The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Lady Charlotte? If you will?” Remembering the fate of the last man who had climbed that ladder, Charlotte clung tightly with both hands as she very slowly and painfully twisted her torso to look down below. She could see Henrietta pinned in the grasp of a man whose rough wool cap hid his face from Charlotte’s view.

The man who had spoken, the one who had called her by name, obligingly stepped forward, into Charlotte’s line of vision.

He wore a monk’s habit, a rough brown robe of the sort the members of the Hellfire Club had been wearing, but Charlotte could see the tips of boots beneath rather than sandals. He had thrown his hood back, revealing close-cropped brown hair and a face that Charlotte might have considered handsome had its owner not been pointing a pistol at her.

“Won’t you come down?” the Frenchman said lightly, as if he were asking her to stand up with him at Almack’s rather than threatening her at gunpoint. “I really shouldn’t like to shoot you.”

“I shouldn’t like to be shot,” Charlotte agreed, but she continued to cling to the ladder without moving. She wasn’t particularly sure that down was a safe place to be. Unfortunately, up wasn’t an option, either. He could undoubtedly shoot faster than she could climb.

“Now, Lady Charlotte,” said the monk, very, very patiently, and Charlotte reluctantly began to shimmy downwards, feeling her way down rung by rung. Henrietta had been wrong; it wasn’t any harder going down than it had been going up, but Charlotte deliberately drew out the process, playing for time. If she dawdled long enough, there was a chance the men might finish in the tunnels and charge up to rescue them. Or they might stay down there, searching for nonexistent villains and exchanging witty quips. Charlotte suspected the latter. A more likely avenue of opportunity was Henrietta’s discarded pistol. Where had she left it? Charlotte thought she remembered Henrietta setting it down by the base of the ladder, but her mind had been on other things at the time.

Twisting, shoulder level off the ground, she peered down at the Frenchman as though something had just occurred to her. Which it had. But it also made an excellent opportunity to try to look for the pistol.

Charlotte donned her daftest, vaguest expression — which, as her grandmother was fond of saying, was very daft indeed. “How do you know my name?”

The Frenchman was neither impressed nor diverted. “That would be telling.”

Charlotte widened her eyes at him in the way that had worked so well on the real Dr. Simmons. “I suppose it would be futile to ask who you are?”

“Very.” The Frenchman gestured with his pistol, but not before Charlotte thought she saw something metallic on the ground by the crumpled form of Wrothan’s fallen guard. Charlotte gave silent thanks to St. Lawrence, or whomever it was to whom Medmenham had dedicated the church. The curve of the man’s body shielded the firearm from the Frenchman’s view. “Come along, Lady Charlotte, no dawdling.”

“I’m not very good with ladders,” said Charlotte disarmingly. “I haven’t a very broad acquaintance with them.”

“All the more reason not to prolong your acquaintance with this one,” said their captor pleasantly. “Peter? Would you care to help Lady Charlotte along?”

It was decidedly unclear just what sort of help he intended. From the way Peter — Charlotte assumed he must be Peter, since he had sauntered forwards at the Frenchman’s call — lifted his pistol, potting pigeons came to mind.

“No — no!” Charlotte flailed a foot behind her as she felt for the next rung down. It wasn’t entirely an act. There was nothing like being aimed at to wreak havoc with one’s sense of balance. “That’s quite all right. I can manage.”

Moving with more speed than grace, she deliberately floundered her way down the next few rungs. It was mostly deliberate, at any rate. She was feeling more than a little bit wobbly, and her skirt seemed to catch at her calves even more than usual. Just as a pair of hands reached out to lift her off the ladder, Charlotte contrived to fall sideways, bumping into Peter in the process. Peter stumbled gratifyingly, and Charlotte fell heavily to her knees by the side of the ladder. As Peter swayed and swore, Charlotte scooped the pistol up under her skirt, wedging it as best she could in her garter under pretense of floundering on the floor.

