The Bad Baron's Daughter (22 page)

Sometime during the afternoon, Lady Suzanne stretched out on her daybed and fell asleep, her arms outflung, her petticoats riding up to her knees. Katie was tired, too, but also a little restless, so she sponged herself with cool rose-scented water from Suzanne’s porcelain ewer and struggled into an eau-de-Nil green gown of silk gauze. The sleeves were small and puffed, the waist cut high under her breasts, and there were twelve tiny buttons inconveniently set down the back seam that caused Katie a fair amount of grief to fasten. It took five minutes of painful effort and much backwards consultation with a full-length mirror before each button was in place.

“Thank God,” she said and started from the room, only to be stopped by the sight of the hairbrush staring reproachfully at her from the sycamore-stained vanity. Katie returned guiltily to run it through her hair and thread a dark green ribbon through the peaking curls in the way that Antoinette had taught her, except that it didn’t look quite the same as when Antoinette had done it herself.

Katie wandered fascinated through the long, carpeted halls and Italianate marble anterooms of the great house, a diffident, respectful tourist among the refined opulence. At length she came to the billiard room where she found Drew, who had most improperly engaged a young underfootman in a game. They stopped when Katie came in and at length Drew bore her off to the orangery, which, he claimed, was the only room in the house with a temperature below roasting.

The orangery proved to be a large, delightfully exotic room closed in by shaded glass, and thick with a velvet jungle of bushes, vines, ferns, and timidly blooming bulbs. Drew led Katie to the center of the room where a hissing fountain sent out a perpetual spray of crystal vapor. She sat on the cool granite floor beneath a spreading umbrella plant and began to question Drew about the plants. What were their names? Did they come from Brazil? Were they poisonous? Did Lady Brixton have a bush with fruit that could make you drunk? Drew had been about to indignantly refute any suggestion that he knew anything about a bunch of damned plants but Katie’s last question and the credulous expression on her pretty features spurred his sense of the ridiculous. Grinning, he began to weave Katie several long and totally imaginary tales about the monstrous botanical rarities of Brazil. He achieved a considerable success with a plant that drugged its human victims with an irresistibly intoxicating fragrance, then drew them inside their leaves and digested them while the unfortunate victims had visions of Utopia. Katie began to look nervously at a lazily curling frond which was nodding seductively over her shoulder.

Lord Linden had been to visit
The Merry Maidenhead
that afternoon and had just returned to Brixton House accompanied by Zack. The two men entered the orangery in time to hear Drew’s last mare’s nest. Linden came to the fountain, brushing aside a few boldly straying branches and tousled his younger brother’s hair.

“I ought to throw you in that fountain,” Linden said pleasantly. “The poor child probably believes every word of your Irish bull.” He bent to touch Katie’s cheek and ran a quick searching gaze over her face.

“If I’m ever to be thrown into the fountain, I’d as lief it be today as any. Sounds devilish refreshing.” Drew studied the thinnish youth with shoulder-length straggling hair and tight breeches who had followed Linden into the room, and nodded, keeping his hands at his sides. “You must be Zack. I know you from Katie’s description.”

“If it was from Katie’s description, then you must be expecting the Demon King,” said Zack matter of factly. He dropped to sit on his heels in front of Katie. “How are you, Katie, pet? Christ, you’re pale. Linden’s been telling me about your escapades! Seems like I no sooner let you out of my sight but you embroil yourself in a set of madhat shenanigans.”

“Of all the unkind, unfair…” said Katie, setting her hand on the fountain’s edge to pull herself upright. She was still angry about his attempt to force her into elegant prostitution. “It was a shame that you didn’t know about Ivo Guy before you
sold
me to Lord Linden. My cousin might have paid you more than fifty pounds for me.”

Katie turned her back and would have marched from the room, but Zack stood and caught her around the waist, pulling her back against his body.

“Whist, Mousemeat. Will you listen a minute? There’s nothing that could ever make me sell you to anyone who’d hurt you. I think you know that.” He ran a tender hand through her curls. “Dammit, are you going to hate me forever? As it turns out, if this Ivo Guy was going to come after you, then you were a hell of a lot better off under Linden’s protection than mine.”

“I’d have been better off under the protection of a cannibal tribe than yours!” said Katie wrathfully, but weakening. “Why did you come? To see if anyone’s bought me a Viennese villa? Well, they haven’t. Good-bye.”

