The Perfect Princess (12 page)

The duke was right about Callie giving them a lead on Maitland, though it took Caspar some time to get the information out of her. She was so enraged at what she perceived as Maitland’s betrayal that she broke off at every other sentence to demolish his character. And, of course, she was full of self-recrimination. She was the one who should have been abducted, not Rosamund. It was all her fault.

If she was looking for sympathy from him, Caspar thought, she would be disappointed. Even as a child, Callie always had to be the center of attention, so much so that visitors to Castle Devere had often mistaken
her
for the duke’s daughter. Caspar had been impatient with her then, and he was impatient with her now. He didn’t want to know how she felt when Maitland took Rosamund hostage. He wanted to know about Rosamund. He wanted facts. He wanted to know how Maitland managed the escape and who else besides his bodyguard could have helped him. Finally, he got what he wanted. A name. Hugh Templar.

It was a name Caspar recognized. He’d met Major Templar, as he then was, at various receptions in Lisbon and Madrid.
The scholar-soldier they’
d called him because of his interest in Roman antiquities. Since then, their paths had crossed in London, and they’d exchanged the odd friendly word, but that was the extent of their acquaintance.

“I don’t know if they were friends,” said Callie, “so much as colleagues. They served with Wellington, you know, in Spain.”

“Many men served with Wellington,” Caspar said. “That doesn’t make them friends or mean that they keep up with each other after the war.”

“I’m aware of that. But they’ve been seen together. Maitland has been a guest of the Templars, here and at their place in Oxfordshire. There’s something else. Maitland’s bodyguard. Well, he was Templar’s coachman before he became Maitland’s bodyguard, and he was in Spain as well.”

“Who told you all this?”

“I can’t recall. Does it matter? It’s not a secret. I must have heard it at some ball or other. Anyway, they’re not friends now. Templar did not even come to Maitland’s trial. Oh, how I wish I had taken a leaf out of Templar’s book!”

“Yes,” Caspar said sharply, “so do we all wish it! Now tell me where I can find Mr. Templar.”

Templar’s house was in Berkeley Square, only a few minutes away from Callie’s house. The streets were quiet now, but there were still troopers patrolling on horseback. Caspar’s thoughts were preoccupied. He was thinking of Templar and Maitland. He knew next to nothing of Maitland, but from what he knew of Templar, he could not see him deserting a friend or fellow officer in his darkest hour.

So what was Templar up to? What was so important
that it had kept him away from Maitland’s trial? And how did Harper fit into it? The go-between? What?

His hopes of questioning Templar were dashed when he arrived at the house only to learn that Templar was not there. His master, the butler said, had taken his wife and young son to Staines to view the ruins of a Roman villa.

Caspar did not need a map to fix Staines’s position in relation to Chelsea. It was a small village on the Thames, on the way to Windsor.

“When was this?” Casper asked.

“Two days ago, your lordship.”

Two days ago, Richard Maitland had been found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang, and Templar had conveniently left town.

He smiled at the butler. “Mr.—?”

“Soames,” the butler supplied, startled.

“Why don’t we go inside, Mr. Soames, and you can tell me all about it?”

H
e said they were moving out, but they didn’t go very far. After loading the boat with two bulging saddlebags, he ordered her into the boat, then he rowed to the other side of the river, where he rested his oars under the dripping leaves of a weeping willow. And here they’d remained as the darkness closed in around them.

She’d considered her chances of escape if she jumped into the river, but she hadn’t liked the odds. For one thing, her hands were handcuffed, making it impossible for her to swim. For another, he’d given her Harper’s coat to wear and she was warm and dry. She hadn’t given up the idea of escape, only she preferred to make the attempt when she was on dry land.

His mood had turned ugly again, and they had hardly exchanged two words in she didn’t know how long. The silence was beginning to grate on her.

She cleared her throat. “What are we waiting for?”

“Harper, of course.”

She looked across the river but could see nothing. “How will he know we’re here?”

“He’ll know.”

She swallowed her next question. Of course Harper wouldn’t be able to see them in the dark. This must have been arranged beforehand. The boat had to have been there for a purpose. If something went wrong, they could slip away by boat.

This man overlooked nothing. Back at the cottage, he’d removed everything that might have betrayed their presence there. Her ruined shoe and popped buttons were now in one of his coat pockets. The picnic basket with the remains of their meal and her tattered clothes was now weighed down with stones and thrown into the river. She was beginning to see just how formidable a foe he would make.

If he was so formidable, how had he managed to bungle a murder? He was practically caught in the act. Caught, convicted, and sentenced to hang. So maybe he wasn’t so formidable after all.

On the other hand, he’d escaped from Newgate, hadn’t he? To her knowledge only one other convict had escaped from Newgate, and that was before she was born.

“Colonel Maitland—”

“Quiet!”

She pressed her lips together. If he didn’t want to talk, it didn’t matter to her. She was used to amusing herself with her own thoughts. Sometimes, she spoke to herself, even when she was hemmed in by a crowd of people. Not that anybody noticed. People didn’t talk
with
her, they talked
at
her. They weren’t interested in her replies, only in the fact that she was a duke’s daughter. If she’d been a mechanical doll, they wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

So, to entertain herself, she sometimes played a game. In her mind’s eye, she turned the people around her
into chess pieces, some of them her allies, and some her enemies who tried to check her as she made for the nearest exit.

