“If you’re going to whip me anyhow,” Mac gasped, “why the devil should I talk?”
“There is that.” Looking regretful, Swinnerton let the whip drop to his side. “Tell me what you know.”
“No more whipping?” By telling himself he was playing a role, Mac was able to let go of his pride and cower. Cowering was easy. Letting go of his pride was more difficult. Thank God Kiri wasn’t here, or he’d probably let himself be whipped until he died of heart failure. “Your word as a gentleman?”
Swinnerton laughed. “I love to see you grovel. Very well, time is short because I must get back to London, so no more whipping. Tell me what you know of our plans.”
“You’re targeting the British royals in order to throw the government into disarray,” Mac said wearily. “You tried to kidnap Princess Charlotte Augusta”—Baptiste made a strangled sound—“and made unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the prince regent and the Duke of York. I suspect the French goal is to create a situation where Britain will be willing to end the war by treaty, with certain territories under French dominion to be returned to us and France keeping the rest of her conquests.”
Swinnerton’s brows arched. “You’re more intelligent than you look.”
“I had help.” Blood was trickling down Mac’s forehead and into one eye, and with his hands manacled, he couldn’t scratch or wipe it away. “Since you’re going to kill me anyhow, satisfy my curiosity about what you’re planning.”
“Why should I satisfy you in anything, you filthy wife-killer?” Swinnerton hissed.
“You know damned well I didn’t kill your wife, Rupert,” Mac said. “You’re the one who beat her to death and tried to pin the crime on me. As for why you should tell me, it’s so I can suffer the frustration of knowing and not being able to stop you.”
Swinnerton’s eyes narrowed. “That actually has merit. But this is for your ears only.” He waved the other men back. With the constant sound of waves filling the air, all he had to do was lower his voice to ensure privacy. “We will strike at the State Opening of Parliament. You know the Chancellor’s Woolsack, which sits right before the throne in the House of Lords?”
Mac nodded. “Big square red thing filled with wool to remind the lords of the source of England’s medieval wealth.”
“You know history! I am impressed.” Swinnerton gave a smile that showed his teeth. “Princess Charlotte will sit on the Woolsack during the ceremony. A bomb inside will surely kill her, the prince regent, the prime minister, and a good number of England’s peers. Clever idea, isn’t it?”
Mac gasped, sickened by the knowledge of what would happen. “How are you going to get a bomb into the Palace of Westminster and set it off without being noticed?”
“A cooperative peer of the realm made it easy. Setting it off will be just as easy.” Swinnerton’s eyes narrowed. “Last question. I’m running out of time and patience.”
“Do you wear a cologne called Alejandro?”
Swinnerton’s reptilian eyes blinked in surprise. “A strange question for your last on earth. Yes, I have a bottle of the stuff my brother gave me and I wear it sometimes, though it’s not my favorite.” He turned and beckoned the other men closer. “Good-bye, Mackenzie. Knowing you has been an appalling experience.”
So Swinnerton had been the leader of the kidnappers. If he’d worn Alejandro that night at the Captain’s Club, Kiri would have been able to give certain identification. They had been so bloody close to cracking the conspiracy.
Swinnerton said to Howard, “You can kill Mackenzie with lingering misery?”
“Aye, sir. There’s a tunnel in the back of the cave that goes down to the cove. When the tide is low, we come and go that way. The tunnel floods when the tide comes in.” Howard smiled wolfishly. “I drilled a nice new metal hook in a rock below the high-tide level. I’ll chain the bastard to that and leave him to wait for the tide to come in.”
Swinnerton considered death by slow drowning, with the victim fighting frantically for breath as the water rose higher and higher. “I like that very well,” he said with a decisive nod. “Go ahead, then. Baptiste, stay here until you’re sure Mackenzie is dead. You know he needs to die, don’t you?”
Baptiste nodded mutely. He still looked pale, but resigned.
