Elisabeth Fairchild (33 page)

Roger might have done just that, embarrassed to interrupt such a private act, had not the woman protested vehemently, “Get off of me!”

The voice he knew all too well. Dulcie!

Grabbing Thistlewood by the shoulder he upended him, rump banging the floor at his feet, pitiful, purpled prod waggling in the breeze.

Dulcie sat up, cheeks flushed, hair awry, one hand across bared breasts, the other twitching her skirts down over her knees.

“Stupid, girl,” he shouted, enraged. “I told you never to come here!”

She was glad to see him, but the growing light in her eyes was extinguished by the intensity of his anger.

He was not at all glad to see her. Thistlewood, he wanted to kill.

Catlike, he poised, ready to leap sideways, ready to strike the man down with the swift wielding of the dirk from beneath his arm. He could hold the others at bay with the pistol in his boot.

But the piles of weapons waited, too much potential for disaster. They’d scatter without Thistlewood to hold them together, and then where would he be? Chasing them down one by one, and no telling what kind of mischief raised.

He stepped back from Dulcie with a strangled laugh. The diametrically opposed calls of desire and duty warred with every muscle in his body. 

“You!” He grabbed Thistlewood by his collar as the man pulled up his breeches. “Do you know how close to a dead man you are? I should kill you here and now, for thinking with the knob below your belt instead of the one above.”

Thistlewood’s face flushed scarlet. A vein throbbed blue in his temple. He eyed the table of weapons as if tempted.

“Are you addle-pated man?” Roger shouted. “Would you risk all that we’ve worked for, today, of all days! Go home and swive yer wife, you old goat, if it’s twat you want, but leave my little temptress alone. She’s nothing but trouble, the minx, but I’ve a fancy for her, and selfish enough not to share. It’s your throat I’ll be slitting do you lay hand on her again.”

Thistlewood glared, as he tucked in the tail of his shirt and buttoned his cuffs. Through clenched teeth he said, “Slut wanted it, Edwards. Bitch in heat. I’m an obliging fellow.”

Several of the men sniggered.

Roger wanted to leap on them, each and every one, to cram the words and laughter back down the bastard’s throats, but he was the Gargoyle. A stone-hearted creature. He must remain calm, collected, his every response deliberate and sure.

“Lie down with every dog that begs, and you will one day get bitten.” He stretched out a hand to Dulcie, hoping against hope she understood his harsh approach. “Get up, strumpet! Do you think to make me jealous, spreading your legs for another man?”

She flinched, cheeks aflame, lips pinched and white. Ignoring his proffered hand, she rose slowly, without assistance, busy straightening, fastening, tucking--hands shaking--and on her face an expression of humiliation and scorn. “You are contemptible. Unforgivable,” she said, voice low.

Her voice and tone were wrong. Dulcie’s not Bethany’s.

“No job for a lady, loving the likes of me.” He surprised her in holding wide his arms. “And yet, you cannot help yourself, can you, Bethany my dear? Coming to your rescue, saving you from a married man’s wilting pillock.”

She hesitated, swallowed hard, arms cradling her bosom. A look around the room--no other source of rescue, only trouble waiting.

“You are a horse’s arse, George,” she said tartly, stepping into his arms as easily as she stepped into her role. “And still I care for you.”

He hugged her tight, hissed in her ear, “What madness brings you here?”

“A notice in the pa--”

He smothered the rest with a kiss, to the tune of lewd remarks and laughter from his compatriots.

His contact was angry, hers resistant, their embrace observed by strangers, her lips promised to another. High in her throat, her heart beat like a frightened rabbit’s. She had come so close to disaster. So close! She felt, used, dirty. The memory of Thistlewood revolted her, grabbing, pinching, forcing himself upon her in the dark, airless storeroom, his ugly, tumescent organ, prodding her skirts, poking insistently at her private parts. At the moment, she did not want anyone touching her, kissing her. Not even Roger.

How thin the line between the woman she was, and the woman she pretended to be. She had willingly spread her legs for Roger. Why did it shock her so much to be treated like a fallen woman? She dressed like a whore, did she not?

In that instant, in Roger’s arms, she felt close to the point of shattering, of losing grasp of who and what she was or would be.

