The Bastard's Iberian Bride (Sons of the Spy Lord Book 1) Page 24

  Kincaid turned the dark gaze on her and gave a terse nod. “Agruen, aided by the fists of a British soldier.”

  Numbness poured into her, locking her in place, and she couldn’t say why. Her legs, hands, arms twitched with a need to move, and her empty stomach turned inside-out. The room went dark, except the pinpoint eyes of Mr. Kincaid. Spies’s eyes. Calculating eyes.

  She choked in a breath. She’d believe it of Agruen, but who was the soldier? And Kincaid surely knew more. Perhaps he knew what she was supposed to have that Agruen wanted.

  “Why? Why was he killed?”

  Kincaid swiped a hand across his face and stalled, like he regretted telling her, but that couldn’t be right. A calculating man like him would never err.

  “There was a woman.” The words came from beside her and she turned. Sweat coated Bink’s unshaven face and threatened to drip. He contemplated her hands, still clutched around his and…trembling. Only the shaking was coming from him.

  “A woman?”

  His eyes glowed golden with their own sheen of moisture.

  “What, Bink?” she whispered.

  Nearby, someone cleared a throat.

  He stared at her hands, but his gaze was carrying him far away, and she knew.

  He’d met Agruen in the war. He’d slipped back to Spain, and he was seeing all the horror again, anew. She’d seen moments like this with Jock.

  She squeezed Bink’s hand, wanting to do more but sparing his pride in front of these other hard men.

  Kincaid leaned in and took up the thread. “Agruen beat the woman half to death and your father fought him.”

  “And the soldier?”

  “Stumbled into it.” Bink’s voice sounded strained. “Found the woman. Was told by Dickson the man had beat her.”

  “Yes.”

  The word spoken by Kincaid had a note of finality, but he went on. “Now. Agruen thinks your mother had something from your father, something about him. And that leaves you in great danger.”

  Her thoughts whirled. Could the treasure be a means of blackmail?

  A thread of nausea twisted in her and she swallowed it down. “She had nothing. Nothing. A letter he sent her, a letter that said nothing.”

  “Where is it?” Tellingford asked.

  Her mother hadn’t shared that letter with Tellingford.

  “I have it.” Bink’s voice was wooden.

  “It might be in code. We’ll need to see it.” Tellingford and Kincaid held a private conversation of back and forth glances.

  Her husband stirred on his chair. “I have it in safekeeping.”

  Her heart skipped. He’d left it at Betty’s, with her desk.

  Pah, the desk was nothing, an empty shell without even any secret compartments.

  She swallowed hard. Paul Heardwyn left her almost nothing and no one would believe it, least of all Agruen.

  But of course, there was also the ring.

  “Agruen took my mother’s ring.”

  “What?”

  “I found a ring among her things. It was, according to Agruen, a part of a puzzle ring. The pieces go together, you know? It had a, a hand.”

  “A gimmal ring,” Kincaid said.

  “Yes, well, Agruen took it from me. He stole it when I visited Cransdall the summer after Waterloo.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there, and it disappeared from my room. He’d been interested in it, so I had a maid snoop around, and then I confronted him, and he told me he was keeping it. And if I told anyone, he would say that I had been…” she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been such a fool. “He would say I’d had congress with him.” She shivered. “Which I didn’t.”

  “I will kill him,” Bink said, gruffly.

  “The rings might hold a key,” Tellingford said.

  “To what?” But even as she asked, she knew—the letter must be coded. They must get the rings back to uncode the letter, to find—

  “What are you not telling us?” Bink asked. “What are you seeking, and why should Paulette give it to you?”

  “Sit down, Tellingford,” Kincaid said. “Bakeley, go and check who’s listening at that door.” He settled on the corner of the desk and began his story.

  Chapter 24

  Bink’s head thundered so badly he strained to hear. He’d killed Paulette’s father, unjustly, unwisely, on the word of a villain.

  No. No. The man had still breathed when Beauverde pulled Bink off him. The woman had still breathed also, though neither of them could talk.

