Chapter 25
I am built for you, Lydia Hope-Wallace. My body and my heart were formed for the loving of you.
—from the unsent papers of Arthur Baird
She needed to go home, Lydia reflected as she sipped at her tea. But she did not want to.
Arthur had remained awake for the rest of the night, watching the back alley out the window from the desk chair, while she had curled up in the cot. Once the dawn had broken, she’d forced him with threats and various erotic bribes to exchange their positions and rest awhile. Tea had appeared as if by magic, and a tray of breakfast comestibles more than sufficient for her and Arthur together. Selina’s work, Lydia had no doubt—the woman had probably known of Lydia’s return to Belvoir’s before Arthur had.
It was midmorning, and Arthur had just now risen and gone to perform what ablutions he could at the washstand Selina kept in an adjoining room. He was rumpled—they both were—and his whiskers had made a significant reappearance. She liked the whiskers, liked the way they drew her fingers to his face. He was more touchable whilst bearded—more plausibly hers.
She kept her eyes focused on the alley, lit now by the watery light of the morning post-downpour. She listened with half an ear to the noisy bustle of the street outside, the clacking of wheels and shouting of hawkers with their wares.
Arthur was uneasy; she could tell it. Though he’d held her for a long time in his arms before he’d gone from the room, she could sense a faint tension in him. She tried to tell herself that his distress was due to his worries over his brother—not to their impending marriage. She tried to tell herself that once they found Davis and Jasper, everything was going to be all right.
She was not a woman accustomed to optimism. But she believed in Arthur, his patience and his gravity and his tenderness. And she believed—more now than she ever had—in herself as well.
The clamor from outside seemed somehow to increase, though she could not discern what was happening on Regent Street—her only view was of the back alley. She came to her feet anyway, curious, and then Arthur returned through the adjoining door.
His shirt was open at the front and his neck gleamed with water. She watched, mesmerized, as a droplet beaded up and rolled down his throat.
She wanted to follow it with her tongue. She wanted—
The door to the office rattled. “Lydia? Arthur? Are you in there?”
It was Georgiana’s voice. Lydia exchanged a surprised glance with Arthur, and he crossed to open the door before she could.
On the other side of the threshold, Georgiana stood, her hands full of papers and her usually pristine ringlets sweaty and tangled beneath her bonnet.
She came into the room and dropped the papers on the desk before yanking the bonnet off her head with a sound of relief. “Goodness. I had to walk the last ten streets. Traffic’s stopped all over because of the parade.”
The parade—yes, that explained the noise in the street, now that she thought of it. Lydia had read of Wellington’s welcome-home parade in the papers the previous day, when she’d scoured Theo’s office for news from the month she’d been away. It was going to take her several dedicated days to catch up on the various political intrigues she had missed. When she moved to Scotland, she was going to have to bribe Ned extravagantly to keep her informed.
Georgiana nudged the papers on the desk closer toward Lydia. “These are for you, from Selina. I was already over there this morning—she’s collected everything she has on your brother, French agents, and the Home Office.” Amusement threaded Georgiana’s crisp voice. “After a clerk shut the door in her face yesterday on King Charles Street, I believe she’s transferred her loyalties from the British government to you personally, Lydia.”
Lydia seated herself at the desk and began to sort through the papers, trying to contain the grin that wanted to break out on her face. The very idea of Selina attempting to manage the Home Office and then being roundly rejected was…
Well, she pitied the Home Secretary, to be certain.
“Where does Selina mean to go next?” she inquired absently, flipping through the papers. They were not terribly enlightening—dates upon which Jasper had received correspondence at Belvoir’s, annotations on the Home Office’s crackdown on Bonapartists, real and imaginary.
“I believe she means to travel on to the Duggleby town house to visit Iris. Though even Selina cannot redirect Wellington’s parade, so she may find herself run to ground until the bridge clears.”
Lydia froze, one leaf of Selina’s heavy writing paper still clamped between thumb and forefinger.
Georgiana’s words—the notes before her—Davis’s letters. The fragments spun, a thousand bits of colored confetti, and then resolved themselves into a picture in her mind.
Wellington.
Bonapartists.
The bridge.
“I know where he is,” she whispered. “Davis. And the rifle scope.”
Her eyes flew to Arthur’s face. He’d taken a step toward her and then frozen, his hands locked on the back of a spindled chair, his knuckles gone white. “Where?”
