A Valentine Wedding (25 page)

“Oh, my lord. You could have been murdered in your bed.” Maria collapsed on the chaise longue, patting her palpitating chest with one hand. “I think I shall faint away.”

“They’ve gone,” Emma said, disappointed. She withdrew from the window. “Once they reach the mews, our men will never catch them.”

She looked around the dressing room. “I wonder if they took anything.”

“We must send for Lord Alasdair,” Maria stated with unusual firmness. “We must send for him at once. He will know what to do.”

“There isn’t anything that can be done,” Emma said
somewhat absently. She was examining the opened drawers in her secretaire.

“Oh, madam, have they taken your jewels?” Tilda hurried into the room.

“It doesn’t appear so,” Emma said. Her jewel case was lying in open sight on the dresser. “It doesn’t look as if they went anywhere near it.”

She stared down at the writing shelf of her secretaire, frowning, wondering what was wrong. “They’ve taken my writing case!” she exclaimed. “Why would they do that? What could they possibly want with it? It’s old and shabby, apart from anything else.”

“I shall tell Harris to send someone to fetch Lord Alasdair.” Maria stood up, drawing her wrapper more tightly around her.

“No, don’t be ridiculous, Maria!” Emma said sharply. “There’s no need to drag him from his bed. There’s nothing anyone can do now except shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.”

“They broke in through the music room, Lady Emma,” Tilda volunteered. “Must have come in over the side wall, Mr. Harris reckons.”

“I don’t care what you say, Emma, this situation requires a man to deal with it,” Maria declared. “I am going to send for Alasdair at once. He’s your trustee. Who better to call upon?” On which statement she marched from the room.

There were times when Maria’s confident reliance on the superior skills of the male ceased to be amusing, Emma thought crossly. She didn’t want Alasdair here.

She was remembering now what she had overheard in the retiring room at Almack’s, and the mingled anger and hurt was as strong as it had ever been. Although
she couldn’t understand why it had made her feel so ill.

She brushed a hand over her forehead, rubbing her temples. She still felt muzzy, as if her thoughts were coming at her from a long distance, and her mouth was as dry as the desert. She massaged her throat, frowning fiercely. Something was wrong … well, everything was wrong. Being invaded by thieves in the dead of night was hardly a matter for congratulation. But something didn’t ring true about any of it.

“Nothing seems to have been disturbed below-stairs, Lady Emma.” Harris, a dressing gown now over his nightshirt, entered the dressing room. “Just the broken pane in the music room. But none of the silver’s gone.” He frowned in puzzlement. “There’s plenty of things they could have pocketed, but I can’t find anything missing.”

“Why did they come in here?” Emma shook her head. “And why did they take my writing case?”

“I’ve sent a footman to Lord Alasdair,” Harris said in a tone that, like Maria’s, seemed to imply that all would then be explained and put right.

“I fail to see what Lord Alasdair can do. Or what light he can throw on anything,” Emma snapped. “The thieves are long gone, and we’d all do best to go back to bed and send for the Bow Street runners in the morning.”

“Shall I bring you some tea, Lady Emma?” Tilda suggested solicitously.

“Might I suggest a drop of brandy,” Harris put in. “For the shock.”

“I’m not suffering from shock,” Emma said, then sighed. They were only trying to help. “Tea, Tilda, please. I would love a cup of tea.”

Alasdair’s first thought when Cranham awakened him with the news that a footman had come from Mount Street was that Emma’s earlier indisposition had turned into something desperately serious. He was out of bed before he was truly awake, heading for the salon, where the messenger awaited.

“What is it? What’s the matter with Lady Emma?” he demanded, throwing off his nightshirt. “Where’s my shirt, Cranham? Quickly, man!”

“Nothin’, I don’t believe, sir.” The footman shifted his feet.

Alasdair grabbed his shirt from Cranham. Naked, he held it for a minute, staring at the messenger as if the man had taken leave of his senses. “Then just what, pray, are you doing here?” he inquired, pulling the shirt on over his head.

