Priceless (22 page)

“I most certainly did not,” Northrup huffed. “I knew you could be found there, but I never imagined a lady of Bronwyn’s station would ever be found in such a place.”

“It’s not a whorehouse, man, it’s a salon. And what difference does it make what she was doing there? The important thing is, she left amid suspicious circumstances.” A tingling at his fingertips and toes signified the return of his feelings. A return carried on the flush of anger; a return he didn’t desire. “Bronwyn is supposed to be here with me.”

Northrup glanced about as if he expected her to pop up at any moment. “Good God. Do you suppose she’s in one of those coffeehouses?” He made it sound more alarming than the prospect of a whorehouse.

“No.” Adam crumpled the paper. His hand, he noted, gripped the little wad as if it contained the secret to transmuting metal to gold. “Rachelle’s suspicions were roused, for the footman was supposed to accompany Bronwyn on her journey. Madame managed to convince him”—Adam smoothed out the precious note, read it again—“she didn’t say how, to confess the truth.”

“Sir, you’re frightening me.”

“Bronwyn has been kidnapped by Carroll Judson, and Madame insists I come at once to the salon, for she believes she knows where they are.” Glancing about him, Adam sought a friendly face, a ray of sunshine, a bit of hope. Northrup remained with him. Despite his own rudeness and impatience, Northrup’s loyalty had never wavered, and for the first time Adam was grateful. He grasped Northrup’s elbow. “You’ll come with me?”

Northrup gaped. “But—”

“I may have need of you,” Adam said simply, and Northrup responded as Adam knew he would.

“Of course, Lord Rawson. If you need me, I’ll be there.”

Bronwyn staggered along the dim alley, one hand on the filthy wall of the building beside her, the other unfastening her cape. Judson watched from his carriage. She kept her shoulders hunched, her head down; occasionally she moaned with enough heartfelt intensity to keep her guard-coachman well behind her. As she walked, she searched the ground. She knew what she wanted; she knew she could find it, given enough time. She only hoped it would be sufficient to distract the guard while she escaped.

“Don’t let her wander too far,” Judson called. “Keep close.”

The burly coachman stepped closer, but she’d seen what she sought. She’d seen her salvation, and she refused to be
thwarted now. Using acting talents she’d never realized she had, she retched. The coachman stepped back.

“She’s going too far.” Uninterested in her distress except as it disturbed the interior of his coach, Judson said with a snap of decision, “Come back. Come back right now.”

Bronwyn walked faster. The guard grunted as he speeded up. Her goal filled her vision, if she could just get close enough…The guard breathed close against her back, but she stopped, slumped. He caught her arm. She reached down, dug her fingers into the pile on the street, turned, and flung a handful of horse dung in his face. Fresh, odorous, steamy, it plastered his beard.

In that instant she slipped out of her cloak and left it in his grasp as she ran. Her panniers, unwieldy, heavy, tried with some malevolent intent to trip her. Her corsets constrained her breathing; she wanted to scream, call for help, but had to reserve her air for the effort of escape. The broad-shouldered coachman panted in great gulps behind her. She concentrated on keeping her ankles straight as the rounded cobblestones beat bruises into the soles of her feet. Her leather slippers splashed mud up her calves; she slipped as she rounded the corner onto the street.

Empty. In a nightmare personified, she’d found the one deserted London street. Like faces that lacked all expression, the barren warehouses stared but offered no assistance. In the gloom of the day, she couldn’t see the brown doors in the brown walls, and she inadvertently passed more than one before veering to press on the wooden panels.

It yielded; she flung herself into a giant room stacked with crates. “Help,” she shouted, fleeing into the darkness. “Help me!”

No one answered, but the door behind her banged back as the coachman charged in. She dodged around a column; she screamed as the column—a large man, the largest man she’d ever seen—moved to intercept her. The sound echoed eerily, and the coachman raced toward her.

To the column she cried, “Help me.” The column didn’t respond, and she said, “Please. Adam Keane, viscount of Rawson, would pay you to—”

The coachman tackled her around the waist, lifted her off her feet. She kicked at him, shouting, “Let me go.”

Slow as an elephant trained to entertain, the warehouse occupant blocked them. “What are ye doin’ wi’ th’ gel, Fred?”

His speech proved as sluggish as his movements, but the coachman paused. “Eh, Oakes, that ye?”

The massive man thought about it. After a painful pause he agreed, “Aye, it’s Oakes.”

The coachman tilted her panniers away from him, using her own clothing to shield him from her blows, and started away. “Oakes, if ye know what’s good fer ye, ye’ll mind yer concerns an’ let me mind mine.”

