by Kate Moore
“Not another step, mind,” said the rough voice. “I’ve got another popper loaded.”
Barksted appeared in the doorway at the rear of the house. “Lady Ravenhurst,” he said, stepping into the garden, accompanied by the man holding the lantern. “And who have we here? Some dastardly rogue who’s abducted you, my dear?”
Barksted signaled the man with the lantern to hold it higher, and the beam caught Lynley.
Barksted’s face contorted in an ugly grin of satisfaction. “Lynley. The man who always interferes with my plans.”
Lynley held himself as straight as he could. He had a spent pistol and a right arm that was rapidly becoming useless. “Merely assisting the lady in returning to her husband.”
Barksted appeared to think. “What a trying ordeal you’ve had, my lady,” he said. “Shall we put it about that you were abducted by this rogue? I think that story will serve admirably.”
He came forward and extended a hand to lift Lady Ravenhurst up. She cast one helpless look at Lynley and took Barksted’s hand.
“I’ve a coach waiting. Let’s return you to your husband.”
It was a moment Lynley knew well, and he tasted the full bitterness of the lesson he’d failed to learn as a boy, that a man could not separate a woman from her folly.
Barksted and Lady Ravenhurst reached the back of the house, when he turned to his henchmen. “He’s yours, boys,” he said. To Lynley, he added, “You were warned.”
In an instant they were on him. He was no match for them without the use of his right arm. He did his best to protect his head and ribs from the blows.
In two minutes it was over. Barksted whistled, and with one last kick at Lynley’s side, his henchmen withdrew.
Lynley lay in the grass at the back of the garden until he heard the carriage pull out of the gravel sweep, onto the road. He rolled to his knees and pushed himself up with his left hand. Dizziness troubled him briefly. The wind had died. Low clouds covered the sky. He staggered through the garden gate and whistled for Sultan. His usually piercing whistle sounded feeble in his ears.
But the horse came. Lynley draped his good arm over Sultan’s withers and let the horse support him. Sultan gave an anxious snort at the smell of blood, but settled down to walk with Lynley toward the outbuilding where Walhouse had kept his carriage and pair. The first wet flakes of spring snow fell as they neared the doors.
Inside there would be hay, old hay, but hay and a roof over their heads. Lynley told Sultan to stand in a makeshift stall that smelled of dry hay. He leaned against the stall partition and stripped off his neckcloth. He wadded it up and stuffed it against the wound in his arm. Then he slid down into the old hay, pulling his cloak around him. Sultan leaned down and nuzzled Lynley’s head. Just a little rest and they’d be on their way.
“Wait for me, boy,” Lynley whispered.
Chapter Twenty-One
Fatal to the husband hunter’s future happiness is any inclination to romanticize men. The husband hunter must refrain from expecting her fellow creatures to act as if they stepped from the pages of chivalric tales or stirring romances. She must do so not out of the selfish motive of protecting herself from disillusionment, but rather from the generous motive of freeing herself to see the gentlemen in her life as the mortal beings they truly are.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
At eleven it became clear that Roz’s baby was determined to make an entrance into the world that night. A heavy wet snow had begun to fall. Emily sent express messages to her mother and brother. Her father and Phil saw their guests off and retired to the drawing room.
On the advice of Aunt Sarah, summoned at the end of dinner, Roz walked up and down her room for several hours, stopping to breathe through the pains, until her labor entered a new, more intense phase. Aunt Sarah then directed housemaids in the preparation of the bed for birthing. They moved Roz to the bed, fed her pieces of ice, and helped her through the cresting waves of pain.
Emily held Roz’s hand, marveling at her sister’s endurance. Roz, who had seemed so delicate, showed a strength Emily had not imagined a woman could possess.
Aunt Sarah put a sturdy arm around Emily’s shoulder and gave a squeeze. “The body has its own wisdom, if we will but heed its messages,” she said. “Roz’s body will take over now, and lead her.”
