An Extraordinary Lord

by Anna Harrington

  “Miss Jones.” Clayton leaned back in the chair. “Is there anything about your story that you would like to amend?”

  Her face twisted into grief at not being believed. “I’ve told you the truth! You can ask General Liggett. He’ll tell you the same. Go on—go ask him yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m certain I will.” Clayton kicked out his long legs in the posture of a man who had nothing to lose. “But first I want to give you the chance to clarify your details. After all, memories can get rather blurry, can’t they? Let’s start with this.” Clayton held up the necklace. “Liggett has a pin just like this pendant.”

  “He probably does since he gave that one to me. That necklace is nothing more than a cheap token. He most likely gives them away to women like ha’pennies to children.” She swiped at her eyes. “I told you. Liggett means nothing to me except as a way to appease Malmesbury.”

  Madame Noir let out a tired sigh. “I really do not have time for this.”

  She coolly walked into the dining room, handed her teacup to Clayton, who scrambled to his feet in surprise, and stepped straight up to Miss Jones. Then she stunned them all by slapping the woman.

  With a gasp of surprise, Veronica started forward, but Merritt stopped her with a hand to her arm and a shake of his head not to interfere. Clayton, too, was smart enough to stand back out of the fray.

  “Listen to yourself, for heaven’s sake,” Madame said calmly and leveled a hard look at Miss Jones. “You are lying to protect a man who is willing to kill innocent people. Do you really think he cares about you, a woman he’s used only to further his career?”

  The woman’s hand rose slowly to her red cheek. For the first time since the interrogation began, real tears watered her eyes.

  “There was no message from Malmesbury about any debt needing to be repaid.” Madame punctuated that accusation by crossing her arms over her chest in an imperial pose that Veronica was certain she used at her business to maintain the peace. “Lies. All of it. All said to protect a man who doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”

  Miss Jones stared at her, saying nothing. But her bottom lip quivered, and Veronica thought she might just let out a true sob.

  “You foolish girl.” Madame shook her head with grim disappointment, as if Miss Jones had betrayed all of their sex. “At the very least, Malmesbury will find out that you’ve been cheating on him and will cast you out.” She leaned forward, placing her hands on both chair arms. “And he will find out because I will make certain of it when I offer my services in finding him a new mistress.”

  Miss Jones glanced desperately at Clayton, begging silently for help. But this time, her tea-bearing knight wisely stood back and did nothing.

  “At the very worst, you’ll be implicated in the riots and if not hanged at Newgate then surely transported to Australia, where you’ll wish the crown had had the mercy to hang you after all.” Madame shook her head. “Do you really think the Home Office is here to play games?”

  “No,” Miss Jones whispered, barely louder than a breath, and grew deathly pale.

  “The only thing preventing any of that from happening to you is Mr. Elliott.” Madame smiled at him conspiratorially, although knowing her, it was to gauge if she could demand double payment for her unexpected services tonight. She took the necklace from him and looped it around Miss Jones’s neck. “So if I were you, I’d cooperate and tell him the truth. Otherwise…” Madame trailed her forefinger around the woman’s throat. “This necklace of yours will surely be replaced by a noose.”

  Miss Jones stared at her, knowing she’d been bested. With a fierce cry born of fear and rage, she threw her teacup as hard as she could against the wall. It smashed against the blue wallpaper and fell to the floor in a shower of black tea and shattered china.

  “Fine,” she seethed, the anger that pulsed from her so palpable that Veronica could feel it from across the room. “I’ll tell you what I know. But if I do, you don’t arrest me.” She jabbed an accusing finger at Clayton. Her murderous gaze swung to Madame, as did her jabbing finger. “And you don’t tell Malmesbury.”

  “The Home Office agrees to your terms,” Clayton answered with a calmness born from years spent on the battlefield. “And you, Madame Noir?”

  “Deny myself the fun of informing Malmesbury?” Yet she acquiesced as she tugged her long black gloves into place. “Very well.” She sighed with disappointment. “I’ll keep my silence.”

