Revealed (34 page)

Then she glanced down and saw that his hand was still perched at her breast, his fingers still nestled inside her gown, idly toying with her pebbled nipple. Her eyes flew to his face, as he immediately withdrew his hand into the cold air, removing the other from the warmth of her shoulder.

Slowly, she untwined herself from him, unlaced her fingers from his hair, let go of his shoulder. But they kept their bodies still, and Marcus, his blood humming, kept her pressed into the dark corner.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, his eyes searching her face.

“Don’t . . . don’t be,” she replied, her voice husky, shaky.

“It was the only thing I could think of—to get rid of them,” he whispered.

She nodded.

“You can slap me now, if you want. As is customary.”

She blushed profusely at that and managed a small smile. “No, I, uh—I think I’ll hold it in account, if necessary.”

“As you like.” He grinned and finally, painfully, moved his body away from hers.

And, after a quick glance at his trousers, he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the dark.

As he walked away, looking around the quiet stables, still, but for the occasional snort and sleepy whinny, the cold air acted as an unyielding reminder of his purpose there. Of what they were looking for.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

She had gotten into his head.

But worse than that, he suspected she had gotten into his heart.

“Come on,” he snapped, his voice harsher than strictly necessary, but it was the only way in his mind to reestablish his course. “You insisted on coming along, now show me where Sterling and this stranger were standing.”

Phillippa’s knees were shaky. The wall was holding her up. And her body, her body sang from having been pressed and molded so perfectly to his. And once he left, it cried out for his return. It was unfair, this sharp reaction she had to him. It was delicious.

But then his voice became clipped and cold—a great deal like his brother’s—and it was as sobering as freezing water to the face.

Obviously he was used to kissing women to get out of difficult situations. It was another day of work for him.

Fine. She gathered her strength and strode out of the corner. She brushed past Marcus as she moved farther down the row, stopping at a stall labeled Letty.

“I was crouched on the outside of the building, here.” Then she moved briskly back toward the front doors, just about in the center of the row. “I saw through the stall, and they came, and stopped about here, and rifled through the satchel.”

Marcus nodded, then immediately joined her, and began rummaging around the hay and straw that layered the packed earth of the stable floor.

“It’ll be small,” he mumbled, “otherwise, the stable lads would have found it.”

Phillippa joined him in rummaging, however delicately.

It was quiet for several minutes, the silence pounding down on her. Her mind turned unerringly back to the darkened corner, the way his hands caressed her, enveloped her, and she could not let it.

“Marcus,” she finally said, breaking through her own thoughts, and apparently his, because he turned around, startled. “Can we—can you talk about something? Anything?”

“Certainly,” he replied, pulling himself back on his heels, resigned. “What would you like me to talk about?”

“You could—you could tell me what we’re looking for,” she ventured, hoping that this would keep her mind, their minds, occupied.

Marcus seemed to consider this. He moved to another stall, began rummaging there before he started speaking.

“At the Whitford Banquet,” he said in a whisper, “they caused a distraction and then stole something from the house, while everyone was in a panic.”

“I recall,” Phillippa replied, toeing back some hay with her delicate slipper. Stables, even the best, were smelly places. “They stole your pistols.”

“No, they stole documents, too,” Marcus corrected. “Designs for a new kind of pin barrel firing rifle; Whitford was still building the prototype. The design was to be sold to His Majesty’s army, which would have made Whitford a lot of money, not to mention given Britain an advantage on the field.”

“What does this have to do with whatever we’re looking for?” she asked.

Marcus grunted as he lifted a hay bale to look underneath it. Nothing. “Guns were Whitford’s pride and joy, not to mention his own particular brand of patriotism. What is Hampshire’s?”

She didn’t even have to think it over. “His horses; he lent half his stock to the war effort during the Hundred Days.” Phillippa gave a small gasp of shock, causing Marcus to look up. “You think Laurent means to steal the horses?”

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t think even Laurent could manage that. But he could destroy Hampshire’s breeding program. I think in this instance, the distraction and the purpose will be met with one blow.”

Phillippa nodded, catching on. “We’re looking for . . . for some kind of incendiary device, aren’t we?” she asked, a drop of fear pitching her voice.

Marcus nodded. “It’s only a guess. Laurent in the past has experimented with chemicals. I’ve done a little study myself, but I’m no man of science.”

Phillippa felt all the blood drain from her face, her heart beginning to beat double time. Panicking. Her legs gave out from under her, and she lowered herself to sit on the bale of hay Marcus had just put down.

He obviously noticed her pallor and irregular breathing, because he moved to kneel in front of her, took her by the shoulders, and held her at arm’s length. “Phillippa, I could be wrong. . . . But if I’m not . . . I’ll stay and look. You go back to the house; tell Byrne where I am—”

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“Phillippa—”

“Marcus, no, I can’t; you could die—”

He could have argued. He could have threatened, cajoled, throttled her. Instead, he stared. At her knees.

Even for Marcus, this was strange. Phillippa was about to ask him if she had a tear in her gown at knee level, but then he took hold of her legs.

“Marcus, what are you—” But her unfinished question was answered when he swung her legs to the side and began examining a small break, a crevice in the bale on which she was seated.

Phillippa stood watching as Marcus reached into the hay bale, almost up to his elbow. She leaned down, crouched beside him, as he rummaged around and pulled out—

Well, Phillippa didn’t really know what it was.

