She imagined the spacious bedroom would be magnificent in the light of day, but by moonlight it loomed gloomy and forbidding. Then again, none of the dark, empty rooms she had visited in her recovery efforts had seemed welcoming. This was certainly no different. A tingling began in her fingers reminding her that she would soon be visible, and she hadn’t yet located the safe that could be hidden in any of the massive pieces of furniture. Time to get to work.
Illuminating her search with candlelight, she started on the near side of the room and worked her way around, inspecting every item of furniture, every mirror, and every painting to see if it hid a private safe. The tingling increased. Soon she could see her ghostly hand as it rummaged through the clothes in the wardrobe. No safe.
She moved to a large painting and found a safe hidden in the wall behind it. Unlike the Farthingtons’ safe, this one would require her skills with a pick and lever to crack. Placing the candle on a nearby table, she focused all of her attention on the task, listening with her fingertips for the delicate movement of the tumblers. Holding her breath, she slowly and carefully lifted each tumbler until she heard the click that signified that the safe had opened. She allowed herself a breath of relief and a wish that Locke could have witnessed her success, before she swung the heavy door back silently on its hinges. The safe yielded several envelopes. She sifted through them till she discovered an envelope sealed with deep red wax.
This was it. Pembroke had said it was a sealed envelope. This had to be the list James spoke of. After all they had been through, she felt a bit giddy holding it in her hand. However, she was still in danger. The sooner she could deliver the list to James, the sooner she would be able to leave this place, recover Portia at the gate, and begin planning her move to America.
That thought tugged at her heart. Life would be difficult without James, but he had made it clear that he didn’t love her, nor would he marry her. Obviously, Ramsden suspected too much about the Nevidimi. It was time to leave London and, her heart caught, Locke behind.
First, however, she had to get the list to James. The original plan was to replace the pick secreted in the walking stick with the list tightly folded into a thin strip of paper, and then toss the stick outside where James and Portia could retrieve it. Of course, that supposition supposed that she would be invisible, not full flesh and naked standing at a window in full view of strangers. She glanced about the room and noted a man’s smoking jacket lying across the bed. That would do.
She wrapped the silky garment around her, then paused. Footsteps! Coming up the staircase!
She ran to the window and searched the gardens below. No Locke. Panic thundered in her eardrums. Voices grew louder in the hallway. No time to stuff the letter in the stick. What to do? What to do?
She flung open the window and carefully sat on the sill, letting her backside face the gardens, then lowered the robe. She could feel the moonlight tingle on her back and she prayed it would be enough to rejuvenate her earlier phase. Meanwhile she reached the corner of the letter to the candle and watched it flare up and be consumed by flame. The letter would be of no value to Locke, but more important, it would be of no value to the Russians either.
A key was slipped in the door lock. She extinguished the candle with a puff of breath, then she let the corner of the letter slip through her fingers. Hot ash from the burning paper drifted to the carpet. Her arm glowed. Just a few minutes more. The gilded chair rocked with the pounding at the door. Someone shouted, “Open up, do you hear me?” An intensity flared through her veins. She leaned back out of the window as far as she could, mindful that anyone in the garden might see a naked ghost preparing to fall out of a window. Wood splintered. She took a deep breath. The door opened.
“Who’s here!” the ambassador bellowed, his glance darting about the room. “Is anyone here?” He turned back to some men behind him. “Search the room.”
Lusinda slipped off the windowsill and carefully wove her way around the man checking under the bed, and the other who lit one of the gas jets. The ambassador rushed to the open window. Had he been Locke, he would have known precisely when he had passed her, but, she smiled, few men possessed Locke’s skills. Just as she was about to leave, she heard the ambassador say, “It’s true, then. Nevidimi are here.”
She turned. He held the smoking jacket in his hand while inspecting the grounds outside of the open window. Jupiter! She’d forgotten to toss the jacket back on the bed.
The ambassador pulled back into the room. “I thought you said you had the girl.”
