Shameless (27 page)

“Can you not reach the first foothold? ’Tis not so
very
high.” Beth’s taunting voice, calling down to him, made him look up. They were all looking down at him, he discovered, but hers was the only face he saw. Her expression, he discovered to his delight, was pure mockery.

By way of a reply, Neil smiled and began to climb.

As he did, it occurred to him that he had smiled more since meeting her than he had in years. Amusement, enjoyment, even an urge to
tease—he had almost forgotten what those felt like. They belonged to his all-but-forgotten youth, and feeling them took him back to a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Toying with this innocent young woman was making him feel almost like a stranger to himself, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. For a moment he played with the notion of abandoning his plan to use her as bait, and instead considered just trying to remain in hiding—in the caves, perhaps—until, hopefully, his existence was forgotten. She was, quite simply, a darling, and to cause her pain, which killing her brother-in-law might reasonably be presumed to do, was something that he would prefer not to do could he avoid it. But there was no choice: Richmond was the only one who knew the truth of his identity beyond the fearsome assassin who killed on the government’s command. And beyond that, it required only the briefest reflection to know that he could not remain hidden away in the caves, or indeed anywhere, forever, or even for very long. Besides, even were it possible, he had no wish to live for months or years constantly looking over his shoulder. If he was going to live, then he wanted a
life,
and to have that he was going to have to eliminate the largest obstacle in his path: Richmond.

Although, strictly for Beth’s sake, he was sorry for it.

“Have we much farther to go?” Dolly asked as he climbed into the passage and straightened again to his full height, which meant the top of his head almost brushed the low ceiling. The buxom blonde stood the closest to him, while Beth, of course, stood the farthest away, with her back turned to him—deliberately, he was sure—as she appeared to study something absolutely fascinating on the plain stone wall of the tunnel. Even though Dolly was looking tired and unkempt, she wriggled and batted her eyelashes at him and essayed a hopeful smile. She was comely enough, and might, at some other time, have stirred his interest sufficiently to earn a brief sojourn in his bed. But at the moment she held no appeal for him at all.

“Not far,” he said, and brushed past her.

“Not that I mean to tease ye, yer worship, but ’ow far’s not far?” Mary asked.

“Two miles. Three at the most,” he replied, his eyes on the ground as he looked for the torch he’d thrown. Finding another such stick would be well-nigh impossible until they were out of the caves, so he had no intention of just leaving it behind.

“I don’t think I can travel such a distance,” Jane said, wringing her hands. “The air is so close in here—sometimes I think I can’t breathe.”

Mary gave her a disgusted look. “So what do ye plan to do, sit ’ere and ’ope a wind blows through?”

Peg, who had apparently picked the torch up before he’d reached the passage, handed it to him.

“Fresh air be what we need, all right,” she said. “We must just walk to reach it.”

“Where will we come out?” Nan asked, and all eyes fastened on him as they awaited the answer.

“An inn.” His response was brief, but that was all they needed to know. The caves opened into the cellar of an inn that was the lowest of the low, a place where criminals ranging from murderers to smugglers to grave robbers to pickpockets came and went without ever a question being asked. Outsiders were not welcome; the too curious might never be seen again. It was notorious enough that it was left alone even by the local constabulary, yet secret enough so that only those who needed to knew of its existence.

“An inn!” The prospect appeared to energize Jane.

“We can get a hot meal.” Nan clapped her hands together.

“Oh, and a wash!” Dolly exclaimed.

“And then go home,” Peg said. Then she looked at him, suddenly less certain. “Can’t we?”

Lighting the torch from Alyce’s, hesitating over the answer, he looked at the circle of expectant faces around him with grim acceptance: for the moment they were his responsibility, whether he liked it or not. What he
wanted
to do was continue his dalliance with Beth, who was now standing a little way back from the others and once more regarding him with a frown, while putting as much distance as possible between himself and those who would kill him. What he was
going
to do was lead this gaggle of gooseberries out from underground, see them safe, and then rid himself of them forever before proceeding with the previous agenda.

“Why not?” he answered, and they all seemed satisfied except for Beth, who still frowned at him. When she found out that she would be accompanying him to a destination quite remote from London, instead of remaining with the other females in some quiet country inn until her family could fetch her, or returning home under his aegis, she was sure to treat him to fireworks aplenty. And that, he discovered as he set off once more with the chatterboxes in tow, was something he was actually looking forward to.

It would be a most pleasant interlude—until he killed her brother-in-law and made her hate him.

“’Tis getting narrower,” Peg observed in a nervous tone as they had to pick their way over piles of rock and squeeze one by one past a fallen slab. “I’ll be that glad to get out in the sunshine.”

Dolly sneezed. “It smells of damp.”

“Doesn’t water weaken rock?” Nan asked, glancing around uneasily. Neil, knowing the answer, didn’t reply. When he’d last passed this way, this passage had been clear. Now it wasn’t. From the evidence, it seemed there had been any number of rock slides over the years, some of them quite recent.

“What happens if the way out be blocked?” Jane’s voice quivered. “What will we do then?”

“Find another way out,” Beth said shortly. It was such blunt good sense that the rest were silenced. Her brows were knit, and she seemed to be in such a brown study that Neil let Alyce take the point with the other torch and fell back to discover what—besides her snit with himself, of course—ailed her.

