Susan Johnson (48 page)

“I’ll have to lock you in with her.” Christian’s duty to her uncle came first.

“Of course.” Roxane smiled. “I promise not to damage her.”

Christian giggled. “Maybe I should go and see little Annie Callandar, show her the letters Eglinton wrote to me last month.”

“Indeed you should. It would serve her right for being so bouncy and pert. Now run off, because I feel malicious.”

“You promise not to hurt her.” A note of caution underlay an odd gleam in her eyes.

“I promise, darling.” And Roxane pushed her gently toward the door.

When the metallic grate of the key sliding from the lock was followed by the diminishing sound of footsteps retreating down the hall, Roxane turned to Elizabeth and said in a hurried whisper, “Forgive me for the subterfuge; it was the only way I could convince Christian to allow me up to see you. She’s an unpleasant woman. I’m Roxane Forrestor, as you may have guessed, and I’m here in behalf of Munro and Robbie.”

“How’s Johnnie?” Elizabeth appealed, her every thought in the days past of her husband.

“He still lives.”

Tears sprang into her eyes, and she suddenly sat down, her legs giving way. “Thank you,” Elizabeth whispered.

Moving near, Roxane touched Elizabeth’s shoulder gently. “He’s been told where you are, and he responded.” She drew in a quiet breath, the lawyer’s description of Johnnie’s condition still too shocking in her memory. “And don’t think me unfeeling,” she went on a second later in a quick, low voice, “to launch into my message, but I’ve so little time before Christian returns. I’m here to tell you Robbie and Munro are planning your escape. They must free you before they can attempt a rescue of Johnnie. Otherwise, Queensberry and your father will continue to use you as leverage against your husband. Now that we know where you are, and if Chrissie doesn’t speak of my visit to her uncle so he moves you, the plan is to come for you tomorrow night. First you, and then Johnnie, immediately after you’re clear of this house.”

She abruptly moved away from the table at the sound of a door shutting on the floor below, walked over to the threshold, and listened for a moment. “Now regardless of what I say when Chrissie returns, just remember … Johnnie was never mine,” she quietly said. “He was never any woman’s until he met you.” She smiled ruefully, this woman who’d had adoring men at
her feet since adolescence. “Do you know, he left my bed one night. Just walked away without explanation. I knew then he’d never be back. He went to you.…”

Elizabeth smiled. “He came to take me from my wedding.”

“So everyone in Scotland heard,” Roxane replied. “I must admit to a touch of jealousy, my Lady Carre,” she added with a faint smile, “to be the object of such devotion from Ravensby. He guards his feelings.”

“And I admit to envy that you’ve known him for so long.”

“Together perhaps we can help win him his freedom.”

Elizabeth wiped her eyes with her fingers and rose from her chair. “Just tell me what to do.”

“I’m going to be insulting when Christian returns. The letter isn’t real, but it’s hurtful. Cry if you can, and shout and strike out at me. Chrissie will find sport in your unhappiness, and perhaps if we entertain her well, I’ll be invited back tomorrow for an encore. It would be advantageous to know you hadn’t been moved.”

“I hear her coming,” Elizabeth whispered.

“Then we must put on our actress masks,” Roxane said with a wink and a smile. “You hateful thing …”

At the time Elizabeth and Roxane were speaking, Redmond was traveling north with ten handpicked men. He didn’t know where Elizabeth was or what her danger, but they were following Harold Godfrey’s messenger, who was carrying the gold he’d received at Three Kings back to his master. Careful to remain out of sight, they were perhaps twenty minutes behind him; it looked as though his destination was Edinburgh. As they neared the city, two of Redmond’s men pulled ahead to keep the Godfrey retainer in sight; unlike Redmond, they’d go unrecognized by the messenger. Keeping pace with him as the roads became crowded with coaches and riders, they looked over their shoulders occasionally to take note of the single rider a hundred
yards back. The first of the remaining eight men, strung out at hundred-yard intervals to attract no notice; Elizabeth’s bodyguard—men who’d protected her since she was sixteen—entered the city one by one.

