A Husband's Wicked Ways (36 page)

Don Antonio regarded her in frowning silence. Then he dipped the quill in the inkpot on the rickety table in the stable and scribbled through his own lines. He turned the paper over. “Very well, write your own appeal. And I suggest you make it heartfelt.” He dipped the quill again and handed it to her.

Carlos still held her left hand flat to the table, blood seeping from the tiny nick where a fold of skin was loosened. Aurelia’s free hand shook as she wrote a few lines, signed the letter, and looked up at Vasquez. He took it, scrutinized it, still frowning. Nothing was amiss that he could see, and it had a satisfactory ring of desperation to it.

“One more thing. Press her finger against it, Carlos.”

Carlos lifted her hurt hand and bent the finger,
pressing the cut against the parchment below her signature. Vasquez nodded his satisfaction, folded the bloodstained sheet over another one that he took from his pocket, and gave the package to Carlos with low-voiced instructions. The coachman left the stable, and Don Antonio gave Aurelia a push back into the stall. The door locked behind her.

Greville left the bedchamber, Lyra on his heels. There was no need for her to guard the man on the bed any longer. Greville was hurrying down the stairs when the doorknocker sounded loudly. He opened it to let in Alex.

“Any luck?” Alex asked, his gaze skimming over the body in the hall. “Is that him?”

“No, one of his victims,” Greville said shortly. “But he gave me all he knows.”

“This was on your doorstep.” Alex held out a small package. “Harry’s gone after the man who brought it, but I doubt he’ll catch him, he was turning the corner into the square as we came up. We found nothing at the lodging either.”

Greville scarcely seemed to hear as he opened the package and took in the contents on both sheets. His eyes hardened and his mouth grew grim as he saw the bloodstain. But he ignored it, concentrating on the words she had written. They were in her own hand, so she was still alive, even if she was hurt. But the hurt had not prevented her from thinking.

“About half an hour due north from here,” he murmured with a low whistle of appreciation. “Clever girl.”

“I lost him.” Harry entered the house somewhat breathlessly. He glanced at the body. “Anything to be done here?”

“No,” Greville said. “It’s a little late in the day. Our friend upstairs…”

“Ah.” Harry nodded his comprehension, then gestured to the package. “What is it?”

“Instructions from Vasquez and a note from Aurelia.” Greville passed one of the papers to him. “Written under duress, but she’s managed to pass on some information that fits quite well with what I got out of that piece of vermin upstairs.”

Harry and Alex poured over the parchment. “I don’t understand,” Harry said as he finished reading. “She says she’s frightened, she’s exhausted, afraid they mean harm to Franny, and afraid for her own life. She begs you to follow their instructions or they will kill her. Where’s the information?”

Greville half smiled. “She also says she’s being held about half an hour due north from here.”

“How is she telling you that?” Harry, the master of code, frowned at the letter. Then his face cleared. “Of course, each n is faintly underlined. Hence ‘north.’ But where’s the half hour?”

“Look at her signature…the
o.
”

Harry chuckled. The letter was neatly bisected. “Clever. She could draw a straight line at any point through the
o
without it looking like anything more than an idiosyncratic touch to her signature.”

“May I?” Alex took the letter and nodded. “Of course. Even a quarter, or three-quarters could be done. Was this a trick of yours, Falconer?”

Greville shrugged. “One of several I taught her. I have to admit I didn’t think she’d need most of them.” His expression was dark.

“So, how does this information fit with what you learned from our friend upstairs?” Harry asked.

“An abandoned stable block outside a hamlet is as concrete as it got,” Greville said. “He hasn’t been there himself, and he wasn’t expecting to have to find it for himself, since his instructions were to meet Vasquez at Mount Street with some proof that he had access to Franny. He was to travel in the carriage with Vasquez and Aurelia. But it has to be on a main highway, or just off one, for them to get anywhere outside the city in only half an hour.”

Greville tapped the second sheet of parchment against the palm of his hand. “Vasquez’s instructions are for me to meet him alone before dawn at the crossroads in the village of Islington. Aurelia’s life for mine.”

