A Fine Passion (41 page)

And Jack, too, would see and understand.

Smile deepening, she turned to him. He stood by the table, still staring at the vouchers in his hand.

“We’ll have to go, of course.”

Jack glanced at her, saw, very clearly, the soft light of anticipation glowing in her eyes. He inclined his head, and smiled. Charmingly.

Nine hours later, he was still smiling charmingly, but the gesture had grown thin—almost too thin to hide his feelings, the increasingly fraught urge to drop his mask entirely, seize Clarice, and whisk her away.

Away from those who wanted her to remain here, in the glittering bosom of the ton, to help them, to be a part of their family, not just the old but the newly forming, too.

It wasn’t hard to see she’d be tempted.

The booth Alton had hired was in the best area, facing the rotunda with the main dance floor between. Sitting in one front corner, keeping still, being as inconspicuous as possible, Jack watched Clarice whirling through a polka in Nigel’s arms.

About them, the cream of the ton circled and strolled, chatting, exclaiming, laughing. Jewels flashed; silks and satins corruscated in the light thrown by the bobbing lanterns. Perfumes and the scents of wine and fine food blended, teasing the senses; the music and chatter combined in a pervasive blanket of sound that yet managed to remain within reasonable bounds.

Everyone present was determined to enjoy themselves; their host was known as the Prince of Pleasure, and they took their cue from him. With only the highest families in the land able to obtain vouchers, the social standing of the company was assured. Consequently, the event was largely unstructured, with less rigidity, less consciousness of importance, all of which contributed to a sense of freedom, of being able metaphorically to let their hair down and simply enjoy.

Even to his prejudiced eyes, the scene was fabulous, and made even more appealing by the lighthearted atmosphere.

Alton whirled past with Sarah in his arms. Jack fought an urge to scowl. Everyone was enjoying themselves except him, and it was hard not to think that Alton was to blame. Especially as the man had pulled out all stops to convince Clarice to adopt the mantle of Altwood matriarch.

Jack had been forced to stand beside Clarice and listen to her soon-to-be sisters-in-law tell her how much they would appreciate her help in setting up their households, in establishing their own positions within the ton. He’d had to smile and nod while
grande dame
after
grande dame
made haughty overtures to Clarice, inviting her to join their circles.

Admittedly, Clarice had merely smiled and avoided giving any assurances, but she hadn’t said “no.”

He would have much rather she’d said “no,” even though he knew such a plain and abrupt refusal wouldn’t have been socially acceptable.

He wasn’t feeling all that inclined to behave in socially acceptable ways.

And with every minute that passed, he only felt more driven.

More tortured.

Regardless of what she’d said, regardless of what he’d thought and hoped that morning, once she considered the evening and all it implied, plus all the arguments countless others had put to her, and most of all the persuasions of her family, would she change her mind and decide to return to this life?

It was what she’d been born and bred to.

If she did…it would be without him. He knew, had known for some time, that the only place he would ever call home, the only place at which he would feel at peace, was Avening. Yet…would he ever know real peace, real happiness, without her?

Her family wanted her; they appreciated her more with each passing day. But they didn’t appreciate her, know her, as he did. They didn’t fully understand Boadicea, couldn’t fully engage with her, with all she was, as he did.

They didn’t need or want her as much as he did.

He was watching her, as ever, when she abruptly stopped midwhirl, then stepped out of Nigel’s arms. She wasn’t looking at her brother, but to the side of the dancing area; Nigel appeared to be asking her what was wrong.

Jack stood. Over the heads, he watched Clarice push away from Nigel’s restraining hands. Following the line of her gaze, he scanned the revelers—until he came to a man’s very pale, round face.

Jack swore. He didn’t wait to see more, but vaulted over the waist-high front of the booth and plunged into the crowd. There were muted shrieks and exclamations, warnings to have a care as he shouldered through the crush. He had no concern over whose ruffle he ripped; Clarice had left Nigel and started after the man, their courier-cum-informer who had murdered Humphries.

The man saw Clarice, stared, then turned and weaved away through the crowd. With her height, Clarice could still see him; she continued to track him, her attention fixed.

Jack swore and redoubled his efforts to reach her, uncaring of what havoc he caused. But the music had ended and the dancers were streaming from the crowded floor, leaving him fighting against a human tide.

Clarice followed the man who had run Anthony off the road all those weeks before. She realized he’d glimpsed her, but by using the crowd to her advantage, she hoped he might think she’d lost him in the throng.

She wanted to see where he was going, and even more whom he was meeting. He had to be meeting someone; there was no other reason a person of his ilk would be at such a gathering.

