How To School Your Scoundrel (13 page)

“The traitor.” Luisa’s voice nearly broke. “It’s Hans.”

Miss Dingleby dropped her arm away from Luisa’s grip and set her hand on the edge of the stall door. The horse nudged her shoulder. “Are you certain of this?”

“I think so. Yes, quite certain. I was in Hyde Park, watching the house . . .”

“You did
what
?”

“I had to. I had to see for myself, to see that Emilie was safe.”

“Stupid, stupid girl. You might have ruined everything. You were told . . .”

“I don’t give a damn what I was told. I . . .”

“Lower your voice, for God’s sake.”

Luisa swallowed and continued, more calmly. “She is my responsibility. My own people are my responsibility. I can no longer sit back and allow you and Olympia to control the matter without my advice and consent. Yes, I came to Hyde Park, I watched the house. And I saw two men signaling the house from the park, and a man come out to join them. It was Hans, and they were speaking in German. Something about musicians.”

Miss Dingleby muttered something under her breath. She turned to the horse and stroked his neck with her long-fingered hands, slow and thorough strokes, from cheek to withers. “Did any of them see you?” she asked at last.

“No. I’m quite sure they didn’t.”

“If they had, you wouldn’t have known.” She sighed and turned to Luisa. “Listen to me. Thank you for the information. I shall discuss this at once with Olympia and decide how to proceed.”

“Very good. Lead the way.”

Miss Dingleby held up her hand. “No. Not you. We haven’t the time; we’ve got to adjust all our plans now, to—”

“To find Hans and force him to reveal who his fellow conspirators are—”

“Exactly.”

“Because he has betrayed us, Dingleby, betrayed us all in the vilest manner. He was Father’s valet, he was like a father to us.” Luisa fought the tears back. “Let me in. I must talk to Olympia.”

“No, my dear.” Miss Dingleby’s voice turned gentle. “You don’t understand. You haven’t the training, you don’t know how these things work. We shall have to spend valuable resources in protecting you, and then where will we be? How will we explain your presence? Everything has been planned to the very last degree.”

“What?” Luisa shook her head. “Do you mean to say you’re still going through with it? Now that you know who the traitor is?”

“Of course we are. The point is to rid ourselves of the conspirators, and the ball will attract them all here, instead of having to go out and hunt them down. That was the point from the beginning. Hans’s involvement, however distasteful, doesn’t affect the scheme in the slightest, except perhaps to ready ourselves for the corner from which the attack might come.”

“I don’t understand. Why risk Emilie’s life, when we know where to look for these men?”

“Of course you don’t understand.” Miss Dingleby laid her hand on Luisa’s shoulder. “Your uncle will quite agree with me. Listen to me, my dear. Go back to your earl. Pack your things. Be ready for our signal. It’s not impossible we will set out for Germany at dawn.”

“At dawn!”

“If all goes well. If we can catch them all tonight. But we can’t do that, Luisa, if we’re not prepared. So return to Chester Square and wait, won’t you? It’s for the best. You’re the Crown Princess, after all. We can’t risk you, above all.”

“But Emilie—”

Miss Dingleby smiled in the feeble light. “Emilie has the best protection in the world, I assure you. And so do you, if you’d trouble yourself to return to it.”

At her words, Somerton’s face appeared before Luisa again, the way it had looked in the gaslight all those weeks ago, when he’d just dispatched the footpad who had attacked her. Something gave way inside her, taking her breath. She would no longer have his protection again. No longer work quietly by his side, sharing space, existing together in the tolerant understanding of two people with much to hide. No longer take comfort in the nearness of his big body, his strength and loyalty interposed between her and the unknown threat outside the door.

She would slink away before daylight. She would return to Germany and regain her birthright, and Somerton would never know what had happened to his personal secretary.

She would not even have the chance to say a proper good-bye.

Luisa lifted her chin and ducked around the gelding’s gleaming neck. The other horses, startled, turned their heads back in her direction.

