Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 04]

by Seducing the Spy

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  She could die. No, worse, she could die before she found Wyndham, and then Wyndham would die.

  That would definitely be the worst thing that could happen.

  She topped the hill, some distance from the madman intent on the scene below.

  “One, two, three, four,” he said to himself with a chilling cackle. “Four, three, two, one . . .”

  Alicia stationed herself behind a tree trunk and got her bearings. As it had been when she was a girl, the panorama of Lord Cross’s celebration spread out before her like a golden picnic. She could clearly see the first table where Julia, Willa and Olivia sat. She could also see the giant dessert tray, laid before the Prince Regent—with Alberta’s brilliant hair and buxom displacement of fruit gaining a bit too much of his majesty’s attention.

  Alicia felt the damp of the night air sinking into her clothing and her bones. The estate smelled of chill and damp no longer held at bay by the greenery.

  Alicia shivered. “This,” she muttered to herself, “is a very bad idea.” She turned on her heel.

  It slipped in the muck, making her flail wildly for a moment to keep from doing a facer in the mud. When she righted herself, the man was standing only a few yards away. He was horribly scarred. Great spreading purple lines, half healed, ravaged his face. There was no telling what he’d looked like before, but now he most surely looked like a nightmare. In addition, his knife was much larger than hers.

  “Good evening, pretty whore.”

  She would remember that voice for the rest of her life. It was him, the man in the garden. Remembering how his cruelty had twisted her own thoughts about, Alicia stepped back.

  “I foolishly thought I could stop you. I have changed my mind,” she said.

  The man nodded politely. “As you wish. I shall simply kill you outright then.”

  He meant it too. She could see it in the flat depthless gray of his eyes. Truly, those eyes were more frightening than any hideous scarring could be. She had the feeling that he’d been a monster long before he’d been wounded.

  And now she was alone with the monster. Her belly crawled at the way he would soon speak to her, the way he could see right into her. Why had she thought herself a match for the monster?

  “You are an incredibly stupid woman, did you know that?”

  At moment, it was all Alicia could not to nod her head in agreement. The smooth power of the viper’s voice poisoned her from within.

  He turned to gaze back over the grand spectacle being enacted before them. “They call themselves by predators’ names, did you know that? Your precious Royal Four—the Cobra, the Lion, the Fox and the Falcon.” He laughed, a crazed gravelly sound that made Alicia’s skin tingle with fear. “I find I prefer creatures like humans.” He looked at her. “Man is a clever beast—for all the cleverest beasts are the one who are both hunter and hunted.”

  Man. It was so very typical. Alicia felt her temper rise, with gratitude and fear combined, because right now wasn’t the best time to become peppery with the man. “Then I must be twice as clever as you—” Oh, heavens, there went her mouth again. “For I am a woman and my kind has been hunted since the beginning of time.” Now she was good and fiery. “I left my father and my lover behind because I will not allow a man to dictate what I think of myself. I am not about to start allowing it from an ugly, rotting, scarecrow of a man!”

  “That wasn’t nice.”

  She frowned. “I never claimed to be nice. That’s merely an assumption that people make because I’m pretty.”

  A nonsmile curled the edge of his scarred lip. “A dangerous assumption I won’t make again, I assure you.”

  “Well, you’re a fast learner, at least. Do try to retain this—we are not going to allow you to kill them.”

  The chilling grimace grew into a self-satisfied sneer. “Oh, but I already have.”

  Her belly went to ice. Then—it isn’t true.

  She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did, all the way to her very bones. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Not yet, you haven’t.”

  He didn’t so much react as he did carefully not react. Too carefully. She tilted her head. “Ah. You have secured them somewhere imminently dangerous.”

  Again he only blinked slowly. “They are quite destroyed, believe me. The Quatre Royale are no more.”

  The Quatre Royale. Really, how juvenile.

  She slowly backed a step away. If the four men were helpless—oh, God, Stanton!—where could this maniac have put them that would soon be “destroyed”? Something that would soon fill with water, or empty of air, or—

  Or burn.

