St. Lyon watched her closely.
“You were trying to determine if he and I were in league! Had you misunderstood my answers, or had they been less to your liking, you might have—! Because of my short association with him I might have—! Oh!” In a flash her hand struck out, dealing a resounding slap to Dand’s face. She stayed before him, breathing heavily, hating herself.
He shook his head, as though to clear it and raised his eyes to hers, tasting the blood that sprang anew from his split lip. He smiled. “Congratulations, Lottie. You must have been wanting to do that for a great while.”
“Take him away!” she said, whirling before anyone could see the tears stinging her eyes.
With a flick of his hand, St. Lyon motioned them to take Dand out and bowing, followed them.
25
Comte St. Lyon’s castle, Scotland
August 15, 1806
AS THE FIRST MAUVE STAINS of dawn marked the horizon, Charlotte paced to one side of her room and back to the next. Where had they taken Dand? She thought she knew. Where better to get information than in that cold tower room where so many others over the decades had been questioned?
She had to find some way to free Dand, to find the letter, to escape. The possibility of doing any of them seemed improbable, accomplishing all three, impossible. She had to concentrate. Her only advantage was that St. Lyon wasn’t certain whether she was an unwitting party to Dand’s plot or an accomplice. Facts suggested he believed the latter.
She had tried leaving her room after St. Lyon had left last night only to have her steps dogged by a footman. She had made some paltry excuse about wanting something more to eat and found her way to the kitchen where the small staff, surrounded by the heaps of parings and carcasses and foodstuffs they’d been preparing for the next day’s meal, had stared at her in gape-mouthed wonder.
Then, about half an hour ago, she had once again ventured out, only to be shadowed by Madame Paule while she went to the library and selected a book to read. If they kept watching her so closely, her chances of finding Dand or the damn letter would be bleak.
Her hands clenched in frustration as a tentative scratch at the door brought her wheeling around. “Come!”
Lizette, her bright eyes darting from side to side, slipped into the room. Charlotte’s shoulders slumped. She’d forgotten her maid. Yet another responsibility. She had to get Lizette out of here unscathed, too. The girl deserved better than to be caught in the machinations into which Charlotte had thrown her. Indeed, she’d been most stalwart.
An idea occurred to Charlotte. Perhaps Lizette could serve both her own interests and Charlotte’s. “Lizette, I am in trouble,” she said without preamble.
“Aye, Miss Nash. I saw what Monsieur Rousse looked like when they dragged him out of here last night. The comte caught you together, did he?”
“Yes,” Charlotte answered slowly, uncertain how much she ought to tell Lizette and deciding that the less the maid knew the less she could be held accountable for. “I have made a terrible mistake. I cannot tell you much, but I am being watched and I must find Monsieur Rousse before anything more happens to him.”
“You love him, don’t you?” Lizette asked and then, as if realizing her boldness, blushed. “Oh! I am sorry, miss. It’s just that it never did sit right with me, you coming here when all the world could see you were still madly in love with Monsieur Rousse.”
“It’s all right, Lizette. You are quite right. The thing is this, I need your help. I need you to make some sort of commotion that will draw the footman away from the hall so that I can slip out. Can you do that, do you think? And then return to the room as though I were still here?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lizette nodded eagerly. “I know just the thing. Give me half an hour so it don’t seem too convenient-like. You’ll know when to bolt.”
Charlotte nodded, impressed with the girl’s canniness. With a quick curtsy, the maid slipped out of the room. Charlotte heard Lizette trading some flirtatious words with the hovering footman and then her footsteps retreating down the hall.
Quickly, Charlotte donned a fresh gown, a muted plum-colored batiste that would meld with the early-morning shadows. She paced, her eyes returning again and again to the mantle clock. She knew where the staircase leading to the tower peep began, behind the fireplace in the anteroom at its base, but she wasn’t certain where in the tower it ended. She had just finished going over her route in her mind when she heard a bloodcurdling scream from outside her door.
