Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 01]

by To Wed a Scandalous Spy

  The intruder sneered at her over his pistol. Willa decided that calling him a mouse was an insult to rodents everywhere. Yet the nasty young man would likely be considered a handsome enough fellow, were he not a bit worse for wear. His once fine clothing was stained and worn and his hair hung stringy before his eyes. Despite that, there was something familiar about him to Willa.

  Perhaps if her heart were not pounding like a runaway horse she would recall where she had seen him, or someone very like him, before.

  “So he loves you little, just as the gossip inferred,” the fellow said with a nasty laugh. “I heard that you felled him with a stone as he rode by you.”

  Despite her fear, Willa was nonplussed. Even the villains knew her story? “Someone ought to shut their gob,” she muttered.

  “That someone is you,” snapped the man. “Now tell me where the bloody book is!”

  “Of course,” Willa sighed. “That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it? The bloody book.” She folded her arms to hide the trembling in her hands. “Well, I don’t have it.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yes, you do. I heard you and the old hen arguing about it as you came down the hall.”

  Drat. She had been speaking loudly, out of courtesy for Myrtle’s hearing. Oh, dear. Myrtle still hadn’t moved a bit. Willa felt sick. If this rotter had killed Myrtle—

  “The book!” The fellow stepped closer. Willa quickly stepped back.

  “I tell you, it isn’t here! Not in this room.” Her stomach churned with cold fear. Nathaniel had walked away from her—yet he’d said he was off to his club, even while Lord Liverpool remained downstairs. Surely that meant he’d understood, hadn’t it? He would come. She merely had to keep this wicked fellow talking until—but what if something happened to Nathaniel?

  Willa would rather die herself than have anything happen to Nathaniel. Yet she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. Now. Here, with Nathaniel.

  Just when she was the closest to achieving that dream this … this man showed up to ruin everything! Willa was terrified beyond description, but she was infuriated even more.

  He raised the pistol to aim casually at her face. Willa was certain she was due to vomit at any moment. “I have forever, you know,” he said silkily. “Nowhere to go now, not unless I have that book. So why don’t we pass the time while you think about it?” He leered at her in what was surely meant to be a threatening way.

  Fortunately, that was the least of Willa’s fears. She snorted. “Not if you value your life, you won’t.” She didn’t bother explaining the jinx. Let the rotter find out the hard way. “Who are you?” If she was going to be killed, she wanted to know by whom.

  The man only smirked. “You never saw me coming, did you?”

  Willa thought about it. “Well, yes, we did, actually. You’ve been tracking me across England, desperately trying to obtain my grandfather’s diary. I must say, you are incompetent.”

  “Enough!” hissed the man. He was pale and his hands were shaking. He also looked furious that she had spoiled what she assumed was to have been his moment of surprising revelation.

  “You probably even put Sir Foster up to burning down Reardon House,” she muttered.

  “Shut up!” the man said in a restrained shriek.

  Oh dear. She was getting to him. That did happen. Men would make such open-ended statements of the obvious. She, in return, always felt compelled to point that out to them.

  They didn’t tend to take it well.

  This gentleman was no exception. All his smug assurance was gone. Still holding the pistol on her, he began to back away from the door and the window. “Come,” he said, gesturing to her.

  “I most seriously doubt I will,” Willa said gravely, then took two quick steps back. “I believe my chances of survival are much superior over here.” She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m considering banking on you missing me.”

  Stunned outrage passed over the man’s features. “You can’t do that!”

  Willa smiled slightly. “Is that even your own pistol?” She folded her arms. “You haven’t practiced with it at all, have you? You thought all you had to do was sashay in and wave your pistol at a couple of ladies and the day would be won?” She shook her head pityingly. “‘Tisn’t much of a plan, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” The man was nearly purple now. “You’re simply Reardon’s barefoot, illiterate broomstick bride!”

  “Illiterate? Illiterate?” Willa had never been so insulted in all her days. She pulled off her right slipper and threw it at him. “I am not illiterate!”

  He ducked slightly and the kid leather shoe slapped him harmlessly on the shoulder. Willa threw the next one much harder. This time, though he waved both arms to fend it off, it smacked him soundly on the head.

