Henry shook his head, tightening his hands on the hilt of the gun. He had to move his hand to the trigger. There was little time left.
It seemed trivial now, the confusing Greek letters, but he damn well had to carry on the charade a little while longer—his finger was rigid on the hilt, refusing to move. “I never thought you were Monsieur Herr, Agatha. From the moment you came into my life, I couldn’t stop watching you. I was aware of your presence every hour of the day. You didn’t have time to write those letters, you were too busy thinking up ways to be scandalous.”
Agatha gave a huff. “Only somewhat scandalous, Henry.”
“Hmm.”
“I used to call you Horrible Henry. Only to myself though.”
“Ha!” Henry couldn’t help the bark of laughter. It helped free the tension in his hand. With a slow movement, he laid his finger on the trigger.
“Enough with this stupid talk.” Lady Guthrie stamped her foot. “Don’t you want to know why I used those letters?”
“No not really. But I’m sure you are going to tell us.” Agatha straightened her fingers and flexed a single forefinger.
Good grief. A hand signal, similar to the ones he used with his men when he passed them in the street. Henry narrowed his eyes. Agatha flexed her forefinger again, as if pulling the trigger of the gun. Oh hell.
“I left Iota Eta Pi on everything I wrote. It became my signature.”
He couldn’t shoot now, both Lady Guthrie and Monique were equally dangerous. “I know that already. I want to know why you used that as your signature.”
“Ca suffit!” Lady Guthrie opened her eyes wide. “I have never been so angry since Lord Foxtone stamped on Monique’s foot at that putain de merde shop opening.”
Shop Opening. “Bloody hell Agatha, you were right.”
Agatha blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“It was a joke, but the joke was on me. Exactly as you said, the phrase was I ought to eat a pie.”
“Not as stupid as she looks then, your lover, Anglethorpe.” Lady Guthrie narrowed her eyes.
“When Lady Guthrie was married to Lord Foxtone, she caused the closure of one of his factories when she ate one of his blackberry pastries—”
“—pie actually. Foxtone was very precise I always had to call it a pie. Dieu I hated that man. And it was Monique’s foot.”
“Blackberry pies, then, and told the newspaper men that it was disgusting.” He glanced at Lady Guthrie. “Monique? I thought it was a strong reaction for being stamped on the foot.”
“I wanted money… to buy information. He wouldn’t give it to me. Tight fisted bȃtard. I had to report back to my… organisation in France so Monique covered for me with Lord Foxtone. Everyone said we could pass for twins and the old fool was short sighted anyway.”
“But the old goat demanded relations!” Monique pouted.
“It was the only thing she could think of to get him off her. But then the shops closed and there was no more money. The first people to cancel their order of cakes was the War Office. If only I’d managed to poison you all. In the end Lord Foxtone wasn’t even worth the effort it took to kill him.”
Agatha’s gasp was audible above Lady Guthrie’s angry breaths.
“You might think the joke was on you, Anglethorpe. But really the joke was on me. I believe you say in English… to eat humble pie. Well, I decided to remind ourselves of that episode every time I wrote to France to Monique, every time in my signature, I ought to eat a pie.”
CHAPTER 41
Agatha couldn’t think of any more delaying tactics. It was going to be now or never. Whilst Lady Guthrie ranted, Agatha sat back on her heels as if waiting. She slid her hand into her skirts and withdrew the cheroot and the knife. Sliding a glance at Monique ahead of her, she quickly waved the cigar in the air.
“It is a shame that you are going to be caught.” Agatha shifted slightly to attract both Lady Guthrie and her cousin’s attention. “I alerted my maid and Henry’s valet to where I was going. Help will arrive shortly.” She cut the end of the cigar off with her knife.
“I don’t believe her.” Monique’s gun never wavered. “I’m getting bored, cousin. Let’s kill the cigar smoking goose now. The coast is clear. We don’t need either of them now. I’ve found out what we need to know. I sent a message back to France about Lord Anglethorpe.”
Agatha stilled; Monique had fallen for it. Pushing her hand into her pocket again, she flicked her eyes to Lady Guthrie. Four meters. Her hand closed around the matches and one of the twists of paper; she didn’t have time to work out which one would be most appropriate.
