Elizabeth Thornton (27 page)

“No holds barred?” asked Maitland pleasantly.

“No holds barred,” agreed Hugh.

Before he had finished saying the words, Maitland’s booted foot connected with Hugh’s flank. But Hugh was no novice to unarmed combat. When he fell to the ground, he brought Maitland down with him, and the soldiers watching the fight roared their approval. Then they began to make bets.

Abbie had one foot on the carriage step when she heard that roar. “What is it? What’s going on?” she asked anxiously, and she looked back at the house.

“Something that’s been brewing for a long time, I think,” said Giles. “I only wish I could stay and watch it.” When he saw the alarm in Abbie’s eyes, he spoke soothingly, though not quite truthfully. “The soldiers will put a stop to it before it gets out of hand. Now let’s get you home and into some decent clothes. Then we’ll talk.”

“Home,” said Abbie. “I want that more than anything.”

One of the soldiers watching the fight edged his way to the back of the crush. Nemo was congratulating himself on a job well done. There had been a moment of alarm when the girl noticed him on the stairs and looked at him for a long time. But she hadn’t recognized him in his red uniform. She was in shock and didn’t know what she was seeing.

He’d lost the book to British intelligence and that infuriated him. He wasn’t used to failure. It wasn’t his fault, but the fault of his incompetent subordinates who’d let the girl get away from them. If he’d been there, it would never have come to this.

But he’d had other things to do in London, more important things. He was an assassin. He’d had to set things up so that he could make the kill and disappear without a trace. The loss of the book was a serious setback. His enemies
knew he was in England now. They would take extra precautions to guard likely targets, and that would make his job more difficult, but not too difficult. He was too daring and too clever for them. He was standing among them, in the uniform of a British soldier, and he might as well have been invisible.

When the soldiers had stormed the house, he was already inside, waiting for them to appear. Then he’d efficiently shot his accomplices one by one. Now that they could be recognized, their usefulness was over. Their days were numbered anyway. British intelligence would have relentlessly hunted them down, and he could no longer afford to associate with them.

He had another cell waiting in the wings, virgin, untried. The irony was that these young Englishmen were as committed to Napoleon as he was. They were idealists, either students or professional men, who really believed that if Napoleon were master of England, he would put an end to the class system and make all men equal. They didn’t think of themselves as traitors but at patriots.

He, on the other hand, was a realist, so he’d used their idealism for his own ends. Napoleon would return like Phoenix rising from the ashes, and these young hotheads would have a hand in it. And not one of them would live to tell the tale.

Ballard had come close to telling the tale and that infuriated him, too. He should have been warned about Ballard long before he turned up in Bath. He’d originally meant to kill him on neutral ground, but after the trick Abbie—he no longer thought of her as Miss Vayle—played on him, he’d appreciated the irony of killing Ballard in the room registered in her name. He wondered what British intelligence would make of it. And he’d been
very sure Ballard would come looking for Miss Vayle. They’d both been after the book.

They said that cats had nine lives, but that little mouse had more than her share of good luck. There was no need to go after her now. Her usefulness had ended as well. But it irked him that she, and only she, could boast of how she’d bested Nemo. He really couldn’t allow that to happen.

He had her brother. It gave him pleasure to imagine all the tortures she would be suffering on his behalf. She would know that now that she no longer had the book to trade, George’s usefulness was over. Every waking hour, she would remember that he’d promised to send her brother to her in pieces if she crossed him. He was in no hurry. Let her wait; let her suffer. Besides, he had other plans for the boy now.

No one was watching him. Everyone was intent on the fight. So many soldiers milling around, and not one of them doing his job.

With a contemptuous yawn, Nemo broke away from the crowd and sauntered to the back of the house. He went to the privy, and when he came out, he was dressed in the rough clothes of a common laborer.

I
t was late in the morning when Hugh’s carriage pulled up outside his house in Berkeley Square. Harper walked him to the front door.

“You done Major Maitland a grave disservice, Mr. Templar, sir,” said Harper. “If his superiors gets to hear of it, he could be court-martialed for striking you.”

