Hands clasped in her lap, Cassie nodded obediently. “Yes, ma’am.”
Having seen enough, the matron released the glass and let it dangle from its ribbon. “You both appear to be on the lam. Perhaps you should explain yourself.”
ZENO DRUMMED HIS fingers on the constable’s desktop as the black-haired gendarme reopened both passports. Leaning back in his chair, the Calais police chief glanced at a few of his most recent stamps. “The moment I receive word from Scotland Yard, Agent Kennedy, I can release you both.” The man laced his fingers together across a wide girth. “While we wait, shall I collect your contact information in Paris?”
He shot Rob a glance. The young man’s demeanor had sobered noticeably since finding the murdered French agent. Zeno passed Cassie’s itinerary across the desk.
“Hotel Pont Royal, trés gentil, monsieur.” He picked up a pencil to scratch a few notes.
A vein throbbed in his neck. “Inspector, I cannot stress enough that time is of the essence. Mrs. St. Cloud is in the gravest of danger—”
A knock on the office door interrupted Zeno’s plea. As he listened to the intruding officer speak, his jaw clenched. He forced himself to draw in a hot intake of breath.
“It is official.” The rotund constable turned to Zeno and Rob. “The rail workers are on strike.”
Zeno grimaced. Cassie, as well as her abductors, was now stranded. Was that good news or bad? He believed they would continue on to Paris. The sprawling metropolitan city was a hotbed of anarchist sympathizers ready and willing to offer refuge.
He still held out a shred of hope that Cassie might have avoided her captors, but he wasted no time on the thought. Inside his shirt, a trickle of sweat crawled down his back. Wasn’t it far more likely they had her in their clutches? He wondered if his fearless young widow would attempt to escape. And if she did manage to break away, where might she run to?
A steely kind of calm settled over him as his heart rate slowed. The rail strike gave him a fighting chance to overtake her on the road, perhaps even beat her to Paris.
The inspector held two wires in his hand. “From Scotland Yard and the Sûreté.” He took one last glance at their papers and pushed them across his desk. “Apologies, monsieur, for the delay.”
Zeno swept up the passports. “We’ll be on our way.”
Outside the police station, he loaded their luggage back onboard the roadster. A few curious onlookers crowded around the vehicle. Waiting, he supposed, for Rob to start the engine.
“Pardonnez-moi, monsieurs.” A young man with cap in hand approached them from the crowd of bystanders. “My brother is a gendarme here in Calais. I have been told you are in search of a young lady, perhaps someone traveling alone, with her maid?”
Zeno nodded. “Please, tell us what you know.”
“I work at the Hotel le George. Late last night, I delivered a meal—a tureen of chowder, baguette, and cheese. Two attractive women occupied the room. The gentleman with them seemed to be someone official. When he tipped me, I heard the young woman, a beauty with silver eyes, call him inspector.”
Zeno took a deep breath. Yes, they were lovely eyes.
Mulling over the ramifications of the hotel worker’s story, he lifted his brows. “Could you describe the gentleman for me?”
As the young man recalled the man’s appearance, Zeno exchanged glances with Rob. Close enough for Cassie to have accepted the man as the real Tautou.
“Did the lady seem in any way uncomfortable, let us say, detained against her will?”
The young informant shook his head. “Non, monsieur.”
Ever the optimist, Rob’s eyes sparked to the news. “I suppose it is much less trouble to get two women to Paris if they travel willingly.”
“Even if they are unwitting hostages.” A chill ran down Zeno’s spine. “We may still be in luck. They appear to believe they have abducted a bit of insurance for themselves.”
Rob scratched his head. “They mean to use hostages to bargain for their own necks?”
The best Zeno could manage was a grimace.
The roadster’s engine coughed and fired up to a round of shouts and applause from onlookers. He hooked the crank onto the side of the engine bonnet and jumped up beside Rob. Nodding to the young man who had stepped forward, Zeno offered a ride. “Would you mind showing us the way out of town and onto the main road?”
A smile as wide as the English Channel itself erupted onto the youth’s face and he hopped aboard. They situated him atop the luggage.
