“What are ye doin’, Hardacre? Way past yer bedtime, innit?” The voice, now right outside, was unfamiliar to her.
Olivia clung to the wall behind the door.
“Some of us have work to do instead of boxing the Jesuit all night,” Adam retorted.
“No rest for the wicked, eh?”
“You must be an absolute angel, then.”
The man laughed.
Adam spoke, “Well, don’t let me keep you from your bed, mate.”
Silence stretched on between them for several agonizing moments before the man made a noise of assent and tromped his way back downstairs.
Adam whispered to Olivia. “It’s safe, it was just Pockmark.”
She didn’t ask but set to work lighting the lamps. Adam took the house master key and crossed the stair landing to unlock the door to Harold’s cell. She heard their low voices. No more than a minute or two later, Adam returned. Harold entered the room behind him.
“For God’s sake, man, let me stay and help,” Harold whispered.
“Take orders from me for once,” he whispered harshly at his friend. “You can help us get the lanterns up on the roof then get to the inn. Wake Jory and raise a hue and cry. Get as many armed men as possible up here as fast as you can.
“You may be approached by a broad-shouldered man in his fifties, well-spoken. Tell him you have a message from Aunt Hilda. Follow his instructions. Do exactly what he says.”
“But…”
“Don’t argue!”
She looked back at Adam and Harold. The two men faced each other like adversaries, not friends. Harold turned away from Adam to look directly at her.
“Then let me take Olivia,” he said. “I can get her to safety and that’s one less thing for you worry about.”
Adam paused a beat before answering. “No.”
Olivia felt relief, her faith in Harold was far from as firm as Adam’s.
“As far as this crew is concerned, you’re locked safe and tight in that room,” Adam said harshly. “If you can manage to get away cleanly, they might never know you’re missing until it’s too late.”
“So your message is more important that the safety of a lady?”
“You getting to the inn guarantees Olivia’s safety – and mine. The message I’m sending should bring better help than Jory and a bunch of villagers with pitchforks. Come on, now. I don’t have time to argue.”
Harold threw them both an expression that very much looked like disgust. He helped pass just five of the lit lanterns – all Adam wanted – up through the hatch to the roof, then set off down the stairs quietly but with ill-humor.
Adam closed the tower room door behind him and locked it, then dragged over a saw horse and braced it against the door. He ascended the ladder to the roof a moment later, and Olivia followed. As she stepped out onto the roof, shouts started within the house.
Adam picked up a small length of waste timber that lay on the roof beside the hatch and handed it to Olivia. “Hold this,” Adam said urgently. “Pass me the lanterns when I ask for them but otherwise stay right here and if anyone pokes their head up, hit it.”
No more than a minute passed before there was a banging of fists on the tower room door, accompanied by the shouting of foul oaths erupting below.
Adam took the first of the lamps and clambered near to the top of the structure. He hung the lamp almost at its apex. Below them, the tower room door began to splinter and the shouts grew louder.
As soon as Adam had descended close enough for her to stretch up, Olivia handed him another lamp and he hung it on another part of the frame – and repeated the process for the remaining three. In the end, the shape looked like a house, four lamps roughly set in a rectangle, and one set above in the center.
Cr-ack!
The whip-like sound of a musket report reached her ears. Olivia went as far as she dared to the edge of the roof. Illuminated in the moonlight below her was Harold sprinting across the lawn.
Why was he going that way? If he had headed toward the north boundary, he would already be in the shelter of the woods.
Out there, running through the open formal gardens, he was exposed. Now she saw the man with the gun step forward, priming it for a second shot.
Cr-ack!
This time the aim was true. Olivia screamed. Harold Bickmore fell and did not rise.
Olivia looked up at Adam who was still halfway up the tower. His face was pale in the moonlight, eyes wide in shock at seeing his friend shot down. Then his head turned to face the hatchway where a man was starting to emerge.
