Viscountess of Vice Page 24

  The carriage sped over a particularly large bump, and she had to bite her tongue to keep herself from casting up her accounts. If Biedermeier knew that Blackstone was investigating him, then she was in very, very deep trouble.

  The earl’s coach was, like the man himself, a study in tasteful, luxurious understatement. Well-sprung seats covered in coffee-colored velvet trimmed with darker brown leather cushioned the long journey. James marveled that this was merely the earl’s second, smaller coach. The spymaster favored it because, unlike his primary conveyance, this one was not marked with the Blackstone coat of arms.

  Blackstone had taken charge immediately. After directing James to tell everyone what he knew, he asked the same of Madame Cherie and Mr. Bailey, who had joined them. The four had spent the first hour of their journey planning. After that, Mr. Bailey and Madame Cherie had dozed intermittently, but Blackstone remained alert as the hours slipped by. He was a good man, James decided. It was hard to say exactly how he knew, but he felt the spy really did have Catharine’s best interests at heart, even though he also cared very deeply about collecting appropriate evidence to convict Biedermeier. James just didn’t know where the man’s allegiances would rest if it came down to a question of Catharine’s freedom versus apprehending the traitor.

  Seventeen hours into the journey, when they were on the final approach to Birmingham, Mr. Bailey had begun to snore, and Blackstone produced a small leather-bound notebook and a pencil and began scribbling, pausing occasionally to look up, as if for inspiration. James shifted his attention to the slumbering Madame Cherie.

  Why did he hate her so? He knew the answer. Because he imagined his mother might be someone like her. As if he had roused her with his unsettled thoughts, she began to stir. He watched her regain her grasp on the waking world. It wasn’t long before she saw him watching her.

  He couldn’t help it. In lieu of being able to ask his mother everything he had never been able to, he said, “Why are you helping us?”

  She gazed at him for a long time. “Life is a series of small choices, Dr. Burnham. Sometimes, a person looks back at the sum of those choices and experiences regret. It’s possible to lament the past even as one understands that the outcome of all those small choices was inevitable.”

  “Even if your choices hurt the people you love?”

  “Even then.” She continued to stare at him. “Who hurt you?”

  “My mother.” He wasn’t quite sure why he was speaking so freely with her, other than that his world had already turned upside down.

  “It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you, but it might be time to let her go. To forgive her. If not for her sake, for yours. And Lady V’s.”

  Breaking eye contact, he looked at the floor, dumfounded by the truth he recognized in her words. He had always imagined confronting his mother someday. As if her answers to his accusations would free him, when in truth, he suddenly understood that he’d had that power all along.

  He thought of Allie and her fussing and fretting, which was how she expressed her love. Of how much he wanted to introduce Catharine to his aunt. He saw for the first time how there could be a vast difference between the woman who’d given birth to a man and the woman who’d mothered him.

  Madame Cherie turned to look out the window, dismissing him. And just like that it was over. His mother’s hold on him evaporated, thanks to a few words from this enigma of a woman.

  When Biedermeier’s coach stopped, the lack of movement had the paradoxical effect of jolting Catharine into a state of alertness. Without a word, he covered her face with the coarse woolen blanket, and, more roughly than was necessary, dragged her out of the conveyance. The air smelled of soot. She could only assume they’d reached Birmingham, but felt compelled nonetheless to ask, “Where are we?”

  He tugged on her wrists, forcing her to stumble as she caught up with him—he walked very quickly. “Why would I bother covering your eyes if I were planning to tell you that?”

  “What harm is there in telling me? It’s not as if I have any outlet for the information.” On the long trip, Catharine had decided to be a problematic prisoner. Recognizing that she had no power in this situation, she nonetheless refused to play the role of the meek, cowering captive. “Where am I? I demand to know.”

  He pushed her roughly for a few more steps, and she heard a door slam behind them. As he removed the blanket, she blinked. Biedermeier moved quickly to draw a brown linen curtain, which had been letting in some faint moonlight, then lit a few candles.

  “Where do you think you are, Lady V?” he taunted, pushing her into a chair. Her hands were still bound behind her back, and she winced as the force of the shove caused her to sit on her own chafed wrists. He then extracted a key from the desk and used it to open a cabinet. He gathered a handful of papers and a ledger and turned back to her, brows raised.

  How she hated him. It went beyond simply an aversion to a traitor of the worst sort. It was personal. Defiantly, she raised her chin. “I think I am in the office in your gun works.”

  “Correct. And here you will stay until—”

  “Until what?”

  “Until I decide what you’re worth.” Rummaging through a desk drawer, he produced a small pocketknife and came toward her.

  “Get away from me,” she hissed.

  He sneered. “I was going to cut your restraints. But if you’d rather keep them…”

  “No!” she said sharply.

  “I would prefer you ask politely.”

  Unwilling to give him the satisfaction, and despite the desperate aching in her joints, she made a show of looking at the wall.

  After a moment’s silence he asked, “What is your relationship to James Burnham? You gave him more than a bloody striptease, didn’t you?”

