Marry the Man Today (35 page)

"Christ, Elizabeth, what the hell have you done?"

Too much to explain right now.

"Please, Ross, I know how to do this. How do you think I managed to make three women disappear without a trace?"

"Because you're mad?"

"Did you or Scotland Yard ever find a single piece of evidence against
m
e?"

He bucked backward as though he'd caught her dead to rights. "Their membership in the Adams."

"Which led you absolutely nowhere. You know I'm right, Ross. If I hadn't just now confessed that I'm responsible for the abductions, you would never have discovered it on your own."

"That's beside the point."

"The point is that we're running out of time for the princess. Maybe for the entire world."

He had stopped his ranting and now looked at her through one eye. "I know the princess. She knows me. I've danced with her. How exactly do I explain to her the reason that I've come to her rescue without the Russian delegation demanding a full investigation?"

"You've danced with her?" Well, good. He was willing to listen. Thank God.

She softened her voice, hoping to sound more reasonable to him. Less the lunatic.

"Whoever took the princess must have actually used the chloroform in the handkerchief to get her quietly out of the embassy. Which would render her unconscious for a time, and disoriented for a number of hours."

Ross was leaning forward, nodding, frowning. "She might not have seen the kidnappers. Wouldn't know they were from the Austrian Embassy."

"Exactly. With a blindfold and absolute silence the moment we lay our hands on her, she won't know who rescued her or even how she got back to the embassy."

"The Austrians certainly won't be able to cry foul for fear of bringing down the wrath of the tsar on their heads. It's a damned near perfect stalemate, Elizabeth." And he looked appalled by the very idea.

"But only if we can make the princess disappear, in a public shop, in broad daylight, then deliver her back to the Russian Embassy. No questions asked."

He studied her for the longest time, his breathing deep and controlled. Scrubbing at his jaw, weighing the gains and losses in his head.

Until he finally said so softly that she barely heard him over the traffic, "Hell and damnation."

Ross had begun to believe that he was dreaming. Or writhing in purgatory for the brief happiness he'd discovered with Elizabeth. The world had gone topsy turvy.

But here he was, wide awake, crammed into a carriage with his wife, actually considering her antic strategies as the only rational risk.

Because time was a critical commodity. As critical as secrecy. The last thing he needed at the moment was to have the little shop surrounded by the police, or the Home Guard, or the entire Russian Army.

The tsar screaming bloody murder at the affront of it all.

Bloody hell!

"
What kind of fiction, madam?" he asked carefully, knowing that he would be setting off an operation that would put the woman he adored into harm's way.

"It's already in progress, Ross. The girls are in place on Huggett Lane. Shopping, chatting, having te
a
—"

"In place? Do you mean right now? At this very minute?"

"We've no time to waste. Everything is set. They're just waiting for me t
o
—"

"For you to show up in your disguise and rescue the princess single-handedly. That's why you're dressed that way.
"

"Not just me. There are to be four of us."

"You're wrong, wife." He couldn't believe he was about to say it. "There will be five."

"Five! Oh, Ross! Thank you!" There wasn't a lick of triumph in her eyes, only urgency and terror. "It's an easy plot. All you have to do is follow my lead."

"No, madam, you'll do as I say, when I say it." He needed to be able to put himself between his wife and a bullet meant for her. "That goes for your confederates. Now, how were you going to deliver the princess back to the embassy?"

"I've hired a private hack to meet us at the Adams."

"No. I'll take care of that at the Factory." If this madness worked, he'd have a huge mess to clean up afterward.

"The Factory?" Her eyes widened at his admission. "Oh,
I see."

Then she nodded soberly and went back to wrestling things out of her ponderous satchel.

A substantial bonnet. A wig box.

"What the devil have you got there?"

"A few things for our pantomime. Remember, you're the father, Ross." She opened the lid of a small wooden box, pulled out a black hairy thing the size of two caterpillars and started fiddling with the back of it. "I'm the mother. And we have three teenaged daughters."

"Three teenaged . .. bloody hell!"

He'd married a quick change artist with the tracking skills of a Seminole warrior.

Twenty minutes later Ross was stepping out of the coach onto the limestone curb a block down Huggett Lane from the import shop. As well-rehearsed in his wife's bloody fiction as he was ever going to get.

The pair of them dressed to the teeth in costumes that would fool the most discriminating audience.

Elizabeth wore a slightly old-fashioned dark wig, shot with strands of gray, a fashionable hat, a heavier bosom, a thicker waist, a beige, flawlessly tailored skirt and bodice, and a gold pince nez on her nose, secured to a brooch with a black silk ribbon.

Ross felt like a bloody orator, his frock coat enhanced by an unfolded walking stick, a silk hat, kid gloves, grayed temples, spectacles. And a rather virile moustache, the ends of which he could see when he glanced down.

All of which his wife had conjured out of her satchel like a magician.

"Mama!" Down the street came their three stylishly dressed teenaged daughters, waving exuberantly. Decked out with parasols and shopping baskets, bundles of brown wrapped packages.

"Good morning, Papa!" Jessica and Cassie each grabbed an elbow, unfazed by his addition to their theatricals.

But while he had them gathered around him, he needed to be sure they understood the gravity of the situation. This was no longer a freelance operation.

"One thing to keep in mind, ladies," he said, including his wife in his hushed tones and the sweep of his gaze. "You're now acting as official agents of the crown. Everything you do or say reflects directly back upon Queen Victoria. And since I am Her Majesty's champion and she is a longtime friend to me, you will do everything in your power to behave in her best interest."

