Lady of Desire (16 page)

“Come on, you buggers,” he muttered.

They followed him upstairs. Blade moved quietly out of habit, but the others were growing overconfident, unmindful of the steps that creaked beneath their weight as they mounted to the second floor, then the third. They moved in a tight V down the hallway, searching for the master’s chamber, where the vault would most likely be situated.

They found His Lordship’s quarters at last in the west corner of the main block. The door to the suite opened to a large sitting room. Moonlight glimmered along the sleek lines of the Sheraton highboy and illuminated a Chinese vase displayed on a pedestal near the window. Sarge and Flaherty immediately began searching the sitting room while Andrews stole ahead of Blade into the adjoining bedchamber. Following him, Blade paused in the doorway, gazing at the enormous four-poster draped in gold cloth. The kingly mattress was set so high off the ground that one had to climb the four polished wooden steps to lie on it. He shook his head in disgust, thinking of the children in his neighborhood who had to sleep on the pavement near open sewers. At least tonight’s work would keep a few more of them alive a while longer, he thought just as Nate called to him in a taut whisper from the sitting room.

“Found it!”

Blade was stalking through the sitting room and crouching down by their side in a moment. Before him sat the safe, poorly concealed within His Lordship’s writing table. The safe was a no-nonsense affair, a simple, drab iron box about three feet square. Blade ran his hand over the key-lock with a wily smile. All thoughts of his earlier uneasiness forgotten in the thrill of imminent victory, he finessed the lock with the dabbs, then held his breath with anticipation as he pulled the small door open. He reached one hand inside the smaller inner shell and felt cool metal.

There was a small chain. Something round. “What the hell?”

“Is it empty?” Nate whispered urgently.

“No, there’s something…” His hand closed around the strange object, catching something else, too, something rough, like… rope.

Andrews was at the window looking out for Jimmy and the carriage, but Sarge and Flaherty came over to him and Nate and bent over his shoulder, waiting eagerly to see their take. Blade pulled it out, and his eyes flared with horror.

“What the devil? ” Nate said.

“Run,” Blade breathed, but all four men could only stand frozen for that split second, staring at what had been placed for them there in the safe—a pair of manacles and a length of rope tied in a noose.

“
Run
!” Blade roared, leaping to his feet and whirling around to face the enemy even as the holland-draped furniture came to life.

Twenty Bow Street thief-takers threw off their shapeless cloth coverings and rushed them.

The sweep of the sun-splashed fells and folded valleys wrapped around her in an endless vista, with the blue foothills of the Pennines in the distance. A steady wind, invigorating but not cold, drove the high-piled clouds across the cerulean sky. It riffled through the gorse and tufted heather on the moors and molded the twilled woollen skirts of her dun-colored sporting costume around her legs as Jacinda waited, her fowling musket braced against her shoulder, while her Brittany spaniel flushed the pair of red grouse feeding on the tender shoots of new heather.

The plump, mottle-plumed birds flapped into the air; the silky-coated spaniel immediately dropped to its haunches, crouched and waiting for the order to retrieve. Jacinda’s gaze narrowed as she trailed the swift, veering game birds with her gun. The first birds into the air were the older, stronger ones; since grouse turned sterile after one breeding season, these could be conservatively culled without damage to the breeding population.

Boom!

Her shot released a puff of drifting smoke and echoed down the valley. The larger bird fell. She nodded to the gamekeeper, who gave the order to the dog. The expert spaniel moved at a springy glide through the shrubs and grasses, the sun glancing off its long, liver-and-white coat. The younger dog, however, a flashy tri-colored pointer, was still an apprentice at her trade and dodged about with exuberant energy, barking with excitement over the kill and altogether irritating her more experienced bracemate, who took its duties as seriously as any upper servant. The spaniel carried the grouse back gently in its jaws to the gamekeeper. Mr. McCullough accepted the grouse with a chuckle and placed it in the bag, then glanced up at her, squinting against the sun. “A fine bird, my lady.”

Jacinda smiled and glanced into the leather pouch at her quarry, nodding in answer to the gamekeeper’s compliment, then handed off her musket to his boy, whose duty it was to reload for her.

Except for the loneliness of being without Lizzie, she had always found it very easy to settle back into the leisurely rhythm of country life.

“‘Twas an admirable shot, my lady,” said a prim voice behind her.