“No, no, no.” Bronwyn flailed wildly.

Oakes’s lumbering stride brought him between them and the door. “The lass don’t seem t’ want t’ go wi’ ye.”

“I’m bein’ paid t’ take her,” Fred answered sharply. Oakes didn’t move, and with forced camaraderie, Fred said, “’Ey, we’re mates, ain’t we? I’m a dock walloper, ye’re a dock walloper. Ye know I wouldn’t do somethin’ not ethical-like.”

“Liar,” she cried.

Fred squeezed her ribs, digging the boning of her corset into her skin, forcing the air from her lungs. “I’m as ’onorable as th’ day is long. This ’ere lady is…mad. Aye, she’s mad as a rabbit under th’ full moon. I’m assistin’ th’ gennaman what’s takin’ ’er back t’ Bedlam.”

Bronwyn could only choke, then to her distress the big man moved aside. “Please,” she gasped with her last bit of breath, but Fred moved inexorably to the door.

A few people traveled the street now, but, pleased with his story, Fred shouted, “Make way fer th’ madwoman.” Her heated protests availed her nothing, only brought the
curious as Fred alternately tugged and carried her back to the carriage. Hearing the hue and cry, Judson waited with a smug smile and a strong rope, and Bronwyn found herself bundled into the carriage and carried away.

Adam’s anguish wrote itself in grim lines around his mouth as he read the sheaf of papers Madame Rachelle had discovered littering Bronwyn’s desk. “That pissabed Judson is responsible for…all this?”

Grave and straight, Madame Rachelle nodded.

“What is Judson responsible for?” Northrup asked eagerly.

Adam never moved his gaze from Rachelle. “He’s the one who enforces the arbitrary laws for the South Sea Company? He’s plotting the assassination of Walpole?” Every muscle of his body tightened as he tried to deny, to wish away, the truth. “How could I have missed it?”

“Perhaps you saw only what you expected,” Madame Rachelle said.

Savage in his unhappiness, Adam snapped, “And you were more clear-sighted?”

Her voice sounded wispy, embarrassed. “This has been a humbling experience. I suspected others of Henriette’s murder, yet even when Judson accused me, I thought he repeated the current gossip.”

“Judson has no character?” Northrup asked.

Still ignoring him, Adam said, “Judson was nasty even as a boy.”

Rachelle now slapped her fists against the desk. “Then why did you not suspect him before he killed my daughter?”

The heat of her anger reached Adam, made him respond with perverse calm. “I wanted to be fair. So many people judged me by my father’s actions, I refused to do the same to Judson.”

“Fair!” She tossed her hands in the air in an excess of Gallic exasperation. “If he was vicious as a boy—”

“He wasn’t vicious. Cruel, as boys are, and rude. But if you’d met me when I was a boy, you’d have thought the same.”

“I can’t imagine such a thing,” Northrup interposed.

For the first time, Adam acknowledged his assistant. “I’m good with my fists, but a misplaced sense of justice is no excuse for my current stupidity.”

Desperate and eager, Northrup asked, “What will you do now?”

“There should be no doubt, should there? This is England. It’s green, beautiful. It holds my heart like no woman ever could.” Rachelle laughed rudely, and Adam thought he hated her. He hated anyone who could see him as clearly as this woman could. “If Walpole is killed, the country I love, the country I longed for on the long voyages, will suffer. My fortune could well suffer. Yet if Bronwyn is killed…” The papers fluttered to the floor. “How could I miss this?”

“You’ve been distracted,” Rachelle said.

“You make excuses for me?” Adam swung his tortured gaze on her.

“A man in love is the most vulnerable of all.”

“In love?” Northrup’s voice squeaked with his indignation. “A man in love could never do what Lord Rawson had done to Bronwyn Edana. He’s ruined her reputation, put her in the path of danger. Even now, when she could be murdered, or worse, he’s talking about his fortune.” Stepping closer Northrup shook his fists in Adam’s face. “She doesn’t have to marry you. I’ll marry her, if need be.”

Adam considered the pale and frightened Northrup, standing up for the woman he called his friend. “She can’t marry you,” he answered mildly.

“And why not?”

“Because I’d kill you both before I’d allow that to happen.”

“Maybe you won’t have to kill her,” Northrup huffed. “Maybe Carroll Judson will do the deed for you.”

