Once Tempted (2 page)

“Yes, quite,” Bradstone said, but to Orlando’s way of thinking the man didn’t sound so truthful. “You left me astounded by your superior intelligence, for Lady Bloomberg fancies herself quite the encryption expert.” He held the note out to her. “Now I ask you to use your remarkable talent for me and for your King.”

Orlando’s heart hammered in his chest at these disclosures. But how could he stop this madness while Bradstone still held the pistol in his hand and this innocent girl remained in the room? Orlando suffered no doubts that if he made a move, she may be harmed as well.

One thought cheered him though. They had yet to unravel the code. Perhaps all he needed to do was to wait and see what Bradstone’s bluestocking would make of it.

Then he would decide if her life was worth placing in such jeopardy.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Someone went to a lot of work to make sure no one could read this,” she said. “It appears each pair of words uses a different cipher. The first uses a displacement of Greek and replaces it with the corresponding sequence in Spanish. You see here and here,” she offered, pointing at the note before her.

“Yes, yes, that is quite brilliant, but can you get the message?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can try, especially if this is as important as you say.”

“The message in this note is a matter of life and death.”

Life and death,
Orlando mused. As if Bradstone cared one whit for the lives he would cost England by stealing this information. But in this he’d fail. For Orlando still would have bet a shipload of gold that this snip of a schoolgirl couldn’t unravel the key.

And then to his horror she did.

“Oh, I see what they’ve done,” she declared. “
El Rescate del Rey
it starts out.” She turned her face toward Bradstone, who shrugged at her use of Spanish. “The King’s Ransom,” she translated. “Does that make sense?”

“The King’s Ransom,” he whispered in an awestruck voice. “Yes. Yes. Go on. Go on.”

While Olivia struggled with the next section of the message, Orlando scrambled to control his shock at what had just happened.

This chit had grasped the first part of the missive. Something no one had done in eleven centuries. If she got the rest of it. . .  Orlando didn’t even want to consider the consequences.

But the evening went from nightmarish to horrific as Bradstone slowly and silently cocked the pistol he’d stolen and held it behind the girl’s back.

A matter of life and death. A matter of life and death.

The marquis’s previous words sang like an unholy refrain in Orlando’s throbbing skull.

Now he knew what the man had truly meant. Bradstone intended to kill her as well.

Silently Orlando rose to his feet.

“Oh, here it is,” she sang out, innocently unaware that every refrain she provided her lover was one step closer to her demise.

“What does it say?” Avarice laced Bradstone’s demand, filling the room with the man’s insatiable greed.

Orlando steadied himself on the edge of the desk. His senses reeled and swayed at having to stand, and he used every ounce of strength he possessed not to draw any attention to his movements.

Meanwhile the little bluestocking continued. “This line reads, ‘In the Tomb of the Virgin.’ “ She bit her lip. “I’ve never heard of such a place. Certainly not here in London.”

Bradstone nodded in agreement. “Then try the last word—that one should reveal everything.” To urge her on, he kissed the top of her head, while behind her back Orlando’s pistol rose until it was pointed at the base of her skull.

For a moment it brushed over the hairs there. She flinched ever so slightly, as if she sensed the nearness of death.

Life and death. Life and death.
The words urged Orlando forward. His hand flexed over the hilt of his stiletto, and he took another silent step.

“I think I have it!” she said, slowly and deliberately. “The last word is. . .  ‘Madrid.’ ” She held it up for him. “The King’s Ransom. In the Tomb of the Virgin. Madrid.” Her lips pursed in concentration. “But it makes no sense. Why would a ransom for King George be in a tomb in Spain?”

“It doesn’t need to make sense to you,” Bradstone told her, his fingers curling around the trigger.

“Kill her, you bastard, and you shall be next,” Orlando told him. Both the girl and the marquis whirled around.

Orlando took advantage of their surprise and leaped forward. He plunged the stiletto at Bradstone, but the man saw it coming and deflected the worst of the blade’s intent, sending it skittering across the library floor.

