Jo Beverley - [Malloren 03]

by Something Wicked

  What would happen this time?

  He stood in a loose group of people and she found it easy to move beside him. “How surprising to find you here, Walgrave.”

  He started as if she had in truth jabbed him with a barbed weapon, then turned to face her as if she were an enemy. “How even more surprising to see you here, Lady Elfled.”

  “This is my first visit.” Despite his tone, Elf determined to be calm and polite. Surely it was possible. “A pleasant event, is it not?”

  “Indeed. But I wonder if Rothgar will permit other visits to this house.”

  “Rothgar does not control my movements.” Already they were sparring.

  “Rothgar controls any damn thing he can.”

  “Then perhaps I cannot be controlled.”

  His lips twitched into a sneer. “Doubtless true. Perhaps you do serve a function—as a cross for him to bear.”

  With difficulty, Elf resisted the urge to fall into a full-fledged quarrel. She took a calming sip of her brandy-laced punch and tried again. “Why so heated, my lord? In truth, I don’t think I’ve ever done you harm.”

  He, too, collected himself. “How true. And in this company, to visit the sins of the brothers on the sister would be foolhardy.”

  He bowed, and would have moved away had Elf not stayed him with a hand on his arm. It surprised her as much as him and she had to scramble for a reason.

  “I wondered if you had word yet from Chastity and Cyn.”

  He raised his brows. “I would have thought your brother more likely to write to you than my sister is to me.”

  “Women are generally better correspondents. And anyway, Rothgar is out of town, so I am staying with Lady Lessington. If there are letters at Malloren House, I might not know of it. It was an impulse only, to ask you.” And a foolish one. She must sound like a babbling idiot.

  He delicately removed her hand from his sleeve, rather as if it were a louse or some similarly unwelcome intruder. “You are overmuch given to impulse, I fear.”

  “And you are overmuch given to criticism!”

  As usual when they had these spats, he looked as if he’d like to throttle her.

  “No,” he said tightly, “I have not received any letters. It is, after all, only three days since they left for Portsmouth, but I believe they planned to go onboard about now. They will doubtless send letters just before sailing. As you know, sailing can often be delayed. I will inform you as soon as I have any news.”

  With that, he turned and walked away. In fact, he went to speak to Sappho, then left. Sappho glanced across at Elf with mildly amused interest.

  Mild did not describe Elf’s feelings. Her hand tingled where he had touched it, even if only to remove it from his person.

  “I was wrong,” Amanda murmured. “It’s not Romeo and Juliet, it’s Benedick and Beatrice. If he ever discovers he’s kissed you, he’ll wash his mouth!”

  “Oh, do stop being so foolish,” snapped Elf. “I want to leave.”

  In the coach on the way home, however, Elf couldn’t help thinking of Lord Walgrave relaxed and in good company. Another side of him she’d never expected.

  “If I hadn’t been there, Amanda, could you have found Lord Walgrave’s company pleasant?”

  “It’s possible,” Amanda admitted. “He’s handsome enough, and has remarkable style. He moves well . . .”

  “I wasn’t asking if you wanted to bed him!”

  Amanda grinned. “Such thoughts tend to arise when discussing a handsome man. But yes, when not speaking to you he seemed pleasant enough. Quite a different person, in fact. Most of the time, however, it was hard to tell because of the noise and smoke of open warfare. At least he didn’t recognize Lisette.”

  “That’s true.”

  And, thought Elf, that could be at the root of her discontent. Deep in her heart, she felt he should. He should at least have felt the vibration, the excitement that plagued her whenever she was in his presence.

  Surely it couldn’t be entirely one-sided.

  Amanda relaxed back in her seat, fanning herself lazily. “I must say, I was wrong in my misgivings. Your foray into wickedness is proving to be most entertaining. I’ll let you choose all our activities from now on.”

  Elf wished she could tell her friend this wasn’t a game, and that any silly reactions she might have toward Lord Walgrave were completely irrelevant. Of course, it would help if she could persuade herself of it!