  Mr. Forsythe’s Spectacle of Fire.

  It was perfect and deadly and awful. “You evil bastard.”

  He grimaced a torn smile. It was hideous. “I never claimed to be nice. That’s an assumption people make because I’m pretty.”

  Then before she could react or even blink, he slipped the knife into her side. The blade slid past wool and silk to reside icy cold in her belly. He stepped back, leaving the hilt jutting from her waist like a hook to hang his hat.

  “Gut wounds take a while to kill. I could have stabbed you through the heart,” he said conversationally, tapping himself on the chest. “There is a spot here, just between the rib bones, where the knife slides unswervingly into the heart itself and death is instantaneous. It would have been more merciful, ’tis true—but I find my capacity for mercy lately strained. I shall enjoy thinking of your endless and excruciating demise, slowly spilling your blood on the hillside, watching him burn, helpless to save your lover from his own fiery end.”

  Alicia moved nearly as quickly as he had. Somehow she pulled the horror from her flesh and thrust it deeply into his chest. “Thank you for the knife,” she gasped. “And the explicit instruction.”

  Then, as the heat of her own blood began to flow down her side, she sagged against a wave of dizziness. She was barely aware of the scarred man staring stupidly down at the hilt jutting from his own chest, the handle jumping slightly in rhythm with the fading beat of his dying heart.

  He looked up at Alicia. She tried to remain on her feet, preparing herself for another blow and wondering dully how many times the knife would change hands before one or both of them died.

  Then the mad, ruthless gleam in his eyes flickered out like a used-up candle and his gray eyes went flat and dead.

  It was awful. Even as he fell lifelessly to sprawl at her feet, Alicia wanted to take it back. Not because he deserved to live, but because she couldn’t bear to be the one to make someone die. To kill.

  And yet she had, without pausing for thought. A rasping sob escaped her throat. “You ought to have . . . to have listened to me, you evil bastard. I told . . . told you I wasn’t nice!”

  Stanton couldn’t see a thing. The curtain of night had ended the hypnotic play of light through the shrinking planks. He could sense Greenleigh’s growing rage, and Marcus’s circling worry. He could imagine Reardon’s fear for his lady—for he was feeling some of that himself.

  “I hear something coming closer,” Reardon said. “It sounds like some sort of parade.”

  Stanton rolled over, nearly pulling one arm from its socket, to peer though the chinks in the wall. “It’s looks like a parade. There are several carriages and it looks like—” He peered closer. “Is that a cannon?”

  Reardon sighed. “Stanton, I can hardly come over to confirm it.”

  Marcus nodded. “It’s a cannon. Perhaps we can convince them to shoot the door in.”

  Dane grunted. “Oh, yes. I can see us surviving that one nicely.”

  Marcus began to call out. “Oy! Oy, we’re in here! Halloo!”

  Stanton closed his eyes, took a breath, and began to shout nonsense as well. Their voices had not returned, but perhaps they could get someone’s attention with all four voices.

  The approaching fanfare drowned them out.

  “I hate horns,”
Marcus muttered. “What’s a fellow to do against a phalanx of horns!”

  Dane chewed his lip. “You realize that they are going to eventually light this thing on fire and we’re all going to die.”

  “I dare say I can think of more cheerful things, but no, it doesn’t look good for us now.”

  Stanton had to agree. Tied, too hoarse to be heard, with fireworks scheduled. The worst of it was that he was leaving Alicia when he’d just found her—

  When he’d just found himself.

  33

  If the journey to Cross’s party had been uphill instead of down, Alicia would not have made it. As it was, she was grateful every time she fell and rolled, for those were steps she need not take. Rising from her last jolting fall, she found herself nearly on the edge of the vast lawn. She felt very strange. Although she kept her hand instinctively pressed hard to her side, she felt almost nothing from the wound. Her most pressing worry was the way her vision seemed to shift from blurred to clear, and how her knees tended to simply give way.

