Since the Surrender (33 page)

Rosalind stood on tiptoe and helped herself to one of the many torches, then crouched over the body, next to Chase, holding the torch low enough to illuminate the man’s face. A round face, an unfashionable short beard, long lashes shut against his cheeks. Apart from the burgeoning bump on his head, he might have been peacefully asleep.

“Do you know who he is?” she asked.

“It’s Ireton,” Chase whispered in disbelief. “Friend of Kinkade’s. What the devil—”

And suddenly, from out of the darkness, that damned flesh-crawling giggle floated, reverberating through the tunnel like a crazed thing swooping to attack them.

Chase scowled, looking irritated, not afraid. “I have to move him before anyone else comes down here. I wonder if he was the lookout? Or just trying to leave?”

“I saw him that day! Remember?”

Ireton was one of those men who packed a good deal of flesh and muscle into a compact frame, and he was remarkably difficult to budge. Carrying him gracefully out of the path of the passageway budge. Carrying him gracefully out of the path of the passageway wasn’t an option. Chase took the torch from Rosalind, replaced it in its sconce, and the two of them managed, gruntingly, to drag Ireton by the ankles over to the corner near the door. Chase propped him up against the wall.

Where he slumped. Like that damned puppet.

Rosalind retrieved the hat and gently placed the great plumed thing over his face. The feather extended vertically. Anyone stumbling across him would hopefully think he’d merely temporarily succumbed to an excess of drink.

And then they turned to stare down the baffling passage. It seemed endless, but that could have been an illusion of the flickering leaping torches and the fact that the place was bloody dark.

Another giggle floated through. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, the very product of darkness. There was an echo to it. A hackle-raising, gut-chilling echo.

Rosalind took in a shaky breath.

Chase reached out his hand and took hers in reassurance, but she could sense the impatience in him. She almost smiled. King Henry VIII had not been a ghost. He had a name: Ireton. The giggle was louder now, and was of a certainty originating in this world, not beyond it. Clearly, from the end of the tunnel. They whirled then froze when they heard footsteps crunching toward them. Chase fingered his pistol.

Surely anyone can hear the beat of my heart, she thought. Banging like a bloody war drum.

How had Chase managed to acquire his aplomb?

The crunch became a blur of white. It was definitely moving directly toward them. Rosalind felt disembodied herself, suspended in that limbo between disbelief and terror, where the mind tries to convince the eyes that everything is quite, quite normal. Because surely that white blur emerging from the shadows could only be a ghost.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. The footsteps came steadily, and then a man dressed in a toga came into focus.

“Well, good evening,” said a cheery voice.

A wreath of gold leaves gleamed around his pearly bald head, and large hairy feet poked out of a pair of sandals that laced up his thick calves. What appeared to be a greatcoat was slung over one arm; he held his hat and a pair of boots in the other. He looked for all the world like a banker returning home from work.

Apart from the toga.

Not a ghost, in other words.

“Brought a new one?” He looked up at Chase with no apparent recognition and all evidence of bonhomie. He peered at Rosalind, who ducked her head bashfully and skillfully moved aside a fold of her skirt to hide her pistol.

“Yes! A new one!” Chase agreed brightly.

“She looks like a screamer,” the man said encouragingly. “Cheerio.”

He pulled his hat onto his head expressly, it seemed, so he could tip it to them, and crunched his way to the end of the passage. They were utterly motionless, fascinated. They watched him closely as he pressed his eye to the peephole.

“Much more convenient, this way in and out, isn’t it, than the Covent Garden exit?” he said over his shoulder conversationally. “This one is much closer to my home. Gets me there in time to get a good night’s sleep and up to breakfast with the wife. One hates to be seen exiting in the Garden. Quite a dangerous place, that.”

So there was another exit?

Which would explain the peculiarities of the men going in and coming out and vice versa. Liam had been right.

She oddly felt as proud as if her own son had done it. The toga-draped man glanced down and noticed the man slumped beneath the great feather hat.

“Tsk tsk, Mr. Woodcock. A touch too much again?”

