The Handbook to Handling His Lordship (32 page)

The dance ended, but when she’d curtsied and would have turned away, he seized her hands. “I’ll be calling at the Tantalus in the morning. Ten o’clock. You either meet me out front, or I shall come in after you. And I will have the authorities with me.”

She yanked her hands free. “You presume too much, my lord. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I suppose we’ll discover the truth of that in the morning.”

Walking with as much grace and dignity as she could manage, Emily moved away from him. She wanted to keep going, to walk out the door and out of London and all the way to Dover where she could take ship and disappear to the Continent, or to America. But that would mean giving up what she’d earned and beginning all over again. And that, when she hadn’t done anything wrong. That, when she’d finally found what she wanted.

A warm hand slipped around her arm, angling her toward the hallway beyond the ballroom. “You look ready to shoot someone,” Nathaniel’s low voice drawled, as he fell in beside her.

“It would be better for me if I confessed,” she murmured. “Better for me in that none of my friends would be dragged into the public eye and ruined for harboring me.”

“Did he accuse you directly?” the wolf asked quietly, pushing open a door and ushering her through it.

“No. Very nearly, though. He said directly that he would be calling on the Tantalus at ten o’clock in the morning and that I should be ready to meet him there or he would send the authorities in to drag me out.”

Silence.

Emily turned around to see Nate pulling the wolf mask from his face. “Well? Say something reassuring.”

“He’s moving faster than I would have liked. He must be very certain you’re Rachel Newbury.”

“I
am
Rachel Newbury. If he has me arrested, I will have to confess to killing Katherine or he’ll see the Tantalus and my friends destroyed. And what do you mean, ‘faster’? You expected him to attempt to drag me off to prison on Thursday instead of tomorrow?”

“You knew it would come to this.” Eyeing her for a moment, he walked over to the windows at the far end of the room and pushed one of them open.

She swallowed down the bitter panic rising in her throat. “I’m not reassured, Nate. You know I won’t allow the Tantalus to be harmed. They’ve given me refuge. I won’t repay that by having it said they’ve been harboring a murderess.”

Nate faced her again. “Come here.” He held out one hand.

Emily crossed the room, and he folded her into his arms. “I’m not a spy, Nathaniel,” she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes as she clutched at his lapels. “I don’t know if I can do this. Running is so much easier, except—” She stopped herself.

“Except what?” he pursued, lowering his face to her hair.

“Do you need to know everything?” For heaven’s sake, the next hours would be difficult enough without putting what lay between them and in their future beneath a magnifying glass.

“Where you’re concerned?” he returned. “Yes.”

“Well, forget it.”

“Stubborn chit.”

For a long moment she remained in the solid, unexpected comfort of his embrace. She found him so infinitely arousing, to her body and her mind, that it surprised her when he could also provide her with such peace. Safety. She couldn’t ever remember feeling safe, and she should be feeling nothing of the kind under tonight’s circumstances, but she did. With him, she felt safe. And warm, and loved.

Finally, he put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. “We have to go tonight.”

“I know.”

Slowly he kissed her, his mouth warm and anything but comforting. “There’s more to all this than you know, and I wish … I wish I could tell you.”

She smiled. “I know, I know. Spies and your secrets. You asked me to trust you, and I do.”

For the longest time he gazed at her, as if he was attempting to memorize her face. As if he never expected to set eyes on her again. “There is one thing I can tell you, though I likely shouldn’t.” He took a breath. “Promise me you won’t protest or argue or reason or smack me across the face with logic.”

Well, that sounded interesting. “Very well.”

“Good.” Tilting her face up again, he kissed her once more, slow and deep and breath-stealing. “One more of those, just in case,” he muttered, that slight, sensual smile of his touching his mouth. “I love you, Emily, Rachel, Eloise, whatever you choose to call yourself. I love you with every ounce of my soul.”

For several seconds she couldn’t speak. “How…” she began, then cleared her throat. “Well. You’re at least as logical-minded as I am,” she tried a second time, her voice shaking, “so you know how abysmal the odds are of us finding a happy ending.”

