“True.”
Jack let out a breath, frowning as he pondered the situation. Bianca waited, working to formulate her own plans. The only thing she came up with was to wonder if Lady Claudia were a part of her brother’s plot. Surely, if she were, she would have wanted Bianca and Jack to be present. She would have led them to the exact spot where the explosives were stored and run for cover. She would have lit the fuse herself.
“We’ll have to split up,” Jack said at last.
“Split up?” Bianca wasn’t sure she liked the idea.
“If you go around to the ballroom, you’ll attract notice and fuss,” he explained. “Which would provide the perfect diversion for me to slip into the downstairs and search for the explosives.”
“And I could do my best to get as many people to leave as possible once I’m discovered.” Bianca’s heart lifted with hope again at the prospect.
Jack nodded. “Whatever it takes to keep you and the others safe.”
Bianca grinned, feeling suddenly warm. “I have a vested interest in staying safe.”
He inched closer to her, sliding his hands onto her waist and grinning at her. “You do?”
“Of course,” she said. “I have a wonderful life ahead of me with a brilliant, sensual husband and a whole family on the way. I refuse to do anything to jeopardize that.”
He stole a quick kiss before stepping away. “Good. Be quick, then. The faster we untie this knot, the sooner we’ll have our life together.”
Bianca lifted to her toes to kiss him one more time, then dashed out from behind the shrub. She continued swiftly along the path, retracing her steps from the first party she’d attended there. Jack waited where he was for a moment. When Bianca turned the corner to make her way along the back of the house, she turned back to him and smiled.
Jack nodded, his returning smile encouraging. Part of Bianca wanted to blow him a kiss, but the move seemed far too sentimental. Instead, she rushed forward, disappearing around the corner of the house.
She got no farther than a handful of steps before a dark form stepped out from behind a low boxwood hedge and lunged for her. She didn’t have time to scream before he’d clamped his arm around her waist and slammed a hand over her mouth. All the kicking and biting in the world couldn’t loosen the man’s hold.
He lifted her off her feet and carried her to the other side of the boxwood hedge, to a small door that stood open. The shock of going from brilliant, winter light to the dim interior of some sort of cellar was enough to render Bianca momentarily blind, particularly when the door slammed shut behind her. She wanted to scream for Jack, especially knowing he was so close.
She thrashed and fought the man holding her, even as the dimness began to resolve as her vision adjusted. The man holding her wasn’t the only one in the room. Two men were moving, lifting and shifting crates and barrels deeper into the room. Another man came forward. There was just enough light pouring in through the open doorway at the side of the room to make out his scowl and his features. Brickman. She was standing face to face with Brickman.
The shock of it made her go still. But that wasn’t the only shock. Details of the cellar began to seep in around her panic. She recognized the scent that was thick in the air—gunpowder. She’d found the explosives.
“Tie her up,” Brickman ordered with eerie calm. “Strap her to one of the barrels.”
“Are you certain, boss?” the man holding her asked. “She’s one of them nobs.”
“She’s Craig’s wife,” Brickman spat. “Not to mention one of those nasty Home Rule ladies. Regardless, she’s the bait my employer needs to lure Craig into his demise. And if we can get her brother and those nasty friends of hers down here too, more’s the better.”
Bianca would have gasped if she’d had any air left in her lungs or any feeling left in her limbs as the brute holding her dragged her deeper into the heart of the room full of explosives. The truth shone suddenly bright in her mind. The May Flowers weren’t the target of this attack. It sounded as though Rupert and his friends in Parliament weren’t truly the target either, only an afterthought. The target of the attack was Jack—the man who was getting too close to discovering Denbigh’s criminal activity, the man who needed to be eliminated. It was suddenly glaringly obvious that everything Jack had discovered, every lead he’d followed, was nothing more than a set-up to lead him here. And Brickman was right, she was the bait.
