by Gaelen Foley
“Ah, Strathmore. I figured you would show up here eventually.”
He looked over the newspaper as Carstairs sat down across the table from him.
“How are you today, Dev?”
“Quite well. Yourself?”
“Splendid.” Carstairs chewed the ivory mouthpiece of his small, stylish pipe, but did not light it. “I hate to interrupt, but you and I need to have a little talk.”
“What’s afoot?” Dev set the paper down, some indefinable note in the earl’s cultured voice arresting him.
Carstairs stared at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay in London, my lord. But it’s time for you to leave.”
“Leave? What are you talking about?”
“You know damned well,” Carstairs whispered slowly.
Dev tensed, careful to keep his face expressionless, but he could not have been more shocked if a cannonball had just ripped through his middle. Good God, had they realized he and Suzy had spoken with Bow Street? He had taken care to ensure no one saw him.
“I don’t understand,” he said in a measured tone of caution.
“Don’t you? Let me see if I can’t help.” Carstairs rested his elbow on the chair arm, leaning nearer. “Do you find yourself missing something valuable of late—or should I say someone?”
Dev felt the earth fall away from its orbit. Lizzie. His face turned ashen, and he couldn’t seem to breathe. “What have you done with her?”
Carstairs snickered idly and leaned back in his chair, chewing on his pipe. “Such a pretty thing. Not to my taste, mind you, but she does have such pretty gray eyes. It would be a shame to put them out.”
Dev launched at him with a garbled cry, going for his throat across the small table.
“Not advisable, Dev!” Carstairs shouted, ducking. “With a word from me, she dies.”
Dev gripped the man’s lapels in fury. “What have you done with her?”
“Ah, so she does mean something to you. You know, I suspected that,” Carstairs choked out.
“Where is she?”
“Easy.” Carstairs sent a meaningful glance toward some chess-playing clubmen on the other side of the room who had stopped their game to frown in the direction of the commotion. “I am sure you and I both prefer to conduct ourselves like gentlemen.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” Dev snarled, but released him and sat back down, realizing he could do little else, since it seemed his enemy was holding all the cards at the moment.
Carstairs tugged his waistcoat back into order. “Your little ladybird is safe for the moment. Just a trifle peeved.”
“So help me, Carstairs, if you harm one hair on her head—”
“I shouldn’t be making threats just now if I were you, old boy. If I were you, I should shut up and listen very carefully to the following instructions.”
His blood boiled. But Dev held his temper in check and waited for the instructions.
Carstairs did not divulge them at once, staring at him for a long moment. He shook his blond head. “God, I should have let Torquil put a bullet in you weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you?” Dev challenged him.
“I trusted you. It’s true,” he said when Dev scoffed in utter contempt. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. You know that I was drawn in by your beauty, and,” he admitted, cruelly, deliberately taunting him with only a hint, “I felt sorry for you after what happened.”
“What did happen, Carstairs?”
“No, Dev. You betrayed me. I’m the only one who can give you the answers you seek, but you stabbed me in the back, so you can go to hell. The only reason I spare you now is because murdering you would call too much attention to the rest of us. Now, here is the plan, and you listen well. You leave London at dawn. You will go to the docks, get on board your little ship and sail away, Strathmore—I scarcely care where, as long as it’s far. Do it,” he said slowly, “or we use your little governess for the village whore before we send her lovely body to the bottom of the Thames.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll go,” he whispered at once. He felt like he might throw up.
“And never come back.”
“You’ll never see me again. It’s as good as done. Let her go. I’ll take her with me. Neither of us will ever trouble you—”
“Dev, my lad, do you take me for a fool? It’s plain to see she’s all you care about. If I hand her over, you could write a letter to Bow Street and start all manner of unpleasantness for me.”
So, they didn’t know he’d gone to Bow Street. Thank God. But if they somehow found out, he realized with sickening certainty, Lizzie’s life was forfeit.
How on earth had they learned of his deception? He had been so careful.
