The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (53 page)

With the strength of the mad, Cleave wrenched free, turning on his old friend with a frenzied look in his eye. The musket lifted.

The sound of a shot reverberated through the room.

The shot had not come from Cleave’s musket.

Cleave’s bloody musket tumbled harmlessly to the ground, as they all stared in confusion at one another. Penelope glanced down at her own pistol, still in her hand, still cool.

As the sound of the report died away, one booted foot stepped down onto the top stair. It was a well-used boot, scuffed along the sides, and it posed—there was really no other word for it—on the stair as though its owner were well aware of the effect it would have.

From where she stood, Penelope could only see the side of the stairs, but Alex had a clear view upwards, and she could see his face change as the newcomer descended, step by well-calculated step. Unlike Guignon, this man’s frame was athletic, with the well-developed leg muscles of a man who spends a great deal of time in the saddle. His coat fell carelessly open over a travel-stained linen shirt.

He held a smoking pistol in one hand.

“That’s a hell of a way to say hello,” said Alex.

Visible nearly up to his neck, the other man tucked the spent pistol carelessly away in his belt.

“You looked like you needed the help,” he said, and came fully into Penelope’s view.

His reddish brown hair had been tousled into a careless style reminiscent of the current London mode, but Penelope would have been willing to wager it was less by design and more by exertion. He had high, clean-cut cheekbones, a square chin, and a quirk in one brow that looked as though it were habitual.

Penelope knew exactly where she had seen him before. It had been in the marketplace in Hyderabad, smiling a rogue’s grin as he tossed his
biryani
to a beggar and sent them on a fool’s chase all the way to Raymond’s Tomb.

“I had hoped
not
to see you here,” said Alex pointedly.

“Warmest greetings to you, too, brother,” said Jack Reid.

He paused on the second-to-last step to survey the field below, grimacing as he looked down over the piles of munitions to the bloody mess that had once been Louis Guignon.

Jack made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Messy, Daniel, messy,” he said reprovingly. “I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?”

Against her better instincts, Penelope followed his gaze. There wasn’t much left of Louis Guignon, at least, not of his face. Cleave had done a very thorough job with the butt of the musket.

Cleave took a stumbling step backwards, staring in horror at his handiwork.

“I didn’t,” he babbled. “I didn’t mean—”

“I doubt your intent means much to Guignon at this juncture,” said Jack, gracefully descending the stairs. “But I owe you a debt of gratitude, for all that. Major Guignon’s presence would have been a decided nuisance at this juncture.” He surveyed the gruesome scene with a critical eye. “Better you than me.”

Cleave backed away. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, we heard that already.” Jack looked quizzically at Penelope.

“And this is?”

Alex didn’t waste time with introductions. His face was bleak as he looked at his brother, so full of naked pain that it hurt Penelope to look at it. “So you are involved in this.”

Jack’s smile was a masterpiece of mockery. Despite herself, Penelope couldn’t help but feel a certain kinship for Alex’s black sheep brother. She had smiled that way often enough herself. “Didn’t Daniel tell you? No? I thought not. We are colleagues, Daniel and I. Traitors in arms, as it were. Aren’t we, Daniel?”

Cleave’s sudden pallor provided all the answer they needed.

Contempt etched across Alex’s face like acid as he turned to Cleave. “And yet you condemned Jack for it. You would have thrown him to the noose to save yourself.”

“That was different,” stuttered Cleave, with a fluttery movement of his hands. “He actually believes in all this! I was only in it—”

“For the money,” Jack filled in genially. “As it happens, so am I. But you are right. There is a difference. You see”—he paused, waiting until he was sure all their attention was upon him—“I am not being paid by the same people who are paying you.”

With a quirk of the eyebrows, he leaned back against the wall, patiently allowing them time to puzzle it out. Cleave stared at him, openmouthed. Alex’s face was a study of wonder and relief.

“You aren’t working for the French,” said Penelope flatly, since no one else seemed capable of doing it.

