TheCharmer (16 page)

Collis and Rose bent swiftly to help. The grate was cemented in place with years of accumulated please-don't-ask, and was cast of heavy iron to boot, but they managed to shift it after Rose thought to dig the Prince's shovel into the seam as a sort of lever. In turn, they all dropped through, only to find that the fall was far longer than they'd thought.

When the footmen finally scouted the alley, they found nothing but a bent shovel and an open grate. When they cast the light from their lanterns into the hole, they could see nothing but darkness below.

Louis Wadsworth stood in his dressing gown and slippers in the middle of his luxurious study, regarding the mess of shattered glass and mahogany that had once housed his masterpiece.

Many men, finding their dreams in pieces on the floor, would have ranted, raged, even wept. Louis made it a practice to never raise his voice. He never allowed anger to sweep him up the way it had his father.

Acting in the heat had killed the senior Mr. Wadsworth. Louis much preferred acting with cold. He hadn't lost his temper in years. No, not since the incident with that silly housemaid when he was not much more than twenty. Of course, that sort of thing scarcely mattered, but it had taught Louis a valuable lesson.

So there were no bellows, no shouts—no words at all. Behind him, he could feel his loyal retainers becoming more and more concerned for their skins. Shuffling stances, rustling clothing, even the occasional daring whispered question to each other—he let their fear wash over him, soothing him. They expected rage. Why satisfy their expectations? It was much more droll to turn and smile at them all. He did so.

If anything, the tension in the room was heightened by his action. Worry crystallized into terror. Louis would have laughed, if he ever laughed. Still, the shrinking of his sturdy crew did much to set his mood to rights.

"I wonder," he said softly, and watched half of them start at the sound of his voice. "I wonder how someone entered my locked house, entered my locked study, discovered a very secure hiding place, wreaked havoc in my innermost domain, and then absconded with some very important materials without you lot getting so much as a good look at him."

"Them, sir."

Louis focused on one of the steadier examples of the lot. "Them… how many?"

"Two," said some.

"Three," said others. The group was about divided in half. Louis waited, imagining his patience stretching like a victim on the rack.

"There was two men, sir," said the first one to speak. "A tall one and a fat one. The fat one were masked, like a highwayman."

"Three," argued another. His voice quavered, however.

Louis tilted his head, examining the protester as if he were a not very interesting insect. The man continued, blurting out words as if he spoke against his will.

"There were the fat one, the tall one, and the wo—" The man next to him coughed sharply. The speaker hesitated, then continued. "The wee one."

One of the others made a slight noise at that, then shut up. Louis breathed in deeply. "Tell me about the tall one. The one without the mask."

The first and bravest speaker nodded. "He were right tall, sir. And black-haired. Youngish, or at least, not old."

Louis exhaled smoothly. He had met a man such as that this very day. Had brought him to the house, although not to the study. A man with very interesting connections—connections that had done Louis's family rather astonishing amounts of harm. Still, he himself had profited nicely from that harm, so he hadn't been inclined to take it personally.

Until now. Louis eyed the first speaker for a long moment. The fellow regarded him warily, but without the abject fear of the others. A strong one. He could be useful.

"I have a little job for you." Louis waved a gentle hand at the others. "You lot can go. Have a pint of beer and charge it to me. Not too much now. I may have need of you later."

The stupid louts relaxed, blinking at him in surprise and pleasure. They left with much crude clomping of boots, leaving tiny traces of the street on his priceless carpet. Louis pondered the meager streaks for a long moment. His chosen man waited patiently, hands clasped behind his back.

The fellow was obviously of better make than his fellows. More intelligent, more stalwart. Perhaps capable of actual independent thought.

"Yes, you'll do nicely." Louis described his wishes to the fellow, who took it all in without requiring a word of simplification or explanation.

He nodded. "Yes, sir. I'll take care of it immediately."

Louis smiled serenely. "Excellent. Oh, and tell the butler to have this carpet taken up and burned, will you?"

The man nodded briskly and set off on his mission. Louis watched him go with satisfaction. The perfect man for the job. Independent thought, indeed.

Of course, once the fellow was successful, Louis was going to have to have him killed. There was no place for independent thought in this household. No, none at all.

"See? I told you I knew the tunnels." The Prince's pleased voice rang oddly through the tunnel, bouncing off the stone walls to boom and fade in their ears.

"This is hardly a royal passage, Your Highness."

"No," chortled George. "Merely an access to one. This way now." His lantern and his good spirits were lit once more.

Rose, on the other hand, seemed none too happy about being below the city to Collis. She walked a few steps ahead, between him and the Prince. She'd said nothing since her first gasp when they'd dropped into several inches of chill water running down the tunnel. The tunnel smelled like hell, of course, so perhaps she was merely busy mouth-breathing as much as possible—but Collis didn't think so.

She was breathing very fast, in halting little gasps like a child trying very hard not to cry, and her grip on her weapon of choice, the fire tongs, caused grotesque shadows as it shook with her trembling.

George, however, was in his element. He danced ahead of them with the lantern for all the world like a boy skipping out on his tutor. "I learned these tunnels at my father's knee—well, actually, I snuck the plans from his royal office. But in my day I used them aplenty. Oh, the mischief I got up to!"

"Mischief, my foot," muttered Rose, so low Collis could scarcely hear her. "Little rotter playing treason on a schoolboy holiday."

That startled a laugh from Collis. "What are you talking about?"

