“I don’t want him to know you are here. Until we see how the land lies, it is better to keep your presence secret.”
Jamie nodded. “I pray Charlie gets here soon, and I pray he has good news.”
“Wishful thinking.” Andrew dismissed his brother’s optimism with a soft laugh. “Now where do you suppose the kitchen is?”
“You’re asking me? Faith. I do not believe I’ve ever seen one.”
Andrew headed for the back corner of the house nearest the stables and found what they were looking for. He pointed to a door on the inner wall. “To the cellar, I’d wager.” And he was right. A small lantern was hanging on a peg just inside the door and shone a weak light into the darkness below.
“Why are these things always held in some subterranean vault?”
“Closer to hell,” he whispered, and Jamie grinned.
At the foot of the stairs, they turned in the direction of the chapel and made their way through empty wine racks to a door in the paneling. It stood ajar and another distant light beckoned them onward. Bless Devlin Farrell and his infallible information.
Andrew had gauged the distance from the manor to the chapel to be no more than two hundred feet, and he paced himself now to be certain the earthen tunnel did not lead off in a wrong direction. When they came at last to another door, Andrew put the lantern down and listened for a moment. Nothing. He took his watch from his pocket and read the dial. Nearly eleven-thirty. If luck was with him, any lingering guards would be on their way to the chapel.
He swung the heavy panel back and stepped through into another corridor, this one better lit and constructed. Arches and niches told him he was in the family vaults beneath the chapel. He motioned Jamie forward and whispered, “Put your robe on now. If we are found, I will tell them that you were escorting me to the chapel.”
Jamie nodded and broke the string securing the parcel. Andrew left the extra robe on the floor behind the tunnel door while Jamie slipped the other over his head and lifted the cowl to obscure his face. He hoped he’d be able to pick his brother out of a crowd of like-garbed participants. If not, they’d arrange a signal.
Remembering to hide his weapon, Jamie pushed a long dagger into his boot and turned to Andrew. “Better give me yours, too, in case they make you leave them in the vestry.”
Andrew handed over his knife. He hadn’t bothered to bring a sword, knowing there would be no way to hide such a long blade. Whatever happened in the next hour, he could not even begin to hope it would not involve violence. It was far more likely that someone would die. Pray it was not Bella.
As she tiptoed down the corridor following the faint sounds of voices, Bella tried each of the doors she passed, but without success. Gina had to be here somewhere. What had Lord Humphries said? They needed to prepare her? What, in heaven’s name, did that mean?
The sound of voices grew louder as she approached a bend in the passageway. One more door remained. She tried the latch and it gave without a sound. She slipped inside, feeling so vulnerable in the open passageway and glad of the respite.
This room was very like the one where she’d been held prisoner. A pallet, a single candle and a chamber pot. She turned and found pegs attached to the back of the door.
And from the pegs hung Gina’s clothing. Everything. Gown, chemise, stays, drawers and stockings! But that meant that Gina must be…naked?
Bella gulped as her heartbeat skipped. She spun around to look at the pallet again, noticing the small pile of personal items for the first time. Gina’s amethyst pendant, her reticule, her gloves. Then she froze, trying to comprehend what this meant. Where Gina was. What they were doing with her. And all the while Andrew’s voice was echoing in her head. A ritual killing? Human sacrifice? Virgin sacrifice…
A hand clamped over her mouth while another circled her, pinning her arms to her sides and pulling her back against a hard, lean form. She tried to scream, but she could not make a sound. Lord Humphries had come back for her!
“Sh-h,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.
She went weak with relief and nodded her understanding. When he loosened his hold around her, she turned and threw her arms around his neck. “Andrew!” she whispered. “Oh, thank God! Where did you come from? Have you found Gina?”
“Hush, and listen carefully,” he said. “Jamie is with me. He is waiting in the passageway. Follow me.”
Bella had so many questions, but they would have to wait. She followed Andrew back down the corridor, James dressed in a monk’s robe behind her. To make certain she did not bolt? Or to protect her? They came to a door at the far end, and Andrew pulled her through into a dark earthen tunnel.
