Valentine (41 page)

He would disappear from London for a while in case Jud decided to pursue him, but he was fairly certain the ex-sergeant would quickly turn his attention to other pigeons worth plucking. And if Jud decided to go to Horseguards and tell his version of events at Vimiera, it would be considered no more than the ramblings of a disaffected old soldier with a grudge against his commander … so long as Gilbraith
wasn’t able to confirm the story with his own recollection of the truth.

He wiped blood from his split lip with the back of his gloved hand as he encouraged his horses to a smart trot. His panic was over. The cultivation and manipulation of an attractive but naive and clearly reckless young woman was a much pleasanter prospect than arranging accidents at the hands of hired dockside killers. And blackmail was a much cleaner tool than murder.

Theo, happily unaware of the witness of her arrival at the Fisherman’s Rest, pushed open the door and stepped into the dim, reeking taproom. It was almost deserted at this time of day, although an old man sat nodding by the fire, puffing a clay pipe. A slatternly young woman, a baby at her breast, leaned against the counter.

“Twopence of gin, Long Meg.”

“I’ll see the color of yer money first,” Long Meg rasped from somewhere in the darkness behind the counter.

“’Ow about a bit o’ credit?” the young woman whined. “Gin puts the babby to sleep.”

Long Meg reared up out of the darkness, as big and crimson-faced as Theo remembered her, when she’d come after Tom Brig with a rolling pin.

“I told yer last time, no more—” She stopped, staring at Theo. “Well, well,” she said slowly. “What ’ave we got ’ere, then? You want somethin’, young miss?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions,” Theo said, smiling in a friendly fashion as she picked her way through the sodden sawdust.

“An jest who would be askin’ ’em?” the woman demanded, her eyes narrowed, mighty arms akimbo.

“My name’s Pamela,” Theo said, having prepared for this.

“You was in ’ere t’other night,” Long Meg said suspiciously. “Wi’ that gentleman cove. Jest what’s the likes o’ you got to do wi’ the likes o’ me?”

“I wanted to ask you about one of your customers.”

Long Meg threw back her head and laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. “We don’t answer no questions around ’ere, missie. Me customers mind their own business an’ I mind mine. We don’t want no snoops around ’ere.” She lifted the flap of the counter and came into the room. She seemed even larger in this small dim space than she had the other night, and Theo felt the first stirrings of alarm.

“I’m not snooping,” she said, although it seemed as accurate a term as any for what she was doing. “I’ll pay for any information—”

“Oh, will you, now?” The woman stepped closer until she was towering over Theo. “An’ jest what’ve you got in that dainty little reticule, then?” She made a grab for Theo’s reticule. Theo danced backward, snatching her arm away. Long Meg lunged forward, and Theo swung her reticule at her head as she brought one leg up and aimed a kick at the mountainous belly.

Long Meg roared, and two men suddenly appeared from the back regions. The slatternly young woman with the baby still leaned against the counter; her eyes, dulled with gin, followed the scene, and she moved aside in desultory fashion as the two men barged through the opening in the counter.

Theo knew she didn’t stand a chance against three of them. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a pistol? Why hadn’t the possibility of robbery occurred to her? She jumped backward, hurling a bench between herself and the purposeful advance of her assailants. If she could get out into the street, she could make a dash for the hackney.

But the men were flanking her now, their eyes fixed on her as they moved sideways, and Long Meg kept on coming, a vicious expression on her face. Theo’s kick had hurt her, but not enough to slow her down, only enough to enrage her.

Desperately, Theo grabbed up an ale pot on the table and threw it into the face of the man approaching on her left. The other one lunged at her, catching her arm. She jerked her arm
upward, twisting her body and catching him on her hip, breaking his hold. But she knew she couldn’t keep this up.

Then suddenly a shot exploded through the dark room.

“Get away from her.”

“Edward.” Theo turned in dazed relief. He stood in the doorway, a flintlock pistol in his one hand.

“Hurry,” he said, and she realized that he couldn’t reload and that it wouldn’t take more than a second for her attackers to recover from their surprise and understand both that and the fact that her rescuer had only one arm.

She took the three paces to the door at a run as Edward stepped backward into the street. Long Meg and her two assistants rushed after them, and Theo spun and kicked the door closed in their faces.

“Run!” She grabbed Edward’s arm and then stared wildly down the empty street. The hackney carriage had disappeared.

Edward swore as he struggled one-handed to reload his pistol. His own hackney had disappeared as completely as Theo’s, and he guessed that the sound of the pistol shot had driven both jarveys away to a less volatile neighborhood.

The door of the Fisherman’s Rest crashed open, and the two men leaped into the street, Long Meg on their heels.

Edward abandoned his attempts to reload and turned to run with Theo. Their pursuers bellowed as they came after them, and Theo realized grimly that they were calling for support. She stumbled, fell to one knee, and was up and running again in the same breath. The pounding of heavy booted feet behind her seemed to be in her blood, and she could almost feel the hot breath of their pursuers on her neck. Edward couldn’t run as fast as she could, his body was unbalanced, and she hung on to his hand, desperately trying to keep him from tripping.

And then the curricle bowled around the corner from Smithfield. The galloping team drove straight past the fugitives and came to a plunging, rearing halt in front of their
followers, who fell back in terror before the flailing hooves, the wildly rolling eyes of the four magnificent animals.

Theo and Edward gulped air into their tortured lungs, allowing the slow relief of salvation to seep through them. The Earl of Stoneridge said nothing to the three from the Fisherman’s Rest, but he sat still as a graven image, the curricle and team blocking the street. His hands moved on the reins and the horses reared again. The two men and Long Meg retreated backward to the door of the tavern and disappeared behind it.

