My Scandalous Viscount (23 page)

“You forgot to tell us your name!” Charles Vincent exclaimed as she fled for the door.

“Williams,” she said absently, seizing the first name that popped into her head. “I am Mrs. Williams.”

There had to be a hundred Mrs. Williamses in a five-mile radius of here. It wasn’t as though she could say she was Lady Beauchamp. One hand on the door, she bade them farewell with a nod, then rushed out and sped to the edge of the street, flagging down a hackney.

She had to tell her husband what she had learned. Beau was going to have an apoplectic fit, but her information was dire enough to warrant the battle that this was going to lead to.

She had to warn him. He’d know what to do.

“Faster!” she shouted to the hackney driver, then she angrily told him through the window that she would pay him extra if he would gallop his horses all the way there.

At last, he brought her to her home. She jumped out and gave him a handful of gold coins, her hands shaking with her terror at her discoveries. A moment later, she burst through the front door of her own home.

Vickers, their butler, nearly jumped out of his skin. “My lady! What on earth—”

“Where is my husband? Quickly! Fetch him now!”

“His Lordship is not here,” the flustered man replied.

“Where is he? I must speak to him at once!”

“My lady, what on earth are you doing back in London?”

She ignored him. “Beauchamp?” she hollered up the stairs. “Where is he?”

“My lady, with all due respect, I’m sure you should be in the country. There is serious business afoot—”

“Dashed right there is, and I think I’ve found out who’s behind it. I have to see him!”

“Madam, I must strongly recommend you wait here for His Lordship to return.”

“There’s no time!” She waved him off, shaking her head. “Just tell me where he’s gone, Vickers. Has something happened? Is something wrong?”

Vickers clasped his hands behind him and fixed her with a quelling stare.

She lost her temper. “If you do not at least tell me where my husband is, I’ll have you sacked!”

His chin came up a notch, but he looked down his nose. “My lady, I have been with His Lordship’s family for twenty-five years. I have not risen from errand boy to my current post by disregarding my master’s instructions. You might like to follow suit, with respect,” he added with a supercilious bow.

“Well, I never!” Carissa reached into her reticule and pulled out the pistol. She aimed it at him. “Talk.”

“Good heavens, Madam!”

“I assure you, I do not wish to shoot you, Vickers. Head servants of your quality are extremely hard to find. But you must tell me where Lord Beauchamp has gone! I have learned the most alarming information directly concerning my husband and his more, er, mysterious pursuits,” she said obliquely, though she was sure the loyal butler must know his master was a spy.

“Answer me!” she insisted just as there came a knock at the door.

They both looked over.

She narrowed her eyes. “No tricks. Go on, you may answer it,” she muttered, waving the pistol toward the door and feeling like a proper highwaywoman.

Vickers was one cool customer. With his usual gravity, he marched over to the front door and peered out the sidelight window.

No one looking at him ever would have guessed he had a weapon aimed at him as he answered the door, though in fairness, he probably was very sure she had neither the will nor the ability to shoot him.

“May I help you?” he asked their caller.

“Sir, my master, Hans Schweiber, the gunsmith, sent me over. He said Lord Beauchamp wished to speak to me.”

“Yes. Do come in.”
And never mind the crazy woman waving a pistol,
his droll stare seemed to add as he widened the door.

A lanky, freckled lad of about nineteen stepped in, hat in hand. “Gor!” he exclaimed when he saw the armed viscountess waiting in the entrance hall.

“I’m sorry about this, but it can’t be helped,” she said.

“I-I can come back later,” the boy started.

“No,” Vickers interjected. “Lord Beauchamp is waiting for you, young man. Michael, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He is not yet back, but he wished for you to go and find him. Please do so without delay. You have important information for His Lordship, I believe?”

“As do I!” Carissa cried indignantly. “This stranger is allowed to see my husband, but I’m not?”

Michael sent her a puzzled glance, then looked at the butler again. “Where shall I go to him, sir?”

“Yes, do tell!”

“I am telling this lad, my lady. Not you—with respect. I humbly beg your pardon and hope you will understand.”

“I understand you’re a bounder,” she muttered. But she stepped closer to try to hear what the butler said as he leaned toward the lad and murmured in his ear.

The gunsmith’s apprentice nodded and turned back to the door. “Very well, sir. Good day, milady.”

“Wait!” She dashed after him. “I’m coming with you!”

“My lady!” Vickers started, but she backed him off with her pistol.

