She paused to collect herself. “I am not angry with you. But if your suspicions are correct, then Rousseau has been deliberately drugging people.”
“To help persuade them to part with a sizable portion of their money, yes.”
“How beastly. But if it is true, the Earl of Munster is in on it. He all but admitted to me that he and Rousseau are in collaboration.” Excitement sent her back across the room to stand before him. This might not be the treason Victoria feared, but a crime of fraud perpetrated by a member of the royal family against prominent citizens would cause the queen untold embarrassment and perhaps significantly weaken public support of the monarchy.
Aidan watched her intently. “He admitted his complicity with Rousseau?”
“Yes . . . well, more or less. He was in his cups at the time and later denied it, but his actions last night seem to confirm it. Where do you think he and Rousseau were going? Do you believe Lord Devonlea and the others who left the Guildhall are involved? If so, we must find proof of their guilt. Perhaps if we—”
Aidan startled her by pushing himself out of the chair. Though pain tightened his countenance, he didn’t miss a beat as he grabbed her, drew her against him, and pressed his mouth to hers. His kiss forced her lips open and his tongue entered her mouth, submerging her in a sensual abyss that blotted out the room and all but the pleasure he sent sizzling through her.
Breaking the kiss suddenly, he left her breathless and trembling with desire for more of him. That was clearly not his plan, for he turned away and retrieved his collar and cravat from the bureau upon which she had placed them.
His nonchalance as he fixed his collar to his shirt put her out of sorts. Frowning, she ran her fingertip over her tingling bottom lip. “What was that for?”
“To shut you up, of course.” He threaded his neckcloth beneath his collar. “If there is any proof to be had, I, and not we, shall see to it. Sneaking about is dodgy business and no task for a lady, not even one who wields a gun.”
“I did save you last night, didn’t I?”
“You did indeed, and while I am exceedingly grateful, I see no reason for you to continue putting yourself at risk.”
“I believe that is for me to decide.”
“Is it?” In two long strides he returned to her and kissed her again until the floor seemed to fall away from her feet and she felt in danger of plummeting. Steadying her with a hand at her elbow, he smiled down into her eyes. “Here is a bit of intrigue for you. If anyone else in the house is up and about, go and create a diversion so I can slip away on the sly.”
“You are going home to rest, I trust.”
“Ah, it is not important that you know where I am going, Laurel.” The pad of his thumb made a sensual sweep of her lower lip, while the simmer in his eyes set her skin aflame. “As long as you understand that you have not seen the last of me.”
Chapter 18
His ribs protesting, Aidan sucked the sharp morning air into his lungs. He had made it out of Laurel’s lodging house undetected, thanks to her asking the maidservant to prepare her morning tea and toast a half hour earlier than usual.
But for the delivery carts, the streets were still relatively empty. He had attempted to restore respectability to his appearance by camouflaging his bruises with a bit of Laurel’s dusting powder, but he still garnered a few looks from shopkeepers sweeping their front stoops. Ignoring them, he headed back to the bridge, convinced that last night’s attack had been no random occurrence. Even with the firing of Laurel’s gun, any experienced thief would have managed to grab his victim’s watch fob or cravat pin before scrambling away.
So if they hadn’t been thieves . . . what were they?
Last night, the fog had swallowed up Fitz’s and Rousseau’s forms, and they might very possibly have proceeded across the bridge to the other side. For all Aidan knew, Rousseau lived somewhere on the river’s eastern bank.
Every instinct, however, sent him back to the steps that led down to the boat slips. An assortment of small river craft bobbed up and down in the current. Aidan made his way along the narrow pier, questioning the boatmen as he went. Had any of them conveyed two gentlemen downriver last night? If anyone had, no one admitted as much. But that didn’t mean Fitz and Rousseau hadn’t hired a craft to meet them here at a specified time, just as those ruffians might have been hired to ensure that no one followed them.
He remembered the words of the dockworker he’d met down on Broad Quay. Ol’ Will Shyler wandered over there one night to take a piss and never came back. Someone found ’im next morning with his face all smashed in. That suggested that someone had been guarding the place.
A guarded warehouse and a guarded entrance to a pier were too much of a coincidence for Aidan’s comfort. Micklebee had told him to find Rousseau’s secret laboratory, and every instinct told Aidan he would find it inside, or somewhere close to, the derelict warehouse on Broad Quay.
A coal ferry, small enough to navigate this section of the river, appeared ready to put out. Aidan hailed the helmsman.
“Going on to the quay?”
“That I am, sir.”
“May I hitch a ride?” He flashed a silver coin.
His face shadowed by a low-slung cap and a dark growth of beard, the man eyed him curiously but shrugged. “As you like, sir.”
The ferry navigated beneath the bridge’s middle arch and then skirted wide around the horseshoe weir that controlled the river levels. Along the way, Aidan considered what he had learned so far.
