A Valentine Wedding (24 page)

He had no interest in returning to Almack’s and strode off to St. James’s Street, hoping that a few games of macao at Watiers would distract him. There was nothing he could do for Emma at this point, and fretting himself into a frenzy was futility itself.

Chapter Eleven

Paul Denis stepped back into the ballroom as Emma and her companions disappeared down the stairs to the street. A grim smile curled his lips. She should sleep now for upward of twelve hours. He would wait until the early hours of the morning before he and Luiz effected entrance. The servants would be well asleep by then, the streets deserted.

By midday tomorrow, he would have the information he sought—one way or another.

When the clocks struck one, he left Almack’s and walked quickly to Half Moon Street. The streets were wet, glistening in the moonlight, and where the pavement ended thick mud began.

Luiz was waiting for him, “You made good time, Paolo. I’ve rope and a gag … and a crowbar. If we can’t force the lock on the French door, we’ll have to break the glass. There’s treacle and paper.” He indicated the small valise on the table.

“Good. I’ve given the woman a powerful dose of laudanum. Enough to knock out a horse. I doubt she’ll wake before midmorning.” Paul began to throw off his evening clothes.

“She took it all right, then?”

Paul gave a scornful laugh as he stepped into a pair of dark britches. “She was asleep before she left that absurd establishment. Of all the insipid amusements. No drink, no cards, except for sixpenny points, and a host of starched matrons enforcing ludicrous rules. I tell you, Luiz, I shall be glad to leave this godforsaken country. Its inhabitants are either mad or double-dyed rogues.”

He thrust his arms into a dark jacket, buttoning it right up to the neck so that not a glimmer of white from his shirt was visible. He drew on thin black kid gloves, smoothing them over his long fingers.

There was something ineffably sinister about the way he flexed his fingers. Luiz felt his scalp crawl. He’d seen Paolo strangle a man with those gloved hands. And he’d seen his face as he’d done so. Utterly impassive, without a twitch of emotion as he steadily squeezed the life out of his victim.

A wise man would ensure he never got on the wrong side of Paolo. It would be well for the woman if the document they sought was readily to be found.

They left the house, moving swiftly through the night-dark streets, blending with the shadows. Paul carried a swordstick. Pistols were thrust into his belt beneath his coat. In his pocket he carried a weighted garotte.

A member of the watch, his lantern held high on a pole, emerged from a dark alley, his boots thick with mud. He glanced at the two men and shifted his heavy bludgeon in his free hand. God-fearing citizens
on legitimate business did not walk the streets in the dark of the night. Carriages were one thing, foot traffic quite another.

He demanded belligerently, “Where’re you gents off to at this time o’ night?”

Paul was in a vicious mood. He had been humiliated twice in two days. First by his assailant of the previous night, and then again by Emma Beaumont. Even though her rejection didn’t affect his plans adversely, his pride was badly damaged.

The watchman took a step toward him. It was a mistake. The wicked strip of weighted leather curled through the air and snapped around the man’s neck. In the same movement, Paul had stepped behind him, catching the free end, drawing it tight.

It was over in a matter of seconds. The man slid heavily to the ground, his lamp crashing in a flare of flaming oil.

“Get rid of him, Luiz.” Paul gestured disdainfully toward the dark alley from whence the watchman had emerged. He stamped on the flame and kicked the still-sputtering lamp into the mud of the kennel.

Luiz dragged the body into the lane, rolling it up against a wall, where it blended with the black mud beneath it. It would be discovered sometime in the next day or two, just one of the many unsolved crimes that littered the city’s back alleys. It would draw no more than a shrug from the ineffective watch.

“Eh, Paolo, was that necessary?” he muttered when he returned.

Paul coiled the garotte and dropped it into his pocket. “He annoyed me. I felt like it,” he said with a dismissive shrug. He started off again, Luiz hurrying at his side.

A wise man did not get on the wrong side of Paolo. Oh, no, most definitely not.

They met no other challenge and turned onto Mount Street just as the clouds most conveniently rolled over the moon. “The gods smile on our little enterprise,” Paul remarked. He was feeling lighter, as if relieved of some weight.

“This way.” Luiz led the way into the passage that ran between Emma’s house and its neighbor. The bare branches of the beech tree hung over the top of the wall. Luiz put down the valise, shinned up the wall with surprising agility, and swung himself into the branches of the tree.

“Are there lights?” Paul called softly.

“No, house is dark as the grave,” Luiz replied, then reflected that that was an unfortunate simile in the light of their recent encounter. “Throw the valise up.”

Paul tossed it up and Luiz caught it easily and dropped it to the ground. Then he jumped from the branches of the tree to the soft earth beneath.

Paul was up and over the wall before Luiz had straightened from picking up the valise. Paul looked at the dark bulk of the house, getting a sense of it. “The woman’s chamber is at the front. She will have a boudoir or dressing room. We’ll look there first.”

He darted at a crouch across the lawn to the glass doors to the music room, then stepped aside to give Luiz room. Luiz was the expert at breaking and entering.

“There’s a bolt,” Luiz said with a grunt. “I’ll have to break the top pane and reach it from there.”

“Well, get on with it, then.” Paul glanced impatiently up at the top-floor windows. It was close to three in the morning. No one would be awake.

Luiz spread treacle on the paper and plastered it
against the windowpane. He raised the crowbar and drove it against the paper-covered glass. It shattered with barely a sound as the broken glass stuck to the treacle. Carefully Luiz peeled away the paper, dropping it to the grass. Then he reached in and drew back the bolt. It took him a minute to break the rather fragile latch, and the door swung open onto the darkened music room.