The Gargoyle’s lips could not heal the hurt. His light blazed orange, a jagged light, rubbing her raw. He kissed like an angry man, lips forceful, taking her strength.

She withdrew from his embrace, shamed, lips swollen.

Davidson whistled. Brunt made a lewd suggestion.

Roger laughed--the cocksure sound of a man who thought highly of his prowess. No, not Roger, George Edwards, his false identity. He pulled her closer, touched her familiarly, hand sliding the length of her tailbone, the gesture possessive and demeaning done publicly.

Roger, the light of him gleaming in Edward’s eyes, leaned close, to kiss her temple, to whisper through clenched teeth, “We have to get you out of here.”

From one of the capacious pockets of his sweeping Garrick coat, he pulled a copy of The New London Times, crowing, “Opportunity knocks, lads. The Ministers . . .” he paused for effect “are having a dinner.”

Dulcie’s lips pursed. She felt like a fool. Of course, he had known about the notice all along.

“There is a God!” Brunt declared gleefully grabbing the Times. “My prayers have been answered.”

“So glad I could help,” Roger said. “Now, if you will excuse us, lads . . .” With a lascivious laugh and a playful pat on her bottom, Roger guided her into the storeroom she had just vacated.

“You planted the notice? You planned this?” she hissed in his ear, as soon as the door closed behind them, her attitude that of a hen beneath a fox’s paw, all squawk and feathers.

The room was small. They were forced to stand side by side.

“But of course,” he replied quietly, peering through a knothole in the door. “What do you take me for, Dulcie?”

“I don’t take you,” she pushed away petulantly. “In fact--”

He turned his back on the knothole, and caught her by the waist, “Well, I should very much like to take you. Here and now.” He drew her closer.

“Is it George Edwards who would have me in this squalid, stinking hole, or Roger Ramsay?” she whispered, still angry. “You play your part too convincingly.”

“If at all,” he murmured.

The suggestion arrested her attention, took the fight out of her. Her eyes told him what her lips did not. Sadness there, wounded pride, a hint of fear, and overriding all, resolve. She meant to refuse him, meant to give him a tongue lashing, meant to demand explanations, and yet in the next instant she threw herself at him, mouth hungry, as she had never shown appetite before.

His hand slid along her ribcage, the other pressed her hips to the aching need in his loins. Would she submit to him, in this closet, before he sent her on her way?

Noises from the other side of the door brought him back to his senses, noises from the mad world into which he had dragged her. Footsteps sounded on the ladder. The tromp of bootheels vibrated on the wooden floor. Ings spoke.

“Look what I’ve got!”

She knows too much, has seen too much, Roger thought. He whispered gruffly into the softness of her hair. “We must get you out of here.”

“Thistlewood said I would not be going home before the business is done.” Dulcie tucked away a stray lock of hair. “Is the ladder the only way down?”

“One other way, through the hayricks. A bit of a squeeze. Perhaps we can sneak you down after dark.”

She frowned, lamenting, “I was a fool to come.”

“Foolish and brave.” He touched her cheek.

She shook her head, with a sigh. “Father will be frantic. And you. Have I in any way endangered what you do here?”

From the far side of the door came the sound of laughter.

He shrugged as he reached for the door latch. “Nothing irreparable.”

The door opened to the sight of Ings pulling daggers from his pockets, one after another, with the air of a magician.

Roger leaned against the doorjamb, asked calmly, “Why so many knives, butcher?”

Ings swiped outward with one of the blades, the breeze raised by his movement stirring the folds of Roger’s coat.

“The better to cut off Castlereagh’s head,” he cackled.

“Butcher’s work, lad, and me the best butcher in the bunch. See the wax end bound about the handles?” He upended one of the knives, fingers pinching the blade.

“Aye, I see it,” Roger played along. “What’s it for?”

“Why to soak up the blood, fool, so me hand does not slip when the cutting needs doing.”

Silence fell as all contemplated the deed to be done.

Thistlewood ended it. “We must let you go first into the dining room, Ings, if you’ve such an appetite for carving the main course.”

“I do, sir. You may depend upon it. I would rather die or hang myself than miss this night.”

Roger would rather Ings died or hanged than go through with it.

Dulcie shrank a little deeper into the corner of the storeroom.

