Elizabeth Thornton (26 page)

Giles put an arm around her shoulders and urged her toward the carriage. When she looked into Harriet’s worried face, tears rose in her throat, cutting off words, but Harriet’s greeting was the perfect antidote to self-pity.

“If you’d stayed with your family instead of going to live in Bath, none of this would have happened. Do you realize we’ve been up all night trying to find out where they’d taken you? Do you know what we’ve suffered these last few hours?”

“Harriet!” chided Giles, then stopped when his wife suddenly burst into tears and flung herself into Abbie’s arms.

“I’m going to kill that man!” sobbed Harriet.

“Who, dear?” asked Abbie.

The carriage was moving off, and she couldn’t help looking out the window, at the grim redbricked building that had almost no windows. She still didn’t feel safe, and she wondered if she would ever feel safe again.

“Hugh Templar!” retorted Harriet.

“Oh, no,” said Abbie. “I’m reserving that pleasure for myself. But how do you know about Hugh?”

“He was the one who told us that you’d been held for questioning,” sobbed Harriet.

“Oh, he did, did he?” said Abbie bitterly. “When did you see him? What did he say?”

Giles did most of the talking. He stuck to the facts, but it was Harriet’s nasty asides that fleshed out the picture that formed in Abbie’s mind. Harriet and Giles had attended the opera that evening, and during one of the intermissions, when they were strolling in the corridor, they’d come face-to-face with Hugh.

“And that showy actress was hanging on his sleeve,” hissed Harriet. “Barbara Munro!”

Harriet was so incensed at this perceived betrayal of her sister, that she’d shaken off her husband’s restraining hand and planted herself directly in their path. “I asked after you, of course,” said Harriet, “and was dumbfounded when he said that he had escorted you to London.”

Giles said reasonably, “Naturally, we were alarmed because you had not turned up at the house. I think that shocked Templar too.”

“No, it didn’t,” said Harriet nastily. “He shrugged his shoulders and moved past us. I wouldn’t have known him, he was so changed.”

“But he did come back,” Giles pointed out. “He told us that he was confident you would turn up soon, but if not, I should apply to Colonel Langley at the Horse Guards. He’d held you for questioning on a matter of national security.”

“Then he just walked away,” declared Harriet, “as though he had not blown our world apart.”

“He’s good at doing that,” said Abbie.

There followed hours of trying to track down this elusive Colonel Langley. He wasn’t in his office, and he wasn’t at his club where, they’d been told, he was living while his house in Chelsea was being refurbished. Giles wanted Harriet to go home, but she flatly refused.

“How could I face our mother and Daniel with the news that you were missing too? We’ve all been so worried about George.”

“What have you heard of George?” asked Abbie.

“He arrived home from Paris when we were visiting you in Bath. There was a note waiting for us when we reached London. He was going off to visit some famous
landscape gardener. He would write to us, he said. But that was weeks ago. Daniel and Giles have approached all his friends, but no one knows where he is. And now this!”

“There’s a lot more to it than you know,” said Abbie.

Giles cut her off. “We don’t have time to go into all this right now. We’re almost there. To cut a long story short, I eventually tracked down Colonel Langley’s aide, Mr. Richard Maitland. He’s waiting for us now, Abbie. This won’t take long, then you’ll be free to go.”

“Maitland!” Abbie shuddered in reaction. “He’s worse than the Spanish Inquisition. Giles, I can’t face him again. I can’t!”

“You have no choice.”

“I don’t like it,” said Harriet. “Either Abbie’s under arrest or she’s not, and if she’s not, no one can force her to do what she doesn’t want to do.”

“It’s not a case of force,” said Giles. “It’s a case of clearing up a few minor details.”

“I still don’t like it,” said Harriet. “What does he want with her?”

“Let’s wait and see, shall we?”

Abbie didn’t like it either. She didn’t like the look of the rundown area they were driving through. She didn’t like the omissions in her brother-in-law’s replies to her sister’s questions. Her instincts were telling her to run for her life, but Giles had grasped her elbow, as though he was well aware of what her instincts were telling her.

When the coach came to a stop, Harriet started to get up.