He saw her eyes flicker up to his, then away. "Did I say that out loud?" she squeaked. "I wasn't talking about anything—no, not a thing! Silly twit, whistling in the dark, that's me." She walked faster, her head bent so Collis couldn't see her face. He thought he heard another whisper—"Bloody stupid, you'll get yourself hanged, see if you don't!"

Apparently, Rose talked to herself… at least in the dark. Interesting theory. Collis couldn't wait to hear more.

"Why will you get yourself hanged? And what did you say about treason?"

"Shut it. Shut it. The walls have ears." The words hissed faintly back his way.

He laughed out loud, the sound ringing hollow in the tunnel. "Rose, the walls don't even have
walls
!"

George paused in his role as jolly leader. "What are you two going on about back there?"

"I'm frightened of the dark," Rose blurted. "Can't bear it, not one moment longer. Please-may-I-carry-the-lantern?"

George seemed surprised that anyone else would want it but handed it over willingly enough. Rose held the wire handle for a long moment, then handed it back. "No, no good at all. It isn't the dark. It's the underground part."

In the circle of sickly yellow light, Collis could see how large and profoundly frightened Rose's eyes had become. Seeing her this way, he felt bad for teasing her. He took her cold little hand in his again. "Rose, we're safe as houses. These tunnels have been here for decades, or even longer."

"Then they're due to collapse, to my way o' thinkin'!"

Odd, Collis couldn't remember the last time Rose's speech had slipped so badly. She truly must be nearly out of her wits with fear.

He ought to be enjoying her discomfort, since this was the first time he'd ever seen her without her customary air of superiority. But the childish cling of her fingers to his made him sorry for her fear and made him want to reassure her.

To Rose, it was as if the past months of security and learning had never happened. The school, the training, even the ache of her shoulder where she'd taken a blow from one of Louis's footmen—everything seemed to fade away, muffled and cut off by the tons of earth above and around her.

To be underground meant burial, and burial meant death, and all the study, all the rationality of thought, all the learning, was swept away in a wash of deeply bred superstition.

She was never going to see the sunlight again. She was going to die down here. She could taste the death in the very air. Her heart was beating like a frightened rabbit and her eyes were so wide open they ached. She felt as if the dank air was too thick to breathe and her lungs could not draw it in.

Collis and the Prince began to fade away, their lantern going dim. She could hear them talking to her, but the words made no sense. She could not catch her breath—

The sharp crack of a hand across her face brought her to just as she'd been about to fade completely. She blinked to see two worried faces staring at her in the circle of lamplight. Her cheek stung and she rubbed it, glaring at Collis despite the fact that she was grateful for the distraction of anger.

He held up his hand to fend off her glare and sent his eyes sideways to indicate the Prince. George stood there with the lantern raised, but Rose could see that he was shaking his other hand as if to relieve a sting.

Forced to draw back her sharp rebuke—for who was she to rebuke a royal slap?—Rose merely dipped a very slight curtsey. "Thank you, Your Highness." Still, a perverse little spirit slipped a few extra words in. "If I may ever repay the favor, it will be my pleasure, Your Highness."

«
^
»

Collis was glad to see Rose returning to her usual dry humor. Not that she was a jester in any way. He had only seen her smile once in a great while, and never at him. Why was that? The other students could sometimes coax a flash of light and life from her, and he had heard rumors that Phillipa Cunnington had even made Rose laugh out loud on occasion.

Unfathomable. Rose laughing. He itched to hear it, if only to fulfill his masochistic curiosity. Bah. He didn't believe it anyway. Rose Lacey wasn't human enough to laugh.

He wondered if her laugh had the husky edge that her voice carried when she was annoyed with him. He liked that edge, liked the way it worked upon his hunting instincts like a stimulus. That slightly deeper, wilder tone brought to mind the chase, which of course brought to mind the capture…

And the, ah… completion.

Now is not the time, old man. Now is the time to worry about your neck
—
and the Prince's
—
not other parts of your anatomy
.

George had led them into an older segment of tunnel. The hundred-year-old stones of the arched wall and ceiling were fitted without mortar. Collis tried to convince himself that that was a good thing—that walls built so were sturdier against the press of city above—but the decreasing height of the tunnel only made him feel the weight of every cobble and every shop above their heads.

The monotonous
splash-splash
of their steps had been the only thing they could hear and the few feet of tunnel ahead all they could see for so long that Collis was beginning to feel as though they were treading in place, never advancing. If they had been wading against the current, he would have been sure of it, but as it was, the flow of rank water pushed steadily against the backs of their calves. They were definitely on their way somewhere.

At least the smell was improving; that or his senses had failed him completely. Terrible thought, that. No more smelling the aroma of roasted venison, no more scent of roses… no more sweetly perfumed women. Not that he could do anything about them now anyway.

"But the sniffing part was still good," he muttered to himself. He saw Rose's profile against the lantern for a moment as she turned her head at his words. He didn't bother explaining himself. She'd only think him mad for worrying about something so trivial when all their lives were in danger.

Rose heard Collis's mutter clearly enough. If he was worried about losing his sense of smell, she could reassure him. She'd cleaned enough chamber pots and privies to know that after a time the smell simply stopped registering, leaving the nose in perfect working order.

Her shoulder throbbed with every beat of her pounding heart, but there was no time to worry about it now. She must not slow them down. The Prince must reach safety.

George looked over his shoulder at her, his plump cheeks glistening in the light of his lantern. "I knew I remembered this! There is a royal tunnel just ahead!" He splashed ahead with renewed enthusiasm.

Rose halted in dismay. Had there been a doubt?