He had come to Bath expecting to yet again exonerate the man who had been both quarry and friend these past several years. Time and again, the Home Office had suspected George Fitzclarence of conspiring against his country, and time and again Fitz had proved them wrong. Oh, he engaged in the usual run of victimless crimes such as the illegal purchase of smuggled brandy and tobacco, or fueling rumors to help drive up the price of specific stocks.
This time however, the subterfuge involved more than money. A member of Parliament lay dead and the well-being of some of England’s most notable citizens had been put at risk, both their purses and their health.
For Aidan this case went deeper, had become more personal, than any before. Melinda had been coerced into giving away valuable property. And Laurel . . . his chest tightened. Laurel might have been killed last night.
He still couldn’t claim to know much about her, not who she really was or why the blazes she owned a pistol. But from everything he had observed so far, he was pretty damned certain she posed no threat to anyone except for unwitting thieves and . . .
Himself. His heart. His work for the Home Office.
A woman like Laurel made a man susceptible in more ways than one. She distracted him and turned his priorities upside down. She brought out fears and furies he never knew existed inside him. The thought of her following him last night, of being in the same vicinity with fiends who would have spared her no mercy, wrenched his gut into knots and made him itch to commit murder.
In his line of business, emotions such as those could prove deadly liabilities, for they robbed a man of his perspective and ran roughshod over his ability to think rationally.
Yes, with Laurel, logic took a backseat to desire.
Broad Quay bustled with morning activity as steady streams of workers scrambled between the warehouses and the docks to load and unload freight from the river barges. Aidan weaved a circuitous path among them, keeping well out of the way. He hadn’t dressed the part of a laborer, but at this time of day it didn’t seem to matter. These roustabouts were too busy to take much notice of him, and besides, he didn’t intend asking questions and therefore had no need to fit in or gain anyone’s trust.
Locating the warehouse with the rotting timbers and crumbling roof, he examined the structure from several vantage points before making his approach. His conclusion corroborated the hunch he’d had, that like the boat slips beside Pulteney Bridge, the property went unguarded during daylight hours.
In a rear corner, he found two broken planks. Crouching, he grabbed hold and tugged. The warped wood groaned but gave barely an inch. He would need more than his bare hands to break through.
He found that interesting. This warehouse was sturdier than appearances suggested.
Not wishing to push his luck, he left the quay, continued over to Dorchester Street, and climbed into a battered hackney. He stopped home briefly to freshen up and have his valet, Phelps, bind his ribs and help him change his clothing, as well as further conceal the bruising on his face.
By early afternoon he set out again, returning first to the bank, where he gathered the latest investment figures on the Summit Pavilion. The records confirmed his suspicions that, since the picnic, investments in the project continued to burgeon.
He pressed on to an impromptu meeting with the members of the Bath Corporation. His unexpected and unannounced appearance threw the aldermen into a bit of a panic, but once they calmed, they were able to assure him that construction on the pavilion would commence within the next few weeks. Whether that would prove true or not, Giles Henderson and his associates seemed genuinely convinced of it.
His next stop brought him back to the Cross Bath, where the MP Roger Babcock had died. His visit here served two purposes. While he casually questioned patrons about poor Babcock’s misfortune, he also immersed himself in the thermal waters. He left with no new revelations but with fewer aches from last night’s beating.
Last, he headed to Avon Street to confer with Phineas Micklebee. Together they considered the previous night’s events.
“So, four of them,” Micklebee said, “Devonlea, Taft, de Vere, and Stoddard, all went on their way up Northgate.”
“Probably to Stoddard’s to play cards. I don’t consider any of them as suspects. Not even Devonlea. It’s Fitz’s and Rousseau’s actions that garner my suspicion.”
“Not surprising. However, don’t let your suspicions begin and end with them, milord. I’ve got a bit of news for you.”
“Go on.”
“Our man in Hampshire checked with the local parish and found no records of any Sandersons having been born, married, or interred in Fernhurst within this century. Furthermore, there are no deeds registered anywhere in the area on an estate owned by anyone of that name. Sorry, mate, but either your lady is lying or she’s a ghost.”
Evening had settled over the city by the time Aidan arrived back at his Royal Crescent residence. There he discovered an invitation on his post salver, one that proved as cryptic as the “ghost” who had sent it.
Across town, Laurel stood at her bedchamber window and opened the locket pinned to her bodice. Ten minutes after nine. Swinging a black velvet cape around her shoulders and pulling up the hood, she scampered down the lodging house stairs and out to Abbey Green. A hackney cab flagged by the maidservant waited at the curbstone.
“The Circus,” she told him.
Just before she stepped up, footsteps thudded across the green. She peered into the skeletal shadows cast by the old oak growing on the sward. Like a phantom, a figure cloaked in black from head to toe, as she was, darted to the southwest corner and disappeared into the street beyond.
A chill swept her shoulders as she thought of the hooded stranger at the theater. Had he somehow found her? Perhaps he had been at the picnic, or the concert at the Guildhall. The lights at the Theatre Royal had been dim and she had not gotten a good look at him. She might have passed right by him on another occasion, even knocked elbows with him at a buffet table, without recognizing him.
Had he been standing beneath the oak tonight, watching for her?
