The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  But he was too distracted by the prospect of speaking with her again, too excited, to notice the silence that surrounded Harclay’s house.

  Without a backward glance, Henry mounted the gate and tore through the mews, scaling the wall in record time. Despite the morbid exhaustion that weighted down his limbs, he landed with hardly a thump inside the warm dimness of Caroline’s chamber.

  A chamber that was empty.

  “Caroline?” he called, softly. “It’s me, Henry—Henry Lake.”

  As if there were other Henrys who climbed through her window, uninvited, at all hours of the night.

  He cringed.

  The bed was made, the counterpane tucked in immaculate angles around the corners of the mattress. There, on the escritoire by the opposite window, a neat stack of letters was ready for the post; a ream of clean-edged paper sat beside it.

  All was where it should be.

  Only, it wasn’t.

  The gilded cut glass inkwell hung precariously over the edge of the escritoire, leaking droplets of blood-black indigo onto the Persian carpet. Beside the growing puddle rested a swan feather quill, mangled about the middle as if someone had stepped on it.

  His nostrils recoiled at that vaguely familiar scent. It was stronger now. Labdanum—pungent, unmistakable.

  Henry’s blood went cold; the back of his skull prickled with terror. In a searing rush the memory came back to him. He’d smelled it that morning in the woods, twelve years ago.

  The morning he’d defied orders, and made a mistake.

  A mistake that cost the life of a young woman.

  A mistake that changed the course of his life, and had him running from England, from everything he loved and held dear.

  From Caroline.

  Caroline.

  He tucked his hand inside his jacket, fingers curling around his pistol.

  The door to Caroline’s dressing room was slightly ajar, maybe an inch or two; a beam of light cut a widening yellow lane across the floor.

  Slowly Henry approached, heart drumming. He fitted the trigger into the crease of his first knuckle. Pain shot up his leg. He ignored it.

  He edged his boot against the door, and was about to kick it back when it opened suddenly, sending him stumbling back into the room. Henry tore his loose hair away from his face, righting himself as his eye fell on a man, tall, black-haired, dressed in an exquisitely tailored evening kit.

  He was smiling, wickedly.

  His teeth, white, even, gleamed with the pearlescent fervor of a full moon. They were a striking foil to his lips, thickened and a smidge raw at the edges of his mouth.

  For a moment his rage flared so violently Henry could taste it in his mouth.

  Henry knew this man. Knew him well, from his childhood days spent in the Lake family’s quiet Oxfordshire neighborhood.

  The Marquess of Woodstock stood across the room, his bony, enormous hand wrapped around Caroline’s neck. Her skin, mottled blue and red, bulged between his fingers, as if he were giving her throat a good squeeze.

  The man’s face was long, a misshapen oval that righted itself as Woodstock grinned.

  He looked at Henry with piercing eyes, light blue, that, together with the wild black locks curled about his brow, lent him a bizarrely rakish air.

  “Hello, Mr. Lake.” He turned to look at Caroline. Henry noticed her face pulse a shade hotter; Woodstock was choking her. “Say hello to Mr. Lake, Caroline. He’s missed you terribly, you know.”

  Henry released the safety on his pistol, aiming it at Woodstock’s broad forehead.

  Woodstock’s fingers clawed at Caroline’s throat. She cried out, a high sound that Henry felt in the center of his chest.

  “She’s got a lovely neck, doesn’t she?” Woodstock asked. He turned back to look at Henry. “I’ll break it.”

  Henry held up his hands. His gaze never leaving Woodstock’s, he crouched down and dropped the pistol; rising, he tapped the pistol with his foot, sliding it across the floor.

  Woodstock caught it beneath the sole of his polished boot.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Don’t you think, Caroline?”

  Caroline let out a strangled sigh as Woodstock loosened his fingers. He did not remove them from her neck. The skin there was bright pink, dappled white where he’d squeezed her especially hard.

  “Caroline,” Henry said, voice low, “are you all right?”

  Her eyes glittered in the dim light. She gave a little nod. “All right.”

