by Лорен Уиллиг
“Deuced dull at court,” Lord Henry agreed. “No scandal, no intrigue, and not a woman worth seducing.”
“Not one?” Medmenham raised a brow at Robert.
Robert clamped down on his temper. “Don’t tell me you mean to promote the charms of Lady Pembroke,” he drawled. “You may have to fight the King for her, though.”
The mention of the Queen’s aging lady-in-waiting had the desired effect. The King’s recurrent sexual fantasies about the determinedly virtuous sixty-seven-year-old had everyone deeply baffled.
Medmenham laughed with genuine humor. “She certainly appears to have an aphrodisiac effect on His Majesty. I, however, fail to see the appeal. We shall find far better entertainment here tonight, I promise you.”
Robert craned his neck in a pretense of eagerness. “Where is this, er, entertainment?”
Medmenham’s lips curved in a slow, satisfied smile. This was his drug, the ability to manipulate his peers with the promise of pleasure, rewarding with access, punishing by withholding. “Not so hasty, Dovedale. As anyone will tell you, entertainment is best savored slowly.”
“It’s hard to savor what isn’t here,” riposted Robert. If Medmenham had his dancing girls stashed away elsewhere, what else did he have hidden?
“All in good time.”
“Is it time to start yet?” Innes bounced on his heels like a dog waiting for his master to throw a stick.
Medmenham cast a practiced eye around the room. The majority of the members had managed to make their way into their robes and were beginning to make inroads on the flasks concealed on their persons.
Cassocks, Robert had learned, afforded excellent hiding places for a multiplicity of items, including pistols and knives or, in Medmenham’s case, a small silver bell of the sort one might use to summon a servant. Raising it, Medmenham jingled it in a prearranged signal.
Far above them, in the bell tower, a deep tolling answered the soprano call of Medmenham’s bell.
In the Robing Room, the members, like greyhounds at the slip, began jostling into place, attempting to form the two straight lines in which they would process into the chapel. Even the antisocial souls propped against the wall abandoned their secluded havens to join in the general throng.
Robert focused his gaze on the men who had kept to themselves during the robing. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the signal, the barely perceptible tilt of the head that summoned one of the hooded figures to meet another at the very end of the line. In that brief moment, as the man’s hood slipped ever so slightly, Robert saw all he needed to see. That was Wrothan on the left side of the room, perched by a pile of moldering Books of Common Prayer. Robert recognized the bump on the nose, a bump that Wrothan had always claimed was the result of ambush by the Mahratta but that Robert was more inclined to ascribe to a barroom brawl in the days before Wrothan had developed his pretensions to gentility and his following among the younger and more corruptible members of the aristocracy.
Wrothan’s contact was more adept. He moved smoothly into line with no betraying movement of any kind, his face perfectly hidden by the fall of his hood.
Robert wriggled himself into the line directly in front of them. Sound, after all, traveled forwards, and there was nothing to be gained by a view of the backs of their hoods. He exchanged terse nods with his partner in the line, whom he recognized as Miss Penelope Deveraux’s affianced. Lord Frederick Staines’s upcoming nuptials appeared to have had no visible effect on his extracurricular activities. Robert just hoped Tommy hadn’t spotted him.
With an unhurried movement, Lord Freddy adjusted his hood over his gleaming hair, easing his features into shadow. Robert twitched his own hood back the other way. Not enough to attract notice, but just enough to free his ears from the heavy fabric.
Between one stroke of the bell and the next, he heard one of the men behind him murmur, “I have your price.”
Between the reverberation of the bell and clomp and shuffle of two dozen variously shod male feet, the words were all but indistinguishable. The conspirators had chosen their moment well.
“Oh, no,” countered Wrothan, a little too loudly. Robert recognized the tone of his voice. He had heard it before, in the officers’ mess, when Wrothan knew himself to hold a winning hand. Wrothan’s whisper was shrill with repressed excitement. “I don’t believe you do.”