“Goin’ or stayin’, ma’am?”
She gazed across the square for another moment, then shook her fears away. How silly of her. Hers was not the only residence lining the square; any one of a number of gentlemen might have been crossing to Abbey Great Street on his way to his evening’s activities.
“Sorry,” she said, and climbed in.
They traveled north, their progress hindered by the snaking procession of carriages, horse riders, and pedestrians zigzagging across the city to their sundry social engagements. The congestion thickened as they entered the Upper Town. Laurel’s confidence began to plummet. When she had conceived of her plan earlier today, it had seemed a sound one. Now doubts darted through her mind with the menace of cloaked figures.
She had spent the afternoon with Melinda and had come away more determined than ever to find the evidence needed to either incriminate or absolve George Fitzclarence. Armed with Aidan’s words of warning, she had tried to deter Melinda from consuming another drop of Rousseau’s elixir. To her consternation, the countess would not be dissuaded. Melinda had laughed at the notion of the elixir containing a mind-altering drug, or any properties other than the herbs and minerals that Rousseau claimed made up his formula.
“Dearest, if people behave differently,” Melinda had insisted, “it is due to the elixir’s restorative properties. A touch of audacity is the natural result of renewed vitality. Blaming brash deeds on the elixir is rather like blaming a murder on the gun.”
Despite her animated protestations, the countess had looked decidedly peaked to Laurel, renewing her concerns for the woman’s health. She supposed fatigue could still be to blame. Perhaps Melinda hadn’t been sleeping well. But if indeed she owed her pallor and pinched appearance to the elixir, then all the more urgent that the formula’s true nature be exposed. Laurel had left Fenwick House with a new resolve and a drastic plan that meant breaking part of her promise to Victoria.
She prayed she wouldn’t be making a mistake.
At the Gay Street entrance to the Circus, she rapped on the ceiling. The carriage rolled to a stop and she glanced out the window, looking for Aidan. Earlier she had sent a note to his home asking him to meet her here at precisely nine thirty.
She saw no sign of him anywhere along the circular sweep of Bath’s most exclusive residential enclave. Few people were about, although bright lights shining from windows and carriages parked along the street indicated that several house parties were under way. Two carriages clattered past hers, raising startling echoes against the elaborate facades of the town houses. A third vehicle exited by the northeast route onto Bennett Street, likely conveying its passengers the short distance to the Assembly Rooms.
Surely Aidan must have received her note. Laurel slid closer to the door, straining to see into the shadows. A low fog swathed the cobbled street, but the mist was nowhere near as dense as on the previous night. The columned facades of King’s Circus, divided into four quadrants of attached town homes soaring three stories high, loomed fortresslike and forbidding. Her misgivings mounted.
In her lap, Victoria’s silver pistol was a solid weight inside her reticule. She considered removing it and holding it at the ready, but this was not some thief- infested expanse of riverbank. It was King’s Circus, home to Bath’s finest nobility. The worst adversity she could expect was a show of indignation on Aidan’s part once he learned of her plan.
A personal invitation from George Fitzclarence had sent her here, and had earlier prompted her to deliver her entreaty to Aidan. Lord Munster was holding a supper party for a number of intimate guests, and Laurel had decided to seize an opportunity that might not come again.
She now knew that, for whatever reason, Aidan, too, was investigating the earl, the elixir, and the Summit Pavilion. And while she’d had every reason to distrust him when she had f
irst arrived in Bath, enough had changed since then to convince her they were not at cross-purposes.
He had been the first to suggest a truce. Why, then, should they not work together?
Footsteps and the abrupt opening of the carriage door sent her heart thrashing in her throat. Aidan had arrived, but would he agree to her plan or call it daft and send her home?
“I feared you might not come,” she whispered as he leaned into the vehicle.
His gloved hand gripped her upper arm. She was hauled along the seat and yanked out of the carriage. A cry escaped her, ricocheting along the building fronts. In the blur of images assaulting her, she glimpsed a black cloak, and a face hidden by a hood with a scarf wrapped high to cover the mouth. Only the eyes were visible. Cold as steel, they sliced through her.
She knew those eyes. This was not Aidan—it was the man from the theater.
Before she could scream for help, his arm came around her, facing her away from him while he clamped a palm over her mouth. The bitter tang of leather made her stomach roil. She raised a desperate gaze to the coachman. Why didn’t he help her? The man gaped back in mute fear. Her assailant shrieked unintelligible but nonetheless threatening words. The driver swore and cracked his whip, spurring the horse to a canter and leaving her to fend for herself.
She thought again of the gun in her purse and fumbled to reach inside, but the man slapped the bag from her grip. Panic fractured the last of her hope as he dragged her along the street and forced her into the cave-dark gap between the western quadrants, where the streetlamps didn’t reach and where no one would see her.
The hands released her arm, only to grip her shoulders and spin her about. A shove brought her up against a wall. One hand returned to her mouth. The other hovered in front of her face, the leather-encased fingers curled around the hilt of a blade that flashed reflected moonlight in her eyes.
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