“What in the—”
“And next time you take a woman’s reticule, you might want to make sure that’s where she’s stored her knife.”
“Whoa, there. Easy, luv.” The man released her arm and held up his hands, his eyes wide with fear. “No need to get so excited.”
“I’m not the one whose future excitement is in jeopardy.” She pressed the point home a quarter inch further, making him grunt in alarm. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or the messy way. But either way, you are going to stop calling me ‘luv’.” She lifted her chin. “Where is the Duke of Southingham? We know he’s behind the plot.”
White-rimmed eyes goggled down at her. “I don’t know what you are talking about, luv—” She wiggled the tip of the knife, earning a squeak from the man. “That is, Mrs. Westmore,” he amended. “The duke’s got nothing to do with this.”
“No?” She tsked in disappointment. “Such loyalty. I do hope he’s paying you well, given that you could swing from the gallows for him. Move out.” She jerked her chin toward the street, trying to keep the hand gripping the knife steady. “Quickly, please.”
As Carlson stepped reluctantly in the direction she indicated, Mary moved the knife to his back, urging him on. In spite of the danger, a thread of breathless excitement bubbled through her. She had captured a villain and saved herself, no need for a hero after all. A new plan tumbled about in her head. She’d march him back to the hotel, tie him up using a Blackwall hitch knot, and have West interrogate him when he returned.
They’d find out what the plan was, and then the queen would be—
A shot rang out, just as they stepped into the main street.
Carlson sagged in front of her, crumpling onto the cobblestones, a scarlet bloom spreading from his chest. Horrified, Mary gaped at him, then fell to her knees, fumbling at the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. Her hands grew slick with blood as she came to the sickening realization there was no longer a pulse to be found. She felt a howling frustration at losing the opportunity to interrogate the man. And then her thoughts flew further.
What if the bullet hadn’t been intended for Carlson?
The bullet could have come from anywhere.
Been meant for anyone.
Her lungs clawing for air, Mary leaped to her feet. Hands reached out toward her, hands that no doubt meant to detain her, question her. Panicked, she dashed toward the tea shop and plunged through the front door. At the sight of her blood-covered hands, chairs tumbled back, men bellowed, women screamed.
A surprised waiter gaped at her, his hands full with a tray and tea service.
“Is there a back door?” she asked desperately.
The waiter inclined his head toward the back of the room, and Mary darted in that direction, tripping over knocked-over chairs. All the while she held her breath, terrified of hearing another shot with so many innocent people at risk.
She dashed through a bustling kitchen and skidded out a back entrance.
Then, her hands still slippery with a dead man’s blood, she lifted her skirts and ran as hard as she could toward the relative safety of the hotel. One thought beat through her mind.
She shouldn’t have insisted on doing this alone.
She needed to remember that her husband had rather more experience in matters of life and death than she did. And, like her dagger, she needed to remember that a living, breathing hero wasn’t necessarily such a terrible thing to keep in one’s pocket.
Chapter 25
As West stepped inside the hotel room, he saw Mary standing over the hotel room’s washbasin. She was stripped down to her corset and chemise, her hands soapy.
He didn’t ask permission, didn’t wait for her to even dry her hands, just strode toward her, turned her around and clutched her to his chest, welcoming the dampness soaking through his jacket and shirt. It told him she was real. Whole. Safe.
It had taken a good deal of restraint to refrain from shouting his objections out on the street, to follow the wagon even as she followed Carlson. He would take a moment and appreciate the fact that she’d survived.
“You cannot imagine,” he said, his voice hoarse, “how happy I am to see you.”
He closed his eyes, savoring the feel, the sound, the scent of her. But as he held her, he became aware of another scent, too, hovering in the background, a coppery tang of violence that did not belong in this moment. Startled, he opened his eyes and forced his gaze further afield. Her dress lay bunched upon the fraying carpet, scarlet smears across the front of her bodice. He glanced toward the washbasin and his hands tightened around her.
The water was tinged pink, with blood.
The walls of the room seemed to swim around him. Blood. Too much of it. The sort of blood one didn’t get from a paper cut, turning the pages of a book.
The only question was, whose blood?
He set her away from him. Noticed, for the first time, her obvious pallor. He could see no bullet wound, no obvious damage, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt. “Are you shot?” he demanded. “Injured in some way?”
She shook her head dully. “No.” It was a whisper of a word.
Hardly a reassuring sound.
He picked up her hand, turned it over. Instead of ink stains, remnants of blood rimmed her fingernails. Panic thumped in his ears at the sight of it. He felt yanked straight back to that lower deck on the HMS Arrogant, the blood of innocents spreading around him.
“What happened?” he snarled. “I swear to God, I’ll kill the bastard.”
“I am afraid someone’s already done that for you.” She shuddered, staring down at her hands. He recognized the vacant, glassy look in her eyes, knew what an unwilling battle did to a soul. Knew, too, that he needed to find out what had happened without shoving her back into the thick of whatever memory was causing her to sway like that on her feet.
