The Viscount's Counterfeit Wife (23 page)

It might be wise to
keep an eye on Dubuc, he decided. One never knew what Antoine’s
nephew was capable of doing next.

Meanwhile, since he
didn’t trust Victor to have left a note on the door explaining his
uncle’s absence, and there was none there now, it wouldn’t hurt
to leave one of his own. He hoped it would ensure that young Miss
Lawton stayed out of Victor’s way.

* * *

Reed
was in a large sitting room with a huge fireplace and crackling fire.
There was a family there. Three boys, two girls, and a beautiful lady
— the mother, he guessed. And a tall man turned away toward the
window, the father, no doubt. He could tell that from the strength
emanating from the man.

They
seemed a happy family. Smiles and laughter abounded.

It
was a special occasion… He knew because they were wearing their
fine clothes.

Christmas!
One of the boys, the older of the two, looked about thirteen years
old. He bent from the waist and, with a long taper, lit the kindling
under the Yule log. Everyone was cheering him on. The boy’s chest
was puffed up plumper than a peacock at being given the honor of
performing this task.

Mumbling incoherently,
Reed shifted onto his other side. Abruptly, the picture changed, the
location switched.

Now
he was in a colorful, noisy place. Not in England. In some foreign
country.

He
was in a market, a bazaar, teeming with hot, often unwashed bodies,
pressing up close against him. He wasn’t walking, exactly, more
like slinking slyly through the crowd of jellaba-gowned men, and he
was dressed the same.

Egypt!
The name hurtled through space to slip into his consciousness.

He
was trying to avoid everyone’s attention, but especially that of
the man he was following. The man turned around to glance behind him
and Reed glimpsed a face distorted into ugliness by the look of
contempt on it.

The
man yelled nasty words and curses at the beautiful young lady he was
dragging through the crowd. She was resisting, sobbing. He was
manhandling her roughly to propel her forward. No one seemed to
notice. Reed wanted to help her, to show that bully how it felt to
be… but knew he couldn’t, he mustn’t… Not yet.

The
sneering man’s gaze swept around and behind him, as if he sensed he
was being watched. Reed ducked behind a display of exotic birds in
bamboo cages.

Surreptitiously,
he followed the mismatched couple. The man sped around the edge of
the moving mass of bodies in the marketplace and the lady struggled
against the shackles, while he towed her along behind him. All eyes
turned firmly away, not daring to look askance at this brazen
daylight abduction. The monster’s lethal reputation was widespread
in this region.

Reed
pulled part of his keffiyeh up to hide his face. It wouldn’t do to
be caught staring by the man or his Horde. They were known to be a
canny and ruthless lot, who’d lop off a man’s head for simply
looking in their direction. Many people vanished after having the
misfortune of meeting up with them. Just like that young lady was
about to do, as soon as that fiend sold her.

Not
that Reed was going to allow that to happen.

Brushing
past a local fruit stand, he allowed his carpet bag to fall to the
ground, immediately crouching down to pick it up. Swift as a cobra,
his hand shot out to place a slip of paper under a rock near the
fruit stall where a young blind boy was sitting motionless, seemingly
unaware of anything, even of the flies busily buzzing around his
head.

Not
the slightest flicker toward the boy betrayed Reed’s intent.
Swiftly, he stood up again and continued on his way.

Behind
him, he sensed the boy move. Felt him rise to his feet and quietly
glide away. Reed continued on his stealthy way, never looking back.
If he was being watched, he didn’t want the boy snatched. No
innocents should be harmed. The boy was merely earning enough to help
feed his starving family. He had no idea that, by carrying messages
for them, he played a vital role in a dangerous drama destined to
bring the brute to hang at the end of a rope.

Nor
did he want to alert anyone, causing his message to be intercepted.
Although, it was in such cryptic script, he was confident only his
partners in this effort, Jace and Max, would know what to make of it.