It did not matter now.
He did not even care about the facts Carstairs might have shared regarding the fire. All that mattered was procuring Lizzie’s safety. He tried to think clearly above the volcanic pounding of his heart. His mouth was dry with fear, his stomach turning with the half-glass of port he’d drunk.
“The plan is, you leave,” Carstairs reiterated. “Miss Carlisle stays in England, where we can keep an eye on her. That way, you won’t attempt anything rash.”
The full force of his instructions suddenly struck Dev. I leave. She stays. Good God, they were to be separated for the rest of their lives! He could barely absorb the shock of it. Live without her?
His mind reeled. He swallowed hard. “I need to see her again. I need to know she’s all right or there’s no deal.”
“Do not attempt any pointless heroics, Strathmore. I really do not wish to hurt the girl. It’s not in my nature—unless, of course, I am forced.”
“I won’t do anything, I swear. Just let me see her. Let me see she is unharmed.”
“I will bring her to the docks, and you can say good-bye,” he drawled in disgust. “Mind you, come alone. Don’t try anything, Dev, or Torquil puts a bullet in that clever head of hers.”
“I will comply fully. Is she all right? For the love of God, man—”
“She is fine. Calm yourself. Now, you tell no one about this, and I’ll see you at the docks at five A.M. You see? That wasn’t so hard.”
Dev flinched but somehow held himself back from killing the man as Carstairs rose.
“Behave yourself, Dev. We’ll be watching you. Oh—and, yes—I almost forgot.” He paused before walking away. “Quint wants fifty thousand quid. Write him out a draft note before you go. Bon voyage.”
“But, Mama, I don’t want to go back to Ireland.”
“Sorscha, I’ve already told you, our packet leaves tomorrow morning from Bristol. We have our tickets. We are going home.” Standing before the dressing table, searching for something in her leather satchel by the light of a single candle, Mary glanced over her shoulder at where her pouting daughter sat atop her packed and locked traveling trunk near the open door of the hotel room, which they were about to vacate.
Her burly manservant, Patrick Doyle, came into the doorway just then, rubbing his hands together. “May I take that for ye, miss?”
Sorscha gave a sulky nod and sighed as she slid off her traveling trunk so Doyle could carry it down to the coach.
“Hold the candle for Doyle on the stairs, Sorscha,” Mary ordered her daughter. “It’s quite dark in the stairwell.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The moment the child had gone, Mary pulled her gun out of the satchel and loaded it with cool expertise, dropping a handful of extra bullets into the voluminous pocket of her cape.
Their trip to England need not have been an utter waste.
She blew out the candle and left the hotel room, pulling the door shut behind her. She joined them at the coach a moment later.
“All set, then. In you go. I just need to make one quick stop before we leave the city.” The hard glance she sent Doyle belied her cheerful tone.
He gave her a subtle nod.
Mary climbed into the coach with her daughter. Doyle knew the way to Quint’s seedy bachelor house, but when they drove past it, all was dark. They went down to the corner past it, where Mary pulled the check-string to halt her driver.
“What are we doing, Mama?”
“Just a moment, darlin’.” She opened the carriage door and stood to murmur new instructions to her servant. “We’ll try Carstairs.”
The carriage rolled on.
Reaching a much finer quarter of the West End, Mary bade Doyle stop a short distance down the quiet street from Lord Carstairs’s large, elegant house.
“Mama, where are you going now?”
“To see an old friend.”
“Why can’t I see my friend before we go away?”
“This is a special friend, Sorscha. Someone I need to repay.”
The girl huffed. “No fair.”
“Oh, quit your sulkin’, lass.” Mary lifted her veil because it was dark and gave her daughter’s rose-petal cheek a teasing kiss. “I’ll be right back, and then we’re off to have jolly times in Ireland, like always.”
Sorscha tried to scowl at her, but smiled in spite of herself.
