Saving Persephone (The Haberdashers Book 4) (16 page)

“It's where I do my best work,” Robert agreed.

“Do you think they're done arguing like old fishwives in there?”

Robert sighed and rubbed the spot between his brows. “I've known them for years and can assure you that they will only get worse until the matter is resolved.”

“How do they stand each other?”

Robert looked up at the stars overhead. “Just one of the mysteries of the universe, I suppose.”

“I would never want a friend like that.”

“A friend who puts up with you no matter how arrogant and annoying you can be? One who not only helps you, but also saves you on occasion? I think you could do worse.”

“Well, once you put it like that.”

“They are essentially brothers.” Robert smiled. “I should know, as I have one of my own.”

“I suddenly find myself saddened that I do not have a brother.”

“Well, just know that half the time most of us would be happy to give you ours.”

“Hm. So brothers are much like wives. My happy self excluded from such an opinion of my wife, of course.”

“Of course.”

* * *

Imogen was keenly aware of her own failings, but one thing at which she was exceptional was playing on another's emotions, especially a man's. She was pleading through the door. “You
must
let me see the baron! These women know what I've done. I'm not safe here!”

With her ear pressed to the door, she regretted that her French was not very robust. The guards were talking amongst themselves and it sounded like they were weighing the possible rewards and punishments of taking her to see the man.

“I can tell him about Robert Bittlesworth! I can -
ow!
Stop hitting me!” Imogen threw herself up against the door with a heavy thump.

George gave her a crooked grin. “I'm impressed.”

“You could help,” Imogen said under her breath, and took to pounding on the door again. “You must let me out! They will kill me!”

The girls took to her tactic in earnest then, shouting epithets at her and periodically thumping against the door as though she were being pushed and beaten. If the guards only had a window to see the women, they would be far more wary. Sabre and George were nearly doubling over holding in their laughter, while Jack smiled at them indulgently from her spot on the floor. At last they heard a key in the lock. As the guard entered, George dragged the smaller Sabre back a few steps and called out melodramatically, “Don't, your grace, it isn't worth it!”

Imogen was afraid George might repeat it in French just to make sure the guard understood her. Meanwhile, the duchess flailed and slapped at George ineffectively. Anyone encountering them now would be hard pressed to believe that these women were capable of doing much other than wearing out dance floors at
ton
balls.

Eyes brimming with unshed tears, bosom heaving, Imogen beseeched the guard. “Please?
Merci?
You can see I'm not safe here.”

“I'll kill her for what she's done to my brother,” the duchess trilled. 

The guard waved Imogen out. When George and Sabre made to rush for the door, the guard threatened them and they behaved effectively cowed. Imogen thanked the guard effusively, but was really thinking about what terrors the Haberdashers were. The guards inside the keep would be hard-pressed to believe the stories of the men who had delivered them, the ones who had seen Jean dead with his own knife and no one but these women to blame.

Now Imogen just had to prove that she was capable of what she had promised. It was so much better to seduce for sport, for pleasure. But if a seduction what it took to get out of this hellish place, then so be it.

* * *

George listened at the door for a moment, then turned on Sabre. “All right, why did she get to go?”

“Think it through, George. She is a bit of a risk. Why would I want her here, listening to all of our plans?”

The scowl was back, but George nodded. “Fair enough. Do we have plans?”

“Not as yet. Have you had any luck divining how many are here?”

“We're two stories down, so I'm not having much luck. That window,” George pointed to the small, barred window near the ceiling, “looks out over the road where we came around before walked up the steps, and there are few people who have traveled that way so far. Usually only one or two at a time.”

“Your hearing astounds me,” Jack said. “I think it's somehow grown more acute.”

“I've learned how to listen more carefully.”

“And Jack,” Sabre said, “you agree with my and George's assessment that we're in Normandy?”

Jack nodded. “The climate and landscape seem fitting, although I've yet to recall the name of this keep.”

