The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  Caroline let it go, just this once.

  “An earl in need of neither fortune nor fame, stealing a fifty-carat diamond in front of five hundred members of the beau monde—that, dear sister, is farfetched.”

  “Yes,” Caroline said. “But that’s you.”

  Even as William grinned, his dark eyes were serious. He took both her hands in his, crumpling the pages in her hand. “I understand I do not deserve your trust, Caroline—”

  “You don’t. You still haven’t apologized, you know, for almost killing my—er—Mr. Lake.”

  “I know.” The grin devolved into a smirk. “But that apology is going to take hours, days even, and we haven’t the time. Hope’s fortunes fall by the minute, as do Lady Violet’s. I won’t see her fall into penury on my behalf. Not after . . . well, everything that I’ve done. If all goes to plan, I’ll have the gem back in Hope’s pocket by week’s end.”

  Caroline’s heart leapt into her throat. By week’s end. That meant Henry still had a fighting chance, that their plot to defeat Woodstock might actually work.

  For the first time in what seemed an eternity, the warmth of hope peeked around the great mass of her frustration and hurt. All this time she’d ssumed the worst, and had held little faith that either she or Henry would meet with a happy ending.

  And now there was a chance that Henry might, if all went well, and Woodstock was bested. He could trade the diamond to the French, and turn the tide of the war.

  She ignored the stab of sorrow that pierced this sudden onslaught of relief. Henry’s happy ending meant he would successfully complete his assignment, and go back to Paris to continue his work there. Henry would leave London, and Caroline.

  It was becoming more difficult to deny the deep and lovely and frightening things she felt for him. Like how she would miss him all over again, when he was gone.

  But she would deny them as long as she could, for in admitting these feelings, Caroline would expose herself to the eviscerating heartache of losing him once more. She would become a traitor to herself, to everything she had worked for, to every promise she had made.

  There was no future to be had with Henry Beaton Lake. They each had chosen their paths. It was too late to change course now. Not after all that had happened.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t help him find the diamond, and in so doing outwit Woodstock, and use the jewel instead to save the lives of Henry’s fellow soldiers, Mr. Moon included. It was what she owed him, for keeping faith in her all these years, for aiming wide when William did anything but.

  And so Caroline untangled herself from William’s grasp and looked down at the pages, scattered with diagrams, timetables, maps. “Tell me more about this plan,” she said. “Where is it, the French Blue?”

  “Some jeweler or another has it—Eliason, that’s what Louis called him. Must’ve bought the diamond off the acrobats. Anyway. The king and his brother, the Comte d’Artois, are to meet him later this week to purchase it.”

  “Right,” she said. “So we follow the king and Artois, and buy it from Eliason ourselves?”

  “Buy the French Blue, or steal it.”

  Caroline arched a brow. “Stealing it once was enough, don’t you think? Better we come up with a new trick.”

  William shrugged. “Perhaps. Either way, old King Louis is going to lead us to the French Blue. After we lure him into a trap and capture him, of course.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “Shall we drug him as well? Tie him up, slap him for good measure?”

  She meant it as a joke; this plan as it now stood was nothing if not absurd, but William tapped a finger to his lips, thoughtfully. “Excellent idea, Caroline. We shall indeed.”

  William pointed to the papers in her hand. “We’ll add it to what I have here. Genius, if I don’t say so myself. Look, we’ll decorate the house in the guise of a—um—house of ill repute, and lure the king there under the pretense of watching some lovely ladies perform, and then we’ll drug him . . .”

  Thirty-six

  Hanover Square, Brook Street

  Five Days Later

  The Earl of Harclay’s plan was as exceedingly absurd in execution as it was on paper.

  It was all Henry could do not to roll his eyes as one disaster after another befell their motley crew of players: Violet, looking worse for the wear, and discreetly casting up her accounts in the water closet every quarter hour; Lady Sophia, her cousin, who managed to drug the earl instead of the king, now sobbing quietly in a corner; Thomas Hope, mooning over Sophia as she sobbed; and then there was the earl himself, dressed as Achilles (for God knows what reason) in a breastplate with egregiously erect nipples.

