by The Impostor
Reardon turned from his tragic pose to see what Dalton imagined were four distinctly unsympathetic expressions.
He shrugged. “Ah, but I was excited by my possibilities, of course. I enjoyed them to their fullest. I was a right little snot, taking care to rub that street boy’s nose in every privilege and advantage I possessed. It never truly helped, however. Simon was always the son my father wanted, and I was merely the pawn in the power match.”
Dalton saw Clara nod slowly. “I know precisely the feeling,” she said.
Reardon looked up then as if pulling himself from the past with an effort. “Yes, I imagine you do. I hadn’t realized…”
“Enough whining, my lord.” Wadsworth waved his pistol to capture Reardon’s attention. “What do you propose we do with this lot? We could throw them in the Thames. Or we might be able to pass it off as a carriage accident.”
Reardon considered the three of them. “Faking a carriage accident would be too tedious. I don’t care if anyone knows they were murdered. The suspects in the murder of Sir Thorogood will be so numerous that no one will bother to dig very deeply.”
James groaned. “You’ve been keeping up with us every step of the way, haven’t you, Nate?”
Reardon turned. “Of course. I’ve known the secrets of that club since I was a child. My father didn’t tell me, of course. I had to follow Simon to learn anything. It wasn’t difficult at all. People never really see children, do they? Or if they do, they don’t take their activities seriously.” He shook his head. “If you were going to live past morning, you would do well to take note of that.”
Dalton closed his eyes for a moment in regret. Reardon was entirely correct. His pose as Sir Thorogood would bite him back now, for Thorogood had more enemies than Napoleon.
Wadsworth smiled. “Very well, then. Would you like to do the honors?” Wadsworth gazed coolly at Nathaniel and held out his own pistol. “Perhaps it is time that you prove your loyalty to the Knights of the Lily.”
There was a long pause. James and Dalton tensed, but bound and against so many, what could they do? Dalton heard Clara whimper and cower behind him.
Whimper? Surely not his Clara? Then he felt a rhythmic motion against his bonds and realized that she had found a blade somewhere. A flare of hope ignited within him.
Faster, Clara, he willed, as he kept his eyes on the tableau before him. Wadsworth was watching Reardon closely, and the two thugs were preparing to enforce their master’s will.
Then Reardon made a tiny bow. “As you wish.” He took Wadsworth’s pistol and stepped back, aiming directly at Dalton.
Clara gasped. “No!” Dalton turned to see her go pale with alarm. He stepped in front of her once more.
“You said you wouldn’t harm anyone!” Behind Dalton, the cutting became ever more furious as she pleaded. “Nathaniel, you don’t have to do this!”
Reardon shook his head, but Dalton didn’t think he seemed all that regretful. Bloody hell. If he was shot, the chance of James’s and Clara’s escaping would decrease drastically, if it had ever existed at all.
“I’m sorry, pretty one.” Reardon took a step farther back. “I thought I could keep you out of this, but… alas.” With the heel of his left hand, he pulled back the hammer of the firearm.
Dalton watched Reardon’s finger tighten on the trigger. He readied himself, although there was no way to avoid the bullet at this range.
“No!” Clara’s cry was followed by the explosion of the shot, and Dalton felt a violent push from behind.
Clara. There was no time to stop her. All he could do was twist to break her fall as she lunged into him, taking them both to the floor, toppling a nearby table with a crash.
Dalton lurched to his knees, his arms still bound. “Clara!” She lay limply before him. Blood welled from her side. There was a glint of gold and he saw a small blade in her hand, no bigger than a leaf of grass.
No. She couldn’t die. He couldn’t breathe, not even draw a breath. A vast band of pain and regret wrapped around his heart. He couldn’t lose her.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Clara!” Her name was torn from his tight and aching throat. Her eyes opened and she gasped.
“Good heavens, that hurts!” She pressed a hand to her waist. Red seeped through her fingers and dripped to the carpet.
“Oh, damn,” Reardon said faintly.