The man looking under the bed stood. “We do. She’s tied up in the garden shed.”
It took everything Lusinda had not to laugh. The ambassador strode over to the wall safe and quickly spun the combination. He rummaged through the papers. “It’s gone.”
He shifted his feet, kicking the walking stick that lie on the carpet. His face reddened. He picked up the stick and examined it. “Locke is behind this. I thought you said you caught him before he reached the safe.”
Lusinda’s skin turned clammy. Caught? They had caught Locke?
“We did, sir. I know we did. There was a scuffle on the landing, and we took him straight down the back stairs to the room. You know the one, sir.” A twisted smile lifted a corner of the miscreant’s mouth. “The one where he can scream and scream and nobody will hear him.”
Lusinda’s heart plummeted, and her face felt numb. Why would he be in a room where he could scream? James’s words from one of their first conversations replayed in her brain. The Russian government is well known for their abilities to persuade individuals to do their bidding.
“He never could have made it to your bedroom, sir, not without us knowing,” one of the guards said.
“But the communiqué is gone, and this...” The ambassador lifted Locke’s walking stick. “This remains. Did someone stay behind to guard the safe while you escorted Locke below stairs?”
The two men looked at each other, then the taller one shrugged. “It took both of us to restrain him, sir. That one’s a fighter.” They both shook their heads till the stout one said, “But we came straight back here. The room was still locked, and we weren’t gone but for a little bit.”
The ambassador shook the stick at them and said something in Russian. From his expression, it wasn’t a word normally used in polite company. “He must have an accomplice that waited for you to leave before they broke in the safe. I must have that letter. Do you understand?”
“Mr. Ramsden has that Locke fellow below stairs, sir. He can’t last much longer. That back of his—”
Lusinda didn’t wait to hear more. She rushed toward the stairs, but the words “bloody mess” still drifted to her ears. She ran down the stairs without consideration to the unexplained air currents she set in motion, or the people she outright shoved along the way.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, that telltale tingling began in her toes, warning her that she was about to phase-back into flesh. Sakes alive! She knew that quick jolt of moonlight she received at the window wouldn’t last long, but she had hoped...
Never mind that, the quickest route outside would be through the ballroom and the terrace doors. She couldn’t help Locke if she was visible. Disregarding her desire to charge through the house to find him, she crossed her hands over her chest to protect what she could and ran through the ballroom toward the doors, jostling the unsuspecting guests in her path. She had just about made it to the open doors when—
“Do you see that?! It’s a ghost!”
A woman screamed.
“A ghost with a shapely backside,” a man said.
“Where did it go? It just ran outside and vanished into thin air.”
“I told you that séance would bring her back.”
Eighteen
LUSINDA...
He didn’t know if he spoke or not. He’d lost all sense of time and place. Even his back had passed the point of pain. He wasn’t even sure if he was still aliv
e. What little consciousness he had fixated on one thought: was Lusinda safe? No life, not even his own, was worth her being caught by these Russian devils. Did she escape?
“Lusinda...”
“He keeps saying the same thing over and over,” one of his tormentors grumbled with a heavy Baltic accent. “Like a prayer, Lusinda, Lusinda. Is she one of those English saints?”
“He might as well pray to the devil for all the good it will do him,” another responded. “When I’m through, there won’t be enough left of him to bait a hook.”
The man’s laughter was sharp, cutting, much like the whip he had plied across James’s back. James hung suspended by the wrists, tied to two sturdy ropes that hung from the ceiling. His face battered, his back split to ribbons, but he told them nothing...except the name of the woman he loved.
“Lusinda...”
“There is a Saint Lusinda.” A new voice entered the room behind him, one that sounded familiar. “But he’s not praying to her, are you Locke?”
Did someone say his name? He wasn’t sure as the ringing in his ears, the result of one too many blows to the head, distorted his hearing. Yet the voice had a rhythm that spoke of familiarity. James tried to concentrate, while the voice moved closer.
“His Lusinda is an angel, not a saint. Isn’t that true, Locke?”
