The King's Code (The Lady Spies Series #3): A Regency Historical Romance (18 page)

~

The
clerk walked into Dante’s Inferno, wanting to speak with the man who had paid for his frequent visits to his favorite opium den.

The skinny clerk rubbed the corner of his eye and scratched his head as he scanned the room. Not seeing the big man, he walked to a little man leaning against the wall.

“You work here?”

“Might do,” he said, a Welsh accent blanketing his words.

“You seen a man with a nasty scar across his face?” He dragged his finger down his right cheek.

The Welshman lifted his bushy black eyebrows and then looked him over from head to toe. “What do you want with him?”

Irritated, the clerk ran his fingers through his hair, white flakes showering down on his dark jacket like snow. “Never you mind. I need to speak with him is all, and believe you me, he will want to speak with me.”

“Let’s see then.” The hairy plug of a man jerked his head, indicating that the clerk should follow him.

He turned to the bar on the right side of the narrow central corridor and smiled at the pretty whores who wiggled in customers’ laps, convincing them to pay for more than their drinks. The men laughed and the whores laughed harder and the clerk wondered if he would be rewarded with more than money for his information.

Brushing the white flakes from his black lapel, the clerk glanced at the left side of the room. Not so much laughing going on there. Gentlemen sat at round wooden tables with a much larger baize-covered table sitting in the middle of them.

A gentleman as smooth as the devil was dealing cards to the other players, and the clerk blinked as he walked into a particularly thick cloud of cheroot smoke.

The sturdy little man placed his foot on the stairs and the low rumble of men’s voices gave way to the feminine howls of whores plying their trade. He grinned as they turned to the right and the man knocked on the far door.

“Yes,” a woman said and he was confused.

“I don’t want a whore,” the clerk said and the Welshman just stared at him, opening the office door.

He blinked against the bright lights that contrasted to the dim gaming room below and listened as the Welshman said, “This man says he has urgent business with Mister Collin.”

The clerk nodded as he looked from his escort to the muscular man with the scar across his hard face. “How do, Mister Collin.” He bobbed his head in greeting to the familiar face.

“What do you want?” a whore said and the clerk looked at her for the first time. She was beautiful. Blond with long legs and the perfect-sized breasts for a man to grab hold of.

“I’ve come about a lady.”

The whore snorted, saying, “Get him out of here,” to the short Welshman who had brought him.

“No, I don’t want a whore. A lady.” He scratched his right cheek. “A lady come to visit me at the
Herald
. Small and young with big blue eyes, sorta pretty.”

The hairy man looked at the blond whore and pointed to a chair but asked him, “Chestnut hair?”

“Yeah, that’s her.” The clerk nodded, sitting.

“Sounds like Lady Juliet,” the Welshman said.

“The lady invited me to her carriage and told me that she was from Whitehall and that them mistakes I’ve been putting in the
Herald
is something to do with the war.”

The beautiful whore and Mister Collin glanced at each other and he knew what he was telling them was important.

“I thought I should tell you as I’m supposed to meet with her tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“The
Herald
at closing time, six o’clock.” The clerk sat up. “And there is something else, too.”

“Yes,” the whore said.

“I’ve been followed for the past few days.”

“Were you followed here?” she asked and the clerk grinned.

“I give them the slip at Covent Garden and come here quick as I could. Thought Mister Collin should know about the lady.”

“You did the right thing by coming here.” The whore smiled and walked toward the hairy man at the door. “Go ask Mister Matthews to get this man ten pounds.”

Ten pounds!

The clerk smiled as the Welshman left. “Thank you very much,” he said to Mister Collin as he tried to picture the amount of opium ten pounds would buy him.

“I do have one more question,” the whore said from behind him.

“What do you wanna know?” He scratched the side of his nose and then his ear.

“Why did you agree to meet with this lady in the first place?”

The clerk opened his mouth to answer but was startled by the sight of blood squirting across the room. His neck felt wet and then he felt the searing pain. His hands went to his throat as he tried frantically to close the slit she had opened across his neck. Thick liquid oozed between his fingers, spilling onto his dirty jacket.

His eyes grew wide and he looked at Mister Collin for assistance, but he and the woman just stood there, talking as he bled.

“Go to the meeting and bring Juliet Pervill to me. Take the Welshman to identify her, but don’t bring her to Dante’s. Take her to the inn.”

“Right.”

The clerk sucked in a breath but it didn’t make it to his lungs as it bubbled out of his gapping throat. The room was going dim. His eyes rolled back in his head, and as he lost consciousness, the clerk wished that he had made it to the opium den one last time before he died.

≈

It was six o’clock and Juliet squinted against the darkening sky as several men emerged from the front entrance of the
London Herald
, none of them the traitorous clerk.

She forced herself to wait another half hour before she called to her footmen, “See if the clerk is in the office.”

The older of the footmen bowed, eager to redeem himself after having lost sight of the clerk at Covent Garden. “Yes, ma’am.”

The footmen looked from left to right on the sparsely populated walkway and then knocked on the door. Juliet watched anxiously, and the older man glanced at her before turning the knob. It gave and he signaled to the younger footman, who nodded, his hand at his waist, touching what she presumed to be his pistol.

She stared at the door, her heart pounding at the guilt pooling in her chest. Juliet reminded herself that her footmen were in no danger, that she had merely asked them to inquire as to the clerk’s whereabouts within the newspaper’s office. However, the longer she waited with no sign of her servants, the more Juliet felt that she should have gone with them.