The doctor came from an evening engagement some time after one, shaking snow from his hat and coat, and praising their efforts. He pronounced everything going according to Nature’s plan. Emily had a thought or two on Nature’s plan and how it seemed disproportionately demanding of women, but she ran back and forth to her father and Phil, reporting Roz’s progress.
At five, as pale early light brightened the windows, a silver, shimmering little boy, slippery as a fish, and fair and mild as Roz herself, entered the world and gave his first lusty cry. A tearful Roz reached to hold him close at once and called for Phil.
She was made to wait while Aunt Sarah and the doctor supervised all that must be done for baby and mother. To Emily’s surprise, as the signs of birthing were whisked away, Roz, too, shed her pains, as if she had not spent the last hours sweating and shaking, red of face and dropping from weariness. The great effort that had overtaken her body had passed. The storm had faded in joy. Her face was radiant as the brightest day after the clouds cleared.
When admitted to her chamber, Phil climbed onto the bed next to his wife and put his arm around her as she held the babe. He slipped a finger into his son’s tiny grasp, and they sat stunned and wondering at the life their love had made.
At seven Emily returned to Candover House to change and go in search of her love.
* * * *
The snow was already melting and turning the streets to mush when Emily banged on the door of the chemist’s shop in Bond Street so proudly named by Miranda Kirby. Persistent knocking and pressing of the bell eventually drew Miranda to the window. When she saw Emily, she opened the shop door.
“Miss, come in out of the chill. Whatever brings you here at this time?”
Emily stepped inside, rubbing her cold hands together. “I need your help to find Lynley.”
“My help, miss?”
“You and your betrothed know the spymaster, don’t you?”
Miranda colored brightly, but closed the shop door with a bang. “But, miss, you’re not to know about the spies or Mr. Goldsworthy.”
“Mr. Goldsworthy, is it?” Emily asked. “Take me to him.”
“Oh, miss, you have no idea what you’re asking.” Miranda twisted the ends of a blue shawl in her hands.
“What about your young man, Mr. Wilde? Will he take me to Goldsworthy?”
Miranda took a breath. “Good idea, miss. I’ll fetch Nate. You wait right here.”
Miranda disappeared through a pair of crimson velvet curtains at the rear of the shop, and Emily heard her footsteps hurrying down a passageway. A door opened and closed somewhere at the back of the building.
Emily looked round the little shop with its orderly arrangement of jars and tins of lotions and salves. The place smelled of citrus, lavender, and deeper, muskier scents. She lifted a jar of lotion from the shelf, and raised it to her nose. It smelled of almonds. The label claimed the most amazing results from the regular application of the lotion inside, and it occurred to her that she already possessed a powerful means of persuasion should the spymaster resist her plan to rescue Lynley.
Goldsworthy’s name was the key to the bold idea that had sprung into her head. She knew exactly how to move him to help her in the manner in which she wished to be helped. He would resist. It would be just like a man to pat her on the head and send her off and claim that he would take care of the situation. But women, whose bodies men disdained as soft and weak, were stronger than men ever gave them credit for being.
She replaced the lotion on the shelf and went ar
ound behind the shop counter. In a drawer under the counter she found just the pen, ink, and paper she was looking for. She began to write, though the ink was cold and the pen, badly mended. The words came rapidly.
She had much more to say, but the distant door at the rear of the shop banged again, and voices raised in argument came her way. She put down her pen, shook the paper dry, and folded the sheet. Miranda and Wilde stepped through the crimson curtains.
“Good morning, miss. What’s this Miranda is saying about your wanting to see Mr. Goldsworthy?” He frowned at Miranda.
“Good morning, Mr. Wilde. Do not blame Miranda for my actions. You must be aware that Lynley left town yesterday, and that he has not returned.”
“Sir Ajax is well able to handle himself, miss,” Wilde said through tight lips.
“I’m sure. Nevertheless. He is mortal, and he may not have anticipated certain complications in this case. I want you to take me to Mr. Goldsworthy, who if nothing else, has a duty to look after his own.”
