As the sun rose over Paris, former Austrian officer Gunter Erhard, the disgraced right-hand man to the even more disgraced Prince Lucien, skulked in the broom closet of the city’s most expensive hotel. The Grand Hotel du Louvre was a glittering confection of mirrored ballrooms, sumptuous buffets, and lavish suites. However, its broom closet had not been designed to accommodate three heavily armed Swedish henchmen and his own sturdy form without considerable discomfort.
Erhard’s cocked general’s hat, bedecked with a year’s salary of gold braid and an enormous white ostrich plume, had tilted down over his right eye. The elbow of a blond giant, Lars, was wedged perilously close to his other eye, threatening to blind him at any moment. Ludwig’s ax handle was shoved into Erhard’s ribs while Johan’s rumbling belly pressed up against his spine. His curved officer’s sword, even in its brass scabbard, could potentially gut Johan should the poor man suffer the misfortune to sneeze. All four men were currently holding their breath and listening to the interminable conversation just beyond the closet’s paneled door.
In the corridor, the burly coachman of one Lady Constance Haltwhistle, unaware of the mini-army stuffed like sardines mere inches from his broad backside, was flirting with a housemaid. She giggled as the Yorkshireman attempted to teach her the English language in four easy lessons. The first phrase she’d learned was “’Ow do,” and now she was up to “Fancy a cocktail?” despite the early hour. It seemed the servants of the Haltwhistle family had chosen to schedule their personal lives around their employer’s erratic hours. Erhard’s spies had confirmed that Hearn caroused with abandon from dawn until noon. From noon until six p.m., he spent his time polishing Constance’s gold-leafed dragon-styled carriage, caring for her horses, and transporting his young mistress from store to store. It seemed the red-haired debutante had developed a penchant for Parisian seamstresses, perfumes, and confectionery.
In the evenings, Hearn drove Lord Wellington Pendelroy, Constance’s rakish cousin, between the opera house, theaters, and the city’s finest gambling dens. Frequent naps in the carriage kept Hearn bright-eyed and dangerous to any who sought to harm his employer or her family. His infamy as an underground fight champion was enough for Erhard and his crew to give the coachman a wide berth. Their plan was to kidnap Constance without anyone noticing her disappearance until she was well on her way to Sweden. An iron-barred cell awaited the blindfolded, bound, and gagged Baron’s daughter on Erhard’s airship. King Oscar had stressed that she must be taken alive, but no one had said she should enjoy the journey.
Erhard grimaced into the darkness of the closet. Give him a nice murder to do any day. Kidnappings were nothing but waiting, bashing, and bundling. It was the dullest form of miscellaneous villainy. He’d hoped to assist Oscar with his global domination strategy now that he was officially the King’s Colonel of Skullduggery and Mayhem. But somehow, Oscar’s sultry brunette adviser, Lady Nay, had stolen his advisory spot. One day, Nay will pay for her chicanery. It was her vile whispering in Oscar’s ear that led to me being here, stuck in a box surrounded by herring-breathed henchmen.
Erhard’s right hand drifted to the leather-wrapped handle of his officer’s saber. He gripped the handle tight, comforted by its familiar heft. Ah, sweet Sophie, my shining silver love. Your blade shall know the taste of blood once more . . .
His reverie was broken as the maid’s playful laugh drifted through the closet door. Erhard gritted his teeth and released his sword. Sophie would not be drawn today unless things went very, very wrong.
The maid’s melodic voice poured praise upon Hearn as he gushed forth romantic poetry. The muscular British coachman was extremely smooth with the ladies, Erhard gave him that. Not many carriage drivers could quote Byron and Keats before breakfast.
Erhard exhaled as Hearn and his companion reached an international accord that cocktails at dawn were required. Cooing like lovestruck pigeons, they moved away from the closet door.
As their footsteps receded, Erhard squirmed to free himself from the press of his men. He writhed his way to the door and slowly turned the ornate brass handle. He pushed the door ajar and poked his head out into the corridor. The back of Hearn’s bald head—shining in the gaslight above a green livery tailcoat, white breeches, and riding boots—was retreating toward the iron staircase that led down to the lobby. On Hearn’s arm hung a shapely chambermaid in a long-skirted black-and-white uniform. Her feather duster was tucked into her belt above a voluminously bustled behind. She looked back over her shoulder and winked at Erhard, thrilled to have a walrus-mustached strongman on her arm plus two coins from Erhard’s own wallet in her pocket.
The bribe was worth its weight in King Louis’s gold. Since his last encounter with the Haltwhistle harpy, Erhard had done his homework on the woman’s henchmen and hangers-on. Hearn was her muscle. The elderly servant Cawley was her errand-runner. Her cloistered friends, Doctors Chauhan and Huang, spent day and night in their suite ordering room meals and champagne at regular intervals. Constance’s cousin Welli was an ex-British redcoat officer with a gambling addiction, and the mysterious American, Trusdale, had left Constance to the gendarmes in the middle of a busy French boulevard. Erhard and his men had sought to follow the police officers following Constance, but had lost both. It was a bad omen for the kidnapping, but this time, Erhard was prepared to face his red-haired foe. If he knew Constance at all, she’d have returned to her found family at the earliest possibility. Especially if she’d had her heart broken by the cowboy leaving her to her fate. That kind of thing could crack even a nut as hard-shelled as Constance.
He’d bet his last coin that the devil in bloomers was back in her room, plotting the cowboy’s downfall for his lack of concern for her safety. Or cackling with glee that she’d managed to evade the gendarmes. Or perhaps, she was simply asleep, exhausted from the police chase. That would be his preferred option. He only had three men by his side. To take down Constance, he’d have preferred an entire platoon at his back, but Oscar demanded discretion in his dirty work.
