My Wicked Marquess (28 page)

It
was
a steep drop down.

“Will someone bring the ladder?” Daphne called.

Her formidable aunt stood beside her magnificent carriage with an array of liveried footmen to attend her.

Willie was shading her eyes, staring up at Daphne in perplexity.

Daphne glanced over her shoulder back into the loft and then held out her hand to Max.

“What are you doing up there, anyway?” her great-aunt demanded while all her servants suddenly appeared to be fighting laughter. “I say! Who is that man you have with you?” the dowager cried as Max came over to stand beside her in the little doorway.

The two of them exchanged a glance. Daphne smiled at him, and then looked back down at her mighty kinswoman.

“Aunt Anselm,” she announced, “this is my fiancé!” She suddenly wanted to shout it from the rooftops, laughing, despite her great-aunt's appalled look to find her in such a state.

Max had colored slightly, but it seemed they both wore a bit of a glow.

“Well, I should certainly hope so!” her great-aunt replied, drawing herself up with a grand look that affirmed Her Grace would not countenance any other outcome now.

It was settled, then. The two of them were headed for the altar.

“Well, come down from there and do the introductions!”
the old duchess commanded already betraying a show of warmth beneath her stern manner.

“Yes, ma'am!” Daphne took Max's hand as they both left the window. As soon as they ducked out of sight, she kissed him again. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Thank you,” he whispered in her ear. “I won't ever make you regret this.”

“I know.” She closed her eyes in a state of amazed elation. This all might be madness, but she refused to let him escape her embrace. “From now on, I will place my trust in you.”

“And I you, my darling.” There was a bang behind them as one of the grooms propped the ladder back up where it belonged. “Your aunt,” Max murmured. “She seems like a force to be reckoned with.”

“Oh, she is,” Daphne answered with a grin. “But don't worry, no female stands a chance against your charm, as you well know.”

“We'd better go. Uh, Daphne—” He started laughing, for with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, she could not stop hugging him.

Now that he had caught her, she never wanted to let him go.

L
ondon seemed familiar.

Drake knew the names of streets and landmarks and could not remember how he knew them. Though his memory was still badly damaged, he was getting stronger.

They had arrived a few days ago after their hard journey from Bavaria, settling into the sumptuous Pulteney Hotel where James kept apartments.

On their first morning there over breakfast, James had handed Drake a copy of the
Post
and asked him to read the newspaper through each day, pointing out any names that seemed familiar. Drake had agreed to this willingly.

He only wished he knew his own.

When a few days passed without any real progress, James approached him in the evening with a broad smile. “My boy. I have a special present for you tonight. Come along.”

“Where are you taking me?” he asked quickly, his haunted eyes burning with alarm. He was still scarred by fear after his ordeal at the torturers' hands.

“Don't worry, Drake. You've been locked up for a long time. We think you could do with some…pleasant company,” James said in a delicate tone as he herded him out into the city's lamp-lit darkness.

“What do you mean?”

Talon flashed a wolfish smile. “We're going to get you a girl.”

“What for?” Drake uttered.

Talon laughed. “You've even forgotten what to do with a woman? Eh, don't worry, it'll all come back to you.” With that, he pushed him into James's carriage.

A moment later, they were under way. Drake cast James a worried glance, but his aged protector merely gave him an encouraging nod.

Before long, they arrived at the Royal Opera House at the Haymarket. The driver brought James's coach to a halt outside the grand theater, where elegantly dressed aficionados of the art were promenading in with small groups of friends or in pairs.

“Wait here,” James commanded as he got out of the carriage. “I will find our friend a suitable companion for the evening. Talon, mind you, keep the curtain drawn.”

James did not want passersby getting a look at Drake. Agents of the Order could be anywhere.

That was also why he had been careful to keep their captive confined either to the carriage or to his rooms in the Pulteney Hotel since their arrival.

He did not want the Council's enemies getting to Drake before James even knew for certain who he was.

Though James had grown somewhat fond of his docile prisoner, he was running out of patience with Drake's inability to remember his full name. Talon, of course, had never entirely swallowed Drake's claim of memory loss. But fortunately, James had devised another means of trying to uncover their captured agent's real identity.

What he needed, James mused as he scanned the people gathering outside the theater, was someone with a vested interest in knowing who all the powerful men in London were. A disinterested third party, with a talent for discretion.

Namely, one of London's leading courtesans.

His stare homed in on a voluptuous demimondaine in an elaborate teased blond wig and a scarlet dress with a plunging décolleté that nearly gave the world a fine preview of her nipples. Diamonds dripping from her neck, she wore a mink
stole thrown across her shoulders, and was smoking a thin cigarillo as she played with the affections of three young lordlings down from Oxford, probably for the Michaelmas break.

