Always a Temptress (33 page)

“Please don’t try my patience.
Virtue’s Grave
. You’re here because you’ve recognized the verse.”

Suddenly there was a pocket pistol in Glynis’s hand. Kate stared at it as if it had just spoken.

Glynis had a gun.
Glynis
. And she wasn’t laughing, as if this were all a joke. In fact, she was looking impatient and cold, one eyebrow imperiously quirked.

“You look surprised.”

Kate let go a breathy laugh. “I imagine I am.” She could understand the bishop participating in a cabal of traitors. But
Glynis
? “Is Edwin…”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Edwin sees only what’s under his nose. Now, don’t waste my time. If you have the book, give it to me.” She lifted the pistol until it pointed at Kate’s forehead. “The alternative is that I shoot you, take it, and leave you here to rot.”

Breathe, Kate
, she thought.
Bea will get the book.

“It seems we’re both out of luck,” she said, lifting the other two books so Glynis could see the titles. “The book wasn’t here.”

Glynis frowned. “I don’t believe you. If you give it up now, the worst that will happen is a bit of time spent in a well-run asylum. Just until the government is changed and you are no longer a threat. Uncle Hilliard made us promise that unless there was no other alternative, that was how we would control loose tongues.”

Like Lady Riordan. Well, this was just an evening for surprises. Evidently Uncle Hilliard followed a few Christian principles after all.

Kate forced a laugh. “You can’t just make a duchess disappear. Certainly not the daughter of one of the most beloved dukes in England.”

Oddly, Glynis began to smile. “Well, you see, there’s the interesting thing. I can. Even better, when I tell them why you disappeared so suddenly, I can tell the truth.”

A cold chill snaked down Kate’s back. Glynis’s eyes were triumphant, as if this were a moment she’d waited years for.

“What truth? That I was trying to stop you from assassinating Wellington?”

Glynis smiled, delighted. “You really don’t know? I swore you did. After all, your siblings do. I do. Edwin’s father broke a solemn vow so he could warn me.”

“You still aren’t telling me anything, Glynis.”

Glynis was still smiling, and Kate had the most awful feeling the woman was dragging this all out for the sheer pleasure of it. “He gave you to Murther,” Glynis said, “because Murther said he could keep you away from the family. But Murther died. So it is now up to Edwin and me.”

Glynis was gloating. Kate suddenly feared that gloat more than the gun. She knew she shouldn’t ask. She couldn’t help it. “You really expect me to believe that my father wanted his own daughter to stay away? There was nothing more important to Father than Hilliard loyalty.”

“Now we come to the meat of the matter, don’t we?” Glynis asked. “And after all these years of putting up with your condescension, I get to tell you the truth. The truth your mother made your father keep from everyone, even you.” Her expression grew smug. “You aren’t a Hilliard at all. You’re nothing but a bastard.”

Kate was stunned. “You would accuse my mother of cuckolding her husband? How dare you!” Instinctively she stepped forward.

Glynis lifted the gun. “I accuse her of nothing, except protecting you, which was a waste of her good heart. You may have been a duke’s wife, but you were never a duke’s daughter. You are nothing but the spawn of sin, a bastard born of violence and filth.”

Kate shook her head, the words incomprehensible.“What do you mean?” She could barely hear her own voice.

“Your mother was raped. That is what I mean. A stranger violated her and got her with child. The child that killed her. Your father hated you from the moment of your conception until the day he died. “

Kate was sure she was freezing. A vast emptiness yawned in her, a tipping, sliding realigning of the world. Of course. Everything made sense now. The distance, the silences, the insults. The eternal sadness in her father’s eyes that only seemed to grow on seeing her.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed her. It was that he’d wished she had never existed.

She couldn’t seem to think. She couldn’t move. Glynis slammed the door shut. The feeble candle flame shuddered to death. Darkness rushed in and Kate stood alone, with no company but the truth.

