“He was not accepted in society even after his marriage,” Ambrose said. “He had the stink of trade and the gutter on him. The girl never had a chance.”
“No, she didn’t,” Sir Barnabas agreed. “She was good for one thing only and when she didn’t magically open the doors of Mayfair to him she was a liability, not an asset.”
“Lady Vanessa told me that there are rumors he has forced opiates on the girl,” Ambrose said sadly.
“Oh, Lord, an opium eater,” Sir Barnabas said in disgust. “Are you sure you want to rescue her? The truth of the matter is she may never be able to lose a taste for it. And frankly, if her family doesn’t want her and she’s been turning tricks for de Vere I don’t know where she can go or what she can do.”
“None of that is her fault,” Ambrose said staunchly. “She has no one to defend her. I will stand as her champion. I would take any assistance you can give me as a personal favor.” He didn’t care for the calculating gleam that entered Sir Barnabas’s dark eyes at his words.
“A personal favor?” Sir Barnabas said. “As in tit for tat? I help you, and you help me?”
“In any way I can,” Ambrose said uneasily.
“Give me a day,” Sir Barnabas told him. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 2
“Are you sure about this?” Simon Gantry, a former war agent and protégée of Barnabas’s, asked. He was eyeing the rusting loose pipe running up the side of a somewhat dilapidated house in Tothill Fields with obvious trepidation.
“You managed far more precarious entries during the war,” Barnabas said impatiently. “I always considered you my best second-story man.” Barnabas had gone to Gantry in the first place because he didn’t want this escapade connected to the Home Office, or him, in any way. When Barnabas had called upon him to request his help he’d been shocked at Gantry’s condition. He’d obviously been drinking heavily on a regular basis and looked the worse for it. His handsome face appeared dissipated, his lodgings were in disarray, and he was too thin to have been eating properly. Yet another crack in Barnabas’s information network. Truth be told, Barnabas had assumed that he didn’t need to keep an eye on Gantry. Lord knew the man had enough friends to do the job.
“I think Daniel is a much better climber than I am,” Gantry argued, referring to his best friend, another ex-war agent and Barnabas’s old lover. Simon tested the pipe by pulling on it. It creaked ominously. “Why don’t you ask him to help?”
“Because if he were to be found in this brothel, no one would believe he was here to sample the merchandise,” Barnabas said drily. “His predilection for men is too well known.” There were other reasons he hadn’t asked Daniel, but Gantry didn’t need to know that.
“I knew it would be the women that got me in the end,” Gantry mumbled as he pulled himself up using the pipe and set his feet against the brick wall on either side of it. “If I make it out of this alive I shall demand a rather large payment.”
“That’s precisely why I didn’t pay you up front,” Barnabas told him. “This way I only have to pay if you survive.”
“You always were a tight-fisted bastard,” Gantry hissed down at him as he climbed up the wall, using the pipe like a rope.
“Daniel clearly revealed more about our liaisons than I thought,” Barnabas said, drawing a laugh from Gantry. “I shall meet you inside, around the corner from the girl’s room.”
“Yes, yes,” Gantry said, his voice distracted. His foot slipped and one of the attachments holding the pipe to the wall popped off, causing it to pull away from the brick. Gantry hung off the pipe for a moment, his feet dangling in mid air. Then he swung his legs back up and kept climbing. “I studied the map,” he called down quietly. “Hurry up so I don’t have to wait for you.” Barnabas nodded, more to himself than to Gantry, reassured that even in his present condition his former agent hadn’t lost his skills.
Barnabas stealthily crept along the back wall, edging around the corner slowly, making sure no one was about. It was still early and business at the brothel was slow. No one lingered by the back door. Luckily the hired fists de Vere used to guard the house had not taken their posts yet.
It was a simple matter for Barnabas to master the lock on the door and slip inside, unseen. After all, before he was a spymaster, he was an excellent spy.
He could hear music and laughter from a well-lit parlor down the hall. It had been an easy matter to discover the layout of the house. He merely needed to head for the kitchens and take the servants stairs up. He checked his watch. They had at least half an hour to find the girl and get her out before business picked up. Hopefully she would be in a condition to help with her own escape.
