Royal Regard (43 page)

Nick looked back toward the road as he
entered the courtyard, hands sending mixed signals to his
horse—forward, back, this way, that. The poor animal was only
moments from shying in all the commotion. Two of the soldiers fell
back to keep watch at the entrance, and the third followed Nick and
Firthley to back up their claims.

Without dismounting, Firthley barked at the
nearest groom: “I am the Marquess of Firthley, and this,” he
pointed at Nick, “is the Duke of Wellbridge. A gold crown to the
first man to provide the information we require.”

Suddenly, four different grooms and a stable
boy no more than ten surrounded them, and a second ring of
witnesses formed behind, interested parties who knew nothing but
wanted to hear everything. The odor of the stable alone would not
have bothered Nick, but added to the pungent privy holes that
served the whole building, the aroma was almost more than he could
stand, so covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Which still
smelled of Bella.

“I’m looking for a Frenchman,” Firthley
announced, “dark hair and eyes, possibly dressed in black. He has a
woman with him—red-blond hair; she may have appeared drunk or
unconscious.”

Nick added, “She was wearing red. Red and
gold. Like her hair.” Nick looked at Firthley through the imagined
veil of her lavender-lilac hair. He had buried his nose in it not
two hours since, and it smelled just like his sleeve. The marquess
snapped his fingers before Nick’s eyes, clearing the vision.

Firthley addressed the crowd. “Information
that proves true pays out ten gold crowns.”

The grooms all appeared crestfallen, but a
stableboy began bouncing from foot to foot, clutching his cap in
his hand. “I seen them, my lord! I seen ‘em! Weren’t here, but the
livery down Craven Street.”

One of the men cuffed the boy across the
head. “And what was you doing down Craven Street when you was told
to be cleanin’ the—”

“Never mind that,” Firthley snapped, “What
did you see, boy?”

“A fat cull with a lady—leastwise, looked a
lady with a fancy red dress, sleepin’ like the dead. ‘E had black
hair and cloak and taking ‘er from one carriage to another,
orderin’ new horses. Me, I was just passin’.” He gave a guilty look
at the man who had boxed his ears. “But I heard ‘im, plain as day.
Frenchy, by the sound of ‘im, and up in the boughs, ‘e was,
screamin’ like Ol’ Scratch ‘bout a carriage wheel and a coat.”

Nick almost yelled himself, a sharp sound of
partial triumph, and then followed with, “Can you show me the
spot?”

“‘Course, Yer Grace, but—” The boy looked
once more at the man who had called out his dereliction.

“No buts.” Nick reached down to grab the
boy’s hand and pulled him onto the saddle in front of him. As Nick
turned his horse, he looked over his shoulder at the simmering
groom, who was trying to decide whether to object. Nick called out,
“The same ten crowns for loan of the boy. I’ll send him back when
I’m finished. Firthley, please?” The groom stepped back, bowing
slightly.

Firthley took out a money pouch and all but
threw a handful of coins at the man, and Nick sped away as fast as
he could, given the crowded courtyard opening onto an even more
crowded street.

The child held onto the pommel with one hand
and the horse’s mane with the other, keeping his head low, as
though he were racing, not so far from the truth once Nick cleared
the throng and made it to the back streets the boy indicated. The
horse skidded in the last turn, so fast Nick was afraid the animal
would slide out from under them and break a leg, but this horse was
in the king’s stable for a reason. The valiant steed righted
himself and was back to full speed in moments. Had he not brought
the boy with him, Nick might have driven his powerful mount right
past the livery, almost hidden behind a public house.

“‘Tis ‘ere, Yer Grace,” The boy shouted and
Nick pulled the reins up short.

He slid off the horse, then pulled the
stableboy down and set him on his feet. Looking around, the boy
said, “New rattler ain’t here still.” He pointed at a coach, up on
blocks to repair the wheel, “but the one ‘e left is there.”

