Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (3 page)

A cough at the door silenced her. Melissa shut her mouth with a snap. Some of the bravado that had carried her through before left her suddenly and her shoulders slumped. The butler that had carried her into the house coughed again.

“Sir, Lord Granwich is here to see you. I’ve put him in the morning room.”

Above the rims of her shattered spectacles, Melissa could just see the earl’s arms lift in the air in seeming frustration.

“Bring him in.”
      “What shall I do with the Viper, sir?”

“I am not…” Even to her ears her voice sounded feeble.

“Take her down to the kitchen and let Carlos and Charles guard her. I don’t want Granwich to see her just yet. I want it to be a surprise for him.”

“Goodness what a lovely surprise,” Melissa muttered. “Here what are you doing?” The black hood that had been hung over her face before, was quickly hooked over her head again. “I…” With little ceremony her body was picked up and carried out of the room. Although the hands gripped her firmly and impersonally underneath her knees and shoulders, Melissa still couldn’t stop the tightness that held her body rigid away from the butler’s torso.

Carter’s feet echoed down a passageway and clumped rhythmically down a small flight of stairs into what must have been the kitchen. Delicious smells of food wafted through the thin fabric of her hood as she bit her lip.

She hadn’t eaten since the large cooked breakfast Mrs. Hobbs had prepared that morning. Mr. Hobbs had been out tending the garden. It had been the least she could do since he had lost his job. Quite when she had ended up employing them both full time was a mystery. It could have been on the day that she had had so many customers queuing at the garden gate for cures that she had had to ask the pair to work for her on a more permanent basis. Or when one night the ghosts of Melissa’s past, living and dead, seemed to walk endlessly through the house as she shivered in her room upstairs in the empty attic.

For despite putting the house on the market, no one had seemingly wanted it even though other houses in the street sold for more. And although she had thought that she would disappear, without the money from the house she couldn’t. She had fallen back into her old routines, growing her flowers and herbs, pressing them, distilling their essences and then attempting to shorten the ever present queue of people behind the garden wall. Helping those that couldn’t help themselves gave her back a small semblance of comfort that balanced against the lonely nights of fear and memories.

Her stomach rumbled alarmingly as she was set carefully down in a chair.
Oh gods
, what a time to happen.

“Do you think we should take the hood off?”

Melissa sat up straighter as a shadow crossed her vision.

Carter’s voice came from behind her. “Um, the earl says that she’s very dangerous.”

“Oooh.” A third voice joined the conversation. “Then we definitely should take the hood off to see who we are dealing with.”

Slowly, the black stifling hood rose, brushing against Melissa’s cheeks. Instantly the shattered glass of her spectacles steamed up.

“Gosh!” the first voice said. “She even has the power to create mist!”

Melissa coughed. She couldn’t help it, the terrified giggle burst forth as she clasped her bound hands into her skirts.

Behind her, Carter gave a long sigh. “Please excuse Carlos my… err... miss. He is a trifle impressionable.”

The giggle passed, leaving Melissa with a tear in her eye. She still couldn’t see, and she was still bound.

“Would you mind awfully, umm, allowing me to put on my other glasses?” she asked in a low voice. “These ones seem to be rather broken.”

A rustling of cloth passed to the left of her, and a hand touched her arm. Quickly she shrunk away, shuddering, as the hand withdrew.

“Ah, about,” Carter’s voice appeared from the direction of the hand. “Um about that—”

Melissa bit her lip and stilled the shudders. “Don’t worry. You were only acting on orders.” Something she knew a lot about. “Would you allow me to get them myself?”

“If you don’t I will. Poor girl, sitting there having endured the master and one of his bad moods—”

“Enough Carlos. Really!” Carter’s hands tentatively touched hers, and this time she held them steady with an iron will as he severed the bonds that tied them together.

Slowly she felt in her skirts and pulled out her new spectacles, switching them with the brass ones on her nose. Immediately the kitchen came into focus, a kitchen table in front of her, and at the other end of the room by the ovens, three men, leaning away from her as if she was going to explode.

“I am quite harmless,” she said quietly.

