A Necessary Deception (29 page)

“Too late,” a familiar voice spoke from the shadows.

Above them, the door slammed. A key turned in the lock.

Before them, Gerald Frobisher stepped out of the darkness broken only by a half dozen candles, his blond hair gleaming like its own candle flame. Beside him, Honore didn’t fair so well. Her honey tresses hung in limp hanks on either side of her face, a wan face white to the lips and sporting shadows like bruises beneath her blue eyes. Her gown hung about her thin frame, limp and smeared with dirt, as though she hadn’t seen a change of clothes or a hairbrush for days.

“How did you get here ahead of us?” Lydia started forward.

“Stay there.” Frobisher held up his hand. A knife gleamed in the dimness of the subterranean room, sparkled as he bent his elbow and pressed the point to Honore’s throat.

A scratch on the delicate skin told a tale of the knife having been there before.

Lydia let out a whimper, then murmured, “This is what comes of surrendering my life to You, God?”

Christien’s own heart, his miniscule faith, shook inside him. If ever he needed wisdom, needed strength beyond his own, it was now.

“What do you want?” Christien asked.

“To kill you,” Frobisher said, and smiled.

“It’s always been our intention to kill you.” Another voice spoke in the gloom.

Lydia gasped.

Christien grasped her arm to steady himself as much as to hold her close to him.

“The blackmailer.” Lydia merely breathed the words. “But Barnaby—”

“Died for his failures.” Into a circle of candlelight stepped Elias Lang. “But I did well convincing you he must have been the man who stole my message to you, my lady, and forced your hand.” The latter part of his speech reverted to his native Sussex accent, the one Christien knew.

“How?” was all Christien could manage. “You were in the same house with me that night.”

“You only thought I was with you.” Lang propped a hip on the edge of a gaming table. “Indeed, you were sleeping the sleep of the . . . er . . . drugged. Not that that was necessary. I am rather good at slipping in and out of houses unnoticed. Those destroyed invitations, Lady Gale?”

Christien flinched, bile rising in his throat. “I’d rather you have killed me then than carry on this deception and bring Lady Gale into it.”

Beside him, Lydia tensed, drew a little away from him.

Christien loosened his hold. If she wanted to retreat from him, he wouldn’t force her to stay. He held his attention tightly on Lang. “Why the charade, Elias?”

“There was no charade. The Home Office did request that we find a French agent.” Lang shoved his hands into the capacious pockets of his coat. “So I sent George Barnaby and young Gerry here after you.”

Christien stared at Lang. “
Pardonez-moi?
You sent them after me instead of the real culprit?”

“Oh, I caught him months ago.” Lang removed one hand from his pocket and waved it in the air. “An émigré chef no one will miss.”

Like Lisette.

Christien shuddered at what he had done to his sister in the name of revenge against France.

“Then why me?” Christien felt too numb to speak in anything but measured tones.

“You were useless to me once you got yourself released from Dartmoor.” Lang removed his other hand from his coat pocket and leaned his weight on his palms behind him. He appeared to carry no weapon on his person.

He didn’t need a weapon with Frobisher holding a knife to Honore’s throat. Neither Christien nor Lydia would make a move to attack, guaranteeing the young lady’s death.

“The French wouldn’t trust you, knowing you had English connections in high places,” Lang continued.

“Then why did you help me get out?” Christien tried to nudge Lydia behind him, the best way he could protect her. She wouldn’t budge.

Lang smiled, a bland curve of lips in his bland face, surrounded by graying hair so fine it appeared to have no color.

A man who looked like nothing. A perfect spy. He blended into shadows and sunlight alike.

Or dark inn gardens after disguising his voice.

“Getting you killed in London would raise fewer questions than in the country,” Lang said. “An accident while riding, a wrecked curricle, shot or mauled by a mob angry with the French.” Lang shrugged. “So many possibilities that would have merely had people shaking their heads over the violence of the country or the misfortune of just one more Frenchman.”

“Who has served his country well for ten years.” The merest tremor marred Lydia’s indignant tone. “You should have let him retire.”

“I tried to leave.” Christien fixed his gaze on Lang but watched Frobisher from the corner of his eye. “And now that I’ve mentioned leaving, we have a hackney—”

“Gone by now,” Lang drawled. “My henchman sent him away. He’s rather angry I wouldn’t let him near Miss Honore here.”

Lydia’s teeth grinding sounded like a mortar and pestle.

Christien’s own jaw tensed with an effort to remain calm, quiet. Only an arm’s length away, Honore was so white and still Christien wondered if she had fainted and Frobisher was holding her upright.