  Henry turned his glare to Woodstock. “Tell me what you want. Let the lady go and I will give you whatever you ask.”

  “Twelve years ago,” he replied, “you murdered a young woman in the woods on my estate. She was helping me with a bit of . . . well, we shall call it precious cargo. That woman was my wife. I am here to return the favor.”

  Fifteen

  The realization hit Henry viscerally, a blow to the ribs.

  Precious cargo. The guns. The stockpile of arms hidden in the woods.

  Woodstock was the traitor. The French agent he’d been tasked to root out that fateful, bloody morning twelve years ago.

  The morning Henry lost everything.

  That strange scent, the labdanum—that was Woodstock’s cologne. It had to be.

  Henry’s mind raced. Woodstock was a peer. A marquess, and an enormously wealthy one at that. He owned the better half of Oxfordshire; Henry remembered, vaguely, his parents entertaining the marquess—Woodstock’s father—for dinner once. The ruckus surrounding the months-long preparation had driven his father to drink, and nearly undone his mother.

  “My God,” Henry murmured.

  The Marquess of Woodstock, a turncoat. The flower of English aristocracy, of landed wealth and gentle manners, was a bloody traitor. How had Henry not known? All this time, how had he not seen what was lurking just beneath his nose?

  But more than that, Henry longed to know why.

  Why? he wanted to scream. Why turn his back on a country that blessed him with every imaginable privilege, with a title and a fortune, with honor, with family, a legacy won by battle half a millennium before?

  Never mind the damage Woodstock could have wrought while in Old Boney’s employ. The man sat in Parliament; he had access to all kinds of sensitive information, to national secrets, to scandals. Whatever Napoleon had paid Mr. Woodstock, he’d gotten his money’s worth.

  But why?

  Henry met Woodstock’s gaze. The man grinned, dipped his head. Henry gritted his teeth to keep from pummeling that grin from his face.

  “Because I could,” Woodstock said, shrugging. “The same reason I now work for myself. Why not? Oxfordshire can be so very dull. It made things interesting, to switch sides. Besides”—he smiled at Caroline—“being a turncoat makes for some rather lovely bedfellows.”

  A pause.

  “Twelve years it took me to find you,” Woodstock said at last. “And all of a few days to find her.”

  Henry gritted his teeth, took a deep breath through his nose. What an idiot he’d been. “Hyde Park. You saw us together there.”

  “It was the fashionable hour,” Woodstock replied. “Everyone saw you there. I saw the way you looked at her. All this time she’s been right under my nose. And then you gave me all the evidence I needed tonight, kissing her in the front hall. How clever, to choose a woman who belongs to someone else.”

  “She doesn’t belong to anyone,” Henry ground out. He prayed fervently, he prayed harder than he’d ever done before, that Woodstock would not do further harm to Caroline. This was his cross to bear.

  Woodstock scoffed. “You’re smarter than that, old man. Though I cannot say that I blame you. She is lovely. And good. Too good for you.”

  Henry’s fingers gathered into fists. He felt sick with rage. He’d never torn apart a man with his
bare hands.

  There was a first time for everything.

  He took a deep breath through his nose. He had to stay calm. Had to play along nicely, for now at least.

  “Your masters in Paris have been very busy slaughtering their neighbors,” Henry said. “Surely you’ve had better things to do than chase me about the Continent.”

  “Surely, yes. But I didn’t want to do those things. I wanted you. You’ll be happy to learn I stopped working for the French after your little—what shall we call it?—oh yes. Accident. Something about having your wife shot dead before your eyes by a careless boy changes a man. My superiors, as you call them, were rather unsympathetic to my situation. I work for myself now.”

  A beat of dread pulsed through Henry. “She was an agent of our country’s enemy, Woodstock, same as you—”

  “She was not,” Woodstock spat. “She merely provided aid when I needed it. She was innocent.”

  Henry swallowed. “If she aided you, that makes her your accomplice. Traitors, the both of you.”

  “Traitor or not, you did not mean to shoot her.”

