Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 05]

by The Rogue

  When the Liars neared the portion of Mayfair where Maywell House was located, Dalton slowed his mount and held up one hand for the others to fall to a brisk but near silent walk.

  Ethan itched to race to Jane’s rescue, but he had to admit that a secretive approach was more sensible. Maywell had to suspect that Ethan would gather the Liars. The last thing they needed to do would be to race in, pistols high, and force Maywell into acting against Jane.

  As it was, Ethan desperately feared that the man already had. She’d been so silent in the carriage, as if she weren’t even there any longer . . .

  Ice squeezed his heart, threatening to halt the beat of it. His Byzantine-minded, shocking, achingly beloved Jane was well. She had to be, for if she wasn’t, then there was no reason for any of this—not the Liars, not the war, not his own existence.

  So he kept with the Liars as they quietly passed down the last sleeping street before Barkley Square, then dismounted and even more silently split into three different directions to surround Maywell House.

  By the time Ethan and Dalton made their way to the square, Stubbs had already extinguished the nearest lamps by the simple expedient of shinnying up the poles and blowing beneath the leaded-glass shades.

  Kurt led one division of lethal-looking blokes to the rear alley behind the gardens and mews. Collis took up guard in front of the house, with two men on each side of the front door and more in the shadows of the park beyond. There was no more than the briefest rustle of leaves and tiniest glint of distant lamplight on blades.

  “I don’t like this,” Dalton muttered. “Too much chance of exposure. I want the Chimera, but I don’t necessarily want the world to know I have him.”

  Ethan gazed at him evenly. “The Chimera is in there. If you want him, take him. I only want Jane.”

  Dalton narrowed his eyes. “ ‘Jane,’ is it?” Then he nodded sharply. “Very well then.”

  Dalton raised his hand to order attack—

  A shimmer of light caught Ethan’s eye. He caught Dalton’s hand back down. “Wait—look.”

  On the second floor, facing the square, a single window remained lighted. Ethan pulled the floor plan from his memory. Jane’s room. As they watched, a female figure passed before the light, the same motion that had caught Ethan’s eye the first time.

  Jane? All Ethan could see was a shape, until the light caught on hair the color of firelight on silk—

  “Hold your men,” he commanded Dalton as he stepped around him. “I’m going in first.”

  Dalton grabbed him back. “I don’t think so. Maywell has a great many burly servants. I think they might object.”

  Ethan pointed up. “She’s alone, I’m sure of it.”

  Dalton eyed the figure in the window again, his jaw working. “It’s risky.”

  Feeling suddenly full of fire and light, now that he knew Jane was very nearly in his arms again, Ethan grinned fiercely and threw his hands wide. “Risk? That’s mother’s milk to me. I’m a gambler, remember?”

  Dalton snorted. “Go then. Secure her and then signal us. If we can, we’ll get her out before we take the house.”

  “And her cousins?”

  Dalton nodded. “All the ladies, if we can. Go.”

  Ethan went, slipping between shadows in his finest run-for-his-life-and-winnings manner, until he made it to the front wall of the great house.

  In a popular style, there were heavier stone blocks delineating the corners of the house. Ethan considered using these as a sort of ladder, but then quickly discarded the notion. Jane’s window was too central. There was no way to tell if he’d be able to move across once he was up there.

  Ivy vines grew close and thick over portions of the front, one of the few signs of neglect that Maywell had allowed to encroach on the exterior. Even so, Ethan banished that idea at once. Agile, tree-climbing Jane might manage that route down, but her more sedate cousins would break their ladylike necks.

  The only option that Ethan could see was to climb the portico itself and follow the ledge to beneath the window. The danger there was that the roof of the portico was in plain sight from the other bedchamber windows. If anyone happened to look out at the wrong moment . . .

  It was the only feasible way. Quickly, Ethan clambered up the columns fronting the portico and pulled himself over the ornate molding decorating the lintel. He had one bad moment when what he thought was a carved-stone acanthus leaf crumbled under his grip, nothing but moldy plaster. For a moment that felt quite a bit longer than that, Ethan hung in space, dangling from one hand while he scrabbled for a better grip.

