The Greatest Challenge of Them All

by Stephanie Laurens

  She tossed the pillow back on the bed and was about to turn away when a sliver of black wedged between the head of the bedframe and the wall caught her eye. She leaned over the bed and angled her head. A small, thin, black-covered notebook was jammed between the wooden post at the head of the bed and the side wall.

  Leaning on the bed, she reached for the notebook. The bed shifted, and the book slipped down, out of sight. “Damn!” She started to straighten, intending to pull the bed from the wall—

  Smash. Crash. BANG!

  An explosion flung her onto the bed.

  Whoosh!

  She gasped, and her breath stung. She coughed and rolled. She fetched up against the wall at the head of the bed and looked at the doorway.

  At a sheet of roaring flames.

  Then a figure—Drake with some garment flung over his head—rushed through the wall of fire.

  His face a mask of resolution lit by the flames, he seized her arm and hauled her to her feet.

  Drake realized he couldn’t carry her out; the doorway was too narrow. He released her, grabbed the hood of her cloak, and drew it up over her head. “Hold your cloak closed.” Thank God she’d kept it on; the heavy velvet folds would protect her delicate skin.

  “But”—she turned toward the head of the bed—“there’s something there, down in the corner. A notebook!”

  “Forget it! We don’t have time.” The crude bomb had been hurled through the window. He’d looked up in time to see the bottle sail over the table and the boxes and crash against the rear wall of the main room. Instantly, flames had engulfed the wall and spread to block the doorway to Badger’s tiny room. “Come on!” He managed to keep all panic from his voice, but they had only seconds to flee.

  He caught her hand, but she tugged back. Wide-eyed, over the horrendous crackling, she yelled, “The book!”

  “It’s not important!” Not as important as her life—or his.

  The roar of the flames was rising. Setting his jaw, he tightened his grip to unbreakable and yanked her behind him. “Hold on to your cloak!”

  She almost stumbled, but he hauled her upright, and in an escalating rush, raced them out through the wall of flames.

  They stumbled to a halt in the main room. Smoke was billowing and thickening; courtesy of their rush and their consequent need for breath, they both started coughing. Smoke stung their eyes. He swiped at his, then flung aside Chilburn’s greatcoat that he’d seized and used to cover his head.

  Smoke swirled around them.

  Bent over, his hands on his knees, he swung to assess the fire. It had got a lot worse since he’d plunged through to reach Louisa. The flames were devouring the entire rear wall and were spreading onto the ceiling and licking over the floor. The building was all old wood and plaster; it would burn like a bonfire.

  Louisa, too, turned and uttered a shocked gasp at the sight. Then she gave a choked squeal. “Oh God!”

  He glanced at her, then followed her gaze down to where flames were licking at the hem of her silk gown.

  Her velvet cloak had survived, but the fine silks had caught. Any second…

  He was on her in a heartbeat. He flicked back her cloak, buried his fingers in the frothing layers of her fanciful skirt, gripped, and wrenched.

  The skirts ripped and parted from the bodice.

  Working feverishly, he gathered what he hoped was the entire mass and flung the resulting, already-merrily-burning bundle away. A tumbling clump of gauzy silks, still in midair a bare yard distant, with a soft, sibilant whoosh, the material went up literally in a ball of flame.

  Horror-stricken, Louisa stared at the burning, blackening mass.

  Shaken to his soul, he grabbed her and turned her, his eyes raking her petticoats to see if they’d caught, but they hadn’t.

  Around them, the heat and smoke were intensifying, inexorably eating the air.

  “Come on!” He bundled her up in her cloak and, with his arm around her, propelled her to the door.

  At the last minute, he remembered and left her for a second to turn off the gas.

  Then he wrapped his arm around her, hauled open the door—and from behind him heard the sharper crackle as the fire fed on the fresh air. He thrust Louisa onto the landing, squeezed out beside her, and pulled the door shut.

