Ransom caught Shelby’s arm. “Don’t do this.”
Shelby jerked away, his fine nostrils flaring with temper. “No, let them hear! They deserve to know what a viper you’ve held to your bosom. Listen now—the tinker’s camp—who took her there? I arranged it. I dangled the bait of a pinion gear, and she fell right into that little trap, didn’t she?” His blue eyes glittered. “And I drugged myself, of course! To lull away suspicion. The temple was my triumph, though. Who but you and Blythe and I knew of the temple room till now?”
“No! Papa—” Woodrow tried to reach for his sleeve, but Shelby swung away.
“We took an oath on that, we three. Would I hold to a childhood oath? Look at the progress of my sorry life, ladies and gentleman,” he sneered. “Look at the fact that I sank to the tune of sixty thousand under a gentleman of French connections and make your own conclusions. Oh, yes, and that amazing, incriminating hat! It’s mine, you say? Well, how shall I defend against a blow like that? I haven’t lost one, nay—but it must be mine. Why, the case must be rested on that point alone!”
“So rest it,” Ransom said darkly.
Shelby turned a scornful look upon him. “Embarrassed now? You only care to assert your accusations in private?”
“I only care to recover my wife. And see that any bastard who put her in danger is drawn and quartered. If you’re responsible, then count your days, brother. They have a limited number.”
“But he’s not!” Woodrow cried. “It wasn’t my papa. Everyone knew about Miss Merlin’s pinion gear and how she wanted it. And he isn’t the only one who knew about the temple, either! I saw Aunt Blythe there, and she was showing Major O’Shaughnessy—”
“Woodrow!” Blythe hurried forward. “You little beast, you swore to me—”
“I’m not carrying tales! It’s important, don’t you see? He thinks my papa tricked Miss Merlin and put her in the temple, and he didn’t.”
“Oh, I feel faint.” Blythe put her hands to her eyes and moaned. “Shelby!”
He looked toward her keenly, making no move to support her as she swayed. “What’s this? New evidence?”
“Mamá!” Blythe crumpled to her knees. “Oh, I’m ill. Help me!”
It was Quin who knelt quickly beside her, cradling her head against his shoulder. “Darlin’,” he soothed. “It’s all right; it’s all right; don’t be frightened, my love.”
Blythe whimpered and clung to him, pressing her cheek to his chest.
“Now, see here, Major!” Mr. Peale exclaimed in a scandalized voice.
Blythe stiffened. “No!” She struggled to sit up. “Get away from me—don’t touch me! Oh, God, I can’t bear—”
“Be still,” Ransom snapped. He stared coldly at Quin. “O’Shaughnessy,” he said, “I’ll have the truth from you, I think.”
Blythe moaned and buried her face in her hands. The officer tightened his hold on her quivering shoulders.
“Your Grace,” he said. “May I—in private—” He set his jaw. A deep flush was rising in his face. “Your sister, sir, for her sake—”
Ransom took a step forward. “I am out of patience, Major. Here and now. Did she show you the temple room?”
“Your Grace,” Quin said in a rush, “I wish to marry Lady Blythe!”
Dead silence greeted his announcement. Then Shelby began to laugh.
Quin glared up at him. His face went from red to white, but he only gathered Blythe’s hands and held them to his lips. “Don’t weep, love. Don’t.”
“How touching,” Shelby crossed his arms and leaned back against the marble pillar. “It very nearly makes me ill.”
Quin kept his head bent, but his broad shoulders went still and tense.
“When did she show it to you, Major?” Ransom asked.
Still Quin did not look up. He pulled out his handkerchief and bent over Blythe, gently applying it to her cheeks. She grasped at his hands, shaking her head violently.
“Sshh, darlin’,” he murmured. “It will be all right.” He looked up finally and met Ransom’s eyes. “I first went there with her not long after I arrived, sir.”
Blythe began to rock and whimper. Quin held her close.
“I suppose I needn’t inquire as to why,” Ransom said.
Quin took a deep breath. “Your Grace. I love her.”
“Yes, I think you’d damned well better. Any other reason for your actions chills me.”
Blythe buried her face in the handkerchief. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, I want to die!”
