The Royal Assassin (17 page)

“Yes. And he's the one who took Emma prisoner as a traitor. You can guess what they do to traitors.”

My stomach flipped over. I felt the knife in my pocket and knew I'd be able to use the blade on Ivanov and Griekev. My only concern was that something so small could do any real damage.

Sumner continued, “I'm afraid Griekev will let Ivanov loose on Emma. Ivanov's wanted to torture her since we arrived. He started to beat her up once until I stopped him. Emma's never shown any fear of him, and he can't stand not to be feared.”

I'll show him fright. “Why didn't you pull her out of there when Emma attracted Ivanov's interest?”

“Emma didn't want to leave. She thought with Ivanov focused on her, I'd have a better chance to find out what Griekev had planned.” Sumner's face looked grim in the faint light inside the carriage. “When I'm done, Ivanov will be sorry he ever thought about harming Emma.”

His tone sent icy water dripping into my veins. Ivanov had more to fear from Sumner than he had from me, and I was ready to rip the Russian limb from limb. Then I'd give Emma a good talking-to for not getting out of that situation in time.

I looked out the window. We were still crossing the City of London. Couldn't the horses go any faster?

In a few minutes, Sumner said, “Stop,” and Blackford signaled
the driver to pull over. “The first lookout will be around the corner, halfway down the block on this side.”

I climbed out, confident someone would follow to help me. I sashayed around the corner and strolled down the street. It was dark. There weren't streetlamps on this narrow lane and clouds blocked any light we might have received from the quarter moon. My eyes adjusted to the gloom enough that I was able to notice movement ten paces ahead of me.

I needed to have faith someone was guarding me from behind.

Sauntering up, I put a hand on the man's rough fabric shirt and said, “Are you lonely?” in a sultry voice.

“Yeah,” he grumbled and tried to paw me.

It was all I could do not to smack him silly. I slid around him, drawing my hand across his chest so he turned to face away from my rescuers. “That'll cost ya. But with some coin, you can have a lot more. What would you like tonight, handsome?”

He grabbed me and smashed his filthy lips against mine. Then he jerked backward and in the gloom I saw a pair of hands had put punishing grips on his shoulders. A moment later, he was flat on his stomach on the stones as one of the duke's footmen expertly tied him up.

“We go on foot from here,” Sumner said.

I went first, following Sumner's directions, and between us we silenced a second watchman. I didn't think I'd been overheard by the men until Blackford slipped next to me and whispered, “I'm lonely.”

He must have felt my startled jump, because I heard a hint of his chuckle. “This is the place, Georgia. Stay behind us where you'll be safe.”

“No. You need me to go inside and find Emma while you fight
these crazy Russians.” I grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Just remember to come find us if we can't get out.”

“It's the building on the left. The first house past the warehouse.” He embraced me for a moment. “Georgia, know I will find you if it's the last thing I do.”

He sounded so serious my heart stumbled at the sudden ache. Don't let him be prophetic.

The sound of a series of blows and shouts to our right told me the robbers' guards had found us. The men fanned out while I melted into the building across the street. While grunts and thuds echoed around me, I used the buildings and the night for cover.

Just before I reached the gates to the wagon yard, a man rushed out to join the melee. I flattened myself against the sooty brick wall of the warehouse, but he didn't turn my way. As soon as he was past, I slipped in. Lamps by the doors to the warehouse gave me enough light to rush across the yard.

The back door was unlocked. From what Sumner had said, it wouldn't make sense that they'd keep Emma prisoner on the first floor. As soon as my eyes grew accustomed to the faint light coming in through the row of large bare windows, I made out the shape of machinery in the high-ceilinged area. This must be the print shop for the anarchist papers circulating throughout London.

I saw the staircase and started climbing, marking the wall with my chalk. When I reached the second floor, I stopped and listened. Not hearing any voices, I opened two doors. Inside one of the rooms were cots, piles of bedding, a few articles of clothing, a chair or two, and little else. In the other, I found a woman and two children sleeping. But no Emma.

