“There’s our thud again. I haven’t heard it in quite some time,” Angelique said.
“We’ve never heard it at this time of night before, either,” Dot said.
“Maybe the rats have just awakened from hibernating,” Angelique suggested.
Dot stifled a whimper.
Delilah shot both of them a quelling look.
“Angelique. Really. And we’ve books about animals, Dot, so you can discover that rats don’t hibernate. The more you know about things, the less frightening they become.”
Both Angelique and Delilah knew this wasn’t precisely true—sometimes the very opposite was true—but there was some comfort in comforting Dot.
Tristan knew that were he stretched out on his blue counterpane right now instead of in a livery stables, the thud would sound like something the house couldn’t quite digest.
Bloody hell. He wondered if the Gardner “sisters” recognized the sound.
Tristan looked up from the tunnel. The faces of his men looked down at him. Eyes tense and alert. They knew better than to shout down at this point. They’d all begun to draw the same conclusions, and who knew how voices would reverberate in the tunnel.
He fished into his pocket and gestured up at them with his lock picks.
So Tristan set to it. Within a few minutes, he got the handle of the door to turn.
He exulted as it rotated in his hand.
But the door didn’t open.
He gently leaned his shoulder against it, holding the knob so that the door wouldn’t spring back abruptly and thud again.
Damn. It was clearly barred or blocked from behind.
Tristan stood motionless for a moment in that dark pit. If they attempted to break this door down, it would most certainly be heard in the boardinghouse.
He knew what to do next.
“This is what I think happened,” he told his men and Mr. Cox when he surfaced. “Derring was either blackmailed into or volunteered to smuggle cigars from Sussex—the contraband was probably stuffed into the bases of the statues. I suspect he volunteered, since he was in debt and he knew he could make a tidy profit. Stone, not marble, statues ordered straight from Sussex for an earl? Innocent as can be. Sounds like just the daft thing he’d buy, anyway, since he was a spendthrift. He may have financed the whole endeavor—paying for the cigars to be brought over and letting the smugglers do the dirty work—or he may have just played a role, seeing it as his way to solvency. I’m willing to wager that someone here at these stables, Mr. Cox, knew about the tunnels—someone who knew precisely where they led—and that’s how Derring managed to meet Mr. Garr and his foxy-faced friend.”
All the color had fled Cox’s face. “Wasn’t me, guv, swear on my life.”
“We shall see,” Tristan said evenly. “I think Derring had the statues brought to The Grand Palace on the Thames, where he could in privacy unload cigars into the tunnels through the entrance in a particular room on a low floor. He then departed again with the statues for his townhouse. The Gardner sisters, if you will, then entered the tunnels through the stables, fetched the cigars, and drove out with them, looking innocent and pretty as you please, or as innocent as those two could ever look. Just a couple of men with a horse and cart filled with hay or some such to hide the boxes, no doubt. They were able to deliver the cigars to merchants who had paid for them and were expecting them. Then the merchants sold them at an exorbitant profit.”
“But then Derring died,” Massey contributed. “Leaving the Gardner sisters in the lurch, because they couldn’t get into the boardinghouse or the tunnels.”
“Yes. Leaving the tunnel door barred and locked and cigars still in the tunnel. And they couldn’t get into the place during all the renovations, since the place was filled with activity. Perhaps not wanting to call attention to their operation, and perhaps not being particularly murderous by nature, they concocted a plan to get into the place—they spread it around that it was a terrible place to go, and they devised a plan to get the cigars and get out . . . not reckoning that they wouldn’t be able to get into that room. At all. And not reckoning that I would be there.”
“That’s almost funny, sir. Your being there.”
“Massey.”
“Sorry, sir. They’re probably desperate by now,” Massey said.
“Yes,” Tristan said tersely.
He rifled through scenarios, but they couldn’t just go and rip the Gardner sisters from their beds without proof of a crime.
“None of what I’ve just said has any merit at all unless we catch them in the tunnel. So we need to catch them in the tunnel. And we need to act now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Lady Derring Lady Derring Lady Derring . . .”
“Wha . . . Dot?”
Delilah had been dreaming. And Dot was whispering. Two inches from her face.
“Shhhh. Captain Hardy is downstairs and he needs to speak to you at once. He told me to fetch you and Mrs. Breedlove, and to be very, very quiet about it.”
Delilah absurdly put her hand out and patted Dot’s face to ascertain that she was real and that this wasn’t part of the dream she’d been having.
Dot’s nose was cold, like a little pet’s, and it squashed a little.
She glanced at the clock on her mantel. It was half past twelve.
Delilah shot straight up in bed.
“Is he all right?”
That sick terror and ferocity were instant. If he was not all right, she would make it so.
If he was not, she thought that she would die.
It was not an epiphany she found welcome at this hour of the morning.
She reeled with it. And then Dot said, “I think so, Lady Derring. He certainly looks quite fine. And he’s with about a half-dozen soldiers and he’s the one in charge, so I would say so.” She paused. “I am less certain about us.”