“Brilliantly well spotted,” drawled Jack. Penelope felt some of her sympathy for him begin to evaporate.

“Who?” Alex asked hoarsely. “Who are you working for?”

“I can’t name names of course. Not with him here.” Jack smiled genially at Daniel Cleave, who seemed to be intent on climbing backwards into a packing crate. “We wouldn’t want the information getting into the wrong hands now, would we?”

“I knew you couldn’t,” Alex said roughly. “Not treason.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Don’t go all sentimental on me, brother mine. Your side pays better than the other.”

“You lied to me,” said Cleave blankly.

“Don’t feel so special,” said Jack airily. “I lie to everyone. And a good thing, too, or my presumed allies would have my guts for tiffin.”

“Not just your allies,” said his brother darkly. “Does Father know about this?”

“I see no reason he should,” said Jack coolly. “I wouldn’t have told you if you hadn’t made such a bloody nuisance of yourself.”

“A nuisance.” Alex appeared to be having trouble getting the words out of his mouth. “
I
am the nuisance.”

“You have a remarkable facility for getting in the way.”

“I was trying to save your reputation,” said Alex through gritted teeth.

“My reputation, as you care to call it,” replied Jack, “is all that keeps me alive in this snake pit I’ve tumbled into.”

“Then climb out of it,” said Alex harshly. “No one asked you to play with snakes.”

“Didn’t they? Not everyone can walk the straight and narrow,
cher frere
. Especially when they’re not allowed onto the path.”

“Touching,” said Penelope rudely. She was still smarting from that “well spotted.” Not to mention that the man had no business beating up on Alex, who had been jumping through hoops of fire on his ungrateful behalf. “You poor, deprived man. You only have a brother willing to sacrifice his own future to save your sorry hide. My heart bleeds for you.”

“Brilliant,” said Jack, with a clipped diction that was painfully reminiscent of his brother’s. “Just what was needed. A Greek chorus. Or are you meant to be posing as my conscience?”

Penelope looked Alex’s brother straight in the eye. “I never take on thankless jobs.”

“Then why are you here?”

Before Penelope could answer, Alex interjected, in a very tired voice, “What was meant to happen here tonight, Jack?”

“If you hadn’t interfered, you mean?” Having gotten his little dig in, Jack went smoothly on. “There are plans afoot for coordinated ris ings across India. I, as you can imagine, am but a very small cog in this large wheel. Guignon, known in the business as the Gulmohar—”

“A flower,” Alex explained, for Penelope’s benefit.

Penelope found herself leaning towards that small attention like a flower towards the sun and abruptly made herself look away.

The little byplay was not wasted on Alex’s odious brother, who looked very pointedly from one to the other before resuming.

“As I was saying,” Jack continued coolly, “Guignon was responsible for Hyderabad. The munitions stored here were to be used for a local rising against the English, with the connivance of several of the leading members of the durbar. As you might imagine, I have quite an interesting little list of names in my possession.”

“Including mine?” said Cleave dully.

Jack bared his teeth in a grin. “Your name is on a different list.” Turning to his brother, he elucidated. “Our Marigold over here was meant to coordinate between the various sectors, pushing some forward, urging patience on others, promising bribes all around. How does it feel, Daniel, old boy, to have been the pin in the grenade that could have set all India aflame?”

“I wouldn’t have done it,” said Cleave defensively. “It wouldn’t have happened without the gold. And I would have given the gold to the Governor General. So it would all have come out right in the end.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” said Jack soothingly. “I’m sure it makes a lovely bedtime story. Puts you straight to sleep at night, doesn’t it?”

“It’s all true!” Cleave insisted. “Without the gold—”

He broke off as the hideous reality of it all assailed him.

“They would have risen on the mere promise of gold,” said Jack softly. “Just as you did. A token here, a token there. That was all that it took. For them as for you. Pity for Guignon that he had to be the one to break it to you.”