The toga-draped man reached up, pulled at a sconce not sporting a burning torch, and the wall spun out again, revealing the shadowy museum.

“Don’t forget to blindfold her now, lad! You’ll ruin everything if you don’t!” Rosalind craned her head: she could even see that godforsaken lumpy puppet.

Then the man walked through the opening. He gave that hidden door a push, and it thunked softly back into place behind him in door a push, and it thunked softly back into place behind him in seconds, as though it had never been.

They stared, dumbstruck, for an instant.

“I’ll…be…damned,” Chase murmured.

The English had a long, fine history of hidden passageways and tunnels and the like, but this one was blindingly original. This had once been Montmorency’s actual residence. What could the passage have originally been used for? Smuggling goods?

Hiding Catholics? Most likely Montmorency had used it for precisely what it was now being used for, since this tunnel likely terminated in Covent Garden and the Mezza Luna.

The only thing left to do was forge ahead or retreat the way they’d come. Neither one of them would dream of retreating, for at the other end of this tunnel there were answers, for good or ill. Chase gifted her with a smile, brilliant with wickedness. Better than a torch, that smile. Better than the certainty of the sun rising tomorrow.

Bloody man was elated when things were at their most contrary, and he sensed he was about to win. And Rosalind simply couldn’t find it in her to believe otherwise. As usual, his certainty became her own. Rosalind returned the smile—how could she not?

He tentatively took her hand, the one not sweatily gripping a cocked pistol. He held it an instant, then raised it to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers gently, by way of reassurance. And then she realized the kiss was also an apology, because he pulled off his cravat and said, “We need to blindfold you. My guess pulled off his cravat and said, “We need to blindfold you. My guess is that they bring girls in blindfolded so they’ll never know where they are or how they got there.”

Bloody hell. She had sensed this was true, but she didn’t relish the prospect.

She sighed. “Very well,” she agreed softly.

“I’ll be here, Rosalind, and I shan’t let you go.”

She stared up at him, and there was no one in the world she trusted more than him. She sighed again, and nodded.

He wound the cravat gently around her eyes. The dark became darker, and then all she saw was a dull black tinged with a reddish glow. It was fine silk, the cravat, and warm from his body and smelled like him, and it was like donning armor even as she relinquished her sight.

“I have you,” he whispered reassuringly.

He always did.

“But keep your pistol in your hand,” he added cheerfully, on a whisper.

He took her hand in his, and silently, pistols drawn, they moved deeper into the tunnel.

“If that gentleman was walking casually, we haven’t far to go to reach the end,” Chase murmured. “He wasn’t precisely provisioned for a long journey.”

The proper response to that hardly seemed “Hurrah!” given that they hadn’t the faintest idea what might be on the other end of the they hadn’t the faintest idea what might be on the other end of the tunnel. But if Lucy were safe and alive, a journey to anywhere would have been worthwhile.

The bright blobs of torches penetrated her blindfold as she walked. Dark, bright, dark, bright, was how she saw her journey now. One foot carefully placed in front of the other, her pace matched to Chase’s. Crunch. Crunch. The ground inside the passage was packed and swept dirt, scattered with pebbles. Their footsteps echoed, no matter how carefully they stepped.

As she had when they crept toward the museum in the dark, she began to measure the world with her other senses. She counted her footsteps. She listened for breathing, hers and Chase’s. She was conscious of the hot press of Chase’s hand in hers. She began to feel like a ghost herself.

On they walked; no one else approached them. But eerie fragments of disembodied voices reached them, bouncing from the walls, reverberating in the tunnel.

A burst of masculine laughter made her jump.

Chase squeezed her hand, but didn’t indulge her nerves. He inexorably pulled her forward.

Once again that nervous giggle shrilled. It was louder still, less ethereal; clearly they were drawing closer to its source. Another hearty burst of male laughter, followed by a hoot, reverberated down the tunnel. Ricocheted, like a frightened bat. Rosalind’s breathing quickened. There was no way of knowing what would be at the end of this, and how could Chase know, armed with a pistol, two knives, a walking stick, and arrogance?

a pistol, two knives, a walking stick, and arrogance?

