The Gentleman Spy: A Guardian/Ward Historical Romance

Chapter 33

Beau needed to speak with Emerald, wished to, but when she’d come to stand next to him, he could only think about how very lovely she was, how brave, how bold, how perfect.

He’d never wished his sister at Bedlam till she interrupted that morning. He’d been forced to let Emerald go, and she’d floated from the sunroom on his heavy sigh. Although with her birthday still some days away, perhaps it had been for the best.

He ran a hand through his hair and glanced at the clock over the mantel in his study. He could still make it to the theatre for the second interval. Saunders had gone to the Palace of Westminster, Something in the gut, he’d said as he left; Allard was at the theatre in Beau’s stead to keep an eye on Emerald; and Beau sat in his study, agonising over everything they knew about Babin and what they were missing.

‘My lord,’ Wallace said, approaching the desk. ‘A Mr Lyon.’

Beau nodded, and a minute later the young man stood in the doorway looking uneasy. Instinct raised the hairs on Beau’s neck. ‘Come in, Lyon. I’m surprised you’re not at the theatre with the rest of the ton.’

‘Yes.’ Lyon swallowed, cleared his throat, and swallowed again. ‘That’s what I’m here about, my lord.’

Beau’s stare was opaque, but his heart rate quickened, his thoughts turning immediately to Emerald.

Lyon stepped further into the study, coming to stand in front of the desk, but he didn’t sit. In his hands, he spun his hat round and round by its brim.

‘I had thought to go, planned to, with my sister—even the Prince Regent will be there—but then Babin—’ Lyon broke off when Beau pushed back his chair with such force it toppled to the ground behind him. His hands pressed firm into the desk, the tips of his fingers going white from the pressure.

‘Babin, what?’

‘We—we—were playing hazard, erm, playing last night.’ Lyon tripped over the words as he spoke. ‘He asked if I planned to attend. I said yes. Then he threw the dice and suggested I ought to keep away. I asked why, and he just said it was a feeling. I didn’t think much of it, but I haven’t felt quite right all day. Something in his demeanour— I can’t describe it. It struck me as particularly odd given he knows, erm, one of the actresses,’ he said with a meaningful look. ‘A Charis or Charlotte Newling or some such. I suppose it’s of no import.’

‘Newling?’ The word came out with the bite of a snake, and Lyon shrank back.

‘Y-yes.’

Three things happened all at once. Beau slammed a fist to his desk, rattling the inkpot, Saunders ran into the study saying, ‘It’s all gone.’ And a panting footman in Allard livery put a hand up in the doorway and choked out the following message between breaths: ‘You. Theatre. Immediately.’

Beau was out the back of the house and into the mews without a thought or care for anyone or anything but Emerald. Lyon’s words were ringing in his ears: even the Prince Regent will be there. Of course. Beau had been a fool. Babin wasn’t going to blow up the House of Lords. He was going to blow up the theatre, assassinate the prince, and take almost all of the aristocracy with him. He didn’t wish only to avenge his father; he wished to avenge France, and what better time and place than on the opening night of a play celebrating Napoleon’s defeat?

‘Tell Duffy,’ he commanded, mounting the horse still saddled from Saunders’s return. He didn’t wait for a reply—none was necessary—and he kicked the horse into motion, spurring it into a gallop behind the long row of townhouses. The roads were empty, all of Mayfair already at the theatre, and Beau covered the mile and a half to the entrance on Brydges Street in mere minutes. With a coin for a boy to watch his horse, Beau ran through the grand saloon and up the stairs to his box, throwing open the curtain to find Allard waiting for him.

‘The dowager is already in a carriage back to Avon House, confused but compliant. Your ward, however—’ He nodded towards the hall. Away from curious stares that had begun to turn in their direction, he said, ‘I saw Babin enter. She went with him, reluctantly from my vantage point. I sent out three men. One went for you, one for the front entrance, one for the back. If he’d left the theatre, we would know.’

‘He hasn’t.’ Beau raked a hand through his hair and told Allard what he’d learned from Lyon.

‘Ah. A Miss Charlie Newling.’

Beau had begun to pace, his mind whirling. ‘There must be a cellar, somewhere he moved the barrels, but easily accessed for his own escape.’

‘A trap room where they can store heavy equipment, large pieces of scenery. There’s a theatre in Paris not unlike this one with something similar. You go. I’ll wait for Duffy and Saunders.’

Beau nodded. He went downstairs and slipped through a side door that carried him down a long, dark hall and into the labyrinth backstage. Instantly, he was absorbed by the chaos of a live production on its opening night.

