To Wed a Scandalous Spy (35 page)

Liverpool looked sour. "I don't see any way out of it."

"What about Derryton?" Nathaniel looked worried. Willa started to worry, too. Lord Liverpool didn't look like he thought any of this was the slightest bit amusing.

"I don't really see how it matters," Willa protested. "After all, the Quatre Royale died out in my grandfather's time."

"Oh, sure," Myrtle agreed. "Everyone knows that."

"Well, then, if those are the facts generally known…" Nathaniel spread his hands.

Liverpool seemed more curious. "This book said the Royal Four died out. Are you sure?"

"Well, yes. The last entry read that none of the four had worthy protégés and that they had no intention of passing the burden of responsibility onto such 'weak and narrow shoulders.' " Willa's head ached. She'd been quoting to them for the past half hour. "Wouldn't you like to simply read it for yourselves?"

Nathaniel sat up. "It's here? In Reardon House?"

Willa nodded. "It's on the shelf in my room." She looked at Myrtle. "Isn't it?"

Myrtle looked thoughtful. "Have I returned it to you yet? I cannot recall."

Nathaniel shooed them off. "Both of you, go. Now."

"Wait." Liverpool turned to Willa. "Where did you get it?"

Willa blinked. "From my parents' collection of books."

"And they've passed on." Liverpool scowled. "Damn. We'll never know then."

Willa opened her mouth to speak, but Liverpool gestured sharply. "Go."

When they were gone, Liverpool let loose, as Nathanial had known he was longing to. "It has always been purely oral tradition! Those are the rules! What bloody idiot put down the whole workings of the Four on paper?"

"One with a dreadful protégé, I suppose." Nathaniel shrugged. "He was probably afraid he was going to die and it would all be lost."

Liverpool shuddered. "Go, fetch that book before I pop a blood vessel."

Nathaniel didn't laugh. He was very sure Liverpool wasn't joking. He nodded and left the room.

His and Willa's bedchambers were at the far back of the house, for he had thought she would appreciate the garden view. He ambled toward their chambers, in no hurry to face Liverpool again soon. The loss of secrecy was tragic, although Nathaniel suspected it was more containable that they realized, but his heart was on wings.

She's mine. I'm keeping
—

There came a powerful
thud
and a shriek, quickly broken off.

"Willa!" He ran to the bedchamber, but the door was locked. "Willa! Are you all right?"

«
^
»

Willa gazed at the barrel of the pistol held in a stranger's hand. Myrtle lay where she had fallen when the intruder had thrown her aside. He'd rapped the woman sharply on the temple with the weapon that he now aimed at Willa's heart.

"Answer him," the man whispered. "Tell him you saw a mouse."

Willa tried to swallow, but her throat was dry as dust. She cleared her throat. "I'm fine, Nathaniel," she called out. " 'Twas only a mouse."

She heard a relieved chuckle from the other side of the door. "Really? What kind is he?"

Willa glued her eyes to the pistol, willing herself to give nothing away. "How would I know? I hate nasty little furry things!"

There was a pause. "I see."

Please, Nathaniel, please listen to me!

"If you're all right, then I'll be off to my club," Nathaniel said easily. "Don't expect me for dinner."

"All right, Nathaniel."

She heard the footsteps leaving the vicinity of the door and closed her eyes. She hadn't known how he would react to her signal. He might well have burst through the door and been taken down by a bullet.

The intruder sneered at her over his pistol. Willa decided that calling him a mouse was an insult to rodents everywhere. Yet the nasty young man would likely be considered a handsome enough fellow, were he not a bit worse for wear. His once fine clothing was stained and worn and his hair hung stringy before his eyes. Despite that, there was something familiar about him to Willa.

Perhaps if her heart were not pounding like a runaway horse she would recall where she had seen him, or someone very like him, before.

"So he loves you little, just as the gossip inferred," the fellow said with a nasty laugh. "I heard that you felled him with a stone as he rode by you."

Despite her fear, Willa was nonplussed. Even the villains knew her story? "Someone ought to shut their gob," she muttered.

"That someone is you," snapped the man. "Now tell me where the bloody book is!"

