The Secrets of a Scoundrel (24 page)

Chapter 18

A
t about the same time Nick had been brought back unconscious to La Maison de Maxime, Gin was sitting tensely, bound, gagged, and blindfolded, in Limarque’s black carriage, speeding through the streets of Paris.

She had no idea where he was taking her, but every time the carriage jolted over uneven streets and broken cobblestones, she collided into Limarque, who was seated much too close beside her.

To her chagrin, he chose to take these accidental bumps as an invitation to touch her. He made free with her person in the most outrageous manner; the gag in her mouth muffled her curses.

Wrists tied before her, she tried to push him away, but he enjoyed that too much. Enjoyed her anger and her fear. He was simply making sport of her, having rendered her powerless.

Maybe he could tell somehow that this was the thing she hated most—being under another human being’s complete control. Indeed, if she was honest, that was the very reason she had landed in this situation.

Her own stubborn secrecy.

Refusing to admit her mistake. Refusing to share power in the form of information. Determined to stay in control of the mission, she had opted not to tell Nick her father’s secret days ago, when she should have.

And now she might have got him killed.

Guilt crashed through her, flaming down every nerve ending, overriding even her terror.
This is all my fault. How could I let him go into that hotel without his knowing the whole story?
It had been utterly immoral of her. She saw that now.
Please, God, let him live.

It was bad enough she had driven her husband off to his death. The thought that she might have got Nick killed, too, was more torment than she could bear.

She despaired of ever knowing why she was so bloody proud, ornery, and difficult. Her mother used to say it was because of her red hair. She just never could see why she should have to do what anybody said, especially a man.

Unless perhaps he proved himself.

What arrogance! Judging everyone like that, as if she were the standard of all knowledge.

Truly, she had been too proud—but now came Simon Limarque, a devil sent to humble her and put her in her place. Never had any man dared to treat her so much like an object, demeaning her and savoring it.

He was laughing at her fury, taunting her, asking did she like this, did she like that as he touched her neck and face and chest in the most annoying fashion. When she succeeded in elbowing him forcefully in the stomach, he quit laughing and pinned her to the seat with a whispered threat of something worse.

Gin went motionless, feigning submission, even as she longed to cut his throat.

Satisfied with her rigid stillness, he finally got off her, sitting upright again.

Her heart pounded with rage.

But as disgusted as she was with him, even more so, she was in a panic over Nick. Vicious blows to the head like that could kill a person or send them into a deathlike coma.

What if no one came along and found him in that alley?

How long would he lie there, bleeding and unconscious?

In this cold, damp chill of late November, he could catch his death quickly. She had to get back to him, help him.

Nothing mattered but that.

Unfortunately, as the carriage raced on, she was well aware that she could face some very unpleasant times ahead, herself. For she had no intention of telling Limarque any of the secrets in her father’s book.

She intended to handle it by lying through her teeth, but if he caught on, she would probably face torture.

Of course, she had realized that fact even before she had volunteered to go with them. No matter. It was worth it to have stopped them from pulling the trigger and finishing Nick off when he was defenseless, lying there unconscious.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to ponder her own best strategy for not getting murdered. The carriage slowed to a halt. The next thing she knew, they were getting out.

Limarque tossed her over his shoulder, piratelike. As he carried her several steps across some pavement, she tried to see around the edges of her blindfold, identify some nearby landmark to help her figure out where she was. Then she could feel him climbing up a couple of steps, and she could tell they went inside because the gusty wind suddenly stopped blowing her hair around.

A door slammed, quite close behind her, while, below, she could hear Limarque’s bootheels striking hardwood floors.

“Put me down!” she insisted, her words muffled by the gag. Her attempts to struggle against his hold only got her a clap on the rear end and another whispered threat of an intimate act of violence.

Then Limarque’s gait changed. “We’re on a staircase. Keep squirming like that, and I could drop you. Do you want to fall and break your neck? No? Then hold still.”

