Lady Rogue (29 page)

“Please don’t go,” she said, stepping forward and wrapping her arms about his waist.

He enfolded her in his arms. “I have to,” he murmured into her hair, surprised that she had accepted the news that he was going after her father’s shipment so calmly. “Go get dressed. Gerald will take you home with him.”

Alex felt her ragged intake of breath, and then her nod against his shoulder.

Afraid she would bolt, he sent Mrs. Hodges in with her while she changed. Then he hurriedly shaved and dressed. With typical efficiency, Antoine had packed Alex’s saddlebags for him by the time he was ready to head downstairs. Kit was standing in the hallway there, Gerald beside her.

He took her hand and pulled her into the morning room. “I’ll be back soon, chit,” he said, “so behave yourself.”

She pulled his face down to kiss him ferociously. “Be careful,” she murmured, running a trembling finger down his chest and hooking it through the buttonhole of his waistcoat.

He touched his finger to the skin of her cheek. “I will,” he said softly, studying her face and fearing that she would never look at him that way again. Once he spoke to Furth about her, it was entirely possible that the next time he set eyes on her, she would hate him. Finally he pulled free of her grip and turned for the door.

“Alex,
je t’aime
,” she whispered at his back. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

He stopped short as the quiet words resounded through him like thunder, wrenching something hard and painful loose in his chest. “Yes,” he said gruffly. She loved him. It was either a last effort to stop him from going, or she was telling the truth. If he turned around to look at Christine Brantley again, he would never be able to leave. Stiffly he made himself start walking again.

“Take care of her,” he rasped at Gerald, who had enough sense to keep his mouth shut. Without waiting for an answer, he left Cale House for the stables, and a hard ride north.

Christine wondered when precisely it had happened. A handful of days ago she had hated all Englishmen, and one in particular, though she didn’t yet know his identity. And suddenly she was ready to do anything to
make certain that same English lord came through this safely. Her shift in loyalties made no sense. Her father would tell her she was a fool to risk her livelihood, and very likely her life, for someone like the Earl of Everton. He was everything she was supposed to detest; a blue-blooded rake who could ruin her, and worse, in a heartbeat.

With Alex storming off somewhere after her father, she should be hurt, and furious, and seeking revenge. Her mind was so muddled where they were concerned, though, that to keep from going mad she deliberately turned her attention elsewhere with the rather weak excuse that eventually everything would sort itself out. If she knew anything about either of them, Alexander Cale and Stewart Brantley could take care of themselves. At least when they knew what they were facing. Fouché, Bonaparte, and one another.

What worried her, though, was that there was something else. Something Alex apparently knew nothing about, and wanted to know nothing about. Someone had suggested that Fouché try to kill Reg Hanshaw, or perhaps even the Earl of Everton. And Augustus Devlin was meeting people in alleys in secret in the middle of the night.

The Downings kept a close eye on her all day, undoubtedly having taken to heart Alex’s suggestion—
hah
, threat—to keep a close eye on her. And so she made a show of moping about glumly until she’d worn them to a frazzle, then suggested that they might all attend Mercia Cralling’s recital as a way to cheer themselves up. The speed with which Everton’s cousins agreed to the suggestion would have been amusing if she hadn’t been so concerned with where in damnation Alex was, and whether Augustus and whomever the viscount was in contact with knew he had gone.

Several times during Mercia’s recital she heard people mention Lady Masquerade, and whether anyone had figured out who she was. She could wonder that herself. It was becoming difficult even for her, remembering that she was supposed to be a boy and acting accordingly,
so she could only imagine how Alex was coping with it. She wished he would tell her. She wished he would stop shutting her out from himself, and let her know how he truly felt about her, whether he felt anything close to what she felt for him.

And she was going to have to decide what, exactly, she was going to tell Stewart Brantley when he reappeared.

A relieved round of applause began around her, and Kit blinked and swiftly joined in. Mercia stood up at the pianoforte and curtsied, and her mother trundled forward to congratulate her while the guests stood to stretch cramped legs and head for the refreshment tables.

