How the Earl Entices

by Anna Harrington

  As if reading her fear, he caressed his knuckles across her cheek. “Don’t worry about me, love.” He placed a kiss to her temple to reassure her. “They won’t send me to the gallows. I still have friends in Parliament I can count on to argue for transportation.”

  Exile. That’s what he meant. Not innocence. He would be forever branded a traitor and banished to Australia, St. Helena, or some other godforsaken place where they sent criminals and traitors, never able to return. He would live…without her.

  She could never follow after him. Her life was here. Her son needed her here. Ross knew that, too, which was why he didn’t ask it of her. The only solace he could give her now was that he would still be alive, but she was too consumed by grief to accept the consolation he intended, because the thought of being apart from him devastated her. The darkness seeped into her soul, killing what last spark of hope she still possessed.

  “Fate double-crossed us again,” he murmured, releasing his hold on her. He caressed her cheek in the darkness. “Apparently, you’re still not meant for me.” His voice lowered to little more than a whisper, one laced with hopelessness. “But I so very much wanted you to be.”

  Pain splintered her insides. When he released her and stepped back from the bars, she reached for him, for one last kiss—

  When her hand touched only cold air, her heart died.

  “Christopher, take her away. Now.” Grief roughened his voice into a harsh rasp. “And never bring her back here again.”

  But she didn’t move, couldn’t bear to move, to end these precious last moments she might ever have with him. Her arm remained outstretched toward him in the darkness, her hand through the bars grasping only cold air. “Ross….”

  No answer came from the dark cell.

  Kit took her arm and gently pulled her away.

  He led her up from the bowels of the prison and out into the damp night that hung oppressively over the city. The loud clank of the metal door slamming shut after them reverberated through the street, the finality of the sound so harsh that she cried out as if a knife had been plunged into her chest. Only Kit’s arm around her kept her from falling to the ground.

  Kit signaled for a hackney waiting on the street, then put her inside the old coach and ordered the driver to take them to Mayfair. He sat on the bench across from her in the darkness, with the only light coming from the dim lantern dangling off the front corner of the carriage. The silence and darkness were oppressive, so deep that every clopping hoof against the cobblestones reverberated as loud as gunfire in her ears.

  She pressed her fist against her chest to physically keep back the tears. She’d been torn in two, with half of her still back in the prison with Ross. But all of her had died in his arms.

  “What happens now?” she forced out.

  Kit turned toward the window, although she knew he could see very little of the passing city beneath the moonless night and thick fog that slowed the carriage traffic to a near standstill. His face was inscrutable in the jostling shadows cast by the swaying lamp.

  “Parliament will convene for the trial tomorrow in the House of Lords. They’re already sitting in session, so there’ll be no delay in the proceedings. If history is any precedent, they’ll vote their decision within a fortnight.”

  Two weeks. Then Ross would be gone from her forever.

  “As for you, you’ll spend the night at Spalding House. In the morning, I’ll arrange for a driver and coach to return you to Sea Haven.”

  “No.”

  The ferocity behind that single word forced his gaze back to her.

  “Ross stands before the Lords tomorrow.” She folded her useless hands in her lap. “I want to be there. I won’t let him face this alone.”

  “Ross wants you safely home with your son.” His firm tone told her that he’d brook no argument about that. “That’s where you’re going.”

  Her fists tightened. How dare he attempt to take away this last bit of time with Ross! “I’ll leave when I know that Ross is safe, when the trial is over.”

  “You’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “No, I want to be here in case—”

  “For God’s sake!” he snapped out furiously. “He doesn’t want you to watch him hang!”

  Her body flashed numb, followed by a blinding pain. But her foolish heart kept pounding, each jarring beat like a hammer to her breastbone, not knowing that she was already dead inside.

  Hang…No. “He said they would transport him,” she whispered, her stunned lips barely able to form the words.

  “He lied.” Christopher’s eyes blazed with fury and anguish. “He’s going to the gallows. The crown will make an example of him, and Wentworth will call in every favor he’s owed to make certain it happens.”

  Her eyes burned, blurring his shadowy figure in the darkness. As silence fell between them, broken only by the rumble of the carriage wheels, her shock gave way to the brutal pain of helplessness. That same horrible helplessness that had nearly ended her ten years ago—this time, it was certain to break her. Even now she struggled for each excruciating breath.

  “Ross is too proud to let you watch him beg for his life, and he sure as hell doesn’t want you there when they take that life from him. He wants you back in Sea Haven, tucked safely into that cottage of yours with your son.” He flicked the latch on the window and shoved it open, to let in the cold air of the damp night, as if he, too, were suffocating. “And I will not deny my brother his final wish.”

  “Neither would I.” But he was so very wrong! Ross’s wish wasn’t to send her away. It was to thwart fate and find a way to finally be together. There was nothing under heaven that would keep her from making that wish come true.

  Already a desperate plan was forming in her head. “Have you been to the studio?” Had he found the papers?

  He shook his head. “As soon as Ellsworth notified me of what happened, I went straight to Newgate.” He didn’t look at her, his attention focused somewhere beyond the carriage in the night. “Ross wanted you freed. So I made it happen.”

