Virtue's Reward (26 page)

“I’m afraid so.”

“But the landlord thought she had gone to be a lady’s maid.”

“So did she, no doubt.”

Helena took up the list of names and studied it again. “Then what are these figures here?”

“Their ages, I’m afraid.”

She looked up into the shadowed gaze. There was nothing there now but a great sadness and compassion.

“But some of them were just children,” she said. “As young as twelve. Oh, Richard! No wonder you have tried to stop it! Why on earth didn’t you tell me before? Is this why you went to Paris?”

“Yes, and why I stayed on there after the war. Dagonet and I heard by accident about the English girls and went to investigate. I hired men to watch the place. Some victims were saved when I purchased their freedom outright. A few are now otherwise employed in London, thank God, and a couple restored to their families. I created other problems, too. Madame Relet was forced to move to slightly less advantageous premises. But she is right. She could take my money to buy more girls and she laughed at me for my pains. I’ve been essentially ineffective, because there’s nothing unlawful about this trade. A girl of twelve can legally consent to employment.”

Helena leaped up and began pacing. She felt sick.

“Without knowing, of course, to what she was consenting. And then to be trapped in a foreign country? It’s monstrous! Why on earth did you keep this from me?”

“It’s not an area of human endeavor that gentlemen usually discuss with their wives.”

“You thought I would have the vapors, or refuse to allow you back into the drawing room?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said slowly. “Perhaps I did. I should have known better. My fearless, sensible Helena!”

“For heaven’s sake, Richard, they are children! I suppose there are such places in London, too?”

Richard nodded. “But at least when desperate, the girls have a chance if they run away. In Paris, with no money and no knowledge of the language, they are helpless, and Garthwood has been enticing them there with false promises.”

“Like little Penny? If it’s not illegal, it should be. The law must be changed.”

“I have been endeavoring to bring my father to that view. But as you may have surmised for yourself, the earl is of the old school. ‘
Laissez-faire
’ is his motto. He sees no role for government in righting social ills. And I shan’t have enough influence myself until I inherit the title, which could be thirty years or more.”

“No wonder there is bad blood between you! What can we do?”

Suddenly Richard grinned. “Fortunately, Mr. Garthwood wasn’t content with the profit to be made in gold from Madame Relet. He has turned that money into brandy and brought it into England without paying duty, and that is most definitely against the law. We can call the customs men, of course. Not only are there casks in the cellar, but there’s enough proof here to put your cousin out of circulation.”

Helena helped him to gather together the necessary papers and replace the others. She was thinking furiously. Madame Relet’s letter made clear what she had long ago surmised: only Harry had the motivation to try to murder Richard. Garthwood might be a villain, but in spite of the smuggling and Richard’s attempts to save some of the girls in Paris, he had no cause to harm the viscount.

In which case, unless Harry was involved, that still left the attempts on Richard’s life unexplained—as was Harry’s friendship with Garthwood. Yet Richard had ignored that and would continue to ignore it. He had pursued Garthwood and done what he could to save the girls in Paris, while shrugging off the attacks against himself.

It seemed a terrible and incomprehensible bravery.

She was so preoccupied that a second letter in the desk almost slipped from her attention, but one glance told her it was from Edward. She turned it over and looked at the front. It was addressed to her. Why on earth should her cousin have kept one of Edward’s letters and not sent it on to her?

Something moved in the hallway.

Helena slipped Edward’s letter into her pocket as Richard put a finger to his lips.

He signaled her to the place in the paneling where the hidden door to the underground passages still stood open, then doused the light. They groped their way into the opening in the dark.

Helena closed the door softly behind them and Richard put his ear to it.

“There’s a peephole,” she whispered.

The faintest glimmer of light shone into their hiding place from a pinhole in the wall. Richard looked through it for a moment. Then he took her hand and guided her silently back down the passage.

“It was only a servant,” he said at last. “Though I’m not happy that he’s about this late. I think we have enough to hang our friend, though not to draw and quarter him as he deserves. Let’s get out of here.”

