How To School Your Scoundrel (27 page)

“Your Highness, I regret the necessity deeply, but I cannot answer for the state of the town. Neighbor is set against neighbor, servant against master.” He shook his bright head mournfully. “I should not forgive myself if any harm came to you under my roof.”

Luisa remembered the startled reaction of the maid, the shifty glances of the townspeople as they walked along the streets. She gazed into Gunther’s serious face. His mouth was tightened into a downward arc of embarrassed contrition.

She tried to smile. “Then lock the door, my friend. I will endure my captivity with fortitude.”

He grinned back in deep relief. “You are, as ever, the soul of grace, Your Highness.”

He bowed and left the room, and the click of the lock echoed softly after him.

•   •   •

A
fter he had gone, Luisa tried to rest. She took off her jacket and lay on the grand sapphire bed, staring at the plasterwork above, but her mind would not quiet. Over and over she pictured not Somerton and Olympia, but Prince Rudolf and poor Peter, with their hands crossed over their chests, nestled in white satin while the Gothic arches of Holstein Cathedral soared above them.

She could not go through that again.

They must be alive. They must.

If only she could weep, and release this awful tension inside her. But while the tears ached behind her eyes, they wouldn’t fall, and so she leapt from the bed and paced across the floor, and at last, in desperation, yanked the stopper from the brandy and poured herself a glass. She closed her eyes as it burned down her throat and the fumes wafted through her head, and she thought of Somerton, the way his kisses tasted in the evening, when he had indulged himself in a glass after dinner. How his black eyes would soften just a little, and he would carry her to bed and call her his Markham as he made love to her. How sometimes the moonlight would come through the window at just the right angle, and gild his black hair silver, and she would run her hands through it and call him beautiful, and he would laugh and say she was a fool, a marvelous little fool.

Surely that was not the entire sum of her earthly happiness. Surely God could not be so unjust.

Luisa went back to the bed and lay back down, and this time the brandy fumes lulled her into a little more calm. Her eyelids drifted shut. Gunther would be back soon, with news. Gunther would tell her that Olympia and Somerton had been forced to go into hiding, that they couldn’t send word, that they were nonetheless planning a . . . planning something . . .

“Madam! Your Highness!”

The whisper slipped urgently into her ear. A gentle hand shook her shoulder.

Luisa’s eyes sprang open. “What’s that?”

“Your Highness!” It was the maid Frieda. Her eyes were wide and blue. She looked quickly over her shoulder and back at Luisa. “You must come! Quickly, now! Before he returns!”

“Before . . . Herr Hassendorf . . .” Luisa shook her head to clear it. “What’s happened? How did you get in here?”

“The housekeeper has copies of all the keys. I took yours from her chain. Oh, Your Highness, he will betray you. You must come. He is . . . he is with the conspirators!”

Luisa bolted upright. “Who’s with the conspirators? Herr Hassendorf?”

“Yes! Oh, Your Highness, when I saw it was you . . .” The blue eyes turned wet. “You must come!”

The bottom fell away from her chest.

“But my husband!” she managed. “Where is he?”

“In the prison! He and your uncle, they were betrayed. They’re in the prison beneath the castle. They’ve been questioned for days.”

Luisa gripped her by the shoulders. “How do you know this? Tell me, Frieda!”

“My brother, he’s a gardener there. He knows one of the prison guards, and he hears them at night, through the windows.” She took Luisa’s hand from her shoulder and kissed it. “Oh, please, Your Highness. You must do something. Everything, everything is terrible now, since the Brigade came in, after you left. They told us the richest burghers would be put in prison, and there would be no rulers, and the country’s wealth given to the people, but instead . . .”

“Frieda, listen to me.” Luisa’s blood was running cool now, her mind sharp. “You must take me there, right away. Your brother, can he help me? Will his friend the guard let me in?”

Frieda wiped her eyes. “Yes, Your Highness. My brother would die for you. As would I. As would anyone in Holstein, except those traitors.”

Luisa had no particular reason to trust this maid. She had trusted Gunther, and now he was apparently about to betray her. Or perhaps Gunther was loyal, and Frieda was the traitor. Frieda had come to take her to her doom.