“But you knew too much about me.” Lang sighed. “A pity. You did a great deal of good, but I always get rid of my agents when they’ve served out their usefulness.”

“Then why not kill him outright?” Lydia took a step forward.

“Back.” Lang threw up his hand.

Honore screamed. Frobisher’s knife had drawn a bead of blood from her throat.

“If you kill my sister,” Lydia said through her teeth, “no place on this earth will be safe for you, Elias Lang and Gerald Frobisher. I will hunt you down—”

“Not if you’re dead too.” Lang yawned. “I’m quite bored with all of this. The explosion and fire in the spirits storage room will be much more entertaining. But you want to know about the charade. I suppose I should tell you. Always nice to die with one’s questions answered.” He yawned again. “Excuse me. It’s been a long night. I didn’t want you to trust de Meuse here, and I honestly needed to get George and Gerry invited into Society. Your husband always talked about how you were too responsible to your family, that he always felt he came second to them, so I thought threatening them would work.”

“And your second blackmail attempt?” Christien asked.

“I wanted Lady Gale back in London.”

“But you made a mistake.” Christien allowed all his contempt to ring in his voice, show in his curled lip and pinched nostrils. “You should have gotten your timing correct with Frobisher and his game.”

“Indeed.” Lang shot Frobisher a glare. “He’ll pay for that mistake.”

“Will he?” Christien smiled. “Are you listening, Monsieur Frobisher? He intends to kill you too.”

“Of course he won’t.” Frobisher smiled back. “He’s my uncle. He wouldn’t dare harm me. He’s just been a bit slow on paying my gaming debts, so I had to get money on my own.”

No hope of turning Frobisher against Lang?

“How will you make him pay then?” Christien asked.

“None of your concern.” Lang whipped a pistol from beneath the gaming table. “Now get moving. Into the back room.”

Christien didn’t move. Neither did Lydia.

“Move.” Lang pressed the barrel of the pistol against Lydia’s temple.

Her face whitened. Her expression remained impassive, calm.

An ache settled in Christien’s chest. Two men with weapons against him, an unarmed man. Impossible odds.

But not for God. Surely God wouldn’t allow these men to win.

He set his lips in a thin line and led the way to the back of the gaming room. Honore’s quiet whimper and the brush of feet and skirts against the carpet proved the only sound in the room. No noise of passersby infiltrated from the street, testimony to the notion that no screams would penetrate to the street from that subterranean room.

A cold subterranean room. Gooseflesh rose on Christien’s arms despite his coat and shirt. No way to free them presented itself. Only the heavy brocade curtain separated the gaming room from service and storage rooms beyond. Storage rooms with spirits. One spark would set the chamber exploding into flames.

He hesitated at the curtain.

Lang cocked his pistol. Lydia drew in her breath with a quick, sharp gasp. Honore screamed, a scream cut off in the middle.

Christien whirled, lashing out with his foot. His boot heel caught Frobisher on the side of the knee. He staggered back, groaning, and fell, taking Honore with him.

And Lang fired.

Lydia cried out. Christien spun toward her, caught her as she fell. No blood. He saw, felt, smelled no blood.

“Where,
ma chère
?”

“A warning shot only.” Lang proceeded to reload his pistol.

He could afford the time. Frobisher had Honore at knifepoint again.

“You try to attack one of us again,” Lang continued, ramming the ball down the barrel, “and I’ll shoot for real next time.”

Christien laughed. Lydia snorted.

“What difference does it make when you’re going to kill us anyway?” Lydia drawled as though bored.

“
C’est vrai.
” Christien tightened his hold on her.

She drew away. “If you’re finished reloading, sirrah, I’ll go peacefully . . . if you let my sister go.”

“You’ll go peacefully even if I don’t let your sister go.” Lang laughed this time. “Gerry, take the child first.”

“No.” Honore stuck out her lower lip like a child. She grasped the edge of a table. “N-no, you can’t b-burn me up.”

“I can. My uncle is paying me.” Frobisher held up the knife, and the candlelight flickered in a silver ribbon down the blade. “Steel. And I have flint in my pocket. One spark in an open cask of spirits and—poof!”

“No, please.” Honore dropped to her knees.

Lydia opened her mouth. Christien locked eyes with her, flicked a glance toward Lang, then to Frobisher, then back to Lang. If she understood—

She too dropped to her knees, then lunged for Lang’s legs to throw him off balance, ruin his aim if he tried to fire again.

Christien grasped Frobisher’s wrist, twisted. He grunted. Christien kicked his knee again. Frobisher went down. Christien remained standing in possession of the knife.

