by Gaelen Foley
The fierce girl’s devotion to her man inspired Carissa, jolting her out of her own shocked inaction. Before she quite had any sort of plan, she jumped down from the gunsmith’s cart and strode toward the docks.
“Milady, come back!” Michael pleaded.
She ignored him. Pushing through the crowd, she noted she was not the only one who had stopped to watch the standoff unfolding. Many onlookers had also stopped to gawk. So much for avoiding scandals, she thought.
Unfortunately, she was shorter than most of the big, sweaty roustabouts and wharf workers gathering to watch.
“Excuse me! Let me through!” She had to shove her way to the front of the rugged crowd, then she had to sneak past the soldiers keeping them under control.
But when she saw Ezra Green joining the soldiers on the dock—only after they had got the Order agents safely surrounded—she realized he would likely have them shot if they tried to escape.
Besides, knowing her friends’ husbands, they would certainly refuse to flee even if they had the chance. They were not the fleeing sort.
“Explain yourself, by God, sir!” Beau cried in fury as Green walked through the crowd of soldiers.
“You explain yourself, Lord Beauchamp! You were supposed to inform me as soon as you heard from them, but I had to find out from one of my men here. Did you think you all could slip away?”
“We don’t run from fights,” Lord Rotherstone informed him. “What’s all this about?”
Mr. Green took out a scroll and unrolled it in front of the agents. “Your Grace; my lords; Miss,” he said with a sneer at the pretty young woman, “I’m placing you under arrest in the name of the King.”
“This is madness!” Beau exploded.
“On what charges?” Warrington demanded.
Green gloated while the soldiers held the agents at bay. “I am happy to answer that for you, Your Grace.” He looked around at them, relishing his moment. “You all have been charged with seventy counts of murder.”
Carissa nearly fainted hearing that. Seventy counts!
“We know about Bavaria,” Green added. “You had to know there would be hell to pay. Or did you all think you’d get away with everything, as usual?”
The black-haired man stepped forward. “Take me. Let them go. It was all my doing—”
“Drake, no!” the girl cried.
He ignored her. “Do you want my confession? Very well. I did it; I acted alone. They tried to stop me—”
“He’s lying! It was me! I did it. It’s true. I’m the one who killed those filthy traitors, and I’m not sorry!” Emily cried in fury, a note of panic in her voice. “They were in the cave. I shot the flaming arrow. It was I who made the firedamp explode.”
“On my orders!” Drake insisted, while Beau pleaded with all of them to shut up, to no avail.
“That’s nonsense, it was all my idea,” Warrington informed Green’s men, taking the lead, as he was wont to do.
Carissa saw the grim glance Rotherstone and Falconridge exchanged, some silent communication passing between them.
“We are all responsible,” Jordan declared.
“He’s right. You either arrest all of us,” Max declared, “or get out of our way.”
“Why, that is an easy decision,” Ezra Green replied. “Men!”
“No, let them go! It was me!” The girl, Emily, stepped forward and offered them her wrists.
Green merely looked amused by her plea. With a smirk, he nodded for his troops. When a soldier stepped forward and clapped the girl in manacles, Drake went slightly mad.
He lunged at the soldier, shoving his musket skyward to step in and punch him in the face.
“Arrest them all, now!” Green thundered, as Drake sent the man flying into the Thames.
Pandemonium broke out all around poor Emily. Carissa watched with a pang of sympathy. She could have told the girl her selfless offer was in vain. Even if her claim were true, it was not some odd girl in trousers that they wanted. Because of what she had learned, Carissa now understood this whole charade was aimed at one grand goal: Destroying the Order for once and for all.
Green seemed close to accomplishing his quest as the agents made the choice to stop fighting and let themselves be taken. It appeared their view was that if one was going to be taken, they all would go.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Lord Rotherstone informed Green as he, too, was clapped in manacles before hundreds of watching Londoners.