Now locked in a deadly battle with the man, Orlando struggled to gain control of the pistol wavering between them.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spied the girl standing near the fireplace. “Run. He means to kill us both,” he told her in Spanish, since it was apparent she had a good grasp of the language.

He saw a flash of yellow silk and thought she was heeding his advice, but suddenly he found her coming at Bradstone with his lost stiletto. Bradstone saw her as well and yanked the pistol free of Orlando’s grip and turned to aim it at her.

“No,” Orlando cried out, reaching for the muzzle and yanking it in a different direction, hoping to turn it finally on the marquis.

And then a shot rang out. At first Orlando thought he had succeeded, that he had stopped Bradstone—but in that next moment, a hot, burning flame of lead passed through his gut. It tore at his senses until all he knew was a wretched tangle of pain.

Her piteous cry pierced his thoughts, a mourning keen to comfort his last few seconds.

Sinking to the floor, he landed at her slippered feet. Her horrified gaze locked with his, her hand covering her mouth.

Down the hall, footsteps and shouts pierced the sudden, deadly silence of the room.

Bradstone wasted no time. He shoved the still smoking pistol into Olivia’s hand and went for the door.

“In here. Come quickly. There has been a murder,” he called out.

Orlando struggled to hold on, to hear what was being said, in case, just in case he lived, so he could tell Hobbe. . . 

But he wasn’t going to live, for the pain spread throughout his chest, his body convulsing with wrenching finality. His eyelids grew too heavy to remain open, while a mixture of darkness and comforting light began blotting out his senses. As he started to drift away, a soft, warm hand cradled his, pulling him back.

Over the buzzing in his ears, he heard Bradstone’s voice saying, “Miss Sutton has committed a murder. That man there. She shot him.”

There were gasps and shouts but not from the lady herself.

No,
Orlando tried to tell the growing crowd of witnesses.
She didn’t do this.

“¿
Cómo podría ayudarle
?” she whispered in his native tongue. How can I help you?

He fumbled to free his hand and with the last ounce of strength he possessed he pulled the ring from his finger. She still held the note in her hand, so he set the gold band atop it and crushed his fingers over hers, tightening her grasp on his two most precious belongings.

The bright light now filled the room. It distracted his thoughts and strangely eased his pain. As much as he wanted to abandon himself to its comforting warmth, he couldn’t leave this girl behind to pay for his mistakes.

“Run, now,” he managed to say. “Go as far as you can. Hide where they cannot find you. Give this to no one but—” The pain overcame him, and he stumbled over the name that should have come so easily to him.

“Who?” she pleaded. “Who should I give it to?”

“Hobbe,” he managed to whisper before he finally relented his life to what he could only hope were angels overhead.

Chapter 1

London, 1812

“H
ow was your trip to the solicitor, my lady?” Carlyle asked as he helped his mistress, the Marchioness of Bradstone, down from her carriage.

“Wretched!” she complained. “The incompetent man says there is nothing we can do. Nothing in the least. He is certain that next month the House of Lords will pronounce Robert dead and allow the title to revert to the Crown.”

Carlyle shook his head. “I feared as much, madame.”

Her ladyship fluttered her handkerchief. “A month, Carlyle! A month!” she wailed. “Where will I live? Where will I go? Everything that matters is entailed with the estate.”

Where will we all go
? Carlyle would have liked to add to her lament. The Bradstone staff had just as much at stake as their mistress in the Parnell family keeping the title—their livelihoods depended upon it as well.

Lady Bradstone drew her handkerchief to her nose and sniffed. “If only my dearest boy would come home and prevent all this. Surely he must know the fits and tremblings his continued absence causes me, let alone this newest injustice.”

“If his lordship were aware, my lady, I am sure he would hasten home without further delay,” Carlyle said very diplomatically. He had tried on any number of occasions to explain to her that it was highly unlikely her son would ever come home.

For seven long years she’d denied that her son had fled the scandalous scene and sought passage on the doomed
Bon Venture.
Seven years of refusing to believe her son had been on that ship when it was attacked and sunk by the French off the coast of Portugal. The papers had been filled with the sad tale of how all hands and passengers had been lost.

Including the Marquis of Bradstone.