“Mr. Harris sent me, sir. Mrs. Witherspoon said he was to,” the footman said with scrupulous adherence to the facts.

Alasdair’s head emerged from the collar of his shirt, his hair disheveled, his green gaze snapping. In a voice of patient courtesy that made Cranham shudder, he asked, “Maybe it wouldn’t be asking too much for you to tell me exactly
why
I should be dragged from my bed at …” He glanced at the long-case clock against the wall. “Four o’clock in the morning.”

“There’s been a robbery, sir.”

“What?”
Alasdair paused on one leg in the act of putting on his drawers. The mask of ironical forbearance was wiped clean away. His eyes, brilliant and sharp, rested on the footman with unnerving penetration.

“That’s what I come to tell you, sir,” the footman said with a slightly injured air. “Thieves … they broke into the ’ouse through the music room.”

“What did they take … no, never mind, how could you know…. Cranham, send Jemmy for my horse … no, that’ll take too long. Ill walk.” He sat down to pull on his stockings and his boots. “Did anyone see these thieves?”

“Harris and Lady Emma, sir. We run after ’em, but they got clean away through the mews.”

“They didn’t hurt anyone?” Alasdair shrugged into the coat that Cranham held for him, reflecting dryly that if Emma was chasing off thieves, there couldn’t be much the matter with her.

“No, sir. Harris fired on one of ’em, when ’e was on the drainpipe, but he got away.”

“Drainpipe … ? Oh, never mind. I’ll hear the details when I get to Mount Street.” Alasdair was striding from the room as he spoke. “Cranham, send Jemmy round to Mount Street, and tell him to bring Sam, Lady Emma’s new groom.”

He reached Mount Street in ten minutes and ran up the steps to the front door, hand lifted to the knocker. It was opened on the instant.

Harris, dressed now in his formal black uniform, greeted him with serene dignity. “Lord Alasdair. Quite a to-do we’ve been having.”

“So I hear.” Alasdair strode into the hall “What was stolen?”

“Nothing that we can see, sir. That’s the puzzle.”

“Oh, Alasdair, I’m so glad you came. Emma would have it that we weren’t to disturb you … that there was nothing you could do,” Maria came hurrying down the stairs, straightening her nightcap that she still wore over her curling papers. “But I’m so afraid.
My heart’s beating like a drum. A household without men, you know, is so vulnerable.”

“For heaven’s sake, Maria, this house is swarming with men.” Emma’s impatient voice came from the head of the stairs. “There’s Harris and half a dozen able-bodied footmen.”

She came halfway down the stairs, her gaze skimming over Alasdair as she said distantly, “There was not the slightest need to send for you, sir. You may as well return home and go back to bed.”

Now what was going on? It had been several days since she’d used that tone to him, Alasdair reflected. Or looked at him with that cold indifference. But he didn’t have time for that puzzle at present.

“Where were the thieves?” he inquired calmly.

“In Emma’s dressing room,” Maria supplied. “Only think. There was Emma sound asleep next door. Anything could have happened.”

“But it didn’t,” Emma pointed out waspishly. “I woke up, sounded the alarm, they ran off, and the only thing that’s missing is my old writing case.” She turned to go back upstairs. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed with my tea.”

“Just a minute, Emma.” Alasdair put a foot on the bottom step. “Did you say they took your writing case?”

“Yes. Now, I’m very tired, so if you’ll excuse me …” she repeated.

“Your pardon, Emma, but unfortunately it’s not that simple.” Alasdair ran up the stairs. “Come, I wish to take a look at your dressing room.” He caught her around the waist and swept her up the last three stairs.

Emma was immediately aware of the current of tension running through him. It was apparent in the hard
arm at her waist. There was an intensity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and his mouth and jaw were set. It had the effect of stifling her protests, and she allowed him to impel her back to her dressing room.

