Marry the Man Today (5 page)

Not as of a week ago, when Ross last spoke to the man. But now was not the time to play that particular card.

"That is, of course, Lord Blakestone, if we convene a peace conference at all, given the tempers involved."

"It's been suggested that you convene something soon, Your Highness. And not to forget the sultan. Because, of course, he would be as resistant to the idea of partitioning his empire as your Emperor Franz Josef would be if the Great Powers divided up the Hapsburg holdings between them."

"Mon dieu
!
"
The prince gasped, launching his monocle off his florid cheek in a perfect arc, before it plopped against his shirtfront, to dangle on the end of its ribbon. "That's not what we . . . ahem . . . That is to say, you can assure Aberdeen that all parties will be represented in Vienna, one way or the other. ..."

All parties, indeed. Now, there was a plain-faced lie, doubtless told by the Austrian ambassador himself. Though it stunk of the tsar's own infamous manipulations. What the devil were the Austrians up to? And why?

Perhaps a bitter dose of Russian intimidation or a little royal blackmail in exchange for leaving the Danube Territories alone.

It was exactly these kind of relentless pressures that might lead a country or its diplomats down a reckless pathway. Political assassinations, invasions, coups.

"I'm sure Aberdeen will be glad to hear it, Your Highness. Because to exclude the sultan is to anger him. Which will only serve to anger Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. And you of all people must understand her temper when she is made to look the fool."

"Yes, yes, Blakestone, I understand perfectly." Rupert's watery eyes flared to saucers, as though recalling a personal encounter with his regal cousin's sometimes thorny disposition. "But I must ask you, sir, to keep this all quite secret."

"My word of honor, Your Highness."

"Now, how about another brandy, Blakestone?"

"No, thank you. It's getting late." An excuse not to be found in the prince's language.

It took Ross another two hours to escape the man and his sycophants, and no time at all to find his way back to the Huntsman.

On a route that led him directly past the Abigail Adams. A building he'd never paid the least attention to before earlier that evening.

Before his unexpected interlude with the amazing Miss Dunaway. With her challenging emerald eyes and her softly clinging scent, which had teased him through the dinner party and still danced in his imagination.

But he had barely made it through the front door when Pembridge appeared at his elbow, a slight hitch to his aging gait.

"Good evening, my lord." Pembridge handed Ross a folder and a pasteboard box, his neatly trimmed gray brows drawn together. "This came for you. From the Lord Mayor's office."

"Thank you, Pembridge, but you didn't have to stay up and wait for me. You could have left it in my rooms."

"Just as well, sir. I was awake anyway." Day or night for the last fifteen years, the prescient old man had always been ten steps ahead of him. "Anything else, sir?"

"To bed with you, Pembridge. Good night." Ross watched the elderly man, worried to see that he seemed to have grown shorter in the last year, slower. He'd have to bring it up to Jared and Drew.

But not tonight. He wanted to take a moment to study the Lord Mayor's report to see if there was anything he could add to the Wallace case. Although how his own specialt
y
—
g
athering and analyzing data from naval fleets around the worl
d
—
c
ould help a local kidnapping investigation, he couldn't imagine. But he'd promised to try.

His shoulder aching and stiff, Ross left the members' area of the club and was just starting downstairs into the elaborate catacombs of the highly secret Factory when he heard footsteps behind him.

"Hold up there, Ross!"

"Drew! What the devil are you doing here? What happened to attending the theatre with your wife and that pack of Swedish royalty?"

"We did. But we came home to a note from the Lord Mayor, pleading with me to help you quietly investigate Lady Wallace's disappearance." Drew went ahead of Ross into the evidence lab and turned up the gaslight at the door sconce.

"Callis is determined to keep this out of the press for as long as he can," Ross said. "Seems to think the London season will be ruined by this spate of crimes against the aristocracy."

"The very reason Caro insisted I join the search. Because of the two women who vanished earlier this year."

"Did she know them? Or Lady Wallace?"

"No. But, you know Caro. A woman who understands the importance of keeping secrets. I came because it was the only way to keep her from joining the investigation herself."

"Then let's get to it." Ross handed Drew the thin Wallace report then dropped the pasteboard box onto the table. "Does it say who first noticed the lady missing?"

Drew leafed quickly through the file then snorted. "Her footman, Whiggens. According to this, he's elderly. Nearly blind, hard of hearing. Apparently he thought it was unusual for his lady to spend nearly an hour in the millinery shop, so he went inside to check on her."

"Didn't find her, then sent for a policeman, right?"

"Exactly. The officer on the corner came running, but the trail had already gone cold. In less than an hour."

"And this is all they found at the scene." Ross reached into the box and pulled out a gaudy blue bonnet, a large kid glove, and a folded, crumpled man's handkerchief.

"Virtually identical to the evidence they found at the f
i
rst two abductions." Drew lifted the bonnet by one of its ribbons and set it on a table stand. "Though surely not this same style of hat."

"We won't know that until Scotland Yard sends over the rest of the evidence." Ross took a magnifying glass from one of the forensic cabinets and peered through it at the bonnet. "So, they found this in Regent Street."

Drew checked the file. "In the alley behind the shop; lodged between two barrels, but in fairly plain sight."

"And Lady Wallace had been wearing this very hat when she entered the shop?"

"According to the footman and three of the sales clerks." Drew was already busy creating a case file from the few pages of the report, the familiar, metal-cornered box that would contain the particulars of the crime as the Factory investigated the details.

