His footsteps suggested he’d hurried to the end of the passage. She might have a few seconds, or she might have longer. Battling the conflict between desire for the right outcome and necessary caution, she rose and pushed open the doors to a large, spacious bedchamber decorated in blue and gold. Rich carpets added an air of sumptuousness, but also promised good sound protection. A small adjoining anteroom suggested the possibility of a study.
Kitty paused on the threshold. Dare she risk it in the time available? The box could be anywhere, and she had literally seconds. It was madness even to begin to look when any moment his Lordship would return. Then how could she explain herself?
She was about to slip back to Debenham’s private sitting room when through the partly open door, she caught a glimpse of the escritoire that might have been described by Sally. There was little time, but surely time enough to dart across to investigate?
The escritoire was closed, but the key was still in the door. Kitty opened it and within seconds was pulling out a small pewter box and, without even checking its contents, rushing to the mantelpiece. There was the vase that had been described. She dipped her hand in and, to her astonishment, felt the key at the bottom. Even as she ran Kitty was trying the key which, to her incredulity, fitted. She reached the sitting room just as she heard voices from farther up the passage. She’d not been gone more than a minute so accurate had Sally’s instructions been, but if she ran fast enough, she might even make it out into the corridor and around the corner before Lord Debenham returned.
Araminta arrived at the top of the stairs just as she saw Debenham approaching. He halted when he saw her, and his face went rigid. His lip twitched. Clearly, he was far from pleased to see her. She wondered what plans of his she might have derailed, and didn’t care. He’d be very pleased with her when she told him what she’d learned.
“You were staying with your sister, you told me.” His tone was curt, and his eyes glittered, reflecting the candle sconce above his head. “What are you doing here?”
“I missed you too much, my darling.” She didn’t expect him to believe her, but she made a good show of accompanying her words with a long, soulful look as she rested against the balustrade at the top of the staircase, and put her hands to her burning cheeks. She could still feel Teddy’s hot kisses branded there. He was her future, and she wasn’t going to let Debenham near her if she could help it.
But Debenham was too valuable to have been thrown to the wolves, much as she’d have loved to have done the pushing herself.
“Well, you’ve completely turned my plans for this evening upside down,” he grumbled. “Now you’ll expect me to entertain you when I had other plans.”
“Such as entertaining a rather fetching actress?” His expletive made her laugh. “Don’t think ferreting out information is your preserve, darling. I’m rather good at that. Always have been, and it’s what I learned tonight that had me rushing over here with rather more haste than I might have otherwise done.”
“Jealousy?”
“I would prefer to think you had a shred of loyalty toward your wife, but I gave up on that hope long ago. I am resigned to the fact that loyalty is a foreign concept to you, so no, it was not jealousy that brought me here.”
He laughed. “Concern? Love or desire?” He looked anxious to leave. Raising his eyebrows, he added with heavy cynicism, “It must have been a particularly strong emotion to have caused you to act so out of character.”
“Well…” She drew out the word, so he could see she had something important to say. “You are my husband, and if I learn of a plot that endangers your financial interests through your likely arrest for treason, I have a vested interest in acquainting you of such a dastardly plan.”
“Oh, so you’d not mourn if I hanged, but you are concerned with how your financial interests would be affected.”
“Precisely.”
He chuckled. “My dear, my secrets are under lock and key. Not even you know how to ferret them out of me or indeed where they may possibly be.”
His supreme arrogance irritated Araminta. She closed the distance between them and ran her fingers up his sleeve. “I may not, but word has it there’s someone who’s going to make a good job of trying.”
He snorted.
“A little birdie told me that someone, in fact, does know where you keep your secrets under lock and key.”
He regarded her lazily beneath his hooded eyes, his silence spurring her on. Yes, she’d tell him, but she’d draw it out. Make him wait.
