Texas Viscount (32 page)

      
At length, a cursing, reeling Zarenko, still in his cups from an all-night debauch, appeared at the door, threatening to take maid, bellman and his own valet and bash in their skulls if they were not silent at once. Josh noted the way Edmund carefully averted his face, hanging his head down to conceal his identity. Drunk as the Russian still was, Josh doubted that Nikolai would have recognized his own sister Natasha, much less a nonentity such as Whistledown.

      
A great flood of relief washed over Josh as he listened to them make their excuses and begin a whispering conversation as soon as the door slammed shut in their faces.

      
“That's him, Coz!”

      
“Yes, he does look like the fellow I saw with you in the park that day, although I doubt I'd have been certain without your confirmation. However, it is now time for you to take the train home and wait until I can straighten out this tangle.”

      
“This might be dangerous, and it's all my fault. I'm not leaving you,” Edmund said manfully.

      
“Don't be even more foolish than you've already been, Eddy. If you are arrested, they'll likely arrest me, too, for being with you. And then where shall either of us be?”

      
“B-but what can you do?”

      
“I shall wait for that odious drunkard to leave his quarters. Given his condition, I imagine I'll have time aplenty to change my clothing, eat a hearty luncheon and take a nap first,” she replied crisply. “Then I'll follow him and learn who the other conspirators are and what they are doing with whatever information you gave them.”

      
“I don't—”

      
His protest was cut short as they made their way toward the end of the hall and a hatchet-faced man in bell captain's livery stalked toward them, calling out, “I say, what are you about? Lollygagging while there's work to be done. You—” he jabbed a finger into Edmund's chest—“see to transporting Lady Landenham's portmanteau downstairs. It must weigh at least five stone. Harry cannot manage it without assistance. She's in 314. Get on it now,” he added impatiently when the young “bellman” hesitated.

      
“And you,” he said, turning to Sabrina when Edmund had moved off toward the servants' stairs, “you're needed to clean up the mess in the suite at the end of the hall. One of Madame Samsonov's servants requested assistance.”

      
“Assistance?” Sabrina echoed dubiously as her mind raced to find a way out of this tangle.

      
The cadaverous man towered over her as an expression of thunderous disapproval slashed across his downturned mouth. His breath reeked from rotten teeth. He spoke as if to a half-wit child, saying, “The lady was indisposed from overindulgence. The noisome mess will ruin a perfectly good Turkish carpet if it is not scooped up and scrubbed off immediately. Then there's the matter of the bed linens, as well,” he added with a sniff of disapproval. “Damned Russians.”

      
Sabrina paled. If it had been some poor soul genuinely ill, she would not have hesitated. But a drunkard...and that odious woman whom Josh had taken riding to boot! “I will rot in Hades before I lift a finger to—”

      
“You will do as you're told immediately or I will take you to Mr. Hasmettle and have you dismissed,” he interrupted, seizing her arm and jerking her toward Samsonov's suite.

      
Josh grinned as they approached the door, but then decided it would be best if he took a hand before both he and Sabrina lost track of dear Eddy. “Hey, there, you in the general's suit,” he called out to the bell captain in the loud tone of a nouveau-riche American. “I need that there little filly to help me unpack my duds.” He strutted up to Sabrina, who stared at him gape-jawed as she jerked her arm angrily free of her captor's grip.

      
The look in her eyes was murderous, but it was obvious to Josh she could not decide on whom to vent her fury as she looked from the protesting captain and then to her rescuer. Josh grabbed her other arm just as the bell captain let go, and whispered in her ear, “It's me or the puke, darlin', take your pick.”

      
“Please, sir, I'm certain you don't want this female. I was just about to dismiss her for impudence. I shall summon another maid. What is your room number?” the captain asked.

      
“This here filly will do right enough...if you take my meanin’.” He gave a lewd wink to the man and peeled a large banknote from the roll in his pocket.

      
The bell captain's eyes lit with greed as he seized the money, bowing obsequiously. “Very good, sir. Very good indeed.”

      
Josh grinned. “I sure hope she is!”

      
As the smirking bell captain bowed and scraped his way down the hall, Josh was left with a spitting-mad Sabrina. “Kiss me and make it look good,” he commanded, lowering his mouth to hers. He could feel the stiff resistance in her body as he claimed the kiss.

      
That avaricious lump of greed who called himself a bell captain watched for a moment, then slipped down the servants’ stairs. The instant she heard the door close, Sabrina stomped down with her heel on Josh's instep.

      
“Ow! Now, why'd you have to go and do that?” he asked, hopping around on his uninjured foot. “It's not time for my dance lessons yet.”

      
“What are you doing here, you...you lying, deceitful, conniving—”

      
“Whoa, now,” he interrupted her tirade. “It seems to me if anyone's been deceived, it's me—by your darlin’ Eddy. Not to mention my own uncle,” he added beneath his breath.

      
“You used me,” she burst out, suddenly realizing to her mortification that tears were stinging her eyes. She blinked them back as she went on the attack again. “You were never interested in me—just in entrapping poor, foolish Eddy!”

      
He dodged her little fist as she attempted to plant it with surprising; force in his stomach. ‘This isn't the time or place for this palaver. I can't afford for Zarenko to find me here.”

      
“I suppose that's the villain to whom my cousin delivered those documents,” she said, suddenly deflated. She was a fool to think even for one moment that a viscount would dally with a spinster teacher if he did not have an ulterior motive. She'd actually believed he found her desirable.
Fool, fool, fool!

