A Fine Caprice - A Regency Romance (23 page)

There came the quiet click of a door latch.

Caprice and Lord Merridew grew very still.

‘Mind he stays inside now,’ Maria’s voice, speaking softly in Italian.
‘And keep him quiet!’ There came a soft, murmured accent and then the door clicked softly shut. They barely heard the woman’s muted footfalls as she moved up the hallway. Hadley’s room was only two doors up and Caprice heard the sound of soft scratching aga
inst the wood and then that
of another door
opening
.

‘Is it time?’
Hadley’s voice, just a whisper.

‘It is. Come along.’

‘But we still don’t know where he is going to arrive!’

‘We know it is tonight
. We shall manage
. And we have done all we can, yes? Ours are not the
only eyes keeping watch
.’

‘True enough
.
Let’s just get it over with. I am a bundle of nerves!
’

Behind the curtain, Caprice and his lord
ship shared a
triumphant look.
At least, Caprice assumed it to be
triumphant
, for t
he light wasn’t good enoug
h to be sure about the expression that was on his face
.
But their surmises had proved to be correct;
now was their opportunity to discover what was going on.

Their quarry moved off down the hallway, heading in the direction of the stairs.

‘What do you suppose it is
?’ Caprice hissed.

‘
I have no idea but it’s all very
interesting.
I’ll allow, I’m curious.’

‘Come on. We don’t want to l
ose them.’

‘No, but we don’t want to get too close
either
.
They’ll both be as jumpy as kittens
, worried that somebody in the household will discover them.
If they suspect that we’re about the damned pair will pretend they’re on some sort of romantic tryst, or something.’

‘No offense, my lord, but it’s hard to imagine anybody being romantic with your cousin.’

‘Oh no offense taken. I couldn’t agree more.’

Leaving the window embrasure, they scurried towards the head of the stairs, still holding their boots so as not to alert Mr. Ravener and the Grand Duchess. From between the railings above, a soft glow could be seen in the hallway below, the muted light of a lantern, just as th
ey had. His lordship moved swiftly to
the top of the stairs,
Caprice close behind him in time to see the pair disappear down the hallway leading to the kitchen.

‘The cellars?’ he murmured.

Caprice shivered. Of
course it would be the cellars.
Dark, dank and rat filled. Where else would they be going? But if the Grand Duchess had the mettle for it then Caprice certainly wasn’t going to b
aulk at returning to those
long, eerie chambers beneath the house
. While she hurried along with Lord Merridew, she wondered who on earth was so important that the pair must g
o to so much trouble to ensure he was met
.
Clearly this was a profoundly secret
encounter.
Was Bonaparte himself coming over? The thought sent a jolt of genuine alarm through her but she quickly chided herself for her foolishness. The little emperor was probably the last person who would wish to be quietly spirited onto an English beach
in the dead of night
. Rumor had it that he never went anywhere without half an army surrounding him
, which would certainly put paid to a visit
such as this
.

No, whoever Mr. Ravener and the Grand Duchess were after was most likely a spy, much like themselves.
A spy with information.
An Englishman? Or a Frenchman bringing news of the deployment of English soldiers on the continent.
She wondered what Lord Merridew would do when he discovered the villain. What he would do with both of his guests, for surely he did not want his cousin to be kn
own as a traitor to his country? And yet if whoever it were caught tonight there was no way that Hadley Ravener would not be implicated.
Unless
Lord Merridew intended to shush the th
ing up to avoid a family scandal?

Realizing that s
uch speculation was ridiculous (for she could not possibly know what was on the man’s mind),
Caprice turned her attention to what lay immediately ahead.

They had slipped their boots on at the foot of the stairs before continuing carefully on. The kitchen was dark apart from the faint light coming through the uncurtained windows. They hesitated, staring at the door of the cellar and then the back door.
His lordship strode across to the one that led to the scullery and the rear garden.

‘Locked,’ he whispered, ‘so it has to be the cellars.’

‘We’ll ne
ed light.’ Or they would immediately brea
k their necks for the stairs would be
treacherous without illumination
.

He nodded and opened one of the shutters on th
e lantern he held, freeing
the barest fraction
of light
to
show
their way. Opening the cellar door, he stood for a long moment, listening. Apparently satisfied by what he heard – or didn’t hear – he stepped through and Caprice followed. The scant ray of light he had allowed shone directly ahead but Caprice was following and couldn’t see her footing clearly so she was forced to lay her hand on his shoulder to steady herself. At the bottom of the stairs, they paused to listen again while
shadows
loomed around them.

From what she could recall of her earlier trip, the cellar was crowded with things,
some that belonged in a cellar like the
wine racks
, but a great
many other things that didn’t. On their right, c
hests
were
stacked on top of each other and furniture piled everywhere,
tables both large and ridiculously small, delicate things meant for a ladies drawing room
next to large, cumbersome
pieces suited to the garden
.
A little to the left w
ere a pile of mesh cages, a dressmaker’s mannequin that made Caprice’s heart jump nervously and indeterminate sha
pes
shrouded beneath
aged cover
s
. It was, quite frankly, not the kind of place one
wanted to spend
time.
There was no sound but
steady drip of water coming from somewhere to their left.

