The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (33 page)

Her breath caught, and her heart gave a pulse, half joyous, half painful. Freedom to us all? He would want to do that, for Sarah, for her? She could not bear to tell him how impossible it was. “My lord, I don’t think—”

“Oh, do not call me ‘my lord.’ I cannot hear it from you. Though I suppose I am not Mr. Rapson anymore, either. My given name is John—can you manage to call me that?”

“John,” she repeated, after a short, heavy pause. “We cannot rely on your charity like that.”

“What charity would it be? I’ve no better use for my wealth.” A burning intensity came into his eyes. “Please, Sarah. I have no more family. You and Rachel, you are as close to a family as I have. You were all that made life in Rookshead livable for me—or almost livable. There’s nothing I could want more than to have the three of us safe and free to live our lives as we see fit, and only as we see fit. With no one else to dictate to us ever again.”

Involuntarily, she squeezed shut her eyes. The idea made her chest ache with longing.

“Please,” he said again. “If you will not scruple to share the main house with me, there is a lovely cottage on my estate, with gardens full of sunshine. You and your sister might live there, just the two of you, and join me in the afternoons whenever you wished to talk of books. Would that not be better than the life you live now?”

Rachel had to bite down on her lip to keep from bursting into tears.

“I always promised you both that life would get better someday,” he said, low and fervent, his eyes were bright with that hope. “I want to keep that promise. For both of you.”

She found herself clasping his arm and saying, “Oh, John! You are too good. Far too good!”

He stiffened slightly at her touch, modest as ever, but when she stepped back and looked at him again, his eyes were twinkling. “Promise me you will think about it,” he said.

“Very well.”

“And think quickly. I hear Spain isn’t safe for the English now.” He lifted a brow. “Not even for English who can pass themselves off as French.”

She felt light-headed. What would she have done if he had found her in Lancashire just a few short weeks ago, and made her such an offer? It would have seemed like heaven.

From his pocket, he drew out a thin silver case and gave her his calling card. A tiny pencil hidden in the lid let him scratch out an address. “Here. You can find me at this residence. I won’t leave Vigo until you come to me. Do you promise you will, at the first moment possible? Tomorrow? We must get away from this city quickly, before the French army reaches us.”

“I will,” she said. “Of course I will.” She tucked the card into her reticule. In truth, tomorrow she would have to send him word that she could not come with him, and beg him to return home, for his own safety. If he got hurt on her account, she could never forgive herself.

Perhaps once Victoire de Laurent was dealt with, she could come home to England. And see about that lovely little house on his estate. And those afternoons talking about books.

If only Sarah had lived . . .

“You must excuse me now,” she told him, trying to hold on to some thread of a courtesan’s sophistication. “I have neglected Don Andrés shamefully.”

Mr. Rapson—
John—
grimaced. “Please, Sarah. You have no more need of men like him. Stay alone tonight. What is it Hamlet said?
Assume a virtue if you have it not
.” His gaze touched briefly on her gaudy gown again. “Better still, leave with me right now. There can be nothing from this life you need to take with you. Leave all that empty frippery behind right now.”

His words made her heart swell painfully against her ribs. “Oh, John. I
cannot
. At least, I cannot come tonight. You must accept that.”

“Then come to the address on that card at first light, and we can be on a ship to England before the sun is high. I beg you, Sarah. Let me take you home again.”

“I will think about it,” she said. “I promise I will.” And, with her whole chest aching, she slipped away as quickly as she could before she began blubbering and gave everything away.

Chapter Nineteen

Don Andrés was nowhere to be found, nor was the duc du Bourge. Rachel searched room after room, stumbling upon scenes of wanton abandonment in nearly every alcove, on every couch. The lords and ladies of Vigo seemed determined to live this night as though it were their last.

Her footman bodyguard had surely lost track of her in the crowd, but she couldn’t afford to look for him. Time was too short.

And then as she made her way into a small, unlit study on the ground floor, she stopped in her tracks.

A man stood in the shadows. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired. “Salomé,” he beckoned in a hoarse whisper. “Come quickly. You are in danger here.”

Du Bourge at last. His signet ring, with all its fat rubies, winked in the bit of moonlight that came through the window.

What on earth was the guest of honor doing hiding in such an obscure room? Fulfilling some command of his French masters, no doubt.

“Quickly!” he insisted, waving her towards him, and the rubies winked faster. “You must come now.”

Rachel forced herself to step closer.

Du Bourge was on her in three strides, and she braced herself for the blow of a weapon, but instead he wrapped her in his arms and pressed a passionate kiss to her lips. “
Chère Salomé, mon vrai amour
,” he declared when he came up for air. His fingertips stroked her temples with surprising tenderness, and it took all her discipline not to recoil from his embrace. “What are you doing mixed up in a business such as this?”

Before she could ask what business he meant, he pulled her towards the far corner of the room, beyond the last of the windows. He tapped at the wall there, and a baize door of the sort servants used clicked open.

Musty air buffeted them. Du Bourge pulled her into a narrow corridor behind the plastered, painted interior wall, with bare loam walls and exposed wood beams. A servants’ passageway.

There was no way to summon her guard or inform Sebastian or the Black Giant–she could not afford to lose du Bourge. So she steeled herself and followed him inside.

Du Bourge shut the door, closing them into the narrow, dim space, and as the bright candlelight vanished, her lungs closed in on themselves.

Something hissed—du Bourge lit another candle.

She locked her eyes on its glow.