“Very well, then, Dingleby,” she said. “I shall expect your message by dawn tomorrow. And for God’s sake, don’t fail me.”

•   •   •

D
espite the Earl of Somerton’s repeated protests, the damned dog insisted on occupying his lap.

“You’ve got no discernment, have you?” he growled at the beast. Quincy lifted his large ears and examined Somerton’s expression the way a doctor might examine a patient. “I killed a man just last week, did you know that? A rather execrable scrap of humanity, to be sure, a filthy traitor and a liar to boot. But I killed him with my bare hands, and felt only a trace of remorse afterward.”

Quincy licked his hand, which had unaccountably moved closer to the dog’s small wet nose.

“No doubt you smelled it on me afterward. Murder must have its own particular smell, quite out of range of human sensation. Though I could have sworn I smelled it on him, that man, just before he struck. He was about to kill me, you know. Nearly did, the bastard.”

Quincy heaved a thoughtful sigh and laid his nose on his paws, which were perched at the edge of Somerton’s thighs.

“I’ve been distracted, you see. But it’s all come to a head now, hasn’t it? That damned Penhallow might have escaped by the skin of his neck the other week, but when the Bureau discovers that their chap at the Russian Embassy has departed for South America, and Penhallow’s fingerprints all over it, why . . .” He glanced up at the clock above the mantel and frowned. “He’s late, damn him. Markham is never late.”

But just as the word
late
escaped his mouth, the door handle jerked abruptly downward.

Without an instant’s pause, Somerton picked up the dog and dropped him on the floor next to the chair.

“Quincy!” exclaimed Markham, crouching on the floor and holding out his arms. His overcoat sparkled with rain. The corgi galloped across the rug and made one of those acrobatic little-dog leaps into his master’s arms.

Somerton set his teeth against the warm surge of feeling in his chest, quite out of order.

“You’re late,” he said gruffly.

Markham rose slowly, Quincy clutched in his wet woolen arms. “I am not late. I am giving notice, effective immediately. I shall pack up my things and . . .”

The warm feeling in Somerton’s chest smothered instantly, as if dashed with cold water.

“The devil you say,” he snapped. “Where have you been all this time?”

“You gave me the afternoon off.”

“The
afternoon
off. It’s nearly eight o’clock.”

“I had business.” The young man lifted his chin to a haughty angle. “I was visiting my aunt in Battersea.”

“Damn your Battersea aunt, and damn your business. You are still under my roof, and in my employ. You will take off that bloody wet coat and warm yourself, and you will march upstairs and inform her ladyship—”

“I will not!”

Somerton took two long strides and placed himself, scintillating, a foot away from Markham’s defiant young body. Quincy looked up inquisitively between them. “You will,” he whispered.

“You can’t force me to do it.”

There was something so brave and afraid about him, some new quality of desperation that seemed to have penetrated Mr. Markham’s skin like the cold rain that gleamed on the tip of his nose. God, that bare and elegant face, so strong and delicate all at once. Why didn’t he grow a set of whiskers, to hide all that beautiful vulnerability?

“Is something the matter, Markham?” he heard himself ask quietly.

Markham took a step backward. “Nothing.”

“Nonsense. Something’s happened. Was it your aunt?”

The young man hesitated. “Yes. Yes, she’s not well, that’s all.”

“Is the condition dangerous?”

“I . . . I don’t know. It’s too early to tell. I ought to go back, I
need
to go back, I—”

“Can she afford a doctor?” The words came out a little more gruffly than Somerton intended.

Markham’s eyes widened. “Yes, she can. She has . . . she has resources. I’m simply concerned, that’s all. And wet.”

“I shall send a message to my own physician to attend her at once. In the meantime, you will go upstairs and summon Lady Somerton, as you were instructed to do this morning.” He kept his place, right there on the rug, glowering down at Markham. If he could just win the man over somehow. Make him understand, through sheer force of will; make him realize what Somerton himself could not articulate.