Zack laughed, planted a friendly kiss on her cheek and released her. “Saucy chit,” he said indulgently, “I came to see you in your hour of illness, of course. Lord Linden came to the Maidenhead and told me you’d been shot. Behold me here, to see for myself that you were all right. Even though it wasn’t any picnic going through the streets in this heat. I worry about you, y’know.”

“Do you really, Zack?” asked Katie, half skeptical, half sincere. She sighed and sank down on the fountain’s variegated Carrara marble edge. “I’m glad that you do because Papa certainly seems to have forgotten about me.”

It would have been nice to be able to comfort her, but her words so nearly echoed the sentiments of the three gentlemen present that none of them felt able to do so. Drew sat down beside Katie and looked at Zack.

“Unless Zack has gotten a message… ?” he said.

“Well, I haven’t,” returned Zack testily. “As I’ve been telling Linden here a good half-dozen times. I’m as stymied as you are. The last I heard, the baron was nosing after some married woman in Dorset, whose name I don’t know. I suggest you check that.”.

Linden’s only concession to the heat was a half-open lawn shirt. He had been leaning against a tubbed palm tree, his arms crossed in front of him, the onyx hair curled only slightly more than usual against his chiselled cheekbones.

“I’ve checked there,” said Linden blandly. “He went to Dorset, yes. And visited his ladyfriend. After that, he disappeared. She has no idea where he went.”

“The lady told you that?” questioned Zack. “My compliments on your powers of persuasion.”

“A persuadable lady,” replied Linden with a noncommittal shrug. “She’s twenty-two, her husband’s sixty-eight. She’s lonely and bored in the country.”

Drew’s interest was drawn away from the subject previously under discussion at the reception of the latter intelligence. “Twenty-two, eh?” he said. “What’s her name? I’ll keep it to myself,” he added as an afterthought.

“She’s Maria Enfield. It won’t do you much good, though,” said Linden. “Her husband is recently retired from the Admiralty. He’s very doting on his beautiful wife and in constant attendance. It took me some time to get her alone to query her on this… subject.”

“Enfield,” said Katie thoughtfully. “I’ve heard that name before. Why, Zack, how queer you’re looking. Are you getting heat sick?”

Zack was indeed looking singularly scarlet. “Her husband, the admiral, couldn’t have been there,” he said flatly. “You must be mistaken, my lord.” He stared at Katie for a few long seconds, until suddenly she covered her mouth with her hand, the pastel blue eyes widening into sugar biscuits.

“You’re right, Zack,” said Katie with a gasp. “He couldn’t have been there because Winnie and Patrick and their friends kidnapped him! Enfield was his name, wasn’t it?”

“It was Enfield all right,” said Zack glumly. “But it couldn’t be… I mean, Jesus… there couldn’t be two Admiral Enfields, could there be? Brothers, perhaps? No, I didn’t think so. When did you go to Dorset, my lord?”

“Wednesday last, before Ivo Guy came for Katie.”

“And you’re sure this Admiral Enfield was there?” asked Zack.

“Yes, of course I’m sure,” said Linden with a snap. “I know I’ll regret asking this, but what kidnapping are we talking about?”

Zack pulled a gray handkerchief from his pocket and pushed back his hair with it, obliterating a miniature tidal wave of sweat. “Has Katie talked about Winnie at all?”

Linden glanced at Katie. “Yes. The Declaration of Independence.”

“Exactly,” continued Zack. “Winnie’s the queen of London’s ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’ set. Nothing her and her half-witted cohorts like better than to cause some disturbance or engage in a petty intrigue. They decided that kidnapping an admiral would be an effective way of gaming some attention. They thought they’d have the government in the palm of their hands, but the government has been paying them no attention at all. And now we know why. The brainless wonders got the wrong man!”

“The wrong man,” said Linden thoughtfully. He walked to Katie and pulled her to her feet. “Go fetch your bonnet, sweetheart. We’re going for a ride.”

Lady Brixton’s town carriage was upholstered in titian blue velvet with gold frogging, which made elegant contrast with the high polish of the mahogany fittings. The carpeting was etched with the Brixton ducal crest, and was so clean and bright that it looked as though it had never known a shoe print. Katie could hear, from inside this plush cradle, the conversation between Lord Linden and Zack, who, with Andrew, were mounting horses to accompany the carriage.

She heard Linden’s voice. “You say he’s being held in a warehouse? Have you ever been to this place?”

“Yes, but not since the kidnapping. Very atmospheric. You’ll like it.”

“God,” said Linden.

