Linda Needham (16 page)

“It may be only a wild goose chase, Wyatt,” Drew said, handing the tintype to the agent, “but I need you and Nick to leave for Antwerp immediately, track down the photographer and identify the man in the photo.”

“And the date it was taken,” Wyatt said, tucking the daguerreotype into an envelope, then into his coat pocket with a pat.

“And the reason it was taken, if you can, Mr. Wyatt,” Caro added, with a gracious smile to the two men, who were already gathering their belongings. “After all, there may have been a set of photos taken at the same time.”

Wyatt gave her another gushing bow, with Nicholas adding, “With your safety uppermost in our hearts, Princess Caroline.”

“Stay under cover, gentlemen.” Drew spoke this last instruction as the two men went speeding off on their mission to save the princess.

The woman seemed to collect loyal subjects by the bushel, without lifting a finger.

“What else did you gentlemen learn at the scene of the ambush?” She turned to the three other men in the room, lighting their stern faces with her smile. “How long had the man been waiting?”

“Perhaps I can answer that, Princess Caroline,” Halladay said as he strode through the doorway with Tucker and Knox on his heels. He handed his im
proved diagram to Drew. “Long enough to have eaten every crumb of the lunch he’d brought along in that tin box.”

Knox joined her at the table and pointed to the small pouch of shredded tobacco. “He’d smoked at least four bowls of excellently rich tobacco.”

“And, Your Highness,” Casserly said, never to be outdone by one of his fellow agents, “our man had downed three pints of Guinness, bottled by Woodward, Nash and Ingersoll, brewers to the queen.”

According to Halladay’s diagram, he’d also spat tobacco like a camel and pissed a half dozen times, but Drew decided that the princess didn’t need to hear that sort of detail.

She had already picked up the folded copy of the
Times
. “It’s dated yesterday.” Her brows were deeply winged when she looked up at him. “But if he had a newspaper with him, it means he was a literate man.”

“Right.”

“Educated, at least enough to read English.”

“Exactly.”

Hell, if she wasn’t already a busy princess, he’d hire her on at the Factory. Though he had already gleaned all there was to learn from the evidence spread out in front of her, he was thoroughly enjoying listening to her logic.

“He was alone, wasn’t he?” she asked, “otherwise he wouldn’t have needed the newspaper.”

“He was completely alone,” Halladay said.

“Which is the mark of a professional assassin,” Drew added. “As is carrying no papers or any other personal item that might identify him should he be captured.”

“Then that must make the daguerreotype twice as significant, my lord. Because he took quite a chance carrying it in his pocket. It must have meant a great deal to him—or he was a complete amateur, after all.”

Exactly the reason Drew had just sent two agents to Antwerp in such a blazing hurry.

“Suffice it to say, Princess,” Drew said, “the man had been lying in wait for your carriage for a few hours.”

“But how did he know we would take that road yesterday? It’s not the main route to Grandauer Hall.” She raised her startled gaze to him. “You don’t think someone is watching the house?”

“More likely someone knows your schedule to the minute.”

“Dear God, how? Oh, wait!” She pointed toward the door. “I keep my calendar on my desk in the library, which was broken into and—”

“You
kept
your calendar on your desk, Princess.” He patted his coat pocket. “I’ve got it now. Which brings us to your new loyal subjects.”

“Oh, and what about them?” she said with a snappish snort, as immediately defensive as he had anticipated.

“Davidson, please explain to the princess what you and Grant discovered in just an hour’s investigation.” Drew settled into a chair, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

The princess stood above him, her fists on her hips. “You couldn’t have found anything, Wexford.”

“Tell her what you discovered, Davidson.”

The big man demurred, shrugged his beefy shoul
ders as he flipped through his notepad. “Well, there’s not too much to tell, Your Highness.”

She fixed her glare at Drew as she said, “I didn’t think so.”

“It’s just that I followed the carriage to their lodgings in a disreputable tavern near Holborn Bridge, where I found them to be in possession of a great deal of money.”

The princess looked between Drew and Davidson. “How do you know this about them?”

Davidson’s brow dipped. “Because I saw for myself, Your Highness.”

“Do you mean that these men walked into the tavern, opened up a strongbox and spread their money all over the table for everyone to see?”

“Well, no, Your Highness. I…” Davidson shifted his weight and cast a wary look at Drew. “The money was in the room they shared.”

She turned the full force of her blue-eyed inquiry on poor Davidson. “So, they invited you to their room to show off their cache of gold?”

“Bank notes and coin, actually, Your Highness. But I was alone in their room at the time.” The usually unyielding man was nearly quaking under the princess’s quiet anger. “The owner of the inn was happy enough to let me in after I’d crossed his palm with a suitable reward.”