Greville’s nostrils flared. “Of course he has no intention of letting either of us live. But before he gives me the coup de grâce, he’ll use Aurelia to get information from me. Even though he’s lost his Inquisition assistant, he’ll still know how to do the job, just rather more crudely.” A shudder ran up Greville’s spine. They wouldn’t touch
Aurelia…
his
Aurelia. And Vasquez would pay by inches for the hurt he had already caused her.

“They won’t risk losing her until they have what they want from you,” Alex said. “If we can find her first, and presumably this stable block must be close by, then we can get her out while you deal with your friend.”

Greville nodded. “As long as she’s conscious, she’ll be able to help herself.” He spoke with a dispassion that concealed his fear for her. She still had her wits about her, or she would not have managed to write her own letter. That was all he had to keep in mind to keep a clear and objective focus. Aurelia’s safety first, the death of Vasquez second.

“Horseback to Islington,” he said. “We’ll find the stable building somewhere around the crossroads. Vasquez doesn’t have time for a lengthy journey from where he has Aurelia to the rendezvous with me.”

“What about upstairs?” Harry asked with a rather delicate gesture in the direction of the staircase. “Should I send Lester to clean up?”

“I’d be grateful,” Greville said. “I don’t have time myself. When he comes around, I’m sure they’ll be interested in him at the ministry. He’ll be a mine of information under the right questioning.” Greville’s mouth twisted in a grim smile. “We’ll see how well the Inquisition stands up to having its own techniques used upon itself. I’ll change and meet you in Grosvenor Square in thirty minutes. We’ll take the North Road. We have two hours until dawn.”

Harry and Alex left. “I’ll leave Livia with Cornelia,” Alex said as they walked swiftly to Mount Street. “I’d rather she wasn’t alone.”

“You might find she has her own opinions on the matter,” Harry said drily. He surveyed the scene on the street outside his house. Linkboys and footmen were running up and down calling for carriages as the guests swarmed out of his house at the end of the evening. “We’ll go in through the back,” Harry decided. “I can’t afford to get caught up in bidding farewell to our guests.”

With Livia as an able aide-de-camp, Cornelia was holding the fort, glossing over her husband’s absence and murmuring all the obligatory pleasantries. Harry made no attempt to distract her, and he and Alex had left the house again, Alex in borrowed riding britches, before the last guest had departed. Lester had gone to pick up a couple of good men to aid in the cleanup on South Audley Street.

“Where did they go?” Cornelia asked rhetorically as the last guest drifted down the stairs to the open door.

“Where’s Ellie?” Livia countered.

“Harry might have left a message.” Cornelia turned away from the stairs, suddenly aware of her bone-deep fatigue and aching feet. “Lord, I’m tired.” She made her way into her own sitting room and fell into a corner of the sofa.

A discreet knock announced a footman with a folded sheet of paper on a silver tray. Cornelia recognized her husband’s writing and snatched at it eagerly. “Thank you.” She waved a hand in dismissal.

“Is there anything else I can get you, my lady?”

“No…no, I don’t think so. Thank you.” She opened the sheet while Livia waited intently. The footman departed and Cornelia said, “They’ve gone to get Aurelia back. That’s all he says…isn’t that just so
typical,
Liv, and so infuriating. Nothing about what’s happened, or where she is, or why any of this…” Cornelia tossed the sheet onto the low table in front of her.

Livia leaned forward and picked up the note to read it for herself. “You forgot to mention that Alex suggests that I stay here until they return. Has he forgotten that his son is in Cavendish Square? I can’t possibly stay here all night while little Alexander is half a city away.”

“Send someone for him,” Cornelia said. “You have your own carriage outside. Send them to bring the baby and his nurse. We might as well be all together in this, don’t you think? We have Franny in the nursery already.”

Livia required no persuasion. The carriage was sent to Cavendish Square, and the two women sat in the parlor as the bustle of the house quieted around them and the clock ticked, and the first faint gray of the false dawn appeared on the horizon.

