My Scandalous Viscount (24 page)

At the moment, she did not care how unladylike she looked. Let the gossips report on it for all she cared!

She cracked the whip over the horses’ backs, determined to catch up with her errant husband.

I
n that moment, Beau felt pulled in a dozen directions at once, and going after Nick was the last thing he wanted to be doing. But of all the pressing matters crashing in on him at the moment, this one seemed the most dire.

If Schweiber’s apprentice could show him to Nick’s hiding place, then he still had a chance of stopping the ultimate catastrophe. If he failed, and Nick assassinated his target—and it had to be someone big for eight thousand pounds—Beau knew for certain the rest of them were headed for the gallows.

Every second counted now, but God knew, he would’ve rather been telling his wife in detail what he thought of her defiance, her inability to respect his orders as her husband. Maybe now she would see this wasn’t a game.

At the same time, he wanted to be in the Tower making sure his friends’ legal rights were being observed and nobody was treating them with undue cruelty. He wanted to be writing to the Elders up in Scotland, telling them to send the best lawyers they could find.

Most of all, he wanted to go tearing off to Carlton House, where Prinny was likely gorging his face, as usual.

How could their royal benefactor betray them like this? Somebody must have got to him. Beau did not know whether Green was part of the Prometheans or not, but even if he wasn’t, the outcome was the same.

This little weasel of a bureaucrat had done more to damage the Order than the Prometheans had managed to inflict on them in a century.

As Schweiber’s apprentice directed him into the East End, Beau tried to ignore his fury and focus on the task at hand. But he was still enraged about what Green had put his brother warriors through back at the docks. Damn it, any one of them would have been willing to die for the cause, but no one had ever suggested that their labors would be rewarded with public disgrace. How could this be happening? Had the world gone mad?

“Here it is, sir, the street I followed him to. The building’s just ’round the corner.”

Beau nodded, drawing his horses to a halt. Judging by the dodgy look of the surrounding neighborhood, he hoped his vehicle was not gone when they got back. “We’ll go on foot from here.”

They jumped down from the carriage. Beau murmured to his horses to stay. Then he nodded to the boy, and they headed for the corner.

The lad peered around the brick corner first, then looked at him. “The building on the right, sir. He went in that second door, toward the back, ground level.”

Beau recalled Nick’s telling him that he had been keeping Trevor in some sort of basement. “Good work, Michael. You stay here.”

“I don’t mind helping, sir, if you need me. I’m a good shot.”

He smiled ruefully. “I’m sure you are. But my friend is on the road to his own personal perdition, and has already shown he doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. I’ll handle this. You can keep watch—and keep an eye on my carriage, would you?”

“Aye, sir.”

With that, Beau slipped around the corner and began walking toward the building. Prowling closer, he took out his gun. His heartbeat quickened as he approached the second door. With every step he took, his instincts sharpened, homing in on the details of the tenement building. Nick would have left himself another exit. He’d have to look for it as soon as he went in; otherwise, the bastard might escape him yet again.

With his gun at the ready, he braced his back against the wall beside the door, listening. Silently, he tried the handle. Locked, of course.

Maybe Nick was not at home, he mused. But Trevor had to be in there somewhere. Hell-bent on stopping the one and saving the other, Beau gave himself a mental count to three, then he lunged at the door with a mighty kick.

Blasting it open, he steadied himself with a wide stance and instantly swept the interior with his pistol drawn. No counterattack was forthcoming from the dark and dirty hovel. But he had to make sure the place was clear.

With that, Beau proceeded through the first room into the second, looking out not only for that bloody turncoat mercenary but for any sign of a trapdoor to the cellar, where Nick had boasted he was keeping Trevor “safe.”

It had to be here somewhere. It was a tiny apartment of only two rooms. The front room was practically bare, except for a hutch of shelves with pots and pans on them and a battered table with four equally battered wooden chairs. He found a newspaper on the table along with the stump of a candle, an empty bottle of gin, the crumbs and uncleared plate from a sparse meal.

