TheCharmer (20 page)

Rose stepped forward. "I am Rose Lacey, sir. I am—" She cast a questioning glance at the Prince. Did this man know about the Liar's Club?

"She's one of Etheridge's trainees, Forsythe."

"Etheridge! Is he still playing spy at that boys' club of his? Oh, well, at least they're using their heads for something besides holding up their hats." Forsythe swung on Collis. "Ha! That's why you look so familiar. You're Etheridge's heir, aren't you?"

Collis nodded. "Collis Tremayne, sir, at your service."

"At my bloody service, eh? Not likely. No one comes up here unless they want something. Even you, Georgie. No time to visit an old friend anymore? You used to hang about here by the hour. Couldn't get rid of you for anything but a meal or a pretty girl."

"Sorry, old friend. It's that damn Regent thing I do. Takes all my bloody time."

"Ha! That Jenkins boy does all the work and you know it."

Rose slid a glance at Collis.
Jenkins boy
? she mouthed. Collis nodded.
Liverpool
, his lips said.

Robert Jenkins, Lord Liverpool
? Mr. Forsythe called the Prime Minister of England "that Jenkins boy"? He was either entirely mad or the bravest man she'd ever met. Even Lord Etheridge said "my lord."

While she'd been pondering that, Mr. Forsythe had wandered away. They found him puttering about the other end of the room where a series of tables had been set up. Rose eyed the scorch marks on the nearby walls and stayed well away from the bubbling beakers and coils of copper tubing, but Collis and George approached the table to exclaim over the apparatus assembled there.

She watched in horror as her two companions poured something from one of those dangerous-looking containers into two smaller beakers and toasted each other. They raised their "glasses" to drink. "Stop!" She rushed forward. "What are you thinking?"

George sipped. "I'm thinking it's a bit young, but it's been a long night. What are you thinking, Collis?"

Collis sniffed his first. "I'm thinking it's best tossed back quickly."

"Agreed." They quaffed their potions, gasped, and choked—then laughed at Rose's look of horror.

"It's a still, my dear," said George. "Gin. Forsythe makes it himself." He patted back a belch. "Pardon me!"

Forsythe looked up, blinking through the fog that had collected on his spectacles from the boiling pot he was watching. Rose stepped forward warily to peek. Stew?

"Are you still here?"

"Yes, Forsythe." George seemed to have all the patience in the world for this old man. "We're still here."

Forsythe sighed. "Oh, very well. If the rudeness isn't working, I might as well give it up. Very tiring, you know."

"I know." George clapped the man on the back. "And I hate to bother you in the middle of your…" He sniffed. "Lamb?"

"And leeks."

"Ah. Well, in the middle of your, um, breakfast. We must ask your help deciphering some designs."

"Ooh. I like designs. What for?"

"The George the Fourth Commemorative Carbine, I believe."

"Well, give! Give!" Forsythe nearly danced in anticipation. The Prince handed him the battered leather case that Rose had stolen from Louis. Forsythe spread the plans out on a table, disregarding George's and Collis's attempts to clear it first. He picked up a candle to peer closely at the plans. "Hmph. Heavy-handed with the stock decoration, I'd say."

"Yes, Forsythe. I thought so as well. Do you see any reason for someone to hide this away, anything wrong—or hidden?"

"I'll say I do. Lousy proportions, for one. A well-made musket is a lost art, if you ask me. Ever since that upstart Manton came up with his ridiculous percussion cap—"

"Now, Forsythe—just because he got his design before the Board of Ordnance first."

Forsythe made a noise and peered more closely until his untidy mustache trailed on the paper. "Oh, my! Oh, my, my, my…"

George, Collis, and Rose stepped forward simultaneously. "Yes?"

Forsythe grunted. "Well, either Mr. Wadsworth is the worst musket designer in the world or…"

"Or?"

"He's not on our side." Forsythe tapped a portion of the drawing. "See this?"

They all peered closer, although of course the symbols were meaningless to them.

"The boring, you see." He looked up at them, but they obviously didn't see. He sighed, as if teaching a group of very slow children. "The bore is the hole, if you will, through—"

"Through the barrel, yes, we know, Forsythe. Go on."

"Well, this bore is tapered, just a fraction. You wouldn't even see it in the design if you weren't looking. But if the barrel is machined to these specifications it will swell with heat. It will tighten—well, you see what I mean!"

He looked at them and sighed. "If you built this musket, per this design, using these materials… I give you two, three firings before the bloody thing blows up in your hands."

Rose saw Collis flinch and then rub his damaged arm. George pursed his lips. "So," he said, "I hand out these weapons, with my name and image upon them—"

"But why?" Rose demanded. "It wouldn't work, not really. After a few incidents, the lot of them would be discarded. They wouldn't do that much damage."

"They would do enough," Collis growled. He'd gone pale and tight-lipped. "How many men would lose their hands? Their sight? Die? Even one makes him a murderer."

George nodded thoughtfully. "And me by association, I assume."

Rose gasped. "He wants you blamed!"

Forsythe was examining the plans again. "How many of these crackers did you have made?"

"We upped the order," George said faintly. "Louis gave us a wonderful price. The commemoration was his idea. We'd thought to replace a large percentage of the weapons now in use. Some of them are so old. We had them made for cavalry and infantry. The gleaming damascened barrels, you know. Reflecting the sunlight on the battlefield. 'So intimidating,' Louis said. 'The French will be half-beaten at the sight.' "

George closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he was no longer the jovial prince Rose had come to know in the last few hours. His eyes had gone cold and icy and his round jaw had attained a firmness that bode Louis Wadsworth no good.

George turned to offer her a deep, heartfelt bow. "My thanks, Rose of the Liars. It seems you have come just in time. The carbines aren't due to be shipped for another three days. You have saved me from a great burden of guilt, and many men from a terrible fate."