They continued down the dark passage until they at last saw the dim phosphorescent gleam of water. They were almost back in the cave.

It was some faint instinct, perhaps, honed by his years operating under the noses of the French army, that caused Richard to stop just before he stepped out into the open. He pulled Helena behind him.

In the next moment there was a blaze of light as half a dozen torches were lit at once.

“And so we are nicely trapped,” he whispered. “For as we noticed, they are stirring in the house as well.”

“We can go back through the other passages—take the one to the lane.”

Something thumped. Helena strained to listen. No doubt Richard had heard it, too.

“No, I don’t think we can,” he said softly in her ear. “Someone comes down that very conduit, and so all retreat is cut off. I’m afraid, dear wife, that we have been outwitted. I can’t tell you how sincerely I hope you aren’t a party to it.”

Helena had been clinging to his hand, but she forced herself to let go. If it came to a fight, Richard would not want to be encumbered with her. As for his last comment, there was no time to think what he might have meant.

The noise of footsteps in the passageway behind them was getting louder. She peered around Richard and looked into the cave. There were several rough-looking fellows climbing out of a boat that lay bobbing in the water. None of them were men from the village or anyone she recognized from her childhood. Nigel Garthwood sat alone on a barrel. His head was cocked to one side as if he were listening.

“You might as well come out, my lord,” he said loudly. “I have loyal servants in every pathway. There’s no escape.”

“Do you suppose we should go out to face him?” Richard said. “Or continue to skulk in the dark? It’s obvious which would be the nobler course, but in spite of carrying the blood of earls, I’m damned if I’m feeling terribly noble.”

The light from the opening danced for a moment across his features. He was grinning!

Helena thrust herself back against the wall as Richard drew his pistol.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

He stepped past her and ran lightly up the tunnel they had just left, directly toward their enemies storming down from the house.

Clinging to the damp wall, Helena watched his silhouette as he sped up the passageway. Her heart hammered. Her knees wanted to buckle, weak as saplings.
Richard!

But before he reached the first bend, he leaped up and disappeared.

A moment later the outline of a man carrying a torch appeared in the same spot. The flame flared red, glimmering over the rough walls of rock.

A darker shadow dropped from the passage roof and knocked the torch to the floor.

The scuffle was entirely silent except for a sudden grunt and a dull thud as Richard’s pistol cracked into a skull and the man fell back unconscious.

Helena ran to Richard’s side.

“ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friend,’ ” he said, and laughed.

Taking her hand, he began to lead her back up the passageway toward the house.

They were too late. More men had poured into the conduits from the other passageways and were racing down toward them.

Richard stopped, jerking Helena to a halt. She glanced back to see more torches and more men. They were trapped.

An unpleasant-looking ruffian glanced down at his supine comrade, then stepped forward to thrust a torch in their faces. He grinned broadly in spite of Richard’s raised pistol.

“Caught,” he said, and spat.

There was no hope of escape, even if Richard were to start shooting. The smugglers bristled with weapons. Their antagonism poisoned the air. Helena thought for one dreadful moment that her husband would try to fight his way free against impossible odds, but he tossed his pistol down in front of the man with the torch and laughed.

“Don’t I recognize you from London?” he asked. “Decided to take up full-time employment?”

The man grabbed the weapon up from the floor and spat again, then leered at Helena.

“I surrender, sir,” Richard said quietly. “I trust you won’t take unseemly action in front of the lady?”

His answer was a blow across the face that sent him staggering backward.

“Mr. Garthwood wants a word first,” the man said. “Otherwise it might be unseemly enough. You left one of my friends dead back there in town.”

The man viciously bent Richard’s arm behind his back, and Richard and Helena were jostled back down to the cave. The smugglers thrust them out into the blaze of torchlight.

At a signal from their master, they allowed Helena to sit down on an outcropping of rock. She quietly obeyed, sick with fear, while two of the men dragged Richard to stand before Garthwood. The rest of the smugglers arranged themselves around the cave, grinning. They were guarding both the boat and the exit tunnel to the beach.

