Virtue's Reward (15 page)

Harry stood up and deliberately set down his glass.

“You aren’t Earl of Acton yet, brother,” he said. “I am not under your orders. I have failed twice, I admit, but it was not for want of trying.”

“As it happens, there were three—not two—of these absurd attempts. You were sadly not present for the first.”

“
Three?
When was the other?”

Richard walked to the sideboard where he poured himself a second brandy.

“Just after you left the last time you were here. Someone took a potshot at me. Luckily he was not as good of a shot as you, and I was barely grazed, or the earldom would have fallen into your hands, after all.”

“You think our unknown assassin will try again?”

“I’d say it’s almost certain. At least no one is trying to harm Helena deliberately, but my presence has twice put her in danger. I’m going back to London. Perhaps you could look in on occasion to see that she’s all right?”

“I’m not sure, Dickon,” Harry replied with a rueful grin, “that she’ll let me. Won’t you tell me more about this sordid business you’ve involved yourself in? I would help you a great deal more, if you’d let me.”

“No,” Richard said slowly. “I won’t. If these attacks are connected with the Paris affair, as I suspect, there is nothing at all you can do about that. Go back to Oxford and forget it!”

“Then I’m dismissed.” Harry strode to the door, then glanced back over his shoulder. “And for God’s sake, take care of yourself. As it happens, I don’t want the bloody earldom.”

* * *

When Helena came down, Harry had gone. She allowed Richard to lead her into dinner and they made nothing but polite conversation as long as the servants were in the room. At last the viscount and his lady retired to the drawing room for coffee and were private.

“Where’s Harry?” she asked immediately.

“The question of the day? I sent him off to Oxford. This time I believe he has gone there.”

Helena locked her hands together and forced herself to go on.

“Richard, three attempts have been made on your life. In each case, your brother seems to have been involved. He was certainly in the vicinity. Why do you shield him?”

“I am not shielding him, Helena.”

“For heaven’s sake! Who else has had either the opportunity or the motivation?”

“Helena, don’t go on with this! I have traveled the world, no doubt offending people as I went. Any one of a hundred could wish me harm. I assure you that Harry is innocent. Take my word for it!”

“How can I take your word? He supposedly rides away, but five minutes later you are shot and wounded in the arm. That night, instead of having returned to Oxford, he breaks into the house. The next morning, a dart pierces your horse on Marrow Hill, almost casting you into the gorge, and he appears out of the wood. He disappears for a moment at the fair, then the elephant is stabbed and you are almost crushed—and we find Harry in the trees with a handful of darts. What else am I to believe?”

“You could try believing me,” Richard said gently.

“I can’t.”

“Then, my outspoken Helena, believe your own common sense. You saw for yourself that my brother is an outstanding shot. If he had tried to take my life with a pistol, I’d be dead.”

“Unless he mistimed it and was too far away when you rode by. Perhaps next time the bullet will find its mark.”

To her amazement, Richard laughed.

“I don’t believe there will be another bullet. These ventures are meant to look like accidents. It would arouse a great deal of suspicion if I were to be shot at on a daily basis. As for Harry, he would never hurt a horse or any other beast, and he is far more efficient than the perpetrator of these bumbling attempts. Besides, no one who knew me would try to kill me using an elephant.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as Harry knows very well, I have lived in India.”

“Then perhaps it’s some kind of a game with him, Richard.”

“Helena, I won’t sit here and listen to this. Can’t you trust me to tell you the truth about my own brother?”

“As you trusted me?” she said. “When someone went through your room? Who else but Harry would try to harm you?”

“I don’t know, and I can’t stay to find out. I leave for London within the hour.”

He smiled regretfully at her, but he seemed already preoccupied with other thoughts.

“I thought you wanted Acton Mead,” she said.

“Then I suppose I was mistaken.” He stood and bowed formally. “Good night, ma’am.”

Leaving Helena standing alone before the fireplace, he walked out of the room. She had no idea when or if she would see him again.