  The Scots, she reminded herself sternly.

  Treason.

  A possible threat to the king.

  Those were the important things, not the way Lord Walgrave made her skin tingle or the beautiful shape of his legs!

  She feigned a yawn. “I must decline. It is too exhausting to be always seeking the unusual. Let us be strictly conventional in the future, my dear.”

  Fort berated himself for leaving Sappho’s so abruptly. Irritating though Elf Malloren was, she hadn’t put him on the run before. His nerves must be on edge because of this business with Murray, damn the man.

  Or perhaps because of Lisette. The fate of the silly chit still bothered him, though it was none of his fault. He’d done his best.

  Lisette bothered him in other ways, too. He wasn’t satisfied she was an innocent, and she seemed to have stirred his dormant interest in women. He’d even found himself sexually intrigued by Milady Elf, burn it! Elf was just the sort of bold chatterer he detested. He liked his women lush, silent, and very experienced.

  Or had, before he’d gone off sex entirely.

  Pox on it, he hadn’t thought about any female this much in months, and now he had two wretched specimens living in his head. If he could only put his mind at ease about Lisette, the other disturbing notions would surely disappear.

  So, the next night, when he attended a dinner at the home of Sir John Fielding in Bow Street, he set out to deal with it. As the ten gentlemen waited for dinner to be served, he asked an opportunity for a quiet word with Sir John, London’s chief magistrate.

  “Trouble?” asked the grizzled man, who wore a silk scarf around his sightless eyes.

  “Of a minor nature.”

  Sir John chuckled. “That’s what everyone says. Or they say they’re asking for a friend. What can I do for you?”

  Fort smiled, knowing Sir John could pick up every nuance of tone and the smile would carry into his voice. “My friend,” he said, “was in company with a young woman two nights ago. She ran off alone and he’s concerned for her safety. I wondered if any female bodies have turned up.”

  “None that I know of, Walgrave, though it’s always possible for unfortunates to be washed up from the Thames some time after their death. Name?”

  “I have not the slightest idea. Gently bred, though.”

  Sir John cocked his head, turning toward Fort as if he could study him. “Then her family will have raised the alarm.”

  “Has any such alarm been raised?”

  “No.”

  “She’s foreign—French—and visiting relatives here. She claimed they might be slow to announce her missing.”

  “Silly titty,” growled Sir John, understanding the implication that the woman had been looking to become a rich man’s mistress. “And shame on you, my lord, for preying on her.”

  “My friend,” said Fort, “behaved with considerable propriety under the circumstances. She would be completely safe had she not run away.”

  “Humph! As I said, I’ve not heard of any suspicious deaths of young women. Give me a description, though, and I’ll have it checked.”

  “Thank you. Middling height and build. Fine boned but rounded in the right places. She was masked, but her chin was a little square, though her lips were delicately shaped. She could be pretty . . .” Fort realized his voice had become almost dreamy because he was recalling Lisette lying on the bed, eating him with her eyes. “Last seen,” he added briskly, “she was wearing a lurid gown of scarlet stripes over a scarlet petticoat, all covered by a poppy-red domin
o worn inside out.”

  Sir John shook his head. “There’s no use in that, Walgrave. If she came to grief, she’ll have been stripped to the skin. Clothes like that are worth money.” After a moment the magistrate added, “To the poor, all clothes are worth money. If her killer didn’t strip her, the slum-carrion would. Hair color?”

  Walgrave found himself deeply disturbed by the thought of Lisette limp and naked in a gutter. After all, it would be his fault for letting her slip. “I don’t know. She wore powder.”

  “Well, a powdered corpse would cause some stir, I assure you! I’ll let you know if I hear anything, but if she’s not caught in a brothel, she’s safe with her relatives. And we can pray she’s learned something from her fright.”

  A brothel. Why hadn’t that possibility occurred to Fort? London abounded with women eager to sell their bodies for coin, but virgins were the fashion. This meant many brothels sought the helpless or hopeless as long as they were unbroached.

