“There are eighty-four steps,” Ian informed her cheerfully as he unlocked a door off the dining room, which she had for some reason assumed merely opened into the library. “After you.”
By the time they reached the top and he had ushered her out onto the open roof of the tower, she was winded enough to admit that this had accomplished one thing, anyway. She walked to the parapet and leaned on the roughly hewn pale stone to catch her breath.
Alice lifted her face to the woolen sky. “Look—it’s snowing.”
“I hope it will not lessen their chances of returning safely.” Ian joined her, his hands clasped over the edge of the parapet, one shoulder leaning comfortably against hers. “Are you warm enough?”
In her flight jacket, she could cling to a fuselage in a gale, and he knew it, but it was kind of him to ask. “Yes. So how far do the Hollys holdings extend?”
“You will have to come up here with me in daylight so that I may show you. But in practical terms, the estate is nearly a thousand acres, with six tenant farms and half a mile of fishing rights on the river, which is on the other side of the first farm.”
“A thousand acres,” Alice breathed. “I’ve heard of ranches owned by the Californios in the Royal Kingdom of Spain ten times that size … but things are more spread out there. How does a person get used to owning so much property?”
The sum total of her ownership was half of Swan and what she could carry in her valise. Which, she supposed, was a lot more than she’d left Resolution with. At least this airship wasn’t stolen. It had been … recovered.
“It is a responsibility,” Ian replied, “and I suppose one grows into it. As a child and a young man, I helped on the farms during harvest, planted roses with my mother, and flew over all of it in the touring balloon—cows and sheep tend to be hard on fencing, and until I left to join the Corps, my job during holidays from school was to repair it.”
“So you didn’t grow up taking dancing lessons and gambling?”
He laughed. “Hardly. Though I do aspire to Claire’s skill at cowboy poker.”
“Don’t we all—though I give her a run for her money. Or toothpicks, as the case may be.”
“Does the property—the house—do I make you uneasy, Alice? Is that the real source of these questions?”
“Not uneasy, no. It’s just … not what I’m used to, that’s all. And if—” She stopped. What if she was mistaken and her inexperience had led her to read something into his words the other day that wasn’t there? What if she’d dreamed the whole thing? What if it never happened at all?
“And if I meant what I said that day in the landau, could you become used to it? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Did you mean it?” There was no sign of the touring balloon as far as she could see, which wasn’t very far in the dark. She turned to him. He was solid, visible. Close. And radiating warmth, the way people got when they were laboring under strong emotion.
“I did,” he said. “This is hardly an appropriate time, when our friends are in danger—when you are in danger—but I feel like champagne shaken in a bottle. I must speak, or explode.” He took her shoulders in both hands, so that they faced each other square on. “Alice, is there any hope that you might feel for me what I have come to feel for you? Sometimes I think there is—at the station, for instance, when you kissed me in that highly inappropriate manner—”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t like it.”
“I did like it. It shocked me to the core, and gave me hope that I might—that you might—that we—”
Was this really the arrogant, commanding Captain Hollys, this man who had been through hell and survived … and now could hardly get his words out? She felt exactly the same way—as though there was so much to say that it was all backing up in her throat, and all she could manage was a whisper. “That we what?”
“That we … might be more to each other than merely comrades in arms. That you might truly believe me when I say I want to offer you all that I have.”
She could hardly speak over the pounding of her heart. “I don’t want all that you have. I want the man who kissed me at the train station. The man who flies as well as I do—and who trusts me to take the helm when he can’t. The one who puts me first—me, an air pirate’s daughter with nothing to her name but half a ship and the clothes she stands up in. That’s what I want.”
He released a shuddering breath, as though he had been holding it. “I am not the man I was, Alice.”
“We would hardly be having this conversation if you were.”
“I do not think I would have survived these weeks since Venice without you. Even now, I—”
“Shh.” She put a finger to his lips, then slipped her arms around his neck as his hands slid to her waist. “You will get better. We’ll see this through together. And after that …”
“After that, will you marry me?” His voice was a whisper of hope in the silence. “Will you, Alice?”
She opened her lips to answer against his mouth. But the word never came out.
Crack!
The granite crenellation two feet from Ian’s elbow exploded in a thousand pieces, and without a second’s hesitation, he rolled her to the rooftop behind the parapet.
*
Claire thrust the lightning rifle into Andrew’s hands and dashed to Gloria’s side. With some difficulty, Jake and Tigg helped each other out from under Gerald Meriwether-Astor’s not inconsiderable weight, and Tigg laid a gentle hand on the man’s neck.
When Claire’s gaze met his, he shook his head.
Jake gazed down at the man’s body—and at the damage the propelled bullet had done. “Guess he won’t be invading the Californias after all.”
So many emotions and panicked questions were ricocheting inside Claire’s skull that the fate of the Californias was the least of her worries. “Gloria! Gloria, wake up. Oh, bother—why do I never think to carry smelling salts?”
“Because our friends do not tend to faint?” Andrew knelt next to her and snapped the rifle into its holster on her back while she patted Gloria’s cheeks.