He shook his head. “I’ve spent most of my life being logical, Em,” he murmured, running a finger along her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized she’d shed. “But then this morning I realized that logically I should be dead. Most spies do not survive the end of a war; we know too much that even the winning side would rather no one else learned. And as for you—logically your life should never have brought you to London, much less to me. So tonight logic can go fling itself off a cliff, with my regards.”

A short laugh burst from her chest before she could stop it. “Well, then. I suppose I love you as well, Nate Stokes.” She straightened in his arms, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead, and kissed him. For a few heartbeats she allowed herself to believe that this could be the rest of her life, in a quiet room with the man she adored holding her close. Then, before that image could sear itself into her mind and lodge there, ruining everything else it touched, she pushed free of him and stood. “Enough. If we need to move more quickly, then I suppose we’d best get on with it.”

Nate didn’t like it; another day or two would have given him—and more importantly, Rycott—time to set a few more players onto the board, to see that the game progressed as they intended. But if Ebberling had gone so far as to announce that he meant to see Emily in prison in the morning, they’d run out of time.

“I’ll go first,” he said, sitting on the windowsill and swinging his legs around into the darkness of the garden outside. Opening his battered old pocketwatch, he checked the time. Three minutes of midnight.

In the past he’d always preferred working through the hours of darkness; physically sneaking about was so much easier than doing so mentally. Tonight they would be doing both, and though he hadn’t a doubt that Emily was game for it, she didn’t have the same experience of operating when failure could mean death. That troubled him. A mistake could upend everything, and even if all went perfectly there would still be a price to pay that she likely hadn’t yet considered. He had, and he was willing to pay it—and he hoped she didn’t realize what it was until it was too late for her to interfere.

He felt her warm hand on his shoulder, and then he pushed off from the window, catching the reaching limb of the old elm tree outside and hurriedly swinging from there to the ground. Once down, he turned and held up his arms. “Come along,” he whispered.

It would be a frightful jump from above, but Emily never even hesitated. Instead she sat on the sill and pushed away much as he had. Her falling weight in his arms sent him to one knee, but no one broke anything, and his first thought was how proud he was of her. “Well done,” he breathed, setting her back onto her feet and rising with her.

“And now?”

“Wait for just a moment,” he said, checking the time once more. Any second now, and—”

“There!” Rycott’s voice came, at the same moment he leaned out the window they’d just left.

Without looking, Nate grabbed Emily’s hand, and they fled into the darkness of London at midnight. Or at least as far as the street, where a sleek black coach without any marking on the doors awaited them. He boosted Emily inside, then climbed up after her. Before the door was even closed they went rattling up the street at a full gallop.

“Well done,” he said, nodding at the petite French woman seated opposite him. “I thought we’d have to be doing this on foot.”

“Rycott sent me a note an hour ago, that Ebberling was already convinced they’d found Rachel Newbury, and that he meant to act in the morning. I’ve been here for twenty minutes. We have moved up our plot, yes?”

“Yes.”

“But what of the others who were supposed to be waiting for us at Newgate?” Emily asked, twining her fingers with his. “If Rycott can’t stall Ebberling, then there won’t be enough time. If no one believes me…”

She looked terrified, and he couldn’t blame her. “I swore that no harm would come to you, love,” he said, squeezing her hand. “If you would prefer that we simply left England, I believe I can convince Miss Martine to drive us to Brighton or Dover.”

“No! You are not fleeing England, Nate. You’re an earl, for heaven’s sake.”

Her gaze searched his face, and he was glad of the years he’d spent learning not to betray his emotions or his thoughts. Even so, he held his breath until she faced Miss Martine. “Don’t worry about heaven’s sake, or mine,” he returned. “This will work.”

“I do think you could not have better allies than these men,” Miss Martine put in, though the glance she spared him told him quite clearly what she thought of him lying to Emily.

If Emily knew the truth, though, the complete truth, she would do something abysmally noble like confess to a murder she hadn’t committed. She would die for it, too, and he would not allow that. Never. No matter the consequences to himself. He forced himself to relax, to sit back in the well-sprung carriage and draw her up beside him.

“They say confession is good for the soul. I suppose we’re about to learn if that’s so.” And he hoped she would forgive him for the rest of it.

