My Scandalous Viscount (25 page)

In the next heartbeat, Nick backed away from the door, and Carissa knew he was about to get away again.

“Beau!” she hollered as loud as she could. “He’s just outside the door!”

Nick whirled around to see where her shout had come from, but the door blasted open behind him, and Beau flew out, charging straight at him.

In the barest of seconds, she saw Nick hesitate, his hand drifting toward the holstered pistol at his side. Before he could decide whether or not to draw on his boyhood friend, Beau plowed into him, tackling him to the ground.
Slam!
They began to brawl: two trained killers.

A tall, muscular man who looked to her like some sort of pirate with a shock of long, dark brown hair and a scruffy beard came racing out of the building right behind Beau. Despite slightly favoring one leg as he ran, he dove into the fray.
That must be Lord Trevor Montgomery!
Beau’s other missing teammate.

Glad that Beau had freed him, she ran toward the fight, leaving the shelter of the corner, but she could not see clearly what was happening. Both men were on top of Nick, pummeling him and getting him under control.

Trevor pulled back his right fist while holding Nick’s jacket with his left hand. He was perfectly aligned for a shattering punch to the face, but something inside him must have held him back, for he did not land the blow. “Damn you,” was all he said. Roughly releasing Nick’s jacket, he pivoted and took a few, uneven steps away, his chest heaving.

With a grim scowl, Trevor struggled to bring his anger back under control while Beau hauled Nick to his feet.

“Who’s the target?” he demanded, holding fast to his arm while making the implied threat of his pistol.

Nick just looked at him.

“Search him,” Beau said to Trevor.

“I already destroyed the message,” Nick said wearily.

“No, you didn’t,” Beau clipped out. “Not when you know full well it’s the only evidence that can exonerate you if anything were to go wrong.”

“Did you hide it in your watch, as usual?” Trevor asked.

“You boys are really something else,” Nick muttered.

But Trevor pulled Nick’s fob watch out of his waistcoat by its chain and clicked the metal back of it open. “Ah, what have we here?” he taunted, drawing a tiny, folded piece of paper out of the watch itself.

“You’re getting predictable in your old age, man.”

“Only to you,” Nick replied dryly.

“What does it say?” Beau asked.

Trevor paled as he read the slip of paper. Then he lifted his gaze to Nick’s in shock. “You son of a bitch. Were you really going to do this?”

Nick said nothing.

“Who’s the target?” Beau repeated.

Trevor glanced at him. “The Prime Minister.”

“Good God! You weren’t really going through with this, were you?”

“I don’t know!” Nick erupted in sudden fury. “I only got the damned thing minutes ago! You think I expected this?”

“You should never have taken the job in the first place!” Beau roared back in his face. “You don’t even know who hired you!”

“I do,” Carissa spoke up uneasily from several feet away.

This was the first the men noticed her.

Already furious, Beau turned at the sound of her voice; his eyes narrowed to angry slashes at the sight of her, but she held her ground.

“I found the artist,” she informed him. “The ‘disposable man’ Madame Angelique described. If you can make him talk, you’ll have your proof about who hired Nick.”

“You found him?” Beau demanded.

“Yes!” she said. “And if you’ll listen to me for once—just give me a chance—I can take you to him.”

Chapter 25

“W
ho is this woman?” Trevor asked bluntly.

“Beauchamp’s wife. Hullo, Carissa.”

“Nick,” she answered with a wry look.

“The wife!” Trevor exclaimed.

“How dare you ignore my orders once again?” Beau demanded.

“I didn’t want to do it, believe me. Especially after all that’s happened between us. But I had a sudden insight, and I had to check on it—for your sake. For all of us!” she insisted, refusing to back down. “And it’s a good thing I did, because it turns out I was right.”