Slowly the men unbent; Carter, the butler stayed where he was, but one of the cooks inched forward and pushed a plate of biscuits towards her with a hand bound in a large yellow stained white rag.

“Err, we thought you might be hungry.”

Delicately Melissa took a biscuit. She choked as a peppery taste filled her mouth.

Three pairs of eyes watched her every move.

They gave out a sigh as she took another bite. “Very ’ice,” she said, gulping in air as her tongue caught fire. “Ot happened ooo your ’and?”

“She ate one of the biscuits!” the other cook whispered audibly, and then gave a hacking cough before continuing, “And she took another bite… she can’t be that bad!”

Carter groaned. “Carlos burnt his hand on one of the pans when the kitchen boy moved it and the wound hasn’t stopped weeping since. He has refused to see a doctor.”

“Mmm. Have you tried a paste of Urtica Urens?”

“Urtica Urens?”

“Oh. Sorry, stinging nettle paste.”

Carter narrowed his eyes and stared. “If this is one of your ways of killing people we are not going to fall for it.”

Melissa sighed and bit into another biscuit. Good heavens, ginger.
Thank goodness
.

CHAPTER 3

Lord Granwich sneezed loudly and pressed a monogrammed handkerchief to his nose.

“Can’t you get anyone to dust in here, Harding? It’s demmed strange to sit surrounded by moldy old books.” The lord sneezed again and looked balefully over his handkerchief at Hades.

Hades crossed one long muscular leg over the other and gave Granwich a long hard look, attempting to quell the unsettled feeling the beautiful Viper had given him.

He hadn’t invited Granwich to come to his house. Hardly anyone was ever granted entry. He shifted in his well-worn leather chair, feeling his body press into its familiar folds.
Damn the man.
Hades had intended to continue reading  a particularly good book by the Roman historian Polybius about Hannibal and his war against the Pergamums whilst he let the beautiful Viper sweat in the kitchen, but Granwich’s visit had put paid to that. 

“I like it like this. And those ‘moldy old books’ are what got your men out of trouble in Corunna.” Hades tapped the heavily scuffed book that lay on the oval table next to him. “If you don’t want my help, go away. I did not invite you here.”

Granwich stepped from side to side, looking round the study with quick glances. Hades scratched at his eyebrows; he hadn’t asked Granwich to sit. The study still sat in a gloom, with only a small oil lamp burning on the oval table by Hades. It was the way he
liked
it. And of course it was good for intimidating people he was interrogating. 

Hades frowned. He didn’t seem to have been as good as usual at interrogating the insufferable Viper—

Granwich let out an audible sigh. “I know your strategies allowed us to triumph at Corunna.”

“And Leiria, and Vimeiro, and to think of it, La Bisbal,” Hades pointed out. “You said you wouldn’t need my help again now that the war was over. What was it that old fool said, “We don’t need armchair warriors anymore, we need men on the ground?””

“I, err, privately think that he was perhaps a little peeved, err, shall we say delicately, that you were able to make sense of the battle plans sent from Portugal and—” Granwich wiped his nose again—“provide a strategy from an ancient Chinese script that allowed our army to lure in the French and beat the hell out of them from behind.”

“Those strategies have been used for years in warfare. What’s wrong with using them again?”

“I think if you had been a little less successful, you might have triumphed in the political arena more.” Granwich sniffed.

Hades fell back into his seat. He should have seen it coming. He had only just finished reading a Latin text about Cicero that he had found tucked at the end of his old university texts. The man had had much to say on the art of success, and the strategy of politics. He tapped the book by his side again with an outstretched finger.

He had to admit, he had been hurt when he had saved the day again and again, and then been given the figurative pat on the back and boot out the door as the war ended. He had only just started to regain a sense of peace. It had been badly shattered after his dalliance with Lady Dalston. None of his books had been able to help him
there.

“If I had been less successful, more men would have been killed.” He swung his foot and rubbed his thumb over the nub of his forefinger.
How is she doing down in the kitchen?

Granwich nodded. “Which is why I am here to see you now. Some information that was held at the War Office is missing.”