“You’re not invited,” said Giles.

Harriet’s mouth dropped open. Quickly recovering herself, she said, “I don’t care whether I’m invited or not. I’m not letting Abbie out of my sight.”

“Sit down,” said Giles in an awful voice.

Harriet sat. “Wait,” she cried when he opened the door.

“What it now?”

She peeled out of her sable-lined coat. “Abbie is not going in there looking like a street hawker. Abbie, take off Giles’s cloak and put this on. At least it will keep you warm.”

Harriet had never allowed anyone to borrow her clothes, not even when she was a girl, because she was always so particular about her things. That she was doing it now gave Abbie an eerie sensation of approaching doom.

She should have run while she still had the chance. Now her legs had turned to jelly.

“Good girl,” said Giles, looking at his wife, then he stepped down from the coach and helped Abbie alight.

A few steps from the carriage, he turned to face her. “Abbie,” he said, bringing her eyes to him, “we don’t have much time, so listen carefully. You must prepare yourself for something of an ordeal. Early this morning, soldiers surrounded this house and tried to arrest the occupants. When the men inside resisted, the soldiers stormed the house and everyone inside was killed.” He paused. “Are you with me, Abbie?”

She was ahead of him. “George?” she got out on a shaken whisper.

“I don’t know,” he said gravely. “I don’t know. But it’s not only George they’re interested in. Maitland thinks you may be able to identify some of the others. I’ll be right with you, so you’ll have nothing to fear. Do you understand?”

She nodded and thought how odd it was that she could think at all.

“Good. Then let’s get it over with.”

The house, unlike the others in the area, was detached and stood back from the road on its own little garden. Its
front door was off its hinges, and glass from broken windows littered the paths and barren flowerbeds. A line of soldiers was keeping back small clusters of people who had congregated outside the iron railings. Richard Maitland met them on the front steps.

“This way,” he said quietly.

Giles slipped an arm around Abbie’s shoulders, as though he were afraid she would faint. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t going to faint. She knew she had to go through with this; she had to find out if George was among the dead.

The bodies were laid out on the floor in the front room, with a blanket covering each one. There were four of them in all. She saw blood on the walls and dark stains on the carpet, but no blood on the blankets that covered the bodies.

She noticed other things: a pair of worn boots flung into a corner; a mans jacket draped over a chair. Two men in dark coats were going through the drawers of a desk, and soldiers were coming and going on the stairs, laughing and chatting to one another, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened here.

It was obscene. It was sickening. She couldn’t go through with it. She wasn’t strong enough.

Giles’s arm tightened around her shoulders, and his eyes searched her face. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this,” he said, “but it’s a condition of your release. Do you understand, Abbie?”

She looked into his kind brown eyes and blinked back tears. If anyone had to be with her, she was glad it was Giles. He was as steady as a rock, and she trusted him.

She thought of Hugh, of how she had trusted him once, and pain twisted inside her.

“Abbie, what is it?”

“It’s all right, Giles,” she said. “I’m stronger than you think.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded all the same, then turning to Maitland, he said, “Who are these men?” and he indicated the inert shapes beneath the blankets.

Maitland answered, “Suspected traitors. The name of one was in the book Miss Vayle gave us. He’s a student at the university. We don’t know about the others yet. All we know is that they resisted arrest.”

“Then let’s get this over with.”

At a nod from Maitland, a soldier rolled back the first blanket to reveal the face of a young man with red hair. He looked as though he were sleeping. It was horrible, but he wasn’t George, and Abbie wondered if it was blasphemy to feel such joy.

“Do you recognize this man?” asked Maitland.

“No,” she whispered.

He was looking at her intently. “No, I swear it,” she cried.

Each time a blanket was raised to reveal the face of the man it covered, her heart would lurch, then subside when she saw it was not George. Apart from the redhaired boy, she recognized them all. They were the men who had attacked Hugh at the Black Boar. But they did not all look as though they were sleeping. The last man looked hideous in death. It was the man in the brown coat.

“For God’s sake!” Giles burst out. “Is this really necessary?”