A snowflake fell on the young woman’s eyelid and her lashes fluttered open. She groaned and closed them again. “Am I shot? Am I going to die?”
“No, darling,” Claire said. “Not for many years yet.”
Her eyes opened slowly and then she looked about her and sat up. “What happened?” Then her gaze fell on Gerald’s body. With a gasp, she said, “Dad! What’s wrong with Dad?”
Rolling to her knees, she reached for him—and then saw the black stain under his ribs. She reared back, both hands pushing at the air as if to deny the very evidence of her eyes. “What happened?”
Claire took her in her arms and pressed her shivering body close. “He saved your life, darling. You fainted and the assassin fired at you. As he pulled the trigger, your father threw himself across your body and took the bullet himself. And as you know, there is no surviving those bullets.”
Gloria gulped air, and pressed her face into Claire’s shoulder. “He died to save me?”
“Without a second’s hesitation,” she said softly into her friend’s hair.
Gloria shivered, and began to sob—great heaving sobs that seemed to come up from the very ground on which they knelt. “I was wrong—oh, I thought such terrible things—said such terrible things of him—and he—oh, Claire!” A shudder of breath, an attempt to gain control, and then she gave up under the onslaught, buried her head, and wept.
Long moments passed and Claire did not move, absorbing her friend’s distress. Sometimes there were simply no words that did justice to a situation. Sometimes only action would do, and sometimes the only action possible was a hug.
When the flood of her tears had at last been reduced to a trickle, Gloria straightened slowly, wiping her nose inelegantly with the hem of her skirt.
Andrew knelt beside them. “Claire,” he said quietly. “I do not like it that the assassin has disappeared with his mi
ssion unfinished.”
“I do not like it either,” she admitted, sitting back on her heels. She helped Gloria up and stood with one arm about her waist, lest her knees should give out again. “How could he conclude anything but that he had the wrong girl when her father sacrificed his very life with her name on his lips?”
“Precisely. Which leads me to conclude that he will certainly go after Alice.”
“But does he not believe she is in the Californias?”
Tigg rounded Gerald’s inert walking boots and touched her shoulder. “I don’t think he does, Lady. When Miss Gloria said she’d rather be Alice, being courted by Ian Hollys and having a future—begging your pardon, miss—it gave him another lead. He’s bound to follow it. It means his death if he doesn’t—a man with a medallion must carry out the Doge’s command, or die trying.”
“But—”
“It’s true, Lady,” Jake said. “I heard him tell it just so. And it wouldn’t take but a few enquiries at one of the inns along the post road to get directions straight to Hollys Park.”
“Because nobody expects a Venetian assassin,” Claire moaned in despair.
“So it’s true?” Gloria asked, her tone hollow with horror. “What he said? Because Dad proved that I was me, he now means to kill poor Alice?”
“He does, and Ian and she do not know for certain he is in Somerset.” Andrew took Gloria’s hand and squeezed it. “We must act quickly. Jake will go with you back to the touring balloon to wait for the Walsingham men and inform them of your father’s demise.”
When Gloria began to protest, he shook his head. “If they do not see his body in medias res, as it were, and hear the facts, you will never be free of them. It must be you, and you must not be alone. Claire, Tigg, and I will take the landau at once to Hollys Park, for Tigg is right. That is certainly where he has gone.”
“Mr. Andrew, I would rather help Jake and Gloria,” Tigg objected. “I am also in Her Majesty’s service, to say nothing of Lady Dunsmuir’s service. Even in the Walsingham Office, that name will carry weight.”
Claire’s mind cleared, and she saw all at once why Andrew had divided them this way. And also that she must be the one to explain. “No, dearest. You must come with us. You are—he is—”
Understanding lit Tigg’s eyes, and a weight seemed to settle at the same time in his shoulders. “He is my father. Do you think I have any influence with him? That anything I say will stop him, when he fired on Gloria without hesitation?”
“No, I do not. But if the worst comes to pass—” Oh, how could she say this? But she must. “If there is a fight, and tonight is to be his last on the earth, it is right that your face should be the last one he sees.”
Tigg’s whole body stiffened, and she could not read that beloved face in the dark. “You aim to kill him?”
“He aims to kill Alice, and already did for Gloria’s dad,” Jake pointed out.
“My only aim is that Alice should live to see the morning.” Claire forced the words through chilled lips. “Anything else is in God’s hands. Come. We do not have much time.”
For a moment, she thought Tigg would refuse. His presence was not, after all, strictly necessary. But something—some instinct—some knowledge of him that her years as companion and mother figure had given her told her that necessary could have more than one meaning.
“All right, Lady,” Tigg said quietly. “I only hope the landau will ignite on that slope.”
“Let us find out, then, as quickly as we can.”
24
“He’s found me!” Alice pressed her face into Ian’s shirt front. “Dadgummit—how?”
“Of greater urgency is the firepower he carries,” Ian said grimly. “That was a seventy-five-yard shot. Come. Stay low. Though the doors and windows are locked, we must see to the servants’ safety.”
