Victoria glanced around assessingly. “I think it will be perfectly possible for you to slip away unnoticed. Do you know, I believe we could both slip out. This crowd has gotten so huge no one would guess we had left. Anyone looking for us would just assume we were at the other end of the room or on the balcony or in the card room or even outside in the gardens.”
“Victoria …”
Her expression brightened with anticipation. “Yes, I am certain we could both slip out. You go first and I will just sort of casually move out into the gardens, hop over the wall, and pop around the corner. You can meet me there.”
“Are you out of your mind?” He was thunderstruck even though he supposed he should have been expecting something along this line. “You will do no such thing. I absolutely forbid it. You are to stay right here, Vicky. That is a direct order. Under no circumstances are you to leave this ballroom. Do not even go out into the gardens for fresh air. Do you hear me?”
“Very clearly, my lord. I assure you, you have made your point. Honestly, Lucas, sometimes you have the most annoying tendency of putting a damper on something that particularly interests me.”
“Forgive me, my dear, but sometimes you have the most annoying tendency of coming up with the most idiotic notions I have ever heard. Now go back to your friends. I shall return as soon as possible.”
“I will require a full report as soon as you get back inside the ballroom.”
“Yes, madam.”
She put her hand on his arm and her eyes were suddenly very intent. “Lucas, promise me you will be careful.”
“I am sure there is no danger in this,” he said soothingly. “But I give you my promise.” Then he scowled briefly at the décolletage of her gown. “The only real danger around here tonight is that you might catch a severe chest cold.”
She grinned. “I shall try to keep warm by dancing. On your way, Lucas. Hurry back.”
He wanted to kiss her full on her lovely mouth but knew that was impossible. Such a public display of affection would be quite scandalous. Absolutely unthinkable. Except that he could not seem to stop thinking about it.
“Vicky?”
“Yes, Lucas?”
“Do you still find me merely a tolerable husband?”
“Quite tolerable, my lord,” she said cheerfully.
He turned and pushed through the crowd toward the windows. He took his time, not wanting to call attention to himself now. When he was satisfied no one would think it amiss if he stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, he did so.
And kept on going.
The Athertons’ garden wall was no more difficult ta climb than Lady Nettleship’s. Lucas found a few chinks in the bricks, a handful of ivy, and a moment later he was over the top and safely down on the other side.
He found himself in a narrow alley that was nearly pitch dark. It stank, as all London alleys seemed to do, but other than that presented no great difficulty. He walked around to the front of the house and moved through a group of lounging coachmen and grooms who were throwing dice.
He paused in the shadow of a team of horses and scanned the line of carriages. Near the corner, a little removed from the others, was a small, black vehicle of undistinguished lines. The coachman was on his box, apparently waiting.
Lucas circled around two other coaches that stood between him and the small, black one and came up on the far side of the vehicle.
“Were you by any chance expecting someone?”
The coachman turned around with a start and peered down at Lucas. “Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps I am he.”
“Never even saw you come out of the house,” the coachman said with a touch of admiration. “Got a passenger inside who wants to have a word wi’ ye.”
Lucas glanced speculatively into the dark carriage and saw a man lounging in the corner. He reflected that being obliged to leave the party unobtrusively as he had, he had not been able to collect his greatcoat. There was, of course, no way to secret a pistol in his close-fitting evening clothes. Pity.
“Good evening, Edgeworth. Waiting for me, I presume?”
“I have something that I think will interest you, Stonevale. Do step inside for a moment, won’t you?”
Lucas considered the possibilities and decided the prospect of getting some answers outweighed the risks. He opened the door and got into the carriage with some awkwardness, deliberately favoring his left leg more than was absolutely necessary.
He was not particularly surprised to see Edgeworth pull a pistol out of his heavy coat.
“I imagine you recall that day you should have died every time that leg of yours fails you, don’t you Stonevale?”
“I do hope you will at least do me the courtesy of explaining what is going on before you pull the trigger,” Lucas remarked, massaging his thigh as he sat down across from the other man.
“You may relax, Stonevale. I will not be pulling the trigger for some time yet. My associate has a few plans that must be carried out before I shall have that pleasure.”
“Would the name of your associate be Samuel Whitlock, by any chance?”
“Whitlock? What an amusing notion.” Edgeworth rapped twice on the roof of the carriage and the vehicle moved off. Then he looked at Lucas and broke into outright laughter. “Imagine forming a partnership with the dead. Most amusing.”
19
The message reached Victoria on a silver salver just as she came off the dance floor with Lord Potbury. “Please excuse me.” She smiled quickly at her escort as she opened the note.
“Of course. Nothing serious, I trust?”
Victoria scanned the brief message and hoped Potbury would not notice that her fingers were shaking inside her beautiful gloves.
Come at once if you value your husband’s life and honor. A carriage waits at the corner with the garments you will need. The driver will give you instructions when you arrive. Time is of the essence.
“No,” Victoria said, smiling very brightly at Potbury. “Nothing is wrong. Just a short note from a friend to tell me she is going to take some air in the gardens. She invites me to join her. I suppose she felt it would be easier for one of the footmen to get the message to me in this crowd than for her to get through the crush. Will you excuse me?”
