Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (2 page)

The brush of a cloak against the cobbles flickered in the corner of his vision. A hooded medium-sized person moved steadily towards the large cross at the center of the square which marked the entrance to St. Giles. Walking confidently, the figure only stopped when they reached the ornate stone monument.

Hades watched carefully as the figure looked neither left nor right. None of the few passersby gave the cloaked form a second glance, despite the rigid figure standing out vividly in the weak sunlight.
Ah
. Here then was the man he had been waiting for.

It had taken months to find any information on the Viper. It was only by chance that he had found an informant willing to talk. But all that he had said was that the Viper had recently come into possession of some stolen government documents he wanted to sell for vast amounts of money
and
that the man would reportedly be meeting someone at the Cross of St. Giles at noon on that very day.

Hades waited patiently, tucked against the wall, but no one else arrived; it seemed that the person the Viper was coming to meet had not turned up. Withdrawing from the muddy corner, he pulled his hat low on his head and thrust his hands in his pockets. He, Hades would play that part.
After all, taking the given chance had been many a victor’s lucky strike.

As the square around the cross became briefly deserted, he walked stealthily towards the motionless dark figure.

“You have something of ours that we want back,” he said in a low voice as he approached the cross. The figure turned slowly, a white hand appearing briefly outside of their cloak.

“I do not have it.” The voice was hoarse, the hood pulled low across the face. “It must be lost. I cannot give it to you.”

“What? You have lost it? You don’t just lose something like that. What about the money?”

“I don’t have that either. I cannot give it to you. It is impossible.”

Hades quickly looked around the small square. His element of surprise was quickly being lost in this puzzling conversation that seemed to be going nowhere.

“You will come with me.”

“What, I… no! No I will not go with you. I must get back.” The cloaked figure took a step away from the cross, a hand appearing again from the cloak.

With a quick jab, Hades hooked his arm under the hand and hauled it forwards. The man resisted and pulled backwards with a gasp, but to Hades’ grim amusement, the Viper’s strength was no match for his.

What else had his informant said? Every person that had come into contact with the Viper had died inexplicably? Hades lifted his chin. It didn’t seem as if he would be dying today.  Closing his arms fully around the Viper’s waist, he lifted the cloaked form with a grunt and carried it in an upright position towards his carriage that waited on the Tottenham Court Road. He cursed as beneath his hands the Viper’s lithe body shook and twisted. Reaching the carriage, Hades tossed the figure inside with relief and banged on the ceiling with a closed fist.

“Home, Carter, and make it fast. I don’t want to be followed.”

The carriage jerked heavily but still did not move.

“What the devil?” Hades pushed the carriage door back open and leant out as the carriage jerked again. A man dressed in a serviceable brown suit jumped neatly out of the way of the carriage’s path, nearly causing the horses to rear.

“Terribly sorry.” The tradesman stroked at his moustache and leapt onto the curb. Hades turned his head quickly away, and swung back into the carriage as it moved forward smoothly again.

The Viper still lay motionless on the floor where he had half-thrown him. Hades bent down from his seat and roughly tied the man’s hands together in front of him. Despite being trussed in the cloak, he had heard too many stories of the Viper’s deeds to let the man have any quarter.

The carriage made fast headway down Oxford Street, finally turning into the cobbled streets of Mayfair. Winding through the narrow roads, the carriage rocked at last to a stop outside two terraced houses in the quietness of Hill Street.

Although richer than the average ton member, Hades preferred to live behind the hustle and bustle of central Mayfair. And despite the houses appearing separate, he owned them both, having knocked them together on the inside. The art of misdirection was underused in his opinion. Especially when there were so many irate women beating a path to his door.

His butler Carter hurriedly opened the door to the right hand house as Hades sprung up the steps and onto the front doormat.

“Get the man in the carriage, would you, and put him in the study.” Hades was more comfortable with his books around him—it would make the Viper’s interrogation easier. But Carter stared at him without moving and, with a studied hand, covered his nose and looked pointedly at Hades’ feet.

