My Wicked Marquess (37 page)

Footman John spit on Max in answer.

Daphne's eyes widened, but Max refused to be baited.

Giving his prisoner a cold, mocking smile, he merely took out his handkerchief and wiped the spittle off his coat. “You may want to mind your manners from this point onward,” he advised. “Where you're going, such pranks are frowned upon.”

“Is that what the Order has sunk to?” the footman asked
with a sneer. “Sending in their women as distractions? You're all a lot of cowards.”

“At least we don't hold old ladies hostage in their own homes,” he answered softly. Then Max glanced at the others. “The rest of you, go back to work! Check on Lady Westwood! You must guard her yourselves until I can arrange for Her Ladyship's protection.”

“Guard her? My lord, is our mistress in danger?” the bewildered under-butler asked.

“Just be on your guard, and don't let any more strangers into the house.”

The countess herself joined them just then, leaning on her cane. “Lord Rotherstone, what is the meaning of this?”

“Ma'am, His Lordship says footman John killed footman Peter to get his job, and might've had something to do with Lord Westwood's disappearance!” the under-butler relayed to her.

Daphne hurried to steady Lady Westwood, but rather than looking overwhelmed, the old countess seemed able to make more sense of this than she could.

She squared her bony shoulders as she leaned on her cane. “Do whatever Lord Rotherstone says!” she ordered her staff. “Obey him—for my sake.”

Well, at least one woman here trusted him, Daphne thought in confusion.

Max nodded to Lady Westwood in gratitude. Having secured the prisoner, he made some of the male servants watch footman John so that he could take a moment to speak to Drake's mother.

A short while later, the three of them had returned to the drawing room, where the tea had grown cold.

“Lady Westwood, I apologize for what happened here today. But you must not give up hope,” Max said as she took her seat again. “We have reason to believe Drake could still be alive.”

“Alive?”
the old woman breathed.

“Max!” Daphne uttered.

The countess gripped the arms of her chair. “Oh, God, I knew it in my heart.” She glanced toward the mantel. “I
knew those ashes couldn't be his. I just knew it, somewhere, somehow, that my son was still alive.”

“Well, your mothering instincts may prove as correct as your memory did. You were right when you said I knew your son. I knew him very well. We were like brothers when we were young. The fact is, I believe I caught a glimpse of Drake myself in London about six weeks ago.”

Both women marveled.

“We don't know why he refuses to make contact with the Order,” Max continued with a taut expression. “We assume he's in some sort of danger, but our goal is to find out who has him, and get back him safely. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

“I don't!” Daphne broke in, glaring at him.

He ignored her, for Lady Westwood's eyes had filled with tears. “Oh, if my son could be alive, Lord Rotherstone…What would you or Virgil have me do? Anything!”

“If Drake makes any effort to contact you, send for me first before you answer him, lest it prove to be a trap,” Max instructed. “You must write to me at this address.” He went over to her secretaire, helped himself to a sheet of paper, and jotted down a few lines. “My contact at this location will make sure I get your message within twenty-four hours. Give no answer until you hear from me first. Will you do that?”

“Yes, yes.” She took the paper, read it, then looked up at him in confusion. “A hat shop?”

He gave her a rueful smile. “A busy shop helps conceal our comings and goings.”

“May I talk to you?” Daphne finally interrupted when their exchange seemed about at an end.

Max looked over warily at her, then nodded. She walked into the next room, a dim and empty music room. He followed. She sincerely wanted to shake him, but when she turned to him, she could not escape her most pressing emotion: worry.

“What is going on? What is this Order you're talking about?”

He stared at her.

“Were you hurt at all in that fight?”

“I'm fine.”

Daphne shook her head, confounded. “Who is Drake, why did the footman attack you, and how could you get an old woman's hopes up before you know for sure if her son is alive?”

“I'm as sure as I
can
be at this point, and it looks to me like hope is all she's got left to live for. Didn't you see the shrine in there—the urn, the portrait? Those are not his ashes in that vase.”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind that. I have to get to London. If the people who planted footman John into Westwood Manor make another move against the countess, she needs to be aware of what she's dealing with.”

“Unlike me?” Her swift riposte appeared to take him off guard. “Do you intend to keep me in the dark, husband?”

He lowered his head, pausing. “Do I have a choice?”

“Not if you still want the same kind of future between us.”

He looked up angrily again. “Is that a threat? Of what? Divorce?”

Daphne's eyes filled with tears. “How are we supposed to have any kind of life together if you don't tell me what is going on?”

