by Gayle Callen
She felt confident in her abilities in a way she hadn’t in a long time. Aubrey Sinclair had crushed her youthful confidence and belief in herself. Nick Wright had given it back to her.
But that wouldn’t help her during the nights to come. She would be alone. And even though she knew she could easily find a husband, she wanted only Nick.
But she wasn’t a coward. She would take Julia’s supper tray upstairs herself, and look at the woman who’d tried to kill her sister. She knocked on the door, and Sam opened it.
He smiled. “Thanks, Charlotte. I really appreciate your help—I’m sure Nick does, too,” he added quickly.
She nodded stiffly. “That’s sweet of you to try to convince me, Sam, but unnecessary.”
He reached for the tray, and as she let him take it she said coolly, “Would you mind if I came in?”
He looked surprised. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“I’ve had several conversations with Julia,” Charlotte explained patiently. “I think I’ve handled myself well. Unless you think it would upset her too much.”
Julia herself stepped into view. “Let her come in, Sam.”
Charlotte froze, trying to find a trace of a murderer in Julia’s expression. But all she saw was an exhausted, pale woman. It had been pointless of Charlotte to come. What could she do—confront Julia, who’d already claimed her innocence? Julia wasn’t about to explain herself just because Charlotte was the next one to ask her.
Sam stepped back and Charlotte entered. She stood there self-consciously as Julia stared at her and Sam shut the door. He set the tray on the bedside table, and Julia sat down on the bed. There was a feeling of tension in the room that seemed to be more than between a guard and captive. Then she remembered that Sam and Julia had known each other all their lives. She wondered which of them felt more betrayed.
Julia stared at the plate of chicken, then glanced up at Charlotte. “Have you been making my meals?”
Charlotte nodded.
“I appreciate it.” Julia began to eat.
When Charlotte continued to stand in the center of the room, feeling foolish, Julia motioned to a chair.
“You could sit down if you want. The men aren’t very talkative, and you’ve always seemed easy to talk to.”
Charlotte shook her head and remained standing.
“I know now that everything you said was for my benefit,” Julia said dryly.
“Which ended up being for Nick and Sam’s benefit,” Charlotte reminded her.
“Of course.”
Behind them Sam cleared his throat, then went to stand looking out the window as the sun set.
Just when Julia seemed frighteningly normal, Charlotte saw how her fork shook as she brought it to her mouth.
“You don’t work for the army,” Julia said.
“No.”
“Then how did you become involved? Surely Nick didn’t pick you out at a dinner party.”
“Not quite,” Charlotte answered, unsure of what she could say. Sam turned around to look at her and shrugged, so she took that as permission. “I accidentally overheard Nick meeting with your—with Mr. Campbell, who decided I had to die because of what I’d heard.”
Julia raised her eyebrows. “So Nick gallantly rescued you.”
“No, he kidnapped me. I thought he was in on your—in on the treason. Eventually he convinced me otherwise.”
“He’s good at that,” Julia said with a trace of bitterness in her voice.
Charlotte didn’t want to hear Julia’s memories of Nick, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask about Jane’s poisoning. Why had she come?
After an awkward pause, Julia said, “So they convinced you to help them?”
With his back to them, Sam snorted but said nothing.
“The convincing went the other way,” Charlotte said, “and Nick never really was convinced. But I was alone when I saw you in Tuxford, and I couldn’t just let you leave.”
“You wove a very believable story,” Julia said softly.
“You helped with your assumptions.”
Julia shot her an unreadable glance.
Sam suddenly cocked his head. Both women stared at him as he moved to the door and bent toward it as if listening.
“Is something wrong?” Charlotte asked.
Sam’s face was inscrutable, but to her stunned surprise, he pulled a pistol out of his belt and handed it to her. “I thought I heard something. Stay here with her.” He glanced at Julia, but spoke to Charlotte. “Use this if you need to.”
Charlotte held the pistol at her side and tried to feign confidence. She knew Julia would assume she knew how to fire it, though that was far from the truth. When Sam left, she backed away from Julia until she was against the door. She couldn’t hear anything, not even Sam’s footsteps down the stairs.
Julia had stopped eating, as if she, too, was waiting. The women looked at each other, then down at the floor, while the silence in the house grew ominous.
“I swear I don’t know what’s going on,” Julia said softly. “I know you don’t believe me. When my brother gets here, he’ll make them understand that I couldn’t do such terrible things.”
Her voice trailed off, and in the growing darkness, Charlotte thought she saw the glistening of tears.
They both jumped when they heard a shout from down below. It sounded like furniture was being toppled, and Charlotte held the pistol in both hands now, though still aimed at the floor. What was happening? Were they being attacked?
She remembered Nick’s words about one more henchman still on the loose. She wondered if the man was actually more concerned about Julia than saving himself. A man like that would be…desperate.
“We’re going to move the desk in front of the door,” Charlotte said, sending a sharp glance at Julia. “You’re going to do most of the work, because I’ll have this pistol trained on you.”
“I’m not going to attack you!” she cried.
“But I can’t take that chance. It seems someone down below doesn’t want you to go to trial.”