Leaning over her, he picked up the soap, dipped her hands back in the water, and then began to rub them slowly, working the fine bones and delicate skin with his fingers, as if he could strip the memory away as easily as the blood. “Won’t you tell me what happened?” he asked in a lower voice. “What occured after we separated?”
She stood still, letting him wash her hands like a child. “I . . . I thought I was following the man from a safe enough distance. But Carlson must have realized it. He circled behind me and threatened me.” She shuddered. “I pulled my knife, thinking to bring him back for you to question, but then someone shot him, right in front of me.” She stood immobile as he lifted her hands from the basin and began to towel them dry. “It happened out on the main street.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “There were innocent bystanders.” She swallowed, and the sound was jagged to his ears. “And I am not entirely sure the bullet wasn’t intended for me.”
“Good Christ,” he breathed, dropping the towel to the floor. She could have been killed. Very nearly had been killed. The knowledge that whoever was caught up in this may have taken a shot at his wife made his blood boil hot. “Did Carlson say anything before he died?”
“He claimed to not know anything about the duke’s involvement. I didn’t believe him, and imagined if I could just get him back here, you might be able to get more out of him, but now . . .” She buried her face in her newly washed hands, hands that West knew from personal experience would take a very long time to feel clean again. “I’ve ruined our chance to find out what they were planning.”
“Mary, you can’t think that way,” he countered. “Carlson was surely shot by Southingham. Perhaps it was part of the duke’s plan to do away with the man all along. He’d not want to leave witnesses lying about.”
Though, that statement was hardly as reassuring as he’d intended.
Because what were he and Mary, if not more witnesses?
She didn’t look at him, just began to breathe rapidly into her hands. “I shouldn’t have pushed him out on the main street. I should have been more careful. . .” Her hands clenched over her face. “I don
’t think I realized the full extent of the danger. In books . . .” She hesitated, then breathed out, lowering her hands. “Well. This real-life business of hunting traitors isn’t much like books, is it?”
West resisted the urge to answer. His agreement here wasn’t needed. Judging by the look on her face, her prior naiveté was a fact she now well understood.
He scooped her up, settled onto the lumpy mattress. Holding her on his lap, he rocked her gently. “Yes, this is a dangerous business. That’s why I have wanted you to be careful, why I made sure you knew how to protect yourself. But you didn’t ruin anything. I don’t know that I would have done anything differently, Mouse.”
And truly, he didn’t. There were no wrong or right choices in those moments—you just went with your gut and hoped for the best.
“But this danger, this uncertainty, is why I don’t like being separated from you,” he told her, brushing his lips across the top of her hair. “Not because I do not think you are brave enough, or capable enough to try to manage things yourself. You’ve proven you are, time and time again. Truly, you are one of the most courageous people I have ever met. But when things go to shite, it helps to have a hand you trust there at the ready. Someone to look out for the person aiming at your back.” He sighed. “If nothing else, Crimea taught me that.”
He felt her tremble in his arms. Knew she was thinking of the man who had just died in front of her, the man whose blood he’d just washed off her hands. “Did you see men die in Crimea?” she asked in a small voice.
“Mary, I killed men in Crimea.” He hesitated. “War is a messy, unpredictable thing, and things go to hell in a hurry when you are trapped on a ship. But thankfully, Grant was there, watching my back.” His arms tightened around her, and his thoughts spun away from that dark time, not wanting to remember. “That is why we need to stick together. Watch out for each other.” His voice cracked. “We need each other to do this properly. Because if you are killed, I swear to God the queen’s health and safety will be the last thing on my mind. I need to know you are whole and standing beside me, helping to do the job before us.”
“Us?” She pulled back, her eyes filled with a sheen of tears. “You mean . . . you still imagine I can help?”
He offered her a grim smile. “Well. You didn’t faint out there today, did you?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve seen and done some things you wish you could forget?” At her nod he lifted a hand and smoothed the dark strands of hair off her forehead. “Well then, I’d say you’ve more than proven your stones.” That brought some of the color back to her cheeks. “There’s no one else I’d want to do this with. In fact, I’d say you are ready for a Victoria Cross of your own.”
That, finally, pulled a small laugh from her. “Well, you did already give me yours.”
They sat for an almost-comfortable moment, the soft feeling of her in his arms nearly heaven. Now that the difficult part of the conversation was over, now that she was returning to some semblance of her normal pattern of breathing, his body reacted with predictable interest.
The soft inward rise and fall of her chest settled her bum more firmly against his lap and reminded him of other things. But as his body hardened—something she could almost certainly feel, with so little clothing separating them—he felt a shift in her posture, a tightening of her spine. Her mind was turning in another direction.
And unfortunately, not the direction his had turned.
Her hands pushed lightly against his chest. “I forgot to ask . . . were you able to find out anything about the wagon?”
He let her slide off him, her bum settling onto the mattress. Watched her dawning self-awareness, the way her hands tugged down the hem of her rucked-up chemise. She looked a bit flushed, truth be told. As if she might be easily convinced to return to his lap. But he didn’t permit himself that thought. He was willing to reach deep inside his well of patience if it meant an eventual return of her faith in him.