Tacking through the crowd, she managed to keep the man in sight, gradually gaining on him. He was circling the rotunda, presumably looking for one particular booth; she was increasingly sure he thought she’d lost him.

Then he stopped. His back to the gardens, from the edge of the crowd, he looked around, as if checking one last time before he approached whomever he was there to meet.

Clarice ducked behind a group of people, thanked her stars she hadn’t worn plumes in her hair as so many other ladies had. She looked down, counted to ten, then shifted to peek at the man again—just as the group before her moved on.

Leaving her staring across a bare expanse of ten yards, directly at her quarry.

His small eyes opened wide. Then with a muffled curse she heard, he whirled and plunged down the path behind him.

Clarice picked up her skirts and hurried after him.

The path was a major one, well lit by lanterns strung between the trees. There were couples and groups strolling along, enough to reassure Clarice but not enough to hide her.

Or the man. He darted along, not quite running, trying, still, not to attract too much attention, glancing behind him every now and then. The idea of screeching “Thief!” and pointing at him flared in Clarice’s mind, just as he ducked down an intersecting path.

She swore, and rushed on. The distance between them had lengthened. She was almost running as she rounded the corner and started along the next path.

A minor path. An unlighted one.

C
larice halted. She’d traveled less than ten yards along the path, but already she stood in dense shadow. The bustle of the crowd around the rotunda suddenly seemed far away, screened by thick bushes.

And she could no longer see her quarry.

“Damn!” She stood a moment more, debating, then did the sensible thing, turned on her heel and marched back to safety.

“Damn, damn, da—” She sucked in a breath and whirled as the man rushed toward her. He’d been hiding in the bushes a few paces farther on.

Lips pulled back in a snarl, he was on her. Before she could release the scream rising up her throat, he slapped a huge hand over her lips, trapped her against him, then started to drag her back down the path. Away from the lighted path with its occasional strollers, away from anyone who might glimpse her silvery gown.

Clarice struggled frantically. This was much worse than the previous night; this man had killed, and would cold-bloodedly kill again.

She kicked and fought, and managed to slow him, but she couldn’t break free. He was not only stronger than the man last night, he was also more intent, more set on his aim, more experienced. His hand was clamped so hard over her lips, she couldn’t move her jaw enough to bite.

Desperate, she used her weight, sagged in his hold, then kicked and wrestled when he swore and tried to juggle her.

She forced him to stop again, but they were too far from the other path; she wasn’t making enough noise to attract anyone’s attention.

The heavy arm around her middle tightened, compressing her lungs. Then the hand over her mouth shifted; he pinched her nostrils closed, simultaneously pressing hard against her mouth, sealing off all air.

Clarice stopped struggling; she went totally still. Before she could think what to do, how to pretend she’d fainted, a roaring filled her ears.

Her vision started closing in, narrowing to a central core of light…

Jack appeared within that halo.

She assumed she was dying, that his was the final image she would see, her biggest regret that she would take to her grave—

Her captor swore. He released her mouth, reached beneath his coat.

Clarice sucked in a huge breath. Blinking back to life, she realized Jack was truly there, rushing down the path toward them, her warrior-lord come to save her.

Simultaneously she realized her captor had drawn a wicked-looking knife from his pocket, that he was holding it down where in the deep shadows Jack wouldn’t see it.

She wrenched sideways, trying to force the man to raise the knife.

The man didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes from Jack, closing rapidly.

Clarice remembered she could speak. “He has a knife!”

Neither Jack nor the man seemed to hear.

Desperate, she lifted her feet and flung herself to the side, trying to pull the man off-balance.

She succeeded better than she’d expected. Her flailing foot connected with the man’s knee. With a grunt, he went down, his grip on her breaking as she tumbled to the ground.

Jack grabbed her, hauled her upright, thrust her back along the path behind him. She staggered back, gulping air.

The man surged up like a spring aimed at Jack. The knife glinted evilly as he drove it toward Jack’s throat.

Jack caught the man’s wrist, swung so his shoulder and back were against the man’s chest, holding him at bay as Jack fought to gain control of the knife or to make the man drop it.

The man drove his other fist low into Jack’s side; Jack grunted, shifted, caught the man’s free fist in his other hand, and held it away as he concentrated on the hand holding the knife. He put all his strength into breaking the man’s grip while holding the man trapped, stretched across his shoulders.