  Then the papers were most likely still in the studio, still tucked beneath the floorboards where Ross had hidden them. Still waiting for her.

  What she was contemplating was dangerous, utterly mad…and quite possibly his only hope. “What will happen tomorrow?”

  He stiffened, clearly not wanting to discuss this. Or even look at her. He blamed her for Ross’s capture, and she didn’t fault him. If she hadn’t been with Ross, he could have hidden someplace else where the soldiers would never have found him. He wouldn’t have gone to the studio at all after the masquerade, choosing instead to move and change locations. But he’d returned because of her, and aching guilt sickened her that the night which had been so blissful for her might be his downfall.

  “The Lord High Steward will call for the trial to commence,” he answered simply, unwilling to offer up any additional information, “and Ross will be given the chance to plead his innocence.”

  But he wouldn’t. That wonderful, honorable man would keep his silence to protect her. Which meant that she had to act now to protect him. “The trial will be closed to the public?”

  “Yes. Only peers and solicitors will be allowed inside.” His gaze flicked to her, then back to the passing streets outside. “Which is another reason why you can’t be there.”

  Her belly tied into a tight knot at what she was contemplating. “But Wentworth will be?”

  “He’ll make certain of it.”

  She twisted her fingers into her skirt to fight back her rising anxiousness, hoping that in the darkness he wouldn’t notice her desperation. “Not his assistants?”

  “Not inside the chamber, no.” He muttered into the shadows, “But you can damn well bet those vultures will be waiting somewhere nearby.”

  So not inside the ambassador’s townhouse. Exactly what she needed to know to carry out her plan.

  As the carriage traveled out of the City, with Fleet Street giving way to the
Strand beneath their wheels, the traffic became heavier, until they were stopped completely near Covent Garden by the snarl of carriage traffic and pedestrians blocking their way. The theatres had let out. Despite the drizzling rain that blackened London, it seemed that the entire city was out for the evening and clogging the fog-filled streets.

  Quashing all signs of nervousness, she suggested as casually as possible, “Can we walk a ways? I don’t think I can keep sitting here like this.” Without screaming. “With all these people, we’ll be safe from footpads.”

  He considered silently for a moment, then gave a curt nod. Pounding his fist against the roof to signal to the driver that they were getting out, he opened the door and swung to the ground. He reached back to help her down.

  “Thank you.” Then she pulled her hand away and stepped back several paces toward the footpath at the edge of the wide road.

  When Christopher turned his back to pay the driver, Grace ran.

  In a matter of seconds she was lost in the crowd and the dark of foggy night, hurrying as fast as she dared without calling attention to herself. She wove her way through the crush of people meandering along the street, past several carriages, and down a side street. Not daring to look back to see if Christopher was chasing after her, she darted into a dark alley that ran behind the theatre.

  Only then, safely covered by shadows and surrounded by the noisy city night, did she stop. She leaned against the stone wall and gasped deeply to fill her lungs. She waited, straining to listen for any sounds that he might be pursuing her. But only the noise of distant carriages and horses reached her, along with stray laughter from one of the open windows in the building across the alley. The midnight bell tolled loudly from a church tower, a woman yelled—but there was no trace of Christopher.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, allowing herself only this one moment of pain and fear. This one moment when she would let herself remember the feel of Ross’s fingers caressing her cheek, the sound of his laughter, the exquisite joy of his hard body moving inside hers as he made love to her. There would be time later when she could have the luxury of more than just this quiet moment to reflect and remember.

  But now, she had to act.

  Pushing herself away from the wall, she hurried on through the night toward the Thames and the Chelsea Embankment. Always, she kept her head down, her face turned away even in the shadows, in case she was being followed.

  An hour later, she reached the alley that ran behind Ellsworth’s carriage house. She pressed herself against the wall, staying tucked away in the dark shadows. She cocked her head and listened…Nothing. Only the sound of drizzling rain dripping off the rooftops and striking the cobblestones. But the alley wouldn’t be empty for long. Christopher would undoubtedly think to look for her here, and when he did, she had to be long gone.

  She carefully approached the studio and reached to open the battered door that the soldiers had nearly ripped off its hinges when they’d forced their way inside. But someone had padlocked it during the day, and the lock wouldn’t give. A cry of pained frustration tore from her as she yanked at it.

  She slammed her fist against the door and stepped back. She looked up at the building, at the windows in the first floor bedrooms. All of them were shuttered, as they had been since the night she and Ross arrived here, to keep away the curiosity of prying neighbors. All the windows—

  Except one. The window in her bedroom.

  The window in the long side of the building whose shutters had been pushed open to allow in the sunlight where she’d sat to pin up her hair that last morning they were together. The soldiers wouldn’t have bothered to shut it when they left, and Ellsworth had said that the building would be empty for the sennight, that neither the workers nor any artists would be here.

  She hurried around the corner of the building and gave a quiet gasp of relief when she saw the unshuttered window, only for the gasp to turn into a cry of distress that it was a full story above her. Even the rickety scaffolding that Ellsworth’s workers had constructed in order to paint to the top of the eaves didn’t reach that high and left a three-foot gap between her reach and the window. Dear God…to come all this way, only to be stopped by a distance of three feet.

