“Nearly there now,” he said, threading his fingers into hers. “Are you ready?”
It was then she realized his other hand was holding his pistol, raised and at the ready. She nodded, unable to speak. She couldn’t exactly admit she was frightened when this was all but her idea. Or that the sight of his pistol terrified her nearly as much as their mission. He called her courageous and brave, but in this moment, she felt anything but.
As they turned onto South Bridge, she could see the shops on each side had already been completely shuttered and locked up for the night. He stopped beside an unpainted door, then cocked his head, listening a long moment. “I do not think anyone is here,” he finally said, putting his gun away.
She loosened a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. Heard him fiddle with the latch on the door, the creak of rusty hinges. Felt the first cold drops of rain pelting her face. And then he was lacing his fingers into hers, tugging her inside.
Immediately, she was enveloped by smells.
Musty and dank, with an echo of something sharper, hanging on the edge of each breath.
As West pushed the door shut behind them, the darkness inside covered her like an immense, unmovable blanket. “Oh,” she gasped, her heart galloping up another few degrees. Had she thought it dark outside, in their mad dash through the dimly lit streets? She would have given anything to have that meager light now.
She had never seen or felt anything so complete.
“West . . . do you have a match?” she whispered.
She heard soft noises, clothing rustling. A muttered curse, delivered into the darkness. “There are none left,” she heard him say. “I used them all the night I snuck into Southingham’s study. Besides, I don’t think an open flame is a particularly good idea in here. We don’t know what we are dealing with yet.” She felt his hand bump into her arm, then trail down to curl over her hand. “So, no light then. Down we go. Stay close.”
She followed him blindly down what seemed like an endless set of stairs, her free hand braced against the cold stone wall. It felt as if they were descending into hell itself—if hell were made of stone walls three feet thick, and composed of a silence nearly as complete as the darkness. She couldn’t see anything beyond her imaginings, couldn’t hear so much as a peep from the outside, though the storm must certainly be close over the top of them now.
Finally, they emerged into a more open space. They stood a moment, hand in hand, ears cocked toward the open darkness. Mary heard nothing beyond the labored sound of their own breathing, but her imagination was helpfully supplying some terrifying ideas about what awaited in the looming darkness.
Bodies. Ghosts.
Guns.
“Perhaps we should split up,” she offered in a small, terrified voice.
“Mouse,” she heard him sigh. “I hope you are joking.” She felt the punishing but welcome grip of his fingers, knew the relief of his pulse, steady, if a bit fast, there through his fingers. “We stick together, no matter what.”
“Agreed,” she breathed.
Together, they stumbled along the perimeter of what turned out to be a small room, feeling their way, using the wall as a guide. In spite of his admonishment to stay together, once they’d made a circuit of the small room and found nothing more interesting than cold stone walls, they aimed toward the center of the room, until her questing fingers dragged across a bit of rough wood and metal. “Barrels,” she called out. “Here, in the center.”
She fanned her fingers out to see the shape and scope of her discovery, imagining what might be inside. The scent she had noticed abovestairs was stronger here, clearly emanating from the barrels themselves.
She sniffed, trying to place the sharp, acrid scent. “Definitely not wine.”
“No,” he agreed, just to the right in the darkness. She felt the air move. Heard him grunt, and then a mighty crash made her nearly jump out of her skin.
“Bloody hell,” she heard him snarl as bottles spilled out of the knocked-over barrel, some rolling loudly across the stone floor, one or two breaking in sharp, tinkling notes.
Mary stooped down and rubbed a finger against the liquid now soaking the floor. “Well.” She sniffed her finger, recognizing the scent. “Unless they plan to pelt the queen with whisky bottles in the morning, I would say we have dodged a catastrophe.”
A low chuckle rose somewhere above her head. “If Grant were here, he’d complain about such a bloody waste of whisky. Still, we ought to check the others.”