The blood drained from Adam’s face, and when Northrup caught at his elbow, he knew it showed. For all Northrup’s pugnacious threats, he watched Adam with the kind of fondness a hound feels for his master. “I didn’t mean it, sir. I’m sure Bronwyn will be fine.” Adam just stared, and Northrup stammered, “If you recall, you defended her right to be a learned woman. Even if you feel you must attend to Walpole first, I’m sure she’ll outsmart Judson.”

Rachelle moved to Adam’s other side and said, “A man has to decide. Will he love and open himself? Or will he deny that part of him and be so strong no one can ever touch him?”

“She didn’t let me decide. I’m bound so tightly—” He strangled on his dilemma. What should he do? Should he look for Bronwyn, who was in danger of her life? Or should he seek out Walpole and warn him of the danger that stalked him closer all the time?

A choice, Adam reflected grimly, he had never wanted to make. The fate of his love rested in his hands. The fate of England rested in his hands. He had no option, he supposed, but—oh God, how would he face the consequences of his neglect?

Adam took Madame Rachelle’s hands. “Will you go to
Walpole and alert him to the danger?” Rachelle didn’t seem surprised at his decision. Indeed, she took it so calmly that he wondered how well he knew himself.

She pressed his fingers, lending him her strength. “Of course, but what makes you think he will listen to me? His contempt for foreigners, especially the French, is well known, and I am not only French, but a woman.”

“He doesn’t despise women,” Adam assured her.

“Nor does he treat them seriously.”

Northrup stepped up, twisting his cravat as if he would strangle himself from nervousness. “Let me go, sir. I’ll convince him.”

“It’s not possible.” Adam grimaced. “I need you to search for Bronwyn.”

“Me? But what will you do?”

Adam’s patience stretched as thin as a razor, but he explained, “If I search and you search, we can cover twice this city.”

Ever pleased to be included in Adam’s plans, Northrup beamed.

From amid the mess on Bronwyn’s desk, Rachelle plucked a quill, found the unstoppered bottle of ink, and pushed a pre
cious scrap of paper toward him. “Write your friend Walpole.”

“I have no time,” Adam said.

“Write him briefly, and I will fill in the details.”

Adam’s brief glare met with solid feminine composure. Snatching the quill, he muttered a curse, then scribbled a pithy warning and thrust it at her. She left with the words, “
L’ amour et la fumée ne peuvent se cachet
.”

Adam rubbed his forehead fretfully. “I’m in no mood for a French riddle.”

“She said, ‘Love and smoke cannot be hidden.’” Northrup stood at attention before Adam. “Where would you like me to start searching?”

“
We’ll
start.” Face set in lines of grim satisfaction, Adam rolled up his sleeves. “With the footman.”

At least the carriage door wasn’t tied shut anymore, Bronwyn thought miserably. But why should it be, when her hands were bound so the bones ground against each other? Her shoulders still ached from Fred’s rough handling as he knotted the rope behind her back. Even now she couldn’t stand to look at Judson’s smirking face. “I still don’t understand why you kidnapped me. What did I know?”

Judson seemed astonished at her stupidity, but how much was true amazement and how much mockery, she didn’t care to guess. “I don’t know what you knew. Don’t you see? I couldn’t take the chance Henriette had told you anything. Your continued intimacy with Adam simply sealed your fate. For all I knew, you sent him to Change Alley to sniff about and ask questions.”

“Not I,” she denied. She kept her gaze steady on his face. “It was Robert Walpole who sent him.”

A variety of expressions chased across Judson’s face. Loathing, amusement, concern for his own skin. He pronounced, “Walpole is too clever by half.”

“And you’re not clever enough.”

Losing interest in her, he mused, “Robert Walpole, eh? What did Adam discover for Robert Walpole?”

Should she tell him what she suspected and let him think Adam knew, too? Or would it push him into action before she could get word to Adam? She had no time to decide, for he crowed, “Look, there’s my flat.”

Outside the windows were the homes of the fashionable, and she asked, “You have a flat in this part of town?”

“I leased it when I showed the amount of South Sea stock I possessed. Of course, the lady who owns it is fussing a bit now, thinking the stock is worthless.” He sighed with satisfaction and leaned against the seat, waiting for Fred to open the door.

“The stock is dropping.”

“The stock will rise again.” He laughed with excessive carelessness. “I have connections. I know.”

“Such a blessing,” she drawled, and he sprang at her. At first she thought he sought to hurt her, and forgetting her shackles, she struggled. But he only thrust his clean handkerchief in her mouth, and in comparison with her imaginings, this seemed so innocuous that she let him do what he would. A mistake, she found, when she was carried, unable to speak and hardly to breathe, past a doorman and into the well-equipped apartment.

