The trouble with a palace of this size, Jack thought as he drew his companion down yet another corridor, was that even a devious rogue of considerable experience might have difficulty finding his way out of such a labyrinthine array. Candles flickering in sparsely placed wall sconces added to the eerie atmosphere of this deserted portion of the palace. Devil a bit, he hoped the others were keeping up. More likely, they were lost down some side passage that led to servants’ stairs or a gilded water closet.
The lady at his side clutched his arm more tightly and emitted a giggle more suitable to a girl twenty years younger. “Monsieur, you are too cautious. It is not necessary to travel to the ends of the palace to indulge ourselves. We French understand dalliance. No one will pounce upon us.”
Jack almost bit his tongue. If she only knew.
Time to quit his mad dash from the ballroom. La Marquise, possibly more intelligent than he had credited, might begin to suspect his ruse. He was not head of security for Tobias Brockman’s empire because his instincts were poor. “Un moment, Madame la Marquise.” Jack slowed to a halt and eased open the door to a room shrouded in darkness. Lifting a candle from one of the corridor sconces, he peered inside. Indeed, a suitable bedchamber. He lit one of the wall sconces inside the room, then returned the candle to the corridor and ushered his companion inside.
An elegant woman of about his own age, Hèlene, la Marquise d’Argenton, was a tempting morsel, a woman of undoubted experience and skill, her dark beauty undimmed by two husbands, four children, and lovers too numerous to count. Jack almost regretted their dalliance could be interrupted at any moment. Perhaps Cheyney would exercise some of his much vaunted powers of reasoning and delay long enough to grant his brother a bonus for this night’s work.
A particularly inopportune moment for the vision of a pert, dark-eyed canadienne to rise up before him. Glaring.
Jack swallowed a sigh, sternly reminding himself this was not a night for personal indulgence, even as the lady’s arms wound around his neck, her body pressed close to his. Too close, his lack of erection all too evident to a lady of Madame la Marquise’s experience.
“Tant pis,” she whispered, standing on tip-toe to breathe the words against his lips. “All that walking has exhausted you, n’est-ce-pas?”
“No, no, Madame,” Jack murmured, seizing her waist and backing her toward the bed. “I assure you.” He summoned his most alluring smile, though his eyes—which should have been gazing into those of Madame la Marquise—strayed to the spectacular sapphire and diamond necklace nestling on her nearly bare bosom. How the devil could a man be amorous when he knew they were to be about to pounced upon? “A great pity we must not disarrange ourselves, Madame,” he murmured against her upturned lips, “but I fear there is no time for that. Your husband will miss you.”
“Certainement,” she replied with a grimace. “Too much Teutonic blood from his maman. He has not the proper savoir faire of a true Frenchman. But no matter”—she shrugged—“I have enough French blood for us both.”
A saucy piece, la Marquise. She reminded him of the English ladies who had turned their eyes in his direction since his intrusion into the ton, even as they steered him away from their nubile daughters. But none of them had been wearing the famous Hammond sapphires in the far reaches of the Tuileries when Louis the Eighteenth was hosting a ball and armed Englishmen stalked the upper corridors.
Madame la Marquise sat on the edge of the bed, arranging her skirts in graceful folds around her. She gazed into his eyes, sultry and inviting. “Come to me, mon cher,” she invited. “I shall take care of your problem.”
Hell and the devil! His cohorts were going to find him bare-arsed, his flag flying at half mast.
“You’re dicked in the nob, miss,” Annie stated flatly. “Addle-brained, fit for Bedlam.”
“Quite right,” Victoire agreed, leaning her head back against the pillows. “I am all that, and more. My head was dinged so many times my brains may be addled for life. Nonetheless . . .” She winced as her determined scowl wrinkled her bruises. “Nonetheless, we are leaving here as soon as I can make it down the servants’ stairs. Pack what we can carry and keep the satchels well hidden. Which footman is most trustworthy?”
“Edward, miss.”
“Swear him to secrecy and have him discover the times of the stagecoaches to London.”
“The mail’s the fastest, miss.”
“Whichever coach leaves at night, Annie. That’s the only time we have a prayer of escape.”
Solemnly, the young maid nodded. “Yes, miss, I reckon you’re right, but you ain’t fit to travel. The coach’ll jog you about somethin’ fierce.”
“Better jogged about than dead.”
“Yes, Miss,” Annie whispered.
“Don’t look so forlorn, child. My cuts will mend. The doctor tells me I am exceedingly fortunate—nothing is broken but a few ribs and those well-strapped. I have been battered before, Annie, and know that no matter how much it hurts, I will somehow survive. And contrive. We will leave here. We will manage on our own, never fear.”