“Nonsense!” said Hugh irritably. He hated when Harper put on his “governess’s” voice and tried to make him feel guilty when he had nothing to feel guilty about.

Well, maybe he did have something to feel guilty about where Abbie was concerned. In spite of Maitland’s threats, he hadn’t expected him to go so far, but after he spoke to Harriet and Sir Giles at the opera last night, he’d begun to worry. As soon as the opera was over, he’d dropped a tight-lipped Barbara at her front door and had gone looking for Abbie. He’d missed her at Newgate by only a few minutes.

Newgate. He felt his rage begin to boil all over again. He’d wanted to teach her a lesson, but he hadn’t wanted it to go that far. He’d left the prison with only one thought
in mind: He was going to find Maitland and tear him limb from limb. But Maitland found him first.

There had been a soldier waiting for him outside the prison. “You’re a hard man to track down, sir,” he said, and handed him a note from Maitland.
If “his lordship” could spare the time from his amusements
, he’d read,
there are several corpses in a house in Chapel Street he might want to view
.

And beneath Maitland’s signature:
Don’t bother to dress up. We’re all friends here
.

Bastard!

The last thing he had expected was to find Abbie there. He didn’t think he would ever forget how she looked when he’d found her with her brother-in-law. Her eyes were wide and haunted, and all the life seemed to have drained out of her.

No, he had no regrets about Maitland. He’d got what he deserved. His one regret was that he hadn’t killed the bastard.

“They drummed
me
out of the army for striking another soldier,” said Harper pointedly.

Maybe, thought Hugh, he had got what he deserved as well. He felt as though a regiment of infantry had just marched over him. Breathing hurt. He knew by the pain in his jaw that he wouldn’t be eating much besides baby food for the next few days. All things considered, Maitland had given as good as he’d got.

Bastard!

Harper was watching him. “Look,” said Hugh, “if anyone asks, we were demonstrating the art of hand-to-hand combat to a group of soldiers. We were giving them a few pointers, that’s all. I’m not going to make a complaint, so nothing will happen to Maitland.”

Harper scratched his chin. “You hurt him pretty bad, sir.”

Though it cost him something, Hugh grinned. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?”

“But no more than he hurt you.” This time, Harper was the one who grinned. “You fought each other to a knockout draw, both of you, so all bets was off. I’ve never known that happen before.”

“Harper,” said Hugh patiently, “use the bloody door knocker and let’s get out of this freezing cold while I can still walk.”

The porter who opened the door to them was as welcoming as a gravestone. All his servants were like this, except for Harper and Tom, and Hugh accepted it philosophically. He was reserved by nature, and his servants respected that reserve.

Step by slow step he made for his library where he knew a fire would be lit. When Harper left him to see to the carriage, Hugh felt oddly let down. A fine state of affairs, he thought, easing himself into a chair, when a man’s only real friend was his coachman. He had many acquaintances, but no one who knew him intimately. He supposed he wasn’t an easy man to get to know.

Abbie had come as close to knowing him as anyone. If only he’d kept her at arm’s length, as he did everyone else, he wouldn’t be reeling from all the unfamiliar emotions that churned inside him right now.

In short, he felt like hell, and if this was what happened when he let someone get too close to him, he would never let it happen again.

Because he was chilled to the bone, he asked the footman who was standing by to bring him a large whiskey. Harper would have said something caustic about the road
to ruin, but this servant—he forgot his name—was as talkative as a doorpost.

As he sipped from his glass, morosely reflecting on his uncaring servants, he was gripped by an ache so profound it seemed like a physical pain. Abbie’s image filled his mind. They were in the kitchen at Endicote, and she’d got the fire going before turning her attention to him. He remembered vividly the gentle touch of her fingers as she felt for broken bones. Her fragrance. Her softness. Her warmth.

He’d do better to remember the wallop she’d given him earlier that night. At least that slap was something he could trust. She’d meant it. Everything else that had passed between them was an illusion. She’d wanted to disarm him, and she’d succeeded.

