Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (29 page)

“You know your father made things very difficult for me, and so I feel that it is some kind of retribution that I should be able to hold you in order to get yet another foe off my back.”

“Foe?” Melissa mumbled. “I don’t understand. I’ll get you any herbs that you want…”

Mr. Adder laughed. “You really are not very fast on the uptake are you? You have my name, I mention your father, and you are still fixated on your silly business as an apothecary.”

Melissa remained silent. His name? Her father? Mr. Adder… Melissa took an involuntary breath in. An adder was just another snake. And mentioning her father, no one mentioned her father to her, they had no cause to, unless…
oh dear
.

The Viper that she had set out to find had ended up capturing her instead and drawing her into his own circle of hell. She should have known that if the Viper was watching her house in Bayswater then he would have been watching the house in Hill Street too.

Melissa struggled strongly, wrenching at the bonds round her wrists.

“Stop it!” Mr. Adder grabbed at her wrists. “I’ve used twine. You’ll only hurt yourself. I need you in good condition for luring in the earl. He’s who I really want.”

That stopped Melissa in her struggles. The bastard wanted Hades as well. And there was no way that she could warn him.

“Mr. Adder,” she began. Perhaps reason would work. Perhaps she could convince him that Hades thought nothing of her. And perhaps that was true. But the man cut across her words.

“Silence. I don’t want to hear any more until we get to our destination. Then I will send word to your lover to come and get you. I’ll have him right where I want him.”

“But…” A cuff across the head stopped Melissa speaking any more. She didn’t want to break her glasses again. She needed to be able to see if she was to attempt an escape at some point.

She gritted her teeth and tried to follow the swaying of the coach, listening as much as she could for bells and shop noises. But it was no use. She did not know Mayfair well, and after an hour became aware that the coach would not be stopping.

Occasionally Mr. Adder would giggle to himself and shift in his seat, causing the leather to creak. Melissa stayed resolutely still, fearing another blow. Her lower body was beginning to numb.

Without her realizing, the motion of the coach sent her into a rocking sleep.

Melissa awoke as the coach came to an abrupt stop. A hand grabbed her roughly around the upper arm and pulled her out onto what felt like a gravel-like path below her feet.

The unmistakable smell of rhododendrons filtered through the hessian sack on her head, filling her with longing to see around her. As she was pulled further along the gravel, she caught the scent of camellias and roses. It was like being pulled back to another time, her father pulling her in a small cart down the drive at their house in Buckinghamshire, pointing out the different plants that were blooming, instructing her to smell the scent of the camellias.

Melissa’s heart became sick with dread. It wasn’t possible. She had thought she would never see the place again.

She stumbled as she was pulled up some front steps. Five, she counted. “One two three four five, once I caught a fish alive,” she sang softly.

There were carpets in the hall. That was a surprise. And there was the smell, and the heat. It was a musty smell, of drying earth and damp. She started to sweat. This wasn’t like her old home, even though her footsteps followed mechanically as she was pulled along through what she knew to be a dining room, then a study, and then into the room where her father had kept all his orchids to shade them.

The musty smell was stronger here. The arm holding her let go and soft footsteps retreated away from her.

“I must warn you, Miss Sumner, that you are in my most favorite room in this house.” Mr. Adder’s voice trembled and then squeaked slightly as he giggled. “The conditions are just right for my beauties.”

Melissa took a step forward.

“Stop right where you are,” Mr. Adder’s voice thundered. “You see,” he continued in more normal tones, “my beauties are asleep now, but when they wake up, if they see you moving, they will come and investigate.”

“Your little beauties?” Melissa whispered, trembling.

“Yes, I’ve left the lids off their tanks so that they can get used to being in a new place.”

“Tanks?”

“Of course! Snakes need very specialized environments in which to live. My particular favorites love the sun, but like it in the dark too.”

Hence the warmth and lack of light. Melissa shuddered.

“Ah, ah ah, none of that. You see, I don’t want you going anywhere, and I think my snakes are the best watch dogs that there are. And if you die, so be it. I need you as insurance to keep your lover away from me. If he comes after you, you both die.”

Melissa could barely open her mouth. How much constituted not moving? She was paralyzed in fear, but she needed to keep the Viper talking. She couldn’t be left alone here with all these snakes. Not after the death she knew they could cause…

But it was no use—his footsteps faded away and a door slammed to the back room. She was trapped.

CHAPTER 29

“I will not tell you anything!” Pedro, the acrobatic assistant to the Viper was propped in a chair, trussed like a turkey in the dining room of Freddie’s house. Bill sat in front of him sharpening a sword on one of the dining chairs whilst Freddie whistled and cleaned his set of guns for the second time that day. James had already left, a doctor having examined his arm and determined that it was indeed broken.

Hades stood and walked round the table, frustrated. They had been unable to extract anything from the man apart from what they already knew. Yes, he had helped the Viper in trying to find a mysterious book he wanted from Melissa. Yes, the Viper had an unhealthy interest in snakes. No, he had never killed anyone, yet. No he hadn’t known what had happened to the Viper’s guests that had disappeared.

“Dammit, man,” Hades roared. “You must know where he has gone.”

Pedro shook his head again and struggled against his bonds. In view of his very athletic and flexible nature, they had tied every part of his body together. They were taking no chances.

But it still didn’t stop Pedro from speaking. Pedro slid a long look sideways at Hades and said unexpectedly, “He did mention that he was looking forward to spending some more time with Miss Sumner.”

Hades stopped in his tracks, just a foot away from Pedro. “Pardon?” he said quietly.

“I said, Professor Lisle said he was looking forward to spending some more time with Miss Sumner.”