H
arry was furious. What the hell had Kate been thinking, walking back into that snake pit she called a family? And without him? By the time he woke early in the evening, she was long gone, and he was left with a growing sense of unease. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t put a finger on it. He was an old enough campaigner, though, to trust his instincts. He had to get down to Hampshire as fast as he could.

The only concession he made to his battered body was to commandeer Chuffy’s chaise. With Chuffy and Kit Braxton along for support, he traveled straight through the night. They played game after game of cards. He stared out the window, that feeling of dread growing with each passing mile.

By the time the coach pulled into the Olde George Inn at East Meon fifteen hours later, he was almost frantic. It wasn’t that his body felt as if he’d taken another spill; he expected that. But he couldn’t overcome the growing sense that he was running out of time. He would have gone right up to the castle to confront Kate, but Chuffy and Kit convinced him to see Drake first while they changed out the exhausted team. Considering the fact that Harry felt like shoving Drake’s teeth down his throat for encouraging this mad start, he considered it the perfect solution.

He knew he’d made the wrong decision when he stiffly climbed down from the coach to hear shouting coming from inside the whitewashed old coaching inn. One of the voices was definitely Drake’s. Harry was afraid that another was Thrasher’s.

“You know bloody well my lady didn’t go nowheres!” the boy was all but howling. “’Specially not with jus’ George. Somefin’s bad wrong, I tell ya.”

Harry began to run.

“Not…not…
not
!”

Bloody hell. That was Lady Bea.

“Harry, slow down,” Kit begged, hot on his heels. Harry found Drake in a parlor, faced off with Bea, Thrasher, and Bivens, one more red-faced than the next.

“I can’t…” Drake was protesting, hands in the air, looking unusually flustered. That might have been because Bea had him by the arm and was shaking him like a rat.

“Not!”
she all but screeched, tears in her eyes. She had a little leather-bound book in her hand that Drake was trying to grab without success.

“Where’s Kate?” Harry demanded, trying to catch his breath past protesting ribs.

Everybody turned on him. “Gone!” Thrasher cried, advancing. “Just…gone! When we woke up this mornin’, that old trout says as ’ow Lady Kate took off with George in the middle of the night. Bollocks she did! They done somefin to ’er, that’s what!”

Harry took hold of his perilously frayed temper. “Drake?”

Drake frowned. “Harry, you’re not up for this yet. Sit down and we’ll talk.”

Harry almost throttled him. “Where. Is. She?”

Drake sighed. “I don’t know. The last she was seen was last night when she retired. After this lot came to report her missing, I went up to the castle to inquire. If we could all sit down, I’ll tell you what I learned.”

The publican, a tidy barrel of a man wearing an old bagwig, came in to offer refreshments, only to be sent running by Lady Bea. It only served to make Harry feel more unnerved. Breathing carefully to control the pain, he helped Bea into a chair.

“Bea,” he said, easing down next to her. “Do you know where she is?”

She scrunched up her eyes. “Not…not…”

“Get the book from her,” Drake suggested sotto voce.

Leveling a glare on the suave Drake that should have dropped him stone dead, Bea dropped the book right down her bodice. It almost made Harry laugh. Almost.

“The story,” he demanded of his superior.

Drake ran a hand through his hair. “I would have questioned the story if Bea hadn’t come out with the book. But the plan Kate devised worked perfectly. She found the book, left it beneath the desk in the library for Bea to retrieve. And then, sometime in the middle of the night, evidently she had George drive her away.”

“Gobshite,” Thrasher sputtered. “Pure gobshite. She wouldn’t go nowhere without me ’n Lady Bea.”

“She might,” Drake retorted, looking regretful. “If she learned something that overset her. The story has already begun to circulate up at the house.” He briefly looked down at his hands. “It seems Kate is not the daughter of the Duke of Livingston.”

Harry was on his feet. “Who said so? I’ll kill them. The duchess was the most honorable woman in Hampshire. She would
never
—”

Drake looked, if possible, worse. “It was rape. A passing soldier, they think, who caught her out in the orchard. The present duke said that the whole family knew of it, but that the duchess had begged the duke not to tell anyone, especially Kate. That it wasn’t Kate’s fault, and she didn’t want her child blamed.”