Maitland spoke in the same controlled tone. “Miss Vayle, do you recognize this man as well?”

“Yes. He seemed to be the leader. I told you, these are the men who attacked Mr. Templar at the Black Boar.”

Suddenly, it was too much for her. She tore out of
Giles’s clasp and stumbled from the room, through the hall and onto the front steps. Her stomach began to heave, and as though it mattered she quickly removed her sister’s coat and handed it to Giles as he caught up with her. “Harriet is so particular,” she got out, then she began to retch. When the spasms were over, she collapsed against the wall.

After some minutes had passed, Giles said, “Shall I carry you to the carriage?”

She waved vaguely at the room she’d just exited. “They all look so young. Their whole lives were in front of them. Why, Giles? Why?”

“I don’t know, Abbie.”

She straightened when Maitland appeared behind Giles, then she turned her head when someone called her name.

Hugh Templar was striding up the path to the house. He was immaculately turned out in evening clothes, and looked as though he were on his way home from a ball. It was quite possible. Most people went to balls or private parties after they’d taken in the opera.

As he leaped up the steps and stood towering over her, she detected the faint smell of a woman’s perfume on his clothes. Maitland had told her the truth. While she was incarcerated in Newgate, Hugh had been enjoying himself; while the lives of the young men in this house had been snuffed out, he had been amusing himself with a woman.

Their eyes collided, hers wild and dilating, his flaring with shock as he noted the sickly pallor of her skin and her disheveled appearance. She looked like a homeless waif of the streets.

“My God, Abbie, what happened to you?” When she
was silent, he looked beyond her to Maitland and Giles. “What is she doing here?” he demanded.

Maitland said, “The same as you. She came to identify the bodies.”

The murderous rage in Hugh’s eyes dimmed when he looked down at Abbie. “I didn’t know you were being held in Newgate,” he said. “That was no part of our bargain. I’ve been trying to find you all night.”

She cowered away from the hand he held out to her. “This was not supposed to happen,” he said. “I made a bargain with Colonel Langley: amnesty for you and your brother if I gave him the book. Tell her, Maitland.”

Maitland smiled as though he were enjoying every moment of this encounter. “That’s perfectly true, Miss Vayle,” he said. “We were to let you go after we questioned you. And we’ve held to our part of the bargain. You should be grateful to Mr. Templar for all he’s done for you.”

Hugh’s eyes never left Abbie’s. “There are no charges pending against you or your brother. Do you understand, Abbie? I did that much for you. Go home and forget about all this.”

As though she could forget all the grief and misery she’d endured because of this man. She thought of the room she’d just left, and of the lifeless young men who were huddled beneath dirty blankets, and all the time she’d feared one of them would be George.

Before she knew what she was going to do, she lashed out at him, and the impact of her open palm sent his head jerking back. A fierce pleasure surged through her as she saw the imprint of her hand on that handsome face.

Drawing on the fragile reserves of her strength, she turned to her brother-in-law. “Giles, please take me home.”

Hugh watched her until she had passed through the line of soldiers at the gate. When he spoke to Maitland, he sounded shaken. “Is her brother among the dead?”

“No.”

Hugh let out a breath. “Thank God for that.”

“But she identified three of the bodies. They’re the men who attacked you at the Black Boar.”

“I could have done that. There was no need to involve Miss Vayle.”

Maitland shook his head. “I wanted to see her reaction. She was very shaken. Now you’re much harder to read, Templar.”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said Hugh.

With the speed of a striking cobra, he smashed his fist into Maitland’s jaw, sending him reeling against a glass door. When the glass shattered and Maitland fell heavily to the floor, soldiers inside the house came running with their pistols drawn.

“Hold your fire!” roared Maitland. He wiped the blood from his mouth and grinned up at Hugh. “I’m going to stuff that silver spoon right down your throat and make you choke on it,” he said.

“And I,” snarled Hugh, “am going to teach you the manners your mother should have taught you. Where is Colonel Langley?”

“He left a while ago, so there’s no one to stop us. It’s just you and me.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.”

Maitland rose cautiously. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable first, shall we?” he said.

This was the signal for both men to remove their coats.