He waited until James was through and then closed the door. “Bloody hell! I know what happened. Biddle sent me a message to warn me what Dash had done. Are you all right, Bella? Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?”
She shook her head. “He forced me to drink a bitter wine. I am certain now that it was drugged. I cannot recall anything from leaving Belmonde’s to waking up here.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Thank God…thank God. But what am I going to do with you now? I cannot leave you here, and I cannot take you with me.”
“There’s no time to take her home,” James said. “She’ll have to come with me.”
“No, ’tis too dangerous.”
“Safer to send her home alone? Or to leave her alone in the tunnel? God only knows who might come upon her.”
Andrew’s eyes closed and a muscle jumped along his jaw. When he looked down at her, his expression was unreadable. “It seems I have no choice. Go with Jamie. Stay close by his side, no matter what happens. Say nothing.”
“But—”
He bent and retrieved a bundle from the ground. “Put this on, Bella. Keep the cowl forward. And keep your hands in the folds. They are so obviously lady’s hands.” He lifted one to his lips and left a kiss in her palm.
“But where are you going to be?”
“I shall be there, too, but I will come in with the others.” He turned to his brother. “Jamie, wait until the ritual has begun before you enter. If you must put the chalice to your lips, do not drink from it. I wager it will be laced with opium.”
“Gina—”
“She is here somewhere, Bella. And I swear to you, I will let nothing happen to her. You must not cry out or try to go to her. Do you understand?” He squeezed her shoulders and waited for her nod before he set her away from him. “Now go. I have to present myself at the chapel door.”
She watched until he disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. Fear for him tightened her chest. She knew him well enough by now to know that he would risk anything, including his life, to accomplish his goal.
Chapter Twenty-One
The faint chime of a single bell carried from the chapel as Andrew climbed out the window of the manor house and headed across the lawns to the arched entry of the chapel. A robed man waited inside the vestibule and took his invitation.
“You are just in time. It is time to close the doors. ’Twould never do to have an interruption.” He chortled as if he’d made a joke. Andrew knew he was deadly serious.
He peered closer beneath the cowl. “Henley?”
“Aye.” Henley reached past him to swing the arched door closed, throw the bolt and drop a wooden bar between two metal brackets.
How would Wycliffe’s men get in? He and Jamie, it seemed, were on their own. Against how many? Andrew said a quick prayer there would only be a few.
“Go to the vestry while I finish locking up. Dash left a robe for you.”
He entered a door between the vestibule and the nave and found the vestry. The room was small, as befitting a family chapel, and the wall was lined with pegs and shelves above. A single bench stood in the middle. Judging by the jackets, hats and other trappings, there were going to be more guests than he’d thought. Most disturbing was the number of pocket pistols, daggers and swords left on shelves and hanging from pe
gs.
As if to confirm his thoughts, Henley came to stand behind him and said, “No weapons.”
Andrew shrugged out of his jacket and hung it up. “I did not bring any. Why should that matter?”
Henley shrugged. “Once we begin passing the cup, some could become a bit rowdy. Dash doesn’t want any mishaps.”
Was Dash in charge? Not Henley? He didn’t want to believe his friend could be guilty of such villainy or betrayal, and yet the evidence against him was mounting.
He sat on the bench, pulled off his boots, tipped them upside down to show Henley he was not concealing any weapons, then pulled them back on. Henley patted his waistcoat pockets to be certain he was not carrying a pocket pistol, and then stepped back to let Andrew pull on the black robe.
He tied the thick cord at his waist and lifted the cowl over his head. After a second glance at the shelf, he decided that Henley was watching him too carefully for him to secrete a weapon in his robe. He would have to depend upon Jamie. “Lead on, Henley.”
“No names. And keep your cowl up at all times. Do not speak unless it is a part of the ritual. Identities must be protected.”
