“Truly,” she said, “it could have been worse. You could have played the part of Bottom and worn an ass’s head."
A low rumble in his throat was the only answer as he pointed toward the octagonal vestibule and the magnificent Baroque staircase, where guests were being served iced champagne off silver trays by polite harlequins with ribboned staffs. Anna and Emory did their best to blend in with the crowd of wizards, Romans and Vikings as they followed the glittering bower down to the lower level. There were frequent pauses while the other guests greeted acquaintances and women squealed over costumes, and, not wanting to appear like they were in any extraordinary hurry, Emory joined some of the men in leaning over the gilded balustrade to comment on the painted glass dome two storeys up.
In doing so he gave more than a few keen-eyed ladies the opportunity to regard the tautness of his buttocks, several of whom squealed again and had to snap open their fans to cool the blush that came to their cheeks.
One young lady, wearing the wide panniers and towering rolled wig similar to the dozen other Marie Antoinettes present, was distracted enough to stare openly at the handsome sight. She neither blushed nor squealed, but she did abandon the small group she was with to ease her way through the crush and join the shapely Puck in admiring the gilded patterns in the rail.
Before she could fully raise her vizard and dazzle him with her smile, he excused himself and went back to where Anna was waiting by a plaster portrait bust of Charles James Fox.
“That was rather rude,” she observed.
“What?”
“Ignoring the French Queen.”
Emory glanced back and had to scan several guests before he found the right one, her face powdered white, her lips bright red, and a heart shaped patch stuck to her cheek. “I pray she does not lose her head over--”
Anna looked up at his sharp intake of breath. “What is it?”
“Move,” he said, taking up her arm again. “Just keep walking and do not look back.”
The command came a split second too late, for she had already tipped her head to see past his shoulder. She straightened again quickly enough, but she could sense the woman was staring after them, her gaze narrowed as she followed their progress down the rest of the curving stairs.
“Did you recognize her? Who was she?”
“My esteemed sister in law, Lucille Althorpe.”
“What?” Anna stumbled, missing the bottom step and hanging precariously off Emory’s arm for the few seconds it took for her to regain her balance. “Are you certain?”
“More than I care to be.”
“But how--?”
“She stripped me naked once before, in your aunt’s parlor. She did it again, just now, and it is not a sensation one is likely to forget.”
Anna was about to ask what he meant, but then she remembered a comment Florence had made that evening. Something about Lucille staring hard enough to leave scorch marks in his breeches.
“What on earth is she doing here?”
“Stanley said he was sending her to London for a short holiday. Plague take his timing.”
Anna thought back to the close call they had had at the posting house in Bath. She had seen Lord Barrimore alight from the berline, then her brother Anthony, then...
“Colonel Ramsey,” she whispered. “He must have had an invitation to the ball and extended it to Lucille.”
“A merry muddle indeed,” Emory said, guiding her across the marble rotunda. He paused at the archway to look left first, then right along the crowded corridor. “It would behove us to find Lord Wessex with all due haste, but curse it--” he lifted the green elfin mask and propped it atop his curls while he searched the sea of painted and masked faces-- “where do we begin?”
“We could each take a wing,” she suggested half heartedly. “The small dining room, the golden drawing room and library lie one way; the bow room, formal dining room, and conservatory lie the other.”
Emory shook his head. “The music guides us toward the conservatory, but my guess is Wessex will not be in too frivolous a mood. The ghostly words of dead philosophers would suit him better.”
He dropped the mask back into place and took up her arm again, a sparkling silver princess and her woodsprite escort strolling leisurely through the draped Gothic archway that led toward the library.
CHAPTER 21
Emory had guessed right. Geoffrey Peterson, Lord Wessex was in the library, well away from the noise and revelry. He was not in costume, but judging by the haggard caste to his face, he was not overly concerned by the faux pas. A man of medium height and middle age, he carried no extra weight around his girth. He had a plain face that was not much improved by bushy muttonchops whiskers. His hair was gray, thin enough to see the shine of his scalp on top.
He was standing by the black marble fireplace, his face glowing red in the bright flames, as much from the heat as the company of the half dozen pirates, clowns, and court knaves who were engaged in a vitriolic debate over the wisdom of exiling Napoleon Bonaparte for a second time.
“What is to say he will stay put this time? We thought Elba a hellish safe place to confine him and look what has come from that. Three, nay, nearly four months of bloodshed, and the deaths of tens of thousands of fine young men. France is in chaos and we show a complete lack of faith in the ability of English justice to punish the man responsible.”
“Mercy and honor have their limitations,” another man agreed. He was seated in a tall wing chair before the fire and not much could be seen of him other than a sleeve, a cuff, and a snifter of brandy.
“Have you heard what awaits him on St. Helena? It is a bare rock in the middle of the South Atlantic, a thousand miles from the nearest landfall. ‘Tis said the devil shit the island out as he flew from one world to the other.”
After a short gust of laughter, another voice emerged. “I heard Napoleon himself had once considered sending a force of fifteen men to capture it, but decided it was not worth the waste of gunpowder. We are sending three thousand, at God knows what cost, just to guard him.”