The Frenchman spoke sternly. He was, it was clear, not accustomed to being disobeyed. Unlike Wrothan, his pitch was perfect; although Robert stood directly ahead of him, he had to strain to hear. “The price will be what we agreed.”
Ahead of them, the door to the nave had been thrown open. The first row of false monks processed in two by two. “I don’t think so. Not if the prize is no longer in the palace. The game has changed, monsieur. I hold all the cards. Or, should I say, the card?”
“Very amusing, sir.” The Frenchman sounded anything but amused.
Wrothan, on the other hand, was enjoying himself immensely. “I couldn’t be more serious.”
The Frenchman’s voice was sharp as a well-honed blade. “You mean to say that you have — ”
“Yes.”
Have what? Robert wanted to shout. What had Wrothan filched from the palace? State papers seemed the most obvious answer. Secrets of the sort that could be sold for a high price. Unless, of course, the Frenchman was not working for his government at all. In that case, the prize could be nearly anything. The Queen’s diamonds alone could keep a man in frog legs for quite some time.
“How do I know that this card is not a mere jack?”
“Would I bluff?”
“If you thought you could — yes.”
“Well, I’m not.” Robert, for one, was inclined to believe him. Wrothan positively buzzed with self-satisfaction. “This time, I have the king in my hand.”
Behind them, the bell tolled for a tenth time. On cue, Robert and his partner stepped through the arched door into the church, nearly missing the Frenchman’s terse whisper. “Where?”
The bell tolled again. Eleven.
“That,” said Wrothan smugly, “would be telling. You pay, I tell.”
The twelfth peal rang. “I see.”
There was something in the Frenchman’s voice that suggested he saw altogether more than Wrothan might like, but Wrothan, flying high on his moment of triumph, was immune to nuance. “I thought you would see it my way.”
“How much?”
“What is a king’s ransom these days?”
The thirteenth peal shuddered through the chamber. They had nearly reached the point where the pairs divided, filing down opposite sides of the nave to form an honor guard for the high priest of the elephant god. “Shall we discuss this — outside?”
Wrothan must have made some gesture of assent. “During the fireworks. There’s a side door in the nave, on the left.”
The Frenchman’s voice was heavy with irony. “I see you have left no detail to chance.”
“I pride myself on my planning.”
“You must indeed be . . . very proud.”
The Frenchman wheeled to one side, Wrothan to the other. Robert followed along behind the Frenchman, to the right side of the chapel. If he were Wrothan, he would be more worried than proud. The Frenchman’s initial alarm had quickly faded to something else. He had been, at the end, nearly as smug as Wrothan. The Frenchman clearly had another card up his sleeve. Robert was exceedingly glad that Tommy and their War Office agent were standing guard outside.
Impatiently, he waited behind the Frenchman as Medmenham strode to the center of the room, torch held high. He was eager to have it all done with already. In a matter of minutes, Wrothan and his accomplice would be caught red-handed, dealing in whatever they were dealing in in plain sight of an agent of the War Office. With three against two, there shouldn’t be any difficulty subduing them and hauling them back to Crown Street for questioning.
Three friars down, Henry Innes made some sort of bawdy comment. Robert’s lips ti
ghtened with impatience. Why didn’t they just get on with it?
Once Wrothan was in custody, his debt to the Colonel would be done. Only a month ago, the possibility of his quest coming to an end had left him with a hollow sensation, like falling off the end of the earth. Now he craved that resolution. Once this night was done, he need never wear a cassock again. He could break with Medmenham and his whole gruesome crew. He could try to make things right with Charlotte.
That, he knew, was the root and stem of all his impatience, not the burning desire to avenge the Colonel, but the need to see this all done so he could make his amends to Charlotte. The future wasn’t a desert anymore, or an endless sea fraught with serpents; it was a garden to be tended, a pleasant place away from the rest of the world, with unicorns to be courted and flowers to be plucked. It was Girdings and Charlotte and everything from which he had been running all these years.
