Linda Needham (21 page)

The woman who had betrayed his trust. Who had loved him for all his goodness but couldn’t stay.

“What about the Tuppenny, Hollie?” The Major wrapped his bony fingers around her wrist. “I heard your father’s old printing press was taken by the Home Office.”

“It was. I barely escaped, myself.”

Joseph took on his lawyer’s air, whipped a notebook and pencil from his coat pocket. “You weren’t arrested, were you?”

Oh, if the earl had merely arrested her and
thrown her into his darkest prison, as he should have done!

“I was able to talk the magistrate out of it, Joseph. Pleaded innocence.” And a false marriage to a cowardly radical, whom she’d grown to dislike with her whole heart. “Since then, I’ve been investigating the massacre on my own. Because it wasn’t going to happen any other way, and I was given an unparalleled opportunity.”

The major scooted in closer, intent. “What have you got, Hollie?”

“Information from Captain Spindleshanks.”

“Coals to Newcastle, Hollie,” Joseph said, leaning back in his chair. “He’s coming to the meeting himself.”

“Yes, I know. He’s sent me in advance.” She’d kept the secret from everyone: her colleagues, her father’s closest friends—men she looked up to. She’d always hated secrets, and this one had gotten far out of hand, leaving her to wonder who she really was, and where she would go after this, after Charles learned what she’d done and who she was and set his bailiffs against her this one last time.

“What’s he been up to, lass?” The major patted her hand.

“Spying on the Home Office.”

“The bloody fool,” Joseph hissed through his teeth, then looked around the crowded dining room as though they were being watched.

And they might well be, though not by Charles or his bailiffs. Not yet, at least; he was in Westminster.

But that knowledge suddenly didn’t feel nearly as solid and certain as it had an hour ago. A coincidental trip that took him away from Everingham Hall, just when she needed to make her escape to Wolverhampton?

Yet nothing at all had changed here. The Fleece was a busy coaching inn, with hundreds of people bound for hundreds of places, at all hours of the day and night.

The noise was clamorous, and yet a sudden chill made her whisper, “Captain Spindleshanks wanted me to let Prentice know that he’s gained certain highly secret information.”

Joseph leaned into her whispering with his penchant for drama. “Highly secret, Hollie?”

State secrets. High treason, without a doubt.

“I have on me a copy of the parliamentary bill that the Home Office plans to enact against the press and the public come November.”

“What lunacy is this, Hollie?” The major took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “Have you been party to stealing from the Privy Council?”

“Not from them.”

“I don’t care from whom. You must hold fast by the laws, Hollie. Don’t give them any reason to arrest you.”

Lying to a magistrate, then impersonating a
married woman, falling madly for a peer of the realm, and finally stealing him blind.

“I’m well past that point now, Major. They think I’ve been printing material for Captain Spindleshanks.”

“Have you been?”

She nodded to the major, and the two men groaned in unison.

She’d never told a soul about her secret life. Too great an opportunity to be accidentally betrayed, to hurt the people she loved. The less they knew, the better for all concerned.

“And I would again, if I still had my press. I applaud the captain’s measures.”

“As I do, girl, but not his tactics, the fool.”

“I don’t think you understand him, Major.”

“I do, girl. And I can’t think of a better way of putting the noose around your neck than associating yourself with a felon. You’re playing a dangerous game here. Your life is in the balance.”

“But life is always dear,” she whispered, “no matter how we live it. And like it or not, Captain Spindleshanks will be in attendance at the meeting tomorrow morning. Please let Prentice know if you see him.”

“Your room is ready, Hollie.” Mrs. Conners bustled over to the table, her guileless smile as wide as the sleeves of her stylish gown.

Hollie was suddenly tired to her soul and aching for a bath. She smiled bravely at the con
cern in the major’s eye and met Joseph’s stalwart approval with the feeling that she was about to set her world spinning out of control.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She left the dining room and followed Mrs. Conners up the stairs, ready to sleep the night away.

She dismissed the odd sensation that she was being watched, because it felt so much like the steamy heat of Charles’s gaze.

But Charles couldn’t possibly be here.