The team moved sluggishly in the heat, their hooves in slow walking rhythm. Katie leaned back against the cushions Drew had arranged for her. Traffic moved imperceptibly on the London streets. No dogs barked, they panted instead. The pigeons on Bennett Street didn’t fly, but flocked, complaining about the reeking incandescence. Katie was excited and her wounds ached, but the heat was weakening her and, coupled with the carriage’s pacific sway, it soon slipped her into sleep.

She did not awaken even after they had reached their destination and the carriage had halted. It took a gentle hand on her good shoulder to rouse her. Katie tried to sit up, but was prevented by the pressure of that hand.

“Wait. Wake up a bit first.” Katie looked up into Linden’s impassive face. He was stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re now at the radical redoubt, about to make contact with an organized threat to the security of the Crown.” He helped her to her feet and, going before her to street level, turned and lifted her down. She leaned against him unsteadily, flinching against the harsh white light. They were stopped in a warehouse district, in the rotting heart of London; red-shingled warehouse roofs were being beaten under the hammer of the sun upon the anvil of the hard-packed, deserted dirt streets. The reek of decomposing rope and the stench of the Thames were suspended in the air. Above them stretched the cream and yellow rough bricks of their destination. From close by came the deep, hollow slap-slap of sluggish river water on the side of a tethered barge. Zack had dismounted and was standing near them, shifting his feet. Drew was still on horseback, standing in his stirrups to get a better look at the building.

“Well, now what happens, Zack?” asked Linden. “Do we make our way through a subterranean tunnel littered with the rotting bones of their previous victims?”

“No,” said Zack, grinning. “We’re not quite
that
atmospheric. This warehouse has a door. Follow me.” The foursome made their way along the edge of the building until they came to a large double door set off the ground by about three feet. There was a scuffling movement from behind the door, and a gun barrel slid out of a knothole, nearly colliding with Zack’s nose.

“Watch it with that thing, would you?” said Zack. “It’s Zack, you booby.”

“That’s not th’ password,” came Winnie’s, muffled voice, with the tremor of a laugh in it.

“Devil take the password, you paper-skulled puzzletext. Open up this door!” Zack commanded.

There was the raw sound of a deadbolt being removed and the double doors swung outward, revealing a smirking Winnie, leaning seductively on an ancient musket, dressed in a long, flowing red frock, barefoot, with large brass hoops in her ears.

“ ‘Ello, Zackie,” she said. “ ‘Ow’s me better ‘alf ?” Winnie stopped, looking over Zack’s head to see Zack’s companions. “Glory be, is this a raid?”

“Pretty close to,” said Zack. “Where’s that admiral you’re holding? Haven’t let him go, have you? No? Good. Because we want to see him.”

Winnie’s jaw dropped. “Want to see ‘im?” she repeated stupidly. “Why?”

“Because, Win, the fellow ain’t Admiral Enfield, Lord Linden here’s come from Dorset this past week and seen your admiral there frolicking in his garden without the cares of a bachelor bunny. Your admiral upstairs is a fake!”

“‘E ain’t a fake, neither!” said Winnie, angry and a little frightened. “ ‘E says ‘e’s th’ admiral!”

Zack gave a snort of disgust. “He did, did he? The old… Winnie, if I was to tell you I was an admiral, it wouldn’t make me one, would it? Best thing for you to do is to take us up and see.”

Winnie ran her tongue worriedly around the toothed-sized gap in her mouth. “Ya kin if ya like but this lift ‘ere ain’t never carried no earls before. God strike me blind, but this ‘ere’s a ‘andsome crowd. ‘N why a war ‘ero like yerself, Lord Linden, ‘d want to ‘elp a band o’ cadge-paws like us is more than oi kin figger out.”

“Disabuse your mind of the illusion that I’m doing anything to help you,” said Linden acidly. Zack had hopped onto the ledge beside Winnie and he reached out for Katie. Linden handed her up to him, two hands about her waist. “What does your kidnappee look like?”

Winnie tugged one brass earring. “Dunno if oi could say, really. Only seen ‘im oncet, an’ it was fair dark at th’ time. Th’ fellow tried to give me a slip on th’ shoulder! So oi stays away from ‘im, see, ‘n mostly watches th’ door while oi’m ‘ere.”

Zack pulled the door shut; Winnie laid her musket on the floor, and began a hand-over-hand motion on a pair of ropes stretched between two pulleys in the corner. The floor lurched and Winnie cast a sapient look toward Katie, and advised, “Someone best watch over th’ little mort there, looks like she’s fixin’ to flash her hash.”