Now Paul moved ahead. He crossed the room to where a door stood open onto the passage leading to the central hall. A candle burned low in its sconce, casting sufficient light for him to see into the hall with its curving staircase.

He nodded to Luiz, who was beside him now, and moved out. He clung to the wall, sidling soundlessly. The house was in dead silence. He trod up the stairs, testing each one for a creak before stepping on it, tiptoeing along the edge closest to the banister. Luiz faithfully stepped into his footsteps.

At the head of the stairs, Paul stopped to get his bearings, ears straining to catch the slightest sound. The landing stretched to right and left. A corridor ran off it to the chambers at the rear of the house. Those held no interest for him.

A pair of handsome double doors faced the head of the stairs, centered on the landing. He pictured the windows she had pointed out to him from the street and knew that she lay asleep behind those doors.

Once behind those doors, he would have all the time he needed for a thorough search. She was not going to wake up, and the household wouldn’t stir before five-thirty at the earliest.

He stepped across the landing and laid a hand on the gilded doorknob. Luiz was behind him; he could
hear his rapid breathing. The knob turned without a squeak and the door swung open.

The chamber was softly lit by the well-banked fire. Paul slipped inside, pressing himself against the wall as Luiz followed him, closing the door soundlessly at his back. They both stood motionless until any disturbance in the air caused by their entrance had dissipated. Now they could hear the regular breathing from the poster bed, the creak of the bedropes as the woman stirred in her sleep.

The curtains were not drawn around the bed, but it didn’t matter, Paul reflected. There was no danger of her opening her eyes.

There was a door leading off the chamber from the right-hand wall. The boudoir or dressing room. He moved forward, on tiptoe across the thick carpet, glancing once toward the bed. She lay on her back, her arms flung above her head, the covers disarrayed over the long sprawl of her limbs.

Paul felt the first stirring of arousal. For all his acting, he had not once felt the slightest desire for the woman. She was merely a means to an end. But now, seeing her so vulnerable, so available, that quickness of wit and movement slowed, that clever tongue silenced, his blood heated, his flesh hardened.

But now was not the moment for distraction. Maybe he could have her later. After the business was done. She owed him some recompense. He trod swiftly to the door, opened it, and found himself in a small dressing room.

Luiz closed the door and they stood there in the dark room. There was no firelight to aid them.

“Light a candle,” Paul instructed softly.

Luiz found flint and tinder on the mantelpiece and lit a wax taper that stood on the dresser. The light flickered and then burned strong, throwing their shadows, huge and distorted, against the papered walls.

Now they didn’t speak. Paul rolled back the cylinder front of the secretaire and examined the contents. There were twelve little drawers, for monthly accounts, and two larger ones in the main body of the piece.

On the writing shelf was a leather writing case. It had a gold lock. The key was not immediately apparent. He began to go through the little drawers. They were filled with pieces of paper. Behind him, Luiz, silently methodical, was searching the armoire.

In the adjoining room, Emma sat bolt upright. Her head felt thick and achy, her throat was dry, and there was a nasty taste in her mouth. But she barely noticed these discomforts.

What had awakened her?

She blinked into the firelit gloom of her chamber. She couldn’t remember going to bed. The last thing she remembered was getting into the carriage outside Almack’s on King Street. And even that memory was somewhat blurred.

But something had awoken her. And then she saw it. The tiny flicker of gold beneath the door to her dressing room. She sat motionless, holding her breath. No servant would be in there at this time of night. Could it be Maria? No, of course not. What would Maria want in there?

She listened, straining her ears, and heard the faintest sounds of movement. The slight scrape of a drawer, the creak of a cupboard door.

Her heart began to pound. There was some indefinable
menace in the air. Whoever was in there was up to no good. Thieves? Had to be. Should she confront them? No.

Emma didn’t lack courage, but neither was she stupid. A lone unarmed woman confronting an unquantifiable danger was a fool. She reached for the bellpull beside her bed, took a deep breath, and yanked on it … again and again and again. It would ring in the servants’ quarters—an urgent peal that would bring Tilda running.

Then she slid soundlessly to the floor and went to the door leading to the corridor. She flung it wide and yelled for help at the top of her voice.

Paul dropped the leather writing case with a vile oath. Luiz stood frozen for a second. They both stared at the door leading to the bedchamber. Then Luiz raced to the window of the dressing room and flung up the sash. It looked down onto the side passage. A copper drainpipe ran alongside the narrow sill. Luiz swung himself through the window and onto the drainpipe with all the agility of a monkey.

Racing feet sounded on the stairs; shouting voices. Paul bent to snatch up the writing case and raced for the window just as the door to the bedchamber was flung open.

Harris in his nightshirt stood there with a blunderbuss. He fired at the window as the dark-clad figure disappeared over the sill. “Missed him!” he said furiously, running to the window. The blunderbuss had only one shot and he stared in helpless frustration at the wiry figure scrambling down the copper drainpipe.

Emma ran to his side. “Get people to give chase, Harris! Try and trap them in the passage.”

Harris ran from the room, bellowing orders to the excited crowd of servants thronging the corridor.

Emma leaned out of the window as far as she could, trying to keep the figure in view. But he was already blending with the shadows. The side door opened, sending a shaft of light to pierce those shadows. The figure ducked expertly away from the light. But in the fleeting moment of illumination, she had seen another figure farther down the passage. An accomplice, presumably.

“My dear … oh, my dear, whatever is happening?” Maria appeared in the dressing room, her nightcap askew over neat rows of curling papers, feet bare, her wrapper hanging open over her nightgown. “Is it a fire?” Her eyes were wide with shock.

“No. Thieves,” Emma informed her, surprised at how calm she now was. She continued to hang out of the window as her own servants poured into the passage. “They’ve gone toward the mews,” she called down.