“Does being kissed
always
make you angry?” He’d come up behind her to murmur wickedly in her ear when, thanks to the remains of a rock slide that partially blocked a passage, they found themselves momentarily alone. Just as he had expected, her head came up and her shoulders squared and she, who had been studiously ignoring him
since he had fallen in behind her at the end of the line, shot him a killing glare over her shoulder.

“I have no idea,” said she, with her nose in the air and icicles dripping from every word, “what you are talking about.”

And marched on.

“Well, there was Rosen: I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but he definitely roused you to anger. Then there was my poor self, who, after having done you the not insignificant service of assisting you in that matter, chose to take payment in the form of one paltry kiss. You were furious, you can’t deny it. And after last night . . . ”

“Hush.” Her whisper was fierce as they caught up to the others. “You will be overheard.”

Smiling to himself as he watched that slender, now ramrod-straight back, Neil waited until another tunnel blockage left them once again to all intents and purposes alone.

“Almost you make me afraid to kiss you again,” he said pensively when the others were out of sight. “Almost.”

She was right in front of him, facing the outside wall with her hands flat against the rock as she began to traverse the severely narrowed passageway. Her head snapped around so that she was looking at him. Her brows practically met over her nose and her eyes shot sparks at him.

“You dare . . . !”

“Daring is certainly required, but then I’ve always considered myself a fairly daring fellow,” he agreed in the mildest of fashions, and barely controlled a smile when she made an infuriated sound under her breath and turned her head away from him again. If the passage had been wide enough to allow for flouncing, he was quite sure she would have flounced away.

“Come, Beth, cry friends,” he said to the back of that red head when he caught up to her again. “You really have no reason to be so vexed at me, you know. I at least let you go without having to be forced to it by aid of a fireplace poker.”

Her head whipped around again. “You are never going to let me forget that, are you?”

He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “I admit, at the moment it seems to be claiming a place at the top of my most cherished memories. Right along with how you looked that night clinging to the balcony, your breasts bathed in moonlight . . . ”

“Oh!”

The passage was really very narrow, he discovered when, turned sideways like the others, he attempted to catch up again as he followed her through it. But then, he was a great deal larger than any of them, which accounted for at least some of the reason she was managing to move much more quickly than he. The rest of the reason could undoubtedly be attributed to her desire to escape his teasing.

By the time he had won free, she was bunched in the middle of the other females. He was content to let her go. Later, when he truly had her alone, there would be plenty of time to engage more in the promising pastime of causing her cheeks to heat until they matched her hair color.

“Be they still hunting us, do you think?” Alyce asked as they emerged from the tunnel at last into a chamber almost as large as the one in which they had passed the previous night. Like that one, it had a soaring ceiling, a goodly number of stalactites and stalagmites, and curved walls terraced by flat stone shelves. At the opposite end was a solid granite wall with the entrance to the last of the tunnels situated some twenty feet above where they now stood. This tunnel would take them directly into the cellar of the inn. Unless, as Jane had so depressingly suggested, the way was blocked. Which he trusted it wasn’t, although the deteriorating conditions in this end of the passage suggested that of late it had gotten very little use.

“Unless they—” Mary began, but her reply was interrupted by a sudden sharp crack that made the hair on the back of Neil’s neck stand up. He barely had time to glance up in the direction of the sound before the ceiling came crashing down.

O
NE MOMENT
B
ETH
was standing there looking at Mary, who was talking. The next there was an ear-splitting
boom,
and the world seemed to cave in on top of her. Something slammed into her with the force of a runaway carriage and dashed her to the ground to the accompaniment of a thunderous roar. The back of her head smacked into stone, the air was forced from her lungs as a huge weight crashed down on her chest, and everything went black.

But she wasn’t unconscious. She knew she wasn’t, because her head ached and her ears rang and she saw stars despite the blackness, and she had to be conscious to be aware of that. Plus she could hear terrified screams that sounded somehow muffled, so that they seemed to come from a little distance away, and more crashes, smaller crashes, as if brittle objects were hitting the ground one at a time and shattering just beyond where she lay.

“Beth? Beth, are you all right?” Neil spoke urgently in her ear. She was so glad to hear his voice, so relieved to know that she wasn’t alone
in the terrifying darkness, that she completely forgot that she had been feeling vexed with him scant moments before. She let out her breath in a long sigh. It was only then that she realized she had not been breathing at all.

“Beth? Are you hurt?” His hand slid across her shoulder to her neck, where his warm fingers pressed into the soft flesh below her ear. “Answer me, damn it.”

She couldn’t see him, although her eyes were wide open and straining with the attempt. The blackness was more absolute than anything she had ever experienced. She could see nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Not even Neil, whom she realized must be lying almost completely on top of her. His hard body was the smothering weight crushing her down into the unyielding stone beneath her back; he had thrown her to the ground and fallen on top of her. Even as she regained enough of her wits to become aware of that, and registered that his fingers on her neck were checking her pulse, he shifted so that he was no longer lying on her, but stretched out against her side. Even though she couldn’t see him, she turned her head to follow his movement, desperate not to lose contact.

“What . . . happened?” she managed, wheezing a little as she pulled air into her lungs.

“Thank God.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “The roof collapsed. We’re damned fortunate to be alive.”

“You tackled me.” Reaching out, she tried to find him, making clumsy contact with smooth wool—his greatcoat. Her hand was on his broad chest, she realized as her fingers splayed out and discovered a button. With her hand flat on his chest, she moved a little, turning toward him. “I think you might have saved my life.”