Judson dismissed the coachman before removing the gag and smiled at her in the most gracious way. With all she knew of him, she still had trouble comprehending his villainy. “Adam Keane’s father was hung with the silk rope reserved for aristocrats, did you know that?” he said. He patted his chest. “
My
father escaped that fate.
My
father left England while he could.”

“Wouldn’t the magistrates have hung him with a silk rope?”

“Insightful girl,” he said, but he didn’t mean it. “No, he
would have had no silk rope. But we were rich. There were tables loaded with food, servants who jumped to do my bidding. The Keanes weren’t rich. I remember seeing Adam Keane dressed in rags, living in a hut. I laughed at him.”

She could imagine Adam’s reaction—being taunted by a jackstraw like Judson. “What happened to bring you down from your mighty perch?”

“A trumped-up charge of counterfeiting.”

Shocked, she asked, “Isn’t that the same charge that brought Adam’s father to the gallows?”

“The late Lord Rawson implicated my father. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, couldn’t go down without pointing his finger in random, widening circles.”

Deliberately obtuse, she asked, “But if your father was innocent, wouldn’t the court have dismissed the charges?”

“My father invested a bit of money in the business to help Rawson along, and that ensnared him. How was my father to know Rawson was so clumsy he would be caught?”

Too shrewd to accuse the elder Judson of misconduct, she asked, “What did your father do to create the wealth you speak of?”

“He held the position of trading justice in the worst part of London.”

“Ah.” She understood immediately, but because she wanted to be released, she kept her tone bland and unaccusing. “Could you untie me?”

Cocking his head, he thought about it.

She shrank down to make herself look smaller than she was and pasted a simper on her face. “A trading justice is a very important person.”

“People don’t realize how important. Do you know how many of the aristocracy complain the trading justices are unfair to the peasants?” He opened a drawer in the end table and rustled through the contents, tossing aside complexion creams, powder boxes, papers.

The handle of the knife he found was decorated with ornate carving, but the blade glinted with utilitarian strength. It attracted her eye like a magnet attracted iron. Only last night, Adam had held a knife, brought it close against her skin, and she’d reveled in it. She’d never once considered he could hurt her, for her faith in him transcended the bounds of good sense. The contrast of her plain, strong man and this stylish, murderous fop brought a heated sweat to her palms. Oh God, where was Adam? She wanted him so badly she fanticized about the taste of him, the scent of him, the touch of him.

“Are you sick?” Judson demanded.

She lifted her dry, burning eyes. “What?”

“You look sick.” He flicked his thumb against the true edge of the blade. “Lovesick.”

His considering gaze brought a fantasy to mind. How easily the knife would sink between her shoulder blades under the guidance of Carroll Judson. How happy he would be to so direct it. Yet she didn’t want to give him ideas; she turned her back to him without obvious inhibition and said, “I can’t imagine anyone complaining about the justices. Who else could keep the London underworld in order? And so cheaply, too.”

“Quite right, quite right.” He grabbed the rope that bound her hands and jerked her hands up. Her shoulder blades strained together. The sinews of her back complained. She grunted, found the moment too brief to prepare for her death.

Then her hands were free.

Moving slowly and painfully, she brought them to rest in her lap. As the blood flooded back, they pricked with a thousand needles just below the skin. She inched off her gloves and tucked them into the chair beside her hip. For some reason she wanted to look at her hands, bare and unornamented. They were nice hands, long and narrow with a few tiny freckles that floated atop the golden skin.
She wiggled her fingers. She rotated her wrists in gentle circles, then massaged the reddened skin where the ropes had burned her. Funny, to be so absorbed in the sight of her own hands, almost as if she were looking at them for the first time—or the last.

Yet Judson seemed oblivious of her, still bragging about his wicked father and how well he did his wretched job. “All the fines he assessed for criminal activities went into his pocket. All the monies collected when a criminal was committed to prison, all the bail-out monies also. That’s how my father met Rawson, and out of the kindness of his heart he allowed the man to move his family onto a hut at the edge of our property. Little did he know the perfidy that ungrateful wretch embodied.”

“I see.” She did, more than he could imagine, and she wondered at his audacity. Did he hope she would tamely submit to his tyranny? He was not a large man; did he hope she would not fight him? She turned to face him and found the blade held close to her cheek, right against the bone. Cautiously she turned to face forward, keeping the point within her peripheral vision. “So when your father was exiled to the Continent, he dragged you along?”

“I went along gladly.” He shrugged. “Better that than a seaman’s fate.”