“Mr. Goldsworthy,” said Wilde, “doesn’t like to make himself known to…the world, miss. Keeps to himself, he does.” For a moment the posh accent slipped, and the young man sounded as if he came from the poorest of London streets.
“I’m sure he doesn’t, Mr. Wilde, but if he does not see me this morning, he can expect to be widely known to the public by the end of the week, for I intend to expose him to the Times for what he is—a spymaster in our midst.” Emily held up the paper on which she’d written her letter.
“Miss, you wouldn’t,” protested Miranda.
“I will.”
Wilde’s expression grew obstinate, while Miranda looked panicked.
Emily tried a different tactic. “Really, you two, didn’t Lynley rescue you recently, and now you refuse to let me rescue him?”
“But, miss,” said Wilde, “Sir Ajax has his pistols and his black horse.”
“Oh,” said Miranda, “he’s playing the highwayman, miss. He is quite...daunting in his black cape and hat with his pistol pointing at a body.”
“And he’s a crack shot,” added Wilde.
“Fearsome, is he?” she asked.
Two heads nodded vigorously.
“It’s a disguise, you know,” she said. She would not tell them, but she understood the disguise. Some part of Lynley was still the boy who had failed to save his parents from their folly. No matter how tall and strong he’d become since the moment when the Russian soldier had struck him down, he needed the highwayman’s disguise to look dangerous. “Take me to Goldsworthy.” She held up her letter.
A long moment passed. Emily stood as still and unwavering as a marble column. At last Miranda tugged at Wilde’s sleeve and turned imploring eyes up to him, and the youth yielded. Emily stuffed the letter into the little reticule on her wrist.
“Wilde,” she said, “Miranda can show me the way. If you know how Mr. Goldsworthy likes to travel, can you send for a vehicle and horses?”
Emily thought she had gone almost too far, but Wilde nodded. He held open the crimson curtains, and Miranda led the way into a narrow passage. They left the shop, crossed a patch of garden, newly green with blades of grass, and entered the kitchen of a building that must, Emily realized, have its front on Albemarle Street.
Wilde left them at some stairs and Miranda led Emily up to a door on the second story. With a quick intake of breath, Miranda summoned her resolve and rapped on the door.
“Mr. Goldsworthy, someone to see you,” she said.
A deep voice rumbled, “Enter.”
Emily took hold of the knob, and Miranda fled.
The room she entered had a military feel to it with canvas draping two walls, maps and cabinets along another, and in the center a desk, which, she felt sure, was larger than any of the cages at the Exeter Change.
Mr. Goldsworthy was built on the scale of Chunee, but russet and brown in hue with a great shaggy head and beard. He was like some craggy oak tree in the wood. She understood at once why Wilde and Miranda had resisted bringing her to him.
She strode into the room, took a stand before the great desk, and met the man’s startled gaze at her boldness.
“Miss, you can’t be here,” he said.
Emily stepped forward. The huge desk was taller than her waist. “But here I am. And what’s more, you need my help.”
“Your help?” The bushy brows shot up. “Who are you?”
“Emily Radstock. I’m here to rescue Lynley.” She plucked a pen from the desk.
“Lynley?”
“Sir Ajax Lynley, my betrothed, who has gone after Clive Walhouse and Ravenhurst’s missing papers.” She refused to believe that he’d run away with Lady Ravenhurst. “What’s more, unless you are willing to act at once, there is a very good chance that Lynley’s mission will fail. And I won’t have him sacrificed to your indifference as Malikov was.”
The big man gave her an assessing look. “You seem to know a good deal about matters that are not proper to your sphere, miss.”
“My sphere? You mean the sphere of any subject of His Majesty with a care for the safety and security of Britain?” Emily waved the pen she’d picked up.
He watched the pen’s movement, suspicious of her intent.