The arrogant tones with a decided English accent moved around his side, to the front. James tried to open his left eye to see, but it was swollen shut.
“An angel in a blue ball gown that flies to heaven when the moon is bright.”
“Marcus?” James whispered through dry, swollen lips. “Is that you?” Was he captured too? Yet he looked as if he’d just stepped off the dance floor. Marcus could save Lusinda. He had to tell him. He had to marshal enough control to form the words. One word at a time. His breath wheezed in and out of his mouth bringing fresh stabs of pain, as if he were breathing the stinging desert wind. He forced his teeth together to make the sound. “Save…”
“Save who, Locke? You? Is that why you think I’m here?” Ramsden laughed, and removed his jacket.
James squinted at his old friend. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
“You’re such a pathetic old fool, James. Haven’t you figured it out yet? I’m not your friend.”
He should feel more shock, more pain at his words, James thought, but on some level it was expected. Sinda had tried to warn him, yet he had defended his friend. Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t hearing correctly, couldn’t be hearing correctly. “Saved me...” he managed, then paused to swallow some of the blood that pooled in his mouth. “Long ago.”
“I made a deal with the Russians, James. Don’t you understand?” Marcus paced back and forth. Locke leaned his head against the inside of his arm, not watching the motion.
“Did you think the British army cared enough to rescue us? They left us to rot in prison, James. They left us to rot in a hole in the ground. They didn’t care if we lived or died. They abandoned you. Just like your mother abandoned you. Left you in an orphanage to rot. But the Russians...the Russians, they were ready to intercede for us. Russia saved you, James, not me.”
“You saved...” James whispered.
“I thought in time, you’d come around. I thought you would join me. Instead you renewed your loyalty to the Crown. You would kiss the Queen’s arse, if she asked, wouldn’t you?” Marcus stood inches from James’s face, his brows lifted, his face almost comical. James wanted to laugh in that face, but his muscles refused to respond.
“And where are those righteous bootblacks now, I ask you? Do you think they even know what is going on? No one is coming to save you, James. No one. No one cares about you. You were always so serious, so calculating. I bet you never calculated on me, did you, James?” Ramsden issued a short bark of a laugh, then jerked his head toward the men behind him.
The whip cracked a moment before the end bit a piece of flesh off his back. James flinched, clenching his eyes and face tight with the pain. His heart raced. He wouldn’t cry out. He wouldn’t give that victory to Ramsden. After the initial spasm, his fatigued body pulled heavy on the ropes.
“Tell me what I want to know.” Ramsden untied his cravat and tossed it with the jacket. “I can make this end, James. Haven’t you suffered enough?”
He stood waiting. Marcus could wait till the Queen herself showed up dancing an Irish jig, Locke thought. He wouldn’t turn over secrets to the enemy. It might cost him his life, but he wouldn’t endanger another.
Marcus signaled, and James tensed, expecting another lash. Instead, he heard his two torturers shuffle toward the door. Marcus’s lips turned in a sad smile. “It’s just you and me now, James. You can tell me anything. No one will know where the information came from.” He paused a moment but received no satisfaction from James.
“I couldn’t leave you in that hole, James. I cared too much about you. I’m the only one who has ever cared about you. I couldn’t abandon you like your mother, or like the British army, or like...Lusinda.”
“Lusinda?” James’s interest perked.
“Yes, Lusinda.” Ramsden said, stepping closer. “She left you too, James. She told me she was going to go home to Russia. That’s where she’s from. Did you know that, Locke? She’s Nevidimi, one of the invisible people. Legends are written about moon goddesses like her. You had the rarest of prizes in your grasp, but you just let her go.” Marcus cupped his hands together then opened them as if he had just released a fairy sprite. “When you think back on it, nothing has really changed, has it? You’re still the coldhearted bastard with no one to love you, and I still have the key to your release.”