  Most of the carvings were of cheap plaster—more of Maywell’s deceit. Ethan was much more careful where he put his hands after that.

  He made the roof of the portico with no more incidents and looked down. There was no sign of the Liars, yet Ethan knew that nearly a dozen pairs of eyes watched his every move. He gave a little wave to indicate that he was fine, then moved quickly to the ledge. It, thankfully, was stone, although it was slimy with soot and pigeon droppings.

  When he reached the window, he saw that it was not locked. He tried to peer in, but the window was fogged with condensation from the cool damp night. He could see little but a white-clothed form sitting before the fire with head bowed. With one hand bracing against the aperture, he pushed the window slowly open.

  The girl before the fire didn’t look up. Her quiet sobs explained why she hadn’t heard his entrance. Ethan began to smile with relief. “Darling—”

  The girl turned with a gasp to blink at him through tear-blurred eyes. “M-Mr. Damont?”

  Ethan’s heart shrank with sudden cold. “Serena?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Feebles drove his precious cargo carefully through the just-rising streets of London. There was naught but milk carts and window washers at work now. The street lamps still burned, where they’d not run out of oil overnight, and the first glow of dawn was still just a promise in the dirty eastern sky.

  He’d done a right job of keeping the pony steady and the cart from bouncing much, but he knew the lady would be black and blue all the same. That was a shame, for she was a very kind lady. He liked the way she looked right at him, as if he weren’t nearly invisible after all. Miss Rose did that too.

  Finally, St. James’s Street came and went. All the best gentlemen’s clubs were there, like White’s and such.

  Which was why the Liar’s Club wasn’t. The Liars lived on the edge of this small area of fancy entertainments. They weren’t for the solid blokes who lived at their clubs to avoid their managing wives. The Liar’s Club was for them what thought they was mad and bad.

  Morning traffic was picking up. Feebles steered the pony around a number of carts unloading meats and greens for the kitchens of the clubs. This was a good time to get to the Liar’s Club. No one would look twice at a delivery right now.

  The dignified façade of White’s faded into the dimness behind them. White’s looked like a right fancy place all right.

  Feebles took a deep breath, already anticipating the scent of Kurt’s morning baking. He’d get the lady out and fetch her a bun with his own hands when he got her to the club.

  White’s could keep their marble steps and fancy front door. The Liars had the best cook in all of England.

  The carved door of the club finally came into view and Feebles pulled the cart to a careful stop. He clambered over the back of his seat to kneel next to the trunk. “We’re ’ere,” he told it.

  “Let me out,” came a thin voice from within. “It’s getting harder to breathe.”

  Feebles bobbed his head, removing his cap from habit, though she could not see him. “Hold out one minute, milady,” he urged. “I’ll get some extra hands to carry you in.”

  When he passed through the kitchen into the back room of the club, Feebles found the place deserted.

  Worried now, Feebles spared a moment to ring the bell to the attic. There was no response, and himself always responded
to the bell.

  Bouncing on his toes with anxiety, Feebles wondered what he ought to do with the lady. Not that he had much choice. He’d have to open the trunk in full view of the street to let her out. Better soon than later, for even now the milk carts and such were making their rounds.

  He scurried back through the kitchen and the front room to the street door. “I’ll have you out in a miller’s ounce,” Feebles muttered as he opened the door and stepped outside. “My—”

  There was no cart, no swaybacked pony, and no trunk waiting on the street outside.

  Feebles paled. “Lady?”

  When the cart had finally stopped, Jane had let her aching muscles relax. There wasn’t one part of her that wasn’t cramping or bruised.

  Worse, the air was getting thick. Apparently the cracks weren’t enough ventilation for this long an occupation of the box. “In just a moment,” she whispered to herself, “they’ll carry you in and open you up and lift you out and you can stretch—”

  Without warning, the cart jerked forward violently. Unprepared and unbraced, Jane was flung headfirst into the side of the trunk. The sickening knock faded after a moment, but the wild jostling went on. Desperately bracing herself with her hands and feet, Jane tried to minimize the impacts but she was brutally tossed despite her efforts.