“It would only take one man to wield an axe,” said a gruff voice of reason. “And cost us naught but the price of honing a keen edge on the blade.”
Wessex turned from the fireplace. “Perhaps we should build a guillotine in Piccadilly? Then we could invite the old hags to come and knit souvenirs to sell while we showed the rest of the world how civilized we have become after two decades of war.”
In the discomfiting silence that met his remark, Wessex glanced around the room. There were few party guests who, upon entering the gloom of the library and hearing the topic of discussion, elected to remain overlong. He saw a tall, broad shouldered man in a ridiculous elf costume and a quite lovely woman wearing little more than an airy silk veil standing off to one side, and was about to dismiss them and turn back to the fire when the man lifted his mask.
For all of ten seconds the significance of the gesture did not register. But then the skin across the back of Wessex’s neck began to shrink and an arctic chill seemed to settle over the room, freezing out the voices of the men behind him. His every sense, his every instinct was tuned to the dark, bottomless eyes staring back at him; a gust of disbelief parted his lips, nearly staggered him back against the marble caryatid.
“I say, Wessex,” one of the men raised his empty glass. “Will you take another brandy?”
“What? Oh. No, not just yet thank you. As it happens I, uh, feel the need to, uh, seek out the nearest water closet. If you will excuse me, gentleman.”
He moved clumsily away from the hearth, bumping his hip on a table as he passed. The elf’s mask was back in place but the glitter of dark eyes followed Wessex across the library and through the arch to the adjoining drawing room. He hesitated there, only long enough to glance back over his shoulder, then continued out of sight.
“Wait here,” Emory said, touching Anna’s arm.
“Absolutely not,” she hissed back, conscious of the men
peering around now to have a better look at the wisp of her costume.
She sensed rather than saw his grimace as he took her arm again. “We really must compare our definitions of docile and obedient one day," he growled. "I suspect our meanings differ drastically.”
Anna kept pace with his long strides as he followed Wessex through the adjoining drawing room and up a small staircase concealed by an elegant swath of gold drapery. At the top, they hastened wordlessly along a narrow servant’s corridor into the regent’s private audience room.
Named appropriately the Blue Velvet Room, the walls were hung with dark blue panels framed in ornate gold moldings. Each panel in turn framed a masterpiece by either Rembrandt, Cuyps, or Both, as well as paintings of British military triumphs. The carpet was blue, woven in a patter of gold fleur de lis to reflect his sympathy for the ill fated monarchy; the furnishings were upholstered in pale blue with heavily gilded arms and legs. Anna, for one, had never been in such a grand state room before and was unabashedly awestruck. She stared up at the multi-tiered chandeliers, at the priceless collection of Chinese vases, at the elaborate candelabra featuring female figures holding palm branches, and she again envisioned scarlet-clad Beefeaters bursting through the gilt doors to drag them away in shackles.
Wessex merely crossed to the regent’s ornate escritoire and lit a pair of candles to supplement the scant light coming from the wall scones.
“I hear you have been a busy man,” he said, glancing over as Emory removed his mask.
“Better busy than dead.”
Wessex held his gaze a moment, then looked at Annaleah. “Perhaps you would prefer to wait in the anteroom?”
“Perhaps she would prefer to wait right here,” Emory said. “I am alive thanks to Miss Fairchilde, not to mention here speaking to you now.”
“Yes,” Wessex drawled. “I will not even ask where you come by your audacity in showing up here tonight, Althorpe. Nor why you, Miss Annaleah Fairchilde--” he turned again to address Anna where she stood in the shadows, the folds of her gown shifting ghost-like in the drafts-- “would risk bringing total ruin down upon your family’s good name to help him.”
Anna felt every drop of blood drain out of her face.
“I assume the reports of your kidnapping were vastly exaggerated?” he asked sarcastically.
“I wrote my brother a letter explaining--”
“That you lost your senses? Or is it that you have lost something even more valuable to this blackheart and feel you have no choice but to remain in his company?”
“I remain with him because I choose to, my lord,” she said coldly. “And because I believe him to be innocent of the charges laid against him.”
“You do realize what will happen to you if you are caught?” Wessex did not wait for an answer before he glared at Emory. “To both of us if we are caught in your company?”
“I was hoping you could call off the hounds so to speak, clear up the misconception that I am a traitor and a Bonapartist, and that I have, in fact, been in your employ as a spy for the past three years.”
Wessex looked hard into the dark, probing eyes. “That would be a difficult thing to attest to, sir, since I have not had a single missive from you for several months. Not since you took it upon yourself to sail to Elba and unleash that Corsican plague upon the world again.”
“I sent you dispatches,” Emory said quietly. “Fully a score or more. I told you there was a plan afoot to mount a rescue and that I had been approached by Bonaparte’s associates to sail the Intrepid to Elba.”
“I received no such dispatches.”
Emory looked startled. “You must have. I sent them through the normal channels, taking all the usual precautions.”