"Of course," Willa sighed. "That's all anyone wants, isn't it? The bloody book." She folded her arms to hide the trembling in her hands. "Well, I don't have it."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Oh yes, you do. I heard you and the old hen arguing about it as you came down the hall."

Drat. She had been speaking loudly, out of courtesy for Myrtle's hearing. Oh, dear. Myrtle still hadn't moved a bit. Willa felt sick. If this rotter had killed Myrtle—

"The book!" The fellow stepped closer. Willa quickly stepped back.

"I tell you, it isn't here! Not in this room." Her stomach churned with cold fear. Nathaniel had walked away from her—yet he'd said he was off to his club, even while Lord Liverpool remained downstairs. Surely that meant he'd understood, hadn't it? He would come. She merely had to keep this wicked fellow talking until—but what if something happened to Nathaniel?

Willa would rather die herself than have anything happen to Nathaniel. Yet she didn't want to die. She wanted to live. Now. Here, with Nathaniel.

Just when she was the closest to achieving that dream this… this
man
showed up to ruin everything! Willa was terrified beyond description, but she was infuriated even more.

He raised the pistol to aim casually at her face. Willa was certain she was due to vomit at any moment. "I have forever, you know," he said silkily. "Nowhere to go now, not unless I have that book. So why don't we pass the time while you think about it?" He leered at her in what was surely meant to be a threatening way.

Fortunately, that was the least of Willa's fears. She snorted. "Not if you value your life, you won't." She didn't bother explaining the jinx. Let the rotter find out the hard way. "Who are you?" If she was going to be killed, she wanted to know by whom.

The man only smirked. "You never saw me coming, did you?"

Willa thought about it. "Well, yes, we did, actually. You've been tracking me across England, desperately trying to obtain my grandfather's diary. I must say, you are incompetent."

"Enough!" hissed the man. He was pale and his hands were shaking. He also looked furious that she had spoiled what she assumed was to have been his moment of surprising revelation.

"You probably even put Sir Foster up to burning down Reardon House," she muttered.

"Shut up!" the man said in a restrained shriek.

Oh dear. She was getting to him. That did happen. Men would make such open-ended statements of the obvious. She, in return, always felt compelled to point that out to them.

They didn't tend to take it well.

This gentleman was no exception. All his smug assurance was gone. Still holding the pistol on her, he began to back away from the door and the window. "Come," he said, gesturing to her.

"I most seriously doubt I will," Willa said gravely, then took two quick steps back. "I believe my chances of survival are much superior over here." She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm considering banking on you missing me."

Stunned outrage passed over the man's features. "You can't do that!"

Willa smiled slightly. "Is that even your own pistol?" She folded her arms. "You haven't practiced with it at all, have you? You thought all you had to do was sashay in and wave your pistol at a couple of ladies and the day would be won?" She shook her head pityingly. " 'Tisn't much of a plan, if you ask me."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" The man was nearly purple now. "You're simply Reardon's barefoot, illiterate broomstick bride!"

"Illiterate?
Illiterate
?" Willa had never been so insulted in all her days. She pulled off her right slipper and threw it at him. "I am
not
illiterate!"

He ducked slightly and the kid leather shoe slapped him harmlessly on the shoulder. Willa threw the next one much harder. This time, though he waved both arms to fend it off, it smacked him soundly on the head.

"You're mad," the man said, rubbing his head in wonder. "Stark staring mad."

"Yet you're a perfect example of sanity?" She grimaced and held out her hand. "Give me back my shoes. I wish to throw them at you again."

The man grabbed up her shoes and held them behind his back with his unarmed hand. "Not bloody likely!"

Then he seemed to become aware that he was treating a pair of lady's soft kid slippers like a serious threat. He flung them to the floor with a growl. His eyes black with fury, he raised the pistol to aim anew at her heart. "Bugger the book! Right now I only wish to kill you!"

No, she could quite seriously say that he was not going to miss her after all. The bullet in that gun was going to pierce her beating heart and kill her.

"Bastard," she whispered weakly.

"Absolutely," the man sneered, and pulled back the hammer with a click that sounded loud in the silent room.

Nathaniel casually walked away from Willa's bedchamber door, maintaining his unworried speed for several long steps. Then he ran to his own chambers and threw open the garden window.