Du Bourge set off down the passage, and the bobbing light seemed to draw and stretch black shapes upon the walls, which shrunk and elongated like creeping men in black robes.

Soon she caught sight of another door at the end of the corridor. Thankfully, du Bourge moved straight for it, and when he pulled it open, fresh night air gusted inward. They came out into a drab alleyway beside the house, the sort of place meant only for housemaids and delivery wagons.

At the moment, though, a glossy black carriage stood there, its velvet curtains drawn, with two handsome grays standing calmly in harness. The carriage door was partway open, a stepstool just beneath it. A footman stepped forward and held out his hand to help her up.

He looked vaguely familiar, but the light was too low to make out his face, and she could not place where she’d seen him before.

Clearly the footman did not expect her to object to entering the carriage. Whoever awaited her inside—whoever awaited Salomé—must be someone Sarah knew. But if du Bourge worked for the French, then the person inside must also be an agent of Napoleon’s. Not someone Sarah should have been in comfortable contact with.

“Go on,” urged du Bourge. “You must go. You know I would never see you come to harm.” His voice lacked confidence.

Her mind raced. Perhaps this had nothing to do with the Game at all. Perhaps it was an assignation. A lover Sarah had regularly entertained? But if so, why was the amorous du Bourge delivering her? And why had Sebastian not warned her of the possibility?

Was it an arrangement Sebastian wasn’t aware of?

Panic set her nerves and muscles vibrating again. That carriage could take her anywhere. She had no weapons. If she were carried off, Sebastian would have no idea where she’d gone.

The footman looked concerned. “Miss? Is everything all right, Miss?” She could hear the London streets in his voice.
English
, not French.

“Bien sur,” she assured the footman. “I am entirely at my ease.” Taking his white-gloved hand, she allowed him to help her up the steps into the coach.

The interior of the carriage was unlit save for a thin shaft of moonlight that struck her side only—she could be seen, but not see. The roar of blood in her ears left her half-deaf as well as blind.

The moment she entered, strong fingers grabbed at her forearm. She gasped. Pulled back instinctively, nearly tumbling back out the carriage door.

“What’s wrong with you?” A harsh male voice. An English voice. Aristocratic. The voice of an older man.

A hard lump formed in her throat. She steadied herself, made her frozen knees bend so she could take a seat. “Nothing is wrong. You startled me, that’s all.”

She wished desperately for more light.

“You’ve been here in Vigo for days, and haven’t sent word,” snapped the man. Not the tone of a lover, that much was instantly clear. This was the tone of a scolding employer.

So she gave the answer normally required by such men: “Forgive me, sir.”

A brief silence, perhaps a slight mollification. And then another harsh outburst. “Did you think you could hide? What game are you playing, girl?”

Cold fear pierced through her chest—all at once, she recognized the voice.

Lord Henry Walters
.

She could make out just enough of his outline now to confirm that his hair was gray, his form lean. He was holding something long across his knees. A cane? A
sword
?

Her blood throbbed.

Breathe. If he meant to kill you, he’d have done it already
.

She remembered the strange, demanding look he’d given her back in London at Lady Barham’s. He’d
known
Sarah. Oh, God—Sebastian knew nothing of this. What had Sarah got herself into before she died?

There was no choice now but to act as though she already knew.

“I do not play games,” she said.

A scoffing breath. “You are nothing but games,
mademoiselle
. I wonder if anything real exists beneath the surface of a creature like you.”

“My position is complicated, you know that.” Surely, that was guaranteed to be true.

“Explain yourself. You’ve had it more than four months.”

Had
it
?

What on earth had Sarah had? Good God, could he mean Victoire’s notebook?

And four months? That was not long before Sarah’s death. Surely not a coincidence.

In any case, it gave her the bluff she needed. “I was . . .
injured
,” she said. “Badly.”

A pause. Suspicious, but considering. “By de Laurent?”

“Yes.”

“So those rumors were true. She tried to kill you. And you
survived
? Unusually careless of her.” A stretch of silence suggested he was giving her a long, hard look.

A terrible thought hit her: if she was interpreting what Lord Henry said correctly, Sarah had the notebook more than a month before her death. And she hadn’t told Sebastian about it—he’d only learned of its existence from Victoire de Laurent herself, on the night Sarah died. Clearly, Sarah hadn’t told him of her contact with Lord Henry either, or that evening at Lady Barham’s party would have gone very differently.

Sarah had kept critical secrets from her partner. Sarah had been lying to him.
Why
?

“You seemed hale enough when we met in London,” said Lord Henry sharply. “Explain why you did not send me a message there. If you cross me, girl—whatever else you may have heard of me, I do not tolerate disloyalty.”

Had Lord Henry been the one to
give
the notebook to Sarah? To have her break the cipher it was written in?

That made no sense. If he worked for the French, why would he need the cipher broken in the first place? And why would he put such a thing deliberately into an English spy’s hands?

But she could think of no other reason he would want Sarah’s services.

“The task is difficult,” she managed to say. “You must trust me, my lord. You must give me time.”

“Hawkesbridge does not suspect?”

Her heart stuttered. How much did Lord Henry know about the work Sarah and Sebastian did together?

And who would have told him? Sarah herself?

Cleary, Lord Henry ordered her to conceal what she was doing from her partner.

Was this somehow an act of treason? Sarah, a
traitor
?

Regardless, only one answer could be given. “He does not suspect,” she said carefully. “But the marquess was with me almost always. That made things more difficult.”