Lady Guthrie cocked her head on one side and smoothed down her skirts with her left hand.
Henry’s gun remained steady. “A message about me?”
Agatha glanced back at Monique; both of them had their eyes on her. Bringing the cigar and the twist of paper in the palm of her hand to her face, she struck a match and inhaled. “Now, Henry.”
Dropping the unlit cigar to the floor, she drew back her hand and threw the burning twist of paper at Lady Guthrie.
The paper tumbled through the air, an imperceptible flame licking at the paper. Lady Guthrie frowned and then gasped.
The paper exploded with a crackle and shower of fire. Holding her ears, Agatha fell to the floor as two more loud bangs followed, a burning sensation piercing her shoulder.
Monique screamed and slid down the door, a blooming flower of red staining her dress across the chest. Agatha looked back up at Lady Guthrie, expecting her to also be incapacitated. But it wasn’t the case—as Agatha watched, Lady Guthrie moaned, the left arm of her dress a charred mess where Agatha’s firecracker had lit her clothes. Leaning to the side, she brought up her right hand which had been hidden in her skirts. Damn. The problem had never been Agatha’s calculations, merely that she just couldn’t throw straight.
Agatha screamed as metal glinted in Lady Guthrie’s hand. “Henry, she has a gun!”
Henry stepped forward in a burst of sound.
She was too late. He fell crumpling to the floor, his cheek thudding violently against the wood.
Agatha took several gasping breaths, sucking at the air. She was an idiot; she should have remembered that Lady Guthrie had killed Charles. She had mistakenly thought that they had used Monique’s gun.
Lady Guthrie was already stiffly reloading the pistol, inhaling great moaning breaths. Agatha could see the scatter of the fire cracker paper at Lady Guthrie’s feet, her carefully drawn diagrams from her notebook charred and wasted. She spared a glance for Henry. His eyes were closed and his body did not move.
The sound of a bullet dropping to the floor woke Agatha from her stupor of shock. She fumbled in her skirts, but the bulky jam jar was sat on top of the other fire cracker. She could not get to it. Lady Guthrie was still fumbling to reload, cursing in pain as she chased the bullet across the floor. Agatha looked out of the front doors. There was no time to leave and get help. The area was deserted and by that time Lady Guthrie would have managed to fire the gun again. She briefly considered leaping onto Lady Guthrie, but realized that she was already closing the butt of the gun ready to fire again.
Agatha rose swiftly in one motion, swiping the unlit cigar from the floor. Leaping past Lady Guthrie, she ran back into the carpeted hall and thudded to a stop. There was no point in continuing to run. The hall only led to more recital rooms and high walled gardens, more spaces where the pistol would be dangerous to her. The sound of the hall door opening galvanized her to action.
Gasping, she fumbled at the matches, pushing the cigar into her mouth. Hands shaking, she lit the cheroot and puffed in and out.
She couldn’t hear Lady Guthrie.
With a shuddering breath, she pulled out the jam jar and inserted the cigar in the hole in the lid and stuffed some more pages of her notebook around the snug fit. Taking a deep breath, she rolled it down the corridor towards the blue room and ran—in the opposite direction.
Th
ere was only one room on the corridor left that she could go to. She slipped inside the instrument store room and quietly shut the door, holding her hands to her head.
The roar of the jam jar bomb shook the doors in their casements.
Holding her breath, Agatha listened to the slow tread of Lady Guthrie lurching down the corridor towards the recital rooms. In the complete darkness of the room, Agatha gritted her teeth and planned her escape.
All was quiet in the storeroom. The door opened slowly. A sliver of light fell through the door. Nothing else moved.
“I know you are in here, little Agatha.” Agatha held her breath as Lady Guthrie slowly stepped into the small space, her gun held out steady in front of her. She held a taper in her other hand, which she held up to the small oil lamp to the right of the door. A soft yellow glow filled the room. “That was a nice piece of misdirection, but you know your lover is dead. There is nothing else to live for.”