“Stay out of this, you! Don’t worry, I’ll let your master know you tried to head me off.” With that, she ran out after Michael, who was climbing into his heavy delivery wagon. “Where are we going?” she asked as she jumped up onto the driver’s seat beside him.

“We?” He furrowed his brow and looked at her as if she were insane.

“You can tell me. I’m his wife, I’m Lady Beauchamp!”

“Er, the London docks, milady.”

“The docks! Of course!” she whispered to herself. Max and the other Order husbands must have arrived!

This was excellent news. Beau would get some help. As long as Nick did not go trying to shoot anybody within the next hour or so. “Well, let’s go, then!”

“I’m going,” he mumbled.

She put the pistol back in her reticule as they lumbered off. “Can’t you drive any faster?” she exclaimed.

But this was a foolish question for any lad of nineteen. The apprentice looked askance at her with a lively twinkle in his eyes. “Aye, ma’am. I was trying to be polite.”

Lord, males and their chivalry. “Don’t be! Just drive!”

“Hold on, then.”

She did. He cracked the whip, and his powerful carthorses lunged against their harness.

“That’s more like it!” she cried heartily, not caring who turned to look. She held on to her seat as the cart went rattling over the cobbled street.

They made a beeline for the docks.

Chapter 24

T
he wind picked up as Carissa and Schweiber’s apprentice neared the open breadth of the river. The London docks bustled with activity. The Thames bristled with countless masts. Fishing boats trawled the current, and watermen ferried people back and forth to the south bank.

Unfortunately the street was clogged with so much traffic around the fish market that the gunsmith’s wagon barely progressed at a crawl.

“Come on, people, move out of the way,” Carissa muttered under her breath. “Did our butler tell you why my husband came down to the docks?” she asked, as they inched along through the mob.

“No, ma’am, only where I was to go to.”

“So much traffic! Are they having a sale at the fish market, for heaven’s sake?”

“I think they’ve blocked off the road ahead.”

He was right. Leaning forward, Carissa saw some soldiers directing carriages away from a section of the docks.
Oh, no,
she thought.

“I wonder what’s happening,” Michael said.

Then she felt her heart lurch in her chest as she spotted Ezra Green crossing the empty space that the soldiers had cleared. He was marching toward the water.

As their cart neared the cordon where they’d be forced to turn, she had a fairly good view of what was going on from the height of the carriage seat.

There was some sort of a row going on down at the river’s edge. Ezra Green was shouting at more soldiers he had brought, waving them on ahead of him . . .

Toward her husband.

She spotted Beau standing on the dock near a moored schooner, his coat and blond hair blowing in the wind. He turned to face the approaching soldiers, roaring at them to stand down. She drew in her breath, aghast, as a dozen soldiers of the King aimed their weapons at him. Beau, in turn, was trying to protect the small group of people who had apparently just arrived on the boat.

Lord Rotherstone, the Duke of Warrington, Lord Falconridge, and another man and woman she didn’t know. “Stop the carriage!”

“But, ma’am, they want me to keep moving.”

“I don’t care! Look!” She pointed.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Rotherstone bellowed as the soldiers closed in.

The Duke of Warrington was more a man of action, however, and pushed two of the King’s men into the water, one with an elbow, the other with a well-aimed kick.

“Seize them!”

Carissa stared with her heart in her throat as the scene on the narrow wooden pier turned to barely controlled chaos. The soldiers went after Warrington first.

Beau yelled at his friends to cooperate. She did not know the young woman who had come ashore with the men—or why she was wearing trousers—but when the soldiers tried to lay hold of the black-haired man beside her (the infamous Drake? Carissa wondered), the girl whipped a bow and arrow off her back and smoothly took aim at the oncoming guards. “Don’t you touch him!”

“Emily, no!” Jordan yelled. “They’ll shoot you where you stand! Hold your fire!” he bellowed at the soldiers, holding up his hand.

The fierce girl’s devotion to her man inspired Carissa, jolting her out of her own shocked inaction. Before she quite had any sort of plan, she jumped down from the gunsmith’s cart and strode toward the docks.

“Milady, come back!” Michael pleaded.

She ignored him. Pushing through the crowd, she noted she was not the only one who had stopped to watch the standoff unfolding. Many onlookers had also stopped to gawk.
So much for avoiding scandals,
she thought.

Unfortunately, she was shorter than most of the big, sweaty roustabouts and wharf workers gathering to watch.

“Excuse me! Let me through!” She had to shove her way to the front of the rugged crowd, then she had to sneak past the soldiers keeping them under control.