Their mouths opened to perfect O's. Hopefully awed. Hopefully aware of the stakes. The threat to each and every one of them.

"Now, don't dawdle, girls," Elizabeth said, breaking out of the group with a noisy trill. Instantly transforming herself into a sophisticated matron on a shopping spree with her family.

She preened at a windowpane
,
then waved to someone across the street, and even added a little waddle to her stride.

The girls fell into step behind her, like a mama duck and her ducklings.

The Carter P. Norris family on parade. And he was their proud father.

Their protector, should anything go wrong. And it damned well better not. Because his wife had a lot of explaining to do when he got her back to their rooms in the Huntsman.

Elizabeth and the girls trolled the various shop windows ahead of him, exclaiming over hats and lamps and china displays until they finally reached the import shop.

It was an odd thing to be looking into that window. Not at the tins of herring and the bolts of cloth as Elizabeth and the girls were doing. But
through
the window into the small store itself; at the layout, the single clerk and the woman customer, the play of light and the stairway that he could see through a break in the curtain in the rear.

A long counter on the right, a wall of shelved goods on the left. The perfect setup for their ruse.

"After this customer, wife," he whispered as she slipped her hand through his crooked elbow and smiled primly up at him, "and then we'll go."

He had the strangest urge to kiss her.

For show.

For luck. For love. Because this was a bloody dangerous business and he'd grown quite used to her being in his life. In his heart.

He bent his head and caught her smile on his mouth, the deep impression of petals and roses. The exotic sensation of having a thick moustache between his upper lip and hers.

She kissed him right back, her eyes wide open and serious. Then she pulled away in mock ire. "Why, Mr. Norris, you dear cad, you!"

"And here we go," he whispered against her ear as the woman inside the shop completed her purchase and pranced out the door.

Perfectly on cue, the girls laughed, then flounced into the store, a dangerous cloud of crinoline, exclaiming over everything in sight.

"Ah, good afternoon, ladies, sir," the clerk said with a chortle, thickly laced with an Austrian accent. A medium-sized man that Ross knew he could easily take down with the back of his hand should it be necessary.

Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

But Elizabeth had hung back just outside the doorway, raising a terrified sweat on the back of his neck, though her actions were exactly as they had planned.

"Mr. Norris, have you seen our Patrick? Oh, my stars! Where did that boy go?" Then she cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted down the street like a fishmonger's wife. "Paaaaaaaaatrick!"

His heart had never felt so exposed, so vulnerable. These were dangerous men with dangerous intentions.

"Oh, look, Papa! Humbugs!" Jessica had stopped near the front door, just as they'd planned, drawing the clerk's attention.

"May I help you, miss?"

"Papa, please!" She poked her finger against the big jar of candy. "Humbugs are my favorite! And sherbet lemons and licorice and bonbons!"

"Helen, you know your mother doesn't like you eating candy." Ross moved into place on Jessica's left as he carefully blocked the clerk's view of the back of the shop.

"It's bad for your complexion, dear."

"Oh, Mama, please!"

"Mama, come smell this rosewater! It's lovely!" Skye and Cassie had positioned themselves at the end of the counter, taking up the entire aisle with their skirts and bonnets, not more than six feet from the curtain into the next room that led to the stairs beyond.

Again they looked too vulnerable. No match for someone who wanted to hurt them.

"Oh, I do love a good rosewater, sweet." Ross felt Elizabeth brush past him, her skirts as wide as fashion would allow. But she waddled those matronly hips down the middle of the aisle with all the confidence of a professional operative, making him wonder if she wasn't.

She took the open bottle from Cassie and gave a long sniff. "Isn't that delightful! Mr. Norris, dear, I'm going to be wanting a bottle of this. Maybe two. Heavenly days, any sign of Patrick?"

Ross cleared his throat and put his mind to the task before he lost the sense of the moment, and his yearning to protect them became the danger to the mission.

"He's somewhere, dear," Ross said to the clerk in his most beleaguered, husbandly derision. "He always is."

"Oh, Helen, look at this pretty gingham! It's you!" Cassie and Skye were unrolling a bolt of yellow cloth between them.

And damned if it wasn't becoming a perfect screen across the back of the shop.

"Oh, Josey! It is!" Jessica left Ross with the clerk and added her flouncing ruffles to the end of the counter.

The aisle now looked like a decorated wagon in a mummer's parade. Four skirts and four bonnets all swinging and bobbing. Four female voices raising a clamor against a wall of yellow gingham stretched here and there.

All because of his amazing wife. Hell, this might work out after all.

"You have quite a lovely family, sir!" The clerk lifted a sympathetic brow.

"Don't mean to be such a handful for you today, sir. With just one of you here and all."

The man gave a telling but nearly imperceptible flick of his eyes to the ceiling, then shook his head. "As usual, sir, a bit shorthanded this time of the day."

Pray God that he was right.

"Mr. Norris, dear, has our Patrick come past you there? Or is the lad still outside somewhere?" Her eyes locked with his, alert to the play of the shop, as aware of everyone and everything as he was. "He'll be wanting a look at the toy trains there on the shelves behind you."

"Yes, my dear." Ross smiled wanly at the clerk and pointed wearily to the jar of humbugs. "A half pound, if you please. And make sure none of them are broken. Our Helen is a very .. . particular child."

Ross glanced at the chattering chaos at the back of the store, and noticed with a jolt of terror that Skye was missing from the mob. The core of their plan had been set in motion.

Elizabeth could feel the concern in her husband, could see it in his dark eyes, his mouth drawn and deadly serious under that expansive moustache.