He turned toward Lydia, to Elias Lang. She lay in a heap of tangled skirts on the rug, her hands locked around Lang’s ankle. He kicked out with his other foot, swung it toward her face.

Christien lunged, knife before him like a bayonet. The blade slid into Lang’s chest. Momentum carried them back, across a gaming table, onto the floor. Christien scrambled to his feet. Lang remained motionless, the knife still buried in his chest.

“He’s dead.” Christien spoke in a flat voice. Numbness flowed through him like a waking sleep.

“It’s over?” Honore whimpered from beneath a table.

“No,” Lydia and Christien said together.

Frobisher had vanished from the gaming chamber, and a tendril of smoke drifted through a gap in the brocade curtain.

“Out.” Christien grasped Lydia’s hands and hauled her to her feet.

Honore surged up and raced ahead of them between the tables, up the stairs, to the street door.

The locked street door with no key in sight.

“No.” Honore began to beat on the door with both fists.

“Other door.” Lydia breathed hard. “There must be another door.”

“Honore, come.” Christien drew her away from the door.

The three of them charged back down the steps, through the gaming room, past the brocade curtain. Smoke blinded them, thick, pungent, filling their eyes and mouths. At one end of the corridor, flames flicked toward a line of barrels. The stench of spilled spirits stung Christien’s nostrils, caught in the back of his throat.

They fled in the other direction. A stairway rose steep and dark. Light flared at the top. Sunlight broken by the shadow of a man.

“Frobisher,” Christien shouted.

In seconds Frobisher would be out the door, slam it, lock it from the outside.

Christien took the steps two at a time. With a flying leap, he tackled Frobisher and brought him down atop a pile of refuse.

Behind them, one of the barrels exploded.

The blast sent a wave of heat and flame sweeping down the corridor. Lydia raised her skirts above her knees and fled up the steps. Seconds later, a second barrel exploded.

Honore screamed. Lydia whirled around. Her sister sat on the bottom step, staring at the encroaching flames with her hands raised as though she could ward them off.

“Honore, get up here,” Lydia cried.

Honore didn’t move. “He was going to burn me alive.”

“Yes, now come along or he still will.” Lydia ran back down, grabbed Honore’s shoulders, and tugged her up.

Honore didn’t run. She stumbled, she fell, she crawled out of the dark stairwell with flames at the bottom and sunlight at the top. With nudges, tugs, and a slap to stop her from screaming further, Lydia got Honore into the alley moments before a third barrel exploded. Her body said collapse onto the fouled cobbles. No more strength to go on. Instinct said to keep running away from the blazing building.

Toward Christien, who came to take her hands in his.

“
Je regrette
—” Christien said. “You shouldn’t have had to see this or endure this.”

“I was as much a part of this as you. But you’re wounded. Let me help you.”

He glanced down at his arm. “Just a scratch. We need to be away from this building before everything inside explodes.”

“Frobisher?”

“He’s dead.” Honore crawled through the muck to reach his side. “Like he wanted me.”

“Not dead,” Christien said. “Just stunned. I’ll carry him away if you will get your sister,” he said to Lydia.

Lydia bent down to take Honore’s hands. “We need to get out of here.”

“I know.” Honore wiped her sleeve across her face, leaving behind a streak of dirt turning to mud with her tears, then scrambled to her feet and charged down the alley.

Lydia ran after her. By the time she reached the corner, Honore had vanished. Poised on one foot, Lydia swiveled a moment between seeking Honore and returning to Christien. Honore was distraught and alone in a seedy part of London. Christien was wounded and in charge of Gerald Frobisher. Honore was her little sister.

Christien was her future.

With one last scan up and down the street and the alley, Lydia turned and ran past the burning building, past piles of garbage, toward the man at the far end of the alleyway. “We need to see if a fire service will come here.” She was panting. “And a magistrate. And—”

A bell began to clang in the distance, growing closer and closer. A throng materialized seemingly from the broken cobblestones.

“They’ll come.” Christien glanced down at Frobisher lying in the street, his hands tied behind him with Christien’s cravat. “Someone will—”

The clang of the fire wagon drowned out the rest of his words. Apparently whoever owned the gaming establishment had paid a fire company to protect his property. Watching flames leap toward the hazy blue sky, Lydia doubted the firefighters would get more accomplished than keeping the blaze from spreading to other buildings.

Bystanders began to help with that, carrying water from a public well. And in the midst of it, a constable arrived with Honore in tow.

“You’ve some explaining to do,” the officer said.