But she had to make a decision. Whom to believe, whom to follow. And in the end, it didn’t matter which one had betrayed her, Frieda or Gunther. She had to get out of this house and into the town. She had to search the prison, because that was where her husband probably lay. If this maid could take her there, she would take that risk. She had to. She had been waiting for nearly ten months; she could not sit a moment longer, hoping for someone else to save her.

“Quickly, then.” Luisa leapt from the bed and found her hat and jacket. Her pulse thudded eagerly in her neck, ready for action. “You must do exactly as I say, Frieda. We’ve got to free them tonight, the duke and the prince consort, and take them somewhere safe. Do you know where we might go?”

“I think so, madam.” Frieda brushed her apron and set her cap.

“Then let’s go, before he returns. And Frieda?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

Luisa took both her hands and kissed each one. “Thank you for your loyalty.”

Frieda opened the door and locked it again behind them, and in minutes they were slipping out the back of the house and into the darkened street, toward the twilit hulk of Holstein Castle, and the prison beneath.

Holstein Prison. Her chest constricted in pain at the thought of her husband lying in a dank, half-lit cell, surrounded by criminals, guarded by ruthless traitors.

What were they doing to him there?

Holstein Prison

O
n the third day, he had given up trying to keep track of his injuries. They had all stitched together into a seamless garment of pain, after all; there was no use remembering that the searing agony on his left arm corresponded to the episode with the burning tongs on Monday afternoon, and the dull ache in his kidneys came as a result of an encounter with his questioner’s meaty fists on Tuesday morning. Pain was pain. He endured it because he had to, because there was no alternative.

Except death. And he couldn’t die yet, not while Markham needed him. Not while this pummeled husk of a body might, in clinging to life, still be of some use to her.

Of what use, however? That remained the central question. He’d known from the outset that betrayal of some sort loomed around the next corner, or across the next smoke-filled table; he avoided these sorts of capers—dropping oneself into a complex foreign affair, trusting people on local hearsay—for that reason. When he had accompanied Olympia to the first rendezvous, shortly after their arrival, he hadn’t liked the look of the place, and he’d said so. Blocked lines of sight, no secondary escape, a regular box canyon of a beer hall.

I quite agree
, said Olympia,
but we must start somewhere. And this fellow, at least, can be trusted.

To his credit, Olympia’s contact had looked as surprised as they were when the men at the neighboring table had risen from their seats and taken out their revolvers. He had fought hard, and ended on the sawdust with a bullet through his brain.

Somerton had taken out two men himself, and might have escaped were it not for the Duke of Olympia, who took an unlucky blow to his ribs from a flying chair and had to be rescued. Now here they were, rotting at the bottom of a loathsome German dungeon, questioned at regular intervals by men who had evidently been trained at the highest level. The torture always stopped short of actual incapacitation: not a broken bone, not a damaged organ, not a single significant laceration. Pain was the object, clear and precise and sublime. For whatever reason, they wanted him alive.

He hated to oblige them.

They would be returning soon. Time had taken on a vague elasticity since he had arrived here—had it been days? weeks?—but there had passed some hours since the last session, and they were due. The thin, cruel one came at night, and the genial, muscular one during the day. Or perhaps it was the other way around: How was he to know? Without a window, immersed in the dull and clammy air of this troglodyte world, laden with the mingled scents of effluvia, the cycles of sun and moon had no meaning.

Somerton stretched out one aching leg against the flagstones, starting with the swollen toes, one by one, and the metatarsals, and then the tarsals. He extended his calf in gentle movements, ignoring the searing pain, and then moved to the other foot. From down another passage came the distant sound of a carrying scream, cut short abruptly.

“Why the devil does he scream so?” murmured Olympia, a few feet away. “Hardly neighborly.”

“Not all men have had the benefit of your training in such matters, Your Grace,” said Somerton. His cracked lips hurt as he moved them.

“Bad form,” said Olympia. “Damned bad form.”

The effort of speaking was immense, but Somerton made it anyway. “Is she alive, do you think?”

“I should hope so, or this has all been a great waste of one’s natural endurance.”

“She will come to look for us, of course.”