Only then did the earl bring his horses under control. The street was too narrow for him to turn his equipage. He cast a glance over his shoulder to where Edward and Theo stood, still gasping for breath.

“Get up,” he said. “Both of you.”

Theo gazed at her husband’s face, and the realization crept inexorably over her that she was about to exchange the frying pan for the fire.

She stepped up to the curricle. “You mustn’t blame Edward for—”

“I don’t,” he interrupted with icy calm. “Get up.”

T
HE CURRICLE WASN’T
built to accommodate three people, and Theo found herself sitting practically in Edward’s lap once they’d scrambled up to the seat.

Sylvester said nothing and beyond moving sideways a couple of inches offered no assistance as they scrunched into place. Once sure that they were securely seated, he gave his horses the office to start. No one said anything until Dock Street was well behind them; then Edward cleared his throat and spoke with more than a hint of constraint.

“I beg your pardon, sir, for bungling it like that. I should have thought … remembered—”

“I don’t hold you responsible for my wife’s actions, Fairfax,” Sylvester interrupted, his voice as hard as iron.

Edward fell silent, wrestling with his mortification. Once he would have been able to handle that situation; instead, he’d had to be rescued like a cocky schoolboy who’d tried to take on the school bully.

Theo touched his arm in sympathy, knowing exactly how he was feeling, but he glared at her, blaming her for his grief
and embarrassment, for involving him in a situation where he was forced to acknowledge his limitations.

She glanced at her husband’s profile. There was no reassurance there. His mouth and jaw looked as if they’d been carved in granite, and she knew his eyes would be spurting fire in the arctic-gray depths.

“Sylvester?” she began hesitantly.

“I presume you’d prefer not to hear what I have to say to you on the open street, so I suggest you hold your tongue.”

Theo was silenced, and they drove without speaking another word through the City with its banking houses, past St. Paul’s Cathedral, and along the Strand, where the landscape became more familiar, the streets broader, the private houses more imposing, the shop windows filled with the luxury items that would appeal to Fashionable London at the height of the Season.

Sylvester, no longer under the spur of fear, weaved his way at a more leisurely pace through the streets, giving a reasonable berth to elegant landaus and heavy drays, and allowing the throng of foot traffic ample time to move out of his way. With Theo safe beside him he felt emptied of all emotion, as if skin and bone merely contained a vast, cold void.

“You’ll have no objection if I put you down at Piccadilly, Fairfax?” The curt question came after such a long silence that both Edward and Theo jumped.

“No, of course not, sir. I’m much obliged,” Edward said miserably.

Sylvester drew up at the corner of Piccadilly and St. James’s, and Edward awkwardly descended to the pavement. He stood for a moment, trying to think of something to say; then Sylvester bade him a brusque good day and the curricle moved off.

Alone with her husband, Theo looked over her shoulder and raised a hand in forlorn farewell. She had the air of one in a tumbrel on her way to the guillotine, Edward thought, feeling sympathy despite his own distress. He’d rarely seen her
apprehensive, even as a child on the occasions when she faced the wrath of her grandfather, but her anxiety on this occasion struck him as perfectly justifiable. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone quite as intimidating as the Earl of Stoneridge that afternoon.

With Edward’s departure the vast, cold void filled up again, and Sylvester’s anger burned anew with a fierce flame. Theo had frightened him more than he’d ever been frightened before. When he’d rounded the corner of Dock Street and understood how a minute later would have been too late, the pure terror that he’d been holding down had ripped through him, turning his gut to water. When he thought of how only the most accidental of circumstances had alerted him to her dangerous exploit, he felt sick, his internal vision once again filled with images of her stripped body floating in the greasy black waters of the Thames.

He drove into the mews and alighted from the curricle, tossing the reins to the head groom before holding up an imperative hand to assist his wife.

Theo barely touched his fingers as she jumped to the ground. The scar stood out, a blue-tinged slash across his forehead, and she realized that she’d seen him angry before, but never quite like this. Foreboding swirled in her belly, lifted the fine hairs on the nape of her neck, turned her knees to jelly. She had never been frightened of anyone before. She hadn’t even been afraid this afternoon; there hadn’t been time. But at this moment, facing the consequences of what now struck her as a piece of foolhardy craziness, she was scared stiff.

She didn’t know this man, who now governed her life, because he wouldn’t let her know him. Oh, she knew his body, she knew what gave him pleasure. And she knew what would make him laugh and what would annoy him. All trivial pieces of present knowledge. But how could she truly know her husband if he kept his innermost thoughts from her, shielded her from his plans and decisions, and told her only
the bare facts of his previous existence with none of the emotions and responses that would have shown her the man who had lived that life?

She couldn’t begin to guess what was going to happen.

Sylvester moved her ahead of him with a hand in the small of her back, out of the mews and around to the street entrance of Belmont House.

Foster opened the door for them, but his greeting died on his lips as he took in the countess’s white face and the earl’s stark severity.

Sylvester’s hand moved around her waist, sweeping her with him across the hall and toward the stairs, so fast now her feet skimmed the parquet. The marble staircase seemed to rise interminably in front of her. She was acutely conscious of his closeness, his breath rustling over the top of her head, the warmth of his body. But it was a menacing proximity. Always before just the sense of him close to her had sent jolts of arousal into her belly and ripples of anticipation over her skin. But the jolts and the ripples now arose from a dreadful suspense.

The long corridor stretched ahead as they reached the top of the stairs, and she was swept along to the double doors at the end. Sylvester leaned forward to fling open one door, and then they were inside her own apartment, surrounded by the familiar objects, the gracious furnishings, the cheerful glow and crackle of the fire. But she could find no reassurance there.