Courtesy of her earlier, futile efforts to loosen Del’s silken bonds, the pillows now hid said bonds from view. She’d look as if she’d simply fallen asleep with her arms splayed out. Which was what, furious and defeated, she’d eventually done.
She feigned sleep until the housemaid left. Then she called Bess. “Don’t ask questions—just come and untie me.”
“Untie you?” Eyes wide, Bess hurried over.
Deliah raised her arms, displaying the scarves wound about her wrists.
Bess’s eyes widened even more. “Oh, my.”
“No questions.” Deliah waggled one wrist.
Bess fell to picking apart the knot securing it.
Del had gauged the bonds so while she’d had some play in her arms, she hadn’t been able to reach one hand to her other wrist, and undo the knot herself. She’d tried every contortion possible, to no avail.
When Bess had both her wrists free, she nodded with what dignity she could muster. “Thank you.”
Sitting up against the pillows, she rubbed her wrists, then noticed Bess was frowning. “What?”
Her expression disapproving, Bess gathered the scarves and set them on the dresser. “I don’t know as I hold with tying up, no matter the reason. I had thought the colonel quite gentlemanly.” Bess was quite a few years older than Deliah, and occasionally, when she deemed it necessary, could become quite motherly on Deliah’s behalf.
Deliah waved Bess to her robe. “If you must know, he tied me up so I couldn’t go with him, or follow him to the cathedral. Not until all the action is over—then, mind you, I’m supposed to join him. Huh!”
“Oh.” Returning to the bed with the robe, Bess looked thoughtful. “So he was protecting you—that’s why he tied you up.” She held up the robe as Deliah slid from the bed. “If that’s the case, I don’t suppose I can hold it against him.”
Belting the robe, Deliah leveled a narrow-eyed look at her maid. “You don’t have to. I’m holding it against him enough for us both.”
With a frustrated humph, she headed for her washstand. “Incidentally, apparently it wasn’t only me who was tied up. You might slip downstairs and make sure all the other lady’s maids have gone up to free their mistresses.”
Bess had followed her. Deliah heard a smothered giggle from behind her, then Bess said, “Yes, miss. I’ll just slip down, if you don’t need me for a moment?”
With haughty grace, Deliah inclined her head.
Left alone, she washed, then poked in her armoire, wondering what to wear.
Wondering how she felt.
Her principal conclusion was that she felt far too much.
Elated because she and Del were to marry—that he loved her, actually loved her! Her, the lady with so many character flaws that no gentleman was supposed to be able to overlook them.
But perhaps that was what love was, what it did? Presumably it was love that made Del overlook all her flaws…no. He’d said he loved her because of, not in spite of, her unconventional traits.
Even better. The fiend.
He loved her, and he’d made her love him—set her free to openly love him. She’d already loved him before, but now…
Now she loved him unreservedly.
And now she was worried. Now she was afraid.
For him. The damned man had gone off to face who knew what without her to watch his back. No her to step out of a carriage with a sword this time. So who was going to distract the enemy for him today?
She pulled out a forest-green pelisse, frogged with gold braid, that she’d yet to wear. That he’d paid an exorbitant sum for it was a point in its favor. Tossing it on the bed and resuming her hunt for a gown to go beneath it, she reminded herself that Del had the other men with him.
Presumably Devil and the others would watch his back, as she had no doubt he would theirs.
But…this loving someone, being free to love someone and therefore fall victim to all the accompanying feelings, was new to her.
Fear for another—another who now meant a very great deal to her—was new to her.
And she wasn’t at all sure she liked it.
She pulled out an elegant gown in pale green wool. It had long sleeves and was closed to the throat. If she was to go to the cathedral, she would need all the warmth she could wear, and hadn’t he said something about going on to Wolverstone’s residence afterward? In which case, she’d need the elegance, too. Laying the gown on the bed, she went to find underclothes.
Bess returned, breathless. Deliah suspected it was from laughing, not running.