Carissa was glad Daphne wasn’t here to see it, or the other two women, as their husbands were likewise placed under arrest. At last, even Drake was subdued. “You’re going to pay for this,” he spat at Green.
“Is that a threat, Lord Westwood?”
“Drake, please,” Emily murmured. He kept his mouth shut, but cast her a rather desperate look as they put the shackles on him. Hadn’t he been a prisoner of the Prometheans for months? Carissa recalled. No wonder he looked so wild-eyed at the prospect of being put back in a cell.
“It’s all right,” Emily assured him as though she were soothing a wild animal.
The only one left with his liberty was Beau. “I’ll get you out of this,” he swore to his friends.
“No, you won’t, Lord Beauchamp. If you are wise, you will continue to cooperate.”
“God, Beauchamp, what else have you told them?” Jordan exclaimed.
“I didn’t—” Beau started to answer in frustration, but he silenced himself as they started leading the others away. “Just—trust me.”
“We do,” Max murmured, giving him a communicative nod.
“Take them to the Tower!” Green ordered.
“The Tower?” Warrington uttered in outrage.
“That’s right, Your Grace. A place reserved for traitors.”
“Damn you, I’ve been serving this country since I was seventeen—”
“Enough, Rohan. He’s not worth it,” Max clipped out. “Beauchamp will get all this sorted soon.”
Beau walked alongside his friends as the soldiers escorted them toward waiting prison coaches. He had not yet noticed her. “Don’t worry,” he was saying to them, “I shall go directly to the Regent. I promise you, this will not stand.”
“The Regent?” Green gave him a quizzical look. “Who do you think signed the arrest warrant? The Home Office has not the authority to take such highborn warriors into custody, my lord.”
Carissa stared, horrified. The Regent already knew of this? But the prince was the final authority. Their last hope.
“Beau, get Mara to talk to him! They’re good friends. She’ll find out what’s really going on,” Jordan called in a dark tone before they shoved him into the coach with the others.
Beau stopped Green as he was walking away, seizing him by his coat. He threw him up against the prison carriage.
Carissa took that as her queue. She rushed toward him to restrain her husband’s fury before they saw fit to arrest him, too.
Of course, that seemed unlikely; she got the feeling that Green somehow needed Beauchamp free. Perhaps it made his claims seem more credible, if he could paint Beau as certifying the alleged crimes of the other agents.
Did he have some way to back him into a corner? Was that how Nick came in?
“The Regent would never agree to this,” Beau was snarling in Green’s face as he pinned him against the carriage. Green merely held up the paper and showed him the signature with the royal seal. Beau glanced at it through narrowed eyes. “Then you manipulated him somehow.”
“I, sir? Never, surely. Though I do hear it is rather easy to manipulate someone who’s out of funds.”
He slammed him again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Green winced. “Why don’t you ask your friend, Lord Forrester?”
Beau went stock-still. “You . . . ?”
“What?” he asked innocently.
Carissa stepped closer, her heart pounding. Beau’s back was to her, but she could just make out their furious exchang
e. “What do you know about Nick?” Beau demanded.
“You’d better take your hands off me before I have you shot. I know you all are trained killers, but you answer to me now, Lord Beauchamp. Don’t forget it. Unless you want something unfortunate to happen to your friends while they’re in prison.”
Beau was seething. “Tell me, Green. When did you join the Prometheans?”
He laughed. “I don’t need such bedtime stories to know the Order has outlived its usefulness, my lord—along with most of the institutions your kind hold so dear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wait a few years. You’ll see. For now, heed me well. There is a new England coming, and those of us birthing it are going to make an example of your fine friends, so that everyone may see that from now on, even the highborn must answer to the law. Not your wealth, your rank, your guns, not even the Crown you’ve so foolishly served all your life can save you from the coming change.” He glanced around at Beau and his fellows in scorn. “You’re a relic. Now take your hands off me.”