A moment later, Mary was slipping through the darkness, nigh invisible in her all-black clothing, her face concealed by her lace veil. She stole down the mews alley, her feet not making a sound over the uneven cobbles. Carstairs’s elegant town house of creamy stuccoed brick was built on the same pattern as the majority of those in London. Mary remembered the layout quite well from the many times she had come to the earl’s debauched routs with Quint in her youth. She intended to get in through the walled garden.
Skimming her fingertips along the mews side of the garden wall, Mary waited until she could see the familiar outline of the grape trellis poking above the wall. She had let Quint make love to her once under that trellis.
When she came to it, she reached up and gripped two of the short wrought-iron stakes that lined the top of the shoulder-high brick wall, which was stuccoed and painted to match the house. Moving carefully amid the iron stakes, she heaved herself up to a crouched position atop the wall. From this higher vantage point, shielded by the trellis, she assessed the situation.
At once she heard the lilting fountain in the center of the garden. Nothing had changed except the displays in the meticulously tended flower beds. Twin benches faced the fountain. The trees in the garden’s corners had grown bigger, but the same conical shrubs lined the cobblestone drive at intervals a few feet apart.
Her heart pounded with terrible excitement for what she had come to do. She had sailed here to England for justice, but now she was willing to settle for revenge.
Things might have been different if Devil Strathmore had proved a worthy ally, but that hope had come to naught. She had wavered in her view of him after seeing him break into Quint’s carriage house, but when she discovered that he had seduced Sorscha’s pretty young teacher, Mary had realized the viscount was as thoroughly lost to depravity as his fellow members of the Horse and Chariot Club.
Blood or no, she had no intention of handing Sorscha over to the likes of him. Still, even without Strathmore’s help, Quint and Carstairs would not get away with what they had done to her. Before she and Sorscha fled back to Ireland, Mary meant to settle the score.
How to get into the house? She scanned the triple bays of windows on each floor of Carstairs’s home, but then the smell of smoke distracted her, floating to her on the warm night air. Was someone in the garden? Her alerted glance swept the tranquil green retreat; then a flicker of movement across from her caught her eye.
She had learned that Carstairs housed Johnny in a fine apartment above the carriage house. On the left-hand corner of the balcony there, she saw the earl’s handsome young stud lounging against the railing with a rifle in his hands and a cheroot dangling from the corner of his mouth. Outlined against the indigo sky, he appeared to be keeping guard.
What on earth? Only now did Mary abandon her interest in the earl’s house, turning her attention to the carriage house. Her gaze traveled to the other end of the long balcony, and her blood ran cold as she spotted Torquil Staines similarly stationed at the other end, keeping watch, a deadly-looking rifle in his hands.
What’s going on, boys? she wondered. What dark business were they up to now? A shiver of belated doom ran through her as she realized she would probably be lying dead on the grass already if she hadn’t stopped to look first, if she had not smelled the smoke from their cheroots. There was light in the cozy upper window of the carriage house and, thanks to her perch atop the wall, Mary could see straight into the main room of Johnny’s apartment, some thirty feet across the garden. She drew in her breath, aghast, at what she beheld.
Quint and Carstairs were framed in the window. They appeared to be in the midst of a heated debate. Between them sat a girl tied up in a chair with her hands bound behind her and a gag across her mouth. Mary stared in shocked recognition. Miss Carlisle.
She knew what these men were capable of; she knew she had to help the younger woman.
Mary took out another bullet so she could grab it quickly for a second shot, then she lifted her gun and rested the muzzle on the trellis. She could handle Quint later if it came down to it. Without their leader, they would be in disarray. Taking careful aim, Mary stared through the window and drew a bead on Carstairs’s flaxen head.
She held on tight against the gun’s expected kick and fired.
Lizzie screamed into her cloth gag when the window shattered and jolted away from it so hard that she toppled the wooden chair she was tied to and landed, wild eyed, on her side upon the floor.
Chaos erupted, a wild rash of shouts both inside and out.