Andrew was glad Henley could no longer see his face. The absurdity of protecting men who engaged in blood games was an irony lost on him, no doubt. And ritual? What ritual? The men gathered here tonight did not believe in anything but themselves, and in their own desires.
And, until very recently, Andrew had been one of them.
Henley led him into the nave and toward the altar. A red rug had been rolled back to reveal a trap door with a heavy metal ring to pull it up. As Henley did so, the sound of soft chanting carried up the stairs to them.
“They’ve begun,” Henley whispered, a note of excitement in his voice.
Andrew looked down into a dark stone stairway that descended toward a weak yellow glow. He thought of Bella and her sister down there, at the mercy of these men, and a surge of anger coursed through him. Bella, at least, was safe for the moment. He hurried down the steps and only stopped when he reached the narrow antechamber at the bottom. There was a small closed door on one side and an arched doorway at the end. Andrew paused for Henley to catch up with him and tried to assimilate the barrage of perceptions assaulting his senses. Together, he and Henley entered the vault through the arched doorway.
The faint odor of musky incense blended with something more foreign. Something that both seduced the senses and burned the eyes. Hashish? The dank air was heavy with smoke and mist, lending a hazy dreamlike quality to the scene. A soft rhythmic chant that was oddly hypnotic filled the air. The flickering of small torches, confusing in what it alternately revealed and hid, offered the only light.
What was revealed in the vault gave Andrew a very bad moment. There were more people crowded into that room, milling and shifting, than he could count. They gathered in a circle around a stone slab that would have held an altar cloth in days gone by, or the body of a long-dead Ballinger ready for interment in one of the sepulchers that lined the walls. A brazier glowed in one corner, and from that rose the smoke of hashish. Beside that was a wine cask from which a flagon was being refilled. And, as he’d expected, a goblet was being passed. Between the opium, hashish and hypnotic chanting, they would soon be insensible, ready to participate in anything, no matter how bizarre or grotesque.
He stepped to the side, separating himself from Henley and trying to blend in with the others as he tried to discern which of the black-robed figures might be Jamie and Bella. Had they melded into the gathering yet? He spied the passageway to the tunnel in the right wall and knew such a thing would have been easy for them.
Where was Dash? He and Jamie were of a similar size, along with one or two others in the gathering. But Bella…surely he’d know that form anywhere, even in shapeless robes. A quick scan revealed a tall figure close to a smaller form. A barely perceptible nod told Andrew that Jamie had noted him, too. He would have to keep track of them so he would not lose them in the coming melee.
He had to bide his time, wait for Eugenia to be brought forth. If anything, anyone, betrayed them beforehand, Henley and his cohorts would have time to spirit her away.
Someone stumbled on the uneven stone flooring and another caught him by the elbow. The mishap had been enough to reveal a familiar profile beneath the cowl. Throckmorton. God, how many more here would he recognize? Half his acquaintances, no doubt. He was certain he could make out Lord Elwood, Booth and even…yes, the Duke of Rutherford. If not for Wycliffe, would he be among them? Ah, but he was among them, and precisely because of Wycliffe.
Henley had stepped up to the head of the altar, lifted a large flagon above his head and raised his voice above the others in a chant that sounded more like a broken hum than any actual words. Then, with a flash of showmanship Andrew hadn’t suspected in him, Henley filled the chalice again and splashed the remainder of the flagon on the bare stone slab in a profane consecration.
Again, the chalice was passed from hand to hand, being refilled from Henley’s flagon at intervals. It was nearly full again by the time it reached Andrew. He lifted it to his lips and feigned a long gulp before he passed it to the person next to him. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his robe, afraid that even the smallest amount would render him as senseless as the rest. As he had been not so long ago.
Jamie and Bella, he noted, did the same. Jamie moved closer to him, but Andrew tilted his head toward the tunnel. Jamie stopped but did not retreat. Andrew wanted them as far away as possible when the fracas began.
And there would be a fracas before this was over.
