The Perfect Princess (10 page)

Women had always been putty in his hands—his mother, his wife, Lucy—he smiled when he thought of the boy. This was something different. He’d never had an apprentice before; he’d never had someone who looked up to him and applauded his cunning and his successes. He found it liberating to be able to take off the mask and reveal himself as he truly was. And the boy was an apt pupil. They could have a bright future together.

Maitland had had the opposite effect on him. From the moment they’d met, he’d felt uncomfortable in Maitland’s presence.
A dour Scot
, he’d thought, but there was more to it than that. He’d find Maitland’s eyes on him, unsmiling eyes that missed nothing, and he’d find himself trailing away in the middle of a sentence. He’d tried to make friends with Maitland, tried to win him over, but Maitland had ignored every overture.

Maitland held no fears for him now. He would never work things out. And Maitland had a failing that he, himself, did not possess. Maitland followed a code of honor, something singular to himself and slightly tarnished around the edges, but a code of honor nonetheless. Maitland would stop at murder, whereas he would not.

His mind sifted through this and that and finally focused on Maitland’s friends. A cautious man, Maitland, and that was something he understood and respected. The chief of staff of Special Branch couldn’t afford to let people get close to him. The only friends who amounted to anything were Hugh Templar and Jason Radley. He knew that Radley had gone off to Paris before Maitland’s world collapsed around him, and as far as he knew, he was still there. As for Templar, he had deserted his “friend” the moment he went to trial.

Or had he?

On reflection, he decided that it was too risky to stand
aside and let the authorities track Maitland on their own. He had no faith in the authorities.
Bumbling
and
incompetent were
the words he would use to describe them, else they would never have convicted an innocent man—Maitland—while allowing someone who was guilty five times over—himself—to walk away unscathed.

His first kill had shocked him, though he’d planned it down to the last detail. It was odd how easier it became with each successive kill, easier and more pleasurable. The rush of power was like nothing he had ever experienced. When he killed, he felt like a god.

He felt the rush of power now just thinking about it. But good as those kills had been, they were as nothing to the pleasure he anticipated when he finally watched Richard Maitland dangle at the end of a rope.

Careful
, he warned himself. Maitland wouldn’t be as easy a kill as those others. The man was born with a suspicious nature. Until Maitland, he’d got by on his cunning and natural charm. After Maitland, he’d learned to use his brains as well. He had to think things through, had to pull things apart and piece them together on the remote chance, the very remote chance, that Maitland would work things out.

When he heard voices in the corridor, he got up. He was expecting his visitor and wanted answers to the questions that had been running through his mind. Where were Richard Maitland’s friends? Where could he be hiding? What would he do next? Who was this bodyguard who had helped him escape?

And who would be in charge of tracking Maitland down?

Harper leaned his elbow on the bar counter, took a long swig from his tankard of ale, and wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He was beginning to realize that abducting a duke’s daughter
wasn’t the wisest thing his chief had ever done. The road to Chelsea was choked with troopers. He’d only come a mile or two along the road when he was spotted, and a troop of cavalry had given chase. If he hadn’t been driving the finest and fastest rig he’d ever had the pleasure of handling, he’d be on his way to Newgate by now. As it was, he’d just managed to ditch the duke’s equipage and take refuge in the Cocked Hat, when the militia surrounded it.

And here he’d been as dusk fell and the lanterns were lit. The taproom was packed, and a soldier guarded each exit. They’d found the duke’s coach and now they were looking for the girl and her abductors. Everyone in the vicinity had been rounded up and ordered to wait in the inn until they could be questioned. If the king had been abducted, there couldn’t have been a bigger rumpus.

It could be worse, much worse. Those soldiers could have come from the Horse Guards, where Special Branch was quartered. Then someone might recognize him, and the game would be up. But these soldiers came from Richmond, and they didn’t know him from Adam.

They hadn’t started to question the patrons yet. Harper didn’t think he was going to hang around for that. Though he knew he had a glib tongue and could talk his way out of just about anything, it could take hours before they got around to him. He had to get horses and get back to his chief. Just a little while longer and he would make his move. He’d cause a distraction and be out of here like a shot.

If his luck held.

When the door opened and two men entered the bar, he realized that getting back to his chief was the least of his worries. He casually turned his back on them so that they wouldn’t see his face. He didn’t know whether they would know him or not, but he sure as hell knew them. Everyone at Special Branch knew them, Digby and Whorsley, the two thugs from upstairs. They all worked
under the same roof and came under the umbrella of His Majesty’s Secret Service, but some sections were more secret than others. Digby and Whorsley worked for Section C, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition. These were the spies who spied on spies.

They were forever sticking their noses in where they were least wanted. Colonel Maitland had bent those noses out of joint a time or two. Digby hated the chief because he thought he’d stolen his promotion. He would make him pay for it now, if he ever caught him.

He turned his head slightly, and from the corner of his eye saw that they were leaving with one of the officers. They couldn’t know about the cottage, could they? He shook his head, answering his own question. Only he, the chief, and Mr. Templar knew where the cottage was, and they wouldn’t tell anyone. But now that they’d found the duke’s carriage, the men from upstairs would know that the chief must be hiding close by.

He had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Look!” a woman shrilled. “They’re bringing in the duke’s carriage! And ain’t that the duke and his sons?”

There was a surge toward the windows as everyone tried to get a better look. From his vantage point at the bar counter, Harper had a clear view. They were standing directly under one of the lanterns.