Beau checked the second room and found a moldy cot, but no one was sleeping in it. There was an old, scarred wardrobe by the wall, but he found nothing but a greatcoat and a few other items of clothing inside that seemed too fine for such surroundings. In the greatcoat pocket, he found Nick’s lucky deck of cards. His lips twisted. At least he’d got the right place, then. But Nick wasn’t at home.

He went back and shut the door he had kicked open in case Nick returned. Prowling back through the place, he scanned again in all directions, a little confounded. “Trevor?” he called. “Trev, are you here? It’s Beau!”

That’s when the low banging started.
Thud, thud, thud.
It was coming from somewhere under the floor, along with a very muffled voice.

“
Damn it, down here! Beauchamp! Let me out!
”

Beau dashed into the other room, following the sound. His stare homed in on the stained, ratty chair with a low table beside it, arranged before the fireplace.

“Trevor!” he bellowed, his gaze trailing down to the filthy oval rug beneath the table and chair. It lay unevenly, and that could signify nothing, but he went over and pulled the edge of the grimy rug back.

A curse escaped him. “Trevor!”

His heart was pounding as he shoved the chair and table out of the way, exposing the full outline of the trapdoor. Unfortunately, it was padlocked.

The banging was coming from the bottom side of the planks. “Get me the hell out of here!” a furious, muffled voice demanded.

“Hold on, I’m here!” Beau’s pulse pounded with fierce joy to hear his long-missing teammate’s voice. “Move back from the door! I’ve got to blast the lock!”

He gave Trevor a moment to back away before carefully shooting the lock apart at point-blank range. He holstered his pistol, but before the smoke had cleared, he had pulled the broken halves of the lock away.

At once, he bent to grasp the handle and pulled the trapdoor up, flooding the space below with daylight.

Trevor lunged up the rough wooden stairs like a captive lion finally escaping its cage. He bounded out of the darkness below to freedom, he whipped around, rather wild-eyed, his jaw roughened with a beard.

“It’s all right.”

“Took you long enough!” he spat. “Where is he? I’m goin’ to kill him.”

“Easy . . . Good God, how long were you down there?”

“Too long,” he growled. As he strode out of the room, Beau stole a quick glance into the hole and saw it had actually been rendered more comfortable than the dank hovel above. So, at least Nick had made sure their friend was comfortable. Nevertheless, it was still a prison.

Then Beau rushed after him into the other room. “What are you doing? Trevor, calm down!”

“Easy for you to say! You haven’t been in a hole for the past few months.” Tearing the kitchen area apart in search of any sharp object, Trevor turned to him and practically snarled at the question. “What the hell took you so long?” he growled over his shoulder.

“It’s a long story. I’ve had every asset at my disposal looking for you.”

Trevor growled in response.

“How are you?” Beau asked.

“How am I?” he repeated, his gray eyes blazing, his thick brown hair grown past his shoulders. “How. Am. I . . . Well, let me tell you, Beauchamp. Back in Spain, we had a massive skirmish with thirty Promethean hirelings. We killed them, of course, accidentally blew up a church in the process. Then I got shot. Spent a few weeks as an invalid, then realized my best friend had lost his mind when he tried to talk me into becoming a bloody mercenary.

“Oh, but that was just the start of the fun. Because then, when I refused, he took advantage of my weakened state to kick me into his own makeshift prison. Hell, I’m talking to myself down there in the dark. Whole conversations, and sometimes the furniture talks back! Of course, my dear old friend, Nick, will still come and talk to me through the door since the rat bastard has got no one else to talk to. Of course, most of the time, my only answer to his conversation is ‘Bugger off, you snaky serpent shit.’ By the way, he told me you got married.”

“Yes.”

Trevor harrumphed. “Nice you had the time to find a bride and court her, what with how busy you must’ve been looking for me.”

“It was a short courtship,” he said with a wince.

“Mine’s probably ruined, you realize. Laura’s probably written me off for dead. I haven’t gotten laid in half a year, not that you give a damn. Do the Elders know about Nick?”

“Not yet.”

“Because they probably think I deserted like he did. Don’t ask me to run, either. Bastard kicked my knee out in one of our recent brawls when I tried to get out. I’ll probably limp for another month yet. And to top it all off, I look like”—he gestured toward his long hair and bearded jaw—“the mad, bloody hermit living in the far corner of somebody’s wooded acreage! So does that answer your question of how I am?”

