A Gentleman of Means (17 page)

“And while you were talking, did you spend any time on the subject of your own safety?” the Lady asked with deceptive calm.

Here it came. Tigg braced himself for heavy winds. “We took every precaution, Lady. No one saw us—even this supposed poacher. We were well away from the house by the time he took his shot.”

“And the return fire was fifty feet away in heavy forest,” Jake put in. “We’d have stayed to investigate, but odds were the men in the house were sending out a search party even as we ran.”

From the look on the Lady’s face, this was not proving helpful to their cause.

“I thought I could trust you,” she said. “How could you have taken the landau and embarked on such a dangerous task without even the courtesy of telling me?”

“They probably thought you would not have let them go, Claire,” the captain put in.

She picked up her spoon and stabbed the egg so that it spurted all over her toast. “This is not a case of
let
, Ian. For heaven’s sake, we are talking about a lieutenant in the Royal Air Corps, and a seasoned navigator, not schoolboys in caps.” She gazed at them, and Tigg saw that in her gray eyes lay hurt, not censure. “I would not have prevented them. In fact, I should have thought of their mission myself.” She looked at her runny egg, blinking fast. “I fear I have lost your confidence, you two, if all you think is that I am a nagging scold without a brain in her head.”

Now Tigg saw the depth of their misjudgement of her—she, who had had such pride in them as they became men!

He abandoned his breakfast and knelt next to her chair. “Forgive us, Lady. We did exactly that—and we were wrong to do so. We won’t do it again. Will we, Jake?”

Jake looked as though one of Mr. Malvern’s Dazzling Incendiaries had gone off under his nose. “Nay,” he said at last. “I was thinking like a boy and not like a man, and I’m sorry for it, Lady.”

Tigg could count upon the fingers of one hand the times that Jake had apologized to anyone. Here was a lesson learned by them both—an astonishing one at that. The Lady viewed them not as her wards or as dependents upon her will, but as men. As partners and as people of necessary skill whose help she needed.

With a hug and a silent promise to himself to remember that their relationships with one another had changed—for the better—Tigg returned to his own potatoes and egg. “Now that we know Gloria is there and being paraded in front of the neighbors as the visiting Miss Aster, what should our next step be? To find out the identity of the gunman?”

“I believe we may count upon Captain Hayes, if that is indeed the man you saw attempting to protect her, to do that,” Claire said slowly. “But our attempts to free her will become immeasurably more difficult, since the house and grounds will be swarming with men looking for that individual.”

“You couldn’t ask for a better distraction, though,” Alice mused aloud. “How can we make it work to our advantage?”

“And how can we be sure he will not make another attempt?” the captain said. “Were I in Hayes’s position, I should remove her posthaste before he did.”

“What I cannot fathom is, why poor Gloria?” Claire said. “And why now? She certainly never attracted this kind of attention while we were at school, and in the Canadas no one would have noticed her had it not been for her throwing in her lot with us. She had been to Paris, to London, and to Venice for some weeks before we saw her, and no one tried to abduct her during all that time. I do not understand it. What has changed that she has been abducted by one party, and fired upon by another?”

“Perhaps if we knew these answers, we might understand all,” Captain Hollys agreed. “I wonder if Gloria herself knows them.”

“I would very much like to ask her.” Claire gazed at her now empty plate as though it were a scrying glass. “She did not seem to be concealing information of this magnitude from us when we were together, but who can know another’s thoughts?”

“Maybe there’s a medallion out there with her name on it, too,” Alice said glumly. “Though I would happily give up the honor of being the only one in the country, I wouldn’t wish it on her.”

“Could that be possible?” Tigg took up this thread, since the thought of that medallion was weighing on his mind in any case. “Could the Famiglia Rosa have put a contract out on her as a means of blackmailing her father? If he had reneged on a promise—if something has gone wrong with his deal to bring English convicts to Venice to serve out their sentences on the gearworks—they would do such a thing without much guilt.”

The captain threw his napkin to the tabletop. “Intolerable,” he snapped. “Using helpless females to coerce people into their filthy business.”

“She might be helpless, but I’m not,” Alice observed.

“I was not speaking of you.”

“No, of course not.” Alice’s voice faded away to nothing, and when her lower lip trembled just a little, she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip to hide it.

In sympathy, Tigg, who sat opposite her, looked away.

“One thing is clear,” Claire said. “While Gloria seems not to have been in very great danger up until now—because if Miss Aster has nothing more dangerous to do than play the pianoforte, she cannot have been—something has occurred recently to change her situation. Therefore, I believe we must respond to that change rather more quickly. The question remains, do we attempt to spirit her out of the house quietly? Or loose a dozen gaseous capsaicin vials upon every window and pull her out by main force?”