Firthley pulled his horse up next to Nick’s,
then dismounted and loosely tied up both mounts. The stableboy
clutched his cap, fist twitching at his side. Only whatever
semblance of manners his mother or his master had instilled kept
him from holding his hand out for his promised payment, or more
likely, Nick thought, reaching into the marquess’s coat. To his
credit, the young man just dogged Firthley’s steps like a hungry
hound.

Firthley pulled out his money pouch again.
“Wellbridge, are you finished with the boy?”

“Let him go.”

Nick maneuvered past the grooms trying to
ascertain his business, slamming open the door of the closed
carriage. As one of the grooms started, “my lord, you ain’t going
to want to—” Nick recoiled at the smell of sick. The entire
conveyance rocked unsteadily as he jumped up onto the step anyway.
“Damn! Firthley!”

Firthley was so close behind, he ran into
Nick’s back. “What is it? Good lord. It smells like—faugh.”

Nick turned and held out a torn piece of red
fabric shot with gold threads, caught in the hinge of the door.
“This is hers.” He waved his hand toward splashes of blood and
vomit staining the floor and the leather squabs on the
forward-facing seat. “Presumably all that is, too.” Alexander’s
face went white and Nick was sure his mirrored it. He was moments
away from adding to the mess on the floor.

A groom was shuffling his feet, waiting to be
noticed. When Nick turned toward him, he tugged his forelock and
asked, simply, “My lord?”

Firthley said, “He is not a lord, man, but a
duke, and you will do best to tell him exactly what he needs to
know without delay.”

“Crikey! A duke, is ‘e?” yelped one of the
other men. “Two in one day, that is! Ain’t never seen such.”
Firthley strode over and began interrogating the man for details of
this other duke he had seen.

The grubby stable hand who had tried to warn
Nick away from the smell made a discomfited bow, and Nick snapped,
“I have no time for niceties. What do you know about this carriage?
How long has it been here?”

“Naught but an hour, Yer Grace, mebbe a bit
more. The gennulman come in with a cracked spoke on the back wheel,
coachman limpin’ it along.” He gestured toward a wheelwright across
the stable, peeling away the iron tyre from the hub. “Paid more’n
double for a new gig, but we ain’t got nuffink so fast as he wants,
not and closed roof, too. Give him a growler, the best we have, Yer
Grace, but he won’t have got far, mebbe five miles down the
road.”

Nick was finally hopeful. “Which road? Did he
say which road?”

“Dover Road, Yer Grace. Wouldn’t know it, but
‘e been screaming at his jervis ‘bout making Dover by midnight.
Coachman looks like he’s to be
put to bed with a
mattock and tucked up with a spade. And no wonder; no amount o’
horses could get a coach to Dover by midnight when it’s near seven
now.
”

“What does the coach look like?” Firthley
asked, nodding to Nick to indicate the other duke was the one they
sought.

“Black, but paint chipped off, red stripe
‘long the side. Horses was one grey, one skewbald, and not
high-steppers these. Mebbe a fast rider could catch up, Yer Grace,
now I think of it.”

Firthley corrected, “I’m not a duke… never
mind. It doesn’t signify. Thank you, my man.”

Nick spoke over him, “Perfect. We can catch
him. Pay the men and let us be on our way.” He rapidly mounted his
horse and while Firthley sent one of the soldiers back to the Royal
Mews to await the king’s instructions, Nick was already on his way
to Westminster Bridge.

A scant half-hour later, they
pulled up at a posting inn, where a decrepit coach with a red
stripe was being pulled into the stable.

“He can’t have stopped this close to London.
He was trying for Dover,” Firthley argued.

“He can’t make it there in time. If he is
going to miss the tide anyway…” Nick surmised. “Perhaps he plans to
stay in London, hide in plain sight and leave on a passenger boat
or find a new coach. From the sound of it, anything would be better
than the boneshaker he bought in Town.”

“And maybe this isn’t the same carriage.”

“Then it ‘beseems we should ask,’ do you not
think?” Nick trotted his horse to the stable but didn’t dismount,
declining to give the reins to a groom who came running. Instead,
he demanded, “Where is the owner of that coach? Has he traded it
for new?”