It seemed at first as if there were infinite ways to go, but when Beau got his bearings, he counted four passageways and stairways shooting off in different directions. He stopped, closed his eyes. Intuition told him to move towards the back of the theatre. He hadn’t a clue what he was looking for as he passed open doors leading to rooms full of costumes, wigs, actors in various states of undress. Although time passed at a crawl, it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before he came to the end of a long hall with only a left turn possible.

He paused at the corner, pressing himself flush against the wall. Slowly, carefully, he peeked around the corner. The passageway was empty, except for a bored-looking man sitting in front of a door—the smuggler from Kent who had twice tried to accost the one most dear to him. Beau was going to enjoy this more than he had any right to.

He would only have one chance to get it right, and when he pulled out his gold snuff box, he imagined how Saunders’s eyebrows would rise.

Beau lowered himself to his knees. He set the snuff box on the ground before reaching into another pocket and pulling out a little case. From the case he removed a slim pair of tweezers then returned it to its proper place. A pocket ran across the back of his breeches. He slipped a hand in and pulled out a quill.

Beau plucked a handkerchief from his pocket, folded it, and held it in place at the tip of the quill with a finger. With his other hand, he used the tweezers to extract a needle-thin dart from the snuff box open beside him and dropped it point down into the quill. The whole sequence was much easier completed with two persons, but with Emerald in danger he could not wait. Using one hand, he closed the snuff box, returned it to his coat, and simply tucked the tweezers where the quill had been.

With such a short barrel, the closer he could get the better. He slipped his shoes off and crept along the wall. The rest of the theatre benefited from gaslights, but several of the backstage corridors were still lit by candles in wall sconces. The dimness was to his benefit, but the sconce that prevented him from getting any closer without moving fully into the hall wasn’t. Ten feet from the man, Beau stopped and raised the quill. The man turned. Beau dropped the handkerchief and blew hard. The smuggler hardly had time to open his mouth before he grasped for his throat. Beau shot forward, easing the man down to the ground and moving him a little ways from the door.

Beau strained to hear anything inside the trap room through the cacophony of the theatre noise on the stage above. When he could make out Emerald’s voice, the dulcet tone if not the words, he ached with relief. He tried the handle. It gave way, and Beau slipped in without catching either his ward’s or Babin’s notice.

Babin had his back to the door, his frame blocking most of Emerald from Beau’s sight. Behind them were dozens of barrels of explosives.

‘I’m disappointed with myself for only giving you credit as a mere smuggler. Revolutionary is so much grander, do not you think?’ remarked Beau into the dimly lit room.

Babin wheeled around, and Emerald cried out, ‘Beau!’ Her wrists were knotted in rope, and as she stepped towards him, Babin wrenched her backward by the shoulder as he squared himself against Beau, who did nothing more than spare her a cursory glance, knowing what distraction could cost. He depressed the violent fury quivering inside him and ignored the sharp pang knocking around his chest.

‘I appreciate how a man might lose focus,’ Babin said, leering at Emerald.

Beau’s muscles tensed with strangled fury. ‘And yet you would see her dead?’

Babin shrugged. ‘In truth, the idea of punishing you for your father’s crime only presented itself to me once you returned—you’d been gone so long, I’d never thought much of you at all. Then there you were. Putting yourself where you didn’t belong. Just like your father.’

Beau felt bile rise in his throat. He’d been gone from Oakmoss too long, but his return had made her an object of Babin’s revenge.

‘I found that afternoon tea at Oakmoss inspiring. I thought perhaps you just wished to bed her, but it’s so much more than that, isn’t it?’ Babin ran the tip of the gun along her jaw, and Beau could feel his insides begin to tremble with seething rage. ‘I could kill you, yes, but how much more delicious to take something you love, like your father did to my family?’

‘Your father was a criminal.’

‘Are your hands clean?’

Beau remained silent.

‘No, I did not think they were.’

‘There’s a chasm between killing an entire theatre of innocent people and killing the man planning to do so. Or, say, killing an innocent woman because your father chose the wrong inlet for his boatful of brandy or tobacco or whatever else.’

Babin scoffed. ‘It wasn’t what was in the boat. It was who.’

For a stretch of time too small to be measured, Beau was stunned.

‘Spoiled Englishmen and their desire to possess what someone told them they cannot have. You understand.’ Babin’s laugh was ugly, his smile jeering. ‘Brandy brings a tidy amount, but the real money is in people. The younger ones in particular fetch an eye-watering sum.’

Of all the experiences Beau had lived through, none had brought him as close to casting up his accounts as the one unfolding before him. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the convulsive bob in Emerald’s throat.

‘Well, this has already gone on too long and the curtain call is nearing. You will not walk out of here, although she will. Only I cannot but think it a shame she must live with more sadness while you escape it,’ said Babin, raising his pistol and cocking it. ‘But I promise she’ll love France.’