Harry heard an odd roaring in his ears. Something seemed to be blocking his throat, and he felt oddly dizzy. “Kate found out.”

Drake nodded. “Last night. The duchess said she feels terrible about it, but she admits she blurted out the truth during an argument. The next thing she knew, Kate’s coach was bowling down the drive with George at the reins and Kate inside.”

Bea actually spit on the ground. “
Chien
.”

Harry sympathized. “What does the head groom say?”

Drake shrugged. “He was asleep. Woke when he heard the coach leave.”

He may not have liked me, but he can never take away the fact that I am the daughter of a duke.
Harry couldn’t get Kate’s voice out of his head. It was what she’d pinned her pride on. No matter how she’d been treated in her life, she’d known who she was. In one fell swoop, even that had been stripped from her.

A bastard. Daughter of a rapist. He thought he would be sick. “They’re lying.”

“No,” Drake admitted. “They had a letter from the duchess.” He rubbed at his forehead. “I should have figured a way to get in up there instead of waiting here.”

Next to Harry, Bea had begun to sob. Thrasher stood, hands clenched, tears running down his face, and Bivens sat ashen-cheeked. Drake just looked stricken.

“Why don’t you think Kate left on her own?” Harry asked Thrasher.

“’Cause she wouldn’t!” Thrasher insisted, swiping his cheeks with his sleeves. “She promised. An’ d’ ya fink she’d leave Lady Bea behind with that bitch?”

That question stuck in Harry’s gut. Thrasher was right. No matter what had happened to Kate in the last weeks, her first thoughts had been for Bea. It didn’t matter how devastated she was, how upended, she would never have frightened Bea this way. Slipping off his chair, Harry went on his knees before the old woman. She had aged suddenly, her skin sagging and her hands trembling. Harry was afraid for her.

“Bea,” he said as gently as he could when he wanted to crush something with his hands. “Do you know anything?”

Her breath still catching in little hiccuping sobs, she nodded. “Not…she…” Another sob escaped, her face screwed up in frustration.

“Sssssh,” Harry soothed. “It’s all right. Tell it however you can.”

He got another frantic nod, and Bea squeezed her eyes shut, holding on to him as if she would fall. Harry tried so hard to be patient and wait her out, but he was suddenly sure Kate’s staff were correct. She was in trouble, and only Bea knew what had happened.

Suddenly the old woman’s eyes opened and she straightened, meeting Harry’s gaze with determined gray eyes. And she began to sing. The tune, strangely enough, was “I Know My Redeemer Liveth.”

Harry actually laughed. “Did they know you were watching?”

Bea nodded. “They said, that I was too dumb to tell it…”

Harry gave her a smacking kiss. “We’ll name our first girl after you,” he promised. “Drake? I’m going to the castle.”

Drake blinked. “But Bea just said she wasn’t there.”

“Bea saw the coach. Not Kate. Besides, Glynis has some questions to answer.”

“I think we’d save time just to go to the asylum.”

“It will be my next stop.”

“Lady Glynis,” Chuffy said, shaking his head as they all got up to leave. “Dark horse. Who knew?”

“May I have the book now?” Drake asked Bea.

Bea glared, but in the end she reached back into her bodice, drew out the book, and handed it over. Drake began to leaf through it.

“Here it is,” he said. “Kate was right. The verse is transposed. I wonder why.”

“It probably changes the position of the code words,” Harry said, helping Bea to her feet and giving her a hug.

She was shaking her head again. “Hierarchy.”

They all stared at her.

“Good God,” Drake breathed, his focus on the book. “It might just be. The next couplet reads, ‘Second to none is your artistry, a woman’s darkest skill.’ The numbers continue. And…yes. ‘Not a bit of me shall die.’ The bishop’s pin says ‘Not
all
of me will die.’ What if each member of the central team has a verse to identify himself to those he sends out. And they have icons, like the rose.” He looked up, his posture suddenly taut. “My God. Kate was right. We have
two
verses. I have to get this back.”

