Or had the Earl of Harclay—William, Lord Townshend—defied everyone’s wildest expectations and actually done the honorable thing? Had he swept Lady Violet off her feet so that he might take her to the altar, the diamond aside?
And could Harclay even speak words like honor and altar without bursting into flames?
Only time would tell.
And Hope didn’t have very much time at all.
He leapt out into the drive and burst into a sprint, his heart hammering as he gunned after the coach. The gravel slipped and skidded beneath the fine soles of his pumps; his chest and throat burned.
He was so close. So very, very close to getting back what was stolen from him those weeks and weeks ago. The diamond was within his grasp; he could feel its cold weight in the palm of his hand, the thrill of his triumph.
But it was slipping further and further away, the coach disappearing into the darkness as the pair of matching blacks was urged into a gallop.
The drive curved into the lane up ahead. Hope watched as the coach pulled into the evening traffic, disappearing into the seamless tangle of horseflesh and lacquer that heaved just beyond the gates of Harclay’s property.
And then, as if it had never existed at all, the coach was gone.
His heart burst with pain and Hope doubled over, hands on his knees as he fought to breathe. He tried to curse the vilest curses he knew, in every language he spoke, but all he managed were a few pitiful wheezes.
The diamond was gone. That bloody jewel was gone again.
He felt sick at the finality of it, the irony of it. Hope knew better than anyone that the French Blue brought misfortune to those who owned it—first Shah Jehan, then that wily traveler Tavernier, the kings of France. And now it brought misfortune to Thomas Hope; a hideously classic example of mankind being doomed to repeat its terrible history.
Doom. Even the poet in Hope winced at the word. It was 1812, damn it, and no such thing as doom existed anymore. Everyone knew it died out with the Tudors, or, at the very least, with wart-faced Oliver Cromwell.
Even so. Watching the innocuous push and pull of traffic in the lane, the slow turning of the moon in the night sky above, Hope could not shake the sense of dread knotting in the pit of his belly.
He was about to collapse in defeat and, with any luck, roll into a ditch somewhere when a familiar hiss—psst! Psst!—sounded from over his shoulder.
Hope rose, chest releasing with relief at the sight of La Reinette leaning out a carriage door, her face obscured by a red satin domino.
“Venir, monsieur, vite!”
She waved him over to the coach in that singularly elegant way of hers, her eyes on his face as he trotted toward her.
“We’ve got,” he wheezed, pointing in the direction of the lane. “To go.”
La Reinette held out her hand. “Oui, oui, I know, come!”
Thank God.
Thank God she was here to save him. He still had a chance.
Hope fell heavily onto the fine velvet squabs. It was dark inside the coach, the lanterns having been extinguished; the better, he figured, to slip through London’s streets unnoticed.
“Oh, Marie.” He gasped. “I cannot tell you. What a relief. It is. To see you.”
He saw the flash of her teeth as she smiled. In the dark they appeared small and sharp, like the talons of a falcon.
He paused. “Wait a. Moment. What are you. Doing back in London?”
“It was time,” she replied. He waited for her to say more but she remained silent.
“Well then,” he said uneasily. “Shall we be off?”
The voice that answered did not belong to La Reinette.
Or any woman, for that matter.
“Oui, we shall.” The voice was like gravel; the accent heavy but clear, clipped.
Hope recognized it at once.
Beside him, Guillaume Cassin pounded the roof with his silver-topped cane. The carriage heaved into motion.
Hope jerked to life, leaping for the door; but the man who had indeed come back from the dead, whose neck La Reinette had sliced open in that sour-smelling room in Paris, stopped him short, using his cane to thwack Hope soundly in the head.
Hope fell face-first to the floor with a ringing thump.
In his head his blood rushed.
And then, nothing.
Thirty-four
Thankfully Lady Blaise had wept herself into a stupor over Cousin Violet’s sudden disappearance at the ball, leaving Sophia to face the black evening ahead in blessed solitude.
