Texas Viscount

by Henke, Shirl

  Josh and Michael took a hansom to meet the earl at his club after the debacle on Downing Street, per Hambleton's instruction. In route both men were quiet, deep in thought, pondering why the trap had failed. It was obvious that Zarenko had known about it. If Jamison believed the earl was involved, he said nothing, but, considering that Josh himself was worried about the possibility, it made for a grim ride indeed.

  “I shall hate to report another failure to Lansdowne and Hambleton,” Michael said as they approached the heavy oak door.

  Josh broke stride. “The Foreign Secretary’ll be here?”

  Jamison sighed. “I'm afraid so. With Hayashi arriving to discuss the final version of the treaty tomorrow, this was our last hope of averting a diplomatic catastrophe. I fear Lansdowne will ask the Prime Minister to cancel the reception at court. Your uncle's opinion on such a delicate matter will definitely be considered. Lansdowne certainly will be here. It wouldn't surprise me if Salisbury himself didn't put in an appearance.”

  Gloomily they followed the footman who had admitted them as he led them down a long maroon-carpeted hallway to a private room where they would be interrogated by the highest-ranking men in the government. “After this shindig is over, maybe I should see if my old pard Alexi and his pals are at the White Satin. Things usually get lively about this time of night,” Josh ventured.

  Preoccupied, Jamison nodded.

  Salisbury was not present but Lansdowne was, just as Michael had guessed. The distinguished gentleman was a whipcord-lean outdoorsman of vigorous middle years. His hairline had receded, but he sported a luxuriant mustache in compensation. Like his friend the earl, he exuded a sense of quietly restrained power. The Foreign Secretary broke the silence the moment the door was closed by the footman. “Wesley, it is indeed a pleasure to finally meet my old friend’s heir.” He extended his hand, and Josh clasped it in a firm grip.

  “I don't reckon your pleasure's gonna last all that long, my lord,” Josh replied.

  “I take it you were unsuccessful,” the Foreign Secretary said, observing the expression on his best agent’s face.

  As they discussed the situation, Josh studied his uncle. There simply was no way the old man could be guilty of treason. But who—

  “I say, Joshua, you’re in a brown study. Do share your opinion with us,” the earl said.

  “Oh, I was just thinking of everyone who works at Hambleton House. More folks than it'd take to drive a herd of beeves clean up to Alaska.”

  “You're assuming that the leak of information comes from your end, not my office,” Lansdowne interjected, his keen dark eyes fastened on the American. “We have cut off all information available to Albany's pup, but I do have a small hand-picked cadre of men whom I trust implicitly...perhaps too implicitly.” Abruptly switching his attention from Josh, he asked Michael, “What do you think of Piltcher?”

  Before Jamison could reply, the earl said, “I've been turning over the problem since we discovered young Whistledown was involved. The boy's a fool, no more capable of this sort of intrigue than is my old hound Ludlow.”

  “If not Sabrina's cousin, then who?” Josh asked.

  The Foreign Secretary and his agent both waited for the earl's reply.

  “I may know when we return home. In fact, I suspect I shall be quite certain,” he replied in a subdued tone.

  * * * *

  Sabrina fought to breathe through the heavy wad of cloth stuffed in her mouth, bound tightly in place with a scarf. Another scarf covered her eyes. If only her heart would stop racing. She was alone, in stygian darkness, rocking back and forth on the floor of a badly sprung carriage as it bounced toward heaven knew where. She had no idea what he was going to do with her now that she had unwittingly discovered him. In fact, she had no idea if he was even aboard.

  After binding and gagging her, he'd pressed a cloth soaked in some vile liquid to her nose and mouth. Ether. She remembered nothing from that horrible moment in the library until she awakened in the carriage. At first she'd been terrified that her roiling stomach would rebel and she'd aspirate because of the gag, but by sheer force of will, she'd fought to subdue her body’s natural urge to purge itself of the drug. Her head still ached, and every time she attempted to move her cramped arms and legs, dizziness assailed her.