“No, my lords. Inside, ‘e is. ‘E and his lady
take a room for the night.”

Firthley asked, “French?”

“As frog’s legs, Sir.”

“What color was her dress?” Nick asked, “And
her hair?”

“Red, my lord, both. No, not quite. Hair was
gold-red, like a ha’penny.”

Nick swung his leg over the saddle.

The groom continued as he took the reins, “‘E
said she’s too sick from champagne at the wedding breakfast to go
on ‘til tomorrow, and must be she is. Clothes was a mess, and she
ain’t woke even with her head smacked ‘gainst the door.”

At Nick’s expression, the man hastened to
explain, “He ain’t done it purposeful, my lord, only he was trying
to carry her out of the coach himself. Won’t have no help from no
one. Proper bridegroom ‘e was, agog to get to his room.” The man
leered, and it was all Nick could do not to drub him with the blunt
end of his pistol.

“Keep my horse here and saddled and water
him.”

Nick was opening the front door before the
man had finished mangling his title, with Firthley no more than a
step behind.

Slamming the barrel-shaped proprietor against
the nearest lime-washed wall, a forearm across his throat and a
pistol to his belly, Nick demanded, “Where is she, you addle-pated
puff guts?” Nick tried to leave a bruise with the barrel of the
gun. “And do not lie to me, or I will see you dead.”

At the request of one duke to give
information about another, the man hemmed and hawed, trying to
persuade Nick he had no notion of a Frenchman with a sleeping
woman.

The soldier with them came in then and
confirmed, “If he doesn’t kill you, it will be Newgate by
sunrise.”

The man couldn’t talk fast enough. “First
floor, Yer Grace. Third door on the left.” Nick couldn’t run up the
stairs fast enough, galloping two at a time, Firthley still close
behind. The soldier called out, “I’ll keep him here, Your Grace,”
then, apparently to a cohort coming in the door, “Up the back
stairs, man, before Lord Firthley and His Grace get into the thick
of it.”

When he reached the third door on the left,
Nick slammed it open with his shoulder, breaking the lock and the
door jamb. The first thing he saw was Malbourne throwing a sheet
over Bella, as though her presence were an affront to his
sensibilities.

Before it covered her completely, though, her
motionless, unclothed body was all he could see, lying on the bed,
white-faced, slack-jawed, bruises on her throat. As far as Nick
could tell, dead. His breath stopped and he nearly lost control of
his stomach.

Her dress was ruined, as were a black jacket
and waistcoat, all tossed carelessly on a chair. Before he fully
registered Malbourne in his shirtsleeves and tidy cravat, the blood
seeping onto the pillowcase under Bella’s head coated Nick’s vision
in red.

He charged across the room.

“Damn you to hell, you oily bastard!”

When the Frenchman rushed to stop him from
entering any further, Nick aimed his fist for the bruise he had
left four days earlier.

The force of Nick’s blow threw Malbourne
against the bed frame, then to the floor.

Nick was on Malbourne before he could finish
the first scream of terror, beating him until blood flew off his
fists, spattering across his face. The Frenchman’s attempts to
block Nick’s rage with his hands only made them additional
targets.

Malbourne’s voice grew quieter and more
sluggish as Nick’s abuse gained in volume, overshadowed only by the
buzzing of a crowd forming behind his back.

“Ten shillings on the blond duke!” “No bet!
The dark one’s nearly dead!” “Five-to-one the black one don’t last
five minutes!”

It sounded like every person in the building
had charged up the stairs to watch and place wagers on the outcome.
The crowd jostling for the best view grew larger every time the
sound of flesh striking flesh flew into the hallway.

“You had no right to her! No right!” Nick
yelled, barely aware of his own words as he pummeled his weakening
adversary. He saw Firthley remove Bella’s silent body from the
room, and at the sight of her corpse, his breath hitched. Even
through the choking, Nick somehow managed to hit Malbourne
harder.