Beau stared rather coldly at her. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Mr. Charles Vincent owns the waxworks museum in Southwark, where all his bloody fantasies of revolution are on display for all the world to see. I know for a fact he is connected to the so-called Prophet, Professor Culvert, Ezra Green’s mentor—”

“I know who he is,” Beau snapped.

“I saw Culvert and this artist together with my own eyes at a bookshop in Russell Square. Culvert was giving a speech and I-I went to hear it, after you told me about him. I wanted to find out more—”

“You went to hear him speak?” he cried, throwing up his hands.

“I wanted to tell you!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flushing. “But then Nick paid his call on me and rather changed the subject. So I just let it go. I didn’t think I had learned anything useful, anyway! And I didn’t want you to be angry at me. Look, I’m sorry,” she said impatiently. “But let’s keep our minds on the problem at hand! If it was Culvert who sent the artist to hire Nick to assassinate the Prime Minister—who’s to say that Ezra Green wasn’t in on it from the start? You already told me you thought he was out for the Order’s blood. What just happened at the docks proves that you were right.” She glanced around at the agents. “You all are being set up. Nick was merely the tool with which they meant to destroy you.”

His jaw clenched, Beau conceded this with a nod. “Back at the docks, Green did just say a few cryptic things to me about a new England coming. Together with what you’ve just told us, his words begin to make sense.”

“Then what are we waiting for? If you can get hold of Charles Vincent and persuade him to reveal the names of those who sent him to France, then you can turn the tables on that odious lizard man. So, do you want to stand here fighting with me, or do you want to get to the bottom of this?” she flung out.

Beau and his friends exchanged a sardonic glance.

“You do know how to pick ’em,” Trevor drawled.

Carissa scowled at him, but Beau eyed her dubiously. “You say he’s down in Southwark? Whereabouts?”

“Come on, I’ll take you to him. There’s no time to lose.” She pivoted on her heel and began marching back toward the carriage. Despite her outward show of confidence, her knees were shaking after she had made her stand before her outraged husband.

They had greater worries to deal with at the moment, but she was not naïve enough to think that this was over.

U
pon their arrival in Southwark, Carissa tamped down her anxiety, watching out the carriage window as Beau and Trevor went across the street toward the waxworks museum.

She told herself not to worry. Charles Vincent was no match for two Order agents. Yet from the second they went through the door and disappeared inside, every minute dragged.

“He’ll be fine, Mrs. Beauchamp,” Nick muttered, sitting across from her, his wrists bound with the very ropes he had previously used on Trevor.

Michael, the gunsmith’s apprentice, was also in the carriage; sitting across from their prisoner, he was keeping Nick in the sights of his pistol.

Nick gave the lad a darkly mocking stare and seemed to be contemplating all the ways he could’ve bested him, a green, untried youth.

Carissa knew firsthand that Nick was a force to be reckoned with. Nevertheless, she sensed the heaviness of his utter remorse ever since Beau had related how their comrades had been arrested at the docks and thrown into the dreaded Tower of London.

“Quit staring at me,” Nick rumbled at her in a low tone.

She tilted her head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t stop wondering, would you really have shot Lord Liverpool?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, gazing out the window in disgust.

“Would you?” she persisted.

He let out a sudden, bitter scoff. “What does it matter what I say? Even if I’d have refused, who’d believe me now?”

“You know who would,” she answered softly. “Beauchamp.”

“After I threatened his lady?”

“You didn’t scare me,” she replied.

As he gazed at her, a rueful half smile slowly curved his lips. “I’ve known Beau a long time, my lady. For what it’s worth, I think you’re exactly what he needed.”

She gave him a wistful smile in spite of herself and lowered her head. “I hope you’re right,” she said. At the moment, she feared Beau was kicking himself for ever getting involved with a meddling lady of information.

“B
loody hell,” Trevor murmured, as they prowled through the dark, macabre labyrinth of the wax museum. “This is what he does in his spare time?”

“At least he’s got talent. You’ve got to give him that.”

