Clandestine (16 page)

“And what exactly will you do when you get there? Announce to all and sundry that you've come to search for Miss Rachel Mansard?”

“I don't care about any risk to me,” she said.

“I've gathered as much, Mrs. Callaway,” he said coldly. “Yet if you rush down to Dartmoor, you will very likely only increase the risk to Miss Mansard.”

A dark flush raced over her cheeks. Her gaze burned. The riot of freckles ran like the Milky Way over the bridge of her nose. Her mouth was unexpectedly tempting.

In spite of the ice in his voice, his blood ran hot.

“If it were your cousin, Mr. Devoran,” she said, “what would you do?”

A silent current seemed to pass between them: an entirely unexpected depth of understanding. Some truths were too great to be denied. He was trumped.

“Move heaven and earth, and hazard everything, of course,” he said simply.

Sarah stretched the bracelet out on the table. Even on such a dull day, the stones burned with blue fire.

“As must I,” she said. “Especially now that Rachel has just secured my autonomy.”

She was unraveling his plans like a cat with yarn. Guy faced the chaos of new patterns and rapidly began to weave the only viable solution. He could not force her to retreat to Wyldshay. Neither could he allow her to race unprotected down to Plymouth.

“Very well,” he said. “The terms change. Yet you already put your quest in my hands when we met in the bookstore. So I beg that you'll continue to allow me to help you, in spite of our disagreements.”

Her eyes searched his face. “Even though there's still something important that you're not telling me?”

“There are a great many things that I'm not telling you,” Guy said. “Though you're very busy finding out some of them for yourself.”

“Rachel has no one else, Mr. Devoran. If I don't go to Devon, I'd only go mad with worry and I'd be days away from helping her, if she needs me. Though I see the folly in my rushing off without a plan, surely you agree?”

Guy paced away across the carpet. Daedalus had no reason to suspect Sarah Callaway, and the evidence suggested that he had already achieved his goal of driving Rachel from London. So both women were probably safer in Devon than in town.

Yet he felt as if he were falling down a long, dark tunnel toward some particularly horrendous perdition.

“I had already planned to go to Dartmoor,” he said. “Though you and I can hardly travel together, Lord and Lady Overbridge host a house party next week. Buckleigh is only a few miles east of Plymouth, not far from the edge of the moor. I can arrange for you to be there.”

“In what capacity?” she asked.

“God, I don't know! As a guest, if you like.”

She stroked the gems idly with one finger. “That would look very odd, don't you think? Perhaps some lady who's attending might need a companion?”

“No,” he said. “I have a better idea.” He turned to face her. “Would you be able to entertain the ladies by giving a few seminars about plants?”

Her smile lit her face as if a lamp burned beneath her fine skin. His heart skipped a beat.

“You can arrange that?” she asked.

“With Lady Overbridge? Yes, of course. Botany is all the rage among females these days. Buckleigh boasts extensive new gardens and she's very proud of them. I'll come myself as soon as I wrap up the rest of my investigations here in London. Meanwhile, I trust to your discretion.”

“Thank you, Mr. Devoran. If Lady Overbridge agrees, it's an excellent plan.”

“In the meantime, if you would allow me to give you something toward the value of that bauble, I'll put it into the duke's safe until you wish to redeem the rest.”

She gathered the bracelet in one hand and held it out. “You're quite that sure that this is worth so very much?”

“I'm absolutely certain of it, Mrs. Callaway,” he said.

Guy thrust the jewels away in an inner pocket, then strode out of the room. The sapphires burned a hot track into his soul. He knew the bracelet to be solid gold with precious stones, because he had bought it for Rachel himself.

S
ARAH
rode in Lady Overbridge's second coach with the governess and a most superior lady's maid. Her Ladyship had declared it was the most delightful idea she had heard in an age. Everyone raved about botany these days, such a ladylike pursuit, the study of plants. How absolutely charming to include a young lady at her house party to teach her guests all about pistils and stamens and why flowers have petals, at all!

Didn't Lady Whitely agree?

Lady Whitely, who had witnessed Sarah's interview with her future employer, most certainly did.

In fact, that lady had added her own opinion, with a pretty little titter: “And if it ensured Mr. Devoran's presence—
such
a handsome gentleman!—at
my
house party, I would invite a Hottentot in feathers.”

Sarah choked back her smile. A little humility before one's betters was always necessary, but that didn't stop her from being genuinely amused as she remembered it.

She glanced out of the coach window at the summer countryside. Their journey would take several days and, ironically, carry her through Bath, where she could collect some more clothes and some books, and explain to Miss Farcey that she was going to take a summer holiday and couldn't be sure when she might return.

Now she was promised the patronage of a duchess, she would always be able to find employment, whatever happened in the meantime, and Miss Farcey would no doubt welcome her back with no questions asked. The freedom of that thought was remarkably heady. As was the knowledge that she carried a nice sum in coins in her reticule: a deposit from Mr. Devoran toward the value of Rachel's bracelet.

Yet real worry still circled beneath that small happiness, as if tired dogs fretted at a treed cat. Rachel was hiding somewhere unknown on Dartmoor, because—even if Mr. Devoran claimed otherwise—Daedalus had attempted to murder her.

Meanwhile, he had remained in London to delve deeper into those so-called accidents. How much danger awaited him from the thugs that Daedalus must have hired to carry out such attacks?

Lady Overbridge and Lady Whitely were not the only females who would be devastated if Mr. Devoran did not come to Buckleigh as promised.

T
HE
street was even dingier than Guy had expected. Shabby terraces of soot-streaked brick and dirty windows in an area that had once housed prosperous merchants, but was now barely clinging to respectability.

