Swept Away (38 page)

“I am attempting to spirit you away, Miss Fairchilde, unless of course you prefer to remain here and see firsthand the inside of a prison cell?”

Anna felt a wave of faintness wash through her. “Does that mean you believe me? You believe Emory’s innocence?”

“It means I am a fool,” he said quietly. “And I firmly believe I will regret my rashness before this night is through. Now please, get on board before someone thinks to order the outer gates closed. You there!” He snapped his fingers and called to a group of liveried groomsmen lounging nearby. “The lady is ill. She must be taken home at once and my coach is nowhere to be seen. I am willing to pay ten guineas for the inconvenience, and provide a letter to the owner explaining the emergency.”

The driver separated himself from the group and came forward. “I’d be happy to drive you wherever you wish to go, my lord.”

Barrimore held out a ten pound note, which instantly vanished to an inside pocket on the driver’s coat, then assisted Annaleah into the coach.

“Where to, my lord?”

“Gravesend,” he said in a voice only the driver could hear. “And if you get us there in record time, my good man, there will be another ten guineas in it for your trouble--another twenty if you can provide me with a pistol and shot.”

The man squinted one eye and touched the brim of his hat. “Aye, milord. As it happens, I have both pistol and musket on board. To guard against night riders, of course. Not to mention,” he added with a broad wink, “the odd angry husband or two.”.

CHAPTER 22

Several more guineas were spent during the perilous ride to Gravesend. Exhausted and foam-flecked horses were changed for fresh teams at two posting houses, a hooded cloak for Annaleah was purchased off a landlord at another. Up to then she sat huddled under a lap robe in the corner of the coach, the occasional beam of moonlight shimmering across her face. She was cold, frightened, confused. She had no idea what Barrimore’s intentions might be. She did not know if she had convinced him of Emory’s innocence, or if she had foolishly betrayed the man she loved to the man she had humiliated.

“I am sorry,” she said at one point, breaking the tense silence that had enveloped the coach since leaving London. “My actions have been reckless and irresponsible, and...and I know I cannot possibly hope to earn your forgiveness. I can also understand how your hatred for me might influence your characterization of Mr. Althorpe, but in truth--and I would swear it to you here and now before God--I did not deliberately embark on a course to either hurt or embarrass you.”

“Miss Fairchilde--”

“No, please. Let me finish. Truthfully enough, I was resistant to the notion of...of pursuing a more intimate relationship--and please forgive me again if I speak out of turn, but my family was quite convinced you were on the verge of offering a proposal--and I
did
seek to discourage you from putting me in the position of having to refuse you...” she paused to ease some of the dryness in her throat, “but I certainly did not walk out on the cliffs that day with any deliberate intent of insulting you. The embrace you saw just...happened. The rashness of my actions startled Mr. Althorpe as much as they must have startled you.”

Following the blurted confession she heard the shifting of wool against wool as he moved an arm. “From what I have learned of Mr. Althorpe, he is a good deal more than a little rash himself.”

“He never once acted without complete deference toward me and my aunt,” she said in a whisper. “He never once forced me to do anything I did not want to do. Indeed, even when he kidnapped me off the boardwalk in Torquay, part of me was happy enough to burst, for I never thought I would see him again. I never thought he would come back for me. I thought...” Her voice trailed off miserably and he finished the thought for her.

“You thought you would be required to endure my company all the way back to town. And perhaps even after that.”

“No. No, it was not so much that I would have to endure your company, my lord. It was knowing that I would rather be somewhere else.”

There were thick banks of cloud overhead with few breaks to allow the moon to shine through. Barrimore had not lit the lamps inside the coach and she had to rely mainly on her senses to know if he moved or looked in her direction.

He was looking at her now, she could feel it. He was studying her with as much, if not more dark condemnation as she had dreaded on the long journey from Torquay to London.

“Do you love him?”

The question came as a surprise, but she answered it without guile. “Yes. With all my heart.”