He was in Westminster.

H
ollie stepped into the tub of steaming water, gasping at the shock of the heat. She shut everything from her thoughts, breathing in the calming scent of the lavender oil, savoring the slip of the soap along her legs and arms. She stood up in the cool night air, scrubbed at her skin, washed and rinsed her hair, and then settled back into the tub, hoping she wouldn’t fall so deeply asleep that she missed the meeting entirely.

There were too many important things to do there. Life-changing things.

The chamber was perfect for her mood, tucked way up into a corner of the Fleece, the ceiling so raftered and gabled that it hadn’t a single right angle to it. The bed was tucked into one shad
owy dormer, and a small table and its pair of chairs in another. A single candle burned on a table beside the tub in the center of the room.

She’d discovered the room years ago and stayed there whenever she found herself at the Fleece Inn, though it was the sort of room that most guests refused for its eccentric simplicity. Her home for the moment. Perhaps for the week.

Or maybe just tonight. It might be Coldbath Prison, after the morning’s meeting. There would be spies and informers on the benches and magistrates waiting outside to arrest her.

She was tired of the itch and the sweat of travel, no longer looking forward to the meeting as she used to, dreading the hour when she’d have to don the captain’s coat and hat and make an appearance.

Most of all, she was exhausted by her deception. The constant checking and rechecking of every thought before she spoke a word. Always running, yet never staying ahead of her heart. It lagged behind and preached at her to stop, to stay and face Charles with the truth.

But it had gone beyond that now.

A spectacle was called for, if a full accounting of the massacre was ever to be made public and the responsible parties brought to justice. Flash powder and swirling capes—Captain Spindleshanks making a grand entrance into the courtroom itself.

If she was brave enough and lucky enough tomorrow to escape the magistrates.

Charles would surely attend her inquest and trial. He would be there watching when she made her grand entrance as Captain Spindleshanks, when she threw off her costume and confessed that she was the crusading captain, when she pointed her finger and accused the Privy Council to their faces of encouraging barbarism against unarmed citizens.

Charles would stand up and courageously agree with her, would defend the innocents who had died at Peterloo, then take her into his arms and…

Hollie started and came awake a moment later, the bathwater still warm and sloshing, the candle the same height as a moment ago. But something had changed in the blinking instant that she’d dozed off; the room felt darker, more familiar somehow.

Charles. The memories of him, clinging to her like the dear scent of him.

She stood up in the tub and let the water sluice off, wrung out her hair, and was stepping out of the bath when she felt a shift in the cool air—eddies of warmth and the voluptuous sensation that she was being watched, tasted, longed for. Which was utterly impossible up here in the garret; it was too small and out of the way.

Dismissing the unsettling feeling as her foolish
imagination, she dried off and donned the white shirt of her Spindleshanks costume she’d set out on the bed and started fastening the buttons.

Charles’s shirt. It had gotten mixed with her own laundry weeks ago, and she’d really meant to return it, but she’d loved the texture of the linen, the faint smell of lime. And now it was a reminder of him that she would wear against her skin.

His warmth, his scent—

“I hope your husband appreciates your tender preparations for him, madam.”

Charles
!

Hollie gasped and whirled toward the dark voice.

He was a part of the curving cruck of the rafters, a midnight shadow leaning against a lighter one. Her heart battered at her chest as she clutched her thin shirt around her.

“You’re supposed to be in Westminster,” she said, with barely enough air for a breath. She couldn’t allow him to intimidate her, no matter what he knew or why he’d come after her.

Because she could imagine that too well.

“And you, madam, are supposed to be at Everingham.”

Charles grabbed for the blazing anger that had sustained him through the last hour, for the fury that had brought him up the stairs and into her ill-guarded chamber, that had allowed him to stand by and watch her at her bath.

Christ, she was beautiful, candle-shadowed and lush-limbed, gold dripping off the ends of her hair.

He hadn’t believed his eyes at first. His Hollie in the dining room of the Fleece, hours from Everingham. An illusion of the shifting crowd perhaps or a flickering memory of her, of her matchless cascade of golden hair, her green eyes.

