Lady Rogue (31 page)

“You’re mad,” she snarled, shoving to her feet. “How could you think—” She stopped herself, unable to continue the accusation. Of course he could think such a thing. From looking at the facts of her presence here, from the spying she’d been doing, there was no reason he should not. Unless he truly knew her, knew that she could never help kill anyone. Even British soldiers. But he didn’t know her. Not at all. “I’m leaving,” she whispered, wanting to flee before he said anything even more terrible. She turned around quickly, and slammed into someone. “Apologies,” she managed, backing up.

“My God,” a faintly familiar, faintly remembered voice said from directly in front of her. “It was you all along.”

She looked up, and froze. The Duke of Furth stood staring at her. There was gray in his hair now, and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his face was a little less angular. But she’d heard his voice only days ago, and it could be no other. “You…” she began, stepping back and turning away from his gaze.

“Kit,” Alex’s voice came from behind her, more controlled now. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t expected it to happen this way. I meant to tell you first. I—”

She whipped around to face him. “You are the traitor here!” she shouted, unmindful of the astounded stir she was causing throughout the club. “And I will have nothing further to do with you!” She turned on her heel. “With any of you!”

Alex slammed to his feet as, with a look of furious contempt, Christine turned her back on him and strode from the room. “Kit!” he roared, as if volume would somehow make her turn around and come back to listen to reason. She disappeared from sight, and he rounded the table to go after her. Something had gone terribly
wrong, and he had more than an inkling that he had made a grave error in judgment. He hoped with all his heart that he had. But she damned well wasn’t leaving until he was certain.

“Everton,” the Duke of Furth snarled from beside him.

Alex had forgotten his presence, and he spared the duke a quick glance. “Later,” he growled.

“Now,” Furth returned, and drove his fist full into Alex’s jaw.

Taken completely by surprise, the earl sat down hard on Kit’s chair, which thankfully she had left standing, or he would have ended up sprawled on the floor. His first impulse was to snap back to his feet and level Martin Brantley. Instead, he sat where he was and lifted a hand to rub at his jaw. “I assume you have a damned good explanation for that,” he growled.

“You knew all along that Kit Riley was my niece,” Furth hissed, sitting opposite him, his face white with fury. “And I have no doubt from what I witnessed at that bloody masquerade ball, and just now, that you have ruined her. By God, Alexander, I should kill you!”

Alex leaned forward, his own temper pushed as far as it could go without exploding. “She blames you for the death of her mother, and the very mention of your name makes her ill. You—”

“That is not—”

“You,” Alex hammered over the duke’s protest, “are here only because after we arrest your dear brother, I didn’t want her to leave my protection and have nowhere to turn.” He stood, still holding Furth’s angry gaze steadily. “At the moment, I don’t give a damn about your concerns. I am going to find Kit.” He turned for the door.

“I’m going with you,” came from behind him.

Alex spared a glance over his shoulder, though he didn’t slow down. “You can go to hell, Your Grace.”

Kit had, of course, absconded with Waddle and the coach, which he counted as a good sign. If she was
stealing his things, perhaps she could still be reasoned with. As one of the club’s footmen flagged down a hack for him, he checked his pocket watch, and was rather amazed to realize that the entire argument and following debacle had only lasted twelve minutes. He ordered the coach to Cale House, reasoning that she would head where she felt most comfortable.

Wenton appeared surprised to see the master of the house returning in a hired hack, but claimed not to have seen Kit.

“Are you certain, blast it?” Alex growled, angry that he had guessed wrong. He’d been doing far too much of that this evening.

“Yes, my lord. I haven’t seen…him for several days.”

“Damnation,” he said, then jabbed a finger at the butler. “If Kit appears, keep her here. I don’t care if you have to knock her out and tie her up to do it. Is that clear?”

“Yes, my lord,” Wenton answered, a rather anticipatory gleam entering his eyes. “Quite clear.”

He sent the hack away and had Conklin saddle Tybalt, who was none too pleased at the short rest. Alex wasn’t, either. Weariness and tension tightened his shoulders as he pounded through Mayfair in the dark. If she wasn’t at the Downings’, he was going to wring her neck.

She was at the Downings’. He knew it as soon as he rode into the drive and saw Waddle sitting on his perch looking bewildered. Gerald was halfway onto his gray gelding, his expression frighteningly sober. “Alex, thank God,” he said, removing his foot from the stirrup and striding forward to grab Tybalt’s bridle.

“Where is she?”

“I was just riding to find you. What in God’s name did you say to that girl?” his cousin asked hotly.

Everyone in London appeared to be angry at him tonight, but only one woman’s feelings concerned him in the slightest. “None of your damned affair. Where is she?”

“Alex?” Ivy’s voice came from the doorway.