“All of your heart,” he murmured. “I should think that would be a considerable amount, Miss Fairchilde. Something I myself can...scarcely imagine or quantify.” After another lengthy pause, he asked, “And is the sentiment returned? Has he declared his feelings with an equal lack of reserve?”

“He...has said he cares for me, yes.”

“Cares for you? Not exactly a resounding commitment from a man who has lived a good deal of his adult life on the whims of the wind and the sea. Do you anticipate he will be content to settle down and raise sheep when this is over?”

Annaleah’s hands twisted together. “He has made no mention of future plans.”

“Nor could he have told you much about his past if he has been suffering the effects of amnesia, although I would hazard to guess the kind of life he has led would be difficult to forget, regardless of the size of the blow to the head. His exploits are quite legend in certain circles.”

“Yes, well, he remembers more and more each day.”

“And shares each detail with you when he does? The charges of piracy and smuggling are not without foundation, you know. Avoiding a British court was one of his main incentives when he agreed to work for the foreign office.”

The conversation had ended there, and for the rest of the way to Gravesend they travelled in silence. Annaleah’s eyes ached and were swollen from crying, her body was drained to the bone with exhaustion and for few miles, she managed to doze to the churning rhythm of the wheels.

It was the change in the sound that awoke her. They were slowing, rolling over the harder packed surfaces of a macadamised road sloping down toward a town. When she leaned forward to peer out the window, she could see the lights of the buildings clustered along the shoreline of the harbor. There were more sparkling further out on the water, lanterns hanging off the yards and reflecting off the decks of the small flotilla of merchant ships anchored off the port town of Gravesend.

“You mentioned he was meeting someone here. Do you know where that meeting is supposed to take place?”

“A tavern,” she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “
The Bull’s Horns
, or some such thing, I believe it was.”

Barrimore’s low laugh startled her into turning around to face him.

“Forgive my ill timed drollery, Miss Fairchilde, but you yourself would not make for a very good spy. In the span of two short hours, you have confided the gentleman’s whereabouts, his intentions, his likely destination. How the devil do you know I am not going to drive straight to the nearest garrison and dispatch a hundred soldiers to surround the tavern and arrest him, or send them aboard the
Intrepid
to lie in wait for him?”

While Anna’s heart slowed to a sluggish thumping in her chest, she strained to see his face through the shadows. They had left Carleton House in too much of a hurry for him to retrieve his hat or gloves or cape, and it occurred to her that he had probably never travelled in a state of such undress before. His hair was disturbed out of its usual precise waves and curls, softening the high, wide line of his brow. His cravat was loosened, the lower buttons on his satin waistcoat undone.

Thinking of his brow, of his face, made her remember the regent’s secretary. He had apologized for not recognizing ‘Lord Barrimore’ in costume, yet the real Lord Barrimore had attended the party in his usual impeccable tailoring and was not in costume at all.

Another image flashed into her mind: there had been someone sitting in the seat in front of the hearth in the library. The wings of the chair had prevented her from seeing more than an arm and a hand holding a brandy glass. But the sleeve had been black, the cuff white; whoever it was had not been wearing a costume either.

“You were in the library this evening with Lord Wessex,” she said, amazed she could even hear her own voice through the loud rushing in her ears.

“I was there, yes.”

“Yet your name was not marked off the guest list at the main door.”

“Main doors can be tedious at times, and the prince can be rather belligerent with guests who choose not to participate in his little soirees. While I give full credit to your Mr. Althorpe for appearing in green stockings and face paint, I would sooner pound sharp sticks under my fingernails. Moreover, I was returning from a journey that sent me halfway across the country on a fools errand--as it turns out-- in order to investigate a rumor concerning a certain gentleman’s arrival on our shores. Even more egregious to the sensibilities, I have spent the past two days trapped in a coach with his incredibly inane sister-in-law. I would happily have forgone the festivities altogether in favor of a full bottle of brandy and ice packs on my brow had there not been a pressing need to speak to Wessex and advise him that our former spy extra ordinaire had indeed landed in Torbay, but managed to somehow evade capture.”

