Nick narrated a story that sounded all too familiar — the children sending mice out to sail their wooden boats — but cold chills shivered down his neck at the retelling of the near miss with the runaway carriage.
“You’re sure the horses were under control once the carriage was in the street beyond the alley?”
Nick nodded. “The coachman must have been feigning a swoon. He clearly looked over his shoulder at the alley, and when he saw me, whipped the horses up even harder and tore down the street. I asked Thom on the way home whether it was usual for them to take that alleyway to your house. She said you’d only been in town for three days, but that they’d taken it each day as they returned from the park. No, it couldn’t have been unintentional.” Nick lifted worried eyes to Harry’s. “Who’d want to harm your children, Harry?”
“Someone who has a very long memory,” Harry said softly, thinking of the letter Briceland had shown him. He was cold with fury, a fury so deep he had the unreasonable urge to strike out at something, anything, in response to the threat against his children. He had always accepted the danger to his own person as part and parcel of the jobs he had chosen to undertake, but the thought that his family could be made to suffer for his actions…he closed his eyes for a moment, his hands fisted to keep from tearing the room apart.
“I’ll help you all I can,” Nick said, aware of the struggle Harry was having to keep his temper leashed. “You can count on me and my men.”
Harry opened his eyes, unaware that they were dark with anger. “Forgive me, I hadn’t thought to ask, and I didn’t have time to talk at any length with Noble. How is your work progressing?”
Nick shrugged. “As well as can be expected. There’s another reform policy up for discussion in the House that I’m sure you’ve heard about. Yet another feeble attempt to do away with prostitution without addressing the real issues of poverty and class structure. We do what we can to help the women who sincerely want a better life, but it’s like throwing pebbles in the ocean.”
Harry managed to find a smile. It was a grim smile, to be true, but still it was a smile, and he hung onto it for all he was worth. “Still trying to save the world, are you? First it was foundlings and child labor laws, then war veterans, and now you’ve taken on Gillian’s pet project?”
Nick grinned. “She can be persuasive when she puts her mind to it.” He gestured toward his damp, rumpled, filthy clothing. “The last few weeks I’ve been in the stews trying to locate the madame behind a particularly nasty string of brothels. Four prostitutes have been killed in the last two months. Gillian’s worried sick about it, so I’ve been interviewing the girls to see what they know. It’s difficult going, but I think I might have a lead at last. I’m more than happy to set that aside, though, if I or my group can be of any help to you.”
Harry’s grim smile grew a little less grim. “Thank you. I may take you up on that, but there are a few things I can do myself to see to my family’s safety.”
Nick’s grin broadened. “Speaking of your family, I approve of your choice of nieces. Thom’s got her wits about her, and has a cool head in an emergency, even if she does have the deplorable taste to befriend a burglar.”
Harry cocked an eyebrow and glanced at Nick’s shady garments, thinking to himself how very interesting life had become of late…a thought that was stripped of all amusement when an image came to mind of charging horses running down his children.
The two men chatted a bit longer, then Nick left to go about his business. Harry called the male house staff in and gave them strict instructions regarding the admittance of anyone unknown to the house. He pulled Juan aside, and gave him further orders that neither the children nor Plum was to leave unescorted.
“I will not allow the Lady Plump to be so much accosted,” Juan replied with a fiery look in his eye. “There was a man today in the grande garden who put his big English face into my very most lady’s and made such comments that she had to strike him a blow to the cheeks, but he will not do so again. I have made sure of that.”
“A man accosted Plum?” Harry asked, startled into immobility. “When? Where? Who? Is she all right?”
Juan tossed his head as he cracked his knuckles. “It was today, while the lady and the young miss and the diablitos were in the grande garden. I don’t know who the man was, but Plump, she has the fire in her heart. She struck him on the face, and I told him to begone, and he left. Then we went to a very boring shop with only books and old ladies and no one who paid us any attention, and then we came home.”
Harry was mildly relieved to know that Plum wasn’t upset enough by the incident to cease her regular calls, but he felt the time was ripe to have a discussion with her. “If you see the man who accosted her again, tell me immediately.”
“I will be happy to rip out his heart and spit on it if he should offend my most passionate lady.”
“I’m sure you will,” Harry said dryly, “but I think a word to me first would be best. Mind you attend to what I’ve told you.”
Juan swore eternal fealty. Harry left him for Plum’s sitting room feeling moderately better, but still worried. He made a mental note to set a few of his runners onto the task of watching the children when they were out. He found Plum sitting before her escritoire, brushing her lips with the tip of a quill as she hesitated over a letter. Love roared to life in him at the sight of her. Should one of the children be harmed, he would be devastated, but if anything happened to Plum, he would be destroyed.
He paused for a moment, watching her as she smiled and rose to greet him, wondering how it had happened that he had fallen so completely in love with his wife that his very vitals were gripped with pain at the thought of losing her.
“Harry! You’re back earlier than I thought. I’m so pleased you’re home. I was going to send for you, but I didn’t now where you’d gone. You’re not going to believe what happened — the children are fine, all of them, no one is hurt in the least, but they almost suffered a most grievous accident.”
Plum told him what had happened to the children, viewing it as a neatly avoided accident rather than anything with more sinister overtones. He hesitated about telling her what had happened, nearly overwhelmed with the desire to protect her and keep his family from harm, but he admitted to himself that Plum was a smart woman, and the more she knew, the better she could guard against any danger.
