Dark Angel (49 page)

"Durward, he must. My God, man, your Ordnance man tried to encompass murder. The stakes had to be high for that. If he didn't know at the beginning that it was a question of sabotage, not simply an easy way to line his pockets, he must have known it before the end. And he must realize he can't prove he didn't know it. He was Silbury's creature. He'll be painted with the same brush."

"I
can't prove he did. It's all conjecture, Rathbone. Nothing but air."

"It's as solid as this table here."

Adam grinned. "We always thought alike."

"This officer—" Rathbone looked with inquiry at Adam.

"Rawley," Adam said deliberately. "Talbot Rawley. An Atillery colonel. Well thought of. Earl Granby's younger son."

Rathbone's eyes widened. "You have landed in a proper quagmire."

"Rawley's clever, in a way. But it's all one move at a time. He doesn't think things through. Silbury's behind it, I'd swear. That part makes sense now. Rawley has bad luck with cards and he was in debt to Silbury. Easy enough for Silbury to apply a little pressure. Silbury located the gunfounder, a man with a questionable reputation and nothing to lose. Rawley might have balked at passing on ordnance information, but he would have leaped at the chance to work his way out of debt and make a spot of money besides. Can you link the two men? That's all I need."

Rathbone looked down at the now cold cup before him. Then he lifted his eyes and looked at Adam. "I'm sorry. Rawley's name never came up. I can ask about, but after all these years... I'd put the matter before the Home Secretary, but he'd want rather more to go on before he acted."

Adam leaned back and stretched out his cramped legs. "It's all right. You've told me more than I'd hoped to find. Silbury was never connected with cannon?"

"Afraid not. It was the rifles we were concerned about. We had a link there. There were formal charges drawn up and signed by the Secretary. Then the papers got mislaid and we dithered about trying to find them." Rathbone grinned. "No one wanted to admit having made a mull of it. By the time they were found, Silbury had disappeared. It was criminal. We didn't think he knew we were on to him."

"He's still in America?"

"As far as we know. With the war he'd have trouble getting back. I'm afraid the H.O. have rather lost interest. Not one of our finer hours. We tracked him to New York and then to Charleston. For all I know he's in Louisiana with his French friends."

Adam grimaced. "He won't be back to bear witness."

"I'd say not a chance. If he does set foot in England we'll go after him."

"Then I'll have to go after Rawley without him."

"It sounds dangerous. If you need any help—"

Adam smiled. "I know where to come."

They spoke for a few minutes more and then parted amicably in the street outside. Adam, needing time to digest everything he had heard that afternoon, ignored the hackneys blocking the streets while they looked for fares and walked toward the Strand. He had another reason. As he left the coffee house he had spotted a familiar face, one he had seen earlier in Grosvenor Square as he left Camden House. He had paid no particular attention to the man then, but the habits of observation were hard to break and he recalled the man in considerable detail. Nondescript, not wellborn but not working class either. A fawn-colored coat, brown breeches, scuffed boots. Clean-shaven with sparse level eyebrows, a nose turning bulbous at the end, and small ears with unusually full lobes. The description might have applied to a hundred men, were it not for the nose and those full-lobed ears. The man had been loitering outside the coffee house when he and Rathbone said goodbye. It remained only to see how far coincidence might stretch.

A half-mile later and Adam was certain. Yesterday he had thrown Talbot Rawley a challenge. Today Rawley was having him followed. Tonight, or whenever Talbot's creature reported to Talbot, he would know that Adam had called at Camden House and from there had gone to the Home Office. If Rawley had been worried yesterday, today he would be in a panic. And panicked men could be dangerous.

It took Adam half an hour to throw his pursuer off and an equal time to make his way to St. James's Street where he hoped to find George Sheriton. Sheriton had told Caroline about Silbury, an admission he need not have made, and Adam was now convinced that Sheriton could be trusted. He needed to trust someone. Caroline's and Emily's safety was now Adam's first concern. It was Adam whom Rawley needed to silence, but he might choose to use Caroline or her daughter as bait.

He found Sheriton, as he had hoped, at his club. A servant in black knee-breeches, looking unkindly on Adam's darkened skin and carelessly tied cravat, undertook to find out if Lord Sheriton was willing to receive visitors. Members, he implied, liked their privacy. That was why they belonged to Boodle's.

Adam was left to wait in the entrance hall and contemplate the horses whose pictures adorned the stairwell. A few minutes later Sheriton appeared with a worried look on his face. "Durward, good to see you. Is there anything wrong?"

Adam clasped Sheriton's outstretched hand, wondering that this open-faced fellow could now seem so innocent when he had once appeared so suspect. "Not yet." He glanced around the hallway, now filled with a half-dozen men who had come down the stairs. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

"Sorry. Of course." Sheriton moved down the hallway. "Let's try the morning room. At this hour it's less crowded than the saloon." He led Adam into a room with a plain white-painted ceiling, comfortably furnished with leather sofas and armchairs. A man seated at a writing desk looked up, nodded at Sheriton, and went back to his letter. There was no one else in the room. Sheriton found a couple of chairs far away from the solitary writer and motioned Adam to be seated. "I've been wanting to talk to you," he said. "I understand I must offer you my congratulations."

The admission seemed to cost him some effort. Adam made a gesture of acknowledgement.

"I'm happy for Mrs. Rawley. She needs looking after, she and the child. I intended to look after her myself, but—" He colored and looked away. "But you've known her longer, of course."