Clara peeled her bloodied fingers from her waist. A bloody slash cut into her skin, but there was no bullet hole. A flesh wound. Nasty but not deadly, as long as she did not take infection. Dalton closed his eyes with relief, bending to touch his forehead to hers in a silent moment of thanks to the divine.
“Damnation! You mucked it, you idiot!” Wadsworth was livid. He strode forward to yank the pistol from Reardon’s hand. “Bloody amateur!”
“Well, it wasn’t my pistol! I can do better with my own weapon.” Reardon reached into his vest to pull out a pistol. “I’m more accustomed to the sight on this one.”
Then he calmly levered it and fired once more. Wadsworth’s servant Bligh went down like a felled tree. Reardon blinked and turned to the sputtering Wadsworth. “Oops.”
“Why in the bloody hell did you do that?” Wadsworth looked from Bligh to Reardon in astonishment.
Dalton took advantage of their distraction to pull violently at his half-cut bonds. He felt some skin go with the rope, but he finally broke free.
Then he lunged for Wadsworth.
The spent pistol spun off into the corner and Wadsworth went down hard. Dalton saw James fling himself bodily at the second flunky and go down in a pile of broken furniture. Dalton didn’t worry. Even bound, James was dangerous.
Dalton had pulled back one fist, ready to see how many pieces a man’s face could be broken into—when the double click of another pistol resounded through the taut silence. Still gripping Wadsworth by the throat, Dalton looked down into another steel barrel just like the first.
Wadsworth lay in his grasp, calmly aiming the matching pistol directly between Dalton’s eyes. “This is one of my own designs. Nathaniel may have bungled his shots, but somehow I don’t think I shall miss mine.”
Smoothly, the trigger began to slide back before his eyes.
Dalton grinned. “That depends on whether or not your design accounted for this—” He gripped the pistol backward, shoving his thumb under the trigger. Glaring, Wadsworth struggled to pull the trigger all the way back, but the mechanism wouldn’t fire without full release.
Dalton twisted the pistol from Wadsworth’s hold and stood. “Have you any more of these about your person?”
Wadsworth only glared and reached for his fallen walking stick to help himself stand. Dalton went to where James lay half-sprawled on the floor. The other lackey was out cold, his nose bloody and his temple swelling.
Dalton knelt to untie James. “Did he get you?”
James was pale and sweating. “No,” he gasped. “I believe I got myself. Fighting with my arms tied behind my back played bloody hell with my shoulder.” When he was untied, he hissed as he used his good hand to drag his injured arm forward. “Damn. Another three weeks in the sling, I’ll wager.” He looked up past Dalton. “Look out!”
Dalton rolled just as he heard the unmistakable swish of a sword through the air. On his back on the floor, he raised the pistol in his hand and fired almost before he registered his target.
The narrow blade fell to the carpet. Wadsworth followed it a moment later to land half on the rug and half on Dalton and James. Dalton struggled to free the two of them from Wadsworth and to stand once more.
Something moved in the corner of Dalton’s vision. Reardon. With the speed of a whip, he was across the room and had the man by the throat.
‘Too bad,” came a cultured voice from the door. “It was a lovely carpet.”
Dalton turned. Liverpool stood just beyond, holding the sword that had fallen and gazing down at the body on the floor. Blood seeped from a bullet wound in the man’s ches
t. Behind Liverpool stood two Royal Guardsmen, who quickly helped James to his feet.
Liverpool approached Dalton calmly, taking a handkerchief from his pocket to polish the slender blade in his hand. “Your coat is mined, as well.”
Dalton rolled one shoulder forward to find that his silk coat was slashed across the back of the collar. Apparently Wadsworth hadn’t known how truly difficult it was to behead a man. Dalton was very glad he hadn’t had to find out, either.
Liverpool glanced down at Clara and then over at James. “Obviously a trying day had by all.” Under one arm he’d tucked the business end of Wadsworth’s silver-handled walking stick, which Dalton realized had concealed the sword.
James pursed his lips in an awed whistle. “Where can I get one of those?”
Liverpool shot him a quelling look. “Etheridge, do let Reardon go. He’s on our side.”