“I’ll see you in London, then.” Swinnerton took one of the lanterns. “Enjoy the execution.” Then he turned and marched from the cave, arrogant as always.
As well he should be. The corrupt devil had won.
Chapter 38
The wind off the Channel cut to the bone, and Kiri had never been more aware of how far north Britain was. She could use some of India’s suffocating heat. At least her divided skirt and riding astride were warmer than a side saddle would have been.
“A nasty night.” Will Masterson rode between Kiri and the coast, breaking some of the force of the wind. His enveloping greatcoat was similar to Mackenzie’s, and in the dark, they looked unnervingly similar. “Do we have much farther to go?”
“If that’s a tactful way of inquiring whether I’m lost, the answer is no, I don’t think so.” She checked the landmarks. “We have between one and two miles to go.”
Will laughed. “It sounds like you have your brother’s sense of direction.”
“Adam is good at such things?” Having known her big brother only a few months, there was much she didn’t know about him.
“Though he’s a peaceable sort, he has the talents of a first-rate officer.” Will shook his head with mock mournfulness. “All wasted since he’s a duke. Actually, you’d make a good officer, too, Kiri, if women were allowed to serve.”
“Me?” she asked, startled. “What a strange thought.”
“You’re decisive and a natural leader. I suspect you also start feeling restless if cooped up in drawing rooms.”
“You’re very perceptive, Lord Masterson,” she said, a little unnerved by the accuracy of his observation. She was only now beginning to realize how ill-suited she was for the drawing-room life. “It’s more amusing to ride through a stormy night on what may be a wild-goose chase.”
“Maybe it’s a wild-goose chase,” he said. “But my intuition is still twitching.”
“So is mine,” she admitted. Not just twitching, but screaming that there was danger and time was running out. “I wish there was moonlight, but it was a dark night on my first ride through this country, too.”
“A new moon is good for conducting business at a smuggler’s hideaway. Mac and his captain wouldn’t be interrupted.”
“In theory.” Kiri spotted a familiar wind-twisted tree ahead. “Here’s our turn.”
As Will fell in behind her on the narrow track, she prayed they’d find Mackenzie alive and well at the end of the road.
Howard turned to Mac, his eyes avid. “Tide is just turning now. The perfect time to stake you down there, Mackenzie.”
He snapped orders to his two men. They leaped on Mac and immobilized his legs while Howard unlocked the chains from the wall. He removed one manacle and left the other on since it gave him a chain for dragging Mac to his feet. Mac struggled, but he was so chilled and stiff from sitting for two days that he couldn’t put up much of a fight.
With the manacle biting into Mac’s abraded right wrist, Howard hauled him to the back of the cave. A narrow, irregularly shaped tunnel slanted down toward the cove. With Howard and one of his men ahead and Baptiste and the other man behind, Mac had no chance to escape, and the narrowness of the passage meant he kept banging into the walls and protruding rocks.
The passage ended at a slightly widened area with water boiling up furiously. Each wave splashed a little higher in the tunnel. Howard locked Mac’s manacle to the shiny steel hook set into the rocky wall. “I’ve been waiting for this moment.” He stepped back, his expression gloating. “Now I can stand here and watch you drown.”
The narrowness of the tunnel concentrated the force of the water. The next wave splashed over Mac’s boots. “Good. If you stay, I’ll have a light for my final moments.”
Baptiste said in a choked voice, “Howard, let’s go above rather than wait and watch. This tunnel is too crowded.”
Howard laughed. “You mean you’re too squeamish to watch a man die. I’m not.”
“We can play cards by the fire rather than freeze here,” Baptiste pointed out.
Howard’s eyes narrowed. “Do you play brag?”
“I know the game,” Baptiste said. If Mac hadn’t been so bruised and cold, he might have laughed at how Baptiste understated his skill to give Howard confidence.
“I’ll play if the stakes are good,” Howard said.
Baptiste shrugged. “Set them where you will as long as we don’t stay here.”