“To Thirsk?” Chuffy shook his head. “Not wise. Still don’t know about Ian.”

Drake was still paging through the little book. “I have someone else in mind.”

“After we get Kate,” Harry said.

Ten minutes later when he stepped through the great oak castle door, Harry knew he would have no luck. He didn’t feel Kate anywhere here. Funny how it had never occurred to him before that he could always tell where she was, that odd energy of theirs connecting them as surely as a tether. He wasn’t able to feel it now; all he felt was a vast emptiness. To make it worse, his arrival cemented the rumors that had circulated among the party. Kate, finding out she was worse than nobody, had fled rather than face society’s scorn. The fact that her husband was looking for her made all the matrons nod.

The only one who seemed upset by Kate’s distress seemed to be her niece Elspeth, who kept glaring at her mother as if she’d personally orchestrated Kate’s downfall. It made Harry hopeful. It also made him realize that Kate had an unerring judgment in people.

By the time they reached the asylum in Richmond, Harry felt as if he were shaking apart. Only his desperation for Kate kept him going.

But Kate wasn’t there. They went through the building like Visigoths sacking Rome, leaving screaming, frightened patients and outraged staff in their wake, but there was no sign of her. Harry had never felt so frantic in his life.

“I’m going back to have a talk with the duchess,” he promised grimly.

Drake caught him by the arm. “You are not. There is another way.”

Kate’s little family took Bea back to London. Harry followed Drake and Kit Braxton to a tidy house near Harrow where they were greeted by a too-pale, nervous blond woman dressed in mourning whom Drake introduced as Lady Riordan.

“Is there another asylum?” Harry asked her before they’d even sat down.

She flinched as if he’d struck her. “I don’t…I can’t speak against my husband. He has my children.”

Drake took her hand. “You don’t have to say a word against him. But the lady who helped you has been taken, and we don’t know where she is.”

If possible, Lady Riordan grew paler. “I don’t know,” she said, straining Harry’s patience. “I think so. They said the one I was at was a…reward.”

He fought for patience. “Do you know its name? Where it is?”

She shook her head. “It’s south. Near the sea. That’s all I know.”

Harry wanted to howl in frustration. Every moment they wasted Kate spent in the dark, with no company but the terrible revelation about her father. Even Kate couldn’t hope to survive that with her soul intact.

His poor girl. She’d suffered so much, and he’d failed her again. He had to find her and make it up to her.

Kate didn’t know where she was. One of Glynis’s staff had poured laudanum down her throat before binding her hands and throwing her onto the floor of her own carriage, right next to poor George. They had driven all night.

By the time they locked her in the room where no one could hear her, she felt battered and confused and sick. She heard the lock turn and opened her eyes to a dark so deep that she couldn’t even make out the outline of a door. The room was cold and damp and rank; Kate thought it might have been underground, maybe on a river.

“George?” she called, struggling to her feet.

The world dipped and swayed, now that it wasn’t held down by horizons and direction. Kate’s stomach lurched sickeningly. She needed to find a chamber pot. First, she had to find George. It was bad enough she was locked in here. George wouldn’t understand at all.

“George, are you there!”

But nobody answered. No matter how much she called, or pounded on the solid door, no one came. She heard no sound at all, saw nothing, and wondered if she’d been mistaken. Could this be, not an asylum, but a tomb? Was she to be left here until the last person who knew her was dead? Would anyone really care?

She had to get out. She had to protect George. She had to get to Bea.

She had to find Harry. She needed to feel his arms around her; she needed to see the warmth in his sky-blue eyes. She had to thank him for bringing her back from the brink of madness. Even if he didn’t want to know, she had to tell him that she loved him.

Please, Harry,
she thought.
Find me. I was wrong. I should never have tried to keep away from you. There aren’t enough hours, and I love you so much. I need your strength, your pragmatism, your exquisite patience. It isn’t enough to survive. I want to live, and if I can, I want to do it with you.