Working together this time, they carefully opened the other barrels. Reaching inside, her hands met a surprisingly fine powder. She sneezed as it puffed up into the air, choking on the invisible assault. “What . . . is that?” she gasped, trying in vain to see something other than the black curtain that currently enveloped them.
“Gunpowder.” West sounded grim. “And a good lot of it.”
They checked another barrel, and then another, all full of the same powder. She realized, then, why West had wisely refrained from her suggestion to light a match.
The entire place might have gone up in flames.
“Oh, good heavens.” She stared into the blackness, wishing she could see West’s face, imagining it bore the same look of horror that was surely claiming her own. The realization of where they were and what eleven barrels of gunpowder might achieve in this location sent a chill rippling through her. “They are going to blow up the bridge.”
“With a crowd of hundreds and the queen’s entourage on top,” he agreed grimly.
Mary stared into the darkness, her thoughts sifting through the pieces. “We have to do something. This is finally the evidence we’ve been needing. Surely the authorities would believe us now, if we lead them here so they can see for themselves.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Or else they might arrest us,” West said slowly, “and presume we had a hand in all of this.”
“We have to at least try,” Mary pointed out. “I won’t have the deaths of innocents on my conscience. I’d rather be charged with treason than live with the knowledge I didn’t prevent a tragedy when I had the chance.”
“I know.” His hand looped against hers. “And for once, I agree with your plan. But I will take the blame if it comes to it. It was all my idea, and you knew nothing about it. Agreed?”
“No.” It was a word he’d once teased her about using, but it had never been more appropriate. “You yourself said we need to stick together. Whatever happens, we will face it together.” Still, his offer unmoored her. She leaned toward him, into the darkness, her throat tight. He had already sacrificed his freedom, to marry her. Now he was offering to sacrifice his very life, his family’s reputation, to protect her? He might not be fashioned like the heroes from the pages of her books, but he was indubitably a hero.
Her hero.
Somehow, through the darkness, her lips found his. His hands came up to frame her face, demanding, desperate, and she hung there, lost in the moment. It was tempting to imagine sliding back into his arms, letting him push her against the stone wall, dispensing with three days of doubt in a moment of pleasure. But instead, she reluctantly pulled away, her lips moist, her heart tipping toward truth. They couldn’t do this, not with so much at stake.
Still, she turned her face into his palm, trembling. “I wish . . .” she sighed, but then stopped the trajectory of that hope. She wished theirs was an ordinary marriage. She wished West was an ordinary man, and she was an ordinary woman, and they were here to do ordinary things, like make love to each other in the darkness.
“I do, too, Mouse.” His voice sounded hoarse. “And perhaps we can figure out how to make that wish come true, once we’ve dispensed with our assassin.” His hand fell away from her face. She let his fingers curl into her hand, tightening protectively.
And then she followed him up the stairs as fast as their lightless path permitted.
As they reached the small landing where they had come in, she girded herself to
step out into what must by now be a raging storm. But instead of rain and thunder, they were met with a door that wouldn’t budge. “What in the devil?” she heard him growl.
She heard the rattle of a latch. “If the wind’s blown it shut—”
“It wasn’t the wind. It’s bloody locked.” She heard him hurl himself against the stubborn wood, his shoulder landing with solid whumps, three in all, each more painful to hear than the last. “God damn it.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, her heart twisting in fear.
“I am saying”—she heard him snarl through the darkness—“that someone has come back and locked the place up for the night. We are trapped in here until morning.”
Chapter 26
They sat side-by-side in the darkness, West’s jacket spread out beneath them, shivering on the cold stone floor.
It was a terrifying predicament. They were trapped in the vaults below Southgate Bridge with a room full of explosives. If they survived the rumored ghosts, they would be stuck in here until morning, when Southingham would return, almost certainly armed and none too happy to deal with them.
And worse—if there could be a worse—now they would never be able to alert the authorities in time to stop the plot.