  He blinked at the pain and the images and forced his attention to the key facts of Kincaid’s story, the ones Paulette’s survival depended upon.

  Agruen had been working with France and the Spanish traitors, the Afrancesados. That was no surprise. Paulette’s father, and the woman, had been working with Agruen and against him at the same time. There had been money, a great deal of it, and a ransom that had gone missing.

  “But Agruen has no money,” Paulette said.

  “Yes.” Kincaid looked far too much at his ease on the edge of the desk. Bink longed to knock the man down. He’d told Paulette a story that would destroy what they had, this tender green love.

  And who’s fault is that, Bink, you miserable brute.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Pity, he couldn’t shut out his memories, or silence the voice in his head.

  “Either the money was lost or was stolen from him, or we’ve considered that he might be paying blackmail.” Kincaid was all business again.

  She glared down at the rich carpet. Her panic had passed, just as the intimacy between them would. She would leave him. Kincaid, so all attentive, was perhaps grooming her to be one of their operatives. He would use her, just as he’d used her father.

  The pain in his head dulled and spread, threatening to consume him.

  He tried to focus. He would hire a good steward for Little Norwick. He would make sail for India by Christmas.

  “I have nothing. And you know I have not been blackmailing him. I want my ring back.”

  “You told him that at Greencastle,” Kincaid said.

  “Yes.”

  “He wanted to see what you’d receive upon Shaldon’s death,” Kincaid mused.

  Bink eyed the crafty Scotsman. “And how did he know to find Paulette at Greencastle?”

  Kincaid almost smiled. “We’d got word to him, round about.”

  Hackwell. Hackwell had been in on this game far longer than Bink had known. What the devil.

  “When he discovered you were marrying Gibson, he knew Gibson would receive whatever was held for you, and being an honorable man, turn it over to you. And we knew you’d protect Paulette and whatever was hers.”

  And you knew I’d fall in love with her, like the sick, sentimental fool that I am.

  Paulette shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, since there is nothing. How could he think a keepsake, or whatever this is supposed to be would be locked up?” She looked at him, the trust still shining in her eyes.

  That look was like a sharp kick to his gut. The trust would be gone soon.

  He’d talk to her later, privately. He’d tell her everything, and if she wanted him gone, he’d leave.

  “Bink. I want to go back where we stayed last night. Can we do that without endangering…them?”

  He thought of Betty, and Trish, and Rowland. Agruen’s hired men would cut them to pieces.

  She shook her head. “No, I suppose not.”

  “We’ll go to Hackwell House. Kincaid.” He fixed the man with a glare. “You’ll employ us extra help.”

  “Shaldon House will be better, Bink,” Bakeley said. “You know how Father is about security.”

  Paulette’s mouth firmed.

  “So you can lock us up there? No, brother. I know Hackwell House, and I’ve hand-picked the staff. Now that you lot are involved, you can help me keep my wife safe there.”

  Kincaid sighed and looked at Tellingford.

  “I’ll make the ar
rangements,” Tellingford said. “And we’ll get you a carriage.”

  He slipped out the door.

  “When will this end?” Paulette asked.

  “I don’t know.” But it was a lie. He knew when it would end. He fisted his hands and pumped energy into his muscles. And this time he would finish the job on the right man.

  The heavy fog had lifted and naught but a mist still hung in the air when they reached the doorstep. A black carriage came to a stop in the street, and Kincaid went out to speak to the driver. Bink recognized the man who jumped down as one of Kincaid’s Scots. His fellow countryman and other of Kincaid’s men ranged the walk in front of the solicitor’s office, creating a clear corridor for Paulette and him.

  He squeezed her hand. “Are you ready?”

  She’d drawn the veil back over her face, all her emotions hidden.

  A sick feeling washed through him. Veiled or not, it would be like that now, forever.

  “Yes.”

  Kincaid motioned and they stepped out. Two paces out, a boy skirted around the carriage boot, ducked under a guard’s arm and stopped in front of them.

  And raised a pistol to Paulette’s heart.