Zeno nodded to Rob. “Let’s get to Paris.”
“I NEED TO get to Paris,” Cassie blurted out to the woman. “And, indeed, some very bad men search for me even now. I promise, sincerely, I will explain everything to you, only …” She pressed trembling lips together and tried not to appear too wild-eyed.
The matronly woman raised a studied brow.
“Only, might we give the driver a destination, perhaps a circle about the square, just so I can give these characters the—”
“The dodge?”
The coach door opened and shut with a bang as a young man climbed aboard. “I’m afraid we must slog onward by carriage. The rail workers are on strike.” Noticing Cassie and Cécile, he tipped his hat, revealing a frightful shock of bright red hair. “I say, Granny, what have we here?”
As he sank openmouthed onto the seat beside her, the elderly woman grinned. She raised an ebony cane topped with an enormous cut-crystal knob, tapped the roof, and the carriage lurched off.
“What we have here is an adventure, Buckley dear.” The woman chided. “And don’t look so unnerved, young man. It is the very thing this dreadfully dull holiday of ours has been missing.” She returned her attention to Cassie.
“Let me introduce myself. I am the dowager Duchess Lady Grafton and this is my grandson, His Grace, Buckminster Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton.”
“Your Grace.” Cassie nodded politely. “I am the dowager Lady Rosslyn. Please call me Mrs. St. Cloud, or Cassandra. Cécile is my maid.”
The dowager raised an elegant chin as a slow, close-lipped smile curled the edges of her mouth. “Well then, Lady Rosslyn, or Mrs. St. Cloud, as you prefer, we have several hours of dusty ride before us and you have promised me a story.”
Cassie spent the better part of the next two hours relating the strange circumstances surrounding her involvement in Zeno’s pursuit of Lord Delamere and the Fenian dynamiters. She found the young duke’s rapt attention to every detail both curious and telling. At every turn of the story, the adolescent proved himself an inquisitive, avid crime solver. And the dowager duchess shared her own brand of running commentary.
When Cassie finished a particularly grisly description of the events at the Stanfield Ball, the elderly woman sniffed. “I send in a donation every year. Spares me hours of boredom.” And she was sparing but incisive with her impressions of Lord Delamere. “Don’t really know the man. Flirtatious, is he not? Stylish. Rather full of himself. I believe the late duke thought him unctuous.”
Cassie sighed. Leaving out the more intimate side of her involvement with Detective Kennedy proved more challenging as her tale went on. The impression she imparted of their relationship was more than friendship but less than what it really was. A great deal less. The thought made her smile, perhaps for the first time today.
Like an infatuated child, the Duke of Grafton, or Buckley as he insisted on being called, questioned her tirelessly about Zeno Kennedy. “I have a box full of clippings on my desk in Euston Hall, organized in chronological order. Beginning with the bombing of Clerkenwell Prison, the fizzle at the London Times building, and both Underground explosions.”
“Buckley wishes to become a Yard man after university.” The dowager duchess feigned a tight-lipped smile, more unhappy than not.
Cassie tilted her head. “If I’m not mistaken, several peers of the realm are employed by Special Branch.”
“I have made a note of them,” the redheaded duke enthused. “
Detective Raphael Lewis is a St. Aldwyn, and Owen Neville is heir to the Earldom of Warwick. Why, even Mr. Kennedy himself is connected to the Ayrshire earls.”
Cassie smiled. “Zeno contends he is a distant relation.”
Buckley grinned at the dowager. “There, you see, Granny?”
“Don’t encourage him.” The duchess raised a brow in mock displeasure. “It is my greatest hope he will grow out of it.”
The very idea that Zeno could be following after them caused a certain amount of fidgeting on the part of the young duke, who regularly checked the road behind the carriage as though Detective Kennedy might pull alongside at any moment. “Gadzooks! Another coach, coming up fast behind us.”
Cassie craned her neck to look out the window. Pistol shots fired overhead. She returned to the duke and his grandmother. “A warning to slow down or be fired upon.”