  Veronica breathed her own sigh of relief. They were making headway. Finally.

  “My work here is done.” Madame retrieved her teacup and finished the last swallow, then handed her cup and saucer to Merritt as if he were a footman. “I’ll see myself home.”

  As she glided toward the entry hall, she stopped in the doorway and turned back to rake a blatantly suggestive look over Clayton.

  “I’m assuming you’ll pay me for my services in person, Mr. Elliott.” A smile teased at her red lips. “I’m very much looking forward to it.”

  Clayton replied to her challenge with a rakish grin. “So am I.”

  She called over her shoulder as she sauntered toward the front door, “Perhaps next time, you’ll let me use whips and spurs.”

  Clayton’s smile faded as the door closed after her. He arched an incredulous brow at Merritt.

  “I told you she’d be helpful,” Merritt replied.

  Wisely not replying to that, Clayton turned back toward Miss Jones, took his chair, and spun it around before sitting directly in front of her. He straddled the seat and rested his arms across the back in a no-nonsense position that announced he’d just transformed from questioner to interrogator.

  “We found the money and goods you’re keeping upstairs to pay men to riot. We know you’ve been doing it since the riots started, long before Liggett arrived in London,” Clayton explained in a low and steely voice. “Why?”

  “Because the general asked me to.” Hatred for Clayton blazed in her eyes, but she understood the deal she’d struck with him and grudgingly answered, “Horatio has been my lover for the past six months. Malmesbury doesn’t know, of course.”

  “Of course,” Clayton drawled. “So Liggett brought you into his plans, gave you a closet full of money, and sent you out to recruit men to lead the riots while he convinced Whitehall to put him in charge of putting them down.”

  Her belligerent silence confirmed his assumption.

  “And now he’s planning one last riot tomorrow night to unleash his soldiers against the mob. Why?”

  “Because this country’s leadership is weak and spoiled, and when Liggett puts down the rioters, he will prove that he’s a better man than the regent. That he’s a strong, natural-born leader who cares about protecting England.” Her eyes flared with a light in their depths that was almost fanatical in its intensity. “Because something needed to happen to make the government wake up and do what’s best for England.”

  “Doing what’s best for England is arranging for soldiers to slaughter their own countrymen?” Merritt challenged angrily, unable to keep his silence. “Is that what this whole plot is about—for Liggett to arrange for a riot tomorrow night simply so he can fire upon them? For God’s sake, he’ll slaughter them!”

  “Didn’t the same thing happen during the wars?” she shot back. “Generals starting battles in which our soldiers were fired upon? The slaughter of Englishmen for the greater good?”

  Veronica squeezed Merritt’s hand for him to keep his silence. No matter how much they despised this woman, they needed the information she possessed.

  Miss Jones pinned her gaze on Merritt. “Too many good men died in the wars, and for what—to preserve the English way of life?” she mocked. “So the same royal leeches and aristocrats could remain in power? So they could continue to make their fortunes on the backs of the poor who work themselves to exhaustion just to afford a loaf of bread? From where the r
est of us sit, that way of life isn’t worth preserving. Social and political upheaval is the only way for people like me to rise.”

  Veronica grimaced. She was certainly telling the truth about that.

  “But you’re wrong about the riots. The last one isn’t planned for tomorrow. It’s scheduled for this morning, just before dawn, while all those European princes are still in town and can see how weak our regent is, how mad our monarch.” With a vengeful smile, she leaned back in the chair. “And you’re too late to stop it.”

  Twenty-two

  “So what’s our plan?” Merritt called out to Pearce and Clayton as the loud jangle of the Armory’s iron doors announced their arrival.

  They were back where they’d started. Back at the Armory, back to trying to find a way to stop the riots.

  Except that now, Veronica was no longer the enemy.