  “No.” Henry took a sharp breath through his nose. “I didn’t. I’m sorry I missed my mark. I’m sorry I missed you. But I am not sorry she is dead.”

  Again Woodstock smiled. “That is where we differ, isn’t it, Mr. Lake? For I am very sorry she is dead. As I’m sure you’d be sorry if your lady love the dowager countess was shot through the head.”

  Caroline’s eyes bulged with terror. “Henry?” she rasped.

  “Ah!” Woodstock crowed. “She doesn’t know about you, does she, Mr. Lake? But then I suppose killing an innocent woman in cold blood is something you would keep to yourself.”

  Henry balled his fists at his sides. Even as he’d sworn to keep her far from the sordid details of his past—even as he’d sworn never to admit to her the things he felt—she deserved to know.

  “Go on,” Woodstock said. His pale eyes glittered. “Tell your tale of woe.”

  Henry met eyes with Caroline. I’m sorry, he pleaded. I’m so sorry.

  “Down at Oxford I was recruited to serve His Majesty in the war against France,” he began. His words were thick, low, each one torn unwillingly from memories he’d locked away. “The morning you and I—after we—I walked you home. When I got back to my parents’ house, a boy waited for me with summons from my commanding officer.

  “A French spy was working in the area at the time. We made it our business to uncover his identity, root him out. That evening a coded letter from the spy had been intercepted. The messenger carrying the letter had been interrogated, but he revealed nothing. My officer decoded the letter. It revealed the location of an arms stockpile—bayonets, pistols, gunpowder—used by French spies working in London. My orders were to wait for nightfall, when I’d meet up with other recruits to search for the stockpile, and destroy it. If we were lucky, the stockpile would lead us to the spy and we could destroy him, too.”

  Henry swallowed, hard. “I was impatient. Eager to prove myself. I had you, Caroline, I wanted to start a fam—” He swallowed again. “I had no inheritance, no money or land of my own. I needed to make my own way in the world. I thought I could take care of the guns and the spy myself, even as I knew the guns would be heavily protected. Guarded. I thought I could make a splash with the officers, a coup no one would ever forget.”

  “I did not forget,” Woodstock said.

  Henry looked down at this feet. “I did not wait. I went into the woods just as the sun rose, armed with two pistols. I found the stockpile. And I found her.”

  The memory overwhelmed him then: the clear sky above, the forest lush with summer growth. That strange, strong scent in his nostrils as he took the girl in. She crouched in a small hollow carved out of the roots of an oak, filled to the brim with guns; she was young, and pretty, her dark hair loose about her shoulders.

  Young, pretty, dark haired. Just like Caroline.

  The girl was alone, or so he thought. And she held in her arms an enormous rifle, fitted with a bayonet that glinted with sinister intent in the pale morning light.

  “She—the girl—looked up at me. I didn’t know what to do, who she was, why she was there. A shot rang out—”

  “That was me,” Woodstock said. “I saw it. Everything. I saw you kill her.”

  “The girl took off running. More shots. I knew there were others in the woods with her. I saw them ducking in and out of the trees—the traitors. I had a clear shot at one of them—he was reloading his gun behind a tree, spilling powder everywhere. I had a clear shot, and I took it. Only it wasn’t his scream that filled the woods. The girl, that one with the bayonet, she’d jumped in front of the man just before I’d pulled the trigger.”

  Henry looked up at Caroline to see a tear fall, silently, down the slope of her cheek.

  Despite the tightening in his throat, he pushed on. “The man left her, took off running. The sight of her, facedown—”

  A sight that had haunted him for more than a decade. This girl—she’d been someone’s daughter. She’d worn a ring on her left hand; she was someone’s wife, perhaps someone’s mother.

  Yes, she was a traitor. But she was also someone’s everything.

  He remembered, vividly, imagining it was Caroline lying facedown on the forest floor, a bullet in her chest, blood seeping through the delicate fabric of her bodice. Her dark hair sticky with blood, a gruesome halo.