“You won’t get away with this,” she growled, trying in vain to fight as the brute shoved her against one of the barrels, then wrenched her arms back to tie her hands together. “Jack is a hundred times the man any of you are. He’ll realize this is a trap. He’ll find me and he’ll bring you all to justice. He’ll—”
Her words and everything else ended abruptly as something hit the back of her head hard. After that, there was only blackness.
Chapter 19
The moment Bianca disappeared around the corner, Jack pushed away from the wall, marching back to the front of the house. He breathed a fraction easier. Bianca would storm into the main part of the house, where the party was taking place, and cause a scene. That would keep the guests—and more importantly, her—distracted for the length of time it would take him to quietly thwart Brickman and Denbigh’s plan.
But as soon as he rounded the front of the house, he came face to face with Lady Tavistock as she made a late arrival.
“Good Lord,” Lady Tavistock said, straightening at the sight of Jack. “Is Bianca here?” The woman’s eyes shone with hope and mischief.
Jack would have shared in that mischief any other day, if the stakes hadn’t been so high. “She’s about to make a grand, scandalous appearance,” Jack confirmed, falling into step with Lady Tavistock, as though escorting her to the door. “I need you to keep her safe and out of trouble.”
Lady Tavistock’s grin fell. “Is something the matter?”
“Yes,” Jack said. There was no point in holding back, not when time was ticking away. “I have reason to believe there will be an attack on this house during the party.”
“Good heavens.” Lady Tavistock gasped and pressed a hand to her chest as they walked up the front steps. Smiley held the door for them. “Shouldn’t the house be evacuated?”
“It may need to be,” Jack admitted. “But delicacy is of the essence. My men cannot move too soon, otherwise the perpetrators will scramble and get away scot-free.” She didn’t need to know that “his men” was Smiley alone.
Lady Tavistock stopped as Smiley stepped forward to take her coat. “It’s Lord Denbigh,” she whispered. “This has something to do with Fergus—with Lord O’Shea’s attack.”
“I believe so,” Jack said. He waited until Smiley had removed her coat, then said, “Protect Bianca at all cost. And keep her out of the way of danger, if you can.”
He fixed Lady Tavistock with a look that said they both knew just what kind of trouble Bianca could get into. Lady Tavistock nodded, then swept off down the hall toward the din of chatter coming from the party.
As soon as she was gone, Jack stepped closer to Smiley. “What part of the house have you been banned from?” he asked, getting straight to business.
“Everything downstairs besides the kitchen and scullery,” Smiley answered quickly. “That’s all to the south side of the house. There are storage rooms and the like on the north side of the house. If I put my money on it, I’d say Brickman’s lot has the stuff stashed under the dining room.”
“Not the ballroom where the party is taking place?” Jack asked.
Smiley shook his head. “Denbigh’s sister’s in there, right? But everything’s been cleared out of the dining room entirely.”
Jack frowned, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. The whole thing was too easy. Something reeked of wrongness to him. Unless the point of whatever explosion Denbigh and Brickman had planned wasn’t to kill anyone, but rather to feign attempted murder. He wouldn’t put it past the bastards to blow up half the house, s
paring the people they saw as too blue-blooded to be blown to bits, only to blame the Irish later in an effort to undermine Gladstone’s followers. But that seemed far too elaborate. The best plots were simple ones.
“Keep an eye out,” he said, slapping Smiley’s arm and heading deeper into the house. “As soon as you can, bring in the bobbies.”
“Yes, sir,” Smiley said, the look of adoration back in his eyes.
He walked purposefully down the hall, as though he belonged there, looking into each room he passed. He needed to find a way downstairs, to seek out the explosives so that he would know where to send the police as soon as Smiley fetched them. More importantly, he needed to find a way to pin Denbigh to the potential crime. That required either a direct confession from Denbigh or from one of his associates.
The halls were strangely empty, though. There should have at least been an army of servants silently swarming the place with trays of tea and cakes to feed the unsuspecting nobs. Stranger still, the empty dining room Smiley had spoken about, the one that stood to be devastated if the explosives were set off, was at the back of the house in a corner, far from the ballroom full of guests.