  Her brain felt as if a hundred bees were trapped inside, their droning buzz the only thing she could hear.

  She skirted the seated guests and the small crowd of privileged servants who were allowed to sit on blankets to see the show. She tried to walk straight to the miniature castle, but there were ropes raised to keep back the spectators and burly footmen to police them.

  One stopped her and spoke to her. She couldn’t hear him for the bees. She tried to tell him that there were men inside the castle. He frowned and shook his head, speaking again. She tried to push past him, but he respectfully held her back and redirected her toward the seated guests.

  She was so weary. She longed to lie down, directly on the grass, and let the bees fade.

  Stanton.

  He was trapped. He would burn.

  Alicia caught sight of George, leaning back in his thronelike chair, gazing eagerly toward the castle. Oh, God. The Spectacle was about to begin. There was no one to stop them from lighting it. Forsythe might have, but he was lying broken in the ravine.

  One thought made it through the bees—only George could stop the lighting of the rockets. No one else would dare defy the prince.

  Except Julia. Alicia dully scanned the seated guests to find Julia, Willa and Olivia at the far end of the table. That made up her mind. George was closer. Closer was good.

  “Well, lads, this might just be it.”

  Stanton shut his eyes against Dane’s hoarse, regretful words. “We cannot die here,” he said. “I refuse to be bested by a fevered madman and a Chinese rocket.”

  Reardon nodded. “That is annoying, I admit.”

  Marcus was still gazing out through the cracks. “I cannot believe that Forsythe would not make a final check of this—” He stopped and gazed at the others. “Right. He already has Forsythe then.”

  “Didn’t that work out nicely for him?” Reardon leaned his head back upon his post. “I suppose we must be grateful that the women are unharmed.” He turned to Stanton. “You can still see Willa, can’t you?”

  Stanton didn’t want to look again, but Reardon so quietly, desperately wanted to know. Stanton rolled to press his face to the crack in the planks that let him see the main table of guests. Lady Reardon was indeed still seated next to Lady Dryden and Lady Greenleigh. Stanton punished himself— perhaps ‘later’ was now?—by letting his gaze trail down to where Alicia lay spread before the ravening hordes as a tempting dessert. She must have had a good reason, but it pained him to see her brought so low. She looked like a courtesan, with her brilliant hair spread across the table and her bountiful figure becoming more exposed by the moment. It seemed the young men of the party had developed a sudden fondness for fruit.

  He had indeed brought her low, just as the Chimera had accused him. She would not be out there now, subject to such degradation, if not for him.

  He closed his eyes against the regret, then forced himself to hide no longer. When he focused again on the main table, he saw her walking toward the prince, her dark gown making her all but invisible in the flickering torch light—

  Dark gown? He looked back down the table, to where the red-haired dessert lay. Then he watched as Alicia—for it truly was Alicia, it was her walk, it was the very tilt of her head—walked slowly up the table.

  “Gentlemen, something interesting is going on,” he said.

  Alicia staggered, nearly fell. Alarm swept him. The way she pressed one hand to her side, her pallor, her disjointed gaze—she was injured!

  “Alicia!” Damn his useless voice! “Alicia!”

  As Alicia staggered to the Prince Regent’s place at the grand table, she caught sight of her sister displayed upon the table as a pagan feast for the eyes. Fruit and delicacies hid the most pertinent parts of Alberta’s anatomy, and the feathered mask was elaborate enough to cause confusion between them—or rather, it would have been if she herself weren’t present.

  Alberta caught her gaze and green eyes widened behind the intricate feathered eyeholes. Alberta clapped one hand over her exposed mouth, dislodging some of the more essential piles of grapes covering her right breast. “Eep!”

  Alicia spared her sister a single apologetic look. Alberta didn’t deserve the notoriety that would soon be hers, but reputations weighed little against lives.

  Stanton’s life.