He grasped her forearm pleadingly. “You have got to
trust
me. Daphne, please.”

“How can I?” she cried, shaking off his touch. “I don't even know you! How dare you ask for my trust when you are up to your eyes in deception!”

“You don't understand—I have a duty!”

“One that apparently matters to you more than I do!” she yelled in his face as tears flooded her eyes.

“No!” He grasped her arms. “Daphne, you are the most important thing to me in this world. I am trying to protect you by keeping you out of all this! You've got to believe me. Please,” he whispered.

She pulled free of his hold. “No. We're past that, Max. I'm sorry. You can't have it both ways. I've come too far
with you to have the door slammed in my face. I will not accept this. At this moment, I have no idea who you really are. I can't take it. You're my husband and you're acting like a stranger. I'm trying to love you, but you need to decide. You can either have it like you did last night with me,” she told him slowly, meaningfully, reminding him with a potent stare of the seduction, “or you can go back to being essentially alone. The choice is yours.”

“Ruthless,” he whispered, shaking his head as he stared at her. “You have learned well, my lady.”

“I was taught by the best,” she answered. “So, what is it going to be?”

He stared at her for a long moment; Daphne refused to back down. He had to know the love they shared was hanging by a thread. It was in his hands.

At last, he gave her a grim and barely perceptible nod. “Very well. You'll be safer with me, anyway. Let's just hope we both don't soon regret it.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“We're taking him to London.”

“What for?”

“The usual, Daphne. So we can beat the hell out of him until he breaks down and tells us what he knows—in this case, who has Drake.” He sent her a sharp look. “Aren't you glad you asked, Little Miss Curious?”

D
on't speak in front of the prisoner unless it's absolutely necessary,” Max ordered her at the start of their very long—and quiet—ride to London.

They had swapped carriages with Lady Westwood temporarily, leaving the phaeton Daphne had driven there in exchange for the countess's closed coach, the better to conceal and contain the enemy agent Max had captured.

Lady Westwood had also lent them the services of her trusted head coachman, who had been twenty years in her employment, unlike footman John. The latter now sat bound and gagged and blindfolded next to Max; Daphne sat across from the two men on the opposite seat.

Max and she spent most of the long ride just gazing warily at each other. The three of them rode in silence for hours, reaching London as daylight waned.

Daphne was not sure what instructions Max had given the driver, but he took them down to a lonely quay a stone's throw from the Strand. There they stopped and transferred from the carriage into a little waiting rowboat.

“Sit in the front,” Max ordered her.

Then the burly coachman got down from his box and helped to shepherd the bound captive into the bobbing wherry. Max shoved footman John down in the middle of the boat and covered him over with a tarp.

“Stay still.” Max sat down in the back of the boat and nodded to Daphne with a hard look. “Hold on.”

Then he shoved off from the quay with an oar, leaving the coachman watching after them on the dock.

Daphne's heart pounded as they drifted downstream and began to zoom faster down the Thames. The cold breeze from their motion blew her hair behind her. Holding on tightly to the boat's wooden edges, she glanced back and saw Max's face fixed with grim resolve.

He plowed the oars into the waves, slowing the wherry about a half mile downstream. Within another hundred yards, he guided them up to the back of one of the old riverside buildings. They glided under a low brick arch, and then came to a heavy wooden river gate.

The boat bobbed as Max maneuvered closer to a weathered rope that hung down with a weight tied to it. Meanwhile, footman John groaned in protest from underneath the tarp. He sounded a bit seasick. Daphne cast a worried look over her shoulder, but Max opted to ignore the man's suffering with stony indifference.

He pulled on the rope in a distinct series of tugs. It dawned on Daphne that it was some sort of bellpull signaling to someone inside to open the gate.

The response came swiftly. There was a loud noise that gave her a jolt, a bang and a creak, and with that, the wooden river gate began to rise before them like a portcullis, dripping Thames water.

Max rowed under it quickly, advancing into a dark, cavernous area ahead underneath the building. The river gate began to close behind them a moment later. Daphne looked all around her in wonder.

What is this place?

No longer controlled by the current, still waters swirled all around them as Max rowed on, until, in short order, they glided up to a small stone dock lit by a single burning torch.

“Where are we?” she started to ask, but the second she spoke, the dark, hollow space was filled with savage barking. With a clank of chain, a huge black dog charged out
of the shadows barking its head off, snarling, baring its teeth like some cousin of Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Hades.

Max shouted at the black beast in a foreign language, and it suddenly stopped. He spoke to it again, and its whole demeanor changed.

