Leslie Lafoy (15 page)

His smile widening, he clasped her wrists, waited until she’d done the same to his and then hauled her straight up and out. Dropping her on her feet beside him, he released her as he jerked his head in the direction of the town house. She nodded once, stooped to catch the handles of both valises, cast one quick glance over her shoulder toward the house and then bolted at a dead run across the alley.

She was good. Very good, Barrett silently acknowledged as he dropped the grating back into place and quickly scuffed dirt and debris along the edges. Why the hell he found it so intensely stimulating, he didn’t know. And didn’t much care, he admitted, checking the back of the house before sprinting after her. He wanted her and understanding the why of it wasn’t going to change how he felt one whit.

He found her just where he knew she’d be, in the deepest of the deep shadows, standing motionless, blending with them, a bag clutched in each hand and watching his approach.

“I have a few questions for you later,” he warned in a whisper, pausing just long enough to take the bags from her. “When we have the luxury of time for leisurely conversation.”

“Would you give me a hint?” she asked, falling in beside him as they made their way through the side yard toward the street. “I truly dislike being unprepared.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I’m curious about,” he admitted, glancing over at her and giving her a quick, quirked smile. “Right now, though, we’re going to stroll out onto the walk and go along in a casual way, looking like your typical couple leaving home for a brief holiday. I’ll hail the first cab we see.”

“Sounds like a perfectly sensible plan,” she allowed, her smile appropriately serene, her gaze warily sweeping the walk ahead of them.

Had she been just a spy during the war? he wondered. Given the range of her abilities, she could have been a courier, too. Curiosity was about to get the better of him when a hansom cab leisurely turned the corner and rolled toward them. Deliberately focusing on the more important tasks at hand, he hailed it, handed Belle inside, and instructed the driver to take them to Victoria Station.

Once inside, settled on the rear-facing seat, he resolutely kept his earlier word. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed the larger of the folded pieces of paper. “When we get to the station,” he began, “we’re going to go our separate ways to the same destination.”

“That being your friend’s town house.”

He nodded. “Whoever killed Mignon didn’t accidentally meet her in the alley behind my house. They were waiting for her to come out. And given that they didn’t find the map on her or in searching our various rooms, you can wager the Crown Jewels that they’re still actively trying to find it.”

“Which means they’re—in all likelihood—still watching the house,” she added for him. “And us.”

“And as a consequence, our only real choice is to divide and confuse them in the hope of losing them,” he went on, handing her the paper. “You’re going into the station and out the other side. Once you do, you’re going to these markets, make some quick purchases at each one with the money I gave you in the priest’s room, and then disappear into the crowd to catch another cab. After the third market you’re going to instruct the driver to bring you to the alley entrance of the address at the bottom of the page. I’ll be waiting there for you.”

After a quick glance at her itinerary, she slipped the paper into her pocket and observed with a small, knowing smile, “You seem to think I can do all this with some degree of panache.”

“As partners go,” he drawled, “I couldn’t ask for a more levelheaded and capable one.”

“And while you may be curious as to why I’m the way I am,” she countered, openly studying him, “for the moment you’re willing to simply accept it as a reality to be used to our benefit.”

Skilled in moving stealthily, unflappable, keenly intelligent. The odds, he decided as the cab drew to a halt in front of the station, were in favor of her having been a courier. “In case no one’s ever told you so, Belle,” he said, reaching for the door handle, “you have an excellent mind. With you in the pocket, I can’t imagine how the South lost the war.”

“We lost because we lacked heavy industry,” she supplied as he helped her out, “and couldn’t import enough to adequately supply the army. What we could get proved impossible to move because we lack the roads they have in the North. It was a doomed effort from the start. Unfortunately, Southern men have never been known for putting practical realities before honor and principle.”

“A slight bit of shortsightedness,” he observed, retrieving their bags from the floor of the rented hack.

“With largely ugly consequences.” Her gaze sweeping the line of carriages rolling past them, she asked, “You’ll be careful?”