  “Let me go first.” In case she fell—she was rubbing her eyes and coughing. He found her hand, gripped, and started down as fast as he dared in the enveloping dark.

  The air grew less smoky the lower they went, but even in the stairwell, the heat was building.

  He reached the tiny foyer before the outer door. He paused and half turned, and Louisa all but fell into his arms.

  He clutched her tight, locked her against him; over the rush of the flames and the sharp cracking of burning wood, he heard the rapid flutter of her breaths, felt the harried patter of her heart against his chest.

  He wasn’t thinking clearly. He couldn’t work out—couldn’t even guess—if any further danger might be waiting for them outside.

  But they had to get out.

  He found the knob of the outer door, hauled it open, and clutching her protectively against him, his head bent over hers, plunged out into the street.

  With long, swift strides, he carried her straight across the lane. An alley joined it a few yards closer to Long Acre; he swung into its mouth and paused. At full stretch, hyperalert, his senses informed him there was no one else close, that relatively speaking, they were safe. He forced himself to ease his hold and let her slide down until her slippers met the cobbles. He closed a hand about one of hers, and as one, they slumped against the alley wall, dragging in deep breaths of the clearer air. After several long moments, they both turned their heads and looked at the conflagration swallowing Lawton Chilburn’s rooms.

  A fire it might be, but it was a chilling sight.

  Drake’s blood was still thundering in his ears. He was breathing far too quickly, too harshly. There was smoke in his lungs, and his eyes stung like Hades. He’d faced several life-threatening situations over the course of the years; none—not one, and some had been even closer shaves—had affected him to this degree.

  He’d never before known panic like this, arising from such a deep, fundamental, psyche-rocking fear.

  All, it seemed, because it hadn’t been only his life that had hung in the balance.

  He looked at Louisa. She was gripping his hand as tightly as he was gripping hers. She stood beside him, close enough that he was aware of her very real presence—still vibrantly alive, still definitely there.

  His breathing slowed. The sharp taste of panic faded.

  She seemed unable to drag her gaze from the blaze.

  Through the cloaking shadows, he studied her face, garishly lit by the dancing flames that had started to push through the broken window and poke fingers through the shingle roof. She was pale—paler than usual—her features stark in her white face. She was still breathing too rapidly, her breasts rising and falling beneath her cloak in a cadence he felt to his bones, yet despite the shock evident in her face, she was very far from panicking.

  Something in him eased, calmed.

  Her eyes remained fixed on the burning building.

  He followed her gaze.

  “A little black book was hidden between the bed and the wall,” she murmured, her voice low and smoke-roughened. “But now it’s gone.”

  “That couldn’t be helped.” He hadn’t been about to risk her in order to secure it. “Laying hands on it wouldn’t have done us any good if, consequently, we’d died.”

  She gave a soft humph.

  After a moment, he murmured, “I can hear the bells. Braidwood’s boys and their fire engines will be here soon.” The frantic ringing drew nearer. He bent his head and murmured more insistently, “We need to go.”

  She sighed. “Yes. We do.”

  Instead of going out and down Cross Lane, where any of the many people pouring out of the surrounding buildings might see and note t
hem, he led her down the alley. It connected with another, and a few minutes later, they stepped into Long Acre.

  Henry and the carriage were drawn up closer to the corner of Cross Lane. They turned, and with Louisa’s arm in his and her holding her cloak closed to conceal her white, lace-bedecked petticoats, they strolled back to the carriage, just another couple innocently walking the street.

  As they neared the carriage, a fire engine rattled up. It swung around the carriage and turned up Cross Lane.

  Henry watched it go, his face a mask of indecision.

  Drake tapped on the side of the carriage.

  Henry looked around, his face lighting with relief—abruptly subsumed by consternation as he took in their state.

  Drake could imagine; Louisa’s face was soot-streaked, and he was surely similarly bedaubed. He threw Henry a warning look and opened the carriage door. “Home.” He helped Louisa climb up, then remembered what was going on in Grosvenor Square that night and clarified, “Wolverstone House—straight to the mews.”