He’d blinked and she was gone. Then she had reappeared in the lobby and followed the proprietress up the stairs.

Hollie! Here in Wolverhampton. There could be only one reason.

To meet her bastard of a husband.

The one she loved madly enough to risk her life for.

He’d carefully steeled himself against her excuses, had let himself into her room with no thought but to continue using her in the way he’d been using her these last weeks: to bait a trap for MacGillnock, to see the man’s reign of arrogance finished. And now, to shut her out of his heart as easily as she’d betrayed him.

All those falsehoods about her loveless marriage. He’d been fool enough to pray they were true, that she was a casualty of her own goodness. But she’d run to her dear Adam at her first opportunity. She’d used Charles well in her game.

And now she was standing insolently in front of him, surpassingly beautiful in the simplicity of
a man’s shirt. Doubtless her husband’s. And just as doubtless, she had been waiting in her lavender-scented garret for MacGillnock to return from a triumphant meeting with the radicals.

He didn’t want to see the sorrowful brightness of her eyes as he came out of the shadows, didn’t want to hear the harrowing thunder in his heart that said how much he dearly wanted all her devotion for himself.

“How did you get in here, Charles?” Her voice was etched with a sad impatience, a trembling roughness that made him want to believe better things.

“It doesn’t matter how, madam—only that you clearly left Everingham as soon as my back was turned.”

She raised her stubborn chin. “I’m not your prisoner,” she said, clutching her fists against the linen folds, her sudden breath causing the dark peaks of her breasts to lift against the loose shirt, beckoning his hand, his mouth. “You said so yourself, Charles. You also said you were going to Westminster.”

He tossed his cloak easily on the back of the chair, as though his arms weren’t quaking to drag her into his embrace.

“I’m here for the same reason you are, madam. Waiting on your husband’s return.”

She huffed and turned away to the gable window and the darkness beyond, her head bent and her elbows winged as she worked privately
at the front of the shirt. She was all slim legs and a shapely, linen-clad bottom. “How did you know he was coming, Charles?”

“Spies, madam. The best that money can buy.”

She turned back to him, the shirt’s pearly buttons fastened now, its hem hanging to just below her knees. “I take it you didn’t catch him.”

“And if I had?” he asked evenly, his breathing remarkably steady for a man waiting on her verdict, though his heart had become a dead weight.

“Then I would plead mercy, of course.” Her gaze was a steady challenge, her lower lip caught between her teeth as though she’d meant to say more.

“The dutiful wife after all, supportive to the bitter end. You led me to believe differently.” But that was the woman’s way—blind loyalty, however mad and impossible the cause.

“I think I said that loyalty was a delicate thing, Charles. Easily injured.”

“What I want to know, madam, is how he got word to you of this meeting.”

“He—It’s been scheduled for a very long time. An important meeting of men who only wish to be heard, to have their opinions considered.” She shook her head impatiently and clutched her arms around her waist, her hair wilder than his memories. “I wasn’t sure, but I was hoping he could keep the appointment.”

“And so you thought you’d come here and
find him, arrange a marital tryst while you’re here in town?”

“I needed to be here, Charles.”

“After your confession to me that he never touched you. Never took you to his bed.”

Her shoulders sagged, and she tilted her chin to the ceiling for a moment, then sighed at him. “You’re completely wrong about all this, Charles. Wrong about so many things.”

“Isn’t that why your bath is scented? For him—your
dear
Adam?” He dipped his fingers into the warm water, brought them to his nose. “Is this his favorite scent?”

“It’s mine, Charles,” she said, her words clipped with anger.

“Lavender, Hollie. But you are peaches and apples and the barley harvest. You smell like that, madam. All day long. I smell you on my hands and in my hair.”

Her face crumpled. “Please, Charles. Don’t.”

“Is he in town?” he asked through the cramping of his throat.

“I don’t know.”

“So he hasn’t come to you yet. Your brave, radical husband who dashes from one heroic event to the next, leaving you behind. The man who supposedly loves you. The one you’d risk your life for. Where is he?”

