The Elusive Bride (38 page)

He glanced at her. “Someone’s trying to break into the parlor downstairs. Bister and I will go down—wait here.”

“Not on your life.” She grabbed the doorknob. “You two go ahead, I’ll follow.”

Gareth hesitated, but in truth he’d rather she wasn’t far from him. The cult might mount a two-pronged attack, one downstairs, the other above. Curtly, he nodded. “Just stay back.”

He pretended not to see her roll her eyes.

Jack, Tristan, Mullins, and Mooktu were already in the corridor. Jack held a finger across his lips, then mimed that he and Tristan would go down the back stairs and circle outside. Mooktu and Mullins would remain by the bedchambers in case of an unexpected incursion there.

Gareth nodded, and they silently parted.

Bister followed Gareth down the stairs. Emily followed on Bister’s heels, treading close by the wall so the stairs wouldn’t creak. Halfway down, Bister found her hand in the dark and pressed the handle of a knife into her palm. Emily gripped, nodded in thanks when he glanced back.

She clutched the knife and felt a trifle less vulnerable, but her primary concern was Gareth, slipping through the darkness of the inn’s ground floor to the parlor door. She and Bister obeyed Gareth’s signal and hung back. He cracked the door open a fraction, listened, then slowly opened it wider.

Then he disappeared into the blackness beyond.

Bister just beat her to the door. She followed him in, and through the gloom saw Gareth, a large dense shadow, waiting, apparently listening, by the window.

The substantial wooden shutters were closed and fastened on the inside. The window casement was also closed and locked, but it seemed inconceivable that the cultists could even get through the shutters.

Drawing closer to the window, straining her ears, she heard whispers, the cadences distinguishing the speakers as Indian.

Suddenly the whispering rose, then stopped altogether.

“Damn!” Gareth reached for the window latch, pulled
the window open, unfastened the shutters, and pushed them wide.

In the faint moonlight, across the inn yard they saw two shocked faces turned their way—then the cultists took to their heels and fled.

Seconds later, Jack and Tristan appeared before the window, looking toward the trees through which the cultists had vanished. “What happened?” Tristan asked.

“They gave up.” Disgust rang in Gareth’s voice.

The others grunted. Hands on hips, they stared at the forest, then shook their heads, waved, and trudged back around the inn.

Gareth leaned out, caught the shutters, resecured them, then closed the window. Bister took back his knife before Gareth turned and waved Emily and Bister up the stairs.

They climbed back to bed rather less quietly than they’d come down.

Emily woke some hours later. Uncertain what had drawn her from her dreams, she lay still—then abruptly sat bolt upright.

The movement woke Gareth. He looked at her. “What is it?”

She drew in a deep breath, let it out in a rush. “Smoke—and yes, I’m sure.”

Gareth was already rolling from the bed.

Scrambling into her cloak, Emily joined him at the door, but then frowned and turned back. “It isn’t so noticeable over here.”

Her side of the bed was nearer the window.

Gareth had gone into the corridor. Mooktu was on watch, sitting closer to the stairs the better to hear any sounds from below. But neither he nor Gareth could smell any smoke in the corridor or the stairwell.

The inn roof was slate—no danger there. Puzzled, Gareth returned to their room—to find Emily at the window, working the latch free.

He was on her in a heartbeat, grasping her shoulders and
pulling her away from the glass. “Be careful! Your nightgown’s white—they’ll be able to see you.”

“Yes, but—”

“I know.” The scent of smoke was more definite near the window. “Let me.”

Releasing her, he closed his coat to his throat, then stepped to the window, tugged the latch free and eased the pane open.

A gust of wind blew the acrid smell of woodsmoke into the room.

He pushed the window wider, using the glass pane as a shield of sorts, until he could look down and along the inn. He could see smoke trailing from somewhere toward the rear. Following it back…through the deep gloom he could just make out three figures in heavy frieze standing staring at a pile of wood stacked against the inn wall.

They’d tried to set the wood alight, tried to train the flames back onto the wooden shutters, but it was December in England; the wood was damp. They’d managed to light a tiny blaze at the base of the stack. One crouched and blew—just as a rain squall struck, sweeping down, pelting the men and quenching the nascent fire, creating yet more smoke.

Coughing, hands waving, the three men stepped back. They muttered amongst themselves, then turned and walked away into the trees.

From above, Gareth watched them go.

“What’s going on?” Emily hissed.

The rain intensified. Gareth glanced at the now sodden stack of wood, then closed the window.

“They’re gone.” He faced Emily and Mooktu. “They tried to set the inn alight, but they didn’t try very hard.”

“
You
get those damned letters back—
every
copy, every last one!” Ice-cold fury vibrated in Alex’s voice.

In the drawing room of the house they’d commandeered in Bury St. Edmunds, Daniel looked at Roderick, waited for his response.

He and Alex had just received a nasty shock. It appeared the letter Roderick had brought them there to intercept held a far greater threat than any of them had realized. Roderick—the idiot—had absentmindedly included Daniel’s and Alex’s real names. While no one else reading the letter would recognize the connection, if the letter—even a copy—found its way into the Earl of Shrewton’s hands, their father would certainly recognize his bastards. Roderick was his favorite legitimate son. As Alex had pointed out moments earlier, if push came to shove over the Black Cobra, the earl would unhesitatingly offer up his bastards as sacrificial lambs to save Roderick—nothing was more certain.

But Roderick couldn’t function as the Black Cobra without Daniel and Alex. And he knew it.

Eyes narrowed to ice-blue shards, his face like stone, Roderick curtly nodded. “All right. I will.”

“How?” Eyes of an even more wintry, unforgiving ice blue, Alex took up a position before the fireplace. “Tell us how, brother mine.”

