Lord of Fire

by Gaelen Foley

  It was all she could do to bite her tongue on the matter. Phillip would have agreed that what mattered right now was Harry. And Harry needed his nurse. She clasped her hands behind her back and lifted her chin. “I wish to speak to you about Peg Tate.”

  “How grim you look, my dear. Something’s missing . . . hmm.” Caro suddenly clapped her hands to her cheeks in mock surprise. “Oh, no! Could it be your virtue? Where have you left your shiny halo?”

  Alice stared coldly at her.

  Caro trilled a laugh and rose gracefully from the divan. “Let me have a look at you, dear. Our little Goody Two-Shoes is not so good anymore, is she? Don’t worry. No one knows what you’ve been doing—no one but me, that is. Ah, poor little Alice, fallen to earth like her wicked sister-in-law. I can see it in your eyes, but don’t fret, I shall never tell. It’ll be our little secret, just us girls and Lucien Knight. Tell me, what did you think of it?”

  “Of what?” she asked in a low warning tone.

  “Fucking,” Caro whispered.

  Alice bit her tongue to keep from answering in terms she would regret.

  “Isn’t he magnificent? I love the sound he makes, that primal growl when he’s on the verge of . . . well, you know,” she murmured coyly.

  Feeling as though she had just been clearly run through with a rapier, Alice glared at her, her eyes blazing with pain and fury, her cheeks aflame.

  “Now, now, what’s this?” Oh . . . you little fool,” she whispered. “Surely you didn’t fall in love with that wolf!”

  Alice could not speak. She just stared at her in angry misery.

  “But you did, didn’t you? Yes, of course you did. You would.” Caro rested her hands together suddenly, tilted her head back, and laughed with elegant glee. “Oh, Alice, poor little fool.”

  Alice’s voice was stuck in her throat, choking her. She cast about for something to say to change the subject, for she could not bear another second of this torment. She seized upon another subject to stop herself from breaking down in tears. She would never give her sister-in-law that satisfaction. “I heard that you struck Harry,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh? That bulldog-faced, old woman has been talking to you, I see. Well, do not concern yourself with my son—he is my son, Alice. It is time he learned discipline.”

  “And you who have never learned it yourself are the one to teach him?” she asked bitterly.

  Caro sent her a warning glance over her shoulder as she went to pour a cup of tea from the silver service on the table. “I am, along with a bit of help, perhaps, from the man who may soon become Harry’s new step-papa. There is a new man in my life, Alice—oh, such a man! A great, blond, Prussian barbarian. I just might marry him if the fancy takes me; then Harry and I will go to live in Berlin with von Dannecker.”

  Alice stared at her, paling. “You can’t be serious. You can’t take Harry away!”

  “Don’t worry, my dear, you may come, too, if you wish. But don’t even think about stealing von Dannecker from me the way you stole Lucien.”

  Alice dropped her gaze to the carpet, struggling for equilibrium. She forced herself to ignore Caro’s wild plans for the moment, concentrating on the main reason for this conformation. “Caro, you must hire back Peg Tate. How could you dismiss her? She has been with our family for twenty-five years, not to mention that Harry adores her. You cannot throw her out on her ear—”

  “Yes, I can, Alice, and I can do the same to you if I please. After what you’ve been through, surely by now you’ve learned your place. I daresay you’ve tumbled off your pedestal, hmm?”

  Alice’s nostrils flared as she drew in another angry inhalation, fighting to check her temper. She lifted her chin, but bit back her retort.

  “I have made some changes in your absence,” Caro went to. “It’s time you acquainted yourself with them.” Tea and saucer in hand, the baroness turned and faced her coolly. “I have taken back control of my life and my household. From now on, I am to be treated with the respect that is my due. You and Harry and the old harpy have yet to learn a proper respect for me.”

  “Usually one’s respect must be earned,” Alice growled.

  “That is just the sort of cheek I refuse to take from you anymore, you little whore!” Caro said, her eyes flaring with malice.

