Linda Needham (18 page)

“Lord Peverel!” Caro was already heading for the man, her hand outstretched and the goblet hidden. “How nice to see you here!”

“And you, Your Highness. You’re looking very well these days.” Though Peverel was smiling broadly, he looked as pale as he had at the tournament, as distracted. “How goes your exhibit? Have you finished installing it?”

“Nearly, my lord. There are still a few items left to bring. Then everything stays here until the end of the exhibition in August. By then I’ll have been empress for a few months and will be living in Boratania”—she felt Drew’s hand in the small of her back, a very gentle, intimate pressure that brought a lump to her throat—“and I’ll…um, I’ll be ready to return each item to its rightful place in my kingdom.”

Peverel focused a rueful smile on Drew. “The princess is very organized. You must have discovered that about her, Lord Wexford.”

“That and her skill at negotiations.”

“Can I do anything for you, Lord Peverel? I mean toward my return to Boratania?”

“No, no, my dear Princess. All is in good order. Yes. A few loose ends that we can tie up at your coronation if…well, if need be.” He gestured wanly back toward the Coalbrookdale Gates and shook his gray head. “As you know, I’m one of the assistants to
the Royal Commission and I’ve a meeting this afternoon in the Exhibitors Dining Room. Last minute details and the like. So I’ll wish you both a very good night.”

“I hope he’s all right, Drew,” Caro said as the man hobbled away, past the mounted Victoria statue. “He still looks too pale.”

“And far too busy for a man of his age. Come, Caro.”

For the last few minutes, he’d been plagued by an odd feeling that something was out of place.

The scent of something. Or something that had brushed the edge of his vision.

He shifted his gaze from display to display, escorting the woman around the boxes and crates in the main aisle, the sundry industrial exhibits being assembled by a vast array of workman.

Probably just the din of the workmen and the sounds of hammers and shouted instructions around them on the ground floor and in the galleries. Besides, the place was crawling with his own men, each of them on high alert as he and Caro made their way toward the towering west exit.

He’d already sent the empty cargo wagons back to Grandauer Hall, but his own carriage was waiting outside in a line of others.

“This way, Princess,” Drew said, taking her elbow and steering her outside through the stream of assorted people who were coming and going through the jumbled gauntlet of slate and stone and timber, waiting to be used inside.

“Less than a week before the Grand Opening, Drew,” she said, stepping quickly to keep up with his pace, “I can only wonder if it’ll all be finished in time.

“Not if someone doesn’t free up this damned log jamb!”

“Oooh! Ouch!” Caught in the press of a passing group of construction workers, Caro stumbled and fell behind him a step.

“What happened, Princess?” Drew stopped and hoisted her upright and close to him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine!” She grunted as she reached down to the muddy path, picked up her fallen folio and that damn goblet, and came up frowning. “Impatient lout! Plowed right into me!”

“Let’s get you to the carriage and then home.” His heart pounding in relief, Drew pressed her arm more deeply into his elbow and increased his stride. He’d have carried her if there had been enough room on the plank walkway.

“A very good idea.” Caro decided not to tell Drew that the clumsy oaf had smacked into her hard enough to bruise her ribs.

That would only send Drew flying after the poor man. And she really hadn’t gotten a good enough look at him, or anyone else who’d been jostling her, to make an identification.

By the time they righted the carriage, she was completely winded by the effort to keep up with Drew’s galloping stride. He had her bundled inside an instant later.

“To Grandauer Hall!” Drew bellowed to the driver. He threw himself onto the bench seat opposite her as the carriage leaped into the gravel lane. “The worst kind of situation, Caro. Suddenly, completely uncontrolled.”

“It was really nothing out of the ordinary, Drew,”
she said, still catching her breath and rubbing at the stitch in her side. “A bit of mud on my cape, and on my folio. Other than that…well, that’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” Drew leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his brow fretted as he looked into her eyes.

“The inside of my cloak is wet. Sort of sticky.” She felt around the side of her dress. “So is my…oh!”

Caro had pulled her hand out of the shadows of her cloak and now found herself looking down at something dark and red all over her fingers.

“It’s blood, Drew.”