  She wavered, staggered, her vision blurring and her head feeling light and buzzing, as if it were about to be carried off her shoulders by a military formation of brightly striped bees. She put one hand on the table and breathed slowly.

  Alberta gazed up at her, frozen with alarm. “There’s a ruckus on the way, Bertie,” Alicia whispered. “You might want to find a spot under the table.” She looked down at the expanse of creamy exposed flesh and grimaced in apology again. “And a very large napkin.”

  Her sister uncovered her lips to say something to her, but Alicia’s attention was drawn by the sight of George standing and raising his hands for silence.

  The show was about to begin.

  Alicia pushed away from the table and took the last few steps on legs she could scarcely feel. Behind her, she heard a gasp of alarm as someone noticed the large smear of blood she had left behind on the snowy table linens. “Sorry ’bout that,” Alicia mumbled. “Never could leave the table like a lady.”

  Although she was sure she still moved in the proper direction, George was beginning to shrink in her vision. Considering George’s considerable girth, that took some doing . . .

  She shook her head sharply. The Prince Regent was about to start the fireworks. Once the first rocket was lighted, there would be no stopping the conflagration until nothing remained by the ashes of the display—

  And four charred bodies.

  Stanton.

  She made it to the center of the long table just as George raised his hand to signal the lighting crew.

  “No!”

  The buzz of excitement faded at just that instant and Alicia’s voice rang loudly across the lawn. One of the Royal Guard stepped forward, but George waved him back. “Let her be.” Then he leaned forward to gaze down the table to where Alberta lay like a harvest feast of the eyes. “I cannot wait to hear this,” George said with smile as he looked back up at Alicia. Or rather, a point rather lower than her face.

  “Your highness—they’re trapped. They’re inside—”

  He wasn’t even listening. Men and their breast fixation. Alicia was trembling with weakness, likely bleeding to death, and trying to save four lives. George was aware of none of this because he was looking at her bosom.

  Alicia watched with some surprise as her right hand flashed out to slap the Prince Regent across the face. “Don’t be such an infant!” she scolded with surprising force. “Listen!”

  The crowd was shocked into complete silence. At that moment, she heard her name, faint and hoarse and far away.

  Stanton.

  George heard it as well, as did all the guests. All gazes went to the
castle. The two men who stood ready to light the long fuses of the first rockets with torches yanked their flames back and away.

  Alicia fell to her elbows on the table as her knees gave way. “They’re inside. They’re trapped inside . . .”

  It was over. People were running toward the castle even now.

  Alicia saw Julia, Willa, and Olivia pick up their skirts and race across the long stretch of lawn. She wanted to run but it was all she could do to straighten. The thought of walking all the way back around the long table seemed impossible, so she dropped to her knees and crawled beneath.

  Looking to her left, she saw Alberta had done the same.

  And apparently, so had young Lord Farrington, who seemed to have no objection to squashed fruit all over his weskit. Alicia hesitated long enough to be sure that Alberta was a willing—nay, eager—participant, then continued out the other side. Let the future come as it may. Christopher didn’t deserve Bertie anyway.

  At last, she was stumbling down the great lawn, her eyes casting about for any sign of Stanton. She saw Lord Green-leigh sweep Olivia into his arms. She saw Lord Reardon pull Willa closer than close. She saw Julia swat Marcus irritably on the chest before she dissolved into oceans of tears in his embrace.

  She saw Stanton standing alone, looking all around him. Her heart gave way to something deep and painful and overwhelming, just to see him there, alive. She stopped, unable to continue, and called his name. He made no sign of hearing her above the crowd. She waved to him. He didn’t see her.

  Then again, he never had.

  The buzzing returned, louder than before. It stole her breath and her will to keep standing. She felt herself falling but there was no way to stop the darkness.

  She didn’t even feel Stanton’s strong arms come about her as she slipped away.

  34

  Alicia awoke in her bedchamber in Lord Cross’s manor. For some reason that surprised her. Had she expected to be somewhere else altogether—like dead, perhaps?