An insidious drumming resounded from the antechamber and they all turned toward the archway. Andrew remembered the door in the antechamber. Could that be where they’d held Eugenia?
He was unprepared for what happened next. There was a flash and the acrid odor of sulfur. Gunpowder, no doubt. A red-robed figure stepped out of the smoke, his arms open wide.
“Welcome, brethren!”
And the drumming reached a crescendo.
Dash—his staunchest friend, his greatest ally in a sea of enemies. The man who had saved his life and who had fought shoulder to shoulder with him. And who had kept his guilty secret all these years. Until just a day ago he’d suspected Dash of being Wycliffe’s covert operative.
And tonight he realized that Dash’s memories of Spain, of Valle del Fuego, had dragged him into even darker places than Andrew had gone.
More recent memories flashed across his mind. Dash’s amusement at the unfortunate inmates of Bethlehem Hospital. The fight outside the gin house on Petticoat Lane—the savagery with which Dash had attacked the longshoreman had been almost frenzied. Yesterday, at the fencing school…
The obscene congregation began to chant, and the words were indistinct and slurred. Something about the “Red wyvern” and “Master.” Andrew could almost smell the rising excitementc and urgency. At least some of them knew what was coming, and they could not wait.
The red-robed man—Dash, he reminded himself—displaced Henley at the head of the stone slab. “You have come, brethren, on this most sacred of nights, to celebrate the brevity of life and the pleasures of the flesh. Live while yet we may.”
A cheer went up and echoed down the tunnel, but Andrew knew it would not be heard outside or on the street. The trap door would contain all sounds, cheers and screams alike.
“From the blood of innocents, we take our strength,” Dash continued. “From their flesh we renew our own.”
A chill invaded Andrew’s bones. He remembered his own ennui and how he had longed to feel again. But he’d never wanted this. Those witches’ Sabbaths in the beginning had been titillating games to find amusement in an unamusing world. Simple ways to pass the hours before dawn. How had Dash taken it so far? And how had he become so jaded, so callused, that a life meant nothing to him?
“Come draw your lot for the privilege of first breach.”
The men pushed forward eagerly. Andrew’s head
pounded. They were drawing for the first right to violate Eugenia. Had he ever drawn lots in his drugged delirium? God, no. He could never have forgotten such a thing. His fingers curled into fists but he pushed forward to withdraw a stone from a wide-mouthed urn. Black.
Several draws later, one of the brethren cried out and held a red stone aloft. He moved around the altar and stood at the foot, opposite Dash.
“And, because this is the thirteenth rite, I have brought you abundance. A second drawing!”
Bella. Dash was talking about Bella. He did not know she had escaped. He must not have had time to go back and check on her. That much, at least, was in their favor.
A frisson of excitement sparked in the gathering. Andrew was nearly wild with anger when the brethren now crowded forward vying for the right to rape Bella. First. The winner, if Andrew had been able to keep track of him in the crowd, was Henley.
He glanced in her direction and saw Jamie grip her arm and shake his head. He could only imagine what she’d been about to do. His Bella might occasionally lack good sense, but she had no deficit of courage.
Once again the chalice was filled and refilled as it moved from hand to hand. When it was passed to him, he noted Dash watching him closely. He tilted the cup back and pretended a gulp before he passed it on. He staggered slightly as he stepped back, hoping Dash would attribute it to the wine.
The smoke from the incense and hashish burning on the brazier created a heavy haze in the vault, increasing the dreamlike quality of the scene.
“Hail, Blood Wyvern. Hail great dragon, master of secret desires. Praise be to thee.” Dash spread his arms wide and lifted them as if to accept the adulation and embrace the brethren.
This was no satanic ritual, nor was it any form of witchcraft he’d ever seen. This was praise for a monster who had read the worst in mankind, understood their sickest desires and given them form and substance. And Andrew knew how this would have to end.
He circled slowly until he was next to Jamie and Bella. Understanding, Jamie passed him his dagger, and he tucked it into a fold in his robe secured by the corded belt.
Lord Libertine Page 25