  The idea that the French Blue was found, and within his grasp, was the only thing that kept Henry from going mad. That, and Caroline’s presence.

  Though she was vaguely costumed as some Greek goddess or another, she wore her shimmering pink toga well; her cheeks flushed a matching shade when she met Henry’s eye across the room.

  Heavens, but she was lovely. He longed to speak with her, if only to ask how she had been, and if she finished that terrible book already.

  But what would it do, to ask her these questions, but deepen the agony of their inevitable parting? These past days, as tonight’s moment of judgment approached, an increasing sense of dread had beleaguered Henry, and kept him awake at night. There were too many moving parts, too many risks. This would not end well; not for Henry, not for Caroline. Probably not for Mr. Moon, either, poor bastard. And he did not want to frighten her with his feelings of helplessness. It was better if he stayed away, as she had asked him to from that first encounter at Thomas Hope’s ball.

  Besides, the both of them were kept occupied by the evening’s seemingly endless string of ridiculous tragedies. Even as she flitted capably about the room, he could tell by the set of her mouth that she shared in Henry’s complete and utter lack of enthusiasm for this nonsensical scheme.

  Henry watched her, wishing all the while he could grab her, and together they could steal away into the summer night’s velvety warmth.

  But he was needed; it was time to move the Bourbon King, Louis XVIII, toward the front door. To say Louis was fat would be like saying the earl’s plan was “somewhat flawed”: so gross an understatement as to be an outright lie.

  This man was enormous. His arms and legs stuck out from the bulbous mass of his belly like sticks from a pudding. Holding him at gunpoint—“What?” Henry had asked, releasing the safety on his pistol. “He isn’t exactly cooperating, is he?”—made him sweat profusely, his powdered wig sticking to his forehead.

  His brother, the Comte d’Artois, was no better. After shoving King Louis into the first of two hired hackneys brought round to the earl’s residence—Henry had recruited the drivers from among the most discreet of Mr. Moon’s men—the lot of them made for the city. There, using information begrudgingly provided by Louis, they met with Artois at a darkened corner; the comte held in his pocket the twenty-thousand-pound note he planned to exchange for the French Blue.

  Henry coaxed him into the hack beside King Louis, again at gunpoint; despite lacking a kingdom and a country, the royals proved overly familiar with giving orders, rather than taking them. The two of them, Louis and Artois, were like bewigged, blubbering hippopotamuses.

  Hippopotamuses in whose meaty hands the fate of all those gathered here rested.

  Henry tugged a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck and let out a short, hot breath. Why they didn’t entrust the diamond’s retrieval to him and Mr. Moon in the first place, he hadn’t a clue. It would have been easier, and far more discreet. They would have a chance—a small chance, but a chance nonetheless—of success.

  As things stood now, Henry had a better chance of being eaten by Artois than anyone, including the earl, had of retrieving the diamond.

  The knot in Henry
’s belly tightened. He reached up and pounded the roof, signaling the driver.

  King Louis swore this jeweler of his—the mysterious Mr. Eliason, the one who apparently had the diamond—was holed up on a ship in the Docklands.

  Henry hated the idea of traveling to London Docks, and at darkest night. Never mind the pickpockets and cutthroats that populated the nearby wharves; he feared the Marquess of Woodstock might materialize from the darkness and snatch Caroline so quickly, so silently, that Henry could do naught to stop him.

  But Caroline’s brother the earl would not be thwarted, even as he was ill with the aftereffects of his accidental poisoning, and so to the docks they went.

  The stench rose up like a fog from the Thames as the hackneys approached. By now Henry’s heart was clambering up and down his rib cage. If Louis was telling the truth, they were close, very close, to the French Blue. Henry’s every worry, every fear, could be erased in a single stroke, but he was not so foolish, nor so hopeful, as to believe that luck was on their side.

