Lord of Fire (41 page)

Just then the doorbell rang.

“Ah, that will be von Dannecker. We’re going for a drive in
Hyde Park.” Caro set her teacup down, ran to the mirror that hung over the mantel, and pinched her cheeks to redden them with a girlish blush, then bustled out into the hallway as Mr. Hattersley opened the door.

Alice
followed her warily, curious to have a look at the man Caro had threatened could become Harry’s stepfather. Von Dannecker was a massive, towering man, maybe even taller than Lucien, and thicker-bodied, with shoulders like granite cliffs. Though his dark clothes were chosen with fashionable reserve,
Alice thought wryly that the rugged, weathered brute would have looked more at ease in chain mail. His overly muscular physique seemed to chafe against the severe cut of his tailcoat and the starchy discipline of his austere, white cravat.

“Karl!”

He dwarfed Caro as she sailed over and embraced him, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks, Continental fashion. He had a broad, square face with a wide forehead and a cleft chin; his straw-yellow hair was slicked back flat against his scalp, and he wore a monocle in his right eye.

His monocle suddenly fell, swinging down on its ribbon onto his chest, as he noticed
Alice leaning in the doorway of the parlor, while Caro continued fussing over him. When he met her gaze, something in his pale blue eyes made
Alice shrink back against the door frame with a faint shudder. He had a thin, cruel mouth; deep hollows under his eyes; and a slight oily gleam on his skin.

“Ah, Karl, that is my sister-in-law, Miss Montague.
Alice, this is Baron Karl von Dannecker,” Caro said proudly as she slipped her hand through the crook of his arm in a possessive gesture, quite shamelessly caressing his bulging biceps.

Alice
nodded to the man. He bowed to her, then looked up toward the stairs as Harry came climbing down them, holding onto each bar of the banister as he descended.

“Auntie! Come and see the kitties in the garden!” the boy cried.

“Coming, Harry! If you’ll excuse me.” She sketched a curtsy to the couple, then dashed past them, running up to assist Harry on the stairs. She grasped his hand. “You know you are not supposed to walk on the stairs without holding somebody’s hand, Harry.”

“I saw the kitties out the window. Nanny Peg said we could give them some milk because they’re strays.”

“Oh, Harry!” Caro called. “Come and greet Lord von Dannecker and give Mama a kiss good-bye.” Caro bent down, holding out her arms to the child, putting on a grand show for her lover of what a good mother she was.

Harry’s enthusiastic prattle stopped. He looked up dolefully at
Alice; she gave him an imperceptible nod. No child was well raised who did not respect his mother, even if the woman was a backstabbing harlot. He heaved a sigh and went dutifully to his mother.
Alice’s heart clenched at the ginger way he embraced the woman, as though he had been stringently taught never to rumple Mama’s hair or her gown.

“What a good boy you are,” Caro said, petting his head in a show of lavish affection. “Now give a bow to His Lordship.”

Harry barely came up to von Dannecker’s knee, but he turned to the man, put his hand on his middle and executed a gentlemanly little bow, then bolted back to Alice. She swung him up in her arms and held him, filled with a strange, protective instinct to shield the child from von Dannecker’s unfeeling stare.

There were only six days left until Guy Fawkes Night, and Claude Bardou’s preparations were moving along like clockwork. His gun crew had arrived, courtesy of the same Irish fishing boat that had smuggled him into
England. His men had brought with them the shiny, bronze-cast cannon—an eighteen-pounder—the well-stocked ammunition chest, and the portable stove for heating hot shot.

This city was going to burn,
he thought with a narrow smile. Going out the door with Lady Glenwood, however, he did not like the defiant way her young sister-in-law held his gaze as she picked up the child and braced him against her hip.

Though Miss Montague looked as delicate and demure as any young English gentlewoman, he read a strength of character in her wary blue eyes that gave him pause. Bardou turned away, shrugging off the odd sensation that the girl could somehow see through his charade as a Prussian nobleman.
Absurd.
Eager to escape her cool, blue stare, he escorted Lady Glenwood out to the
Stafford’s waiting carriage, which he had borrowed.

As soon as they were under way inside the carriage, Caro draped her arms around his neck and kissed him in a more sensual greeting. Bardou had never enjoyed kissing, but he played along willingly enough, for she was highly useful to him. Indeed, she would be the bait with which he would lure Knight away from
London on Guy Fawkes Night. Yet, he mused as he kissed her roughly, he sensed there were things Caro was not telling him about her relationship with Lucien Knight. Every time he had skirted the topic of her recent scandal with the Knight twins, she had danced away from the subject with her coy, irritating gaiety.

Bardou had not pressed her too hard because he had not wanted to turn her against him, but as he felt her falling increasingly under his power, he decided to ask again a bit more firmly. He ended the kiss and looked into her lust-glazed eyes. “My darling, you know I am wild for you,” he murmured. For a native Frenchman, it was no mean trick to speak English while feigning a Prussian accent.

