Nicholas had locked it, yet now it slowly, very slowly inched open.
She knew who stood in the shadows beyond even though, with the sun slanting in through the windows, with her eyes still watering with pain, she could only make him out as a vague shape.
Hope leapt and flooded through her. Her brain started to race. Opening her eyes wide, she frantically signaled to the open priest hole beside her. Not knowing where Fothergill was, she didn’t dare move her head, but he couldn’t see her eyes.
Slowly, clearly, Charles nodded, then silently closed the door.
Penny stared at the panel. What was he up to? Her head throbbed. She heard Fothergill’s footsteps on the priest hole’s stone floor; he was no longer slinking silently as he returned. Lowering her lids, she stayed slumped against the post, feigning unconsciousness.
Fothergill strode out of the hole; he marched straight past her to the side of the bed. She heard the tinkle of metal, then other, softer sounds…after a moment, she understood. He’d made his selection from her father’s collection and was stripping off a pillowcase to use to carry them.
He was loading the pillboxes into the case when the knob of the main door rattled.
“My lady?” Norris’s voice floated through the door. “Are you in there, my lady?”
Fothergill froze. Penny knew the door was unlocked; Fothergill didn’t.
In the next breath he was at her side, his knife in his hand, his gaze on the door. Then his eyes cut sideways—and caught the glint of her eyes before she shut them.
He moved so fast she had no chance to make a sound; he whipped a kerchief from his pocket, forced her jaw down, and poked the material deep into her mouth. She choked. It took a few seconds of wheezing before she could even breathe—screaming was out of the question. She couldn’t get enough breath even to make loud noises.
Satisfied he’d gagged her, Fothergill left her; silently crossing the room, eyes on the door, he went to the double windows, looked out, all around, then unlatched the windows and set them wide.
His escape route?
Turning, he looked at Nicholas, still slumped unmoving on the floor. Silently, he walked over, then hunkered down at Nicholas’s side. After a moment, Fothergill lifted his head and looked at her. Then he reached for Nicholas, hauling his unconscious form around so he half sat, slumped before Fothergill. Facing Penny.
Balancing Nicholas against his knees, Fothergill looked again at Penny. His knife flashed in his right hand as he raised it. A smile of inestimable cruelty curved his lips.
He was going to slit Nicholas’s throat while she watched.
Her mouth went dry. She stared.
And felt a cool draft drift across her ankles.
It could only come from the priest hole.
She screamed against the gag, flung herself against her bonds, stamped her feet—made as much noise as she could to cover any sound Charles might make.
Fothergill only grinned more evilly. He reached for Nicholas’s chin, drew it up.
His gaze deflected, going past her. His smile froze.
Charles appeared—was simply suddenly there—beside her.
“I think she means don’t do it.” He moved farther into the room, away from her. “Wise advice.”
He held a dagger, a much more wicked-looking weapon than the one Fothergill had; he turned it in his fingers, his dexterity screaming long and intimate acquaintance with the blade.
Fothergill saw. Understood. They each had a knife. If he threw his and missed killing Charles…
Quick as a flash, Fothergill threw his knife at Charles.
Charles dived, rolling back toward Penny. Fothergill’s knife hit the wall and bounced off, spun away, landing closer to Charles. Charles surged to his feet between Penny and Fothergill. He’d expected Fothergill to go after Penny, the best hostage, or if not that, the door, behind which half the household staff waited.
He’d forgotten the old rapier that hung on the wall above the mantelpiece. Fothergill flung himself at it, yanked it from the fixed scabbard. It came free with a deadly hiss.
His lips curled as he swung to face Charles.
With one quick, swirling turn, Charles grabbed up Fothergill’s dagger, crossed it with his, and met Fothergill’s first rush. Catching the rapier between the crossed blades, he steadied, then flung Fothergill back.
Fothergill staggered, but immediately reengaged.
Much good did it do him. Charles let his lips slowly curve. Despite the furious clashing of the blades, the sparks that flew as dagger countered flexing steel, within a minute it was clear that Fothergill wasn’t up to his weight, at least not in experience of the less-civilized forms of hand-to-hand combat.
The rapier was longer than Charles’s blades, giving Fothergill the advantage of reach, but Fothergill had never been trained to use the weapon—he wielded it like a saber, something Charles quickly saw. Trained to the use of every blade imaginable, he could easily predict and counter.
While he did, he planned and plotted how best to disarm Fothergill; he would really rather not kill the man in front of Penny. The others were gathered outside the door, waiting for his word, but he had no intention of inviting anyone in; in his increasingly panicked state, Fothergill would undoubtedly run someone through. Enough innocents had already died.
The thud of their feet on the rug covering the floorboards was a form of music to his ears. Through the fractional changes in tone, he could judge where Fothergill was shifting his weight and predict his next attack. Combined with the flash of the blades, the almost choreographed movements, he had all the information he needed; his instincts settled into the dance.