But he was wrong. James had changed. He hadn’t let Lusinda go. He had no intention of ever letting her go. He knew her worth, and it was far more than even Marcus could imagine. Indeed it was blasphemous for Ramsden to even mention her name. Anger energized his fatigued limbs. He’d show Ramsden what for. If he could just get one arm free, he’d show Ramsden what had changed.
Ramsden, though, appeared to have no notion of James’s dangerous thoughts. He studied his fingers like some dandy. “You know what she told me, Locke? We were dancing about the ballroom.” Marcus inhaled deeply and a delight spread across his features as if he had scented the bouquet of a fine glass of cognac. “She was wearing that gown that displayed her breasts like two magnificent pearls begging to be plucked. Did you ever think to sample them, Locke? Taste that tender skin and those succulent nipples?” His tongue swept across his upper lip. Locke pulled so hard on the ropes he thought to tear them from the ceiling.
Marcus laughed. “What am I saying? You probably never lifted your nose out of a book long enough to even see that she had breasts. Well, I noticed, and she saw me noticing, and she liked it. You know what she told me, James? She said you were cold. She said you were calculating. She said she loved you, but you refused to love her in return. She couldn’t reach your heart. You couldn’t love her. You can’t love anyone.”
Her face loomed in his mind. Her soft vulnerability hidden behind a masque of defiance. He thought of the time he had stood in the rain rather than face his desire for her, and his accusations after the unfortunate accident. Guilt and shame knifed through him and hurt more than the bloody stripes on his back. She was wrong. He loved her. He was just afraid she’d be hurt by that love. He wanted to protect her. Keep her safe.
That’s a lie, something whispered deep inside. You were afraid you would be the one hurt if you loved her. Just like those other women hurt you. That’s why you brought her to this devil’s lair, knowing all the while you were placing her in danger. His heart squeezed tight, he felt the fight leave his muscles. Perhaps Marcus is right. Perhaps I don’t know how to love...
“Sinda...”
“It’s too late. Don’t call out for her now. She’s already gone.” Marcus gloated. “She begged me to take her away. Begged me, James. How could I refuse? Tonight, I held her in my arms while we danced. I sampled her sweet, s
weet lips, and she promised me that I’d be able to sample more. I’m taking her back to Russia, where she’ll be appreciated for her talents. She’s gone, James. You have nothing left. Nothing.”
A salty tear ran down his face, stinging the cuts and broken skin it encountered in its path. A tear for all the things he should have told her, for all the things he should have done.
She hadn’t hurt him. She had accepted him as no one had done before. She understood him and loved him. No. He had hurt himself. His Sinda had warned him about Ramsden, warned him that Ramsden had lied. That thought held. James tried to pull together, to focus on Ramsden. He was lying now. He could feel it. His convictions grew stronger.
“Give me the names of the other British agents, Locke. I know you know them. Haven’t you suffered enough? Tell me so I can put an end to this.”
Lusinda must have gotten the letter in time. She hadn’t abandoned him. She’d never abandon him. That thought reverberated in his brain. It felt so right, it had to be true. Her face loomed brighter in his thoughts, and her scent filled his nostrils. Sweet Lord, he loved her so much he could conjure up the very essence of her.
“You’re lying,” he said, the knowledge giving him strength. He shifted the position of his legs, taking some of the strain from his shoulders.
“I’m not lying to you Locke. Why should I? You can’t harm me. You couldn’t crush a flower in your condition. Tell you what, tell me the names of three agents and I’ll let you have Lusinda when I’m through with her. You’ve probably been too moral and stalwart to taste the chit, but not me. I’ve wanted her for a long time, even before I knew of her talents. She has a way about her, a defiant streak that I’ll take pleasure in breaking. I’ll make her bend for me. Bend whichever way I want. I’ll make her ride me in the moonlight while I watch her turn invisible. Or maybe I’ll let you hold her on the ground while I make her lithe little body writhe in the moonlight. I’ll plough deep within her, then watch her fade away.” He laughed, a disgusting sound. “I’m hard as a rock just thinking of it.”
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