A Gentleman of Means (23 page)

“He’s found me!” Alice pressed her face into Ian’s shirt front. “Dadgummit—how?”

“Of greater urgency is the firepower he carries,” Ian said grimly. “That was a seventy-five-yard shot. Come. Stay low. Though the doors and windows are locked, we must see to the servants’ safety.”

The two of them still recumbent upon the gravel roof, he wrapped Alice in his arms and kissed her hard. It was just her luck, to be shot at and have the most wonderful moment of her life ruined with a vengeance. Claire and Andrew had such a romantic engagement story. How would she tell hers?

First, she supposed, she had better live through it, and worry about the telling later.

They scrambled to their feet, and, running hunched over, gained the tower door and slipped inside. The trip down took about a tenth of the time of the trip up, aided by sliding along the ironwork rail and taking the steps two and three at once. Ian shot the bolts and closed off one entire wing of the house, as well as the staircase that led to the floor where the Boatwrights and the maids slept.

“If he does break in, at least we shall limit his movements as much as we can. And while Boatwright was a fine shot in his day, I would not want to risk his safety if he should walk in on that gun.”

“How are we going to watch for him—the assassin?”

“We shall arm ourselves to the teeth and retreat to the second floor. There, you will stay away from windows and watch the hall from the gallery. He must cross the hall to gain the stairs, and you will have a clear shot.”

“You will stay away from windows, too, you hear?” Alice said, the anxiety in her tone rather spoiling the order. “I have an answer for you and you’re not getting it until this is done.”

“Then I will do my utmost to make this the briefest siege in the history of England.”

Even in the midst of mortal danger, he could make her smile.

She thumbed the switch of the lightning pistol that had never left her pocket since she’d returned from Venice a wanted woman, and as it hummed into life, she took up her post crouched behind the marble rail of the gallery that overlooked the entrance hall below. After a moment’s debate about whether or not to douse the electricks, she decided she needed light for a shot as much as the assassin did. She would just have to be faster on the draw.

Smoothly, Ian moved from window to window, slipping in and out of the rooms on the west side with the ease of long familiarity. How long would it take her, too, to feel that this house was home? How was she going to manage it all—staff, grounds, enough rooms to put all of Resolution in? How was she ever going to live up to the legacy of beauty and grace that his mother had left, when the only legacy she had of her own mother was how to take a man down with one shot, and how to stretch a penny until it squeaked?

She supposed she ought to be grateful for the first, since without it, all the rest might not be possible.

Ian moved farther away, and soon her quick hearing lost even his quiet footfalls on the polished wood and thick rugs. He must be working his way around to the south side, which opened up on the gardens and would provide any number of places to hide. Terwilliger might even conceal himself until morning, thinking she might be foolish enough to step out of doors.

He might even have gone out to
Swan
.

Alice’s stomach leaped and sank. The ship was only partially provisioned, but she had no doubt an assassin would be as good at stretching food as ever her mother had been. All he would have to do was wait until she pulled up ropes, and she’d be trapped on her own ship until he was good and ready to shoot her. Maybe he’d even fly it back to Venice with her body in the hold, and poor
Swan
would be stuck forever in the impound yard on the Lido where Alice had found her, her brief bid for freedom scuttled.

No, no. She couldn’t think that way. She needed to stay alert and remember that she and Ian were each other’s first line of defense. She mustn’t let the tension get to her, or she’d start to gibber the way he had during those first few days after their escape.

“Alice Chalmers, I presume?”

Her heart practically leaped from her chest at the sound of a man’s voice. Not Ian. Not Boatwright.

Foreign.

Him.

“Who’s there?” Her whisper was harsh with fright.

“I am the representative of justice.”

Where in tarnation was he? In the corners the electricks didn’t reach, the dark was complete. He could be anywhere, his voice whispering in the gallery, seeming to come from every direction. She must scream.

No, she mustn’t. Ian would come running, and Terwilliger would pick him off like a pheasant flushed out of hiding.

“You are charged with illegally freeing lawful prisoners of His Serene Grace the Doge of Venice, with grand theft of a legally impounded ship, and with failing to pay your transfer fees before leaving the country.”