He drew back into the deep shadows and waited.

Rachel's last letter was securely folded in an inner pocket. It contained just enough extra detail about the threats to her life that he had been able to follow several new leads. With the additional information he had gleaned from Jack and his own earlier investigations, Guy had a damned good idea of what Daedalus had been trying to achieve.

Now it was time to make sure.

The brick wall that had collapsed so suddenly had belonged to an abandoned building at the end of this street. Rachel had often walked past it on her way back from the post office, before turning into Goatstall Lane. At the beginning of June, the bricks at the top had crashed down, barely missing her.

Such a dramatic event had fortunately had witnesses.

Yet the inhabitants of Lower Cornmere Street would be understandably reluctant to speak to a gentleman. So—though he made no attempt to hide his competence to defend himself—Guy wore some damned uncomfortable filth on his hair and skin, along with an equally dirty jacket, working men's pants, and rough boots.

His normal voice would have betrayed him instantly. Fortunately, as boys, he and Jack had learned as many different accents as they could from the servants at the various duchy properties and at Birchbrook. Then, as wild young men, they had learned to mimic the prizefighters and their cronies, a skill that had since saved Jack's life upon occasion.

Guy trusted it might now save his, also.

A few high-flung stars promised nightfall when the man with a limp finally emerged from the Merry Dogs public house and began to weave his way up the street.

“Stainbull!” Guy hissed as the man drew level. “Ye've bin playing hide and seek wi' me, ye damned marplot!”

Stainbull jerked to a halt. He peered up beneath the brim of his greasy hat and gave Guy a rotten-toothed grin.

“Mr. Uxbridge, sir? Now, sir, ye made it clear when we last met that ye be a man of the world. Ye'll not hold ill with poor Stainbull, sir?”

Guy ignored the stink of cheap ale and raw onions, and grasped the man's collar.

“And as I said then, sir, I want a name, that's all I want. I know who did it. But who paid to have it done?”

“Well, ye be a bright spark, sir! Where's the blunt ye promised me?”

He thrust Stainbull up against the wall and slipped a knife against the man's throat.

“Ye've bin on the drag lay, cully. The name now, then we'll see about the rest. Or perhaps ye fancy a visit with Jack Ketch?”

“God rest us, Mr. Uxbridge, sir! I don't know nothing!”

Guy tightened his grip. “That's not what a little bird told me.”

Stainbull stretched his neck, his eyes bulging. “There's no cause for that, sir! The timing was careful, went just as planned. The piece got dust on her bonnet and was taken all a-mort, but walked on home as merry about the gills as you could please. Not a pretty yellow hair on her pretty yellow noddle harmed, sir.”

Guy glowered, keeping his lips tight over his suspiciously good teeth, though he had swilled a little thick tea in an attempt to stain them.

“And if a cove wanted to know how to go about getting another job with timing just as careful, a cove knows who to talk to. But what if that cove don't care how it was done, and only wants to know the name of the churl that ordered it?”

Stainbull's eyes darted about. No one else was in earshot. He licked dry lips and squinted back up at Guy.

“Then that cove'd be too late. He's gone.”

The tip of the knife threatened to draw blood. “The name?”

“Falcorne, sir! Prig called himself Falcorne! A squat, dun fellow wi' blue peepers.”

It was the third time Guy had heard it: no doubt not his quarry's real name. Though the description—short and thickset, brown-haired and blue-eyed—applied to half the rogues in London.

Keeping Stainbull still pressed up against the wall, Guy relaxed his fingers a little.

“And what did this Falcorne do for a living, Mr. Stainbull, that makes you call him a prig?”

“The cove had airs, set himself up like a gennulman, though he was used enough to having his paws in the dirt.”

Guy clinked coins in his pocket. “What kind of dirt?”

“Dirt, sir! Ground in, like. Fingernails cracked like a whore's madge, but with the job done and the mort taken off in a fright, you'll not find him here, sir. He'll be gone home.”

For a second Guy's blade threatened to cut the man's throat. “And where is that, Mr. Stainbull?”

“My doxy was married to a blacksmith from south o' Dartmoor. Same way o' talking. Look for him there between the moor and the sea, she said.”

Ice water trickled down Guy's spine. “What else?”

Stainbull squirmed. “Well, I thought he might be touched, sir. He said in his cups he could tell the Queen of Denmark from Marie Louise, and Charles de Mills from the Old Velvet, and he was very partial to a monk's head or a ruby-lipped cat. Then he cackled like a crow. I don't know any more than that, sir. Not to save my humble life! So you'll not squeal on poor Stainbull, sir, as was born halt and shamble-legged and never did no one no harm?”

Almost numb with shock, Guy released the greasy collar, just as something sharp blurred at the edge of his vision. He twisted instantly and chopped hard with one hand.

He could almost convince himself that he'd imagined the nasty little blade, except that the edge of his palm stung with the impact against its wooden handle. Another second and he'd have been stabbed in the gut or cut across the ribs.

Stainbull dodged aside and grinned, his knife already hidden again in his clothing.

“You're a rum cove, Mr. Uxbridge, sir,” he said.

Before he could prevent himself Guy laughed, but he also tossed a handful of coins onto the cobbles.

As Stainbull scrabbled for them he strode away. It was an amusingly intense way to test his conclusions about what he had learned. Fortunately, no knife came whistling through the air to fell him in his tracks. A slightly hair-raising vindication!

The lame man had knocked down a brick wall with exactly the right timing for Rachel to walk away terrified, but unscathed. Just like the other men hired by Falcorne to carry out the “accidents,” Stainbull was a villain, but not a killer.