The worried, uneasy feeling that had been building inside him since Christine had run out of the Traveller’s edged into full-fledged panic. He jumped out of the saddle and made his way around the Downings and into the house. “Kit!” he bellowed, shoving past Fender and making for the stairs. “Kit, I’m sorry! Let me explain!”

“Alex!” Gerald’s sharp voice came from behind him.

“What?” he snarled, taking the steps two at a time.

“She’s not here.”

He froze. One hand gripping the railing, he shut his eyes. “Where did she go?”

“She came running in,” Ivy’s voice took up, “though how she got out, I don’t know. She never—”

“Where did she go?” Alex repeated harshly, opening his eyes and turning to look down at his cousin.

“She said she was going to join her father.”

Alex slowly sat down on the stairs. It felt as though the air had been knocked out of his lungs, and it took him a moment before he could even say the words aloud. “She’s gone back to France,” he whispered.

“We tried to stop her,” Gerald offered, “but she was quite angry.”

The earl lurched to his feet again. “She’s a damned female, Gerald,” he rasped, vaulting back down the stairs. “You could have stopped her.”

He made his way outside again, the Downings trailing behind him, both wearing deeply wounded expressions. “Alex, I’m sorry,” Gerald repeated.

“Don’t be,” he said shortly, swinging up onto Tybalt again. “She’s not going anywhere. Not until I get a chance to straighten this out.”

“She took my best hunter,” his cousin pointed out.

“Over half an hour ago,” Ivy added.

“I’ll catch her in Dover,” Alex insisted, trying not to listen.

“I know you’re fond of her,” Ivy commented, obviously trying to soothe him. “Gerald and I are, too. Quite fond. But she couldn’t stay here any longer, anyway.
You know that. Perhaps she’ll be better off in Paris, after—”

“No!” Tybalt skittered beneath him at the outburst, and Alex yanked him back around.

“Alex, you—”

“No! She’s not leaving me this easily. Not without one bloody hell of a fight.” He kicked the stallion and rode out into the dark.

A
lex paced angrily at the end of Dover pier, while Gerald engaged in a lengthy and cumbersome interrogation of an increasingly suspicious ferryman. After what felt like hours, but must have been no more than a few minutes, his cousin handed the man a few shillings and tipped his hat. With a last look at him, the ferryman strolled off, whistling, to his shanty.

“Is he certain it was she?” Alex asked impatiently, stalking over to where Gerald stood looking out over the water.

“He nearly wouldn’t talk to me at all, with you standing there glowering like a gargoyle,” his cousin grumbled.

“Was she on the ship?” Alex insisted, not interested in his cousin’s commentary.

“Tall, well-featured, yellow-haired boy with a portmanteau, tipped well, and wouldn’t talk to anyone,” Gerald returned, ticking off each point on his fingers.

“Except for the not talking, it sounds like her,” Alex admitted reluctantly, alarm over her safety tearing through him with each pulse of the waters carrying her away. “And of course, she just made the tide, which puts her another twelve hours ahead of me, at the least.” He slapped his hand against the pilings. “Bloody chit has the luck of the Irish, that’s for damned certain.”

“Precisely what do you mean, ‘ahead of you’?” Gerald asked slowly.

“She’s not escaping that easily,” Alex stated, glancing at his pocket watch for the fiftieth time since they’d left London.

His cousin began shaking his head. “No. You are
not
going to France, Alexander.”

“Yes, I am.”

“There’s a war on, damn it!”

“I know that. And Christine Brantley’s going to be right in the middle of it. And it’s my fault.” That was what troubled him most. Whatever she felt about him, he wanted her to be safe.

“What exactly is it that you did, to make her flee the country?”

Alex glared at his cousin for a moment. “I had Furth meet us at the Traveller’s,” he admitted reluctantly.

Gerald looked at him. “Why, pray tell?” he queried faintly.

“I wanted him to protect her. I’d thought to cushion the blow first, but being my usual ham-fisted self, I managed to start an argument with her over her father, instead.”

“Even so, cousin, she’s the one who decided to leave.”

“She said she wouldn’t,” Alex insisted, knowing he was being stubborn and unreasonable and irrational.

“Don’t you think you’re being rather, how shall I say…obsessive?” Gerald asked carefully.

Alex looked out over the dark waters of the Channel, and at the lights of Calais glowing faintly through the mist just under the horizon. Somewhere between here and there was Christine. Weariness, frustration, anger, and loneliness hit him in succession, as they had when Ivy first announced that Kit had left him. “I love her, Gerald,” he murmured.

For a long moment Gerald just looked at him. “I’ll go with you,” he said finally.

Alex shook his head. “If something happens to me, you are the end of the Cale-Downing bloodline. Besides that, Ivy would murder me if I let you go. You stay here.”