  Bink’s blood roared and he shoved her behind him. A guard jumped the boy, and Bakeley joined in.

  “Bink.” Paulette’s cry came from behind. Tellingford had her about the waist and was dragging her back.

  He was on them in seconds, wrenching the solicitor’s hand, while Paulette kicked and struggled, her bonnet and veil flying off. The man released her and she rushed into Bink’s arms.

  Tellingford held up his hands. “I was getting her to safety.”

  “I won’t go anywhere with you,” Paulette choked out, her cheek pressed to Bink’s shoulder.

  Behind them, the melee came to a close.

  “Let’s get to where we’re going,” he said.

  But he paused. The boy’s cap had been torn off, and long hair, as dark as Paulette’s except for the lacings of grey, trailed over a torn shirt. The boy was no boy. He was no girl either, but a fully grown woman of some years.

  The same woman they’d seen on the road.

  Paulette gasped and clung harder. “She’s the one we saw. Beaten up cart, grey horse. She followed us.” She released her grip and turned on the woman. “You work for Agruen. Who are you?”

  The woman’s lips twisted in preparation to spit, but a yank on her collar stopped her. She huffed. “I work for no Englishman.”

  The accent, the face, she was Spanish, or Portuguese. Not French.

  And so familiar.

  He moved closer. She was perhaps forty, petite and trim, much like Paulette. Too much like Paulette.

  “Filomena,” Kincaid whistled. “Resurrected from the dead.”

  “Good day to you, Kincaid. Your men have disarmed me. Tell them to let me go.”

  “You’ll have more than one wee pistol on you, Fil. Perhaps we shall let the Gibsons go on their way, and you and I will go inside and chat.”

  “How lovely. Shall we have a fine English breakfast? Some elderberry jam on a point of toast?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Now the battle had subsided, a throbbing started behind Bink’s eyes.

  He knew her. He’d seen her in Portugal or Spain, lurking about a camp, delivering intelligence, visiting an officer’s bed—one of those, perhaps all of those.

  A fog thickened around the memory but couldn’t hide the sharpness of those grim eyes.

  “I think not. I’ve come for something and then I shall leave.”

  She turned on Paulette. “I want the letter from your father these men have given you.”

  Her mouth dropped. “What?”

  His Paulette was too confounded to even attempt a lie.

  “The letter. Pah, do not pretend. He told me he sent a message that would be kept in trust for you. I want it.”

  Paulette looked back at Tellingford. He shook his head. “You’ve broken into my office twice, Fil. You know there’s no such message.”

  Her lips wriggled in a frown that turned into a smile, and then a laugh. “That was me only the once. But I don’t think Dickson found it either, else he would not still be looking.” She turned cold eyes on Paulette. “Where is it, then, querida corazón?”

  “There was no message,” Kincaid said. “If he sent it, it didn’t arrive.”

  Paulette’s eyes widened and she looked up at Bink, her gaze tearing at his heart.

  Kincaid was wrong. Heardwyn had sent not one message but two, and neither was important, was it? Neither was worth Paulette’s life.

  A chill slithered through him—in the library, Agruen had said he was keeping Paulette’s ring to solve a puzzle, and this woman wanted a letter, a letter Kincaid didn’t know about.

  Kincaid and the late Lord Shaldon didn’t have the key to this puzzle either. What the devil was everyone looking for?

  He studied the dark eyes of the woman and their halos of crows’ feet. Since Heardwyn’s death, the French in Spain had been vanquished. She wasn’t after a cypher or a state secret.

  His head pounded. His lungs squeezed like a cart had rolled over on him. And her eyes burned into him, clouding his vision.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  She laughed, a stark, evil, croaking, her eyes glittering. A spy’s eyes, abandoning the lie. “You do not recognize me? Though you thought once to rescue me from the girl’s father.”

  At his side Paulette froze.

  “Alas, I could not dissuade you because here” she pulled at her collar “Dickson, while he raped me, squeezed me so tightly I could not speak for a month. It was Paul who pulled him off of me. And this one,” she pointed at him but glared hard at Paulette, “this is the one who beat your father to death on the word of a rapist.”