Lady Guthrie grinned suddenly and, with a sweep of the gun, pulled the middle tier of instruments from their shelves. All that showed was blank wall behind. Agatha tensed as, with a muted roar of rage, Lady Guthrie one handedly pulled more cases from the shelves, instruments thudding to the floor around her.
Soon there were no more instruments left. The shelves lay bare and empty, the walls scuffed and marked behind them. Lady Guthrie laughed, her eyes staring from her head.
“This must be fate. You and I in here. Do you know that Charles and I made love in this room just before Anglethorpe caught you with him?”
So that was what Charles had been doing, and why Lady Guthrie had been so upset. Agatha bit her lip until it bled. Nothing was going to induce her to move from where she was.
Lady Guthrie looked around herself wildly, the gun swinging from side to side as she did so. Only the cello cases remained in their original positions, standing as upright as shoulders. One case lay to on its side, its clasps undone.
In her dark cramped position, Agatha brought her hands up to her face and lit a match. Slowly holding out her hand, she lit the rolled sheet of music she had found inside the cello case.
Lady Guthrie started towards the case with a smile on her face. Agatha took a sharp intake of breath. The sheet had not yet burnt fully.
“You once called me a mouse, Lady Guthrie.” Her voice echoed around the uncarpeted room, causing the instruments to thrum in response.
Lady Guthrie swung her head from side to side and took another half step forward towards the case. “Of course I called you a mouse, little Aggie, with your pathetic experiments. A mouse that I crushed again and again with my actions for five years.” She laughed harshly. “And now I will silence you forever, just like Anglethorpe.”
Agatha shook her head as Lady Guthrie reached the cello case and switched her gun to her left hand… just five seconds more was what she needed. “I am a mouse no longer,” she whispered, her voice getting louder and louder. “Hear… me… roar!”
With a wave of sound, the cello case exploded as the makeshift taper ignited Agatha’s last firecracker at the bottom of the case. The case lid flew open, knocking the gun from Lady Guthrie’s hand. In an instant, the wire strings of the disintegrating cello inside whipped through the air and lacerated Lady Guthrie’s face, as a shard of wood harpooned her in the hip.
“Aiiiieee….” Lady Guthrie screamed. Agatha didn’t wait for a pause—she shot out her arm from behind the bottom pile of instrument cases where she lay and drove the cello spike she had taken from the case through Lady Guthrie’s foot into the ground. Lady Guthrie’s scream rose higher as with the flat of her hand, Agatha drove her arm into her stomach. And then she was silent.
Wiggling and twisting from behind the instrument cases at the very bottom of the shelves, Agatha stood with a wince. Lady Guthrie was pinned into place on the floor. She couldn’t fall backwards or forwards, her pistol lying useless, feet away on the floor. Gazing at Agatha, her mouth agape, she sighed and passed out doubled up against the shelves.
Agatha leaned back. She had been lucky. Lady Guthrie’s haste had led her to overlook the bottom shelves behind the cellos. The falling instruments from the upper shelves had piled up in front of where Agatha had hidden. She had only just been able to get her hand out in time, armed with the cello spike, thanking the memory of the fallen Mr. Daventry as she had driven it into Lady Guthrie’s fragile ball slippers.
Sobbing, Agatha pushed the remaining cello cases out of the way and swept the pistol from the floor. Without a second look behind her, she hobbled gasping into the vestibule.
As the sickness roiled in her stomach, she stood over Monique, the useless gun in her hand outstretched. But she needn’t have bothered. The woman’s eyes remained open and unseeing, quite dead.
With leaden steps she crossed to Henry. Kneeling beside him in a sense of déjà vu, she turned his head towards her.
His eyes were closed, but his face was still warm.
She sobbed gently. “Henry, I love you. Please be alive.”
Henry lay still on the floor. Frantically she shook him, cradling his head in her lap, tears running down her face.
“Father.” Henry’s lips moved imperceptibly as he breathed the soft word.
Agatha lifted her head. “No… Henry… don’t go.”
“Dying without being loved,” he breathed again, his eyelids flickering. He opened his eyes slowly and stared into hers, his hand fumbling at his chest. “Agatha, promise me…” With a grimace of pain, he fell back unconscious. She gripped his hand tightly.