“You bribed the innkeeper and then searched their room without their permission, without
mine
?”

“But he had
my
permission, Princess,” Drew said, rising from the chair. “I’ll take the blame for any sleight against your sovereignty. The point is that
these relatively simple men are traveling with a huge amount of money.”

“They’re exiles, Wexford, about to return to their homeland! It’s probably all the money they have in the world.”

“But it’s also enough money for them to fund a clever plan to assassinate you.”

“Is it now?” She straightened to her most rigidly royal posture. “May I see you privately, Lord Wexford?” She turned on her heel and glided out of the room into the foyer, where she whirled on him and took him by the lapels to whisper at him.

“I won’t have you persecuting my subjects, Drew. This is completely unnecessary.”

“It might well be, Princess, but until I know the source and the intended use of those funds, your Mr. Brendel and his friends will remain under my scrutiny.”

“You can scrutinize them all you want, but you’ll keep in mind that, as my subjects, they are under
my
protection. I insist you bring your suspicions to me before you act upon them.” She sniffed at him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have my own investigation to begin.”

Her
own
bloody investigation? “Where?”

“If you must know, I’m going upstairs to get my logbook and the chart of my family tree. After that, I’ll be in the library. Unless you object. Do you?”

“As long as you stay within the house, Princess.”

“Thank you,” she said with a regal toss of her head.

Caro could feel Wexford’s arrogant gaze following her all the way up the stairs.

Though his gaze was hardly an uncomfortable thing. It was sultry and seeking and always seemed to make her heart stutter in her chest.

But it did make it difficult for her to think.

And she really had to start thinking quickly if she was going to make it through this horrible mess without any more bloodshed.

I
t took Caro a good fifteen minutes to refold her family tree and pack it into its leather case, even though she was only going to unfold it again as soon as she got it back down to the library.

She was met at the bottom of the foyer stairs by Mr. Runson, striding toward her from the front gallery. Though his formal butler’s suit was perfectly pressed and fit to his hugeness, the poor man looked as uncomfortable as an impatient cat trapped inside a drainpipe.

“Good morning, Princess Caroline. Since his lordship left the house for a moment with his agents—”

“Left the house?” How silly to feel left alone. “Did he say why?”

“Something about inspecting the ambush site for himself. In any case, I thought you needed to know that there’s a small caravan coming down the drive toward the house. Are you expecting anything like that today?”

A small caravan? “I don’t recall arranging to meet with anyone here at the house today.” But with all that had happened in the last few days, she could easily have forgotten.

“They must not have come through the main gate, else Lawson would have sent word. I’d best send them away, Your Highness.” Runson took off for the front door.

Certain the mistake was hers, Caro ran past him and made it there first. “Let’s look and see who it is, Runson. I’d hate to turn away someone who’s come all this way to see me, just because I forgot.”

Reminded suddenly of Drew’s many warnings and the terrifying ambush and the bullet that hit poor Henry, Caro carefully pulled aside a corner of the lacy curtain at the side window and peered out at the drive-up.

The sky had clouded up in the last half hour and now a soft, misty rain was falling on the soggy hatted driver of the canvas-topped wagon making the curve, and the two carriages behind him.

Two carriages?

“Do they look familiar to you, Your Highness?” Runson asked from his perch at the other side window.

“Not offhand, Runson, but I wonder if the wagon is bringing items for the exhibition?” An absurd thought; she’d had to fight and steal and beg for the Boratanian items that she had stored away. Very little had been just handed to her on a silver platter.

“I’ll go ask, Your Highness.”

“No wait!” The driver of the wagon looked up toward the window as it came abreast of the wide steps. “Why, it’s Karl Brendel!”

Her subjects! Caro threw open the door and shot outside into the drizzle to the sound of Runson bellowing after her, to him following her down the steps toward the wagons.

“Come back inside, Your Highness!”

“Dear Mr. Brendel! Hello and welcome!” She met the man as he lumbered down from the driver’s seat. “I had so hoped you would come stay with us!”

“Your pardon, Princess Caroline.” Brendel dipped into a deep bow, the rain pouring off his hat brim onto his boot. “It just took us a while longer to gather everyone together.”

Caro took his hand and raised him. “But you’re here and that’s what counts. Along with all your worldly possessions, from the looks of this caravan.”

“With your kindest permission, Your Highness.” Brendel bowed again.

The two other vehicles had stopped and now the carriage door flew open, disgorging four children, who took off as a squealing pack, running out into the knot garden in the center of the circular drive-up.

“Who are they, Brendel?” Caro had never seen so much energy in one place. Two boys, two girls, skipping along the white gravel paths, leaping over the short boxwood hedges.

