by Anne Stuart
Maddy was already on her feet when Luca said in a placating voice, “Why don’t you let us go and retrieve her? We’re more than capable of dealing with any resistance, and it might be better if you weren’t seen.”
“You aren’t capable of dealing with Sophie’s resistance if she doesn’t want to come with you,” Maddy warned him.
“She knows I’m married to Bryony, and she’ll take my word that you and the captain are wed. I would think wishing to be reunited with her sisters would trump any infatuation she might have.”
“True enough. Sophie was never infatuated in her life—she thought men were tedious. If she’s developed any affection for the viscount I’d be astonished. Nevertheless, we’re going with you. I, for one, don’t intend to wait one second longer than I have to before seeing her again,” Bryony stated, fixing him with a stern expression.
“But you’ll stay in the carriage,” Kilmartyn said firmly.
Bryony had learned to lie in the last few months, Maddy thought. “Of course,” Bryony said, her eyes wide. “Anything you say.”
“Have you convinced her? Or have you buggered it up again?”
Rufus flinched beneath his mother’s harsh tones. “She’s ready whenever I am,” he said. “She believed everything I told her.”
His mother’s smiles were never warm, but there was a trace of approval in this one. “Good boy. And we’re fully prepared to deal with Alexander. I found the gun in his desk drawer, and I’ve loaded it for you. It will be easy enough to sneak up on him. He’d never suspect you.”
“He won’t be happy if you’re here,” Rufus said doubtfully.
“He won’t even be thinking about me once he hears that she’s fallen. He’ll be distraught, and you could even suggest she committed suicide. As long as you do your job it will all go swimmingly. Just make certain she falls into the garden, not onto the street. That would cause too much of an uproar, and we’re going to have to live all this down once you inherit the title.”
“You forget I have experience in tossing Alexander’s females off a roof,” Rufus said with an attempt at dignity.
“Ah, yes, poor Jessamine.”
“She didn’t love him,” he said. “She was always flirting with other men, even with me. She deserved her fate.”
“And so does that little trollop who conveniently happens to be one of the Russell girls. I would be quite cross with you if I weren’t pleased with how all this came together. Clearly it was meant to be. I have every expectation that the same opportunities will arise once more with the two others. And if you find you’re tired of killing, there’s always the chance we don’t need to worry about them, but I believe in being thorough. It is only when you deviate from my plans that things go wrong, my boy. If you’d done what I told you, they would have died when you burned down their town house, and it would have been over with when you killed Lady Kilmartyn. But you miscalculated and they escaped. Very sloppy.”
“Yes, Mama. I promise I’ll finish it. I haven’t grown tired of it.”
“You will redeem yourself, I have little doubt, and then you will come into your own. You’re much more suited to the viscountcy—Alexander would rather strip off his clothes and dabble in the water like a child. This way it all works out as I had planned. First we took Renwick back, along with enough money to support it, and everyone assumed it was Russell who’d stolen it. That will be followed by Alexander’s disgrace and death, and no one will even remember the trouble in the house of Russell.”
“It doesn’t do to underestimate him, Mama,” Rufus felt compelled to say.
“He is no match for me,” she said simply. “Neither was his father.”
“My father as well,” Rufus said.
“You aren’t still fussing about that, are you? Once you succeed in killing your own father, you find that you’re quite able to do anything at all,” she said simply. “He was so weak I could have taken care of it, but I wanted you to have the experience. It made you stronger.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“If you can kill your father then you should have no trouble at all killing your brother.”
“No, Mama.” The thought suddenly came to him—her equation worked out quite simply. He should have no trouble killing his mother either. The thought brought an unexpected cheer to his heart.
“You should take care of it, my darling boy. You should do it now. We can’t be sure when Alexander will return, and it needs to be done.”
“Yes, Mama.” He rose obediently, but to his surprise his mother rose as well. “You’re coming with us?”