One could only flounder for so long; grabbing a hand, Peter yanked her unceremoniously to her feet, all but pulling her arm out of the socket in the process.

“I’m all right,” she said breathlessly, making a show of swaying dizzily. Her garter sagged but held, just barely supporting the weight of the metal. Charlotte clamped her knees together, trapping the barrel between her thighs. “Really I am.”

“You are also,” said the Frenchman dryly, “blocking the ladder. Jack?”

Peter dragged her backwards while another of the Frenchman’s henchmen made for the ladder, presumably in pursuit of the hidden King. Across the width of the ladder, Charlotte’s eyes met Henrietta’s. She let her eyes slide sideways, towards the ladder. In response, Henrietta lowered both eyelids in a discreet blink. That was one of the joys of over a decade of friendship: There was no need for words to communicate.

They were agreed. It would be much easier to let the Frenchman’s men fetch the King down first and stage their rebellion after, while the Frenchman was preoccupied with the King. At least, Charlotte was fairly sure that that was what Henrietta’s blink meant.

In the meantime, it was best to continue to be as daft as possible. Charlotte fluttered her lashes at the Frenchman, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her knees were pressed together at a very odd angle.“Shouldn’t your men be Jacques and Pierre?” she asked. “Rather than Jack and Peter?”

“I believe in supporting the local economy,” said the Frenchman blandly. “It would be very inadvisable to travel with a foreign retinue. I am sure your brother would agree with me — Lady Henrietta.”

So he knew who Henrietta was, too. Charlotte had the greatest respect for the Frenchman’s intelligence-gathering network. They were obviously immensely thorough.

Henrietta regarded him narrowly, as though staring long and hard enough might provide a clue to his identity. “Do you know Richard?”

“So to speak.” The Frenchman had his eyes on the ladder, watching as his man climbed, steadily and far more speedily than Charlotte, up towards the painted scene on the ceiling, but Charlotte had no doubt that he was equally attuned to her and Henrietta.

“What do you want with the King?” Charlotte asked boldly.

If he was going to kill them, he would do it, anyway, so where was the harm in asking? Charlotte was nearly certain that he had no interest in killing them, unless circumstances somehow made their deaths absolutely imperative.

Robert would probably say that was taking her trusting nature too far, but Charlotte didn’t think it was about being trusting. It was about the Frenchman not wanting to make more of a mess than he had to.

“I don’t want your King particularly,” said the Frenchman with disarming frankness. “But as you can see, events have forced my hand. I can’t very well leave him here, can I?”

Charlotte felt that that was a rather disingenuous portrayal of the situation. “But you drugged him,” she pointed out. “Why, if not for this?”

With a Gallic shrug, the Frenchman dodged the question. “The old man was half mad, anyway. He scarcely noticed the difference. All I did was . . . help him along a bit.”

“That,” said Charlotte sternly, or at least as sternly as she could with her arms clamped behind her back, “is not an excuse.”

“Justice with her flaming sword,” murmured the Frenchman. “How charming. If somewhat trite.”

“I prefer old-fashioned,” said Charlotte helpfully. “It sounds better that way.”

On the very top of the ladder, his minion — Jack, if Charlotte remembered correctly — was beginning to descend with a man-size bundle draped over his back.

“Well done, Jack,” the Frenchman called. “When you are finished, bring him out to the carriage.”

“Carriage?” said Charlotte, as Jack reached the midway point, carefully balancing his royal burden.

“I fear you will come to know it rather intimately,” said the Frenchman, and although he spoke matter-of-factly, there was something decidedly ominous his words. “I cannot leave you here.”

“Can’t you?” faltered Charlotte.

“As much as I hate to disoblige a lady . . .” The Frenchman held up both hands in a stylized gesture of helplessness. “You do pose something of an inconvenience, you realize.”

“What do you intend to do with us?” Henrietta asked darkly.