His lordship
moved forward slowly and she followed, unwilling to let either the man or the lantern out of her sight. She would
hate
to be
alone down here. And imagine if there were no light? The thought
caused another surge of panic within her and she sucked in a deep breath for she was neither alone
nor
lightless and had
no reason to think she would be
any time soon.

The cellar was large, branching off in several directions. His lordship had elected to go to the subcellar they ha
d investigated that morning. He swung opened the door that was set into the shelves and put his head through the door,
glancing down the stairs.

‘It’s impossible to tell if the
y went down there,’ he breathed. ‘I
t’s black as pitch.’

Caprice glanced to either side of her but it was
as black as pitch everywhere except
where the lantern
cast its brave illumination
. ‘Do we go down?’

‘No point
,
as we do
n’t know if that was their direction. Perhaps they went
through some other damn tunnel,
’
he sounded annoyed. ‘Damn, but we should have risked discovery and hung on their heels
.
They’ve
disappeared on us and we haven’t any idea where they are.
’

‘
Well they have to come back, don’t they? It seems likely that they’ll come back this way
if they want to go upstairs
.
’

‘
True. S
till
, it’s
a bloody nuisance.
I might just have to shake Hadley until his teeth ra
ttle to find out where that
tunnel is that leads to the beach. You’re
right, however. They’ll
come back this way in all likelihood.
’

‘
So we just need to wait
.
’

‘True enough
.
In the meantime, I would be interested to see how far back these cellars go
.
Back to
the stairs, young Master Morris.
’

She turned obediently
. ‘They said they didn’t
a
ctually know where the person they were supposed to be meeting was turning up
,’
Caprice reminded him. ‘
Do you think they’re trailing around down here as well
?’

‘Maria seemed to have some
definite idea
s on the subject
.
She is about twenty times smarter than my dear cousin so sh
e just might just get it right
.’

‘So
we just stay at the foot of the stairs
and wait for them to come back again
?’ It sounded like a sensible course of action to Caprice. She did not fancy trailing around this unappealing landscape in the least.
‘You think
they
’ll really bring this mystery man
into the house?’

‘Why not? It’s big enough – and empty enough – to hide an army.’

Oh marvellous -
she might
soon
be sharing quarters with a French spy! ‘So shall we hide again and wait?’

‘I can’t think of a better course of action.’

They looked around them, his lordship unshuttering the lantern and holding it up. Yes, Caprice thought uneasily.
It really wa
s j
ust as unpleasant as it had been that
morning. ‘I suppose we might as well
make ourselves comfortable
,’ she murmured.

‘I might just see what’s in that direction. I’ve only been down here a couple of times and I’m not sure how far it extends.
I want to see if there are an
y other obvious ways out
. Another set of stairs, perhaps.
Wait here, just in case somebody comes back.’

‘By myself?’ the words were out before she could stop them
, an anxious squeak
.

He smiled at her. ‘Oh, yes. You don’t care for rats.’

‘
Nobody
cares for rats!’

‘They won’t approach you. If they see you, they’ll run away.’

‘Not if I see them first.
I’ll
run away.
Besides,’ she pointed out, a little desperately, ‘I don’t have a candle
and I absolutely am not going to sit here in the dark
.
Begging your pardon, my lord,
’
she added belatedly.

He looked around again and found a stub of wax stuck into the neck of a bottle
, one of several that had been set down by the foot of the stairs
. He lit the wick and handed it to her. ‘There you are.’

She looked at the dan
cing flame, unimpressed. It appeared far too tenuous
to be relied
up
on. ‘Will you be long?’

‘I’m just going to take a look around
. There might be another door that leads off it that we’ve missed.’

There were probably a dozen, Caprice reflected resentfully. She had never seen a place so riddled with needless passageways. But waiting a few feet from the foot of the stairs that led up to sanity – in the form of the kitchen – was better than nothing. If she fixed their position in her mind then she could probably manage to find them if her candle failed her.

‘Very well,’ she knew she sounded singularly reluctant but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

‘I won’t be long.’

‘I predict a
minute down here by myself will feel
like ten,’ she replied wryly. ‘
But you’re right
I suppose
; we need to know if there are other doors.’

‘Good lad.’

Caprice watched him – and the lantern – disappear with wistful eyes. She glanced around her, no
ticing how the candle flame bobb
ed merrily with her movements, making shadows dance. She needed a place to sit that was still near the stairs and yet within view of the door that Mr. Ravener and the Grand Duchess should be returning thro
ugh. With a guest accompanying them, hopefully
.
Which meant that she needed to be tucked out of sight for it would not do to scare them off. His lordship could take the situation in hand, the local magistrate, or whoever dealt with smuggli
ng on this particular coastline
could be called and then perhaps she could get to bed.