A Husband's Wicked Ways (34 page)

“I trust I may have more than one,” he said, moving away with her into the ballroom.

“Alas, sir, my card is full,” she said, gesturing to the dance card that was fastened to her wrist with a piece of gold silk. “But I have saved you the quadrille, as promised.”

“Then I must be satisfied.”

“Aurelia, this dance is mine, I believe.” Nick Petersham appeared in front of her, hand extended. “Ah, evening, Vasquez.” He nodded at her companion. “You’re not trying to steal my dance, I trust?”

“Hardly,” Don Antonio said with a thin smile. “I’ll claim mine later.” He bowed and moved off.

“Do you know Don Antonio, Nick?” Aurelia inquired as he led her to the set.

“I’ve met him once or twice in the clubs. Odd bird.” Nick took his place opposite her and they offered the ritual courtesies as the music started.

Aurelia wasn’t sure that was quite the description she would have used, it was rather too benign for a man who was beginning to make her flesh creep every time she saw him.

She was aware of Greville’s eyes on her as she moved down the dance. He was standing against the wall, a glass in hand, apparently talking idly to a gray-haired, tired-looking man who looked as if he had had to drag himself bodily to the ball. She didn’t know him, in fact was certain she had never seen him before, but she knew immediately that he and Greville were not having a casual conversation. No one else would see it, but she had been observing her husband for months now, and she knew when he was working. And he was working now. His lips moved lazily, his posture was relaxed, everything about him indicated he was having an inconsequential chat with his companion, but whatever they were talking about, it wasn’t inconsequential. Although his eyes were following her, she didn’t think she was the subject of their conversation.

“We’re thinking maybe he’s going to use the Marquess de Los Perez to set up the intelligence network…once he’s taken care of you, of course,” Simon Grant murmured
into his glass of champagne, his weary eyes flickering over Don Antonio, who had just entered the ballroom. “The marquess has connections to King Carlos, but there are strong suspicions that he’s a turncoat. He could assemble a court in exile here in London and use it as the perfect cover to send intelligence to Fouche.”

Greville sipped his own champagne, his gaze still on Aurelia. “I’ll instruct Aurelia to ask a few innocently probing questions.”

Simon nodded. “Don’t keep him on a string too long, Greville. You’re his main target, and the most important task you have is getting rid of him before he gets his hands on you.”

“I know. Believe me, Simon, I know. But I have some leeway I think. And if we can deflect another plot at the same time, then all to the good. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I leave it you, Greville. Just don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Greville gave a short laugh and pushed himself off the wall. “I won’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, Simon, I must retrieve my wife for the next dance.”

Simon nodded and turned to find Harry Bonham beside him. “Excellent ball, Harry.”

Harry smiled his disbelief. “What…or rather who…brings you here, Simon? Wild horses wouldn’t drag you to a ball if you didn’t have a good reason.”

Harry’s chief shrugged in acknowledgment. “Someone I wanted to get a look at. And now I’ve done so, I’m sure you and your lady will excuse me.”

“Of course.” Harry stood aside and watched his chief thread his way to the door.
Just whom had Simon Grant come to get a look at?

“I know you don’t really wish to dance,” Aurelia said as she and Greville walked off the dance floor a minute before the orchestra struck up for the country dance. “So you don’t mind going to the supper room instead, do you?”

“Not in the least,” he agreed with some amusement. “It’s just rather unusual for you to demand food as a priority.”

“I didn’t eat much at dinner,” she offered in excuse. It was impossible to explain at this point the nausea that only food would assuage. “I’m just hungry, Greville.”

“Fortunately, that’s easily remedied.” He guided her with a hand under her elbow in the direction of the supper room. “Besides, I wanted a quick word before your dance with Vasquez.”

Her stomach clenched and she forced herself to relax. “Oh, yes?” she said with an assumption of ease, taking a seat at one of the small tables scattered around the room.

“What may I fetch you?” He stood with a hand on the back of the chair facing her, and his gaze was suddenly uncomfortably sharp.

“A little turtle soup,” she said promptly. “With bread.”

“As you command, ma’am.” He turned, then glanced back at her. “Wine?”

“No, just lemonade, please.”