“Quite,” Beau replied. “I understand you’re irked, but I’m glad as hell to see you alive.”

“He wasn’t going to kill me!” Trevor scoffed. “He’s just abused my friendship and my trust past toleration and for that, I will make the bounder pay.”

“You’ll get your chance, I promise.” Still stunned that Nick would do this to Trevor, Beau watched his friend lay hold of a kitchen implement that could easily do some damage in the hands of a trained Order agent. But Trevor tossed the roasting spit aside and put out his hand.

“Give me your pistol.”

Beau stared at him. He was wearing a pair of Mantons in the holster belt round his waist. But he hesitated. “We need him alive, Trev.”

“I know that! When I said I’d kill him, I didn’t mean it literally, for God’s sake.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because it would be understandable.”

Trevor took a deep breath and let it out, slowly beginning to turn back into the relatively civilized human being Beau remembered. “All right,” he said at length. “I’m all right now. I just needed to get some of that off my chest.”

Beau smiled. Then he handed him the gun. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Trevor nodded, looking even more like his old self once he had a means of self-defense securely in hand. He tucked the pistol into the waist of his dusty tan trousers. “It’s good to see you.”

“You, as well, mate.” He gave Trevor’s shoulder a brotherly squeeze.

He was not sure he had the heart to tell Trevor that Rotherstone’s team had just been sent to the Tower of London, though. One thing at a time.

“So, do you know where he went?”

“Where, no, but I do know
what
he was doing. Every day he goes to check the drop point to see if they’ve left him the name of the person they want him to kill.”

“He’ll be back soon?”

“Any moment.” Trevor paused and looked at him.

“Good,” Beau murmured as he reloaded the pistol he had shot at the door. “Then we’ll be waiting for him.”

D
riving a delivery cart was harder than it looked, Carissa was finding. Her arms and shoulders ached from laboring to manage four very strong carthorses, and a whip, to boot. But she had seen the general route Beau’s carriage had taken.

It took some searching to find his parked coach. She had got lost twice and had to turn around in a cramped alley, which had involved getting down from the driver’s seat and taking the lead horse by the bridle.

She got under way again once they were headed in the right direction, and at last, she spotted her husband’s glossy black coach-and-four parked on the side of the street.

The gunsmith’s apprentice came jogging over with a look of alarm as she pulled up behind it.

“Where is my husband?” she demanded, but Michael quickly signaled for quiet, a finger to his lips.

“Milady, it isn’t safe for you to be here.”

“Well, I am here now, and I’m not leaving until I speak to my husband!”

“His Lordship is inside, but for your own safety, will you please stay out of sight?”

“We’re near Nick’s hiding place?” she asked dubiously.

“It’s just around the corner. We’re waiting for him to arrive.”

“Then I suppose you’re right. I’d better hide. He’ll recognize me if he sees me and realize Beau’s inside.”

Michael nodded. “We can’t let him see my master’s name on the delivery cart, either. If you’ll wait inside Lord Beauchamp’s coach, I’ll drive the cart around the block. You’re going to be here by yourself, so you’d better stay hidden if he comes by.”

“Very well.” Remembering Nick’s cloaked death threat against her, she slid down from the driver’s seat of the cart. The lad steadied her with a polite hand as she caught her balance. Then he waved her toward Beau’s coach.

As soon as she climbed inside, Michael ran back to the delivery wagon and drove away, to keep it out of sight.

His timing proved impeccable, for he no sooner drove it around the corner than Nick himself appeared, riding across the intersection on horseback.

Carissa ducked with a gasp as Nick rode by.

When the sound of his horse’s hooves had clip-clopped past, she peeked past the edge of the carriage window.

He was out of sight. But she had to know what was happening. She slipped down from the coach and sneaked over to the corner, peering around it.

Her eyes widened as she watched the rogue agent dismount, walk his horse into the mews, and then reappear a moment later, heading for a door toward the back part of the building.

She ducked behind the wall, her heart pounding, when Nick glanced around, looking back over his shoulder, a man perennially on guard. But as he reached for the door handle, he suddenly noticed something wrong with it and froze.