“Gaseous capsaicin.” Jake looked heartened at the prospect.

“That might be our best bet, Claire,” Alice said, apparently now restored to speech. “Any attempt to spirit her out will have to get past the guard they’re sure to have posted.”

“We will be stretched thin, what with someone watching the road in case she is removed, someone watching for the poacher, and several someones watching out for the guard,” Tigg said.

“At that rate, there will be no one left to fetch Gloria,” Jake said. “Definitely gaseous capsaicin.”

“If only there were a way to get a message to her, so that she could be prepared,” Alice said. “It’s always helpful when the abductee assists in her own rescue.”

Claire’s gaze became fixed upon the small brass door that opened on the tube system for the house. “A message,” she repeated. “Why should we not send a message? Why should not Ian invite Captain Hayes shooting or some such? Or better yet, to some event requiring ladies in attendance—a ball.”

“Because Captain Hayes is no longer a member of our Corps—and in fact might be considered by some to be a traitor to the brotherhood for signing on with a colonial outfit.” Captain Hollys raised an eyebrow in her direction.

“Is that so?” she asked in some surprise. “But was he not honorably discharged?”

“Honor on paper is not the same as honor in fact,” he said with rather uncharacteristic brevity.

Claire thought for a moment. “I wonder if he knows of the general feeling? More to the point, would a message from you, whom he has never met, be met with skepticism or interest?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it, as long as somehow Gloria is able to read it?” Alice asked. “We might even ask him to provide us direction to the young ladies of the county to this imaginary ball. Then he would share it with her for certain, even if he would never parade her around in public.”

“It’s worth a try,” Tigg suggested. “The worst that can happen is that he shakes his head and tosses it in the fire. We can still go in with the capsaicin.”

“I agree.” Claire set her napkin on the table and pushed back her chair. “Alice, come with me. We will compose as delightful an invitation as ever two women did—and hope that Gloria’s wits are still as sharp as we remember them to be.”

Enough was ruddy dadburned flaming
enough
. Gloria was up to
here
with being dragged halfway across the world and then shot at for good measure, and today she was going to do something about it.

Just as soon as she figured out a plan.

Fuming, her temper at a rolling boil under its lid of civility, Gloria allowed the housekeeper to attend to the bruising she had sustained on arm and hip last night, and then to dab ointment on the cuts on her neck and shoulders where flying glass had struck her. The bullet had not found its mark—if indeed she had been its target—but instead had passed through a portrait of an insipid young woman and plowed a good four inches into the plaster behind it.

Captain Hayes, whose quick action in bearing her to the floor beneath him might just have saved her life from a second shot, had still not risen one whit in her estimation. For while he had immediately dispatched two of his fellow captors—men who seemed to be posing as visiting friends and who had completely bamboozled Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, the neighbors who had been invited to dinner—he had not himself joined the search. No, he preferred to stick to her side like a burr from the Texican Territories, and muse out loud upon ridiculous theories involving poachers and gypsies.

As if either one would fire directly into a drawing room!

This morning she had taken breakfast on a tray in her room, pleading shock and indisposition, but the housekeeper had informed him that her condition was improved, if not her spirits, which had produced an invitation to luncheon.

If nothing else, she could fortify herself with excellent food and then indulge in a good tongue-lashing over dessert. Her temper worn as thin as her linen skirt, she didn’t even last until the soup was taken away.

“I demand to know what is really going on here, Barnaby,” she said, deliberately using his Christian name though he had not given her permission to do so. It put them on a more intimate footing—as being shot at tended to do. “I have been abducted, handed about like luggage, and now fired upon, and I will tell you right now that I have had enough. Either you give me the entire picture or I go down the wistaria vines at the first opportunity and take my chances on the road.”

“That would be both foolish and dangerous. Remember our proximity to the prison.”

He persisted in the fiction that they were somewhere close to Dartmoor. She had no idea how he had convinced the Robertses to play their parts in the farce last evening—perhaps he had told them she was soft in the head and had to be humored or she would have a fit.

In fact, that nonsense would be the first to go.

“Oh, bother it. We are nowhere near Dartmoor. We are eight miles east of Bath on the post road, and believe me, I am quite capable of walking them if I must.”

He dropped his spoon, and beef broth splashed on his immaculate shirt front.

Good. Served him right.

“How long have you known?”