  It could’ve just as easily been Henry’s wife, a bystander caught in the crossfire. A victim of his violent, dangerous doings. His mistakes.

  Caroline, his everything. His collateral damage.

  He could not bear the thought of Caroline being harmed, or worse, on his account. He’d sworn, at that moment, to keep her safe. Keep her far from the bloody business in which he was engaged. He was a fool, he was impatient and unwieldy, and his foolishness would only end up hurting her. It was too late to leave the service besides, and now he had a debt to pay, a wrong to make right.

  He had decided, quickly, what he would do. The choice he would make.

  He took a deep, trembling breath. “I came under heavy fire. So I ran. I could not destroy the arms. I did not discover the identity of the spy or his accomplices. I only managed to kill a girl, and frighten the neighbors. I bungled my mission, embarrassed my officers. And because I failed, because I saw what my mistakes, and my profession, could do to the people I loved, I had to break my vow to you, Caroline. I had to leave.”

  Caroline let out another cry; Henry’s blood leapt, and his body leapt with it.

  With violent stealth, Woodstock kicked the pistol from the floor into his hand and pressed it to Caroline’s temple. He clucked his tongue. “Not another step, Mr. Lake.”

  “You’re hurting her.”

  Woodstock’s smile curled evilly into his cheeks. “That’s the point.”

  “Kill me,” Henry said. “Take me. I’m the one who killed your wife. Kill me and call it even.”

  “Such a tidy ending that would be for you! But alas, the pain would be too brief. You must suffer, yes, but living can be so much more painful than death if it’s done right. And I intend to do it right, Mr. Lake. For your sake. And for Lady Caroline’s.”

  Woodstock released the safety on the pistol. Caroline stiffened, eyes squeezed shut against the blow sure to come.

  “Wait!” Henry cried. “Wait. I have something that might interest you. A trade.”

  Woodstuck narrowed his eyes. “A trade?”

  “A fifty-carat diamond, in exchange for Caroline’s life.”

  “It’s that diamond all the papers are talking about, isn’t it?” Woodstock cocked a brow. “Thieved from some idiot’s ball?”

  Henry’s heart hammered against his ribs. “Yes. The French Blue.”

  Sixteen

  Caroline’s breath caught in her throat.
Inside her chest her lungs burned.

  It was impossible to tell what shocked Caroline more: the content of their conversation, Henry stripped of his secrets by this silver-tongued stranger, or the fact that Henry had left her not because he didn’t love her, but because he loved her too much.

  The mistake he’d made, why he’d left her. Twelve years ago he left her because he had to. Because he’d accidentally killed this man’s wife, and he feared the same might happen to her.

  Henry’s leaving had nothing—and everything—to do with Caroline. He did not leave because he got what he came for (a toss—well, several tosses—in the sheets); he did not leave because he found her dull or ugly or unworthy of his handsome enormity.

  He left because he loved her. Because he would give up everything, his family and his name and future, to keep her safe.

  He loved her then, as ardently as she’d loved him. All the time they’d lost, the misunderstandings, the secrets, the pain—it was almost too much to bear.

  And now here he was, offering up a priceless jewel in exchange for her life.

  It made her feel like weeping.

  And she would have wept, had a stranger not been threatening her at gunpoint inside her bedchamber.

  “The French Blue,” Henry repeated. “It’s yours, if you leave her in peace.”

  “You have it?”

  “I—”

  A hesitation. Slight, hardly noticeable.

  Except Woodstock noticed.

  Again he clucked his tongue. “You were going to lie to me, Mr. Lake. Good thing you did not.”

  “I can get it. I will get it. I swear to you, Woodstock—”

  “When?”

  Henry hesitated. Caroline thought her heart might burst. “Soon. Give me a chance to get it. The diamond. And then I’ll give it to you.”

  More silence.

  Please, she prayed. Please, Henry, don’t get shot.

  As if he had control over Woodstock’s gun.

  She did not dare reach out herself, try to wrest the gun from Woodstock; she’d read enough novels to know startling a man with a pistol usually ended in blood. A very dramatic amount of blood.