“Oh, Karl,” she purred, running her hands all over his body. “I feel the same for you. You make me feel so alive!”

“You know that I am serious about you,
Carolina,” he said, stroking her. At the joy that lit her face, he almost felt a twinge of conscience.
What a fool she was.
“But if we are together,” he continued sternly, “I must know the substance behind this upsetting gossip about you that greets me everywhere I turn. I will not be made a laughingstock. I must know the truth about what happened between you and those blasted Knight brothers.”

She lowered her lashes.

“You almost married Damien Knight, did you not?”

“To me, it was only a flirtation, Karl.”

“Is that why you allowed the other one to use you?”

“Lucien Knight did not
use
me!” she retorted, indignation flaring in her eyes. “For your information, he was so desperate to have me that he betrayed his own brother, but I don’t mind saying that I quickly bored of him. He was quite hurt. Indeed, he is still furious at me, but what can I say? I lost interest.”

“Then, he is in love with you?” he asked, frustrated by the vague sense that she was lying to him. “I only ask in case I should expect trouble from him over you.”

She smiled and slipped her arms around him again. “Oh, Karl, how sweet! Would you really protect me from my jealous ex-lovers’ advances?”

It was then that he took a canny guess at the lie behind her sugary smile.
Of course.
She was still seeing Lucien Knight behind his back, probably still sleeping with him on the nights that Bardou wasn’t with her.

So, that was what she was hiding,
he mused.
Why, the bitch thought she was clever, dangling both men
. If Bardou really were von Dannecker, he would have been incensed, but instead he smiled through his guise, happy with his theory that she was still bedding his enemy. It meant that his plan would work perfectly.

“Would you really rescue me if I were a damsel in distress?” she teased, licking her lips in invitation. “Would you protect me, my big, fierce Viking?”

“With life and limb,” he vowed, scoffing inwardly at her ignorance. The Vikings had been Norsemen, not Germans.

“Mmm,” she murmured, pressing her body against him, kissing him again. His body hardened as she slid her hand down to his crotch, but a thought of Sophia trailed through his mind. She still had not returned, and he was beginning to wonder if his fiery Russian darling had run away.

She wouldn’t dare,
he assured himself. She had written him a note while en route, chasing Rollo Greene to Lucien Knight’s country house, and that was not the behavior of a woman who was about to defect. Nevertheless, that last, small corner of Bardou’s soul that still bothered to care about anyone had begun to worry that something had happened to her. There was no other woman like Sophia. She was the only one who had ever understood him, his dark needs. Then he scoffed at his own fearful imaginings. Sophia had always been more than able to take care of herself. He did not doubt that she had succeeded in killing the repulsive American; Sophia always got her man. He knew he could rest assured that she had done her job for him, and that was all that mattered, he thought impatiently.

With that, he put her out of his mind and brought Caro back to the Pulteney Hotel, where he took his enemy’s woman like a whore, forcing her to admit between his vengeful thrusts that he was a better lover than Lucien Knight. She did not dare say otherwise, but it pleased him nonetheless.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Cloaked in shadows, Lucien watched the glittering ballroom from the dim, high balcony, scanning the crowd below with the brooding patience of a predator stalking its prey. He could not believe that four days had passed. Four days of ceaseless searching and racking his brain to outwit Bardou, and now already it was Friday night. Tomorrow was Guy Fawkes, and he
still
had seen neither hide nor hair of his enemy.

Over the past half week, he had coordinated his defenses with both

Bardou was no gentleman, but he was probably arrogant enough to think that he could fool the ton for a while if he dressed in the right clothes. It was infuriating. He could feel him here, so close by, just out of sight. That peasant son of a bitch was no doubt laughing up his sleeve at Lucien’s desperate efforts to find him. Obviously, he was not going to show himself until he was entirely ready to begin.

Just then, a ripple of excitement moved through the ballroom below. Lucien saw all heads turn curiously toward the entrance; then his jaw dropped as a graceful beauty in white walked in, her chin high, a strand of pearls draped artfully over her strawberry-blond hair.

Alice
!

He stared, flabbergasted, transfixed.

What the hell is she doing here?
He couldn’t believe his eyes. Joy and panic crashed in on him from opposite directions. Oh, God, how he had missed her.
What the hell is she doing in
London?

Caro sidled into the ballroom beside her. The baroness was dressed in a tight black velvet dress, but
Alice commanded the room, poised, slender, and cool. With her airy evening gown of white silk wafting sensually against her skin, she was an aloof marble goddess who had just stepped down to life from atop her pedestal. She seemed an entirely different creature than the serious, shy young thing who had ventured into his library last week and had been so easily charmed by a bit of Donne poetry. Now she was a force to be reckoned with. She paused under the grand entrance, surveyed the ballroom with a lofty air of detachment, then glided forward into the ballroom.

Instantly, a swarm of men surrounded her and Caro, young bucks and dandies and uniformed officers clamoring for her attention, offering their eager gallantries. Seeing this, Lucien’s eyes blazed with rage.