The Bargain (29 page)

Alan found he was grinding his teeth and stopped. How was he to guarantee a lack of visitations when this new “haunting” seemed to be managed by spirits indeed, he thought. Wires materialized across staircases; noxious smells wafted from corners; bloodcurdling shrieks plagued the night. The culprits were in the house, he had concluded. No one except trusted servants was getting in or out; he was sure of that. Yet they had searched the place from top to bottom and found nothing conclusive. They had exposed every hiding place the actors had used without result. It was frustrating, maddening.

At least Ariel was safely away from this now. She had sworn she wouldn't set foot in the place, and he could think of her sitting calmly in her own front parlor, out of danger, perhaps sewing. Alan grinned at his own imaginings. More likely she was pacing the floor and cursing. But she was safe. As always, when he thought of her, his pulse accelerated. It was damnable that he should spend the first days of his marriage trapped with Prinny in Carlton House, but when he had mentioned this fact to the prince, the only response was, “Married? My dear boy, how could you make such a disastrous mistake? Marriage is pure hell.”

The prince's might be, Alan thought grimly. But if he ever got the chance…

“My lord?”

He turned to find one of the guards under his unwanted command. “Just wanted to let you know,” the man added. “It's probably nothing, but we seem to have a footman missing.”

“Missing?”

“They're still looking. And he could have taken to his heels.”

Several servants had simply fled in the last few days, unnerved by the barrage of malicious pranks. “Let me know,” he said curtly.

The man nodded and went out. After a moment, Alan followed to check on his other arrangements.

***

The prince's cronies began arriving at seven. Watching them assemble in the room that had been set up for their card party—with enough bottles to stock a pub—Alan thought that if you removed the trappings surrounding these aging men, they would resemble nothing so much as the drunkards one saw lying in the gutters. The prince did have friends who were intelligent and more moderate in their habits, he acknowledged to himself—his own father insisted that the monarch was a fascinating conversationalist when he wished to be—but those friends were not here tonight. These were the gamesters, the libertines, and worse, who gave the prince's subjects such a distaste for him at times. And listening to the joke one of them was telling, Alan could only share that sentiment. His longing to return to his own life swept over him so strongly that he had to clench his fists.

The guests gradually settled in their chairs, and the cards were dealt. Servants were kept busy refilling glasses and fetching various small articles that were called for. The air grew smoky and close. Alan was fighting an uncomfortable combination of mind-numbing boredom and wild impatience when one of his men beckoned urgently from the far doorway. Instantly alert, he made his way around the perimeter of the room, praying for action and for a chance to end this cursed vigil once and for all.

In the next room he found several of his men standing in a loose circle around his brother Robert, who looked as if he had been crawling through a coal bin. This extreme departure from Robert's customary dapperness left him speechless for a moment.

“They've got Flora and Ariel,” Robert said, moving toward him with a slight stagger. “We have to find them.”

Alan felt apprehension shudder through him in a breath, as if a giant hand had grasped his heart and squeezed. “Who has her? Where?” he demanded.

“These villains. Here in Carlton House.” He stumbled again. “The devil! They tied my legs so tight I can scarcely feel my feet.”

Alan looked sharply at one of his men.

“We were patrolling the house,” he reported, “and we heard noises from below. We found him in the coal cellar, trussed up like a Christmas goose.”

Robert glared at him, and then seemed to notice the state of his clothes for the first time. He groaned aloud.

“No one else?” asked Alan.

The man shook his head. “A few footprints in the coal dust—smeared.”

Alan turned back to his brother, who was holding his head as if it ached. “What the devil are you playing at?”

“Flora said we had to come,” he answered. “Practically the crack of dawn…”

“To Carlton House?” Alan's voice was grim.

“To find Ariel. And then they said she was here. Told her we should wait till she returned, but Flora was…” He made a gesture. “Not like herself at all.”

All of Alan's muscles had tightened. “Why?”