“T
HAT MUST BE IT
.” G
REVILLE
spoke barely above a whisper as the three men sat their horses on the outskirts of a tiny hamlet just outside the village of Islington. In front of them stood a tumbledown building, its thatch wearing thin, the stone gateposts to the yard crumbling. Faint lamplight showed through the slatted walls.

“And we passed the crossroads a half mile back,” Harry murmured.

Greville glanced up at the sky. Polaris was fading but still as due north as ever. “I’m getting into position.”

His companions merely raised hands in acknowledgment, and Greville backed his horse onto the lane, before picking his way through the trees alongside the cart track that led from the crossroads to the building. At the crossroads, he took up his position to the side, behind a gigantic oak tree. He wanted to catch Vasquez off guard for a vital moment before they brought out Aurelia.

He sat quietly, waiting. Clearing his mind of everything, everyone. And most particularly of all thoughts of Aurelia. She had the power to distract him, to muddle his purpose with emotion. He knew what had to be done once Vasquez appeared, and it was never fruitful to revisit a plan.

When the stable door opened, Alex and Harry were standing beside their mounts, keeping calming hands on bridles and necks. They were well hidden, but the slightest movement could alert the man who stood now in the yard, his eyes on the reddening sky, his body alert, poised, listening. A rapier’s silver sheath glistened in the light from the open door behind him. Then he spoke softly over his shoulder, and another man led out a broad-shouldered gelding.

Vasquez mounted, settled his rapier at his side. The telltale bulge of a pistol showed in his coat pocket as he twisted forward to adjust his stirrup. He spoke again to the man at his bridle, then rode out of the yard and onto the cart track leading to the crossroads.

Harry and Alex were a good twenty feet from the track, and downwind, but even so both held their breath as the man rode past. The horse did not catch the scent of his fellows however, and horse and rider went on past along the track.

“He’s Falconer’s now,” Harry murmured. “Now we wait.”

“I’d rather just go in and get her out of there,” Alex muttered.

“We can’t afford any sound that will alert Vasquez.”

“I know that,” Alex whispered.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t like waiting either.”

Alex nodded. They had to stick to their plan. The henchman would bring Aurelia out soon. When he did so, then Alex and Harry would make their move. Silently.

Aurelia was still locked in the stall when she heard her captors moving around, talking in whispers, the sound of a stall being opened and the unmistakable creak of leather and the heavy clop of iron-shod hooves. So some part of the building was put to its proper use, she reflected, creeping to the partition, trying to peer out through the narrow strips between the slats.

It was impossible to see anything, however, but she could hear well enough. The whispers were in Spanish, so not much help, but she could at least tell Vasquez and his henchman apart by their voices. She heard the sounds of the outside door opening, then the horse moving away.

There had only been one horse. So was Vasquez going for his murderous rendezvous with Greville? Or had Carlos left? And what would happen if Greville failed to keep the appointment…failed to walk into whatever trap they had laid for him?

She couldn’t think like that. If she did, the fear would paralyze her. She knew they would kill her, knew that if
Greville didn’t come to her rescue, she would die in the next few hours. Never see Franny again, never smell May blossom or new-cut grass, never see the life that she carried enter the world. Panic swamped her. She leaned her forehead against the rough wooden planking of the stall and pressed hard, feeling the pain as the wood abraded her skin. The pain took her out of her panic, cleared her mind, brought focus.

She stepped back, ran a hand lightly over her belly in a symbolic gesture of reassurance to the life within, and banged vigorously on the door to her stall. A rough voice murmured a string of what sounded even in a foreign tongue like obscenities. But she had the answer to one question. She was alone with Carlos.

She backed away from the door and looked around the dimly lit enclosure for something…anything. Greville had said it was rare to find nothing of use in a confined space if one looked with trained eyes. All she could see here were straw, a length of twine that she had untied from around the bale of straw that she had used to make a nest, and the wooden sides that enclosed her. The iron rings were no use, they wouldn’t budge. Only to be expected if they were intended to hold a rampaging horse. But what of the rough slats of the partition walls?