In the ensuing years, the marquis’s estate had been cast in turmoil—first from a lack of heirs and now because of the Prince Regent’s maneuvering to see the title revert back to the Crown.

Apparently Prinny wanted to reward one of his favorites with the prestigious title and the accompanying rich estates.

But the greatest impediment to disposing of the Bradstone legacy turned out to be the marquis’s mother. Lady Bradstone refused to believe her son had perished. Not even the eyewitness account provided by the captain of a nearby packet ship swayed her from her unshakeable belief that her son had escaped death’s watery trap.

A mother would know,
she often told her pragmatic butler.
If Robert were dead, I would know.

“This is all that Sutton creature’s fault,” her ladyship was saying, causing any number of her staff to look away, some of the cheekier footmen to roll their gaze heavenward.

Carlyle sent one and all his most severe stare. If their mistress wanted to blame the infamous debutante for the marquis’s hasty and fatal departure from London, who were they to question her?

“If that horrible jade hadn’t led my poor, sensitive boy astray, he wouldn’t have had to flee town in such a confused state.” The marchioness paused for a moment, her lips pursed, her jaw set with long held rage. “I shudder to think of him all those years ago, lost and undone over that wretched affair, prey to who knows what sort of fiends and villainy. I told Mr. Hawthorne-Waite this very morning that I am convinced Robert was most likely kidnapped and taken aboard some other villainous ship against his will. For he would never have gone off voluntarily on that awful
Bon Venture.”
She paused again.

Carlyle waited for her final refrain. It hadn’t changed a word in seven years.

And after the requisite pause, she finished her vehement rail. “Lisbon, indeed! My Robert would never have gone to such a heathen place by choice.”

“Yes, indeed, ma’am,” Carlyle replied.

Her ladyship sighed. “And so I told Mr. Hawthorne-Waite. Though I am starting to doubt that man’s qualifications as a solicitor.” She turned her watery blue eyes on the butler. “He is of the opinion that kidnapping is not reason enough to keep one’s son from being declared dead.”

“A terrible injustice, ma’am.”

She smiled bravely and began to take the steps again up to the front door. “And he also refused to find and bring that jade to justice. She murdered that poor Spaniard. Who’s to say she didn’t harm my Robert as well? And can you imagine my shock, Carlyle, when that odious little solicitor had the audacity to intimate that she more than likely died with my Robert! Can you fathom such a thing? My Robert taking a murderess with him to Lisbon? I think not.”

“Yes, my lady,” Carlyle said, while silently agreeing with the solicitor’s tactless assessment of the situation. Why shouldn’t he?

Witnesses had seen Miss Sutton crouched over the body of the dead Spanish agent, a smoking pistol in her hand. Lord Bradstone had told several of the gathered crowd that Miss Sutton had committed the crime. Then in the hubbub and panic, Lord Bradstone had disappeared. Slipped away and fled London in the dark of night aboard the
Bon Venture.
And to make the entire scandal even more lurid, the next morning Miss Sutton was also gone.

After a brief investigation, letters found in Miss Sutton’s room linked her and the marquis romantically. Several of them had been reprinted in the press, telling the sordid tale of their secret affair.

Yet through it all, Lady Bradstone refused to believe anything that tainted her son’s reputation. With each year, her remembrances of the man had grown and risen to such proportions it was hard to believe that such a paragon had ever existed.

“Oh, Carlyle, what will I tell Robert when he comes home and finds I have lost his title and estates?” The lady’s lip quivered, her eyes welling up with familiar tears.

He directed her toward the door. Once inside, he’d settle her in her favorite drawing room with a large pot of tea and a tray of her favorite cakes. Perhaps then he could broach the truth of the matter one more time and see if he could convince her ladyship to take a more constructive view of their situation.

It was about time the lady believed what everyone else knew to be true.

The Marquis of Bradstone was not coming home.

As Carlyle turned to take the overly familiar step of telling her ladyship that she ought to heed the solicitor’s advice and start planning for a less than secure future, he noticed the lady’s gaze was fixed on the street, and she’d gone an unearthly shade of white.