Hades looked down and sighed. In his impatience he had not stopped to consider the muck again in St. Giles. Now that he was back in Mayfair he was damned if he was going to spread it around his house.

“I’ll go round the back, and leave the boots in the stables. Make sure that someone cleans them and leave some new boots at the back door, please. I can’t interrogate the Viper in my slippers.”

“Certainly sir.” Carter trotted down the steps and easily hefted the cloaked Viper from the carriage and carried him through the front door. Hades winced as Carter banged one end of the cloaked form against the door, eliciting an unmanly squeak from the Viper’s trussed form. Wrinkling his nose against the smell of his boots, he strode to down the small lane to the back of the house and decided he didn’t feel too bad for the odious villain. What he had reportedly done to his victims was
far
worse.

Carter waited at the back door with Hades’ new boots, his eyes scrunched up as if in pain.

“What is it, Carter?” Hades pulled the boots from his hands. Carter never said what he thought. He just showed it through his facial expressions.

“I think, sir…”

“Spit it out!”

“Err, if I might be so delicate to say…”

Hades shook his head and, tucking the boots under his arm, pushed past his gaping butler and padded with stockinged feet through to his study.

The Viper sat stiff-backed in the angular library chair Hades used to get books from high shelves, his hood still over his face. With a sigh of satisfaction, Hades fell back into his comfortable leather chair and laboriously pulled on the clean leather boots. It was hard to feel in control when one was loafing around with toenails on show.

Carter entered again at a trot, but for once he bore only a tray with a large whiskey bottle on it and no biscuits.

Hades frowned. “What are you doing, Carter? Get me some coffee.”

“What a good idea. I’ll have some too.” The hooded Viper cocked his head on one side, the voice which had sounded low in St. Giles, now a pleasing contralto with just the slightest of shakes to it. Hades stared at the cloaked figure. The Viper was a woman?
Of course.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman had played the underworld.
Monsieur Herr
, the French spy that Anglethorpe had wrestled with had been female too.

He scratched his chin as Carter remained standing by the door, the butler’s face for once carefully blank.

“What are you waiting for?”

Carter gave no sign that he had heard. He nodded vigorously at the cloaked figure. Sighing, Hades walked softly behind the Viper and quickly pulled at his hood.

“Thank goodness for that. I thought I was going to spend my entire time underneath that cloak,” the Viper said.

Hades blinked and walked in a wide circle around the Viper. Staring downwards, he examined the woman in front of him. She did not present a formidable figure. Her jet black hair was piled on top of her head and she wore brass spectacles that were so smashed he could not see her eyes.

He glanced at Carter, who waited expressionless by the door.

“Why aren’t you going to get my coffee?” Licking his lips, Hades backed away to his chair and looked at the whisky, and back at the Viper. Apart from asking for coffee, she had said nothing else. With a thump he sat down. He
needed
to look her in the eyes.

“Take off your glasses.” He was not going to do it for the Viper.
Show no mercy.
That was another trick of interrogation that he had read in his books.

Wincing, the woman put her bound hands to her face and, twisting her head from side to side, unhooked the spectacle arms from behind her ears, pulling out a few strands of hair in the process. Once done she looked steadily, and what seemed to be, rather mistily at him.

“Good God.” It was all he could force out, nearly drowning in the blue of her eyes. He dived at the whisky tray and poured himself a strong measure, throwing it down his throat fast. Slowly he poured himself another and sipped at it. Out of the corner of his eye, Carter gave a satisfied nod and closed the door as Hades sat back in his leather chair.

“I might have known. Diana whatever-your-name-is.” Hades coughed as the burning liquid took hold. “To think that I thought you were just another scheming debutante. Using that to get close to me, and hiding your true serpentine nature by pretending to be mute.”

“I beg your pardon?” The Viper narrowed her eyes and blinked. Hades really had to admire her form, she was an exceptionally beautiful woman. One that had been hard to forget.

“At that ball a year ago you acted as if you were a simpleton. In reality you knew I was on to you.”