He nodded. “Keep watch over your shoulder, don’t take any chances, and I’ll see you shortly.”

“If anything goes wrong,” she said, slowly backing away from him and toward the main door of the station, “I’ll either go to the Blue Elephant or send word there. You’ll do the same?”

She’d seen the possibility of disaster and thought to accommodate for it before he had. The generals would have been fools not to use her. Damn fools. “We’re going to talk before the afternoon’s out, Belle.”

Her smile was soft and confident and somehow sweetly defiant. His blood singed through his veins as he struggled with the impulse to close the distance between them and plant a parting kiss on her deliciously taunting lips. It wasn’t either strength of will or greatness of character that saved him from making a complete ass of himself. It was Belle turning on her heel and walking away without even so much as a hitch of hesitation or a backward glance.

Barrett stood on the walkway, the tide of travelers swirling around him, and watched her disappear into the crowd. The cool voice of reason told him there was no reason to worry about her. He could see that no one was following her. She was smarter by half than her cousin had been. Belle could take care of herself. She’d be quite all right off on her own for a short while.

Reason and certainty didn’t make any difference, though. His chest was tight and his stomach was twisted into a cold coil of apprehension. If anything happened to her, he’d blame himself and regret the course for the rest of his life.

Ramming the fingers of his free hand through his hair, he exhaled a hard breath and forced his mind to consider the situation from a more practical angle. Turning, he stepped to the outside edge of the stream of pedestrians and then moved along with them, keeping himself decidedly visible and making it easy for Mignon’s murderer to choose him as the immediate prey.

Chapter Eight

Wiggling her cold, wet toes inside her boots, Isabella watched the back sides of the town houses roll past and promised herself—yet again—that when she got back to Louisiana she was never again going to leave it. At least the rain there had the gumption to be rain. And it was warm, too. Not at all like this cold, heavy English mist that clung and eventually, insidiously, penetrated every nook and cranny of the world and everyone and everything in it.

The hack slowed and she hefted the new basket and its load of foodstuffs from the seat beside her. With it resting on her lap, she craned forward to look along the high stone wall separating the service road from the backyard of a particularly dilapidated-looking two-story house. The gate was wooden and sagging on its hinges, but it opened as the cab eased to a halt beside it.

Barrett, his dark hair plastered to his head and water running in tiny rivulets off the shoulders of his greatcoat, stepped through the opening to seize the hack’s door handle, smile at her through the open window and say, “I was getting worried.”

“What you’re getting is drenched,” she countered, accepting his hand out. Mud instantly squished up around the soles of her boots and the carriage rolled away, flinging clumps of sodden roadway in its wake.

Barrett quickly drew her out of the splatter and through the gate. Using his shoulder to shove it closed behind them, he asked, “Did you have any problems?”

“I never noticed anyone following me,” she answered, smiling at the short path newly worn in the grass along the wall. “I was rather hoping that I would see someone and that I’d recognize them,” she added, as he took the basket in one hand and her elbow in the other. “It would have answered all of our questions.”

He shook his head and started toward the rear of the house, saying, “I’d rather not take the risks at this point in the game.”

“We’re going to have to take them sometime,” she pointed out. “If we don’t, we’re not going to be able to name the real killer and clear you of suspicion.”

“It’s another of those bridges of ours. First things have to come first. Which, at this particular moment, is to get ourselves into some dry clothes. Carden should be here within the hour.”

She stepped into the house and paused, surveying what had passed at one time for a serviceable kitchen. What few cabinet doors remained hung at odd angles from the frames. A water pump came up through a lower cabinet, unhampered by a countertop. The flooring had been tile once. Now it was largely gouged wood and chipped glue. Barrett placed the basket on a board that had been laid across another cabinet missing its top.

“The cellar would be my first choice as a hiding place, but it’s too wet,” Barrett said, drawing her forward and out into the main hall. “A problem Carden is most definitely going to have to address. There’s only one room upstairs that has curtains left on the windows so it will have to do.”