“Certainly.” Potbury bent gracefully over her hand. “Enjoy yourself. Lady Atherton’s gardens are quite extensive. Once again, my congratulations on your marriage. Good man, Stonevale.”
“Yes, he is, is he not?”
Victoria unobtrusively collected her cloak from one of the footmen, explaining that she was going out into the gardens for a few minutes and found it cool outdoors. Then she made her way discreetly toward one of the windows.
A moment later she was deep in the unlit portion of Jessica Atherton’s precisely manicured gardens. Several rows of clipped hedges and elaborately designed topiary shielded her from the ballroom windows. Jessica Atherton’s gardens were rather like Jessica herself, Victoria concluded: beautiful, perfect, untouchable.
Climbing the wall took a bit of doing. She was obliged to hitch her gown up to her thighs in order to accomplish the feat and she thought fleetingly of what Lucas would have said had he seen her expose so much leg. The thought brought tears to her eyes and she dashed them away immediately. She would do something violent to Edgeworth as soon as she found him if Lucas had not already done so.
Victoria wrinkled her nose at the stench in the alley as she put on the cloak and pulled the hood up over her head. Then she walked swiftly to the corner.
A public coach was waiting. An obviously half-drunk coachman tipped his hat with mocking respect. “Expect you be the lady I been waitin’ for.”
Realizing he probably thought he was taking her to meet a lover at a secret rendezvous, Victoria said nothing. She shrank deeper into the cloak and climbed quickly into the coach. The vehicle jolted forward before she was properly seated and she nearly lost her balance.
When she reached out to brace herself,
her hand touched a sack. She knew immediately it contained the clothes she had been told to wear.
Even as she pulled the breeches, shirt, and boots from the bag her stomach turned over with a sickening realization. This was no coincidence. Whoever had sent the note must know that she was in the habit of wearing men’s clothes at night. If that same person knew that dark secret, he might know others.
A ghost would know such things, she reflected, or a man who trailed her like a ghost the way she had once trailed Samuel Whitlock through the corridors of his own home. Victoria shuddered.
But she could not think about that now, she told herself as she changed quickly into the male garb. Indeed, she must not think about it. The only thing that mattered was rescuing Lucas.
Her stomach felt distinctly queasy again as the coach pulled up outside the Green Pig. The choice of destination could not be a coincidence either. Someone knew everything.
With shaking hands, she put her cloak back on over the masculine clothing and pulled up the hood. Then she quickly rolled up her gown and the rest of her discarded clothes and stuffed them into the sack.
“Third room at the top o’ the stairs,” the coachman muttered as she stepped down from the cab. “Trust you’ll ‘ave fun. Quality usually does, unlike the rest o’ us that’s got to work for a livin’.” He did not even bother to look at her as he took another sip from his flask, flicked the reins, and drove off.
Victoria watched the carriage roll out of sight and then she removed the cloak and put on the high crowned hat that had been provided. Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she walked boldly through the front door of the gaming hell.
Everything was different this time, she thought nervously, and she knew that was because she did not have Lucas by her side to make it all seem a grand adventure. The red glare from the hearth illuminated the rough crowd of Green Pig patrons, making them look like demons from the underworld. The coarse, drunken laughter was unnerving. She had the feeling a violent brawl could break out at any moment. As she started toward the stairs one of the barmaids sidled up to her.
“You don’t want to be goin’ up there alone, now do ye, sir? You’ll be wantin’ a lady friend and it just so ‘appens I’m free at the moment.”
Victoria thought frantically. “Thank you, but there is someone waiting for me.”
“Ah, so that’s the way of it, eh?” The barmaid winked. “I saw your friend go up earlier and I ain’t one to pass judgment on that sort o’ thing. Besides, the bloke already paid for the room. Good luck to ye, I say. But if ye decide you’d rather have a woman, ye just give old Betsy a shout, hear?”
Victoria stared at her in confusion. “Yes, thank you very much, I’ll do that.”
Betsy roared with laughter. “Ye can always tell the well-bred coves. They remember their manners even in a place like this.” She sallied off into the crowd, still chuckling.
Victoria went grimly up the stairs, the sack containing her dress still clutched in one hand, the cloak draped over her arm.
At the top of the stairs she found herself in a dark hall. She could hear obscene laughter and groans coming from the rooms as she passed two doors and stopped at the third.
She hesitated a moment at her goal and then tapped cautiously on the third door. It opened immediately.
Isabel Rycott stood framed in the doorway, looking even more exotic in men’s clothes than she did in a ball gown.
“Lady Rycott. What a surprise.” Victoria struggled to sound calm and cool and almost detached, the way Lucas always managed to do when he was facing a startling situation. At least she was not dealing with the reanimated corpse of Samuel Whitlock, Victoria told herself. “Where is my husband?”
Isabel Rycott smiled with a terrible satisfaction and revealed the pistol in her hand. “Won’t you come in, Lady Stonevale? I have been waiting for you.”