  She turned her head, staring into his cruel eyes. She spoke quietly, but made sure to enunciate each word. “James Burnham is my lover.” A small, slightly mad part of herself insisted on the truth. To feign confusion, to say, “James Burnham is nothing to me,” was, at this moment, inconceivable.

  But that wasn’t precisely factual, either. “James Burnham was my lover,” she amended. There. That was the awful, complete truth. She’d had the best of all men within her grasp, and now he was gone, lost to her forever.

  Biedermeier’s darkening countenance prompted her to return to rationality, to speak more strategically, to do what she could to protect herself and the mission. “As were many other men. You, of all people, should know that. I’d recently decided to take up with you, though now I can’t imagine why. I must have been feeling desperate.”

  “He’s a spy, isn’t he?”

  Catharine hid her shock. “Dr. Burnham? Whatever gave you that idea? Oh, but that would be exciting, wouldn’t it?”

  “Perhaps you are, too, though I doubt it. You’re merely caught up in it. A pawn. A meaningless bit o’ muslin. He’s using you. That’s my guess, though it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is how much he values you.” He yanked her wrists, pulling her to her feet. He pointed to the floor next to one of the desk’s massive wooden legs. “Sit.” When she did not immediately obey, he pressed down on her shoulder, causing her knees to buckle. Crouching down beside her, he used a new length of rope to lash her wrists to the desk. Once secure, he positioned the knife next to the rope binding her ankles and looked at her, brows raised expectantly. “I’ll cut your legs free so you’ll be more comfortable, but you have to ask politely. And I encourage you to do so, because you’ll be here for a while. I have a great deal of…paperwork to do.”

  No. She would not give him the satisfaction. She’d rather die, and it sounded like death was a distinct possibility. If this was the end, she was determined to meet her fate with her pride intact. Curling her lip at him, she shook her head.

  “You!” He recoiled and leaped to his feet. “You’d better hope that your lover cares enough to save you.”

  “I can save myself,” she snapped. “Name your price.”

>   “It’s not money I want, viscountess. I’ll be on my way to the coast before nightfall, and I’ll be on a ship to France within a week. You’re merely my insurance policy. Should your lover arrive before I leave, a certain amount of…negotiating will have to commence. What remains to be seen is whether he values you more than me. Yes, that’s the only question. Are you worth it?”

  Catherine felt no relief once Biedermeier had gone, because his taunting question scrolled through her head, a perpetual torment she was powerless to stop: are you worth it?

  The awful truth that had taken root in her stomach when he’d first asked was now sending up vines that threatened to strangle her: she didn’t know. Surely the Blackstone she’d grown close to in the last few days would not willingly sacrifice her, but he’d been a spy for much longer than he’d been her friend. She’d looked into his steely eyes many times and seen the emptiness there. Above all, he was loyal to the cause.

  She understood that, even respected it. What was it he’d said to her? “Someone has to do it.” He had proven himself more than capable of making difficult decisions, of sacrificing whatever—and whomever—needed to be sacrificed.

  James she was even less certain about. Of course, she had no idea to what extent he was involved, just that he had been at the soirée, and it was hard to imagine Blackstone not making the connection. For the millionth time, she revisited the whispered conversation that had felt so private, yet had unfolded in front of a crowd of jeering onlookers. “You don’t know what I’ve done,” she’d said, though it killed her to speak those words. “I do,” he’d insisted quietly, looking at her as if he could see every mistake she’d ever made, every flaw and misstep—and, even more remarkably, as if none of it mattered.

  Miserable, she let the first hot tears fall. There was no point in clinging to the hope she would survive this. It was difficult to imagine a way for either James or Blackstone to help her. They were, in some ways, very alike. Both were meticulously consistent, doggedly loyal to their respective causes. If her life hadn’t been in jeopardy, she might have found it amusing: her potential knights in shining armor might just be too pure, too good, too committed to their noble causes, to save her.

  Several minutes later, her heart jumped when she heard a key being inserted into the door’s lock. But her fear quickly turned to relief when she saw that her visitor was a child of no more than ten. She had to smile through her tears. Biedermeier was even now locked in a battle of wits with one of England’s most ruthless spymasters, yet in this simple way, he’d been outwitted by a child.

  The boy stared at her, brown eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. She willed him to come closer, to remove her gag so she could speak to him, but after a few moments, he retreated, locking the door behind him. A few minutes later, he returned, this time with an older boy in tow. Making his way to her, the older boy loosened her gag.

  “What is your name?” she whispered urgently, guessing that he was thirteen years old, perhaps fourteen.

  “Alfie,” he whispered back. “What is yours?”

  Ah! James’s Alfie! Suddenly, the unkempt, freckled child before her seemed a beacon of hope. “My name is Catharine. I’m a friend of your teacher, Dr. Burnham.”

  The boy’s eyes registered his surprise. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t want to be here. I’m here against my will.”

  “Mr. Biedermeier is a bad man.” He took a step back.

  “Yes.”

  “Dr. Burnham is going to get him,” Alfie said with something that sounded like uncertainty. “He knows what is happening here.”

  Her heart leaped. “He knows I’m here?”

  Alfie just shook his head. “Are you hungry, ma’am?” Before she could answer, a grubby hand reached into a pocket, retrieved a lint-covered boiled sweet, and deposited it in her mouth.