Another door creaked ahead of them.

She heard a low-toned, clipped exchange between the leader and his underlings, then the door slammed.

“Shut the blinds,” he ordered someone.

She heard the
snick
of wooden shutters clicking closed. Then Limarque bent down to spill her off his shoulder onto a hard wooden chair beside a desk.

A moment later, the blindfold slipped away from her eyes. Hands still bound before her, Gin blinked rapidly and looked around at the plain, sparse room.

Directly in front of her, Limarque loomed, studying her, arms folded across his chest.

He passed behind her and removed the gag from her mouth, then he walked away to confer with his men across the room.

Gin struggled to get her bearings. After a brief exchange of information, he nodded their dismissal.

The broken-nose man trudged out among the others, probably to see a doctor. Gin glowered at him in hatred as he left.

Limarque closed the door after his men and locked it, then returned. Opening a desk drawer, he pulled out a small notepad and pencil. “Now then. If you’re ready to get started, madame.” He pushed her chair in for her, bringing it snugly to the desk, then he pulled the candle toward her. “Time to get to work.” Slipping her father’s journal out of his waistcoat, he set it on the desk before her. “Go on. Impress me.”

Gin stared down at it, heart pounding.

“Well? What are you waiting for? You said you know the code. So start deciphering.” He grasped her chin and roughly lifted her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I don’t allow women to make a fool of me. I spared your lover in exchange for these secrets, and I must warn you, I’m all out of mercy for today. So, no games. Start writing—and make it worth my while.” He released her face.

Gin swallowed hard. “Would you untie my hands, please? How am I supposed to write like this?”

“You’ll manage.”

She scowled at him, gingerly picking up the pencil. It was awkward with her wrists bound, but not impossible.
Deceive, delay, confuse.
Revealing the true contents of her father’s book was, of course, out of the question.
I’ll just make something up
.
He has no way of verifying it, after all,
she thought.
I’ll make him think I’m cooperating, win his trust, and keep my eyes open for any chance to escape.

Fortunately, she knew enough about codes at least to keep him guessing for a while. “I’ll need a Bible. It has to be the original King James—the Protestant Bible. In English,” she added pointedly.

Her expectation that this would send her French Catholic captor off on a fool’s errand was thwarted as he smiled.

Damn, why hadn’t she asked for something more exotic. But this was the most believable source code for a book cipher, as it was so common. Easy for any British spy in the field to get his hands on, according to her father.

Limarque obviously knew his business. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite so easy to fool. At once, he pulled a King James Bible off the bottom shelf of a cluttered bookcase against the wall and brought it to her.

When he dropped it on the desk with a thump, she managed a taut nod, mentally cursing. “Thank you.”

“So, it’s a book cipher, then.”

“No, it merely starts that way.” Better think of something fast.
Right.

Pulling the pad of paper over to her, she began drawing crisscross lines as for a game of tic-tac-toe. Below it, she drew a large X, then she started filling in the letters.

Limarque glanced over her shoulder. “Book cipher mixed with the old Masonic code? Interesting.”

“Just be glad I didn’t require a Caesar wheel.”

“I hate a cipher wheel, myself,” he remarked. “It’s not very practical in the field.”

She arched a brow at him, full of questions that she opted not to ask.

Limarque began to pace back and forth across the room, waiting for her to produce results. “So, who are you, anyway?”

“No one of any consequence,” she replied absently as she worked. “Could I have more light, please? It’s too dark in here with the blinds closed.”

“Of course.” Instead of opening the shutters and letting her look out the window, which might tell her where they were, Limarque lit a match off the low fire in the hearth and brought it over to the nearby candle.

She nodded her thanks. “Now could I have a penknife? The pencil’s point is dull.”

He gave her a knowing smirk. “Do you take me for an idiot? If you are not going to uphold your end of our bargain, I’ve got no particular reason to leave you alive.”

