Linda Needham (5 page)

“I’m afraid he didn’t make it as far as prison.” Drew unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk safe and pulled out a file box.

“He escaped?” That seemed to get her attention.

“No.” Drew caught her eye and said as pointedly as possible, “Though he tried to.”

“Tried? Then…do you mean…he’s dead?” she whispered, her soft brow dipping.

“He is.”

“Dear God, that’s…horrible.” She exhaled slowly, sobered considerably as she raised her eyes to his. “But, if the man who wanted to kill me is dead, then he’s no longer a threat to me, is he?”

“That’s not how the game is played, Princess.” Drew sat on the edge of the table, leaned toward her, marveling at the sweeping length of her deep golden lashes. “Because as long as the target remains alive, so does the threat.”

“And you’re certain that I’m the target?”

“You were a threat to someone just a few weeks ago, and unless something in your life has changed radically in the meantime, you’re an even bigger threat now than you were then. Because doubtless there’s a clock ticking somewhere against you, counting out your days.”

A bit melodramatic, but the truth, nonetheless.

“But, why?” She drew herself up. “Who can I possibly be a threat to?”

“Believe me, Princess, if I knew the answer to that, I would never have bothered you with the matter.”

She frowned at that, at the blatant implication, then shook her head and rubbed her neck as though she had a headache. “But it makes no sense. I haven’t any enemies.”

“You obviously do. And you can help me and my investigation by trying to recall if you’ve ever overheard something that didn’t sit well with you. An odd comment, by anyone—a staff member, a friend—a meaningless inquiry about your schedule, your activities. Anything that might have felt out of place.”

“Believe me, Lord Wexford, if I suspected anyone
of wanting to harm me or anyone around me, I’d have reported my suspicions to Palmerston immediately.”

“I’m sure you would have, Princess. However, no assassin worth his salt would let on his intentions.”

“I suppose not.” She gave him another very sober look, this time tinted with impatience. “You wanted me to listen to the facts, Wexford. I guess I’m ready now. How did this all come about?”

Hiding his satisfaction, Drew slipped the report in front of her on the table. “The threat first came to light three weeks ago when a man approached a tavern owner on the waterfront at Gdansk, asking for directions to the nearest assassin.”

“Good heavens! As boldly as that?” She glanced down at the report, then back up at Drew with those wide, blue eyes on fire. “‘Please sir, point me to the nearest assassin’?”

“Arrogance is a common mistake among the wicked. Fortunately, the tavern owner is a friend of…well, let’s just say that he has connections to the British Foreign Office.”

“A Prussian tavern owner on a Baltic wharf?” She lowered herself to the very edge of the chair, eagerly peering up at him. “Why would such a man have any connections to Whitehall?”

Why indeed? “The point is that our contact stalled the man while he judiciously sent word through channels to a British diplomat in Brussels.”

“Why didn’t the tavern owner just have the man arrested immediately?”

“Because that would have tipped off the original source of the assassination contract, and that’s who we need to find as quickly as possible.” Drew pulled a lamp closer to the papers on the table in front of her.

“Besides, at that point in time, we didn’t even know who the target was to be.”

“You mean this assassin person didn’t name me as his intended victim.”

“Not even a hint. The target could have been a ship’s captain, a butcher, a king…”

“Instead, it turned out to be me.” She frowned and drew the paper closer. “How did you learn the target was me, then?”

“That took some careful investigation.”

“What did the diplomat do when the information reached him in Brussels?”

Drew dragged his favorite chair to the map table and sat down beside her, pleased that she had settled into the story, pleased that she smelled of roses. “He couldn’t really do anything until he uncovered the identity of the target, so he went to Gdansk—”

“Himself? He didn’t send an envoy?”

“Let’s just say that he’s the sort who prefers to conduct his investigations firsthand.” Safer that way. “He met the conspirator, a man named Herr Bechel, in the tavern.”

“Face to face with a criminal?” She looked up from the paper.

“That’s how the job gets done, Princess; the operative leading the conspirator through a series of questions, trying to squeeze a few clues out of him. Acting as though he would cooperate.”

“Wouldn’t Herr Bechel have been suspicious—chatting over an ale with a well-dressed toff?”

Yes, his little princess seemed well into the suspense of the story now, following the logic, her questions far more intense than he’d have expected.

“Our diplomat wasn’t well dressed at all. I suspect
that, indeed I would hope, that he appeared to be not only a filthy drunk, but a genuinely harmless dockside vagrant.”

