A Baron in Her Bed (27 page)

“Good.” Her father rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go downstairs. As yet I haven’t had a good chat with your aunt.”

After dinner, Geneviève called for Horatia at the appointed time in her carriage. She thrust some clothes into Horatia’s hands. “Put these on.”

“Here?”

“
Oui
.” She lowered the blinds.

As the carriage rocked along the street, Horatia struggled into the ill-fitting clothes that reeked of horse.

“I’m sorry. They belong to the stable boy,” Geneviève said. “They were the only ones that would fit you.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “You are so tall and slim.” She held out a pair of scuffed shoes. “These will be too large for you. You’ll need to stuff the toes with paper.”

Horatia admired Geneviève’s nimble fingers as she tied a credible cravat without a mirror. Her clothes were more suited to the gentry. She wondered whom the duchess had coerced into giving them up and had a ridiculous vision of her ordering a local clerk to remove his clothes. She stifled a nervous giggle, tugging on her black tricorn as Geneviève tucked her dark hair beneath the bevor hat.

A watchman called, to whoever would listen, that the weather remained fine. The carriage halted for them to alight in New Bond Street beside a trough of water at the stand. A night coach passed them, and link boys lit the way for a chair carrying an important personage. Fortuitously, the bare wisp of smoky cloud hiding the crescent moon drifted away. A cool breeze stirred the trees and fanned the stench of fresh horse manure, stinging Horatia’s nostrils. She shivered in the thin clothing, more from apprehension than cold.

No available hackneys were waiting. A peddler strolled up to them with a box of clocks strapped around his neck. Horatia waved him away as her frustration grew. She and Geneviève walked up and down. The minutes turned into half an hour.

“It’s growing late; we will have missed him.” Horatia rubbed her arms.

“I see one!” Geneviève darted out to wave it down. Horatia followed, unable to move very fast as the shoes fell off her heels.

“Don’t have smallpox or the plague do you?” the jarvie asked before they climbed in.

“Certainly not,” Horatia growled. “Berkley Square if you please.”

“Toffy kind o’ place for the likes of you, wouldn’t you say?”

Horatia squared her shoulders. “Mind your manners, my man, or you won’t get a bonus.”

“No offense meant.” The jarvie pushed his hat back and drew his whip.

They passed elegant stone and brick houses as they approached Berkley Square. Horatia caught sight of Guy as he walked up Brutton Street, a tall hat on his head, his long dark coat flowing about his ankles. “Follow that man!” she called to the jarvie.

“What kind o’ smoky business is this?” he asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Horatia said. “Just think about the extra money you’ll earn.”

The jarvie turned the hackney and drove after Guy, who had disappeared into New Bond Street. An empty hackney passed him and slowed. Guy waved it on, content to go on foot to his destination. They caught sight of him again as he turned from Grafton Street into Albemarle Street. He walked past the grand façade of the Royal Institution and disappeared into the Grillion Hotel.

“What do we do now?” Horatia asked. “I daresay he’s there to meet a friend. He may be there for hours.”

Suddenly, the hackney doors were flung open, and a man thrust a pistol into their faces. “Out.”

Another man stood beside him. Both men’s faces were obscured by shadows.

Climbing down, Horatia stilled the clink of coins in her pocket, having heard that some people were held up and robbed just for their handkerchiefs. Geneviève followed, unusually silent behind her. She couldn’t be sure that a scolding tirade wouldn’t erupt from Geneviève’s lips and get them both shot. Horatia could sense it building and spoke before the duchess could. “What do you want?” she croaked, her voice lowered to a growl by the fear that tightened her throat.

One of the men seized her, while the other grabbed Geneviève. They were pulled into the light cast by a street lamp. “What business do you have here?” the tall man asked.

“They look like pigs, they do, miss,” the jarvie offered from his seat. “From Bow Street I’ll be bound.”

The light fell on the tall man’s face. Horatia gasped. “Is it you, Lord Strathairn?”

“What the devil?” He whipped off her hat. “Miss Cavendish. Why are you dressed like that? You smell of the stable. And why do you follow Lord Fortescue?”

“We are very worried about
Gee
,” Geneviève said, finding her voice.

“I’m sorry, Lord Strathairn.” Horatia finally remembered her manners. “I’d like you to meet Duchess Châteaudunn. The duchess is Lord Fortescue’s sister.”