“Perhaps we'll get a good look at it as we leave,” the duchess said drily. ”I assume George gave you her count of the men upstairs when we arrived?”

Jack nodded again, having had George sketch the number twelve in her palm shortly after they arrived in this room. “It seems an unreasonable number to fight.”

“All at once, yes,” Sabre said. “Which means we would need to figure out how to divide them.” The duchess mused their options, her gaze flitting around the chamber, coming to rest on her pregnant friend again. Her brow creased. “Jack, are you feeling all right?”

Jack couldn't hold Sabre's gaze and looked down at her hands. “I'm just overly tired, that's all. It's been ages since I've had so much excitement.”

“Liar,” George pronounced immediately, squatting down to check on Jack herself. “You're sweating, you have circles under your eyes. Are you sick?”

Jack chuckled. “No doubt you will have a disgustingly healthy pregnancy, and I'll have no chance to ask you such impertinent questions.”

“Are you having pain?” Sabre asked, settling down on her knees to the other side.

Jack hadn't meant to derail their escape planning, because quite honestly all she wanted to do right now was go
home
. She wanted to sleep in her bed for a week, only waking long enough to sip tea and eat scones. “A little,” she finally murmured.

George took to rubbing the small of her back, which was quite lovely. As George was the oldest of five, and daughter of a very temperamental mother, she had a better knowledge than most of what mothers-to-be had to complain about.

“Don't be brave,” Sabre warned. “Tell me what's hurting.”

Jack bit her lip before admitting her fear. “I think they might be birth pains.”

George's fingers faltered in their rubbing for a moment, but then she merely asked. “How badly does it hurt?”

“It's a sharp pain. At first I thought perhaps I had over-exerted myself or it was just, you know, a reaction to what happened at the doc. But then they came twice more, a bit more intense each time.”

She saw George and Sabre exchange a look.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have sent Imogen,” the duchess said, “as she was the only one of us who has seen to a birth before.”

“My mother would sometimes have a false round of pains weeks before a birth,” George said. More darkly she added, “Or at least she said she did. She wasn't, as you might imagine, so stoic as you're behaving.”

Jack smiled. “I just want to go home. Go back to your planning.”

George stood up. “Help me with my buttons, Sabre.” She was busily plucking apart ribbon ties as the duchess assisted her with the back of the dress. Stepping out of it, she added it to the pile of fabric under Jack. “Lay down and get some rest. Sabre and I will work on taking you home.”

Jack laughed at the outfit that her friend had revealed. A long blouse overlaid with a fitted bustier of brown silk, and brown trousers that tucked into her boots. She looked like something half-way between a pirate and a whore, and utterly like the hoyden that she was. George simply rested her hands on her hips. “Do you like it? I love the colder months. You can hide so much under your clothes.” Jack knew that among the things George hid were a number of knives. George picked up one of the shawls that Imogen had contributed to the pile, made of bright green silk, and tied it at her waist like a sash. “My wardrobe is complete!”

Jack laughed even harder. “Now you truly do look like a pirate.”

“No, I think I'd need to wrap it around my head for that.”

“Haberdashers!” Sabre said a bit sharply, even though she was laughing herself. “It is time for us to move on with our plans. I agree with George that you need to sleep, Jack.” Sabre patted her friend's foot. “Then when you wake up, I'll have it all figured out.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Once he and Casimir returned to the loft, Robert encouraged the men to all take turns sleeping for a bit. He even took a short nap himself. Then in the pre-dawn hours they waylaid the grocer. Their combination of threats and bribery seemed to prove effective again. However, it was clear that only two men could be concealed in the wagon, at best, and that it should be the smallest of them. Casimir was a ready choice, but Robert and the duke were of a size. That was when Robert discovered, to his chagrin, that the normally affable duke had become intractable. A few moments of fiercely whispered conversation had ended with “yes, your grace,” and the plan that Robert and Gideon would lead an assault on the front door while Casimir and the duke slipped in from the kitchens. As plans went, it was perhaps as effective as four men could be. Bernard had told them that the chateau was more of a castle, really, and that it housed more than fifty men. Robert loathed believing him, since it made their attempt to attack it madness. But if it proved to be true, then he and Gideon were to draw as many out of the chateau as they could, while Casimir and the duke operated inside to find and free the women.