“Ah, then, he was in disguise?” Her fine, bright eyes lit up in the lamplight gilding the tips of her lashes.

“That’s also how it’s done.”

She laughed in amazement. “You seem to know a lot about this diplomat’s investigations. Wait just a moment there.” She stood slowly, stared at him. Through him, lighting little sparks in his chest. “You’re talking about yourself, aren’t you? You’re the British diplomat.”

“As I said, Princess, I prefer to conduct my investigations firsthand.”

Caro didn’t know quite what to say to the man who was lounging back in his chair, too large for it, too large for the room, for his title.

This very extraordinary earl with his long, powerful legs and that unfathomable, smoky gaze.

He was no ordinary diplomat, either.

No ordinary man.

And yet everything he’d said so far was simply impossible to believe. Some of it so downright absurd that she needed to hear more, needed to put a bit of distance between them so that she could think.

She moved to the far side of the table, her bare shoulders warmed by the low-glowing fire in the hearth at her back. “So, my lord, the dastardly Herr Bechel never guessed that you were not as you seemed.”

“He didn’t.” Wexford’s smile spoke reams about him. Daring and proud. And very, very good at his work. “But he did get a little deep in his cups and hinted at the purpose of his search.”

“That he was looking for an assassin?”

“Only that he was in the position to pay good money to a man who didn’t mind getting his hands a bit bloody.”

“With my blood.” A sobering image if she’d ever heard one, immensely personal. “What did you do next, my lord?”

He shrugged. “I volunteered to do the job myself, of course.”

Caro nearly choked on her gasp. “You volunteered to kill me?”

“I didn’t know you were the target at the time, Princess. Not that that would have mattered. Not that I would have murdered an innocent person.” He seemed to think this was funny, though he had the grace to try to hide his smile in that squared-off jaw. “It was the perfect opportunity to learn the target’s identification.”

“So did he actually hire you to kill me?”

“Unfortunately not.” He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, his brows lifted, teasing. “I knew he wouldn’t. As drunk as Bechel was, he could tell that he needed someone more reliable than me.”

She swallowed through a completely dry throat. “What happened then? Did you arrest him for conspiring to murder and then coerce a confession out of him?”

He stood, towering above her as he ran his fingers through his dark hair. “I let him go, of course.”

“Of course?”

“This man was my only lead, Princess. I needed him to be free to follow his master’s instructions. And I needed to be just as free to follow him.”

She balked at the absurdity of his logic, but that
only made it seem more reasonable. “But isn’t that dangerous? Following a man like that?”

“It’s far more dangerous than not keeping him close in my sights.”

“I suppose it is.” What a dauntless man this earl was turning out to be.

And how unsettling to think that he had already invested so much of his courage in her.

“After a few false starts, Bechel led me quickly through Silesia, and then deep into Saxony and finally to eavesdrop on his meeting in Altenburg with the contact who would eventually arrange for him to meet Josef Tor, the man who was hired to kill you.”

“The assassin.” Already dead, but all of this happened so unsettlingly close to her beloved Boratania. “What then?”

“And, Princess, three days ago, after spending one long night in a very small, stifling attic”—he sat down opposite her and leaned forward—“I finally learned the worst of it.”

“Yes?” she said, breathless with the nearness of him, the leashed power in his muscles.

He studied her as though he hadn’t really seen her before, his eyes dark and deeply searching. “A name whispered so low that I barely caught it: Princess Caroline Marguerite Marie Isabella of Boratania.”

Like a death knell. “Dear God in heaven.”

“Indeed.” He leaned closer, as though telling her a deep secret. “But what I didn’t find out, Princess, is the information that will keep you alive into your old age.”

“Which is…?”

“Who it is that wants to see you dead.”

C
aro shook her head and gripped the back of the chair, holding on for dear life, still unable to sort completely through the pieces of Wexford’s story.

“But why, my lord? I can’t imagine anyone hating me so much that they want me dead.”

“Hate probably has nothing to do with it, Princess.” His voice had gentled considerably, his gaze softening, judging her every move. “Everyone has enemies of one sort or another.”

“I’m sorry, Wexford, but you must have misheard my name in that hot old attic.” Her nerves jangling, she picked up the report he’d set out for her to read. But the words just swam and dodged. “This Tor fellow couldn’t have meant me. It was some other princess, some other royal. I couldn’t possibly be the target.”

“Believe me, Your Highness, anything is possible when the stakes are high enough.”

“What stakes?” Frustrated, she dropped the report
and paced away from the man and his impossible intrigues. “I’ve been living in exile since my birth.”