“The children belong to us, Your Highness.” He looked fondly out onto the madness, then gestured behind her, back toward the other vehicles.

“Us?” Had the man been recruiting subjects for her off the streets of London?

“I hope you don’t mind, Princess. We’ve a few extras among us. Children, grandchildren, my wife and Wilhelm’s wife. Couldn’t very well leave them behind at the tavern.”

“Of course not!” More than just a few loyal subjects—whole families of them to take with her back to Boratania!

Brendel smiled as an older woman stepped out of the first carriage and started after the children. “And there’s my wife, Dorothea, right now.”

“Robert Frederick,” the woman shouted with an amazingly loud voice, “you come back here right this minute! Get away from that fountain!”

“The boy in the gray cap is our grandson,” Brendel continued, rolling his eyes as the lad slipped out of his grandmother’s reach. “He’s eight.”

“Grandfather, look!” the boy shouted, standing on the edge of the pool. “Little orange-and-white fishes swimming around in here!”

“If you’ll excuse me, Your Highness. Frederick, you heard your grandmother!” Brendel hurried off after the boy and the other children, who must have all been cooped up in the carriage for hours on end.

By now an amazing mob of people was emerging from the two carriages: at least six more than yesterday’s delegation, and her drive-up was beginning to look like a train station.

Twelve, all totaled! More subjects than she could ever have hoped for!

Drew wasn’t going to like this at all.

“Dear Princess Caroline!” Johannes was hobbling quickly toward her through the misting rain. “I do hope we haven’t come at an inconvenient time for you!”

“On the contrary, Johannes.” Caroline caught his hand as he tried to drop into a bow, wanting to ask him directly about his odd statement but knowing that Drew was right about not questioning the elder
ly man’s memory. “I’m thoroughly delighted to see so many of you.”

In fact, she was delighted to the marrow. And prayed that neither Johannes nor any of the others would ever learn that they’d caught her completely by surprise with the size of their group.

“The children will settle right down in a few minutes,” he said, his eyes worried. “It’s just that they haven’t seen such wide-open spaces for a good many months.”

“I’m so glad to have them. Now let’s get everyone inside out of the rain.”

She sent the wagon around the back to be unloaded into the conservatory, then led the rest of her drenched entourage into the foyer with their loose baggage.

“Please make yourself comfortable, everyone,” she said over the din of whispering and shuffling footsteps.

Then she turned to Runson, who’d been shadowing her since she’d gone outside to meet the caravan. “Take my guests out to the conservatory for the moment. We’ll need to open at least eight rooms in the east wing, and see that they have a midday meal in the dining room.”

Runson raised a thick, suspicious eyebrow over the heads of the milling crowd and whispered, “If you don’t mind me speaking my mind, Your Highness, his lordship isn’t going to like this one little bit.”

“I expect he’ll raise the roof, Mr. Runson,” Caro whispered back, “but as you can see, I don’t have time to coddle the man’s temper. You can tell him that—”

Runson was now looking past her toward the
doorway they’d just entered through. “You’re just in time to be telling him yourself, Your Highness.”

“Ah, there you are, Lord Wexford,” she said, grabbing a stout breath of courage before turning toward the doorway. “Our guests have arrived.”

“May I see you in the library, Princess?” He didn’t look at her, didn’t even stop long enough to wait for her reply; he just kept walking down the gallery toward the library.

She had half a mind not to follow him, but she didn’t want him returning to the foyer and frightening her subjects. They were already enough on edge.

“Are you leading public tours of your home now, Princess?” Drew was standing in the center of the room, his boots planted hard against the thick carpet.

“You know very well who those people are: my subjects. You knew they were coming.” She closed the library door to shield the guests from the argument that was doubtless about to explode between them.

“And they have conveniently multiplied like rabbits.”

“They’re called families.”

“They can’t stay.” He came toward her, stopping just a few feet from her. “We haven’t finished collecting information about them.”

“How long would that take?”

“A week, two at the most.”

“After the exhibition opens and after my coronation? What would be the point? It won’t matter one way or the other. I suggest a compromise, sir.”

Drew had never seen her eyes quite so brightly blue, sparkling with unfeigned resolve, her dangerous devotion to her providential subjects.

And now this even more dangerous talk of compromise.

And the sobering sight he’d caught, of Johannes standing in the foyer, exclaiming to Wilhelm over a caseclock with the Grostov family crest carved into the oak door.

An innocent enough act, except that they doubtless knew too much.

He’d left her alone for only a few minutes, trusting that he would receive word of their approach in time to turn them away. But the misfit group had apparently gotten lost and had picked their way through the woods. Blackburn had been about to warn them off with a shot when he’d seen Caro run out and greet them.