James strolled over to the courtesan and interrupted her sport. Like all of her breed, she knew the smell of real power and abandoned the boys to take his offered arm, never mind that he was old and frail.

“What can I do for you tonight, sir?” she asked, tapping his cheek with her folded silken fan in brazen coquetry.

“Are those real diamonds?” he asked in amusement.

She flicked the ashes off her cheroot and said, “I earned 'em.”

He let out an urbane chuckle, but removed the thing from her fingers and cast it onto the pavement, waving away the smoke. “I wonder if I could prevail on you to spend a couple of hours with my young friend. He's in the carriage. May I introduce you?”

She paused, eyeing him and then his waiting carriage warily. Lord, these ladies of the demimonde had the instincts of an alley cat, he thought.

“No one is going to hurt you,” James murmured. “My friend, you see, he was badly injured in the war. He has not been with a woman in a long time.”

“Ah.” A wistful frown of what James quite believed was genuine sympathy came over her painted face. A good-hearted whore, it would seem. “Did he lose a limb, poor boy? Wife can't take it? Cruel.”

“No, no. It was a head wound, I'm afraid. He's been—confused ever since. I think the pleasure of your company would do him a world of good.”

“Of course it would!”

“May I introduce you?”

“Well, there is the small matter of my fee.”

He slipped a small purse of gold into her hand discreetly. “Be kind to him. He's been through a lot.”

“I understand completely, grandfather. Lead on.”

“You are cheeky, aren't you?”

“It's in my blood,” she said.

James opened the carriage door for her, but she peered cautiously into the dark carriage to make sure the situation was all right before stepping up into it.

“Hullo, love. May I join ye? I hear somebody needs some cheerin' up in here—oh, my God!” she suddenly shouted, staring at Drake. “Westie!”

Drake gave her a blank stare.

“Westie, is it really you! God's bones, I cannot believe it!” With a joyous squeal, she flung her arms around him, barely noticing his tense recoil. “Oh, darlin,' what did that horrid Boney do to you? I didn't even know you was in the army! But now you're back! Oh, Westie, love, thank God you are alive.”

“Westie?” Talon drawled.

The courtesan shot him a pointed look over her shoulder. “For the Earl of Westwood, of course.”

“Ah,” James said, slowly smiling. He had been holding his breath, but now it seemed they had their answer.

Drake began shaking his head. “That can't be right. I have never heard that name before. I have no idea who this woman is.”

“Westie, love, it's me, your own Ginger-cat!” She looked at James in bewilderment. “He doesn't know who he is?”

“Afraid not,” James replied.

“I am sorry, madam,” Drake forced out, his head down, his body bristling.

“Oh, poor dear, it's all right. You must've been through a terrible ordeal. But believe me, we spent many a merry night in our revelries.” She planted a kiss on his cheek that left a rouge imprint of her lips there.

Drake wiped it off with an agitated look. “Please take her away. I don't want her, James.”

“I'll take her,” Talon muttered, smiling.

The woman glanced over her shoulder at him with a frown.

“You know, my dear,” James said, “it might help to speed his recovery if you could provide us with any further information that you might have about him. Who his friends might be, for instance. If you could give us their names, we
could deliver Lord Westwood to them so they could care for him.”

“I thought you were his friends,” she countered with another flash of cagey distrust in her eyes.

“Well, we are, of course, but there must be others. Mates of his?”

She shook her head, as though beginning to sense that something wasn't quite right. “If you don't want to look after him, let him come with me. He needs a woman's care.”

“I don't think he's ready for that.”

“Well, I'm just a whore, old man,” she concluded, giving James a cheeky shrug. “What do you want to know, what positions he likes? He used to come to the brothel and join in the drinking and songs, among other things. That's the wild Westie I used to know. Not this invalid,” she added with an indifferent glance, as though deliberately trying to distance herself.

Perhaps she sensed the danger she was in.

James stared at her. “Very well. In that case, you may go,” he finally dismissed her, though he suspected she was bluffing.

Good riddance
, said her eyes. She handed him back the little purse of gold he had given her.

“Keep it,” James invited her.

“I don't want it. Even a whore's got her pride, milord.” She hopped out of the carriage and slammed the door behind her.

“I don't trust her,” Talon said after a moment as the courtesan rejoined her Oxford lordlings in the square.

James watched the three young men encircled her.

“There you are, Ginger-cat!”

“You nearly broke our hearts!”