“I won’t. I can’t. I can’t be a party to . . . to whatever it is between you. Find another servant to do your dirty work.” He turned away, set Quincy to the floor, and slung off his coat. “One that’s still employed by you.”

“No, it must be you.”

“Nonsense. Why me?” Markham tossed the coat over the door of the wardrobe and went to the fire, which had been built up not a quarter hour earlier by Somerton’s own hand, not that he was prepared to reveal that humbling piece of information. Quincy trotted anxiously at his heels.

Somerton folded his arms and said, through his teeth, “Because you’re my right hand. You are mine.”

“What a thing to say. I am not
yours
, Lord Somerton. I am my own man. I thought I had made that clear from the beginning.”

Somerton forced his anger back, forced his brain to calmness. Markham stood with his hands stretched out, his auburn head bowed, unconscious of his own appeal.

“Mr. Markham,” he said, “I quite understand your notions of integrity. I assure you, I mean no harm to her ladyship.”

Markham laughed. “Oh, quite. Just a harmless little chat in your study, of the sort you conduct daily.”

“She has betrayed me. She has betrayed me from the first.”

“You haven’t precisely been the most admirable of husbands, you know.”

Somerton tightened his hands about his arms. “I quite agree. The two of us are not suited for marriage together. I therefore intend to offer her . . .”
Say it. Make it true.
“A divorce. I have already drawn up . . .”

Markham whipped around. “A divorce!”

“Yes.” He barked the word, to drown out the terror in his heart, the queasy feeling of finality. Everything going into motion at last. No turning back now.
Divorce.
God, what an unwholesome word. A word of failure. An admission of culpable sin. “So you see,” he went on, more calmly, “this will, no doubt, be welcome news to her ladyship. You are summoning her to her own deliverance.”

Markham’s eyebrow lifted slightly, as if detecting the note of irony in Somerton’s voice and wondering what it meant.

“Do you really mean this?” he whispered. “Divorce her? What about your son?”

“We will make arrangements, of course. He’ll hardly notice my absence. He’s been her child from the beginning, hasn’t he?”

The fire hissed quietly. The room had grown too hot, too quickly. He shouldn’t have laid on so much coal. Like a mother, worrying over an infant.

Markham took a small step forward. “I wish you would—”

“What, Markham?”

“You’re so bitter.”

Somerton gathered himself. This had gone on far enough, like a bloodletting he had grown too weak and sick to stop. “I am not bitter. I am filled with resolve, Mr. Markham, and all will shortly be arranged to everyone’s satisfaction. Now go upstairs and do your duty.”

Markham stood in the red glow of the coal fire. His brown eyes were huge and rimmed with gold, a trick of the light. His skin looked almost translucent.

“Mr. Markham?” Somerton prodded, to break the silence.

Markham’s thin shoulders moved up and down. “Very well. I’ll go to her. But merely as the act of a friend, and not your secretary.”

“I beg your pardon?” The floor seemed to be sinking away beneath his feet.

“As I said, I am leaving your employ and your house. Tonight, possibly, or tomorrow morning at the latest.” Quincy whined at his feet, and he leaned down to give the dog’s head a reassuring pat.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

Somerton gave himself a moment to answer, so as not to alarm either Markham or himself with the initial response, violent with panic. “If your aunt’s health is so precarious, Markham,” he said in a drawl, “she is quite welcome to stay in Chester Square until you can bear to part with her.”

“I am afraid it won’t do, sir. If you will allow me, sir.” He bowed and made a motion with his arm, shooing Somerton away from his path to the door.

Leave. Markham was leaving.

Naturally, that was to be expected. A cold and ruthless beast like himself, a corrupt and unpleasant soul such as his: Why would someone so pure and upright as Markham wish to pollute himself further?

There was no need for this visceral reaction, this blood roaring in the ears. Markham was only a secretary, after all. Somerton could find another, just by snapping his fingers. Just by holding out a fistful of money. Someone as old and cold as himself, this time: someone in whom he would never think of confiding.