But when she saw Ezra Green joining the soldiers on the dock—only after they had got the Order agents safely surrounded—she realized he would likely have them shot if they tried to escape.

Besides, knowing her friends’ husbands, they would certainly refuse to flee even if they had the chance. They were not the fleeing sort.

“Explain yourself, by God, sir!” Beau cried in fury as Green walked through the crowd of soldiers.

“
You
explain yourself, Lord Beauchamp! You were supposed to inform me as soon as you heard from them, but I had to find out from one of my men here. Did you think you all could slip away?”

“We don’t run from fights,” Lord Rotherstone informed him. “What’s all this about?”

Mr. Green took out a scroll and unrolled it in front of the agents. “Your Grace; my lords; Miss,” he said with a sneer at the pretty young woman, “I’m placing you under arrest in the name of the King.”

“This is madness!” Beau exploded.

“On what charges?” Warrington demanded.

Green gloated while the soldiers held the agents at bay. “I am happy to answer that for you, Your Grace.” He looked around at them, relishing his moment. “You all have been charged with seventy counts of murder.”

Carissa nearly fainted hearing that. Seventy counts!

“We know about Bavaria,” Green added. “You had to know there would be hell to pay. Or did you all think you’d get away with everything, as usual?”

The black-haired man stepped forward. “Take me. Let them go. It was all my doing—”

“Drake, no!” the girl cried.

He ignored her. “Do you want my confession? Very well. I did it; I acted alone. They tried to stop me—”

“He’s lying! It was me! I did it. It’s true. I’m the one who killed those filthy traitors, and I’m not sorry!” Emily cried in fury, a note of panic in her voice. “They were in the cave. I shot the flaming arrow. It was I who made the firedamp explode.”

“On my orders!” Drake insisted, while Beau pleaded with all of them to shut up, to no avail.

“That’s nonsense, it was all my idea,” Warrington informed Green’s men, taking the lead, as he was wont to do.

Carissa saw the grim glance Rotherstone and Falconridge exchanged, some silent communication passing between them.

“We are all responsible,” Jordan declared.

“He’s right. You either arrest all of us,” Max declared, “or get out of our way.”

“Why, that is an easy decision,” Ezra Green replied. “Men!”

“No, let them go! It was me!” The girl, Emily, stepped forward and offered them her wrists.

Green merely looked amused by her plea. With a smirk, he nodded for his troops. When a soldier stepped forward and clapped the girl in manacles, Drake went slightly mad.

He lunged at the soldier, shoving his musket skyward to step in and punch him in the face.

“Arrest them all, now!” Green thundered, as Drake sent the man flying into the Thames.

Pandemonium broke out all around poor Emily. Carissa watched with a pang of sympathy. She could have told the girl her selfless offer was in vain. Even if her claim were true, it was not some odd girl in trousers that they wanted. Because of what she had learned, Carissa now understood this whole charade was aimed at one grand goal: Destroying the Order for once and for all.

Green seemed close to accomplishing his quest as the agents made the choice to stop fighting and let themselves be taken. It appeared their view was that if one was going to be taken, they all would go.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” Lord Rotherstone informed Green as he, too, was clapped in manacles before hundreds of watching Londoners.

Carissa was glad Daphne wasn’t here to see it, or the other two women, as their husbands were likewise placed under arrest. At last, even Drake was subdued. “You’re going to pay for this,” he spat at Green.

“Is that a threat, Lord Westwood?”

“Drake, please,” Emily murmured. He kept his mouth shut, but cast her a rather desperate look as they put the shackles on him.
Hadn’t he been a prisoner of the Prometheans for months?
Carissa recalled. No wonder he looked so wild-eyed at the prospect of being put back in a cell.

“It’s all right,” Emily assured him as though she were soothing a wild animal.

The only one left with his liberty was Beau. “I’ll get you out of this,” he swore to his friends.

“No, you won’t, Lord Beauchamp. If you are wise, you will continue to cooperate.”

“God, Beauchamp, what else have you told them?” Jordan exclaimed.

“I didn’t—” Beau started to answer in frustration, but he silenced himself as they started leading the others away. “Just—trust me.”

“We do,” Max murmured, giving him a communicative nod.

“Take them to the Tower!” Green ordered.

“The Tower?” Warrington uttered in outrage.

“That’s right, Your Grace. A place reserved for traitors.”

“Damn you, I’ve been serving this country since I was seventeen—”

“Enough, Rohan. He’s not worth it,” Max clipped out. “Beauchamp will get all this sorted soon.”

