TheCharmer (28 page)

"Well, I suppose if you've been dangled on the Prince's knee since you were a tot, you rate a little dispensation. He used to tell me the most fantastic stories about the Prince when we were in our first years at school. I thought for the longest time that he was making them up. Then I suppose he didn't see him for a long while, for he didn't talk about him anymore. Anyway, by then we'd discovered the fascinating topic of females."

Rose snorted softly. "I can imagine."

Ethan smiled at her. "I wonder. Would you believe it if I told you that Collis was, at one time, the most absurdly romantic soul I've ever known? Addicted to Shakespeare, mad for poetry, inclined to spout rhyme about 'hearts entwined of lace and fire' ?"

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. Here was another man full of malarkey. "Not one little bit."

"Every word of it truth, I swear it." He shook his head. "I don't know where that boy went. After his parents died, I think a part of him went into hiding.

Or perhaps it was the army, or the wound… I know he came back different, or at least it seemed that way the one time I saw him."

Rose wished she could have known Collis then. She could imagine him young and untroubled. He would have been a beautiful boy, whole in body and soul. How he must have shone, like a silver chalice unmarred by fingerprints or tarnish.

Damn, she would never stop being a housemaid, would she? Silver polishing, for heaven's sake. She'd best keep in mind that if Collis was a silver chalice, then she was a humble wooden spoon. A spoon with a mission, one she'd best be keeping her mind on. As soon as she heard a little more about Collis.

"You were supposed to be telling me about his inheriting Etheridge."

"Did I wander? Sorry."

She didn't believe his apology. He'd had some reason of his own for telling her that. But then again, he was a mad, drunk gambler. She ought not to listen to a thing this man had to say… except that she desperately wanted to hear. "So how did he come to be heir if his father was only an officer?"

"The way he told it, there are no other Etheridge men to be found. A search back along the line left no relatives of any kind, if you can believe that. Apparently they don't breed well at all. Lots of only children, lots of dying young, that sort of thing."

That didn't sound quite right to her… a bit convenient, really. Still, there was no accounting for the heights of snobbery enacted by the aristocracy. The proper heir probably farmed pigs in the north country or something unbearable like that.

"But can you simply pick someone to be heir?"

"To a title, no, not usually. But then, most of us aren't Collis, born with a golden horseshoe up his arse, either. A word in the ear of the Prince and a bit of mudgery-pudgery in the entail records and voilà! Instant heir."

"Seems a bit dodgy to me, but I suppose what the Prince Regent says, happens." George was capable of sudden and outrageous generosity, she'd heard. She could imagine him taking a fancy to little Collis and waving his royal hand… but he'd not been Regent then, had he? It must have been the King's wish as well.

"Of course, they treated him more like a royal heir than simply Etheridge's heir," Ethan went on. "Not spoiling him as much as smothering him. Etheridge, loyalty to Etheridge, devotion to Etheridge. Everyone telling him it was the most important thing in the world—but it meant nothing to him. And why should it, with his uncle being a young, hardy bloke? The odds of him inheriting have always been slight. No, his mistress was always music, even as a lad. The music master at school gave up teaching him after a bit. I think Col must have passed the fellow right up."

Rose sighed. "I've never heard him play."

Ethan blinked. "Do you mean to tell me he doesn't play
at all
?"

Hugging herself, Rose shook her head. "Never once since he was wounded. He played the drums for a while, I heard, but I think he was only trying to fend off all the sympathy."

"God save us, the Etheridge stiff upper lip. Bloody miracle any of them can speak at all." Ethan blew a sigh of amazement at the ceiling. "Not playing at all. Damn, he must be nearly ready to explode."

"Why do you say that?"

"Collis needs a mistress, a cause to serve—somewhere to belong, if you like. Not like me. I prefer being on my own."

Rose wasn't any too sure of that, but she didn't interrupt.

"Collis without music is Collis without any meaning at all, I imagine." Ethan looked sorrowful. "Damn. Poor bloke."

"He belongs," Rose said quietly. "Or rather, he will." If she hadn't ruined everything for him. She firmly pushed that guilt aside. No time for worrying about that now. "I do think he's searching, a bit. He seems so… lost, sometimes."

"The man after."

Rose frowned. "Who?"

"The man after. The fellow one becomes
after
life blows up in your face. My da used to tell me that it wasn't the man you were before trouble hit that counted. It was the man after."

"Your da sounds like a wise man."

"My da was a social-climbing shoemaker. He was talking about taking advantage of a bad situation to gain rank and status." He cocked a thumb at his chest. "I'm the one to put the philosophical light on it."

"A gambling philosopher?"

He shrugged. "Or a philosophical gambler. I'll take either."

She squinted at him. "Are you sure you're quite sober now?"

"Oh, heavens, no. Where'd you get that impression?"

"Hmm."

"You're a very nice lass. I like you." Ethan put his arm behind her shoulders. Rose allowed it, for there wasn't a great deal of room to be missish in their hiding place. He wasn't a bad sort, either, for a mad, drank gambler.

"You'd clean up nicely, I think," she told him. "Burn the blinding waistcoats and shave the mustache…"

"The mustache? You don't like it? But it comes in so handy as a distraction when I'm playing. The marks think they're reading me, you see. They think they can decode how I'm toying with my mustache in order to discern my true feelings about my hand." He petted the furry thing fondly. "I'd hate to deprive them of the fun of that."

"Well, think of it this way. They'll all go spinning off, looking for the new code. That ought to supply you with hours of amusement."

He laughed, his brows raised in surprise. "Do you gamble, my pretty Rose?" His hand came to rest on her shoulder. She peeled it off with an unoffended smile.

"I'm not your pretty anything, Mr. Damont. And I do not gamble… at least not with cards."

