A Tip of the Cap (London League, Book 3)

by Rebecca Connolly

  Rogue nodded his thanks. “The message from Trick said this was not about me,” he went on, crossing his ankle over his knee. “Do you think that could be true?”

  Sphinx nodded slowly, then looked at Fritz. “Rogue would be the easiest target. That news story and sketch some months ago, anyone could have drawn conclusions.”

  “I agree,” Fritz told him. He looked at the missives once more. “But this might be beyond me.”

  “Not especially,” Sphinx assured him, picking up a letter. “It only takes the eyes to see it. Give me a moment.”

  “If he does this in a moment,” Rogue muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “I will quit right here and now and become a farmer.”

  Sphinx snorted softly. “You’d be a terrible farmer. And I won’t solve it in a moment, simply…” He trailed off and tilted his head to one side. “Hmm. Very French of them. And to hide it beneath the obvious code…”

  Rogue grumbled under his breath, earning himself a nudge from Malcolm. “What are you seeing?”

  Sphinx looked up, suddenly surprised that someone was addressing him. “Vigenère.”

  “Bless you,” announced Rook, striding into the room without knocking, Gent on his heels.

  His brother’s gaze skewered him briefly. When this had no effect, he then returned to his explanation. “It’s a complicated cipher, but it’s been used for many, many years. Once you know how to break it, it’s really quite simple.”

  Rook snorted and sank into a chair. “Everything is simple to you.”

  “Including you,” Sphinx snapped, looking back at the letter in his hand. “Now, will you shut up and let me work?”

  That earned him a grin from the entire room, and Rook held up his hands in surrender. “Have at, Sphinx, by all means.”

  They all sat in silence for the most part as Sphinx worked, muttering to himself and scratching ink to paper. Malcolm grew uneasy and impatient but hid it as best as he could. After all, there was nothing he could do but wait, now that they finally had decent clues. This seemed to be important. Perhaps he was only desperate for a break in the monotony of their investigation, but he would take what he could get.

  “There it is,” Sphinx suddenly murmured, smirking to himself and leaning back, tossing the pen on the desk for emphasis. “First letter after punctuation.”

  Malcolm perked up and snapped his fingers at the others, who were in various stages of drowsiness after long moments of waiting. “Yes?”

  Sphinx nodded and handed letters out. “Yes. Ignore everything else. The first letters after every punctuation mark. Write them all down.”

  “What about the keyword?” Rook asked as he took his. “Do you have that?”

  Sphinx shook his head. “Not yet. And with this cipher, the word most likely changes with each letter.”

  Rogue swore, holding the letter further away as he stared at it. “No wonder I couldn’t see it.”

  “You saw exactly what they wanted you to see,” Sphinx reminded him, his tone almost absent as he worked on his current letter. “They knew you would intercept them. That’s how they could play the lot of you like chess pieces. You moved where they wanted you to move.”

  Malcolm looked at Rogue for a long moment, Trick’s words playing over in his mind. “It wasn’t about you at all,” he said at last.

  Rogue looked back at him, the same uneasiness brewing in his eyes. “I was the chess piece.”

  “A distraction?” Rook offered from his side of the room.

  “But from what?” Gent asked, eyes wide with concern.

  They all looked back at Sphinx, whose eyes raced frantically across the page, his lips moving wordlessly. “The keyword would have to be something here,” he muttered to himself. “If it changes every time, it has to be here… The dates are correct, couldn’t correspond to anything else, you would have found that…”

  Malcolm returned to his own letter, identifying the code that Sphinx had directed and almost numbly recording the letters down. It was a scramble of letters, nothing making sense or forming anything at all. Page after page of randomness, enough to make Malcolm’s eyes ache with the efforts of trying to see something he couldn’t.

  He would need Sphinx to come up with some answers soon, or he would give up on Trick’s insight entirely. And he would have to tell Hal that unfortunate piece of news, and she wouldn’t like that at all.

  “Got it,” Sphinx suddenly breathed, a true smile breaking over his stoic features and making him years younger in appearance. “I’ve got it!”

  “What is it?” at least three of them demanded at once.

  “In a moment, in a moment…” he rambled, going back and forth between manic scratchings and the letter itself. “It’s in the salutation. In this one, the most recent, the word was ‘greetings,’ though I doubt they used it again. These must have taken ages to write, doubling the code and all…”

  Gent gaped at Sphinx, then looked at Rook. “Does he always do so much at the same time? Explaining what he’s doing and thinking while doing and thinking it and making us wonder what is wrong with our minds?”

  “Every bleeding day,” Rook replied at once with a shake of his head, though he bore a hint of a proud smile.

  “I’m surprised you are both still alive,” Rogue said, sounding remarkably relaxed now that they were so close to a victory of sorts.

  Malcolm could not join in their bantering, nor could he feel relief. There was no reason, as yet, to be relieved about anything. Until they knew precisely what they were facing and had a plan in place to combat it, he wouldn’t let himself enjoy any of this. Instead, he felt more on edge, his instincts ready to pounce on whatever was revealed.

  The sooner they could end all this, the sooner he could return home.

