Elisabeth Fairchild (32 page)

She swallowed hard, pursed tight her lips. She would not allow her voice to tremble. “Not so much, I think, as I would have you care.” There were tears in her eyes, tears caught up in the words that spilled from her lips in an impetuous rush. “Body, mind, heart and soul--I am linked to you. Do you not recognize how rare the bond?”

With a repetition of the same handful of words with which he had already struck her to the core, he broke her heart. “You would do well to look elsewhere.”

Boot heels scuffed stone.

Three men stood silhouetted against the light on the far side of the stone screen--heralds, flanking her father.

“Last place I saw her.” Her father’s voice was thin with worry.

A hiss of satin, a whiff of sandalwood, a change in the light--she felt Roger’s absence before she turned to find him gone. A shadow loomed among the shadows, the smaller wooden door at the side of the chancery creaked shut.

Once again he left her.

Dulcie watched the dark slide of trees beside the road. The light of the coaches ahead bobbed eerily in the moonlight, as uncertain as her future.

A long line of mourners risked the road home that night, safety in their numbers. She found no safety in her hope for a life with Roger Ramsay. His handkerchief balled in her fist, she admitted the hard truth of it. He married the Gargoyle’s work, a demanding mistress.

She could not deny that he felt something for her. But he used her, and she allowed herself to be used. They had formed a contemptible bond, a demeaning relationship--small, limiting and undignified--completely at odds with her idea of love, with this day and all it stood for.

Dabbing tear swollen eyes, she leaned against her father’s shoulder, drawing strength from his slumbering reliability. No surprises here. No secrets. No danger.

Stapleton was such a man. He would prove just as reliable, as comforting in his support of her, in his absence of mystery. To the predictable tune of wheels and hooves on macadam, Dulcie decided to accept Roderick Stapleton’s offer of marriage.

Chapter Forty

February 1821

The Selwyn Townhouse, Wellclose Square, London

Dulcie made Captain Stapleton a happy man. Together, they set a wedding date--the 18th of March, following close upon the heels of the publishing of the first banns, which would follow the betrothal ball, in which marriage settlements were to be publicly signed, on Thursday week, the 24th of February.

And in the cheerful business of planning the wedding, a honeymoon to Italy, the house they meant to live in, Dulcie, who pretended more than possessed the happiness she enacted, convinced herself that she no longer desired Roger, that she had no more room for him in heart or memory.

On the Tuesday before the betrothal ball a notice in the New London Times spoiled her illusion, a small notice, boxed in black. Dulcie stared, disbelieving, at the back of the page her father sat reading. A Cabinet dinner would be held the following evening, at the London residence of the Earl of Harrowby in Grosvenor Square.

The spoon with which she absently stirred sugar into coffee, fell clattering from the cup.

“Another fitting for your wedding dress today, is it my dear?” Her father’s voice rose from the far side of the page.

“Fitting?” she repeated stupidly. It was not at all fitting to hold a Cabinet dinner in the very house she had seen destroyed in her mind’s eye, equally unfitting that notice of such a meeting should be posted in the paper.

Roger had assured her the Cabinet avoided meeting together outside of the House, that they were aware the radicals plotted against the government. He had vowed no one would die.

Her father shook out the paper, turned the page, gave a little jump to see her staring intently at the space where page had been.

She jumped up, chair legs scraping in her haste to leave. “I must go!”

“Dulcie.”

She turned in the doorway. The paper had been abandoned.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Stapleton?”

“Who else?”

She studied the floor, thought of Roger. “He is an admirable fellow.”

“A steady young man with fine prospects.”

“He is.”

“A good match.”

“Yes.”

“And do you see the world with like mind?”

The question puzzled her. She looked up at him confused. With pained expression, he struggled to admit, “Your mother and I, we saw things very differently.”

She remembered--the squabbles--her mother insisting she must be bled--her father begging, “Leave the poor child alone.”

He looked lost in the morning light, smaller than usual, uncertain of himself, of her future. The air about him silvered with concern.

“Stapleton is a kind and thoughtful gentleman, deserving of my every affection,” she said. “We shall make an amicable pairing.