  “You’re mad,” the man said, rubbing his head in wonder. “Stark staring mad.”

  “Yet you’re a perfect example of sanity?” She grimaced and held out her hand. “Give me back my shoes. I wish to throw them at you again.”

  The man grabbed up her shoes and held them behind his back with his unarmed hand. “Not bloody likely!”

  Then he seemed to become aware that he was treating a pair of lady’s soft kid slippers like a serious threat. He flung them to the floor with a growl. His eyes black with fury, he raised the pistol to aim anew at her heart. “Bugger the book! Right now I only wish to kill you!”

  No, she could quite seriously say that he was not going to miss her after all. The bullet in that gun was going to pierce her beating heart and kill her.

  “Bastard,” she whispered weakly.

  “Absolutely,” the man sneered, and pulled back the hammer with a click that sounded loud in the silent room.

  Nathaniel casually walked away from Willa’s bedchamber door, maintaining his unworried speed for several long steps. Then he ran to his own chambers and threw open the garden window.

  Willa’s window was several yards away. Nathaniel eyed the wall below it. The twisted trunks of old-growth ivy had supported the intruder climbing to her window but was now torn from the wall and unstable. From the look of the tangle of broken climber, the man had scarcely survived the climb himself.

  Ladders? No, it would take too long to bring them.

  Breaking down the door? Good idea in theory, but the doors of Reardon House were heavy oak. It might take several tries to bring it down. In that amount of time, Willa could be made most definitely dead.

  The cold fear threatened to weaken him. He would not consider the possibility. Nothing could happen to Willa. “She’s the lucky one, remember?” he whispered to himself.

  Then the shadow of a decorative bit of stonework caught his eye. About three feet below Willa’s and his windows ran a bit of a ledge, scarcely two inches wide. Another band ran about five feet higher, its line broken by the windows themselves.

  Nathaniel ducked back into his bedchamber and tore through a drawer, looking for his creepers. As he pulled off his boots and tugged on the butter soft leather shoes with the India rubber soles that he had used for the odd break-in back in the days before he’d become the Cobra, Liverpool appeared in his doorway.

  “Is there some reason why I am sitting down there with no diary in my hands?”

  Nathaniel didn’t bother to look at him. He moved to sit in his window embrasure. “Willa wants me to kill a mouse.”

  “And why is that my concern?”

  “Willa loves mice.” He swung his legs out into space.

  “Dear God, man! What are you doing?”

  “There’s an intruder in Willa’s room. I’m going to kill him, just as she requested.”

  “Why not use a key?”

  “There are no keys in Reardon House. Only locks from the inside. It seemed clever at the time.” Nathaniel began to drop himself out of the window.

  “Wait!”

  He looked up at Liverpool.

  “You cannot mean to risk
yourself!” Liverpool said sharply. “You know there is no Cobra candidate behind you! The Four must not be weakened now, not in wartime, especially not for the sake of some Northants tavern maid!”

  Nathaniel didn’t so much as frown, but Liverpool abruptly decided to take another tack. “Why not wait until less valuable reinforcements arrive? You are the Cobra. The Cobra does not go out on a ledge to be a hero. Think, man!”

  For the barest instant, Nathaniel thought. He could wait, and he probably should—just as his father had always put cool logic before any emotional attachment. He nodded at Liverpool. “You’re right. The Cobra would not go out on a narrow ledge for a woman.” Then he tore off his frock coat and threw it into Liverpool’s hands with a grim, deadly smile.

  “But Nathaniel Stonewell would. Now go get those reinforcements.” With that, he dropped himself out of the window.

  The little hole in the gun barrel seemed a vast black void. Willa’s knees went rather dramatically weak. She quite unwillingly staggered into a side table, sending the unlit candlestick thudding to the floor. The man started violently but, fortunately, not enough to pull the trigger.

  It did confuse him so that he didn’t see the shadow pass the window to one side of them. Willa didn’t take her gaze from the intruder’s face but simply sidled away from the window, forcing him to turn his back to it.