  To Beth.

  “Why would anybody want to single out Rogue anyway?” Rook asked with a laugh, crossing his arms. “Of all the idiotic notions…”

  “I will kill you, you know,” Rogue offered, smirking slightly.

  “It’s not Rogue they’re after.”

  All attention turned to Sphinx at his sudden declaration, hushed though it had been. There were no dramatics, but a deep severity that commanded them all.

  “John?” Rook prodded, watching his brother with concern, foregoing any secrecy in names for a change.

  There were deep furrows in Sphinx’s brow, and he looked up at Fritz in confusion. “Do the words ‘gate’ and ‘knight’ mean anything to you?”

  The room grew more silent than before. No one breathed.

  Malcolm stared at the code breaker for a long moment, only able to blink as the words echoed in the suddenly vault-like expanses of his mind.

  “Why?” Fritz asked carefully, his voice as tense as his frame.

  Sphinx glanced around, the missive in his hand. “This letter, written yesterday, mentions going there, wherever it is. Seems rather significant.”

  Malcolm’s heart stopped in his chest, and he lost all sensation to his frame. There were no emotions, no thoughts, no comprehension of what he had just heard for a heartbeat.

  It wasn’t Rogue they were after. It was him. They were going to his home where his wife and children slept. His family had no idea what he truly did or the danger they were in.

  They were after his wife and children!

  With another slow blink that was more painful than anything he had ever suffered in his entire life, Malcolm looked at his comrades, his brothers in arms, the men he trusted with everything important to him, and released the shortest, softest of exhales.

  Then he was out of his seat, bolting for the door, with every man of them behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They rode harder than they had ever ridden in their lives. The roads out of London passed quickly, pounded into submission by the hooves of the five horses in their group. They were soon joined by some others that had been sent for, per Fritz’s orders, and the further away from London they rode, the more focused they seemed
to become.

  Malcolm had not paid attention to who had joined in the ride to Knightsgate, nor did he particularly care. He was not in command of this force, Fritz was, but for the first time in his life, Malcolm would be insubordinate if it came down to it. He regretted every harsh or critical word ever spoken to any of his men over something personal interfering with their missions. Malcolm now understood, perhaps for the first time, what they must have felt. His family had never been in danger, so he’d always been able to separate his work from his life at home.

  Now they would be merging in the most horrifying manner possible. There was no control for this, none at all. He was only grateful that so many had rallied to his aid, riding with him to support the cause and the efforts to save his family.

  Sphinx had stayed behind to decode the rest of the letters and give pertinent details to the operatives overseeing London in their absence, but nothing in them could possibly convey anything to alter this course of theirs. Even if the attack should be forthcoming and not present when they arrived, they would be strong enough to withstand it, and he would know his wife and children were safe. If it had already commenced…

  He swallowed harshly and pushed his horse harder, unwilling to consider the possible ramifications.

  His family ought to have been protected. There were measures in place to ensure that they would be. But with no warning and no idea of what they were facing, there was absolutely no guarantee that the measures would be sufficient. There were never any guarantees in times like these. Trace’s death was proof of that.

  If he lost any member of his family because of this…

  There would be no recovering. That would be the end of him, of everything he was or wished to be. He wouldn’t care about England or the state of affairs with France, or any uprising, traitors, or bonds of loyalty.

  He wouldn’t care about anything.

  All he wanted at this moment was to get home and protect his family. He would rage and rail and beat the life out of whatever villain had done this to them, whether high ranking Member of Parliament or chimney sweep from Lancashire. The instinct to defend and protect had never roared with this much indignation within him, and he feared for his sanity if it was not to be avenged.

  Fritz insisted that they stop to change horses, which Malcolm had resisted vehemently, hating the thought of slowing at all.

  “We cannot keep this pace on these animals,” Fritz had barked. “If you want to be able to get there and do anything about it, you will exchange horses now.”

  It chafed at his drive to push on, but he nodded firmly and followed him. Those that had joined in the ride later than the rest sped on, much to his disgruntlement, but minutes later, he had a fresh horse and was back to racing home.

  No one said much of anything to him, but he knew they conversed with each other behind him. No doubt they were formulating some kind of plan; it was what he would have done in their situation.

  He was not in the mindset to prepare anything. There was no plan for him. He needed to get to his home and scour every room in it until he knew his family was safe.

  What would they think? Would they know to be afraid?

  His mind conjured up images of a mob descending on his home, the dust from the horses’ hooves billowing up behind them creating a more menacing impression. Would the children have seen them approach? Would Beth? Would his operatives in the area have acted, or would they be caught as completely unaware as he had?

  Questions and fears preyed upon Malcolm as he rode on, his heart at least double the pace of his horse, his breath hitching nearly every inhale.

  There was no telling what they would face, or whom. None of their usual suspects had strayed from their normal London lives and schedules, they would have been informed of that. Nothing in London had indicated a mass convergence anywhere.

  Unless they had missed something significant. Unless the distraction of their recent endeavors had caused them to miss what was truly occurring.