“On to me? But my name is not Diana!”

“Of course it isn’t. Why would any queen of the underworld give out her real name? Although Diana is an exceptionally apt name for you, Diana the huntress, just like a viper!”

“Viper? What are you talking about? I’m not like a snake. Wait a minute—I’m the Viper? But you are the Viper!”

Hades laughed, setting his whisky glass down on the table with a sharp click. He snorted and laughed again. These were the kind of jokes he liked. When the villain pretended to be something other than what they were, when in reality they were trapped. It was
good
to have so a worthy opponent.

Carter staggered back in with the coffee and biscuits, followed by the audible sounds of Arturo’s pattering paws. Hades clicked his fingers; however, instead of going first to Hades, the comical dog clipped straight up to the Viper and laid his head on her knee.

The Viper blinked and, in an uncertain fashion, brought her face down close to the dog. Arturo yipped and licked her on the nose. Sneezing, she fumbled stiffly at her skirts and with a surprised look, wiped her face on her cloak.

Blasted dog
. Hades huffed and swept up a coffee cup. “He likes biscuits.” He shook his head. What was he saying?
He slammed the cup back down on a delicate saucer on the coffee tray. “I will keep you here until you tell me where you keep the documents. Don’t think I won’t harm you if you try to escape.”

The Viper squinted at him a little above Arturo’s head and in a very small voice said, “Earl Harding? Is that you?”

CHAPTER 2

Miss Melissa Sumner took a shallow deep breath in as she narrowed her gaze and squinted again at the powerful form of the earl.
He levelled a gaze at her that spoke of irritation and disdain.
Oh dear, not again
. She smiled weakly and tried not to move as the library chair dug into the back of her trussed legs.

“Where are the documents?” he demanded again, sitting forward in his seat, a lock of brown hair falling down across his forehead. Melissa blinked as the memory of dancing with him swept over her. He had been as irate then as he was now.

A warm head pressed gently against her thigh. The funny looking spaniel that had entered the room after the earl laid his ears against her knee and proceeded to nuzzle her calves.

“Arturo, come here!” The earl frowned and clicked his fingers. “She doesn’t have any biscuits.” He clicked his fingers again.

But Arturo didn’t stop. He turned his head to his master and with a small woof laid his head on Melissa’s knee. Slowly lifting her bound hands, Melissa rested her shaking fingers on the little dog’s head and pushed them into his silky fur. The dog rumbled at the back of its throat as if in comfort.

“Arturo, that is the Viper! She has killed many men… do stop…
cuddling
her.”

The dog looked back at its master and woofed again.

“Yes she is. Just look at her. The beautiful temptress. You know she tried to trap me before, tried out her feminine wiles and novelty by pretending to be mute, but still giving me her name… I nearly fell for her dangerous game…
Diana
.” The fire in the earl’s voice was palpable, a rage simmering just below a full storm.

Feminine wiles?
“I am not Diana, as I have told you before.” Fumbling with her bound hands, Melissa slipped her brass spectacles back on and hunted for a part of her lenses to look at him through, but the knock the butler had given her when hefting her through the front door had very much shattered the already partially broken glass. “I only said Diana, because you were wearing a red carnation at the time and it was the only thing I could see.
Dianthus Carrolus
if you must know. I happen to like flowers.”

“Devil take it then, why did you pretend to be mute?”

Melissa shook her head blindly and stopped stroking Arturo’s ears. “Isn’t it obvious now? Didn’t the lack of glasses give it away?” An unfamiliar defiance filled her as the remembered humiliation swept through her body.

“Errr…”

“I’m blind without them! Have you ever tried dancing a waltz without knowing where you are going because you are too blind to see, whilst some large angry handsome man mutters disparaging comments about Machiavellian debutantes in their ears?”

“Handsome?  Ahem. Are you sure you weren’t plotting ways to kill me?”

Melissa huffed. “If I wasn’t then I am now!”

“So how do you do it? How do you kill all of those men? Tell me!”

“What men? What? I am not the Viper!”