The Diamond Key (24 page)

But it was a dog licking his sore foot near the right fork that caught Torrie’s attention. She pulled the horses to a sudden stop, to her father’s complaints about their tender mouths, handed him the reins, and jumped down. “Homer! It is you!”

The little dog wagged his tail. He’d gone as far as he could, then waited by the side of the road, confident that his master would return for him. Torrie picked him up and brought him to her father’s curricle, placing the filthy dog on the seat, despite her father’s frowns.

By now the Lynbrook carriage and the solicitor’s gig, the mounted soldiers and the hackney with Young Cyrus and the Runner, had all caught up to them.

“Give the dog a drink,” Major Campe called out from his coach, “and then put him down. We’ll see where he goes.”

One of the soldiers hurried over with a flask, and Lord Duchamp begrudgingly sacrificed his beaver hat for a bowl. Young Cyrus brought over some of the sliced ham Ruthie had pressed on him in case the master was hungry, having missed his morning meal and now his nuncheon. The Bow Street officer left his hired carriage and held out a bit of cheese left over from his own meal.

So many people had not watched an animal eat since feeding time for the lions at the Royal Menagerie. Homer paid them no mind. He wolfed down the meat, swallowed the cheese without chewing, and gulped down the water. Then he belched indelicately. Young Cyrus handed him down from the curricle seat to Torrie, who patted Homer’s head before setting him on the ground.

The soldiers dismounted; the earl held his restive pair in check; Torrie gathered her skirts, ready to follow the ragged terrier. Everyone held their breaths.

Homer raised his head and sniffed. He lowered his nose to the ground and sniffed again. Then he headed farther along the right fork in the road.

“By George, the little fellow’s got it!” Lord Duchamp said to no one in particular. “He could give my hounds a run for their money, I’d wager.”

But Homer merely lifted his leg against a fence post, then sat down to lick his foot again.

“Damn,” the earl declared, seconded by more than one of the watchers.

“No, I think he means us to follow,” Torrie said, hurrying to pat the dog on his head again in encouragement. “Or to follow this line of fence, anyway.”

“There is a house up ahead,” Mr. Castin called from the seat of his gig. “I can just make out the chimney over those trees.”

The former soldiers remounted and took their weapons out of their saddlebags. The Runner removed his pistol from his pocket. Young Cyrus went back to the hackney to fetch the meat cleaver he’d taken from the Kensington house kitchen. Major Campe had a rifle resting out the open window of the Lynbrook coach. And Torrie started walking, the dog at her side.

“My lady, Ruthie’ll have my hide, iffen anything happens to you, an’ the master will, too,” poor Young Cyrus said, trying to get in front of her with his meat cleaver. She glared him back beside her.

“You get back in this curricle, girl,” her father ordered. She did not hear him.

“Ma’am, you had ought not be here at all,” the Runner said. “You are interfering with the law, so stand back.” She did not heed him.

None could stride ahead, or drive on, or ride in front, because the dog was limping along at his own speed, sniffing as he went. No one dared to chance destroying the scent Homer was following, for there were narrow cart tracks leading in other directions, another group of chimneys now visible. Investigating each of those paths could take hours, and Lord Ingall had already been missing for far too many.

So they marched at a small, weary dog’s pace, this most peculiar cavalcade.

What if the dog was following the scent of a rabbit? Torrie worried. Homer was no hunter. He was not much of a dog, but Wynn loved him, so she did. “Find him, my friend. Find your master. Find Wynn.”

In another few yards Homer raised his head, perked his ears, and started trotting. When the path curved, he darted under a bush, and Torrie cursed, but he reappeared up ahead. The Lynbrook carriage was having difficulty as the roadway narrowed, but she could hear Major Campe urge his driver onward. And then she saw the old rickety house—and Wynn, seated outside in an old, rickety chair. The dog raced forward.

Wynn put his pistol back in his waistband when he recognized the rescuers. He stood and said, “I knew you would come.”

He said it to the dog.

Wynn nodded toward Major Campe in the carriage and the mounted soldiers, in unspoken thanks for their intended assistance. He nodded toward Lord Duchamp in the curricle, the solicitor in the gig, and his own valet, one eyebrow raised as if to ask how much help they all thought he needed. Then he nodded toward the Bow Street Runner. “And I was hoping you would come.”