Aurelia sat back and breathed deeply as her husband eased his way through the growing throng towards the supper tables set against the far wall. Even tonight, she must work. But for some reason the zest had gone from it.
Not for
some
reason,
she told herself.
She knew the reason perfectly well. Pregnant ladies did not make good spies.

Greville came back to the table with a steaming, fragrant bowl and a basket of warm rolls. He set both before her, then fetched her a glass of lemonade and sat down beside her with his own glass of wine.

“So what do you need to talk about?” she asked, dipping her spoon in the bowl.

Greville spoke softly in the whisper that only she could hear. “Ask Vasquez about the Marquess de Los Perez…float the name, see if you get any reaction. Watch for the usual signs, a flicker of an eyelid, a twitch of a shoulder…you know what to look for.”

“I do. Is this man in London?”

“Yes…arrived relatively recently. It’s possible he could become the center for a Spanish intelligence network. We’d like to know if Vasquez has any interest in him.”

Aurelia nodded and finished her soup. “That seems straightforward enough.” She glanced at her dance card. “I should return to the ballroom, the quadrille is the next dance.” She managed a smile as he offered his hand to help her rise. “Into the breach once more.”

M
IGUEL STOOD IN THE DARK
, deserted alley running behind South Audley Street and cursed softly as he attempted to lift a window, which when last he’d looked had been unsecured. It would have been the matter of a moment to flip the original catch, but in the meantime someone had strengthened the lock. Breaking it was not beyond his skill or his tools, but it would take time, and time was more than precious.

He worked as quickly as he could, making a small hole in the glass with the fine diamond point of one of the tools. The hole gave him access to the inside lock, and he worked with painstaking patience until finally the lock eased apart. He inched the window up just enough to allow him to roll sideways through the aperture.

The library was in darkness and the house was silent around him. He knew that only a few servants slept in the house, mostly maids. Only the night watchman could give him any trouble. He moved silently to the
library door and opened it a crack, peering into the hall, which was dimly lit by a light in a sconce by the staircase. The watchman was slumped dozing on a chair by the front door, his head on his chest, low snores bubbling from his half-open mouth.

The man could count himself lucky the
asp
couldn’t see him asleep at his post, Miguel reflected as he sidled into the hall, approaching the man in his chair from behind. A quick rabbit punch to the back of the neck and the snores ceased; the man fell forward and slowly crumpled from the chair to the floor.

Miguel trod soundlessly up the stairs. He paused at the top, listening. All was quiet. The nursery stairs would be at the end of the hallway in front of him. He was halfway down the corridor when he heard it. A low, throaty growl that made the hairs on his nape stand up.

Then the dog came at him. Massive forepaws on his shoulders knocked him to the ground and the hound stood over him, her meaty breath hot on his face. He closed his eyes against the sight of bared teeth and the fierce glare of tawny eyes and waited to feel the teeth ripping his throat.

Don Antonio moved gracefully through the stately steps of the quadrille. His eyes were on the time, but his partner wouldn’t guess his preoccupation from the ease with which he performed the lengthy and complicated
figures of the dance. She needed all her attention on her part. The dance was relatively new to London society, and Aurelia, like most of her friends, had danced it only a few times before. For all her instinctive dislike of her partner, she was grateful for his skill, which covered up her own occasional missteps.

As the last lively strains of the finale faded away, she allowed him to lead her off the floor towards the welcome breath of cool air coming from the hall. “That was pleasant exercise, sir,” she said, flicking open her fan to cool her heated face. “You’re more familiar with the dance than I am.”

“I danced it in Paris many years ago,” he said, his hand beneath her elbow as he guided her around the square landing towards a pair of open windows on the far side. “Let us take some air.”

Aurelia went willingly enough, but instead of continuing to the open windows, he stepped behind a worked screen in front of a narrow door. His hand on her elbow tightened and an unformed panic gripped her. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with suspicion, then he had propelled her through the door onto a narrow, dark servants’ staircase.

“Don’t make a sound,” he instructed softly. “Your daughter’s safety depends upon it.”

“My daughter…Franny…what do you mean?” She barely managed to get the words out through the fear that clogged her throat.

“She’s safe enough. It’s up to you whether she stays that way.” He led her down the stairs, and slowly Aurelia regained her composure.