Thistlewood was not so squeamish. “Castlereagh and Sidmouth must be dispatched first--their heads taken.”

Roger shot a look at Dulcie. Her images, from the night of the King’s funeral--here they were--coming true.

“I bring bags to carry them away in,” Tidd offered, tossing onto the table full of arms two drawstring sacks. “My wife stitched them together from an old apron.”

“They look better suited to holding hares than heads,” Adams held high one of the bags.

Tidd leapt to the defense of his wife’s stitchery. “A head’s no bigger than a good-sized cabbage, and these bags will easy hold a cabbage. We did test them.”

“You must take Castlereagh’s hand as well as his head,” Davidson said.

“His hand?” Brunt picked at his teeth with a piece of straw.

“Aye, man. It is sure to be worth something someday.”

Brunt and his straw ferreted something from between two miscolored incisors. He examined the unidentifiable substance with interest and commented, “It will be maggot food before anyone offer you anything for it.”

“Not if we pickle the thing like any pig’s foot.” Ings had all the answers.

Harrison laughed. “Aye. Brine’s the thing.”

Thistlewood shrugged. “Cure it then, if you’ve a mind. It will be all the cure I need if it is but separated from Castlereagh’s wrist.”

Chapter Forty-One

The Cato Street Loft

There was no sneaking down the ladder. Thistlewood lay sleeping beside it. No going out the other way either. Ings and his knives were tucked into the nook that opened onto the hayricks.

Dulcie and Roger lay together, side by side, in a darkness penetrated by little more than the sound of the others snoring, the occasional scrabbling passage of a rodent, and a thin bar of moonlight that slipped the edge of the canvas that had been tacked up over one of the windows.

By that knife blade of silvered light he could see the dark shape of her, a thin wedge of gilded hair, the curve of her moonlit hip. He longed to see more, to wrap arms around her, to press his lips to hers. At the same time he wanted nothing more than to see her gone.

He curled up next to her, slid his arm about her waist.

She slapped at him, made muted noises of protest.

He refused to relinquish his hold, pressed his mouth to her ear, the silk of her hair tickling his cheek, while her fingers pinched crablike at his arm.

“I want you,” he said.

“Well, you cannot have me,” she whispered. “Are you mad?”

“Mad with desire,” he said.

She turned in his arms that she might speak without being heard by any but him. “Well, I am not. Not with that lot in the next room, not after what Thistlewood . . .”

“He did not--”

She exhaled heavily. “No. Your arrival proved well-timed.”

He sighed, touched her cheek, buried his nose in her hair.

“Thank God. You were mad to come here.”

“Why did you not take me into your confidence?” she rasped into his ear. “Why not tell me you had planted that announcement in the New London Times?” 

Heat rose within him that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the heat of her breath upon his ear. Her hair smelled of vanilla and almonds. He closed his eyes against the darkness, nuzzled closer, the better to drink it in.

“This is what I do. Did you not trust me to do it well?” His lips drifted down the lobe of her ear. His hands drifted lower.

“Stop,” she protested weakly. “You have no right to touch me.”

She was right, of course. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he murmured, lips against her chin. “You have something more important to do?”

She pulled away petulantly. “I have missed my dress fitting.”

He laughed, her concern unexpectedly trivial. His hands drifted to the lacing of her bodice, which with a single, smooth motion, he untied. “A dress fitting? Is this not the perfect fit?” He loosed the strings, fingertips seeking the fullness of her breasts.

She gasped when he dipped his head to taste her satiny warmth. Nipples, gumdrop hard, contracted beneath the rasp of his tongue.

“You mustn’t.” She moaned and shoved him away, despite the sweet scent of her rising need. “It was a very important dress fitting,” she insisted, provoking muffled laughter. “And tomorrow night, a ball.”

Undeterred, single-minded in his desire, he abandoned her bodice while her hands were busy retying laces. Instead, he pursued the hem of her skirt, which raised at his touch as easily as her bodice had come undone. “I would not think you would hold a ball so important when mine do ache for thee.”

“An occasion I cannot miss,” she insisted, batting at her skirt.

“An opportunity not to be missed.” He chuckled throatily, one hand upon her thigh, the other loosening his breeches.