Buckley removed a pistol from beneath the plush bench seat. “Highwaymen, or Lord Delamere’s thugs?”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe highwaymen would use a carriage.” After a second volley of shots, Cassie sidled over to the coach window in time to witness an injured outrider fall forward. The man caught himself at the last minute and held on. As they rounded a sharp turn, she craned her neck to look ahead. One of the guards riding out in the front slowed his mount and fell back to the rear of the carriage.
As the coach pulled ahead he shouted inside, “I must give the order to return fire, Your Grace.” Buckley nodded to the man.
Their driver whipped the teams to a pace much too fast for the curved route they traveled over. The carriage swayed dangerously through a series of turns as they swept past a road sign. Nineteen miles to Paris. Depending on who had the least obstructed view, Cassie and the duke took turns firing his pistol out opposite windows.
The carriage hurtled down a steep slope, pitching onto two wheels as it rounded a blind bend. “Everyone to one side,” Cassie yelled and shoved a screaming Cécile to the elevated side of the coach. Cassie threw herself into her maid’s lap. Buckley did the same across the aisle. The grand dame clutched her nephew and her crystal-topped walking cane for dear life.
The duke poked his head out the window. “Good God.”
Cassie strained to see the road ahead. “Good God.”
A wagon laden with hay was slowly making its way uphill. They were going to plunge off the steep side of this road and be smashed into bits of bone and flesh. Slowly, as if in a dream, the teams slowed, the carriage braked and the coach righted itself, narrowly missing the farmer’s wagon.
All four wheels returned to the road with a teeth- rattling crack and a thud. The springs bounced them so hard, the wheels literally lifted off the ground for a moment and Buckley hit his head on the roof. Cassie tasted blood. She had bitten her tongue.
The duke’s outriders fired a volley of shots, and their pursuers fell back.
The fallen revolver skittered across the floor of the carriage. Cassie took up the gun, braced her arm on the window ledge, and sighted down the barrel. This time she waited to take her shot.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Zeno slid several francs across the counter. The busy inn’s cook had filled his travel basket with bread and cheese, several pastries, and two bottles of ale.
“No doubt you’ve been busy? Many more customers than usual, what with the rail strike.” The innkeeper’s wife had winked at him earlier. He leaned farther over the bar and lowered his voice. “I have lost touch with some fellow travelers—English—perhaps you could help me?”
The woman wiped off the counter with a damp cloth. “As you say, we have seen many customers today.”
“Specifically, two young women traveling together. They may be escorted by … well, guards, perhaps. Any similar guests or customers through the inn today?”
She swept back a few loose hairs, noting the stack of bills on the bar. She regarded Zeno with a wary eye. “Perhaps, monsieur.” Her gaze returned to the pile of notes on the counter. Zeno added a few more.
“How could I forget les Anglais? They claimed to have been attacked on the road by highwaymen. There were guards. Oh mon Dieu, oui. Four outriders. One had a wound to the upper arm.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a fuss over a scratch.”
Zeno swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “Could you describe them for me? In detail, s’il vous plaît?”
The innkeeper’s wife tilted her head and nodded. “Three English and a French girl—the lady’s maid.” The handsome middle-aged woman leaned toward him, so he might enjoy a more intimate view of her breasts. Zeno bit back a frown and remained amiable, even as she trifled with him.
“You like, Englishman?” She lowered her voice. “Perhaps you might take a room upstairs to refresh yourself?”
Zeno swept a long, approving glance up and down. “What a shame, madame, but I must make Paris by nightfall.” He cleared his throat. “You were saying something about a group of travelers?”
The woman shrugged. “A duke, hardly more than a boy, his grand-mère, and two young women. An English lady and her maid.”
“A French maid, you say?” He held his breath.
“Oui. A beauty, as was her mistress. The English woman was tall. Her hair not blond, not brown. Eyes, d’argent, I think.” A corner of her mouth curled. “Are these your women, monsieur?”
“The ladies weren’t hurt in anyway?”
She seemed surprised at his question. “Non, monsieur.”
Zeno wanted to kiss her. At the very least, dance the woman around the dining room. He settled for a brief kiss on each of her cheeks and slapped a few more notes on the counter. “And how long ago, madame, did they pass through here?”