If she would have him, that was. After the events of the past few weeks, that was by no means a foregone conclusion.
In the center of the nave, Medmenham raised his torch high, angling it towards a deep bowl that had been hung where a chandelier must have been, long, long ago. His sleeves fell back from his arms, revealing two red-eyed elephants, whose trunks twined down his forearms.
“Gentlemen!” he called out. It was, Robert thought, a singularly inappropriate term under the circumstances. “I give you . . . the sacred flame!”
Across the aisle, Wrothan inclined his head in a barely perceptible nod. Next to him, the Frenchman nodded back.
As fireworks shot into the air, cartwheeling through the high, arched ceiling, the swish of a monk on the move was barely perceptible through the crackle of the fireworks and the catcalls of the members. Robert automatically cast a quick glance around as he prepared to follow, and nearly tripped over his own habit as he saw what the explosion of light had illuminated. One by one, the babbling voices fell into silence as the hooded body of men stared, as one, at one small girl huddled at the far end of the nave, clutching at the door handle with one gloved hand.
Robert’s triumph turned to ashes in his mouth. It wasn’t just any girl. It was Charlotte. Even in a shapeless dark cloak, with a hood shading her face, he knew her. He would have known her anywhere.
Had she followed them? Guilt rose, acrid and viscous, in Robert’s throat. If he had brought her to this, however unintentionally . . .
“My, my,” drawled the amused voice of Sir Francis as the last of the rockets exploded, unleashing a shower of sparks that made Charlotte shrink back against the door. “The great elephant god is nothing if not quick with his rewards!”
Beneath the raucous laughter Robert could hear a pitiful squeaking sound. It was the leather of Charlotte’s glove, scraping against the doorknob as she struggled to get it to turn. Abandoning all subtlety, she turned her back on the company and used both hands to tug at the knob. It was no use. The door was stuck.
And so was she.
From the left side of the church came a decided click as the door to the churchyard swung shut behind Wrothan and his companion, prepared to implicate themselves in all manner of dastardly plans. It was the moment Robert had been waiting for since the Colonel’s death, the culmination of months of painstaking plotting and tracking. He had dreamt of this moment during the long voyage from India to England; the prospect of it had kept him warm against the biting winds of the endless ride to Girdings. His revenge was finally at hand.
Robert didn’t have to think twice.
He sprinted forwards, grabbing Charlotte around the waist and hoisting her up over his shoulder so that all his fellow friars could see were a pair of rapidly kicking legs in silk stockings. Let Tommy and the War Office man deal with Wrothan.
“Mmmrph!” bleated Charlotte into his back.
He decided to take that as “Thanks, awfully, for saving me” rather than “Put me down right now!”
“Sorry, my fault!” Robert announced, making sure to keep any bit of Charlotte that might be the least bit recognizable between his back and the wall. Since there was only one bit of Charlotte that anyone in the room ought to recognize, that was simple enough. “This one’s mine. I forgot to tell her to go round the back.”
He could tell the exact moment she recognized his voice. Her hands stopped clawing at his back and her legs ceased their kicking. In that one moment, she went entirely rigid, with a stiffness born of shock.
A sucking sense of despair settled somewhere in Robert’s middle, like low-lying fog. The game was up. There would be no making it up to her now, no explanations that would suffice. How could she not despise him after seeing this? It would have been one thing to tell her about his recent activities — with suitable ameliorations — quite another for her to have seen it with her own eyes. He had always known the gods were cruel. He had just never realized quite how cruel.
The only slight saving grace was that Medmenham looked even worse than he. It was scant comfort.
“No fair hogging her!” one of his brethren called out in raucous tones. “Share and share alike, that’s our motto!”
Robert could have sworn that their motto was “only the best for our orgies,” but a low rumble of assent greeted the man’s statement.
“I say, pass ’er over!” shouted out Lord Henry, losing his aspirates in his enthusiasm for female flesh. “Looks like a ripe ’un.”