Shivering against the direction of her thoughts as much as the chilled air, Mary stared out at an invisible black landscape she knew contained eleven barrels of gunpowder and one tipped-over barrel of whisky bottles. Just an ordinary Wednesday night, she tried to tell herself.
That is, an ordinary night if one were the heroine of a tragic novel, literally facing one’s darkest hour.
The blackness began to seep into her very pores until she felt as dark as their surroundings. All around her, she could hear the faint drips of water, the sounds telling her that the storm outside—the storm she still couldn’t hear, in spite of straining her ears to catch some vital sound beyond her own breathing—was intensifying. She listened in vain for a rumble of thunder, tried to imagine she could see a flash of lightning. There was nothing beyond the relentless drip of water and her own labored breathing.
Clearly, screaming for help would be a waste of time.
“Do you think Southingham locked us down here on purpose?” she whispered, finally giving voice to the fear that had plagued her from the moment she realized they were trapped. “That he heard us, and knows we are down here?”
“No. I think he must have simply checked the door one last time and realized it was unlocked,” came West’s firm reply. “No one from the street could have heard us so far down here. And if he had a suspicion we were here, I doubt he would have left us here, mucking about in his barrels. He would have just shot us, don’t you think?”
Mary wanted to believe West’s matter-of-fact cataloging of their predicament, his simple explanation for the reason they were likely still alive. But fear had hold of her now. “How can you be so calm?” she choked out. The thought that they were trapped here, like animals in a cage, ghosts and bodies and barrels lurking in the darkness, made her want to claw her way to freedom, even if it meant tunneling ever deeper beneath the earth, or scratching through three feet of stone.
Through the darkness, she felt West’s hand bump into hers. “Here,” he said gruffly. “I can feel you shaking. Have a bit of this. It will warm you up, if nothing else.”
She felt the cool press of glass against her palm. Realized he was passing her one of the unbroken bottles of whisky. She hesitated a moment, then bolted down her first swig of something more interesting than punch.
The burn of it caught her off guard. It tasted like a smoky peat fire—not the sort of thing one willingly swallowed. She choked a moment, then found her words swimming drunkenly somewhere near the bottom of her throat. “This is what you and Grant are so fond of drinking? How on earth do you stand it? It is the most vile thing I’ve ever tasted!”
He chuckled, and she felt the warm press of his shoulder, leaning into hers. “In truth, it’s generally regarded as an acquired taste.”
“And just how does one ‘acquire’ this horrid taste?” she sputtered, still trying to clear her head from the unexpected burn of the stuff.
“By taking another sip, and then another, until oblivion and pleasure take over and you no longer care what it tastes like.” He hesitated, then added wickedly, “Just like me, Mouse.”
Well. He had a point there. So she lifted the bottle again. Sniffed at it, then sipped, more gingerly this time, handling it far better now that she knew what to expect. The third and fourth gulps were even better, but then she felt West’s fingers reaching through the blackness to lift the bottle from her hands, spilling a bit down her chin in the process.
“That’s a bit more than a sip.” She heard him chuckle.
“Well, given that we are locked down in here in a room about to explode, oblivion sounds like a good alternative.” She wiped her sleeve across her mouth. “I feel helpless, with no way to fix this.” She felt the moisture from the spilled drink soak through the thin wool of her sleeve, giving her a small shadow of an idea. “Although . . . could we dampen the gunpowder with the whisky?”
“I don’t think so. This particular variety tastes like the sort Grant likes to smuggle down from the north, strong enough to take paint off a wall. A much more potent brew than the sort they sell at White’s. If we dampen the gunpowder with this, it’s liable to make the place go up even brighter.”
“Oh.” She looked down in the area where her lap would be, if only she could see anything in the blackness. “Well then, bugger me blue.”
He burst out laughing. “Clearly, your vocabulary has taken a turn for the worse since marrying me.”