  Directly behind the man, what looked like a single finger showed briefly in the window, silhouetted against the pearly gray afternoon outside. One? One what?

  Then, two fingers. Ah, a counting. She readied herself.

  Three.

  Willa fell flat to the floor, throwing herself over Myrtle. The window burst in a shower of glass and Nathaniel leaped into the room. The door shuddered under the repeated slamming of large, determined bodies, then finally gave with a rending crash. Ren Porter rushed in accompanied by several footmen. The intruder didn’t know who to aim at first.

  Then it was too late to decide. He was down, disarmed, and being pummeled most properly by Nathaniel. Once the man was unconscious—oh, very well, a bit past unconscious—Nathaniel ceased and stood up, his chest heaving.

  Willa ran to him and flung herself into his arms. He held her closer than close. “Well played, wildflower,” he whispered, his chuckle hoarse with desperate worry. “I particularly liked the part where you demanded your shoes back to hurl them again.”

  She accepted another squeeze from him before she ran to Myrtle. Ren Porter was kneeling next to the fallen woman. Myrtle was rousing. “I’d say she’ll have the headache of her life, but no permanent harm done.” Ren grinned at Willa with lopsided apology. “I wouldn’t recommend laudanum, however. It makes one do the damnedest things.”

  Willa smiled warmly at him. “I have no idea what you mean.” He bobbed his head quickly in thanks. She pushed him to the door. “Go back to bed, you madman. There’ll be no dying in my house, do you understand me?”

  He laughed weakly and bowed. “Yes, my lady!”

  Lord Liverpool appeared in the doorway. He glanced down at the man on the floor. “Always the bedamned Wadsworths.” He glared at Nathaniel. “Louis Wadsworth has been in the Tower for more than a week, held under trusted guard! No one escapes from the Tower!”

  Nathaniel considered Liverpool for a long moment. “Have you actually seen him in the Tower yourself?”

  Liverpool tilted his head thoughtfully. “No, I had not yet visited him there. I had hoped some time in prison would make the questioning easier.”

  “Ah. Then I would say that there was indeed someone put in the Tower … but not this man.”

  “Hmm. Someone close to me has failed me.” Liverpool looked exceedingly dangerous. “I do not like it when I am failed.”

  “Hmm.” Nathaniel found himself unconvinced. Liverpool had never truly adapted to the more constrained position of Prime Minister. In some ways, he behaved as if he still held all the autonomy and power of the Cobra in his hands. Power that was Nathaniel’s now.

  Nathaniel had difficulty believing that a man such as Liverpool would let a prisoner like Louis Wadsworth slip through his fingers. Yet what would be the purpose of aiding such an escape?

  The possibility of following Louis directly to the prize—Willa’s book.

  “It is convenient that you are here to claim your prisoner once more, is it not?”

  Liverpool looked at Nathaniel sharply, his narrow features tightening. “Your meaning, Reardon?”

  Nathaniel shrugged easily. “Merely congratulating you on a happy accident. However, I do hope you realize how fortunate it is that my lady was not harmed in this incident?” His tone was light, but he knew Liverpool did not mistake his meaning.

  Liverpool narrowed his eyes. “Your lady would have been far from danger, had you heeded my advice.”

  Nathaniel kept his own gaze level, his expression quite bland. Liverpool matched him until his gaze flicked away, apparently without volition. Satisfied, Nathaniel turned his attention to the figure on the floor.

  “First Ren Porter. Then Foster. Now Wadsworth. I do feel a right target, I must say.” Someone wanted him rather dead, it seemed. Had Louis Wadsworth been behind the entire matter, only coming forward when the others had failed? “Do you think we’ve our Chimera in hand now?”

  “I intend to find out.” Liverpool signaled to one of his own men. “Bind that man and take him to my carriage. I believe I must step up my interrogation timetable.”

  Willa came to stand with Nathaniel again. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you still have the book, Willa?”

  She blinked at him. “Goodness. I’d forgotten all about it. You truly do want that book.”

  “Yes.” He couldn’t tell her why.

  “I’ll fetch it from Myrtle’s room.”