Olivia still held the piece of lumber in her hand and she took a step back toward the hatch but her skirt snagged on the shin-high railing. She pulled it and felt fabric tear.
The man, Dunbar, clambered out onto the roof and turned toward her.
*
Adam positioned himself above Dunbar just as the man hauled himself upright and eyed Olivia.
He dropped from his position and pulled the man to the floor. He managed to land a couple of strong punches before Dunbar shoved him off and swung at him.
Adam saw stars before he felt the pain in his jaw. Before he could draw breath, he was hauled to his feet and punched in the gut. Winded, his legs went out from under him and he dropped to his knees.
“The lights! Get the fekkin’ lamps off the tower! They’re visible all the way to bloody Plymouth!”
Adam had no idea who called up from below. But surely very shortly, Black Angus or one of the others would emerge from the hatch to back up Dunbar.
“I’m goin’ to make ye regret the day ye crossed me,” the man growled.
Adam looked up in time to see him draw a booted foot back to kick him. Before the man could do so, Adam grabbed his other ankle and pulled. The man fell back and Adam managed to regain his own feet, still half-stunned from the blow to his jaw.
Dunbar lumbered upright and faced Adam. He began pacing toward him.
Adam stepped back a pace and felt the low iron railing at his calves. The advancing man showed no signs of stopping. Would the thug try to shove him off the roof or simply grab him and take both of them to their deaths in a blind rage?
Adam leapt upwards and managed to seize a lower spar of the signal structure just as Dunbar reached him. The thug’s arms wrapped round his hips and he used his full substantial weight to try and drag him off. Adam felt the spar drop an inch or two. He prayed the hinges he’d fashioned would not give way. Worse, the whole bloody thing could topple over. Above him, the lanterns, arranged in a signal that warned of “strange ships of superior force to the fleet” – an incongruous message but the best Adam could recall from Howe’s code book – swung wildly. If one fell and broke, he’d have fire on the roof to worry about, too.
The pain in Adam’s arms and shoulders was acute as Dunbar literally swung from his body, trying to dislodge him. Then a flash of brown hair passed beneath him, Dunbar howled, and Adam’s lower body was released. Adam swung himself up onto the horizontal support as he’d done numerous times to reach a spar on a ship.
Looking down, he saw Dunbar reach round and touch a blooming red patch on the side of his white shirt. Olivia had jabbed him in the side of the ribs with the penknife Adam had given her, but it might as well have been a pinprick to the big man. He spat an insult, reaching out to swat at her.
Adam crossed over the beam and used it to drop down and swing.
His booted strike to the ribs was powerful enough to send Dunbar staggering backwards. His heels struck the railing and Adam saw his terrified look. His arms wheeled wildly, but his overbalance was terminal. Dunbar fell back and disappeared over the edge of the roof without a sound, perhaps struck dumb by the realization of his fate. A moment later, Adam heard the dull thud as the man’s body struck the ground.
Adam immediately rushed to Olivia’s side. Despite his injuries, he held her to him just as Wilkinson himself emerged onto the roof and aimed a pistol at them.
“Have we d
one enough?” Olivia whispered into his shoulder.
“I hope so.” He kissed her hair, willing his racing heart to slow.
Black Angus rose through the hatch and Wilkinson ordered him to take down the lanterns.
“A disappointing end, Hardacre,” Wilkinson said at last. “You showed such promise. Fortunately, it doesn’t change our plans. You will still be going to France – but perhaps not treated as well as you might otherwise have been.”
He sidled around the roof, keeping the pistol trained on them. “One false move and I won’t shoot you, Hardacre, I’ll shoot the lady.” Adam looked into Olivia’s eyes and saw only the smallest measure of fear. She lifted her chin to show her resolve to the major. If Adam had ever been uncertain of his love for her before, such doubts were now forever banished.
“Now, get downstairs,” said Wilkinson. “Miss Collins has a visitor.”
As soon as they were back in the tower room below, Olivia took Adam’s hand and squeezed it. Black Angus gave them a sour look and pulled them apart.