It looked like the innards of a clock, small, it fit neatly into Marcus’s hand, with a vial attached, enclosing some kind of yellowy bit of wax. A tiny hammer was held in place by a taut wire. The whole thing ticked, winding down.

“I think—that its phosphorus,” Marcus said, examing the device closely.

“The smelly stuff that makes fireworks flash?” Phillippa asked, and received a quick nod of approval in return.

“It reacts to the air, burns bright white.” Marcus delicately touched the hammer on the tension wire. “Phillippa,” he said, his brow furrowed in intense concentration, “I need you to step away from me now.”

Phillippa did as she was told, taking cautious, measured steps back, all the while keeping her eyes on what Marcus was doing. The ticking of the device was becoming slower, the spaces in between stretching further apart, echoing in the dark of the stables.

Marcus delicately reached into the device and took hold of the tiny hammer. Gingerly, and with aching precision, he held his breath, closed his eyes, and broke the hammer off.

And nothing happened.

Phillippa tiptoed back to Marcus’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder as he exhaled in relief.

“Wind up the gears, and it ticks down,” he said, staring at the device, “like a clockwork toy. Once the time runs out, the hammer breaks the glass, exposing the phosphorus to the air, igniting it.”

“But it’s so small; surely it can’t burn this whole place down.” Phillippa replied, her eyes narrowing.

“Yes, but stuck in the middle of the bale, it would send the whole thing up, and then fire would spread, and voilà: a burning stable.” Marcus said, standing.

“And they wound it eight hours in advance?” she asked.

“I doubt it, someone was here just before we were.”

No, Phillippa thought. It was too simple, too easy that they found it. And the device was so small, ridiculous to have kept it in so large a satchel. Do men know nothing of how to execute fashion usefully?

“Marcus,” Phillippa said, grabbing his arm, “the satchel—it was bigger than this. I mean it was fuller.”

Marcus stared down into her eyes for a moment; then together, they looked down the length of the stables.

In front of every stall was a bale of straw, laid out to replace the muck from the stalls in the morning. And at the far end of the structure, piled to rafters, were bales enough to keep the stalls clean for the next month.

Phillippa gulped, as Marcus turned his gaze to the device in his hand. “How many?” he asked her.

“How many what?” she replied, her eyes flickering with alarming speed from one bale, to another, to another.

“How many devices do you think were in that bag?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Phillippa!” he commanded.

“I don’t know!” she cried, turning her mind back to that afternoon, back to the stranger and the satchel on his back.

“A half dozen, maybe?” she answered hopefully. “Marcus we can find them, I know it. You start on that end, and I’ll start on this one.”

Unfortunately, her faith in their device-finding abilities was not to be tested. For at that moment, in the distance, the whine and pop of that evening’s main event sounded through the night.

The fireworks had begun.

“Too late,” Marcus said, and Phillippa heard the soft pop of breaking glass, as the dry-as-kindling bale to their left began to at first smoke and then burst into flame.

“
G
ET down!” Marcus yelled, putting his arms around Phillippa’s shoulders and ducking. Another bale burst into flame, then another. One up in the rafters. Marcus glanced over his shoulder, and saw what he feared; the neat stack of bales leaking smoke. The whole pile would be on fire in a matter of moments.

It all happened so fast. The pop of distant fireworks died as whinnying Thoroughbreds began to snort and scream, rearing as the flames began to spread. Phillippa clung to Marcus’s waist like a lifeline, pulling him toward the stable doors.

“We have to get out of here!” she cried from under his arm.

Marcus was quick to agree.

As fire seemed to spread with abandon underfoot, and burning straw began to fall from the rafters, Marcus and Phillippa covered their mouths and made their way to the stable door and ran out into the cold, sweet air.

As Marcus took a deep breath, clearing his head of the chemical-tainted smoke that had just begun to assault his lungs, Phillippa wasted no time in running back to the stables.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Marcus said as he ran after her.

“The horses! We have to get them out!” she yelled as he caught her about the waist.

“You can’t go back in there,” he argued, and when she pulled against his embrace, he stilled her. “The stalls—do they have exterior doors?”

She nodded through tears, and they took off for the side of the building, which was now emitting noxious smoke and ominous light.

As Marcus pulled open the first latch of the exterior stalls and led out a frantic mare, Phillippa, having realized that the two of them were not going to be enough to get all the horses out, cried out into the glowing night. “Oy! Fire! The stables are on fire! Help! Fire!”

The air remained still. Until suddenly, they heard from the other side of a hill an answering cry of, “We’re coming! We’re coming!” and a dozen boys, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, ran over the rise.

Immediately the eldest boy, who must have been head stable lad, commanded, “Billy, Frankie, run to the house, get help!” and the remaining ten split into groups on either side of the building, pulling open the exterior doors of the stalls, freeing the frightened and bucking occupants.

As they worked, more people, alerted by the quick-of-foot stable lads and Phillippa’s yelling, began to join them, some working on the stall doors, some taking the water barrels that had once served as Phillippa’s hiding place and putting them to use.

Marcus moved to the next stall and the next, working with as much speed as possible, when Phillippa’s urgent voice drew his attention.

“Marcus,” she said breathlessly, pulling at his sleeve, “I think that’s the man I saw—the stranger.”

She pointed toward a figure silhouetted at the top of the hill, about a hundred feet away, next to a tree, watching the chaos of the fire. It was impossible to make out his features in the dark at that distance, but occasional flashes from overhead fireworks and the fire of the stables was enough to highlight his frame and light-colored hair.