In the meantime the only man who’d seen Johnnie since he’d entered prison was sitting across the table from Robbie and Munro Carre in a private room of a tavern near the Lawnmarket shaking his head.

“He doesn’t have the strength even to move a hand yet. I’m telling you, it’s too early. Let me see if I can get a doctor in to examine him; then at least you’ll know his capabilities.”

“The longer the ship sits there, the less chance we have of remaining undiscovered. Even with Norwegian flags,” Robbie said. “The customs men won’t let us anchor there indefinitely.”

“We could carry him out if he can’t walk,” Munro suggested.

“It’s going to be tough enough just getting a few men inside without calling down the entire guard. Carrying a man of Ravensby’s size up those narrow stairways …” Douglas Coutts shrugged at the impracticality.

“If Johnnie stays in there, rather than growing stronger, it’s more likely he’ll die of prison fever in his weakened condition.” Robbie’s voice was rough with fatigue. He’d hardly had any sleep since fleeing his property in East Lothian, playing hide-and-seek with British cruisers off the coast. And when the news of Johnnie and Elizabeth’s capture had been conveyed to him by Charlie Fox, he’d immediately sailed for Leith. “I’ll talk to Roxane when she returns from seeing Christian Dunbar,” he said with a sigh. “But if she’s seen Elizabeth, my gut tells me to take them both out tomorrow night.” He looked to his cousin for his opinion.

“They won’t be expecting anyone to try and move a man as near death as Johnnie,” Munro said. “I agree. Tomorrow. If Roxane has good information. But timing’s essential. Once Elizabeth is freed, the alarm may be
raised. We have to be ready to go into the prison the second she’s out of Queensberry’s hands.”

“In that case, gentlemen,” their lawyer said, giving in gracefully, “I shall be ready with the gold to open those first doors aboveground.” His smile was grim. “The keys for the rest, I’m afraid, will require a fight.”

Early that evening, Roxane, Robbie, and Munro exchanged information in her private sitting room.

“Elizabeth isn’t even guarded,” Roxane said. “They must feel she’s well hidden. And considering the usual state of news in this small city, she is; it took over a day for my very competent caddies to find her.”

“If she’s not guarded, her rescue should be relatively simple,” Munro noted.

“The key to Elizabeth’s room is on Christian’s chatelaine, if you prefer not breaking the door down.”

“I’d like to be as unobtrusive as possible, since we’re going into the prison almost simultaneously.” Robbie was sprawled on Roxie’s sofa, his boots resting on the curved padded arm. “I think we’ll use Christian’s key and then make sure she and her staff are locked away when we leave.”

“If Johnnie can’t travel or if you don’t dare make for Leith immediately, you’re welcome to come back here.”

“Notice how optimistic our hostess is,” Munro said with a faint smile for Robbie.

“Cathcart escaped a year ago without a trace,” Roxane reminded them. “The price of freedom is negotiable apparently even in the castle prison.”

“Douglas tells us he can pay to open the doors aboveground,” Robbie said to her, “but Queensberry has his own men at the final gates.”

“Take enough of your Carres then to deal with them.”

“Too many men will raise the alarm.”

“I’m tempted to talk to Commander Gordon himself. Perhaps he has a price.”

“If he weren’t dependent on Queensberry’s patronage
for his place, I’d say your idea might be feasible. Unfortunately …” Munro’s voice trailed away.

“We’ll have Johnnie free, Roxane,” Robbie assured her. “One way or another.”

“Remember, if you need them, those rooms on the top floor where you’re staying will continue to be safe; I’ve enough influential friends—no one would dare search my home.” She was being modest; as the reigning beauty in Edinburgh, some even said in Britain, she had most of the powerful men in the country eager to please her.

“We hope to make for the ship.”

Robbie nodded his agreement. “Although it depends on Johnnie’s health. Coutts says he’s desperately weak.”

“Where will Elizabeth be taken?”

“Directly to the
Trondheim
.”

