How To Distract a Duchess (25 page)

He fingered the heavy velvet drapes and found the opening. As he parted the curtains by finger-widths, Artemisia leaned to peer around him. Stale vodka fumes laced with sickly sweet opiate and a cheesy male tang floated toward them. Artemisia raised a scented hanky to her nose to disguise the ambassador’s odor but only succeeded in adding faint rose-water to the miasma.

Trev parted the curtains further, careful to shield the ambassador’s face from the encroaching moonlight with his own shadow. Artemisia ducked and peered under Trev’s upraised arm. Then she saw them.

Lined like a small boy’s toy soldiers, a string of five statuettes were propped on the rail that ran along the head of the bedstead. And there was Mr. Beddington, perched not a foot from the ambassador’s slack lips.

Artemisia saw immediately that Trev couldn’t reach for the statue without leaning across the entire bed. And he’d need to release the curtains, which would plunge him into darkness, making it difficult to choose the right statue or keep from knocking the wrong ones off their narrow ledge. Or else she could hold the curtains back and risk the moonlight waking the ambassador since she wasn’t tall enough to block it out like Trev.

Or . . . she could tiptoe around the bed and fetch the statue from the side on which the ambassador was sleeping.

Clutching Miss Bogglesworth to her bosom, she was half-way around the bed before her hands began to shake.

This is ridiculous,
she scolded herself.
You’re far too strong-minded to let a little thing like larceny reduce you to a quivering mass of pudding.

She groped for the part in the curtains and drew them aside. Across the ambassador’s bed, Trevelyn grinned at her and nodded encouragement. The snoring continued in a steady cadence. She let the curtain fall behind her and edged toward the head of the bed, her gaze never leaving Kharitonov’s quivering jowls.

Once he snorted and stopped breathing briefly. Artemisia froze until the ambassador resumed his wheezing. Her hand was surprisingly steady as she set Miss Bogglesworth on the rail beside her mate. Intent on her goal, she lifted the Beddington statue slowly.

The ambassador rolled over and his meaty hand grasped one of her breasts. A soft squeak escaped her lips before she realized he was still asleep. She forced herself to remain motionless. Even so, the way his fingers mauled her nipple made her stomach roil.

Trevelyn looked as though he could spit tacks, but he stood resolutely at his post, shielding the ambassador’s face from the moonlight. He jerked his head toward the door, telling her she needed to extricate herself from the sleeping Russian’s lascivious attentions.

As if I didn’t know,
she thought at him with upraised brows.

But how to do it without waking the ambassador? That was an exceedingly sticky wicket.

She eased away slowly, leaving Kharitonov’s fingers grasping at thin air. When his hand drooped back to his side, she released her pent-up breath.

He mumbled something undecipherable.

Then suddenly Kharitonov reached out and grasped her by the waist. He pulled her down into the bed with him, pressing her face against his rising and falling chest.

Artemisia had heard of sleepwalkers. They took unremembered jaunts about their home, carried on lucid conversations, and did all manner of things that normally required one to be conscious.

But she’d never heard of someone being ravished by one.

She only needed to disentangle herself and the ambassador would drift back into what were obviously becoming exceedingly naughty dreams. She managed to free one arm and tried to hand Mr. Beddington to Trevelyn. He wasn’t looking at her. Trev’s gaze was riveted on the ambassador’s roving hand. Kharitonov had found her skirt and was pulling her hemline northward, baring her legs to the knee. The Russian mumbled again, his voice thick as he patted her on the rump.

“No way in bloody hell,” exploded from Trevelyn’s lips and the ambassador’s eyes snapped open.

Trev leaped onto the bed and pried Artemisia from the ambassador’s arms. Kharitonov rolled Trevelyn into a bear hug in her place.

“Lubov!” Kharitonov bellowed.

  
“Trev,” she said. “I had the matter perfectly well in hand—“

“No, the ambassador was the one with something in his hand,” Trev snarled as he tried to free his arms from Kharitonov’s grip.