“That is what I thought you said.” With no warning, Hades swung his fist at Pedro’s jaw and connected with a loud
clack
.

“Ah, love,” Freddie crooned to his pistols. Bill grimaced and nodded.

“Shut up, Freddie,” Hades said through gritted teeth.

“Permission to ask one question, sir?” Freddie asked mockingly. Hades nodded grudgingly. “Where is Miss Sumner now?”

“None of your business, Freddie.”

“No, he has a good question,” Pedro said, grinning. “After all, if the Viper was after my
amore
, I wouldn’t be sitting around here, talking to an innocent circus man…”

“You are as innocent as the Viper in all of this, Pedro,” Hades raged. He knew Melissa was at his house. He was to meet her there at nine p.m. He didn’t want everyone with him when he went. It was a private affair between the two of them. His staff were protecting her. There was no way that she could be got at there.

But he remembered Pedro and the cake. “How did you kill our kitchen boy?” he asked suddenly. His hands clenched at the memory.

Pedro’s head shot back in the chair, and he eyed Hades’ clenched fists with disfavor. “Oh, so it did work, then. I didn’t know if it would. I knew about your liking for cakes, although I thought I might try my special cake on your lover first.”

“She is not my lover.” Hades shot a quick glance at Freddie, who grinned openly.

“Who cares?” Pedro shrugged. “I added a little something to it that Professor Lisle was an expert in extracting. He told me to take care of you at all costs. I just followed his example.”

“What did you put in the cake?”

“Snake venom.”

Hades frowned. Snake venom fitted with the way in which the kitchen boy had died. But he remembered that Trump had said it was almost impossible to die from ingesting the poison.

“It obviously didn’t work. You can’t die from eating snake venom,” he said contemptuously.

Pedro gave him a pitying look. “All the venom needs is to enter the blood stream. I was taking a chance.”

What had his cooks said? They had laughed at the kitchen boy for getting a splinter in his mouth. That must have been how he ended up poisoned; the venom in the cake entered the bloodstream through the wound in his mouth.

“So you do know what Professor Lisle was doing!” he said. “All those people, killed by snakebites. You knew everything.”

Hades advanced again on Pedro, who shrank away. “He threatened me,” muttered Pedro angrily. “He said he would send me back to my father.”

“I don’t understand what is so bad about your father?”

“Pablo Moreno?” Pedro replied disbelievingly. “You mean you haven’t heard… I can’t tell you. The only good deed he did once was letting some poor girl go with her money, and that was only because she helped him out of debt by throwing knives for him. Of course that wasn’t quite what he had planned for her—”

“Agatha Beauregard,” Bill murmured. “What a turn up for the books.”

“Agatha Beauregard, as in Lady Anglethorpe?” Hades said disbelievingly. Bill nodded slowly and went back to sharpening the sword.

“You are being misdirected,” Freddie said suddenly. “Can’t you see he is taking you away from your questioning?”

Hades glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece. The hands showed a time of twenty to nine. He needed to be at his house at nine o’ clock anyway. There was no harm in arriving early and checking on the welfare of Miss Sumner. He smiled slowly. It would be something that he would quite enjoy.

“Stay here and look after him,” he said, pointing at Pedro. “I’m going to see to Miss Sumner.”

Freddie and Bill exchanged a glance and each nodded. “As you wish,” Freddie said.

Hades arrived at his home to find it in uproar. The windows blazed with light, and none of the drapes were drawn. For the second time that year a crowd had gathered in the hallway and were shouting so loudly at one another that they did not notice Hades push open the already unbolted door.

He watched them wrangle for a few minutes, catching snippets of the conversation.

“Said she would be home for teatime.”

“Perhaps we should warn the earl…”

“She does have a history of running off.”

“Can anyone find Arturo?”

“I think she was meant to meet him…”

“Enough,” Hades boomed above the babble. “What is going on?”

Charles and Carlos turned to look at him with shocked faces. Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs took no notice and continued arguing heatedly about ‘love’ and ‘running away’.

Carter’s shoulders slumped and he took a step forward in front of the group. “It’s Miss Sumner,” he said dolefully. “She’s disappeared…”

“…again,” finished Hades.

“Yes,” Carter said, even more miserably than before. “She said she was going to the Royal Society. She refused to wait for me to organize someone to accompany her.”

“I would have gone after her, but when I reached the street, she was gone,” Mrs. Hobbs volunteered.

“How long after she left did you go after her, Mrs. Hobbs?” Hades asked.

“’Bout five minutes.”

That was not enough time for Melissa to have reached the end of the road.

“She was meant to meet me here at nine o’ clock,” Hades said.

Mrs. Hobbs brightened. “I was just telling her about being receptive to ideas. Perhaps she’ll come back in the next few minutes.”

Carter shook his head. “It’s passed nine already. And I can’t find Arturo.”

Hades did not want to know what Mrs. Hobbs had been saying to Melissa. Melissa was supposed to have met him in the study at nine. Without excusing himself, he left the group and walked into the study. The grate was cold, with only the ashes from the previous day’s fire in them. Apart from a few books on his desk, the study was the same as it had always been.

With a sinking heart, Hades stumbled across the carpet to his desk and sat in the chair behind it, wincing as his leg hit against the open drawers. He frowned as his eyes became level wi
th an untidy stack of some of the books he’d bought from the Temple of Muses, a scrunched up ball of brown paper crowning the pile.

Bloody hell. She’d been through his drawers. He hadn’t had time to give her the books. He fingered the topmost book lightly, brushing away the ball of paper to reveal the author’s name,
A. Sumner
.

Stunned, he sat back in his chair. What a coincidence, to have picked up Melissa’s father’s book without knowing.
Oh no—
what had she thought about it?