Beau seemed so stunned by his words that he let him go. Green cast him a smug look, righted his coat, and walked away. He climbed up onto one of the prison carriages. As it started to roll away, Green noticed her.
Carissa found herself looking into the eyes of a traitor. She shrank back when Green tipped his hat to her in mock politeness. “Lady Beauchamp,” he said, as his coach drove off.
Hearing her name, Beau spun around and saw her standing there.
His jaw dropped. Motionless, he stared at her as though she had just stabbed him in the heart.
“What are you doing here?” Then he shook his head at her with an icy look. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t have time for this.”
“Beau, wait!” she cried, as he brushed past her.
“Go home,” he said, crisply enunciating the words as he walked away from her.
Her very heart shriveled within her. But she had to tell him what she had found out. She started after him as the gunsmith’s apprentice came pushing toward him through the crowd. “My lord!”
Carissa was jostled this way and that by the throng while the two conferred ahead.
When she cleared a knot of giant roustabouts, she saw Beau marching toward his own coach, with Michael hurrying beside him. “Husband! I need to speak to you!” she yelled after him.
But he didn’t even listen. He climbed up into his coach, pausing only to send her a cold, reproachful glare over his shoulder—a wordless reminder that his sending her to the country had been a test—which she had failed. Michael jumped up onto the carriage. Then Beau threw the brake and drove off without even giving her a chance to speak.
Stubborn male! She knew he was angry about a thousand things—understandably so—and no doubt her arrival at that precise moment was the worst thing she could have added to his burden. But, blast it, the time had come to show him what she was really made of.
Her jaw set with determination, she rushed back to the gunsmith’s abandoned delivery cart and commandeered it. The apprentice probably intended to come and get it later, but she would save him the trouble.
Because she was bloody well following them.
“Out of my way!” she hollered at the fishmongers and wharf workers milling about in the road.
At the moment, she did not care how unladylike she looked. Let the gossips report on it for all she cared!
She cracked the whip over the horses’ backs, determined to catch up with her errant husband.
In that moment, Beau felt pulled in a dozen directions at once, and going after Nick was the last thing he wanted to be doing. But of all the pressing matters crashing in on him at the moment, this one seemed the most dire.
If Schweiber’s apprentice could show him to Nick’s hiding place, then he still had a chance of stopping the ultimate catastrophe. If he failed, and Nick assassinated his target—and it had to be someone big for eight thousand pounds—Beau knew for certain the rest of them were headed for the gallows.
Every second counted now, but God knew, he would’ve rather been telling his wife in detail what he thought of her defiance, her inability to respect his orders as her husband. Maybe now she would see this wasn’t a game.
At the same time, he wanted to be in the Tower making sure his friends’ legal rights were being observed and nobody was treating them with undue cruelty. He wanted to be writing to the Elders up in Scotland, telling them to send the best lawyers they could find.
Most of all, he wanted to go tearing off to Carlton House, where Prinny was likely gorging his face, as usual.
How could their royal benefactor betray them like this? Somebody must have got to him. Beau did not know whether Green was part of the Prometheans or not, but even if he wasn’t, the outcome was the same.
This little weasel of a bureaucrat had done more to damage the Order than the Prometheans had managed to inflict on them in a century.
As Schweiber’s apprentice directed him into the East End, Beau tried to ignore his fury and focus on the task at hand. But he was still enraged about what Green had put his brother warriors through back at the docks. Damn it, any one of them would have been willing to die for the cause, but no one had ever suggested that their labors would be rewarded with public disgrace. How could this be happening? Had the world gone mad?
“Here it is, sir, the street I followed him to. The building’s just ’round the corner.”
Beau nodded, drawing his horses to a halt. Judging by the dodgy look of the surrounding neighborhood, he hoped his vehicle was not gone when they got back. “We’ll go on foot from here.”