So, she’d suffered the indignity of Newgate. He was damn sorry for it, bitterly sorry. But treason was a capital offense. She’d got off lightly in more ways than she knew. He could still feel the residue of the shock that had frozen him when, after their fight, Maitland had taken him to view the bodies and had murmured, “We think they were Nemo’s accomplices.”

If Abbie and her brother were mixed up with Nemo, they were lucky they had lived this long.

She would return to Bath, and he would take up his life in London as though they’d never met. The years seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of him, years of cold houses, cold servants, and cold, calculating women who sold their favors for money.

At least they were honest. He’d take a Barbara Munro over a dishonest, repressed old maid any day.

His lips twisted in a bitter smile. A repressed old maid? Who was he trying to fool? In bed, she was as
passionate and wanton as a man could hope for in his woman. She’d wrapped her long legs around him and taken him on a wild ride to rapture. He’d been counting the hours until she could do it again.

I love you
.

The fire sputtered and quietly died.

He stared moodily at those smoking black coals, then suddenly reaching for his empty glass, he hurled it into the grate.

In Vayle House, just off the Strand, Abbie and her family had congregated in the upstairs parlor. Because this room was small and easily heated in winter, and because it had a fine view of the river Thames, it was the favorite meeting room in the house.

Abbie had undergone a transformation since she arrived home. She’d bathed and washed her hair and was wearing one of her sister’s gowns, an olive-green worsted that buttoned from throat to hemline. She was seated on a cushioned stool in front of a blazing fire, drying her hair, and once in a while she would absently run her fingers through it to fluff it out.

With few omissions, she’d told her family the whole story from beginning to end, answering questions as they arose. At first, they were incredulous. They were inclined to believe that she was suffering from dementia. But they couldn’t dismiss the fact that George was missing or that she’d been imprisoned in Newgate, or that she’d had to view the bodies of young men who had died in a house in Chapel Street.

When there was a lull in the conversation, Abbie looked around the parlor as if to convince herself that it wasn’t a dream. She was home. She was safe. The people
she loved best in the world surrounded her. If only George were here, it would be perfect.

The difference between Hugh Templar and the members of her family couldn’t have been more striking or more painful. There was nothing she could do to turn the people in this room against her. They’d had their differences in the past; they didn’t always get along; but when a Vayle was in trouble, they all rallied around.

They were so fiercely biased in her favor that when she told them how Hugh had betrayed her to the authorities, their outrage had been ferocious. Daniel had vowed to challenge Hugh to a duel; Harriet swore she would find a way to make him suffer; their mother promised that after she had finished blackening his character, no hostess in London would invite him to her house; and Giles had murmured that hanging was too good for him.

It didn’t help when Abbie told them there were no charges pending against her or George because Hugh had made a bargain with Maitland. They saw at once that if Hugh had really wanted to protect her, he could have given the book to Maitland without bringing her into it. Obviously he’d wanted Abbie to suffer, wanted her sent to Newgate.

Abbie couldn’t bring herself to tell them the rest, that she’d been fool enough to go to bed with Hugh. Daniel might take it into his head to try and force Hugh to marry her, and she’d been humiliated enough as it was.

She would drown in tears of self-pity if she didn’t get a grip on herself.

Let it go
, she told herself fiercely. There were more important things to think about than Hugh Templar. He could hurt her only if she allowed him to, and she wouldn’t let that happen because she was a Vayle, and Vayles had their pride.

They were all quiet now as they tried to come to grips with the incredible story she’d told them. She could have wept at the change in them. This wasn’t how they’d looked the last time they had a family conference. They’d been sitting at her dining room table in her house in Bath, and she’d felt intimidated, as she usually did, by the force of their personalities. Now they looked as helpless as children. She would have given anything to have things back the way they were, before this nightmare burst upon them.

“I wonder,” said Daniel, breaking the long silence, “if you did the right thing, Abbie. Maybe you should have told this Maitland fellow the whole story. These people have the resources. If anyone can find George, they can.”