Maria, hurrying up the stairs after them, found the door to the dressing room firmly closed as she reached it a few paces behind them. She opened the door somewhat hesitantly. “My dear …”

“Not now, Maria,” Alasdair said. The curt tone was not one Maria was used to hearing when he spoke to her. She realized that something had happened in the last minutes to banish his usual urbanity.

“Very well,” she said meekly, and backed out, closing the door.

“What is it?” Emma forgot the retiring room at Almack’s for the moment.

Alasdair didn’t immediately answer her. He walked around the dressing room. “Is everything just as they left it?”

“Yes. I don’t think Tilda’s had time to tidy up.” She poured tea and took a sip, watching him curiously.

Alasdair went to the window. “They escaped this way?”

“Mmm.” She continued to sip her tea, waiting.

“Your writing case was on the writing shelf in the secretaire?” He ran a hand over the flat glossy surface of the shelf. It was where he’d seen the writing case on his own investigation.

“Mmm.”

“What was in it?” He turned to face her, resting his flat palms on the shelf at his back. His lean, angular countenance was very intense, his eyes beneath half-lowered lids as sharply penetrating as dagger tips.

Emma shrugged. “Only what you’d expect. Writing materials. Pens. Paper. Sealing wax.”

“Letters?” The one-word question cracked with the force of a musket ball.

Emma stared in surprise. “I don’t know.”

“Think!” Again a pistol shot of an instruction.

Emma regarded him with a touch of resentment. “Why? What could it matter?”

“More than you know. Now,
think!”

“I can’t think when you’re bellowing at me as if I were a recalcitrant spaniel!”

Alasdair ran a hand distractedly through his already disordered locks. He sighed and consigned Charles Lester and his instructions to the devil. Charles Lester didn’t know Emma Beaumont.

“Was there any correspondence from Ned in that writing case?” he asked, quietly now.

“No,” Emma said decisively. “I kept his last letter in there for a while … except that it wasn’t a letter. It was the strangest poem … a very bad poem.” She bit her lip suddenly and was silent.

“Where is it now?” Alasdair didn’t move a muscle.

Emma frowned. “What’s all this about?”

“Just tell me where the poem is.”

She rose and went into her bedchamber. Alasdair followed her. “I keep it in my copy of
Ode on Intimations of Mortality,”
she said, a tiny catch in her voice. She took the slender volume of Wordsworth from the bedside table and handed it to Alasdair.

He opened it and let the rust-stained parchment flutter into his open palm. He stood looking at it in silence.

“For God’s sake, Alasdair, what’s going on?” Emma demanded in frustration. He looked up. “This,” he said softly, raising the
parchment. “This is an encoded outline of Wellington’s intended spring campaign in Portugal.”

Emma stared in disbelief. “But why do I have it?”

“That’s a good question.” Alasdair raised an almost amused eyebrow as he tucked the parchment into his breast pocket.

“Ned entrusted this, and a letter to you, to the man he was with when he was killed. It seems that Hugh Melton mixed up the two. Ned’s letter to you arrived at Horseguards just before Christmas. They assumed, of course, that it was the real thing, and it took them longer than it should have done to realize at last that it was actually only what it appeared to be. An innocent letter from a brother to a sister … no more, no less.

“Of course, by that time, Napoleon’s conscripted Portuguese and Spanish allies were chasing after the document too. They’d known Ned was carrying it at the time of his death. They gave up when they thought it had been transported safely to England. However, it appears that they have a mole at Horseguards. He was able to inform them that in fact it had gone missing. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened.”

His smile was sardonic as he continued, “Then, you see, my sweet, it was a matter of who could get it first. It’s been a regular hunt-the-thimble. Time is of the essence, as you can imagine. The information will be no good to Napoleon once Wellington begins his campaign in March. They need to know what troop movements he’s planning before he makes them.”

Emma nodded. It made sense. “But why didn’t Ned’s masters just ask me for it?” she said with customary pragmatism.

Alasdair sighed. “Another very good question.
There was a feeling that if you knew what it was you had, you might let it slip to the wrong person.”

“I can keep a secret!” She was indignant.