Still giddy, Clarice watched as they wrestled. This was no clean fight; even she could see the difference. Neither was averse to using any means they could to win. They grunted, and staggered; Jack was too experienced to let the other have space enough to use his legs. Inexorably, Jack bent the man’s wrist back, farther…

Suddenly, Jack let the man’s other hand go and drove his elbow back into the man’s chest. The man wheezed, and nearly collapsed on Jack.

Jack staggered. He might have been as strong, but the other man was heavier.

With a huge effort, the man wrenched himself free, flinging Jack away. He staggered, but quickly regained his balance.

They faced each other, two wrestlers looking to close, a few yards between them.

Before Jack could move in, the man abruptly fell back.

His eyes went to Clarice. He lifted his arm.

Jack couldn’t reach him in time.

He flung himself at Clarice.

He caught her, let his weight carry her to the ground, didn’t truly care when he felt the sharp sting of the knife, followed by blossoming pain as it lodged in the back of his shoulder.

Behind him, the man swore foully with a thick accent, European but from nowhere that bordered the sea.

Jack heard the man’s footsteps as he started toward them, felt Clarice’s arms wrap about him and hold him, felt her warm and safe beneath him.

Ruthlessly focusing his senses, he gathered his strength to push free at just the right moment; it would take more than a knife in the shoulder to stop him.

The man’s footsteps abruptly halted. He was still too far from them for Jack to make any sensible move.

Shouts reached them, followed by footsteps rushing down from the major path.

The man swore again, more softly, then swung on his heel and fled.

Jack groaned and swore, too. “Damn it! He’s getting away.” He started to struggle up, but Clarice tightened her hold.

“There’s a knife in your back.”

He bit back his “I know”; there was a strange note, an odd quality in her voice. He reminded himself she wasn’t used to fights and knives and death, but he was nowhere near dead. “It’s all right. I’m not that hurt.”

“But—”

He pushed back enough to sit up, disentangling from her as Nigel and Alton came pounding down the path. With his head, Jack ordered them on. “After him. I’ll survive.”

Clarice had already scrambled to her feet; hunkered down, her attention was fixed on him. After the briefest of glances her way, glances she didn’t even register, Alton and Nigel raced on.

They were young and fast; there was a chance they might catch the villain.

Other revelers were gathering at the head of the path, but no one else had yet ventured down.

Clarice twitched the hems of her skirts from beneath Jack’s legs, and scrambled around him to view the damage. Her heart seemed to have lodged in her throat, choking her; the sight of the blood oozing from around the blade made her reel, not with faintness but with a medley of emotions so powerful she had to slam a door on them just to function. “What can I do to help?”

She laid her hand lightly on Jack’s shoulder; he was obviously in pain.

He met her eyes as she peered around his shoulder. “Can you pull the knife out?”

She blinked. She was thankful the path was so shadowy; he hadn’t seen the blood drain from her face.

“It hasn’t touched anything serious. It’s lodged in muscle, but it’ll do less damage if I don’t move until it’s out.”

She shifted back to face the knife. “How?”

“Just grab it and pull it slowly out. I’ll try to relax so it comes out more easily.”

She dragged in a huge breath, held it, closed her hand around the hilt, and did as he said, careful to exert only enough force to draw the knife slowly free…then it was out, in her hand. She blew out a breath, and slumped to sit beside Jack.

He offered her his handkerchief. “Use that to press on the wound.”

She did. Just as she pressed the linen pad down hard, a shot rang out.

They both looked down the path in the direction of the sound.

Jack closed his hand around hers. “It won’t be your brothers.”

She looked at his grim face. “How can you be sure?”

He started to rise. She scrambled to her feet, then helped him up, keeping one hand pressed to his wound.

“Let’s go and find out.”

Others had now ventured down. A few gentlemen, seeing Jack’s injury, offered their handkerchiefs to help staunch the blood. Clarice accepted them, adding them to the wad beneath her hand as, followed by a small procession, they headed down the path.

They traveled more than half the length of the huge gardens before they reached the scene of the shooting. It wasn’t on the path, but a little way off it, in a small clearing surrounded by bushes. A shocked group of revelers, including, Clarice noted with relief, Alton and Nigel, stood staring, silent and stunned, in a wide circle around the round-faced man.

He lay on his back, arms wide, staring, sightless, up at the night sky.

A large hole in his chest bled sluggishly. On the grass beside him lay a nondescript pistol.

There was no question that he was dead.

Halting beside Alton, Jack sighed.

“I don’t understand.” Frowning, Alton turned to Jack. “We’d gone past on the path, then heard the shot. But who shot him?”

Jack looked down at the pale, round face. “His master—our last traitor.”