I tiptoed away. The corridor ran along the inside of the building toward the front, lit by a single lantern. As I walked along, I
heard a baby wail and a mother shushing it. I guessed these rooms would be occupied by families not involved in the craziness I could hear outside. A small child stuck his head out of a door and was roughly pulled back inside by someone threatening him with a spanking. I heard snores from behind another door.

I reached the front of the building, marked the staircase with chalk, and hurried to the third floor. Now I heard nothing but the sounds of bobbies' whistles coming from outside and men's shouts. Help had arrived for Blackford. I hoped he was all right.

The first room I entered was a large, square, richly appointed parlor with a small oil lamp burning on the mantel. I could see draperies pulled back from the windows. I bumped into an end table and put my hand on it. Marble. Running my hand against a chair, I felt the satin upholstery.

I picked up the lamp and kept going. The room next to the parlor was a well-appointed bedroom in black and green that faced the street. Then I walked down a long hallway until I finally reached two more bedrooms, one in blue with oak paneling and the other in pink and violet and ruffles. Three residents. Two male, one female.

I could think of only two leaders of this group and they were both male. Who used the pink bedroom?

There was no sign of Emma or her jailers. Blast it, where was she?

W
ITH
a sick feeling in my stomach, I was about to dash down the long hallway to the stairs. Emma had to be on another floor. Or in another building. I wheeled around in the center of the hall, realizing something was wrong with the layout on this floor. The hallway had no doors off the length of it, but the bedrooms facing the front and back of the floor weren't nearly long enough to meet in the middle.

What was in the space in between and how could I get in? There had to be a hidden room in the center of this floor.

Holding the lamp up, I studied the walls in the hallway between the parlor and the green room in the front and the other two bedrooms at the far end of the building. A couple of fine paintings hung on the otherwise plain walls. There was no chair railing to hide a switch. No handle or doorknob. Nothing to hide an entrance or a sliding panel.

I could hear horses below in the street. I guessed these were
pulling the police wagons used to transport the prisoners. I knocked on the wall and heard it ring hollow.

I hurried into the parlor and felt around the carving of the mantelpiece. Nothing swung open. Nothing clicked.

Footsteps pounding up the stairs made me jump. I ran into the hall and saw Blackford and Sumner arrive in the light of the lamp I'd taken from the parlor. “Where is she?” the duke asked.

“I don't know, but there has to be a hidden room behind this wall.”

Sumner knocked on the wall in a few places. “It sounds hollow.”

Blackford disappeared into the parlor and returned in a moment with the andirons from the fireplace. Handing one to Sumner, they began to attack the wall. Sumner broke through first, and I could see light through the hole. He and Blackford went to work breaking chunks of plaster off to enlarge the hole until we could squeeze through, one at a time.

I went last, but not by choice. Emma was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. Several feet away were another chair and a table where a single candle burned. I coughed as I tried to breathe the thick, stale air now coated with plaster dust. The room smelled of dirt and candle grease and sweat and fear.

Emma's body sagged against her bindings. Her hair had fallen loose of its topknot and there was a smear of blood on her dress. I wanted her to move, to cry out, anything to show she was alive. But she remained limp.

Blackford cut Emma's bonds while Sumner held her face as he stared at her closed eyes and kept murmuring her name. It had to be enough to give me hope.

As Blackford finished with the ropes, she pitched forward and
Sumner swung her up into his arms. Blackford grabbed one wrist. “I feel a pulse, but it's weak. Is she breathing?”

Sumner turned his ear toward her mouth. “It's very shallow. We need to get her to a doctor.”

I held up the lamp and saw the outlines of two openings. One toward the front of the building and one toward the back. I hurried to the door leading to the front and found the mechanism to open it attached to the dirty wall. “Come on.”

I went first with the lamp, with Sumner carrying Emma right behind me, and then Blackford after he blew out the candle. The duke whistled when he saw the contents of the parlor shining in the lamplight. “We'll have to send the constables back for all of this. And find someone to open that safe.”

“What safe?” I asked as I hurried to follow Sumner down the stairs.

Blackford's reply was a grumble.