  Paulette’s eyes widened and her mouth opened but no words came. The shock on her face sent Bink spiraling.

  His world crashing should make more noise than the soft breath of his bride. The darkness descending should shut out her face. He shouldn’t be able to see the words settling into her heart.

  He mustered some breath in the grey calm and said, “He was not dead when I left him.”

  But he might as well have been so. And he wouldn’t explain to Paulette on a public street, with Kincaid and his men looking on.

  The eyes his bride turned on him were hollow.

  My love, she had called him, not one hour ago. All the incipient promise of love had drained away. A woman could not love the man she thought killed her beloved father, could she? Not even for a manor and four thousand a year.

  His pulse pounded in his ear. It was useless. He was useless, a feckless beast, only good with his fists. Once they had this madness settled and he knew she was safe—

  He drew in a deep breath. No. He would not make a run for India, not yet. She could be with child, even now. The child would need him. She would need him, his protection and guidance, at least for a while, and he would give it to her and rue losing her from his bed.

  “Foolish girl, she did not tell you of me, did she?” the woman called Fil said. “I am Filomena De Silva. I was a cousin to the woman you called Mother, and—”

  A shot crackled through the air, pain stinging Bink as he dived for Paulette.

  Chaos erupted. With one hand he reached for her. With the other, he clawed for the gun at his waist.

  More shots blasted. Smoke mingled with drizzle. The grip of his pistol was wet. He slid it under his coat and a sharp pain pushed him to his knees, and Paulette slipped from his grasp.

  No—she was ripped from him. Blood-lust flooded him. He struggled up, legs wobbling like slippery eels, chaos around him, men fighting, wrestling. The horses spooked, flew off, hooves clattering, carriage stairs dragging, door flapping. A thug reared in front of him, knife in hand and he fired, sending the man crashing.

  Bakeley snatched his arm.

  “Where is she?” Bink roared.

  “You’re hit. Get insid
e.”

  “Where’s Paulette?”

  Kincaid popped up from the man he was checking. “See to Gibson’s wound, Bakeley.” He pointed at another man. “Get horses. Now.” Then he gripped Bink’s shoulder. “She’s in that carriage. Agruen took her. The horses,” he bellowed.

  A roar swallowed him, but no noise would come. He fisted his hand around the pistol and would have pounded his brother, but Bakeley parried and wrenched the gun away. “Let me go,” Bink shouted. “What are we waiting for? He’ll torture her for naught.”

  The pavement rolled like the deck of a ship. He’d failed her. He’d failed to protect her.

  “See here.” Kincaid grabbed his shoulders and glared into his eyes. “You’re gut-shot, man. Ye’ll be no good in the chase, bleeding and fainting. I will find her and we will get her back.”

  He looked down at his waistcoat where a thickening circle stained the cloth a darker shade of brown. “Damn you,” he said, gripping Kincaid’s arm. “Do it, then. Find her.”

  “I’ll follow as soon as I have him inside,” Bakeley said.

  “No. You’re the heir of Shaldon. Stay with your brother. We’ll find them.”

  The horses arrived and Kincaid was off.

  “Them?” Bink asked.

  “They have the woman also.”

  Paulette rubbed tiredly at the bindings on her wrists and looked around the squalid room.

  A glimmer of light floated in through the dingy windows. This was a small sitting room of the sort she thought she might have been able to afford with her income. Threadbare chairs, their cushions stained an unpleasant shade of brown, adorned the fireplace.

  She and the woman who claimed to be a cousin had been shoved onto battered wooden chairs at a sad matching table in the room’s corner.

  Her knuckles were bloody, her dress ripped, and she had lost Betty’s lovely hat and lacy veil. Agruen stood watching his minion finish tying Filomena. The other woman winked at her over the wiry, smelly man’s shoulder, and she felt some of her spirit return.

  She had fought hard and would have bruises to match Jenny’s.

  “This is a pretty set of rooms, Lord Agruen,” Filomena said. “You have had more financial resources than the world knows of, I see.”