“
Pfft.
Since before we moored here. Contrary to my father’s belief, I do have a brain, and I can read a map. The moment we passed over Bristol I oriented myself to the countryside.”

He sat back in his chair, half his attention on dabbing at his shirt with his napkin, the other half on her, rather as one watches a dog that might bite. “I see I have underestimated you considerably, and rather than making you the dupe, it seems I have played that part.”

“I hope you will correct whatever delusion under which poor Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are laboring.”

“That is not their name. But that is quite beside the point.”

“What
is
the point? Barnaby, you are going to tell me the truth at once, or there will be more than soup flying in here shortly.” Her meat knife was clenched in her fist, and she relaxed her hand with an effort of will.

His eyes widened only slightly before he pushed his soup bowl aside. “Very well.”

“What?” She would never have thought it would be this easy. In fact, it only could be so if he were about to hand her another line. “The truth, Barnaby. I do not have the patience to wait while you fabricate another tall tale for my entertainment.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Will you permit me to call you Gloria, then, before I embark upon it?”

“Since we were in rather intimate contact last evening in full view of your friends and associates, I think that is reasonable.”

Now the smile had more substance. “Have you been compromised, do you think? Do you wish me to make an offer for your hand?”

Blast the tiny leap of her heart that had no business doing any such thing! “I should not wager tuppence on any marriage between us, with such a poor beginning. Now, enough distractions. Yes, you may call me Gloria, if only because ‘Miss Meriwether-Astor’ has so many syllables it will slow the recitation of the tale.”

“Very well. I suppose I should begin with what I can prove. My name is indeed Barnaby Hayes, and until I joined your father’s service, I was a captain in the Royal Air Corps. But along with that I performed other duties for Her Majesty—duties that could not be recorded in the difference engine at the Admiralty, or admitted to any living soul.”

With Goria’s recent experience, one sort of duty came immediately to mind. “Were you an assassin?”

He shook his head, and she realized with a tingle of shock that she had been only partly joking—and he had answered in all seriousness.

“My duties with the Royal Air Corps were merely a façade. My true calling is with the Walsingham Office under the direction of the Prime Minister himself.”

“The what?”

“We also refer to it as the Secret Service Bureau.”

For the second time during her acquaintance with him, she was rendered speechless.

“What I am about to reveal to you is of the utmost importance. No one may know of it but our two selves.”

“And your three guests, and the Robertses, and quite possibly the staff.”

He shook his head. “The staff know nothing. However, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are couriers, bringing secret correspondence from London that cannot be entrusted to either pigeon or tube. My three guests, as you have correctly surmised, are junior agents, tasked with keeping you safe.”

“They’re not very good at it,” she could not resist pointing out. “I suggest a transfer to the Royal Mail.”

This time he laughed, his whole face alight with humor. “Miss—Gloria, may I just say that one of my greatest regrets throughout this entire enterprise has been that we did not meet under more … auspicious circumstances.”

She willed herself not to blush, so of course failed miserably. “Go on,” she managed, to give herself time to recover.

The laughter faded from his face, and he leaned a little toward her. Since she was on his right at one end of the dining table, and the junior agents were nowhere to be seen, it had the effect of enclosing them in a bubble. She could smell the wool of his tweed jacket, and a subtle scent composed of lemon and fresh linen, dried in the sun. “I very much regret to say that the Prime Minister, Mr. Darwin, has tasked the Office with the capture of your father.”

The moment broke with an almost audible sound. She reared back in shock. “My father?”

His gaze was filled with sympathy, and regret, and purpose. “We have all deceived you from the moment you stepped aboard
Neptune’s Fancy
with your friends in Venice.”

“Yes, I know,” came out of her mouth before she could decide whether or not it was wise to say so.

“You do?”

“Not that you were an—an agent, but that you were deceiving me. Obviously. Dartmoor was hardly my first clue.”

“Then perhaps it is I who will be taking a transfer to the Royal Mail when all this is over.”

“When all
what
is over? Specifically. Please.”

“I regret the necessity for it, but as they say, needs must when the devil drives. We are out of options, and your father is a very clever man. He is also a very much wanted man, by at least two monarchs, possibly three. There have been meetings at the highest levels of government to formulate plans to apprehend him, all of which have failed. Which efforts brought us, eventually, to you.”

Gloria had comprehended it now, in all its dreadful, painful symmetry.
“You are using me as bait to capture him?”

With a nod, he said, “I have come to appreciate your fine qualities, which makes this all the more difficult. You are in no way at fault in any of this. And I realize that the ties that bind you to your father will be irreparably severed if we are successful. For that I apologize, though of course no words are adequate.”

