The Night Angel (2 page)

Falconer’s eyes searched the dark reaches, trying to discern human legs. But it was futile. He backed away and silently shut the door. “We’ll go around the front.”

Mary protested, “But, sir, I’m forbidden from entering the main rooms.”

“As am I. Come along, swiftly now.” In fact, Falconer had never entered the formal chambers. They were said to be very grand, not that Falconer cared. He hurried the two ladies down the narrow servants’ corridor and through the swinging doors at the end. Down a connecting hall they sped, committed now. Past the kitchens and through another pair of swinging doors, which led into the dining salon. The doors swished softly over the polished marble floor, and one squeaked quietly as it closed. Falconer heard footsteps in the distance, undoubtedly a guard. He hissed softly, “Fly!”

Serafina took the lead. She had been through these chambers often enough, drawn into public view at the legate’s insistence. Prince Fritz-Heinrich was a minor prince in the Hapsburg Empire and a tyrant within his own household. He had been known to fly into an uncontrollable rage over a singed roast. The front salons were treated as a distant reflection of the palace in Vienna, and guards were ordered to shoot intruders on sight.

Had they not been in such a scramble, Falconer might have spared a second glance at what they passed. For here on Pennsylvania Avenue stood a sample of royal grandeur. The central hall was a full eighty feet long, the ceiling three stories high and domed. They raced beneath a forest of crystal chandeliers.

“Who goes there!” came a shout behind them.

“Faster,” Falconer said.

“Halt!”

Serafina pushed through the connecting doorway to the side passage. Mary’s face was stretched tight with terror. No doubt the servants who worked the front rooms regaled their fellows with tales of what awaited those who trespassed. Behind them they heard the clipped sound of leather-clad feet. Then came a sharper sound, one Falconer knew all too well—the metallic click of a percussion rifle being cocked.

Falconer slipped through the hall door and halted just inside. He tensed as the footsteps raced toward them. When the door began to swing inward, Falconer applied all his strength in the opposite direction. The door hammered back, smashing hard against the oncoming guard. Falconer continued straight through, his fists at the ready. But the door had caught the guard square in the forehead and knocked him back a dozen paces. Falconer bent over the supine form, saw he was breathing but unconscious, and relieved the man of his weapon.

He hurried down the side hall and outside to find the two women clutching each other outside the Gavis’ apartment door. “Why did you not enter?”

“I left my key in the cottage,” Serafina whispered.

Falconer did not want to knock and then bandy about with who goes there and why and all else that others might hear. Instead, he gripped the knob with one fist, readied himself, and heaved.

There was a short sharp crack, and the lock wrenched free of the doorframe. “Inside.”

He stepped into the small parlor and fitted the door back into place. Hopefully the damage would be missed in a hurried midnight inspection. “Go wake your parents, lass. Urge them to make haste.”

Mary asked, “Shall I light a fire and make tea?”

“There isn’t time.” Falconer moved to the window. The moon remained shrouded. He could see nothing save light from one window across the courtyard.

Mary pulled the drapes shut and lit one candle. Falconer shifted one corner of the curtains and kept surveying the courtyard until Serafina returned with her parents.

Alessandro Gavi hurried into the front parlor, wrapping a quilted robe about his frame, his face still rumpled with sleep. His wife followed close behind, looking both confused and frightened.

Falconer silently watched the candlelight waver over the faces of the three Gavis as Serafina continued her explanation of events. Gradually his exultation over Serafina’s appearance at his doorway evaporated. In its place was an ache so deep he could hardly breathe. He saw now that his prayerful request for a sign had been answered. Not by Serafina’s arrival, as he had first thought. Instead, by the very grave concern he saw in Alessandro and Bettina Gavi’s expressions.

The months together with this family had shown him one thing above all else. Serafina would never defy her parents’ wishes again. All her early troubles had started through rebellion. She was determined now to honor her family. This she had said over and over.

In this moment Falconer understood why she had repeated the words so often.

As though to emphasize his bewilderment, Alessandro Gavi finally spoke in English. “I do not understand. You went first to this man and not to me?”