As he felt that he could not trust Bernard, Robert left him bound in the woods nearby.

Dawn was creeping up as the wagon rattled up the road around to the kitchens, and Robert made for the front doors with the earl.

* * *

As Imogen had spent time with rich, powerful men her whole life, she knew how they thought. What they valued. This Baron Granby was no particular exception. He was perhaps a bit more self-centered than most, which was saying something. And quite a bit crueler. But overall he reeked of entitlement, wrapped around a very small, very guarded ball of fear. A primal fear, probably not something of which he was even aware, but Imogen could sense it. While she smiled at him, while she made promises about what she would tell him about Robert, what she
could
tell him after spending a sennight alone with the Hero of the Home Office, she observed. The baron enjoyed the obvious appeal of breasts, but more so had an obsession with feet. He loved to inflict pain, but also craved a woman who was strong enough to return it. Imogen watched his every reaction to how she held herself, how she breathed, how she
was
. Slowly, she altered her behavior to entice him. Entrap him. A shift of a foot here to have her slipper peek out below her hemline. A tilt of her shoulders there to make her seem more direct and less coy. She conveyed herself to be both strong and submissive, and he ate it up as though she had served him the finest of desserts.

She hoped to be able to call on the spirit of Scheherazade, and tell him a thousand and one tales. To taunt him with her body without actually allowing him to touch it. To keep him poised on the edge of desire, keep him more vulnerable than he realized he was, so that she could do her best to collect the information Sabre had asked for. She was doing to the baron, she realized, precisely what Robert Bittlesworth feared she had done to him. At the time, she had laughed at his accusation, not thinking herself capable of such a thing. Now, she had to admit that under the right conditions, she
was
capable. That further, it was something at which she could excel. But was it something that she would want to do in anything other than these very extreme conditions in which they found themselves? No. Categorically no. But to save the three women downstairs along with herself? Yes, that she could do.

She slid a slippered foot out further and settled in for a long evening of talk and flirtation. She could only hope that the outrageous lies she came up with to tell the baron came nowhere close to the truth of Robert's activities, nor that they revealed her own ignorance of what Robert truly did. As such, she hinted at the unspoken hopes and fears that the baron had regarding Robert. It proved to be a fitting way to keep the man's attention.

* * *

Sabre awoke when she heard a clang outside that sounded suspiciously like steel. “George?”

Her friend's voice was low but clear in the early morning darkness. “I'm awake.”

“Do you want me to boost you to the window?” They were getting some little light of dawn through the window, but most of their room was in shadows.

“You're not tall enough.” George then proceeded to crabwalk her way up the corner of the room closest to the window. Reaching the ceiling, she flung herself out, just barely managing to grab hold of the bars in the window before falling. The force of her jump and sudden stop thumped her body against the wall in what sounded to be a painful way. Barely stopping, she hoisted herself up to peer out the window.

“I'm sure you're very impressed with yourself,” Sabre said.

“Immensely,” George murmured, clearly more absorbed with what was happening outside the window.

“What can you see?”

“Nothing yet. But I'm hearing...” her friend's voice tapered off.

“Tell me what you're hearing or I'll find a way up there myself.”

When she spoke again, her voice was more enthused. “I'm definitely hearing swordplay, but I also just heard the earl swear.” She lowered herself to dangle from the window. “Look out below, please.” Then she dropped to the floor, rolling to absorb some of the impact.

“So it's time to go,” Sabre said. “Jack, are you awake?”

“Yes,” said the third Haberdasher, but her voice sounded odd.

“Jack, what's wrong?” Sabre dropped down near her friend and felt around in the gray dimness for her hand.