Lord of Fire (50 page)

“Karl! Lucien! What is the meaning of this?” Caro demanded in shock, several steps from the bottom.

“Caro, stay back,” Knight warned through gritted teeth.

“My lady, help me!” Bardou panted. “Call off your jealous fool before he pulls the trigger!”

“Lucien, have you gone mad? Put your weapons down, all of you! There is a child in this house. I will not have guns drawn here.” Bardou stared at her, his heart pounding with renewed hope as she came rushing down the steps.

“Stay back,” Knight ordered her as she ran toward them. “Caro, no!” Knight roared, throwing up his hand to ward her off, but he was too late.

Bardou shot out his hand and grabbed her by her hair, yanking her toward him. She shrieked as she stumbled against him, but he whipped out his pistol before any of them could stop him and put the gun to her head.

Caro screamed.

“Stay back or she dies,” he warned with a wolfish grin.

“Karl! You’re hurting me!”

“Shut up,” he growled at her.

“Bardou, let her go,” Knight said in deadly quiet. “This is between you and me.”

“And Sophia, too, yes? I’ll see you tonight, old friend,” he threatened softly, then kicked the door open and dragged Caro out to the waiting carriage. “Wake up,
Stafford!” he bellowed.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of his fast drag-carriage,
Stafford turned around in question. His face went ashen when he saw that Bardou had taken Lady Glenwood hostage. “What on earth—”

“Shut up and drive!”

“Von Dannecker—”

“Don’t question me!” he roared. “Do as I say unless you want us both to hang! You’re in too deep to back out now, so just bloody
drive
!”

He clapped his hand over Caro’s mouth when she drew breath to scream. She fought and clawed at him every step of the way, but he was relentless, hauling her out the door, down the front steps, and across the pavement toward the waiting carriage. Her feet barely touched the ground as he hefted her like a rag doll in his grasp, but he didn’t take his eyes off Lucien Knight and his men as they followed him like a pack of salivating dogs closing in on a stag at bay.

“Stay back or I’ll shoot the bitch!” he yelled, sweat beading his forehead. Wrenching open the carriage door with one hand, Bardou backed in, pulling Caro in after him.
Stafford whipped the four-horse team, and the drag tore off down the quiet, residential street.

“Which way should I go?”
Stafford asked.

“Head east. Weave your way toward the river and try to lose them in the City if you can, then take the

Ratcliffe Highway

. You claim you’re a good driver. Let’s see how good you really are.”

“All right,”
Stafford said grimly, his expression hardening with resolve. He brought down his whip on the horses’ backs and the drag shot ahead, zooming down

Brooke Street

. Crossing

Grosvenor Square

, they swerved around slower traffic in the road, scattering pedestrians out of their path. Bardou looked out the window and saw Lucien on a large, black horse, riding hard after them with his men, in hot pursuit. Bardou knew how to slow them down. Right in the middle of

Grosvenor Square

, he took aim and shot at Knight from out the carriage window. The bullet went wide, but the shot had the calculated effect. Though it did not discourage Knight and his men, he saw their furious looks. They slowed a bit, letting Stafford’s carriage widen its lead on them rather than risk an exchange of gunfire in the midst of city streets crowded with civilians.

Their lead increased as
Stafford veered the drag into a sharp right turn onto

Bond Street

. They went thundering past gigs, wagons, and a mail coach, pounding down the busy main artery of the fashionable shopping district. Bardou’s pulse was racing with glee as he took another glance out the window. Caro was crying, her face ashen with fright, her cosmetics smearing down her cheeks. She held onto the leather hand strap for dear life.

“Von Dannecker, what is going on?” she wailed.

“My name is Bardou, and you are my hostage,” he said coldly. “Your lover took my woman from me. Now I take his woman in return. But never fear, he will come to save you, and when he does, he will die.”

“He is not my lover!” she cried as the carriage took another jarring turn.

He scoffed at her lie.

“It’s true! I mean nothing to him!”

“He is following,” he pointed out. He took another glance out the carriage window and grinned. “Keep going,
Stafford! You are doing well. We’re losing them.”

“Von Dannecker—Bardou—you must let me go. You’ve made a mistake,” she insisted, wiping her tears; then she let out another yelp as the carriage rocked up onto two wheels, tearing around the corner at Piccadilly, then crashed back down onto all four and kept going.

“What mistake?” he growled.

“Lucien Knight was never in love with me! It’s my sister-in-law he’s mad for—
Alice!”

“What is this you say?” he asked dangerously, recalling the moody allure of the young blue-eyed blond. She was, like Lucien Knight himself, a mysterious creature of quiet elegance. “You told me he was so desperate to have you that he stole you away from his brother.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I told you, but that is not what happened.
Alice is the one who captivated him, not me! Last week she didn’t have influenza, as we told everyone. She spent the week at his house. She is his lover—his mistress! I was merely covering up for her.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re lying.”

“No! I lied before, I admit it—I wanted to make you jealous, and I didn’t want you to notice her, only me. But this is the truth!”

“You lied to me?” he snarled, incredulous as he realized that she had fooled him. She was useless to him. It was the little blond that he needed.

“I had to! Now you have to let me go, don’t you see? It’s
Alice that you want!”

