Swept Away

by Marsha Canham

  Another image flashed into her mind: there had been someone sitting in the seat in front of the hearth in the library. The wings of the chair had prevented her from seeing more than an arm and a hand holding a brandy glass. But the sleeve had been black, the cuff white; whoever it was had not been wearing a costume either.

  “You were in the library this evening with Lord Wessex,” she said, amazed she could even hear her own voice through the loud rushing in her ears.

  “I was there, yes.”

  “Yet your name was not marked off the guest list at the main door.”

  “Main doors can be tedious at times, and the prince can be rather belligerent with guests who choose not to participate in his little soirees. While I give full credit to your Mr. Althorpe for appearing in green stockings and face paint, I would sooner pound sharp sticks under my fingernails. Moreover, I was returning from a journey that sent me halfway across the country on a fools errand--as it turns out-- in order to investigate a rumor concerning a certain gentleman’s arrival on our shores. Even more egregious to the sensibilities, I have spent the past two days trapped in a coach with his incredibly inane sister-in-law. I would happily have forgone the festivities altogether in favor of a full bottle of brandy and ice packs on my brow had there not been a pressing need to speak to Wessex and advise him that our former spy extra ordinaire had indeed landed in Torbay, but managed to somehow evade capture.”

  “Our...spy?”

  “My dear Annaleah, you could not have been expected to know it, I suppose, else we would have been doing a poor job indeed at subterfuge, but I have worked with Wessex for the past five years, helping him organize and interpret the information he receives daily from the spies he has placed all over Europe. Further--to your growing horror, I am sure--I know a good deal more than you likely ever will about Emory Althorpe. I know his background, I know his family, I know about the beatings his father gave him and the name of the first serving girl who took him into a haystack. I know about the brother who believes he has wings and can fly, and believe me, after two hours in a coach with that infernal woman, I can even appreciate why he might have preferred to leave all that behind and run away to sea.

  “I also know how and when he was recruited, and that he was considered to be our most valuable source of information on the continent until something appeared to turn him around. Half the coded dispatches he received, in fact, were written in my hand and only signed after the fact by Wessex.”

  Anna grew very still. “I’m not s-sure I understand what you are saying.”

  “I am saying--” he leaned forward and the leather seat creaked softly-- “if there is a traitor working within Wessex’s very small, very tight-knit group of confidents...then he has to be exposed. What is more, if there is proof such a traitor exists, and Althorpe has it, then it must be retrieved and taken back to London as soon as possible.”

  His voice was like a slow curl of mist, low and chilling, and it froze Annaleah to the bone. Barrimore worked with Wessex. He knew all about Emory’s role in the war. He handled the dispatches...

  Had he also intercepted them? Hidden them? Rewritten orders that Wessex knew nothing about?

  Her hands clenched tightly into fists on her lap and she turned to gaze wildly out the window. What, indeed, had she done? She had led Barrimore straight to Emory Althorpe, but whose interests, exactly, was the marquis looking out for? If Emory did have proof that might expose a traitor inside Wessex’s cabinet, and if that traitor was the Marquis of Barrimore himself, who better to find it and destroy it before his crimes could be revealed?

  She should have suspected something right away. He was always so cold, so aloof, so unapproachable and suddenly tonight he was warm and talkative, helpful, sympathetic...

  Anna almost groaned out loud. She had to do something, of course, but what? She had to warn Emory, but how? There was no way of knowing if he had even managed to get away from Carleton House, if he had ridden for Gravesend right away, if he was even there now, keeping his rendezvous with Seamus Turnbull.

  A sharp rapping on the wall of the coach brought Anna’s attention snapping back to the Marquis of Barrimore. He had opened the sliding panel and was talking to the driver, instructing him to find the Bull’s Horns tavern.

  The tavern whose name she had simply blurted without thinking.