“Better murder than work?” She gazed at him. He held the knife in a fighter’s grip, blade tilted up, point extended. It seemed only to emphasize the contrast between Adam and the beast before her. “You have an odd sense of morals.”

“Morals are for wealthy men, my dear, not for those who are left to fend for themselves at the age of fourteen.”

Forever secure in the bosom of her family, she was shocked. “Your father died when you were fourteen?”

“He married a woman with money, and she found me repulsive.” He touched his penciled brow with his little fin
ger. “I had to grow up then, you see. I lived on the streets of Rome. I learned Italian, especially the word for ‘freak.’ I worked in a kitchen. I worked in the fields. I worked like a slave. I survived, survived by my wits. Through the years, I’ve brought myself up in the world, and I swore I would never have to work with my hands again.”

“Work with your hands?” She spread her fingers, looked at them incredulously. “You’ve been killing people.”

He looked down at the knife as if he’d forgotten he grasped it in his hand. “So I have. And I’m very, very good at it.”

“He’s no footman,” Northrup said with scorn. “He’s Carroll Judson’s valet. Don’t you recognize him? He followed Judson about Change Alley, adjusting Judson’s clothing and chirping about his makeup. You’re Gianni, aren’t you?”

The footman made a gurgling noise, and Adam unwrapped his fingers from around his throat. It took effort, for Adam wanted, so badly, to strangle him, but Northrup’s composure acted as the perfect foil for his own savage inclinations.

Indeed, as Gianni stumbled backward, Adam realized how well he and Northrup acted as a team. Inclined to exploit their unity, he watched Gianni bump against the kitchen table and come to rest against the closed pantry door. “Speak, scoundrel,” he snarled, but Gianni massaged the marks Adam’s fingers had left, stalling until Adam propelled himself forward.

Hastily he agreed, “I am Gianni.”

“You are dead,” Adam said. “If anything has happened to Bronwyn, I’ll dismember you with my own hands.”

“Lord Rawson,” Northrup reproved. “Intimidation will avail us nothing. There’s a proper way to do these things. First we offer a bribe. Then we threaten him.”

Adam glowered at his proper young secretary and the suave valet. “I stand corrected.”

Gianni sniffed. “The English are so barbaric.”

Adam’s resolve died a swift death under Gianni’s disparagement, and Northrup halted Adam’s forward rush with a stiff arm across the chest. “Gianni, I won’t be able to control Lord Rawson if you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head.”

Subdued, Gianni nodded.

“Now, about the money—” Northrup began.

“You cannot offer me enough to betray my master.” Dramatic as an opera singer, Gianni pulled himself up. “His wealth is beyond measure.”

Northrup and Adam chuckled in unison.

“It is!” Thumping his chest, Gianni bragged, “My master has the inside line to information about the South Sea stock. He has assurances….”

In a carefully measured tone, Adam asked, “From whom?”

The Italian wilted under Adam’s frosty gaze as he hadn’t beneath the threat of violence. “From someone high in the South Sea Company.”

“And what does this mysterious person say?” Adam demanded.

“That as a reward for his services”—Gianni inhaled but seemed to find no sustenance in the air—“Mr. Judson will be informed when it is time to sell his stock.”

“The time has passed to sell his stock.” Northrup sounded shocked at such ignorance.

Rolling his eyes in alarm, Gianni said, “No, no, he has assurances.”

Northrup asked, “Does Judson truly believe the stock will rise again?” Gianni nodded, and Northrup
tsk
ed as if he were saddened.

Adam laughed briefly. “Poor imbecile.”

More than Adam’s sarcasm, Northrup’s pity convinced
Gianni, and his conviction showed on his handsome face. “So. We are devastated once more.”

“He is devastated,” Adam corrected. “You need not be.”

“I will not betray him.” Gianni’s brown eyes flashed with indignation. “You are the imbecile if you think I will. We have been devoted for years. He is all I have in the world.”

“You don’t have to betray him,” Northrup soothed. “Miss Edana is our only interest. All you have to do is tell us where he has taken her.”

“And ruin the one true pleasure he takes in life?” Gianni sighed in exasperation. “I cannot do that.”

Adam’s patience broke like a log licked by fire. He sprang at Gianni. Northrup made no move to stop him, but when a woman screamed, he swung on her like the angel of vengeance.

A large man, the largest man Adam had ever seen, stood at Daphne’s elbow, and she pushed him forward as she shrank under the flame of Adam’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” she babbled. “I’m sorry. I’d do anything to take it back. Promise you won’t tell Rachelle.”