“Isn’t the usual procedure to drop you in an oubliette pending ravishment?” He smiled blandly as Henrietta scowled at him. Henrietta had never enjoyed being made fun of. “You really must resort to better reading material, Lady Henrietta. I am, I fear, flat out of oubliettes, and I have no desire to be pursued by your large and irate male relations vowing vengeance. I have,” he added tantalizingly, “met them before. No. Once we have gone a sufficient distance from Wycombe, you will be left at a perfectly nice coaching inn to find your own way back to London. I will even pay for a private parlor. We wouldn’t want you mingling with the masses.”

“Then why take us along at all?” asked Henrietta grumpily.

“Because if I leave you here, you will be able to raise the alarm. It’s really quite simple.” His air of superiority reminded Charlotte of Henrietta’s older brother in one of his lecturing moods; it clearly struck Henrietta the same way. “By the time your companions finish searching the grounds for you, we should be well out of the way.”

“There is a flaw in your reasoning somewhere,” insisted Henrietta.

“When you find it, do be good enough to let me know. Ah, Jack. Excellent.” The Frenchman’s man presented the King to his master like a butler with a decanter of claret. The King was unconscious, unshaven, and strapped into a straight waistcoat. There was a distinctly unpleasant odor to him. Whatever other accommodations Wrothan might have made for his stay, he had never contemplated the incompatibility of a chamber pot and a straight waistcoat. The poor King. The degradation of it all made Charlotte’s throat tight.

The Frenchman’s nose twitched. “This is going to be a very uncomfortable carriage ride,” he said resignedly.

“Couldn’t we change him?” Charlotte suggested tentatively. “We could wrap him in my cloak if there aren’t any other clothes to be had.”

“Swaddled tenderly as a babe by your own lily white hands? I think not, Lady Charlotte.”

“It wouldn’t take long,” Charlotte persisted as the man holding her muscled her over the threshold, out into the stinging night air. “And it would make us all far more comfortable.”

“An excellent attempt, Lady Charlotte. But I refuse to oblige you by loitering here until the cavalry arrives. There will be plenty of time to tend to the King once we are underway.”

“Carriage rides make Lady Henrietta sick,” Charlotte blurted out.

Henrietta, who had never been sick in a carriage in her life, promptly blew out her cheeks in an attempt to look bilious.

The Frenchman was not convinced.

“How very unfortunate for her,” said the Frenchman dryly. “Shall we?”

“Perhaps if you let her sit on the box?” Charlotte pleaded, submitting to being shuffled forward by her captor. “She is seldom as queasy in the open air.”

“And allow her to grapple with my coachman for the reins?” The Frenchman was bearing them inexorably away from church and mausoleum, away from the caves where their cavalry still hunted will o’ the wisps. At the end of the lane, Charlotte could see a carriage, a blur of unrelieved black. It was going to be a very tight fit with all of them in it, even assuming the Frenchman left his locally hired ruffians behind. “Ingenious, but no. I suspect Lady Henrietta suffers from carriage sickness as much as I do.”

“How dreadful for you,” said Charlotte sympathetically.

“No, Lady Charlotte,” said the Frenchman. Although he sounded more amused than otherwise, there was a steely quality behind it that signaled that further discussion on the topic would not be well received.

“I suppose offering you money wouldn’t work, either,” said Henrietta glumly.

“I am lamentably impervious to bribes.”

“And to odor, apparently,” retorted Henrietta.

“There are certain occupational hazards with which one must simply come to terms.”

“What is your occupation precisely?” demanded Henrietta.

“Right now? Seeing you into my carriage.”

Charlotte left them to their bickering. At least, Henrietta was bickering. The Frenchman was baiting. Whatever one chose to call it, it was keeping him nicely occupied. No one was paying the least bit of attention to her, including her own guard, who marched her along with the nonchalance of a groom with a particularly placid old mare. He was undoubtedly thinking about something else, like a warm fire or hot ale or whatever it was that ruffians thought about when they weren’t being ruffianly. His grip had gone decidedly slack.

Knowing she only had one chance, Charlotte stomped down hard on his foot and drove an elbow into his stomach.