This man
. Falconer had saved his daughter’s honor. He had sheltered her in a transatlantic voyage. He had reunited her with her parents. Yet here in this moment of danger, he remained
this man
.

Bettina Gavi must have seen Falconer’s distress, for she spoke quietly to her husband in Italian. Alessandro tried to recover by adding, “Not that we are ungrateful for your kind assistance, good sir. We remain in your debt. But you must see, after all, I am her father.”

“I sought his protection,” Serafina replied, her forehead creased in confusion. “Was I wrong?”

“No, daughter.” Bettina Gavi gripped her husband’s hand and squeezed. “Your father was merely concerned over, how do you say,
decoro
?”

“Decorum,” her daughter supplied.

“Exactly. After all, it is—what time is it, Alessandro?”

“My pocket watch is back in the bedroom. But very late.” Alessandro Gavi might have been sleepy, but he had a diplomat’s smooth ways. “Sir, I of course meant no offense.”

Falconer knew he was expected to respond in kind. But here and now, raw from his desperate nighttime prayer, he saw his answer upon display. The three of them formed a silent tableau, a message as clear as fiery words scripted upon the dawn sky.

Serafina turned not to him, but to her parents. Her parents stood to either side of their daughter, seeking to shield her from the closest present danger. John Falconer, the man they needed, yet feared.

Had Serafina herself shown a desperate love for him, perhaps they might be swayed. Yet she was still recovering from the previous summer’s trauma. Her own heart had been sorely wounded. She was truly fond of him, he was sure, and would call him friend all her days. But when her heart healed, her parents would seek another’s hand. Someone appropriate for their station. And Serafina would yield to their request.

Falconer felt a burning behind his eyes. He turned back toward the draped window, mentally picturing nothing save a bleak and empty night. He muttered, “I must depart.”

“Excuse me, good sir, did you speak?”

Falconer’s fists clenched at his sides as he clamped down on a sorrow that writhed and bucked and sought to bring him down. It was a silent struggle, one that no one else noticed. And he won.

He turned to face the four of them. “We must depart. Now.”

“What, in the middle of the night? You can’t—” “Think on this, sir. Think carefully. Your daughter saw attackers. Whether they were after you, we can only guess. But I cannot protect you here. Do you understand what I am saying? I cannot protect you or your daughter. You are entrusting the legate with securing your family’s safety.”

“He is right, Alessandro.” Bettina’s face was drawn with growing concern. “What if the legate was behind this?”

“He would not dare have me attacked on his own property!”

“Lower your voice, husband.” Bettina Gavi took daily instruction from an English tutor. Her abilities were growing steadily, but her accent remained very heavy, particularly now when she was so afraid. “Have you not yourself said the legate seeks to make trouble with the Americans? He could attack us, then accuse the American authorities of being unable to protect their foreign guests even inside their capital.”

Rapid action went against the diplomat’s nature. “But where would you expect us to go in the middle of the night?”

“A hotel.”

Alessandro Gavi wrung his hands. When dressed in his official finery and stationed in the halls of power, he cut a dignified figure. Now, in the depths of a night masked by cloud and fear, his hair a tangle and his movements nervous, he looked frail and aging. “Whatever will the legate think?”

“If you wait and ask permission, he might refuse.” Falconer found every word an effort. “If you go and explain on the morrow, it is a deed already done.”

Gavi offered Falconer reluctant approval. “You are right. Of course. Very well. We must pack.”

“No time.” Falconer straightened, as though easing his back. But the internal struggle could only be quashed by motion. “Tomorrow you will send me back with a message for the legate. Mary and I will then fetch your possessions. We must leave now. Before the guard in the formal chambers awakens and raises the alarm.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Never mind.” Falconer motioned toward the door. “Take only what you can carry easily. We leave in five minutes.”

“But—”

“Hurry.”

Chapter 2

Prince Fritz-Heinrich von Hapsburg, nephew of the Austrian emperor, possessed a remarkable example of the royal nose. An uncharitable person might have said that the prince’s snout was made for looking down on those around him, and for sniffing his disdain. Both of which the prince did altogether too often.