She stopped on the stairs, taking a firm hold of the iron banister. “Where is she?” she demanded in a voice as cold as it was calm. “I’ll not take another step unless you tell me.”

“I have her and I will take you to her. But if we don’t make the rendezvous by a certain time, you will never see her again. I suggest you hurry.” He jerked her elbow.

Could she believe him? Could she afford not to?
Greville had drilled into her the mantra: trust no one. But this was different. She couldn’t take the risk that he was lying about the danger to Franny. She continued her descent to the narrow hall at the bottom of the stairs. There she stopped. “I’m not going with you without proof that you have my daughter.” A guttering candle in a sconce provided very little light, but she could still clearly see the hard set of his mouth and the blank coldness of his black eyes that told her nothing.

“Outside you shall have your proof,” he said, unbolting the door at his back. Miguel would be back at the carriage now, with all the proof that the woman could need. She would go quietly, and the rest would slip into place.

Aurelia thought rapidly. Once she’d left this house, she would be dependent on her own resources. For as long as she stayed under this roof, she knew that Greville was close by, even though she could at present see
no way of letting him know what was happening to her.

“If we miss the rendezvous, you will never see your daughter again,” Don Antonio repeated, his voice hard and cold as obsidian. He opened the door, which she saw now led onto a narrow passage that ran along the side of the house.

Greville would notice her absence soon enough, and he would draw the right conclusion, once he realized the Spaniard was not there either. But she needed to leave a trail, something. She had no idea how often this staircase was used, but she had to take the chance, the only one she had.

Don Antonio was peering out into the passage, and swiftly she let her hand fall to her side, dropping her fan on the step above her as softly as she could. Maybe it was a forlorn hope that someone would find it quickly, but it was all she had. Greville would at least know where she’d left from, and the significance of the fan, their means of communication, would not be lost upon him. It screamed the Spaniard’s involvement.

With the deepest reluctance, the sense that she was now abandoning all her defenses, Aurelia stepped past Don Antonio into the passage. She heard the door click shut with a dreadful finality. He put his hand beneath her elbow and propelled her towards the end of the passage, where it opened into the alley that ran behind the houses. The alley was deserted except for a single, unmarked carriage. From the open windows of the house drifted the sounds of music, voices, laughter. Such ordinary sounds
of merriment. Aurelia felt as if she was living in some parallel universe.

The evening was growing cool and she shivered in her thin gown, goose bumps lifting on her bare shoulders and arms. “It might have been chivalrous to have provided a wrap,” she snapped at her escort. The complaint cheered her. She had not sounded frightened or even disconcerted by her abduction, just as annoyed about the situation as anyone would be in the most normal of circumstances. The look he gave her, with just a hint of surprise, heartened her even more.

The carriage door swung open from within as they approached it. Aurelia stopped close to the back of the house. “I’ll not get in without proof that you have Franny.”

Don Antonio did not loose his grip on her elbow, but he called softly towards the open door, “Miguel?”

The man who jumped down was not Miguel but Carlos. “He’s not back, sir.”

Don Antonio’s grip once more tightened on his captive. Then she felt the unmistakable muzzle of a pistol pressing into the small of her back.
“Get in,”
he demanded against her ear. “If you wish to see your daughter alive…get in the carriage
now
.”

Something had gone wrong, she knew immediately. But how to exploit it? Would he use the pistol? If he needed her alive, what good was she to him dead? She pulled back against his hold. “Where’s the proof?”

“You’ll have it soon enough. And your husband will
have your ear for his own proof.” His voice was as low and deadly as the cold steel against her ear.

Now came the sharp pain of a cut, and a trickle of blood, sticky on her neck. Terror flooded her. Guns were one things, knives quite another. They had always made her shudder from earliest childhood.

She stumbled a little as he pushed her to the open door, and as she did so, she dashed a hand against the hot trickle on her neck, flicking her fingertips out to the ground. If Greville saw the drops, it would add to his knowledge, however sketchily. The man standing beside the carriage door gave her a shove upwards and she fell rather than climbed into the dark interior, but once again the months of Greville’s training came to the fore. She still had her ear, even though the cut still bled, and now she had to think—with more clarity than she had ever mustered before. She heard Don Antonio’s last words once again.

Your husband will have your ear for his own proof.