His boots were considerably harder than her heel. Surprise more than pain was her ally. In a reflex reaction, he loosed his hold on her wrists. Pulling away, Charlotte flung herself to the ground, rolling beneath his grasping hands. Above her, she could hear shouting and feet slipping on the wet grasses.

Charlotte kept rolling, clawing inelegantly at her skirts as she went, fumbling for the pistol snagged in her garter. Already sagging, the garter snapped, sending her stocking sagging down and releasing the pistol into her grasp. Scooting back on her behind, one arm braced behind her, Charlotte hefted the gun, angling it at the men rushing towards her. They abruptly stopped rushing. Pointing the gun first at one, then another, Charlotte levered herself slowly to her feet, never allowing the point of the pistol to drop, even though the muscles in her forearm and shoulder burned at the strain. Her right stocking flopped around her ankle. It seemed like such a small annoyance under the circumstances, and such a very odd thing of which to be so aware.

There would be no pulling it up now, though. Charlotte picked her target, pointing her pistol in the direction of the man holding the King. “Give me the King,” she said.

The Frenchman regarded her with something very like fraternal annoyance. “Really, Lady Charlotte, must you? Put down the gun.”

“Put down the King,” Charlotte countered, keeping her gaze firmly on her target. “Then I’ll put down the gun.”

The man’s eyes flickered to his master in silent question. He looked as though he would have liked nothing better than to drop his sovereign and run.

That, thought Charlotte giddily, was what you got when you hired help on the cheap.

She gentled her voice, speaking directly to the man with the King, as she might have to an animal in the gardens of Girdings. “If you put down the King, you won’t get hurt.”

“He won’t get hurt, in any event.” The Frenchman’s voice was as urbane as ever, but there was a tinge of annoyance under it. “That gun isn’t loaded.”

Charlotte drew herself up proudly. “Would you be willing to wager a man’s life on that?”

The Frenchman looked her up and down. He smiled with disarming humor. “Frankly, yes.” He had a dimple in his left cheek. Who had ever heard of a spy with a dimple? Charlotte disapproved. “If it is loaded — which I very much doubt — you wouldn’t fire it. You would never risk hitting the King. Unless you are, much to my surprise, a crack shot, you run a very good chance of doing so.”

“I was raised in the country,” said Charlotte defiantly. He didn’t need to know that her version of country pursuits had been sitting in the garden with a book.

Or perhaps he did know. It might be the way the gun was making her hands tremble, or the fact that she was holding it a full foot away from her body.

The Frenchman sighed. “Put the gun down, Lady Charlotte, and come along like a good girl. Peter?”

That was the outer end of enough. Unfortunately, Charlotte didn’t quite know what to do with a gun. She knew that there was something called priming that had to be accomplished before the weapon could be fired, and she believed it involved powder, but whether that powder was already there or needed to be added remained a mystery to her. And there was no time to find out. Obedient to his master, Peter lunged for her arm. So Charlotte did the only thing she could do. She threw the gun at the Frenchman’s head.

Her throw went wild, of course.

So did Charlotte’s foot. The force of the motion sent her skidding on the wet grass, flinging her backwards into her would-be captor, who went sprawling backwards beneath her onto the ground, all tangled up with Charlotte’s skirts. He broke the fall rather nicely.

Over the steady cursing of her unwilling human mattress, Charlotte could hear Robert’s voice, shouting, “There! That way! Follow the noise!”

Charlotte scrambled off her assailant, kicking him as he grabbed at her. In the confusion, Henrietta had also broken free of her captor. She dealt him a blow to his nose with the flat of her hand that sent him reeling backwards into the trunk of a tree.

Even in the dark, the Frenchman’s distorted face was a glorious thing to behold. Ha! He had never expected that, had he? To be fair, neither had she. She had been aiming at the Frenchman’s head. Instead, the gun had landed on his foot. Apparently, a falling gun could hurt rather a lot. Hopping on one foot, he was cursing far more inventively than the other men, in a selection of modern and classical languages.