“Help! A rat! It’s climbed up me skirts! Help!” Light footsteps pounded by her door, followed by more cries for help echoing down the hallway. A second later, she heard the footman call after Lizette and then the sound of him running in pursuit.
At once Charlotte ducked into the empty hall, picking up her skirts and running as swiftly as possible to the small, negligible doorway that marked the servants’ staircase. She raced down them, stopping at the bottom to determine if the hallway outside was empty. It was. The staff were busy laying fires in the common rooms and setting the dining table for breakfast.
She moved quietly to the tower anteroom and stooped beneath the mantle of the empty fireplace. There. A small slit in the back indicated the hinges of a hidden door. She pushed and with a sound that filled her ears as loudly as thunder, the heavy portal pushed inward. She did not bother shutting it but slipped inside.
At once she realized the challenge she’d posed herself. Inside, it was black. The smell of mold and ancient smoke hung like a miasma in the air and a cold draft blew down from above, buffeting her cheek like death’s kiss.
She shivered and edged forward, feeling with her foot. A step. She gingerly examined the dimensions with her foot. Ten inches high, six or seven deep. She stepped up again and again. Five steps, ten, a dozen. She swallowed, looking back at where the dim light from the anteroom filled the bottom of the narrow chute. Then the stairwell curved round and even that slight light was lost to her.
The wall pressed in on both sides, not much wider than the breadth of her shoulders, the outer one slanting in toward her as though the wall would at any moment collapse and trap her here in the blackness. The stairs seemed to go on forever. She ignored the tendrils of panic that clamored at the edges of her reason. She would not fail. She would not turn back—
High above she heard a voice, echoing and disembodied. Dand’s. She groped along the wall, afraid of slipping, forcing herself to go slow, to be quiet, though every fiber of her being insisted she hurry.
A bar of light appeared overhead, illuminating a rectangular patch of stone. The peep. Cautiously she made her way up to it and caught her breath as she realized how large the peep was, at least a foot across. But how could that be? She would have seen it on her trip to the tower with St. Lyon.
Pressing back against the far wall, she looked out. For a second she did not understand what she was seeing and then, as she edged closer, she realized why she hadn’t seen the peep earlier: It wasn’t on eye level with someone standing in the room. It was above. The peep was hidden by the lintel stone capping one of the tower windows.
More confidently, she moved closer and looked down. St. Lyon sat in a chair in front of Dand, his legs crossed, his attitude resigned. Charlotte forced her gaze to Dand.
They had stripped him to the waist and chained his wrists to the iron rings embedded in the wall, his arms spread wide. The manacles had chaffed his skin raw, thin trickles of blood ran down his arms. Midnight blue bruises marked his ribs and the side of his face. But most terrible of all was the rose brand, gleaming darkly on the muscle of his left breast, a reminder that he had been here, or a place much like it, before.
“Is there anything I can do for you? I mean, short of letting you go of course,” St. Lyon asked.
Dand didn’t reply. Instead, he tried to shift his shoulders. The ache had settled in deeply after nearly a dozen hours, digging knuckles of pain in his back and neck. And he was damn thirsty. Every word he spoke reop
ened the cut on his lip.
St. Lyon sighed. “I know who you are. You’re Andrew Ross. One of those noble orphans.” He dragged the word out with a slight sneer. “Those boys who got themselves into that muddle in Malmaison. Unfortunately, you all got caught before you could be any use to the Royalists. Or your Church. Or whoever or whatever it is you were working for.”
Dand glanced down at the rose brand stretched out along the muscle leading to his upper arm. “However did you guess?” His parched throat lent a deep rasp to his voice.
St. Lyon tipped his head, ceding the point. “Yes. You are rather distinctive.”
Dand licked the blood from the corner of his mouth, making an effort to stand upright because his arms were getting bloody tired of holding his dead weight suspended between them. Not that St. Lyon had beaten or tortured him. But his underlings had been a little rough in escorting him up here, especially the one whose nose he’d broken. Consequently, by the time they locked him into the metal cuffs, he’d been unable to hold himself upright for a good while.