Erhard looked forward to grilling the girl about her unusual martial skills on their flight up to Stockholm. Kidnapping victims always got chatty on long airship rides. Who knew what family secrets he might find out? There must surely be more to Oscar’s obsession with Constance than a simple squabble over lost armaments. And knowledge was survival in Oscar’s court these days, Lady Nay had seen to that. Gone was the wise King who had once pulled Erhard out of a deep depression over a lost love. Now, Oscar was little better than the tyrants he’d once scorned. Where was the man Erhard had grown to admire? How far had Nay’s poison sunk into the old man’s heart?
That was a question he’d try to answer another day. As Hearn and the maid disappeared down into the stairwell, Erhard stepped out into the corridor and straightened his cocked hat. A row of ten emergency cartridges was strapped securely against the side of his headgear. This surely wasn’t enough to face the infamous Brass Queen.
He prayed to all that was unholy that the girl would be sound asleep when they entered her room. The universe deserved him a good turn, for once.
A suite door opened ahead. The men instinctively flattened themselves against the wall as a bespectacled maid poked her head out from the doorway. She beckoned them to approach. Glancing over their shoulders, the four men scurried along the corridor. As they reached the maid, she pointed inside the suite behind her where a snoring, silver-haired septuagenarian in blue woolen long johns was sprawled out on the bed. A maid treated each of his hands to a manicure, and a third scrubbed his toenails with a brush and a sour look on her face.
“Monsieur Cawley believed our story that he’d won a free spa treatment by virtue of being the hundredth Yorkshireman to walk through the hotel door. He said that free was his favorite price,” whispered the bespectacled maid. “He is very relaxed now.”
“So I can tell,” murmured Erhard, and slipped the maid an extra coin for her service. “Thank you for your help. Now, off you go.” With his warmest smile, he shooed her into Cawley’s room and closed the door.
At the end of the corridor stood Constance’s suite. The men silently formed into an attack formation behind Erhard. Breathing softly, he crept to the door and slowly opened it.
Inside the suite, all was cloaked in darkness thanks to the thick drapes pulled tight over the windows. Followed by his men, Erhard squinted and padded silently into the orange-blossom-scented room. Lars locked the door behind them and pocketed the key. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they tiptoed between two dozen hatboxes to approach the emperor-sized four-poster bed. They surrounded the mound of blankets that covered a sleeping form. Tendrils of long, red hair crept from beneath the blankets across a snowy white pillow.
The three Swedes raised their Nordic battle-axes, ready to fight the she-devil Erhard had warned them about for days. At first they’d laughed, but now they were grim and ready for battle. They were as prepared as they were going to be, and so was he. From an airtight rubber bag secured inside his tailcoat pocket, Erhard drew a chloroform-soaked handkerchief. Moist cloth in hand, he threw back the blankets and shoved the handkerchief toward Constance’s . . .
Pile of cushions? A red wig? What the . . . where is she?
The sound of a window sliding closed came from the bathroom. A light flared beneath the bottom of the door as someone within lit a gas lamp.
Erhard shielded his eyes from the light as the bathroom door flew open. In clomped a short, curvaceous woman in a tattered ball gown, a muddy cloak, and riding boots.
She halted, gaping at the Viking raiding party in her bedroom.
As Erhard’s hand flew to his saber, Constance let out a banshee roar that echoed around the chamber. Such a cry would surely wake the dead, never mind her neighbors.
The clock was ticking on this abduction. Time to take off the kid gloves and get brutal. He nodded at Johan. The blond behemoth charged at Constance like an enraged bull. The girl shrieked and bolted for the suite’s main entry door. Lars raced to meet her there as Johan blocked her possible retreat into the bathroom. Making a bolt for the broken window within would have been her best move, but apparently the girl didn’t know the meaning of the word retreat.
Constance rattled the locked brass handle and then thumped both fists on the paneled door. She squealed as Lars lunged for her corseted waist. With surprising grace and speed, she twirled out of Lars’s reach and shot toward the bedchamber’s curtained window.
Ludwig sprang to grab a handful of her long red hair. He caught hold of her pinned emerald tiara and yanked her toward him. Constance roared with fury and slammed the wooden heel of her right riding boot into his knee. Bones cracked, and the big man crumpled to the floor as Constance threw herself toward the bed. She leaped upon it and stood atop her mound of blankets, wild-eyed and panting with exertion in her off-kilter tiara.
Confused voices sounded in the corridor. Her piercing screams had raised her companions from their slumber.
But no one could help Lady Haltwhistle now. Even if they had to wrap her unconscious body in blankets and throw her out the window, she was leaving this hotel tonight.
Erhard scrambled up onto the mattress, knocking his general’s hat over one eye on the four posters’ curtain rail. He pushed his hat back into place, narrowly avoiding chloroforming himself as he did so.
Constance backed up against the upholstered headboard as Ludwig limped to the left side of the bed with murder blazing in his blue eyes. Lars flanked the right side of the bed, and Johan climbed up on the mattress to stand behind Erhard. The fox was cornered.
Constance held up her right hand as if for protection as her left scrabbled underneath her cloak. Erhard leered at her helplessness and sprang to press the reeking handkerchief to her young face. A tiny gun appeared in Constance’s left hand as he struggled to grab her throat. As if in slow motion, green light flared at his feet spreading out past the bed and lighting up the boots of his henchmen in a circle of lurid lime.
The world collapsed beneath him as the floor disintegrated. Down fell the bed, the Swedes, his prey, and himself in a stomach-turning tumble of blankets and pillows.
Down one floor, crashing through an empty bed.
Down another, smashing through splintered wood, plaster, and dust.
Next stop, the lobby.
Or death . . .