Leslie Lafoy (34 page)

“And if,” she posed coolly, “Barrett dies in there because you think it would be too much trouble to look for him?”

Carden’s gaze snapped up from the map to openly appraise her. O’Brien heaved a sigh and stared down at the floor, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“I don’t care what you think of it, Mr. O’Brien,” Belle went on, deliberately keeping her tone firm but gentle. “The task is yours because you have the skills necessary to see it properly done. I’m going to go see Inspector Larson because I alone have the information necessary to enlist his assistance. As soon as possible after that, Carden and I will join you in the search for Barrett. He’s there and we’re going to find him.”

In O’Brien’s glowering silence, Carden drawled, “I gather that you’re not intending to follow any of the instructions in the note.”

“Emil doesn’t intend to. Why should I?” she countered. Looking between the two men, she added, “A little lesson I learned in our bloody war, gentlemen. The best defense is an unexpected offense.”

Carden nodded ever so slightly. O’Brien looked decidedly doubtful. “Mr. O’Brien,” she went on, taking a scrap of paper from her pocket and handing it to him. “On your way to marshaling what manpower you can for the search, I’d appreciate it if you would gather together the things on this list and have them for me by the time Carden and I join you in Cheapside.”

His right hand occupied with the coffee cup, he flipped open the once folded paper with his left. Belle watched as his gaze traveled down the list and his eyes widened.

“Jesus friggin’ Christ!” he exclaimed, his head snapping up so fast that he had to shift his feet to keep his balance. “What are you thinkin’, lady?”

“That Emil Caribe isn’t expecting me to take so bold an offensive.”

He swallowed, twice, before he managed to choke out, “I can’t. The boss’ll have my balls.”

Carden sighed and mercifully intervened. “Do as she asks, O’Brien,” he said evenly. “If Barrett trusts her, so can we. Get her what she wants and start the search. I’ll stand between you and Barrett if something goes wrong.”

Shaking his head, Patrick O’Brien stuffed the note in his trousers pocket and set his coffee cup aside. “When you head that way,” he ground out, clearly more resigned than committed to doing as he was told, “I’ll be at the Hen an’ Chick.”

“Thank you,” Belle offered, reaching into her other pocket and extracting the two bundled stacks of currency Barrett had taken from the wall safe the morning they’d fled his house. “In case it does cost a small fortune,” she explained, handing them to the Irishman.

Tucking them inside his coat, he moved off toward the door, muttering obscenities under his breath. She and Carden stood side by side in silence, watching him go, wincing together as the door slammed hard in his wake.

“Belle,” he ventured quietly, staring out the window and into the rear yard, “are you sure of the course?”

It occurred to her that he knew very little of what she intended to do. But the fact that he’d been willing to go blindly along so far suggested that he didn’t plan to directly challenge her. “Yes,” she assured him, knowing even as she did that it wasn’t entirely true. There were so many things that could go wrong, so many guesses and hunches that might not play out as she thought they would. She was trusting her instincts and hoping for a solid measure of good luck.

“I’d feel much better about it all,” Carden said, interrupting her thoughts, “if you’d stay at Haven House and let me pursue it alone. I’ve sent for John Aiden. He’d be a stalwart, able guard and you’d be quite safe. Which we both know has always been Barrett’s primary concern.”

She nodded, silently accepting the truth of his statements.

“I also know Larson,” he went on, apparently taking her silence as a sign that she was giving the notion serious consideration. “And O’Brien relayed his report to me. I can deliver it to the inspector quite capably. And then there’s the fact that Cheapside is far less dangerous for a man than it is a woman. Barrett wouldn’t want you there.”

They were, she had to admit, all very sound, very logical reasons for her to step back and let Carden take responsibility for finding Barrett. “Tell me something,” she began, taking up her redingote. “Do you love Barrett?”

He started, his movement to take the coat from her faltering as he blinked and drew a quick breath. He recovered quickly, though, and as he assisted her into the garment, he somberly replied, “He’s more a brother to me than either of my real ones ever were.”

“Would you wait at home and let John Aiden go off to search for him?”