Hades already knew. But it wouldn’t have done to have revealed it. “Missing?” He injected a questioning tone into his voice. “How does information from the War Office go missing? The war is over. Why bother trying to retrieve it?”

“Two reasons. Look, please may I sit, Hades?  My legs are about to give out.”

Hades frowned. Granwich was determined to stay. He had even used his name which Hades hated. Harding was much cleaner. Less
amusing
. He sighed; he wasn’t the only man to know how to use strategy. Granwich was a master of the human condition.

“I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” he muttered, stretching stiffly before moving the library chair back out from the corner of the room where it had been concealed in the gloom. He clicked his fingers and the study door opened.

“Carter, get us some coffee please?” The butler nodded and glided silently away.
I want to know what she’s up to.

Granwich perched on the chair and shivered. Sighing, Hades picked up the poker by his chair and prodded at the meagre fire. The room had fallen cold whilst he had been wrangling with the beautiful Diana—no,
the Viper
. It happened often when he was reading. Usually Carter would come in and build the fire back up again, but he had obviously stayed away due to the unexpected visitor. Hades crouched and poked at the white coals again and added another log, causing the fire to blaze, lighting up the room. He looked up to see Granwich staring at him with eyebrows raised.

“What is it?” he asked, getting to his feet. Granwich pushed himself backwards on his chair, his eyes on Hades’ hand. Hades followed his line of sight to see the forgotten fire poker still firmly in his grasp. With a grunt he laid it back on the grate and sat back in his chair. He had let his frustration show too easily.

Granwich slumped back against the sharp wooden slats of his chair. “The choice of coffee.”

Hades grunted. “I’ve found it clears the mind more than brandy. You can concentrate more, and you don’t get the confusion.” Although the headache could be just as severe. Especially if one was reading long into the night.

Carter entered silently again through the door and steadily placed a silver tray holding a coffee urn and biscuits on the oval table. Hades swallowed, a sudden hunger gnawing at his stomach. How surprising—yet more biscuits. No matter what he asked for he
always
received biscuits, always different of course, of every shape and size, but most decidedly biscuits. Not that he complained—he supposed he must eat them; he had known disappointment when he had reached for the plate and found only crumbs.

He threw a biscuit on the floor and picked up the coffee urn. “Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.”

As Hades poured, Granwich started to talk, but stopped, the coffee cup wobbling in his hand. He laid it on a side table and scratched his head before blinking and starting again. “The information that has been lost is a list of the spies who remain in many of the European courts.”

Hades took a bite of one of the biscuits. That was indeed bad news.

“A man called the Viper has let it be known that he can access the list, and he wants to sell it off to the highest bidder.”

“Hmm, you have mentioned errr… him before. Viper… did we call him that?”

Granwich shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He seems to have emerged out of nowhere. Just like the viper snake appears, he takes on prey much bigger than himself. It seems he has professed he has no allegiance to England.”

“You’ve tried the most obvious strategy?”

Granwich shook his head, furrowing his brow. “No, what’s that?”

“Cutting off the head of the snake of course.”

Granwich glanced at Hades and laughed. Hades swung a foot and waited. They never took him seriously the first time. Granwich coughed to a halt at the silence and stared at the carpet where only moments before a biscuit had lain on the floor. Hades threw another one down.

A small woof emanated from underneath Hades’ chair. Arturo rolled out, his expression firmly fixed in a lopsided grin. It almost always made Hades smile. But not on the days when Arturo decided to swap sides.

Granwich raised his eyebrows.

Hades sighed. “Lady Colchester gave him to me,” He didn’t reveal that he had kidnapped the dog after Victoria, Lady Colchester had asked the dog to bite his ankles. “Look, cutting the head off the snake is the well-known name of the military strategy whereby one gets rid of the head of an organization, and the rest of the group fall apart. I assume you have tried this already?”

Granwich took a sip of his coffee. “Yes, we have. And all the men that we have sent after him have disappeared. Many of them have appeared in the river Thames with no discernible marks of violence on them, but their faces hold an expression of agony. It is just adding to the Viper’s armor. No one will go after him without a hefty payment.” He turned his face away as he put the coffee cup back down on the side table. “Their wives are also understandably anxious.”