  As he moved on to speak to other men, he berated himself for overlooking this.

  When dinner was announced, Sir John called Fort back to his side. “I could hire you a Runner, Walgrave. Remarkably clever, my men are, at finding people.”

  It tempted him, but was far too dangerous. Part of Fort worried for silly Lisette, but part of him suspected her of being much more than she seemed. If she were working for Murray, he couldn’t let Fielding get within sniffing distance of her.

  Fort offered the older man his arm into the dining room. “Thank you, Sir John. I’ll consider it.”

  After the meal, as the contented men sat around enjoying brandy and tobacco, Fort found opportunity for a moment or two with George Grenville, the powerful Secretary of State. It wasn’t hard, because Grenville was just as eager to speak to him.

  “So, Walgrave?” asked Grenville in a quiet corner. “Any notion of when these Scots villains plan to do it?” A neat man in sober clothing and a tidy gray wig, he took his brandy with abstemious sips as if it were a bitter medicine.

  “It’s to be soon, but I can tell you no more than that. Murray keeps me in the dark.” Fort offered his silver-and-obsidian snuffbox but the older man waved it away. Fort took a pinch himself. “From what I can gather, he keeps everyone in the dark as to the whole plan.”

  “But he’ll use this toy, this pagoda?”

  “So he says, and I’ve managed to remove it from Rothgar Abbey for him. It’s at my house under guard. A shame really. It’s an exquisite piece, perfectly made. When wound, all the little figures around it and on balconies spring into motion, performing their tasks. It was the centerpiece of a masquerade ball Rothgar held last year.”

  A ball that Fort would never forget.

  The ball at which his father died.

  “So?” said Grenville. “It’s a toy.”

  “It doesn’t make it any the less dangerous.”

  “It offends me to have it at the center of serious matters. Indeed it does.”

  Fort hadn’t told Grenville that the pagoda had been his idea. The main reason Murray had risked contacting strangers at all was because he didn’t know how to get a lethal object close to the king. Fort, playing his part of willing conspirator, had pointed out that it should be a gift the king wanted, and that he knew just the thing.

  The king had not been present at the calamitous ball at Rothgar Abbey, but he’d visited a few days later to grace Chastity’s marriage to Cyn. He’d seen the automaton and expressed a veiled desire for it. It had clearly just been a matter of time before Rothgar presented it as a gift.

  So, when Murray asked about an object that could be sent to the king, the pagoda had sprung into Fort’s mind. It was perfect, mainly because Rothgar would end up entangled in a Jacobite plot. There was such seductive neatness to it. The toy that had tinkled as his father died would bring the revenge Fort thirsted for.

  When Murray had given Fort the word, he had used his knowledge of Rothgar Abbey to have the toy stolen. Now it was hidden in his cellars until the time came for the Scot to make it lethal. He should have been relishing the next steps, but instead he found himself increasingly uneasy.

  “I don’t trust Murray,” he told Grenville. “I certainly don’t trust him to tell me the truth about his plans. He’s clearly suspicious.” He gave an edited version of events at Vauxhall.

  The older man shook his head. “Can’t have been pleasant for you, Walgrave. My thanks for playing this part.”

  “I am happy to do my duty.” Fort pondered the situation a moment longer, reluctant to give up his weapon against Rothgar. But it wouldn’t do. The risks were too great. “It is my opinion,” he said, “that the king must be warned about the pagoda.”

  “No, no.” Grenville leaned forward, color touching his cheeks.

  “Why the devil not?”

  “Because the king’s too fond of Bute.”

  Fort knew Grenville hated Lord Bute, confidant of the king and now Prime Minister of England, but he didn’t follow this. “Surely His Majesty could be warned not to tell anyone.”

  Grenville snorted. “His Majesty tells Bute every time he empties his bowels. He’d tell him about this, believe me. Bute’s loose-mouthed, too. He’d go home and chat to everyone, including his cousin, Michael Murray.”

  Both Fort and Grenville had been considerably surprised to find that Michael Murray, traitor, lived openly in London in the house of Britain’s Scots Prime Minister.