“Not onto the roof, of course,” she said. “But I wish to observe and make certain there are no mistakes this time. I should have a good enough view from the servants’ quarters.”
“Yes, Mama. And I plan to make certain she lands on the stone wall, so that she dies quickly. It’s four flights down—I have no doubt that it will be sufficient.”
Mrs. Griffiths sighed. “It is too bad we can’t use the street, but we can’t risk the attention. Someone might look up and see you. She might scream when she falls. I don’t suppose you could break her neck before you toss her.”
Rufus shuddered. He’d done that once, at her behest, and he’d hated the cracking noise. “I’ll do my best.”
Mrs. Griffiths smiled at her son fondly. “That’s all I could ever want, darling boy.”
Alexander was ready to punch someone, anyone. Applying for the special license had been simple enough; finding a cleric or magistrate was an entirely different matter. He’d been across town and back at least six times, tracing down one possibility after another, and it was well past teatime before he found someone willing to take care of it. He simply had to convince or drag Sophie to the magistrate’s office at the Old Bailey to have it done, and he could imagine her reaction. Sanctifying a marriage among thieves and murderers was hardly a good way to start a marriage, but then, the two of them were hardly an ordinary couple. The magistrate had been so delighted to oversee an act of joy rather than his usual duties of sending men to prison, hanging, or the hell of transportation to Australia that he’d agreed, though he insisted he couldn’t do it before tomorrow morning.
Alexander had little doubt he could convince Sophie. He was still in a haze from the night they’d spent together, the sheer joy in her as she discovered her sensuality, explored his body, and let her own be taken and pleasured until she was a helpless bit of femininity, beyond movement or speech, curled in his arms trustingly, holding him tightly even in her sleep.
She might even love him. At the very least, he was utterly sure he could get her to love him, and the pleasure they took in one another was a good start. She would say yes; he was sure of it. He’d done everything he could to show her how much he wanted her, needed her.
Of course, his inner devil pointed out, you didn’t say the words. Women liked words, and he hadn’t given them. It had been too long since he’d felt this way—if, in fact, he ever had. He’d been infatuated with Jessamine, but that had been a boy’s fascination.
With Sophie he felt an almost mystical connection, though he refused to believe in such things. He’d felt it the first time he’d seen her, and been fighting it ever since. He loved her anger, her sweetness, her smart mouth, and her fierce sexuality. And by God, he loved her cooking. He could worship at her feet if he wasn’t afraid she’d stomp on him. And that was still another reason why he loved her. She was afraid of no one; she would do anything, risk anything.
She was also damned volatile, and she could have viewed their long night together with belated embarrassment, and he hadn’t been there to soothe her. She might have decided he was pond scum once more, and try to escape, particularly since he’d given back her shoes.
But he trusted her. If she left he would find her. If she left he had the very strong suspicion she’d find some reason to come back. She was as drawn to him as he was to her, and he didn’t think she could just walk away, any more than he could.
He’d lef
t her alone with Rufus. For some reason the notion troubled him, making him quicken his pace. There was something off about Rufus in the last few years, something strange and excitable that worried Alexander. There was no reason why Rufus would harm her, though he’d made it clear he thought the idea of Alexander marrying her was insane. Then again, Rufus was his heir, and Alexander had sworn off marriage after Jessamine’s death. Rufus could have gotten used to thinking of himself as the future Viscount Griffiths.
No, Rufus wouldn’t hurt her. He wasn’t like his vicious mother. He could blacken Alexander’s character with his malicious tongue, but Alexander could take care of that by taking Sophie in his arms and speaking the words he was so wary of. Words that were so easy and so hard.
He quickened his pace. The house was too close to get a hackney, too far to get there fast. He strode through the streets at something very close to a run.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“ARE YOU READY?” RUFUS ducked his head inside the door, his charming smile leaving Sophie unmoved. She was about to make her escape over the rooftops of London from the man she loved, the man who had either abandoned her or, if she were to believe Rufus’s outlandish tales, might even kill her, and the only person she could turn to was Rufus Griffiths, a man she disliked and distrusted.
