Let Me Be The One (57 page)

Battenburn was regretting his last demand. Clearly he had pushed both men into taking this stand. "Very well," he said easily. "My wife will bring them. Louise? You heard our guests. They want to see the documents."

Sutton and Whittington regarded their host in some confusion. His speech, it seemed, was made to the air. Their attention shifted simultaneously when a panel of bookshelves suddenly separated itself from the wall and swung open into the room. Their alarm was not entirely feigned when they saw who came through the opening.

Northam stepped into the library, his hands held level with his shoulders. Behind him was Louise. She held two vellum sheets in one hand. The other held a primed pistol.

"You will not credit who I discovered in your reading room, my lord," Louise said. She nudged Northam forward with the pistol. "He has heard every bit that I have, I'm afraid. And he did not seem to be overly surprised. I fear we have uncovered a problem we did not foresee. I am convinced they are all in league, Harrison."

"What?" Battenburn's eyes darted between his guests and his wife's prisoner. "In league? How do you mean?"

Louise tossed the documents to the table at her side. "These are fakes," she said."Certainly they were written by our guests, but I am now persuaded that they were engaged to do so. Is that not correct, Lord Sutton?"

"If you say so, my lady," he said easily. "It does clear me of any wrongdoing. I am in favor of that."

The baron regarded Whittington. "Is this true?"

"I am also in favor of redemption," he said. "If you prefer to think of my letter as a fake, then it pleases me."

"They are making light of us," said Louise. "Northam's presence is telling. Elizabeth has betrayed us to him. He could not have found the passage without her aid and he would not be here, not at this time and place, if these two had not informed him of this meeting. We are found out, Harrison. They meant to trap us."

Battenburn put his drink down and picked up the letters. He was certain Louise was right. It was only a question of how to manage an outcome that was to their advantage. He jerked his chin toward Northam but addressed his wife. "Was there any sign that Elizabeth accompanied him?"

"Do not be foolish, Harrison. He would not permit that."

Northam smiled thinly as Battenburn flushed. "I certainly would not."

Harrison said nothing. He opened the middle drawer of his secretary and removed a small pistol. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sutton and Whittington exchange glances. "You must revise your plan to overpower me, my lords, for I assure you, I will not hesitate to shoot." He exchanged pistols with Louise because the one he had was better suited to her small hand. "What is to be done, my dear?"

"We must be rid of the evidence and the witnesses, of course."

"My thoughts also." He walked to the fireplace and tossed both original letters into the flames. "I will get the others. I assume they are also fakes." Battenburn did not have to leave the library to retrieve them. He walked briskly to the bookshelves and chose Schlegel's
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature.
Opening it, he removed the pages that were not bound and tossed them onto the fire also. "That is the evidence," he said, with no concern that anything had been lost. "These three present a slightly different problem."

Northam raised a single brow. "Not so easily thrown in the fire, are we?"

It was Louise who answered. "No, not into the fire, my lord. I have something else in mind. You will proceed." She jabbed him in the small of his back with her pistol. "Through the doors, please."

Northam realized she did not mean for him to go back the way they came, but to head toward the hallway. Battenburn indicated Sutton and Whittington should follow. Louise closed the shelves that led to the reading room and then caught up quickly to her husband.

"Up the steps," she said, pointing to the main staircase.

Northam continued to take the lead. He suspected their direction was the parapet, but he paused dutifully at each crossroads in the hall, waiting for instructions from Louise or Harrison. Could Elizabeth hear them? he wondered.

It was something of a miracle that Louise had not stumbled on her in the passage. North had already moved into the baron's private library, leaving Elizabeth behind in the corridor with orders to stay there, when Louise had come into the small reading room using the same entrance he had. Her approach had been silent, but then he had also been listening to Sutton and Whittington discuss their arrival before the baron met with them. He was impressed that they had gamely accepted the roles the colonel assigned to them. The usually unflappable Earl of Whittington was suitably agitated by the impending interview. Lord Sutton was more at his ease but equally prepared to allow Battenburn the upper hand until they had the documents.

Northam had expected Louise to appear, but not in the way she had. Elizabeth, wherever she had gone, had not been able to warn him of the baroness's approach. Now she could be anywhere in the house and equally uncertain of his whereabouts. She was in possession of his pouch, however. It could offer her some protection if she but looked inside it. What he would do remained a mystery to him. Saving himself would be difficult enough, but he had Sutton and Whittington to think about as well.

A rush of frigid air met them as North pushed open the door to the roof. He stepped out, his chest tightening upon drawing his first deep breath. Behind him, Sutton coughed. Whittington began stamping his feet in an attempt to warm himself. When North glanced back it seemed to him that neither Lord nor Lady Battenburn were affected by the cold. It came from having ice water in their veins, he supposed.

Louise waved her pistol to the left and ahead of the small party, indicating the perimeter of the crenelated wall. "There," she said. "At the battlement."

Northam was of no mind to hurry the journey. "You do not really believe you can succeed in this, Battenburn." His voice was carried on the back of the wind. "More than the three of us know of the letters you took from the ambassador's library."

"I took?" asked Battenburn. "You have mistaken me for your wife. She is the thief, Northam. Not I."

"The documents were already gone when she arrived."

The baron chuckled. "Is that what she told you? It's not so. She put them under her turban and carried them out. A bit of misdirection, I'm afraid." He was watching North closely and saw the slight pause in his step and the stiffening of his shoulders. "What else didn't she tell you?"