“Hang the opera. Let's go to the pub!”

She glanced back warily over her shoulder at James's carriage as she and her admirers strolled off to pursue their night's pleasures elsewhere.

Talon looked at James. “Shall I go after her?”

“No.” He shook his head. “We got what we needed for now. If we want her again, she shouldn't be hard to find.
‘Ginger-cat' is not exactly inconspicuous.” He rapped on the carriage to signal his driver, and a moment later, they were under way.

Drake, meanwhile, had no idea why it had mattered so much to him that the painted woman go free. He kept his head down and said nothing as they rode back to the Pulteney Hotel in silence.

All the while, he kept turning over in his mind the name that she had called him. The Earl of Westwood. That was he? The name did not even ring a bell.

When they reached the Pulteney, James locked him in his room for the night. Drake sighed. He had been expecting that.

Out in the sitting room, James gave Talon his new orders in a low tone. “Now that we know he is the Earl of Westwood, I want you to find his family's home and get one of our spies into the household, probably as a servant. Once they are in the house, I want them to search for any clues about his past involvement in the Order. Also, have them report back on any pertinent activity that comes up.”

“Understood. Do you also want me to call on Dresden Bloodwell? He should be in London by now. I believe Malcolm gave you the address.”

“Yes, I have it here.” He unlocked his portable writing desk and took out a slip of paper with Dresden's location on it. He handed it to Talon. “Drive past and have a look, but don't approach him by yourself. Give him a wide berth. The man is, after all, a murderous lunatic. We'll call on him together soon and make sure he is keeping his mischief to a minimum. While you take care of that, I have a meeting tomorrow at Newgate.”

“What, at the jail?” Talon asked in surprise.

“Yes, several months ago I received a communiqué from one of Tavistock's underlings, a warden at Newgate. He told of a convict locked up there who was clamoring to see Tavistock. O'Banyon is the prisoner's name. He claims to have information about where the lost treasure tomb of the Alchemist can be found.”

Talon stared at him in astonishment. “Truly?”

James shrugged. “We shall see. Since Tavistock is no longer with us, the unfortunate Mr. O'Banyon will have to make do with me. I shall hear him out tomorrow and see for myself if he has any credibility. Considering where he is presently, I have my doubts.”

“The lost treasure tomb of the Alchemist…” Talon murmured. “Wouldn't that be something if it turned out to be real? If one of the missing scrolls could actually be found?”

“It could hold the key to unimaginable power,” James replied in a low tone.
Just the thing to help me overthrow Malcolm
.

Talon shrugged. “I guess we can only take O'Banyon's words with a grain of salt, though. What's he in Newgate for, anyway?”

“According to the warden, O'Banyon is a thief and a mutineer. He claims that he was the first mate on a privateer ship, but the court brought piracy charges against him.”

Talon snorted. “No doubt this blackguard would say anything if he thinks you can help him escape the hangman's noose.”

“No doubt,” James agreed, but his eyes glowed at the mere possibility of getting his hands on one of the lost scrolls containing undreamed-of secrets discovered by the earliest Prometheans, including their greatest occult master, the Renaissance-era alchemist known as Valerian.

“Well, if we're both going to be gone tomorrow, who's going to mind the ape?” Talon asked.

James gave him a wry look. “If you're referring to the Earl of Westwood, I shall have my driver and a couple of other men on hand to stand guard.”

Talon nodded. “I'd better check on him, anyway. He's too quiet in there.” He marched across the suite and unlocked their captive's door, thrusting his head rudely into the room. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Drake was lying on his bed reading the newspaper, as ordered. He just looked at Talon.

Talon huffed and shut the door again, locking it.

Go to hell
, Drake thought. There was no love lost between him and the eye-patch bastard.

When the door closed again, Drake returned his gaze to the Society column and stared once more at the detailed wedding announcement of one of Society's apparently elite couples.

It was to be held right here in London, and it was scheduled for tomorrow morning.

The bride's name was unknown to him. But Drake kept staring at the groom's name with an inexplicable certainty that he knew this man, this marquess.

An idea was forming in his head.

He did not tell James that he had recognized the name. Perhaps he would. But first, desperate for any solid answers, Drake felt compelled to sneak away to this wedding tomorrow and get a look at the groom's face if he could manage it somehow. The name sounded so familiar…

Rotherstone.

 

The great day had come at last.

The morning glowed with golden promise, but behind her veil, Daphne's face was pale with nervousness as she rode with her family in her father's rarely used state coach, festooned with flowers for the occasion, and drawn by four horses wearing white plumes on their heads.