“I don't know!” protested Robert. “They wouldn't tell me, damn them.”

Making a heroic effort, Alan managed to refrain from trying to shake sense into his brother. Pulling him to a chair, he sat down opposite and put his elbows on his knees to lean close. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he ordered.

“Flora was dead set on visiting Ariel,” he replied.

Alan nearly told him that he didn't care a whit about Flora, or what she wanted, but he held his tongue. All of his faculties were occupied in controlling the unfamiliar roil of emotion inside him. What if something had happened to Ariel? a frantic voice kept demanding. He wanted to race to her rescue, to annihilate her enemies, to howl like an animal.

“They had their heads together for half an hour or so,” added his brother. “And then they said they had to find you. Matter of great urgency and all that, but they wouldn't say what,” he complained.

Alan heard an odd sort of sound issue from his own throat.

“If you think I could have kept them from it, you're dead wrong,” responded his brother.

“And so,” prompted Alan, ignoring this.

“The footman didn't want to let us in,” said Robert a bit disjointedly.

Alan looked up. “The missing footman?” he asked one of the men.

“Most likely, my lord.”

“And you still haven't found him?”

The other shook his head.

Alan knew that he couldn't sit still much longer. “What then?” he asked Robert.

“We went looking for you, and when I came around a corner, something hit me, and I woke up on a pile of coal.” He flexed his legs and seemed to find them restored. “They must have served Flora and Ariel the same trick. We must find them.”

Alan was already standing. “Get the men together,” he told one of them.

“Even the ones who are…?”

“All of them.” Let the prince go hang, thought Alan.

The man left to do his bidding. Robert walked back and forth across the room, testing his balance. Alan beckoned to one of the other guards. “We have to comb every inch—” he was saying when there was a shout from the room behind him and the sound of breaking glass.

Cursing, Alan ran back to the prince's gathering. A chair had been overturned, and two of the players were standing. All of them were staring toward the far corner of the room, where a slender young man stood holding a pistol.

There was no way he could have gotten in, Alan thought. Yet there he was—a handsome lad of about sixteen in drab clothes, with eyes that burned like hot coals.

He moved slightly left, sighting the pistol as if he had found his target. Alan had a moment's fear that he was going to shoot the prince. And then he fired and put a bullet, and then another, into Lord Royalton's chest.

There was a frozen moment when blood spurted, men gasped or whimpered, and then everyone moved at once.

All of the card players except the regent fell to the floor. The guards came pouring through the rear doorway. Surprising Alan, the prince knelt next to Royalton and sought to assist him. Alan himself dived for the intruder. But the youth had already cast the pistol aside and lunged through the doorway at his back—where there ought to be a guard, Alan thought as he raced after him. No doubt he was sharing quarters with the lost footman. But he didn't care greatly about either of them. The only thing that mattered was catching this intruder who was his best hope of finding Ariel.

At last he could move, do something. Fear and fury pounded in him in equal parts as he ran. What if they had hurt her? kept beating in his brain as he went. These were murderers. What if she was…? But he couldn't tolerate that thought. It made him want to rip the world apart and throw the fragments to the winds. He couldn't face life without her. The idea was irrational, insane, but he had never uncovered a fact more true.

The boy ran like a frightened deer. When a pair of servants appeared ahead of him, he ducked and wove from their reaching arms, startling them at the last moment with a shriek like a steam whistle. The prince's servants were jumpy at best, Alan thought, as the two hesitated and lost their chance to capture him. He pounded on, aware of steps behind him now but caring only for his quarry.

***

The boy knew the house intimately. He was taking a route that avoided the more populated areas and any dead ends. But he couldn't hope to escape, Alan thought. He must have known that wasn't possible when he took up the pistol.

He was gaining on him. Triumphant, Alan pushed harder. He told himself that he was running toward Ariel, and away from all that had bedeviled him at Carlton House for the past weeks. The need for her beat in him like a score of hammers. He would find her; she would be all right. And by God, he would never let her out of his sight again.