“I assure you, I received nothing. Not then, not at any time before or after Napoleon landed at Antibes and began his march to Paris.”
“Are you saying none of my subsequent dispatches got through either? None of the messages detailing Bonaparte’s movements? The movements of his army?”
“I have received nothing from you, sir. Not for five months or more. Thank god you were not the only coal in the fire or we should have had no prior warning about the positioning or strength of his troops at Waterloo.”
Emory, clearly stunned, paced to the far side of the room. “If none of my messages came through,” he said hoarsely, “ how do you explain the coded replies I received back ordering me to go along with the ruse at Elba? Ordering me to remain in Bonaparte’s camp?”
“They did not come from me, sir! I sent no such orders coded or otherwise! And if you think you can lay any of the blame for your traitorous actions on my shoulders you have a sadly misguided notion, indeed! In the first place, I would never have sanctioned the escape of such a dangerous fugitive--what would be the point? Why in God’s name would I unleash that plague upon the earth again?”
Emory blinked. Then blinked again. His right hand went to his temple, his left he held up to Annaleah as she started toward him.
“Cipriani. He said ‘the messages were intercepted.’ He also said, ‘we knew all about you from the beginning’ and implied there was a spy in Lord Casterleagh’s offices.”
“You are grasping at straws, Althorpe. Is that why you have come here?” the minister demanded. “Because you expected me to corroborate this outlandish story?”
“I expect you to uphold your word to reveal our relationship should the need arise. You gave it freely enough the day you presented me with the arrest warrant for Seamus Turnbull and used his freedom to blackmail me into signing on as one of your spies.”
“You voided that agreement, Althorpe, the day you sailed the Intrepid to Elba. And if you think you can barge in here accusing me of collusion and expect me to bow to your threat of blackmail, you can damned well think again! Any outlandish accusations you make would amount to your word against mine--and yours, I fear, is not the worth the spit required to form the words.”
“They are not outlandish accusations, Wessex,” Emory said in a low voice. “They are the truth and I will be damned if I am the only one left hanging in the wind.”
“If you are hanging in the wind, sir, it is by your own doing not mine, for as God is my witness I had no foreknowledge of the escape from Elba!”
“Then you have a spy in your cabinet, sir, and he has managed to play us both for fools!”
A violent ache was throbbing in Emory’s temple, the pressure so intense against the back of his eyeballs it was almost impossible to think. He had been counting on Wessex to support him, to at least lend credence to his claims of innocence and perhaps even buy him the time necessary to prove it.
He raised a hand to his head, and, finding the stiff orange curls of the wig there to greet him, tore it angrily off, flinging it along with the elf mask halfway across the room. Once freed, his own hair fell in wild black waves around his face, making the green paint and sparkled silver eyebrows Fysh had enjoyed applying seem all the more incongruous.
“I might,” Wessex said with a calmer, though unconvincing coldness, “be able to argue for leniency if you surrender yourself to the authorities. Do it here, now, tonight, and I promise I will personally guarantee a fair trial.”
Emory’s hand had risen again to massage the back of his neck. His fingers rubbed across the gold chain and he stopped, narrowing his eyes as he drew the links forward until the iron key dangled free of his shirt. “The dispatches,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I did not have time to destroy the last ones you sent.” He glanced pointedly at Anna. “I locked them away in the strongbox, dammit, along with--”
“There he is! I knew it was him, I knew it!”
The shrill female cry came from the shadows behind them. All three turned to stare at the doorway, where Lucille Althorpe stood, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing across the room at Emory Althorpe. Standing beside her, his pistol drawn, was Colonel Rupert Ramsey, and behind them, four armed Beefeaters fronting a small group of gentlemen who were strain
ing forward to see the cause of the commotion.
One of those gentleman was Anthony Fairchilde and the shock of seeing him was enough to keep Anna’s feet rooted to the floor, delaying her reaction long enough for Ramsey to push past Lucille’s encumbering panniers and aim his pistol across the room.
Anna screamed, and leaped forward. “No!”
She saw the puff of smoke as the hammer struck flint and sparked against the powder. There was a split second delay while the powder in the chamber ignited, followed by the loud explosion of the shot.
Lucille Althorpe clapped her hands to her ears and screeched, falling back against the four Beefeaters as they were about to surge through the door. Two of them went down with her in an upheaval of wire hoops, panniers and lace petticoats; the other two managed to step around the tangle of legs and rush through the doorway. They were armed only with their beribboned pikes, but the latter were ten feet long with viciously hooked steel points at the end.
Anna had felt the heat of the shot fly past her face but it had missed her and gouged a deep pit into one of the panelled walls. Emory was shouting something, but before she could turn and run to him, Wessex had stepped forward to block her path. In desperation she tried to dart past, but he was close enough to grasp her arm and jerk her to a painful halt. She lashed out with her fist, with the toes of her shoes, and managed to pull free, but she was off balance and spun painfully into the corner of the escritoire
Across the room, with one hand on the gilded latch, Emory hesitated and started to turn back for her.
Swept Away Page 28