  “How dare you?”

  “Well, that’s what you are, aren’t you? I know it. I know what you’ve done, so don’t put on airs with me, or you may remove yourself from my house and be on your way. Don’t forget that I can deny you access to Harry.”

  Alice stared at her, stunned anew. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  Alice blinked rapidly, trying to absorb this most terrible threat. “What do you want of me?”

  “Ah, that is better. You see how much nicer it is when we get along?”

  Alice glared at her in loathing.

  Caro smiled blandly and sipped her tea. “Now, then. Our first order of business is for you to put in a few appearances in Society to reassure everyone that you are quite recovered from your bout of influenza. It is essential for women like us to keep up appearances.”

  Alice fought with herself to hold her tongue over that remark. I am not like you, she thought. No matter what I did with Lucien, I never will be like you.

  “Society is rather thin these days, but there is a concert tonight at Countess Lieven’s and a ball at the Argyle Rooms on Friday. You will attend both.”

  “I can’t. It is the French lady’s visit,” she muttered.

  “I see. Very well, you may be excused from the concert tonight, but you will go to the ball on Friday with me. You should be quite recovered by then.”

  “What about Peg?”

  With an aloof expression, Caro looked down her nose into her tea, clearly relishing her position of power. “Swear to me that you will forever stay silent on everything that took place at Revell Court, and I will give her a second chance.”

  Alice studied her in disgust. Clearly, the baroness had realized that if the ton found out that Alice had been Lucien’s mistress, and that Caro, her own guardian, had willfully contributed to her downfall and had done nothing to protect her, then both of them would be shunned. It was one matter for Caro to be known as a scandalous adventuress, but quite another to be exposed as a villainess so petty and jealous that she would help to ruin her own maiden sister-in-law. Perhaps Caro did not want her new Prussian lover to know the kind of woman she really was, Alice thought.

  “Do you swear?” Caro prodded.

  “I have no intention of ever publicly acknowledging Lucien Knight,” Alice replied in a deadened tone. “Before I left, we agreed to treat each other as complete strangers, as though we had never met.” The words shot a spasm of pain outward from her heart to her whole body, but she kept her gaze even, her face expressionless.

  “Good,” Caro replied. “Then it will be our little secret. As a token of good faith, I will allow Mrs. Tate to stay—but I will hold you responsible for keeping that meddling old harpy out of my path. And tell her I demand an apology.”

  Peg was going to fume at having to humble herself before Lady Glenwood, but for Harry’s sake, Alice knew that she would. “Very well.”

  Caro smiled brightly and smoothed her hair. “Well, then, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  “Ah, that will be von Dannecker. We’re going for a drive in Hyde Park.” Caro set her teacup down, ran to the mirror that hung over the mantel, and pinched her cheeks to redden them with a girlish blush, then bustled out into the hallway as Mr. Hattersley opened the door.

  Alice followed her warily, curious to have a look at the man Caro had threatened could become Harry’s stepfather. Von Dannecker was a massive, towering man, maybe even taller than Lucien, and thicker-bodied, with shoulders like granite cliffs. Though his dark clothes were chosen with fashionable reserve, Alice thought wryly that the rugged, weathered brute would have looked more at eas
e in chain mail. His overly muscular physique seemed to chafe against the severe cut of his tailcoat and the starchy discipline of his austere, white cravat.

  “Karl!”

  He dwarfed Caro as she sailed over and embraced him, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks, Continental fashion. He had a broad, square face with a wide forehead and a cleft chin; his straw-yellow hair was slicked back flat against his scalp, and he wore a monocle in his right eye.

  His monocle suddenly fell, swinging down on its ribbon onto his chest, as he noticed Alice leaning in the doorway of the parlor, while Caro continued fussing over him. When he met her gaze, something in his pale blue eyes made Alice shrink back against the door frame with a faint shudder. He had a thin, cruel mouth; deep hollows under his eyes; and a slight oily gleam on his skin.