Though barely a moment, it felt like a year as she lay there stranded, unable to right herself. Behind her back, she felt something painful jabbing into her hand. Broken glass from the window. She opened her fingers and clutched the long shard. Tears of pain filled her eyes, but she blinked them back fiercely. Ignoring the cuts and the trickle of blood across her palm, she used the glass knife to saw away at the rope binding her hands.
“Son of a bitch!” Carstairs screamed, wiping his hand across his temple where the bullet had grazed him, painting his light hair with the mark of a crimson lightning bolt.
Mary reloaded and this time, coolly took aim at Torquil. But as she concentrated on trying to get a clear shot in the dark, she was unaware that Johnny had come down the steps and glided around the perimeter of the garden toward her.
Aiming for Torquil’s chest, she was about to pull the trigger when the young man commanded: “Freeze!”
She whipped her aim down at him, and they stood in a motionless tableau, guns drawn.
“Don’t you move!” Johnny warned her. “Over here, Torq!”
“Hold him!”
“It ain’t a him,” Johnny yelled back, eyeing her with extreme suspicion.
Torquil was on his way, and Mary knew that when he reached her, she was as good as dead.
“Let me go, Johnny,” she ordered calmly.
“You know me?”
“I tried to help you once. Easy—” Slowly, she pulled back her veil.
His eyes widened. “Jesus Christ.” His rifle sank.
Mary whirled to fire her shot at Torquil, who was running toward them, but he dived behind the low wall of the fountain.
“Hold your fire!” Johnny yelled, lifting his hand toward Torquil just as Quint banged the apartment door open and came out. “Hold your fire, I say!”
“Strathmore!” Quint bellowed in fury.
“It isn’t Strathmore! Hold your fire!” Johnny abandoned Mary to her escape, jogging toward the carriage house. “It’s Miss Highgate!”
“W-what did you say?” Mary heard Quint utter as she leaped down from the garden wall.
She was already reloading when Quint’s thunderous howl floated out across the night. It sent a ripple of fear down her spine.
“Ginny!”
> Carstairs let out a disbelieving curse at the hated name, but Lizzie paid no mind, fighting against her bonds. Behind her back, she sawed at them for all she was worth, and she could feel them giving way, strand by strand.
“Get back here, Quint!” Carstairs yelled, but the baron had already gone barreling off into the night.
“God damn it. Johnny!”
“He went with Quint. They’re chasing Ginny.” Torquil strode back into the apartment. Lizzie, still toppled onto her side on the floor, eyed his passing boots in fright as they crunched the nearby glass underfoot. “I can’t believe that bitch is alive!”
“Not for long,” Carstairs growled.
“Quint’s not gonna let you touch her.”
“He’ll have no choice. You know what this means?”
Torquil nodded in cold reproach. “That she’s working with Strathmore.”
“Under the circumstances, sending him away isn’t going to be sufficient.”
“Say no more,” Torquil murmured, pausing to poke his gun into Lizzie’s ribs. “Guess we won’t be needin’ this one anymore.”
She whimpered.
“Go kill Dev,” Carstairs ordered, unsheathing the big knife he had strapped at his side. “I have a few more questions for her. Perhaps now she’ll be ready to tell me if Dev has been talking to anyone else.”
Torquil sent him a hard-eyed nod askance. “Bet you wish you would’ve listened to me now, you bloody sod.”
“Just do it,” he spat.
Torquil growled at him and left.
Lizzie felt another strand of her bonds break, but gave a small shriek into the cloth gag as Carstairs wrenched her chair upright.
He planted his legs wide and bent down to her eye level, giving her a menacing smile. “Now, then, Miss Carlisle, I regret to say there has been a slight change of plans. You have your lover to thank for your death—for you must die, I’m afraid. Whether it will be slow and messy, or swift and clean is up to you. Let me help you understand your situation. There is no help coming for you. Do you hear me? Your darling Dev will be a corpse within the hour. His adventuring days are over. So you might as well cooperate.”