“I should like to go upstairs with Miss Daisy.” Barnabas grinned at the oh-so-proper tones of Wetherald coming from the parlor. Only he would think you had to ask permission to take a whore upstairs at a brothel.
“Lord, love,” Daisy Richie said with a low laugh. “Come on now, and let me loosen that cravat. We don’t stand on ceremony here.” Raucous laughter rang out from the room’s other occupants at her bawdy tone. She was an old acquaintance of Devlin O’Shaughnessy’s who had been very helpful to Barnabas on several occasions, providing him with valuable information for a reasonable price. She was close to retirement, and had her eye on a ship’s captain. Tonight would complete her dowry.
Without waiting to see Wetherald led astray by Daisy, Barnabas made for the kitchen on silent feet. The cook looked up in alarm when Barnabas entered and the scullery maid gave a little squeak. Barnabas pulled out a sizable stack of pound notes and set them down on the counter while holding his finger to his lips in a universal gesture for quiet. The cook’s gaze turned calculating and she reached for the money. She riffled the notes with her thumb and then gestured across the kitchen with a jerk of her head. She glared at the scullery maid and pulled off several notes, holding them out for the girl. Barnabas didn’t waste any more time with them, quietly slipping through the door to the servant’s stairs.
Mrs. de Vere was on the third floor. Apparently the attic had been converted into a sort of suite for her. The higher Barnabas climbed, the more stifling the air became. The stairwell smelled of sweat and dust and other things that in the right circumstances could be pleasing, but here were nauseating. When he reached the top of the stairs on the third floor, he listened at the door. He heard furious whispering on the other side and then the telltale thump of a body hitting the floor. He waited for Gantry’s signal.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Barnabas heard Daisy say in disgust. “She’s been at the pipe already.”
“Where the hell is James?” Gantry snapped.
“Here,” he said, opening the door and stepping in.
The room was little more than a closet. It had clearly been a servant’s quarters before being converted for Mrs. de Vere’s use. The walls were now hung with heavy dark burgundy drapery, the floor covered with a large, thick rug. Barnabas knew those furnishings were not for Mrs. de Vere’s comfort, but rather to muffle sound from the room. The bed occupied most of the space, a monstrous wooden behemoth with shackles on the posts. He’d seen worse prisons, but not for a woman of Mrs. de Vere’s upbringing. This room was meant for one thing, and the woman lying in a heap beside the bed looked as if she’d provided more than her fair share of it. From the smell in the air, he knew that Daisy had been correct about the opium.
Mrs. de Vere was small—dainty, almost. Barnabas wasn’t sure why that surprised him. Wetherald knelt beside her, half holding her limp body in his arms, her head falling back loosely over his arm, her long brown hair fanned out on the floor. It looked dull and unwashed. He could see dark circles under her closed eyes, almost as dark as the bruise on the left side of her face, and on the wrist of her arm dangling above the floor. It was then he noticed her other arm stretched awkwardly toward the bed. She was still shackled. For how long, he wondered.
“Thank God. Sir Barnabas,” Wetherald said in a hushed voice, as i
f his arrival was the second coming of the savior. “Mr. Gantry says that you are better equipped than he to pick a lock. Hurry. We must free her.” He gently brushed some hair off the unconscious woman’s face. “How could any man treat a woman so?” he asked in a ragged, distraught voice.
“Was there anyone with her?” Barnabas asked sharply, also speaking in low tones, advancing toward Wetherald. He didn’t want to consider why the other man’s distress touched something in him that he’d thought long dead.
“No,” Gantry said. “But apparently de Vere brings them himself around ten o’clock each night.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got half an hour.”
“Is she lucid?” Barnabas had reached Wetherald and the girl by then and cupped her bruised chin gently, lifting her face. She mumbled incoherently, but didn’t open her eyes. Her features were delicate and Barnabas could still see the vivacious and pretty girl she’d been several years ago.