“The parade.” Her voice shook. “I saw the route in the papers yesterday. It goes across London Bridge and directly in front of St. Saviour’s Church.”
Arthur looked taken aback. “You think Davis is in the parade?”
“No.” Oh God—she wished she was wrong, she wanted to be wrong. But she did not think she was. “I believe he’s at St. Saviour’s now. I think he means to fire into the parade.”
Arthur’s face had paled, but he did not contradict her, did not demand she explain her thinking. Only… “Why?” he said hoarsely. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“You said you overheard the Thibodeaux mention a duke, did you not? Now that the occupation of France has ended, the Duke of Wellington has returned to England. The parade is in his honor, meant to welcome him home. He’ll be at the end of the parade, in full military dress and on display in an open box.” She looked up and met Arthur’s gaze, now trained intensely upon her. “Ever since the assassination attempt upon him in Paris in February, Wellington’s gone nowhere without armed guards. But if Davis has the rifle scope, it does not matter if Wellington’s guarded by half the Bow Street patrol. He’ll be defenseless.”
“Why would Davis want to use the rifle scope against Wellington?”
Her throat felt tight. She ought to have seen it sooner. With everything she knew of Davis—with the appearance of the Thibodeaux—with all her political knowledge, knotted into a thousand interlocking webs in her head—she ought to have predicted this.
“The first letters we ever exchanged discussed the participation of Scottish troops in the Napoleonic Wars. Davis said Wellington and his men lured the Scots with false promises, then unfairly compensated them for their efforts. He—”
She twisted her fingers together in front of her. “He never mentioned anything like this. But there is a substantial contingent of Bonapartists who have been exiled from France—the ones who organized the assassination attempt on Wellington in February. It’s possible the Thibodeaux were a part of that group. And it’s possible they brought Davis over onto their side.”
Arthur’s eyes were fixed on her face, his expression tight with suppressed emotion.
He believed her. That fact settled somewhere in her chest, even as anxiety clogged her throat. He trusted her without question.
Then his lashes came down as he turned and made for the door. “I’ll go to the church. I have to try to stop him if I can.”
Lydia found she was already on her feet. “I’ll go with you.”
He turned back to her and took a step in her direction. Another. His eyes, rings of blue and green and gold, locked with hers. “No. No, Lydia. I need you to stay here. Wait for Jasper.”
She shook her head in helpless negation. Her eyes burned; she could not see him clearly. “You can’t go alone. You’ll be defenseless. It might not just be Davis—it could be him and the Thibodeaux together. You—”
“I cannot let him do this, my love.” His soft voice stilled her frantic words, and her heart clenched at the sound. “If there’s any chance I can prevent him before it’s too late, I have to try.”
Of course he would think so. Not just to avoid an assassination, but to stop his brother. To save Davis, if he could, from doing something unforgivable.
I wanted to believe him , Arthur had said. Part of me has never stopped seeing that little boy in him.
Fear clutched at her throat, throbbing in her ears. Don’t , she wanted to say. Don’t go, don’t leave, I love you. Stay.
But she could not ask that of him. Not now, not in this moment.
Georgiana had crossed to them, and now she reached into her reticule and removed a small pearl-handled pistol. She pressed it into Arthur’s hands. “Take this. I’ll run back to Selina’s—we’ll go to the Home Office together and tell them Lydia’s suppositions.” Her face was set and uncompromising. “We will make them listen this time.”
Arthur’s burn-flecked hand closed around the modest weapon, and Lydia’s stomach turned over.
“If Lydia is right about this,” Georgiana said, “there’s still time. Wellington is meant to be at the end of the parade, not the front. You have an hour—perhaps more—to search the church and stop your brother.”
He nodded, wordless gratitude writ plain on his face.
And then he turned back to Lydia. He reached out and caught her around the waist with his free hand, drawing her hard up against his chest.
He kissed her. He kissed her like it was the last time he would ever have his mouth on hers, like he could breathe his stubbornness and determination into her body. He kissed her like his lips were a promise and his heartbeat a vow.
She kissed him back the same way.
When they broke apart, his hand cupped her cheek—once, gently—before falling away. “I’ll be back for you,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry,” she whispered, and then the door closed, and he was gone.
It was some long moments before she looked down at the desk and realized he had not taken the pistol.
He had had only that single armament, that lone defense. And he had left it for her.