“I shall be at a dinner party and ball at the Chancellor’s house tomorrow night anxiously awaiting news. I expect the outcry over the prison escape will reach some of the Privy Council before morning. Tonight I go to the Countess Pamure’s. I may hear gossip of Queensberry, for he’s known to have had a
tendre
for her in the past.”

“We ride for the
Trondheim
after dark,” Robbie said, “to bring in sufficient arms for tomorrow night. I’ll leave one of our men to accompany you to the Countess’s should you need to reach us with a message; he can pose as one of your footmen. I don’t envy you your evening though,” he added with a grin. “The Countess is likely to recite her newest love poems.…”

“And you’re not romantical?” Roxane teased.

“One in the family is enough,” the young Master of Graden ironically noted. “Although none of his acquaintances would have bet a shilling on Johnnie Carre’s understanding of love a year ago.”

Redmond’s men had been on surveillance at Harold Godfrey’s lodgings since they’d arrived in the city, changing watch every two hours so their appearance wouldn’t
be conspicuous, hoping the Earl of Brusisson would lead them to Elizabeth. But he’d not exited his apartments since the messenger had arrived. And according to the occupant of the floor below Godfrey’s flat, Harold Godfrey lived alone.

As they continued their watch, an elegant coach drew up to the entrance of the building late in the evening, and moments later Harold Godfrey, dressed modishly in blue velvet and black lace, strolled through the door and stepped into the gleaming carriage.

As the vehicle rolled away, a figure pushed away from the shadows of the wall and, picking his way across the garbage-strewn cobbled street, moved into another shadowed doorway on the opposite side. “He gave Countess Pamure’s as his direction,” one of Redmond’s men said to him.

“I’ll send another man to you,” Redmond quietly replied, “and I’ll find my way to the Countess’s; the drivers should have some information. I’ll see what I can discover.”

So Redmond was curbside with a group of coachmen when Roxane’s carriage deposited her at Countess Pamure’s town home. While he didn’t recognize the copper-haired beauty alighting from her carriage, he knew the woman’s footman who was assisting her from her blue-lacquered coach.

As Roxane carefully navigated the short distance to the entrance on her high pattens, her hooped skirts and velvet cloak gripped firmly in her hands, Redmond moved slightly away from the gossiping drivers so he’d be visible to the footman following his mistress toward the torch-lit doorway. Neither man spoke to the other, cautious in a city of strangers, but their eyes met in recognition, and the Carre clansman murmured, “Wait.”

A short time later, when the disguised Carre clansman came outside, he and Redmond walked away from the cluster of waiting coachmen and grooms, moving
down the street a small distance. Briefly, they exchanged information, and Redmond made arrangements to speak to Robbie later that night at Roxane’s. The men parted after only a few minutes, and Redmond returned to his surveillance.

Roxane had never met the Earl of Brusisson, but she knew the Duke of Queensberry as she knew everyone in the limited ranks of the Scottish nobility. And the man standing beside the Duke met Robbie’s description of Harold Godfrey. Returning her attention to the young man who was complimenting her on the beauty of her gown while his gaze was focused several inches below her collarbones, she smiled graciously at him until his fulsome flattery came to an end and then said, “I’d be eternally in your debt, dear Buchan, if you’d fetch me a glass of claret. It’s dreadfully hot in here.” Tapping him lightly on his cheek with her ivory-and-lace fan, she added flirtatiously, “If you don’t mind …”

After he rushed off to accommodate her, she glanced in the candle-lit mirror on the wall beside her, minutely adjusted the lace at her décolletage, practiced a fleeting winsome smile and, satisfied at her theatrical skills, glided toward the man who was attempting to end Johnnie Carre’s life.

Queensberry saw her first as she approached and
half-turned toward her with a welcoming smile, interrupting his conversation so the taller man beside him turned to look as well. Roxane smiled at them both, flipped open her fan with practiced ease and, dipping into a minute curtsy that showed off her fine bosom to advantage, raised her seductive dark eyes. “It’s so pleasant to see you back in town, James,” she cordially declared. “The city loses a certain sophistication when you’re absent.”