A deeper sense of wrongness sank into his bones as he approached the ballroom and the party. Lady Claudia’s guests weren’t the target of the attack. They would be shaken if there was an explosion, perhaps even injured, but not killed. That wasn’t what caused the hair to stand up on the back of Jack’s neck, though. It was too quiet. Bianca should have had the whole party up in arms by now.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Rupert noticed Jack the second he stepped into the ballroom. He left his group of friends, who were clustered around a lavishly-set refreshment table near the door, and strode up to him. “And where is my sister?”
“We need to find her at once,” Jack hissed, no time for nonsense.
“Answer my first question,” Rupert said, looking more baffled than upset. “Why are you here? I thought you and my sister were banned from polite society.”
Jack ignored the comment, gripping Rupert’s arm and attempting to steer him to the side of the room, out of the way of prying eyes. “This house is about to be attacked,” he said. “There are explosives—”
“How dare you?” Lady Claudia’s screech interrupted Jack’s explanation. The buzz of conversation quieted as she pushed her way through guests to march up to Jack’s side. “This is an insult of the highest order,” she went on. “You and that woman were told to leave. You were banned from this party and this house.”
“That woman is my wife,” Jack growled, the instinct to protect Bianca in more ways than one overtaking his concern for the lives and wellbeing of the party guests for a moment.
Lady Claudia snorted. “She’s a whore, and you’re no better.”
“I’ll thank you not to speak of my sister that way,” Rupert rushed to Bianca’s defense as well.
“What is going on?” Lady Katya stepped out of the audience of party guests, all of whom had abandoned their conversations to watch the drama unfolding near the doorway. Lord Malcolm was only a step behind her.
Jack had never been so happy to see his pseudo step-father. “Where is Bianca?” he asked.
Lord Malcolm frowned. “Have you lost her already?”
Lady Katya was quicker to catch on. “Where is she supposed to be?”
“Here,” Jack said. “She was going to cause a diversion.”
“Why?” Rupert asked.
Jack glanced past Bianca’s family to the inconvenient audience. “The house is loaded with explosives,” he said, trying to keep from being heard by anyone but Lord Malcolm, Lady Katya, and Rupert. “Denbigh purchased this house specifically to blow it up during this party.”
“That is a ridiculous lie,” Lady Claudia insisted, dripping derision. “My brother would never do such a thing.”
The others had far stronger and more serious reactions.
“Where is Scotland Yard?” Lord Malcolm snapped.
Jack met his eyes and stared at him with all the contempt he felt. “Sitting on their arses, ignoring what I’ve been telling them for weeks, because some bastard had me removed from all of my cases without stopping to think that my work was incomplete.” He wanted to say so much more, to shout and carry on at Lord Malcolm the way he had shouted and carried on at him all those weeks ago, but there wasn’t time.
For his part, Lord Malcolm’s expression hardened and a splash of red came to his cheeks, as though accepting his chastisement. “I’ll have the authorities fetched at once,” he grumbled.
“Smiley is already on his way—” Jack didn’t finish his sentence. Lord Malcolm had already stormed out of the room.
“Where is Bianca?” Lady Katya asked again, her eyes round with fear.
“She was supposed to be in here,” Jack said in a low voice, glancing around.
True to the nobility’s insistence on maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of danger, the guests had gone back to chattering and laughing, eating and drinking, and the string quartet near the window had resumed playing. In the long run, Jack was relieved. It would keep them all from interfering.
“This is all a ruse to ruin my party and humiliate me,” Lady Claudia insisted. “I demand you all leave at once.”
“Something must have happened to Bianca,” Jack went on, ignoring her.
“Then we have to find her,” Lady Katya said, starting out of the room. “Where was the last place you saw her?”
Jack followed her, Rupert coming with them. “As she rounded the back of the house, heading for this room.”