They followed Wilkinson down two flights of stairs. He led them into the study – where Peter Fitzgerald waited.
“That man is a spy,” the solicitor proclaimed, pointing his finger, the sense of affront plain in his voice.
It struck Adam as absurd.
He burst out laughing. “It might surprise you to know we’re all spies here, Fitzgerald.”
The man glared at Adam, then he turned to Olivia and gave her a look of visceral contempt. “Except for her.” He advanced toward her. “She’s nothing but a whore.”
Fitzgerald’s palm connected sharply with Olivia’s cheek.
Adam threw off Pockmark’s straining hands and got two paces forward before his vision turned white from a flash of pain and heat that radiated from the back of his head.
Then everything turned black.
*
The pistol butt made a sickening sound as it struck. Olivia’s stomach fell as Adam crumpled to the floor. The scream she wanted to release was stuck in her throat, then she found herself spun around and a short velvet hood was dragged over her head.
To further add insult to injury, she was bound, then picked up like a sack of wheat and dumped without ceremony into a carriage after a rough journey through the house over someone’s shoulder. As the vehicle moved off, she heard a groan from the seat opposite. She leaned forward but was immediately shoved back into her seat.
“Don’t ye worry about him, darlin’” said a man with an Irish lilt to his voice. “He’ll be sleepin’ for quite a while yet. Ye just worry about what The Collector has in mind for ye. He wasn’t best pleased to learn ye’ve been sharin’ yer charms with another.”
Soon, it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than a growing headache and raging thirst inside the fusty hood. And, disturbingly, Adam had been silent for what seemed like hours. Without sight and landmarks, it was difficult to know how far they had traveled. She fought to tamp down panic and fell into a feverish state from lack of sleep and the physical aftermath of the night’s horrors.
Olivia was jolted awake by the carriage pulling to a halt. Before she could arrange her confused thoughts, she found herself roughly tossed over some man’s shoulder and carried some distance before being dropped onto a pile of canvas.
“Now you be a good girl and stay here quiet-like, eh?” said Wilkinson.
“Would you be so good as to remove the hood,” she croaked. “And may I have water?”
She felt a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll compromise. I’ll get you water but you keep the hood on for now. Agreed?”
She nodded, feeling weariness down to her bones.
“Good girl. It will all be over soon.”
As he left, Olivia heard a door slam loosely shut and she guessed that she was in some kind of shed. Her wrists and shoulders hurt from being bound and the stink of the dirty canvas on which she lay added to the sick-making discomfort of the hood. She could hear water lapping.
Whereabouts was she? And where was Adam?
When the hood was finally removed, it was not by the major, but rather Fitzgerald who then put the edge of a glazed clay pot to her lips. Cold sweet water filled her mouth and she hated herself for how pathetically grateful she felt for it.
With her arms still bound behind her, she struggled to a more comfortable seating position and looked about. She appeared to be in some kind of boat shed on a pile of old sails to the side of a slipway. Two lengths of timber, worn smooth with age, sloped steeply down the center of the shed and out under the door.
There was no one else here except Fitzgerald, and that made her nervous.
She was the subject of his full attention. If she could avoid looking into his eyes…
Olivia was not going to get the option. With three fingers under her chin, Fitzgerald lifted her head. His face was mere inches away. The closeness of it was disturbing. She wanted to close her eyes but did not. She wanted to ask where Adam was but did not.
“Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves,” said Fitzgerald. He shook his head with apparent regret, his voice soft, even gentle without the angry denunciation of earlier. “My fondness for you was genuine, you know. We might have made a successful marriage of it.”
She drew in a deep breath to speak. “Why betray your country? You have a good practice, a modest living. Many a-man would be content.”
“Content?” he spat the word like it was a profanity. “Content to see stupid men grow rich and powerful while I bow and scrape? I was made for greater things.”
“Great things are earned.”
