Elizabeth Thornton (37 page)

His lips began to twitch. “I told you—those were the names of partisans. If you don’t believe me, ask Harper.”

“Maybe I’ve got the names wrong, but I’m sure there’s quite a list.”

He chuckled. “Abbie, I should have married you when—” He stopped and looked at her warily. “I never did explain about Estelle, did I?”

“No,” she said. “You never did get around to telling me about your wife.”

“Now, don’t go giving me one of your clear-eyed stares.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t tell you about her because she’s not important.”

“Maybe not to you, but she is to me.” She sat on the bed and indicated a chair. “Sit down, Hugh. I’m all ears.”

“I know how to get rid of that clear-eyed gaze,” he said. “All-seeing, all-wise, and all-knowing Miss Abigail Vayle.” He tilted her chin up and lowered his head. “All I have to do, Abbie, is make love to you. Then your eyes get misty as they’re doing now, and your lids get heavy. I’ll bet your heart is pounding like an athlete’s after a race.” He put his hand over her breast. “See? I was right.”

“Hugh,” she said weakly, “not again.”

All amusement was gone from his face. “Then tell me no, Abbie.”

But she couldn’t say no to him, and he came down beside her on the bed.

Abbie was in the parlor when Hugh unlocked the door to Tom. Her cheeks were pink, her hair was barely tamed, and her breath had yet to even. She picked up the newspaper that lay on the table and was studiously reading it when Tom entered and began to gather the remains of their meal.

“What kept you, Tom?” asked Hugh innocently. “Miss Vayle and I have been counting the seconds till your return. Isn’t that right, Abbie?”

The look she sent Hugh would have burned him to a cinder if he’d seen it, but he wasn’t looking at her. He’d gone back to working on the notes he’d made.

She snapped the paper open and stared at it blindly. What she’d learned about Estelle could have been written on the head of a pin. The man was totally exasperating. But she’d learned something important. Whether Hugh knew it or not, Estelle’s betrayal still cast a shadow on his life. His trust was not given easily, and once lost was almost impossible to reclaim.

Now she understood why he’d been so hard on her. She’d betrayed him too, or so he thought, and she wondered how she could convince this difficult, complex, and wonderful man that she really loved him.

“Abbie?”

She snapped the paper again. “What?”

“I think I’ve found something interesting.”

She lowered the paper. “What have you found, Hugh?”

“It was staring at us in the face all the time.”

“What was?”

“Miss Fairbairn’s letter. Colette passed the book to you, but nobody knew about it because Colette was murdered. Six weeks later, Miss Fairbairn writes that letter to
Michael Lovatt, and suddenly everyone is after the book, British intelligence, Nemo and his conspirators, and, I believe, Alex Ballard. What does that suggest to you?”

“I have no idea.”

He looked at her somberly. “There’s someone in the foreign office, or someone in government circles, who is passing information to the enemy—a traitor. How else would Nemo have known that the book had turned up? We’re looking for a traitor.”

“Maybe Alex Ballard was the traitor.”

“I can’t believe that. Alex came to see me in Bath to enlist my help. I was the one person he could trust because I was no longer attached to British intelligence. He must have suspected that there was a traitor passing information to our enemies. I believe Nemo murdered him.”

Her eyes filled with misery. “A man like Nemo won’t let my brother live, will he, Hugh?”

“I’ll stop him, Abbie. This isn’t over yet.” When she was silent, he went on, “Just be patient. When Harper gets here with Giles’s lists, we’ll know more. Meanwhile, I’m going to write out a list of everyone remotely connected with that book and see if I can find some clue to who this traitor is.”

“Giles’s lists?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I asked Giles to give me a calendar of the engagements of the Royal family and the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Nemo is an assassin. The book, well, the only reason he wanted to destroy it was to protect his mission. His real mission, I mean.”

“To assassinate—? Who?”

“Someone important, someone whose death will profit Nemo and his master, Napoleon.”

She couldn’t hide her desperation. “We don’t have
much time. He said he would be leaving England in a few days.”

His eyes held hers. “I’ll find him, Abbie. Trust me.” He smiled whimsically. “I’m a gladiator, remember?”

Dark had fallen when they heard someone hammering on the door, then Harper’s voice calling out, “I have the newspaper you ordered, sir.”

This was another precaution, a code for “the coast is clear.” It seemed rather silly to Abbie. She didn’t see why Harper and Tom couldn’t simply say “the coast is clear,” but spies had their own way of doing things, and who was she to interfere?

Hugh never answered the door without his pistol in his hand. All these precautions made her realize just how dangerous he thought Nemo was.

Hugh entered the parlor first, and Harper was right behind him. Like Tom, he was all spruced up in his new livery, but unlike Tom, he was wearing a white wig, and his white gloves were immaculate.

“Did you get those lists?” asked Hugh.

“Right here,” answered Harper. He slipped his hand into the inside of his jacket and produced a folded wad of papers.

“Help yourself to a glass of wine,” said Hugh.

Abbie smiled when Harper removed his gloves before pouring out the wine. “I could take to a footman’s life,” he told her. “Do you know, they gets tipped for doing nothing? I captured one o’ them lady’s lapdogs in St. James’s Street, as it scuppered from a carriage, and its mistress gave me a half sovereign for my trouble. Coachmen never gets tipped for nothing around here.”

This was said in a baiting way for Hugh’s benefit, but Hugh was already studying the lists and ignored him.

It was still raining outside. The room was warm. Abbie felt safe with Hugh and Harper here with her. She didn’t think of these two men as master and servant. They were comrades, which explained why Harper overstepped the bounds of what was proper between a servant and his master.

Her gaze moved to Hugh when he threw down Giles’s lists. “What is it, Hugh?” she asked.