It was better that way, after all.

He stepped to one side.

“I shall be waiting in my study, Mr. Markham.”

L
uisa climbed the stairs with heavy feet. With every step, the burden of guilt weighed down in greater mass: She had done this, she had found the jewel box, she had driven the last fatal stake through the marriage of Lord and Lady Somerton. And having driven it, she would whisk herself away, and leave them both to the consequences.

She pressed her eyes shut for an instant, and recollected the bolt of anger that had struck her chest at the sight of that portrait lying among the jewels. Her own cousin Roland, Olympia’s golden grandson, laughing and handsome as ever: How could Lady Somerton possibly have done this? Her husband had never stood a chance, had he? She had clung and clung and hadn’t let go . . .

No.

Luisa pushed herself up the final flight. Her head was aching, her body empty of vital force. She had to put this out of her mind. The marriage had broken down irretrievably years ago; it had perhaps never really existed to begin with, not with damned Roland in the picture. In any case, it was none of her concern anymore. One last summons, one last inevitable errand, and she would be done. She had larger concerns. She had her throne to regain, conspirators to root out and punish. A constitution, perhaps, to put into place, to ensure that such a thing would never occur again in Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof.

The routine breakdown of a typical aristocratic English marriage was neither here nor there, in the grand scheme of her life.

The nursery door was ajar. Luisa knocked briefly and pushed it open, without waiting for Lady Somerton’s gentle words of permission.

The day nursery sat empty and dark, the toys put away. A wedge of light pushed open the door to the night nursery, Philip’s bedroom, and the murmured cadence of a mother’s voice followed. Luisa’s heart ached at the sound.

But she didn’t pause. No, that would be fatal. She reached for the knob and turned it, and Philip’s head and Lady Somerton’s head turned toward her at the same exact angle of surprise. The light from the lamp cast soft shadows across their faces.

“Why, Mr. Markham,” said Philip. “What are you doing here? Are you back to—”

Luisa cleared her throat. “Madam, his lordship presents his compliments and asks you to join him in his study at once.”

Lady Somerton, betraying not an ounce of anxiety, laid her finger along the glossy illustrated page from which she was reading and closed the book around it. “At once?”

“If you’re finished with the story, of course.” She couldn’t look at Philip’s curious face, at his black eyes so precisely the same shade as his father’s.

“
Father
wants you?” he asked, incredulous.

“It appears so.” She laid the book on the bedside table and turned down the lamp until it went out in a wink. She bent over Philip’s bed to kiss him, and Luisa looked away.

“I guess you’d better go, then,” Philip said, in the darkness. “I hope he’s not cross.”

The silken rustle of skirts. “I hope so, too, darling. Good night.”

Luisa walked from the room, and the Countess of Somerton trailed sedately behind her, saying not a word, all the way down to the study, from which the dimmest of lights crept beneath the door.

Luisa knocked smartly on the wooden panel.

There was no answer.

She turned the handle and opened the door. “He’ll be downstairs shortly, no doubt,” she said, as Lady Somerton swept by in a dignified swish of dark blue silk.

“No doubt,” replied her ladyship.

Luisa watched in a kind of professional admiration as Lady Somerton proceeded to the armchair before her husband’s massive desk and took her seat gracefully, like a schoolgirl called in by the headmistress. Her spine stretched to the ceiling in a perfect plumb line, and her shining dark head could have held a dictionary level. She was, in that moment, more a princess than Luisa herself.

“Good evening, your ladyship,” Luisa said respectfully.

Lady Somerton did not turn her head. “Good evening, Mr. Markham.”

Luisa cast a last glance around the Earl of Somerton’s study, where she had spent so many long hours in quiet and oddly companionable industry. The simple furniture, the shelves of books, the marble fireplace she had so often stacked with coal, the great desk where Somerton had sat, scribbling drafts and issuing orders: how forbidding it had looked once, and how familiar now. Somerton’s image floated past, his profile sharp against the blurriness of the opposite wall, as hard and distant as Caesar.