“We will, mon—sir.” Christien grasped Frobisher’s tied hands and pulled him to his feet. “We need to get this one to a magistrate.”

“Is that so, man?” the constable asked.

Soiled and smelling of refuse, Frobisher stared at the cobbles and said nothing.

The constable escorted them several blocks to the magistrate’s office. Inside a chamber scarcely large enough to hold the six of them and smelling of pickled herring, Christien told his story of working for the War Department and then the special assignment for the Home Office. He told of Lang’s treachery and his intention to kill them all.

“He’s the murderer,” Frobisher burst out from his corner. “He murdered my uncle, the French traitor.”

“Indeed.” The magistrate’s gaze flicked to Lydia. “Lady Gale, what do you have to say regarding this?”

“She’ll lie for him,” Frobisher called out again. “She’s his—”

“Quiet,” the constable commanded.

“I’m his—” Lydia worried her lower lip between her teeth. “He was a friend of my husband’s, is all.”

Beside her, Christien flinched away.

“He is without question loyal to Great Britain,” Lydia continued. “You can trust his word and the word of the daughters of Lord Bainbridge.”

“Of course, my lady.” The magistrate smiled at her and Honore. “I believe you, but I need to ask him more questions.”

“Perhaps you’ll allow me to take the ladies home first, sir?” Beneath the grime of smoke and dried blood, Christien’s face gleamed a sickly gray. He held his arm, the one he’d injured while saving her from a fall in March, taut to his side.

“He needs to see a physician first,” Lydia said.

“He will in good time.” The magistrate nodded, sending his old-fashioned queue sliding over his shoulder. “And I’ll send you ladies home in my carriage now.”

“But—” Lydia began.

“Go.” Christien’s voice cracked like a whip. “You look like you’re about to fall down.”

She felt like she was about to fall down, but she wasn’t comfortable leaving Christien with Frobisher and the magistrate. Without her and Honore there as reminders of who their father was, the magistrate just might choose to believe an Englishman. “If you’ll take Miss Honore home,” Lydia addressed the magistrate, “I’ll stay.”

“But, Lydia,” Honore protested, “I need you to talk to Father for me.”

“You can talk to him yourself. Right now, Monsieur de Meuse needs me more.”

Honore burst into tears. Lydia remained at Christien’s side. He gazed at her with his eyes bright and color returning to his skin.

In the end, Honore departed in the car of the constable’s spinster daughter. The magistrate sent a servant riding for the War Department to verify Christien’s employment with them, and after Frobisher became sick on the magistrate’s floor, the constable took him to a cell beyond a heavy door.

Once they were alone, the magistrate turned to Christien. “I believe you, sir, but must observe the formalities. There will be an inquest, of course, if they find the remains of Elias Lang. Such a pity.”

“I thought he was my friend and a loyal subject.” Christien sounded as though he spoke from inside a well. “I thought—it’s good I already resigned. I can’t have been a very good agent.”

“Nor I a sister,” Lydia said.

“But perhaps—”

The arrival of a colonel from the War Department interrupted Christien. They greeted one another with a firm handshake, obvious acquaintances or even good colleagues.

Christien turned to Lydia. “Lady Gale, allow me to present Colonel Jonathan Timmons.”

“Gale?” Timmons’s pale blue eyes widened. “Any relation to Sir Charles Gale?”

“His wife,” Lydia said.

“Wife? But I thought—” Timmons glanced at Christien. “Quite a sense of humor good ol’ Charles had. Saying you’re a petite thing indeed. Ha-ha.”

“Indeed.” Lydia injected as much frost as she could into her tone. Frost to counteract the heat flushing through her. Frost to steady her suddenly trembling hands.

“If you please,” Christien said, “I’d like to take Lady Gale home.”

“But we need to know about Lang,” Timmons objected.

“Later.” Christien offered Lydia his arm.

“It’s your duty to this country,” Timmons insisted.

“Lang is dead. Enquiries into his death and what he told me beforehand can wait. My lady comes first.” Leaving Timmons spluttering, Christien swept out of the magistrate’s office, Lydia on his arm.

“You put me before duty.” Not so much as a crystal remained of Lydia’s frost.

“If I had weeks ago, none of this would have happened.” Christien raised one hand to hail a passing hackney. “I should have resigned the instant you told me of the blackmail. I should have seen what Lang was doing. But my quest for revenge against Napoleon got in my way.”

“I could have stayed and listened to you about my father. But I was so determined to be loyal to him, to my family.” She swallowed.