“Lubov!” the Russian roared, all traces of too much alcohol and opiate gone from his enraged face.

Artemisia thought about bashing the ambassador with Mr. Beddington, but if the base shattered and the key was exposed here, their situation would be even grimmer. She settled for grasping one of his Excellency’s fingers and bending it back as far as she could.

Kharitonov yelped and growled a Russian curse at her, but didn’t lessen his hold on Trev.

“If you’d only waited,” she said to Trevelyn, “I’d have—“

“If you think I’d stand here and watch him molest you, you’re daft. Now run,” he yelled to her as he grappled with the ambassador. “Run, damn it.”

So she ran.

Out the door and down the corridor, not pausing before the linen closet. There was no possible way she could hoist herself into the garret and no time for a candle to light her way in the dark. She skidded to the head of the stairs.

The heavy tread of someone pounding up the steps made her stop. She could still hear Trev and Kharitonov, their voices growling, the crash of heavy objects shattering on the hardwood—the collection of statuettes being destroyed, she realized—and the dull thuds of fists hammering flesh. She was sure Trev could acquit himself admirably in a match of fisticuffs, but the ambassador was a very large man. Artemisia hoped Trevelyn wasn’t on the receiving end of the blows she heard ringing down the hall. Obviously he was trying to buy time enough for her to make good her escape.

She wanted to turn back, to help him if she could.

But she’d promised Trev she would run at his command and she knew he wouldn’t thank her for breaking her word.

“What we have here?” Lubov’s voice rose to her from the lower landing. His pale eyes raked her form in a deliberate invasion. He ran a thick tongue over his lower lip. “English Miss have fun with Lubov,
da
.”

She shuddered with revulsion. She’d scolded Trev for interfering in the ambassador’s chamber. Now she wished he were here with her to trounce this fellow as well.

Artemisia couldn’t make it past the hulking Lubov on the stairs. There was no exit for her through the garret alone. At best, she and Trev might leap from the ambassador’s window, but it was a three-story drop and no friendly gorse bushes below to break their fall.

Lubov flashed her an evil smile and began to advance up the steps.

There was nothing else for it. She threw her leg over the brass stair railing and slid down, sailing right past the stunned Russian. She had to hitch herself around the turn at the landing, but she managed to stay ahead of Lubov as he pounded after her.

When she reached the main floor, she resisted the urge to fly out the front. Instead, she dashed toward the rear of the home, hoping to locate the back door into the alley where Trevelyn’s horse waited. She barked her shins on several pieces of furniture as she stumbled through one room after another before finding the exit.

She pushed through the door, Lubov almost upon her. Trevelyn’s horse’s head was down, cropping a few late mums sprouting near the house. She grasped the saddle and hurled herself onto his back, blessing her father for insisting she learn to ride like a boy.

“Not so fast, English Miss.” Lubov grabbed the horse’s bridle, but Artemisia threw out her right foot and drove her heel into his eye-socket. He released her mount and clutched his face.

“Yah!” she screamed like a savage. The startled horse bolted down the cobbled alley like the hounds of Hell were on his tail.

Artemisia did nothing but hang on as the gelding fled for the safety of his own stable. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel anything. It would hurt too much to dwell upon how she’d abandoned Trev when he needed her most.
  

“Madam, we were not expecting you.” Cuthbert knotted the sash at the waist of his dressing gown with characteristic fussiness. “Master Felix told us you were visiting friends from Bath who’d invited you to a house party—“ He stopped abruptly when he turned up the gas lamp. “Oh, my word. Your Grace, what has befallen? Are you injured?”

“No, I’m not hurt,” she said as she pulled off her ruined gloves. At least Felix’s artless lie had kept her family from worrying over her absence. Freshly mud-spattered from her wild ride through the London night, her hair frizzled out in all directions, her sleeve ripped at the shoulder, Artemisia knew she looked a fright. It was why she’d tried to sneak into the manor house without attracting anyone’s notice. She should have known Cuthbert was part bloodhound.