Fothergill pressed, and pressed, trying to force him to yield his position before Penny, defending her—and failed. Desperate, Fothergill closed; again with relative ease, Charles threw him back.
Fothergill stumbled, almost falling. Charles stepped forward—realized and leapt back as Fothergill dropped the rapier, grabbed the rug with both hands and yanked.
On the far edge, Charles staggered back, almost into Penny.
Fothergill grasped the instant to fling himself out of the open window.
Charles swore, rushed across and looked out, but Fothergill was already on the ground, racing away, hugging the house so Charles had no good target. Charles thought of his direction, extrapolated, then swore again and turned inside. “He’s heading for the shrubbery—one will get you ten he has a horse waiting there.”
Penny blinked as he neared. He gently removed the gag and she gasped, “Send the others after him.”
Tugging at the knot in the cords binding her, Charles shook his head. “He’s a trained assassin—I don’t want anyone else cornering him but me, or someone equally well trained.”
He jerked her bonds loose, caught her as she sagged. Eased her back to sit on the bed. Only then saw the bruise discoloring the skin over her cheekbone.
His fingers tightened involuntarily on her chin, then eased.
Penny didn’t understand the words he said under his breath, but she knew their meaning.
“He hit you.”
She’d never heard colder, deader words from him. Words devoid of all human emotion, something she would have said was impossible with Charles. His fingers gently soothed, then drifted away; turning her head, she looked into his face. Saw resolution settle over the harsh planes.
“What?” she asked, and waited for him to tell her.
Eventually, he drew his gaze from her cheek, met her eyes. “I should have killed him.” Flatly, he added, “I will when next we meet.”
Penny looked into his eyes, saw the violence surging. Slowly, she rose; he didn’t step back, so she was close, face-to-face, breast to chest.
Arguing would be pointless. Instead, she held his gaze, and quietly said, “If you must. But remember that this”—briefly she gestured to her cheek—“is hardly going to harm me irreparably. Losing you would.”
He blinked. The roiling violence beh
ind his eyes subsided; he refocused on her eyes, searched them.
She held his gaze, let him see that she’d meant exactly what she’d said, then she patted his arm. “Nicholas has been unconscious for some time.”
He blinked again, then glanced at Nicholas’s slumped form, and sighed. He stepped away from her. “Norris! Get in here.”
The door flew open; pandemonium flooded in.
CHAPTER
21
NICHOLAS STIRRED AS SOON AS THEY LIFTED HIM. NOT SO Jack. By the time he opened his eyes, then groaned, Dr. Kenton had arrived. The dapper little doctor lifted Jack’s lids, moved a candle before his eyes, then gently probed the huge contusion above his right temple.
“You were lucky—very lucky.” Kenton glanced at the cosh Charles had retrieved from behind the chaise. “If your skull wasn’t so thick, I doubt you’d be with us enough to groan.”
Jack grimaced; he bore with the doctor’s fussing, but signaled to Charles the instant Kenton’s back was turned.
If Jack was up to making such faces, he was at least in possession of his wits; Charles eased the doctor from his patient’s side and bore him away.
Fifteen minutes later, Gervase returned, grim-faced. They gathered again in the library as they had hours earlier; this time, both Jack and Nicholas looked the worse for wear, pale and drawn, both in pain, Jack from his head, Nicholas from the shoulder wound Fothergill’s blow had reopened.
They took it in turns to relate their story. Penny described how Fothergill had arrived, how he’d seemed so innocent to begin with, and how that had changed—how he’d incapacitated Jack, then used her to force Nicholas to do his bidding. She stopped at the point where Charles had appeared at the bedchamber door. She looked at him, sprawled beside her on the chaise. “How did you know to return?”
“I shouldn’t have left.” He looked grim. “We were galloping toward Fowey when the penny dropped. Dennis’s cousin couldn’t have had any direct connection with our nemesis; the knife and cloak were stage dressing to ensure I connected the death with the intruder here and raced off to investigate, presumably so something could then happen here. I turned back. Gervase went on to see if there was anything we could learn from Sid Garnut’s death.”
Gervase shifted restlessly. “Other than being proof beyond doubt that our man—Fothergill as we now know—is cold-bloodedly callous, there wasn’t anything more to be learned.” He paused, then added, “The boy had been dispatched with almost contemptuous efficiency. Fothergill, or whoever he really is, feels nothing for those he kills.”
Penny quelled a shiver. Charles took up the tale of what had transpired in the master bedchamber. He abbreviated the proceedings, stating only the necessary facts. He’d just reached the point at which Fothergill went out of the window when the crunch of approaching hooves reached them.
Charles rose and looked out. “One of my grooms. Looks like Dalziel has unearthed something.”