They made a striking group, the duke and his sons, as darkly handsome as gypsies, and as graceful. But there was something about their bearing, not arrogance exactly, but something close to it, that commanded respect. And Digby and Whorsley were certainly giving them respect, bowing and scraping like trained dogs in a circus.

“Toadeaters,”
muttered Harper under his breath.

The door opened and a soldier entered. “His Grace, the Duke of Romsey,” he cried out, “is offering a reward of five thousand pounds for information leading to the safe return of his daughter.”

A hush descended, then everyone started talking and
shouting across each other. One of the soldiers left his post at the door to quell an argument that had broken out between two patrons. The distraction Harper had been waiting for had arrived.

He idled his way to the door and pushed it open, then froze when he heard someone calling his name.

“That’s Sergeant Harper! He’s one of them!”

Digby’s voice! So the man from upstairs had recognized him after all. He didn’t look back. He charged down the corridor, through the back door, and into the inn’s courtyard. And after him streamed a horde of shrieking patrons, all determined to get to him first so they could claim the reward.

As they surged into the courtyard, soldiers cocked their pistols.

“There he is!” yelled Harper, pointing. “He’s getting away!”

It was the same trick he’d used at Newgate, and he hoped to hell it would work here as well.

He untied the first horse he came to and jumped onto its back. A volley of shots rang out, but none of them was aimed at him. The soldiers were firing at the imaginary target he had pointed out. It would take them precious seconds to reload their pistols.

He dug in his heels and in a bounding leap went thundering onto the road to town. A bullet whined right past his ear. There was always some clever blighter who held his fire until he was sure of his target. That’s what he’d taught the men under his command to do, so he shouldn’t be complaining.

“Hold your fire!” yelled Digby.

“After him, fools!” Whorsley’s voice this time.

There was no thought in Harper’s mind now of rejoining his chief. He knew what he had to do, and that was lead the enemy as far from Colonel Maitland as possible.

H
is Grace called for Digby and Whorsley and, without waiting to see if they were following, led the way into the inn. As soon as the innkeeper showed them into a private parlor and bowed himself out, he pointed to chairs. “Sit,” he said.

Digby and Whorsley exchanged a veiled look, but when the duke’s sons each took a chair at the table, so did they, only they sat ill at ease on the edge of their seats.

His Grace stood in the middle of the room, his feet apart, clenching and unclenching his hands. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with dark hair graying at the temples. Harper had likened him in his own mind to a gypsy, but the duke was not dark-skinned. He was tanned by the sun, the result of an active life spent outdoors. He was in his early sixties and was generally taken for a much younger man. At this moment, he looked older than his years. Every line in his grief-stricken face was deeply etched.

His sons, Lords Caspar and Justin, so closely resembled their father that no one could have mistaken the relationship. Rosamund had been spared the square jaw and aquiline nose, but they all shared their father’s wideset gray eyes, intelligent eyes that looked at the world in a clear-eyed, reflective stare.

After several moments of silence, Caspar said gently, “Father, sit down.”

“What?” The duke looked at his elder son, made a considerable effort to come to himself, and took the chair Caspar indicated.

He was never at a loss, always in command of every situation. His hair-raising escapades in France during the Revolution had made him a legend in his own time. But this was different. This so closely resembled the grief that had consumed him when his wife died that the fear was almost paralyzing. He’d forgotten how fragile he was until two strangers, Major Digby and Captain Whorsley, had arrived at the house and broken the news of Rosamund’s abduction. Her coach had been found abandoned in the environs of Chelsea, they’d said, and without more ado, he’d mounted up and ridden out with them. Now he wanted a fuller accounting of what had happened to his daughter.

Caspar and Justin, he knew, felt as lost as he did. They’d been in London when militiamen had tracked them down and given them the news. They’d arrived at the Cocked Hat within moments of each other.

Just looking at his sons brought a measure of calm, though he did not always see eye to eye with them. Caspar, the heir, against his father’s wishes had fought in the Spanish Campaign, and had returned to England a changed man, with a steel in him the duke secretly admired, but could not always tolerate.

Justin, not to be outdone by his older brother, had joined him in the last weeks of the war. But Justin’s experience was different from Caspar’s. He’d been feted by
the Belgians, he and his fellow, dashing hussars. To Justin, the war was glory and glamour. Caspar’s long years in Spain were much darker. All the same, the duke was counting on both sons now to see them through this terrible calamity.

They believed that Maitland was no fool, and that he would use Rosamund to barter his way to freedom. He prayed they were right, but what he’d read of Maitland in the newspapers made him fear the worst. If he thought he’d get away with it, he would kill Rosamund without compunction. They had to find him before it was too late.

The duke’s eyes moved to Digby and Whorsley. Though they were military men, they looked as if they spent much of their time chained to their desks, studying reports. They were both lean, fortyish, with lines of concentration furrowing their brows, and they reminded the duke of his own bookkeepers. If a penny went missing, they worried at it until it was found. He hoped it was a good sign.

They’d said they were from Section C of His Majesty’s Secret Service, and seemed proud of it. The duke, however, was not reassured. The Secret Service was so fragmented that the right hand rarely knew what the left hand was up to. If it had known, someone like Richard Maitland would never have been appointed as chief of staff.

Everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to speak. “Major Digby,” he said, “who is this Harper fellow?”

“Maitland’s bodyguard, and now evidently his accomplice. He helped Maitland escape from the prison. That’s all we know at this point, Your Grace.”