She couldn’t shake the agitation Rufus brought out in her whenever he was near. Perhaps it was simply her confusion about this entire situation, and it had all devolved onto Alexander’s hapless brother.
But there was nothing hapless about Rufus; she had no doubt of it. From his charming, self-deprecating smile to his one perfect curl on his forehead, he was artifice personified.
He was offering to help her, and she couldn’t afford to be picky, to let an unexpected queasiness get in her way. She rose, feeling like her old self in her dress, with the almost-new corset Gemma had found among her belongings. She’d lost some weight, probably from the missed meals, and Gemma had been set to tighten that instrument of torture still further when Sophie had begged her to stop. At Renwick she wouldn’t have to wear a corset, or shoes, or do anything she didn’t want to do. At least, not in the perfect Renwick she pictured in her mind. She could even take off everything and slip into the pool. She wanted that glorious feeling of the cool water all around her again, this time with bright sunlight overhead.
But that was all a fantasy, and she was much better off not thinking about it. She had to look ahead, not behind.
She followed Rufus, watching the slight limp that he’d tried to disguise, and she wondered how he’d been hurt. That had never been explained, nor had his connection to pirates, but presumably he’d shared the story with Alexander. She didn’t need to know. Forward, she reminded herself. Not back.
“This way,” he said, opening a door toward the end of the hallway that she hadn’t even seen. It was cut into the wall, and she realized it was a servants’ entrance. “We don’t want to risk anyone seeing us—they’d try to stop you.”
The steps were narrow, winding, and he reached behind her to pull the door shut, his arm brushing against her body. Even with all the layers of female armor she felt a flinch of fear shake her, and she wondered what would happen if she simply went back, if she ignored Rufus’s warning and faced Alexander whenever he returned. Rufus was undoubtedly lying about some of the things he’d told her. Everybody lied at some point or another, and it was clear Rufus was jealous of his brother.
“Come along, Miss Russell,” he whispered, and she turned forward, ready to follow him. But for some reason, purely instinctive, she gave a little kick backwards, and the door opened just a crack.
Rufus didn’t notice, and she hadn’t an earthly idea why she did it, but for some reason it seemed necessary as she followed Rufus up into the darkness.
It ended in a large, barren room. There were windows at either end, boxes and odd pieces of furniture in storage, but the shadows were too deep under the eaves to see. There were probably a thousand rats up here, she thought, shivering. She could feel their eyes on her in the darkness.
There was a narrow door beside one of the windows, and Rufus had already pushed it open, hurrying her along, as if he didn’t want her to look too closely into the darkness. I’m not afraid of a few rats, she thought defiantly, but followed him nonetheless. The less she thought about it, the easier it would be.
She walked out the door and immediately froze, slamming herself back against a brick chimney. She’d been envisioning a nice, flat rooftop, easy to traverse, but this one was slanted at a fairly sharp angle, the next roof was too far away to jump, and she could see no way down, even if she managed to get across them without falling.
Rufus had already pushed the door closed behind her, or Sophie would have turned around and dived back inside. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but this was different, with all of London laid out before her, the street miles below. She glanced behind her, and the garden seemed equally far away.
A wind was whipping through the rooftops, pulling at her hair, tugging at her voluminous skirts, and she clung tighter to the brick. Alexander’s house was one of the few with a hut-like wooden entrance on top of the roof, presumably so the climbing boys could get to the chimneys. A window looked out over the roof, and once more she felt beady, ratlike eyes watching her.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” She had to raise her voice a bit for Rufus to hear her. A light drizzle had begun, and she wondered if it would make the slate tiles slippery. That was all she needed.
“Done it a dozen or more times,” Rufus said cheerfully, his hair flopping in the wind. “Just give me your hand.”