A
loud shout set his heart to hammering. He was caught! He thrust his
body sideways to avoid the impending blow from behind and ended up
falling… falling... onto a very hard surface.

Damnation, that stung!
What on earth had he fallen on?

Light from a window
filtered into the room, waking him to find himself on the floor in
the bedroom, in their rented house in London, still without his
memory.

He’d been dreaming?

It had seemed too real
to be a dream, but it couldn’t possibly be reality.

Could
it?

He heard another loud
shout and this time recognized the sounds of a local fruit hawker
pushing his cart down the road, trying to sell the dregs of his wares
before the sun went down.

Sitting up, he rubbed
his sore shoulder that had taken the brunt of the fall. He hoped he
hadn’t opened the wound.

A
market in Egypt!
What
in Hades had he been doing there?

The images had been too
clear, too detailed to be anything other than a true memory of
somewhere he’d actually been, which meant the sneering swine was
also real. If so, that young lady was in trouble.
He
had to help her!

But how could he? He
was continents away and couldn’t even recall his own damned name?

He slammed his fist on
the floor.

He
wanted his life back!

He didn’t care if he
found out he was a thief, or even a spy. It was better knowing who
you really were than to be floating around, rootless, without a
memory.

Wait! There was one
solid piece of information he remembered from his dream. He rubbed
his tingling fist. He’d been working with two men, one called Jace,
the other... the other name didn’t surface. He’d been sending
them coded messages.

That was hard to
believe.

But if he was able to
remember who they were and how to find them, it might help him work
out who he was and how he’d gotten here.

There was one other bit
of information he’d gleaned from his dream. The sense of danger had
been very real. He
must
be the reason Talia was being threatened. Worse, he had no idea how
to keep her safe because he wouldn’t recognize the danger if it was
standing right in front of him.

* * *

Max jumped to his feet
in the drawing room that fronted the house they’d rented,
diagonally across the street from Reed’s.

He’d been nodding off
when he heard the vehicle approach and slow down. Still expecting it
to pass by, especially once he noted its opulence, he was taken aback
to see it stop right in front of Reed’s home.

“Well, I’ll be…”
He watched with alarm as the Vanisher’s main minion, dubbed by them
as ‘The Mincer’, alit from the carriage and sidled up to knock on
Selwich’s door. This was the snake’s second visit. A few days ago
Jace said he’d seen Adley being kept on the doorstep and leaving
soon afterwards. What was he doing back again?

Max raised his
telescope to take a closer look. He snorted. Melvin Adley was a
foolish fellow, too fond of outrageous, foppish clothes. His patent
leather shoes added another two or three inches to his negligible
height. He sported a vile orange morning coat over a poet’s shirt
of canary yellow. His collar was so high and starched, the poor dolt
couldn’t turn his head more than an inch to either side.

The door opened. Max
wasn’t able to see by whom, though judging by the way the Mincer
lowered his head to talk, Max decided it was probably the young boy.
Seconds later, the oily little weasel was let in and spent a good ten
minutes there before departing, looking sly and pleased with himself.

Max was disturbed by
that gloating smile.

This didn’t augur
well for Reed. A change of plans was going to be needed. That dandy’s
self-satisfied face told it all. Something evil was going to happen
and they needed to find out what, quickly, and put a stop to it. The
Vanisher was not going to get the chance to poison a whole household,
like he had an entire village in Egypt.

* * *

“Nothing? Not even a
loaf of bread?” Tally’s voice rose in stunned disbelief.

They were standing in
front of the pantry in the kitchen — Foster, Mrs. P, Joseph and her
— staring, agape, at the bare shelves.

“No, not even a stray
crumb is left. There’s nothing to eat or drink in the house.”
Foster growled in disgust.

“But why us?” She
couldn’t believe her eyes. “Surely there are households with
better supplies than ours?”

“Maybe them houses
are better watched, not so easy to break into?” Mrs. P suggested.