“Of course not.”

She turned and faced him. “You can’t ask something of me that you wouldn’t consider doing yourself.”

It took a moment and an obvious battle between his sense of chivalry and his sense of fair play, but, eventually, his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “Against my better judgment, I’ll allow the truth of that.”

Feeling more relieved than victorious, she offered him a sincere, “Thank you,” and then moved toward the door, announcing, “I’m ready to go if you are.”

Dashing ahead, he pulled it open for her. It was as she passed him that he knitted his brows. “Just out of curiosity,” he drawled as he followed her out and down the steps, “What sort of things is O’Brien gathering up for you?”

“Six feet of small-diameter rope, two feet of stiff wire, a small pair of snips, a box of waterproofed matches, and two sticks of dynamite.”

She heard him make a gurgling sound, but before he could gather his wits to a sufficient degree to press her for specifics, she jauntily asked, “I assume that you have a solicitor? I want the transfer of the land grant to be absolutely, perfectly legal. And I think I should probably have a will made while I’m at it.”

“Belle,” he began.

Hearing the doubt and reservation in his voice, she continued on toward his carriage, looking back over her shoulder to smile at him and say breezily, “Oh, and did O’Brien tell you where Emma and Rose and Emil are staying? That’s information we’re most definitely going to need to give Inspector Larson.”

Chapter Eighteen

It frigging hurt to open his eyes. Or rather eye, Barrett decided, trying one and then the other and finding his left one nearly swollen shut. And breathing was even worse. If a couple of the ribs on his left side weren’t broken, they’d at the very least been pounded well out of place. As for the rest of his body …

Gingerly, painfully, he lifted his head. His right arm lay across his midriff, an unnatural bend in it midway between the elbow and the wrist. The part of him sticking out of his coat sleeve didn’t look much like a hand anymore. Actually, if pressed, he’d have to say it more resembled a small ham than anything else.

Ham. He lay back and swallowed. God, he was hungry. And thirsty. And cold to the damn marrow of his battered and broken bones. The latter probably, he allowed, because he was lying on a damp dirt floor. Carefully angling his head, he gazed at the small rectangle of light in the upper corner of the room. Considering the layer of grime hazing the rippled glass, the sunlight passing through was fairly bright. Which suggested that he’d been unconscious for at least three, maybe four, hours. Which explained why he was hungry and thirsty.

He sighed, grimacing and growling through the painful consequence. It took a moment for the sharpest edge to fade and to permit his brain to consider anything beyond the abuse he’d endured. But when it did, it clicked through a series of hideous realizations, his heart starting with each and every one.

The blood pounding through his veins deepened the pain and he clenched his teeth, forcing himself to ignore it, to keep his mind focused on what mattered. The land grant … Left inside pocket. Sucking a shallow breath through his teeth, he slowly shifted his shoulder and deliberately pressed his good hand against the outside of his coat. And heard nothing, felt nothing.

Sagging into the dirt at his back, he swallowed his anger and willed his mind to work past it. Caribe and the sisters had the land grant. But it was worthless to them. It had been issued to Lafitte and Lafitte had bequeathed it to Belle and Mignon. Mignon was dead. Which made it Belle’s alone. Unless she signed it over …

“Christ,” he growled as all the ugly pieces of the plan tumbled into place. Three or four hours … It was likely that Carden would be the one to receive the ransom note. It had been outside his house that Caribe’s vicious little mob had been waiting for him. If O’Brien had done as he’d been instructed and taken Belle to Haven House … Oh, God! Into the same snare that had been waiting for him!

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t control the shudders tearing through his body.
Think!
he commanded himself.
Use your bloody brain!

What did he know for certain? he asked, trying to bring the panic under control. Only one thing, he realized. That he was still alive. If they had Belle, if they’d already forced her to sign over the grant, they’d have dispatched him. They wouldn’t take the chance that he’d live to hunt them down. He was alive because they needed him that way for the time being. They needed to use him to bring Belle to heel. But once they did that, once they had what they wanted from her … Neither one of them was going to be allowed to live.