He dropped his flirtatious attempts to regard her with worried eyes. "Take care, pretty lass. If Collis Tremayne is the reason you won't be flirted with, then you are playing deep stakes indeed. His level is not for the likes of us, you do know that, don't you?"

She twitched her lips. "Mr. Damont, even you are completely out of my range. I know I cannot touch Collis."

He watched her, his eyes still somber. "But the question is… Does he know he has touched you?"

Rose didn't answer. The silence grew, punctuated by the
thump-thump
of the stamping mill over their heads.

«
^
»

Louis Wadsworth didn't seem like an outraged victim of theft, Collis realized. Rather, he seemed more to be playing the part for his own amusement, like a bored stage actor making up his own drama.

There was trenchant irony in the costuming and the elaborate dungeon scenario. All very flamboyant, all very riveting. Collis wondered what Louis was really doing it for.

Louis was parading now, pacing back and forth before his prisoners, his personal guard a stolid threat behind him. The swish of his walking stick, the click of his boot heels, was so very considered as to be laughable.

But if Louis wanted them to laugh, to discount, to underestimate… then it followed that there was more here than met the eye. Collis was a professional, and personal, expert on distraction techniques. He used them to keep others from seeing his own occasional despair.

What was Louis keeping under wraps?

Aside from the fact that he was bloody foaming mad, of course. Louis paused in his pacing to peer curiously into George's battered face. Abruptly Collis tired of waiting. "Louis, I'm tired and I have to piss. Hurry it on, would you?"

Louis turned to him, coming to a stop in front of Collis with his stick resting on his shoulder like a rifle. "So sorry, was I boring you?" He twitched the stick to the other shoulder, wrapping both hands casually around the knob. "I could provide a bit more excitement, I'm sure. That is, if you really want me to."

Collis didn't even have to force the weary tone in his voice. "Louis, even you don't believe this charade. Why don't you just jump right in with your reasons for committing treason? I'm sure we're all just panting to know."

Louis quirked a brow, as if he had not expected such a direct challenge and found it interesting. "Treason? How dare you, sir! It is I who have been betrayed. I, a peaceful man, a man of industry—I have been violated by thieves!" He ended his passionate speech with his arms flung open and his stick raised high for emphasis.

Collis didn't believe a word of it. "Thrilling performance, truly," he said dryly. "I might cry."

Louis shrugged. "Ah, well, mock me then. You will not be mocking soon." He shook his head sadly. "Tonight I shall be forced to shoot two masked intruders who will violate my home. Alas, it will only be afterward that I'll realize I have killed my new acquaintance Mr. Tremayne and his hireling."

Collis sighed. "Ah, now come the clichés."

That chipped Louis's armor, Collis could see. Something dark flashed in Louis's eyes and he stepped closer, tipping his stick under Collis's chin. "You are pressing your luck, Mr. Tremayne. What were you doing in my study, hmm?" His eyes narrowed. "Who sent you there?"

Collis grinned through battered lips. "The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers."

That made Louis blink. "The competition?" His eyes narrowed as he thought about it. Collis didn't have much hope of him believing it. His own link with Dalton, the man who'd killed Louis's father in the heat of committing high treason, pointed to a slightly higher authority than a lot of disgruntled gunmakers who'd been outbid by Wadsworth & Son. Dalton's well-known connection to Liverpool further damaged Collis's ability to hide any dire motivation. Damn. Louis had had him spotted from the first moment in that club, as a plant. And since Collis had been operating on misinformation, he hadn't had the opportunity to play the disenchanted heir, the bored Corinthian whose possibilities were hampered by an all too young and healthy uncle—which just might have worked. Too late now.

The cane tip dug into Collis's throat more fiercely. "Try again," crooned Louis.

"Ah, Mrs. Blythe? She heard you didn't like girls."

The first blow of the walking stick wasn't so bad, for it glanced off the meaty part of his right shoulder. The second one took him hard in the ribs. He would have doubled over but for the manacles trapping his wrists, so the third blow caught him full in the gut. He bent over as far as his arms would let him, trying to ease the pain. He breathlessly contemplated vomiting on Louis's shiny boots, but sadly, he hadn't eaten lately.

George rattled in his bonds, but Collis quelled him with a look. The more of Louis's attention that stayed on him, the less Louis would have to spare for George. If the man realized who he had in his grasp—there was no way to tell which way he would spring. Collis didn't want to push Louis to that level of desperation, not until George was safely back where he belonged.

The longer Louis amused himself by beating Collis like a back-alley hound, the longer the Liars had to come to George and Collis's rescue. Surely Mrs. Blythe would have told them something. And surely Dalton would follow their trail to Wadsworth's—except he hadn't sent them to Wadsworth's, he'd sent them to Wentworth's, hadn't he?

As Louis continued to apply the walking stick in all sorts of painful places, Collis began to realize just how helpless and alone they were. If only someone out there knew where he and the Prince were.

"No!" he cried out after a mighty blow of the stick. "Not my left arm, please! I was wounded—"

He drew a subtle sigh of relief when Louis began to work assiduously on his dead arm. Although the blows rocked his body, he felt nothing. It might buy a little time.

He only hoped it would be enough.

Ethan and Rose made their way into the factory just as she had planned. Louis Wadsworth was apparently very confident of the protection provided by his high walls, for there were only two watchmen whom she could see. Those two spent their time casting dice by the gate. Once the growing dusk could mask their movements, Ethan and Rose quietly pushed the grate up and slipped into the factory proper. Ethan quickly armed himself with a pry bar from a crating area.

Knowing Louis, he would have hidden his captives somewhere that amused him. A bell tower or an animal's cage… she looked up at the castlelike facade of the building… or a dungeon.