Tally shook her head.
“What am I saying? They weren’t coming for supplies. It must be a
warn....” Realizing that Mrs. P’s eyes were widening with fear,
she cut herself off. They’d tried to keep as much of this as
possible from Mrs. P, so she wouldn’t worry. Changing courses, she
said, “I’m thinking…”

“About that reptile
who came back yesterday?” Foster completed her sentence.

“Yes, but how did
he…?” But she knew. Somehow that slimy toad had managed to do
something, while he was in the house, which caused this to happen.
Her guess was that he’d opened a window for someone to break in
during the night. She had gooseflesh at the mere idea!

Yesterday’s return
visit by that sneaky little milksop had unsettled them. By the time
Joseph found Foster, who’d immediately come to see the caller, he’d
found the snake slithering back to the front hallway after wandering
around the house unimpeded. Not even Mrs. P, who’d gone to the
market, had been around to stop him.

Foster had to explain
to Joseph that he was never to allow anybody into the house, when he
answered the door. He was to leave the person or persons outside on
the doorstep, and lock the door, until he found either Foster or
Tally. But the warning had come too late, evidently the damage had
already been done.

Yesterday, their
question had been,
Why had he
bothered to return, once she’d assured him the owner wasn’t
living here?
Today, the question was,
What
other evil had he done while in their house, in addition to making it
easy for someone to rob their food?

“No window is broken,
I’ve examined them all, so the wretch must have left one unlatched
to provide a way in overnight to steal our food.” Something didn’t
feel right about that. Tally voiced her misgivings. “I simply can’t
picture a fastidious-looking man like that creature climbing in a
window, can you?”

“D’ye think it
might be connected to–”

She shushed him with a
hard look. She didn’t want to alarm Mrs. P further. She was easily
frightened, especially “in the big city”, as she put it. It would
be better if she thought it was just a random robbery. “Mrs. P, you
and Joseph had better go buy some food for us to eat.”

“What has this world
come to when a body has to worry about their food being taken from
their own kitchen?” She gave a long-suffering sigh as she went to
get ready. “Come along, Joseph.”

Tally called after the
pair. “Make sure you take a hackney back. You’ll be carrying too
many heavy packages.”

“Just came back from
shopping yesterday,” the cook grumbled, “Ain’t never know’d
anybody to come in and steal a body’s food in Evesham. ‘It’s
enough to make a body…” The end of her tirade was lost as they
disappeared up the stairs toward the back door.

Foster waited
impatiently until they heard the door close, then said, “As I was
about to say, d’ye think it might have something to do with yon
Gordon?

“Of course not!”
She was quick to defend Reed, but really, what did she know about
him? Nothing, other than witnessing his character over the days he’d
been with them. Memory-less, he was not an underhanded man. She’d
be more likely to believe they’d broken in to get to him, than his
abetting them to enter to steal…
food
?
It made no sense.

What if that little
vermin was The Vanisher? Or one of his men? That was who that beggar
said was going to put them in their graves. If it was that easy to
break in to steal their food, how hard would it be to murder them all
in their beds?

“What did they hope
to achieve by taking all our food? They have to know we’ll just go
out and buy more.” She was at a complete loss to understand.

“Humph. Don’t make
much sense to me neither.” Foster rubbed his chin, thoughtfully.
“Mason has to sleep here from now on.” He made it a
pronouncement, as if there was no gainsaying the fact.

“Didn’t you tell me
he rarely did that?”

“When he sees how
easily they got in, he’ll be persuaded.” He sounded pugnacious
now. She had no doubt he’d be making his displeasure at this forced
entry very clear to Mr. Mason. And truthfully, she would feel a lot
better knowing the investigator was in the house overnight.
Especially now!

“While you take care
of that, I’ll hold the fort here.” If they had poisoned the food,
she might have understood better. Though only a cold-blooded
barbarian would poison a whole household just to harm her. But to
simply remove it all? That was beyond strange.

As Foster left, his
parting words were, “Mind you put your pistol in your pocket. Ain’t
no telling what’s gonna happen next.”