Daphne stared, wide-eyed, as the dog shook itself and began wagging its tail, jumping eagerly toward Max. Her heart was still pounding with fright, though the beast was now wagging its tail and sitting tamely, as ordered.

Max gave her another firm, steadying look. “Stay here while I see to him. Don't go anywhere. Don't move.”

Daphne looked uneasily at the dog with no intention of crossing that thing's path. “Don't worry, I won't.”

Max pulled the tarp off footman John. “Get up.” He untied the man's blindfold so he could see where to step without falling into the water, but he kept his hands tied.

Daphne did her best to be helpful, reaching out to steady the boat against the dock as the two men got off the boat. The dog bristled and stared at the male stranger with a low snarl, but at another order from Max, the beast lay down on its stomach and began panting.

Max marched footman John across the small dock and up a stone tunnel that had been dug beneath the house, or whatever it was above them. With gooseflesh on her arms, she stared into the darkness in the direction they had gone. She still had no clear notion of what in heaven's name was going on. She was doing her best to keep her terror at bay, but she was beginning to wonder, truly, what manner of man she had married.

The dog's ears pricked up at a loud metallic bang from deeper into the darkness. Daphne swallowed hard, but a moment later, Max reappeared, all in black, emerging from the shadows. The torchlight sculpted his angular face.

He gave the dog an order, pointing to the wall. It got up and trotted back to where he had told it to go. Then he came to the edge of the dock and reached down to her, holding out his hand.

She took it warily and climbed out of the boat.

“What have you done with the footman?” she asked with an uneasy glance around.

“He's in a holding cell. Come on.” When he started once more up the limestone tunnel, she had no choice but to follow him into the darkness.

“What is this place?” she whispered.

“You are in, or rather under, Dante House.”

“Dante House,” she murmured as the tunnel ended in a sparse stone chamber with a rough-hewn wooden table, a colorful floor mosaic of St. Michael the Archangel as in the stained-glass window, and a white Maltese cross suspended on a chain from the living rock. It matched the one in the Rotherstone portraits, the family chapel, and the signet ring she had found.

She turned to him all of a sudden. “The Inferno Club?”

“Yes.”

“Max—”

“You'll get the answers you seek, Daphne, but first I must speak to Virgil.” He walked away from her, crossing the dim, clammy chamber. “Can you climb?” He laid his hand on a ladder that ascended into a dark chute.

She nodded, and stepped onto the first rung.

With Max a few rungs below her, they climbed to the pitch-black top of the ladder. From what little light there was, Daphne could just make out an oval opening, a sort of doorway. Max told her to get off the ladder and go through it. Groping around nervously in the dark, she managed to find her way. She stepped off the ladder, through the opening, into a narrow, lightless passageway.

When Max joined her, he took her hand. “Follow me.”

Daphne did so gladly, staying close to him. He led her through some sort of blind maze, but at last, he opened one more hidden door, and she breathed a sigh of relief. A moment later, they emerged from what proved to be a closet in some bedchamber.

Max pulled the hidden door shut behind them, and then closed the closet door. He cast her a glance. “This way.”

They left the bedchamber, squinting a little from the
change from pitch-black into daylight, though even this was fading fast. They proceeded to walk down the corridor, and then down the carved staircase of the gaudiest house interior that Daphne had ever seen.

Dante House seemed deliberately fashioned in bad taste, or perhaps by a drunken architect: florid, feverish, dizzying in its ornate rococo style, as though someone had set out to create a place that was intended to disorient the visitor.

“What do you think?” Max asked, eyeing her askance.

“It's horrid,” she replied.

“That is the idea. Here. You can wait in the parlor. Oh, hullo,” he said as he looked into the room.

The parlor was already occupied.

“Hullo, yourself!” A highly made-up woman jumped up from the chaise longue where she had been reclining and fanning herself in a pose of utter boredom. She was dressed in a gaudy style that perfectly matched the house. “Am I allowed out yet?”

“Huh?”

“Can I go?”

Max snapped his fingers. “I'm sorry, I can't remember your name.”

“It's Ginger!”

“Ah, of course. Ginger-cat! What are you doing here in the middle of the day?” he asked in an amiable tone.

“Your mad Highlander is making me stay here!” she said with a huge roll of her kohl-lined eyes. “He will not let me leave. Says it's for me own safety. He's been holdin' me here against my will for days, ever since I came and told him I'd seen Westie.”

“Oh, it was you who saw Drake?”

“Aye! He was in a carriage with two other blokes. He were not himself a'tall. Oh, I tried to get him to come with me, but he didn't even remember who I was! So, anyway, that's all I know. I told your Scotsman that, but he still won't let me out of 'ere. A girl's got to make a livin'!”

