Perilous Risk (39 page)

The morning of their second day travelling Rebecca sat with Stephen in the main room of the coaching inn. She studied his ashen face. He had left their chamber and not returned the whole night. Now he was conspicuously averting his gaze from her own bowl of porridge and milk. Her heart contracted.

He was ill and he was still trying to hide it from her.

Uncle Frederick was the best of physicians. When they arrived at his house, she would at that time insist that Stephen submit himself for a full examination. Until then, she would hold her tongue.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.

“No. Are you done yet?” he asked, motioning to her untouched bowl.

She wasn’t particularly hungry but she forced herself to take several bites. They would be travelling all day and Stephen hadn’t been all that prone to stop for food on this journey.

“It’s just gruesome if you ask me.” Behind her, the man’s voice rose with emotion. “The Earl of Barnet found shot in the head in his own bed.”

“Who did it?” The other man’s voice held a note of morbid curiosity. “A disgruntled servant?”

“No, here’s the really interesting part. There was nothing found to indicate who the killer was and no one knows who might have wished him dead. The earl was loved and respected by all. A good and kind soul he was, he gave generously to charity.”

“My goodness, don’t they know anything more?!”

“Well, rumour has it that his mistress, the Duchess of Saxby, has disappeared. People are saying she’s run away with a new lover.”

“Wait, didn’t the Duke of Saxby himself just die?”

“Aye, he did.”

“He was a young man, wasn’t he?”

“Aye, he was.”

“What killed him?”

“A lingering constitutional weakness from a tropical fever. You know how frail some gentlemen can be.”

“Hmm, well, a man shot in the head in his own bed, he must have some enemies somewhere.”

Her porridge seemed to have taken on a greyish cast and the steam wafting up from it held a sickly odour. A spasm of nausea twisted through her stomach and she looked up slowly.

Stephen was watching her.

And she knew.

Icy-shards pierced her stomach, centring around her navel and then radiating outwards to become chills.

He reached across the table and enfolded her hand in his large one. He gave her a firm squeeze. “Let us go now.”

Dry-mouthed, she swallowed hard. Then she nodded, for she had agreed to accept this part of him.

She had no choice but to accept it, for she loved him completely.

* * * *

“Just like that, he’s dead?” Rebecca huddled deeper into the blankets, wishing she had a flask of hot coffee or tea to ward off the continued sense of icy dread. Would Stephen be in danger of discovery? No. He’d done this before. Likely he’d done it many, many, many times. Oh, she didn’t wish to think on it!

But he had kept himself safe this whole time. Surely, he would be safe now. His acts were sanctioned by the crown.

But what if
he
became inconvenient to the crown? Or what if a faction within the government didn’t approve of his having killed Barnet?

“I am a killer, Rebecca, it is what I do. I stalk, corner and kill my targets. It is no great feat. He never suspected that he was a target of anyone like me.” As if he had been reading her recent thoughts, he added, “But my superiors will not like this.”

Fear for Stephen gripped her. “Why not? He wasn’t a target? Oh, God, you killed him just because—”

Stephen held up a forestalling hand. “I was supposed to kill him but not yet. I was to wait and find a way to bring him down politically. To ruin his reputation.”

“Why was he a target?”

“He was plotting to kill the Prime Minister.”

He said this as simply as if he’d just said Barnet was the headmaster of a boy’s school.

“The Prime Minister…” She swallowed back the hysterical giggle that had threatened to erupt. It just seemed too fantastical. “Goodness.”

“He wanted to put his own man in as Prime Minister.” Stephen took her hand and traced his fingertip along the dove-grey suede of her glove. “That’s how I came to be connected with Maria Seymour. She was procuring young men for him, prospects to be assassins or spies. She can be very seductive and she was highly effective at helping him in this manner.”

Stephen motioned to the papers he had put aside. “I have taken some of his private letters and his diary. I hope to find more solid proof for some of what Maria told me. Perhaps I can salvage some of my mission.”

Rebecca glanced down at the papers and felt the blood rush from her head to her toes. Her stomach seemed to have stayed behind with the fast-rolling carriage. Then she gaped at him. “Oh Goodness, Stephen, you have his papers in your possession?”

“It is no great matter. They shall be replaced soon enough.”

“Y-you took them from—”

“He had a desk in his study. I was able to rummage through his personal papers there quite undisturbed. I was in no danger.”

“I see.” Her teeth were chattering with sympathetic terror for the risk he’d taken.

“It is rather fascinating, how he promised to reward Maria.”

“Was it really?”

“Oh yes. You see, young Saxby had to die. Maria had not managed to conceive his heir. He would be useless to her if she could not secure a position someday as mother to a titled son. So, she killed him. Barnet promised her that if she would aid him in finding these young men who would do his bidding, then he would wed her.”

“But she likely wouldn’t be able to conceive with him either.”

“Barnet had a plan. He had a little maid that he fancied and she had already proven herself fecund by giving him a daughter. He would impregnate her and Maria would pretend a pregnancy.”

“You read all of this…I mean, he spelled this out in his personal papers?”

Stephen shook his head. “No, I put the bits and pieces together. What I learnt from my spies in their houses, what I learnt from Maria and now what I read here. She would have made quite a good political hostess.”

“She
would
have?”

“She’ll never trouble you again. She’s going far away.”

“Where?”

He shook his head. “You needn’t concern yourself with her. It’s over.”