  No. She wouldn’t let this stop her. She refused to stop now.

  She glanced around the small service area between the studio and the main terrace house fronting Cheyne Walk. Her eyes desperately searched for anything she could—

  An old barrel. It lay on its side on the ground behind a white-washed necessary, the weather having shrunk the boards in the side staves and head until gaps showed between. The metal loops were rusted and bent. She’d have to be a fool to trust that rotted thing beneath her weight.

  “Then I’m a fool,” she whispered.

  With a soft groan of exertion, she picked up the barrel and heaved it up onto the scaffolding’s boards, about five feet above the ground. It landed with a rattle of noise that made her flinch. But no sound or movement came from the surrounding houses, no lights flared—no one knew she was there. Or cared.

  Summoning all her courage, she slowly climbed up the scaffolding, one tentative step at a time. Her hands and knees shook as she inched slowly upward and never let herself look down. Then she very carefully positioned the barrel and eased her weight onto it, standing slowly to her full height.

  When she reached the window, she lifted a shaking hand toward the sill, to raise the sash—

  Locked. Oh God, it wouldn’t move!

  “No,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with helpless frustration. “No!”

  She had to find a way inside. She had to!

  With no other choice, she reached beneath the greatcoat and grasped her skirt. She gave a hard yank, and the fabric ripped. Pulling again and again, she tugged until the material tore away. Then she made a fist with her left hand and wrapped the fabric around it until it was encased in cotton layers.

  Closing her eyes and saying a quick prayer, she punched her hand through the window. It shattered, and she froze as the sound of breaking glass rained through the alley. She stayed perfectly still, waiting to be caught. But the night remained just as still as before, just as silent beneath the foggy black midnight.

  Careful not to cut her arm, she reached through the broken pane of glass to carefully feel for the latch—

  Her fingers touched metal, and a long sigh of relief poured from her as it gave way with a soft click. She pushed open the window and brushed away the remaining pieces of glass that had landed on the sill.

  Then she jumped.

  The barrel fell away beneath her, clattering to the hard ground. She lay across the window casement on her belly, just far enough inside not to fall back out. There was only one way forward now, so she kicked her feet against the side of the building and leveraged herself through the window.

  When she landed on her feet in the room, she paused. She was unable to ignore the fierce stab of emotion in her chest at being back here, where she and Ross had revealed so much to each other. Where she’d made herself vulnerable enough to share all her secrets with him, to make love to him and open her heart the way she never had with any other man.

  Her throat tightened—where she’d seen him beaten and dragged away as he was arrested.

  “No time for that,” she scolded, blinking hard and forcing herself forward. Later, she promised herself. There would be time later to think of Ross and all she was risking. Now she had to stay focused and numb to the pain.

  Her belongings were still scattered about the bedroom, including the gold gown that Ross had torn off her in his desire to make love to her. Her hairbrush at the dressing table where he’d told her that he wanted a future with her, her little travel bag resting on the bed next to the night rail…all of it exactly where she’d left it, as if simply waiting for her to return and continue with her life right where she’d left off. But because of Ross, her life would never be the same again.

  She changed quickly into a
fresh dress but kept Kit’s coat to protect her from the weather, snatched up the few coins leftover from their trip across England, and paused as she reached for her ruby ring.

  Love always. Her life with David was so long ago that it now felt like a dream. He was her past.

  Ross was her future.

  She made her way downstairs in the darkness, where she knelt on the floor and felt at the boards beneath the central beam. One gave beneath her hands, and a soft cry of relief fell from her. She held her breath as she reached inside the small hollow—

  Her fingers brushed against the papers, still beneath the floor where Ross had hidden them. Thank God. Her hand shook as she retrieved them, knowing those pages held the difference between life and death. Not only for Ross but also for every man whose name was on that list. For those men alone, knowing what Ross was sacrificing to keep them alive, she could never give up.

  Not bothering to replace the board, she tucked the papers inside the coat’s breast pocket and moved to the door. A flick of the lock on the big carriage doors, a hard shove and groan of wood upon stone—the doors parted just enough for her to slip outside into the alley. Without a glance backward, she hurried away into the night.

  When she’d gone far enough away from the carriage house that Christopher wouldn’t be able to find her, she stopped. Quiet stillness hovered around her. Now she could rest and plan out her next steps.

  Beneath the doorway of an abandoned building, she sat down to take refuge against the cold drizzle and wait out the dawn.

  Chapter 25

  “So you know what to do, correct?” Grace held up the few coins she had left and leveled her best motherly stare at the three boys standing with her at the edge of the square across from Wentworth’s townhouse. Then she hesitated, frowning as she looked them up and down. “Perhaps you won’t be able to do this after all.” She lowered her hand, to make a show of putting the coins away. “I’ll have to find other boys to help me. Boys who can run faster.”

  “We’re fast, ma’am.” The oldest of the three boys assured her, his shock of bright red hair nearly as arresting as the map of freckles covering his ruddy cheeks. He wasn’t more than twelve.