“May we go now?” Gerald queried in his wife’s ear, and she elbowed him in the ribs.

“Not yet,” she answered with good-humored exasperation. “Unless you’d rather wander about the house keeping an eye on our guest.”

Kit stifled a guilty frown. They’d done nothing but show kindness and concern for her, and she was about to cause them a fair measure of trouble. She glanced about the room, hoping her quarry might be in attendance so she wouldn’t have to search Mayfair for him in the dark.

Gerald sighed and looked about, then straightened with a grin. “There’s Hanshaw. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Please,” Ivy agreed, waving him away. “Men,” she muttered to Kit, who raised an eyebrow, attempting to play along.

“Beg pardon, cousin?” she asked innocently, tugging at her waistcoat.

“Oh, not you, of course, Kit,” Ivy returned with a self-conscious smile.

Thankfully Deborah Glover waylaid Ivy, and Kit was able to make her excuses and head for the refreshment tables, with the intention of walking straight past and out the door to find Viscount Devlin. She glanced back at Ivy to see her looking in her direction, and with a silent curse at Alex for making such effective threats,
she paused to sample one of the ham biscuits.

They were quite good, and she was helping herself to a second one when a gloved hand slid down her shoulder to her elbow, and curled around her arm. For a moment she thought it must be Mercia, and shrugged off her nervous impatience enough to turn and smile at the girl. The eyes that looked back at her, though, were far less innocent than Miss Cralling’s, and rather than being a porcelain blue, were black as a raven’s wing.

“Lady Sinclair.” She grinned, trying not to choke on her biscuit, while her mind roiled to sort out a whole new set of complications she hadn’t been prepared for. Not tonight. And not with Alexander Cale’s mistress. Former mistress. “Ham biscuit, my lady?”

“Don’t think you’re fooling me,” Barbara purred. “I know exactly what you are, you harlot.”

As her father always said, when trapped, attack. “About deuced time you figured it out. What took you so long?” she mumbled around her mouthful, and lifted a glass of port from a nearby footman’s tray.

For a moment Lady Sinclair just looked at her, her mouth open to make a response she could no longer use. “And what do you have to say?” she finally murmured.

Kit raised an eyebrow and swallowed the biscuit. “Seems the price of barley’s going up this year,” she suggested, smiling again.

Barbara kept her arm tightly gripped, which would make any escape attempt into a wrestling match. “I wouldn’t be so smug if I were you. I could flat ruin you in two seconds.”

“And I could set you on the floor in half that time,” Kit responded promptly. “I’m a sterling boxer, you know.”

Another hesitation followed, and Kit reflected that Barbara Sinclair was likely not used to being threatened with physical violence. “I don’t care what you are,” her ruby lips returned. “I only care that you leave London. Immediately.”

Considering that was exactly what she should be do
ing, Christine found herself less than pleased at the suggestion. “Or?” she prompted.

“Or everyone will know you’re Everton’s whore,” Barbara spat.

“Odd accusation for you to be making, Barbara,” a male voice drawled from behind them. Augustus Devlin draped an arm over each of their shoulders and leaned forward between them. “Pot calling the kettle black and all that rot, you know.”

“Get away from me, you sot,” Lady Sinclair snapped.

“And you stay away from Everton,” Kit warned in the same tone, then smiled. “Remember, if everyone knows about me, there’s no reason he should marry you.”

“And you’re a greater fool than I, if you think he’ll marry
you
,” Barbara murmured. “Where did he find you anyway, Covent Garden? Do you make him buy you things before you let him between your legs?” She looked Christine up and down. “Tall thing like you, what are you worth, a shilling a go?”

Augustus chuckled. “More than what you’d earn humping knights and esquires on Regent Street, Barbara.” He leaned closer to Lady Sinclair. “Leave off the girl, which, or I’ll have to begin spreading tales about your fondness for the shepherd-and-the-lost-sheep game, shan’t I, now.”