Aurelia moved slowly down the length, unsure what she looking for until she found it. A large splinter of wood. She pried it loose gingerly. It was long and thin, and sharp.

She picked up the length of twine and examined her armory with a critical eye. Not bad for a woman in a silk-and-spider-gauze ball gown. In different circumstances she would have laughed at the reflection, but now it merely served to help her focus, to find deep within herself the training she had had from Greville.

She positioned herself behind the half door to the stall, and in the angle, so that when the top half was opened she would momentarily be hidden from view. Then she started yelling at the top of her voice as she banged with her fists on the door.

Carlos cursed her again, then flung open the top half of the door, still hurling whispered abuse. When he couldn’t see her, he stuck his head farther into the stall. Aurelia drove the sharp point of the splinter into his neck, just below his ear. He yelped, fighting to pull it free, spinning around with his back to the door. As he turned, Aurelia flipped the length of twine around his neck and pulled it tight with all her strength, using the door he leaned against as leverage. She didn’t have the power to strangle him, she knew, but she could bring him down to his knees, render him helpless long enough for her to unbolt the bottom half of the door.

He slid forward, grabbing at the makeshift garrote, struggling for breath, the splinter still sticking out from behind his ear. As he fell to his knees, she lost her hold on the twine, but it was a matter of a second to draw the bolt. She thrust the door forward with all the power in
her shoulder, and it knocked her jailor from his knees onto his face in the straw.

She jumped on him foursquare for good measure on her way to the door and heard him groaning behind her. But she didn’t care how much damage she had done. The man would have hurt her child without a second thought given half a chance, and he deserved everything she could give him.

Aurelia burst out into the abandoned stable yard just as Alex and Harry came racing through the trees.

“Dear God in heaven, Aurelia,” Harry gasped, leaning a hand down to her as he drew rein beside her. “We thought he had your feet to the fire.”

She stared at them in disbelief. “How…What…What are
you
doing here? Where’s Greville?”

“Dealing with your abductor,” Harry said briefly. “And you shouldn’t need to ask what we’re doing here, Aurelia.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said with a faint smile. “Of course you’d be here, it’s all in a day’s work for you.” She took the hand he held down to her and let him haul her up onto the saddle in front of him, asking again, “Where
is
Greville?”

“Meeting with Vasquez…only you were making such a racket that our best-laid plans have probably gone awry.” Alex came up beside them. “How many did you murder?”

“None. But you need to secure one. I left him on his
face, but I doubt I did him enough harm to keep him there.”

“I’ll do that,” Alex said, dismounting, a pistol already in his hand. “Harry, you’d better take Aurelia and see what’s going on at the crossroads.”

Don Antonio heard the faint sounds of shouting just as he reached the crossroads. It was a woman’s voice. He rode on. Carlos could handle the woman with one hand tied behind his back. And it wouldn’t hurt Falconer to hear his wife’s cries. It would prepare him for what was to come.

The crossroads was deserted, the four tracks forming the cross stretching away as faint gray lines in the beginning dawn light.

He rode into the middle and drew rein. He didn’t reach for a weapon. The
asp
would not kill him from a hiding place. Not unless he had the woman safe. Don Antonio felt his blood surge. He had waited for this day for too long. Oh, certainly he was on his country’s work and would never lose sight of that, but he could satisfy his own niggling dissatisfaction with a past mistake at the same time.

“So, Vasquez, where is my wife? I can hear her well enough, but I must see her before we can discuss an exchange.”

Don Antonio turned his head towards the small stand
of trees dominated by a giant oak on the right of the crossroads. He couldn’t see the
asp,
but he didn’t need to for this conversation. “She’ll be here in a moment. Show yourself.”

“Show me my wife.”

Antonio took a whistle from his pocket, looked back over his shoulder, and blew one shrill note. “She’ll be here in just a few moments,” he said as if they were discussing the appearance of a horse for sale at Tattersalls.