“Those last two are worthy of death?” She couldn’t help the incredulity in her tone. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”

“The Doge does not take slights to his authority lightly.” He was moving, she realized suddenly. His voice seemed to be coming from—

There. An inky shadow moved on the side of the gallery adjacent to where she stood, the north side, where they’d just come down from the tower.

“How did you get into the house?” He knew where she was, so she might as well ask questions while she could. Her only advantage was that he didn’t know she knew where
he
was.

“I came prepared with a rocket rucksack. Even the best security never quite seems to extend to the top of a house. After I missed my shot up on the tower, I made a wager with myself that you would be in too great a hurry to lock the door behind you. I rarely lose my wagers.”

“We didn’t think of a rocket rucksack,” she admitted. One step. Two. Just a few feet and an enormous ceramic urn would give her partial protection. While it likely wouldn’t slow the bullet much, it might deflect it enough that she could get a shot off. “Was it you shooting at Gloria Meriwether-Astor?”

“Sadly, yes. It strains credulity that there could be two blond Colonials acquainted with Captain Hollys within ten miles of one another, but here you are. I will remember next time not to make such assumptions.”

He must be very confident in his ability if he could yarn on like this, giving her a better bead on his location. She had almost made it to the urn when he said, “Halt there, if you please. Take your hands out of your pockets and raise them. I will make this as quick and painless as I can. I have no fondness for a woman’s suffering.”

“Don’t count your chickens,” Alice said through her teeth, and, her hand still in her pocket, where it had been wrapped around the grip of the lightning pistol, she pulled the trigger.

A bolt of blue-white light burned through the front of her pants and arced across the space dividing her side of the gallery and his. She saw at once that shooting from the hip had caused her to aim low. The bolt burned away part of the marble railing and spent itself at last in Terwilliger’s leg, where it burned his pants and some of the flesh right down to his boot.

He screamed, and in his convulsion of pain, pulled the trigger of the huge double-barreled pressure rifle that the lightning had revealed he carried. Alice dove for cover behind the urn, and it exploded in a million pieces that rained down for twenty feet onto the parquet floor of the entrance hall.

Simultaneously someone banged on the front door and shouted. Ian burst out of the corridor to the guest bedrooms, skidding on the polished wood and diving to the floor, rolling and coming up next to her. “Alice!”

“He’s down but not dead,” she said, barely able to get the words out for shaking.

“Not for long,” Ian said, gathering himself for a rush along the gallery.

“No!” She grabbed his arm. “That gun has two barrels—he only shot one! I saw where he went down—there. Cover me.”

To her everlasting amazement, he did not argue. He, an experienced military man, simply calculated the odds, saw that they were greater if they did as she said, aimed his Corps-issued pistol across the gallery, and fired. At the same time, she ran like the hounds of hell around to the next side and saw Terwilliger lying on the floor, propping himself up with the stock of the pressure rifle.

Ian fired again—glass shattered on the floor below—and Alice aimed the lightning pistol and let off another bolt as she flung herself to one side, against the wall. Simultaneously, the pressure rifle barked, deep as a bloodhound’s baying, and a painting fell off the wall and landed with a crash on top of her.

As she struggled to get it off—it had to weigh a hundred pounds—footsteps passed her at a run.

“Lay down your arms in Her Majesty’s name!” Ian demanded. “Or I’ll shoot you where you lie.”

Which was all Alice heard before someone hauled on the painting and Claire’s voice said, “Alice! Oh God, Alice, are you alive? Speak to me!”

“I’m fine,” she managed. “Dadburnit, I missed and that villain is still alive!”

“Ian and Andrew are tying him up with their belts,” Claire said breathlessly. “Dear heaven, is this painting lined in lead?”

“Gold, probably. Umph!” With a final push, she was free, and Claire hauled her to her feet.

“Oh, I am so glad you are unharmed. So happy—” Her voice wobbled and she burst into tears.

Alice put her arms around her. “Hush. It’s all right. Between the two of us, Ian and I brought him down. Now I suppose it will be up to the Admiralty to deal with him.”

“And you and Gloria will be safe at last,” Claire wailed, completely gone to pieces.

With a quick breath, Alice remembered that she wasn’t the only one in danger tonight. She patted her friend’s shaking back urgently. “Gloria! What happened? Is she here? Did you get her out?”