He strode out, reappearing two minutes later, one of the now familiar plain packets in his hand. He went to the desk and slit it open; unfolding the sheets, he returned to the chaise.
Swiftly scanning, he grimaced. “Dalziel writes that while they still haven’t cleared Gerond, the Julian Fothergill who’s a connection of Culver’s wife is a twenty-year-old with pale blond hair who, according to his mother, is presently on a walking tour of the Lake District with friends. He is, however, a budding ornithologist.”
Charles glanced at Gervase, then Jack.
Who humphed. “Other than the hair color and a few years, he had all the rest right.”
“Not only that, he used it to best advantage,” Charles said. “No one’s surprised to find an avid bird-watcher marching over their land.”
“How was it that Culver didn’t realize?” Gervase asked. “If our man’s been staying there pretending to be one of the family, surely the usual questions about Aunt Ermintrude or whoever would have tripped him up.”
“Not necessarily.” Charles glanced at Penny. “If the family’s as large as Dalziel suggests, then it’s always possible he truly is a member, just not that member, not of an English branch.”
“And Culver would never notice,” Penny said. “Aside from all else, the Fothergills are his wife’s connections, and with the best will in the world I doubt his lordship remembers his own connections. If this man hadn’t remembered Aunt Ermintrude, Culver would have thought he himself had got things wrong—he’s awfully disconnected.”
“He’s a true recluse,” Charles said, “but a terribly correct one.”
“What’s more,” Penny added, “his reclusiveness is well-known.”
Looking up at the ceiling, Jack sighed. “I just can’t get over how glibly he took me in. I was on guard when he walked in, but by the time he got behind me, I’d started to relax, to believe he was as harmless as he appeared.” He grimaced. “He was so damned English.”
Charles regarded him wryly. “Now you understand how I survived so long in France. No matter how alert and on guard one is, the eyes see what they see, and we react accordingly.”
Penny remembered her earlier thought; Fothergill was indeed a Charles-in-reverse.
“Regardless,” Charles said, “we can’t afford to sit back and reflect. He had a horse waiting. If he wasn’t worried about being identified, then he was ready to leave this area. If his mission is to punish the Selbornes and retrieve some of the pill- and snuffboxes, having failed here, where will he head next?”
Already pale, Nicholas turned a ghastly hue. “He’ll go after my father.”
“Where is he?” Gervase asked.
“London—Amberly House in Mayfair.” Nicholas struggled to get up.
Charles waved him back. “If we’re right, he can’t kill your father, not out of hand. He’ll know by now that he has no chance of laying his hands on the pillboxes—we’re not going to leave them here unguarded, and besides, he didn’t get you to show him how to open the panel.”
“Overconfident.” Gervase nodded. “But it does mean he won’t bother coming back here.”
“It also means,” Charles said, looking at Nicholas, “that he’ll feel compelled to get to thesnuffboxes. You said they’re at Amberly Grange, in Berkshire, in a priest hole much like the one here. Fothergill might not know of the priest hole, but he’ll now suspect something of the sort—some well-hidden chamber that only your father or you can open.”
“That’s why he won’t kill your pater outright.” Jack narrowed his eyes consideringly. “If I were he, I’d go to Amberly Grange, to where the snuffboxes are, and wait—use the time until Amberly returns there to learn the lay of the land, even ingratiate my way into the household, or at least into a position of being able to gain access to the house.” He glanced around at them all. “There’s no time limit applying for him, and the only pressure he knows of is that Charles now knows who he is and presumably will be searching for him.”
“Given his actions to date, I don’t think that’ll deter him,” Charles said.
“More, he seems young enough, arrogant enough, to see it as a challenge.” Gervase’s gaze was hard. “That should work to our advantage.” He looked at Charles. “So how do you want to play this?”
Charles rose. Seated beside him, sensing his impatience, Penny had wondered how much longer he’d stay still. He strode to the hearth, then faced them. “I need one of you to stay here—Jack, for obvious reasons. Gervase—you can get the word out along the coast as well as I. We need to shut the stable door so he can’t bolt.”
Gervase nodded.
Glancing at her, Charles continued, “I’ll go to London.”
“As will I.” Nicholas again struggled forward in the chair.
“No.”
Nicholas looked up, but the edict was unequivocal.
“I’m leaving now—tonight,” Charles said. “I’ll travel straight through and be in London by midday, possibly even before Fothergill. I’ll speak with your father, and Dalziel, and determine our be
st way forward.” He paused, his gaze on Nicholas’s determined but drawn face, then more quietly added, “I understand your wish to aid your father, but you’re in no condition to do so. A long, jolting journey will land you in a sickbed for days if not longer.”
“He’s my father—”
“Indeed, but I was sent here to deal with this matter.” Charles paused, then added, “You may safely leave it to me. Fothergill won’t succeed—and he will pay.”
“And you needn’t worry about your father, Nicholas, for I’m going to London, too.”