“All the other maids have gone up and freed their mistresses. The duchess has called a meeting in the breakfast parlor as soon as maybe—they’re rushing to serve breakfast now—so we’d better get you dressed and ready.” Bess hurried to help her tie off her petticoat, then lifted the gown over her head.
Gowned and laced, Deliah sat at the dressing table, let Bess brush and braid her hair, and wondered what the other ladies thought. She strongly suspected they’d be as unimpressed with their spouses’ actions as she was with her spouse-to-be’s.
While she’d lain in the bed tied to the headboard waiting for dawn to arrive, she’d had plenty of time to consider the timing of Del’s offer for her hand. Being a spouse-to-be gave him certain rights—one of which he’d claimed mere hours later.
Had he made the offer so he would have the right to do what he felt he had to to protect her? Was that why he’d offered for her hand?
The uncertainty tried to insinuate itself into her mind. She considered it, but rejected it. Felt confident enough to reject it. Del was too practical a man to, as it were, sacrifice his future merely to protect a woman he considered to be in his charge—a woman he had no real feelings for. He could have tied her up without her promise to marry him, risking her wrath and subsequent alienation, if he’d had no feelings for her. If he hadn’t wanted a future with her.
She remembered enough of his words, his declarations of the night. He’d been sincere and absolute in his wishes and wants, his view of them together as the cornerstone of his future.
And the very fact that he’d gone to exceedingly domineering lengths to protect her was an irrefutable indication that he did, indeed, harbor strong feelings for her.
But she didn’t like being tied up, helpless to help him.
That, she was going to make very clear, simply would not do.
“There.” Bess slid the last pin into place. She glanced at the pelisse. “Will you be going out later?”
“Yes.” Deliah rose, tweaked her gown straight. “And I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.”
Turning, she headed for the door and the breakfast parlor. “I’m going to see what the other ladies think.”
On more than one front.
“So he proposed, and then he tied you up? Congratulations!” Eyes twinkling, Alathea beamed at Deliah. “On the proposal front, I mean. As for the rest.” Wryly, she glanced around the table. “Welcome to the club.”
Deliah glanced at the other ladies gathered about the long table in the breakfast parlor. All seemed to share Alathea’s sentiments. “So we really were all tied up?”
Nods and affirmations came from every occupied seat. It transpired their men had been rather inventive in their choice of restraints—silk scarves, cravats, silk curtain cords, even silk stockings.
“And,” Honoria said, eying them all from her position at the end of the table, “not one of us got free. For that, they’ll all have to pay.”
“Hear, hear,” echoed around the table.
Having discovered, the instant she’d smelled food, that she was ravenous, Deliah made steady inroads into the selections she’d heaped on her plate, and tried to assess the other ladies’ thoughts and intentions. In the end, she simply asked, “What do you mean by pay?”
Honoria’s fine gray eyes came to rest on her face. “After behaving in such a high-handed fashion, they’ll expect us to react. They’ll be expecting us to extr
act our ounce of flesh”—she paused to smile—“in one way or another. And, of course, we will, not least because we would never want them to believe we’d grown resigned, or, heaven help us, were no longer annoyed by said high-handed ways.”
“If they ever thought that, we’d be in dire straits.” Patience sipped her tea.
“But,” Deliah allowed her inner frown to show, “you don’t seem all that annoyed. You do seem rather resigned. Much more so than I. When Del first left, I was furious.”
“That’s because you’re new to this…for want of a better description, emotional game.” Phyllida toasted Deliah with her teacup.
“The emotional game of being married to a strong, dominant, possessive—and protective—gentleman,” Flick added. “Sadly, you can’t take the protective-to-a-serious-fault characteristic out of the mix. It’s an inescapable part of who they are—the sort of men they are.”
“Exactly.” Chin propped in one hand, Alathea nodded. “If we want all their other characteristics exactly as they are—as we do—then we have to accept their sometimes overactive protectiveness.”