“You are not going alone,” Gerald protested, though he appeared somewhat relieved to be excluded. Alex didn’t blame him. For anyone but Christine, he wouldn’t for a moment consider making the journey himself. A captured Englishman, especially one in the employ of His Majesty, would be a dead Englishman.

“I’ll be fine,” he returned, turning back to the head of the pier for Tybalt and the hunter Kit had left behind. With almost twelve hours before the tide changed again, he would just have time to ride back to London, gather some essentials, and return to Dover to take the next ship to Calais.

“If I may pose a question?” Gerald asked, falling in behind him.

“What?”

“How will you find her once you get to France?”

Alex stopped. By the time he put in at Calais, she would have twelve hours on him. All he knew of her whereabouts in Paris was that she and her father lived in Saint-Marcel, if that wasn’t another lie. Beyond that it would be hunches and guesswork, which under the circumstances would be neither the fastest nor the safest route to follow. Not that it mattered, for he would do whatever was necessary to find her. He started to answer that he would manage somehow, when it abruptly occurred to him that he might have an easier time of it than he’d imagined. “She’ll come to me.”

“And how will you manage that feat, when she’s already crossed the Channel to get away from you?” Gerald asked skeptically.

“I told you, it was a misunderstanding,” Alex growled.

“The size of Yorkshire,” his cousin added.

“Shut up, Gerald.” Alex swung into the saddle.

“Angry as you may be, cousin,” Gerald persisted, “you’re not leaving England without telling me what you’re planning.”

“Stewart Brantley is expecting a shipment of weapons to arrive in Calais any time now,” he returned impatiently as his cousin mounted up beside him. “He’ll
be waiting there for them. And he’ll take me to her, or I’ll kill him.”

“Saints bless us, Alexander,” his cousin said resignedly as they started back on the road to London. “You’re going to get us all in one hell of a lot of trouble.”

Alex gave a brief grin, grateful to have something to do besides worry. “I already have. But you’re right. I’m certain it will get worse.”

The Duke of Furth paced in his study, unmindful that it was several hours past midnight, and that his wife and daughter had retired to their respective bedchambers some time ago. Despite Everton’s plainly voiced wishes, he had followed the earl to Gerald Downing’s town house. While he had been unable to overhear the conversation, from the speed at which Everton, followed by his cousin, had departed, they were in pursuit of someone, and it took little deductive reasoning to guess who it might be. It had taken even less effort to return to Brantley House and dispatch one of his more trustworthy footmen to Cale House to watch for Alex Cale, and another to Dover.

He would not let events slip away from him again. And as Everton seemed to have the best idea of what was going on, keeping an eye on the earl seemed the wisest decision. And so Martin Brantley was still pacing an hour later when the man he had dispatched to Dover returned, tired and breathless. “Out with it,” he snapped, seating himself behind his desk.

“The Earl of Everton and Mr. Downing went to Dover, all right, but they weren’t there for long.”

“They set sail?” he asked sharply, leaning forward.

“No, Your Grace. The tide had turned. They stood about talking for a few minutes, then rode back to town like the devil was after them. I came straight back here to tell you.”

“So she’s gone back to Stewart,” Furth muttered darkly. “Damn Alexander for not telling her I would be there.” He was a little surprised that Alex had returned
to London; it seemed he’d misinterpreted several things concerning Everton and Christine. Odd, that.

“Your Grace?”

“Nothing, Edmund. Go get some rest.”

The footman bowed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

It made sense that the earl would return to Cale House, and Furth was less than surprised when half an hour later his second footman appeared to give his report. “An old man came to the house, and then a few minutes later he and his lordship left again. His lordship was wearing old clothes, like a commoner.”

Martin Brantley watched his footman out the door and then sat back in his chair. “So he’s going to Calais after all,” he murmured. “And with a war on yet.” The Earl of Everton had been behaving in a rather uncharacteristically haphazard manner for the past few weeks, in fact, a circumstance that coincided with Christine’s arrival in London. Apparently he had been correct in his interpretation of Everton’s state of mind, after all. Displeased by events and yet at the same time slightly reassured, he stood and went to wake his butler. He had some preparations of his own to make.

Calais was in a worse state than it had been when Christine had departed France a little less than a month ago. Confident as she was in her ability to navigate the streets, the heavy portmanteau she carried, and the nearly two thousand pounds inside it, made her acutely conscious of the beggars and thieves and army deserters wandering the streets in profusion. She should have left the blunt behind, but it was dearer than lifeblood to her right now. Aside from the clothes, it was all of him that she had taken, and such a sum meant less than nothing to someone as wealthy as Alexander Cale.