The hackney stopped, and Christien handed Lydia inside. Once seated, she turned to him and demanded, “Was Charles unfaithful to me?”

“
Ma chère
, it does no one any good to rake up the past.”

“Which is as good as a yes.” Lydia stared down at her hands. They trembled. Her lower lip quivered. She clamped it to the upper, but the tears still came, hot, steady, unchecked in their twin paths down her cheeks. “I think I’ve always known, but I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to think he wasn’t a gentleman or wasn’t thinking of me while away—at least partly a good husband. But he lied and cheated and—” She pounded the seat with her fists until the leather cracked open and moldy stuffing oozed onto the floor.

Christien caught hold of her hands and began to caress them. “Lydia, this does you no good. You mustn’t let his bad behavior destroy you. It . . . I . . .” He pried her fingers open. “If I can forgive Napoleon, surely you can forgive Charles for his
amour
.”

“Charles, yes. Myself?” Lydia dashed her tears away on her sleeve. “I thought I was so clever marrying Charles, even though Father didn’t quite approve. He signed the marriage license, as I wasn’t of age yet, but he didn’t like it.”

“So he isn’t always an autocrat.” Christien smiled at her.

Lydia looked away, her face hot. “No, I suppose not. And he was right in the end. Oh, that hurts to admit.”

“But you did it.” Christien nudged her chin up with his fingertips. His eyes, bluer than a summer sky, gazed into hers. “Not all men are fools, liars, and cheats. And sometimes we have wisdom to impart.”

“A great deal more than sometimes.” Lydia ran her tongue along her parched lips. “I blamed Charles for leaving me in favor of his regiment. I blamed my father for trying to dictate my life. And you—” Her throat closed. She swallowed. “And you for—”

“For loving you?” He rubbed the ball of his thumb along her lower lip. “Or perhaps because you love me too?”

The power of speech eluded her, so she nodded, and he kissed her. He kissed her until they reached Cavendish Square. He kissed her after they stopped.

When the jarvey shouted for them to get down and pay, Christien stopped kissing her and drew away. “I believe after that, a proposal is in order. But I’d rather not ask on the heels of your learning your husband was unfaithful.”

“Thank you. It’s not that I think you will be. I simply fear—”

The hackney shifted, and the door wrenched open. “Get out and pay or I’ll have the Watch on ye,” the jarvey commanded.

“Of course.” Lydia slipped past him and headed toward the house and the now-open front door. In a moment, she could be alone in her room to think, to ponder, to decide whether or not marrying Christien was wise after Charles. He would give her as much time as she demanded, not because he didn’t love her enough to pursue her, but because . . .

Because he understood she needed to stop running and do some pursuing of her own.

Behind her, the hackney door slammed. Wheels began to rumble.

“Wait.” Lydia sped down the steps and into the square. “Wait.”

The hackney stopped. Lydia ran up to the door, making herself the entertainment of several dozen members of the haut ton. She yanked open the door. “Yes, I’ll marry you on one condition.”

Several onlookers, including the loitering hackney driver, applauded. Others called advice, from telling Christien to keep driving away to suggesting he get down immediately.

He took the latter advice. “What’s that?”

She told him and he laughed. Hand in hand, they retraced her steps to the house. Lydia’s cheeks burned at the audience, but she kept her head high and a smile fixed to her lips.

“We’ll enjoy the news sheets tomorrow,” Christien observed.

“Enough to eclipse Honore’s behavior?”

“Along with Lang’s disgrace, yes.”

They climbed the front steps together. Lemster stood at the top, his grin broad. “The family is in the drawing room, my lady, except for Miss Barbara. She’s in Lady Bainbridge’s sitting room. But the library is empty.”

“Thank you. We want the drawing room.” Lydia turned toward the ground floor chamber door. Too little sound emerged from behind it, and her heart began to thud.

Was she making another terrible mistake?

She glanced at Christien, thought of their conversation that felt like a lifetime ago, and whispered a prayer. “Thy will be done, Lord.”

Christien squeezed her hand and pushed open the door. A quiet conversation ceased. Father and Whittaker rose.

“What took you so long?” Honore demanded. She had washed away the dirt and changed her dress, but redness around her eyes told of her earlier tears.

“We had further business,” Lydia said.

“You should have come home with your sister,” Father said.

Lydia took a deep breath to keep her feathers flat. “Honore was taken care of, and I wasn’t certain a magistrate from the East End would treat Christien fairly.”

“Christien, is it?” Father grunted. “Rather familiar, don’t you think?”

“She’s agreed to marry me, sir,” Christien said, “with your permission.”