“Oh God,” Julia whispered, covering her face with her hands. “This has to be a bad dream.”
“It’s not a dream! Those men down there could be injured, maybe even dead because of you!” As Charlotte shouted the words, it suddenly became real to her. The pistol started to shake in her hands, but she gripped it tighter and reminded herself that Nick was on his way back. He would arrive in time.
Or he’d walk in unawares and—
Her stomach rebelled, and she wanted to throw up. She couldn’t let herself think the worst. Julia took a step toward her, and Charlotte coldly leveled the pistol.
The other woman froze. “You wanted my help,” she whispered.
Charlotte nodded and pointed with the pistol to the desk next to the door. Julia went to push it, and Charlotte moved to the other side to pull. She couldn’t grip the edge with only one hand—and she wasn’t putting down the pistol—so she opened the nearest drawer and wedged her hand inside. Between the two of them, the massive desk began to inch across the wood floor.
Something heavy toppled over downstairs, and there was another incomprehensible shout.
“Hurry,” Charlotte ordered, when the desk covered half the door.
By the time they got it where they wanted it, someone was pounding up the stairs.
Julia gasped and backed away, while Charlotte trained the pistol on the door. The door opened an inch and slammed into the desk.
“Who is it!” Charlotte cried.
No one answered. She backed against the far wall, barely noticed as Julia took cover beside the bed. The door slammed harder into the desk and Charlotte fumbled with the pistol, trying to pull back the top piece, as she’d seen her father do when shooting targets.
She started to sob as the door banged harder and harder, and the desk slid. She could see Julia cowering on the floor, covering her head with her hands.
When the desk toppled and a masked
man jumped across it, Charlotte screamed and fired. But her shot went wide, and suddenly all she saw was the giant muzzle of the stranger’s pistol pointed at her. He fired, and feeling a hot flare of pain, she fell back against the wall. Her pistol tumbled uselessly to the floor, and she slid to the ground.
Feeling dazed and distant, she watched numbly as the intruder grabbed Julia by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Julia screamed and he shoved her toward the door.
“Charlotte!” she cried, trying to turn back, but the man wouldn’t let her go. “Are you all right?”
Charlotte wet her lips but she couldn’t answer. Pain had begun to radiate all throughout her body, engulfing her mind.
“Go!” the man yelled.
When Julia stumbled over the desk, he roughly dragged her out into the hall.
Charlotte heard the bumping sound of Julia being pulled down the stairs and the woman’s hysterical crying. Then Charlotte finally let go of consciousness.
Chapter 23
A fault in your plan is sometimes fate’s way of steering you to the truth.
The Secret Journals of a Spymaster
Just before full dark, Nick was rubbing down his horse in Hume’s stable when he heard the distant sound of a gunshot. A feeling of terror he’d never felt before gripped him.
Charlotte was in there.
Another gunshot cracked in the silence.
He grabbed his pistol and went running toward the house. He wanted to burst inside and shout her name, but he would be calm and controlled or he’d get her killed. The kitchen door was ajar, so he hesitated, but could not hear any sounds.
Bending low, he went inside, aiming with his pistol. But all he saw was Cox sprawled on the ground, unmoving, and Hume unconscious in the corner, with the table upended beside him.
After looking through the doorway into the dining room and seeing no one, Nick bent and put his hand on Cox’s chest. He was breathing regularly. In the growing gloom, Nick could make out blood matting his hair. Nick hoped he’d only been knocked unconscious.
“I’ll be back,” he whispered, patting his coachman.
He heard screaming upstairs, and then pounding as a person—or people—came running down the stairs.
Nick crept through the dining room and as he peered into the candlelit parlor, he saw a black-clad man holding a woman’s arm. It was Julia, her face wet with tears. She cried out when she saw another body in the parlor.
Sam had partially fallen across the sofa. There was blood on his mouth, and already his eye was swelling shut. He’d had a more physical encounter with the intruder than Cox had, but there didn’t seem to be a large spill of blood.
Where was Charlotte? Nick wondered frantically.
The man pushed Julia out the front door and followed her. Nick spared a glance out the window to see that they were running toward the east, but then he took the stairs two at a time.
The first door—to Julia’s bedroom—was broken inward, and a desk was out of place and on its side. He saw Charlotte on the far side of the room, slumped to the side on the floor. When he saw a smear of blood on the wall above her, he tasted bile in his throat. Once again he was the cause of a woman suffering—and not just any woman, but Charlotte, whom he thought about constantly, whom he dreamed about. These last weeks, she had brought him to life.
He fell to his knees and looked at the blood that soaked into her garments along her left side. He called desperately, “Charlotte!”
She stirred and her eyelashes fluttered. When she started to straighten up, she winced and reached for her left arm.
“Be careful,” he said quickly, helping her sit upright. “You’re wounded.”
“He shot me,” she whispered, stunned.
“Julia’s man?”
“Yes.” Charlotte looked up into his eyes and gripped his arm with her right hand. “She didn’t know he was coming. He forced her out the door.”
“She’d like you to believe that,” he said impatiently. “I saw her run willingly once she was outside. But enough of that. Where does it hurt?”