One of Howard’s men said, “I’d just as soon take my money and go home and leave you to this.”
When the other mumbled agreement, Howard gave them both a couple of gold coins. As they left, he turned to Mac and said in a gloating voice, “You’ll die in the dark, Mackenzie. The sea always wins. Water’s cold at this season, and it will keep coming. Higher and higher, and no matter how much you struggle, it will rise over your head.
“That’ll take time, though. Sometimes you’ll be able to grab a breath, then the salt will be in your mouth and you’ll be screaming underwater for air until you die.”
“You’ve a gift for description, Howard.” Mac was just about able to manage a lazy drawl. “And here I thought your only talents were stupidity and treachery.” As insults went, not his best, but he wasn’t in his best shape, either.
Howard kicked at him but didn’t connect when Mac stepped deeper into the water. “This tunnel isn’t used much,” the smuggler hissed. “I think I’ll leave your body here till the crabs and fish have picked your bones.”
Mac shrugged. “Do as you will. I won’t care.”
Expression furious, Howard turned to climb the tunnel, the lantern swinging in his hand. Baptiste lingered. “I’m sorry, Mac. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Hell is paved with good intentions,” Mac said wearily. “So get the hell out.”
As Baptiste turned, he dropped an object to the sandy floor where the water had yet to reach. Then he was gone.
As the last glimmer of lantern light vanished, Mac leaned over and scooped up the object. It was Baptiste’s penknife—an ingenious special model that Mac had given the other man as a gift the previous year.
Unlike most penknives, where blade and handle were solid, this knife had two different pieces that folded into the handle. One was a standard blade for sharpening quills, the other was a narrow silver spike for use as a toothpick. And Baptiste had not dropped it by accident.
Holding the penknife in icy hands, Mac managed to latch open the toothpick. By this time the darkness was absolute, but he didn’t need light to find the manacle. Though the lock was simple, trying to pick it in the dark as frigid water splashed over him was damnably difficult.
To complicate matters, his right wrist was the one chained and he had to work with his left hand.
He’d almost sprung the lock when the knife slipped from his numb fingers. Panicked, he filled his lungs and knelt, submerged in the ice water as he felt around on the stony floor with his left hand. The force of the current tossed pebbles and small shells along with the tide, and was strong enough to move the knife.
He couldn’t find it.
He couldn’t find it.
He straightened and gulped in more air, then knelt and resumed searching with fingers that no longer had sensation. Where the devil was it? He filled his lungs once more, then ducked under for the third time.
There! The knife was on the verge of being washed out of his reach, but he managed to grab it. As he stood and gasped for breath, he tucked his left hand under his right arm in the hope he might be able to restore some sensation. But he couldn’t wait long to try again. The water was halfway up his chest and rising fast.
Working with excruciating care, he inserted the toothpick into the lock and moved it around, trying to strike the pin without breaking the pick. He poked over and over. Howard’s prediction of gulping air in the lull between onrushing waves had come true.
The lock sprang open as a wave washed over his head. Lungs burning, Mac jerked free of the manacle and staggered upward through the churning water. He crashed hard into a wall, but his head broke above the water and he gulped in the blessed air.
He spent a couple of minutes leaning against the wall and marshaling his strength as he analyzed his situation. Though he hadn’t drowned, he might freeze to death without warmth and dry clothes. He couldn’t stay where he was because they would find him when they came down to verify his death. There was no place to hide between here and the main cavern, where they would be sitting by a fire and playing cards.
One way or another, he would have to get by Howard and Baptiste if he was to survive. Baptiste probably wouldn’t attack him, having given him the means to escape drowning, but Howard was armed and dangerous enough to kill both of them.
Rising water splashed his chin, so it was time to get moving. The longer Mac waited, the more his condition would deteriorate. Emerging from the water into the bitterly cold air made him feel even more frozen, and his saturated boots and clothing weighed on him like lead.