“
Our
...spy?”

“My dear Annaleah, you could not have been expected to know it, I suppose, else we would have been doing a poor job indeed at subterfuge, but I have worked with Wessex for the past five years, helping him organize and interpret the information he receives daily from the spies he has placed all over Europe. Further--to your growing horror, I am sure--I know a good deal more than you likely ever will about Emory Althorpe. I know his background, I know his family, I know about the beatings his father gave him and the name of the first serving girl who took him into a haystack. I know about the brother who believes he has wings and can fly, and believe me, after two
hours
in a coach with that infernal woman, I can even appreciate why he might have preferred to leave all that behind and run away to sea.

“I also know how and when he was recruited, and that he was considered to be our most valuable source of information on the continent until something appeared to turn him around. Half the coded dispatches he received, in fact, were written in my hand and only signed after the fact by Wessex.”

Anna grew very still. “I’m not s-sure I understand what you are saying.”

“I am saying--” he leaned forward and the leather seat creaked softly-- “if there is a traitor working within Wessex’s very small, very tight-knit group of confidents...then he has to be exposed. What is more, if there is proof such a traitor exists, and Althorpe has it, then it must be retrieved and taken back to London as soon as possible.”

His voice was like a slow curl of mist, low and chilling, and it froze Annaleah to the bone. Barrimore worked with Wessex. He knew all about Emory’s role in the war. He handled the dispatches...

Had he also intercepted them? Hidden them? Rewritten orders that Wessex knew nothing about?

Her hands clenched tightly into fists on her lap and she turned to gaze wildly out the window. What, indeed, had she done? She had led Barrimore straight to Emory Althorpe, but whose interests, exactly, was the marquis looking out for? If Emory did have proof that might expose a traitor inside Wessex’s cabinet, and if that traitor was the Marquis of Barrimore himself, who better to find it and destroy it before his crimes could be revealed?

She should have suspected something right away. He was always so cold, so aloof, so unapproachable and suddenly tonight he was warm and talkative, helpful, sympathetic...

Anna almost groaned out loud. She had to do something, of course, but what? She had to warn Emory, but how? There was no way of knowing if he had even managed to get away from Carleton House, if he had ridden for Gravesend right away, if he was even there now, keeping his rendezvous with Seamus Turnbull.

A sharp rapping on the wall of the coach brought Anna’s attention snapping back to the Marquis of Barrimore. He had opened the sliding panel and was talking to the driver, instructing him to find the
Bull’s Horns
tavern.

The tavern whose name she had simply blurted without thinking.

She unclenched her fists and rubbed the palms on her cloak to dry them. Her fingers brushed over something metallic jutting up from the side of the bench and she remembered the letter opener she had snatched off the regent’s escritoire. She had hidden it in the folds of her gown then later tucked it down between the cushion and the coach when they had boarded the diligence in the courtyard. The blade was long and exquisitely sharp and while she could not for half an instant imagine plunging it into living flesh, it gave her comfort to know she was not as completely defenceless as Barrimore supposed.

Anna was beginning to grow immune to the sights and smells of various waterfront lodgings. Indeed, one could have plucked the tawdry
Bull and Horns
tavern and changed it for the
Jolly Tar
and no one would have noticed the difference. The air reeked of fish and salt water, the gutters were clogged with waste. A pair of skinny dogs who were growling and snapping over a tasty morsel of bone in front of the inn slinked away with their prize when the door of the coach opened and Barrimore stepped down onto the muddy road.

He was clearly not impressed with their surroundings. The driver had wasted time and taken several wrong turns until the proper name of the establishment was determined, and while there were lights and noise blazing on either side of the
Bull and Horns
, the tavern itself was dark and quiet, the shutters and door closed. The driver was none too pleased and did not need to wait for the sharp glance Barrimore cast his way before he reached beneath his seat and rested the loaded blunderbuss in plain view across his lap.