“C
hrist!” He leaped across the carriage like a tiger, towering over her as he threw back her cloak. “They got to you, Caro! Right in front of my eyes! They got you!”

“It’s nothing, Drew. I feel fine!”

He yanked up her bodice and cursed again. “Stabbed you right through your cloak, the bastards!”

“Stabbed me?” She unhooked her cloak at the neck and then tried to see for herself, but he was in the way. “Not badly, though.”

“Damn it, Caro!” He flew to the little window in the driver’s cab. “To the Factory, Davis! On the double!”

“If we can just get home to Grandauer Hall, Drew, then I can get out of these clothes and clean up the wound, and then—”

“Don’t be absurd.” He was already back on her side of the carriage, straddling her legs and bending over the wound as the carriage thrashed along the cobbled street.

A moment later the lout rolled her onto her face with a, “Sorry, madam. I have to see this.”

“This?” The next thing Caro felt was him cutting at the ties at her back. “What are you doing?”

Her bodice popped open behind her and he quite expertly yanked the sleeve off her arm.

“Hold still, Caro.”

“You cut off my camisole!” Completely bare! At least on one side.

“Shhhhh…” And now he was hunkering over her, gently pulling back the linen, staring, muttering curses. “Thank God for that. A surface wound. The blade must have been deflected by your ribs.”

“I told you: I feel fine.”

“Only because the bastard missed getting you with a solid, full-on thrust.”

Full-on. “Oh.” Her stomach gave a turn.

“A dozen bodyguards,” he muttered as he probed around the wound with such gentle fingers, his breath so remarkably soft against her skin, she could just lie there forever. “And damnation, still they got through me to you.”

“But not with a full-on thrust, Drew. Something must have worked.” Caro closed her eyes, feeling suddenly, marvelously, sleepy.

“No, you don’t, Caro.” He pressed his palm and a square of something over the wound. “It’s my handkerchief. Now, hold it here against your side and sit up. I don’t need you going into shock.”

“The only thing I’m shocked at, Drew, is you stripping off my clothes.” Shocked and more than a little delighted.

“Couldn’t be helped, madam. Now, hold tightly.” He helped her sit up and tugged the bloodied, shred
ded camisole around her midriff to keep the kerchief in place, and then slipped her arm back into the sleeve of her shirtwaist.

“A few minutes, Princess, and we’ll be there.” He slid into the seat beside her and settled her back against his chest.

A very snug, safe place to be. “Where did you tell the driver to go?”

“Not far,” he whispered against her ear as he pulled his cloak across the front of her, warm and scented with his spicy shaving soap.

A factory, he’d said. What kind of a factory? She could see that they were clearly heading toward Mayfair.

She turned slightly toward him and found herself supported by one of his arms and looking up into his face. Into that strong chin, those dark eyes.

“Thank you again, Drew.”

He frowned down at her, obviously angry with himself. “Don’t.”

“But just imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been watching over me like a hawk. A full-on thrust, if you remember.”

His eyes darkened further, his gaze trailing across her nose, her cheeks. “I damn well could have lost you just then, Caro. In the blink of an eye.”

“I’m not that easy to lose, Drew.” But, dear God, she could lose herself in his eyes.

“And so impossible to forget.” His finger trembled as he brushed his knuckle along her jaw, then drew his fingertip slowly, softly between her lips, so slowly that she felt herself melting against him, hoping that he would kiss her this time. Full-on.

“Dear Drew…you, oh!”

But then the carriage rocked around a corner and he stopped, frowned at her and then said, “I’m terribly sorry, Princess.”

She had been about to tell him that it was quite all right to kiss her, when, in the next instant, the lout covered her head in his cloak.

“What the…Drew!” She fought against this prison, more shocked than angry. “What are you doing?”

“My job, madam.” Now he’d wrapped his powerful arms around her inside the cloak.

“Are you mad, Wexford?”

“I damn well hope I am.” He dropped his words against her ear, a fiercely hot warning. “Keep still, Caro. It’s for your own good.”

“Is this your cure for a stab wound?” She kicked out, but met with the seat opposite. “Unhand me, sir!”

“Another three minutes, Princess, and we’ll do something about this wound.”