Charles Vincent had employed every visual trick known to art and science to enhance his sinister scenes. He used mirrors and
trompe-l’oeil
painting like a magician; lighting techniques and clockwork mechanical devices borrowed from the theatre gave some of his figures motion and made them seem even more alive.

Beau scanned each new, gruesome scene they passed, his gun at the ready, but concealed in his coat pocket to avoid alarming the other visitors at the museum.

Their presence complicated matters, but even so, he had to admit it felt good to be
doing
the sort of thing he was trained for instead of all those endless rounds of hostile interrogation.

“Your lady was right. There does appear to be a theme,” Trevor remarked wryly, as they passed the waxen beheading of King Charles.

“I can’t believe she came here by herself,” Beau growled, but Trevor laughed softly, both of them watching everywhere, searching the shadows for the pale, lanky artist Carissa had described.

“So,” Trevor said in amusement. “A redhead, eh?” He looked askance at him with a jolly glimmer in his eyes.

Beau ignored him with a huff.

“Never thought I’d see the day.”

“What?” he retorted.

“You’re madly in love with her.”

He snorted. “At the moment, I’d like to wring her neck. She’s completely impossible.”

“Hmm, who does that sound like?”

“Uh, shut up.”

Trevor laughed quietly as they both continued advancing, guns drawn. “So, Beauchamp’s met his match. Well, when I think back to how you and Nick used to rail on me for being so smitten with Laura.” He shook his head.

“How is she, anyway?” Beau asked, as they moved on through the dimly lit maze of corridors.

“No idea. She probably thinks I’m dead. So, how do you want to do this?” Trevor nodded at the corridor ahead.

Beau shrugged. “By the book, I think. If we get too rough, it’ll only seem to prove everything Green’s been saying about our organization.”

“Good thing we left Nick outside, then. Speaking of the Inquisition—” Trevor nodded at the scene of a Spanish torture chamber.

“Charming. Let’s find this sick bastard and put an end to his fun.”

Trevor nodded. They split up, continuing their search.

When Beau passed the scene of Ann Boleyn kneeling for the axe man’s blow, it tightened the knot in his stomach, reminding him afresh of his brothers in the Tower. The sight of the dungeon tableaux renewed his cold rage. What the hell was he going to say to their wives about all of this, anyway?

That reminded him. Jordan had told him to summon Mara, who had ties to the Regent. Prinny was a personal friend of hers, the godfather of her little boy.

Beau made a mental note to do that next. But he could not think about their wives right now and the female hysterics he was going to have to deal with. He had enough trouble with his own meddling bride at the moment.

On the other hand, Carissa had brought him this lead, he admitted, irked at his own surging pride in her.
Not so fast. We’ll see if it pays off.
Their visit to the waxworks could still turn out to be naught but a dangerous waste of time.

Then Beau came to the French Revolution scene and stopped, taken aback. With a chill down his spine, he scanned the grim spectacle.

The wild Paris mob had been lovingly reproduced, down to the last detail—thanks in part, most likely, to Madame Angelique’s firsthand account. Then he spotted the basket of heads Carissa told him to watch for. Beau lifted an eyebrow, spotting a possible likeness of Prinny among the waxen decapitated heads. Under normal circumstances, the artist’s gall would have made him furious. In this case, however, it was a welcome sight: evidence. Tangible proof of their malice toward the Crown, and certainly a strong suggestion of their violent, revolutionary intents.

He glanced around, saw no one was coming, and vaulted lightly over the railing for a closer look. He lifted the Prinny head out of the basket by its shock of frizzy reddish brown hair. With an odd sense of graveyard humor, he held it up and looked at the waxen head, eye to eye, then laughed dryly under his breath.
Trevor needs to see this.

He climbed out of the mob scene, taking the head with him. He found it rather hilarious to be carrying the Regent’s head around, but the damned thing might be needed for evidence. Still on the hunt for its maker, he walked down the darkened corridor, his pistol in his right hand, the head tucked under his left arm.