* * *

Richard traveled fast through the covering darkness, his pistol at the ready. He watched the shadowed countryside pass by from the window of a four-horse chaise. His driver and tigers were also well armed. He had no desire to die just yet. Perhaps that necessary concern would stop him from thinking so much about Helena. He had not expected it, but she enthralled him. It seemed a terrible irony. He craved her company, even when his desire threatened to undermine his self-control. And he couldn’t afford that, especially now, when he needed all his vigilance.

As an additional precaution, he kept a burly manservant, named—appropriately enough—Mr. Hardy, with him whenever he went outside his London lodgings. Assassination is easy enough. Richard had no romantic notions that his athletic prowess could save him from a bullet, or a knife in the dark. Yet there had been no attack on his carriage, after all, and so far the attempts against him had been amateurish and insignificant. That would probably change.

Four days passed entirely without incident as he quietly put back into motion his network to gather information about the Paris affair. The fog was thick for October. London was empty of society when Richard walked quietly back from his club one night, his servant at his heels and every sense alert.

For some reason, he had not expected that it would come with such crude, overwhelming force. At least half-a-dozen shadows lurched at him out of the swirling mist. Hardy collapsed under a heavy blow from behind. Richard’s sword hissed from its cane to meet the onslaught. There was no room for pistols.

“Do your worst, gentlemen!” he cried.

He slipped aside so that the first blow hit hard into the wall where he had just been standing. The fog might have allowed the attackers to take him by surprise, but he could use it, too. Someone yelled in pain as Richard’s sword found its mark.

Yet he was just one against many. Keeping his back to the wall, he fought blindly against an onslaught of knives and cudgels. He wounded at least two more of his assailants before a blow caught him from the right that almost broke his arm.

He gasped aloud and his sword fell to the ground.

The iron pipe swung again.

In the next instant, Richard went down.

With feet and hands and head, using every trick that his travels around the world had taught him, he dealt a series of disabling blows. With his left hand he wrenched a small dagger from his boot. Someone cursed as the blade found its mark. He was proving a more difficult adversary than these thugs had expected. The number of attackers still able to fight was rapidly diminishing. Above the grunts and curses of the brawl, he heard footsteps limping away—someone was hurt badly enough to give up.

Perhaps he would make it, once again, by the skin of his teeth.

The next blow knocked the breath from his body. His dagger spun away across the cobbles. The fog was lifting. Light glinted off steel, but he was too winded to fulfill a sudden irresponsible desire to laugh. Blood gushed from his shoulder as the blade was withdrawn for a second thrust.

The bastard had found his sword in the dark.

Strong hands held him down mercilessly as the man took aim for the final blow.

It was the crowning irony of his existence: Richard Arthur Lysander Acton, Viscount Lenwood and heir to an earldom, was going to die in an alley on his own blade and leave Helena Trethaerin a widow.

His final breath roared in his ears, but it was only Death erupting in hilarity.

* * *

Helena awoke to the quiet sounds of the country. She dressed with her normal care and went calmly down to face the household. Richard was gone. He would not confide in her and he did not trust her, and not only because they were strangers.

How long, she wondered dully, had he known Marie? Several years, perhaps? Did gentlemen talk with their mistresses, or only go to bed with them? Perhaps he really loved Marie and would have married her had she been eligible.

She knew nothing of the life of a man like Richard. Her father and his neighbors had been simple country squires, content with the daily round and the local customs. They were none of them members of great families.

What kind of resources did Richard’s family control? Enough to allow them to do as they liked without regard to convention. Enough for Richard to have traveled to India and entertained himself learning how to ride an elephant.

Perhaps she first fell in love during that extraordinary journey up from Cornwall, where the treasures of his intelligence had been revealed like glimpses of some distant, bright country seen in a dream. She could never match it. He was too far above her in maturity and knowledge, in reading, in experience.

And yet she loved. Love made even more deep and absolute when he had bestowed on her the exquisite gift of his body—the unstudied care and tenderness and passion that were only natural to him. Her blood ran hot and desperate as she thought of it: the enchantment of a man’s touch, of this one man’s touch, piercing her to the soul.

What on earth could an ordinary mortal like herself offer in return? He could only have married her because she was poor and unconnected, so that she would not interfere with his life. One of Lord Salisbury’s daughters would complain to her family if she felt neglected, but Helena had no one in the world beside Richard himself. She laughed wryly at herself. What else had she expected?