“I know why you are here.”
“Pure genius,” Dand managed.
“And I also know all about your companions.”
Now that earned Dand’s attention. He glanced up sharply. St. Lyon caught the involuntary movement. He smiled. “Ah, yes. I know all about your little conspiracy. The marquis of Cottrell and Colonel MacNeill are on their way here, due, I should say, to arrive soon. How did you think to get them inside the castle? Or did you think you’d only need to leave the back door open?” He chuckled.
What the hell was he talking about? Dand waited, Connie Brockway hoping the bastard would say something that made sense.
The comte’s smile faded a little. “Although really, even for infamous Rose Hunters the hubris of thinking the three of you could take on me and my staff is a little extreme.”
“I don’t know who you’ve been chatting with, Comte,” Dand croaked, “but you’ve been misinformed.”
“I doubt that. My informant hasn’t been wrong yet. Even to knowing how you would react to my appearance in Miss Nash’s bedchamber.”
Thank God, at least St. Lyon didn’t suspect Charlotte. It took every ounce of Dand’s overstretched resources not to let his relief show.
“Really, rather disillusioning, that,” the comte said. “I had you marked for a man who would go to any lengths to secure his goal.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I was disappointed. Especially as the lady so clearly has no reciprocal feelings.”
“Leave her out of this.” Pain vanished. Plans to escape and plans to still secure that damn letter evaporated. All that was left was an instinctive need to protect Charlotte, a need so innate, so deeply rooted, he couldn’t have reacted in any other way.
“I should like to…” St. Lyon trailed off.
Dand lifted his head, meeting the comte’s gaze. “If you hurt her, in any way, to any degree, I will kill you.”
The comte clucked his tongue, once more appearing disgruntled and dismayed. “See? There is that arrogance again. So overwrought, all these dire threats and such.”
“If she comes to any harm,” Dand repeated softly, “you will die.”
This time the comte’s self-assurance did not fare so well. He sniffed, frowned, and stood up. “I am a gentleman. I have no intention of hurting her. Quite the opposite actually.”
“Make certain of it,” he muttered thickly.
“Yes, yes. Or you will kill me.” The comte snickered. “The fact is, my friend, you are chained to a wall. You are guarded by several of my best men and even as we speak, your colleagues are riding into a trap. And finally, tomorrow, after I have finished selling the Prussian ambassador’s extremely indiscreet letter to the pope—”
“I thought you hadn’t read it,” Dand cut in.
“I lied,” the comte said calmly, then continued. “As I was saying, after I have auctioned off the letter, I shall, for a tidy sum, offer you and your companions to Napoleon’s representative. I am sure he will be all atwitter to discover with whom you have been working in Paris.”
“Ram and Kit aren’t involved in this.”
“Oh, please.” The comte rose and snapped his fingers at one of the men hovering outside the door.
“I am sorry that I can’t let you down from there. But you do have a reputation of being, how did he put it?, formidable. However, I can assuage your thirst.” He turned to the guard. “Go and get Monsieur Rousse a glass of water at once.”
“You are all kindness.”
“I am a civilized man, Mister Ross, not a barbarian. I leave that to the citizens.”
“Ha!” Dand laughed. The sound rattled in his dry throat. “The citizens’ acts are those of rank amateurs compared to the centuries of atrocities committed by the aristocracy.”
The comte shrugged. “True enough. But at least I do not indulge in torture for the pure sport of it,” his glance fell tellingly to Dand’s brand, “as some of the revolutionaries have.”
He seemed satisfied with this last remark, and with an impatient gesture motioned the guard out of the tower room, turning at the last moment and giving a courtly bow in Dand’s direction. “I still do not know…Part of me wants to believe you really are Andre Rousse. Why is that, do you suppose?”
Dand snorted. “I haven’t a bloody clue, Comte.”
“Humph.” The comte eyed him for a few more seconds and left, closing the tower door behind him.