It took Arthur nearly the full hour to make it to St. Saviour’s. The duchess’s man at Belvoir’s—either accustomed to misadventure or terrified by Arthur’s general air of ferocious intensity—had not asked questions. He’d produced a hack with a sharp-eyed driver as if from nowhere, and Arthur had, quickly and urgently, communicated his desperation to get to St. Saviour’s Church.
The driver had passed his thumb across his mustache, considered the congestion on the roads, and then hauled Arthur up front alongside him. And then he’d taken off.
Arthur had spent the journey staring at his ancient pocket watch and grinding his teeth. When they could make out the church in the distance, Arthur had leapt down and taken the rest of the street at a dead run.
The entrance to the church was obscured by scaffolding, but there were no workmen about, only milling pedestrians: street vendors, women carrying market baskets, children bundled against the cold and seated on their parents’ shoulders. The parade was nearing its end, though Arthur could not yet see Wellington’s carriage—it was still too far back to be visible.
But he knew—he knew all too well—that with the rifle scope, the distance would not matter.
He ducked behind the scaffolding and tested the church’s front door, which seemed barred from the inside. He tried to force it open, but it resisted his efforts, so he continued on to the transept, shielded by shrubbery. Several yards down, he located a broken window, half hidden by a pile of refuse and building materials.
He forced his way inside. The metal frame scraped against his shoulder, but he ignored it.
Inside the church, the windows were set in ashlar—a cool, airy stone dressing that was marred by crumbling mortar. The remains of pews were heaped in piles near signs of active restoration: bricks and lime, ladders and trowels. Parts of the roof had collapsed, and the late-afternoon sun made bars of light along the stone floor.
He headed toward the tower at the center of the building, from which the transepts radiated. As he made his way up the dark, windowless stairway, his boot caught the edge of a rotted piece of wood paneling, which came away from the wall.
Jesus. He needed to find Davis before the whole tower came down around them
He hesitated a moment, then closed his fingers around the spongy wooden plank. A pitiful weapon, perhaps, but better than nothing.
And yet his mind recoiled at the thought. Could he truly use a weapon—any weapon—against his brother?
It felt impossible. But he would do what he must if it was the only way to stop Davis.
Arthur shifted the plank in his grip and moved more quickly up the narrow stairs, his lungs working, his heart racing in his chest. From exertion. And from fear of what awaited him.
At the top of the stairs, he found a single, tiny door. Beyond that door was the roof of the tower, the narrow crenellations he had seen from the ground—and Davis, if Lydia’s suppositions were correct.
The door wasn’t locked. He grasped the handle, eased the door open, and was briefly dazzled by the brilliant November sun and the crystalline blue of the sky.
When his vision cleared, he saw Davis, the butt of a rifle at his shoulder and the barrel pointed directly at Arthur’s chest.
Beside him was Jasper Hope-Wallace.
Everyone froze: Davis with the rifle, Arthur with his plank, and Jasper with his hand on the pistol at his waist.
And then Davis lowered his weapon. “Arthur?” he said disbelievingly. “What the devil are you doing here?”
Jasper leapt into motion, pushing Davis aside and moving to the threshold where Arthur stood. “Have you come alone? Damn it, was there anyone else down there?”
Arthur felt blood pounding in his ears, his whole body tense, the muscles of his forearm knotted where he held the plank. “I’m alone. Hope-Wallace, what is this? Why are you with him ?”
Davis was looking blankly from Jasper to Arthur and back again. “You know each other?”
“Yes,” said Jasper grimly, “but your brother is meant to be in Scotland right now.” He finished his perusal of what lay beyond the threshold and turned back to Davis, who was still standing between the stone crenellations, the rifle dangling from his hand. “The parade’s nearly over. I don’t think they’re coming, Baird.”
“Who’s not coming?” Arthur demanded.
At the same moment, Davis said, “How in Christ’s name do you two know each other?”
Jasper shoved the door closed with a bang. “I met Lord Strathrannoch when I was at Kilbride House. And why the hell he is not in Scotland where I specifically told him to remain, I cannot fathom.”
All of Davis’s attention was fixed on Arthur. He was blinking erratically, like a mechanical toy out of proper order. “You were at Kilbride House? Why?”
“I was looking for you, goddamn it! Did you think I would let you take off with the rifle scope and not try to track you down? I couldn’t—I couldn’t allow you to…” Arthur’s gaze flicked to the rifle in Davis’s hands, but the scope he’d designed was nowhere to be seen.
