“He’s got a knife, Sandro,” called Arianna.
“Yes, yes, don’t worry,” he responded, parrying a thrust with a quick flick of his forearm. “Stay where you are.”
Ignoring the order, she edged along the side of the carriage, alert for any other sign of movement. Where was Henning? she wondered. And what of their coachman? A low groan from the driver’s perch seemed to indicate that José had survived the first attack.
Questions, questions—but they would have to wait.
A flurry of wild thrusts had forced Saybrook back several steps, giving her a clearer shot at his assailant.
“Tírate al suelo,” she called to him in Spanish, ordering him to duck down.
“Aim for his knee and not his heart,” called her husband. “I want him alive for questioning.”
“Jem!” cried the assailant, his voice turning shrill.
A shot rang out from somewhere on the other side of the coach, followed by a scream. One of the horses whinnied in fright, spooked by the flash of fire.
“Ye’ll be getting no help from Jem.” Henning’s voice rose above a wispy plume of gun smoke.
“I suggest you throw down your blade,” said Saybrook to his attacker. “The lady is a crack shot.”
“As if any bloody female could hit the broad side of a barn,” jeered the assailant, but he sounded a little shaky.
“Oh, I assure you, my wife is no ordinary female.”
Arianna angled the pistol’s barrel a fraction. “I’ll aim a touch high. If I miss, it will hit his cods rather than his knee. Either way, he won’t be walking very steadily for quite a while.”
Her sangfroid seemed to spook the man. Cutting a last halfhearted jab at Saybrook, he suddenly turned and bolted for the tangled wildness of the looming moor.
“Dio Madre!” She was about to pull the trigger and drop him with a shot to the leg when her husband took off after him. Cursing her flapping skirts, she scrabbled up to the top of the ledge and followed as fast as she dared.
2
From Lady Arianna’s Chocolate Notebooks
Toasted Pecan–Chocolate Toffee
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cut into chunks
11/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons corn syrup
3 tablespoons water
2 cups well-chopped pecans, toasted
8 ounces chocolate, cut into chunks, your choice of milk, semi- or bittersweet
1. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a medium, thick-bottomed saucepan over medium to medium-low heat, add the butter. Wait a minute or two until the butter really starts to soften and melt. Stir in the sugar, corn syrup, and water. Cook, stirring regularly, until the mixture is bubbling (lava-style) and a candy thermometer registers 300°F.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in 1 cup of the pecans.
4. Pour the hot toffee out onto the prepared baking sheet. Depending on how thick you like your toffee, spread it out into a round 10 to 12 inches in diameter. Set it aside to cool.
5. While the toffee is cooling, melt half the chocolate in a microwave or double boiler. Be sure the toffee has set up a bit before you spread the melted chocolate over the top. Immediately sprinkle with 1/2 cup of the remaining pecans.
6. Wait 20 minutes, or until the chocolate has firmed up. Carefully flip the toffee over. Melt the remaining chocolate and spread it on the second side. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup pecans. Let cool.
Henning quickly caught up with her. “Steady, Lady S,” he wheezed as she slipped on some loose scree. “No need for you to risk your lovely ankles. I’ll handle it from here.”
Arianna snapped a rude oath and forged ahead. Henning was no aficionado of physical exertion, and his breath was already coming in ragged gasps. “Stubble the manly bravado. My ankles—and my wind—are likely a good deal stronger than yours.”
“Auch, much as it pains me to admit it, you are probably right.” He climbed up a twist in the footpath and paused to catch his breath. “But it appears that Sandro has no need of us.”
Up ahead, she saw that her husband’s long, loping stride had narrowed the distance between him and his quarry. As the path narrowed to cut through a cleft in the rocks, Saybrook suddenly picked up his pace and angled through a patch of scrubby heather to cut off the man’s escape.
Sensing the danger, the assailant veered sharply and began climbing over a tumble of boulders. The earl was right on his heels.
Pushing past Henning, Arianna started to run.
Saybrook lunged, catching hold of the man’s coat.
Kicking, cursing, the assailant struggled desperately to break free, but the earl held tight. Spinning, swirling, their shadows blurred in the wind-whipped snow. They both crested the stones at the same time and fell together in a pelter of whirling jabs and punches.
“Damn.” Arianna skidded to a halt just as the assailant landed a vicious kick and broke free. His boots scraping over the rough rock, he lurched to his feet and made a wild, running leap across a narrow ravine.
“Damn!” Saybrook’s oath echoed her own.
The jump fell a few inches short. Arms flailing, the man fought to catch his balance on the lip of the ledge, but the slippery snow and gusting wind were against him. With a strangled scream, he fell backward and disappeared into the chasm.
It took a moment or two for Arianna to climb to her husband’s side.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he repeated in frustration. “Damn the fellow for breaking his bloody neck.”
“They might have been naught but thieves, hoping to prey on prosperous travelers heading north for the holidays.” Even to her own ears, the suggestion sounded hollow.
“We deliberately chose a route that avoided the main roads,” he replied tersely. Despite the cold, he stripped off his coat. Tiny tendrils of steam licked up as the flakes swirled, white against white, and melted on his sweat-dampened shirt.
