by Amanda Quick
“I do not think we can depend on that,” Edison said.
Emma closed her eyes and flopped down into the nearest chair. “You cannot keep me cooped up forever in this house, you know. I will go mad.”
“There is an alternative,” Edison said casually.
Emma opened one eye. “What is that, pray tell?”
“We could keep you cooped up in my house.”
“I don’t think so.” Emma opened the other eye. “I wish to preserve what little is left of my reputation, tattered and torn though it may be.”
“Quite right.” Victoria closed her book with a snap. “I, however, am free to come and go, and I think that I might be very useful to both of you in this little drama.”
Emma and Edison stared at her.
“How?” Edison asked.
Victoria gave him a cool smile but there was an anticipatory gleam in her eyes. “Gossip flows through the ton like water through a sieve. Why don’t I go out this afternoon and pay a few social calls? Perhaps I shall learn something useful. Who knows? Basil Ware may have accidentally dropped a hint of his intentions to someone in Polite Circles, someone who would have had no notion of what he meant.”
Edison hesitated. Then he nodded once. “It’s worth a try. I, in turn, will take myself off to my clubs to see if I can pick up any information in that quarter.”
Emma made a face. “What of me?”
“You can finish your letter to your sister.” Victoria got to her feet with brisk enthusiasm. “Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I shall go upstairs and change my gown. One needs to be properly dressed for this sort of thing.”
Emma waited until the door closed behind Victoria. Then she looked at Edison.
“I do believe that your grandmother is enjoying this adventure.”
His mouth curved slightly. “You may be right. Astonishing.”
“Obviously this unfortunate taste for excitement runs in the family.”
My Dearest Daphne:
I have good news and some bad news. First, the good. It appears that my current employer will not be requiring my services much longer Emma stopped abruptly and gazed sadly at what she had written.
The thought of the impending end of her term of employment with Edison was not good news. It was the most unhappy news imaginable. She could hardly bear to contemplate the prospect of the lonely life she would be obliged to endure without him.
Dear heaven, she had fallen in love with the man. Enough. She had to pull herself together, for Daphne’s sake, if nothing else. Determinedly she dipped her quill in the blue-black ink.
I have every expectation of receiving the final portion of my wages within a few days. I am having some difficulty securing a reference from him, but I think, in the end, I will manage to do so. Please try to carry on there at Mrs. Osgood’s School for Young Ladies for just a while longer.
Now for the less cheerful news. There is still no word in the newspapers regarding The Golden Orchid. By all accounts it has, indeed, been lost at sea, yet I cannot seem to abandon the notion that the ship will eventually return. Perhaps it is only that I cannot bring myself to believe I was so foolish as to invest in a doomed Carriage wheels clattered in the drive. An unpleasant shiver shot through Emma, startling her with its intensity. She looked up from the half-finished letter to her sister and glanced at the tall clock. It was nearly five o’clock.
She peered out the library window and caught a fleeting glimpse of a dark red and black carriage pulled by a team of handsome grays. Lady Exbridge’s town coach. Victoria had returned from her afternoon calls. Of course it was the Exbridge carriage, Emma thought. Edison had given strict instructions that no other coach was to be allowed through the gates until he returned. Even the milk wagon and the fishmonger’s cart had been barred for the day. Cook had been obliged to go to the end of the drive to buy the items she required for the evening meal.
Victoria would no doubt have interesting gossip. Emma tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but it got stuck in her throat. This was ridiculous. There was no call for this sense of panic. Edison had left one of the Bow Street Runners to watch the house. Nothing would get past the man.
Outside, the carriage halted on the paving stones. Emma’s sense of foreboding deepened. She tried to force herself to write another line or two to Daphne while she waited for Victoria to come down the hall to the library.
She gripped the quill too tightly. It snapped in her fingers. Annoyed, she tossed it aside. She was starting at shadows, she thought. The tension of the past few days had obviously begun to affect her nerves.
Victoria must be in the hall by now. Straining to listen for the butler’s greeting, Emma opened the center drawer of the desk to search for a fresh quill. And saw the small knife that Victoria used to sharpen the nibs of her pens. She removed the cap and saw that the blade was fashioned of good, stout steel with a keen edge.
A low murmur of voices echoed in the hall. The butler sounded anxious.
“Sir, I really must insist that you leave. Lady Exbridge has given instructions not to allow anyone except members of the family and the staff into the house.”
“Calm yourself, my good man. I assure you that Miss Greyson will see me.” Basil Ware opened the door of the library. “Won’t you, Miss Greyson? After all, Lady Exbridge would be positively crushed if you refused to join us in her carriage.”
“Mr. Ware.” Emma stared at him and knew that all of her forebodings had been accurate.
“Do say you will come, Miss Greyson.” Basil’s eyes glittered with malice but his smile did not slip. “It’s nearly five. We are going for a drive in the park. Your future mother-in-law thinks that it will be just the thing to show the Polite World that you have her seal of approval.”
“What the devil do you mean, you let him walk right into the house and take her away?” Edison slammed the hapless Runner up against the wall of the library. “You were supposed to guard her. I paid you to protect her.”