“Good. I would see you happy. Safe.”

Safe from Ramsay. Safe from scandal and society’s scorn. “Off with you, now.” He waved a hand. “No good keeping dressmaker’s waiting.”

She did not tell him the wedding dress would have to wait. That she could not rest idle, hoping Roger knew of this cabinet meeting that threatened the very fabric of the country, the warp and woof of her future. She must be sure.

She could not tell him that mere thought of Ramsay swayed her from a commitment that day by day weighed heavier on her soul. She knew too well her father wanted this wedding, this very suitable match--happy solution to her willful ways. She knew he would forbid her going.

And yet, knowing as much did not stop her from racing up the stairs, nor from dressing once again in the orange girl’s clothing.

She intended to return within the hour. A quick word with Quinn and her world would return to its charted course, no more sidetracking, no more romantic dreams.

Transformed, she crept from the house, hailed a hack, her escape unnoticed, smooth as silk.

A small hitch waylaid her.

On arriving at Roger’s apartments, no one came to the door. She banged furiously and at great repetition. The only response aroused came from the house one door down.

A gentleman’s gentleman poked out his head. “Gone, miss. To the country. His brother in Brighton, if I am not mistaken. Or perhaps it is the sister in Surrey.”

“And his man? Quinn?”

“Home with his wife and children. I have been asked to keep eye on the place.”

“Oh!” She could not hide her disappointment.

“Shall I tell Quinn who called, miss, when he returns?”

She plucked at the bright folds of her borrowed skirt. “Yes, thank you. You may tell him Bethany White called.”

She turned her back on disappointment, perplexed. What  next? She could not wait for the convenience of Quinn’s return, could not blithely return to dress fittings and wedding arrangements without being sure. She hated her options, considered them with a foreboding that she trusted right down to the soles of her turkey-heeled shoes.

Despite her fears, she summoned a hack and directed it to deliver her, “To Cato Street.”

Feb 22, 1821

A cold afternoon. No one looked twice at a man with head bent to his muffler, cap pulled low. Right past the guard Sidmouth had set on the square--Tidd walking the west side, Brunt the east--Roger nipped into Harrowby’s house, by way of the servant’s entrance, a crate upon his shoulder.

He went disguised, hair slicked back, thin mustache, manner prim, his attire meticulous if threadbare. The name and background of the man he pretended to be stood ready on the tip of his tongue. He was Tom Hyden, a gentleman’s gentleman, reduced to delivery boy. He had once served a Colonel Bridges. His address was number fifteen Manchester Mews. He was a man in debt, with wife and two children, another on the way.

Under the noses of his fellow Cato Street conspirators he had, on more than one occasion, visited Lord Harrowby, informing him of his progress. A milkman one day, a chimneysweep the next. They never suspected, never so much as looked hard at him.

The box on his shoulder contained not cream and coconut as labeled, far more important--names and addresses--a list of those who were to be involved in the attack. In addition, he carried, very carefully, wrapped in sawdust and tissue, what the ministers, by way of Harrowby, must see for themselves.

In the dining room, by the window’s light, Brussels lace tablecloth shoved out of the way, the box and its contents decidedly out of place atop the gleaming, six-leafed dining table that stretched the length of the room, they examined one of the homemade hand grenades.

Harrowby backed away from the ugly, fist-sized, hemp and pitch coconut. “Good God! How many of these have they?”

“Dozens, my lord.”

Harrowby sank into the nearest chair, pale, voice unsteady, “They would blow up my house and all my guests in it, would they?” He rose, crossed to a gleaming satinwood sideboard, with shaking hand poured himself a drink, offered one to Roger.

Roger refused. “Must keep a clear head.”

“Indeed. Indeed. A nerve-wracking business, this. How can you do it, sir, without a spine stiffener or two?” He downed his drink, and poured himself a second.

“You have sent word, by private means? They are not to come?” Roger asked.

“Yes, yes. Everything to the letter, just as you insisted. My servants hasten to prepare a dinner for ministers who will never arrive. Wine has been ordered.”