  There was little room in which to move anyway. The carriage was a small closed conveyance with both doors locked. She'd tried kicking at the one nearest her feet, but could do nothing to open it. Then she'd struggled to turn around in the narrow space between the seats and kick the other door. Equally useless. The driver had ignored the racket, never slackening his breakneck pace.

  Where are they taking me? And what will they do to me when we arrive?

  Such thoughts would only lead to more panic. Sabrina could not afford that luxury. She was utterly on her own. Well, that was scarcely a new experience, considering that she'd come to London to make her own way seven years ago. If she had succeeded by brains and determined self-discipline once, she could do so again. All she had to do was to use her mind to outsmart her enemies. She concentrated on breathing deeply.

  Judging from the silence outside and the muffled sounds of the horses' hooves, they were somewhere in the countryside. Perhaps if she feigned illness from the effects of the badly administered dose of ether, she would find an opportunity to escape once she was taken outside the confines of the locked carriage. Pretending to be ill would not take great thespian abilities, she concluded, considering how wretched she felt.

  Suddenly the carriage jerked to a stop, causing her to hit her head against the seat. She could hear voices speaking a polyglot of French, Russian and English, mostly French, which she understood.

  “Why did the fool send her here?” Natasha Samsonov demanded imperiously after the driver had made a halting explanation of some sort in Russian.

  “After tomorrow our Englishman will have outlived his usefulness.” The voice of her brother, Zarenko. Sabrina shivered, wondering what he would do once he recognized her as the “maid” in his room. Had they realized yet that the love letters had been stolen?

  “The woman also has no usefulness. She is a pest to be disposed of immediately,” Natasha said.

  “Not so quickly. I want to find out what she knows. How did she find her way to the secret entrance?” Zarenko issued some sharp order in Russian and the door of the carriage opened.

  Rough hands seized hold of her and she was flung over a massive shoulder and carried like a sack of potatoes. In a few paces she was inside some sort of shelter. The blindfold was removed, revealing the scowling face of Nikolai Zarenko looming over her.

  Sabrina blinked, trying to accustom herself to the bright light issuing from a kerosene lantern on the table beside which she had been seated. Her captors were ringed around her—Zarenko, Sergei Valerian and Natasha Samsonov, whose eyes had an unnatural onyx glitter that frightened Sabrina even more than the menacing man who spoke to her.

  “So we meet again.” Zarenko massaged the side of his head, where a reddened mark was visible at the hairline. Of course he remembered her!

  “You know this meddlesome female?” Valerian asked in a bored voice, as if his companion's amours held not the slightest interest for him.

  Zarenko ignored him. “Now the mystery is solved. What did you do with Wettin's letters, my dear?” His almost genial tone was in contrast to the brutal way he grabbed her chin and tore the gag from her mouth. “You are an English spy. Where are the letters? I promise it will go far easier for you if you tell me.”

  Her mouth felt as if it had been glued closed, and her throat was parched and sore. Sabrina forced herself to ignore Natasha's penetrating stare and concentrate on the man interrogating her. When she spoke, her voice was raspy but firm. “I am no spy, merely a teacher employed by the earl.”

  “And whom were you teaching in my hotel suite, hmm? Dressed in a chambermaid's uniform.” One big hand took hold of her hair and pulled on it hard, bringing tears to her eyes
from the stinging pain. Then he used his other hand to close off her already aching throat until she coughed and gasped for air.

  “You will tell him. They always do.” Valerian stood at the opposite side of the room, pouring himself a tall glass of vodka.

  “Oh, do be quiet, Sergei. Let us do what we do best.” Natasha's voice was husky with excitement.

  “I am not a spy,” Sabrina repeated stubbornly.

  “But you were searching my quarters—for Wettin's billets-doux?”

  “No. I knew nothing about them.” A lie but she hoped a forgivable one.

  “You took them. What did you do with them?” Natasha asked, gliding closer, her long nails curved out like claws, close to Sabrina's face.

  Steeling her courage, Sabrina met the pitiless black eyes and replied, “I turned them over to British authorities.”

  Valerian cursed and downed the rest of his vodka. Zarenko slapped Sabrina so hard her ears rang and bright lights flashed before her eyes.