He was holding the kerchief against her side now, his hand covering hers, her arms trapped by his.

“You’ve kidnapped me again!”

“Only a precaution.”

“Let me out of here.” And yet she was wondering if she really wanted him to let her go. Except for the soft wool of his cloak that was loosening with every jostle of the carriage, she felt fine.

“You can take out your anger on me in just a moment, madam. Stop moving and all will be well.”

Quite fine, indeed. And it was probably the shock, but she didn’t care. Snuggled against the long length of him.

“I can’t see a thing, Drew.” She gave a good strug
gle, just for good measure. But he just held her more tightly, whispered against her ear more fiercely.

“That’s the point. Now settle down. Or you’ll break open your wound and start bleeding again.”

The carriage turned sharply, then rolled to a stop.

“Here, sir!” came a voice from outside. And then at least three other voices.

“Hold still, Princess.” She was suddenly completely in his arms and in the air, the cloak keeping her from seeing anything at all.

“Where have you taken me, Wexford?”

“She’s been stabbed, Pembridge. Get the door, someone. Into the infirmary.”

“Is this a hospital?” She felt a cool draft on her leg as he carried her down the carriage steps and then a few steps down into some damp-smelling place.

More muffled voices and shuffling and the odd feeling that Drew was taking her down into a dungeon.

“You actually
have
kidnapped me again, Wexford!”

“Shock,” he said to the voices, who then laughed softly, knowingly.

And then the air was warm and stuffed with sounds and fragrances of all kinds.

“All clear, my lord.”

Drew’s cloak was whisked off her head as quickly as it had been put there. And she was still in Drew’s arms, still on the move down a well-lighted but darkly paneled corridor. Still underground, she was sure, in a place that was oddly elegant and very, very masculine.

“Where are we, Drew?”

An older man opened a door ahead of them. “I’ll get Fitzgerald. You’ve caught him in.”

“Thanks, Pembridge,” Drew said as he carried her
past the man into a room that could have been a parlor in any manor house, if it hadn’t been underground.

“Are we in a cellar, Drew?”

He put her down on a settee. “Keep hold of that handkerchief.”

“Who is Fitzgerald?”

“A doctor.” He added a chunk of wood to the hearth fire, making it snap and pop.

“I don’t need a doctor.” Oh, but it did hurt a little to breathe.

“You’re going to see one. A very good one.”

“Is this a hospital?”

“No.”

“You just happen to have a doctor handy.”

“That’s about it, Princess.”

“Where have you brought me?”

He unfurled a plaid woollen blanket from the back of the settee and coaxed her like a child. “Now please lie down, Princess. Ah, here’s the doctor now.”

Drew met the man at the door without a preamble. “A stab wound, Martin. Fortunately it’s not deep.”

“Lucky young woman.” The doctor peered at her from across the room, looking over the top of his spectacles as he shrugged out of his jacket.

“Of course, I need you to tell me everything you can about the wound.” Drew shrugged out of his own coat, as though the pair of them were planning to operate. “The shape of the blade, the angle…you know what I need.”

The doctor smiled at Caro as he approached, a man with a voice as smooth as cream. “My dear Princess Caroline, how I wish that we had met under better circumstances.”

“I’m actually just fine, thank you.” She tried to sit up straighter, but Drew had slipped behind the settee and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Just sit back and relax, Caro,” Drew said softly into her ear. “We’ll take good care…”

Of course, he would. And yet for some reason he was suddenly wearing a sickly sweet fragrance instead of his usual clear…clean…um…

“You won’t feel anything, Princess, because…

The doctor’s nice voice just kind of swam away from her, and Drew’s did, too. The soft parlor lights dimmed and dimmed and dimmed…

To absolutely nothing.

“Bloody blazes, Drew, you look like hell!” Ross frowned up at Drew from his reading chair as he entered the otherwise deserted map room.

“Good, because I feel like hell. Where’s Jared? Pembridge said he was here, too.” A wonder these days; Jared spent most of his time playing squire to his wife in Lincolnshire.

“I’m right behind you, Drew.” Jared had come into the room with two scones on a plate. “Hungry? I can get more.”