It wasn’t chess, of course, but it appealed to her sense of whimsy. If chess pieces could talk, who knew what they would say? They might rant about always having to shuffle back and forth on the same old board, going through the same old motions, day in, day out. What if one of them were to rebel and make a dash for freedom?

With Maitland, it wasn’t a game. He’d really done it. She settled back and thought about it. Newgate. The Felons’ Quadrangle.

The turnkeys and prisoners and their visitors had to be pawns, and were cluttering up the center of the board. That wouldn’t last for long. The pawns were always the first to be sacrificed.

The real players were moving into position.

Maitland
. She toyed with the idea of making him the black king, but it just did not fit. In chess, the king was far too passive, always hiding behind a pawn or his bishop or his queen. Maitland would go on the attack. He had to be the most powerful piece on the board, and that was the queen. Harper could only be his right-hand man, his rook.

She was the prize Maitland wanted, the white king. Once he had her, the game would be over. He would have won. Her queen was supposed to protect her, but in this game her queen—and who was more aggressive than Callie?—hadn’t decided yet whose side she was on, and her rook, Mr. Proudie, had been taken out of play in the opening gambit. The only thing that stood between her and Maitland were her pawns.

The turnkey panicked them.
Prisoner has escaped! Lock up the prison!
Pawns were getting in each other’s way. Harper scattered them.
Up there
, he’d shouted.
He’s getting away
. And her pawns cleared the board.

Where was her bishop? Her knight? Where was Charles? He was in a corner with his hands in the air. And when her queen finally rallied, it was too late. Harper disabled her.

Nothing now stood between Maitland and her. Checkmate.

Then the shot rang out, and she toppled to the board.

The sequence was wrong. It hadn’t played out quite that way. There was something out of place. What? Where? How? It was coming to her.

“Damn!”

The boat rocked and she rocked with it.

“Damn!” he said again.

She looked at Maitland’s shadowy outline, then looked out across the river. There were no people to be seen but she could see their lanterns flickering as they climbed the path through the bushes to the cottage. Not Harper, then, for there would be only one lantern. These must be her rescuers, and among them could well be her own father and brothers. She drew in a breath to scream, but froze when she felt the cold barrel of his pistol pressed to her temple.

“Scream, and it will be the last breath you exhale.” His free hand closed around her throat and tightened. “And it will achieve nothing,
nothing
, do you understand? They can’t reach you. They have no boats. All I have to do is throw you in the river, and you’d drown within minutes. Is that what you want?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “No.” The hand around her throat slackened and she choked out, “But you don’t understand what my father must be going through.”

This was not the time to defy him. Fear and frustration were riding him hard, and he was more brutal than he meant to be. “I don’t care! Can’t you get it into your head that all I’m trying to do is survive? If I have to choose between you and me, I’ll choose myself every time. Remember that!”

He forced her down on her knees. “Facedown,” he told her.

She lay curled in a heap, her face pressed against one of the saddlebags. Her tears had dried. All she could think was how much she hated this man.

Richard didn’t have as high an opinion of his prowess as Rosamund did. As she huddled in the bottom of the boat, he silently cursed himself for his sheer incompetence. His first mistake was in abducting a duke’s daughter. His second mistake was in allowing Harper to talk him into keeping her for a little while longer. And his third mistake, he could blame on his parents. They were the ones who had raised him to treat all females with deference and respect no matter what the provocation. So now, he felt guilty for the way he had manhandled her.

But bloody hell! This woman was no shrinking violet. She could take care of herself. What they should have done was unhitch two of the duke’s high-spirited horses, ridden hell for leather to meet Hugh, and left Lady Rosamund Devere to her own devices. As for the hypothetical footpads Harper had mentioned, he wouldn’t like to be in their shoes if they tangled with Rosamund.

When he realized he was grinning, he let out a soft oath. This woman had addled his brains! He shouldn’t be admiring her, he should be concentrating on putting as much distance between himself and his pursuers as he possibly could. Things couldn’t be much worse. God only knew where Harper was; Hugh must be thinking the worst; and he wasn’t fit to row a boat.

Every time he drew on the oars, he could feel the pain in the left side of his chest. He could well be bleeding to death. And because he was on the point of collapse and couldn’t row worth a damn, he was letting the current take them downstream, in the opposite direction to where he wanted to go.

He had to get rid of the girl, but he had to do it so that he gave himself plenty of time to get away. He needed to dress his wound; he needed a horse; but more than anything, he needed to rest.

He beached the boat under an abandoned ferry dock, and they walked the short distance to the village of Kennington. Across the river, the lights of the city winked on and off. Kennington was in a rural area and boasted one main street, and one coaching inn, The Black Prince.

He examined her critically before they entered the inn, and he adjusted her hat for no good reason that she could see. Her hair was still tied back, and was now covered by Harper’s greatcoat.

They were to pass themselves off as brothers, Maitland told her, attorneys who had come into the area to act for one of their clients. That’s if anyone asked. But on no account was she to open her mouth. He would do all the talking, and just to get his point across, he put a gun to her ribs.