He looked at her sadly. “How can I expect you to understand? You, a mere governess…you have nothing and you expect nothing. You think me Judas, selling out Christ for thirty pieces of silver? Wars can be profitable ventures. Other have done it, so why not me?”
She had promised herself to be strong, to not show fear or to beg, but her resolve could not overcome her fear.
“I implore you, Peter, if you had any regard for me at all, let Adam go. Walk away from this. It’s not too late.”
Fitzgerald cupped her cheek and caressed it. Olivia let out a shaky breath.
“What would you offer me in exchange for his life? Yours?”
She swallowed and nodded. “If you guarantee Adam’s freedom, yes.”
Fitzgerald frowned, appearing to consider it. “If we were wed, you could not testify against me. There is that, I suppose.”
He stood and took a few steps away. “A woman who consents to be my wife because I have the power of life and death over her lover? If I hated you, I might even do it – force your obedience, force your submission to me. I could take great delight in my cruelty. But even that wouldn’t be enough, would it? It really wouldn’t matter if I treated you with great cruelty or great kindness. You would always love him.” He turned to face her. “I thought all those months ago that if I won your mind, your body would follow. How ironic that now you’re offering me your body, but I will never possess your mind.”
“Please, Peter, you know this is over.”
“Alas, I have no choice. The rendezvous is set. I promised them Hardacre and you are here to keep him obedient.”
Chapter Thirty
Every time he closed his eyes, Adam relived the moment over again. The sharp report of the musket. Harold falling to the ground dead.
Dead because of him.
The nightmarish dreams caused by his concussion terrified him.
Constance came to him in one. She was dead because of him. She appeared and looked at him in surprise across the tumble-down wall of the ruins in the woods. She was still young but he was as old as he was now.
Olivia!
He killed her, too? No…that was Harold. He killed Harold.
What happened to Olivia?
If only his head would stop pounding.
A bucket of cold water was tossed in his face, a blessing and a curse. It woke him up at last, but it reminded him ho
w much his goddamned body hurt.
“Wakey, wakey,” announced Black Angus. “Major Wilkinson wants a wee word with you. Get to your feet.”
Adam started to rise, but apparently not fast enough for the Scot, who pulled him up by the arm, tugging at his already strained muscles.
The door to the room opened. The glare of a new dawning sunrise made his eyes water. From what he could see, the Carrick or even the sea itself was a short distance away. Another man, Red, Adam suspected, shoved him in the center of his back to propel him down the short hallway into a small sitting room. By the looks of things, it was the main room of a cottage; a door with a small window led into it, led immediately outside.
Wilkinson sat on a humble timber settle, looking more grey and less commanding than Adam ever recalled seeing him. Nevertheless, the man had made himself at home. A working man’s earthenware mug and a small teapot sat on a tray beside him. On a footstool were papers and a small traveling inkwell.
“Tell me what you did last night,” he asked, his voice mild, perhaps even resigned. “Who were you signaling? And what is the significance of the chandler’s shop at Charteris House?”
Despite his aches and pains, Adam stood to attention. “You’ll get no answers until I see Miss Collins set free, unharmed.”
Wilkinson thumped his fist on the arm of the settle. The tea tray rattled, but the man managed to hold his temper somewhat.
“Last night, you were in a better position to bargain,” he said. “All things considered, I’m not in a mood to cooperate. The Frenchies will loosen your tongue soon enough. I’ve seen men go mad in their prisons, they’re a living death, a horror you cannot imagine.”
“Why wait for the French? Why didn’t you do it last night? Your men demonstrated they were quite capable of killing an unarmed man.”
Wilkinson didn’t answer. No one in the room answered.
Adam’s movement was so swift it took everyone by surprise, even Adam himself. Before he had even formed a coherent thought to do so, he lunged at Black Angus, seized the dirk from the scabbard at his waist, and had a startled Wilkinson by the shirt, then around the throat with the knife at his ribs.
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 93