“Yes, Miss,” Annie intoned.
“Pack warm clothing, stout boots, and my bonnet with the broadest brim to shadow my bruises.”
Annie shook her head. “Beg pardon, Miss, but I still think your brains be addled. “You’ll take a turn for the worse, mark my words.”
“Now, Annie! I hope to be out of here by tomorrow night.”
Worse than she felt right now? Victoire doubted it. Her pain was far worse than after either of her bouts with a river. Only raw courage kept her going. She had been pushed down the stairs, no doubt about it. She could still feel the hand imprints on her back. No doubt this time. Someone had tried to kill her. Odds were, the culprit was one of her cousins.
If she stayed at Ravensden Park, she would die. Good luck could be stretched only so far. Hers had been tried three times. The odds, therefore, were against her, flight her only recourse, no matter how dreadful she felt. No matter the consequences to her health. She was no lily-livered city damsel. She was Victoire du Bois, daughter of a courier de bois, granddaughter of the most stubborn sinner in Lower Canada, perhaps in all the Canadas. A descendant, on her papa’s side, of a French marquis and commanding general. She might be bent, but she did not break.
Two more days passed before Victoire could face the long flights of servants’ stairs that led to the ground floor and the long, cold trek to the village at just after midnight. Only to endure hour after hour of the bone- and brain-rattling dash of the mail coach, which seemed expressly designed to finish off what little courage and spirit she had left. By the time they arrived at the coaching inn in London, she needed the help of both Annie and the jarvey to lift her into the hackney.
Even breathing hurt. And instead of enduring London’s cobbled streets with the certainty of a warm welcome and a fine featherbed at the Beasely’s, they were venturing into a blank unknown. So unknown, they had to rely on the jarvey for the address. Annie was right, she was mad. The hour was late, and fog crept up from the river, drifting around them like ghostly tendrils of smoke warning them they had strayed onto the road to Hell.
Dear God, what was she doing? How many women had thrown themselves at Jack Harding in this fashion? How many excuses had he heard through the years? Yet who else had the power to aid her? Where else could she turn? Even if she wished to turn tail and run back to Granpère, she would not make it to Plymouth. It had taken her last ounce of strength to survive the journey to London.
The jarvey pulled his horse to a stop before the house on South Audley Street, jumped down and opened the hackney door. “Shall I knock them up, miss?”
“Yes, please,” Victoire murmured, hopes plunging as she gazed at windows ominously dark. Surely Mr. Harding was not a man who retired early. Unless, of course, she was interrupting a tryst.
A chill swept up her spine. How could she have been so naive? Victoire opened her mouth to call the jarvey back, but at that moment the front door opened—a scant few inches only.
The conversation between the jarvey and the butler seemed to take forever, but Victoire already knew the outcome. They were being turned away. Cast out onto the cold, foggy streets of London, with no alternative but the kindly Beaselys, who did not deserve to be swallowed up in her nightmare. Dieu me sauve!
“Sorry, miss,” the jarvey said, “but the house is closed up, the mister gone to Paris, and them not knowin’ when he’ll be back. Mebbe a day, mebbe a week.”
Frenchwomen, even half-Frenchwomen, were brought up without fairy dust obscuring reality. Victoire had had ample time to consider alternatives. It was, after all, highly unlikely that her chance-met acquaintance, who had taken such care to warn her against himself, would provide shelter, even if they had arrived to find every light blazing in the house on South Audley Street. Therefore . . .
“Please listen closely,” she said to the jarvey. “We are not destitute females down to our last shilling. We can pay for accommodations, but I do not choose to patronize a grand hotel. I will make it worth your while if you can you direct us to a lodging for respectable females, a place where we may be comfortable without being in danger of being taken for doxies.”Solemnly, the jarvey nodded. Victoire could only hope he had taken in the quality of her clothing, her polished, if oddly accented, speech. “Aye, miss. I know a place. And, never fear, you’ll be safe there. Mrs. Giddons, an old tartar, she is. Chases bullybacks off with a rolling pin. Not a one of ’em touches the girls at Ma Giddons.’”
But when Victoire saw the two steep flights of stairs leading up to the room Mrs. Giddons had available, tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t, she absolutely couldn’t. But with the aid of Annie, their new landlady, and the sympathetic jarvey, she made the impossible journey to a comfortable chair in her new rooms, with just enough strength left to fish out a vail for the hackney driver that sent him on his way with a spring in his step and a smile on his face.