Barbara pulled free of his grip, her face white. “You’ll never have him,” she whispered fiercely at Kit. “I’ll see you gone and his band on my finger by the end of the Season.”

Augustus smiled. “Baa, baa.” When Lady Sinclair turned her back on them and stormed from the room, he turned his gaze on Kit. “Best watch her,” he commented, reaching past her for a sweet tart. “Not much for witty repartee, but some say she put a candlestick to the back of her late husband’s skull, the night she found him playing lost sheep with the upstairs maid.”

Kit stood looking at him. He’d had the appearance of a specter before, but now his flesh had acquired an al
abaster, paper-thin look to it, as if he might simply tear into small pieces and drift away in the next breeze. “I appreciate the warning,” she returned, wondering whether Fouché had suggested the viscount keep an eye on her, or if the meeting had been a coincidence. It saved her the trouble of tracking him down, but neither was she ready to confront him about his loyalties at Mercia Cralling’s recital.

“Not at all, Kit.” He paused, lowering the tart. “What is your name, by the by?”

There had been little doubt that he knew, but it was still jarring to hear the question. “Christine,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “You were stunning at the ball the other night.”

“Thank you.”

“I can see why Alex has kept you to himself.”

He was far more dangerous than Barbara Sinclair, Kit sensed, because he had far less to lose. Augustus Devlin was dying, with no family, and no heirs to speak of. If it suited him to do so, he would bandy her tale throughout London. If he knew enough about her, he could effectively ruin Alex’s reputation in the political arena, even get him arrested for harboring her under the noses of the
ton
. “It was necessary,” she answered in a low voice.

“How much would you pay someone else to keep your secret, I wonder?” he continued, looking her slowly up and down. In the face of his sharp gaze, she realized that for once he was completely sober. “Or secrets, should I say? Would you lift your heels for me, Christine?”

“I’ll tell Alex what you are, is what I’ll do,” she murmured, furious and uneasy.

“He’ll never believe you.” Slowly he shook his head, his eyes holding hers. “You have no proof of anything, my dear. And a ramshackle girl like yourself, lovely as you may be, would hardly be the one to convince anyone else.”

“But why do you hate Alex?” she whispered. She’d
been the one raised to hate the English; he’d been raised as one of their elite.

“That’s personal,” he returned softly.

“I won’t let you hurt him,” she retorted fiercely.

“Such loyalty,” he approved with a cynical smile. “But you’d be much wiser to simply stay out of it. And much safer.” The gray specter’s eyes held hers for another moment, then he slowly reached out and briefly touched her cheek with cool fingers. “Do tell Everton to make you come once, for me,” Lord Devlin murmured. “If he has another chance.”

“Go to hell,” she said flatly, and turned on her heel, not wanting him to see that she was afraid for Alex.

For a long moment he stood looking after her, his expression unreadable, then gestured at the footman to bring him a brandy. A large one.

S
uffolk was cold and wet, and Alex was grateful for it. The poor weather and the bad roads kept his mind from wandering. Hanton McAndrews left word for them at several posts along the way, and from their brevity it was obvious that the Scot was moving fast to keep up with the smugglers. Yet neither the knowledge that time was short, nor that a very serious task lay ahead, was enough to keep Alex’s thoughts from flying back to London—to Kit—every time he and Samuels stopped to rest the horses and ask for news.

Kit had accepted the fact that he was going after her father with a surprising degree of restraint. Undoubtedly she expected that Stewart Brantley would be able to elude him, as he had done in the past. Alex had no intention of turning his back so completely on his duty, however, whatever he might secretly wish. And when he did catch their smuggler, he would lose Kit. And that was what haunted him.

A day later and three miles from the sea, Alex and Samuels caught up to Hanton and the crates of weapons he was trailing. Despite his best efforts, Alex still had no idea whether Stewart Brantley had returned from Calais to personally escort the muskets.