“I’ve been a damned fool!” he said. “A stupid, prejudiced damned fool!” He stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s one piece of the puzzle that is still missing, but everything else has fallen into place. There’s a dinner in the Prime Minister’s honor tomorrow night at Lord Merkland’s house. I think Nemo will be there, and George, too. I need to see the guest list for that dinner party.”

Abbie’s voice was shaking. “So you know where George is?”

“No, not yet. Harper, you stay here with Miss Vayle. I’ll take Tom with me.”

He gave Harper the key to the door. “Don’t open the door until you hear me complaining about the weather. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

She had risen, and her hands curled around the back of a chair. “And if you don’t come back in an hour?”

“Harper will know what to do.”

Then, with Harper looking on, he kissed her swiftly and left the room.

W
hen Harper locked the door behind him, Hugh felt the rush of blood through his veins. He’d felt like this many times in Spain. His mind was razor sharp, racing, teeming with impressions. Abbie had given him the map and everything was falling into place. One little piece was missing, and when he had that he’d know his way out of the maze.

Tom came out of the room opposite the suite with his pistol cradled in one arm. “Follow me,” was all that Hugh said before descending the stairs.

The rain was coming down so thick and fast that it bounced off the pavement and ran in rivulets into the road. One of the hotel footmen held the doors for them and insisted on braving the elements to hail a hackney.

“I could ’ave done it,” said Tom sullenly.

Hugh had more to think about than Tom’s pique. “So you could, but then the footman wouldn’t get his tip, would he?”

As they made to enter the coach, Hugh pressed a shilling into the footman’s hand. Tom stuck out his bottom lip and glowered at the grinning lackey. Then Hugh
shoved him into the coach and gave the driver directions to Vayle House.

When the hackney pulled away, the footman took the coin he’d been given and examined it under the light of the porch lantern. He’d keep it as a lucky piece, he decided, something El Centurion had given him before he, Nemo, had brought his world down around his ears. Templar was going to Vayle House on the other side of Mayfair. There was more than enough time to take care of the girl and disappear into the night.

When he entered the hotel, he kept his face expressionless. The landlord’s wife was sitting in state in the little bar off the vestibule, and she wasn’t pleased that her servant had come down with a fever and had sent his “cousin” to take his place. At the moment she was happy with him for hailing the hackney for her guests. He wanted to laugh out loud. He’d been playing a game with El Centurion. He’d wanted to look into his eyes and show his scorn for Templar’s legendary reputation. He could have killed him there, on the spot, and his manservant with him. That he had not done so was a mark of his utter contempt. El Centurion was a nothing.

Nemo had had a few bad moments the night before when he watched them slip away from Vayle House in a boat. But he knew the value of patience. He’d taken a hackney to every spot on the river where they could have docked, and at the Blackfriars Inn, he’d been rewarded. One of the hackney drivers remembered a couple answering their description coming up from the river. He’d also overheard the directions the man had given his driver. They’d asked to be taken to a hotel in Gloucester Street, though he couldn’t remember which one.

He’d been here since dawn. He’d decided to take Templar
and the girl unawares, when they were sleeping. He had thought his best plan was to set a fire and get to the girl in the confusion. But this was better. Now there were only two of them to deal with.

The excitement of the chase began to hum in his blood. He could taste it, smell it. It was an aphrodisiac, hardening his body as no woman had ever done. It wasn’t always this way. Only those kills that mattered to him personally affected him like this. It would pass as soon as the blood poured out of her veins. But in the future, when he was pounding into some stupid woman, reaching for his release, he would remember the chase and the kill, and his body would explode with excitement.

The landlady had come out of the bar and was watching him. He went to the kitchen, picked up the first tray he came to, and went upstairs with it.

Abbie turned from the window where she’d watched the lights of Hugh’s hackney till they were swallowed up in the night. Harper was sitting at the table and was shuffling a deck of cards.

“It will help pass the time,” he said, and he began to deal.

Abbie nodded absently and picked up the lists Hugh had been reading before he suddenly took off. The engagements of all the members of the royal family were there as well as those of Lord Liverpool and the leading lights of his cabinet.

“What made him suddenly decide that Lord Liverpool is Nemo’s target? Why not the Prince Regent or Lord Castlereagh?” she asked.

“He didn’t say, but when you thinks about it, it stands to reason. The Prime Minister practically runs the country.”

“Does he? Much as my brother-in-law likes Lord Liverpool, he says that Castlereagh and Canning run the country.”

“Yes, but them Frenchies don’t know that, do they?”

She picked up the piece of paper with all Hugh’s notes. “Why does he want the guest list to Lord Merkland’s dinner party? Who does he expect to see on it?”

“He didn’t tell me that either. Look, Mr. Templar said he’d be back in an hour. Why don’t we have ourselves a nice rubber o’ piquet to make the time pass quickly?”

She sat down and picked up her cards. “I don’t know how to play.”

“I’ll teach you.”

She shivered, but not unpleasantly. It was all coming together. All those threads that had been left hanging were beginning to weave themselves together. There was a coherency here that she’d missed because she hadn’t tried to make connections. Things had happened and she had accepted them. But now she could see that they
were
connected. But she wasn’t seeing clearly. She was groping for something that was just out of reach.

She glanced at the clock. In one hour, Hugh would return. “All right,” she said, “let’s play cards.”

She had just taken the first rubber, much to Harper’s disgruntlement, when they heard a scratching on the outside door. Abbie looked at Harper. He had half risen from his chair and his hand was raised in a silencing gesture. When the scratching came again, he reached for the pistol on the table and padded to the front door. Abbie went after him.

The sound that came from the other side of the door sounded like an animal in pain, then in a hoarse broken whisper, the sound of her name, “Abbie.” Then there was a thud, as if someone had collapsed on the floor.