“In fact, a certain person who is not at all the kind of creature I’d associate with and who, in fact, you shouldn’t either—except that I know how susceptible you are to a pretty face.” While her words sounded as if they were coated in butter, there was a jagged edge to Araminta’s fury. How had she remained in ignorance for so long that Kitty La Bijou was her sister? All this time the girl had pretended ignorance, but she must be filled with spite and envy that Araminta had what she’d been denied. Miss Bijou must have been carefully plotting to bring to fruition her evil plan—the total destruction of Araminta’s life.
“For God’s sake, Araminta, stop talking in riddles and get to the point. Yes, I’m interested if there is something to suggest a threat against me, though doubtless your only motivation in forewarning me is to save your own skin.”
“Precisely, darling, which is why you should listen to me and why I am, in this instance, so very valuable to you. All right.” She rolled her eyes. “I believe you’ve made arrangements to entertain Miss Kitty La Bijou after tomorrow night’s performance, and I have it on good authority that she has an ulterior motive for agreeing so readily to your charms.”
Just saying the name brought the acid to her mouth, but she went on sweetly, “She is very jealous of me and has been telling terrible lies about me, did you know. But worse is the fact that she knows about a certain box—” Araminta stopped and called after him as her husband turned on his heel and tore up the passage. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Debenham run in his life.
Kitty slipped out of Lord Debenham’s bedchamber with literally a split second to spare before the sound of his footsteps around the next bend alerted her to the fact he was on the warpath. She couldn’t believe it. She had it. The pewter box was in her hands, and it had been so simple.
But how to continue to avoid detection? Surely someone would challenge a strange young lady in an evening gown?
Kitty kept to the back stairs where the lighting was dim, and the corridors were empty. If she could successfully weave her way through the catacombs of Lord Debenham’s spacious London townhouse, she should eventually find her way to the basement and so to the welcoming outdoors.
When she did manage this, blinking in the moonlight at the top of the stairs that led from the coal delivery access, she set her footsteps for north.
She couldn’t go home to her lodgings. While she’d pretended she no longer had the right to live there, it would be the first place Lord Debenham would seek her out as he undoubtedly would do. If the box she had in her arms contained the secrets of which he was suspected, he’d kill to keep her from handing them over. She had to be swift and canny.
She couldn’t go to Lissa. Not at this late hour.
She thought of Ralph, but again, he might not be there whereas Silverton was close by. Close enough so she could seek his help and his advice.
She told herself that her decision to seek him out first had nothing to do with wanting to show him how clever she, alone, had been; that it had nothing to do with the fact she loved him to distraction—still.
None of this was evident when she was admitted to his drawing room, and he faced her from the other side of the sofa with an expression of mild perplexity, for they had parted—for good, it would have appeared, not long ago. And his marriage was in just days.
“Silverton.” She simply breathed the word. She was delirious with her cleverness. Then she carefully laid the box on the low table and waited
for realization to sink in or curiosity to get the better of him.
He received her alone in his drawing room where it appeared he’d been playing cards. There was no one opposite him at the small walnut table, and when he glanced up after she was announced, a gamut of emotions flickered across his face. Then he rose, and flicking just the barest of glances toward the box, stepped forward and placed his hands on Kitty’s shoulders. “I don’t believe it.”
“Silverton…are you not you proud of me?” His worried frown had not been swept away by delight.
“You put yourself in grave, grave danger.” Kitty did not like the hint of suspicion in his tone when he asked, “What did you have to do to get this?”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t touched me if that’s what you’re worried about. In fact, it was all astonishingly easy. Dorcas had been supplied the exact location by a friend who’d been to Debenham’s house, and then when he invited me into his bedchamber—” she glanced down and blushed, “I had a vial of powder that Mrs. Mobbs had given me to put in his drink.”
“Dear Lord, Kitty, I don’t believe it.”
He turned back to the box and finding the lid locked, was instantly supplied the key by Kitty, who said, “I knew exactly where that was, too. Open it, Silverton. I want to see what it contains.”