Willa's window was several yards away. Nathaniel eyed the wall below it. The twisted trunks of old-growth ivy had supported the intruder climbing to her window but was now torn from the wall and unstable. From the look of the tangle of broken climber, the man had scarcely survived the climb himself.

Ladders? No, it would take too long to bring them.

Breaking down the door? Good idea in theory, but the doors of Reardon House were heavy oak. It might take several tries to bring it down. In that amount of time, Willa could be made most definitely dead.

The cold fear threatened to weaken him. He would not consider the possibility. Nothing could happen to Willa. "She's the lucky one, remember?" he whispered to himself.

Then the shadow of a decorative bit of stonework caught his eye. About three feet below Willa's and his windows ran a bit of a ledge, scarcely two inches wide. Another band ran about five feet higher, its line broken by the windows themselves.

Nathaniel ducked back into his bedchamber and tore through a drawer, looking for his creepers. As he pulled off his boots and tugged on the butter soft leather shoes with the India rubber soles that he had used for the odd break-in back in the days before he'd become the Cobra, Liverpool appeared in his doorway.

"Is there some reason why I am sitting down there with no diary in my hands?"

Nathaniel didn't bother to look at him. He moved to sit in his window embrasure. "Willa wants me to kill a mouse."

"And why is that my concern?"

"Willa loves mice." He swung his legs out into space.

"Dear God, man! What are you doing?"

"There's an intruder in Willa's room. I'm going to kill him, just as she requested."

"Why not use a key?"

"There are no keys in Reardon House. Only locks from the inside. It seemed clever at the time." Nathaniel began to drop himself out of the window.

"Wait!"

He looked up at Liverpool.

"You cannot mean to risk yourself!" Liverpool said sharply. "You know there is no Cobra candidate behind you! The Four must not be weakened now, not in wartime, especially not for the sake of some Northants tavern maid!"

Nathaniel didn't so much as frown, but Liverpool abruptly decided to take another tack. "Why not wait until less valuable reinforcements arrive? You are the Cobra. The Cobra does not go out on a ledge to be a hero. Think, man!"

For the barest instant, Nathaniel thought. He could wait, and he probably should—just as his father had always put cool logic before any emotional attachment. He nodded at Liverpool. "You're right. The Cobra would not go out on a narrow ledge for a woman." Then he tore off his frock coat and threw it into Liverpool's hands with a grim, deadly smile.

"But Nathaniel Stonewell would. Now go get those reinforcements." With that, he dropped himself out of the window.

The little hole in the gun barrel seemed a vast black void. Willa's knees went rather dramatically weak. She quite unwillingly staggered into a side table, sending the unlit candlestick thudding to the floor. The man started violently but, fortunately, not enough to pull the trigger.

It did confuse him so that he didn't see the shadow pass the window to one side of them. Willa didn't take her gaze from the intruder's face but simply sidled away from the window, forcing him to turn his back to it.

Directly behind the man, what looked like a single finger showed briefly in the window, silhouetted against the pearly gray afternoon outside.
One
? One what?

Then, two fingers. Ah, a counting. She readied herself.

Three.

Willa fell flat to the floor, throwing herself over Myrtle. The window burst in a shower of glass and Nathaniel leaped into the room. The door shuddered under the repeated slamming of large, determined bodies, then finally gave with a rending crash. Ren Porter rushed in accompanied by several footmen. The intruder didn't know who to aim at first.

Then it was too late to decide. He was down, disarmed, and being pummeled most properly by Nathaniel. Once the man was unconscious—oh, very well, a bit past unconscious—Nathaniel ceased and stood up, his chest heaving.

Willa ran to him and flung herself into his arms. He held her closer than close. "Well played, wildflower," he whispered, his chuckle hoarse with desperate worry. "I particularly liked the part where you demanded your shoes back to hurl them again."

She accepted another squeeze from him before she ran to Myrtle. Ren Porter was kneeling next to the fallen woman. Myrtle was rousing. "I'd say she'll have the headache of her life, but no permanent harm done." Ren grinned at Willa with lopsided apology. "I wouldn't recommend laudanum, however. It makes one do the damnedest things."