  “Ah, Karl, that is my sister-in-law, Miss Montague. Alice, this is Baron Karl von Dannecker,” Caro said proudly as she slipped her hand through the crook of his arm in a possessive gesture, quite shamelessly caressing his bulging biceps.

  Alice nodded to the man. He bowed to her, then looked up toward the stairs as Harry came climbing down them, holding onto each bar of the banister as he descended.

  “Auntie! Come and see the kitties in the garden!” the boy cried.

  “Coming, Harry! If you’ll excuse me.” She sketched a curtsy to the couple, then dashed past them, running up to assist Harry on the stairs. She grasped his hand. “You know you are not supposed to walk on the stairs without holding somebody’s hand, Harry.”

  “I saw the kitties out the window. Nanny Peg said we could give them some milk because they’re strays.”

  “Oh, Harry!” Caro called. “Come and greet Lord von Dannecker and give Mama a kiss good-bye.” Caro bent down, holding out her arms to the child, putting on a grand show for her lover of what a good mother she was.

  Harry’s enthusiastic prattle stopped. He looked up dolefully at Alice; she gave him an imperceptible nod. No child was well raised who did not respect his mother, even if the woman was a backstabbing harlot. He heaved a sigh and went dutifully to his mother. Alice’s heart clenched at the ginger way he embraced the woman, as though he had been stringently taught never to rumple Mama’s hair or her gown.

  “What a good boy you are,” Caro said, petting his head in a show of lavish affection. “Now give a bow to His Lordship.”

  Harry barely came up to von Dannecker’s knee, but he turned to the man, put his hand on his middle and executed a gentlemanly little bow, then bolted back to Alice. She swung him up in her arms and held him, filled with a strange, protective instinct to shield the child from von Dannecker’s unfeeling stare.

  There were only six days left until Guy Fawkes Night, and Claude Bardou’s preparations were moving along like clockwork. His gun crew had arrived, courtesy of the same Irish fishing boat that had smuggled him into England. His men had brought with them the shiny, bronze-cast cannon—an eighteen-pounder—the well-stocked ammunition chest, and the portable stove for heating hot shot.

  This city was going to burn, he thought with a narrow smile. Going out the door with Lady Glenwood, however, he did not like the defiant way her young sister-in-law held his gaze as she picked up the child and braced him against her hip.

  Though Miss Montague looked as delicate and demure as any young English gentlewoman, he read a strength of character in her wary blue eyes that gave him pause. Bardou turned away, shrugging off the odd sensation that the girl could somehow see through his charade as a Prussian nobleman. Absurd. Eager to escape her cool, blue stare, he escorted Lady Glenwood out to the Stafford’s waiting carriage, which he had borrowed.

  As soon as they were under way inside the carriage, Caro draped her arms around his neck and kissed him in a more sensual greeting. Bardou had never enjoyed kissing, but he played along willingly enough, for she was highly useful to him. Indeed, she would be the bait with which he would lure Knight away from London on Guy Fawkes Night. Yet, he mused as he kissed her roughly, he sensed there were things Caro was not telling him about her relationship with Lucien Knight. Every time he had skirted the topic of her recent scandal with the Knight twins, she had danced away from the subject with her coy, irritating gaiety.

  Bardou had not pressed her too hard because he had not wanted to turn her against him, but as he felt her falling increasingly under his power, he decided to ask again a bit more firmly. He ended the kiss and looked into her lust-glazed eyes. “My darling, you know I am wild for you,” he murmured. For a native Frenchman, it was no mean trick to speak English while feigning a Prussian accent.

  “Oh, Karl,” she purred, running her hands all over his body. “I feel the same for you. You make me feel so alive!”

  “You know that I am serious about you, Carolina,” he said, stroking her. At the joy that lit her face, he almost felt a twinge of conscience. What a fool she was. “But if we are together,” he continued sternly, “I must know the substance behind this upsetting gossip about you that greets me everywhere I turn. I will not be made a laughingstock. I must know the truth about what happened between you and those blasted Knight brothers.”