Claire raised her head, drew a shuddering breath in a clear effort to regain control, and scrubbed the tears off her cheeks. “We got her out and they shot us down. Her father and his mercenaries found us—and when Terwilliger shot at Gloria, Mr. Meriwether-Astor flung himself in front of the bullet.”

“Then—”

“He is dead and Gloria is alive and explaining all of this to the gentlemen from the Walsingham Office.”

“The
who?
”

“Never mind, we’ll explain it all later. The important thing is that you are both safe!”

“Alice?” Claire stepped back to allow Ian to take her into his arms. “You’re all right? He didn’t hurt you?”

“The only thing that might have hurt me is this ruddy great painting.” She craned her neck to look up. “Oh dear. It looks like you’ll have to replaster your wall. And the painting’s done for, I’m afraid. The canvas tore clear across.”

“The devil take the painting. It was my great-uncle George and he was a crashing bore. The only interesting thing he ever did was fall on you.”

She grabbed his lapels, a sudden urgency compelling her to speak, though Claire was standing just on his other side. “Ian.
Yes
.”

Despite the fact that his gallery was in ruins and an assassin lay not ten feet away, he understood at once. Or perhaps he understood not the words so much as the emotion gleaming in the tears in her eyes. His face softened in a smile and he whispered in her ear, “I understand, my dearest, bravest love. You have made me eternally happy. And great-uncle George notwithstanding, I want no other partner by my side.”

“Tigg?”

At Claire’s soft question, silence fell upon the gallery, broken only by gasping attempts to catch their breath. Alice pulled herself out of her own chiefest concern with an effort, and focused on the young man approaching slowly along the gallery.

Tigg knelt beside his father, who had been trussed hand and foot by Ian and Andrew. “So,” he said quietly.

“We meet again,” Terwilliger agreed, his face pinched with pain from his burned leg. “Can’t say I’m sorry.”

Tigg gazed at him. “I wish it hadn’t been during your attempts to kill my friends.”

“If your friends hadn’t offended the Doge, they’d never have met me. But that’s all clouds under the keel. You’re a fine young man, Tommy. I know I haven’t a right to be, but I am proud of you.”

“No. You don’t. It’s my friends here who have that right—Lady Claire. Captain Hollys. Alice. Andrew. It’s them you should thank for helping me along.” Tigg paused, and leaned down. “Dad?”

Alice leaned in to see better over Ian’s shoulder. The man’s face was working, as though he was in greater pain than could be accounted for by the burns, and a bubble of liquid frothed between his teeth. “Nice … to hear that word on your lips, son. I won’t go to prison. Won’t even go to trial.”

“You don’t have much choice,” Tigg pointed out. “We’ll be sending a tube to the Admiralty in a minute, to report the capture of a foreign assassin and a deserter.”

“A man always has a choice,” Terwilliger choked. “Always. Mine were bad. I have regrets. But I don’t regret Nancy … and I don’t regret … you …”

His voice faded into silence and his body went limp.

Tigg whipped off the belt and grabbed his wrist, and in doing so, revealed a ring on the man’s hand. A ring with a hinged top that lay open, revealing a tiny empty chamber.

“Dad!” But his fingers on Terwilliger’s wrist revealed the truth—as did the froth issuing from the man’s lips. Tigg raised his head, his gaze meeting Ian’s. “Poison, sir. Must’ve taken it before you reached him.”

“Oh, Tigg,” Claire breathed, and moved to touch his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Slowly, he stood, gazing down at the body of the man who might have fathered him, but who had never been a father to him. Almost blindly, his hand covered hers on his shoulder. “Don’t be sorry, Lady,” he whispered. “I never knew him long enough to grieve him.”

“But you can grieve the loss of what might have been,” she said softly. “You can grieve the man who loved your mother, and who made her smile so beautifully in that daguerrotype.”

Tears swelled in Alice’s throat, and instinctively she slipped her arms around Ian’s waist, under his coat. He pulled her closer, his arms about her shoulders.

And when Tigg, all six feet of him, turned to Claire and buried his face in the crook of her neck to weep, his shoulders shaking as she hugged him tightly, no one begrudged him his tribute to what might have been.