Cleave swallowed hard, his eyes snaking over towards the two kegs that mercifully concealed Guignon’s fallen form from view. “I killed him. I—I’ve never killed anyone before. But I killed him.”

“Never killed anyone before?” asked Jack with all the exasperation of a professional dealing with an untalented amateur. “What did you think happened when you passed on those coded messages? Tea parties?”

“That was . . . different.”

Jack’s lip curled. He regarded Cleave with undisguised contempt. “Just because you didn’t spatter their brains yourself?”

Cleave went an unpleasant shade of green, swaying slightly where he stood. Penelope could almost bring herself to feel sorry for him.

Almost.

How many men had he killed? Even leaving aside those shadowy figures who might or might not have been condemned to early graves by the intelligence Cleave had passed along to the other side, there was still Freddy, Freddy who would have been alive but for the misfortune of learning Cleave’s close-kept secret. Cleave had killed Freddy, and he would have killed her, too, had he believed her a threat.

When it came down to it, Penelope wasn’t entirely sure that cobra in her room hadn’t been meant for her, no matter how Cleave chose to recall it. Penelope tried to remember what they had discussed that night on the balcony, and couldn’t, other than that some of it had been about Alex. But if she had said anything that had triggered Cleave’s sense of self-preservation, he would have sent the groom to do his work for him and then murmured about tragic accidents afterwards. He would probably even have convinced himself that he had never meant it to happen.

“Did you hit Fiske over the head?” she asked coldly. “Or did the groom do that for you, too?”

“I think not,” said Jack Reid. “If Mehdi Yar had done it, Fiske would have been dead as planned. The Frangipani seldom misses his man.”

Cleave looked at him blankly. “The what?”

“You didn’t know that, did you? You thought you were simply slipping a bit of extra to a servant to do your dirty work for you.” Jack shook his head. “No. Mehdi Yar is an old hand at the game. That’s not his real name, of course. He’s been at this so long, I doubt even he remembers what his name once was. Frangipani suits him as well as any.”

Alex was looking decidedly grim around the lips. “In other words, Mehdi Yar is yet another spy.”

“Our superiors weren’t entirely sure that Daniel could be trusted to keep his nerve, so they sent Mehdi Yar to keep an eye on him. If you had showed any signs of weakening, an . . . accident would have been arranged.”

“He went off to Hyderabad when I sent him,” argued Cleave. “How he could he watch me from there?”

“But you followed him, didn’t you? And I’d wager it was because of a message he sent you.”

The dropping of Cleave’s jaw was answer enough. “He’ll kill me, won’t he?” he said after a minute. “When he finds out what happened here tonight.”

“If we don’t shoot you first,” said Jack idly.

Penelope couldn’t tell whether or not he was serious.

Alex sent him a hard look. “No one is shooting anyone. I believe there’s a way out of this. Justice may not be best served by it, but at least fewer heads will roll.”

“Pity,” said Jack. “I enjoy a good rolling head. It was why I originally joined up with the other side.”

Ignoring him, Alex turned to Cleave. “You have to turn in Mehdi Yar.”

“But he’ll denounce me. He’ll tell them I’m the Marigold.”

“No,” said Alex succinctly. “We’ll put it about that Guignon was the Marigold. Our authorities won’t quibble. They’ll simply be happy to have the Marigold out of the way. You might even get that reward you so badly wanted,” he added dryly.

Cleave had the grace to flush.

“There is a quid pro quo, I imagine,” his brother drawled.

“Naturally,” said Alex. He looked to Cleave. “In exchange for our silence, you maintain yours. Not a word about Jack, one way or the other. As far as anyone was concerned, he wasn’t here tonight. And neither were you,” he added, looking full at Penelope for the first time in a very long time. “Cleave and I came alone. We cornered the Marigold. He fought back. We prevailed. In the struggle, he gasped out the name of a confederate. If Mehdi Yar attempts to implicate Cleave, it will be taken as sour grapes, revenge for capture.”