After helping Fitzhugh, one of the few servants left at the house, carry Mama upstairs to her bed, Sophia pleaded exhaustion. With promises that she would wait up for any word of Violet’s whereabouts, she ducked into her room and closed the door behind her.
She stripped off her pale satin gloves and loosened a particularly painful pin that had assaulted her right ear all night, allowing them to fall through her fingers to the floor.
And then she fell back against the door and let out the breath she’d been holding all night, tears welling as she sank slowly to the ground.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and allowed herself at last to cry, her hurt and her anger and her grief pouring from her eyes, the tears hot as they slid down the length of her neck.
It was the sort of cry reserved for prima donnas on stage and hapless heroines in novels.
But Sophia would not be thwarted; she had wronged, and been wronged in return, and hang it all if she wasn’t going to get a good, solid, one-for-the-ages cry out of it.
Mr. Hope had looked handsomer than ever tonight; and while he would’ve looked better in black leather rather than white, her heart had skipped a beat at the blue of his eyes, the boyish curve of his lips. He’d excused himself so abruptly on the landing of the top of the stairs; as she watched him walk away, intent on seeking out the French Blue, her heart, so exultant moments before, sank into the depth of her disappointment and seemed to dissolve altogether.
It would be the last time. The last time he would bow over her hand and her blood would pulse with the knowledge that he was hers and hers alone. The last time she would look into his eyes and see her own desire, the love she bore him, reflected in the wide, startling blue irises.
On ne peut avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre.
Sophia remembered the faraway look in La Reinette’s eyes as she said the words.
One cannot have one’s cake and eat it, too.
The madam had been talking about some lover or another, one who broke her heart; one she loved above all the others. Now Sophia understood La Reinette’s pain, her regret. By setting her cap at London’s most eligible—and often most lackluster—gentlemen, Sophia had neglected men like Thomas.
Passionate men, handsome men, men who made her feel alive, adored.
Men who loved her, and whom she loved in return.
What a fool she’d been! To even think of choosing the Marquess of Withington, sweet natured as he was, over Thomas Hope.
Thomas hadn’t broken her heart; no, Sophia had done smart work of that herself.
And now she was alone in a crumbling house, no money or future of which to speak; it would only be a matter of time before that Cassin fellow, wherever he’d disappeared to, revealed her identity as the author of some of the most scandalous memoirs England had seen in decades. What little she had left—family, reputation—would be ruined.
Again the tears threatened; but even as Sophia was tempted to give in, and give up, and resign herself to a thankless and gray spinsterhood in some thankless, gray place like Scotland—for surely Mama’s exhibitions of grief would force all of them into exile—she found herself wondering what La Reinette would do.
La Reinette. Yes, thinking of Madame always made Sophia feel better; and in the early, heady days of her courts
hip—if one could call it that—with Mr. Hope, the Little Queen’s adventures occupied her thoughts often.
Sophia glanced toward her bed, the single taper on the table beside it. Its flame wavered sluggishly in the still air of the room.
Barely enough light by which to read.
But it was enough.
Sophia wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and scampered to the side of the bed. Drawing up on her knees, she pushed aside the bedclothes and ducked to peer into the dark space below.
Admittedly not the cleverest of hiding spaces, but then again Lady Blaise was not the cleverest of mamas. Besides, if anyone needed watching, it was Cousin Violet; no one suspected Sophia of much beyond the usual sins of youth: vanity, a proclivity for gossip and flirtation.
Harmless things, really, when compared to her usual nighttime activities. If her mother only knew! Lady Blaise would be dead of apoplexy in five seconds flat.
The tattered hatbox scraped across the floor as Sophia drew it out into the small circle of light. She traced the familiar lettering, now faded, with her fingers: LOCK & CO HATTERS. 6 ST. JAMES’S ST. LONDON.
Carefully she placed the box on the bed and climbed up after it, her slippers falling to the floor with tiny, hollow plunks. Drawing near the taper, she opened the box, inhaling the animal scents of leather and fur that still clung to it so many years later.