“Lady Blythe,” Mr. Peale said in a stricken voice. “Lady Blythe. Has this criminal used you ill? Has he ruined your good name, and for no more reason than a villainous plan to abduct Miss Lambourne?”
Quin jerked around. “You slimy little—I’ll horsewhip you for that!”
“Your paltry threats do not frighten me, sir!” Peale cried. “I’m a man of God, but choose your weapon—I’ll go out with you to avenge this calumny! She is far above you, and yet you’ve dragged her down into the muck of your base de—”
“Good God, Peale,” Ransom interrupted. “Take yourself off. I can’t stomach a rejected suitor’s hysterics right now.”
Mr. Peale gave Quin a trembling glare. “Your Grace,” he said without looking at Ransom. He turned around, and with a jerky stride, disappeared into the dark.
The Duchess May came forward. She gave Quin a look that Ransom found unreadable. “Please help my daughter to her feet, Major O’Shaughnessy. I believe she had best retire now.”
“Oh, Mamá,” Blythe said, muffled in the handkerchief. But she leaned on Quin as she rose, and let him hold her for an instant in a tighter grip before she turned into her mother’s arms.
“So affecting,” Shelby said when Blythe and the dowager duchess were gone. Quin stared at a point near Ransom’s feet, not answering.
“I would like to hear all of this story,” Ransom said to him. “From the beginning.”
Quin’s lips tightened. He glanced toward Woodrow and Jaqueline.
Ransom nodded in mocking answer to the unspoken question. “Yes, Woodrow will stay. I need one word at least that I can depend upon.”
The boy looked up at him, eyes wide. He stood a little straighter.
“Major,” Ransom prompted with a nod of command.
“There’s little to tell, sir. Her Ladyship is blameless.”
Ransom’s mouth flattened. “So blameless that you’d hang for it? I have some choice, you know. I can believe you forced yourself on my blameless sister and then blackmailed her into telling you the key to that room, or I can believe she was not so innocent, but a willing party in a flirtation that went a bit far.”
“It’s not—” Quin scowled. “I meant that—Damnation, what do you want me to say? I flirted with her, aye! It was a challenge at the start. And then, when she came to me—when I learned to see—” He paced away, stopped, and looked at Ransom suddenly. “You don’t know her! No one here knows her, or looks past the damned Falconer fortress she’s built around herself. She’s lived in your shadow until she’s almost lost her own will. That puffball Peale—that pompous little bag of air—why do you suppose she suffers him, but that he has your sanction? She would have married him a half dozen times over if I’d not begged her to think. If I’d not—” He turned his face away, rubbing his mouth.
“Damaged the goods?” Shelby suggested dryly.
Quin swung back. For an instant, there was murder in the air. Ransom moved a step, putting himself between them. “If you were meeting my sister at the temple, why didn’t you find Miss Lambourne when she was held there?”
“We didn’t go then. We hadn’t gone. Not for weeks. Apparently Mr. Peale told her he had been walking in the vicinity. She grew quite…panicked…over the possibility that you would find out. You saw her—that day you brought the hat to me and she thought that it might have been mine! She almost swooned.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “She was terrified. How could I have told you that I knew
of the temple without explaining how and why? Without doing what she fears most in the world—lessening her in your eyes?” He set his jaw. His scattering of freckles stood out against the white lines around his mouth. “It’s been a month—a full month since she’s allowed me to…meet her—in private.”
“Do you believe this?” Shelby asked scathingly. “Let me tell you a different version. This fellow made love to our sister until he seduced her. He found out about the temple from her and planted that tinker with his damned pinion gear at the gate where I come and go. When Merlin and I fell right into the trap, he made his move, and put her where no one would think to look.”
Ransom grimaced. “Shelby, what the devil is this damned pinion gear you keep raving about?”
“Miss Merlin’s!” Woodrow said. “She needed one very badly for her wing control. We all knew it.”
Ransom narrowed his eyes. “All?”
“Oh, yes. Quin and Papa and Aunt Blythe and Mr. Peale and Mamá and I. Everyone who was helping with the flying machine.”