  His gaze flicked to her as she stood at the massive fireplace and stirred up the coals for the light and warmth a fire would provide. He wanted her here because he wanted her to be part of the planning and because he wanted her at his side for however tonight would eventually play out. But mostly because she wasn’t safe anywhere else. That was why they’d left Miss Jones’s town house as soon as they’d learned of Liggett’s plans, before Clayton had even finished interrogating the woman—to put their men into place. Even now, men were guarding his father’s house, and a messenger had been sent to the Court of Miracles to tell Filipe to put more men on watch. Merritt would protect the people he cared about tonight, no matter what he had to do to ensure it.

  Pearce and Clayton exchanged concerned glances as they strode into the room, with Pearce going directly to the sideboard and its waiting bottles of liquor.

  “Miss Jones admitted who’s been giving money to Liggett to fund the riots.” Clayton stopped in front of Merritt, his haggard face grim. Merritt knew before he’d spoken the name—“Scepter.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Veronica interjected and returned the poker to its stand. “From what Merritt’s told me, Scepter wants a controlled revolution.” She walked slowly toward the men. “Yet riots are the exact opposite of that. They’re unpredictable.”

  “But bringing in soldiers isn’t,” Clayton countered. “That’s their endgame. Not the riots and the civil unrest they cause but the show of strength in putting them down.”

  “All the credit for the success of it given to Liggett,” Merritt added.

  “And all the blame for doing nothing placed squarely onto the regent,” Pearce finished.

  “We learned something else from Miss Jones.” Clayton passed a grim look between Merritt and Veronica. “Liggett sent those men to kill you because he realized you were on his trail, and he didn’t want anything to interfere with his plans.”

  Merritt didn’t look at Veronica, doing his best to hide all traces of his worry and concern for her. “That’s why they all had the same symbol…the pin, the tattoos, the pendant—they were all in league with Liggett.”

  “They were all in league with Scepter,” Clayton clarified. “We think the key is the group’s symbol, like a secret password they use for immediate recognition of one another.”

  “The keys to the kingdom, that’s what Liggett called it,” Veronica murmured. “I thought it was a religious reference.”

  “Not religion,” Clayton corrected. “Revolution.”

  Merritt’s blood turned to ice. “This means Scepter has infiltrated the military.”

  “The military, the Home Office, Parliament…” Clayton blew out a harsh breath. “We can’t assume anything is out of their reach.”

  “Except the monarchy,” Pearce muttered from the other side of the room as he raised his glass to take a sip.

  Merritt turned to stare at him as an icy revelation struck him. “The monarchy—the regent,” Merritt muttered. “That’s what we keep hearing from the members of Scepter we’ve managed to find so far. That the regent is weak and corrupt, the monarch mad.”

  Clayton interjected quietly, repeating Miss Jones’s words from the interrogation, “And England lacking the strong leadership it needs.”

  Merritt’s heart skipped. “Liggett said the same. That the government was indecisive, that England needed a show of strength and resolve instead of wastefulness and weakness.” A sickening, bitter taste of acid covered his tongue. “He didn’t mean putting down the riots. He meant overthrowing the regent.”

  A curse fell from Clayton’s lips, and Pearce set down his drink. A grim silence settled over the men. In their entire lives, their most sacred duty had been to the monarchy and army. Now, Scepter was plotting to destroy even that.

  “But Liggett, of all men?” Pearce shook his head. “Does Scepter really think it can make Horatio Liggett into an English Napoleon?”

  “No,” Merritt answered quietly. “And they don’t have to. Liggett is just their current pawn. They’ll employ others like him to keep demonstrating over and over how weak the regent is, how corrupt, how destructive for England. And eventually, when the time is right, Scepter’s men will declare that the regent is just as unfit as King George, that he needs to be removed and a new monarch installed. Voices will call out from all levels of the government and the military.” He stared grimly at the floor. “Who will be there to stop them from overthrowing the House of Hanover?”

  “One of the royal dukes,” Pearce interjected firmly. Disbelief filled his voice that they were even having this conversation. “Especially if he’s the one Scepter’s picked to replace the regent.”