When Mrs. Hood found her, Helena was calmly sitting at her desk, writing an amusing, inconsequential letter to her friend Catherine Hunter.

“There’s post for you, my lady,” Mrs. Hood said.

Helena took the letter and glanced at the seal. It was the Acton crest. She had seen it on the backs of all those ranks of chairs at King’s Acton. Unfolding the paper, she glanced at the signature, then rapidly perused the writing.

“It would seem, Mrs. Hood,” she said, “that we are to be honored with a visit from the countess.”

“Master Richard’s mother, my lady? Lady Acton? Well, bless my soul!”

“Bless all of us,” Helena said dryly. “We had better start seeing to the best bedroom.”

* * *

“ ‘It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,’ ” a man’s voice quoted quietly.

“Damn you, sir!” It hurt him a little to speak. He must have a cut lip in addition to the other injuries. “So far it has been anything but!”

“By Jove, he’s coming around!” another voice said, both less cultured and more recently familiar. “I thought you was dead as a doornail, my lord.”

The first voice continued to quote gently, but this time from another poem.

“ ‘Young Blount his armor did unlace / And gazing on his ghastly face / said, “By Saint George, he’s gone! / That spear wound has our master sped / And see the deep cut on his head! / Good-night to Marmion.”—”

“
‘ “Unnurtured Blount!” ’
” Richard continued softly, ignoring the pain. “
‘ “Thy brawling cease: / He opes his eyes,” said Eustace; “peace!” ’
Am I to assume that I am somehow in the presence of Charles de Dagonet, or do they quote Walter Scott in heaven?”

“If you would match the words of the poem and open your eyes, you could see for yourself,” Dagonet said. “Of course, you have a splendid black eye, so it will probably hurt like the blazes. I have moved the candle aside, however, so don’t fear instant blinding.”

Richard slowly opened his eyes and in spite of his lip, grinned.

“I never thought, sir, that your face would prove more welcome than that of angels, but it is, remarkably, the case.”

He tried to sit up and fell instantly back against the pillows.

“Damnation!” he said.

“Yes,” Dagonet said. “You are regrettably fenestrated. ‘The breastplate pierced!—Ay, much I fear, / Weak fence wert though ’gainst foeman’s spear.’”

“It was my own bloody sword,” Richard said with considerable irony, “that made the punctures. How did I get here? And where the hell am I?”

“You are in the spare room at my lodgings in Jermyn Street,” Dagonet said. “I beg you will accept my humble hospitality, at least until you are able to walk.”

“How much damage is there?” Richard asked.

“Surprisingly little, considering the amount of blood your man here and I have been obliged to wash away. Of course, I don’t suppose it was all yours. I refrained from calling a quack, knowing you share my distrust of the breed. He would have wanted to take yet more blood, and I believe you have lost enough, so we have patched you up ourselves.”

“Thank you,” Richard said grimly as his friend helped him sit up and Mr. Hardy thrust pillows behind his back.

“You seem to have no broken bones,” Dagonet continued, “though your face and arms sport a large number of unsightly bruises. Your shoulder is stabbed and there’s another window closer to your chest. Had you not twisted that fellow’s hamstring to break his grip as he tried to hold you down, and then managed to roll mostly out of the way, I believe the swordsman would have pierced your heart.”

“And then
‘made fatal entrance here, / As these dark blood-gouts say.’
If you witnessed that, then you must have appeared on the scene in time to prevent his trying again. Thank you again, sir.”

Dagonet raised a brow. “Unfortunately one of his friends managed to thump you on the head, instead—as a parting blow, as it were. They didn’t seem to be very well bred.”

Richard couldn’t help himself, though it hurt abominably to laugh.

“But you also had your sword cane, no doubt, and the rascals fled at your approach. Otherwise there would be a terrible pile of bodies for the watch to dispose of. I can only regret that I didn’t stay conscious long enough to see you use your weapon. I assume you then carried me back here with the aid of Mr. Hardy, who by this time had regained his senses? Were you able to recover my blade?”