Marry the Man Today (33 page)

"Not to mention all those state secrets that need to be kept fro
m
—" Drew frowned, lifted his eyes to Ross. "Did you hear that?"

But Ross was already out the lab door and heading silently down the passage toward the tailor shop and the noises in the dimness.

Toward the soft footfalls, moving toward him.

The whisper of fabric.

A familiar scent.

And then someone crashed into him, squarely against his chest. The person flew backward, out of his reach with a bellowing shout as Drew went dashing past them, deeper into the passage.

"I'll go see if there are others."

"Come here, you!" Ross made a lucky grab in the dark for the burglar who was scrabbling away from him, and must have caught a sleeve.

Then a hand.

A very soft hand.

Dismissing the distracting sensation, he hauled the little sneak thief behind him along the corridor toward the light from the lab, wondering how the devil the Factory's defenses had been so badly breeched. How many of these ruffians were prowling through the rooms? And what could be done to keep them quiet?

"In here, you bloody bastard!" He pulled the rumpled clump into the room at the same time he realized that he was looking at the back of a rounded woman, righting herself.

At her skirts. An apron. Slender arms and long hair. Burnished red hair, golden tipped, tumbling out of its loosened bonds as she turned.

Silky, shining hair.

Elizabeth's hair.

Bloody hell!

"Elizabeth?" A stupid question. He was looking right into her beautiful sea-green eyes.

At her stunned, crimson-cheeked, open-mouthed face.

"
Ross?" She squinted right back at him, tilting her head. "What are you doing here?"

"Me? What the devil are you doing here? I left you in Ha
m
pstead." Left her sleeping and naked, but now ...

"I'm very aware of where you left me."

"How the hell did you get back to town, madam?" He reached out and lifted her hair back over her shoulder, if only to convince himself that she wasn't simply an illusion. "And where's that blighter Will? I ordered him to stay with you."

"Good heavens, Ross, he's a boy. He hadn't a chance. I tricked him. But you'll not take it out on him. Really, that's all beside the most important point. What I want to know is, what are you doing in here?" She pointed at the floor, her eyes still puzzled, flashing with exasperation.
"
In this place?"

"What are you talking about, wife?" They were utterly at cross purposes, speaking riddles to each other. "And how did you get in here?"

"How did
you?
"
She seemed increasingly incensed, as though he had followed her here instead of the other way around.

"I came down the stairs, madam. And you?"

"The
stairs?"
She quirked her brow. Pursed her lips and looked to the ceiling.

"How did you get past the guard?" Hell, he'd just seen the man upstairs. The two other entrances were manned by multiple sentries.

"The guard? Oh."

He didn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean, 'Oh'? How did you get in here?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but pulled back her words and moved away from him as Drew came bowling through the door with a lighted candlestick.

He raised a brow when he caught sight of Elizabeth. "Well, good evening, Lady Blakestone.
"

"Wexford?" She canted her head as though she was looking at a ghost.

"I thought you left your wife at Grousemeade Cottage, Ross." Drew set the burning candle on the table next to the evidence box.

"So did I." He pointed at the candle but kept his eyes on his nervous wife. "Where did you find that?"

"In the tailor shop. And I doubt Mr. Puckett left it burning."

Ross took hold of his wife's arms and turned her around to face him full on, better to catch the nuances so alive in her eyes. "Well, madam, explain yourself. How did you get in here?"

But her mouth took on an even more stubborn slant as she glared back at him. "Here's a better question, Ross: where
are
we? What kind of place is this? And what have you and Drew to do with it?"

Bloody hell, did she really not know that she was in the basement of the Huntsman? "Let's just say that Drew and I have a right to belong here. We work here. You don't. Now what are you doing in our cellar?"

She glanced at Drew, then back at Ross. "All right, then, my lords, since I am obviously the one who found my way into this so-called cellar by way of the . . . unofficial rout
e
—"

"Which is from where?" Drew asked in an overly diabolical voice, his arms crossed over his chest.

"In . . . uh
m
, through the paneled wall of the tailor shop."

"The what?" Ross asked, with a glance at Drew. "How? From where?"

She wrinkled her brow and rubbed the end of her nose with a crooked finger, as though wishing to muffle the truth. "From . .. from the Abigail Adams."

Impossible! The place was three blocks away. "You must be joking."

Drew snorted. "I'll go check it out. If she's righ
t
— and I'm assuming your lovely bride wouldn't be spinning a tale for u
s
—
t
hen I should end up at the Adams."

"You might as well go home from there, Drew. I'll see you back here this afternoon."

Drew sent a gracious, encouraging wink toward Elizabeth, and then arched a brow at Ross. "Welcome to the
husbands' club,
old man."

Drew stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, turned on his heel and left the lab, trailing that damned contented tune behind him.

"Now, listen, Elizabet
h
—" Ross whirled back on his wife, ready to get to the bottom of all her dodging and deceptions, then realized that she was three sizes larger than she'd been when he left her. Her bosom matronly, her waist larger around, her dress oddly old-fashioned . . .

He opened his mouth to ask what the devil she was up to, but the woman reached out to him, caught her fingertips in his coat sleeve as though to soothe him.