“You saw her just now?” she said hopefully. “Then chase her! Something’s wrong, Nick!”
“You’re wounded!”
Anger and fright warred inside him. He knew she was right, that he had a duty to go after Julia. But Charlotte could be dying and not know it.
“Nick, I insist you go. My arm hurts, but I think that was all that was hit.” She moved her left arm and winced. “See? It’s not even broken. Now go!”
“But you could bleed to death!”
“And I can stop the bleeding myself.”
And then Nick understood. He had been ordering her around, treating her like the helpless widow, when she was capable of living by her own wits, of making her own decisions. He was not her master, or her husband. He didn’t need to treat her—or Julia—like a man, but an equal.
Loving Charlotte was not a weakness. It had become the best part of him. She deserved to be cherished, to be treated lovingly. He had been fighting all the wrong battles where she was concerned. Yet how could he abandon what he was?
But she was worried about him, and he owed it to her not to let her think she’d ruined his career.
Though it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, he said, “All right, I’ll go. But I won’t be long. Just let me help you to the bed.”
“No, my legs work fine,” she said, pushing away his hands. “Just go find Julia!”
“See to Cox and Sam,” he called over his shoulder as he ran from the room. “They’re downstairs, injured.”
Charlotte watched Nick leave, and all her courage and bluster faded out of her. It would be so easy to have allowed him to take care of her, something her husband had never done. She’d thought that was what she wanted most in the world—a man who cherished her enough to put her first.
And Nick had wanted to do so, at the expense of his career, his pride, and his honor. But she couldn’t let him do it. She would prove that she had the strength to stand alone. Nick was letting her make her own choices, because otherwise he would be no better than her husband was.
Very slowly Charlotte got to her feet and hesitated. But her legs held her; she could breathe in and out with no difficulty. She walked carefully to a mirror and turned up the lamp beside it. She gasped, because now she saw what had caused Nick such alarm. There was a lot of blood soaking her arm, and since it had been against her body, her side was soaked, too.
She found a pair of scissors and cut through the sleeve of her dress until she could see the gouge in her upper arm. Blood still seeped from it, and it made her light-headed and dizzy with pain when she washed it out with soap and water. She wrapped a long strip of linen about her arm and secured it with a knot. Her heart was pounding and the pain was making her nauseated, but then she remembered Sam and Mr. Cox. Were they bleeding even worse than she was?
Hesitantly Charlotte descended to the ground floor and paused to listen. There was no sign of Nick, no other sound in the house. She found Sam in the parlor, half lying on the sofa, nearly trapped behind a fallen display case, as if he’d tried to use it to protect himself. He was already beginning to stir.
“Sam?” she called, giving his shoulder a gentle shake.
He groaned and lifted his head. She could see a small amount of blood on his face, and his eye was turning colors as it swelled shut. When he put a hand to his head, she brushed his hand aside and felt the bump.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He nodded and almost fell over as he tried to rise from his knees. She steadied him and helped him sit on the sofa.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, wincing. “A bloody headache, but nothing else. Where’s Julia?”
“She’s run away. Nick is chasing her now.”
When she tried to touch his face, he pulled away. “Charlotte, what about Cox?”
They found Mr. Cox unconscious on the kitchen floor. Mr. Hume sat huddled in the corner, his eyes vacant, a
bottle of brandy at his lips, blood trickling from the back of his head and down into his collar. When they asked if he was all right, he only shrugged, but allowed Charlotte to wrap a bandage about his head. Between Sam and Charlotte, they woke Mr. Cox and saw to the nasty cut on his head. Considering what could have happened, they’d all emerged relatively unscathed.
But had her sister Jane? Charlotte had never had the chance to ask Nick how she was.
He was still out there somewhere, she thought, looking out the window into the darkness. All she could see was her own worried reflection.
It wasn’t difficult for Nick to follow Julia and her henchman, which surprised him. Though it was near dark, he could see the light color of her dress as she ran through quiet, deserted streets, hear her heavy breathing. Gaslights intermittently illuminated the fleeing pair. Before them loomed the darkness of a park, perfect for them to elude him.
Nick picked up his pace, his pistol in his hand. It was easy to want her captured. He had only to think of his injured men—of Will and Jane, of Sam and Mr. Cox.
And Charlotte.
He thirsted for revenge, for an end to what had begun years before.
As he got closer, he saw that Julia was being helped by her cohort. He had a hand on her arm, pulling, but she could move only so fast in her heavy gown and petticoats.
They crossed the last street before the park, and as they moved through the gates, Julia’s partner took one last look behind him. Nick had been ready and kept himself motionless, out of sight, away from the gaslights. He heard what he thought was a sob, but surely that was wrong.
Running swiftly, silently, he entered the park behind them, hiding near the brick columns of the gate. As he took a deep breath, ready to pursue them, he heard a muffled scream, quickly silenced.
Nick peered around the column, and only ten yards into the trees he saw Julia’s henchman with his hands around her neck. She struggled, dangling from his grip like a rag doll.
It was too dark to use his pistol. Nick launched himself at the two and dragged the man down to the ground. Julia collapsed beside them, coughing and sobbing.