“Don’t look like no bawdy house,” Annie declared suspiciously, “but mebbe this is how they trap girls come in from the country.”
“I think we’re safe enough. I can well picture Mrs. Giddons chasing off procurers with a rolling pin. A formidable female. I would not care to have her for an enemy.” Their new landlady was, in fact, taller than many men and built like a blacksmith. A true tigress. In spite of exhaustion and pain that consumed every inch of her body, Victoire felt safe for the first time in weeks.
“Come, miss, let’s get you to bed. Put your feet up, and with the hot cuppa tea and the meat pie Mrs. Giddons be sending up, you’ll feel better in no time.”
“One thing first,” Victoire said, holding up her hand. “Please find the paper and quill we packed. I have a note to write.”
“Bed first, miss.”
As tired as she was, Victoire nearly laughed out loud. How low she had fallen, to be ordered about by her fifteen-year-old maid. “Very well, Annie, bed first, but the letter will be written tonight.”
Wide-eyed, Annie asked, “You truly think he’ll help, miss?”
Victoire leaned forward, supporting her chin on fisted hands, while she sorted through her exhausted brain for the right words. “Evil is like a disease, Annie. We must fight it as we fight smallpox, with a dose of the evil itself. So who better to fight the enemy than a man who has sampled darkness, who understands its many facets?”
“Aye, miss, but who’s to say he won’t drag us down into the pit instead of lifting us up?”
Victoire sighed. “Not a single soul, I fear. I can only hope. Come, Annie, get me up from this chair. This day is not yet over.”
“I swear, even his bollocks blushed!” Harry Blacklock chortled.
“Bare-arsed and red-faced,” Gabe Hammond agreed.
“And if you ever speak of it to a single soul outside this room,” Jack intoned from behind the desk in his study on South Audley Street, “I shall impress you into the Hellions and make you work for a living.”
Viscount Cheyney heaved a sigh. “I apologize for my abominable timing, brother, but the necklace was, I believe, the object of the evening.”
Harry, barely containing his laughter, declaimed, “We burst into the room, cloaked and masked, guns at the ready, and there’s our Jack standing beside the bed, his trousers about his ankles and Madame la Marquise with her skirts up to her neck. Talk about in flagrante delicto!”
“We retrieved the sapphires,” Jack growled, “and made our escape as planned. Mission accomplished.”
“Indeed,” Avery agreed, “and a pleasant journey down the Seine it was, all the way to LeHavre.”
“A demmed slow journey,” Jack grumbled. “Tobias is going to skin me.”
“I trust your mother is pleased, Hammond?” Avery inserted swiftly.
“In alt, I assure you,”Gabe replied, going along with his friend’s clear determination to change the topic, “though m’father asked if I’d made any progress discovering how Madame la Marquise acquired the Hammond sapphires.”
“Jack?” Avery prompted.
“Evidently her husband bought the necklace in a perfectly respectable shop on the Champs Elysée. But when I had one of my men pay the shop a visit, the provenance dimmed, even as the proprietor began to squirm. The sapphires had been described as the possession of an aging courtesan in need of selling up her treasures. The seller was a native Frenchman, the jeweler assured me, but other than that, his description was so vague I can only assume he knew he was buying stolen property but was too dazzled by the necklace to turn it away. In other words, he purchased it from a go-between, a buffer between the thief and the buyer.”
“So no clue to the thief himself?”
“None. Except that he is able to move freely between London and Paris. An odd start for a London cracksmen, which brings me back to what our informants originally told us. ’Tis possible the thief is a member of the ton.”
Gabe shook his head. “Will you pursue the matter?”
“I doubt it’s possible,” Avery offered, “unless the thief strikes again.”
After general murmurs of frustration, the three younger men settled down to reviewing every detail of the events in Paris and toasting the success of their mission, while Jack perused the mail that had accumulated in his absence. He saved the personal mail, which his butler had carefully stacked in a separate pile, until last. Most would be thrown away, unread, the perfume wafting from them a clear indication of their contents. Why women seemed to find a rogue more attractive than a peer of the realm remained a mystery.
Carelessly, Jack tore open yet another letter, this one short, only a few lines. No perfume. The signature . . . Hell and the devil! Swiftly, he read the message. I fear my life is in danger. You are the only person I know who can help. Victoire du Bois. Followed by her direction, an address far from the elegance of Mayfair.
Stunned, Jack stared at the note, read it again. Could she not have managed more? “Biddeford!” he bawled.
Conversation stopped. Three pairs of eyes focused on him. When the butler appeared, Jack asked what he knew about the note, which had evidently been delivered by hand. “A young maid brought it, Mr. Harding, three days ago it was. She said it was very important, but then . . . well, sir, I fear all the ladies consider their missives of vital importance.”