“You don’t have to threaten me,” she retorted. “This book is full complex code! It’s going to take some time.”

“You have an hour . . .” He turned over an hourglass on the mantel. “To produce three pieces of information from this book I can verify.”

She hid her terror at this challenge. “Any specific area of interest?”

He shrugged. “Give me a secret about the Order’s dealings with the Truveau family. I used to work for the count. That way I’ll know if it’s true.”

“That’s not fair! My life depends on whether or not the information in this book is true? That’s ridiculous! I cannot even say for sure if this book is authentic! Just because I was going to sell it doesn’t mean I can vouch for its accuracy. For all I know, it could be a hoax!”

“John Carr said it was absolutely real.”

She snorted. “Carr would have said anything to get your money,
monsieur.
That blackguard stole it from me. I came to France to get it back.”

“Lot of trouble to go to for something you claim is a fake,” he drawled.

“It’s the principle of it. It’s mine. He took it. But I don’t know for certain if it’s real or not! I’m not prepared to stake my life on it.”

“I’m afraid you already did, madame. What was that name he called you? Virginia?”

She nodded reluctantly, hating that he knew even that much about her. There weren’t many Virginias running around in London. Her mother had named her after Virgil. It wouldn’t be too difficult to track.

“How did you come by this thing, anyway?”

“I stole it,” she mumbled. “I’m a thief. Carr and I work together.”

“Who’d you steal it from?”

“Some eccentric old man in London, a recluse. We broke in when he was not at home and cleaned out his valuables. When I glimpsed this old journal on his nightstand and saw the insignia on the back of it, I had an inkling of its significance. The Order of St. Michael the Archangel had just been exposed in all the London papers. Shocking, really, to hear that something like that had existed since the Crusades. Anyway, I realized the senile eccentric was probably an old, broken-down Order agent. He’s dead now, anyway. Natural causes. I kept the book and became obsessed, I suppose, with figuring it out. I’ve always had rather a passion for puzzles of the mind. Chess, mathematics.”

“Bluestocking, eh?”

She shrugged.

Limarque sat down nearby and continued staring at her. “Well, best crack on, then, as you English say, my little thief. Time is wasting.”

Gin saw in relief that he seemed to buy her story. But, heart pounding, she felt like she was damned either way. She did not want to give him real information from her father’s journal, but she had no doubt this ruthless man would kill her if he decided she was lying.

“Very well,” she forced out in a strangled tone. She decided to give him something true out of the journal in the interests of survival, but it would be dated information. Secrets that could no longer do any active harm. “As you wish. The Truveau family. I believe I’ve come across that name in here before . . .”

He waited impatiently while she flipped through the pages, which, when decoded, were arranged alphabetically by topic. One just had to know where to look.

Rather than putting the topic heading in the obvious place, in the top outer corners of the page, Virgil had listed it on the bottom line, all the way to the right, next to the binding.

On every page of the journal, the letters were carefully grouped into neat blocks of five, alternating with similar groupings of numbers. Her father had been very thorough. There was a whole section on the great Promethean families. Given that she knew the book well and had used it often, she had a fair idea of where to turn.

She scanned down to the bottom line and furtively got to work decoding the subject heading working off her greatest secret, the one they would have killed her for. The keyword:
Serpentine.

Of course Virgil had chosen a keyword that had special meaning between the two of them. It had been there, one sunny day, at age thirteen, on the banks of the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park that her mother had first introduced her to the gruff, braw Scotsman who was her natural father.

They had become instant friends.

Her heart ached with missing him as she finally found the pages dealing with the Truveau clan. In this situation, her greatest hope was to make him proud.

“Well? What have you got? I’m done waiting,” Limarque snapped after a quarter hour.

She cringed away from him slightly as he stomped toward her. “Um . . . there’s a story in here about something that happened in 1802.”

He looked disappointed by the age of the information, but he nodded nonetheless. “Go on. I worked for him then.”