“If you refuse to help me, Mr. Goldsworthy, do not suppose that I will not mount a rescue mission on my own, and do know that the following letter will appear in the Times if I do not return with Lynley, whole and sound, within three days.”
Emily dropped the pen and pulled the letter she’d begun from her reticule. She read the opening she had composed, and then she improvised. She knew what would come next.
“Sir:
“It has come to the attention of this writer that foreign agents of the most dangerous sort operate in the midst of London, moving among His Majesty’s ordinary subjects with impunity, promoting the aims of Britain’s enemies through espionage and murder.
“In recent months such agents have procured vital Foreign Office documents for the benefit of our enemies and have reached into the most secure of London prisons to murder one of their own to prevent his disclosures. What became of Thomas Culley in the Fleet?
“Furthermore, the public should know that the government employs English spies to combat this enemy, and that these spies are granted broad license to burgle and spy and coerce. The ordinary person may wonder how such spies could operate without gaining notice. He or she should look again at certain chemists’ shops and clubs, which act as fronts for the nests of spies among us.”
“Stop.” Goldsworthy held up one of his great hands. “You must not send that letter under any circumstances.”
“Then you’ll accompany me to find Lynley?” Emily held her breath. Goldsworthy appeared as immovable as a craggy boulder jutting out of a hillside.
“It’s all well and good for you to insist, but we’ve no idea where he’s gone.”
Emily let her lips curve upward in a triumphant smile. “I know exactly where he’s gone.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Even when the husband hunter feels most secure of the gentleman to whom she has pledged herself, she must expect quarrels to be a part of her intercourse with him, for we are flawed creatures, likely to wound one another out of our own past hurts and disappointments. Outwardly there may be no sign of the inward scars we bear, but if our love for one another is to prosper, we must confess our errors and resolve to love in a new way.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Mr. Goldsworthy, in spite of his bulk, moved nimbly and decisively. In half an hour he and Emily were seated in a curricle behind a pair of sturdy horses with Wilde in the groom’s position at the rear. Emily had had time to pen a brief note to her father. The melting snow threw up slush and mud as they rolled out of London. A cold, sharp wind blew the sky empty of cloud.
Until the
y stopped for a change of horses, Emily refused to confide the location of the empty parsonage and her reason for believing it to be Lynley’s destination as well as that of Walhouse. As they waited in the coffee room of a small posting inn for the new team to be put to their carriage, a stir at the inn door caught Emily’s attention. She froze at the sound of a familiar voice. At Goldsworthy’s side, she leaned back to let the big man’s bulk conceal her.
“Barksted,” she whispered.
Goldsworthy looked over at the newcomers standing in the entry with the landlord. “And Lady Ravenhurst,” he said.
Emily ventured a glance around Goldsworthy’s massive girth. Lady Ravenhurst clung to Barksted’s arm, looking haggard and disheveled, and yet still lovely, while Barksted made demands of the innkeeper. He asked for a maid for the lady, and commanded a private room. The hostess came and led Lady Ravenhurst upstairs. And Barksted disappeared with the landlord.
“Give me ten minutes,” Emily told Goldsworthy. She had not realized until she saw Lady Ravenhurst’s beauty how even she, who had come to know Lynley as much as he permitted anyone to know him, could doubt him.
Upstairs, a maid bringing a basin and a pitcher of hot water showed Emily to the door. Emily knocked and a tremulous voice admitted her.
Lady Ravenhurst sat looking helplessly at a hand mirror, her golden hair falling down one side of her face, a silver brush in her hand.
“You,” she said.
“Where’s Lynley?” Emily asked.
“Oh.” Lady Ravenhurst turned the silver brush over in her hands, not meeting Emily’s eye. “Barksted will not want me to tell.”
“You must, however,” Emily insisted, trying to keep the outrage from her voice.
The lady appeared to engage in an inner struggle. “Oh, very well,” she said. “He’s at that parsonage on the road to Longfield.”
Emily was tempted to turn on her heel and leave at once, but she asked, “He’s not gone to Dover?”