And at first she didn’t see the soldiers at all, despite the red coats. They were motionless, blending into shadows. And then it was their very alert tension that disturbed the softness of the room. Everything else in it was frayed, or soft, or worn. The soldiers were rigid, spotless, and grim.
Tristan, she saw. Standing like the needle on a compass in the dead center of the room.
“Ladies, please sit down,” Tristan said at once. Quietly.
Delilah froze.
“Delilah,” Angelique urged, and touched her arm.
They sank onto the settee.
Their hands touched between them. Angelique’s were as icy as hers.
“This is Lieutenant Massey.” Tristan’s voice was scarcely above a whisper. He gestured to a tall, sturdy, dark-haired man. Angelique and Delilah nodded to the lieutenant.
“We apologize for the dramatic nature of this request and the necessity for subterfuge. But Mrs. Breedlove, Lady Derring, we’d like you to inform the Gardner sisters that the room they originally wanted has become available to let, and then to move them into it straight away. First thing tomorrow morning. One simple sentence from you. Then hand them the key.”
Delilah stared at him. Surely she was dreaming.
“I . . . don’t understand.” Angelique was able to speak. In a whisper.
Delilah began. “But . . . I’m afraid we’ve let that room to . . . but we promised . . . we can’t . . .”
“Lady Derring.” It felt wrong, suddenly, to hear him call her that. Delilah: he’d claimed her name. Lady Derring was a name that belonged to another woman in another lifetime. “I am the Captain of the King’s Blockade and I’m afraid I must insist that you do as I say.”
She reared back a little as if he’d thrust a torch into her face.
“For your safety and the safety of your guests, Lady Derring. The Gardner sisters are neither sisters nor women.”
There was a silence. Her heart battered at her like it was trying to break free.
“Tristan . . .” Delilah curled her hand into the settee. She felt as though she was falling and falling.
Lieutenant Massey’s eyes went wide when he heard the “Tristan.”
His head swiveled between Captain Hardy and Delilah.
Tristan’s face was unreadable and his eyes were cold as bullets in the shadowy room. All he was in this moment was a commander.
What had Angelique said? Like a rock or a trebuchet.
“Captain Hardy.” Angelique was frightened, too, Delilah knew. But her tone was all that was placatory and dulcet. Angelique was a survivor. “You can understand that this building belongs to us, so naturally we are concerned . . . what on earth is happening? Are we under suspicion of a crime?”
Angelique had asked that terrifying question with gracious rationality. And a hint of good humor.
Then again, she hadn’t kissed this man’s scars a day ago. Or risen sated from his arms, reluctant to let him go, a few hours earlier. She hadn’t heard him beg her with her name. She hadn’t cracked open his guarded heart, cherished what she found there, never realizing in the process that she’d also cracked open her own and now—well, what had Angelique said? That it rattled around in there like dropped china? That’s how it felt.
Waves of emotion swooped through Delilah like attacking birds: fury and helplessness and nauseating betrayal and scorched pride.
She was a fool.
Tristan was carefully considering how to answer, which was also terrifying.
“We have ascertained that you and Lady Derring are innocent of involvement in this matter.”
“You’ve . . . ascertained?” Delilah repeated. Her voice was raw with incredulity.
Her lips were numb.
There was a little silence.
“Yes.” His voice was hoarse. It contained the faintest apology. But only a little.
Her head went back in shock.
His purpose was Duty, after all.
“And I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you the details of our presence here. Not yet. Not until we’ve completed what we set out to do.”
“Because we might still be suspects.” She said that with a certain bitter wonder.
“For your own safety. We believe the two of you and all other guests save the Gardners to be guiltless. Your husband was not, Lady Derring.”
Her hands began to rise to her face, desperately. No. She would not shield herself from this, and if what she felt showed on her face, she wanted Tristan to see it, too. If anything truly moved him at all.
She gave a soft, ironic laugh. It hurt, terribly, the laugh, as if every one of her vital organs was bruised.
“Oh, now I see. You’re that Captain Hardy.”
She heard him take a sharp breath.
“Always gets his man,” Lieutenant Massey whispered proudly.
“Or woman, too, I suppose,” Delilah said lightly, slowly. “Is that not so, Captain Hardy?”
She couldn’t read his expression. But she could feel tension in him, and in all the soldiers. Drawn back and back, like a trebuchet prepared to launch its ordnance. This was what they were born for.
“We’re under orders from the crown, Lady Derring, and as such I am the crown’s representative and responsible for all of these men here,” Tristan said. “And it is not hyperbole to say that it’s a matter of life and death.”
“So you are aware of the uses of the word hyperbole. And just listen to how many words you’re using now, Captain Hardy. How many of the ones you said meant a thing?”
“All of them.” He said that evenly. As though it were an unadulterated truth, a commandment etched in stone.
She turned away.
She couldn’t bear to look at his hard, enigmatic soldier face.
He leaned forward a little.
“I will protect you with my life.”
He laid those words down slowly. As though he’d been asked to swear a vow.
She knew it was true. He’d already done it once, hadn’t he? Because she’d been just that foolish before: they’d let a strange man into the house at the wrong hour, and he’d attacked her.