“Let us pray she doesn’t succeed.” A faint grunt and a clink of metal against stone, as Olympia shifted his weight. “Let us pray she did the sensible thing, and sent that wire to London.”

Somerton rather doubted it, with the kind of doubt that sat like a stone ball of dread in one’s empty belly. Better he should suffer a thousand times worse than this, better he should lose himself in an agony so profound as to transcend the ordinary boundaries of human experience, than Markham should fall into the power of the Revolutionary Brigade of the Free Blood. The contemplation of this possibility hurt far worse than the constant chafe of the manacles about his wrists, the daily inventiveness visited upon his skin and sinews.

Markham, and the possibility of a child growing inside her, begotten of their dreamlike weeks in the Fiesole sunshine. His Markham, their child.

“I do wonder, in my moments of leisure, why they take such trouble to keep us alive,” he said.

“Because a dead man has no value, of course. An elementary principle. I’m surprised you should ask.”

“But they hardly need keep us alive, to lure Luisa here.”

“My dear fellow, this goes further than capturing the princess. A duke and an earl of Great Britain, of some practical and personal value to the Queen herself, are valuable sorts of commodities for a fledgling republic to own.”

Somerton’s mouth tasted of copper mixed with bile. He spat carefully into the flagstones to his left. He knew all this, of course, but it was useful to keep talking about sensible things. It kept the mind from drifting into the shoals. “We haven’t told them who we are,” he pointed out.

“But she knows. Dingleby knows. She must be back from England now, having failed to lure Stefanie back with her. She’s on her beam ends, with two princesses safely married and great with child, outside the range of her influence. You and I are her last hope. The ripe plum, fallen into her lap.” The duke spoke reflectively.

“Luisa will not allow herself to be used by the revolutionaries.”

“Do you think not?”

“Nothing means more to her than her people, old chap. Her integrity is absolute.”

The chains clinked again. “Obviously, my dear fellow, you haven’t paid much attention to the way your wife looks at you.”

Ah, God. Like a new gash, the pain tore through his ribs, infinitely deeper than the torture he’d endured in this prison.

“I smell a wager, Your Grace.”

“Done. The stakes?”

“My best agent in Vienna . . .”

A gasp. “Von Estrich?”

“The same. To your chap in St. Petersburg . . .”

“You can have Kurikov for free, by God.”

“That fellow in Sarajevo, then. The one who bagged the elephant last spring.”

Olympia laughed. “Oh, ho. You heard about that? Very well, then. Since the stakes must be rich enough to mean something. Your Von Estrich to my Begovic, she turns up with bells on, army at her heels, weeping over your wounds.”

“And I say she holds firm, wires the British Consulate in Berlin, and trades our meager lives in exchange for a Life Guards regiment to roust the anarchists out of her castle.”

Olympia said nothing. The sounds of distant bustling drifted through the prison bars. Time for the next round of questioning, it seemed. Thin man or heavyweight? Somerton hoped the latter. He was stronger, but less inclined to wanton cruelty.

“What is it, old man? I can hear that feline smile of yours, all the way over here.” Somerton rested his aching head against the wall.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’ve got something up your sleeve, do you? I don’t suppose you care to share it.”

“No, I . . .”

The voices grew louder, and Olympia swallowed his words. Keys rattled in the lock, that familiar metallic sound that sent cold dread stirring inevitably in his blood, in anticipation of the trials to come. What would it be this time? Burning cigarettes? The tongs? Immersion of the head in ice water?

“Doctor here for the prisoners,” the guard said tonelessly.

Sweet Christ. Not a
doctor.
This was worse than he thought.

He braced his arms in the manacles.

“A light, please, if you will,” said a familiar voice, speaking in cultured German. “Not too bright as to hurt the prisoners’ eyes.”

The breath froze in his lungs.

A lantern appeared, next to the visitor’s face, casting a dim glow across the ridge of a well-known regal cheekbone and the slope of a firm chin. A plaid hat came down low above a pair of eyes that, if he could see them well enough, if he could dare to examine them closely, would be warm and topaz-brown.

“They appear to be in very poor health indeed,” said the doctor, and only Somerton could have heard the waver in that confident voice, the timbre in the vowels that meant its owner felt something.

He closed his eyes. The light really did hurt them.