  She unclenched her fists and rubbed the palms on her cloak to dry them. Her fingers brushed over something metallic jutting up from the side of the bench and she remembered the letter opener she had snatched off the regent’s escritoire. She had hidden it in the folds of her gown then later tucked it down between the cushion and the coach when they had boarded the diligence in the courtyard. The blade was long and exquisitely sharp and while she could not for half an instant imagine plunging it into living flesh, it gave her comfort to know she was not as completely defenceless as Barrimore supposed.

  Anna was beginning to grow immune to the sights and smells of various waterfront lodgings. Indeed, one could have plucked the tawdry Bull and Horns tavern and changed it for the Jolly Tar and no one would have noticed the difference. The air reeked of fish and salt water, the gutters were clogged with waste. A pair of skinny dogs who were growling and snapping over a tasty morsel of bone in front of the inn slinked away with their prize when the door of the coach opened and Barrimore stepped down onto the muddy road.

  He was clearly not impressed with their surroundings. The driver had wasted time and taken several wrong turns until the proper name of the establishment was determined, and while there were lights and noise blazing on either side of the Bull and Horns, the tavern itself was dark and quiet, the shutters and door closed. The driver was none too pleased and did not need to wait for the sharp glance Barrimore cast his way before he reached beneath his seat and rested the loaded blunderbuss in plain view across his lap.

  “Wait here,” the Marquis murmured and started to close the coach door.

  “If he is here, he might not believe you have come to help,” she said, hoping the tremor she could feel in her throat did not echo in her voice. “And if he is not here, I suspect Mr. Turnbull might shoot you without troubling to ask.”

  Barrimore saw the logic, though only with the greatest reluctance. “Then stay close behind me and if I tell you to run back to the coach, you will run, is that quite clear?”

  Anna’s face was partially hidden by the hood of the cloak, but she nodded anyway. She saw him pat the bulge beneath his jacket and knew it was where he had concealed the flintlock pistol the driver had given him earlier.

  He approached the door and gave it two brusque raps with his knuckles.

  Anna came up behind him, her hand lightly caressing the pocket of the cloak where she had slipped the letter opener. It was cold enough for her breath to fog the night air, damp enough to add moisture to the tiny beads of sweat already glistening at her temples.

  Barrimore knocked again, this time loudly enough to startle the two mongrels away from their bone and start barking. The sound of a shout came from one of the second storey windows farther down the street, the ire directed first at the dogs, then at the third spate of heavy-fisted pounding on the tavern door.

  “We be closed fer the night,” a muffled voice came through the wood slats. “Fever inside. Quench yer thirst elsewhere.”

  “I am not seeking to quench my thirst,” Barrimore said, his voice low and pressed against the crack of the jamb. “I have come from London on a matter of great importance.”

  “We be closed, I tell ye. Come back in the morning.”

  “Morning may be too late. The man I have come to see--”

  “Ain’t here, I tell ye. No one’s here but two poxy ‘ores an’ me.”

  Barrimore waited a beat then hissed, “I have come to see Emory Althorpe. Is he here?”

  There was a distinct, wary pause on the other side of the door before the disembodied voice asked, “Who might he be, and who might you be asking after him?”

 
“My name is hardly important. I--” Barrimore drew a clipped breath as the muzzle of a gun was pressed into the back of his neck, forcing his head roughly against the door.

  Behind him, Anna barely had time to react to the shadowy intrusion before an arm was snaking around her waist, dragging her back. Another was clamped firmly over her mouth, muffling her cry of surprise. Out of the corner of her eye she could see where a third man was already climbing up into the carriage beside the driver, a cocked gun aimed squarely between the frightened man’s eyes.

  “We’ll ask again,” the first man snarled against Barrimore’s ear. “Who might you be?”

  “My name is of no immediate consequence, but I must warn you that the young lady you are manhandling is Miss Annaleah Fairchilde. She is here under my protection and should she suffer so much as a bruise, you will pay and pay dearly for the affront.”