“Ye ready, m’lord?” Hanton inquired, crouching down with him among the gray, weather-worn rocks where they’d been waiting for the past three hours to finally move against their quarry.

Alex rested his chin on his arm and looked down at the smugglers in the cove below. The boat had put in a little over an hour ago, but the men appeared to be in no hurry to load the crates. It made sense. There was still some time before the tide turned, and heavy, dark clouds were rumbling in from the northeast. In all likelihood they would wait for the first tide of the morning before they crossed the length of the Channel to Calais.

“May as well,” he muttered, sliding back away from the crest of the hill.

“Ye sound like you’re plannin’ a funeral, m’lord,” Hanton commented in his thick Scots brogue, his breath clouding in the cold air.

“It feels like it,” Alex admitted darkly, climbing to his feet and brushing at his breeches.

“Ye used t’enjoy this part, as I recall,” Hanton continued, following him back down the hill toward James Samuels and their waiting horses. “Ye’d be riding down on ’em like Lucifer himself, firing your pistols and bellowin’.”

“Yes, well, I’m much older and wiser now,” the earl retorted, grabbing his reins and swinging up into the saddle.

“Your da used t’hate those damned meetings, too, ye know,” Hanton said, mounting beside him. “Used t’say how much he envied that ye could go out and do something ’sides sit on yer arse and talk. Like ye have to do now, I mean.”

“You still play the bagpipes, Hanton?” Alex returned, kneeing Tybalt into a canter.

“Aye, m’lord. Why d’ye ask?”

“You have the wind for it. That’s for damned certain.”

On his other side Samuels gave a short laugh. “He’s got wind enough to play one under each arm.”

“Shut up, ye damned English,” Hanton retorted. “Should never’ve let me one daughter marry ye.”

The earl smiled at the exchange. It had been a year since he had last seen Hanton McAndrews, and better than three since he had last ridden with the Scot. Back
then, the French had been raiding the coast and “confiscating” British goods, under Napoleon’s so-called Decree of Fontainebleau. Prince George had assigned Furth, Hanshaw, and the Cales to put a stop to it. After his father’s death, Alex had listened to Gerald and had stayed in London, to keep his precious Cale blood from being spilled in something as mundane as service to his country. Despite his frustration at not being able to take direct action, he had played politics, become bored, and played at being a rakehell again. It had taken Christine Brantley to drive him back out into the cold wet. And as he kicked Tybalt into a gallop to charge down into the cove, he was loving every minute of it.

Almost as much as he loved the spy waiting for him back in London. Alex took a ragged breath, surprised he had let himself admit to it, and surprised he had lasted for as long as he had without doing so.

A shot cracked sharply in the rocks around them as the smugglers spotted them, and Hanton shouldered his gelding into Alex’s black. “Keep your bloody head down, yer lordship!” he bellowed, firing a return round.

Alex shook himself, and motioned for Samuels and the two men pounding behind him to take the lead. While Hanton and his crew rode around the back of the cove to flank any escape attempt to the west or north, Alex and his men turned sharply east along the water to cut the smugglers off from the boat and the Channel as they bolted toward the sea.

“Stop right there!” he bellowed, pulling Tybalt up so short that they both nearly went down. He yanked his pistol free of his belt and pointed it at the head of the nearest man, while his associates moved to flank him on either side. At the sight of the weapons, the smugglers stopped and dropped their own arms.

“Got ’em, m’lord!” Hanton’s brogue came from the direction of the wagons. “Thirty crates, at least!”

Alex gave a short, relieved grin. They’d been in time. English soldiers weren’t going to die because he’d been a fool. “All right,” he said, urging Tybalt forward a few steps, “whom do these wagons belong to?”

No one stepped forward, though in truth he hadn’t expected anyone to do so. Hanton McAndrews made his way over beside him to hold Tybalt’s head while Alex dismounted. “No volunteers, eh?” the Scotsman scoffed.

