Viscountess of Vice Read online

  But it was too late. As she fell back, everyone heard her gasp—everyone saw her well-known face awash with shock—and Blackstone caught her, his arms hooking under her shoulders.

  She struggled to right herself, holding a palm in James’s direction to halt his approach, warning him away as she tested her feet. The palm remained suspended in the air as she used the other hand to reach up and remove the skullcap concealing her real hair. She looked at him as her hair tumbled free, those stunning auburn locks that had once fallen across his chest, a benediction of fire. Holding his gaze, she pressed her palm closer to him, demanding that he acknowledge her wish that he not come any nearer. He nodded his reluctant assent, his body screaming in protest.

  Satisfied that she had silenced him, she straightened her spine and looked around the room. Her unkempt hair and a large red gash on one cheek did nothing to detract from the regal air she exuded. He followed her gaze. Dozens of men stared at her.

  “Allow me to introduce myself, in the unlikely event that there’s anyone here who doesn’t know me. I am Lady Catharine Chambers, Viscountess Cranbrook. And I wish you all a good evening.”

  Dropping her skullcap to the floor, she began to walk, slowly, proudly, as if she expected the crowd to part for her. It did. As she passed James, she shook her head at his attempt to take her arm, to accompany her out of the room. “Let me go by myself,” she whispered.

  He understood. She needed to do this alone. His noble, complicated love. He would follow her later, after she’d made her grand exit. He would go to her, and he wouldn’t leave until they made things right. No matter if her bloody butler barred him again—he would claw his way up the side of her house, trellis or no trellis, and force his way in. He didn’t care if she ever explained. He didn’t even care who he found in her bedchamber, because he knew now with utter certainty that if he could look into her heart, he would see himself there. He nodded. “For now,” he answered. “But I will follow you.”

  Understanding flashed between them, and a weight lifted from his shoulders.

  After she disappeared from view, it only took a moment for the drawing room to explode. Talking, shouting, wild gestures—surely not even Bedlamites were so crazed.

  He spun around, trying to think what to do about Biedermeier, who, like everyone else, had stood silently watching his exchange with Catharine and her subsequent dramatic departure. Suddenly, the gunmaker lunged at him. His chin reeled from a blow, and his mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. Grabbing the man’s shoulder with one arm, James retracted the other and delivered a jab to Biedermeier’s mouth. Rewarded with a gush of blood, he yanked Biedermeier’s head down and whispered in his ear, “I know what you’re doing. So does the Home Office.”

  Biedermeier reared as if James had shot him, staggering into a few bystanders. Then he turned and fled.

  Goddammit! As soon as the words were out of his mouth, James realized he’d made a grave error. He’d been too furious to think clearly. If he’d been in his right mind, he’d have comprehended that any hint he knew about the sabotage would galvanize the traitor. The evidence would be gone as soon as Biedermeier could get back to Birmingham.

  The Home Office. He had to go there, make what he’d said to Biedermeier true. But first Catharine. He began pushing his way through the crowd. Though they were aflutter with the scandal they’d just witnessed, they picked up right where they left off, merrymaking and drinking. It seemed impossible that they could act as if nothing had changed, as if seeing a woman ruined before their eyes were cause for glee. He’d just stepped into the foyer when he felt a familiar hand on his arm.

  “What?” he said sharply. Would Madame Cherie never leave him alone?

  “My dear boy, you should have left when I told you.”

  “Why? This was all in a day’s work for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Things like that happen in places like this. A man like you should stay away. You’re better than this.”

  “I’ll gladly stay away from this place. It’s never been the place. It’s been—” Why was he explaining himself to her? He didn’t owe this woman anything.

  “It’s been her,” she finished for him.

  He saw no point in denying it and nodded curtly.

  She nodded in return. “Good-bye, Dr. Burnham.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lungs greedily inhaling the sharp autumn air, Catharine put one foot in front of the other, over and over, as if she could somehow walk far enough to leave this whole nightmare behind her.

  Common sense told her to hire a hackney. At this rate, James would beat her home. He’d left no doubt in her mind that he would follow, that there would be a reckoning. But common sense was a small, quiet voice competing for attention amidst the cacophony inside her head. Her fevered mind lurched between the scene of her ruination at Madame’s and imagined futures in which she was cast out of society, rejected and left utterly alone. Then it revisited the feel of Biedermeier’s hands on her. The thud in her stomach when she’d turned and looked into James’s eyes, caught doing the one thing he’d asked her not to. The sick churning in her gut to know that very soon, she would have to tell him the truth—and lose him forever. All these thoughts and sensations swirled together, a jumbled mass that propelled her forward, flimsy satin evening slippers carrying her past the darkened houses of her neighbors.

  As she made her way onto Hanover Square and caught sight of her house, the tears began to fall. She fumbled off her gloves, burrowing one hand into her pocket, needing to feel the substantial heft of the ruby. Squeezing it with all her might, she turned at the sound of hoofbeats. A carriage approached.

  James was so dear to her. How would she look into those intelligent green eyes and confess? When he learned the truth, it would all be over between them, but at least he would know that her actions had been in service of a greater cause. The notion of a cause dictating one’s behavior was something James Burnham, of all people, could understand. How ironic that she had to choose between his love and his respect.