“I see.” Ransom frowned. He looked at Shelby. “It was a bluff. It wasn’t ribbons she wanted from the tinker, then.”
His brother shifted his feet and nodded. “I should have known, of course. I thought it an odd coincidence, that the shabby fellow carried pinion gears with his pots and pans. But that’s not the point! The thing’s being nailed on me, Ransom; I’ve been made to look as black as pitch. And now—I ask you—who pulled down that book with this supposedly in it?” He kicked at the paper on the floor. “Who made sure it would be found? I am not stupid, brother. If I had something like this to hide, for God’s sake, would I put it in a book in plain sight in the saloon?”
“I don’t know,” Ransom said slowly. “I don’t trust myself to know.”
Shelby made a sound of furious disgust and turned away. Other footsteps reverberated in the corridor. Mr. Collett, looking disheveled, came hurrying toward them with two footmen behind him.
“Your Grace!” He bobbed into a hasty bow. “I’ve men to stand bodyguard, as you asked. Something untoward has happened, I fear?”
Shelby twisted back on his heel. He stared at the footmen.
“A bodyguard,” he said softly. “Oh, Ransom…Ransom…do you think I’ll forgive you for this?”
Ransom kept his gaze hard and level. He did not, could not—would not believe that Shelby could betray him. And for that alone, for that one immovable conviction, he had to let his order stand. Because blind love made a miserable substitute for reason.
He turned away to Mr. Collett. “Put a guard on Major O’Shaughnessy also. By my authority as magistrate they are both under arrest. Neither he nor Lord Shelby leave the house at any time.”
“But you can’t!” Woodrow’s high-pitched cry rang in the hall.
Mr. Collett bowed his head. With an uncomfortable cough, he began to issue low-voiced instructions to the footmen.
“Uncle, you don’t think Papa kidnapped Miss Merlin?” Woodrow gave Ransom’s coat a frantic tug. “You don’t! He wouldn’t do that; you know he wouldn’t!”
Ransom put his hand to his eyes. “Woodrow—”
“No, listen to me! I’ll find Miss Merlin! I’ll find out who did it. It wasn’t my papa. I know it wasn’t!”
Like a coward Ransom chose retreat, with no way to answer or explain, no buffer against the scared disbelief in his nephew’s eyes. As he started to move away, Jaqueline stepped out of the shadows where she’d stood, half-forgotten. She placed a hand on Woodrow’s arm and hushed him.
Ransom came face to face with her, and halted.
“I understand you.” She looked into his eyes. The faint flicker of candlelight turned her violet gaze to deep velvet. “You are a duke and a magistrate, and cannot be a man. But…” Holding her chin like an Amazon queen, she reached out and lightly touched his chest. “There is the law”—she lifted the hand that had touched him to her lips—“and there is the heart. So. Woodrow and I, we do you the service, Duke. We take your heart with us…to keep it safe where you wish it to be.”
She reached down and grasped Woodrow’s hand. He clung to her, giving Ransom one last trembling look. But when Jaqueline slid her arm through Shelby’s in spite of his baffled frown, Woodrow instantly grabbed his father’s other hand.
“Now. Come,” Jaqueline said. “Perhaps we can persuade our bodyguard to play spillikens with us until it is time to go to bed.”
Ransom watched them down the hall, the footman making a hesitant foursome as Jaqueline engaged him in bright banter as if he were a newfound guest. Shelby said nothing. But he held Woodrow’s hand and he kept Jaqueline’s arm, and the rigid set of his spine and jaw had gone to something less than killing fury.
Brava, mi prima, Ransom thought. Bravissima one more time. He closed his eyes. Thank God you never miss a cue.
Chapter 22
“They are the French,” Merlin hissed. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Now, see here, young lady!” Mr. Pemminey’s chubby mouth pursed. “I think I would know it if my sponsors were French. Why, they speak the King’s English better than I.”
Merlin dropped her head back against the creaking wooden settle. She put her hands over her eyes, blocking out the cluttered, book-lined interior of Mr. Pemminey’s tower room. “Of course they speak good English.” She glared at him through her fingers. “It’s a secret, don’t you see?”