“Doesn’t appear that way,” he replied. “I suppose they’d rather talk to the jailers in Old Bailey.” He pursed his lips for show, though real anger coursed through him at the thought of what would have happened if Hanton had been slower in tracking down the muskets. “Or better yet, Mr. Samuels, why don’t you bring us some rope?”

That produced an unsettled grumbling. A moment later, a gray-haired man with a round gut and bad teeth, whom he’d already pegged as the group’s leader, spat onto the rocks at his feet and slouched forward sullenly. “Will Debner,” he grunted in a thick Yorkshire accent. “They ain’t my wagons.”

Alex nodded. “Good afternoon, Mr. Debner. Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

With Samuels watching the others and Hanton trailing a few steps behind them, they clambered over the rough rocks around the point. Once they were out of sight and earshot, Alex turned around again. “Tell me how you came to acquire those weapons,” he said, grateful for his caped greatcoat. Out of the protection of the cove, the storm winds gusted hard and wet from the north.

Debner spat again and folded his arms. “And what do I get, then?”

“How about we don’t string ye up right here, ye bloody traitor?” Hanton snarled.

The earl raised a hand, and the Scotsman subsided. “I can put in a word to keep you from hanging.”

“For pulling some damned crates about?” the smuggler returned, his deep-set eyes shifting warily between Alex and the Scot.

“For smuggling weapons to the enemy during wartime,” Alex corrected succinctly. “That’s treason. Punishable by death.” He stepped forward and shoved Debner hard into a boulder, wondering if he was going
to have to say those same words to Kit. “Where did you get the muskets?”

The smuggler rubbed at his chest. “You’ll keep me alive, yer lordship?”

“I’ll not let them hang you,” Alex corrected, wondering if the man understood the distinction. Even with a handful of supposedly more humane ordinances in place, there was still a wide variety of ways to put a criminal to death.

Debner scowled, narrowed his eyes, and shifted his feet on the stones. “I know a gentleman, in France. An ex-English blue blood, he is.”

“His name?” Alex insisted, hoping the smuggler couldn’t read his expression.

“Brantley, he calls himself. Stewart Brantley. He sent word that I was to go to York, and those wagons would be waiting for me in an old barn. And they were. And here I am. Hardly worth a hangin’ at all, wouldn’t you say?”

Alex ignored the appeal. “Once you loaded them on the boat, where were the crates to go?”

He felt rather than saw Hanton holding his breath. This was the critical question. Because they’d seized the crates before they left English soil, no real crime but theft had been committed. Unless they got an admission of one.

“Brantley was t’meet us in Calais ’n a few days. We started for the coast early because of the damned foul weather.”

The earl glanced at Hanton, who nodded. He started forward to lead the smuggler back to the others, but Alex put an arm across his barrel chest and stopped him.

“You’ve worked with this Brantley before, I assume?” Alex continued, every part of him wishing not to. But he had to know.

“Aye,” Debner admitted, squinting his good eye. “But I ain’t confessing to nothing you don’t already know about.”

“Quite right.” Alex nodded, keeping his frustration hidden behind a neutral expression and clenched fists.
“I was wondering, though, if you’ve had dealings with any other English, ah, blue bloods.”

The smuggler spat again. “And what’ll this get me?”

“The best I can manage for you,” Alex snarled, what remained of his patience seeping away in cold and agonizing uncertainty. Hanton was alert beside him, obviously curious at the questions. “Which is a great deal. Answer the damned question.”

“Aye. Skinny, light-haired fellow. Sharp, ’e was, and pretty in that blue-blood way o’ yours. Ain’t seen ’im for maybe a year, though.”

Alex’s mouth was so dry, he had to swallow before he could speak. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

With a slow breath, he turned around to face the sea. Without a word Hanton marched past him and shoved Will Debner back in the direction of the cove. Alex heard them leave, but didn’t turn. For a long time he stood looking out at the rough, wind-scalloped waters of the Channel. France was there, out of sight behind a wall of clouds to the south, Belgium and Wellington slightly farther east. And Napoleon Bonaparte was somewhere between the two.