"What color is Lady Wallace's hair?" Ross pulled a glittering strand off the line of stitching that attachéd the wide blue ribbon to the blue velvet brim of the hat.

Drew gave another quick scan of Callis's report. "Dark brown, almost black."

"Interesting." He held the strand up to the sharper light of the gas flame. "Because this belongs to a redhead."

He plucked two more from the rusching at the nape, and was struck by the softness of the scent.

A wisp of the familiar.

"An imposter?" Drew had asked the very question Ross had been considering.

"Except that all the witnesses identified Lady Wallace in the carriage as well as in the shop." Ross dropped onto a ta
l
l stool, sniffed at the handkerchief and grimaced. "Definitely chloroform. Found in the dressing room."

"And this glove found at the end of the alley. Also tinged with the slight smell of chloroform."

"Which could mean that Lady Wallace was chloroformed in the dressing room, taken outside into the alley, then put into a vehicle."

"We need to see for ourselves, Ross. Otherwise I might be forced to believe that Lady Wallace truly did disappear without a trace."

Leaving only the most bone-chilling possibilities.

"That's what disturbs me the most," Ross said. "Because people don't usually disappear completely, for no reason. Without a threat of blackmail or a ransom demand. This makes three, Drew. What the hell's going on?"

"A professional criminal?"

"Clever enough to best Scotland Yard at least twice in the last four months. No wonder the Lord Mayor wasn't going to leave it to the Yard this time. Though I don't mind saying I'm completely stumped."

Not a common feeling here in the Factory. It sprawled for three blocks in all directions beneath the elegant rooms of the Huntsman and other, more ordinary buildings. Its catacombs f
i
lled with workshops and laboratories, libraries of information, communication systems, every possible invention and some impossible. Every government agency at their beck and call.

Yet sometimes even they were left completely at sea.

"And the Austrians, Ross? How did that go?"

Ross snorted and lifted the blue bonnet off the stand. "Playing games with the Great Powers, Drew. Dangerous games. With dangerous toys."

And yet suddenly Ross felt he was looking at the most dangerous weapon of all.

Richly scented and marked with strands of strawberry gold hair.

All of which made his brain ache.

And the ache only worsened after he left Drew in the lobby and reached the small, shared sitting area in front of his suite where he found Lord Tuckerton fast asleep in a high-backed chair, a newspaper draped across his knees.

"Lord Tuckerton?"

Ross touched the old man's bony shoulder and he woke with a snorting start. "Yes, yes, what?"

"Sorry to startle you, Lord Tuckerton, but you seemed to have fallen asleep."

"Ah, good, Blakestone. Just the man I wanted to see." The old man struggled to rise, but Ross bent onto a knee to save him the effort.

"What can I do for you, Tuckerton?"

The old man lifted his watery gray eyes to Ross. "You can help find my lass."

"Your lass?"

"My grandniece, Lady Wallace. She's missing." The whole of his body sagged against the back of the chair.

Bloody hell. "Lady Wallace is your grandniece?"

"My brother's granddaughter."

"I didn't realize." Poor old Tuckerton. Never married. Rarely left the Huntsman for anything more than Sunday services at St. Paul's or the opening of Parliament.

"How did you find this out?"

"That husband of hers, Wallace. He came by here asking if I'd seen her today. But I hadn't, had I? Not since Monday last when she picked me up and we went for a drive in the country."

"When did Wallace come by?"

"Just after lunch." After the abduction. "Can you find her for me, Blakestone?"

"I promise to do my best, Lord Tuckerton. But let's keep this between the two of us."

"Oh, thank you, lad. Thank you."

"But in the meantime, let's get you back to your chamber." Feeling like a heel for having nothing at all to tell him that would buoy the grieving old man's spirits, Ross stood and slipped his hand under the old man's elbow. "Things will look much better in the morning."

Chapter 5

What mighty ills have not been done
—
by woman!

Who lost Mark Anthony the world?—
A
woman!

Who was the cause of a long ten years' war,

And laid at last old Troy in ashes?—
W
oman!

Thomas Otway,
The Orphan,
1680

“You
look every inch the elderly spinster, Lady Ellis!" Elizabeth grinned as she straightened the woman's dowdy black fichu. "Eighty-five, if you're a day.
"

"I feel a hundred." Lady Ellis sent a skittish glance toward the bustling mid-morning traffic clattering along Threadneedle Street.
"
And so ... exposed."

"You've nothing to worry about, my lady." Though Elizabeth remembered being just as frightened the first time. Certain that everyone had guessed at her secret plans. That the police were on their way, ready to clap her in irons.

But now it seemed that the more often she braved the hazardous undertaking, the easier the job became. And the more she shamelessly craved the challenge.

"Is my wig on straight, then?" The woman grimaced and tugged on the black ribbon tied below her chin. "It feels loose."

"It's fine. Besides, no one will suspect a thing, because no one is paying the least attention to us. A pair of helpless, elderly ladies."

"You do look positively ancient, Miss Elizabeth."

"Then we're both well armed!" Elizabeth pushed her spectacles up her nose, then tapped the tip of her cane on the cobble. "Are you ready?"

"If you think we are ..."

"I'm quite sure of it." And quite proud. "I've pulled off this stunt dozens of times, without a single hitch."

And she was about to do it again!

They were standing in front of the Bank of England, garbed in their frumpish battle armor, prepared to mount a full frontal assault on the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

An indignity that never failed to raise her hackles.