They jumped down from the carriage. Beau murmured to his horses to stay. Then he nodded to the boy, and they headed for the corner.
The lad peered around the brick corner first, then looked at him. “The building on the right, sir. He went in that second door, toward the back, ground level.”
Beau recalled Nick’s telling him that he had been keeping Trevor in some sort of basement. “Good work, Michael. You stay here.”
“I don’t mind helping, sir, if you need me. I’m a good shot.”
He smiled ruefully. “I’m sure you are. But my friend is on the road to his own personal perdition, and has already shown he doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. I’ll handle this. You can keep watch—and keep an eye on my carriage, would you?”
“Aye, sir.”
With that, Beau slipped around the corner and began walking toward the building. Prowling closer, he took out his gun. His heartbeat quickened as he approached the second door. With every step he took, his instincts sharpened, homing in on the details of the tenement building. Nick would have left himself another exit. He’d have to look for it as soon as he went in; otherwise, the bastard might escape him yet again.
With his gun at the ready, he braced his back against the wall beside the door, listening. Silently, he tried the handle. Locked, of course.
Maybe Nick was not at home, he mused. But Trevor had to be in there somewhere. Hell-bent on stopping the one and saving the other, Beau gave himself a mental count to three, then he lunged at the door with a mighty kick.
Blasting it open, he steadied himself with a wide stance and instantly swept the interior with his pistol drawn. No counterattack was forthcoming from the dark and dirty hovel. But he had to make sure the place was clear.
With that, Beau proceeded through the first room into the second, looking out not only for that bloody turncoat mercenary but for any sign of a trapdoor to the cellar, where Nick had boasted he was keeping Trevor “safe.”
It had to be here somewhere. It was a tiny apartment of only two rooms. The front room was practically bare, except for a hutch of shelves with pots and pans on them and a battered table with four equally battered wooden chairs. He found a newspaper on the table along with the stump of a candle, an empty bottle of gin, the crumbs and uncleared plate from a sparse meal.
Beau checked the second r
oom and found a moldy cot, but no one was sleeping in it. There was an old, scarred wardrobe by the wall, but he found nothing but a greatcoat and a few other items of clothing inside that seemed too fine for such surroundings. In the greatcoat pocket, he found Nick’s lucky deck of cards. His lips twisted. At least he’d got the right place, then. But Nick wasn’t at home.
He went back and shut the door he had kicked open in case Nick returned. Prowling back through the place, he scanned again in all directions, a little confounded. “Trevor?” he called. “Trev, are you here? It’s Beau!”
That’s when the low banging started. Thud, thud, thud. It was coming from somewhere under the floor, along with a very muffled voice.
“Damn it, down here! Beauchamp! Let me out!”
Beau dashed into the other room, following the sound. His stare homed in on the stained, ratty chair with a low table beside it, arranged before the fireplace.
“Trevor!” he bellowed, his gaze trailing down to the filthy oval rug beneath the table and chair. It lay unevenly, and that could signify nothing, but he went over and pulled the edge of the grimy rug back.
A curse escaped him. “Trevor!”
His heart was pounding as he shoved the chair and table out of the way, exposing the full outline of the trapdoor. Unfortunately, it was padlocked.
The banging was coming from the bottom side of the planks. “Get me the hell out of here!” a furious, muffled voice demanded.
“Hold on, I’m here!” Beau’s pulse pounded with fierce joy to hear his long-missing teammate’s voice. “Move back from the door! I’ve got to blast the lock!”
He gave Trevor a moment to back away before carefully shooting the lock apart at point-blank range. He holstered his pistol, but before the smoke had cleared, he had pulled the broken halves of the lock away.
At once, he bent to grasp the handle and pulled the trapdoor up, flooding the space below with daylight.
Trevor lunged up the rough wooden stairs like a captive lion finally escaping its cage. He bounded out of the darkness below to freedom, he whipped around, rather wild-eyed, his jaw roughened with a beard.