He climbed grimly, feeling his way through absolute blackness while trying to avoid crashing into any more rocky walls than was absolutely necessary. The way up seemed much longer than the way down had.
The climb took so long that he was beginning to wonder if Howard and Baptiste had extinguished the fire and left the cave for some more comfortable place. Then he saw a faint light ahead. Rationally he knew he’d be better off if the men had left the cave, but the light was heartening.
Moving as silently as his numb feet could manage, he continued toward the light—and abruptly found himself in the main cave. He’d thought that it was farther ahead because the light wasn’t strong, but now he saw that the fire was blocked by the two men sitting at a table in front of it.
He froze, hoping they wouldn’t notice, but Howard must have heard his footsteps. The smuggler glanced toward the tunnel and his jaw dropped with shock before he rose from his chair and grabbed his shotgun. “Damn you to hell! Why can’t you just
die?
”
“I never had much patience for sitting around.” Mac stared at the weapon, wondering his odds for dodging a lethal blast of shot. He could probably avoid being killed right off, but he was bound to be wounded and then he’d become easy prey.
“Rot in hell, Mackenzie!” Howard raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed.
As the smuggler’s finger tightened on the trigger, Baptiste stood, calmly took aim with a pocket pistol, and shot Howard in the back at point-blank range.
Howard made a gurgling sound and his eyes widened with disbelief. Then he crashed to the floor like a felled tree.
There was absolute silence in the cavern for a dozen heartbeats. Then Mac sighed and walked toward the fire. He spared a glance for Howard and saw that the man wasn’t breathing, and good riddance.
Mac tossed the pocketknife to Baptiste and came to a stop as close to the fire as he could get without burning. He was shaking all over with a combination of cold and reaction. As he held his icy hands toward the flames, he asked, “Why, Jean-Claude? For money? Even if Swinnerton claimed they were trying to catch a runaway heiress before she ruined herself, you can’t have believed the story or you would have told me about it.”
Baptiste barely managed to catch the pocketknife. His shaking hands fumbling, he managed to fold the knife and tuck it away. “I suspected Swinnerton wasn’t being truthful, but I didn’t see much harm in giving him the information needed to enter the club. I never thought there would be violence.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed as he studied the face of the man who had been his trusted friend. “How much did they pay you?”
“I didn’t do it for money.” His mouth twisted. “Their French master promised to send my mother out of France. I haven’t seen her since I fled the Reign of Terror.”
Mac caught his breath, understanding the power of that. He would give a great deal to see his mother again, even if only for an hour. “Did they keep their word?”
“They sent a copy of her death certificate.” Baptiste’s voice broke. “She died over two years ago, and I didn’t know it. So it was all for nothing. I betrayed you and England for
nothing!
”
He’d precipitated a disaster in the process, but Mac couldn’t help but feel sorry for the other man. God knew that Mac had made monumental errors himself. Sleeping with a fellow officer’s wife had been criminally stupid, and it had damned near got him killed. He would have died if Will and Randall hadn’t made extraordinary efforts to save him. “Tell me more about the conspiracy. Who is involved, and who is their French connection? Surely not Napoleon.”
Baptiste’s mouth twisted. “Joseph Fouché.”
Mac sucked in his breath. The ruthless French revolutionary had been many things, most notably the commissioner of police. “Isn’t he out of power now?”
“Yes, and he wants to regain Napoleon’s favor.”
“By targeting the British royal family and creating the conditions for a peace treaty.” Mac whistled softly. It all made sense now. “Who are his conspirators on this side of the Channel? Surely he didn’t contact you directly.”
Baptiste shook his head. “Lord Fendall and Rupert Swinnerton are half brothers. Their mother, Marie Therese Croizet, was sister to Fouché’s mother.”
“Making Swinnerton and Fendall first cousins to Fouché. Perfect tools.” Mac frowned. “Didn’t you tell me once your family came from the same village as Fouché?”