Now that she was over her initial shock, Victoria told herself she must stay calm. She would be no help to Lucas if she had hysterics. “Is Edgeworth with you?” she asked as she stepped into the room. “I cannot imagine you have managed this entire business by yourself. You are accustomed to using your male acquaintances, are you not?”
“How very astute of you.” Isabel backed away from her. Her eyes were feverishly bright. “But, then, you always were a very clever girl, weren’t you? Too clever by half. And now you are going to pay for it.”
Still clutching the sack of clothing and the cloak, Victoria wandered over to the fireplace to lean negligently against the mantel. The blaze on the hearth cast a sordid glare over the small, shabby room. “You don’t mean to tell me that all this is because you hold some sort of grudge against me, madam? What on earth have I ever done to you?”
“You killed him. That’s what you did,” Isabel hissed. “You killed Samuel Whitlock and ruined everything.”
Victoria went still. “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me just what it was I ruined for you?”
“I had it all planned, you stupid little bitch. Whitlock was going to marry me after he killed your mother. It took me months to work him up to the point where he had sufficient nerve to see to the business of murdering Caroline. Months.”
Victoria almost collapsed against the mantel. “You prodded him into murdering my mother?”
“Do you think he’d have done it on his own? He hadn’t the guts to do it without being pushed into it. He saw no need. Kept saying he had the use of her fortune anyway, so what did it matter if she was alive. But I did not have the use of that fortune. So I made it clear to Samuel that he could not have me unless he got rid of her, and he wanted me very badly, Victoria. Very badly, indeed. He finally arranged the riding accident.”
“I knew it was murder, even before he confessed.”
“Yes, you guessed that immediately, didn’t you? Less than two months later he started acting very strange. Kept saying he was seeing your mother’s ghost. I was afraid he was losing his mind, that he would get himself sent to Bedlam before he could marry me. So I decided to see for myself what was going on at his house at night.”
Victoria’s fingers tightened on the sack. “You were there that last night when he came at me with a knife, weren’t you?”
“Who do you think put the knife in his hand? I told him he must kill Caroline again and this time she would stay dead. He was so crazed with drink and the notion that Caroline had come back to haunt him that he did as I told him.”
Victoria’s pulse was racing, driven by savage anger and a terrible fear. “Where is my husband? What has he to do with any of this?”
“All in good time, Victoria. All in good time. He will be here, never fear. Edgeworth is going to bring him.”
“So Edgeworth is involved.”
Isabel tightened her grip on the pistol and laughed softly. “Oh, yes. It was Edgeworth’s idea to finish the matter in this particular fashion. He has a score of his own to settle with Stonevale, you see. I agreed to do it his way so long as I could be certain of your death.”
“You cared so much for my drunken sot of a stepfather that you wish vengeance on me? I am appalled by your taste in men, Lady Rycott. But, then, I suppose I should not be so astonished. After all, you took up with Edgeworth and he certainly is not an admirable specimen of manhood, either, is he? Perhaps you like men who are as low as you yourself?”
“I told you once I like men who can be controlled. Men who are weak and therefore easily manipulated. It makes everything so much easier, you see. Whitlock was completely in my power. Edgeworth is now, too.”
“How did you happen to select Edgeworth as your assistant?”
“I heard the talk that there was ill feeling between him and Stonevale. When Stonevale began pursuing you, I decided a man who disliked him as much as Edgeworth did could be of use to me.”
“’Tis a bit late to murder me,” Victoria pointed out. “My husband has legal control of my money now. In the event of his death, the inheritance goes to our remaining relati
ves, including my aunt. You will never see a penny of it.”
Isabel’s eyes sparked in anger. “Don’t you think I know that? You deprived me of any chance of getting hold of your fortune the night you caused poor, stupid Samuel to fall down those stairs. You ruined all my plans and now you will pay.”
“Why have you waited so long to take your vengeance? Why did you go to the continent after Whitlock’s death?”
“Because I was afraid you would realize I had been involved. You were so damn clever that I could take no chances. I had no way of knowing how much you knew or how much Samuel told you that night he tried to kill you. I fled the night of his death because I feared you would put the entire tale together. But you never did.”
“No. But for the past few months I have had the oddest feeling that there was something left unfinished.” The nightmares had begun shortly after she had been introduced to Isabel Rycott, Victoria realized with a chill.
“I did not care for life on the continent,” Isabel continued coldly. “Oh, it suited me well enough at first, but there were problems after I became involved with a young Italian count. His mother, you know. She was afraid her precious son would marry me and she could not bear the notion of the family fortune falling into my hands. She contrived to have me cast out of the higher circles of society, ruining all my opportunities. Most unpleasant.”
“So you decided to return to England.”
“It is here I have the best chance of securing another fortune. And mark my words, I will find another Samuel Whitlock, and soon. I have gone through my first husband’s money and I find myself in need of more. Quickly. While on the continent, I had kept track of you through friends. After several months I realized I was safe, so I returned to London.”
“And decided to make me pay for ruining everything for you?”
“Precisely. But I also wanted you out of the way because it was simply good policy to tidy up after oneself. There was always the chance that you would put it all together, you see. Since I must be free to stay in England, I could not take the risk that you would eventually figure out that I had been involved in your mother’s death.”