Startled, Dalton turned to stare at the man he still held by the throat. Reardon, growing purple but manfully trying not to show it, gave a careless wave of his hand. Dalton looked back to Liverpool. “But he shot Clara!”
“I’ll be all right, Dalton.” Clara came toward them, a handkerchief now pressed to her side, the other side supported by James. She was pale and her eyes were wide, but she looked wonderful to him.
Reardon took advantage of this distraction to reach up to peel Dalton’s fingers from his throat. Wheezing just a bit, he shook his head. “I didn’t intend to shoot anyone. I was going to very carefully miss you. It was all I could do to pull the pistol aside as it was.” He took a step toward Clara, but Dalton moved into his path.
Reardon shrugged. “I only want to apologize. Shouldn’t we fetch a doctor for her?”
“It’s nearly stopped bleeding already,” Clara said. She looked down at her ragged, filthy, rain-soaked and wrinkle-dried, bloodstained self. Then she looked back up to Dalton. “However, I think I need another change of clothing already,” she said faintly.
Dalton felt his throat tighten at her bravery. What heart his Clara had!
Clara watched the look in Dalton’s eyes go from worried to proud. Warming inwardly at his approval, she forced herself to turn away from him when all she wanted was to run into his arms. She moved to stand before Lord Liverpool.
Her side burned badly, and she was beginning to feel a bit faint, but primarily she found that she was terrified of the man before her. She could scarcely draw breath her throat was so tight, and she was sure her hands were shaking.
She put them behind her back and raised her chin, making sure not to look away from Lord Liverpool. “There is something you must know, my lord.”
Lord Liverpool turned to her. To her surprise, he was not much taller than herself, yet he emanated such a presence that she’d expected someone more on Dalton’s scale.
He stood before her, looking her over with his flat gray gaze. “Sir Thorogood, I presume?”
Clara didn’t answer, her throat too tight to speak.
He gazed at her for a long moment. “Humph.”
Clara swallowed. “Lord Reardon is not on our side. I’ve learned that as a boy, he joined a revolutionary group that intended to kill his father, who is apparently someone high in the government. He claims it was only a boyhood prank, that he was never serious about it. Yet I saw him meeting secretly with Wadsworth not two weeks past.”
Liverpool only gazed at her impassively. Clara swallowed the dryness in her throat and continued. “If you read certain documents in his safe, you will see that they most definitely confirm him as a traitor.”
Reardon looked from one person to the next. “That story does not refer to me.”
“‘A boyhood prank,’“ quoted Dalton softly. Clara watched him turn to gaze at Liverpool. “No. It doesn’t refer to Reardon. It refers to Prince George, doesn’t it, my lord?”
Liverpool shot Dalton a look full of warning, but Dalton continued.
“That is what all this is about, isn’t it? Hiding what George did at the age of sixteen. You set me up, hunted Clara, twisted my Liars into knots, all to conceal George’s association with the Knights of the Lily.” He shook his head. “Poor George. He never took anything seriously. What a moment that must have been, when he realized that he was about to murder his own father, his own king.”
“That’s when he came to my father,” said Reardon, nodding. “Prince George confessed his foolishness to my father. Father sent for Liverpool immediately and chaos reigned for one entire day. My father and Lord Liverpool dispersed the group, sending some of the young men as far away as America, forcibly if necessary. George was upbraided for several hours straight and put in the keeping of a rather fierce and watchful tutor. The King never learned of any of it.”
Clara looked from a silent Liverpool to Nathaniel. “And now?”
Nathaniel gestured for her to sit on the settee facing the fire. Gratefully, Clara sank onto the cushions.
Continuing, Nathaniel looked up to include Dalton and James. “I’d only recently returned from persuading the Austrian Emperor to declare war on France. A month ago I was approached by the few surviving members of Fleur about their plans to blackmail the Prince Regent. They knew I’d severed my ties with my father and assumed I was of like mind. Of course, I remembered the entire fiasco from my childhood, although I was not supposed to know anything about it at the time.”