*   *   *

By the time dawn came about, damp and gray, Peter Velton, the Marquis of Ebberling, was in a black rage. What the devil was he spending thousands of pounds for, if damned Jack Rycott couldn’t do a simple thing like find a pair of people with whom he was already acquainted? If he couldn’t follow the trail of a man he’d trained in the art of spying? A man who had had a head start of but a moment?

He paced his front drive, refusing the cup of tea his butler had been stumbling behind him holding for the past twenty minutes. This would be resolved by noon, or they would see how an infamous spy held up to a pistol discharging full in his chest. He’d paid for results, damn it all, not an idiotic chase through the countryside where she might find any number of sympathetic ears ready to hide her from him again. Rachel Newbury. Emily Portsman. Whatever she chose to call herself, no one could hide from him. He’d proven it once, and he would do so again if need be.

Hooves pounded up the street beyond Velton House, moving far more swiftly than was permitted in the heart of Mayfair. He faced the foot of the drive as Rycott pounded into view, his mount winded and sweating in the chill morning. “Tell me you found that murderess,” Ebberling demanded. The more he said it, the more truthful it sounded. By the time she went to trial—if he couldn’t see to her, himself—he was certain even he would believe it.

“I found her,” the spy returned, swinging down to the cobbled drive and grinning. “They were halfway to Newgate and I had to put a ball through Stokes—Westfall, I mean—but she’s good and caught.”

Ebberling felt a chill run down his spine, cold and unpleasant. “You … shot an earl? I thought Westfall was your friend.”

Rycott shrugged carelessly. “Friends betray and are betrayed. Money always spends.”

“Then he’s … dead?”

“Before he hit the ground. It’s not wise to give Stokes a chance to pull a pistol.”

Previously he’d thought Rycott looked somewhat like a dandy, well manicured, precisely dressed in the latest and most expensive of styles. Now that he looked more closely, though, he could see the hard line of his jaw, the glitter of amusement in his eyes caused by the murder of a friend. There was nothing dandyish in the way he appeared now—only death on two feet.

Belatedly the destination Rycott had named sank in. “They were on their way to Newgate? Why, in God’s name, would they flee to a prison?”

The black-haired spy shook his head. “Not Newgate. They were headed for the Old Bailey. Or so she admitted, when I asked her very nicely. They meant to attempt to convince some judge or other that you were the one who killed Lady Ebberling, and Miss Newbury witnessed it.” His grin deepened. “That Nate always had some scheme or other up his sleeve.”

“Where is she now?”

“I found her a nice, cozy room in Newgate. I’d have done for her myself, but you said you wanted her, and then all the guards who’d heard the shot came piling out into the street, so I had to hand her over.”

“I don’t want a trial,” Ebberling stated, his uneasiness deepening to anger. “And now that you’ve killed a member of the peerage, how the devil am I supposed to dispose of her quietly?”

Rycott tilted his head, a strand of black hair falling across one intense blue eye. A mad eye, Ebberling thought belatedly. He’d hired a madman.

“I have some … acquaintances in strategic places,” he drawled after a moment, “one of those places being Newgate. As a favor to me, one of these acquaintances saw Miss Newbury stashed in a dark little cell beneath the men’s ward. No one else will know to find her there, and I imagine between the two of us, she’ll be happy to say whatever you want her to, just for the favor of seeing daylight when they march her out to the gallows.”

Evidently he’d hired a clever madman. But then, Ebberling reflected, he’d always had a penchant for succeeding at whatever task he’d set before himself. “When might I see her?”

“As soon as you have a horse saddled, my lord. Though you might wish to dress in something a bit less fine. I believe there to be rats and dank water where poor Miss Newbury is waiting your convenience.” Rycott chuckled. “When last I saw her, she was having some difficulty keeping her skirts out of reach of the lunatics in the cell next to hers. Almost a shame, her being as pretty as she is.” He shrugged again. “Almost.”

“Wait here, if you will,” Ebberling ordered, striding for the house. Yes, it would be better if he didn’t look so much like himself, anyway, when he called on Miss Newbury. Then no one would be able to say that he’d influenced her to confess in any way. And a confession would be the best resolution to this, even if choking the life out of the troublesome little flea would have been more satisfying.