“A treasure trove,” he murmured.
It was as if Debenham was proudly keeping an inventory of each evil extortion attempt and other felonies in which he’d been involved. Indeed, here was all the evidence they needed to convict him of a multitude of crimes, including the blackest of all—treason. Beneath the list of those whose secrets he’d ferreted out, and those who’d paid to have their scandals suppressed from threatened publication, were his notes from three years earlier on how he and his associates intended to bring down Parliament following their attempt on Lord Castlereagh’s life.
“Dear Lord, not only is so much in his handwriting, he’s signed all manner of incriminating correspondence,” breathed Silverton. Carefully closing the lid, he rose and drew Kitty into his embrace, but when she moved her head slightly, he kissed her on the top of her head.
“You have done what no one in the Home Office has managed in more than two years. You are a ….” He put her away from him and stared with wonder into her face. Kitty’s heart hitched, and it took all her willpower not to throw her arms around his neck and hug and kiss him rapturously, for excitement—and pride—were fast flowing through her veins.
“Say it, Silverton,” she murmured. “I want to hear what you think I am.”
“I’ve always known what you are,” he said with more energy this time though he didn’t move his head closer. “You are the most courageous, beautiful, astonishing young woman I have ever met.” His eyes glowed as he lowered his voice. “If we existed within the pages of a romance, we would get our happily ever after.”
“It’s too late now.” She moved but did not entirely pull away. “You are not going to abandon your worthy bride at the altar, throw me astride your white charger, and gallop into the sunset to where a priest is waiting to preside over our holy vows.”
“It doesn’t mean I wish I couldn’t.”
She smiled. She felt the familiar tug at her heartstrings; the pain in the back of her throat as she fought the tears. “The inevitable is too hard to resist. There’s too much of everything to fight. Our marriage would simply not be accepted. I’d be shunned, and possibly, so would our children…our female children, certainly. I wanted respectability through marriage, but I wanted love more. And now I can’t have either.”
“Where are you going?”
She turned at the door and looked over her shoulder. “Home,” she said simply. “I’ve achieved my greatest wish—to deliver to you what you wanted above all else.”
In two strides he was at her side. He restrained her with a hand upon her shoulder. “That’s not what I wanted above all.” He glanced back at the box on the table, then again at her, his look full of meaning.
“But we know it can’t be.”
Reluctantly, he nodded. “But you can’t go home.”
“I realized that, of course. It’s the first place Debenham will look. After here, of course. No, Mrs. Mobbs has a bed for me.”
“Kitty, I can’t let you go. It’s too dangerous.”
“I certainly can’t stay here.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “Not with your mother in residence.” She pulled away, more firmly this time. “Good night, Silverton. I’ll slip out the servant’s entrance.”
“I’ll take you.” But when Kitty protested strongly, he finally persuaded her to accept an escort of one of his servants, and wearily Kitty made her way through the streets in a hackney, suddenly exhausted. She’d proved herself, and now she felt she could sleep for a year.
She didn’t sleep more than an hour, it seemed, for Mrs. Mobbs was soon rousing her urgently.
“I gotta get yer out ‘o ’ere, Miss Kitty,” she whispered. “’I dunno ‘ow but ‘is Lordship seems ter fink yer ‘ere and ‘ere ain’t where yer can be if that’s wot ‘e wants, is it?”
In a panic, Kitty threw back the covers of the bed she was sharing with some other newly-arrived maid to town and stood, disoriented, in the middle of the room while Mrs. Mobbs bundled her discarded dress into a bag.
“Out the back, ’urry!” she whispered. “I”ll keep ‘im talkin’ in the parlor. Take the first hackney yer can get. It don’t matter where yer go, yer just can’t be ’ere.”
With her mind in a whirl, Kitty dashed out of the back door and into the cobbled laneway. She could hear Mrs. Mobbs raising her voice cheerily in greeting for but a second, before a passing hackney caught her attention and she darted in front of it, rapping on the door to make it slow.