      
“Dammit, Sabrina,” Josh said, placing her arm around his and starting for the stairs, “you're meddling in something that could get you killed.”

      
As opposed to breaking her heart. “I will not stand by and watch my cousin be imprisoned for something he was duped into doing. This Zarenko—”

      
“Would kill you or Whistledown quicker than a frog would swallow a fly. We have to find your cousin and take him—”

      
“Oh, no! You're not taking Edmund to be interrogated by your friends in the Foreign Office. I overheard what happened to the last fellow they had in their care!” she cried.

      
“I wondered why the two of you took off so sudden-like,” he mused as they began descending the steps.

      
Midway down, they encountered a young gentleman escorting an elderly lady in puce satin. Son and mother gaped at the obviously well-dressed man who held on to a mere chambermaid as if she were his wife. As they passed, the gray-haired lady muttered something about the impudence of servants, the moral decline of the upper classes, and whatever was the world coming to?

      
“I have to change clothes,” Sabrina whispered when they were out of sight. “That's where we'll find Eddy—but I'll cooperate only if you promise not to turn him over to the authorities before hearing us out.” Did she dare trust him? Sabrina had no idea, but she did have a choice. Once she and Edmund had their clothes back, they could slip away from Josh.

      
She needed time to think, to formulate a plan. At least they now knew the name of the Russian agent. Then another thought struck her. “I heard the earl mention that the mistress of a member of the royal family was involved in some assassination plot—it's Natasha Samsonov, isn't it?”

      
Josh sighed in capitulation. “You're smart as a tree full of owls, aren't you.” It was not a question. “That female is, if anything, even more dangerous than her brother, who, incidentally, is Nikolai Zarenko whose daddy owns a big chunk of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.”

      
They were at the bottom of the staircase and starting to draw curious looks before Josh realized he had to let go of her. The moment he did, she hissed, “I'm going to change clothes. I'll bring Edmund out to meet you as soon as we're ready to leave.”

      
Josh grinned. “Now, why don't I believe you?”

      
“Because you lied to me and judge others by your own standards,” she snapped back.

      
He let her go, watching the starchy way she walked across the lobby, like a queen shooing aside courtiers. There wasn't a man alive with the sense of half a brick who'd mistake her for a servant. If ever a woman acted to the manor born, it was Miss Sabrina Edgewater. But that didn't mean he could trust her to keep her word. Not when she was playing mother hen to her favorite chick, Eddy Whistledown.

      
Josh figured he had about five minutes to find the servants' rear entrance to the hotel.

* * * *

      
“Come on, Eddy, don't dawdle, else you'll have to worry about another sort of neckwear,” she scolded impatiently as he fussed with his cravat. “If we don't slip out the back door quickly, I'm certain the viscount will come searching for us,” Sabrina chided in frustration. Heavens above, she'd managed a whole row of buttons down her back in half the time! “Do you want to be turned over to the earl, who believes you've stolen secret documents and betrayed your country?”

      
“Of course n—” he protested as she practically dragged him from the small room and down the hall.

      
The sunlight was bright as they burst through the door into an alleyway strewn with refuse from vendors' produce carts. Edmund nearly slipped on a slimy, well-blackened banana peel as they looked around, getting their bearings. “I think we should go that way,” he said, pointing left.

      
“I think you oughta head my way,” Josh drawled conversationally as he emerged from behind a large wagon loaded with beef for the hotel kitchen. “What? Not glad to see me?” He shook his head in mocking reproof. “Sabbie, Sabbie, what am I going to do with you?” His eyes lit up devilishly at possible answers to the rhetorical question. “And here I saved you from having to clean up after Natasha. Drinking vodka like she does, I bet she can geyser up like Old Faithful.”

      
“You should know, my lord, being intimately acquainted with the toe dancer,” she snapped, then quickly scolded, “and as oafish and crude as ever.”

      
He grinned. “Did you expect a change in the five minutes since you last saw me? But I reckon more lessons might help.”

      
“I'm surprised you'd trust me to give them, or do you intend to come to my prison for instruction?” She arched one eyebrow and fixed him with a cold stare.

      
“I don't think you're a spy, darlin'. As for your cousin here, I'm not so all-fired sure.”

      
Looking as if he'd just swallowed a goldfish, Edmund stood frozen as he listened to their exchange, which was too intimate by half in spite of Sabrina's addressing the viscount properly The American certainly did not return the courtesy, an infraction for which he had seen her deliver many a set-down. Then he dared to glance at Sabrina and saw something soft and vulnerable flash in her eyes. But perhaps it was a trick of the light, for she blinked and it was gone.

      
Edmund tried to move protectively in front of her, braving the viscount's wrath as he protested, “I say, my lord, you can cast aspersions on me but not—”

      
Sabrina thwarted his grand speech by stepping forward and pushing him to the side. “I can handle this matter myself, Edmund.”

      
Stubbornly he moved in front of her once more. “As the man of—”

      
This time Sabrina held on to his arm with amazing strength as she stepped around him again, but before she could utter a word, Josh broke into laughter, saying, “You two got the makings of a good vaudeville act there.”

      
“Will you both stop this instant!” she practically shrieked, stamping her foot, which unfortunately landed in a pile of slimy lettuce. If Josh had not reached out and steadied her, she would have fallen.

      
“Easy,” he said gently as she jerked her arm angrily away.

      
Regaining control of her emotions, she said in a cool voice, “I was going to return, my lord, once I saw my cousin to safety. Edmund is not guilty. He, too, has been used quite shamefully.”