Nothing else had ever felt quite so necessary.
“I did not discover much,” he admitted. “The wagon didn’t go far, perhaps a block or two. It stopped in the middle of South Bridge. The oilskin on the back was covering a load of barrels, which the driver carried underground, one by one.”
“I don’t understand. If he stopped on the bridge, how could he carry the barrels underground?”
“The lower arches of the bridge were walled in some time ago, and form a series of vaults below. It’s cool and dark down there, and some of the merchants use them for storage, though you couldn’t pay me to go down in there. Years ago, when the burkers were stealing bodies for the medical school, it is rumored they stored some of the bodies in the vaults. A good many Edinburgh residents think they are haunted.”
“Haunted?” She gave him an odd look. “Surely you don’t believe such a thing. And how do you know so much about the bridge?”
“I studied its architecture when I attended university here. The vaulted arches support the bridge, and without them the bridge would come down. But the city decided to wall them in, thinking to make more usable space for commerce. Unfortunately, walling them in rendered them nearly unusable. They leak terribly from whatever is flowing across the top.” He shrugged. “Rainwater, sewage, it all filters down into the vaults.”
She pulled a face, and he was at least glad to see she was no longer looking at him as if he might have sprouted an extra limb.
“So, the driver carried the barrels down into one of the vaults,” she said, frowning. “What do you think they contained?”
“The shop on the top of the bridge belonged to a wine merchant, and the barrels had the name of an Italian vineyard stamped on the barrels. I presume they contain wine.”
“An Italian vineyard?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “but we no longer suspect the Orsinians anymore, remember? It is the Freemasons who are involved.”
“But we don’t think the Freemasons are at the heart of the plot. They are simply the face the assassins planned to pin it on. Southingham has to have a political or personal reason to want to kill the queen. Perhaps we’ve overlooked an Orsinian connection there.” She slid off the bed and began to pace. “You have to admit, it is an odd thing to imagine a wine shop might receive such a large delivery of unbottled wine. Wine is most often bottled at the site of the vineyard, or at the port, where it is unloaded.”
Once again, she surprised him. He realized, then, that he’d only been watching the wagon and cataloging its contents, not thinking properly about what either could mean. “How do you know that?” he asked, shaking his head in awe.
She waved a dismissive hand in the air, her brow scrunched in thought. “Oh, I once read a book featuring a vintner as the villain. He stuffed his victims into empty wine barrels, then shipped them overseas.” She turned toward him, the hem of her chemise swishing about her calves. She looked fierce in her musings, well-recovered from her earlier brush with terror. “If the barrels contained something other than wine . . . guns, for example. Ammunition.”
“Southgate Bridge would be a convenient staging place,” West agreed, still trying to catch up with racing thoughts.
“They could be thinking to arm a makeshift army on the morrow. Or . . .” She stopped. Gasped. Rummaged through her valise and yanked out a clean dress, pulling it over her head.
“Mary, what is it?” he asked, concerned.
“Can’t you see?” Her hands began to fly over the buttons marching up to her throat. “The plot is larger than a single assassin, and larger, even, than the queen, it seems.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever is in those barrels, they are stored under Southgate Bridge. The Queen will cross over it on her way to Holyrood Palace, where the Freemason procession will start.”
Understanding dawned. “You think they plan something with the bridge?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned. “But I think we need to find out what is in those barrels.”
A rumble of thunder greeted them as they stepped outside the hotel.
The air smelled of coming rain, which was preferable to the less palatable undertones of Edinburgh’s streets. Night had fallen, an inky darkness. The threatening weather had driven most of the earlier revelers indoors, and the streets had an eerie, deserted feel. She was reminded of West’s terrible description of the vaults, of the dank, dark space and the bodies that had once been stored in them.
She shivered against the thought. We need to stick together, he’d told her.
And for the rest of this adventure, she intended to be a bur by his side.
As they hurried down the city’s narrow cobblestone streets, the darkness seemed nearly overwhelming. In Mayfair, the gaslights lent some warmth to the night, but here, in Edingburgh’s back alleys, there was no more light to be found beyond the occasional streak of lamplight, filtering through a shuttered window.
And in truth, there was nothing warm about a night that might see a monarch dead with the sunrise.
Somewhere above her head, she heard the scrape of a shutter opening. A shout of “Gardyloo!” sang out, several stories up. Mary leaped forward just as something was tossed out, splashing out onto the streets behind her. She plastered herself against West’s strong back, crying out in surprise. “What was that?”
“Mouse,” she heard him chuckle, his voice low and warm. “It’s just a pot of piss. Nothing you haven’t seen before. In fact, I seem to recall something of that sort on the day we met.”
Slowly, she peeled herself off him. “Well, I certainly don’t recall seeing a chamber pot that morning,” she shot back. But the small joke helped to dispel the tension. “How much farther?”
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 29