He kissed her hand. She couldn't do anything but nod in a short, panicky manner. The Prince squeezed her fingers lightly. "Now, my dears, we must end our adventure. To the palace."

"Georgie!" Forsythe looked up from his fascination with the plans. "Are you sure he actually
made
the guns flawed? Could be this design was accidental, then discarded. Not that I couldn't have done better, mind you. But if you chop off his head before you're sure…"

George thought a moment. "Could you tell me? If I find you some of them to try, could you tell me— without blowing yourself up?"

"Oh, too right I could. Let's see… to ignite and fire without actually touching the trigger?" He started to wander off again. "I could use a string… or a spring! Or a…" He disappeared among the chaos.

George nodded shortly. "Come, you two. We'll just duck down through the tunnels back to the palace." Before they managed to find the door, Forsythe appeared once more.

"Presents!" he cackled. He handed Collis a complicated contraption of hinged metal. "You push this release here and it snaps open to become a grappling hook." He scratched his nose. "I think. If I recall." He turned to Rose.

"A gift for the Rose of the Liars," he said, and pressed a small, delicate pistol into Rose's hand. She'd never seen a pistol so small. "It is decorated with the huntress Diana there on the lock plate, and the barrel is damascened with silver. A pistol fit for a lady," Forsythe said proudly. Indeed, it was incredibly delicate and ornate, nearly a shimmering deadly piece of jewelry in its own right.

Still, Rose could not help shrinking from it. "Oh, no thank you, sir!"

Collis shifted his stance. "Rose is afraid of firearms, Mr. Forsythe."

Forsythe wrapped her fingers about the pistol anyway. "It seems to me that when a lady needs a pistol the most, fear of a bit of noise would not be a problem."

Rose laughed shortly. "That is true, sir. But I cannot accept this. It is much too fine for me. If you must give me something, let it be another box of your amazing matches. I'll find them vastly more useful, I'm sure."

Forsythe squinted at her. "If you'll come back and visit me, I'll make sure you never run out."

She smiled. "You're flirting, sir."

He cackled. "You're correct, my dear."

She leaned forward to plant a kiss on his creased cheek.

"Ladies are born, Rose of the Liars," he whispered while she was near. "Born, not made. And you, my dear, are a lady born."

She pulled away to gaze at him questioningly, but he was gone, wandering through his stacks of books and other objects like a man lost in the forest.

"Now where did I put those breeches? I know I saw them last week…"

The Prince's vow to "duck back down through the tunnels back to the palace" was an understatement. St. James's Palace was far from the Tower and would take much longer to traverse than their previous journey.

"I know a shortcut," George assured them, and led the way once more.

The carved designations to the tunnels made no sense to Collis, and he worried. "But they aren't supposed to," claimed George, "or just anyone could find their way into the palace! If you don't know the code, you'll just wander around down here until you die."

That was just what Collis was afraid of.

Rose set an exhausting pace. "Louis knows we have the plans," she insisted. "We need to get His Highness to safety and turn the Liars loose on Louis's factory." She'd taken Collis's hand, his left one, for a moment and gazed into his eyes. "I don't want those guns to reach our soldiers' hands, do you?"

So Collis followed. And he worried.

Especially when he saw George's "shortcut." They were stopped at a gaping break in the tunnel, their toes hanging off a ledge that dropped to darkness. Collis heard water running—nay, rushing—below them. He gritted his teeth. "What. Is. This?"

"The Tyburn," George said airily.

"There is no Tyburn any longer," Rose pointed out.

"Oh, it's here. It's merely been paved over, like the Fleet River turned to Fleet Street." George leaned out to hold the lantern over the water. Rose made a protesting noise and Collis grabbed the royal coattails before the royal drowning took place.

"See?" George held the lantern to one side. Collis and Rose could see large, heavy iron rings the size of dinner plates set horizontally into the stone, only a crescent remaining exposed like the rungs of a ladder. The whole thing reminded Collis of the bare ribs of some serpentine beast.

"You hold on, and step on them," George told them. "There's a ledge that runs alongside the water. We can travel due south, right to the palace." He sounded sublimely confident.

Collis wasn't so sure. "Why not stay in the tunnel?"

George handed the lantern to him and swung out into the river tunnel, his chubby fists clinging to the rusting rings. "Can't get there from here," he chuckled, and began to grunt his way down the line of rings.

They had no choice but to follow. "Can you manage?" Collis asked Rose.

She nodded wearily. "Just don't drop the bloomin' light."

Collis obediently hooked the wire handle of the lantern to his waist. Then he moved it slightly to the right—away from the "Etheridge jewels" as Rose called it. Despite his worry, he grinned at the memory.

At the bottom of the rings, there was indeed a ledge running alongside the water. It was raised not quite a foot above the waterline. George frowned. "I don't remember the river being so high before." He straightened his cuffs. "Oh, well, only a few more miles to go." He took the lantern from Collis and took the lead.

It may have been only a few miles, but to Rose it felt endless. She'd had only a few hours of sleep in the past few days, and her shoulder burned like fire. She wanted no more of tunnels and darkness. Especially dark, tunneling
rivers
. The ledge was no wider than a footpath, so she kept one hand trailing along the wall so she didn't misstep. The water rushing past alongside her reminded her very forcefully that she'd never learned to swim.

George, however, seemed to be having fun again. "I'm building a grand park just above us here," he informed them, his voice raised over the constant rush of water. "It will be surrounded by the finest homes and have an ornamental lake fed by this very river." He looked over his shoulder at Rose. "I haven't named the lake yet. Any suggestions?"

He wanted ideas from her? Now? "I—I'll have to think on it," she said faintly. That seemed to satisfy him and he trundled happily on. Princes were so odd!