“Just drive! As far as you can get away from here, and don’t stop!” she cried out, handing the jarvey a coin before leaping inside.
Only when they were well on the road and had put considerable distance behind them, did Kitty’s heart finally start to slow down and she felt she could relax.
Where could she possibly go? she wondered. Was her home in the village a possibility? But no, she hadn’t the money to go such a distance in a hired hackney, if it were even possible.
The jarvey had taken her at her word and was simply continuing, so Kitty relaxed back in the squabs and closed her eyes while her mind churned over the enormity of what had occurred.
Perhaps a lodging house on the outskirts would suffice. But at this hour? She’d be mistaken for a prostitute and refused admittance, even if she could pay.
For the moment though it was easier just to do nothing while the hired equipage rumbled through the streets. Kitty thought of the danger she’d just escaped and wondered what might be in store for her. She should have let Silverton take charge, but had wanted to prove that she’d not done this to gain his gratitude. She’d done it as much for herself as for him. And Lissa.
She must have dozed off, for suddenly the hackney was slowing. She looked out of the window and saw they were beyond the outskirts of London and that the river illuminated on her right was unfamiliar. The rank odor of rotting detritus wafted through the cracks in the door, and she held her nose at the stench while her stomach heaved.
Suddenly, she was frightened. The silence was unnatural. Not the hustle and bustle of London, but the eerie quiet of some country hamlet.
Where was she? This did not seem right. How long had they been driving? What instructions did the jarvey think he was following?
Then a more insidious question filtered into her adrenaline-flooded brain.
Whose instructions was he following?
She rapped on the roof to gain the driver’s attention, but he did not falter though he must have heard. The track they were following twisted and turned as it contoured the hedgerows by the river. Kitty had never been this far east of the city. She knew of no one who lived here.
The carriage lurched as it hit a deep rut, and Kitty was flung agai
nst the side, hitting her head and heightening her fear.
Last night, she’d been a guest at Debenham’s townhouse. She’d thought she’d been so fortunate and clever in achieving her aims with virtually no physical contact with Debenham. Then she’d fled to see Lord Silverton and to hand him the information he needed, before slipping away to the least likely place Debenham might find her—Mrs. Mobbs’s.
How then was she a prisoner? For that’s what she felt she was at this moment, thundering over the muddy roads toward who knew what.
She grabbed the doorknob, but the vehicle was traveling too fast to make it an option to throw herself out, even if she were able to fling open the door which seemed unyielding, even as she tried.
Dear God, if Lord Debenham were behind what seemed increasingly like an abduction, what might be the outcome?
Finally, the carriage slowed in front of a tidy little house on the banks of the river. It looked to be a mill with its large waterwheel slowly turning the sluggish water. Dawn limned the horizon, giving just enough moonlight to make out the eerie outline. Kitty hoped she might seize the chance to leave and run before the carriage came to a halt, but she heard a gate close behind them at the same time as a large, burly, balding man in a hessian apron and leather gaiters emerged at the top of the mill’s steps. He advanced purposefully toward the carriage, opening the door as it stopped, and shouting a few words to the jarvey before he thrust in a meaty hand and hauled Kitty out and onto the dew-covered grass.
“Welcome, Miss Kitty,” he greeted her, seizing her hand and pulling her up the steps. She was no match for him she quickly realized, and to struggle was pointless. He was so very much larger.
And he smelled. Of flour, but also of something stale and rank that made her eyes water.
“Who are you?” she managed as she stumbled over the threshold of the enormous, wooden-floored storeroom into which he pushed her. “What do you want of me?”
He ignored her, dragging her toward the open window from where she could see only a wide expanse of river, mudflats and reeds with, in the distance, a scattering of humble dwellings.
Lady Unveiled - The Cuckold's Conspiracy (Daughters of Sin Book 5) Page 23