  Still, even if the jewel was beyond his grasp, that didn’t mean he couldn’t protect Caroline. She rode in the hackney behind his; the moment they reached their destination, Henry leapt through the door and waited for Caroline to alight, following her closely as they made their way onto the wharf.

  “Is everything all right?” she whispered.

  “Hardly,” he replied. “Stay close.”

  The blackness was complete here, blurred by the lantern Thomas Hope held at his shoulder. The only sounds were the limp rush of the Thames, the snap and grate of ships in their docks; no one dared make a noise, their footfalls muted. It was humid, the air, and Henry’s palm felt clammy against the warm metal of his pistol as he held it in the waistband of his breeches.

  King Louis led them to the end of the wharf, before he turned to the small crowd gathered behind him.

  “We cannot take all of you,” he said in heavily accented English. “Eliason is a greedy man but he is not stupid. If he sees so many coming, he will turn up his tail and run.”

  Artois nodded, chins quivering in agreement. “Yes, he will run. We will only take two.”

  Henry’s throat seized with rage. He was so close, so very close, to the French Blue, and now he was being turned away, told to entrust its retrieval to these idiots.

  He had half a mind to leap past the royals and find Eliason’s ship himself. He knew the jeweler would use a sloop, something fast and low in the water, probably something old, inconspicuous. It would not be difficult to find. Doubtless Henry could outwit and outsize Eliason, and any goons he employed as security. Lake could bully the jeweler into handing over the diamond; he could have the French Blue in his pocket in a quarter of an hour, maybe less. Free Moon and be done with the whole thing.

  But that would mean leaving Caroline.

  And Henry wasn’t about to do that, not here, not in this godforsaken swampland. Who would defend her, should Woodstock appear out of the ether? Certainly not her brother, as lovesick and half-dead as he was; and Thomas Hope was, well, hopeless—thoroughly occupied with Lady Sophia’s ample bosom.

  Henry ran a hand through his hair for the thirtieth time that night. No, he would stay behind, and protect Caroline from whatever—whomever—lurked in the darkness. He was not willing to risk her life, not for the diamond, not for what the diamond meant to him.

  Because Caroline Townshend meant more. And so Henry stood down.

  Lady Violet did not. Stealing a glance at the earl, she stepped forward, a bit more steady on her feet than she’d been at the house.

  “Lord Harclay and I will go with the king,” she said firmly.

  Hope, of course, cried out in protest, and fought to accompany King Louis and Artois to Eliason’s ship. The diamond had technically belonged to Hope when it was stolen, and Hope stood to lose just as much as Henry—that was to say, everything—should the jewel be lost.

  Nevertheless, Violet won the argument, swearing to Hope that she would return the French Blue to him. While she spoke with convincing sincerity, Henry didn’t exactly share her conviction.

  Looping her arm through the earl’s, Violet followed the King and Artois. Henry watched the night swallow them. He should follow them, see Harclay’s inane plan through, reclaim the diamond for England. There was so much at stake: his future, Caroline’s, his men and his country, and all he had worked for these past twelve years.

  The weight of this knowledge suffocated him. And yet he did not follow Violet and the earl, and stood instead by Caroline’s side.

  Caroline.

  He could smell her perfume, and sense her rising panic; she was shaking and trying to hide it. Henry swallowed his own; he had to calm her down. He turned to Sophia and Thomas Hope, who stood in a tangled huddle behind him.

  Hope was drawing a shawl about Sophia’s shoulders; the debutante looked up at the banker with eyes that glittered in the darkness. The way she was looking at him—it was an invitation, a provocation, even.

  And Thomas Hope appeared all too happy to be provoked.

  Henry cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Jolly good of Lady Violet and Harclay to do the heavy lifting for us, eh? Come, let’s have a nip in the hack while we wait.”

  Without turning from Sophia, Hope untangled a silver flask from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Lake.

  Henry looked down at the flask, fighting a smile. It was as subtle an admonishment to leave Thomas and Sophia alone as a spoken “shoo, off with you!” would have been.