He said this with such finality, Rebecca held her tongue. Perhaps he would tell her in time but she sensed she ought not to push now. Stephen had done so much for her. He had risked his mission and his life for her. Fear twisted through her belly again. “But your superiors didn’t want her to go away?”

“They would have preferred it if I had manipulated the situation into a compromising position for both Barnet and Maria. But mostly Barnet. He’s always been a manipulator himself, pulling the strings of many great and powerful lords. He got most of them when they were young and he seduced them into compromising secrets or crushing debts or any number of obligations to himself. I think he was looking at the Earl of Ruel as a possibility. A young, charismatic man. Someone not yet quite marked by any faction. But Jonathon Lloyd frustrated his recruitment efforts. In fact, I think Ruel was getting rather close to the truth, and that’s why he had to be brought down.”

Again, Rebecca had a sense of her stomach dropping down. Dear heavens! She’d never suspected the whole matter endangering her had such wide sweeping effects. She clearly did not have a strategic mind.

“There, there now.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Don’t frown so. It is all over now for you. You’re safe.”

“Safe because you killed him.”

“I had to.”

“But your superiors—”

“Will have to accept that I acted on my best judgement.”

“Oh, surely a man like Barnet would never take a tarnished whore like Maria to wife. Why, he’d be too proud.”

“Yes, I don’t think he intended to keep his promises.”

Maria’s a cunning woman but her arrogance blinds her sometimes.”

Stephen pulled off Rebecca’s glove and took her hand into both of his hands, trying to warm her up. How long had Barnet kept her bound in the dark of that hideous cellar?

Barnet had signed his own early death warrant by that action.

Suddenly, Stephen was back standing on the ledge outside of Barnet’s window, with the wind whipping at the collar of his workman’s coat and the scent of wood smoke and coal fire in his nose. Though he’d wrapped it in a towel, the pistol’s report still echoed in his ears.

The pistol had been a dramatic but necessary touch.

He had just wanted Barnet dead in the most expedient, certain way possible. No room for error or delay.

However, he hated using any indiscreet means. For him, the objective typically was to eliminate the target in the most undetectable manner possible. To disguise an assassination as an ordinary death. To create the least disturbance for the populace. No gossip, no headlines in the newspaper.

Indeed, that was a job well done.

However, this time, a more flashy scene would provide just the type of drama that would titillate the masses and spark their imagination and overblown outrage about decadent aristocrats.

It would mark the first specks of eroding tarnish upon Barnet’s sterling reputation.

Yet, speaking strictly as an agent of the crown, Stephen had not acted on his best judgement in the matter with Barnet. Not his best
impersonal
judgement, the way he’d always done with regard to past targets. He had compromised his duty, that of ruining Barnet publicly, in order to assure himself of Rebecca’s safety.

His superiors would never understand that.

But he’d had to be absolutely sure. And if he’d let any time lapse, Barnet would have learnt of Stephen’s association with Rebecca and that would have compromised his ability to protect her.

It would have been a risky situation.

Stephen didn’t like risk.

Especially where Rebecca was concerned.

Logic and expediency were much better companions than risk. So, he’d done what had to be done and it was over. Now he would take Rebecca to her uncle. At least he would do that much for her.

Pain knifed through his midsection, so sharp that he bent forward slightly and had to suppress a groan. He had struggled through the night with pain and retching and been unable to eat this morning. Unable to keep any opiate down.

How foolish he had been, to allow the euphoria of the opiate, the pain-dulling effects, to lull him into a belief that he somehow could have a normal life.

A future with Rebecca.

That dream had turned to dust, ashes on his tongue as bitter as bile.

His days were numbered now. But he would see her safely to her uncle. That was something he had promised himself. And he had made himself two more promises.

Firstly, he was going to break her remaining bond with the Earl of Ruel, for her sake. When Stephen was gone, he wanted no chance that she would slip back into her former mode of relishing her heartbreak. Of wrapping herself away in her pain and disillusionment as other women did their widow’s weeds.

Secondly, he intended to—

Another wave of pain slashed through his guts. Stronger. Lashing. The intensity wiped everything from his mind but the white-hot agony. It took every ounce of will he possessed to resist the urge to heave.

“Stephen?”

He clenched his teeth and glanced down at her.

“You’ve gone completely white.”

His stomach cramped violently. He forced a smile for her. “Pardon me, my love, I have to check something with my driver.” He leant forward and rapped loudly on the forward wall of the carriage.

“You have to save him.” Rebecca stared down at Stephen, lying on the bed. His face was completely ashen, greyish. And she had to stare hard to assure herself that yes, his chest was in fact still moving, if only barely, to take in his breath.

“I shall do my best,” Uncle Frederick said.

She jerked her head up to met Uncle Frederick’s gaze. “No, no, you
must
save him.”

“I don’t know, Rebecca, I will not lie to you. He’s lost a great of blood from what you’ve told me.”

She suppressed a shiver. They had stopped the carriage and she had waited inside a long, long time.

Then the burly, frankly frightening looking coachman had come to her and said that Stephen was in a dire situation. She had hurried to his side, expecting the worst. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight of him half-conscious, paler than death and turned on his side, vomiting blood.

She put her hands to her mouth and breathed deeply and closed her eyes. She forced the horrific image down.

Uncle Fredrick touched her shoulder. “I shall do what I can, my dearest Becca. But you ought to have brought him to me weeks ago.”

She lowered her hands and wrung them in front of her. “I did not know.” The words sounded like sobs.

He was so young. What a horrid waste. Oh God, why did this have to be happening?