A trap. For her father. This was all she was—bait, like a bit of meat tied to a snare. She put down her utensils, her appetite utterly gone, and stood a little unsteadily.

“And if you are successful?” she whispered.

“He will face the trial for treason that his actions have merited.”

“His actions? You mean with the convicts?”

He gazed at her. “What convicts?”

“In Venice. He planned to waylay the ships transporting the English convicts by sea to the Antipodes, and sell the people to the Doge for labor on the gearworks.”

Now she had rendered him speechless. After a moment, he got his mouth working again. “No. I did not mean the convicts. I am not even sure there is a law on the books that covers such a thing. No, my dear, I meant the French invasion this summer past, which he financed and equipped for the Bourbon pretender.”

Into her stunned silence, he related the facts—succinctly and yet with a gentleness that told her he enjoyed it as little as she.

After a few minutes, when she had recovered enough to speak, she managed, “How is it possible for him to invade another country and I not know? I was in Paris for that entire month and heard nothing of it—but then, I do not read the French newspapers.”

She read fashion magazines. Perhaps she ought to elevate her thinking henceforward.

“I agree wholeheartedly that the whole plan was toplofty and misconceived. If not for several factors that we are still unraveling, the invasion might have succeeded. But that is not all.”

“Really. Enlighten me.” She was operating in a sort of cloud now, while part of her mind tried to sort back through the year past to see if what he said could possibly be true, and the other part wondered where on earth her brain had been not to know what the English government seemed to know.

The Secret Service Bureau. Any other woman would have fainted with the shock by now. Perhaps she ought to consider it.

“Mr. Meriwether-Astor was also responsible for supplying a known seditionist with a weapon which he subsequently used to attempt to shoot down the Prince of Wales’s airship as it passed overhead.”

“Oh, now, that is simply beyond the pale,” Gloria snapped. “Dad cannot be responsible for what people do after they buy his weapons. That is strictly upon their own heads.”

“The weapon was made to look like a telescope. In reality it was an air cannon, built to specifications for one purpose only. We believe we can prove conspiracy to commit high treason. Set alongside the French invasion, we are faced with two attempts in one summer to bring down the monarchy, both equipped by your father. You must see that it cannot be permitted to go on.”

She supposed it couldn’t. What was wrong with Dad that he was never satisfied? She had seen it coming, in her own small way. Seen how one company was not enough—he had to be buying up smaller munitions works and looking to the horizon for—

“The maps in his office,” she said faintly.

“What about them, dear?”

“I always thought they were for decoration. But they’re not. France, the southern half of England, the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias, the Levant … these are the locations you speak of. I suppose the Californias were next. He—oh, no, that cannot be possible. He cannot start wars in other places simply to sell munitions, can he?”

Her eyes held a silent plea. When Barnaby remained silent out of respect for her feelings—for of course a reply in the affirmative was the only logical one he could make—she looked away.

She had always felt she had never been good enough for her father. Not a boy, not smart, simply kept on sufferance because she was the only heir he had. But now …

Who wanted to be good enough for a monster?

Even the thought of carrying his name for another moment burned her, as though it were a brand, marking her as belonging to him. As being like him. As having the same blood in her veins.

She didn’t. She couldn’t.

But how could she escape her parentage? It would be so difficult that escaping from this house would be child’s play in comparison.

“What am I to do?” she whispered. To whom the question was directed, she did not know. God, perhaps? Tears filled her eyes, almost as though she had learned of the death of someone who had once been close to her.

Barnaby was silent for several long moments. Then, “Might I offer a suggestion?”

“For what?” Where was her handkerchief? She checked both sleeves, and before she could use her luncheon napkin, Barnaby had pressed his own handkerchief into her hand.

She would not cry. Her father did not deserve her tears.

“You asked what you might do,” he said gently. “It is time for action, and there is indeed a way in which you might assist us further.”

“I am already bait,” she said after she had blown her nose. “Do you require me to wriggle on the string?”

His eyes darkened, as though she had hurt him, but his gentle tone did not change. “If you wrote to your father under some pretext—any pretext save the one we were just discussing—it would hasten his journey here.”

“Hardly. If he did not bother to provide a ransom, hearing from me will not change his plans.”

“Ransom? We demanded none. Your disappearance, we hoped, would be enough to compel him to come to England, especially since we made ourselves rather obvious at Gibraltar.”

There had been no ransom demand? Well, no matter. That still didn’t erase the French invasion or the prince’s airship. In the face of that, any finer feelings she might have cherished on his behalf were dying like a rose under the blast of winter.