“Yes, I know, Princess.” He rose and leaned against the edge of the table and crossed his arms over his chest, all the while studying her with those dark, probing eyes of his, as though watching her for some clue. “Someone wants you out of the way. I don’t know who. I don’t know why. But it’s my job to find out. Until I do and you’re completely out of danger you’ll have to remain in seclusion—”

“What did you just say? In seclusion?”

Drew had expected that very reaction from the princess—her eyes flashing out a blue-flamed warning, her fine shoulders straight, her royal chin raised at him as though a finely crafted weapon.

A magnificent bundle of outrage.

“Yes, Princess,” he said, trying to moderate the moment. “You’ll be locked up safely behind impregnable doors until—”

The woman laughed, a broad, unexpected sound. “You can’t be serious!”

“Deadly serious. Until the matter is settled you’ll remain out of the public eye and under guard.”

“That’s impossible!” She jammed her fists against her hips. “I can’t possibly spare the time. I’m right in the middle of preparing the Boratanian exhibit for display at the Great Exhibition.”

“The exhibition in Hyde Park.” He’d seen the note in her dossier and knew she wouldn’t like his solution to that particular security problem.

“That’s right. I’ve been collecting the lost and stolen and looted treasures and artifacts of my country since I was old enough to understand their meaning, and just a few weeks from now I must have a
representative group ready to display for Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition.”

“Which is to be attended by hundreds of officials and foreign dignitaries and God knows how many of the general public who will come to gawk.”

Along with the single assassin who will arrive with the rabble to pull off a shot at her pretty little head. Surely the woman could see the potential problem.

And yet her smile was quite proud. “If you know that much about the Great Exhibition, Lord Wexford, then you understand the enormous amount of work ahead of me, in public and in private. Not to mention all the pomp of getting ready for my investiture ceremony.”

“As Empress Caroline of Boratania. Yes, I know that, too. The title comes to you, as the last member of your family, when you reach your twenty-first birthday.”

Power and privilege and an enviable lineage, with a coronation ceremony attended by thousands. Motive enough to be rid of a royal who’s in the way of someone’s villainous design.

“Both events are very important to me and to the future of my kingdom, Wexford. All of which will require hours and hours of my time. So I can’t possibly seclude myself behind—”

“But you will, Princess. Else you might as well be walking around with a target pinned to your back.”

“Don’t be—” she stopped mid-denial, then frowned at him as though she’d caught him deliberately trying to shock her. “Surely it can’t be as bad as that?”

“I don’t know yet whose great scheme you’re threatening, but you’ve given plenty of people plenty
of reasons to be rid of you. Starting with your impending title, my dear empress.”

“Why would anyone care? It means little to anyone but me. Why, it’s hardly more than an honorific to emboss on my stationery.”

“Perhaps, but it’s an impressive title, nonetheless.” Feeling as though he’d snagged her cooperation for the moment, Drew packed up the file box with its paltry contents. “Then there’s the matter of your increased income.”

“It’s an entailment. Available only to me. If I die without issue it disappears.”

“But while you live, that money must come from someone’s treasury. Someone who might resent being a bit poorer for your gain.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“And lastly, Princess, are your ten square miles of Boratania, which is due to be excised from the flesh of another kingdom.”

“A bit from three kingdoms, actually. But it’s no more than a tiny spit of land on the borders between Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria. It was pledged to me long ago when Boratania was vanquished. I don’t see how it could possibly matter.”

“My dear princess, in 1806 the Great Elector of Saxony declared himself king and allied himself to Napoleon against the rest of Europe. And for that sin, in 1815, as a result of the Congress of Vienna, the upper half of his kingdom was given to Prussia. His son is still complaining about the insult. I’ve heard him myself.”

“Believe me, I know my European history very well, Lord Wexford.”

“Then tell me why on earth His Majesty would
stand aside and allow even another square inch of his kingdom to be gifted to you for your birthday?”

“Because he’s my cousin.”

Drew laughed, then regretted its scoffing sound. “I’m afraid that blood is a lot thinner than any of us would care to believe.”

“My blood is plenty thick, sir. Royal to the last drop. The land belongs to me, to my people. It’s the last vestige of my family’s kingdom and my cousins will support me.”

For the first time Drew felt the pinch of carrying the secret he held against her, that she had a lot more than a few cousins to worry about.

“We’ll discuss that later, Princess.” Drew picked up her cloak from the back of the chair. “Come, my carriage is just outside. I’ll take you home.”