And then came the scream.

It blasted her nerves like lightning. Panic momentarily paralyzed her. Cold, then hot, then cold again with terror. She halted, sucking in a whimper. Her breath came in awful tattered gasps.

“Chase.”

“Listen, Rosalind.” He was stern.

And there it was again. The scream. Fainter, this time. A bit shorter in duration.

And this time she noticed that it somehow…. lacked conviction?

If such a thing could be said of a scream.

Her breathing began to ease a bit. She took in a deeper breath, feeling drained by fear.

Funny, but the sound in fact reminded her of the time she and her sisters had put on a play taken directly from a horrid novel she’d read aloud to them by the fire. Lucy, at first, had been elected to be the heroine, which would have required her to scream when she saw a ghost. But she’d been terrible at acting; she was unfortunately much too good at simply being herself, and struggled to be anything but.

Jenny, however, was very good at screaming, as she was the loudest.

But this sounded more like a Lucy scream. Not precisely terrified or accomplished or as a result of any particular trauma. Quite odd, really.

really.

She had no choice but to take her cues from Chase’s reaction. He wasn’t charging toward the sound, pistol drawn.

Then, of course, he would never dream of endangering her, regardless of who else was being endangered at the moment. God help them.

She’d never been suspended in a nightmare quite like this one. But if one needed to have a nightmare, she thought, it was lovely to share it with Charles Eversea.

On they walked, hands entwined, utterly silent. Forty steps into their journey the silence gradually took on texture: rather than intermittent ghostly bursts of sound, a distinct hum of masculine voices came toward them. The sort of hum that only a group of voices could make.

How on earth would she and Chase confront an entire group of men? What on earth would they find?

Chase pulled her to a halt. “Watch your step. Lift your feet up carefully,” he murmured into her ear.

She knew why in a moment: the dirt beneath their feet had given way to hard floor. Marble, from the sound of it against her slippers. Ten more steps she counted, and during those steps the dull red glow of the torchlit tunnel slowly gave way to a different sort of light: the warm pervasive light of a chandelier and fire and candle. Unwavering.

The hum was no longer a hum: distinct and separate conversations, loud though they were, could now be picked out.

loud though they were, could now be picked out.

“…what a splendid idea! I could barely scrape together the subscription, but I’m beyond delighted that I did.”

The tunnel had been chilled and somehow filled with cool air, and now the familiar heat of a fire-heated room swept over her, and she knew the tunnel was behind them and whatever they were about to face was quite officially ahead of them.

Two corded velvet curtains had opened directly onto a small domed, marble-floored foyer from which several hallways branched. A heavy crystal chandelier, tiered like a reverse pyramid to a single, long narrow drop, dangled over it, like a fancy Sword of Damocles. Chase was bemused to find a man presiding over what appeared to be a reception desk, much like Sergeant MacGregor did at the Montmorency. He was young and still coltish of limb, but very briskly official looking and dressed in a uniform that elevated him above footman but not quite to gentleman: a long dark blue coat with gold braiding, pale blue stockings, and buttons that winked a little too brightly to be truly tasteful.

“Your first time, sir, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. With no apparent surprise.

The first time creeping through a tunnel from a museum to what might very well be a brothel? That would be a yes.

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Chase matched the jovial tone.

“Hmm. I wasn’t told to expect anyone new this evening, but on occasion this has been the case. Would you mind sharing the name occasion this has been the case. Would you mind sharing the name of your sponsor?”

This was brightly asked.

Bloody hell.

Chase thought quickly. The toga-wearing man in the tunnel had referred to Ireton as “Woodcock,” another juvenile appellation in a series of juvenile appellations characterizing this entire misbegotten enterprise. The success of a clandestine operation such as this would utterly depend on anonymity, considering what was at stake. Mentioning Kinkade’s name would likely be certain disaster and reveal him as an interloper.

“Mr. Welland-Dowd,” he guessed.

Heart thumping hard, fingers gripped tightly in Rosalind’s, getting and giving reassurance. Her soft hand was damp. He could feel the rapid tick of her pulse, too.