At once Dand straightened and twisted round, managing to angle his hand in such a way that he could grasp the metal chain. He pulled as he rocked the chain back and forth, working at loosening the iron ring holding him. Earlier, when the guard had gone for dinner, he’d thought that he’d felt the slightest movement from deep within the rock.
“Dand.” A voice, so soft that for a second he thought delirium had found him, filtered across the room. “Dand!”
Charlotte. How—?
He looked up, scanning the mortared stone and saw a faint shadow move above the north window. She must have found one of the hidey holes.
“Charlotte,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Be careful. The guard will be back soon.”
“I know.” A pause. “What can I do?”
Brave lass. The only indication of her distress was a slight breathlessness.
“You have to find a way out of the castle,” he said in a low voice. “You have to warn Kit and Ram. They are coming—”
“I heard,” she broke in. “But…why? They aren’t involved.”
“Someone went to a great deal of trouble to make St. Lyon believe they are involved.”
“But—” She broke off as she realized that how and who and why were not important now.
“Can you do this?” he asked.
“As soon as I find some way to open your manacles. Lizette can distract the guard—”
“No!” His imagination flashed through a dozen scenes of Charlotte being caught, implicated, sold alongside him and the others to Napoleon’s agents. “No. There isn’t time. This is more important and, if all goes well, Kit and Ram may well be in time to effect my rescue.” He found a smile. “How much they will love that.”
“I have to find a way to help you escape.”
My God, was that a sob he heard? A sob for him? From his oh-so-hard and tough little spy?
It was almost worth being chained to this bloody wall to hear that. Almost, but not quite, because he couldn’t do a bloody thing about her tears, couldn’t hold her and console her and promise her all the things he wanted to promise her, had wanted to promise her for so long, far longer than he’d been willing to admit.
“You aren’t going soft on me now, are you, Lottie?” he asked gently.
“Yes!” A wretched little snuffle. He could imagine her trying to smile and it tore at his guts. “Yes. Happy? You’ve brought me to this low state, Dand Ross. And I’ll see you pay for it.”
“Promise me,” he whispere
d urgently.
He heard her breath catch and then her voice, low and vibrant, as though she was promising him her life, not retribution. “I do. I will. I swear it.”
“Find Kit and Ram. They’re the best chance we have of seeing your promise kept. Now go. Please.”
She hesitated on the verge of saying something, and he prayed she would not. It would be too much like a parting gift and he had never had more to live for. But instead she only whispered, “I’ll see you soon, Dand,” and was gone.
26
Comte St. Lyon’s castle, Scotland
August 15, 1806
CHARLOTTE WALKED BOLDLY down the hallway toward her bedchamber ignoring the footman-cum-guard’s start of surprise. She doubted he would tell his master that she had gone missing for half an hour, particularly as nothing untoward had occurred during that time. He would be punished as well as made to look foolish at having been duped by a mere woman.
The entire St. Lyon staff, with the possible exception of Madame Paule, had a lamentable lack of appreciation for female intelligence. A fact for which Charlotte was profoundly grateful. She had an idea.
She entered the room to find Lizette holding one of Ginny’s more luxurious gowns in front of her as she twirled before the huge mirror. “It’s a lovely dress,” she said gently.
With a guilty start, Lizette spun around. “Oh, miss! I am sorry. I didn’t mean any harm! I just never had something so beautiful and I didn’t think—”
“It’s yours.”
The maid stopped fidgeting, staring at Charlotte with round eyes. “What?”
“It’s yours for helping me.”
“Th-thank you, miss! I never had anyone be so generous to me before! I…I…”
“I need you to help me again, Lizette,” Charlotte said. “Only this time it will be a great deal more dangerous. No, wait,” she said as the maid stepped eagerly forward. “Listen carefully before you answer, Lizette.
“You don’t even know what is at stake and I can’t tell you. I must tell you, however, that you could lose your life in this endeavor. I do not think it will come to that. I would not ask this of you if I thought the peril too great, but there is still a chance and you must understand the risks.
My Surrender Page 26