She opened the door to her carriage and looked up at her coachman. “Wait here, I’ll be back in just a moment.”

The man nodded, thinking nothing of her request as he had no idea of their true mission at the
Herald
. Juliet had kept that information between herself and her loyal footmen, not wanting her mother to discover that she was investigating the code on her own.

She walked to the door and opened it, peering into the darkened lobby of the
Herald
. The smell of extinguished lamp oil still hung in the air and Juliet took a step forward, closing the door.

The hairs at the nape of her neck bristled and she turned to her right, catching a glimpse of her footmen lying on the floor the instant before a dark force looming over her grabbed her from behind.

She began to scream, but the man’s hand clamped over her mouth so violently that her mind reeled with wild pictures of a very violent death.

“The clerk sends his apologies for not meeting you.” The man gave a burst of breathy amusement, the note of cruelty raising gooseflesh on her arms. “But as my employer slit his throat, it is very unlikely that he would have spoken overmuch to a representative of Whitehall.”

Juliet closed her eyes, berating herself for concocting such a dangerous lie. She jerked her head away from the man’s hand, thinking to use his misconception to her advantage. “Whitehall knows I’m here.”

She tried to turn to look at the man but he grabbed her chin so hard that she winced.

“We better leave then, hadn’t we?” He laughed, stuffing a piece of muslin in her mouth.

He pushed her forward and Juliet glanced at her footmen, looking for any indication that they were alive. She saw that one of them was breathing and Juliet prayed that her coachman would find them soon.

The man shoved her toward the back of the large building and then stopped. She tried again to turn her head to look at him but he grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking her head back against his hard chest.

“Draw attention to us and you will suffer the same fate as the clerk.”

Juliet nodded, hearing the cold indifference in his voice and knowing this man would not hesitate to kill her. He opened the door to the alley and propelled her to a waiting carriage. She stepped up and her brows furrowed at the sight of a small man that Juliet could have sworn she had seen before.

“Is this her?”

“That’s her.” The hairy man smiled as he reached up to tie a blindfold over her eyes and then she remembered. She had seen him riding just outside her house.

He had been watching her, she realized.

“Did you have to kill anybody?” the man asked with a distinct Welsh accent.

“Didn’t have to,” the larger man said, and Juliet sighed with relief.

The big man pulled her right arm back so roughly that Juliet grunted against the muslin gag. She felt a band of cold metal around her wrist and then he was yanking her left arm, causing her shoulder to crash against the squabs.

The manacles clamped closed and Juliet felt her panic rise at the finality of the ominous sound. She had to think, sure that she was safe until she met with the French cryptographer.

And then he would slit her throat.

Seamus!

Did they know about Seamus?

No, the clerk had not known about Seamus and she was sure that the Frenchman wanted information from her, indicating that he had little. But what information could she provide that would keep her alive?

She was still thinking when she felt the carriage had stopped. The Welshman pushed her up an outer flight of stairs as the bigger man spoke, ordering, “Put her in the first room. I’ll leave you here while I inform Enigma of her arrival, but it might take a few minutes for us to get over to the inn.”

Enigma.
That must be the cryptographer and they were holding her at an inn. Juliet felt a ray of hope, sure that there would be guests in the other rooms.

“Right,” the Welshman said and a door opened, blasting her with warm air.

Their footsteps echoed in what her senses told her was a narrow corridor and the small man came to a stop, opening a door and guiding her by the arm into what she assumed was the first room. She took small steps so as not to trip and then the Welshman turned her and Juliet’s back hit a wall.

“Sit down.” The left band of steel came off only to be fastened again.

He turned her so that her back pressed against something hard and then she felt the mattress and Juliet realized that her manacles had been strung around a bedpost.

“They’ll be coming for you shortly,” the Welshman said and Juliet stilled at the note of regret in his voice.

She heard him walk toward the door and Juliet tried to use the sound to orient herself in the room. The door opened and closed and then she knew that she was alone.

Juliet worked quickly, feeling up and down the bedpost and determining that she had but two options. Break the thick side rail of the bed or lift the sturdy wooden bed frame off the floor entirely.

Neither seemed likely.

Making her decision, Juliet pressed her back to the heavy wooden post, butting her heels against her backside. Her left hand was able to grasp the underside of the side rail, but her right hand was too small to hold the round wooden bedpost.

She took two breaths and held the last, pushing up with her feet. The bed lifted slightly from the floor, the manacles digging into her wrists as she strained against the weight of the wood. Juliet quickly dropped her arms and tried to slip the metal beneath the post, but the wood hit the floor before she was even close to getting out from under it.

Juliet began to cry, sure that she would never leave this room alive if she did not free herself.
Think
. She took a deep breath.
Think!

Leverage. Use the bed against itself.

Juliet lifted the bed again but quickly turned, pressing the bedpost between her back and the wall. She pushed as hard as she could with her feet, sliding her back down the smooth bedpost, her arms stretching to get the manacles from underneath.

Her teeth were clenched against her gag, and her thighs burned from holding up the weight of the wood, but she only had a few inches to go. Her hands hit the floor and she was pulling them beneath the post when it slipped from between her shoulders, not enough of her back pressing against the post to keep it in place.

“No,” Juliet whispered and then she realized that the post was resting on the metal bar connecting the right and the left cuffs of her restraints. Her heart stopped and she tried to slow her breathing. She would have nothing but her wrists with which to pull the manacles free.