Isabella nodded, noting the dining room on her right as they passed, moving along the mahogany-paneled stairwell toward the base of the staircase. The front door—a thick, windowless, unadorned slab of mahogany—was straight ahead, the formal parlor to the immediate right of it, the sitting room to the left. Not surprisingly, the stairs creaked horridly beneath their feet as they made their way to the upper story. At least, Belle consoled herself as she winced, no one would sneak up on them in the night.

There were five rooms overlooking the stairwell. One straight off the small landing at the top, two on either side, fronted by a narrow strip of wood floor bounded by a painted, spindled balustrade. Belle considered the meager space, the thinness of the railing, the precipitous incline of the stairs, and made a mental note to not wander about in the dark. One wrong step and a person could find themselves—in a matter of mere seconds—slamming rather forcefully into the front door.

The room to which Barrett led her was on the front and right side of the house. Over the parlor, she noted, stepping into the darkened space. It was bare except for the faded green damask curtains hanging limply over each of the four windows. A hearth, framed by a simple mahogany mantel and surround, was centered on the outside wall. Ashes from a good many fires spilled out onto the simple flagstone hearth.

All in all, she decided, she’d slept in worse places. At least the ceiling seemed intact; there weren’t any water spots and certainly no gaping holes. And all the windowpanes seemed to be there. The air was cool and damp but it wasn’t moving through the curtains and across the room to stir the thick layer of dust that covered it from wooden floor to crown moldings. Mercifully, and more important than anything else, there wasn’t the slightest evidence of rodent tracks.

“It can be made habitable,” she offered, turning a slow circle. Her valise sat on the window seat that, were she brave enough to touch the dusty curtains, would overlook the street at the front of the house.

“With a lot of work and no small amount of money,” Barrett added, moving to the door that connected the room with the one behind it. “You change in here and I’ll do the same in this one.”

She stood where she was, noting that while he’d stepped out of sight, he’d left the door open. The hem of her dress was sodden, weighed a ton, and really needed to be laundered. Her boots were equally wet. As were her stockings and the lower edge of her hoops. To be out of them, warm and dry, for just a little while would be heavenly. Discarding the discomfort even temporarily posed a significant problem, though. She had two choices in dry clothing, neither of which was a particularly good one. There was her nightgown and wrapper or there were her night clothes. The latter, aside from being shockingly form fitting, would look utterly ridiculous with either her dress shoes or her mules.

With a sigh, she resigned herself to the lesser of the two fashion offenses and began working open the buttons down the front of her dress. “Was anyone following you?” she called out, wandering toward the window seat where Barrett had placed her valise.

“Not that I noticed.”

He was just inside the other room and to the left of the doorway, she noted, shrugging her arms out of her sleeves and letting the dress pool around her feet. “Maybe your house isn’t being watched after all.”

“It’s more likely that they weren’t positioned so they could see the back of the carriage house.”

Logical
. She undid the tie at the small of her back and let the hoops fall away. Dropping down on the seat, she used the toe of one booted foot to pry the muddy, wet leather from the other as she asked, “Do you think the constables will be watching it now?”

“Larson has to think that I’m smart enough not to go back there. I’m fairly sure that he wouldn’t waste the time and manpower for a surveillance.”

“But we do have to go back, Barrett,” she protested, shifting about to use the base molding of the seat to remove the other boot. “We’re still missing two pieces of Mignon’s half of the map. One of them is absolutely essential.”

“Yes, but Larson doesn’t know any of that. And there’s no
we
to it. I’ll go back alone and search.”

So he thought, she silently challenged, stripping off her stockings and tossing them onto the pile in front of her. Clad only in her chemise and pantaloons, she rose to her feet and pulled her nightgown, wrapper, mules, and a clean pair of stockings from the valise. “You’re going to leave me here unprotected?” she taunted, dropping the nightgown over her head.