Aware he was being goaded, North did not reply. Sutton and Whittington were similarly silent, both of them looking for an opportunity to seize the moment.

"She will have told you about her child, of course," Battenburn went on. "Some explanation for her less than virginal state would have been in order on your wedding night."

It pained Northam that Sutton and Whittington were privy to the baron's discourse. Since he fully intended they should escape unscathed, it meant that Elizabeth's secret would hardly be that any longer. He believed he could rely on their discretion, yet he hurt for Elizabeth.

Louise gave her husband a quelling look. She did not approve of this talk in the least. It was a measure of Battenburn's anger that her silent entreaty went unheeded.

"Turn around," the baron said as Northam reached the crenelation. "All of you." Northam's body filled the space between the stone merlons, making him vulnerable to a frontal charge. Battenburn could envision himself heaving North through the embrasure and then leaning over to watch his body hurtle toward the ground. He would take some pleasure in it, in fact. "But did she tell you everything?" he asked as if there had never been a pause in his thoughts. "Did she tell you about her child's father?"

North's mouth tightened imperceptibly. On either side of him Sutton and Whittington were pressed against the stone battlement. Icy fingers of air tugged on the back of his frock coat. The sensation of pulling and pressure was so real that North almost turned to look behind him. A frisson took hold of his spine and he clamped his teeth together, steadying himself solidly to block the opening in the wall.

"She did tell you," the baron almost crowed. He glanced at his wife. "Did I not say that she would? She told you that pathetic story that Louise helped her concoct. It soothed Elizabeth, I think. She wanted to believe it was true."

"Harrison," Louise remonstrated with him mildly. "This serves no purpose."

"I want him to know." Battenburn's thick hair whipped in the wind, but his jaw remained stubbornly set. "It is a small thing, Louise. Let me have this one small thing." His eyes shifted back to Northam. "I was her lover," he said. "The father of her child. I had her first, Northam. Think about that as you—"

Elizabeth's cry was positively feral as she vaulted through the embrasure and over Northam's shoulders, hurling herself at Battenburn. North pushed Sutton and Whittington broadly to the side, ducking and throwing himself forward as the baron reflexively fired off his pistol. He caught Battenburn just below the knees as Elizabeth's body collided with the baron's chest. They brought him down together. Louise's cry could not quite smother the sound of her husband's skull cracking on the cold stone floor. Northam rolled off Battenburn and made a grab for Louise's ankle as she recovered her wits and began to run for the door. He missed her boot, scrambled to his feet, and gave chase. One thought propelled him forward. If Louise managed to flee to the secret maze of corridors in Battenburn, even Elizabeth might not be able to find her again.

Elizabeth shook off Lord Sutton when he would have helped her to her feet. Her eyes followed the trail of blood from Battenburn's supine body to where Northam was prepared to throw himself at Louise's retreating back.

Her warning shout came a moment too late. Louise turned suddenly, brandishing her weapon. She waved it wildly, not at her pursuer, but in Elizabeth's direction. Northam's vision was clouded by a red haze, part terrible anger, part mind-numbing fear, and part something he did not quite understand, a sense that all was not just as it should be. Not entirely of his own volition, he pitched forward, his outstretched arms grasping the baroness's gown. Caught off balance, Louise stumbled through the open doorway and into the stairwell. A heartbeat later, Northam's momentum propelled him through the same opening.

Elizabeth, Sutton, and Whittington were all running to the door as the pistol fired. The report echoed hollowly in the stone stairwell. Louise's body tumbled down the spiral steps, twisting limply in a flurry of petticoats until it lay still some twenty feet below. Elizabeth caught North by one leg before he snaked and rolled along the same route as Lady Battenburn. Sutton leaped over Northam's body to lend aid to Louise, while Whittington helped Elizabeth get her husband to his feet.

Northam staggered up, leaning heavily on both supports. They were uneven bookends. Elizabeth's shoulders were below his own, while Whittington was taller by several inches. Still, he was grateful for their assistance. He was finally able to identify the thing that was not quite as it should be.

"You are shot, North," Elizabeth said. "Come, rest here. I will stay with you while Lord Whittington finds a—"

From the stairwell they all heard Sutton's robust voice reverberate against the stones. "Her neck is broken. Lady Battenburn is dead!"

Elizabeth had no feelings to spare. She steadied North. "Come. Sit here. You must—" She stopped this time because her husband was paying not the least attention to her.

"Where is he?" he demanded.

Elizabeth followed the direction of his gaze to where the baron had been lying. A smear of blood marked the spot where his head had hit the floor. The drops beyond it, though, were from North's wound and led directly to where they stood. There were no such markings to identify the path of the baron's escape.

A feeling that was akin to dread, though not nearly so powerful or compelling, made Elizabeth's eyes lift to the same opening in the battlement that she had climbed through. She glanced at Northam and saw that he was of a like mind. Knowing she could not hold him back, she chose to assist him instead. Whittington helped her get him to the wall. By the time they reached it, Lord Sutton had joined them.

Like knights of old they lined up between the stone merlons. Instead of tipping cauldrons of boiling tar over the lip, they leaned forward through the low intervals and stared down.

Below them, ignominiously sprawled on the frozen ground, lay Harrison Edmunds, the last Baron of Battenburn.

Epilogue