“Thank you, Biddeford.”
“Ah, sir, the maid did say one thing that seemed odd. She said her mistress was ‘in a bad way’ and needed help. Truly I thought”—pink suffused the middle-aged butler’s face—“I believe I may have misinterpreted her message,” he finished, his crisp speech deteriorating into a mumble.
“You may go.” Biddeford made a hasty exit.
’Tis nothing,” Jack said to his friends, “just a lady whose name I didn’t recognize.”
Gabe, ever the cynic, laughed out loud. “An unknown damsel turns our fearless policeman’s face to parchment.”
Jack stood up. “I must rise early tomorrow. Goodnight, gentlemen.”
With shakes of their heads and a few knowing glances, the Devil’s Disciples made their farewells. Avery, however, eyes narrowed on his brother, asked, “How may I help?”
“By not asking questions.”
Viscount Cheyney’s gaze never wavered. “If you need me, or any of us, you know you have only to ask.”
“I know. Goodnight.” Jack delivered a curt nod before heading for the stairs. Whatever was happening with Victoire, he suspected he might need all the help he could get before the matter was finished.
She had written the note four times, settling for two short cryptic sentences only when she was down to her last two sheets of paper. He would come as quickly for those few words as for ten pages of explanation, she knew it.
Or he would not come at all.
With each day that passed without a sign of him, Victoire became more certain it was to be the latter. What else could she expect from a man who was a policeman by day and a voluptuary by night? What was she to him? One more day—no, two—and she would be forced to write to Mr. Beasely, a slim hope as the Darrincotes would swallow him whole, destroying the solicitor and his family as easily as they had destroyed the pretensions of a family connection from Lower Canada.
Victoire wiggled her toes beneath the bedcovers—the only parts of her that did not hurt when she moved—and stared out the one small window in her tiny bedchamber at the gloom of a winter rain. A fitting accompaniment to the somberness of her thoughts and the physical aches and pains that would not go away. Two days to Christmas, and it seemed as if she was trapped, alone and forlorn, in its antithesis, a nightmare of evil.
Ill health was treacherous. She should be grateful she was alive instead of feeling sorry for herself, but Annie had been right. The journey to London had come too soon after her fall, and she was paying the price, still barely able to get out of bed and walk across the room. And her high spirits had gone the way of her good health, shattering her ability to face her problems. She was drifting, one day blending into the next, waiting for Jack Harding to do what she could not do for herself.
Waiting for a man who never came. Would never come.
Knowing you were a fool and being able to do something about it were two different things, she discovered. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow she would feel better, her head would clear, and she would find her own way out of this trap. Tomorrow . . .
She slept.
A great commotion rose up the stairwell, enough to penetrate Victoire’s small sitting room and waft into her bedchamber. Loud voices, coming closer. Mrs. Giddons shouting, a man’s angry rumble . . .
Annie burst through the door and dashed to her bedside. “Miss, oh, miss, he’s come, miss. It’s him, Mr. High and Mighty himself. An’ Mrs. Giddons chasing ’im and beating ’im with her umbrella—”
And suddenly he was there, every glorious inch of him standing in her doorway. And right behind him Mrs. Giddons, still shouting, “No gentlemen callers! Particularly not a jackanapes like you. Out, sirrah. Be gone!” Victoire winced at the blows her landlady was landing on Mr. Harding’s back.
“Would you kindly inform this virago that I was sent for?”
It took two tries before Victoire could raise her voice loudly enough to be heard over the uproar Mrs. Giddons was making, and another minute or more to convince her fierce landlady the gentleman was a friend.
“Fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Giddons muttered darkly as she retreated, her folded umbrella still clutched in her hand. “I don’t stand no nonsense, not even from a gentlewoman such as you, Miss Doobwa. Fifteen minutes, y’hear?”
“A veritable Viking,” Jack approved as Mrs. Giddons shut the outer door. “You are well served.”
Victoire nodded. “The good Lord was surely with us when the jarvey brought us here.”
His gaze wandered from the stitches in her scalp to the eye that was still a swollen to the bruises that were fading to green and yellow. Does the rest of you match your face?” he demanded.
“Every inch.”
He stepped close to the bed, glaring down at her. “Explain,” he snapped.
The wretch. He was treating her like one of his men, a lowly one at that. “You’d best pull up a chair, the story’s a long one.”
A glimpse of a smile showed through his grim look as he sat down beside her. “Do you think the old harridan will be back with a broom this time?”