“Not at all,” Daisy said. “And I don’t blame her. We call this room the torture chamber. Poor dear’s been here for three weeks. Mrs. Tilley, the madam, made his lordship start giving her the opium because her screams were frightening off the other clients.”
“He is not a lord,” Wetherald said stiffly. “No lord of the realm would do this to a woman.”
Daisy stared at him with a disbelieving laugh. “Is this chuck really that innocent?”
“Yes,” Barnabas drawled, amused despite the situation. “He is.”
“See here,” Wetheral said.
“Enough,” Gantry snapped. “Unlock the shackles. We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“It will only take a moment,” Barnabas said, pulling his lock picks out of his pocket and searching for the right one. “Go down the servants’ stairs and make sure the back is still clear.”
Barnabas had the shackle unlocked in a matter of seconds. As soon as her arm was free, Wetherald carefully lifted her back up onto the bed. He let her go and immediately yanked off his jacket and covered her with it. Barnabas hadn’t even noticed she wore nothing but a sheer, ragged shift. She was so thin it was painful to look at her.
“Miss Richie,” Wetherald said, gathering the girl in his arms again. “Would you see if there are any other clothes we can put on her?”
“I’m afraid there aren’t,” Daisy said a moment later in consternation. “Nothing in here but the bed. No clothing or nothing, not even a bureau to keep them in.”
Gantry came sneaking back in and Barnabas’s senses went on alert. “What is it?” he said quietly.
“The bouncers are at the door. Two tonight. And there’s a line of men waiting to get in back there, the back door crowd. This establishment doesn’t just serve the nobs, apparently. We can’t take her out that way.” Gantry looked mad as hell. “What a harebrained scheme this was. You shall owe me dearly, James. I hadn’t planned on killing anyone tonight.”
“What?” Wetherald’s face had gone pale. “We can’t kill anyone. I can’t be involved in that.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to kill anyone,” Gantry scoffed. “You’d muss your cravat.”
“You are overdressed for a mission as well, so I wouldn’t point accusing fingers,” Barnabas said as he looked around the room. No window. No other way out except the servants’ entrance or the main stairs. “Simon,” he said, an idea forming. “Can you slip downstairs and make it seem as if you’ve just arrived for a visit with one of the fair ladies here?”
“Of course I can,” he said immediately. “Why?”
“Tell them you’re here to meet Wetherald, that you two were planning to visit Daisy together.” He turned to Daisy. “I assume that sort of thing is allowed in this house.”
“It is,” Daisy said, frowning. “But I don’t usually do that.”
“Well, since this is the last trick you’ll ever turn, my dear, I wouldn’t worry about setting dangerous precedents.”
Wetherald looked shocked and appalled. “I cannot be part of that,” he stammered. “What if that rumor was to get out? It could ruin my reputation.”
“Nonsense,” Simon said. “Everyone’s doing it these days.” He turned to Barnabas. “I’ll have them show me to Daisy’s rooms. But these two had better be in there when I arrive.”
“They will be,” Barnabas assured him. “Once you and Daisy are alone, Wetherald, you must strip. Then give Simon your clothes. He will bring them here, we will dress Mrs. de Vere as you, and Simon will carry a very drunk Lord Wetherald out of the house over his shoulder.”
“And what am I to do?” Wetherald whispered harshly. “How am I to get out with no clothes?”
“Wait about half an hour and then come down complaining about being robbed,” Barnabas said with a shrug. “Make a fuss and demand they hail a hackney for you. Make it clear that you don’t want this bandied about any more than they do. They’ll comply and see you swiftly on your way. Robbery is bad for business.”
“And Miss Richie?” Wetherald asked. “Will she be in danger?”
“Not at all,” she said blithely. “I’ll simply say we were shagging and your friend said he needed to use the necessary. Then he never came back.”
“It’s not very plausible to be robbed by a friend that I would do…that with,” Wetherald blustered.
“Tell them you just met him earlier tonight at a hell,” Barnabas said. “That sort of pick up is common among thieves and confidence men.”