The woman swept up his money and raised her hands in the air. “Perhaps two hours. They … effrayé—terrify—the travelers in my inn. Merde! Several customers took up with them and formed a convoy.”
Zeno left the inn whistling. He placed the lunch basket on the seat of the roadster and looked around for Rob, anxious to be on their way. They were hardly out of the woods yet, but there was a glimmer of hope, a chance Cassie had eluded Delamere and his cohorts. He could hardly wait to share the news with her brother.
“Nothing here at the inn, I’m afraid.” He spun around at the sound of Rob’s voice.
“Our chances improve as we approach Paris. We’ll find a bit of industry where we can purchase a few cans of petrol.”
“This should get us close enough.” Rob retrieved their last container of fuel from the carriage trunk and Zeno grabbed the funnel.
His young recruit wiped the dust and sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Zeno marveled at both Rob’s ingenuity and how quickly this odd vehicle had grown on him. Driving was almost routine now. “Shall I take the steerage for a while?”
Zeno jumped behind the driver’s seat and Rob cranked.
The engine putted and rumbled into commission as a coach pulled by four horses flew past the inn. Zeno stared after the trail of dust.
Rob followed his gaze. “Every time one of them passes by, you get that look in your eye.” He lifted the basket up off the seat and hopped aboard. “Dare I ask who you are thinking of?”
He offered a dusty grin, but a grin nonetheless. “I have some news to share.”
“Good news, I hope.” Rob unhinged the stopper on a bottle of ale and took a long swig.
Zeno released the brake and eased back on the hand clutch. “The best all day.”
“AT LEAST WE had the good sense to send our trunks ahead.” Cassie glanced around the spacious, light-filled hotel room and unpinned her hat.
Her maid moped about the room.
“Dear me, what a sour expression, Cécile.” She approached the girl. “I realize you lost a suitcase and some personal items. You know I will give you whatever money you require to replace them. Don’t you?”
“Oui.” Cécile pushed on paned doors that opened onto a small private terrace. “Oh, madame, come and see. Très tragique!”
Cassie stepped out on the balcony and followed her maid’s forlorn gaze. There, along the curve of the Seine, stood the much-touted, partially completed ironwork structure that already dominated the cityscape. She tried to imagine the rest of the tall spire.
“What a sight Mr. Eiffel’s Tower will be.” She bit her lip and moved closer. “Cécile, did you form an attachment to that young French man on the train with us?”
A sideways glance told Cassie she had struck a nerve. “You do realize that even if those men were from the Sûreté, they were also in league with Lord Delamere and up to no good? They could have harmed both of us.” Cassie twisted her hands together. “In fact, I am at a loss as to who I might safely contact now that we have arrived in Paris.”
Cécile cast her eyes downward. “Perhaps I am foolish, Madame St. Cloud.”
Cassie put her arm around the girl’s slumped shoulders and rubbed. “Cécile …”
“Oui, madame?”
“You didn’t mention anything about where we would be staying in Paris? I mean, to the young man—any personal information they might use to find us?”
“Non, madame.”
She exhaled. It was so much safer to be anonymous, swallowed up by this great city. Briefly, Cassie admired the bright red geraniums in flower boxes and inhaled the cooler afternoon air. “There now, let’s unpack and get situated, shall we? You must contact your brother. Perhaps you can have a visit this very evening.”
Her pretty maid’s brows furrowed. “But you should not be alone.”
“Nonsense, Cécile, I am due at the gallery before it closes to view my hanging.”
Ashen faced, the girl whimpered. “Hanging, madame?”
She reached out and stroked her hair. “Not me, silly girl, my paintings.”
CASSIE STOOD IN the front of the gallery and stared in horror. She had no trouble recognizing herself in the painting. Please tell me it isn’t so. She blinked several times and hoped the blur would resolve into a different face on the naked woman in the artwork.
A girl lay under a tree, au naturel, surrounded by several fully dressed men. The gentlemen admired the young lady as they lounged about her. The wood nymph looked as if she had awakened from a dream to discover herself unclothed.
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy Page 25