He took her hands and led her over to the blue-and-green settee. “In the future, I will leave word as to my exact destinations, so you will always know where to find me if you should have need of me. As for the accident with the horses, I’ve heard about it. Plum, do you remember a few weeks back when you were commenting on how odd it was that the children were experiencing so many accidents?”
Plum’s gaze dropped to her hands. “Yes. I know I haven’t been the ideal stepmother to them—”
“I don’t think they were accidents,” he interrupted, dismissing her notion that she wasn’t a good stepmother. No one could have more patience or tolerance for the five hellions he’d spawned — five dear hellions for whom he would fight to the death. “I have reason to believe that someone is deliberately trying to hurt them.”
“Hurt them?” Her face went pale as she clutched his hands tightly. “Who would want to hurt the children?”
“I don’t know for certain yet, but I’m going to find the proof I need in the next day or two. It has something to do with a situation in my past, a job I did.” He gave her a brief resume of his past work with the Home Office, along with reassurances that he had long left his spy days behind.
“Someone is trying to hurt the children,” Plum repeated, for a few seconds obviously not believing what he said. She stood up, her hands fisted tightly, her cheeks bright with anger. “I will destroy him.”
Harry was a bit startled by the vehemence in her voice, but warmed by it as well. Only Plum could love them all so well. She truly was one woman in a million. “That won’t be necessary, sweetheart. I’ve taken steps to see to it that you’ll all be protected, but I wanted to warn you so you’ll be aware of what’s going on, and won’t try to get rid of the footmen or Juan when they accompany you. I’ll send a man down to Ashleigh Court to look into the accidents there, but I don’t hold out hope that he’ll find much.”
“Ashleigh Court?” Plum blinked and looked at him curiously. “But…those accidents were weeks ago.”
“Yes,” Harry said, his jaw tight at the thought of someone stalking his children, someone invading their home to do them harm. “As I said, the person doing this has an old grudge against me. I have men looking into possible sources of information here in town, as well.”
“Oh,” Plum said, sitting down, looking oddly relieved. “Then it couldn’t be — you must find the man who is doing this, Harry. He must be stopped.”
Harry was about to ask Plum to whom she had been referring when she gave him an odd look and bit her lower lip. Immediately his mind was drawn to that lush, sweet lip, how it tasted, how he wanted to nibble on it, and in return, the many things he would enjoy it doing to his body. It was with an effort he wrenched his mind off her moist little cherry lip and focused on what she said.
“If you were a spy, there must have been occasions where you had to…kill someone.”
She wanted to know about the men he’d killed? Harry wondered for a moment if there was a hidden side to Plum he hadn’t seen, then relaxed. Surely she was just concerned that he had the experience to protect them from whoever sought to do the children harm. “Yes, I have, regrettably. I don’t like to take a life, Plum, and I’ve always tried to avoid it whenever I could, but I would not, and will not, ever allow anyone innocent to suffer at the hands of the guilty.”
Plum glanced toward her escritoire. “Was it an extreme measure? That is, did you try to resolve the situation by less fatal means first? Did you try to reason with the people first? Bribe them? Or perhaps, give them a taste of their own medicine? Did you try those things first, Harry, before you were forced to kill?”
Harry smiled a reassuring smile. Dear, sweet innocent Plum. He hesitated to have such a gruesome discussion with his delicate wife, but perhaps it would be for the best. She would no doubt understand just what lengths he was prepared to go to in order to see to the children’s and her protection. He spent the next half hour detailing the more outstanding of circumstances, allowing her to question him closely about the methods he employed to avoid having to kill his enemies, as well as general information about the surrounding events. If the situation facing him weren’t so heinous, he might almost have found her avid interest amusing, but in the end, he rose, gave her what was meant to be a reassuring kiss, but turned into a fiery plundering wherein he tasted the sweet depths of her mouth, then took his leave of her more than a little pleased with the gentle, loving woman he had wed.
“My very most Lady Plump! You must come quickly!”
“What is it, Juan?” Plum asked absently, brushing the end of the quill against her chin as she thought. Would it be better to have Charles found naked in the monkey cage at the Zoological Gardens, or in flagrante delecto with another man?
Juan threw himself to his knees before her. Plum paid little mind to such a show of histrionics. Juan was always throwing himself to his knees over something. Usually it was of no consequence. “It is a most terrible occurrence! It is the even very catastrophic!”
Plum sipped the cold tea that had been sitting at her side while she labored the last two hours, a slight frown between her brows. “Is anything on fire?”
“No, it is not the fire—”
“Is anyone bleeding?” The monkey cage had a certain appeal to it, but sadly, the other would involve the shame of another man. She hated to make anyone but Charles suffer. Perhaps if he was shot while trying to escape after the theft of an object from the newly opened British Museum?
“That I am not knowing. You must come now, it is of the most terrible event—”
What of a harlot? Would that be enough to shame Charles? She shook her head even as the idea formed. The Charles of old certainly had no qualms about making it known to other gentlemen that he used the services of harlots. Then again, if it was a harlot like no other, that might do the trick. Plum wrote a note to investigate whether there were any procurers of sheep for gentlemen of unnatural tastes. “Has any property, real or otherwise, been destroyed?”
Juan clutched her knees. “You are not listening to me! I am trying to tell you—”
“Does the situation involve any sort of weaponry? Swords? Axes? Firearms?”
“Madre Dios, no—”