  The man with the gun had no chance to answer the challenge as the sound of an iron bolt scraped beneath Barrimore’s ear and the door was yanked open.

  As tall as he was, the marquis had to look up into Seamus Turnbull’s face. The Irishman stared hard at Annaleah before growling to the men to bring both her and Barrimore inside. The third man nudged the driver with his gun and a moment later, the carriage pulled away.

  Annaleah was hustled forward through the darkened doorway and left to stand beside Barrimore as the door was shut and bolted again behind them. At a grunt from Seamus Turnbull a pair of lamps were lit inside the taproom. One of them was brought forward and raised so the light shone on Anna’s face.

  There was still a residue of silver dust on her skin and in her hair, sparkling softly in the yellow glow and the effect showed in the startled green eyes.

  “What the bejesus are you doing here, Miss? How did you know where to come and who might this fancy toff be that you’ve brung along with you?”

  “Is Emory here?” She asked anxiously. “Did he manage to get safely away from Carleton House?”

  “He managed,” said a familiar voice from the opposite side of the room. “No thanks to a wall of thorn bushes that would have tested any man’s mettle.”

  Anna turned and saw a splash of white in the corner, the blur of a full sleeved shirt, open at the throat, cinched at the waist with a wide black belt and black breeches.

  “Emory!” She pushed past Barrimore and ran across the room to fling herself into Althorpe’s arms. He did not hesitate to catch her nor to swing her around, where, shielded from the prying eyes of the other men in the room, he kissed her hard and deep on the mouth. When they broke free, she gasped again and her hand went to his cheek. The skin on his face and throat was scratched in a dozen places where the thorns had cut him; one of his hands was wrapped in a length of cloth, splotched pink. “Dear God,” she gasped. “Are you all right?”

  “Never mind about me. How did you get here? How did you get away from Barrimore?”

  “I did not get away from him,” she said, briefly distracted by the visible stains on his shirt where other cuts, other scratches on his chest and arms had bled through. “He is here. He brought me from London.”

  “He brought--?” Emory twisted around and stared at the silent figure in the doorway, the shock of recognition tightening his features. “Barrimore?”

  The marquis bowed slightly. “Althorpe. You’re a difficult man to run to ground.”

  “He has a gun,” Anna cried. “Under his coat. The left hand side.”

  Seamus reacted to the urgency in her voice, pushing the marquis back against the wall and brushing his jacket aside to uncover the polished walnut stock of the flintlock tucked into his waist.

  “It is him,” Anna said. “He is the traitor. He knows you are innocent and he has come to find the proof of his own guilt and destroy it before his own treacherous dealings are uncovered!”

  Barrimore’s mouth slackened. His eyes narrowed and he momentarily forgot to be vexed at the roughness in Seamus’s hands as the rest of his clothing was searched for weapons.

  “Me? Good God, Annaleah! You think that I--? You think I would--?” He stopped, clearly shocked. “Whatever put such an absurd notion into your head?”

  “You all but admitted it to me in the carriage, sir, telling me you knew everything about Emory’s activities in France.” She turned to Emory. “He admitted to me that he works for Wessex and knows all about your spying missions in France. He saw the dispatches you sent. He wrote many of the dispatches you received, and could easily have falsified others!”

  “I wrote some of them, yes,” Barrimore admitted. “But not all. Nor was I the only one who would have had access to the codes. In the hundred days after Bonaparte’s landing at Antibes, there were sometimes two and three hundred dispatches arriving daily. The sheer numbers required us to employ a dozen extra men to cull the important information from the fodder.

  “What is more, I have taken a huge leap of faith in not driving straight to the nearest garrison and leaving it up to the courts to decide guilt and innocence. Why would I do this, why would I help you and knowingly place myself at risk of being painted with the same tarred brush as Mr. Althorpe if I were the guilty party?”

  Annaleah’s lungs deflated on a gust.