"Look, Ross, I promise to show you everything later. But just now we don't have much time."

"No time for what?" It never ended, this riddle of his wife. One puzzle after another. One surprise before the next one, an even larger one.

She was flicking an impatient frown at him. "I thought you were trying to find Princess Lenka. Isn't that why you left me to pine away in our wedding cottage in Hampstead, while you came flying back here to London?"

"Yes, but the case of the abducted princess isn't your affair."

She took a stout breath and set her brow. "Actually, Ross, I think can help."

"Thank you, but I've got plenty of help. My own operatives, the Home Guard, the Metropolitan Police, the Foot Guard, the bloody cavalr
y
—"

"Isn't that going to be a little crowded for a quiet investigation?"

God, it was late. And she was more beautiful than ever with her adventurous spirit. But he was tired enough to sleep a week, had hoped for just a few hours.

"Please, Elizabeth, I appreciate your concern for the princess. It's not your problem."

But it's completely my problem!
Elizabeth had never dreaded anything quite so much as she was dreading this. Telling Ross that she'd been responsible for the three previous abductions. That they weren't abductions at all.

But that the princess's kidnapping was terrifyingly real.

She had to tell him everything, if only to make him believe her.

Even this new little bit of treachery. That not only had she and her operatives already been at work on the case, but that they might have broken the first clue.

A very large clue.

Best to
ju
st say it right out.

"Look, Ross, I know you're not going to like anything I'm about to tell you, bu
t
..."

He took his time pinching out the candle flame then casting her a weary glance. "But what?"

"I know where the princess is being held."

He rubbed at his temples, sighed. "Please, Elizabet
h
—"

"You have to listen to me, Ross. When I got back to London, I didn't know where you were, but I had to do something."

"You had to do something about the kidnapped princess? Why?"

The full truth would surely mean a battle between them, and would slow them down, so she didn't answer completely. "So when I couldn't find you, my assistants and
I
. . . well, we went over to the Russian Embassy to see if we could do anything."

He came fully alert and plunked her down in the chair behind her. "Bloody hell! You did what?"

"Good heavens, Ross, we didn't knock on the door. We posted ourselves across the street, around the perimeter."

He towered over her, his arms crossed against his chest, as though daring her to continue. "But why?"

She was leading up to the reason. "A short time after we arrive
d
—
o
ne o'clock mayb
e
—
I
saw a shadowy figure on the roof, skirting the eaves, in the rear of the building. Apparently he was looking for a way to get inside, maybe to drop onto a balcony or something."

"Well! Did he get inside?" He scowled his question at her, plainly interested, plainly not wanting to be.

"Something must have spooked him because he listened for a moment, then scuttled down a drainpipe. He ducked through the garden shadows and then disappeared down an alley."

"No one else saw him, wife, none of the guards?" He stood there looking down at her, the muscles in his arms flexed.

"I doubt it. Nobody moved, Ross."

"And then what?"

Her overprotective husband wasn't going to like this part at all. "Well, I couldn't just let him go. So . . . I followed him into the alley."

"Bloody hell! You could have been killed!" He dropped down on his knees in front of her, his eyes flashing with dark horror. "How the hell far did you follow him?"

"All the way to an import shop on Hugge
t
t Lane." She swallowed hard, just now realizing that she might have been in a bit of danger after all.

"And then what did you do? And please don't tell me that you went inside."

At least the stubborn man was finally fully engaged in what she was trying to tell him. Furious, but he obviously believed her.

And she had so many more secrets to tell him.

But his eyes were so bright she had to look down at her fingers for a moment before she could bear the intensity. "I waited, to see what he'd do next. It was still dark, and a light flared up in the attic almost immediately. That's when I tried the shop door and it opened. I didn't hear a bell, Ross, so I went inside."

"Christ!" He dropped his head into both hands.

"A few steps only." She raked her fingers through his hair, just for contact, to make sure he didn't hate her completely. "But I'm sure I heard something upstairs of the shop. Harsh voices, whispering. Angry words, though I couldn't understand them. As though something had gone wrong."

When he raised his head, he was still looking at her from under a thunderous brow. "And then what?"

"I heard someone coming down the stairs. So I ducked outside and hid in the doorway of the next shop. Then I followed him another ten minutes until he disappeared into a large building somewhere in Kensington. So we can't wait another minute. You know how quickly things change in a kidnapping."

After all, her three assistants were already waiting for her in Huggett Lane, ready to put their plan into gear as soon as it got light enough.

Though that might be a bit difficult just now, given her husband's stare of disbelief.

"
Where do you come by this whole mad idea?" He captured her chin between his fingers and bent to her, palpably frightened for her. "Besides the danger involved in skulking outside the Russian Embassy, you haven't any understanding of what it takes to foil a kidnapping."

Oh, but I do, husband. I just don't know how to tell you where I came by that understanding.

"Please, Ross. At least let me show you where I think she is. That's all I'm asking. Please."

Ross heard himself growling. His mind a muddle. His heart rattling against his throat, terrified for his wife. Getting involved when the danger was so real.

But bloody hell, she sounded so sure of herself, her story so plausible, he had to look into it. And if she came along with him, at least he would know exactly where she was at all times.