Lord Strathairn’s accomplice whistled. “I’ll be damned!”

“I appreciate your concern, Your Grace.” Lord Strathairn spoke through clenched teeth. “But you’ll make matters worse for the baron if you remain here. Please go home.”

“I demand you tell us what this is about,” Geneviève said, having regained her poise. Her voice rang with imperiousness, and the other man hesitated then made an awkward bow.

“It is secret government business that does not concern you, Your Grace,” Lord Strathairn said in a cool tone. “Have no fear. We shall keep your brother safe. Please leave now or you’ll both spend the night in a Bow Street cell.”

“Guy’s on secret government business?” Horatia gasped. That would certainly account for his odd behavior. “If you’re sure…”

“We’ll guard him like a baby.” The Runner – if indeed he was one – gave a guffaw, which was cut short by Geneviève’s icy glare.

“I do hope so,
monsieur
,” the duchess said. “There will be
difficultés
should you fail.”

Once back in the hackney, Horatia instructed the jarvie where to take them. He moved the horse on without further comment, apparently struck dumb by what he’d witnessed.

“What on earth is Guy involved in?” Horatia asked. If she’d felt cold before, she was now chilled to the bone.

The hackney turned the corner into Grafton Street and passed a lane behind the hotel. Horatia saw two men exit by a back door.

“Look, there’s Guy!” Horatia clutched Geneviève’s sleeve. She hung out the window. “Stop the carriage!”

The jarvie cursed as he pulled the horse up.

Geneviève craned her neck. “He and another man are climbing into a carriage.”

“I can’t run in these shoes! You go! Tell Lord Strathairn,” Horatia said. “I’ll keep their carriage in sight.”

Oui
.” Geneviève climbed down onto the pavement. She paused. “But what if we lose you?”

“Hurry! Tell Lord Strathairn to follow us.”

As the duchess ran back to Albemarle Street, the carriage with Guy and the other man passed them. Horatia stuck her head out and shouted to the jarvie. “Don’t lose sight of that carriage!”

“You meet all kinds in this ’ere job,” the jarvie said with a crack of his whip.

The hackney moved at a clip to the next corner in time for Horatia to see the carriage that bore Guy away head down Dover Street towards Piccadilly.

Lord Strathairn appeared with his accomplice, driving a carriage half a block behind them. They must have forced Geneviève to go home. Horatia bit her lip. She would be very angry.

At Piccadilly, a stream of evening traffic held the hackney up. A wagon loaded with wares trundled along at an appallingly slow pace. With mounting horror, Horatia watched Guy’s carriage disappear from view. “Have we lost them?” she yelled, trying to make herself heard above the noise of clattering wheels and pedestrian chatter.

“Not bloody likely,” the jarvie yelled back. “When Pete sets his mind to it, he doesn’t fail.”

“There it is; I see them,” Horatia called. “They’re heading towards the Strand.” She had no idea if Lord Strathairn still followed or was held up in the traffic.

They traveled under the stone gateway of Temple Bar and the nearby Inns of Court where judges, barristers, and silks wandered the courts and chambers in their robes. In Fleet Street, they passed printing shops, churches, inns, and coffee houses. Ahead, Horatia saw the carriage enter Bridge Street, where a motley crowd filled the pavement. “Could they be heading for the river?” she yelled to the jarvie. A group of sailors gathered in a pool of lamplight turned to watch them pass, as did a pair of well-dressed gentlemen intent on some evening’s entertainment.

The carriage they followed barely avoided a cat streaking across the road as it turned into Earl Street towards Puddle Dock. It stopped outside a warehouse, only feet from the moss-covered steps leading down to the water, where boatmen rowed passengers up river. But at this time of night, the moon shone down eerily with not a person in sight.

Not wishing to venture too close, the jarvie pulled up the hackney at the top of the lane, beside a pen filled with ducks and fowl settling for the night.

Horatia gagged and covered her nose at the stench of manure mingling with sea-coal smoke. Masts creaked and gently swayed on the River Thames.

Fingers of mist rose from the water and began to swirl around them shrouding the moon in a ghostly haze. In the poor light, Horatia jumped down onto the sandy gravel in time to see two vague shapes enter the building. She whirled around with the hope of finding Lord Strathairn, but the lane behind them was empty.