The ruddy-faced man’s name was Will. He had come highly recommended from Bow Street, but at that moment Edison was close to strangling him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Will said earnestly. “But it’s not my fault they got yer lady. Ye don’t understand. Miss Greyson insisted on going with Lady Exbridge. And I didn’t have no instructions regarding Mr. Ware.”
His own fault, Edison thought. It had never occurred to him that Basil would walk right up to the front door. The Strategy of the Obvious.
“The very least you could have done was follow the damned carriage,” Edison growled.
“Well now, I don’t expect it will be too difficult findin’ that fine vehicle,” Will said soothingly. “Someone will ‘ave noted which direction it went.”
“You idiot, he probably abandoned my grandmother’s town coach as soon as he was out of sight of the house. Switched to a hackney or something else equally anonymous, I’ve no doubt.”
“Give up a ‘andsome carriage like that?” Will stared at him as if he’d gone daft. “But it’s worth a bloody fortune.”
“He couldn’t care less about the damned coach.” Edison tightened his hands on Will’s collar. “It was Miss Greyson he wanted. And now he’s got her, thanks to your bloody incompetence.”
Will’s face twisted in bewilderment. “What’s incompetence mean, sir, if ye don’t mind my askin?”
Edison closed his eyes briefly and breathed. He forced himself to release Will. Then he took a step back from the Runner and turned away.
He would accomplish nothing if he did not regain his self-control, he thought. His only hope now was logic and strategy. He had to start thinking the way Basil Ware thought. That meant he had to begin thinking in the way of Vanza.
He unfolded the note that had been waiting for him when he returned to Victoria’s mansion and reread the message.
Stokes:
They are both safe and will remain unharmed providing you arrange to transfer the recipe to me. Instructions regarding where and whe
n to deliver it will be sent to you sometime during the next few hours.
He was dealing with a student of Vanza, Edison reminded himself as he crumpled the note in his fist. A man who had sunk himself so deeply into the Strategy of Deception that he had escaped detection as a former member of the Vanzagarian Society. A man who was so deeply into Vanza that he evidently believed in the efficacy of the occult elixir.
Basil Ware would place his faith in the Strategies. All of his planning would be done according to those tenets. Sending messages regarding the delivery of a valuable item while keeping oneself and one’s hostages hidden was no simple task, Edison reflected. It would certainly not be easy to manage from a distance. Time was a factor. Once the game was in play, Ware would want things to happen as swiftly as possible. The longer the entire process went on, the greater the risk for him.
Therefore, Ware was still somewhere in London. He would be deep into the Strategy of Concealment now.
That particular Strategy taught that the best hiding place was the place one’s opponent considered the least likely for the simple reason that he believed it to be secure and under control.
“You’re a fool, Ware.” Emma looked at Basil with disgust. The nondescript hackney in which they rode had been waiting in a nearby lane. Basil had closed the curtains, but a few minutes ago Emma had caught a whiff of the river. The stench told her they were in the vicinity of the docks.
“You have no room to talk, my dear.” Basil sat on the opposite seat. He had put away his pistol after one of his men had secured Emma’s and Victoria’s hands behind their backs. “Had you taken my offer at Ware Castle, you could have enjoyed a pleasant position as my, shall we say, associate. Instead, you chose to cast your lot with Stokes.”
Realization dawned. “It was you who shot Chilton Crane in my bed chamber, not Miranda.”
“I kept a close eye on Miranda while she was at Ware Castle. When she tried to involve one of my staff in her scheme to send Crane to your bed chamber that night, I realized her intentions.”
“She wanted me to be found in bed with Crane.”
“Indeed. She believed that if you were thoroughly compromised, she would be able to control you by offering you a post. But you are a most determined female, Miss Greyson. I was almost certain you would find your way out of such a simple tangle.”
“You followed Crane to my room, saw the opportunity, and murdered him so that I would be facing the specter of the hangman’s noose, not merely unemployment due to a soiled reputation.”
Basil inclined his head. “I am Vanza. I believe in making a thorough job of such things.”
“Miranda must have assumed that I really did kill Crane,” Emma said.
“Probably. But she was dumbfounded, not to say furious, when Stokes came to your rescue in such a gallant fashion. She assumed that he must be after the recipe.” Basil smiled. “And I confess I leaped to the same obvious conclusion.”
Victoria glowered imperiously. “Why on earth would my grandson need some ridiculous occult potion that can only be used to cheat at cards? Why, he can make more money in one successful shipping venture than he could in several months in the gaming hells.”
“Besides,” Emma added, “Edison is a man of honor. He would never cheat at cards.”
Basil shrugged, unruffled by the implied accusation. “Perhaps he believes that the recipe will lead him to the Book of Secrets.”
“Aren’t you interested in the book?” Emma demanded.
“Not particularly. I do not think it exists. I suspect it was consumed by the fire in Farrell Blue’s villa. Even if it escaped the flames, it is useless to me.”
“Why do you say that?” Emma asked.
“Now that Blue is dead, I doubt that there is anyone alive today who can decipher any more of the recipes. And as it happens, I am interested in only this one, very special elixir.”