“Especially,” Catriona said, “when you realize that that protectiveness, and its sometimes extreme nature, is a direct reflection of how much we mean to them.” She smiled at Deliah. “They’re really quite simple and straightforward in that way.”
“Mind you.” Honoria set down her teacup with a definite click. “That does not mean that they get to exercise that protectiveness to the extreme without paying us our due.” She met Deliah’s eyes. “Over the years, we’ve grown increasingly shrewd. Anything you ask—and if you’re wise you can extend the boon time to quite a few days—he’ll feel forced to grant.”
“To make up for his high-handedness,” Flick explained. “I once managed to get Demon to take me to a horse fair he never would have countenanced me attending otherwise.”
Alathea nodded. “I’ve managed to get Gabriel to more than one ball on the strength of an overprotective incident.”
Catriona smiled serenely. “And then there’s the other, more personal benefits.”
All the ladies smiled in what was clearly fond memory, and equally fond anticipation.
Deliah blinked, imagined…. “I see.”
“Indeed.” Honoria folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate. “And, of course, they’re all together.”
“We would be much more exercised if it was any of them alone,” Phyllida told Deliah, “or even just two of them against unknown others.”
“In this case,” Honoria said, “we don’t need to actually worry for their safety—they’re as safe as they could be even were we there to watch over them. However, while I will admit us being anywhere near the cathedral while they’re dealing with this Black Cobra person would distract them utterly—and we don’t want to forget they have Sangay to protect—there’s no reason I can see that we shouldn’t arrive the instant the action’s over.”
“Which by my calculation,” Patience said, “means we should leave as soon as possible.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Flick glanced around the table. “So—how many horses, how many gigs?”
Del sat on the floor of one of the stalls around the octagon in Ely Cathedral and prayed he wouldn’t get a cramp. At least the stall floor was timber, not stone. The cathedral—so much massive stone in the depths of winter—was as cold as the proverbial tomb.
Waiting for time to pass—it was exactly like being on picket duty. Not that he’d been a picket all that often, let alone recently, yet at least in war, there was an element of omnipresent danger to help keep one alert. Here…they all knew nothing would happen until after Sangay arrived.
Which would be shortly, Del hoped. Shifting silently in the confined space, he pulled out his fob-watch. It was almost nine o’clock. Outside the stained-glass windows of the octagonal tower, it was full daylight—or as full as the light was going to be that day.
Settling back into his hunched position, he found himself staring at the hilt of his sword. The sheathed blade lay on the floor beside him. He had a loaded pistol, too. Many of them had elected to carry one, just in case Larkins resorted to firearms. The cultists, thank heaven, abjured such weapons on some convoluted religious grounds, which was all to the good. He had no doubt that, regardless of how many came to the cathedral, his side would see victory, at least of a sorts, that day.
He was in a mood for victories. Succeeding in gaining Deliah’s promise to marry him had meant more to him than he’d thought it would. He’d intended to ask her regardless and had told himself he’d been asking then because of the necessity of his mission—because he’d needed the right to ensure she didn’t arrive at the cathedral too soon.
While all of that had been true, he’d needed to know she was his on some much more crucial, personal plane. Knowing she’d agreed had filled him with a…certainty. A jubilation, an assurance and an absolute conviction that this—all of this—was proceeding exactly as fate decreed. Exactly as it was supposed to be.
His only remaining uncertainty was a small, tiny, niggling one. He hoped his and Deliah’s exchange of promises would be strong enough to stand against the inevitable ramifications of his morning’s actions. He hoped she’d understand that he’d simply had to do it, that given what she meant to him, he’d had no choice.
Regardless, he thought, as he shifted awkwardly again, he couldn’t regret tying her to the bed. She was safe, and in his new world—the future he’d taken his first steps into last night—that, to him, was the most important thing.
A loud creak had him raising his head, listening, straining his ears.
Light shafted above his head, then slowly faded as the sound of a heavy door closing reached him.