She eyed a rat scuttling across the ground intent on its own pursuits. “You can leave me here, Pete.”

“You shouldna go after ’em, miss,” Pete said. He removed his hat to scratch his head. “Don’t like the looks of this ’ere place at all. They might be ark pirates, being so close to the river as they are.”

“What are ark pirates?”

“Those who rob an’ plunder on the river, miss. Anyways, there’s something smoky goin’ on behind that door.”

“If you’d rather leave, then please do so.” She reached into her pocket and drew out some coins for him, dismayed to see how much her hand shook.

“Hold on a bit,” Pete said, deep furrows forming in his brow in the light from the lantern he held. “I didn’t say I’d leave, did I? You might be a bit dicked in the nob, but you ain’t short of pluck, and I ain’t about to cast you to the birds of a feather in that there place. “I’ll stay ’til your friends show up, that I will.”

Relieved, she looked back at him. “Thank you, Pete. I’ll just go and see if I can hear what is being said.”

“Then you be careful, miss.”

“I will.”

She picked her way down the lane towards the warehouse, edging around a stinking and rotten animal corpse on the ground. The mist thickened, and the night turned pitch black. She faltered, unable to see the way. Distant sounds reached her, echoing through the fog. Was it a carriage? She stood still, unsure whether or not to return to the hackney, if the noise wasn’t the sound of Pete leaving. Ahead, a glow of light shone around an ill-fitting door. She crept forward and placed her eye to the crack of the warehouse door but could only make out blurred movement in the flickering candlelight and a low hum of voices within.

Suddenly, an arm stole around her waist and pulled her off her feet. A big hand covered her mouth and nose, clamping down on her shriek of protest.

Guy was convinced they had lost Strathairn when he and Forney left by the hotel’s rear door. He looked around at the dozen men who stood to greet him in the bare candlelit warehouse. They had been sitting around a table drinking brandy. Heavy curved wooden ribs marched across the ceiling like the inside of a whale’s belly. An anchor propped against a wall where fishing nets were piled and the smell of rotten fish lingered in the air.

“Please take off your coat, baron,” Forney said, hanging his on a peg near the door.

Guy did the same ruing the fact that his new gun was in the pocket. He fought to appear calm as he greeted each man around the table. So far, none had asked awkward questions. Whenever a man eyed him too closely, however, saliva dried in his mouth and his heart banged against his ribs. He felt naked, so poorly prepared was he for this dangerous gamble. One question could strip him bare.

The last man in the room to be introduced was a Monsieur Delany, a short dark-haired man with hard brown eyes like a weasel.

Delany leaned forward, a deferential light in his dark eyes. “Baron, it’s good to see you again. I am sure you must recall when we met that memorable night before Napoleon escaped from Elba.”

Every muscle in his body tense, Guy forced himself to smile and speak warmly. “
Oui
. It is good to see you again, Delany.”

“Your contribution to Napoleon’s escape was the result of remarkable planning,” Delany said.

Glad that the light was dim, Guy turned slightly to hide the side of his face that lacked the scar that had marked Vincent’s.

“We are eager for you to help us with this new plan, Baron.”

“And I am eager to do so.”

Forney handed him a glass of golden liquid. “Raise your glasses, gentlemen. We toast our success.”

Guy drank the French brandy, welcoming the burn in his throat slicing through his chilled body.

“I’ve thought long and hard about where we strike and when,” Forney said. “We must learn from the past like the failed Gunpowder plot to assassinate King James by blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. If Guy Fawkes had been successful, it would have killed the King his family, and most of the aristocracy.” He rubbed at the deep lines on his forehead. “Today, it is even more difficult, for the palace is searched by the yeomen of the guard before every state opening of parliament.

“Then there’s the successful assassination of Spencer Perceval, shot and killed in the lobby of the House of Commons.”

“I should think many would thank us if we shot Liverpool,” said a fair-haired Englishman called Diprose.

A ripple of amusement passed through the room.

“Which is why we won’t,” Forney continued. “But we shall use this successful assassination as the outline for our plan.” He took Guy’s arm and pulled him into the light. “Baron, I want you to take charge of this mission. I place our future success in your hands.”