Luisa backed out of the room and closed the heavy door. For a moment, she hovered outside, leaning against the knob, the same way she had all those weeks ago when she had first arrived.

And now she was leaving.

Luisa pushed herself off the door and down the hall. As she paused in the entrance hall, seized with an uneasy reluctance to return quietly to her room, a footman called her name.

She turned. “Yes? What is it?”

“A message for you, sir. Brought around the area entrance ten minutes ago.” It was John, the newest footman, a cousin of Annabelle’s, a large fellow with plain brown hair and a blank face. After three weeks, Luisa still couldn’t decide if he were irredeemably stupid or extraordinarily cunning. He held out a small square of paper.

“Thank you.” She tried not to snatch it away too eagerly.

John went on standing there, arms hanging loosely at his sides, expression hanging loosely from his face, while she unfolded the paper. She looked up and glared at him. “Are you waiting for a reply?” she asked sharply.

“No.”

She tilted the paper away from his view and read the quick scribble:
Meet me at Wellington Arch make haste. D.

A tiny dark drop marred the lower left-hand corner of the note, just below the D.

“Markham?”

The Earl of Somerton’s bark made her jump. She folded the paper together with shaking fingers, along all the wrong creases, and turned toward the stairs. “Yes, sir?”

He stood with one hand on the newel post and one foot still poised on the stairs. He had taken off his coat, and his waistcoat strained to contain the powerful breadth of his chest and shoulders beneath the white shirt. In the darkness of the hall, his face seemed even more rugged and Caesar-like than usual, weighed down with an expression of extreme displeasure that she, Luisa, recognized as grief.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

“No, sir. A message from my aunt.”

“Is she in danger?”

Luisa opened her mouth to deny it, but changed her mind at the last instant. “I’m afraid so, sir. My presence is requested without delay.”

He waved his hand. “Off you go, then. John, hail a hackney at once for Mr. Markham and ensure the fare is paid in advance. Would you like John to accompany you, Mr. Markham?”

He said the words with brusque efficiency, but in Luisa’s shocked state, paralyzed by fear and dread, exhausted by interrupted sleep, the unlooked-for kindness nearly brought her to her knees. She had to swallow first, in order to speak. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me.” He resumed his journey in the direction of the study, like a beast on the prowl. “I haven’t the time to deal with a visit from the constable, that’s all.”

•   •   •

O
n a bleak evening in unfashionable February, Hyde Park Corner should have been deserted, except for the occasional desultory hackney or businessman returning late to his family in Kensington. Instead, it swarmed with horses and vehicles and imperious members of the London constabulary, a panicked melee that continued up Park Lane as far as Luisa could see.

“Something’s up, looks like,” said the driver, with the thoroughly unimpressed air of an experienced London cabman, as he brought the hackney to a rocking halt on the corner of Green Park.

Luisa smacked her hand on the doors. “Let me out!”

“All right, mate, all right,” the driver grumbled, and the doors sprang open. He called out, “I’ll be waiting here on the corner!” but Luisa was already ignoring her aching head and the weight of malaise to dodge between a policeman, a lamppost, and a clutch of drunken young gentlemen to round the corner of the railing and hurry up to the base of the arch.

A woman’s figure emerged from the shadows. “There you are!” exclaimed Miss Dingleby, holding out her arms.

She was dressed in a silk ball gown that gleamed in the gaslight between the buttons of her plain wool coat, which she had left unbuttoned in apparent haste. Her hair was pulled back in an immaculate chignon, not a strand loose, and her gloved hands gripped Luisa’s arms with fanatical strength.

“What’s happened?” Luisa gasped.

“I don’t know. It’s a shambles. We’ve been betrayed—”

“Was it Hans?” Luisa took Miss Dingleby by the shoulders.

Miss Dingleby closed her eyes.

“What’s happened? Is Emilie safe?”