It was Greville they wanted, not her. She was merely their means to him. Knowing that brought an even deeper calm, and with it the certainty that something had gone wrong with the Spaniard’s plan. He and the other man were talking in low, fierce Spanish just outside the carriage door. She couldn’t hear clearly, but her Spanish was so rudimentary at the best of times it wouldn’t help her. But Antonio’s fury required no language to make it manifest, and the name
Miguel
kept coming up.

Vasquez climbed in, slamming the door behind him.
The other man jumped upon the box and the carriage moved off, out of the alleyway and into the main street. Don Antonio sat opposite Aurelia, tapping the gleaming blade of his knife into the gloved palm of his other hand. He watched her from narrowed eyes as light from the street threw occasional illumination into the interior. Aurelia kept her expression impassive, her body still and apparently relaxed in a corner. She wanted to touch the still stinging cut behind her ear, assess the damage, but forced herself to ignore it. She would not give him the satisfaction. And she would show him no fear.

She was feeding her composure on the faint possibility that he did not have Franny after all. This Miguel character had not shown up. She guessed he was to have brought the proof. If there was no sign of him, then it was not too much of an optimistic stretch to think that he had failed in getting hold of Franny. And if this lay only between her and Vasquez, then he would find her more of a challenge than he had bargained for. She turned her head to look out the window, trying to make a mental note of the route they were taking.

Don Antonio leaned over and flipped down the leather curtains, blocking out the light. Deliberately Aurelia leaned back into her corner and closed her eyes.

The Spaniard watched her, his mouth a thin, grim line.
What had happened to Miguel?
If the woman wasn’t afraid for her child, she would be all the more difficult to break. Without Miguel it would be messy. He could do it himself, but he did not have Miguel’s techniques, the
tricks of the Inquisition. The job had to be completed tonight. The boat would be waiting for him at Blackfriars to take him down the Thames and out of the city. On horseback and alone at this time of day, it would take him less than an hour to get to the rendezvous. The tide would be full at eight o’clock, and he had to be on board by then, his business here accomplished. He could not afford the time to find out what had happened to his assistant. He had to break the woman quickly.

Greville became aware of Aurelia’s absence only slowly, far too slowly he would later castigate himself. He had watched them during the quadrille, reluctantly admiring the Spaniard’s skill at the complicated dance figures that would have defeated him on the first steps. It was a long dance, four or five different movements, and after a while he moved away in search of congenial company. He found Prince Prokov surveying the supper table with an air of mild curiosity.

“Ah, Falconer, perhaps you can enlighten me. What are those little things on the ice trays that people are extricating with those tiny pins?”

“Periwinkles. Cockles and whelks, too. Quite delicious, but I tend to think the effort barely worth the instant of taste.”

“They are sea creatures?” Alex took a tiny shell from the platter and examined it closely.

“Yes, they cling to rocks. They’re very common along
our coastlines and considered a delicacy among all sections of society. You’ll find costermongers selling them all over the country close to the sea. A sprinkle of vinegar is said to improve them enormously.”

Alex took one of the pins provided and prised loose the minute scrap of seafood. He tasted it, then shrugged as he swallowed. “I don’t appear to see the point. But then Livia doesn’t really appreciate the appeal of pickled herring, and that I do find hard to understand.”

Greville laughed. He looked around. “I don’t see your wife.”

“No, she’s closeted in some corner with her friends discussing the joys of maternity. Or that was what they were discussing when I left them, but it’s possible,” Alex added in musing tone, “that the subject was designed to send me away, and they are now deeply engaged in some other much more engaging topic that is not for the ears of men.”

He looked at Greville with a smile, as if expecting agreement, then, seeing his companion’s slight frown, said, “Aurelia was not with them.”

“No, she was dancing with Don Antonio Vasquez,” Greville said, his voice suddenly sharp. “Excuse me, Prokov.” He spun on his heel and left the supper room. Alex, after an instant, followed.

There was no sign of Aurelia in the ballroom, no sign of her in the card rooms. Greville strode around the galleried landing where groups of guests were taking the fresh air from the windows after the exertions of the
dance floor. Aurelia was not among them. And neither was Don Antonio.

“Who saw her last?”

Greville turned at Alex’s quiet question. “Damn it to hell, I don’t know. But we need to find out.”