He held out his own, but for the moment she couldn’t move. “Just let me gather myself,” she said shakily. “I hadn’t realized it was this high.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a peculiarly sweet smile. “Don’t even think about it. It won’t take but a minute.”
She reached out and put her hand in his and began inching across the pitch of the roof. Her heart was pounding wildly, and she realized she was afraid, terrified, in fact, when she’d never been afraid before. She looked up at Rufus, and she knew for certain that she’d been a fool.
“Come on,” he called to her, lifting his voice above the wind. “You’re better off on the far side of the roof. You don’t want people seeing you up here—they may make a fuss, call attention to us, and then the servants would try to stop you. It could be dangerous up here if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
She glanced down, way down, into the street. There was some kind of commotion going on right in front of their house—people milling about, angry voices rising up to her. And then someone turned his face up, way up, to the roof, and even from that distance she knew it was Alexander. Alexander, coming for her. Alexander, who cared for her.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I think I’ll go back in.”
The door opened behind her, and she started to turn, full of relief, when she looked into Mrs. Griffiths’s dark, ratlike eyes. “No, you won’t, missy,” she said, slamming the door behind her and moving out onto the roof, sure-footed as a spider climbing a web.
Sophie edged back from the chimney, reaching for the door, but there was no handle, no way to pry it open. Mrs. Griffiths held up a large iron key. “It’s locked and this is the only way we’ll get back in. I’m afraid you won’t be coming with us.” She turned to look at her son. “Come along then, Rufus! What’s keeping you? It’s a simple enough job—get on with it.”
“She’s on the wrong side, Mama,” he said plaintively, sounding eerily like a small child. “You said I must throw her into the garden.”
Mrs. Griffiths sighed loud enough to be heard over the wind. “Then take her and throw her. You’re a man; you’re strong enough.”
“Why are you doing this?” Sophie cried out, though she knew the answer.
“That’s a remarkably stupid question,” Rufus said petulantly. “I should be the viscount, not Alexander. It w
as only an accident of birth that put him first.”
“He must be at least five years older than you!” she cried.
“Eight, to be exact,” Rufus said, ignoring logic. “I’m the chosen one.”
She stared at him in disbelief, trying to fight the panic that was surging through her. “Chosen for what, exactly?” She couldn’t keep the caustic note out of her voice, when she should have been placating, and she wanted to kick herself. Except if she did, she’d end up falling over the edge of this treacherous rooftop.
“Don’t be difficult, Sophie,” Rufus said. “It was all preordained. Fighting against it will only make it worse. Your father didn’t struggle. I broke his neck and it was over in an instant. I could do the same for you. There’s no way out—make it easy on yourself.” His soft voice was almost persuasive.
Sophie stared at him in shock. “It was you? You killed my father? For God’s sake, why? He never hurt you—you didn’t even know him!” Her cry was caught and carried by the wind, and she wanted to scream in pain and disbelief.
“I needed the money and I needed a scapegoat,” Rufus said simply. “And I needed Renwick.”
“We needed Renwick,” his mother corrected in an icy tone far removed from Rufus’s wheedling. “Now get on with it, or I’ll do it myself.”
The last of Sophie’s fear drained away as sheer fury filled her. These two . . . monsters had destroyed her life and the lives of the people she loved. There was no way she was going to let them win. She clung tightly to her chimney, trying to decide who was her weakest opponent. Mrs. Griffiths was a mountain of a woman—if it came to a battle she would win by brute force. Rufus had a bad leg, which had to affect his balance on this precarious perch. If she could fling either of them over the edge she’d do it without a moment’s regret. She took a tentative step toward Rufus. “I’ll scream. I’ll scream so loud Queen Victoria will hear it.”
“No one will hear it,” said Mrs. Griffiths coldly. “The wind will carry the sound away, and if anyone happens to notice, it will be too late. They’ll just assume it was your scream as you fell in your foolish attempt to escape. Or your suicide, whichever works best. We can decide that later. Right now we just need you dead.”