Adam concealed his surprise. He had not known that Sheriton's easy, flirtatious manner hid such genuine feeling for Caroline.

"I know." Sheriton looked up and met Adam's eyes. "About Emily. It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I would have been proud to make Caroline my wife. Forgive me, Durward. I wanted to make that clear. I didn't mean to offend you."

Adam smiled, though he felt a surge of fear. "No offense taken." Sheriton had surprised him once again. Men of his kind did not take tainted women for their wives. Yet he was ready to accept Caroline, a confessed adulteress, to put it bluntly, and her bastard child.

Sheriton leaned forward, hands clasping his knees. "What I don't understand," he said with sudden passion, "is how Talbot could have dragged her secret into the open, before her family. Jared was the only one concerned, and he accepted Emily. That ought to have been enough for anyone. I tell you, Durward, Talbot was my friend, but if I see him again I don't think I can answer for the consequences." He drew a deep breath. "Durward, if there's anything I can do..."

It was what Adam had come for. "As a matter of fact, there is."

Caroline was in the drawing room on her knees before a chintz-covered chair, mending a rent in the fabric, when Adam found her and described his meeting with his friend Rathbone from the Home Office and his earlier meeting with Lord Camden. "I want you and Emily out of London," he concluded abruptly.

Caroline was shaken by the disclosures, though they made a kind of terrifying sense of what had happened in Spain. If Talbot had been involved in treasonous activities, he would have had nothing to lose by committing murder to keep his involvement secret. "I won't go," she said.

"If you think Jane won't have you, Sheriton is sure he can persuade his mother to take you in."

Caroline stuck the needle in the cloth and got to her feet, annoyed at his obtuseness. "Jane isn't the problem. The problem is that I'm not going to go away and leave you to face Talbot alone. You're his target now."

Adam did not say that there was nothing she could do in any event, though she knew he would be justified in doing so. But if Adam was in danger, she could not bear to be away from him.

"I'm not invulnerable," he said, "but I like to think I'm a match for Talbot. But if he tries to get at me through you—or God forbid, through Emily—then I'm helpless."

Caroline shivered. It was an argument she could not withstand. Were Emily to be taken again... She pushed the thought away. She still had dreams about Salamanca, but she could not face those memories in the light of day. "Very well," she said, her fear for Adam warring with her fear for Emily. "We'll go to Jane. But Adam, it mustn't be for long."

For answer he took her in his arms and held her close. She clung to him tightly. There were no thoughts of bed now to distract her. She was suddenly terrified. And Adam was wound as tight as a spring, his muscles tense against her face and breast. "It won't be long," he murmured against her hair. "God help me, if I have to kill him myself, this thing must come to an end."

Caroline drew away, shocked at the intensity in his voice. "Don't say that."

Adam's smile was rueful. "No, I'm not a man of violence, am I?"

Caroline was suddenly curious. "Adam, have you ever killed anyone?"

He hesitated. "I've come near it on two or three occasions. With my fists and legs and body. I don't carry a gun."

"No, of course not," Caroline said, remembering that his mother and father had been shot by soldiers with guns. Talbot was a soldier and Talbot carried a gun without question. But not in London. Surely he would not turn a gun on Adam in London.

Adam returned to the problem at hand. "I think Elena had better go with you. Hawkins would never forgive me if I didn't see to her safety as well."

His words made the threat even more real. "What about Aunt Margaret?"

Adam smiled. "Even Talbot wouldn't dare. But I'll tell her to be careful." He took her face between his hands, his eyes intense, his fingers gentle. "Caro, nothing will happen to you or Emily. I swear it."

Caroline opened her wardrobe and selected a straw bonnet with dark blue ribbons. It seemed an appropriate choice for their drive with Sherry. The bonnet would hide most of her face, and while she did not intend to go in disguise, today's outing was intended to deceive. Adam had told them that he was being followed, and for the benefit of this unseen observer they were going to play out the fiction that Sherry was taking Emily and the two women to Richmond for a picnic.

It was what they had told Emily as well, lest some idle remark on her part give the game away. Time enough when they were safely away from Red Lion Square to tell her Lord Sheriton was driving them to her Aunt Jane's.

Caroline tied the ribbons on her bonnet, picked up her reticule, and ran downstairs to the entrance hall. Elena and Emily were waiting for her. The door was open and Caroline could see the landau drawn up in front of the house. It was a clever choice on Sherry's part. The landau was a pleasure carriage, not meant for long drives to neighboring counties. But though the day promised to be fine, Sherry had not put the top down, giving them privacy from any curious eyes.

Sherry hastened up the steps to help the women into the carriage. Emily caught sight of a man in a fawn-colored coat who had stopped before the house next door to make some adjustment to his boot, and informed him they were going to Richmond. The man grunted, averted his eyes, and moved father down the square. Then Adam came out of the house bearing a wicker hamper. "Is that our picnic?" Emily asked, bouncing up and down on the seat of the landau.

"It is," Adam said, handing it to Wilkins, Sherry's elderly coachman, who stowed it in the boot. There was in fact a picnic basket in the hamper containing sandwiches and some wine—Caroline had packed it herself—but the hamper was otherwise filled with their clothes and toilet articles. Caroline looked into Adam's eyes, her mouth framing a voiceless question. "Well done," he said. She knew he was referring to the man who was now crossing to the other side of the square.