“Well.” Her lips twitched. “I’ve been taking notes.” She wanted to dive into the sound of his laughter. Sighed heavily instead. “Isn’t there anything we can do besides drink the rest of the bottles and wait for morning?”
She felt his hand fumble through the darkness to land on her arm, where it settled softly, a whisper of promise. “I have a few ideas.”
She sucked in a breath. Already, the whisky was doing strange things to her head. Or perhaps that was owed to the touch of her husband’s hand. She leaned toward him, the whisky stripping away the last of her doubts, the promise of a different kind of oblivion urging her on. But before her lips could find his, she stopped as she caught the sound of something new.
Tiny nails on stone, skittering through the darkness.
He apparently heard it, too. “Good Christ, what was that?”
She reached out a hand, seeking his. “West . . . are . . . you afraid of ghosts?”
“Hardly.” She could hear him panting in the darkness. “Ghosts don’t bite.”
She smothered a laugh. It hardly made sense. This was her large, strapping husband, the man who plunged after criminals brandishing a gun, the man who kept a Victoria Cross lying about the top of his dresser bureau. The skittering came again, this time to their right, and he jerked beneath her palm, kicking at imaginary things.
“Are you . . . afraid of mice?” she asked, understanding dawning. “But you call me Mouse!”
“I know.” She heard him gasp through the darkness. “And that’s because you’ve been terrifying me since the very first moment I saw you.”
She burst out laughing, and he supposed he couldn’t really blame her.
He felt a bit like laughing himself.
Oh, but the universe had a terrible sense of whimsy, to trap him down here—at Southingham’s hand, no less—with a room full of what he could only imagine were a horde of beady-eyed, sharp-toothed creatures. Even if he could only hear the one.
He supposed he could just tell her. Explain all of this. His instincts always pushed him toward tight-lipped silence when it came to managing his demons, but it was clear that silence was not going to be useful around his new wife.
And truly, what else did they have to do here to pass the time, sitting in the darkness, vermin closing in on every side?
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br /> “And it isn’t mice as much as rats,” he admitted, staring up into the cavernous darkness. “Do you remember the corpse?”
“Please don’t call her that,” he heard Mary say tightly, her laughter dying.
“Very well, the barmaid, then. Southingham wanted her, too, and he wouldn’t let it go. The barmaid preferred me, you see, and his ego was quite smashed over it. So he took every opportunity to harass me afterward.” West winced as he said it. A euphemism, that. He could still remember the day Southingham had cornered him, the broken ribs, the week he’d spent in Harrow’s infirmary. He recalled how difficult it had been not to unleash his fury, knowing that he—not his bully—would risk expulsion if he struck out in defense.
“But there’s a code amongst gentleman, you see. Future viscounts don’t go about pummeling future dukes, even if those dukes deserve a thrashing. Retaliation was a bit tricky. So one night, I filled his room with rats. Only, they didn’t stay in his room. Some of them found their way back to mine, chewing their way through the walls.” He shuddered, even as his ears strained for more unwelcome skitters. “Southingham told everyone who would listen the rats had chewed my prick to a nubbin. And of course, a proper gentleman could not go around showing everyone the part in question, just to prove a rumor wrong. So for a time there, half of London imagined I was . . . lacking.”
“You? Lacking?” This time, her laugh was welcome. “Good heavens, West. Judging by my sister’s utter horror when I married you, there’s not a woman in London who believes such a thing anymore.”
“Well, I may have worked hard to disprove it.” His lips twitched. “And that prank with Southingham’s duchess last year . . . it was intended to ensure the one woman who mattered would know my prick was intact, thank you very much.” He leaned his head back against the wall, feeling better to have told her this piece of his life. He wouldn’t have imagined that unburdening himself would feel right, but with her, somehow, it did. “Your turn now,” he said softly into the darkness. “I’ve told you one of my truths. I’d ask a question of you. Why are you so afraid of guns, Mary?”
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 30