“Make way there.”

Falconer stepped to one side. A liveried attendant in powdered wig and brocaded frock coat led a trio of servants into the grand salon. The doors were opened by two guards, also in full Hapsburg livery. When the doors swung shut behind the small group, Falconer pretended to relax against the back wall.

A man sidled up beside him. Gerald Rivens was the prince’s junior coach driver. Gerald had been stepping out with Mary, Serafina’s maid. They were often seated in the servants’ gallery at the church Falconer attended. A bit of the rough trade was Falconer’s initial impression of the man. But Falconer had no problem with those from society’s underclass. It was, after all, his own birthright as well.

Gerald asked quietly, “You mind a word?”

Falconer responded by making room for Gerald to join him against the wall. Gerald planted his tricorn hat upon his chest, as though respectfully awaiting a summons. It was a common practice among the prince’s servants, adopting positions that suggested they were busy with duties even when idle.

Gerald said, “Mary won’t tell me where you’ve got the family holed up.”

Falconer nodded acceptance of the news, well pleased to learn his orders were being carried out.

“Don’t blame you,” Gerald went on. He pitched his voice low and kept his eyes focused on the closed doors across from them. “I’ve noticed signs of strangers in the night.”

Falconer glanced over. The man was narrow in all the ways that mattered. His face pinched downward to a slit of a nose. His gaze was tight and cautious. Though his frame looked slight, he carried himself with the taut muscles and wariness of one who had survived his share of battles.

Falconer murmured back, “What is your weapon of choice?”

Gerald looked at him and smiled with the knowing grin of one who understood everything that Falconer had left unsaid. “I don’t walk those ways anymore.”

“I’ve seen you at church.”

“Aye, I came crawling up to the cross a few years back. Accepted my salvation on the only terms that mattered. Empty-handed, broken and needy.”

“I like those words,” Falconer replied. “Especially when spoken by a man who knows his way about a fight.”

“Like I said, I’ve left the dark paths behind.” Gerald turned his attention back to the shut doors with their gilded crests and nodded slowly. “But in a former life, I was partial to the blade.”

Falconer nodded also, accepting the smaller man’s gift of trust. “You were speaking of attackers?”

“Don’t know who they were. But I had a careful look around the day after you slipped away. There were footprints between the cottages and the stable.”

“Mary told you where Serafina had seen the figures?”

“That she did. Which was why I went to have a look for myself. I spied three sets of footprints. And a bit of slow match. You understand?”

“Musket,” Falconer replied with another nod. A slow match was a means of firing an old-fashioned weapon. Since the advent of percussion caps, slow matches were used less and less. But the hand-crafted guns of old were still used by marksmen who sought accuracy above all. “Assassin.”

Gerald drew his mouth down. “Mary said you had a history of your own.”

“I once considered myself a better man than some because I had never played the pirate,” Falconer confessed. “Fool that I was.”

“I’ve come to feel the only difference between a strong man and a weak one is the color of the lies he tells himself,” Gerald agreed.

Falconer turned to look squarely at the man. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, brother.” He offered Gerald his hand and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You’ll find Mary at Brown’s Indian Queen Hotel for another few days.”

Gerald’s grip held surprising force for such slender bones. “After that?”

“We’ve rented a house on Lafayette Square.”

Gerald seemed reluctant to let go of Falconer’s hand. “Does Master Gavi have his full accompaniment of servants?”

“The Gavis have no need of a full-time carriage driver. But a trusted man who could serve as family guard would be most welcome.”

“What of yourself?”

“I am soon to be called away.”

The doors across the hall swept open. A royal attendant stepped out, his chin held so far back he could look both up at Falconer and down his nose. “John Falconer, your presence is required.”

As Falconer stepped forward, Gerald said softly, “I’m your man.”

Serafina stood a pace behind and to one side of her parents. The aristocrats and a few petitioners formed two long arms down either side of the formal chamber. The hall was large, imposing, and very cold. No amount of burning fires or sunlight could warm the atmosphere.