  Liverpool glanced around at the room full of servants tending the glass and broken door. “Shall we retire to the library, then?”

  Willa retrieved the diary from where it sat on Myrtle’s nightstand. Once in the library, she prepared to hand it over to Lord Liverpool. Yet something in the air between the Prime Minister and her husband compelled her to hand it to him instead.

  The appreciative glint in Nathaniel’s eyes told her she’d done the right thing.

  Nathaniel tipped the book open to read the flyleaf. He clenched his jaw mightily, then handed the book over to Liverpool. Lord Liverpool read the flyleaf, went even more rigid than usual—Willa would have wagered it wasn’t possible—then snapped the volume shut with a sharp crack.

  “I’ll take this, if you don’t mind,” he said tightly.

  Nathaniel nodded silently, his jaw tensing rhythmically.

  Liverpool nodded shortly to Willa. “Lady Reardon,” he said by way of leave-taking. He strode from the library with his expression frozen in acidity.

  Taking Willa by the hand, Nathaniel followed to see him out. In the front hall, they paused to allow two footmen to walk a groggy Louis Wadsworth out between them. “What a shame,” Nathaniel muttered. “I thought I hit him harder than that.”

  Just then, Daphne and Basil descended the stairs, obviously dressed for travel.

  Nathaniel did not seem terribly surprised. “Heading for the country already?”

  Basil shrugged. “The Season is over for us, now that we are in mourning. At least at Reardon we may entertain quietly.”

  Daphne looked worried. “Basil, what is all this? Who is that man?”

  Basil patted her hand. “It has nothing to do with us, my sweet. Let Thaniel handle his own mess. I insist that we leave now.” He signaled the footman behind him to bring their trunks forward.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “We are in the act of transporting a dangerous criminal from the house at the moment. I suggest you stay back until he is gone.”

  Daphne’s eyes went wide. “Another attack? How did you survive this one?”

  Nathaniel smiled at Willa. “Quick wits and a lethal pair of shoes,” he said. Then he left her with Daphne and Basil to accompany
the two guards to the carriage with their prisoner.

  “When you get him inside,” Nathaniel said to them as they nearly dragged their burden down the steps to the drive, “I suggest you bind his feet as w—”

  Suddenly Louis gasped, looking over Nathaniel’s shoulder at the park beyond. He began to struggle. “No, he’s—”

  A gunshot rang out, echoing against the facade of the house so that the source was masked. Willa watched in horror as Nathaniel went down in a tangle with Wadsworth and the two footmen.

  “Is he dead?” shrieked Daphne. “Is Thaniel dead?”

  Willa was at Nathaniel’s side in an instant, down on her knees in the gravel. She pushed at the pile of men covering him. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw that his shirt was covered with blood.

  The two footmen rolled aside, then pulled Louis Wadsworth up. He hung more limply than ever, the spreading stain on his shirtfront explaining why.

  Nathaniel wheezed, then coughed. He took in a great lungful of air there on his back, a blissful smile crossing his face. “I truly thought they had me,” he said to Willa, his voice a croak.

  She laughed damply. “I think the late Mr. Wadsworth simply knocked the wind out of you, darling.”

  He turned to look at the prisoner. Then he rolled his head to gaze up at Liverpool, who stood by the carriage with a sour expression. “Our Chimera, do you think?”

  Liverpool grimaced. “I don’t doubt it.”

  Nathaniel sat up. “Damn.”

  The footman who had taken off at the shot came jogging back. “We found where they was waiting in the park, sir, but they was gone. Had a horse ready, they did.”

  Willa helped Nathaniel to his feet and dusted off the back of his trousers. He laughed, thinking of how long ago—had it only been little more than a week?—he’d woken by the side of the lane with a woman in his arms.

  Liverpool took a seat in his carriage. “There is little point in remaining now,” he said sourly.

  “At least you still have Foster,” Nathaniel reminded him.

  Liverpool nodded. “That is a comfort. Unfortunately, I am fairly sure now that Foster was simply a minion. I suspect the Wadsworths were the leaders of their cell of espionage.” His driver took off with a jerk.