He felt somewhere between the two himself. He’d known already that Kit had been involved with her father’s small-coin smuggling, and he didn’t really care much about that. Napoleon had been on Elba then, and hungry people would be fed, one way or another. It was the guns that concerned him. Debner’s not seeing the skinny, pretty blond boy for a year didn’t mean that she hadn’t been involved. Or it might. Alex grimaced and ran a hand through his windblown hair. Enough was enough. He’d played the game against too many opponents who were supposed to be his allies, and it was time he let at least one of them in on what was happening.

“It’ll be dark soon, m’lord,” Hanton said from behind him, and Alex nodded.

“Everyone ready to go?” he asked without turning around.

“Aye. Everybody wrapped up nice and tight for ’Is
Majesty.” The Scot stood silently on the rocks for a moment. “This skinny boy. Ye know him,” he stated finally.

“I do.” He sighed and turned around. “You’d best get the crates and horses to shelter before the storm breaks, and then head south in the morning.”

“And you, Master Alex?”

“I’m headed back to London tonight.”

Christine squatted down in the bushes along the main path at Vauxhall Gardens and waited. The ground was damp and cold, and with the fog having rolled in, the leaves and twigs pricking into her arms were already picking up a share of nightly dew. Ivy and Gerald would be furious if they discovered her absence, but then if they wanted to keep her inside, they shouldn’t have given her a room with a window and a convenient rose trellis outside. In fact, she had planned to return before now, in case Gerald decided to try to cheer her up with a game of billiards as he had done last evening. And she
would
have been back at Downing House already if Reg Hanshaw had bothered to be home when she went calling. But he hadn’t been, and this was the direction his stuffy butler had given, and so she waited.

Prowling about Vauxhall might have been more productive, except that her loathsome uncle was still in London, and Reg was just as likely to be in the company of the entire damned Brantley clan as to be alone with Caroline. In truth, hating Caroline was somewhat more difficult than she had expected. Resolving her feelings toward her cousin, however, was not her reason for hiding in the bushes. She wasn’t exactly certain why she was there, for presumably if Augustus Devlin was working with Fouché and she was working with Stewart Brantley, they were on the same side. Except that Fouché would kill the Earl of Everton if he could arrange it, and she would do anything,
anything
, to keep that from happening.

Finally, while strolling about the fountains in the
company of Lord Bandwyth and after nearly having her hand stepped on by Lady Julia Penston, she spied Reg over by the gazebo. Caroline was with him, but so were Mercia Cralling, Celeste Montgomery, Francis Henning, and Lord Andrew Grambush. Kit took a moment to wonder when Mercia had begun seeing Grambush behind her back, then shook herself, rose, brushed off her coat, and strolled over to greet them.

“Kit.” Reg grinned, stepping forward as he spied her approaching. “Thought you’d be back in Ireland by now.” He put out his hand, and Kit shook it.

He was genuinely pleased to see her. Alex then really had told him nothing about her. “Father was delayed. I’ll be going in a day or two.”

“I do wish you could persuade him to let you stay the remainder of the Season, Mr. Riley,” Caroline cajoled with an enchanting smile.

Kit smiled back at her a bit absently, and returned her attention to Reg. “Might I have a word with you?” she requested, trying to make the query meaningful to him, but innocent to everyone else in the party.

The baron looked at her speculatively for a moment, then nodded. “Grambush, do buy the ladies some ices,” he suggested. “Kit and I will be along in a bit.”

Grambush offered an arm each to Mercia and Caroline, while Francis and Miss Montgomery fell in behind. “Take your time, gentlemen.”

When the rest of the party had made their way down the path, Reg turned to look at her. “If you’re wondering where Everton’s gone, I can’t—”

“No, no,” she cut him off, shaking her head. “I know it’s secret state’s business and all that rot. What I want to know is, does Augustus know where he’s gone?”