  It was a masterful plan, one worthy of the villains they were dealing with, and one he would have admired, had he been in a position to appreciate it. Their enemies had known they were being watched, and they had taken advantage of that knowledge. They had manipulated Malcolm and his men easily, twisting the League’s attention where they wanted it to hide their true goals, whatever those might have been.

  Why his house? Why his family? He almost never operated out of Knightsgate in matters such as these, which meant his identity had to have been compromised in some way. There were no ties between Cap and Knightsgate; none whatsoever. He had seen to that, and more than twenty years of working in this sort of position had given him plenty of time to hone his skills in secrecy and security.

  Why now?

  None of it made any sense, and the more he thought about it, the more muddled his thoughts became. They would find answers today, of that he was certain. There would be some clues found, either in London or at his home, and captures would be made. Interrogations would ensue, and confessions would spout forth. Real progress would be made, and they would not feel so lost in the field against this faction.

  He took no comfort in any of these things, though he ought to have done. Comfort would not come until the end, whatever it was.

  All their previous victories meant nothing to him at this moment. He did not care what they had once accomplished or what their abilities had been. He did not even care what they were capable of in a group of roughly fifteen.

  He only needed this victory.

  Just this one.

  As the light of day began to fade, and the sun moved closer to the horizon, Malcolm felt his heart skip several beats.

  Darkness would fall soon. In London, that would not be much of a hindrance, but out here in the Hampshire countryside…

  “Go,” he urged his borrowed horse. “Go, boy, go.”

  Whether his urging helped, he couldn’t have said, but when the cold and too dark edifice of the house was rising before them, he felt a burst of exhilaration.

  And then panic set in.

  He vaulted from his horse and started towards the house, only to have his shoulder gripped tightly.

  “Steady,” Fritz urged, his voice tight. “I’m sending half the men to search the grounds, and our presence alerted your local connections, so they will stand guard. How do you want to do this?”

  Malcolm glanced over his shoulder at his friend briefly. “Whatever will get me inside and end this in the fastest way.”

  Fritz nodded and dropped his hand. “I’ll follow. The others will take the servants’ entrance and secure the house.”

  Malcolm exhaled slowly, nodding, and then strode forward. They hadn’t approached with stealth, so he saw no reason to proceed now with any. The most direct way into the house would be the main entrance, and he had no qualms about being predictable in this instance. It was his home, and if anyone thought to take him by surprise within it, they were sadly mistaken.

  The large door creaked a little as they entered, and there was almost no light within but what the sunset allowed through the windows. He was suddenly grateful for the ride through the fading light, as it made adjusting to the dark of the house easier. He crept along, faintly surprised that there was no ambush waiting for him the moment they entered.

  In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone about at all.

  He glanced back at Fritz, whose widened eyes and furrowed brow told Malcolm that he was feeling something along the same lines.

  Where was the contingent that had ridden for this house? Or were they forthcoming?

  Light flickered from within one of the drawing rooms, the largest one, he recalled, and he could hear a wood fire crackling.

  He moved forward, curious and cautious. No one would intentionally make themselves known in such a blatant way unless there was something to be gained by it, but there wasn’t another option. He didn’t know where Beth and the children were, or any of his servants, who knew their duty was to pr
otect and defend the family at all costs.

  If he was walking into a trap, so be it.

  He approached the room slowly, unable to see anything from his current angle, knowing that whoever was within, if anyone, would have a far better vantage point than he did.

  There was nothing for it, then. Malcolm straightened and entered the room calmly, as he might have done on any given day. The sight that greeted him could not have been more unexpected.

  “Lady Lavinia.”

  How his tone managed to remain so mild, he would never know. He felt at once sickened and shocked, and he only prayed his expression was as contained as his voice.

  Lady Lavinia? How in the world…?

  Pieces slid quickly into place, one after the other, and the picture now unfolding was more terrifying and brilliant than anything he had imagined.

  It was not the oblivious Mr. Herschel in the details and designs. Not the unpopular Mr. Herschel who had betrayed his country and his standing and his duties. Not the pompous Mr. Herschel who had plotted against Malcolm and his cohorts and sent them off on a mad dash here when the plot had finally been uncovered.

  Not Mr. Herschel.

  His wife.

  And there would be no fighting that. Well, not with his fists or his sword, at any rate.

  Lady Lavinia sat in a chair near the fire, though she faced the doorway. She sat with all the regal pride of a queen occupying on a throne. Her dark eyes were glinting in the firelight, fixed on him with the same mixture of interest and disdain that she had always displayed, wearing the same smirk he’d seen dozens of time in London. She looked far too refined for someone who had come on a traitorous mission, her gown a deep, wine-colored red with a daring cut of the neckline, even more so than her usual wardrobe.

  “Lord Montgomery,” she purred, eying him without shame, her gaze lingering where it would. “I so hoped that you would join us.”

  Thinking quickly, Malcolm took a further two steps into the room and bowed a little. “Had I known you would be here, my lady, I should have arrived in a more timely fashion. I had no idea you and your husband would be paying us a call. Have my servants left you in such darkness? I shall send for a footman right away.”