  “Aye, m’lord.” Henry’s crisp nod told Drake he’d made the right decision. “Just sit back, and I’ll have you there in no time.”

  Which, Drake assumed, as he joined Louisa in the carriage and dropped to the comfort of the seat beside her, meant that Henry would take the back roads and avoid the melee that doubtless was clogging the square as carriages waited and others jostled to ferry guests away from Sebastian and Antonia’s ball; as such events ran, it would be hours yet before the pandemonium ended.

  The carriage pulled smoothly away from the curb. Drake didn’t bother tracking what route Henry chose. Instead, he allowed his mind to revisit and reconstruct what must have occurred…

  After several long moments, he glanced at Louisa and felt compelled to state the obvious. “That was…very close.”

  She was apparently staring out at the passing façades. “Did they—whoever threw that bomb or whatever it was into the room—know we were there?”

  One of the more critical questions. He noted that he wasn’t even surprised that her mind had followed the same track as his. “I’d drawn the curtains, but the light was on. He—whoever he is—had to have known someone was there. Whether he knew it was us, specifically…he could only have known that if he’d been in the lane when we arrived, and I’m fairly certain there was no one lurking at that time.”

  After a moment, she asked, “Do you think they were still outside, watching, when we came out?”

  Another important question. “I don’t know.” Before he’d been able to make any assessment, others had come tumbling out of the houses. “There were too many others about to even guess.”

  “Hmm.” She said nothing more, but a moment later, he felt her search blindly for his hand.

  He met her questing fingers with his, let her grip, then gently gripped in return.

  Her hand remained in his, their fingers twined, as they rolled through the streets toward Mayfair.

  CHAPTER 41

  G riswade had, indeed, dallied in Cross Lane to verify the results of his handiwork.

  Quite aside from ensuring that any remaining evidence linking Lawton to either him or the old man had been converted to so much ash, he’d been interested in learning who had been searching Lawton’s rooms, assuming, of course, that they made it outside.

  After scanning the street and concluding it was empty, he’d lit the cloth wick he’d jammed into the neck of a bottle filled with a volatile mixture of lamp oil, spirit of turpentine, and pitch and thrown the bottle as hard as he could through the lighted window of Lawton’s rooms. Then he’d ducked under the overhang protecting a shop door farther along the street and waited to see who came rushing out.

  The flames had taken hold very nicely.

  He’d held his position, lingering despite the danger of some neighbor of Lawton’s spotting him and connecting him with the blaze.

  His patience had been rewarded when a gentleman protectively carrying a lady wrapped in a velvet cloak, possibly thrown over a ball gown, had come racing out of the door to Lawton’s rooms.

  The man had rushed the lady across the street and out of Griswade’s sight. He’d had only a fleeting instant in which to study the pair.

  He had no idea who the lady was, only that she was a lady. Absolutely definitely—the gentleman’s attitude to her had blazoned that fact on Griswade’s brain. Protectiveness of that steely, ruthless, unbending variety only seen with such clarity in the upper ranks of the aristocracy had all but glowed through the shadows wreathing the lane.

  Which made some degree of sense. Because even though the fire had been behind the fleeing couple and therefore the gentleman’s face had been in shadow, Griswade had recognized him.

  Ever a prudent man, even before the old man had recruited him, Griswade had deemed it wise to identify those few individuals men such as he—with birthrights that, judiciously used, would shield them from the more mundane authorities—had reason to fear.

  The gentleman who had rushed out of Lawton’s rooms with some aristocratic lady in his arms had featured as the one ranked above all others on the list of those whose notice Griswade would prefer to avoid.

  Yet Winchelsea had been in Lawton’s rooms, presumably searching.

  Why he’d had the lady with him was anyone’s guess. Although Winchelsea was renowned for his long string of paramours, Griswade couldn’t imagine a man such as he mixing pleasure with business. With dangerous intrigue.