That Captain Hardy. That’s what that particular man had said. An odd numbness spread through her limbs.
“Will you give me the key to that room, please, Lady Derring?” he asked patiently.
His hand was extended.
Her hands were trembling as she unhooked the keys from her belt and found the right one. It seemed to go on forever, the frantic jingling.
He waited patiently. All those soldiers watched.
She dropped the key into his hand, very careful not to touch his skin.
“Thank you. We shall have soldiers in every empty room of the house,” he said. “We will explain the situation to your other guests now and temporarily remove them from the premises for their own safety. Please instruct your staff to avoid that floor tomorrow. For now . . .” he added, standing, “try to sleep.”
This last might have been the most ridiculous suggestion she ever heard.
And he turned back to his men abruptly and they clustered in the corner of the room to listen to him, and she wondered if she was already forgotten. She’d been a means to an end, after all.
What else could they do but go back up the stairs, taking care to not make a sound?
“Fox,” Angelique muttered, dazed. “Henhouse,” as they went up the stairs.
“At least my instincts are good,” she muttered a few steps later.
But Delilah said not a word.
“You’ve always been so kind, Lady Derring,” Jane Gardner said to her, the following morning, after breakfast, when she gave the Gardner sisters the good news that they’d be moving into the larger suite. One of Tristan’s men had returned the key to her last night after they’d prepared the room for today.
“Yes,” Delilah said numbly. “Haven’t I?”
She dropped the key into Jane Gardner’s hand.
“Thank you,” Jane said in that tiny, fluting voice. Delilah suppressed a shudder.
Margaret glanced up from between her lashes. Then glanced down again. “And the food here is wonderful,” she said almost wistfully.
While Helga silently served breakfast to only the Gardner sisters, who were told that everyone else was out, a half-dozen soldiers waited in the livery stables.
Another half dozen were waiting in rooms on the first floor, waiting to pour into Suite Three.
Delilah and Angelique and Dot remained at the top of the stairs, the door closed.
And at eleven o’clock in the morning, a well-fed Jane Gardner opened up the wardrobe in the room on the first floor, lifted the hatch in its floor, climbed down the ladder, and moments later retrieved one small box from the tunnel.
Massey, down the hatch in the livery stables, watched this retrieval through the keyhole of the door.
And then the person formerly known as Jane Gardner hesitated. Eyed the barred door.
And decided that of course she ought to go back the way she’d come.
When she was lost from view to the shadows, Massey pulled on the doorknob hard and released it.
The thud was a signal.
When she struggled up out of the wardrobe, cap and wig askew, arm triumphantly extending a box of cigars to her “sister” Margaret, she discovered Margaret couldn’t quite take it from her.
She was already bound at the wrists and being held fast by two men.
Two soldiers helped her all the way out of the wardrobe, instead, by yanking her up by the armpits.
“I’ll just take those,” Tristan said.
And reached for the disgusting cigars.
Within a few hours Tristan’s crew had searched the Gardner “sisters’” rooms and confiscated their belongings (which included an interesting variety of knives and pistols), removed all the cigars from the tunnel through the stables, and arrested a few of the stable workers after some rigorous questioning—seemed a stable boy’s grandfather had once worked at the whorehouse and knew of the tunnel. When they’d learned Derring was the owner of the former Palace of Rogues, they’d made
him a business proposition he was in no position to refuse. If he hadn’t keeled over in White’s, he might have actually paid his debts in a few years.
Tristan coerced from their captives a few more names of the gang in Sussex. Officers were already on the road heading to Sussex to nab them.
It seemed the “Gardners” had been under a variety of threats to deliver the cigars to the merchants who’d ordered them, which was part of the reason for the feminine disguises.
And as for the statues, they’d all been unpaid for and returned to the stonemason, who was also arrested.
And thus the Blue Rock gang was decimated.
The soldiers allowed everyone at the boardinghouse a very quick peek down the wardrobe.
“Where else does it go?” Delacorte pondered. “I suppose one of us will need to be brave enough to find out.”
“I nominate Dot,” Angelique said.
Dot looked uncertain. Then forgot her concern instantly in the pleasure of looking at the soldiers.
Delilah didn’t want to look down into that tunnel, but she did.
Vertigo struck.
It seemed the Gardner sisters’ plan had hinged on Delilah and Angelique being stupid enough—or, more charitably speaking, naive enough, or desperate enough—to let them stay, and to not question their disguises. If they’d been a trifle more murderously inclined or less certain of themselves, they might not be alive to stare down a tunnel.
Men. For God’s sake. Was there no end to their perfidy?
What an astonishingly venal thing for Derring to have done at all. And all the while she had smiled at him dutifully across their dining table and asked about his day. But if he’d been in a panic about his debt, if he’d felt any guilt, it hadn’t shown. Surely she would have sensed it? Then again, she’d lodged two men wearing dresses.
She couldn’t imagine the Gardner sisters had slept a wink when they found out the captain of the blockade was under the same roof. Surely, being smugglers, they’d realized he was that Captain Hardy.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 26