Besides, Everton had brought in the Duke of Furth, knowing full well how much she detested her uncle. Damn Alex anyway, for deciding he needed to take care of her, as if she were some sort of weak-minded miss. She could fend for herself. She didn’t need him. And she didn’t miss him. And she didn’t care that Viscount
Devlin wanted him dead, and that Everton hadn’t a clue.

Her father wasn’t at the tiny room they kept a short distance from the waterfront, but he obviously was living there, and she heaved a relieved sigh. At least Fouché hadn’t been lying about Stewart’s whereabouts or his well-being. She removed the money from the portmanteau, and then stuffed the bag under her cot. They’d been burglarized before, in Paris, and she would feel safer if the blunt stayed with her.

Relieved as she was at having caught up to her father, she hesitated a time before going out to seek him. He would be furious at her for returning on her own, and for the ruckus she had no doubt made in London upon her departure. She opened the small cupboard by the one and only door the shabby room boasted, and grimaced. As usual, there was nothing to eat. It startled her a little to realize that she had eaten nothing since dining with the Downings the night before, nearly twenty-four hours earlier. With another sigh, she made her way down in the gathering dark to one of the local taverns to get a meal.

The first person she encountered in the doorway of L’Ange Déchu was a large, drunk blacksmith, and as she elbowed him out of the way and stepped inside, she reflected with a slight grin that Francis Henning would be appalled at the company she was keeping.

“Kit!” Bertrand called from his usual spot behind the bar, and lifted a pair of mugs in her direction. “Welcome back, boy!”

Kit gave him a mock salute and dropped into a chair by the fire. “Thank you, Bertrand,” she returned in French, and requested a bowl of gravy and biscuits. After a month of thinking and speaking in English, except for a few choice insults to Alex, switching back to French felt odd. And in times such as these, making a slip would be dangerous. She would have to be careful.

“Kit!” Stewart Brantley’s jovial voice came from the doorway, and she looked up as he stepped into the tavern. “Welcome to Calais, my son.”

As Kit smiled and rose to receive a kiss on either
cheek, she studied her father’s countenance, looking both for some sign that he was angry at her, and any indication that what Alex had told her about him was true. She saw nothing other than pleased welcome in his eyes, but that was no surprise. She’d played games of chance against him often enough to know how proficient he was at disguising his thoughts. She stepped back from her father, motioning him to take a seat, and called for a bottle of ale.

“So, dear one,” Stewart murmured, sliding onto the bench opposite her. “Why have you left London and your cousin?”

“I was worried about you,” she replied in the same tone, reluctant to tell him the entire tale. “I expected you to collect me before you vanished.”

“You should know by now, child, that I can take care of myself quite adequately, and that I would come for you when I was ready for you to return.” He leaned forward, a displeased look crossing his features for the first time.

Kit nodded, angrier than she expected at his cool assumption that she would simply follow his lead, even not knowing where in God’s name he’d gotten to. “Forgive me for being concerned about you, then.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Angry, child? I thought you would be pleased to stay with your cousin another few days.”

There was the possibility, she realized, that he had known all along that Alexander Cale was his English spy. As she eyed him, though, it was impossible to tell whether he knew anything of Everton’s involvement. And if he didn’t know, she didn’t wish to tell him. He would ask too many questions, and it would hurt too much. She didn’t dare question her own silence beyond that. “Why would I want to spend more time with that arrogant bastard than I have to?”

Stewart Brantley motioned Bertrand for a plate of stew. “No reason.”

“By the by,” she added, “Fouché shot Lord Hanshaw before I could give him the name.” She leaned
forward. “Which raises the question, if the comte had his own informant, what the deuce did you need me in London for?”

He looked at her for a moment, then lifted his mug and drank. “I refuse to put my monetary and physical well-being in the hands of the Comte de Fouché.” Stewart Brantley pursed his lips, brief humor lighting his characteristically hard features. “But neither do I care to put all of my proverbial eggs in one basket.”

So she was simply part of his plot. That wasn’t so unusual, though in the past he had at least told her the circumstances. Christine found that she didn’t like the idea of being one of his pawns. “Fouché knows…about me,” she commented, watching again for his reaction.

Stewart nodded, his cool, assessing gaze on her. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be leaving France in another few days.” He took another swallow. “Whichever way this commotion ends, there’s more profit to be found elsewhere.”

Christine stirred at her gravy with one finger. Anywhere away from London, away from
him
, seemed both terrible and a tremendous relief. She wanted to be nowhere she might ever see him again, even by accident. “Good,” she muttered at her dinner.

There was silence for a moment. “So may I assume that Everton has satisfied his debt of honor to me?” her father murmured finally, looking into his mug.

“As much as such a man cares for honor,” she returned, the words difficult to force out through her tightening throat. “When do we leave?”

“Ah,” he breathed, sipping at his ale. “I see. He bedded you, and—”