With one leather-gauntleted hand, she shaded her eyes from the sun and turned to her governess. “Why, thank you, Miss Hood.”

The woman was only now just beginning to warm up to her again.

The hunting party continued on, walking upwind across the open moor in a broad line. The dogs scouted the terrain ahead of the gun, their keen noses sniffing out the quarry amid the aromatic wild thyme and yellow cinquefoil. Behind Jacinda, servants in the dark green Hawkscliffe livery rounded out her entourage, three footmen following with their picnic hampers and a large parasol, and a pair of grooms leading the ladies’ saddle horses. As they neared the boundary of her family’s property where the low stone wall followed the sinuous curve of the ridge, the gamekeeper nodded to her. The Brittany had pointed another grouse.

Jacinda accepted her reloaded musket from the boy and cocked it, then lifted the gun to her shoulder, awaiting the bird’s rush from cover. The spaniel pounced, scaring the pair of startled fowl skyward. She trailed the larger bird on its crazy, zigzag path.

Boom!

She missed. The bird swooped in a miraculous escape toward the trees. It flew over the wall; then Jacinda’s eyes widened as the daft pointer tore off after it through the field, ears flapping. Before anyone could stop it, the dog had scrambled over the stile and disappeared into the trees, trailing a barking echo.

“Blast,” she murmured.

“Get the dog, boy,” McCullough ordered the lad, who bobbed a nod and ran after the animal.

“Is that Lord Griffith’s estate?” Miss Hood asked with a speculative lift of her eyebrows.

“No, ma’am,” McCullough answered. “Lord Griffith’s holdings border His Grace’s lands to the northwest. We are looking southeast. Those woods are part of the park of Warflete Manor, the home of the earl of Drummond.”

“The politician, Lord Drummond?” Miss Hood asked in surprise.

Jacinda nodded. “The same. I imagine he’s quite elderly now. I haven’t seen him since I was a wee thing.” She petted her impeccably behaved spaniel’s head. “Robert says he is a curmudgeon. Of course, Robert says all Tory politicians are curmudgeons. I believe Lord Drummond is a special adviser to the Home Office.”

McCullough grinned. “Did you hear the old gent has built a golfing course on his estate?”

“Has he?” Jacinda asked with interest. The Scottish sport was becoming all the rage.

Suddenly, crazed barking erupted from inside the distant woods. Jacinda drew in her breath as a human voice joined in, shouting furiously at the dog. She heard the boy’s high-pitched voice, as well. She and McCullough exchanged a startled look.

“I’ll see to this,” McCullough declared, already running toward Lord Drummond’s property.

“Wait for me!”

“My lady!” Miss Hood cried in exasperation.

“What if Lord Drummond thinks the boy was poaching?” she called back, then ran after the gamekeeper, still carrying her gun. At the wall, she hitched up her skirts about her ankles and nimbly scaled the wooden stile. She jumped down and raced on, a minute or so behind Mr. McCullough.

At the edge of the woods, she found a deer path between two tall, brushy stands of yellow-flowered Scotch broom and plunged into the dappled woods. She followed the sound of the pointer’s eager barking over the soft soughing of the wind through the trees. Hornbeam, ash, and oak swayed gently, with an occasional black mulberry posted here and there, ancient and imposing. The sounds were getting louder. She could hear several dogs barking ahead, a man’s blustery tirade, the boy shouting, and Mr. McCullough trying to take control of the situation.

Waving off an insect, she burst into the clearing just in time to see the pointer chase around in a circle with two large collies, then take a flying leap into the pond, going after the ducks floating along the banks. The ducks flapped away with a frenzy of panicked quacking while the dog splashed this way and that trying to catch one.

The furious owner of the collies stood on the banks, fishing pole in hand. He was a rugged-looking, weathered old sportsman in jack boots and country tweeds. He shouted futilely at her dog, who had churned the pond into a whirlpool and had undoubtedly scared away all the fish.

Dodging the boy’s attempts to catch her, the pointer bounded up merrily onto the banks again to make the fisherman’s acquaintance, splattering his wire-rim spectacles and drenching him in muddy water as she gleefully shook her short coat.

“I said
sit
, you ridiculous creature!” the old man roared.

The overgrown pup dropped at once to her haunches and cowered before him, the soul of obedience.