  James, Madame Cherie, and Blackstone stood in a lane near the gun works, huddled together against the late November chill. Bailey had gone to search Biedermeier’s home. James had told the group everything he knew about the building and sketched a crude map of its layout. His head bent over the foolscap, Blackstone reminded Madame of the path she would need to take through the gun works to let them in.

  Everything was ready to go. In his more optimistic moments, James thought they might actually pull it off. And if they didn’t, he had another plan of his own. He patted his lower back and felt the comforting bulk there.

  He was willing to try it Blackstone’s way, even to concede that the earl’s plan was logically superior, but logic wasn’t driving him any longer. For the first time in his life, reason would not rule.

  His eyes slid over to Madame, who was listening intently to the earl. Disguised as a maid, she was almost unrecognizable. Mr. Bailey, in his dealings with Biedermeier, had learned that the man had a maid in twice a week to tidy his office and private parlor. Tonight, conveniently, his usual maid had fallen ill and would send her mother instead. Dressed in drab brown linsey-woolsey, hair obscured under a cap, her face devoid of its usual paint, James could almost believe in her transformation.

  Despite her speech in the coach, the woman remained a mystery. His notion to make a scientific study of prostitution seemed like a quaint fancy from a lifetime ago. How could he have expected to know what was unknowable, that, given enough dogged investigation, the world would simply open up and spill its complex secrets? He had the sense that, from now on, the confident, almost smug certainty with which he’d always viewed the world would no longer be available to him. He didn’t know anything anymore.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He knew without question that his heart belonged to the woman inside the Biedermeier gun works. If he could do one more thing with his life, it would be to get her out, unscathed.

  The sweet tartness of the boiled sweet was a jolt to Catharine’s system. “Alfie!” she gasped, “you must help me!” She couldn’t waste this opportunity. Surely it would be her only.

  “I’m afraid of him,” the boy whispered, suddenly looking much younger than she suspected he actually was. “I want to help, but I’m afraid of him.”

  “I am, too.”

  He bent down and retrieved something from his boot. “I have this penknife,” he said, taking a step toward her. “It was my father’s.” She nodded her encouragement. “He’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. All the force of her being was focused on the boy, trying to will him to free her.

  “Perhaps I could loosen your bonds and then leave you this knife. That way, see, it wouldn’t be me who let you out.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes! I could have found such a knife anywhere! I could have had it secreted away on my person! It needn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Chewing his lower lip, Alfie began to work on the ropes that secured her ankles to the desk. She had to smile when he accidently loosened one ankle too much and the ropes fell, causing him to whisper a mild curse.

  She was more concerned about her hands, which, once free, she could use to untie her feet. He was like a spooked horse, in need of careful soothing. Quietly, she encouraged him to come around the back of the chair and talked him through loosening her bonds there. When she was satisfied he’d made enough progress that she could finish on her own, she said, “Thank you, Alfie. You’ve done a good, brave thing. You should go now.”

  Without a word, he fled. If she made it out, she would make sure that he and all the other children were looked after.

  One hand was loose enough to give her the leverage to hold the knife against the ropes that bound the other. As she sawed, she smiled at the image of returning to Hanover Square with twenty-one children in tow. What would the butler say? What would everyone say? Well, ruination might have its advantages. Turning one’s formerly aristocratic home into an institution for homeless waifs was nothing when one had already been revealed as a courtesan.

  The knife sliced through the final fibers. Giddy with hope, heart thumping wildly, she
freed her ankles and rose, a free woman. What now? Well, she’d walk to London if she had to.

  Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Escape. London. James. Blackstone. In that order.”

  Why was it taking so long?

  Acid roiled in his gut as James stood with Blackstone outside the back of the building. The same fear he’d felt when he first learned Catharine was gone swirled in his chest. In the last eighteen hours, he’d been able to sublimate most of his dread. There had been things to do, plans to make. It had been more important to be efficient than to be afraid.

  But now, poised at the door, grasping fingers of panic began to scratch at his insides. After a few minutes, panic had transmuted into helpless terror, leaving him breathless and shaky. It wasn’t death he feared. He’d long since made peace with God. No, it was the prospect of losing her, of having to go on, to trudge through thousands of days without her, to grow old without her.

  “Dr. Burnham.” Blackstone’s voice was low, but his intense gaze had the effect of pulling James’s attention back to the situation at hand. “Don’t think. It’s the worst thing you can do now. Just act.”

  Suddenly there was a creak, and the door opened a few inches. A white-capped head emerged. “A boy just let me right in. I didn’t even have to explain that I had come in place of the usual maid,” Madame whispered, motioning them inside.

  They paused for a moment, eyes adjusting to the darkness. They were in a storeroom, taken up mostly by stacks of bar iron.

  “The boy said he’s asleep in the tearoom and told me to start with the office,” Madame said. “I popped my head in to the tearoom without waking him. She’s not with him.”

  James nodded. “I know the room. It’s a parlor of sorts. It’s been used for storage lately but he often holds business meetings there.” He pointed to the room on the rough map they’d been using.