Victoire sent Annie off to placate their valiant landlady, and then they were alone. For a moment she could say nothing at all. He was here. Her dark angel sitting close, as he had at The Merry Piper. He’d come to her, and her heart was so full it stoppered her mouth.
He was so handsome; she, so ugly. He must be revolted.
“Victoire? Tell me what has happened.”
Soft, gentle words. From him. Must not cry! Men hated watering pots. Must. Not. Cry.
He handed her a large white handkerchief. She turned her head away and blew her nose, knowing he must despise her weakness. She was fulfilling every male expectation of female fragility. One fall down the stairs and she’d lost her independent spirit, her brain as bruised and useless as her body. Quelle idiote!
Clasping her hands together for support, Victoire began at the very beginning. “Do you remember that day in the park,” she asked, “when you stopped my runaway horse? Well, I fear it may not have been an accident.”
“I know it wasn’t.” His green eyes looked steadily back at her, wholly confident in what he was saying.
He believed her?
“Three boys came out of the bushes,” he continued, “throwing pebbles at your old nag. Even at the time I suspected it wasn’t just youthful high spirits. If they had been caught, the punishment would have been too severe to take the risk for the sake of a prank.”
Victoire’s temper flared. “And you didn’t say anything!”
Jack’s rugged face took on the superior male look that inevitably infuriated her. “I spoke to Ravensden, advising him to take you into the country.”
“Delightful!” Victoire scoffed. “And what if he’s as anxious for my fortune as the rest of the family?”
“At the time I didn’t think so,” he responded equitably. “And it was possible Tarrant set up the incident simply so he could play hero. It was his ill luck that I outdistanced him.”
“Yet you said nothing!”
“To you, no.” He stared at the driving rain beating against the window. “I didn’t want to frighten you. And I truly thought you’d be safe in the country.”
Men!
Unfair. The incident had been small, questionable in its interpretation. No one could have anticipated what would follow.
So she told him the whole of it. Her happiness with life at Ravensden Park, the shock of the old bridge giving way beneath her, the plunge into the river, the arrival of both her cousins, Julius’s attempt at rape, followed closely by her tumble down the staircase. No doubt about her last accident—she had been pushed. She continued with the flight to London, her fear of bringing harm to Beasely and his family if she turned to them for help.
“I am so very sorry to involve you,” she ended quietly, “but I knew no one else strong enough to stand up to the Darrincotes. A great imposition, I know, but if you could but advise me what to do. I know I should go home, but somehow I cannot bear for the Darrincotes to win. If at all possible, I am determined to stay the course, see where my path will lead.”
Though his face grew more grim with each word she spoke, he uttered not a sound. Miserable man, to leave her hanging, unsure of his support. Surely there was a heart inside him somewhere, some emotion other than lust—
“Tell your maid to pack,” he ordered without preamble. “You’re leaving this place.”
“I am safe here,” she protested. “You’ve seen how well I am guarded.”
“And how easily I came up the stairs, in spite of your self-appointed she-wolf.”
“But no one knows I am here.”
“They will. A woman like you in a place like this? I’m surprised word hasn’t leaked out already. It could have been your cousin coming up those stairs to finish what he started.”
Victoire blanched, twisting her fingers in the bedcovers. A dreadful thought, but there was worse. “Truthfully,” she admitted, “I don’t believe Julius was in the house at the time I was pushed. I fear it was Odelia.”
“A viper’s nest,” he muttered, shaking his head. “In spite of all my adventures into sinning, I never dreamed—”
“I spring from bad seed.”
He stood up. “Nonsense! What the Darrincotes need is a good dollop of du Bois blood. Send them to the rightabout in no time. Come, come, call your maid. Time to leave this place.”
They had traveled so light, ten minutes was all it took. Jack scooped Victoire out of bed, wrapped her cloak about her, and carried her down the stairs to his waiting carriage. Heads poked out of every room along the way, watching the fine gentleman make off with one of Mrs. Giddons’s tenants, while the landlady herself stood by, nodding her approval, lest anyone think she had abdicated her position as the fiercest defender of maidenhood in all London.
“Where?” Victoire asked weakly as he settled her in his coach.
Where indeed? In an uncommon fit of emotion, Jack realized, he’d let his feelings rule his head. But there was no hiding now. Someone was bound to recognize him, and word that he had taken a woman from Mrs. Giddons’s establishment would soon be blown into the latest scandal. A scandal he could not foist on anyone else.
Annie climbed up, settling herself on the opposite seat. Jack rapped on the ceiling of the coach, signaling the coachman to start. The die was cast. He was taking her home.