Inside, a scattered pile of fine paper lay strewn about the box’s silk-lined interior. Each page was covered in Sophia’s careful copperplate handwriting, La Reinette’s extraordinary life boiled down to a series of looping p’s and g’s, the grand arch of an A.
Sophia read the first line of script at the top page—It had been a cold winter, a terrible winter, and I knew the duke’s warm embrace could not last forever—and only when the taper’s light sputtered, the wick having burned down to a blackened nub, was La Reinette’s spell broken.
Sophia looked up, blinking. She sat up, running a hand along the stiffness in her neck, and set the pages down on her lap.
Goodness, but the memoir was good; Madame’s stories were intoxicating; the romance and the bare-chested barons and long, naked nights spent before roaring fires made for some exquisite reading.
Sophia glanced out the window; outside the night was black, no sign yet of dawn or sleep.
Settling a few pillows against the headboard, Sophia leaned against them and bent her knees, propping the pages on her thighs. She still had a few minutes yet of light, and the story was just getting good . . .
The spy had no name but the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my short life. With his gaze alone he could fell any woman, rich or poor, royal or common . . .
Tonight he played the part of pirate, leaping from his ship on the Seine, his billowing shirt open, his eyes alive with danger. It took all my strength not to swoon at his feet. His dark hair was wild in the wind, the curls held back by a red handkerchief . . . I waited for him to touch me, for the stars in the blank sky above to answer my urgent prayers that he love me as I loved him . . .
Sophia pulled back, her thoughts sparking with a vague sense of recognition, of familiarity. Blue eyes, fallen woman, dark, curly hair.
Dread snaked up her spine; her body went stiff. It couldn’t be; couldn’t possibly be him. He and La Reinette were no more than strangers back then, two people brought together by a series of exciting, if unfortunate, events. She couldn’t be in love with him, not after what they’d done together . . .
But Sophia knew better. She recalled her conversation with La Reinette the night Mr. Hope had interrupted their meeting at The Glossy:
I enjoyed this week’s tales. Thoroughly. That spy you knew, back in France—the one with the curls, who could fell a girl with his gaze alone? He is my favorite gentleman yet.
La Reinette had smiled; a smile Sophia now understood to be the secret sort, the malicious sort. Yes. He is my favorite, too.
Blue eyes, fallen woman, dark, curly hair.
It could only be one man.
It could only be Mr. Thomas Hope.
Sophia leapt to her bare feet, her mind racing as she tore into her armoire in search of her boots.
Of three things she was certain.
First, La Reinette was in love with Mr. Hope, had been since they’d first met nearly a decade ago.
Second, Hope was not in love with La Reinette, never had been.
And third, La Reinette was French. She said herself the French were possessed of vengeful hearts. As a woman spurned, Sophia had no doubt Madame would do everything in her power to destroy the object of her unrequited affections.
Everything, like colluding with Hope’s enemy, Guillaume Cassin, to mastermind a plot to bring Hope to his knees.
A plot to bring the woman Hope did love to her knees, too.
It made perfect sense; Sophia was angry at herself for not seeing it sooner. La Reinette was the only one other than Thomas who knew Sophia was writing scandalous memoirs. The madam was the missing link; she was the one who sold Sophia out to the gossip sheets.
And now that La Reinette and Cassin had Sophia by the short hairs, they would turn their attention to Mr. Hope.
It was, ironically enough, just the sort of plot, of adventure, that populated the Little Queen’s memoirs. Only now, the madam would use her cunning and wily nimbleness against Sophia; it was no longer an adventure but a duel, a race to ruin.
Sophia quickened her steps, and was about to scuttle down the stairs, when she caught sight of the narrow door that led to Uncle Rutledge’s dressing room. She paused, but only for a moment; she darted into the room, emerging moments later wearing only her chemise, a ball of clothes tucked into the crook of her arm.