He had acknowledged everyone but Torrie, who was covertly scrutinizing him for damage. “What about me?” she asked.

He put down the dog. “You? I prayed my wife-to-be would have enough sense for once to stay where she belonged.” But his smile belied the words, and his open arms were an invitation Torrie had no intention of resisting. She ran into his embrace, saying, “Your wife? Oh, Wynn, I love you, too.”

“Whew,” her father said, mopping at his brow. “At least that’s taken care of.”

What remained was to take care of Boyce.

Wynn had not been able to kill the blighter.

Boyce had been crying, for one. It was hard to dispatch a man who was as sodden as a six-year-old.

He’d been unarmed for another. Well, he did have weapons before he dropped them, but Boyce could not reach them, caught in Wynn’s trap and hanging upside down by his ankles as he was, like a haunch of venison strung up to age. Wynn found he could not kill a man who was threatening him with a whine instead of a knife or a loaded pistol or a club.

Boyce was not worth chancing another exile for, either. Boyce was still a titled lord, and the government was still run by titled gentlemen. They did not take kindly to having their ranks thinned by assassins, no matter how justified, for it reminded them too forcibly of their unfortunate counterparts in France. Wynn had too much of a future in England now to repeat his past mistakes. A few weeks ago he could have taken the first ship to anywhere. No more.

So he had not been able to butcher the blackguard. He had not been able to sit inside and listen to a grown man weeping, either, or suffer the stench of sausage that enveloped Boyce like a dirty shirt, an odor the rum touch also exuded. So Wynn had taken his chair outside, along with his pistol recovered from the caitiff’s sack, and the meal Boyce had bought with Wynn’s purse. If no one came soon, Wynn had decided, he’d have to load the stinking, sniveling scum in the old wagon and head back toward town. Now Boyce was the Runner’s problem, as a representative of the Crown.

The soldiers were cutting the blubbering Boyce down from the rafters.

“It is better this way, my lord,” the solicitor was saying, “letting the law handle such distasteful matters. They might not hang him, but I doubt one such as he will survive prison.”

Lord Duchamp had other ideas, and his whip in his other hand. “He threatened my family.”

Boyce started wailing. He tried to catch Lady Torrie’s eyes, to plead to the only woman present. “But I love you! I did it all for you, because I could not bear to be apart from my beloved.”

Wynn grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground while the Runner pretended to catalog the armor helmet as evidence. “Beloved?” Wynn asked, shaking Boyce like a mud-encrusted rug. “You do not know the meaning of the word. What kind of love is it that could harm a hair of their beloved’s head, or could make her suffer for an instant? Love is supposed to be selfless, you ass, and I doubt you’ve had a selfless thought in your entire sorry life.” He threw the smaller man away from him, into the arms of two of the soldiers.

Boyce was not finished yet. He appealed to Major Campe, who had made his slow way to the door. “But ... but I am a gentleman. I demand satisfaction of Ingall.” Who knew what he could do with a pistol in his hand?

The major spun on his crutches in disgust, giving Boyce his back. “You have proved you are no gentleman.”

But Torrie stepped away from Wynn’s side, closer to Boyce, and said, “How dare you even think to challenge Lord Ingall, the man whose skull you almost crushed?”

Wynn tried to pull her back. “Hush, sweetings. My head is harder than that, I promise you.”

Torrie was too enraged to listen to him. She shook her fist in Boyce’s face and said, “You want satisfaction, you son of Satan? Well, so do I. You plotted to steal me away from my family, marry me against my will, and hold me for ransom. You almost made me Wynn’s widow before I am his bride, to say nothing of almost killing both of us in that fire. Satisfaction? Sending you to prison does not half satisfy me, you disgusting, driveling little man.” She hauled back her fist the way her father had taught her and clobbered Lord Boyce on the nose. The soldiers let him slide to the ground as Torrie rubbed her knuckles on her skirts. “Now I am satisfied.”

Wynn pulled her outside, but not before telling the half-conscious Boyce that he was a lucky man. The lady could have basted his ballocks, too.

Lord Duchamp looked proud, but the major told his friend to tread carefully. “I would hate to see you in that woman’s black books.”