“I wonder how I missed you at Lisbon,” the voice mused from behind the oak tree. “I thought I knew everyone of interest who was there at the time. You slipped past my spies.”

“And you foiled
me
. I don’t make mistakes,
asp.
”

“No, I’m sure you don’t…in general,” Greville added with soft deliberation. He wanted Vasquez to be annoyed, a little off center. All the while he was listening for the sound that would herald Aurelia’s arrival on the scene with whoever held her. As far as the Spaniards were concerned, it would be one against two then, with Aurelia in the middle. But in fact it was three against two.
Still with Aurelia in the middle.

But Aurelia was not without her own resources, he told himself. She’d proved it already.

He heard footsteps coming from the track to the abandoned stable and judged it time to move out. He rode into the crossroads, his hand on his rapier, and with a nod saluted his opponent, who offered the same courtesy.

“Bring her here, Carlos,” Don Antonio instructed.

“I can bring myself, Don Antonio.” Aurelia stepped forward. She held a pistol.

Ye Gods and little fishes.
Greville wanted to throw back his head and laugh.
His
Aurelia, all his. How she’d done it, he couldn’t begin to guess. But he was fairly certain Harry and Alex had had little real part in it. The only sounds he had heard had been from Aurelia.

She leveled the pistol at Don Antonio. “Should I shoot him, Greville?”

“Well, that depends on how much of a grievance you bear him,” Greville said, sliding his rapier from its sheath. “If you wouldn’t mind too much, I would like to conclude the business in my own way…but I will defer to you.”

“I don’t really care for shooting people,” Aurelia said. “You should know, Don Antonio, that Carlos is being taken care of by Prince Prokov. Lord Bonham is just behind me.”

Don Antonio seemed to ignore her. He looked at Greville as the first bloodred touch of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. “Is that how you wish to conclude this, Falconer?” The Spaniard, too, drew his rapier from its sheath.

“No,” Greville said, dismounting. “I, too, like a challenge, Vasquez. Aurelia, take my horse.”

She went swiftly to take the reins, but she couldn’t understand why he was doing this…accepting a challenge that he
might
not win, when all he had to do was shoot and walk away. But she knew, too, deep in her core, that
Greville had his own code of justice. He wanted this last battle to be personal.

He was a strange man, to put it mildly. He was capable of quite frightening emotional detachment. He didn’t know
how
to love, but she knew that he loved her nevertheless. And she loved him. She loved him for his humor, for his all-embracing competency, for his devotion to his work, for the sadness and loneliness of his past life, for the selfless skill of his lovemaking. But mostly she loved him just for himself. She’d known that for a long time, and she
did
know how to love. And knowing how to do that meant she had to step away now and let him conclude this in his own way.

Her hand brushed her belly in the now habitual gesture. Once this was over, Greville Falconer had another love to acknowledge.

Aurelia moved back with Greville’s horse to stand close to the oak tree. Harry had dismounted and was already standing there. He had heard the exchange and accepted as she had his colleague’s decision. But with a swift move he took the pistol from Aurelia. It was his own, after all. Don Antonio Vasquez was not leaving here alive.

The two men stood facing each other, bright blades in their hands. By mutual consent they tossed their firearms to the ground, away from where they stood. Their blades saluted, touched. Greville danced back, the rapier in his right hand, but his left hand moved swiftly, and a dagger flew, catching his opponent in the muscle of
his sword arm. Don Antonio’s arm dropped, useless, to his side.

Harry knew, as Aurelia did not, that the wound was crippling. Shattered bones could sometimes heal, but ripped muscles were another matter.

Don Antonio stood there, his rapier at his feet, his good hand pressed to the bleeding wound. “Finish it.”

Greville shook his head. He kicked the fallen rapier aside. “Oh, no, Vasquez. You threatened and hurt those whom I love this night, and for that I will not give you an honorable death. You will live to enjoy my country’s hospitality.”