Wispy gray sideburns flew as he shook his head. “No, ma’am, I do not. They are high-minded, farsighted men, who have seen the value of my labors when others have laughed. Why, their generosity alone—”
“Yes, yes, I know it’s very hard when people laugh, but you can’t just go off and sell your work to the enemy!”
“The enemy!” Mr. Pemminey’s round face turned as red as Ransom’s crimson dressing gown. “I say, Miss—uh—what did you tell me your name was?”
“Merlin Lambourne,” she said, and brushed a cobweb off of the cravat around her waist. “Well, I suppose it’s Merlin Duke now. Or Damerell. Or perhaps Falconer. I’m a duchess, you know.”
He gave her a skeptical look. Merlin glanced down at herself with a trace of chagrin. After her sojourn in the castle’s dungeon before they’d brought her here, she was somewhat grubbier than usual. She rubbed at the cobweb again.
“A duchess,” he said. “I suppose I’d as soon believe that as believe in this story about the French.”
“Believe what you like!” Merlin stood up. “But why do you think I’m here? I was kidnapped. And we must think of a way to tell Ransom where I am, so that he can rescue me.”
Mr. Pemminey huffed. “Nonsense. Rescue you from what? Who is this Ransom, then—I suppose he’ll be coming along now disturbing my schedule just like you, young lady!”
Merlin stared at him in exasperation, “You don’t know anything, do you? Ransom is the duke, of course.”
Mr. Pemminey pinched his lips together, apparently in thought. His cheeks turned pink. Then he sucked in his breath. “You don’t mean Damerell of Mount Falcon? Highly unlikely he’ll dare to show his face here. He made it quite plain to me some months ago what he thought of my aviation project when I went to him desiring funds. No—he won’t be welcome in my castle, miss. I should slam the door in his face!”
“Well, that wouldn’t do any good,” Merlin said. “He would simply knock it down. He’s very clever at things like that.”
“He sounds like a barbarian.”
Merlin’s lips parted in astonishment. “Ransom? Oh, my heavens, no. He’s the most civilized person on earth. In the universe, most probably.”
“Indeed. He was quite rude to me. And you say you know him, do you?” Mr. Pemminey’s bright little eyes became even smaller, narrowing in suspicion. “How do I know you haven’t been sent to spy upon me?”
“Spy upon you!” Merlin puffed up in affront. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Mr. Pemminey gave her a sidelong glance, and began surreptitiously shuffling the papers
on the table away from her. Merlin looked down, catching sight of a diagram and a set of equations on the top sheet. Her lips parted. She bent over and grabbed at the pile.
“No, no!” Mr. Pemminey kept tight hold, and the vellum parted with a rip.
Merlin stared down at the torn sheet in her hand. “This is my diagram!” she exclaimed. “You’ve been spying on me!”
“I have not.”
“But this is mine.” She shouldered the protesting Mr. Pemminey aside and began leafing quickly through the papers. “These are my notes! There’s my wing tip, and the equations on air weight and lift.” She held them up in exultation. “They’re safe! Do you have them all? Oh, they’re safe! I thought they’d been burned. How did you get them?”
“Well, I—” Mr. Pemminey’s mouth worked. “They’re yours, you say? Are you quite sure?”
Merlin bent over a diagram. “Yes. You see—this is the way I’ve numbered the struts. Starting here at the apex and moving outward. And this crank and pinion here, that’s to change the angle on the wing for landing. And the wheels are for—”
“All of this—” He spread a pudgy hand to indicate the pile of paper. “This is your work?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “My flying machine.”
“Well.” Mr. Pemminey looked at her with a new expression. “I must say, I am impressed. These notes have been of great help to me.”
“But where did you get them? I thought they had burned.”
“Oh, no. I’ve been receiving these excellent communiques for some months now. Most useful. Most beneficial. I can’t agree with your emphasis on catgut at the expense of metal, but your notions on wing contours are absolute genius, if I may say so. I’ve applied them rigorously. I do appreciate your generosity in sending the notes along.”
“But I never sent them.” She peered down at the paper. “This isn’t my handwriting at all.”
“Did you not send them? Oh, but a young man has brought them for you. A very nice, pleasant young man. I don’t recall his name, but you will, no doubt.”
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