to her before they reached the cathedral. As they drew up in the cobblestoned square, they saw that the party from Tuscombe Park had arrived just ahead of them.

  Alfred and Edythe had already emerged from their carriage, and as footmen assisted Lady Ophelia and Lady St. Merryn from the second one, Antony saw Letty, swathed in her voluminous gray cloak and looking like a small, gray nun, jump down from a third vehicle that appeared otherwise filled with servants. Not for a moment did he suppose that Alfred and the other adults had banished her to that vehicle, but he did not blame her for choosing to ride with a few lively servants rather than three old ladies or Alfred and Edythe Tarrant.

  Forty minutes later, inside the cathedral, the organ sounded a single chord, and the congregation turned as one to face the great entry doors. In the hush that fell upon them came three loud knocks. From outside, the bishop’s words sounded clearly:

  “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.”

  From their position near the doors, four churchwardens replied, “Who is the King of Glory?” When Bishop Halsey had made the proper response, they opened the doors and presented to him the petition for the consecration, and the keys to the cathedral, saying, “Reverend Father, we pray you to dedicate, consecrate, and bless this church.”

  Charley, standing between her husband and Letty in the first row of pews on the left side of the central aisle, watched the bishop’s procession pass through the doors and along the aisle toward the sanctuary. Bishop Halsey carried the tall, decorated staff with which he had knocked upon the doors.

  Having taken part in the ritual circuit of the cathedral’s exterior that preceded their approach to the entrance, Wellington followed the bishop, and for once, his attire did full justice to the grandeur of the occasion, because he wore his Garter robes. The sky-blue velvet mantle and crimson velvet surcoat provided splashes of color amidst the black and white raiment of others in the procession. His soft-crowned black hat trimmed with ostrich plumes sat at a jaunty angle, and his gold collar of twenty-six enameled garters coiled around enameled roses, seemed to rest lightly on the ducal shoulders. The Garter itself showed each time he moved his left leg forward. One of the few men in the kingdom ever to hold at the same time both the Orders of the Garter and of Bath, he displayed the latter only in the smaller
silver star below the Garter star on his left side.

  The procession reached the altar rail, where Bishop Halsey said a prayer of dedication before moving into the sanctuary. The organ sounded again, and the choir and congregation sang a psalm. Then the archdeacon stepped forward. Signing to the congregation to kneel, he sang a portion of the Litany while the bishop, carrying the staff, measured the cathedral from east to west, and from north to south, before tracing a St. Andrew’s Cross on the floor at the entrance to the chancel.

  From that point a series of prayers and responses followed, and Charley found it hard to keep her mind on her prayer book. The temptation to gaze about her at the magnificent cathedral was nearly overwhelming, but since she had already hushed Letty twice, she felt obliged to keep her eyes where they belonged.

  The child seemed unnaturally fidgety, so she thought it imperative to set a good example. At one point, thinking Letty must be hot in her heavy cloak, Charley asked if she wanted to remove it. She refused, and although her reddening cheeks made it clear that she was overwarm, Charley did not press her to do so.

  More prayers and the lesson followed, then another hymn, before the bishop, standing near the altar rail, said, “Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”

  The congregation replied, “And let the whole earth stand in awe of Him.”

  “Be seated.” Halsey turned expectantly to Wellington, who stood at the end of Charley’s row, on the center aisle.

  Letty seemed to make a squeaking sound of distress, but she turned away from Charley as the Duke stepped forward and moved to face the congregation. “My friends,” he said, his voice carrying easily, “I will make no long speeches. This moment, of all moments, belongs to this glorious house of God.”

  Charley saw that Elizabeth had been expecting him to speak for some time, for his declaration that he would not brought her head up with a jerk. Seated also in the first row of pews but across the aisle, between Rockland and Alfred, she had sat when everyone else had. Quickly rising again, she stepped forward to stand at the altar rail, separated from the Duke only by the Seraphim Coffer, resting just to the right of the central opening in the railing.

  Hearing a muffled cry some rows behind her, Charley turned, ignoring a look of disapproval from Lady Ophelia, who sat at Letty’s other side. A large, heavily veiled woman four rows back, in apparent distress, was trying to make her way to the center aisle. Charley’s first thought was that the poor thing was ill, but as that notion crossed her mind, she became aware of another disturbance nearer at hand. To her shock, Jeremiah’s head popped through the opening in the front of Letty’s heavy cloak. As the disturbance behind them grew louder, the monkey scrambled free of the child’s grasp, leaping to the back of the pew and agilely eluding her frantic attempts to recapture him.

  Wellington, cool and collected as always, ignored both interruptions and said calmly, “I shall now present this coffer of sacred vessels …”

  The veiled figure had reached the aisle, and was striding forward.

  “… as a gift from the British nation …”

  Jeremiah ran to the end of the pew.

  “… to be dedicated to this glorious cathedral.”

  The monkey leapt at the veiled woman, snatching at her hat and veil, as Wellington said, “Miss Tarrant, if you will kindly open—”

  “No!”

  The striding figure broke into an awkward run just as Jeremiah streaked off down the aisle with a hat, a veil, and a wig.

  Pandemonium erupted amongst those in the congregation who saw what the monkey had done, and Charley saw that the woman was none other than James Gabriel. As he hoisted his skirts and charged toward the altar rail, she turned in terror to Antony.