  Her rescuer had told her to remain quiet, and so she had, but Jane could bear it no longer. “Let me out!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “Stop! Stop and let me out!”

  Her cries were met with an instant increase of speed. The cart was swaying wildly now, the trunk actually bouncing across the bed of it. Every bounce was a new punishment on old bruises. Jane felt as though she were going to vomit. Only iron will and the thought of the added nastiness in her cramped prison kept her jaw locked.

  Her breath labored harder now than before as her panic began to steal her self-control. Gasping, she used her upper hand to bang against the trunk lid. “Out!” was all she managed. “Out!”

  The endless ride went on. Jane wept tears of helpless pain and panic as her air thickened and her body throbbed.

  The little man had betrayed her after all. She wasn’t going to see Ethan. She wasn’t ever going to escape this trunk. She was very much afraid she was going to die.

  Ethan. The blackness threatened to take away every thought but that one. She wanted to live, she wanted to be with Ethan and have dark-eyed children and spoil them rotten and . . .

  Unconsciousness rendered what mercy it could as the darkness took her mind.

  Augusta dangled from Ethan’s hands, her feet kicking fretfully in the air. “I changed my mind,” she hissed at him. “I want to go back up!”

  Ethan gazed coldly down at Jane’s cousin. “You go down slowly, or you go down quickly. It’s all the same to me.”

  “Augusta!” Serena’s hiss came from below where she waited in the shadows with the rest of her sisters. “Augusta, just shut it and climb down, or I’ll tell Mama that it was you who borrowed her best bonnet and ruined it!”

  The fact that such a trivial threat worked would have amazed Ethan at any other time, but now all he wanted was to get Jane’s beloved cousins to safety so that he could go beat her location out of her traitorous uncle before the man was hanged for treason.

  The fact that he and Serena had convinced the other girls that Ethan still worked for Lord Maywell caused him not the slightest moment of guilt. It was just as Jane had said. Maywell had made his choices. All he could do was to try to protect the girls from physical harm. Their reputations had been lost the day Maywell had made up his mind.

  Augusta finally wrapped her feet around the column and slid down it into the waiting arms of Kurt. One look into the face of the giant shut her up quite nicely. Once on the ground, she ran timidly into the embrace of her sisters. Stubbs rushed the girls away down the street, wrappers and shawls fluttering. They looked a bit like geese hurrying before the goose boy.

  Ethan quickly made his way back along the ledge—the journey now grown rather boring with practice—and took up his position in the room, with his pistol raised and his ear to the door.

  Below him, he knew the Liars would be entering silently through any window or door that would yield to their craft.

  Kurt’s men would be heading for the attic servants’ quarters in order to immobilize the most dangerous of the burly footmen. Collis would be securing belowstairs, disabling any guards or early-rising servants from rushing to his lordship’s defense.

  Where Dalton would go, Ethan cared not at all. Ethan himself only had one goal.

  Maywell’s study, where his every instinct told him Maywell would be waiting for him.

  With utter disregard for the thuds and howls that echoed through the house, Ethan beat a path down the stairs to the main floor. He surprised one frantic footman who was running clad half in livery and half in nightclothes. He swung his pistol up in a panic at the sight of Ethan.

  Ethan didn’t bother to stop and discuss the matter. He raised his own pistol swiftly to clip the other man in the lower leg and ran on.

  Dalton appeared at his side, his goal apparently the same. “Nice shot,” the spymaster said as they rounded the corner. “I thought you didn’t know how to handle a pistol.”

  “I said I hated them,” Ethan shot back. “I never said I didn’t know how to use one.” He ran ahead, but not before he heard Dalton make a sound of amused surprise.

  The other Liars had made their way quickly through the house. Collis and Kurt joined Ethan and Dalton just as they neared Maywell’s study. They all halted just outside the door and listened.