Someone had just entered through the main doors at the end of the nave. Sangay? Or someone else?
Carefully shifting into a crouch, he slowly raised his head, until he could look out over the front lip of the stall. His line of sight was across the octagon, past the altar, and down the nave. He could see Gervase in his borrowed monk’s robe seated halfway along a pew three rows from the front, head bowed, apparently deep in prayer. Glancing to his right, Del saw Tony, also garbed as a monk, all but invisible, seated at prayer in the shadows of one of the stalls across the octagon from Del’s position. Gyles, the other monk, Del couldn’t see, but he knew Gyles was sitting or kneeling in prayerful attitude beyond one of the columns on the other side of the nave.
Whoever had entered had hesitated at the far end of the nave. Thinking of how awestruck Sangay would feel in an edifice that struck awe into the hearts of grown men, Del prayed the boy would remember his instructions.
Assuming it was he.
Finally, on slippered feet, the newcomer crept slowly up the central aisle. It was Sangay.
Del exhaled. Watched as the boy, still wary, but with increasing assurance—presumably he’d sighted his bodyguards—made his way to the second pew from the front, and slid into it to perch at the end by the aisle.
Everything was in place. No matter how he strained his ears, Del could hear not even a shuffle to give away the presence of the other men concealed at various points inside the cathedral. Even the monks were as still and silent as statues; in their gray robes in the shadows, they were difficult to see unless one looked directly at them.
Sangay looked around, scroll-holder in clear view in one hand. Seeing no one frightening, the boy settled on the pew.
He didn’t have long to wait. As they’d surmised, the Black Cobra had had someone watching the cathedral, too wise to get trapped inside. Less than two minutes had passed when a door somewhere opened and shut, then footsteps—confident and assured—came striding in. They were coming from the south transept, past the vestries.
Whoever had come to fetch the scroll-holder would appear through the massive archway on Del’s left. He ducked down, peered through a narrow gap he’d found in the front paneling of the stall.
Held his breath.
A man—large, heavy, close-cropped dark hair—Larkins!—strode into the octagon.
Del looked at Sangay. The boy’s eyes had widened, locking on Larkins. To his credit, Sangay didn’t do the one thing that might give their game away—he didn’t glance at any of his bodyguards.
Instead, even though he was visibly trembling, he gamely stood and slipped out of the pew. And halted, waited. There, at the top of the long nave, in the middle of the central aisle, the scroll-holder clutched in one thin hand.
As they’d hoped, Larkins saw no reason not to go to Sangay. The boy was the epitome of unthreatening. Larkins slowed, but didn’t break stride, almost swaggering as he crossed to halt before the boy, towering over him.
Watching Larkins from behind the man’s back, Del couldn’t see his face, but he saw no evidence of a glance to either side, no indication Larkins had even noticed the monks. None of them had been, or were, in his immediate line of vision.
Larkins looked down at Sangay. “Well?” His voice was rough, dark with suppressed menace.
Sangay ducked his head respectfully. “I have brought the scroll-holder as you wanted, sahib.” Sangay offered it up, balanced across both his palms.
Unseen by Larkins, Tony slid silently from the stall in which he’d been sitting and, sword in hand, glided to the altar. Gyles appeared, hovering just behind the column to Larkins’s right. Gervase held his position, apparently as yet unseen, but he was closest to Sangay—he would be the last to move.
“Good.” Reaching out, Larkins took the scroll-holder. He turned it in his hands, examining it. Then his fingers flicked and tugged, releasing the six levers. Opening the unlocked holder, Larkins slid the single sheet of parchment from within.
Ignoring Sangay, still standing before him, Larkins unrolled the letter. The decoy copy. Half turning so the light from the tower windows above fell on the sheet, Larkins quickly perused it. Then he smiled.
Del caught the satisfaction in that smile—also saw the evil anticipation infusing Larkins’s features. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, felt his body tense.