  Henry tucked the flask into his coat and placed his hand on the small of Caroline’s back. Her trembling lessened, slightly. “We’ll just, er, meet you . . . there, back at the hackney. Do take your time”—here he would’ve wiggled his eyebrows, if Hope had been watching—“we have all night.”

  Lake pressed Caroline into motion beside him.

  After a beat, she released a stifled giggle. “Good Lord!” she wheezed. “No mystery as to what they’ll get up to. I wonder where they’ll do it.”

  Henry snorted. “Right there, if I had to hazard a guess. Luckily we escaped before the show began.”

  They made for the hackney in silence, the only sound Henry’s footfalls on the uneven cobbles. Caroline’s slippers made barely a whisper as she moved beside him. Through the gauze of her gown, her skin warmed his palm.

  “We should have gone,” she murmured at last. “I know this whole mess was William’s plan, but you and I—we should be meeting that jeweler, and buying back the diamond.”

  Henry guided her closer, so that she walked in the cradle of his arm. “You’re worried about him. Your brother.”

  “Of course I’m worried,” she replied. “That’s all I do anymore, is worry. About him. About you.”

  Inside his chest, Henry’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  He could practically hear Caroline roll her eyes. “I know, I know, you can take care of yourself, all that rubbish. But it can’t be helped. I think about y—”

  She stopped herself. Henry swallowed, hard, and tried not to dwell on what it meant that she thought about him.

  Caroline refused him, hadn’t she? And even if her feelings had changed, and she felt a fraction of what he felt for her, it didn’t matter. Whether they won back the French Blue tonight, Henry was leaving, bound by duty and honor to return to Paris. They could never be together, Henry and Caroline. There was no place for such a match in the worlds they had chosen, no time or tolerance for a repeat of the heartbreak they each had suffered twelve years ago.

  And yet.

  The insistent beat of Henry’s desire for her would not be ignored. It was immediate, and overwhelming, the heat from his palm pulsing up his arm to land in his chest, between his legs, in his temples. A million sensations sprang forth from this place where he touched her, where mer
e layers of muslin and whalebone and gauze separated flesh from flesh.

  God, but he could not get past how much he wanted her. How much he loved her.

  It could have been his imagination—overeager, as usual, in her presence—but Caroline seemed to curl farther into his touch, pressing her body against his.

  She’s just frightened, he told himself. Tired.

  Still, Henry liked the sense of peace it brought him, surrounding her with his body. Knowing he could protect her, in this moment at least, even if protection wasn’t what she was looking for.

  When they reached the hackney, waiting just beyond the wharf’s edge, Henry nodded at the driver; the man tipped his hat and studiously averted his gaze.

  “Find someplace safe,” Henry told him. “Out of the way. We’re sitting ducks here.”

  Henry opened the door, and his fingers slid from Caroline’s back to her hand. Her fingers felt naked and cold in his palm. Without thinking, he gave them a squeeze as he helped her climb into the vehicle.

  He followed her inside, closing the door quietly behind him. It was cool, and dark in here; the hackney’s lamps, distorted through the grimy window, offered little in the way of illumination. He took a seat on the thinly cushioned bench across from Caroline. The hackney began to move, slowly, the wheels clapping an uneven beat over the cobblestones.

  Henry removed the flask from his coat, unscrewed its top. She turned her head to look out the window, the skin on her swanlike neck burnished gold in the low light. She held her hands in a tight knot on her lap.

  “Care for a nip?” Henry held out the flask.

  With trembling fingers she took it, and gave it a sniff. She wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”

  “Single malt Scotch whiskey. You’re not going to like it.”

  Caroline tilted back her head, taking a goodly pull. At once her face screwed up in a grimace, tongue emerging from between her lips as if she could banish the taste from her mouth. “You’re right. That’s awful. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself—drinking whatever it is you’re offering me inside a coach. Why can’t anyone keep a nice sherry beneath the cushions?”