  Fort had expected Grenville to order Murray’s arrest. The Secretary of State had other ideas, however. He wanted Murray caught in the act. He pretended he wanted to catch him red-handed so the plot would be quashed forever, but Fort knew he also wanted to ruin Bute.

  Grenville and Bute were rivals for power in the kingdom.

  It was all a devilish mess.

  “You know what would happen if we warn the king,” Grenville continued persuasively. “Bute would talk. Murray would take to his heels. But he’d be back again another time without us being in on the plot.” Grenville leaned forward. “It was sheer good fortune that the man approached you, Walgrave, and that you had the wit not to reject him outright.”

  Fort often wished he had thrown Murray out and not ended up in this tangle.

  “Don’t worry about the king,” Grenville continued. “He’s safe. We’ve told his people to be particularly careful about unexpected gifts. And with you involved, we’re alert and ready. They can’t act until they take possession of that toy.”

  Fort wished he shared Grenville’s confidence. “Why not just take Murray in and force the details out of him?”

  “It’s hard to get anything out of these fanatics, and the days of rack and pincers are over. Without proof, there are too many to cry ‘injustice’ and ‘habeas corpus.’ Have you heard about Wilkes’s new venture?”

  “That blusterer? What now?”

  Grenville’s face creased into lines of distaste. “He’s starting a news sheet called the North Briton merely to stir trouble against the administration and the king. He’d love to open with a story of an honest Scot being tortured merely on vague suspicion of treason. No, my lord. We need to catch the villains in the act.”

  “It’s devilish risky.”

  “We have people watching Murray.”

  “If only we could find out what’s really behind it all,” said Fort. “What point in killing the king, when he’s got two brothers and a child on the way? It seems like an act of spite.”

  “Perhaps that’s what it is.”

  “Murray doesn’t strike me as a mindlessly spiteful man. He’s more like a zealot with a cause. Once or twice he’s mentioned a stone. The Stone of Destiny. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

  “An amulet, perhaps?” But Grenville waved the words away. “If it’s supposed to protect him, he’ll find it of little use when we catch him in the act. Damme, sir, we’ll tear him apart with four horses as the French did for attempted regicide.”

  “Just so long as it’s not for success
ful regicide,” Fort said dryly. “His Majesty does not deserve an early death. But I’m afraid my part is mostly done. I have the pagoda. When they come for it, I’ll alert you. The rest is up to you.”

  Fort moved on then to chat with other men. At the moderate hour of ten, he left Sir John’s house, intending to head home and check yet again on that damned pagoda. Even though he’d put two armed men to guard the door turn and turn about, he still worried about it being moved without his knowledge.

  He felt as if he was living on top of a powder magazine surrounded by fire.

  Fort suspected Rothgar intended to give the automaton to George upon the birth of his first child, sometime in August. But he could imagine the enthusiasm with which the king would receive such a gift at any time. He’d probably be in an unregal hurry to have it wound and set in motion.

  At which point, the explosives with which Murray intended to pack it would send shot and fragments into the bodies of all nearby.

  Fort wanted to be completely certain that His Majesty’s aides and attendants would never let any item near the king without careful inspection. He wasn’t. George liked his own way.

  If only Murray would unlock his damned mouth and simply explain the whole plot!

  Fort had tried to draw him into his social set, hoping to create a time of drunken ease in which the Scot would tell all. Murray, however, drank like a nun, and did not game at all. He had no interest in women. God knows what he did do with his time. Read the Bible?

  How could Bible reading go hand-in-hand with callous slaughter?

  And what did Murray’s apathy toward women mean for Lisette?

  Fort would have laid his fortune on her being a genuine innocent panicked by the prospect of sex. If so, she was unlikely to be Murray’s puppet. But then, who had she been, this bold innocent who stole a gentleman’s pistols?

  With a sigh, he realized he’d sunk back into fretting over the damned woman. He rapped on the roof of the coach with his cane and commanded a change of direction.