Jasper turned to Arthur, tipping his chin back so they were eye to eye. “Your brother stole your rifle telescope on my orders. He did not intend to use it.”
“On your orders?” Arthur said. “Davis works for you ?”
Davis was staring at them both, his jaw working, his face tense. He looked agonized, his green eyes blazing in the sun.
“Yes,” Jasper said. “Davis has been working for me—for the Home Office—for nearly half a decade.”
Arthur’s mind reeled. Five years—over the last five years, Davis had seemed to abandon everything he’d once believed in. He’d ingratiated himself with the Scottish aristocracy he’d once despised. He’d supported—he’d pretended to support the Clearances.
All of it had been a lie.
“For eighteen months,” Jasper went on, “we’ve been tracking a group of Bonapartists who mean to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. We stopped their first attempt in Paris on the strength of your brother’s intelligence, but Davis learned that they meant to try again upon Wellington’s return to London. This goddamned rifle scope was meant to convince them to trust Davis. It was meant to be the bait that lured them into the open.”
Davis worked for the Home Office. Davis was not part of an assassination plot. He was working to stop one.
His brother had not intended to hurt anyone.
Relief was a detonation in Arthur’s chest, an explosion so fast and consuming that he felt light-headed. “Bait?” he said hoarsely. “All of this was…”
“A trap,” said Jasper. “A trap we’ve spent months cultivating.” He slammed his hand against the stone crenellations, a quick powerful burst of frustration. “And it has not worked.”
Davis was shaking his head, his black curls falling over his brow. “How did you know where to find us?” he asked Arthur.
“We found your papers in the boardinghouse in Haddon Grange, and Lydia figured out where you would be. We thought—we all assumed you meant to fire into the parade.”
Jesus. Arthur felt a confused welter of emotions tangled in his chest. Guilt that he had believed Davis part of the assassination plot; relief that it was not so. Outrage, still, at the way that Davis had deceived Lydia.
And yet—had the deception of Lydia been part of the Home Office’s plan as well—part of Davis’s intelligence gathering?
I’m sorry , Davis had written to her, a letter he had never sent. I don’t know how to tell you.
Davis, meanwhile, looked as though he had taken a blow to the head. “Lydia? My Lydia? She knew about the rifle scope? She believed that it—that I—”
“Enough,” Jasper said. His voice now contained neither the rich tones of Joseph Eagermont nor the frustrated affection of an older brother. He was clipped, fully in command. “We need to go. They’re not coming.”
“Whom do you mean?” Arthur asked. “Whom did you think to find here? The Thibodeaux?”
The silence that greeted his words was so complete that Arthur could pick out the individual sounds of the parade below: horseshoes striking the ground, a shout, the hoarse cry of a gull.
“What do you know of the Thibodeaux?” asked Jasper carefully.
“We know they’re after Joseph Eagermont, the spy they uncovered in Kilbride House. We came to London together to warn you—we tried to contact you through Belvoir’s Library.” Anger met guilt and frustrated relief in him, rising to a boil. “For God’s sake, if the two of you had only told us what was happening—do you realize the danger that you put Lydia in? She might have been targeted because of her connection to you—to both of you—and she had no idea of the risk.”
Jasper’s face had gone a sickly shade of white. “I told Lydia—I told her to go back to Strathrannoch Castle with you.”
“She was worried for you,” Arthur said. “If you supposed she would read your note and remain quietly at home when she believed you to be in danger, then you do not know Lydia as well as you think.”
“Arthur.” Davis’s voice had a strange calm tone to it, an evenness that raised the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck. “Where is Lydia now?”
“She’s at the library,” he said, “waiting for her thrice-damned brother to show up so she can tell him about the French agents after him—the agents that the two of you already know about! The duchess left your signal in the office window yesterday and Lydia has been waiting there ever since.”
“The book?” Jasper asked. “The red book?”
“Aye.”
Davis lifted the rifle in one quick movement. Jasper flung open the door to the stairwell. “We have to go,” Jasper snapped, vaulting easily through the small opening. “We have to go right now .”
“Why? What the devil—”
Davis threw himself after Jasper, his dark head disappearing after Jasper’s fair one. “The Thibodeaux know about the signal,” he said. “They’ll know how to find her.”