“I shall be ruined,” Wetherald said stoically. “But for the sake of this poor girl I shall do it. Miss Richie, lead the way.”
“You’re such a gentleman, sir,” Miss Richie gushed as she took his proffered arm. “If you want a little snuggle, free of charge, come see me. I’m retiring after tonight, what with the money Sir Barnabas is paying me, but for you, love, it’ll be pleasure and not business.”
“You are too kind, madam,” Wetherald said politely as he held the door for her.
Simon was shaking his head. “I don’t think I was ever that naïve or noble,” he said. “Where shall we meet you?” He didn’t ask how Barnabas was going to get out. He knew better. Barnabas always got out.
“You take the waiting carriage. I shall be driving the hackney that comes for Wetherald,” he said, not worried in the least at improvising this part of the plan. He’d commandeered his share of carriages in the past. “We will meet you at my house.”
“Fair enough,” Simon said, and then he was gone.
Chapter 3
The girl started to moan and thrash on the bed not long after the others left, and Barnabas stepped over, intent on keeping her from falling to the floor again and hurting herself. God knew it was going to be difficult enough to get her out of there without a broken limb to complicate matters further. When he touched her arm she yanked it away and nearly tumbled off the bed despite his intentions.
“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, grabbing her shoulders and holding her down.
“No,” she cried out weakly, struggling to get away from him. She was weak as a babe, her efforts pathetic. Clearly no one had taught her to fight properly. “Get away,” she said. Her eyes opened, but only about halfway. They were bloodshot and the pupils so dilated all he could see was a small strip of dark brown iris. Before he knew what she intended ,she spit at him. The spittle landed on his shoulder.
“Well, at least you’ve got a little bit of mettle left,” Barnabas said, staring in disgust at his ruined jacket.
“Bastard,” she slurred.
“This does not bode well for our future relationship, my dear,” Barnabas said sarcastically. As she continued to struggle he sighed and sat down on the bed, pulling her halfway into his lap so he could wrap his arms around her and keep her still.
“Hate you,” she said, her head falling back over his arm.
“Naturally,” Barnabas told her. “Most people do.”
She stunk to high heaven and Barnabas couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to bed her. Of course, most of the men whom de Vere had brou
ght were likely not very fussy about that sort of thing since sex for that lot usually included a great deal of sweat and blood and effluvia. He shuddered. He may have some unusual sexual desires, but none would allow him to bed a pathetic specimen like poor Mrs. de Vere. He supposed the attraction was her former rank and popularity. Not to mention the forbidden nature of humiliating and abusing a man’s wife in front of him.
“More,” she whispered.
Barnabas leaned closer. “What?” he asked, not sure what she’d said.
“More,” she whispered brokenly. “More opium. Then I’ll be good. I promise.”
Barnabas tightened his jaw and a muscle ticked in his cheek. Goddamn the bastard who would do this to an unwilling woman. Wetherald was right. What kind of man did this to his wife? To a woman entrusted to his care, with no resources or recourse available to her? Her inability to assure de Vere’s entrance into society was hardly her fault, and yet it was clear de Vere had decided to punish her for the slight.
“I’m taking you out of here,” he told her, trying to speak clearly while keeping his voice low. “We’re leaving.”
“I won’t go,” she said, distress making her voice shrill. “You can’t have me.” She obviously didn’t understand what Barnabas was telling her.
“No, you silly girl,” he said impatiently. “We are rescuing you. We are taking you far away so you don’t have to do this anymore. Do you understand?”
She’d begun to cry, but no tears came from her bloodshot eyes. In all likelihood she hadn’t had anything to drink for hours, perhaps longer. She had no tears left to cry. How similar they were.
“Come now,” he said, gentling his voice as if speaking to a child. “Don’t you wish to leave? I will kill de Vere for you. Hmm? Doesn’t that make you happy? I shall make him suffer. Yes?”
“Kill?” she asked, confused. She struggled again. “No.” Her protest was weak, as if she wasn’t sure death wasn’t preferable to the alternative.
For Love and Country (Brothers in Arms Book 13) Page 2