“I’ll try to retrace her steps,” Lady Katya said, jogging ahead of them toward the front door.
“What do we do?” Rupert asked, striding by Jack’s side.
“We need to find the explosives and keep them from being set off,” Jack told him.
He pushed on, his heart racing, turning a corner into what he hoped was a servant’s hall that would lead them downstairs. But the hall only led to more empty rooms, forcing them to backtrack and search for another way downstairs.
Jack was getting close to wanting to punch holes in the walls to find his way downstairs when he and Rupert stumbled across one of the footmen that was clearly one of Brickman’s men stepping out through a discreet door near the front hall. Jack didn’t hesitate. He charged for the man, grabbing him by his jacket and slamming him against the wall.
“Where is she?” he demanded, using his forearm to apply pressure on the man’s throat.
The man gaped and gurgled before squeezing out, “Downstairs.” He had the good sense to glance to the door he’d stepped out of.
Jack tossed him aside, toward Rupert. “Take care of him,” he said. “Don’t let him leave the house or alert the others.” As he dashed through the door and started descending the servant’s stairs, he turned back to say, “If you can, lock him in the dining room.”
“The dining room?” Rupert blinked in bafflement.
“No!” the man groaned. “Not there. I’ll be blasted to bits.”
Jack rushed down the stairs with the grim satisfaction of confirming what Smiley had suspected. The explosives were below the dining room. As soon as he reached the downstairs hallway, he paused to get his bearings, then turned north and jogged along the hall.
He didn’t make it more than a few yards before a pair of toughs dressed as footmen stepped out of what appeared to be a silver storage room to stop him.
“Party’s upstairs,” one of them said with a banal enough tone that Jack suspected they didn’t know who he was.
That was exactly the advantage he needed. Before they were ready, he punched the larger of the two in the jaw, swinging him around so hard he fell to the floor.
“Hey!” the second one shouted.
Jack managed to grab him before he could put up a fight and to slam his knee in the man’s groin. The man squealed like a pig and fell over his companion, who was bleeding profusely through a bloody nose.
Jack hated leaving the two there without truly neutralizing them, but if Bianca was in trouble, if the explosives really were set and ready to be lit, he needed to move. He climbed past the two men and rushed down the hall, glancing into each room he came across.
He had just begun to question whether he was missing something or whether he had gone in the wrong direction when he heard a muffled, female shout from the room at the end of the hall. He knew in an instant it was Bianca and broke into a run.
“Get off of me! Leave me alone!”
Her shouts echoed through the open door around a slight corner. There were no lights in the room, and as soon as Jack caught the whiff of gunpowder, he knew why. He could just make out the shapes of boxes and barrels. Bianca struggled with two men in the middle of the room of explosives, but she was clearly weak and limp. The men already had her over a barrel and looked to be tying her hands to something on the other side.
“Unhand her,” Jack shouted, rushing into the room.
“Jack, thank God!” Bianca shouted. She went limp for a moment, but as soon as the two men manhandling her moved away, she writhed and struggled to stand.
The men came at Jack before he had a chance to help her. Unlike the two in the hall, these men were primed and ready to fight. Jack dodged a blow thrown by the first one but took a fist to his ear before he could get out of the way of the second. The blow stunned him for a moment and made his ear ring, but too much was at stake for him to give up.
“Jack!” Bianca called again, lurching as she managed to get herself upright. She held her head and groaned.
Something was wrong with her, but he needed to deal with his attackers before he could help her. They came at him with brute strength, but Jack noted how gingerly they moved around the room, as if afraid the wrong move could set off the explosives.
On top of his attackers, someone was pounding at a door at the far end of the room. A woman’s voice shouted from the other side, but Jack couldn’t make it out. Bianca dragged herself toward the noise as Jack twisted to evade one of the men, who had tried to strangle him from behind. He grabbed the man’s arm and spun, wrenching it out of its socket. That man howled and went down.
It’s Only a Scandal if You’re Caught Page 21