The two of them still recumbent upon the gravel roof, he wrapped Alice in his arms and kissed her hard. It was just her luck, to be shot at and have the most wonderful moment of her life ruined with a vengeance. Claire and Andrew had such a romantic engagement story. How would she tell hers?
First, she supposed, she had better live through it, and worry about the telling later.
They scrambled to their feet, and, running hunched over, gained the tower door and slipped inside. The trip down took about a tenth of the time of the trip up, aided by sliding along the ironwork rail and taking the steps two and three at once. Ian shot the bolts and closed off one entire wing of the house, as well as the staircase that led to the floor where the Boatwrights and the maids slept.
“If he does break in, at least we shall limit his movements as much as we can. And while Boatwright was a fine shot in his day, I would not want to risk his safety if he should walk in on that gun.”
“How are we going to watch for him—the assassin?”
“We shall arm ourselves to the teeth and retreat to the second floor. There, you will stay away from windows and watch the hall from the gallery. He must cross the hall to gain the stairs, and you will have a clear shot.”
“You will stay away from windows, too, you hear?” Alice said, the anxiety in her tone rather spoiling the order. “I have an answer for you and you’re not getting it until this is done.”
“Then I will do my utmost to make this the briefest siege in the history of England.”
Even in the midst of mortal danger, he could make her smile.
She thumbed the switch of the lightning pistol that had never left her pocket since she’d returned from Venice a wanted woman, and as it hummed into life, she took up her post crouched behind the marble rail of the gallery that overlooked the entrance hall below. After a moment’s debate about whether or not to douse the electricks, she decided she needed light for a shot as much as the assassin did. She would just have to be faster on the draw.
Smoothly, Ian moved from window to window, slipping in and out of the rooms on the west side with the ease of long familiarity. How long would it take her, too, to feel that this house was home? How was she going to manage it all—staff, grounds, enough rooms to put all of Resolution in? How was she ever going to live up to the legacy of beauty and grace that his mother had left, when the only legacy she had of her own mother was how to take a man down with one shot, and how to stretch a penny until it squeaked?
She supposed she ought to be grateful for the first, since without it, all the rest might not be possible.
Ian moved farther away, and soon her quick hearing lost even his quiet footfalls on the polished wood and thick rugs. He must be working his way around to the south side, which opened up on the gardens and would provide any number of places to hide. Terwilliger might even conceal himself until morning, thinking she might be foolish enough to step out of doors.
He might even have gone out to Swan.
Alice’s stomach leaped and sank. The ship was only partially provisioned, but she had no doubt an assassin would be as good at stretching food as ever her mother had been. All he would have to do was wait until she pulled up ropes, and she’d be trapped on her own ship until he was good and ready to shoot her. Maybe he’d even fly it back to Venice with her body in the hold, and poor Swan would be stuck forever in the impound yard on the Lido where Alice had found her, her brief bid for freedom scuttled.
No, no. She couldn’t think that way. She needed to stay alert and remember that she and Ian were each other’s first line of defense. She mustn’t let the tension get to her, or she’d start to gibber the way he had during those first few days after their escape.
“Alice Chalmers, I presume?”
Her heart practically leaped from her chest at the sound of a man’s voice. Not Ian. Not Boatwright.
Foreign.
Him.
“Who’s there?” Her whisper was harsh with fright.
“I am the representative of justice.”
Where in tarnation was he? In the corners the electricks didn’t reach, the dark was complete. He could be anywhere, his
voice whispering in the gallery, seeming to come from every direction. She must scream.
No, she mustn’t. Ian would come running, and Terwilliger would pick him off like a pheasant flushed out of hiding.
“You are charged with illegally freeing lawful prisoners of His Serene Grace the Doge of Venice, with grand theft of a legally impounded ship, and with failing to pay your transfer fees before leaving the country.”
“Those last two are worthy of death?” She couldn’t help the incredulity in her tone. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”
“The Doge does not take slights to his authority lightly.” He was moving, she realized suddenly. His voice seemed to be coming from—
There. An inky shadow moved on the side of the gallery adjacent to where she stood, the north side, where they’d just come down from the tower.
“How did you get into the house?” He knew where she was, so she might as well ask questions while she could. Her only advantage was that he didn’t know she knew where he was.
“I came prepared with a rocket rucksack. Even the best security never quite seems to extend to the top of a house. After I missed my shot up on the tower, I made a wager with myself that you would be in too great a hurry to lock the door behind you. I rarely lose my wagers.”
“We didn’t think of a rocket rucksack,” she admitted. One step. Two. Just a few feet and an enormous ceramic urn would give her partial protection. While it likely wouldn’t slow the bullet much, it might deflect it enough that she could get a shot off. “Was it you shooting at Gloria Meriwether-Astor?”
“Sadly, yes. It strains credulity that there could be two blond Colonials acquainted with Captain Hollys within ten miles of one another, but here you are. I will remember next time not to make such assumptions.”
He must be very confident in his ability if he could yarn on like this, giving her a better bead on his location. She had almost made it to the urn when he said, “Halt there, if you please. Take your hands out of your pockets and raise them. I will make this as quick and painless as I can. I have no fondness for a woman’s suffering.”
A Gentleman of Means Page 22