  He had already seen, and with a hand on the pew rail, he swung first one leg then the other over, his gaze catching hers. “Watch Letty,” he ordered. Then, turning, he dashed toward the Duke, more than a dozen feet away.

  Charley looked at Elizabeth and saw that she had knelt in front of the Seraphim Coffer, her attention so firmly riveted to her own important task that she was deaf to all the commotion.

  In the blink of an eye, pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in Charley’s mind. Unable to climb over the pew rail as Antony had done, she shrieked Elizabeth’s name as Antony grabbed Wellington and shoved him to the ground in a whirl of crimson and blue velvet, covering the Duke’s body with his own.

  Although Elizabeth must have heard Charley shriek, she had already unlocked the coffer, released both latches, and was opening the lid, oblivious of Gabriel racing toward her. Grabbing Letty, Charley forced her to the floor, protecting the child’s squirming body with her own. Lady Ophelia dropped down beside them just before the explosion.

  Antony saw Gabriel seize Elizabeth by the shoulders, fling her aside, and throw himself atop the coffer as it exploded. The blast, though muffled by his large body, was still sufficient to shake the altar and send two acolytes tumbling. Pieces of the wood chest shot out from the blast, but when the cacophony of screams and shouting died away, the few injuries proved to be minor. The sole person killed in the explosion was the proud man who had risen from clockmaker’s son to be mayor of his town.

  The stunned bishop was far enough away not to have been knocked over, but he had grabbed a column to steady himself. Straightening, he gazed uncertainly out over the congregation, but it was Wellington, scrambling to his feet the moment Antony rolled off him, who took command. No stranger to pandemonium accompanied by gore, the Duke began at once to issue orders, and no one questioned them.

  “Archdeacon, cast your vestment over that poor devil’s remains,” he bellowed. “Churchwardens, see to the injured at once. My friends,” he added when people realized he was speaking and began to quiet down, “I pray you, remain peaceful and do not further disgrace this house of God. You may be sure,” he went on in the same powerful voice that had once carried his commands across fields of battle, “that it was the Lord Himself who protected us from harm this day. You will go forth from here in the knowledge that His house is truly blessed.”

  When the bishop murmured anxiously that the consecration was not complete, the Duke said firmly, “Then I would suggest that you make a decision as to what you want to do, Bishop. Your choices are clear. You can continue now.”

  “Surely not, my lord duke,” Halsey squeaked. “Not with the body and blood of Mayor Gabriel spattering our altar.”

  “Your minions can remove Gabriel’s corpse to the vestry,” the Duke said practically, “and a damp rag will soon remove the bits most likely to offend. However, if you choose not to continue at present, you have only to announce to the congregation just when you do mean to do so. Next Sunday, I should imagine, though I daresay you won’t get as large a crowd then as you have today. It will have become something of an anticlimax by then, don’t you think? My advice is to get on with it now but to do the thing with dispatch. Surely, there are bits of the ceremony that you can leave out.”

  As realization spread through the congregation that the danger was past, fear turned to curiosity. Heads strained and twisted to see what was happening at the altar rail. Bishop Halsey, with a glance at the assembly and another at Wellington, moved to confer with the dean and the archdeacon.

  Wellington turned to Antony, who was feeling extremely grim, and said, “I collect that you never anticipated this gambit, my friend.”

  “I never suspected him,” Antony admitted, forcing himself to meet that stern gaze. “He kept the Seraphim Coffer at his house to refurbish it. I recall now that he said he would deliver it here on Wednesday but then kept it till Friday, when he must have installed his explosive device. As a clockmaker’s son, though he often deprecated his skill, he must have learned enough of his father’s art to prepare his mechanism. He tricked me well, Your Grace. When it counted most, I failed you.”

  Wellington shook his head. “When it counted most, Tony, you offered your life for mine. I won’t forget that, or allow you to do so
.”

  Antony grimaced. “In truth, sir, had he not created such a row, I’d have never known what was about to happen, and in fact, I still don’t know why, at the last minute, he changed his mind and threw himself over the chest.”

  “I do,” Charley said, putting her hand on Antony’s arm and giving it a squeeze. “He cared deeply for Elizabeth. Seeing her so near the coffer shocked him into acting.”

  Antony had not seen her come forward. The stunning discovery that Gabriel had not been the man he seemed to be, combined with the urgent need to protect Wellington and the shock of the explosion, had put all thought of Charley and Letty out of his mind. He looked at her now in guilty dismay of this second failure, but she smiled.

  “I have told you and told you,” she murmured for his ears alone. “You can trust me to take care of myself, and to take care of Letty.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Jeremiah fled to the organ loft with his treasures,” she replied in a normal tone. “She is trying to coax him down again.”

  The Duke, who had been reassuring Harry Livingston that he was quite unharmed, turned then and said, “I could not help overhearing you say that Mayor Gabriel was in love with Miss Elizabeth Tarrant, my lady. I quite thought Tony said earlier that she is betrothed to Lord Rockland.”

  “I did,” Antony said.

  Charley said, “Mr. Gabriel did not know about the betrothal, however. Nor could he have known that she would be taking my part in the ceremony today, for we arranged that only this morning in Fowey. I daresay seeing her gave him quite a shock, but it is unnerving to think he would not have leapt forward to save me.”

  Antony said, “He did impress upon you that once you had unlocked the coffer, you were to stand well back and let His Grace open it to present the vessels. You even questioned him, saying he had previously told you to unlock it and also to open it.”