  Unless he’d had no choice?

  The fire engines arrived and set about their noisy business. Griswade clung to concealment while he toyed with the prospect of learning the lady’s name and, perhaps, using her to somehow spike Winchelsea’s guns, to distract or even pressure him into looking away…

  Griswade’s brain snapped back into focus, and he realized how farfetched that scenario was—how riddled with unforeseeable dangers.

  Realized, too, that the sight of Winchelsea exiting Lawton’s rooms had rattled him enough to derail his thoughts.

  He couldn’t afford that, especially not now.

  Not now he was so close to securing the old man’s estate.

  Smoke was billowing thickly, and there were dozens of neighbors milling in the lane, providing cover enough for Griswade to slip out of his hiding place into the edges of the crowd and unobtrusively make his way up the lane.

  Once he reached Castle Street, he set out for his own rooms, his own bed. And turned his mind to the now-burning question of whether, even at this late stage, he should cut and run. Or whether he should hold his nerve and usher the old man’s plans to their undeniably attention-grabbing end.

  Step by step, he went over the old man’s plans yet again. He reached the end and could see no real justification for balking.

  When the gunpowder went up, he wouldn’t be there.

  As for the old man, he wasn’t even in London.

  And by that time, there would be no one left to point the finger at either of them.

  Winchelsea might be on his trail—might have started unraveling the threads of the plot—but that was really all his appearance in Lawton’s rooms suggested.

  What had the old man said?

  On cue, his mind supplied the old man’s raspy, almost-quavering voice intoning: On no account, no matter what happens, deviate from the plan. There may be slips—matters you can’t control. Don’t panic. Simply proceed, step by small step, and follow my directions to the end…and all will be well.

  The old man had played in these leagues far longer than Griswade had. Without doubt, he could rely on the old man’s advice. Indeed, he had no reason to do otherwise.

  Reassured, he strode on. He could and would steer the plot to its stunning climax, and he would walk away untouched and, even more importantly, undetected and unsuspected.

  And once the old man’s estate was legally settled on him, he would make sure he inherited in short order. Then he’d take a trip—perhaps to the Americas. A land big enough to get
lost in.

  With every step, he felt more confident, more assured.

  As he turned into the Strand, he reminded himself that Winchelsea had no idea who he was.

  And given how far along their path they’d already gone, it was as close to impossible as made no odds that Winchelsea would ever find out, and certainly, not in time.

  CHAPTER 42

  L ouisa remained silent as Drake helped her down from the carriage in the mews behind Wolverstone House. Still compulsively clutching his hand, she walked by his side up the shadowed walk from the rear gate to the side door and didn’t even ask why he’d brought her there.

  He presumed she understood that with the ball still in full swing at St. Ives House, neither of them was in any state to attempt to smuggle her inside and to her room. Even trusting to the Cynster staff’s discretion and using the servants’ stairs was, in the circumstances, an unacceptable risk; it would need just one nosy guest to glimpse either of them in such disreputable state, and the news would be all over the ton come lunchtime.

  At this hour, the side door was locked, but he had the key on his chain. The door opened into his mother’s morning room; after unlocking it, he ushered Louisa in, followed her, then shut the door and relocked it.

  She waited beside him without a word.

  Retaking her hand, he guided her past the chaises and chairs to the door.

  A secondary set of stairs was his favored route to his apartment. With all his family in residence, but thankfully presently several doors away at the Cynster ball, Hamilton would be awake and in the kitchen, awaiting their return. Finnegan, too, would be up and dressed, but he knew better than to present himself unless Drake rang for him.

  Not even Drake had managed to fathom how Hamilton always seemed to know the instant any of the family set foot on the tiles of the front hall, no matter how quietly they crept in. Personally, Drake suspected Hamilton had rigged some sort of alarm to the front door, one he, his father, and his brothers had never been able to discover.