“Captain Spindleshanks is not a fool, Charles. He knows he’s being watched and knows better than to show himself.”

“Because you told him.”

“No, Charles. He just knows.” A shuddering sob escaped her. She raked her fingers through her hair, the finest tendrils curling at the edge of her face in a gilded halo. And she was weeping, tears sliding down her cheeks and landing on the shirt, making wet oriels of the linen. “It isn’t safe for him, my lord.”

“Ah, and it is safe for you, Hollie?” He was unable to understand her tears, let alone the excuses he was creating for her treachery. He caught her shoulders and risked looking into all that weeping sadness. “Running his errands for him, printing his handbills. You’re doing that still, aren’t you? Against my orders. Against your own best interests.”

Her cheeks were pink, her brows winged in her unnameable fury. “An old pledge, as I said.”

“So you pledged yourself to follow him to the ends of the earth. For what? Is he grateful, do you wonder? Has he ever once said?”

“He doesn’t have to say a thing. I know the captain’s heart.” She yanked herself away from him and went to the table strewn with her papers and inks, then fingered the yellowing pages of a small book. “I do it because I must.”

“He forces you? Is that what you’re saying?” He wanted to believe that the man gave her no choice in her loyalties. That fitted so much better against his aching pride.

“Nobody forces me to do anything against my
beliefs, Charles. You should know that of me by now. The only thing I can assure you of is that I’m not expecting my husband tonight. He’s not coming here.”

“Because he’s a coward, Hollie.”

“No, dammit. I mean…well…yes. He probably
is
a coward.” The sob in her throat made his heart catch, made him want to hold her in his arms. “You’re absolutely right, Charles. Captain Spindleshanks is the most cowardly creature in the entire world.”

Her agreement ought to have delighted him, but it only made him angry.

“He’s a rake and a bounder, Hollie. Take it from me, I’ve been one. I know the worthless life he leads. From one lightskirt to another, unconnected to anyone or anything. He doesn’t care.”

“And you do, Charles?”

He’d never imagined caring as much about anything. “I do, Hollie.”

Yet he was acting the rakehell again, calling her husband vile, wanting her outside her marriage vows, wanting to make promises of his own, to make the man vanish from the earth as though he’d never been. He ached to hold her, to take her to bed and make love to her every night of their lives.

But she was better than that, deserved far more than a stolen life. So he kept his distance.

“You married the wrong man, Hollie.”

She shook her head, emphatic, sniffling back her sorrow. “No, I didn’t, Charles.”

The slice to his gut nearly bent him in half. She should be
his
, damn it. He should have found her first. There on St. Peter’s Fields. If the magistrates had kept the swords and tempers in check.

“I should have known better, Hollie. You wear his damn shirt like that, like you’ve just come out of his bed.”

It threatened to fall off her shoulder, for the collar buttons were undone. A trail of glistening tears ran down between her breasts.

Her clear eyes caught his gaze, lit up with a sudden determination. “It’s not his shirt, Charles. It’s yours.”

His stomach flipped, dragging a sharp breath out of him. “Mine?”

She raised her hand and the sleeve slipped down over her fingers. “See, Charles. It’s yours.”

Calling himself a fool for getting this close, for wanting to believe, he lifted the cuff, found his monogram and then her steady, tear-starred gaze.

Not MacGillnock’s shirt.

“
My
shirt.”

He didn’t need to hear this. Didn’t need to be standing on the brink of paradise, a breath away from the angel who was holding out her hand to him.

“I love you, Charles.”

“Christ, Hollie.” He
really
didn’t need to hear that either, so beguiled by the scent of her, unable to move.

He wanted to unfasten the buttons, to lift aside the linen and take her lushness into his mouth. If only she were free and his wife and the mother of their children. “Why? Why not your husband’s shirt?”

“Because…Oh, Charles.” She grabbed a breath and another heart-stabbing sob. “Because he…”

“What, Hollie?
Tell
me, damn it.”

“Because he…isn’t my husband.”

“Not your—” He flinched, feeling gut-punched. And then confused, because she wasn’t that sort. “Adam MacGillnock is
what
to you, then, Hollie?”