Using Alton and Nigel as assistants, Jack gathered what information he could.

Nigel found a young lady who had seen a man leaving the clearing immediately after the shot had rung out; he convinced her parents that she should talk to Jack, and escorted the party to where Jack sat on a bench beside the central avenue, Clarice at his side still holding the wad of handkerchiefs tightly to his wound.

A few gentle questions confirmed that the young lady had indeed seen the murderer. Unfortunately, she was in the grip of incipient if not actual hysterics; Jack wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Clarice shifted, drawing the girl’s startled gaze. “Come now. This gentleman was injured trying to catch the man. You’re not injured, just frightened, but you’ll feel much better after you’ve told us all you saw. Where were you standing when it happened?”

The girl blinked, and replied, telling them she and her group were strolling the lawns just beyond the small clearing. Clarice’s calm questions, asked with the transparent expectation of receiving coherent answers, steadied the girl; she responded increasingly freely. When the shot had rung out, she was the best placed of their group to see the gentleman who had walked, calmly and unhurriedly, away from the scene.

Unfortunately, beyond describing him as tall, with a well-cut evening coat and fashionably styled dark hair, she couldn’t identify him. She hadn’t seen his face.

“He didn’t look around at all. At first, I thought he couldn’t have heard the shot. Indeed, I wondered if it
was
a shot I heard, given he was so calm.”

Jack summoned a smile and thanked the girl, her parents, and escort. Relieved, the parents ushered the small group away.

Alton looked down at Jack. “Should we search?”

Jack grimaced. “For what?” Slowly, assisted by Clarice, he stood. “Whoever it was is indistinguishable from the majority of male guests.”

“If he’s even still present,” Clarice said.

Jack glanced at her. “Oh, he’ll be here. Leaving, doing even that much to draw attention to himself, let alone cutting short his evening’s entertainment, isn’t his style. Especially now he knows that our last chance of identifying him”—he glanced back at the clearing where the garden’s attendants were dealing with the dead body—“just died.”

At Jack’s insistence, Clarice took him back to the Bastion Club.

“Gasthorpe knows how to contact Pringle, and he knows more about stab wounds than any doctor in London.”

She did as he asked and kept the emotions bubbling inside her carefully suppressed. For the moment. At least until the doctor had pronounced Jack fit enough to withstand them.

At the club, she swallowed her protests, respected their rules, and agreed to wait in the parlor.

Gasthorpe whisked Jack away; noting the majordomo’s unruffled efficiency, Clarice surmised he was used to dealing with peers sporting stab wounds and the like. She humphed and paced the parlor. Dr. Pringle arrived, a sharp-featured gentleman who bowed and assured her that Jack had the constitution of an ox. He also promised to stop by on his way out and inform her of his opinion of Jack’s injury.

Mollified, she sat; when a footman appeared with a tea tray, she was absurdly grateful. She sent her compliments to Gasthorpe and settled to wait.

Upstairs, Jack winced as Pringle probed the wound.

“Clean as a whistle.” Pringle opened his bag and rummaged for bandages. “One benefit of dealing with professional killers.”

Used to Pringle’s graveyard humor, Jack merely grunted. He gripped the edge of the table against which he was leaning and kept his lips shut as Pringle rebathed the wound, smeared it with some unguent, then laid gauze across it before bandaging him up. The bandage had to wind over his shoulder and across his chest, but Pringle was experienced enough to leave him room to move reasonably freely.

Pringle was tying off the bandage when the door opened, and Dalziel walked in. Jack let his surprise show; like him, Dalziel was in evening dress.

Dalziel closed the door behind him, nodded to Pringle, then studied Jack. “There’s a story flashing around the clubs of a gentleman rescuing a fair damsel in a dark walk at the Vauxhall Gala, then the villain being shot dead.” Dalziel raised his brows. “I take it that was you?”

Jack grimaced. “Yes to the first, but I don’t know who shot him.” Concisely, he recounted the events of the last hours. “So in terms of appearance, the last traitor could be you or I. The other detail you can add to his file is that he’s high enough in society to garner vouchers to a Royal Gala. The watch at the gates was strict, entry by voucher only. Our ex-courier-cum-informer couldn’t have got in without one.”

Dalziel nodded. “Duly noted. As to our late friend…” His voice hardened. “I can confirm that he was a Pole, known to have a secret loyalty to Napoleon’s cause. Curtiss and the Admiralty have been watching him for years, but he’s never shown any interest in military secrets, nor has he been traveling. He’s been in London since ’08. Unfortunately, I only learned all that this evening.”