When we reached the street, Blackford's carriage was waiting for us. Blackford issued orders to his footmen, who walked back to stand by the front door before he leaped into the carriage. Sumner lifted Emma's limp frame up to him.

By the time I scrambled into the carriage, Sumner was seated with Emma in his lap and across one seat. I squeezed in between Blackford and Jacob. The lamp I held showed me all three men were bruised and bloodied, but I didn't see any serious injuries. Emma didn't seem to move or breathe. She lay slack in Sumner's arms as he stroked her cheek and murmured in her ear.

“What happened?” I asked as the carriage jolted into motion.

“We were outnumbered,” Jacob said, “but we kept them busy until Adam arrived with the police.”

“Ivanov? And Griekev?”

“No sign of either one of them. And I suspect more than a few of their thugs got away,” Blackford said. “Once we get Emma home and fetch a doctor, I need to reenter their rooms. See what I can learn about their criminal activities.”

“There's a printing press and offices on the first floor in the back. If they're running a ring of thieves out of there as well as the anarchist press, I'd look there as well as the rooms on the third floor. Their furnishings are as nice as yours, Your Grace.”

“I saw those paintings in the hallway. One's a Gainsborough, I think,” Blackford said without a trace of irony.

“In a hallway in an East End tenement?” I found that thought amazing.

“Where better to hide stolen goods?” Jacob replied. “I'd like to go back with you, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Jacob.”

Sumner looked at Emma's expressionless face and then at Blackford.

“She's going to want to see you when she wakes up, not us,” I told him. “We'll leave you to get the doctor and then you and Phyllida can take care of her.”

“Thank you,” Sumner said in a weary voice.

“We?” Blackford said in surprise.

“You're not getting rid of me,” I told him.

“At least change your clothes,” he said, eyeing my scandalous attire. “And you'll have to hurry. I don't look forward to another battle with those thugs they employ, and they'll be released by the magistrate soon enough.”

Phyllida looked ready to swoon when Sumner carried a still-unconscious Emma into our home, but she took a deep breath and directed him to Emma's bedroom. Then, setting her shoulders back like a soldier on parade, she marched into the kitchen and
began to make strong tea with plenty of sugar. Heaven knew we all needed it after the night we'd had.

And it wasn't over yet.

I hurried into my room and removed my costume, which Phyllida mercifully hadn't noticed. Fortunately, I'd left my corset and stockings in place. I needed only to pull on a dress I wore for hauling books around the bookshop and hurried back to join the pair I found pacing in the parlor.

“We promised to wait until Sumner returns with the doctor,” Blackford said. “In case we're needed.”

His gaze traveled in the direction of Emma's room.

As his words sank in, I joined in the pacing. After a moment, I found it impossible to wait. I marched back to Emma's room and found her lying on the bed, her eyes shut. I helped Phyllida finish removing her clothes. Her dirtied and bloodied dress already lay on the floor. I turned her while Phyllida sponged off the worst of the dirt and blood.

Her purple bruises and cuts left by Ivanov a day earlier were evident. Now she had a new slice across her neck that had bled onto the neck of her dress and bruises on her arms in the shape of large fingerprints. I didn't see any head wounds, yet she didn't stir.

Poison.

I was livid at their cruelty. I was going to kill Ivanov. Or Griekev. Or the unknown woman. Or all three. With my bare hands around their throats.

I could hear Sir Broderick's voice in my head, saying,
No. We will turn them over to the police, and we will provide evidence of their crimes. That is our job. We are not executioners.

How many times had he said that to me about my parents' killer after their deaths? Too many to count in those first years.
My temper had been banked over the years, but I'd never truly been able to put out the fire.

Leaning over the bed, I smelled Emma's breath and checked her head for signs of a lump. No odor of poison, no lumps. Her breathing was shallow and slow. I decided this was a sign she'd pull through and released a great sigh.

Phyllida finished bathing her, and then the two of us pulled a clean shift over her and tucked in the bedclothes. I knew she'd be in good hands with Phyllida and Sumner.