“Good. They are watching. As I warned you they would.”

“Do you mean to say they walk the square?”

Roger nodded. “For the past few days.”

Harrowby strode to the window and twitched back the damask drape. “Is this bomb you bring me, this list of names, not enough to arrest them today?”

“In due time, my lord.”

“Before tomorrow evening? They will never get near my house?”

“As promised, my lord. Nowhere near.”

“And in the interim? What am I to do with the food? The wine?”

“Celebrate when we have taken the assassins.”

“Of course.” He rubbed his forehead. “Stupid question. Tell me, is there any other way in which I may be of service to this Gargoyle of yours?”

Roger’s estimation of Harrowby’s nerve climbed a notch. Disaster tended to bring out the best or worst in man or womankind.

It brought out the best in Dulcie.

He could not wait for this madness to be done, as Sidmouth dictated, the men caught red-handed, the tools of murder in their hands. No slipping the hangman’s noose. He would make things right again with her, when this was done.

“No, I do thank you, my lord. There is only one more thing I require,” he said.

She went to Cato Street, and then knew not what to do with herself. She could not climb the stable ladder into a den of radicals. She was not so foolhardy.

The sign for The Horse and Groom drew he eyes. Perhaps she might watch for sign of Roger, without herself being conspicuous.

A tankard of cider to sip, she settled herself to wait and watch on a worn, wooden bench with blurred view to be had of the street. The pages of the New London Times spread like a shield, she hoped she might remain somewhat aloof from the sullen group peopling the pub.

Cold air played with her skirt. The door admitted new customers. A murmur of voices at the bar, and in a crush of pages the paper was torn from her hand.

Thistlewood.

He towered over her, thinner than when last she had seen him, cheeks hollow, lips chapped, coat threadbare.

“Thought that was you, Mistress Milkymaid, giving our lay a good stare as you sauntered past, all tarted up,” he said with wolfish grin. “Changed your mind, have you, about loaning me your wagon?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve come to see . . .”
Lord. What was the name he had used?
“George,” she said.

Thistlewood extended his arm, with a bow, as if she were a fine lady and he the perfect gentleman. “Nothing simpler. Come, I know just where the lad keeps himself.”

“Can you not bring him to me?” she suggested.

He laughed. “Not trusting me, my dear? And me a happily married man with no designs on your person. You’ll be putting ideas into me head, you will.”

The glint in his eyes she mistrusted right down to her toes, but speak to Roger she must, and Thistlewood appeared to be her only option. She saw nothing to fear in the color of him, greyed and wan though his light might be. Warily, she took his arm. He tucked her hand close, patting it avuncularly. His touch made her skin crawl.

“Perhaps, I may have opportunity to change your mind about me,” he said.

Roger returned to Cato Street with a spring in his step. The trap was set, everything arranged. A brilliant plan, really, and the whole thing finished by the end of tomorrow. All was prepared, every contingency covered. He was whistling as he climbed into the loft in Cato Street.

Thistlewood had gathered more armaments. Guns and swords piled the table, blunderbusses and pistols side by side with carbine and musket, swords and pikes, staffs as tall as a man. Formidable weapons. He had never seen such an arsenal outside of a military position. There were belts and boxes of ammunition, ball, cartridges and gunpowder flasks. In a flannel bag a knobby bunch of tarry, string-wrapped grenades. Action loomed immanent.

Tidd and Davidson, Brunt, Harrison and Adams, heads bent, voices low, looked up as he rose from the ladder’s well, voices stilling, eyes gone wide. For a sinking moment he thought his identity revealed, his disguise undone. The whites of their eyes flashed uneasily. Expectant looks were directed toward the storeroom, as if they awaited something nervously.

The slap of flesh against flesh filtered from behind the oaken door, an oath, a woman’s muffled scream of “No!”

In two swift strides he crossed the room, threw open the storeroom door, said conversationally, “What’s this then?”

Thistlewood, breeches down, pale moon of an ass in the air, did his utmost to mount a woman who struggled beneath him, legs bared.

“Damned fool, shut the door!” Thistlewood ordered at the top of his lungs.