“That won’t be necessary, Lord Wexford,” she said with a sniff and a regal toss of her bejeweled head as Drew reached out with her cloak in his hands. “Palmerston’s carriage is waiting for me.”

With a twinkle of triumph in her eyes, the princess turned her long, straight back to him and proffered her lovely, white shoulders for him to drape with her cloak.

Which he would have done but the perfect slope of her neck and nape struck the breath from him, itched at his fingers, tempted him to slide them along her skin, to taste the forbidden.

All night she had smelled of rosewater; though he’d thought at first it was merely the scent of the duke’s prized gardens. But the scent had followed her and now lapped at his chin, found purchase in his nostrils.

And now threatened to addle his wits.

“Not to disappoint you, Princess, but Palmerston’s
carriage is no longer here.” He quickly draped the opulent black velvet cloak across her shoulders, inadvertently skiffing his fingers through the escaping curls above her ear, doing his best to ignore the bolt of lightning that leaped along his arm and roared down his breastbone, right into his groin.

She turned and glared at him, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Why?”

“Because you’ll be using my carriage from now on, wherever you go, whatever you do.” Which will be exactly nowhere, if he had anything to say in the matter.

“I’ve got my own chauffeur, thank you.” She dismissed him with a shake of her head and started toward the door.

“Yes, but yours isn’t armed, is he?”

She turned. “Of course not!”

“Nor is your carriage built to withstand a barrage of bullets.”

Her eyes went wide with horror. “You can’t mean that someone might really take the trouble to shoot at me in my carriage?”

“Like a sitting duck, Princess. I don’t mind taking a bullet for you, but I plan to make it as difficult for the assassin as possible.”

“Good heavens!” She held his gaze from under a fretted brow, took hold of his linen shirt cuff. “You’d take a bullet for me? Why?”

“As I’ve tried to tell you for the last hour, madam. That’s my job.”

She caught her lower lip with her teeth. “I don’t think I like the idea.”

“Then do as you’re told and we’ll both live long enough to see you crowned empress. You’re to speak
to no one of the threat against you. No one, do you understand? Not unless you clear it with me first.”

“But why?”

“My investigation must remain an absolute secret.”

“What will I tell my friends? With you driving me around in your carriage?”

He would have said,
You’re not going anywhere for the next three weeks, madam, so no one will see us together
, but she probably wasn’t quite ready to hear that yet.

“You’ll tell your friends nothing, Princess.”

“What about Lord Peverel? Shouldn’t he and my other ministers know something about your theory?”

“Not until I’ve had time to vet them all.”

“But the queen herself appointed him and the others as my privy council—”

He took hold of her upper arms, trying to make her understand. “Tell them nothing, Your Highness. Nothing. Not until I give the word. Promise me, Princess. Your life and the lives of so many others may depend on it.”

“Is this really—”

He raised her chin with his fingertip. “Promise me.”

She danced her blue gaze across his brow as he held her fast, finally settling on his eyes with a stubborn, but utterly reliable, “I promise.”

“Good.” Drew nodded and then released her.

“I keep my promises, by the way.” That lovely chin was in the air again.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Princess. Now, whether you like it or not, you and I will be together day and night until I’ve caught the person or persons who want you dead.” He picked up his own coat off the rack near the door. “Or until they succeed.”

“Succeed at wha—? Oh!” Her eyes widened. “You mean until they kill me!”

Drew couldn’t help his smile. “Now, wouldn’t that be a terrible waste of a beautiful, young princess.”

Little spots of pink bloomed on her cheeks. “You’re certainly treating my life lightly after all that blustering.”

“Not me, Princess.” He reached across the front of her and opened the door to the dim hallway beyond. “You’re the one who doesn’t seem to care.”

“Of course I care.”

“Then you’ll do as I say, whenever I say it.” He stepped into the corridor ahead of her, a habit that caused him to look both directions. “As to this particular moment, I plan to put you safely into my carriage and take you to your home, with or without your permission.”

The princess plainly bristled at his effrontery, then she set her teeth behind her lovely, lush mouth before pronouncing, “Then you’d best take me straight home, Lord Wexford.”

Instead of replying, he tucked her gloved hand inside the crook of his elbow and started toward the alley door, where Henry would be waiting with his own carriage.

She’d have to learn that when he said they would be together day and night, he meant close together. Near enough for him to put himself between her and a bullet if need be.

Of course, the real danger lay ahead, inside the walls of her own home, Grandauer Hall.

He had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t going to like the changes he’d made there.

Wouldn’t like them at all.