Wynn leaned over to whisper in his friend’s ear as he passed: “I’ll be safe. She loves me, you know. And she wants children. My children.”

Lord Duchamp let Wynn and Torrie drive the curricle home while he rode with the solicitor. It was never too soon to start negotiating the marriage settlements, he felt. Besides, how much trouble could the pair get into, in an open vehicle, with a dog sitting between them?

He had not counted on them stopping along the way. Every half mile. Every ten minutes. Every time they needed to reassure each other of their love, their safety, how soon they could be wed, and who was the better driver. Besides, the dog needed to get down after all that food.

At one such stop, after Torrie had checked Wynn’s skull for the third time, to make sure he was not bleeding again, and he had kissed her knuckles again, to ease the soreness from striking Boyce’s nose, she explained about Barrogi’s letter. Then she asked, “Do you mind?”

“What, that you opened my private mail? I hope you do not intend to make a practice of it, woman. No man wants a prying wife.”

Which meant another stop, another kiss, another burst of joy that Wynn wanted a wife at all, and he’d found the perfect one.

“I suppose I can forgive you this time, for the letter did tell you where to look for me.”

“No, do you mind about Barrogi?” Torrie asked, retying her bonnet strings.

“What, that the old rapscallion is gone? Zounds, no. He was of no use to me, and his talents were wasted as my assistant.”

“No, silly. I mean do you mind that he eloped with Miss Peters?”

“Lud, I should say not. I did everything but buy them the ring and a license. I threw them together every chance I could.”

Torrie was confused. “I thought you were looking for another husband for her.”

Wynn laughed. “If I had mentioned marriage to Barrogi, he would have scampered off as fast as his legs and my money could carry him. But as long as it was his idea ...”

“Hmm. Rosie Barrogi. It has a kind of ring to it.”

“As long as she has a ring on her finger, I do not care. Speaking of which, do you prefer the family emerald engagement ring, if I can pry it away from Marissa, or a ring of your own, a diamond for my Diamond?” He smiled and pulled her into his arms for a long kiss.

Torrie gave up and tossed her bonnet to the floorboards, where the dog curled up on it to go to sleep. “Whatever you decide,” she said, sliding closer to him on the seat, content at the very idea of his ring on her finger. “Do you think they will be happy?”

“Plucking pigeons at their gambling club? Delirious. But not as happy as we will be, my love.”

Which necessitated another stop, another kiss. When they got underway again, Wynn’s kerchief had joined Torrie’s bonnet on the floor.

“I forgot to ask,” Torrie said, and no wonder, with the wonder of Wynn’s love, “what was the message from the Runner? Had he spoken to Lord Lynbrook? The current one, of course, Francis.”

Wynn nodded and brought his attention back to the horses. “Yes, he saw the man, and finally got him to tell a new version of the story. What else could Francis do with Major Campe’s sworn affidavit staring at him? What he says now is that when they got Frederick into the coach, he insisted Francis go back for his Manton, which he must have dropped during the duel when he was shot. The pistol was still primed—I know he never fired, so it must have been—so Francis tried to unload it. In the moving carriage. The damned thing had a hair trigger, of course.”

“But why did he never say so?”

Wynn shrugged. “Because he was too much the coward to admit that he’d killed his own brother, even if by accident. It was easier to pay the surgeon to emigrate and blame me. He convinced the authorities to press charges, and I was gone, with no one the wiser.”

The word Torrie used was one her mother had never taught her. “So what will happen to him now?”

“What can happen? He cannot give me back the lost years or my family’s regard.”

“That’s it? Francis will simply get away with blackening your name?” Torrie was furious.

“What would you have me do, my love, challenge another Lord Lynbrook? Besides, he has three children.”

“I thought the current Lady Lynbrook had two sons.”

“Ah, but his mistress has a daughter. But do not fear, my bloodthirsty little bride, justice will be done. Lynbrook’s confession will be made public. He will never show his face in London again, never cross my path. And that Lynbrook estate where we all met, near Bette’s family property and Troy’s father’s manor, is not entailed. My man checked. I think that would make a fine wedding gift for Major and Mrs. Campe, do not you?”

“I think you are the finest, most generous man I have ever known.”

“Don’t forget the luckiest, my dear.”