“Sandro,” she began, eyeing the treacherous fall of jagged rocks leading down to the body. Already a thin scrim of ice was glazing the surfaces. “It’s not worth the risk of a broken leg.” Or worse.
“On the contrary, we can’t afford to overlook any clue.” Finding a handhold in the fissured stones, Saybrook started to descend. “Having a medical man as a traveling companion does have its benefits,” he quipped over the chuffing of the wind. Henning was a skilled surgeon whose ministrations had saved the earl’s leg from amputation during the war. “God knows, his ill-tempered mood has so far provided precious little comfort. But at least he can tend to any bodily injuries.”
His friend, who had finally managed to scramble up the slippery stones, huffed a harried gasp as he bent over and braced his hands on his knees. “I have bloody good reason to be in a foul humor,” he retorted, once he had caught his breath. “Being friends with you has a habit of leading into some very nasty situations, laddie. We haven’t even crossed the border and already some unknown enemy is trying to kill us.”
“Let us not jump to conclusions,” said Arianna. She winced on seeing a sliver of granite break off beneath Saybrook’s boot. “As I said, this may be a case of simple robbery.”
Henning answered with a low snort. “Nothing concerning you two is ever simple.”
True. Unfortunately, the surgeon’s words were not mere hyperbole.
“Oh, Basil, I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into yet another viper’s coil,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have taunted—”
He cut off the apology with a brusque wave. “Auch, in truth, it’s me who’s to blame for this present predicament, and I damn well know it.” A puff of pale vapor swirled as he exhaled another short, sharp breath. Turning abruptly, he crouched down and peered over the ledge.
“Find anything?” he called to the e
arl.
“Nothing in his pockets, save for this,” answered Saybrook. A leather purse arced out of the gloom and landed at the surgeon’s feet with a muffled thud.
Henning undid the drawstrings and peeked inside. “How gratifying to see that our hides were worth gold instead of silver.”
“Any clues offered by the man’s clothing?” asked Arianna, shivering as the melting snow started to trickle beneath the upturned collar of her coat.
“No.” A muffled oath. “There seems to be something inside his leather waistcoat, but the thongs are too knotted to work free.”
“Here.” She tossed down her knife.
“How lucky for me that my wife carries a dagger, rather than a dainty little bottle of vinaigrette.”
She absently rubbed at a spot of blood on her cuff. “It’s a wonder I don’t fall into a permanent swoon, considering the things I see when I’m with you two.”
The earl spent another few moments examining the body before turning the dead man facedown and climbing up from the ravine. Shaking the strands of wet hair from his brow, he pulled a small object from inside his glove and handed it to Henning. “Does this mean anything to you?”
The surgeon subjected it to a long scrutiny. “Yes.” He returned it without further comment.
“Put this back on, before you catch your death of cold,” said Arianna, draping his overcoat over Saybrook’s shoulders. “And let’s get moving. Further discussion can wait until later. We need to return to the carriage and tend to José, not to speak of getting you into some dry clothing.”
“What about him?” asked Henning, gesturing at the corpse. He shifted his gaze to the earl. “Do you intend to report this to the local magistrate?”
“No, I think not,” replied Saybrook after a slight hesitation. “There is nothing to gain from involving the authorities, except unwanted questions.” His mouth thinned to a hard line. “Let us leave him and his fellow varlets for the wolves and the carrion crows.”
“Or a skulking renard,” muttered Henning grimly.
Renard. The French word for “fox” seemed to rumble through the rocks, low and menacing like a predator’s growl.
Arianna carefully uncocked the fancy dueling pistol. They were heading to Scotland in order to hunt for a cunning traitor known only as Renard. A clever operative who reveled in deception and death as he moved within the highest circles of London Society, betraying government secrets to a foreign enemy.
But the question of who was hunting whom had just taken a dangerous twist.
* * *
“The nearest town looks to be no more than five miles away.” Saybrook looked up from the map and glanced out the far window. Although the temperature had dropped several degrees, the squall had blown over, and in the silvery twilight, the snow-dusted landscape had an eerie tranquility. “Barring any further mishap, we should be there within the hour.”
Henning’s response was a sardonic grunt—in French, which added an extra soupçon of sarcasm. “Grâce a Dieu.”
God willing, repeated Arianna to herself. Though she feared that it would take special effort on the part of any higher deity to counteract the Devil’s influence on the upcoming mission.
Uncorking a silver flask of strong Scottish malt, Henning took a long swallow, then offered the rest to Saybrook. “There’s a wee dram left, though most of it went down José’s gullet.” The coachman had been knocked unconscious by a rock during the initial attack. But with his head bandaged by the surgeon and his belly warmed by the whisky, he had insisted he was fit to drive.
Arianna finished tucking a makeshift drapery over the shattered window and turned to her husband. “Drink,” she ordered, before the earl could demur. He still looked half-frozen, despite having changed out of his wet shirt and breeches. Adding a low oath, she spread a blanket across his lap.
Saybrook took a small sip and handed it back. “We can fill ourselves with warming spirits once we reach an inn. Right now—”
“Ah yes, right now, we had better have one of our jolly little councils of war,” interrupted Henning. “And here I thought that resigning from the military would mean an end to mortal danger from flying bullets and blades.”