  “I don't believe her. She's involved in this up to her eyebrows,” Natasha said, using a nail to trace the delicate arch of Sabrina's eyebrow. “I wonder, can a teacher find employment if she is blind?” she mused, pointing two fingers directly at her prisoner's eyes.

  “I no longer have the letters. They are with the government. Most probably destroyed by now,” Sabrina said, lowering her lashes so as not to meet the dagger like threat from the Russian woman.

  “She's probably telling the truth about that. The evidence is too damning to keep,” Zarenko said angrily.

  “Then let me kill her,” his sister replied.

  Sabrina held her breath as the three conspirators argued.

  * * * *

  Lord Lansdowne had departed from the club for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister. Salisbury would not be pleased to learn that their Japanese treaty was still in jeopardy. By the time the earl, Josh, and Michael arrived at the town house, the city was starting to come to life. As they passed street vendors and clerks in route to work, the three men in Hambleton’s carriage maintained a tense silence, each deep in his own thoughts.

  When Nash opened the door for them, Hambleton asked, “Has Hodgins arrived yet?”

  “Yes, m’lord. He's in the kitchen taking his tea as usual.”

  “Please ask him to join us in my office. You, as well, if you please.”

  Bowing diffidently, the butler nodded. “Very good, m’lord.” He walked briskly down the long hallway to the kitchen at the rear of the house.

  Mystified, Josh and Michael followed Hambleton. Nash and the earl's secretary quickly joined them. Instinctively, Josh felt for his Colt, concealed inside his jacket and noted that Jamison was doing the same with his Webley. They stood on either side of the door as the two men approached the earl, who paced at the large window behind his desk.

  “Would you be so good as to show me your keys to my desk?” he asked both men.

  The Texan and the agent exchanged puzzled looks, both still wary as Nash reached without hesitation inside his pocket and produced a key. Hodgins took a moment to fumble through the numerous pockets of his suit, then did likewise. The earl held one in each hand, comparing them

  “Very good. You may go, Nash,” Hambleton said. Then he turned to his private secretary, who had been with him for over twenty years. As soon as the butler closed the door, the earl fixed Hodgins with weary gray eyes and asked, “Why did you do it?”

  Hodgins drew in his receding chin in indignation. “Do what, m’lord?” He cast an uneasy glance at Jamison and the viscount. Both young men were poised on the balls of their feet.

  Hambleton held out the keys he'd taken from Nash and from his secretary. “Pray examine the evidence, my dear fellow. You will note that Nash's key is clean. Yours is stained blue.”

  Hodgins put on his glasses and squinted at the blue cast on the edges of the key. “It must have rubbed against something in my pocket,” the secretary said.

  “Only if you are in the habit of carrying pure blue pigment inside your good suit jacket?” Hambleton replied.

  “Pure pigment—like for paint? That stuff never dries,” Josh said as Jamison nodded grimly in understanding.

  “You were the one who verified that young Whistledown’s information was a trap. I deliberately kept that knowledge from you, but when Zarenko sent someone to ask you about it, you went to the only place I might keep such sensitive documents and found precisely what I had left there.”

  “You set a trap inside the trap,” Josh said as he breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  If Michael Jamison felt the same, he concealed it completely. “How much did the Russians pay you to betray your country, Hodgins?”

  By now the thin little man was chalk-white and perspiring profusely despite the cool morning air. He ran one ink-stained hand over his thinning hair and slumped against the bookcase. “I know nothing about this,” he protested in a thready voice.

  Before anyone could question him further, Edmund Whistledown burst through the door with Nash and the two footmen-cum-guards trailing behind him. “I tried to stop him from interrupting, m’lord,” the butler said apologetically.

  The earl nodded, then turned to Edmund. “Now what is so urgent—”

  “Sabrina's missing! I knocked on her door and the latch hadn't caught. Her room is empty, the bed not slept in. I've searched the house. She's vanished without a trace.”

  Josh placed one hand on the boy's shoulder and turned him around. “None of the servants saw her this morning?”