  A sob choked her as a hooded figure alit.

  Not James—she could tell from the man’s silhouette. Her hands, one of which still clutched the ruby, instinctively flew up to protect her face as a familiar voice greeted her. “Good evening, viscountess. Fancy a trip to Birmingham?”

  There wasn’t time to scream—not that there was any help to be had for her, a woman without friends, without allies, cast out of polite society. She struggled against the sweet-smelling handkerchief he shoved in her face.

  Neither Catharine nor her attacker noticed the ruby skittering across the cobblestones and coming to rest in front of the door at number ten Hanover Square.

  Her house was dark. James didn’t care if he had to force his way in. He’d climb another tree, bowl over that taciturn butler—whatever it took. She wasn’t getting away from him this time. Covering the last few paces before he reached her steps, he stumbled over something small. It took a moment to recognize the small, shiny red object. The ruby! She must have dropped it. Looking for and not seeing the chain it always hung from, he pocketed the gem. Just as he was about to lift the large brass knocker, he was startled when the door opened of its own accord to reveal…

  The Earl of Blackstone?

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” The earl, dressed in a black greatcoat, stepped outside and craned his neck to look up the street. As if summoned by the power of the aristocrat’s gaze, a carriage appeared from around the corner and came to a halt in front of number ten. “And for that. Let’s go.”

  Before James could protest, or even make sense of the conflicting emotions ripping through him, a leather-clad hand came to rest on his forearm. He shoved Blackstone’s arm away. The man reeled, taking a few steps to right himself. Fists raised, James looked into the earl’s inky eyes and saw, to his shock, something that looked remarkably like respect.

  Blackstone showed James his palms. “Dr. Burnham, I think you will find that we have the sa
me goal.”

  James lowered his fists but remained wary. “And that would be?”

  “The safe return of the viscountess.”

  Terror shot through him. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I have my men combing the streets looking for her, but there’s an obvious answer to your question.”

  “Your men?” he echoed, his mind grasping to make sense of the phrase before coming to rest on the other half of Blackstone’s answer and what it implied: Catharine was missing.

  “Yes, I have a network of…associates, empowered to make certain inquiries on behalf of the Crown.”

  “My God.” Suddenly it all made sense. Her refusal to abandon Madame’s. Her vague protestations of obligation. Her concern for the child laborers, so seemingly at odds with her subsequent behavior. “She’s a spy.” Saying it aloud, he heard the wonderment in his voice. “And you are, too.” Blackstone neither confirmed nor denied the assertion. James’s stomach churned. He repeated his earlier question. “Where is she?

  “I have learned from several years in this…business that sometimes, as much as the human mind wants to make things complex, the answer to a riddle is often the most obvious among the alternatives.”

  “Occam’s razor.”

  The earl cocked his head. “Yes, exactly. I believe she has been taken by a man named Georg Biedermeier who manufactures military arms in Birmingham. I gather from your exchange with him at Madame Cherie’s that the two of you are acquainted.”

  “Biedermeier is sabotaging the muskets he assembles. The barrels are faulty.” The earl’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve been operating a school inside his gun works.” He didn’t think it possible for the man’s brows to travel any farther up his forehead, but they did. “I was planning to go to the Home Office with this knowledge—tonight in fact.” Suddenly worried that his tardy report would not look good in the eyes of an agent of the Crown, he added, “I needed to come here first, though. Things between Catharine and me are…”

  The earl had recovered his calm countenance and bounded down the steps. “So I gather,” he said over his shoulder.

  James felt a sudden thud in his gut, as surely as if the earl had punched him. “This is my fault. I told him—”

  “Get in,” Blackstone interrupted, holding open the carriage door. “Then talk. Anyone could be listening.”

  James could only obey. Settling himself in the coach, he told the spy about how he’d met Catharine, about her request that he help the children, and about what he’d learned at Biedermeier’s works, both in terms of the sabotage and the children. He left out of his tale what he’d seen later, when he’d come back to find Catharine stripping for Biedermeier.

  “And she told you who she was? Who she really was, I mean.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” James said quickly, sensing that Blackstone’s relationship with Catharine was that of spymaster-spy. “I didn’t know who she was until I met her in her true guise at the home of Daisy and Robert Watson, the same night I met you.”

  “But how did you recognize her if, until then, you’d only seen her masked and bewigged? We made sure her disguise gave no hint of her true identity.”

  “Well…” She made love to me in the mask, but her real hair cascaded across my chest. I would never not recognize that hair.

  “I see.” The earl must have filled in enough of the story on his own.

  “Biedermeier has taken her,” James said, ignoring the unspoken question. “It’s the obvious conclusion, I agree. But do you have proof?”

  “I followed him out of the room. After your…exchange with Catharine at the soirée, it was clear he knew you. He seemed angry with you in a way that had nothing to do with the unmasking. It shouldn’t have mattered to him who Lady V really was. If anything, one would think he’d be pleased to have—”

  “To have slept with a viscountess?” James finished, his voice rough.