There was an extra edge to his voice that Arianna found disturbing. He was always irascible—which was, she admitted, something she found rather endearing. But this new razor-sharp note was like steel scraping against flint.
It was only a matter of time before such friction set off dangerous sparks.
“Yes, we had better talk now,” replied Saybrook, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the air. “For no matter what José says, I intend to relieve him of the reins shortly.”
She frowned but remained silent, knowing it was useless to argue.
“Once we reach the inn, there are things that can’t be discussed,” he went on. “We must assume that the walls have ears.”
The creaking of the paneling seemed to grow louder as the earl’s oblique warning hung heavy in the chill air.
It was Henning who broke the silence with a brusque cough. “Well, to begin with, we need not fear being taken up by the authorities for murder,” he muttered. “It’s highly unlikely that anyone will stumble over the bodies, even come spring.” He and Saybrook had hidden the other two dead men deep in a crevasse far from the road. “But as for other threats . . .”
He rubbed a hand along his bristled jaw. “I cannot believe this was a chance attack. Someone knew we were heading to Scotland and must have had men watching the routes north.” The rasp of whiskers was audible against his callused palm as he settled his gaze on the earl. “Yet only a very small circle of high government officials were privy to our mission. What does that say to you, laddie?”
“It simply repeats a fact that we’ve known for some time, Baz,” pointed out Saybrook. “The French traitor Renard has access to privileged information. That’s why he—”
“Or she,” murmured Arianna. “Let’s not forget that a woman can be just as dangerous as a man when it comes to duplicity and deception.” She paused. “I ought to know.”
The earl’s mouth quirked up at the corners at the reminder of how they had met. She had been masquerading as a male chef in an aristocratic household, hoping to smoke out her father’s murderers and bring them to justice. But when the Prince Regent was poisoned by one of her decadent desserts, the earl had been called in to investigate because of his expertise in chocolate . . .
A soft laugh recalled her to the present.
“Point taken, my dear.” The earl’s amusement then died away just as quickly. “Whether a he or a she, Renard has an uncanny ability to uncover government secrets and use them to foment chaos, as well as to destroy lives. That is why we must trap the Fox and put an end to the trail of bloodshed.”
“A pretty speech, Sandro,” said Henning. “What you’ve left out is the ugly fact that Renard is almost certainly a highborn English aristocrat. And an even more sordid truth is that the ambush may have been ordered by the double-dealing spawn of Satan, Lord Grentham.”
“Dio Madre, you are like a terrier who refuses to drop a bone, even though the meat has been chewed off,” growled the earl. This wasn’t the first time Henning had suggested that the Minister of State Security might be in league with the French. “I don’t like Grentham any more than you do. However, in this case I think him innocent of any intrigue. Much as he loathes us, we’re the only ones he trusts to unmask the traitor, regardless of Renard’s power or prestige. So for the moment, we’re worth more to him alive than dead.”
“Perhaps he’s pulled the wool over your eyes, laddie,” responded Henning. “As far as I’m concerned, what happened in Vienna is no proof of his innocence. Indeed, the fact that the culprit there turned out to be the son of a prominent peer of the realm makes me even more suspicious.”
“You really think it’s possible that Grentham is Renard?” asked Arianna. “I have perhaps the most reason to hate the bastard, but . . .”
The surgeon was quick with a reply. “He’s a man who has devoted much of his life to deception and manipulation. Whether it’s by the stroke of a pen or the squeeze of a trigger, murder is a weapon he uses with impunity if it suits his purposes.” A scowl pinched his face. “In truth, the whole bloody circle of officials privy to this mission are a bunch of arrogant aristocrats who think themselves gods among mortal men.”
“I trust you do not include Charles on your list of suspects,” said Saybrook softly. His uncle, Charles Mellon, was a senior diplomat in the Foreign Office, and it was because of him that the earl had first become involved in investigating murder and treachery within the inner sanctum of Whitehall.
“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” muttered Henning.
Oh, hell, thought Arianna.
Friends, family, country . . . Loyalties were going to be tangled and tested in unimaginable ways by this mission. The special bond between the surgeon and her husband had been forged in the fire of the brutal Peninsular War. But were the ties of blood and Scottish heritage tugging at their camaraderie?
“I know this endeavor is fraught with emotion for you, Baz,” said Saybrook. “But don’t let your heart overpower your head. We must use cold logic in order to vanquish all our enemies—and like you, I’m aware that there may be more than one lurking out there.”
For an instant, Henning’s expression turned even darker. But then his bony face relaxed into a throaty laugh. “We Scots don’t have hearts, merely chips o’ Highland flint, liberally watered with whisky. However, you are right—we’re a clannish people, and I’ve let my blood rise to boil on account of the threat to my sister’s son. I shall try to temper my personal feelings.”
“I know that this stirs political as well as personal conflicts for you,” replied the earl. “If there were a way to avoid your involvement—”
Recipe for Treason: A Lady Arianna Regency Mystery (Lady Arianna Hadley Mystery) Page 2