Roderick glanced at the copy of the letter Delborough had been carrying, which Roderick had been forced to kill his own man, Larkins, to secure. “Hamilton’s at Chelmsford. I sent eight men to follow and harry their party, to keep them in sight. Tomorrow, I’ll take a force of our elite, and join the eight. We’ll have overwhelming numbers—there’s only four men counting Hamilton, and he has the woman to protect as well. We’ll stop him, seize him and the woman, and bring them here.”

Roderick shot a venomous look at Alex. “I’ll have to leave them to your tender mercies—I’ve just got word Monteith’s in the country. And he, too, is heading this way, but from the direction of Bath, with two guards, as Delborough had, and a pirate captain in train. I’ll have to go west to keep him out of Cambridgeshire.”

“This is rapidly degenerating into the worst possible scenario,” Daniel said. “The four couriers are landing at widely distant ports. Our watchers on the coast are stretched thin.
Although we’ve already lost men, admittedly we have more, but knowing where to send them in time—”

“It’s just as well,” Alex said, tone dripping superiority, “that our four pigeons are making for a single roost, and that whoever this puppetmaster they’re reporting to is, he’s nearby.” Alex cast a lethal look at Roderick. “Which is why I suggested we move up here. I’ll hold the fort—man our inner rampart—here, with M’wallah and my guard, but you two will have to take command in the field.”

Alex’s gaze shifted to Daniel. Silently, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. Neither he nor Alex trusted Roderick any more than they trusted his—their—sire.

Unaware of the interplay, Roderick nodded curtly. “I’ll take Hamilton tomorrow. We’ve already got a force quartered on the other side of Cambridge—enough to deal with Monteith.” Roderick looked at Daniel. “You could—”

“No. Leave Monteith for the moment,” Alex said. “He’s not close enough to demand immediate action—we can wait for better details of his position before making our plans. As you say, we already have men in the area. Have we heard anything of Carstairs?”

“Not since he left Budapest.” Roderick ran a hand through his hair. “He’s still somewhere on the Continent, and hasn’t yet reached the coast.”

“As far as we know,” Alex dryly replied.

Daniel uncoiled his long legs and stood. “In that case, I’ll assist with Hamilton.”

Roderick inclined his head, accepting what he saw as an offer of help. “We’ll leave at first light and ride toward Chelmsford. A messenger will come north to meet us and confirm their route. With any luck, it’ll be toward us, along the road through Sudbury. Once we locate the carriage and gather our eight following it, we can pick our spot.”

Roderick glanced at Alex. “Given those riding with us tomorrow will be from our elite, I can’t see how we can fail to seize Hamilton, meddling Miss Ensworth, and the letter.”

Alex’s features had eased to their customary elegant
serenity. “That sounds excellent.” Alex met Roderick’s eyes, lightly smiled. “I’ll look forward to celebrating your success.”

While they breakfasted by lamplight, Gareth told the others of the attempt to set fire to the inn. “Standard practice for cultists, but to no purpose here.”

Later, while Mooktu, Mullins, and Bister readied the carriage, Gareth showed Jack and Tristan the evidence of the abortive attempt. They found three different spots where fires had been lit.

“Determined beggars, aren’t they?” Tristan spread the ashy remains of one fire with his boot. “But perhaps they achieved what they intended.”

Gareth grunted. “That occurred to me. No one could have imagined a fire would take hold long enough to do any real damage. They just wanted to keep prodding us.”

Jack gazed at the charred logs. “Anyone care to wager we’ll see action today?”

“No bet,” Tristan returned. “Given this, today is the day.”

A
hoy
brought them back to the front yard. For the benefit of the cultists they were sure would be watching, Jack and Tristan shook hands with Gareth, then mounted and, with cheery waves, trotted off south through the town, as if parting ways.

In reality they would circle around and fall in behind the band of cultists following the carriage, as they had the day before.

Emily was already in the carriage, snuggled up beneath a mound of rugs. His breath fogging in the sharply cold air, Gareth glanced at Bister on the roof, at Mooktu and Mullins on the box. “Be ready. Somewhere on our road today, they’ll strike.”

The expressions on the three faces turned his way mirrored his own feelings.
At last!

He climbed into the carriage, shut the door, and they were off.

They rolled sedately out of the town, heading north on the road to Sudbury and Bury St. Edmunds. Once they’d left the last cottages behind, Mullins flicked the reins and the horses lengthened their stride.

His hand locked around one of Emily’s, Gareth watched the winter-brown fields flash past—and waited.

He was still waiting—they all were—when the carriage rolled into the village of Sudbury. He recognized the tactic, one cult commanders often employed—make the target wait and wait and wait until, inevitably, they relaxed, then pounce—but he still felt the effects.
When?
was the question occupying all their minds.

After rattling across a bridge over the River Stour, Mullins drove into the market square, paused to ask directions, then headed on a short way and turned into the yard of the Anchor Inn.

Climbing down to the cobbles, Gareth took one look at the ancient inn Wolverstone had directed them to, and felt expectation leap. The inn was so old it was a hodgepodge, a conglomeration of additions made over the centuries with wings here, there, and entrances everywhere—perfect if one wanted men to slip unobtrusively inside.

Leaving Mooktu, Bister, and Mullins to watch over the carriage and arrange for fresh horses, he ushered Emily through the front door.

The innkeeper popped up before them. “Major Hamilton?” When Gareth nodded, the man beamed. “Please—come this way. You’re expected.”

Both he and Emily eagerly followed the man down a narrow corridor. The innkeeper halted, tapped, then opened a wooden door that, from its solidity, dated from Elizabethan times, and bowed them in.