  “Not if Scepter can’t trust any of the royal dukes to do their bidding,” Merritt explained. “They’ll want a puppet ruler in place, not just a change in monarch. They’ll declare that every one of the royal dukes is as mad as their father, as unfit as their brother—emotional hysterics and breakdowns, fits of rage, publicly flaunting mistresses, committing scandal after scandal, and spending the country into poverty. They’ll put a new monarch in place. One they can control.”

  Clayton added grimly, putting voice to what they were all thinking, “A second Glorious Revolution will be born.”

  “And we only have until dawn to stop it,” Merritt reminded them.

  Pearce came forward. All three men stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, as they’d done on the battlefields of Spain and France when they needed to strategize. The familiarity of the gathering and the shared purpose behind it warmed through Merritt. These men were his brothers, a family formed in the fires and blood of battle, and he would lay down his life for them.

  “So where do we start?” Pearce said.

  “How do we start?” Clayton shook his head. “For God’s sake, to stop this, we’d need our own army to replace Liggett’s or a riot we can control.”

  Merritt and Veronica said in unison, “I can get us—”

  Realizing what they were doing, they both stopped and turned toward each other.

  “An army,” Merritt finished, his chest warming as he held her gaze beneath his.

  “A controlled riot,” Veronica added, a slow smile crossing her face.

  Pearce and Clayton exchanged bewildered looks. Then Pearce threw up his hands. “I don’t even want to know how.”

  “Miracles,” Veronica answered enigmatically.

  Merritt shrugged. “And a little kidnapping.” He removed his jacket, tossed it aside, and rolled up his sleeves. “But first, we’re going to need General Braddock.”

  “This is madness,” Marcus Braddock, Duke of Hampton and former general with the Coldstream Guards, declared to the men as he finished listening to their plan.

  From across the octagonal room where she leaned back against the wall and did her best to go unnoticed, Veronica silently agreed.

  Dawn was only a few hours away. According to Clayton and Pearce, soldiers from the Scots Guard were already positioned in the streets behind makeshift barr
icades. Liggett would arrive soon to lead them in firing on the rioters. And Scepter would be one step closer to revolution.

  Marcus Braddock knew it, too. That was why he shoved himself off the arm of the sofa where he’d been perched for the past half hour and began to pace the length of the main room of the Armory. Brandon Pearce had had the unfortunate task of rousing the duke from his warm bed and out of the arms of his wife to bring him here, while Merritt and Clayton had remained behind to concoct their plans.

  If the men of the Armory didn’t get themselves killed—with several rioters and soldiers right along with them—it would be a miracle.

  But everyone in the room also knew this was the only workable plan they had.

  “So let me see if I understand this correctly.” The duke paused in his pacing to cross his arms over his chest. “We’ve got a monarchy to rescue, a riot to put down, Scots Guards to immobilize, and only three hours left to do it.”

  “That’s about right,” Merritt confirmed.

  “And this is our plan—kidnapping, mutinying soldiers, and starting a riot of our own?” Marcus gestured a hand at the Armory around them, indicating all they’d plotted out tonight. “Crossing both the Home Secretary and War Department to protect rioters?”

  “Well,” Clayton grudgingly acquiesced, “when you put it that way—”

  “Yes,” Merritt finished resolutely.

  Marcus blew out an aggravated breath and shook his head. “Defeating Napoleon was easier.”

  Yet his eyes gleamed at the sense of purpose the four men now shared, something they’d all missed since the wars ended.

  “Then call out the Coldstream Guards, General,” Pearce said quietly. “Every man who was under your command will still lay down his life for you.”

  Marcus dropped his arms to his sides as he looked thoughtfully between the three men standing with him. All three were still just as loyal to their former general as he was to them.

  “You all know your parts in this and have agreed to do what must be done?” He paused meaningfully and pinned Veronica with a look over his shoulder. “Including you, Miss Chase?”