  Dalton stepped aside and motioned Ethan forward. Another time, Ethan might have made an acid comment about providing human cover for the others, but tonight he merely stepped up and gave the sturdy door a mighty kick. With the full force of the Liar’s Club behind him, he charged into the room to face down Lord Maywell.

  The sight that greeted them stopped all the men in their tracks. Lady Maywell sat in a chair before the fire, all grace and serene bearing, with a pistol firmly held in her hands aiming right at Ethan’s brain.

  Stretched before her on the rug, his own brain bleeding sluggishly into the carpet, lay Lord Maywell, traitor, schemer, and soon-to-be corpse, by the look of him.

  Lady Maywell didn’t seem very upset about her husband. She only gazed calmly at the mass of armed intruders with her grip on the pistol quite still and unshaken.

  Ignoring the pallid form on the floor, Ethan stepped forward. If ever he needed his infamous charm, it was now. Maywell had little life left in him and Ethan had the sinking feeling that there was no one else who knew where Jane was.

  “My lady,” he said soothingly as he approached. “My lady, may I have the pistol, please?”

  Lady Maywell turned her gaze down to her hands as if she hadn’t really been aware of what she held. She tilted her head slowly, then opened her hands to let the pistol fall to the floor.

  Ethan didn’t think he was the only one to tense in preparation for the firearm’s accidental discharge, but the pistol only thudded harmlessly onto the carpet.

  “I believe that was already fired,” Lady Maywell said distantly.

  “Er, yes,” Ethan murmured. “My lady, may I?” He indicated the man on the floor.

  For the first time, Lady Maywell gave her attention to her husband. “He’s dying.” Abruptly her foot flew out to deliver a sharp kick to Maywell’s lax arm. “Stupid, selfish man.” She looked up at Ethan as if he were the only other person in the room. “You know what he was up to. His blasted games! Cards and conspiracy, that was all he cared about! He was on his way to ruining us all, robbing my daughters of their future!”

  Ethan exchanged a glance with Dalton. After all their investigation, had the Chimera been taken out of the game by his own wife?

  Ethan moved to kneel at Maywell’s side. The man’s face was ashen, his skin purpling grotesquely around the bullet hole in his temple. Yet, still he breathed.


  Nothing could rouse him, however. Kurt examined him, lifting his eyelids to inspect his pupils, which were large and mismatched. The giant looked up at the spymaster and shook his head definitively.

  The air seemed to leave Ethan’s lungs. He turned urgently to Lady Maywell, who had watched this activity dispassionately. “Where is the small man?”

  She blinked vaguely at him. “Who?”

  Barely resisting the urge to shake the woman, despite his sympathy for her, Ethan gritted his teeth. “His man of business, his partner in treason, the small man with the round face?”

  Lady Maywell blinked. “Oh, yes. I recall him now. Isn’t that odd? I know he came here often, but he always seemed so forgettable—”

  Ethan was in agony. “My lady?”

  She stopped to consider, then shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve seen him tonight. Harold came home quite late.”

  “Lady Maywell, where is Jane?”

  She blinked, startled. “Don’t you know? Harold said he was going to fetch her back, that you’d taken her from Bedlam without his permission—not that I blame you, for I regretted that as soon as Harold sent her off with you—but you should have had more care for her reputation—”

  Ethan turned away, sickening despair clenching at his gut. Jane gone, God only knew where, and the only one who knew lay silent and dying at his feet.

  Hopeless fear seized Ethan. He was too late, he had lost her, by God, he’d killed her as surely as if he’d raised the pistol himself!

  He turned to Dalton, his eyes wild with dread. “Etheridge?” Please, let the spymaster have some sort of plan. Ethan would sell himself, his soul, his everything to the Liars if only Dalton could find Jane.

  Dalton Montmorency, Lord Etheridge and spymaster, took Ethan by both shoulders and gave him a shake. “Not yet,” he said, gazing into Ethan’s desperate eyes with quicksilver intensity. “It isn’t over yet.”

  Ethan took a breath, strengthened by the understanding in Dalton’s eyes. Dalton loved his lady, possibly every bit as much as Ethan loved Jane.