There was a clink beside him, as the lantern was set down on the stones.

“Can you open your eyes, sir?” asked a steady voice, this time in English.

“Yes, Markham,” he whispered, and cracked his eyes back open.

“Jolly luck,” said Olympia. “I do believe I’ve just gained myself an agent in Austria.”

•   •   •

L
uisa was no doctor, but she could see that Somerton—and her uncle, too, blast his clever schemes to hell and back—had endured a horrifying ordeal this past week, while she had been slumbering among Frau Schubert’s best down pillows back in Huhnhof. His eyes were swollen, his skin mottled, his lips crusted. He was hanging from a pair of manacles, chained high upon the wall, in such a way that his shoulders hunched at an unnatural angle, bearing his weight.

She touched his cheek, his lips, his forehead. He watched her intently. She turned her head slightly to the opening of the cell and said, in German, “Both prisoners must have their wrists released from the chains this instant, or I cannot answer for the consequences.”

“But Herr Doctor! There are very dangerous men!” The guard was shocked.

“I have been sent from Herr Hassendorf himself to ensure these prisoners are well enough to continue questioning by morning. I will take any risk to ensure his orders are fulfilled to the strictest extent. Unlock these manacles at once.” She used her most commanding tone, filling the walls with the force of her conviction.

The guard came forward, shaking his head, and took out his keys. “It’s your funeral,” he muttered.

He freed Olympia first, and then Somerton. Her husband slumped down the wall in relief, rubbing one wrist and then the other. She picked up his hand and examined it. The skin was raw where the metal had chafed it, day and night. “My God,” she whispered, bending her head so the guard wouldn’t see her expression. A tiny drop fell from her eye and landed on the inside of his wrist.

“Markham, don’t,” he said.

“What’s the prisoner saying?” demanded the guard.

“That it hurts, of course. I’ll need a large bucket of warm water, and soap, and lengths of toweling. The malignant animalcules must be cleansed from the wounds before putrefaction sets in.”

“But I can’t leave you alone with them, Herr Doctor! They’ll eat you alive!”

“I assure you, I have treated more dangerous criminals than you have hairs on your head, and not one of them has offered me anything more than grateful thanks.”

“But these two are . . .”

Luisa pounded the floor. “At once, sir!”

The guard scurried from the cell, clanging the door shut behind him.

“Not the brightest chap, is he?” Somerton said, in a voice she hardly recognized, so low and broken it belonged to another man.

She put her hands on his face and kissed his cracked lips. “Oh, my lord! What have they done to you?”

“Damn you for risking yourself,” he whispered. “You damned marvelous fool.”

“I suppose
my
suffering is immaterial,” said Olympia. “Never mind. I’m merely an old man of fragile health and uncertain prospects.”

“You’re the reason we’re all here to begin with,” she snapped.

“I protest.
You
are.”

“Can we not waste time on the pleasantries, if you please?” Somerton was testing his arms now, flexing each one, wincing as he went. “We only have minutes before that fool of a guard returns.”

“Can you walk?” she said.

“There’s one way to find out, isn’t there?”

He braced one hand against the wall and drew his feet carefully beneath him. Luisa ducked under his shoulder and laid his other arm across her back.

“Thank you,” he said, and straightened to his full height.

“How do you feel?”

He looked down at her with his dark eyes, in which burned a tiny, flickering reflection of the nearby lantern. “Tolerable,” he said, in such a way that her toes curled in her boots and her brain relaxed in relief.

He was still Somerton.

“Able to stand over here as well,” said Olympia, “if anybody gives a damn.”

Somerton kept his gaze on Luisa. “Not particularly, though I suppose one’s grateful not to have to carry your ancient carcass from the prison across one’s shoulders.”

“Take a few steps,” she said. “Loosen your limbs, if you can.”

“My dear, you will perceive the door to our apartment is still locked.”

He was moving stiffly, supporting himself against the wall as he went, but he could stand. He could walk. She searched his face in the lantern-lit shadows, trying to gauge how hurt he was, but of course the expression on his fearfully bruised features remained stoic. His shirt seemed to be stuck to his back, and stained here and there with spots of blood.

She dug her fingernails into her palms. “I . . .”