Beau walked alongside his friends as the soldiers escorted them toward waiting prison coaches. He had not yet noticed her. “Don’t worry,” he was saying to them, “I shall go directly to the Regent. I promise you, this will not stand.”

“The Regent?” Green gave him a quizzical look. “Who do you think signed the arrest warrant? The Home Office has not the authority to take such highborn warriors into custody, my lord.”

Carissa stared, horrified.
The Regent already knew of this?
But the prince was the final authority. Their last hope.

“Beau, get Mara to talk to him! They’re good friends. She’ll find out what’s really going on,” Jordan called in a dark tone before they shoved him into the coach with the others.

Beau stopped Green as he was walking away, seizing him by his coat. He threw him up against the prison carriage.

Carissa took that as her queue. She rushed toward him to restrain her husband’s fury before they saw fit to arrest him, too.

Of course, that seemed unlikely; she got the feeling that Green somehow needed Beauchamp free. Perhaps it made his claims seem more credible, if he could paint Beau as certifying the alleged crimes of the other agents.

Did he have some way to back him into a corner? Was that how Nick came in?

“The Regent would never agree to this,” Beau was snarling in Green’s face as he pinned him against the carriage. Green merely held up the paper and showed him the signature with the royal seal. Beau glanced at it through narrowed eyes. “Then you manipulated him somehow.”

“I, sir? Never, surely. Though I do hear it is rather easy to manipulate someone who’s out of funds.”

He slammed him again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Green winced. “Why don’t you ask your friend, Lord Forrester?”

Beau went stock-still. “You . . . ?”

“What?” he asked innocently.

Carissa stepped closer, her heart pounding. Beau’s back was to her, but she could just make out their furious exchange. “What do you know about Nick?” Beau demanded.

“You’d better take your hands off me before I have you shot. I know you all are trained killers, but you answer to me now, Lord Beauchamp. Don’t forget it. Unless you want something unfortunate to happen to your friends while they’re in prison.”

Beau was seething. “Tell me, Green. When did you join the Prometheans?”

He laughed. “I don’t need such bedtime stories to know the Order has outlived its usefulness, my lord—along with most of the institutions your kind hold so dear.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Wait a few years. You’ll see. For now, heed me well. There is a new England coming, and those of us birthing it are going to make an example of your fine friends, so that everyone may see that from now on, even the highborn must answer to the law. Not your wealth, your rank, your guns, not even the Crown you’ve so foolishly served all your life can save you from the coming change.” He glanced around at Beau and his fellows in scorn. “You’re a relic. Now take your hands off me.”

Beau seemed so stunned by his words that he let him go. Green cast him a smug look, righted his coat, and walked away. He climbed up onto one of the prison carriages. As it started to roll away, Green noticed her.

Carissa found herself looking into the eyes of a traitor. She shrank back when Green tipped his hat to her in mock politeness. “Lady Beauchamp,” he said, as his coach drove off.

Hearing her name, Beau spun around and saw her standing there.

His jaw dropped. Motionless, he stared at her as though she had just stabbed him in the heart.

“What are you doing here?” Then he shook his head at her with an icy look. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t have time for this.”

“Beau, wait!” she cried, as he brushed past her.

“Go home,” he said, crisply enunciating the words as he walked away from her.

Her very heart shriveled within her. But she had to tell him what she had found out. She started after him as the gunsmith’s apprentice came pushing toward him through the crowd. “My lord!”

Carissa was jostled this way and that by the throng while the two conferred ahead.

When she cleared a knot of giant roustabouts, she saw Beau marching toward his own coach, with Michael hurrying beside him. “Husband! I need to speak to you!” she yelled after him.

But he didn’t even listen. He climbed up into his coach, pausing only to send her a cold, reproachful glare over his shoulder—a wordless reminder that his sending her to the country had been a test—which she had failed. Michael jumped up onto the carriage. Then Beau threw the brake and drove off without even giving her a chance to speak.

Stubborn male!
She knew he was angry about a thousand things—understandably so—and no doubt her arrival at that precise moment was the worst thing she could have added to his burden. But, blast it, the time had come to show him what she was really made of.

Her jaw set with determination, she rushed back to the gunsmith’s abandoned delivery cart and commandeered it. The apprentice probably intended to come and get it later, but she would save him the trouble.

Because she was bloody well following them.

“Out of my way!” she hollered at the fishmongers and wharf workers milling about in the road.