“Angry, actually. The princess has been stabbed.”

“What?” Jared put the plate down on the table.

“Christ, Drew!” Ross was already at his side. “Will she be all right?”

“By some bloody miracle. That’s why I need you both to come downstairs.” Drew didn’t wait for them to follow because he knew they would.

He left the map room and took the backstairs down to the false door in the wine cellar, past the two
security guards waiting on the other side, then led them through the Message Management Center of the Factory in the basement of the Huntsman, under the street, past the reception area and the chattering telegraph room, finally into the conference room where he’d collected the “Princess Files” and the initial reports on this most recent attempt on her life.

“Bloody hell, I was walking right beside her! And still they got to her.” Drew couldn’t help pacing the distance to the table and back to the hearth.

“Settle yourself, Drew,” Jared said, catching his arm, stopping his progress. “You said she’s going to be all right, and that’s because you were there beside her.”

Ballocks! “Next time she might not be so lucky.”

“Can’t you just keep her hidden away until the trouble passes?”

“Believe me, Ross, she’s not that kind of princess. My carriage was ambushed and shot up on the way home from that bloody tournament she had to attend, because she was a Damsel of the Dell, whatever the hell that was. Today it was to tend her exhibit at the Crystal Palace, four days from now it’ll be the opening ceremonies of the Great Exhibition with tens of thousands of people, and then three days later her own, very public, coronation.”

“I see what you mean, Drew—the woman’s every assassin’s ideal.”

“Ross telegraphed me about the ambush; that’s why I came back to London. My Kate insisted.”

“A very Kate thing to do, Jared. I don’t know what you did to deserve that bride of yours.”

“More’s the point, Drew,” Ross said as he leafed steadily through Caro’s file, “what the devil has your
princess done to make someone so angry at her? Why?”

Because she’s not Princess Caroline, Ross.

She’s not any kind of a princess.

A fictional life, fabricated out of bits and pieces by the great and powerful families of Europe strictly for the purpose of using her.

And Caro didn’t know a thing about it.

Damnation, he’d love to be able to confess the truth to his friends. To have their insight.

But he’d made promises that he had no right to break, to Palmerston, to Queen Victoria and, though she might not know it, to Caro herself.

“I was hoping that you and Jared could investigate the stabbing. Go back to the Crystal Palace and ask around, in absolute secret, about the exhibitors, the workers, anything that was happening at the time.”

“In secret, Drew? An exiled European princess has been stabbed, and you want it kept a secret?”

“From everyone, Ross. Fleet Street especially. Please don’t ask me why. I’ve been sworn not to tell you, not anyone. It may even mean the princess’s life.”

Jared was sorting through the papers on the table. “Have you a description of the attacker? His clothes? Anything at all?”

“If you’ll wait a few minutes, Jared, Princess Caroline will be here and you can ask questions yourself.”

Ross snorted. “She’s coming to the Factory?”

“She’s already here, in the infirmary. Probably just waking up.”

“You brought her here?”

“Didn’t have much choice. Read through her file while I’m gone. I’ll go check on her.”

Caro blinked and blinked, trying to keep her eyes open and finally realized that she had nodded off for a moment.

“Good evening, Princess Caroline.” Mr. Pembridge’s voice paddled close and then swam away again.

Hmmmm…she must have nodded off again.

The bed was rolling. No, not the bed—the whole floor. She was walking. Trying to walk, but the path was so narrow, barely as wide as the soles of her shoes.

“She’ll be coming around now, Drew.”

And she was going to chide Drew for not kissing her fully on the mouth in the carriage, for whispering something into her ear that didn’t make any sense at all.

Then it wasn’t Drew at all, but a plainer man, shorter, carrying a bucket.

Stocky, like a bricklayer.

Sandy haired, with light eyes and snaggled teeth.

He wouldn’t let her pass on the path, shoved her off balance with his elbow.

“Not too fast, Princess Caroline.”

Caro felt as though she were blindly falling and falling. But when she finally was able to keep her eyes open, she found herself sitting upright on the settee staring into Mr. Pembridge’s face with its craggy smile.

“Dizzy?” he asked, touching her forehead with the back of his fingers. “Sick at your stomach?”