“You deceitful bitch! You wasted my time!” He backhanded her hard across the face.

She flew back against the squabs with a shriek as they lurched onto the
Strand, but rather than easing his tension, hitting her only whetted his appetite. He picked her up and slapped her again. “Go on, cry, useless bitch. Cry all you want.”

“Von Dannecker!”
Stafford yelled from up on the driver’s seat. “What are you doing to her? Stop it!”

With blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, Caro blubbered in terrorized self-pity at
Stafford’s attempt to interfere.

“You’re right, Mr. Stafford,” Bardou murmured. “It’s time to silence her lying tongue. Good-bye, Lady Glenwood,” he whispered, leaning toward her.

“No—no! Get away from me—”

Her protest ended in a sudden choking sound as he grasped her throat, a snarl fixed on his face. She clawed at him, gagging and slowly turning blue as he strangled her with one hand, his grip unrelenting, his stare as cold as stone, until after a minute or two, her struggles ended. He dropped her then, and looked at her crumpled body in contempt.

“Whore,” he whispered.

 

Less than ten lengths behind, Lucien and his men chased the drag as it thundered down the
Strand and into Fleet Street. A world away from
Mayfair’s elegant avenues, the noisy, mercantile city was a medieval maze of narrow, crowded, zigzagging streets. Lucien yelled to his men as
Stafford veered right at
New
Bridge
. Immediately upon rounding the corner, a cold, November wind rushed up from the broad river ahead, riffling through his hair. Ahead, the
Thames was dull pewter, busy with boats of all shapes and sizes moving upriver and down, their white sails bowed. New

Bridge Street

bustled with wagons and vendors taking their goods to Fleet Market, just up the road behind him, but the working day was ending early and there was a holiday atmosphere in the air. Everywhere people were starting to get ready for the Guy Fawkes Night celebrations. At this time of year, night came early. Already the sun had begun to set.

Lucien narrowed his eyes against the gritty, blowing wind, then cursed, signaling his horse just in time to jump a vegetable seller’s wheelbarrow that nosed out of a side alley without warning into his path. The vendor yelped as the black stallion arced gracefully over the cart; then he cursed Lucien as the horse landed neatly on the pavement and raced on.

Stafford
did not cross the imposing
Blackfriars
Bridge
that spanned the
Thames straight ahead, Lucien saw, but instead made another reeling, right-hand turn onto

Earl Street

, which became
Upper Thames. Lined with industrial wharves and yards, various workers’ halls and the occasional brewery,
Upper Thames hugged the curves of the river. They passed the waterworks and
London
Bridge
, where
Upper Thames turned into
Lower Thames and things got decidedly seedier.
Stafford made a sharp, unexpected left turn by St. Dunstan’s workhouse and suddenly disappeared.

“Damn!” Lucien whispered, his heart pounding. He scanned the buildings and licked his dry lips, feeling them becoming chapped in the wind. Kyle and the others reined in and looked at him in question. “Spread out,” Lucien ordered in a low tone. “We’ll box him in. Whoever sees him first, yell for the rest of us. Lady Glenwood’s life depends on us, lads.”

He hoped they were not already too late.

They nodded grimly and rode off in separate directions to close off the area, but Lucien urged his horse into the deserted alleyway. Suddenly, down a dark, garbage-strewn lane adjoining the alley, he saw
Stafford’s drag flash by.

Bardou leaped out of the moving carriage and ducked into the gloom of one of the dilapidated building’s overhanging eaves. Lucien’s eyes flared. Dimly aware of Kyle’s shout some distance away as the lads spotted the carriage, he made a split-second decision, biting back the shout on the tip of his tongue.

Bardou’s move was a ruse designed to make Lucien and his men chase the empty carriage when Bardou had already escaped. Ethan Stafford probably didn’t even know that the Frenchman was no longer in the carriage.

Let the bastard believe he has made a clean escape,
Lucien thought, his heart pounding. Sophia had warned him that Bardou had explosives stored in a warehouse by the river. Lucien had a strong suspicion that Bardou was headed for his lair. Lucien decided to follow him alone because if he shouted to his men, Bardou would be alerted that he was still being followed and thus would not go to his headquarters where the explosives were stored.

At the same time, he realized with sickening certainty that Bardou would not have abandoned a usable hostage. It could only mean that Caro was already dead.
Oh, God,
he thought, slammed by the realization that he was too late.

He drove his heels into his horse’s sides and started after Bardou, only to rein in a few paces later. Stealth was impossible with the horse under him. Its clopping hoofbeats echoed too loudly throughout these quiet back alleys. They would alert Bardou to his presence; besides, Bardou would surely dart indoors soon at one of the riverside warehouses.

While his men chased
Stafford’s carriage back toward
London
Bridge
, Lucien slid down off his horse and stole after Bardou on foot. He steeled himself against the realization that he was leaving his proud, loyal steed unattended in a rookery of thieves, but all that mattered was getting Bardou. With rage in his heart, his pistol in his grasp, and his nemesis in his clear line of fire, the only thing that stopped him from shooting Bardou in the back was the knowledge that the man might have other accomplices besides Ethan Stafford, who might still carry out his plot even if Bardou himself were killed. The only way to eradicate the threat completely was to find Bardou’s headquarters and learn his plans.