I walked from her room, ready to attack the leaders of this ring of thieves with their expensive tastes. The first person I met in the hallway was the doctor, who greeted me distractedly and moved on. Phyllida hurried him to the bedside while she began to catalog what little we knew about Emma's condition.

Sumner was in the parlor with the men, all of them on their feet. “Did anyone get some tea?”

They all shook their heads. Then Blackford looked over my gown and nodded to himself. Apparently he approved of drab gray where he didn't like light-skirt flamboyance.

“Let's go,” I said to Blackford and Jacob. “Sumner, sit down and relax. You'll have a long night ahead of you. Try to rest now. And have some tea. You look peaked.”

His voice grumbled from deep in his chest but indistinctly as he resumed pacing.

I shook my head at his nervous energy, but I couldn't claim to be any better. I was rushing around as if my actions alone would make Emma well. I waited for the other two men to leave my home and then brought up the tail of our strange procession. A duke, a young assistant to Sir Broderick who'd begun life in the East End, and a female middle-class bookshop owner.

“I borrowed another lantern from Lady Phyllida so we'll have
two to search the place properly,” Jacob told me, setting his next to the one I had grabbed from the fancy parlor in the tenement.

I picked up the lantern I'd borrowed and looked it over under the streetlights in my neighborhood. “The outside of this is made of silver.”

The two faces inside the carriage stared at me and then the duke took the unlit lamp and studied it. “Definitely silver, and I've seen its mate before. When we no longer need it, I should return this to its rightful owner.” He signaled and the carriage began to roll.

“Who?” I caught his gaze and held it.

“Remember the robbery at the Marquis of Shepherdston's more than a month ago?”

“How could I forget? The thieves blew up part of the house.” Then I looked at the delicately sculptured lamp. “Do you mean—?”

“This is one of the pieces that was stolen.”

Pieces of the two cases began to fall together. Unfortunately, I was so tired I couldn't make sense of the whole plan. “We need to tell Scotland Yard. They've been chasing all over after the thieves.”

Blackford smiled. “I think we just solved the case.”

That left me with even more questions. “But I thought Ivanov was an anarchist. And yes, anarchists make bombs like the one used to blow the Marquis of Shepherdston's safe. That's what killed Tsar Alexander. But I thought anarchists didn't believe in people living in luxury. Their rooms in that building are certainly opulent.”

“Perhaps they only object to other people living in luxury.” Blackford's tone was dry. “It's a useful way to fund their work and their newspapers. You can't think there's much money in being a rabble-rouser.”

“I wonder if everything in the rooms on the third floor was stolen.”

“Probably.” In the glow of a streetlight as we passed, I could see Blackford's smug expression. “Especially that Gainsborough.”

“Why would anarchists want to live in such luxurious conditions? Why not sell those goods as well to fund their revolution?”

“We'll have to catch them and ask them.”

His solution didn't make sense to me. “What if the anarchist cause was just a smoke screen for their real intentions? Maybe they're really a gang of thieves who are hiding behind the anarchists.”

“The anarchists have a history of robbing to fund their work. The only difference with this group is they're in London and we have to stop them.”

He was probably correct, but it still didn't feel right. I looked out the window of the carriage and realized we had returned to the tenement. As we climbed down, I asked, “Which building did Nadia live in?”

Blackford opened his mouth and shut it again before saying, “I was going to ask Sumner. So far as I know, only he and Emma and the anarchists know.”

When I looked at Jacob, he shook his head. “I never found out where Nadia lived. She gave me the slip in this neighborhood.”

The residents of the area in the street at that hour gave us surreptitious glances as they shuffled by on their way to work in local sweatshops and factories.

We were joined by the duke's footmen who'd stood guard by the front door. Inside the building, I could hear sounds of children running and babies crying and muffled voices as we walked to the back of the first floor and searched the printing shop. We found broadsheets and papers pertaining to anarchy, but I was more interested in the cheap two-shilling editions of Russian literature, history, and philosophy. I picked some up and glanced through
them. I didn't know if the books had been written in English or translated. Either way, the fiction was brooding and colorful. The wording sounded like that of a native English speaker.