  Blackstone narrowed his eyes and searched James’s face, silent for a moment before continuing. “Certainly, he would have been surprised to see you, supposedly a paragon of reform and restraint, at the event, but why would he be so enraged unless there was more to it?”

  “I don’t know. He came at me, so angry. It felt as if he knew I’d been deceiving him, but I wouldn’t have thought that possible. Catharine and I were the only people who knew about my true intentions at the school.”

  “Indeed? Because he visited the Society for the Comfort and Elevation of the Poor and the Betterment of Their Children this morning.”

  James inhaled sharply. “How do you know that?”

  “We’ve been trailing him all day. It seemed unusual—he’s never been there on any of his other trips to town—but not inherently suspicious.”

  “That’s it, then. I was, ah, working alone on this project.”

  “So he knows you’ve been deceiving him about the school. But that isn’t enough to justify the display we witnessed.” The earl trained his keen eyes on James. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” said James, his stomach filling with acid. “I told him I knew what he’d done. When he came at me, I whispered it in his ear before I hit him.” Guilt washed over him. “This is all my fault.”

  Blackstone steepled his fingers and leaned back against the black squabs, almost disappearing, since he was dressed head to toe in the same color. “No doubt he’s taken her because he believes she’s important to you. Everyone saw you declare yourself and saw the way she looked at you. He already knew you’d been lying about the school. Now you’ve given him reason to believe you knew about the sabotage. He’s thinking back now to his recent…encounter with Catharine and putting the two of you together in his mind. He probably thinks you’re the spy, assumes the two of you are working together. Perhaps he’s planning to ransom her.”

  James buried his head in his hands. “Oh God.”

  The coach slowed, and James looked up. They were coming to a familiar gray brick mansion. “Why are we stopping here?

  “We need to pick up a passenger. An unexpected ally.”

  “No! We need to move.” James heard the wildness in his tone.

  Before the coach had even come to a full stop, Madame Cherie, dressed in a sober black traveling cloak, slipped out of the house’s massive front door, accompanied by a footman.

  “What help can she possibly provide?”

  “She knows the address of Biedermeier’s solicitor—that’s how he’s paid his accounts at Madame’s. And she wants to help.”

  “Why the bloody hell do we care about his solicitor?” James felt like his head was going to explode. All this talking was getting them nowhere.

  “Biedermeier’s a foreigner. He can be charged with treason, but he can’t be tried by Parliament. We’ll have to convince a jury. And for that we need evidence. No doubt he’ll have destroyed all the paperwork you told me about, but with any luck there will be something incriminating at his solicitor’s.”

  “You’re thinking of evidence, of paper, when Catharine may already be…” He couldn’t make himself complete the sentence, as if to articulate it would make it true. His throat was closing, making speech difficult. “We need to save Catharine.”

  “The two goals are not mutually exclusive,” the earl said softly.

  Chapter Twenty

  Catharine awoke to a blinding pain in her head. It took her a few moments to realize where she was. Or, rather, to realize that immersed in darkness she didn’t know where she was. Straining to focus, she concluded that the blackness was not absolute, but rather imposed by a covering of some sort.

  Attempting to remove whatever was obscuring her vision, she came up short. Her hands were bound behind her back. An attempt to move her legs revealed that they were similarly restrained. Though she could not move any part of her body, the whole of it seemed to be jostling: semi-regular jolts compounded the pain in her head. Concentrate. She strained her ears, and the telltale sound of hoofbeats revealed itself. She was
in a conveyance of some sort.

  Forcing her mind to penetrate the fog that enveloped it, she willed herself to remain calm. She closed her eyes and sniffed a little, attempting to clear her nose and make herself more comfortable.

  “That’s right,” said a voice. An accented voice. “Weep, viscountess. I shall make you very sorry that your lover ever trifled with me.”

  The rough fabric shrouding her head was torn off and, though it was only incrementally lighter inside the twilit coach, she was momentarily blinded. She lay on the floor, blinking, straining to resolve the image of Biedermeier, lolling against the carriage’s dark green squabs. The man was looking daggers at her, one lip curling upward in disgust. It pleased her to see that he was looking somewhat worse for wear. The sneering lip was split and caked with dried blood.

  Why had he taken her? Surely not because he was so terribly incensed at the knowledge of her true identity. You’ll be sorry your lover ever trifled with me. The exchange she’d shared with James in Madame’s drawing room had been intense, highly charged, immensely personal. And everyone must have heard James say he loved her. But Biedermeier couldn’t think there was anything of consequence between her and James. After all, she hadn’t needed much convincing to grant Biedermeier his striptease. He thought her a vapid, indiscriminate sort of woman. At least she hoped he did, because right now it seemed her survival might hinge on it.

  Of course, seeing James at the whorehouse at all would have upset Biedermeier. Surely he had been angered to learn that his schoolteacher, his paragon of morality and rectitude, had a dark side. But there had to be more going on than that. Disappointment at seeing James in a whorehouse wouldn’t be enough to prompt him to kidnap her—even if he believed she was James’s lover. She struggled to impose some logic on the situation through the relentless throbbing in her head. It didn’t make any sense. Unless—her stomach dropped at the thought—he somehow knew the gun works was the target of an investigation.