“Well, my dear, if Virgil says you have to stay, you'd better make yourself comfortable.” He looked at Daphne in amuse
ment. “Why don't you two girls amuse yourselves with a nice little chat? I won't be long.”

“Max!”

“I'll be back, Daphne. Cool your heels.”

“How do you like that?” Ginger declared, putting a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. “Aw, honey, are they keeping you locked up here, too?”

“Um, no. Well, I hope not. I came in with my husband.”

“Husband?” Ginger exclaimed. “Oh,
very
nice! Damn me, you landed Rotherstone? Well done, my girl.”

At her colorful language, it dawned on Daphne that she was in the presence of a demirep.

Oh, dear.
She instantly thought of the Dowager Dragon. This was not at all approved company for a lady of the ton.

On the other hand, leave it to Max to deposit her into the company of a brothel woman. Blast the man. He was testing her. Again.

Ha
, she thought. “I say—Ginger, is it?”

“Yes, love. And you are?”

“Daphne. You haven't ever…entertained my old man, have you?” She raised a curious eyebrow at the woman.

“Oh, no. Not with 'im, regrettably. But that Warrington—” She gave Daphne a broad wink. “I know why they call 'im the Beast. Lud, that lovely brute can leave a girl right sore with the way he goes at it.”

Daphne's eyes shot open wide; Ginger let out a peal of hearty laughter, as though she had shocked “the fine lady” on purpose.

But as the harlot laughed aloud, Daphne slowly joined her, giving vent to her nervous tension after the day's wild events. Their shared laughter filled the room. For when Daphne thought of how she had behaved last night with Max, it struck her with an oddly liberating glee that, for all her earlier disapproval of the breed, maybe she and this brazen scarlet woman had a thing or two in common, after all.

 

Taut with apprehension over what his old mentor was going to say about his bringing Daphne into the Inferno Club, Max
walked down the corridor looking for Virgil, but when he found him, he realized at once that the Scot already knew. He must have either seen her or heard them both come in.

Max spotted the aging Highland warrior in the dining room. He was pouring himself a large draught of whisky. Warily, Max stepped into the dining room with its florid murals.

Virgil did not look at him. He took another swallow of liquor and then he shook his head. “You've done a very foolish thing, Max. How could you bring her here?”

Max went toward him cautiously. “You can trust her, Virgil. I wouldn't have risked it if I had any doubts.”

He snorted. “Trust a woman.”

“She is my wife. She deserves to know what she's in for. She can handle it.”

He shook his head. “You're a damned fool. You've put all our lives in jeopardy, and hers. You shouldn't have dragged her into this.”

“I had no choice,” he said wearily. “She found one of my key hiding places at home.”

Virgil slammed down his cup. “I knew you would grow careless as a result of this—sentimentality!”

“Sentimentality?” Max stared at him with anger flooding his veins. “I love her, man.”

“If you really loved her, you would take her home and tell her to forget all that she's seen!”

“It is too late for that.”

“You had no right to do this, Max.”

“No, Virgil,
you
have no right to ask me to lie to the woman I love for the rest of my life! What more do you want from me? I gave you twenty years of my life. You can go to hell if you don't like it. Damn you, and damn all of this. What I wouldn't give to wash my hands of it!”

“Oh, the sacrifice is too hard for you?” the old Highlander mocked him. “You boast of twenty years? Well, I've given nigh forty, you ungrateful whelp.” Virgil shook his shaggy head, and then paused for a long moment. “Her blood is on your hands now if they ever get to her—and if they break
her, so is all of ours.”

Max closed his eyes and lowered his head. “I'm not going to let anything happen to her. Ever.”

“That's what I said, too, a very long time ago, but somehow my lady is no longer with us.” Virgil fell silent abruptly and turned away.

Max knew the story. He stared at his old mentor's back. “Virgil, I know your brother Malcolm took your woman from you, but that—”

“Silence!” he thundered, whipping around to glare at Max. “Do not speak of her to me!”

Jordan walked in just as Max lowered his gaze, Virgil's bellow still echoing on the air.

Max braced himself before he glanced over to gauge his friend's reaction to his having brought Daphne into their secret lair. “Good day, Lord Falconridge. The queue for those wanting to run me through starts over there.” He pointed at Virgil.

Jordan gave him a wry look, but shook his head with a degree of worry in his eyes. “I trust your assessment of the matter, Max. If you say she can be trusted, that's good enough for me.”