“And in my future daughter-in-law,” Victoria said grimly.
Emma was startled to hear herself called a future daughter-in-law, but she decided this was not the time to question Victoria’s choice of words.
“Oh, yes.” Basil’s mouth twisted in irritation. “I’m afraid I do require her services. At least until I find another woman who responds to the elixir. Unfortunately, females who are susceptible to the potion are not very thick on the ground, as Miranda discovered. It took her months to find you, Miss Greyson.”
“How did you discover that Miranda possessed the recipe?” Emma asked.
“I have spent the past few years in America, but I have kept in touch with my contacts in the Vanzagarian Society. When I returned, I heard the rumors about the theft of the Book of Secrets, of course. However, I paid little attention to them because I was busy with my own project.”
“Hastening the death of your aunt?” Emma said grimly.
“My, you have been busy.” Basil chuckled. “You’re quite right. It was obvious she intended to take her own sweet time about the business of dying, so one night I took matters into my own hands. Or should I say I took a pillow into my hands?”
Emma took a deep breath. “And Sally Kent saw you do it. She then tried to blackmail you for it.”
He inclined his head in an approving fashion. “Very astute of you, Miss Greyson. I gave the little fool some money to keep her silent while I considered how best to get rid of her. And then I saw to it that she disappeared.”
“Why did you go after the recipe for the elixir?” Emma asked. “You had just come into an inheritance.”
“Unfortunately, I did not discover until after the old woman was dead that the Ware estate was very nearly bankrupt,” Basil admitted. “There was enough money to keep up appearances for a while, but not for long. I was forced to consider new measures.”
“I suppose you set out to find yourself a wealthy widow or an heiress,” Victoria said. “That is the usual means by which gentlemen repair their finances.”
“As it happens, I preferred a widow to an heiress. I did not want to be obliged to go through the negotiations and the business of settlements with a young lady’s father, you see. The truth about the state of my own finances might have surfaced.”
Emma suddenly understood. “You limited your search to widows and Miranda was on your list.”
“She appeared a likely prospect at first,” Basil agreed. “But I had no intention of becoming the victim of someone else who was playing the same game as myself. Naturally I conducted a discreet but extremely thorough investigation of her background.”
“And you turned up the fact that she was an adventuress,” Victoria said.
“I was about to strike her off my list when, quite by chance, I stumbled onto the fact that she had lived in Italy for a time and that she was now in the habit of serving a rather vile tea to her female acquaintances. I put that information together with the rumors about the theft of the Book of Secrets and the fire at Blue’s villa, and suddenly all was clear to me.”
“I must say it was very clever of Miranda to invent the identity of Lady Ames and move straight into Society,” Victoria remarked. “She must have stolen some valuables from this Farrell Blue person. Enough to cover the cost of at least one London Season.”
Basil smiled grimly. “But not for a second or a third. She had to find a way to make the elixir work. I thought it best to allow her to take the risk of conducting the experiments. It would have been vastly more difficult for me, a gentleman, to find a way to feed the potion to an endless string of unsuspecting females.”
Emma narrowed her eyes. “You killed Miranda, didn’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did not.”
“You’re lying,” Emma said. “It must have been you.”
“I admit that I fully intended to get rid of her. I went to her house the other afternoon when I was informed that she had sent her servants away for the day. I suspected that she had begun to panic.”
“You knew that she had sent a message to me?” Emma asked.
“Th
e person I employed to watch her house warned me that she had done so. I feared that she intended to tell you everything, perhaps even offer to make you a partner in her venture. I could not allow that. But when I got there, she was already quite dead. And the recipe was nowhere to be found.”
“I don’t understand.” Emma stared at him. “You must have been the one who killed her. There is no one else ...”
“Ah, but there is, Miss Greyson. Your fiancé.”
Emma was incensed. “He did not kill Miranda.”
“Of course he did.” Basil’s eyes glittered. “What’s more, I believe he found the recipe. The library had been most thoroughly searched.”
There was no point arguing with him, Emma thought. “You believe that Edison will hand over the recipe for the elixir in exchange for Lady Exbridge and myself, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think he will do precisely that. Unlike me, he is weakened by his notions of Vanza honor.”
Victoria stirred and tried to adjust her position on the small wooden stool. “No doubt Edison will blame me for allowing that despicable Basil Ware to kidnap you.”
“Ware kidnapped both of us, not just me.” Emma tested the strength of the knots that bound her wrists behind her back. “But you’re quite right. Edison will not be pleased. He does not like it when things do not go the way he intends.”
In the end it had been horribly simple for Ware, she thought. He had ordered two of his men to stun Victoria’s coachman and groom with blows to the head while they sat waiting for their mistress outside a fashionable address. When Victoria had finished with her visit, the villains, dressed in the Exbridge livery, had carried her off before she had even realized what had happened. Basil Ware had held a pistol on her while the carriage was driven back through the mansion gates. When one of the grooms had failed to recognize the coachman, she had been instructed to inform him that it was none of his affair if she wished to employ a new man. With Victoria forced to give the orders, Basil Ware had had no difficulty entering the house.