“Here, Your Grace. Be pleased to sit.” He pulled out one of the kitchen chairs for her, then rebuilt the fire to heat water. “I daresay you’ll feel better after a nice cup of tea.”

“Thank you, Cuthbert,” she said shakily, laying the Beddington statue in her lap. “Of course, tea. Father always said it was the sovereign remedy for all ills.”

But there was nothing steeping in the china teapot that would cure her ills. She folded her arms on the sturdy table and laid her head down, wishing this was all just a horrible dream from which she’d momentarily awake.

To his credit, Cuthbert remained silent till she raised her head.

“Does Madam wish one to call for a physician?”

She must look worse than she thought.

His old eyes drooped with concern. It occurred to her that he actually did resemble an aging bloodhound in this light. “One can send someone straight away.”

“No, no, I’m quite well.” She pulled a hankie from her reticule and blew her nose like a trumpet. That attic was crammed with years of dust. “I will take tea when it’s ready.”

A steaming cup appeared before her.

“You are a wonder, Cuthbert,” she said.

“One does what one can,” he said with pompous humility. “If there’s nothing further, I’ll wake the chambermaid to see to your bath.”

She sighed. “There is something more. Please sit.”

“Madam, it would be highly inappropriate for one to sit in your presence.”

“Please, Cuthbert, no more lectures on what’s done and not done. I can’t bear it right now. Just sit.” She looked up at him. “Please.”

He pasted an uneasy smile on his face and perched on one of the other chairs.

“I need help,” she began. “And I need someone I can trust.”

“You may rely upon me, madam, on both counts,” he said automatically.

“Thank you, but I want you to wait till you’ve heard what I have to say before you commit yourself.” She stared at the wisps of steam rising from her cup. “Though truth to tell, if you won’t help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Cuthbert gave an injured sniff. “Madam, how can you doubt me? My father would be spinning in his grave if ever I turned my back on Southwycke.”

“Very well,” she said. Then she proceeded to tell him everything, starting with her father’s work in The Great Game in India, her masquerade as Mr. Beddington, Trevelyn’s covert attempts to locate the key, Mr. Shipwash’s abduction and ending with their disastrous raid on the ambassador’s home. She left out only the heart-stopping affair that had flamed between her and Trev. In truth, she could hardly bear to speak his name, lest fear for him render her incoherent. “So you see why I need your help.”

“We must alert the authorities immediately.” Cuthbert rose to his feet.

“No, that’s the one thing we may not do,” she said with dull certainty. “It would eliminate our one advantage. If we contact the constabulary, the Queen’s agents will almost assuredly confiscate this.”

She set Mr. Beddington on the table before her.

“A statue?” Cuthbert’s wary look spoke volumes. He obviously feared for her mind.

“No, Cuthbert, not the statue. What’s inside it. Mr. Beddington holds the key. The key to my father’s contacts in India and the key to two men’s lives here. It is our only bargaining chip.” She drew a fingertip from the end of Beddington’s muzzle to the statue’s base. “I just have to figure out which lock to open with it.”

* * *

The door to Artemisia’s darkened chamber was thrown open with force. She jerked to full wakefulness to see her mother storming across the room and drawing back the drapes to let in the full light of midday.

“Artemisia, I cannot believe you can sleep after all that’s happened,” Constance began. “And to cap everything, your Mr. Beddington is gone.”

Gone?
Artemisia struggled to sit up. In a flash of panic, her gaze riveted to the wardrobe in the corner. The statue was still prancing on top of the massive piece of furniture. She breathed a sigh of relief. Her mother must mean the other Mr. Beddington.

Her.

She knuckled her eyes. She wasn’t thinking clearly at all and small wonder. Cuthbert had insisted on rousing her abigail so she could bathe, even though she felt she could sleep on her feet. But once she was clean and snug in her own bed, sleep fled from her like shadows from a candle.