Yesterday it hadn’t mattered that she’d opened her home to them, but this morning had changed all that.

He couldn’t have her pressing Johannes for an answer until he knew for himself what the answer might be. Her curiosity would only lead her to heartache. And the only thing he could do to stop it was to deflect her interest.

“What sort of compromise, Caro?”

She had been watching him with a cocked hip and a rebellious eye. “I will give you leave to investigate my subjects as you please, sir.”

“Will you, now?”

“Their entire families, as well.” She tapped his chest with her fingertip. “Respectfully.”

“I’m always respectful.”

“And take extra care with little Robert Frederick. He looks dangerous to me.”

They were safely back in the realm of dodge and parry. “And in the meantime, Princess?”

“They stay here.”

“In the stables.”

“They are not livestock!” She harrumphed at him and then started toward the library door. “They’re staying in the hall, in the east wing, where they can have a bit of privacy and the children can play as they please. Surely you can work around them.”

He knew she wasn’t going to budge on this, not with the lot of them already taking root in the conservatory.

He followed the woman out the door toward the kitchen. “Princess—”

“You’re a member of a gentleman’s club, Drew. You must know how much one can learn of a man simply by sharing a meal with him.”

“Supper?”

She went breezing through the kitchen door, stopping everyone in their stride. “Good afternoon, Mr. Mackenzie!”

Mackenzie grinned at her with his whole face. “Good afternoon, Princess. Runson just told me there’d be another twelve for supper.”

“Exactly! You’re a life saver, sir!”

The man beamed. “I’ll be serving poulet sauté à la plombière, with a D’Artois of apricot for dessert.”

“You’ll love living in Boratania, Mr. Mackenzie!” she said, casting a smile at Drew when that big lout Mackenzie kept grinning at her. “And I know his lordship will miss you.”

“And I him, ma’am!”

“You’re not going anywhere, Mackenzie,” Drew said, suddenly wanting to include Caro in that command.

Her fondest wish meant that she would be leaving
England to make a better life for herself, meant leaving him the lonely man he’d been before meeting her.

“And if you can make small cakes for each of the four children to take with them to a little party in the stable,” she was saying to Mackenzie as she scooped her finger around the strawberry smears left on the inside of the morning’s jam compote. She waggled her red fingertip at him. “With a cherry-cream topping. I’ll be forever grateful.”

Mackenzie nodded a bow at the princess. “It’ll be a pleasure, Your Highness.”

Sheesh!

She popped her finger into her mouth and was out of the kitchen a moment later, heading toward the foyer with Drew close behind.

“You’re mighty free with my operatives, madam. They’ve got their own jobs to do.”

“That’s what comes of distrusting my staff enough to send them on holiday.”

“Where are you off to now, madam?” Watching after her was like chasing thistledown.

“To the conservatory to meet the rest of my loyal subjects. You might come along, Drew. A good time to insert yourself among the suspects.”

He damn well couldn’t risk leaving her alone with any of her “subjects.” He knew Caro would honor her promise with regard to Johannes’s offhand remark. But her hospitality was already making the atmosphere like that of a family reunion, where people would be eager to share beloved tales of old with her—where facts would become entangled with lies.

“Thanks, madam, I think I will join you.”

“I thought you might!” She flashed him a dazzling smile just as she stepped into the conservatory, leav
ing him no time to reply as the exuberant crowd surrounded her, habit forcing him to pull her back against him.

The two women dropped into deep curtsies and the men bowed again and again. The children were at her feet, looking up in awe.

“Are you really, truly a princess, miss?” asked a tiny girl in an even tinier voice.

“I am, indeed, sweetheart. Princess Caroline.” She bent down to the girl and brushed a strand of damp hair off her forehead. “What’s your name?”

The child’s brown eyes brightened. “I’m Marguerite Belvedere.”

“Ah, I have a Marguerite in the middle of my name.” Caroline lifted the giggling girl into her arms.

“And that’s Oscar, my brother.” She was pointing at a boy of about five, gazing up at the princess with wide-mouthed adoration.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Oscar.” She shook the boy’s hand, and then Annora’s, who seemed related in some way to Marcus. “Welcome all of you!”

“Who’s that?” asked Marguerite, pointing over Caro’s shoulder at Drew.

Caro turned and smiled up at him with a “Here’s your chance, master spy” grin. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you all to meet Andrew Chase, the Earl of Wexford. He and his staff are helping me prepare for my relocation to Boratania.
Our
relocation.”

“C’n I help, too, Mr. Earl?” asked the little girl who had taken up residence in Caro’s arms and now turned her big eyes on him.