  “No. They”—he gestured to the footmen—“they saw her late last night. She said she couldn't sleep and was going to the kitchen to warm some milk and read in the library. Nothing's been disturbed in the kitchen or the library.” He nodded to the men, who had helped him search.

  As Josh peppered the three with questions, Hodgins pressed the latch to the hidden panel and started to draw a small Adams revolver from his pocket. Jamison was on him before he could raise the weapon, knocking it from his hand. He seized the trembling man and threw him onto the desk top, holding him by the scruff of the neck, his face pressed against the wood. “Now, why is it, old chap, that I suspect you know what happened to Miss Edgewater?”

  The sound of Josh's Colt cocking directly against Hodgins' temple filled the large room. “Talk, or so help me God, I'll blow your brains from here to that wall,” he said in a deadly voice.

  Jamison pulled Hodgins up so Josh could center the large-caliber pistol between the secretary's bulging, terrified eyes. As the two men were dealing with Hodgins, the earl dismissed Nash and the footmen, instructing them to question the rest of the household staff in case anyone had seen Miss Edgewater since last evening.

  “Why did you do it, Hodgins? You've been my right hand for twenty-one years.”

  “T-twenty-two,” his secretary stammered. “I-I did not do it for money. It was for her. She’s wealthy. We were going to live in Paris...”

  “You’re going to live in a hoosegow—if you're lucky—and that's only if I get Sabrina back,” Josh said.

  “He means the Samsonov woman,” Jamison said, shaking his head. “You fool, don't you know she used you the same way she used the Duke of Albany’s son? Who, I might add, is younger and considerably better-looking than you, not to mention a shade richer himself.”

  “What did you do with Sabrina?” Josh repeated, growing more desperate with each passing moment.

  “I turned her over to them. My last...duty for Tasha’s brother was to fetch all the documents in the private folders,” he said, moistening his thin lips nervously as he glanced at the locked drawer that had revealed his treachery. “I knew you were at your club, waiting to hear about the trap you’d set.”

  “One that you knew would fail,” Hambleton said with a downturned mouth. “How did you encounter Miss Edgewater?”

  “She left a note for you earlier in the day, saying she was suspicious of Tasha. I only found it after”—Hodgins' face turned from white
to red for a moment—“Tasha came here...to verify whether Count Hayashi was meeting Lord Lansdowne last night. I...we...well...” He cleared his throat nervously.

  Josh could well imagine “Tasha's” wiles, seducing information from this piteous fool in exchange for sexual favors. “Sabrina followed her here, I'd bet on it. She'd do anything to save her cousin.”

  “Somehow she found her way to this office through the secret passage,” Hodgins admitted.

  “She must’ve gone out to search the garden late last night. Then you followed her into the office. Am I getting it right so far?” Josh asked. The barrel of the pistol never wavered from Hodgins' nose.

  “Y-yes. I took her and the papers to the end of the alley, where Tasha's carriage was waiting. Tasha was that upset and said I couldn't come with her now. That first she'd have to deal with the woman.”

  “Sabrina would never go willingly with you and climb into a carriage with that Russian rattler,” Josh said. “What did you do to her?”

  “I only used a bit of ether, then carried her. Honestly, I did not harm her,” Hodgins quickly blurted out.

  “But you knew your darling Tasha would harm her plenty.” The menace in Josh's voice was bowstring-taut.

  “Where would she take Miss Edgewater?” the earl asked.

  Hodgins closed his lashless eyes as if preparing to die as he swallowed, shaking his head. “I have no idea.”

  “I just might,” Michael said. “My men have been watching the comings and goings of the Russians for some months. Besides living at the Metropole, this group has a small, private hunting lodge in the north of Essex, not far from the coast.”

  “A perfect place for making good their escape by sea after they assassinate Count Hayashi,” Hambleton said.

  Josh saw a dim ray of hope. “You ever hear any talk about it?” he asked Hodgins.

  “N-no, but it might be,” he said lamely, thinking there might be a dim hope of living out the day if the wild American raced off in search of the Edgewater woman.