“Promise you what?” she cried. “Henry?” But there was no reply.
This time there was no one to stop her running outside. But the previously quiet street was now a hive of activity. Three coaches with sweating horses rumbled to a stop outside. With loud shouts, men jumped down from the coaches and rushed up the steps.
“Put the gun down, miss. We have you surrounded.”
Agatha looked round in bewilderment.
“Drop the gun,” someone said slowly.
She looked up into the eyes of Earl Harding. “I don’t think I can.”
“Hades, do something for her!” Victoria stepped out from the earl’s shadow and, unpinning her cloak, threw it around Agatha’s shoulders. “It’s alright,” she murmured, rubbing at Agatha’s shuddering arms. “We are here now.” She jerked her head at Earl Harding. “Hades, if you please?”
The earl reached forward and gently removed the gun from her hand.
“Cooee lads. Did you ever think we’d catch Monsieur Herr in her nightwear?” one of the coachmen hollered to the crowd.
“I’m not Monsieur Herr,” she whispered to Victoria. “And it’s not alright.” Her voice hitched as a sob rose through her throat. “Henry needs help. Gun shot. In the hallway.”
Earl Harding stepped forward sharply. “Did you shoot him?” He paused, the barrel of the gun pointing towards her in his hand.
“Lady Guthrie did it.” Agatha shivered again and swayed. “She’s Monsieur Herr. She’s in the instrument room.”
Victoria gasped as with a soft sigh, Agatha crumpled into her arms.
CHAPTER 42
Smoke and spice. That was all she could smell. She was surrounded by the comforting odor. Taking a deep breath, Agatha opened her eyes.
There was nothing but blue, everywhere she looked. Smoke and spice and blueness. She frowned; it didn’t make sense. Pulling at her arms, she winced as her shoulder strained. Strangely, her hands were clasped around a warm object. A breeze ruffled in her ear.
“Be still, baggage. I have you now.”
Agatha moaned as her body jolted. Around her waist, a hand tightened.
“Out of the way, Ames. I have her. You may always be late but this time you were better late than never.”
A soft fabric rubbed against her nose. Breathing in, Agatha inhaled the spice and smoke again. It was so familiar. With a hiccup, she pushed her face forward, into the softness. It could only be a dream. Henry was stil
l laid out on the cold floor in Hanover Rooms shot by Lady Guthrie. He couldn’t have survived.
A warm hand stroked at her head and cradled her hair. “Shhh. I won’t let you go.”
Agatha sighed. It had to be a dream. No man had ever looked after her. Not since Henry had assured her he would deal with Charles. Not since he had come to rescue her.
“Look at me, Agatha.”
The voice was commanding.
“I don’t want to.” If she did, then the dream would break and she would still be outside Hanover State Rooms, shivering in the cold.
The low voice caressed at her senses. “If you don’t look at me, I can’t tell you what I want from you.”
Oh the devious man, cunning even in her dreams. “Tell me now,” she demanded into the soft fabric. “I can still hear.”
Strong hands stroked her on the nose, pulling her away from her nest.
“Look at me… dearheart… Agatha.”
Unwillingly Agatha looked upwards, into the deep blue eyes of the only man she had ever loved. “Henry,” she breathed. “Don’t… please don’t disappear.”
The rumble of his laugh pulsed through her. “I’m not the one that always disappears.”
“You’re not real. I saw Henry die with my own eyes…”
The deep blue of Henry’s eyes vanished as he blinked, then creased as he smiled. “Ever questioning, Agatha. That’s one of the reasons I want you… I love you. You and I, we are two of a kind, constantly searching for knowledge, truth.”
“You stopped me.”
Henry’s eyes disappeared as his chin pointed upwards. Agatha stared mesmerized at the strong jaw above her.
“I believed that it would make everyone happier,” he said quietly. “Avoid scandal. Only recently has it been pointed out to me that there are many ways to search for a type of truth. I thought I was searching for what my father was looking for when he died in order to give me answers about his death to put my sense of family back together again.” He looked down at her again. “But in reality I was looking in the wrong place.”
Somewhat Scandalous (Brambridge Novel 1) Page 27