Belle was with Carden, he hastily assured himself. And Aiden. O’Brien was likely there, as well. The Irishman knew the players, the game. He’d relay the information to the others and they’d all see that Belle was well protected. They wouldn’t let Caribe past them. She was safe.

But only, he realized, for as long they could keep her shoved behind them. That task would be all but impossible once the ransom note arrived.

Belle would agree in an instant to do whatever Caribe demanded. She’d act out of obligation, out of compassion, out of honor. As for whether she loved him or not … A memory came gently into focus before his mind’s eye. Belle, standing in the kitchen, looking up at him and confessing the aching hollowness that had come with finding the treasure, the joy that had lit her smile when he’d offered his arms in solace, the yearning in her eyes as he’d gazed down at her and tried to find the right way to tell her that he loved her. How gently, unconditionally she’d accepted his failure. How thoroughly she’d poured herself into his heart and given him all that she was.

She loved him. He knew it. And the truth that he’d so hoped for now frightened him to the very center of his soul.

Belle liked risk, liked the way it made her feel. That attraction, blinded by love … She’d see the danger inherent in meeting Caribe’s terms, he assured himself, his blood pounding, his throat tight and prickling with tears. Belle had good instincts. She was intelligent, field-wise, and quick.

But even as he considered her strengths, he knew that if her instincts warned her to step back, she’d listen not to them, but to her heart. There would be no flinching. No waffling and trying to work her way around it. No passing it off to Carden or Aiden or O’Brien—no matter how logical they tried to be, no matter how assertive they got. How she’d go around them depended on the kind of resistance they offered in the face of her determination and the exact terms Caribe and the sisters set for the exchange.

He had to count on his friends to stay close to her, to intervene if she tried to take a risk too large. They had to know what she meant to him. Carden had lied to him about his feelings for Seraphina. Aiden had done the same about his feelings for Alexandra. Surely they had recognized his own lies about loving Isabella. But if they didn’t …

His stomach clenching, Barrett closed his eyes, knowing that all the worry in the world wasn’t going to change the outcome. He had to think, to figure out what was likely to happen and how to get between Caribe and Belle.

The land grant needed to be legally transferred. Otherwise, Belle would simply have to present Lafitte’s will to the proper authorities and reclaim it. To demand that she put the transfer in the name of either of the de Granvieux women or Emil Caribe would be tantamount to taking out an advertisement in the
Times
and publicly proclaiming themselves murderers, kidnappers, and thieves. And so the transfer would be simply to the bearer of the grant. There was a single, certain consequence in that: Caribe wouldn’t send a minion to make the trade, he’d do it himself. But the exact hour and the place where Caribe wanted to make the transaction …

God Almighty, that could be anyone’s guess. London was a huge city with millions of dark corners. They’d give Belle the time necessary to have a barrister draw up a legal title transfer, but, beyond those few hours, they had no obvious reason to delay.

Barrett eased his head back to consider the window again. Fairly close to noon, he guessed. Perhaps a little after. He moved his head back to center and then to his right. The door out was at the top of four rickety steps. Whether it was locked and what—and who—might lie on the other side of it were discoveries that could be made only when he got there.

His right arm useless, he eased onto his left hip, planted his left elbow in the dirt floor, and began to push himself up. The pain shot through him, white and hot. The shaft of sunlight jerked and danced and then winked out.

*   *   *

It was all moving very quickly. And the pace was only going to accelerate as the day went on. She could feel it in her bones. As Carden helped her out of his carriage, Isabella smiled in thanks and tamped down the hard, twisting stab of regret. He was a most competent man and she was certainly glad for his company and assistance. But, despite their physical similarities, he wasn’t at all like Barrett. Carden Reeves’s edges were ever so much smoother, his manner considerably more polished and refined. He was, she supposed, a man of his social status; a bit elevated and removed from the grubbiness of the real world.

She wished with all her heart that it was Barrett holding her elbow as they made their way toward the knot of constables on the walkway. Not that that would have been wise at this particular moment, she reminded herself. Larson believed him responsible for two murders already. Three if she’d properly interpreted what the constable at the precinct desk had told them. Still …