“Ripe but not ready,” parried Robert, miming a hearty pat to Charlotte’s backside. In for a penny, in for a pound, after all. Her gasp of indignation was lost somewhere in the folds of his cassock. “Can’t you see she isn’t properly costumed? Besides, we can’t have the girls before the ceremony. The god wouldn’t like it. And if the god doesn’t like it . . .”
Charlotte hung heavy over his shoulder, so still, she seemed to be scarcely breathing. He could feel her listening with every fiber in her body, listening as though her life depended on it. Didn’t she even trust him to get her safely out?
But, then, why should she? Robert asked himself with brutal honesty. His record so far hadn’t exactly been one of spotless knight errantry. The truth of it stung like sharpened steel thrust straight through the vitals.
“I’ll just go deposit her in back, shall I?” Robert suggested. He didn’t wait for anyone to propose an alternate plan. Instead, he lurched towards the door to the vestry as fast as he could go, with Charlotte jouncing against his back with every step, twisting her out of the reach of an inebriated monk who made a grab for her temptingly displayed posterior.
“No sampling the goods early!” he snapped.
“Someone needs to teach you to share,” pronounced Medmenham provocatively, hefting his torch.
“Would you share?” demanded Robert with deliberate insolence. With the resultant burst of laughter as shield, he slipped through the door to the vestry, clipping one of Charlotte’s shoes against the door frame in the process. Charlotte made an irritated choking sound.
Fighting for balance, Robert kicked the door shut behind them. It wouldn’t stymie pursuit, but it might slow it.
Charlotte immediately began to indicate that she wished to be set down.
“Not. Now,” Robert gritted out, tightening his hold on the backs of her legs. “Do you want them to have you?”
With any luck, the members of the society would be too eager for the promised pleasure of their magical elixir and multitalented dancing girls to care to pursue, but he wouldn’t feel properly safe until there was a good mile between Charlotte and the brethren. Make that two miles, he amended.
Through the thick wooden door the chanting was beginning, calling for the elephant god. Medmenham must have used the torch to light the braziers. Scented smoke began to seep beneath the door frame, making Robert’s stomach heave in memory.
Maybe it wasn’t just the smoke making his stomach heave. Robert kicked open the door on the side of the vestry, taking out some of his anger on the unsuspecting planks. This was not how this was supposed to have gone. What in all
the blazes was Charlotte doing barging into the Hellfire Club? Serpentlike, he could hear Medmenham’s voice urging Charlotte to improve her acquaintance with “architecture.”
Bending forwards from the waist, Robert eased Charlotte to the ground, trying to keep her from tumbling over into the mud of the churchyard.
Charlotte stumbled as she landed, swaying in place as she tried to get her bearings. One hand lifted to her head while the other came to rest against the church wall. Lowering her head, she took a deep breath, then another, sucking in the cool, damp air.
“Are you all right?” he demanded in a rough whisper, grasping her by the arms. He resisted the urge to examine her for broken bones, an absurd notion. Any bruises were undoubtedly internal rather than otherwise.
Charlotte ducked her head, still fighting for breath. “Fine,” she wheezed, and then came the question he had been dreading. “What was — ”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said quickly, knowing he could only delay, not avoid. “We need to get you away. Before they come after us.”
How was he even to get her away? He had come with Medmenham, in Medmenham’s carriage, which was now the devil only knew where.
“What in the blazes are you doing here?” he demanded belatedly. His hands tightened on her arms. “Did Medmenham invite you?”
“No! I hadn’t known he would be here. Or you. Or even where here is.” Charlotte blinked a few times, as though she were still having trouble focusing. “What are you doing here?”
He hardly remembered. “I’ll tell you the whole story,” he promised. “Later. After we get you home. This is no place for a lady.”
“But — ” began Charlotte.
“Did you come in a carriage? A sedan chair? This is no neighborhood to walk about in.”
It was already too late. A crunching in the underbrush alerted him to the fact that they were no longer alone.