“So you came down to make your claim, my lord?” Garthwood said. “I should have thought you’d have come during daylight hours with your man of business, rather than with your little wife. This is rather a havey-cavey way to go on for a member of one of England’s first families, isn’t it, breaking into folks’ houses at midnight?”

“Alas, sir, I have appallingly sorry manners, as you no doubt noticed at Acton Mead.”

“Ah, yes! Acton Mead, pretty in the autumn. I tried to find the unfortunate document then, of course, but you had hidden it. After that, it seemed simpler to get you out of the way.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Garthwood?” Helena said.
What did the man mean—‘make your claim?’
“Do you mean to tell me you walked unannounced into Acton Mead before your Christmas visit? To look for something—what, pray?”

“He hasn’t told you, has he?” Garthwood said. “I thought not.”

“So it was you,” Richard said with a smile, “who searched my room in September? I suppose I must commend you for having the nerve to enter my home in broad daylight. Can you ever forgive me for accusing you, Helena? I must have been out of my wits.”

“I forgot it long ago,” Helena said. So she had been wrong, too, in thinking that had been Harry.

“I’m sure a great many people think the world would be a better place without my insufferable presence,” Richard said to Garthwood. “But why
you
in particular?”

Garthwood shrugged. “Who else can Helena turn to, if you should meet with a sad accident?”

“Like a stray bullet in the wood, or a fall from a horse, or even an unpredictable elephant at a fair?”

“Alas, yes! So unfortunate! She would be left destitute and alone in the world once more. Perhaps then she would accept my suit? Thus to put you out of the way seemed my best first course of action. Surely you can see that?”

“But she would not be as penniless as you seem to imagine, sir. Upon my demise, Lady Lenwood will inherit Acton Mead, along with a considerable independent income. Whether she would entertain your suit I cannot say, but she would be under absolutely no financial compunction to do so.”

Helena looked at him in amazement. This was getting more confusing by the minute. Garthwood still wanted to marry her? Why? Was he insane? And did Harry know about Richard’s will? Harry might eventually get the earldom, but there would be no immediate financial benefit to him. In which case, what motive could Harry have had?

“But I thought your brother would inherit from you,” she said.

“Did you, my dear? I should have told you.” Richard’s jaw was beginning to color where he had been struck. “Until I married, he was my heir, of course. But didn’t you realize that I would change my will to provide for you? Harry knew I had done it.”

“I never thought about it,” she said.

But the knowledge lit a small fire of courage. Richard had cared enough to leave her Acton Mead in his will—though she would far, far rather he stay alive!

She looked from her husband to her cousin. “But I can’t see, Mr. Garthwood, why you would wish still to marry me, if you thought I brought no dowry.”

“I have to admit, sir,” Richard said, “that I am wondering the same thing.”

“Are you, my lord? I can hardly believe it. And that is why you have to die, and your knowledge with you. You are otherwise no more than a nuisance. It’s been a devil of a task to keep track of you these last months. The dye was a clever idea. Madame Relet eventually saw through it, of course, but by then you had already left again.”

“And here I am, wretchedly still alive,” Richard said dryly. “Do you suppose I lead a charmed life?”

“If so, I think that has finally come to an end. But I shall not leave my poor cousin alone very long. It was a difficult day for me, when you whisked her away from this house and left me to my wounded sensibilities. After all, she was just about to accept my offer at the time.”

“Please don’t pretend there is any affection between us,” Helena interrupted with considerable heat, “for there never has been and never will be. You are wasting your time to kill Richard, if you are under any insane illusion about my feelings, for I will never marry you.”

“Thank you for that, at least,” Richard murmured to Helena.

“I had thought of that,” Garthwood said, ignoring him. “In which case you can simply follow your husband to his watery grave.”

Fighting nausea, Helena leaped to her feet. “So that Harry can inherit Acton Mead, after all? Is that what this is all about? Harry has been your accomplice from the beginning? Did he promise you a share of the proceeds from Richard’s wealth? Aren’t you satisfied with the profits from your unconscionable racket here?”