The boy came up to the turn of a corridor and skidded around it. But that slight slowing was enough for Alan, who lunged and caught hold of his arm, bringing him down with a crash and falling half on top of him.

Alan sat up at once, and was surrounded by a group of his men, as well as Robert, he saw with some surprise. They all looked to the captive, who still lay on the floor struggling for breath. He had knocked the wind out of him, Alan saw, resisting the impulse to lift him bodily and try to throttle information out of him.

At last the youngster drew a shuddering breath. He jerked his arm, but did not get free.

“Where are the women you imprisoned?” demanded Alan.

“Go to hell,” muttered the boy.

Alan grasped his other arm and jerked him up so that they faced each other. “Tell me, or I'll…” But the gaze he met was so blank, so filled with the expectation of pain and loss, that he couldn't finish the threat. “One of them is my wife,” he said instead. “I am extremely… worried about her.” As the boy's eyes showed a flicker, Alan marveled at the inadequacy of words. Of course he had been worried before in his life—“worried” was a good description of the moderate anxiety he had felt on occasion. It was ludicrous when applied to the emotion that pervaded his body and soul now.

“What have you done to Flora Jennings?” asked Robert, pushing forward. “If you have hurt her…”

“We wouldn't do nothing to her,” the youngster mumbled. “If she hadn't come to blow the gaff on us, we wouldn't've had to tie her.” He raised his head suddenly and sat straighter. “But I don't care about nothing now. You can do what you like to me. I killed him.” He heaved a sigh, then as suddenly looked anxious. “I did kill him, din't I?”

Alan nodded.

“Huh.” He looked satisfied and, oddly, vindicated.

“Show us where the women are,” commanded Alan.

“Will you let me go if I do?” was the cunning reply.

“No.”

The youngster glanced at Alan, then shrugged. “We never meant nothing to happen to them,” he repeated and started to struggle to his feet.

He led them back toward the servants' wing, and then down into the basements. They passed well-stocked storerooms and a magnificent wine cellar and finally came up to a blank brick wall. “If you are playing some trick…” began Alan.

For the first time, the boy grinned. Stepping forward in the dim light of the lanterns they had been forced to light, he took hold of what appeared to be a piece of wall and opened it like a door. “It's fake, see?”

One of the men held up his lantern, illuminating a continuation of the cellars behind this panel.

“This is where you have been hiding, you and your friends?” said Alan.

He grinned again. “They're long gone. You'll never find them. We drew lots, and I won.”

Or lost, thought Alan, for the boy would surely hang for Royalton's murder. “Show us,” he said gruffly.

***

There were rats, Ariel thought nervously. She was sure she had felt one against her ankle, and though the sensation had stopped as soon as she wriggled, the idea filled her with revulsion. Her arms ached, too, nearly as fiercely as her head. She had steadfastly refused to give way to fear, but it was getting more and more difficult. What was happening upstairs? she wondered. Had the plot to kill Royalton succeeded? And far more important, had Alan gotten in the way? The possibility made her whole body shudder with fear and the need to do something to help.

She heard voices. A sliver of light showed, revealing the position of a narrow door to her prison. She debated whether to call out. Was this rescue, or merely her captors returned? And then the door creaked open and her eyes were dazzled by lantern light.

“Ariel!” exclaimed a hoarse voice.

“Alan,” she cried. “Thank God you're all right.”

“I?”

Her eyes adjusting, Ariel saw her husband gazing down at her. But it was not exactly her husband. The calm, rational man she knew so well was not there. Alan's teeth were bared; his blue eyes blazed. His coat was torn, and his hair disheveled. He looked like a completely different person.

A young man next to him suddenly jerked and pulled away. Alan reacted with lightning swiftness, catching his wrist.

Then Ariel heard Lord Robert's voice. “We ain't through with you yet. There's still Miss Jennings to be found.”

A clatter of footsteps followed, and she was alone with Alan.