  She lowered her lashes.

  “You almost married Damien Knight, did you not?”

  “To me, it was only a flirtation, Karl.”

  “Is that why you allowed the other one to use you?”

  “Lucien Knight did not use me!” she retorted, indignation flaring in her eyes. “For your information, he was so desperate to have me that he betrayed his own brother, but I don’t mind saying that I quickly bored of him. He was quite hurt. Indeed, he is still furious at me, but what can I say? I lost interest.”

  “Then, he is in love with you?” he asked, frustrated by the vague sense that she was lying to him. “I only ask in case I should expect trouble from him over you.”

  She smiled and slipped her arms around him again. “Oh, Karl, how sweet! Would you really protect me from my jealous ex-lovers’ advances?”

  It was then that he took a canny guess at the lie behind her sugary smile. Of course. She was still seeing Lucien Knight behind his back, probably still sleeping with him on the nights that Bardou wasn’t with her.

  So, that was what she was hiding, he mused. Why, the bitch thought she was clever, dangling both men. If Bardou really were von Dannecker, he would have been incensed, but instead he smiled through his guise, happy with his theory that she was still bedding his enemy. It meant that his plan would work perfectly.

  “Would you really rescue me if I were a damsel in distress?” she teased, licking her lips in invitation. “Would you protect me, my big, fierce Viking?”

  “With life and limb,” he vowed, scoffing inwardly at her ignorance. The Vikings had been Norsemen, not Germans.

  “Mmm,” she murmured, pressing her body against him, kissing him again. His body hardened as she slid her hand down to his crotch, but a thought of Sophia trailed through his mind. She still had not returned, and he was beginning to wonder if his fiery Russian darling had run away.

  She wouldn’t dare, he assured himself. She had written him a note while en route, chasing Rollo Greene to Lucien Knight’s country house, and that was not the behavior of a woman who was about to defect. Nevertheless, that last, small corner of Bardou’s soul that still bothered to care about anyone had begun to worry that something had happened to her. There was no other woman like Sophia. She was the only one who had ever understood him, his dark needs. Then he scoffed at his own fearful imaginings. Sophia had always been more than able to take care of herself. He did not doubt that she had succeeded in killing the repulsive American; Sophia always got her man. He knew he could rest assured that she had done her job for him, and that was all that mattered, he thought impatiently.

  With that, he put her out of his mind and brought Caro back to the Pulteney Hotel, where he took his enemy’s woman like a whore, forcing her to admit between his vengeful thrusts that he was a better lover than Lucien Knight. She did not dare say ot
herwise, but it pleased him nonetheless.

  Chapter 14

  Cloaked in shadows, Lucien watched the glittering ballroom from the dim, high balcony, scanning the crowd below with the brooding patience of a predator stalking its prey. He could not believe that four days had passed. Four days of ceaseless searching and racking his brain to outwit Bardou, and now already it was Friday night. Tomorrow was Guy Fawkes, and he still had seen neither hide nor hair of his enemy.

  Over the past half week, he had coordinated his defenses with both Bow Street and London’s undermanned police force to find Claude Bardou. He had given them a sketch and a verbal description of the big Frenchman, but so far no one had seen him. He had alerted the Horse Guards; ordered security shored up at Westminster Hall and all the more significant buildings and royal dwellings throughout London; and had had the old cellars beneath Parliament searched for explosives, but the premises had been clear. While Bow Street and the constable’s men searched the streets and began their torturously slow sweep of the riverside warehouses, Lucien had begun searching for Bardou in Society.

  Bardou was no gentleman, but he was probably arrogant enough to think that he could fool the ton for a while if he dressed in the right clothes. It was infuriating. He could feel him here, so close by, just out of sight. That peasant son of a bitch was no doubt laughing up his sleeve at Lucien’s desperate efforts to find him. Obviously, he was not going to show himself until he was entirely ready to begin.