Into the midst of it all charged Robert, Miles, and Lieutenant Fluellen. Nothing had ever sounded more welcome to Charlotte’s ears than the thunder of feet as the cavalry charged down the hill, hooting and yelling and not really saying anything in particular but making a great deal of very martial-sounding noise. They were literally steaming in the cold night air, like a whole troupe of fire-breathing dragons, steam rising off their skin and their breath showing in ragged puffs. Two of the Frenchman’s band broke and fled at the sight. At least, they tried to flee. Like a terrier on the scent, Miles set out in hot pursuit. Tommy dispatched Henrietta’s staggering assailant with a swift punch that sent him reeling into a tree.

Robert charged towards Charlotte, breathing fire at the man who was trying, rather halfheartedly, to grab her arms. Charlotte suspected the Frenchman hadn’t paid him terribly well. At the sight of Robert, he gave up altogether, breaking and running in the direction of the woods.

“The King!” Charlotte shouted, jumping and pointing. “Robert, the King!”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Neither did the man holding the King. Making a quick assessment of his options, he shoved the King at Robert. Robert’s arms closed around the bundle in a reflex reaction.

“Take him! He’s yours!” the man gabbled, and scrabbled off into the woods, following his fleeing colleagues.

“What in the — ?” began Robert.

“Hired help,” explained Charlotte breathlessly. “The real culprit is — oh, drat.”

While they were otherwise occupied, the Frenchman had made his own somewhat lopsided run for it, hitching and hopping his way towards his carriage at a surprisingly impressive speed for a man who appeared to have the use of only one foot. Charlotte wondered if she had broken his toe. With an arrogant wave, the Frenchman swung himself through the open door, snapping his fingers at his coachman. The coachman cracked the reins even before the door was fully closed. Charlotte could see the Frenchman’s disembodied arm sticking out of the compartment, yanking the swaying door closed as the carriage lurched into movement.

Robert took two long strides forward, remembered he was holding the King, and skittered to a halt, looking miffed. Miles dropped the man he was punching and gave chase, but it was too late; the horses were picking up speed.

As the carriage drew away, the Frenchman leaned head and shoulders through the window. In the light of the carriage lamps, Charlotte could see the white of his teeth as he grinned at them, a rogue’s grin, unrepentant and entirely infectious. Despite herself, Charlotte could feel herself grinning back. And why not? Even if he had escaped, they had won. They had the King.

“I wish you joy of your King!” he called through the window. His voice whistled back on the wind, rich with amusement. “I never really wanted him, anyway.”

Charlotte couldn’t be quite sure, but she thought he winked at them.

“Of all the cheek!” Henrietta exclaimed furiously. “Next time, take the Prince of Wales!” she shouted, but the Frenchman was already out of range, the sound of his horses’ hooves fading.

“Really, Hen,” remonstrated Miles, but his arm was tight around her shoulders as he said it and his voice was muffled from being buried in her hair.

The others all melted into insignificance as Robert approached Charlotte, bearing the King in his arms like Sir Walter Raleigh gifting Queen Elizabeth with foreign treasure.

“I brought you something,” he said, and there was something in his expression that hurt to view. “Not quite a dragon’s head, but . . .”

Charlotte dropped her eyes from the expression in his. It was safer to concentrate on the King, to ignore whatever else it was that Robert was offering along with the bundle in his arms. She was a coward, she knew. But what was cowardice but another term for prudence? What she didn’t acknowledge couldn’t hurt her. At least, not too much.

Evading the question, Charlotte dropped to her knees beside the King. “Your Majesty?” she whispered, reaching out to the wasted figure in Robert’s arms. She could be constant to her King, even if she couldn’t trust Robert to be constant to her. “Your Majesty?”

The rheumy eyes opened, trying pitifully to find a focus. His fingers tightened feebly around hers, like those of a child who hadn’t yet quite learned the use of his limbs. “Emily?” he croaked.