  “Then you believe him?” she gasped weakly. “You believe Emory is innocent?”

  “I am half persuaded into believing he was used as a pawn by factions on both sides of the Channel. I do not believe he is totally innocent of all the charges levelled against him--in particular the most recent events that exposed you to inestimable dangers!”

  “But I told you, I went with him willingly. He did not really kidnap me.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said quietly. “But he did a devilish good job of stealing your heart, did he not?”

  Anna stared at the shadowy profile, at the starkly handsome features that were always too stern by far. Though the Marquis of Barrimore was very good at keeping his emotions under tight rein, there was no mistaking the rough note of regret in his voice and she could not help but wonder if her Aunt Florence had been right after all. Had he, indeed, been in love with her and simply too painfully proud to reveal it?

  “You are nothing if not the devil of a man yourself, my lord,” she countered softly.

  “Yes, well, despite the bruising my vanity has just taken, I shall take that as a compliment.”

  “It was meant as one.”

  Emory cleared his throat, reminding them they were not alone in the room.

  “May I assume we have come to some manner of agreement here? Do I give his lordship to Seamus to drown in a gutter, or do we let him breathe a while longer? And what, in God’s name, were you going to do with that?”

  Anna followed his gaze down to where she clutched the ornate gold letter opener in her hand. She did not remember taking it out of her pocket, nor was she quite sure what to do with it now even as the grimness on the faces of the men around her began to give way to crooked smiles.

  Emory leaned over and gently plucked the ominous weapon out of her fingers.

  “If you believe in my innocence as you say,” he looked over at Barrimore, “can you have my ship released and my men set free?”

  “To what purpose, sir? That you might run again?”

  “No,” Emory said quietly. “As it happens, I am getting damned tired of running. If the papers are still there, on board the Intrepid, they may not only help clear my name, but might also provide a clue to the identity of the true traitor. Besides which, I have a bad feeling about what is happening in Torbay at the moment.”

  “Torbay?”

  “Napoleon is due to be moved to Plymouth, is he not, where he is to be transferred on board the Northumberland and thence taken to St. Helena?”

  Barrimore’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sources are very good since that is not yet common knowledge, but yes. The captain of the Bellerophon is being sent orders to sail to Plymouth at his earliest convenience.”

  “Then they will have to execute their plan before t
he ship leaves Torbay.”

  “What plan? What are you talking about? And who is ‘they’?”

  “They, is your real traitor and whoever else is conspiring to help Bonaparte escape his exile before the sentence is carried out.”

  “Impossible. He is guarded day and night. He is on board a ship in the middle of a British port surrounded by a dozen brigantines bristling with cannon and men eager to use them.”

  Emory shook his head grimly. “I have seen the port, the ships, the fairground atmosphere surrounding the Bellerophon, and I tell you sir, I could board her, take a stroll about the deck with Boney and the two of us leave again with no one being any the wiser.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “The hell I do say, yes. And to prove my point, I will sail the Intrepid there and do exactly that.”

  “The Intrepid is under equally heavy guard.”

  Emory quirked an eyebrow. “I intend to have her running out in open water before the morning tide comes in.”

  Barrimore regarded him with a cool, assessing eye. “Do that, sir, and I will gladly stand on the foredeck alongside you.”

  “We have to get on board first,” Seamus growled. “And we weren’t exactly planning to stroll down the wharf and whistle for an invitation to dine.”

  Barrimore studied the big Irishman whose brow was also furrowed as he inspected the marquis’s finely tailored evening clothes. With a slight nod to acknowledge the sarcasm, Barrimore reached up and began tugging at his silk cravat to loosen it. “Provide me with more suitable attire, sir, and I would be happy to provide escort regardless of what method you use.”

  Emory studied the noble lines of Barrimore’s face a moment, then nodded at Seamus. “Get him something to wear. And give him back his gun; with only seven of us, we may need all the firepower we can muster.”