Jacinda winced, needing no formal introduction to know that the imposing figure they had so rudely disturbed was none other than the earl himself. The authoritarian tone of his voice made that instantly clear, but if there had been any doubt, it was removed by the pale, black-clad physician who approached the old man gingerly.

“My lord, pray, sit you down. Such temper is not good for your heart.”

“Oh, flap off, you damned old crow,” the earl muttered, but he rubbed his chest vaguely.

The pointer let out a contrite whine and offered the earl her paw.

“Get this idiotic animal out of here before I shoot it. You, sir, are trespassing!” the fire-breathing earl declared, turning to glower at McCullough as he hurried to collect the dog. “What are you doing on my property? Poaching, eh? Helping yourself to a bit of my game? Didn’t expect to find me at home, I warrant!”

“Beg your pardon, my lord. Her Ladyship’s hunting party was coming across the moors when the dog bounded off. We sincerely apologize for the mishap—”

“Ladyship, what? Hawkscliffe’s duchess?” he asked in a scathing tone. “She’s too refined for shooting, God knows, damned gentry upstart.”

“No, sir, but I enjoy it,” Jacinda spoke up, suppressing a bemused smile as she marched toward him.

The curmudgeonly old fellow squinted at her, polishing his spectacles with a handkerchief. “What are you doing with that gun?” he demanded.

“Grousing, my lord. I hope I did not give you a start. Take the dog away,” she instructed the boy, who slipped a collar over the pointer’s head.

“Well, as long as you are not some Radical assassin come to shoot me over the Corn Laws,” Lord Drummond grumbled, then put his small, round spectacles back on. “Good God!” he said abruptly. “You are the very image of Georgiana!”

“That is because I am her daughter,” she answered wryly, offering him her hand.

With an automatic air, the earl clasped her gloved fingers lightly and bowed over her hand, then squinted at her again in searching amazement. “Little Lady Jacinda?”

“Yes, my lord. Is aught amiss?”

“You are all—” He waved his handkerchief, gesturing vaguely. “—grown.”

“Indeed, sir. I made my debut last Season.”

“Why aren’t you in Town?” he clipped out, stuffing his handkerchief back into his breast pocket. He lifted his square chin, inspecting her like a general his troops. “It is the start of the Season, is it not? Shouldn’t you be husband-hunting with the rest of the silly young chits? ”

She was taken aback by his bluntness, but on second thought, decided she found it refreshing after all the smooth hypocrisy of the ton. “I’m afraid I have been sent down to the country for misbehavior,” she replied matter-of-factly.

Slowly and, much to her surprise, the gruff old man began chuckling. “Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? You are Georgiana’s daughter, after all.”

She scanned his face in sudden, deepening interest. “You knew my mother, sir?”

“From a safe distance,” he said, with a wicked twinkle in his steel-gray eyes. “I had the privilege of her friendship, yes. Your mother had the heart of a lioness.”

Jacinda drew in her breath, barely able to contain her delight. Someone who had known firsthand the glamorous stranger who had been her mother! “Won’t you come and join us for our picnic, my lord? My governess and I have not had much agreeable Society since we left London.”

“I am never agreeable, ask anyone, but—as a pretty young lady is bound to be better company than Dr. Cross—I accept. Gladly.” His shrewd gray eyes twinkled behind his spectacles as he offered her his arm.

Jacinda smiled brightly at him and took it.

Bruised and still, Blade sat in a condemned hole in the bowels of Newgate Prison, on a bench hewn into the stone. His head was in his hands, his elbows resting on his bent knees. A musty smell rose from disease-ridden straw scattered across the floor, and he could hear rats scurrying about in the corner. There was a narrow, barred window too high to see out of; through it came a gray, glassy light. The walls sweated, and from some far-off place he could hear the echo of a prisoner shouting under a brutal flogging.

They were going to hang him. And Nate. And the others.

It was over. All, all… over.

His men had been thrown into a mass cell to await their fates among their fellow criminals, but as their leader, Blade had been confined in this solitary dungeon. This, he supposed, was intended to break his spirit. He had not been in Newgate since he was fifteen. Back then, he had been caught stealing an old gentleman’s silk handkerchief. A few tears of feigned contrition had earned him the judge’s pity and thirty days in the “Start.” After that, he had walked out scot-free to put his new skills into practice, for a month in a mass cell had quite rounded out his education in the criminal arts.