She skipped down the stair as she tugged one leg, then the other, into her uncle’s rather voluminous breeches; she tugged a shirt over her head, tossing aside a musty waistcoat after tangling her arms in its armholes. Too much work, that, and no one would notice, anyway.
At least she hoped no one would notice.
Skidding out the kitchen door, Sophia shrugged into a jacket. She topped off her costume with a hat that was two sizes too big and twenty years out of fashion.
She tucked the last of her pilfered finds into her jacket and, tipping up her nose so that she might run without the hat falling into her eyes, Sophia took off at a sprint.
There wasn’t much time. She had to stop La Reinette and that rat-faced Frenchman Cassin from getting to Thomas.
If they hadn’t already.
Thirty-five
The Glossy was a far less pleasant place, Hope found, when one was bound and gagged and dragged none too gently down the stairs to a dark, smelly room behind the kitchens.
His senses returned slowly. He was vaguely aware of the murmured conversation between La Reinette and Cassin as they followed him into the basement; every word, spoken in crisp, clipped French, made the pain in his head pulse sharply.
When at last he opened his eyes, the darkened room swam languidly about him; he was suddenly aware of the chafe of rope against the skin of his wrists, his arms bound behind him to the rickety chair in which he sat. A handful of stray curls had fallen into his eyes, and the impulse to push them away made his fingers itch.
He managed a glance about the room. It was a pantry, its shelves lined with flour and turnips and cellars of salt; a trio of cured pig haunches hung listlessly from the ceiling, lilting back and forth, back and forth, as if they, too, were impatient to know what the devil this was about.
Aside from the pig haunches and turnips, the room was bare, illuminated by a single lamp La Reinette had placed on a nearby shelf.
Umberto, seemingly unscathed from his run-in with Hope’s pursuers some weeks ago, was tying Hope’s legs to those of the chair. Marie urged him faster, faster, then shooed him from the room when the task was done; quietly she closed the door be
hind him, turning to Hope.
Her eyes were alive, joyfully triumphant as if she’d wagered her last guinea on a no-count featherweight and won. Hope swallowed. He didn’t like that look, not on La Reinette; it made her look wild, like she might do or say anything and Hope would be none the wiser.
From behind her, where Cassin moved in the darkness, there came ominous scraping sounds, metal against metal; he was sharpening something, a blade. Hope swallowed, his belly turning over. He did not care to know what Cassin was up to back there.
Not yet, anyway.
La Reinette sauntered toward him, crossing her arms over her chest. She wore a robe of watery Japanese silk that was so fine as to be transparent, showing every curve, every sinew, highlighting especially the hardened points of her nipples.
Hope looked away, annoyed. Had she come to slay or seduce him? How like her to confuse the two.
“Thomas, look at me.”
His gaze snapped to meet hers. “Don’t call me that. I am not Thomas to you.”
The triumph in her eyes faded somewhat; she chewed the inside of her lip as she considered him. He gently tugged at his bindings, only to find they wouldn’t budge. Umberto, it seemed, knew his way around tying innocent men to rather uncomfortable chairs.
Hope swallowed the panic that rose in his throat. He’d faced worse odds than these and had somehow managed to survive. Tonight will be no different, he told himself. Think. Think.
“So you and Cassin.” Hope nodded at the figure that moved in the shadows behind La Reinette. “What an unlikely alliance, considering you killed him eight years ago. Tell me, Marie, how’d you manage such a feat? The mind boggles. Really, it does.”
The madam twisted her lips into a sour smile. “I am perhaps a witch. That answer, does it satisfy you?”
Hope scoffed. “Don’t insult me, Marie.”
She tilted her head; after a moment she uncrossed her arms and pulled up her sleeve, fingering a ribbonlike scar that ran up the pale flesh of her inner arm.
“It was my blood on his throat. I went to Cassin before, and told him you meant to kill him. And to myself I thought, let Hope think his enemy is dead; what a surprise it will be, yes, when he knows he is alive! And my friend Cassin. A very good actor he is.”
The Millionaire Rogue Page 31