He snorted. “As if I could avoid it. The door nearly fell in with the force of Liverpool’s pounding. I’ve never seen him so livid, before or since. You could hear him bellowing at poor young George all through our house.” His lips twisted as he regarded Lord Liverpool, who stood silently watching them all. “I’m sure it will be my turn now that I’ve told you all of this.”
James looked at Nathaniel, curiosity etched in his face. “So you don’t hate the Liars?”
Nathaniel grimaced. “They aren’t my favorite branch of the government, but no, I don’t hate them.”
James didn’t back down. “Or Simon? Because you were awfully convincing just now.”
Nathaniel looked away, then back. “Simon Raines was just a boy who had finally found a home. I couldn’t hate anyone for that.”
Clara chewed her hp. “But I saw you there, talking to Wadsworth and his guests. You seemed one of them to me.”
“I was posing as a sympathizer in order to learn more of their plans. They have the potential to do the Prince Regent a great deal of damage, should word of his participation get out.”
“But he was only a boy! Surely no one will hold it against him!”
Dalton shook his head. “No, Clara. The public would not be nearly so forgiving. What if it caused his regency to be stripped from him? It could happen, if public opinion turned too far against him. As regent, he is the guardian of his very ill father, our king. What would people think if they learned that he had once actively plotted his own father’s murder?”
“No wonder you were all in such a frenzy to find me!” Clara chewed her hp. “But who signed the kill order?”
Behind her, Dalton shifted. “I did.”
Clara turned, lips parted in shock. Dalton didn’t look at her. “Didn’t I, my lord?” His tone was light, almost bored. Clara knew by this that he was utterly enraged.
Liverpool gazed back at him. “Did you?”
“It had to have been me, sir.” Dalton’s tone was most polite. “For the only other explanation is that it was you.”
If possible, Liverpool’s gaze was icier than ever. “I don’t think you have sufficient evidence to make such a dangerous accusation, boy.”
Clara looked back and forth between the two men. “Then there is no rogue member of the Royal Four?”
Nathaniel turned to shoot her a horrified look, then ran both hands over his face.
Now she had their attention. Liverpool stared at her, his jaw working in his otherwise expressionless face. He finally spoke. “You know who the Royal Four are, child?”
Clara went cold. There was something resigned and deadly i
n his voice, as if her knowledge had just passed the point of no return. “N-not who they are, no. I simply know of their existence.” She was fairly sure of the identity of one of them now—although Nathaniel had been very convincing as a villain—but she thought that Lord Liverpool really didn’t need to know that.
“Mrs. Simpson, you are a very dangerous woman.”
Inside Clara’s stomach, ice churned. This was not good, not good at all.
Then Liverpool turned to the others as if she’d ceased to exist. “Well, now that you lot have disturbed a very old dog, we must see what can be done to send it back to sleep again.”
Dalton worked his jaw, but nodded. “Certainly, my lord. As soon as I’ve escorted Mrs. Simpson ho—”
“Mrs. Simpson is no longer your concern. I will conduct her to Westminster Hall, where she will receive medical attention… and where she will remain as the guest of the government until further notice.”
Clara turned to appeal to Dalton but halted at the remote expression on his face. He didn’t so much as glance her way. “Very well, my lord.”
The two guards stepped up to escort her from the room. Looking over her shoulder from the other side of the red-coated young giants, Clara felt a sharp cold pain, as if she were being cut from him by a surgeon. She hardly dared think past that at this moment, or she felt she might collapse in a quivering pile of abject fear.
Dalton remained impassive. Nathaniel stepped forward to take her arm. “Come along, Clara.” His tone was regretful but his grip was firm.
As Nathaniel led her away, she closed her eyes against the cold still expression on Dalton’s face as he let her go without another word.
Her last near-hysterical thought was that at least she was leaving by the door. …
Dalton strode from Reardon’s house, his gaze unseeing, his face grim. James caught up with him on the walk outside. The new day threatened to dawn as gray as Dalton’s face.
James eyed him warily. He had never seen Dalton like this. “He can’t keep her locked up, can he? She’s not guilty of any crime, not really.”