But when he noticed a black curtain on the right and heard work sounds coming from behind it, he stepped closer, intrigued. Ignoring the sign that read
KEEP OUT
, he pushed the curtain aside a couple of inches and peered into the latest waxworks scene still under construction.

His stare homed in on the artist hard at work, clearly absorbed in his pursuits. The fellow matched the description Carissa had provided, but even without it, he could’ve known him by his theme—another king getting his comeuppance. In this one, the English barons were forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta.

Inspired, himself, with an interesting way to get the man’s attention and challenge him about his guilt, Beau rolled the Regent’s head at its creator.

Charles Vincent looked over as Prinny’s likeness came tumbling toward him. Beau stepped past the curtain, strolling toward the proprietor with a dark stare.

Vincent blanched and backed away from his figure. “What is the meaning of this?” he sputtered.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Beau replied.

“You’re with the Order,” the man breathed.

Beau smiled.

Charles Vincent bolted, dashing out past the far side of the curtain. Beau chased him.

“Trev!” he shouted into the hallway.

Trevor was coming around the other corner and appeared just in time to head him off.

Vincent whirled around, saw Beau closing in behind him, Trevor blocking his path ahead. He darted sideways into the Coliseum.

“Stay back!” he warned, brandishing a sculptor’s implement with a nasty little blade on the end.

Beau leaped over the rail into the scene and stalked him like a lion. Vincent dodged away again, running for a door in the background that had been painted into invisibility. “Go round the other way!” Beau yelled to Trevor as he set off chasing the man.

Beau knew he was at a dangerous disadvantage. This was Vincent’s lair. He knew every nook and cranny of the place, while all the illusions and pitch-black passageways behind the walls were new to Beau. Even so, he pursued him through the hidden maze that gave the artist access to his sets, until, all of a sudden, they somehow burst out near the guillotine once again.

Passing visitors screamed at the sudden intrusion.

Waxen figures went flying: pitchfork-wielding revolutionaries in liberty caps, gendarmes, a hooded executioner.

Cornered, Vincent slashed at him with his wax-carving knife; Beau grasped his wrist and forced him to the floor.

“Cooperate, or I’ll break your arm!”

He screamed. “No, please!”

Locating them by the sound of the visitors’ shrieks, Trevor came hurtling over the front rail to assist, ignoring his injured knee though he cursed when he landed.

“Don’t move,” he ordered, training his pistol on their man.

“I’ve got him,” Beau said through gritted teeth, his heart pounding.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?” the artist cried, aghast.

Beau crouched down slowly. “Oh, I think you already know.”

B
y the time Beau and Trevor escorted Charles Vincent out of the wax museum, he had already confessed, confirming their worst fears. Professor Culvert had reassembled his coterie of young devotees, now powerful men placed here and there in the government, including Ezra Green.

Vincent did not know how many were taking part in the conspiracy, but he guessed their number at under twenty men. The group had hired the “assassin” to kill the Prime Minister and were even now, ready and waiting to pounce.

They would seize their opportunity in the crisis that they knew in advance would erupt once the Tory leader fell.

It was clear to Beau that this odd waxworks fellow had been specifically chosen to go to France and arrange the contract. He was expendable because, to start, he did not bring the kind of power the others had to offer.

More importantly, with the subtle themes of violent revolution on display throughout The Gala of History, the eccentric artist would seem unstable, even unhinged enough to have conceived the plot alone. They must have brought him in from the start as their unwitting scapegoat.

Unluckily for them, the conspirators had not counted on anyone’s being able to trace the man to them, let alone getting him to confess. But when Beau had convinced him that his coconspirators meant to let him take the fall for all of them, he finally gave way.

The waxworks man had tearfully admitted that Culvert and Green had set out in secret to kill two birds with one stone: assassinate the hated Lord Liverpool and destroy the Order in the process.