Miss Dingleby shook her head. “They’ve taken her.”

Luisa fell to her knees. “No. Oh, God. No. You said . . . you said she would be safe—”

“Stefanie . . . they’ve got her, too—”

“Stefanie? But how?”

“I don’t know. No one knew her location except Olympia and me.” Miss Dingleby spoke in hard, swift words, absent of feeling. “Listen to me, Luisa. Compose yourself. You’re our only hope. You must come with me at once, before they discover you, too.”

“But my sisters! We’ve got to find my sisters!”

“We haven’t time. We’ve got to move quickly.”

Luisa staggered to her feet and placed her hand against the cold stone of the arch’s base. Above her, the Corinthian columns soared upward, dwarfing her feeble human frame. The horror of it all churned in her gut; her head began to throb. “They’ll kill them! We’ve got to . . . got to—”

“No, they won’t. They’re too valuable. They’ll simply use them to get you, my dear. The real prize, the crown jewel. As long as they don’t have you, they’ll keep your sisters alive.” She grasped Luisa’s hand and tugged. “Now come along. I have a safe location for you, a place to hide.”

Luisa ripped her hand away. “No. I’ve got to think.”

“Luisa, my dear, you must.”

“No. I’ve had enough of your schemes. I’m going to return to Chester Square and summon the earl, and by God, he’ll find my sisters . . .”

Without warning, Miss Dingleby’s hand flashed out and struck her cheek. Luisa spun sideways into the arch, striking her forehead against hard stone.

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Dingleby composedly. She laid her hands on Luisa’s shoulders. “But you must come to your senses, my dear. My hackney is right here. Off we go.”

Luisa’s head was ringing with pain and shock. She wanted to object, to shrug off those managing hands and run down the pavement to her own waiting hackney, her experienced London cabman who would take her back to Chester Square and Lord Somerton. Somerton would help her sort this out. Somerton would rise up like an avenging devil and . . . and . . .

Her limbs were heavy. She couldn’t seem to work up the necessary energy to cast off Miss Dingleby.

“Come along.” The governess’s voice was soothing in her ears. “You need to rest, my dear. You’ve had so many shocks. You’ve been so terribly strong through all of this. Come along with me, somewhere safe.”

Luisa wanted to refuse. Some inner voice rose to a shout inside her, saying,
No, no! Keep fighting!
But the voice couldn’t get out, and her head was ringing, and her limbs were heavy.

Miss Dingleby’s arms closed around her. “There we are. Right this way.”

•   •   •

L
uisa woke sometime later, in the middle of a dream of bouncing carriages and the smell of a stable, and her sister Emilie’s voice calling out in German.

She was lying on a pallet of some sort. Her head still hurt. She was going to be sick.

She rose up on her hands and vomited, just missing the edge of the straw mattress on which she lay. There wasn’t much; she hadn’t eaten in more hours than she could count. Still she heaved on, and the bile burned the back of her throat, and her eyes watered with the force of her heaving.

When at last the contractions stopped, she collapsed back on the pallet.

A distant shot rang out, making the wooden floor vibrate for an instant.

With enormous effort, Luisa raised her head. “Emilie?” she whispered.

Had she dreamt it, or had she really heard Emilie’s voice, shouting out in German? But Emilie was dead.

No. Emilie was captured, Miss Dingleby said.

“Emilie,” she whispered. But she hardly heard the word herself.

The nausea returned, but she was too weak this time, and her head hurt. It was easier to fall asleep.

•   •   •

T
he second time she woke up, two strong arms were burrowing beneath her body and lifting her upward into the stable-scented darkness.

“There we are, my good fellow,” said a low voice, rough-edged and familiar.

Her dry lips moved. “Somerton?”

“What a mess, Markham. A damned awful mess.”

The arms were like bands of iron beneath her body. She relaxed against them and turned her face into the warmth of a fine woolen waistcoat. The sense of motion overtook her. She was swinging into the unknown.