Marry The Man Today Part 34

"Good heavens, Ross, we didn't knock on the door. We posted ourselves across the street, around the perimeter."

He towered over her, his arms crossed against his chest, as though daring her to continue. "But why?"

She was leading up to the reason. "A short time after we arrive d - o ne o'clock mayb e - I saw a shadowy figure on the roof, skirting the eaves, in the rear of the building. Apparently he was looking for a way to get inside, maybe to drop onto a balcony or something."

"Well! Did he get inside?" He scowled his question at her, plainly interested, plainly not wanting to be.

"Something must have spooked him because he listened for a moment, then scuttled down a drainpipe. He ducked through the garden shadows and then disappeared down an alley."

"No one else saw him, wife, none of the guards?" He stood there looking down at her, the muscles in his arms flexed.

"I doubt it. n.o.body moved, Ross."

"And then what?"

Her overprotective husband wasn't going to like this part at all. "Well, I couldn't just let him go. So... I followed him into the alley."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! You could have been killed!" He dropped down on his knees in front of her, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with dark horror. "How the h.e.l.l far did you follow him?"

"All the way to an import shop on Hugge 't 't Lane." She swallowed hard, just now realizing that she might have been in a bit of danger after all.

"And then what did you do? And please don't tell me that you went inside."

At least the stubborn man was finally fully engaged in what she was trying to tell him. Furious, but he obviously believed her.

And she had so many more secrets to tell him.

But his eyes were so bright she had to look down at her fingers for a moment before she could bear the intensity. "I waited, to see what he'd do next. It was still dark, and a light flared up in the attic almost immediately. That's when I tried the shop door and it opened. I didn't hear a bell, Ross, so I went inside."

"Christ!" He dropped his head into both hands.

"A few steps only." She raked her fingers through his hair, just for contact, to make sure he didn't hate her completely. "But I'm sure I heard something upstairs of the shop. Harsh voices, whispering. Angry words, though I couldn't understand them. As though something had gone wrong."

When he raised his head, he was still looking at her from under a thunderous brow. "And then what?"

"I heard someone coming down the stairs. So I ducked outside and hid in the doorway of the next shop. Then I followed him another ten minutes until he disappeared into a large building somewhere in Kensington. So we can't wait another minute. You know how quickly things change in a kidnapping."

After all, her three a.s.sistants were already waiting for her in Huggett Lane, ready to put their plan into gear as soon as it got light enough.

Though that might be a bit difficult just now, given her husband's stare of disbelief.

" Where do you come by this whole mad idea?" He captured her chin between his fingers and bent to her, palpably frightened for her. "Besides the danger involved in skulking outside the Russian Emba.s.sy, you haven't any understanding of what it takes to foil a kidnapping."

Oh, but I do, husband. I just don't know how to tell you where I came by that understanding.

"Please, Ross. At least let me show you where I think she is. That's all I'm asking. Please."

Ross heard himself growling. His mind a muddle. His heart rattling against his throat, terrified for his wife. Getting involved when the danger was so real.

But b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, she sounded so sure of herself, her story so plausible, he had to look into it. And if she came along with him, at least he would know exactly where she was at all times.

"Very well, madam, we'll take a drive past the import shop." If there was anything to it, he'd take it from there.

"Wonderful!" She grabbed his arms, lifted up onto her toes and kissed him. Then she picked up the large fabric satchel she'd dragged in behind her, grasped it in front of her in both hands and waited for him.

Not a patient bone in her body. And if she was right, if the Russian princess was locked in an attic in Huggett Lane, then she'd just possibly saved the day.

"This way, madam." He closed the lab door and led her up the stairs through a series of locked doors, a vestibule, past two guards, and finally into the back hallway.

"The Huntsman, Ross?" She stopped and touched his shoulder. "Is that where we are?"

"You're very good at secrets, Elizabeth." Too good, it seemed. "Please keep this one. Because a whole lot of people are depending on it."

She snorted as if he'd just accused her of treason. "I'll carry it to my death, Ross. As if you didn't know."

The sun was up and the morning beginning to bustle as they left in a carriage from the rear of the Huntsman.

"To the Russian Emba.s.sy, Henry."

Ten nearly silent minutes later, with his lunatic wife tucked under his shoulder and his heart rammed up against his throat, the carriage came to a halt in a narrow street a block short of the Russian Emba.s.sy.

"There, Ross." Elizabeth slipped to the seat across from him and tapped on the window gla.s.s. "I was posted in the doorway of that flower shop, just opposite the northwest corner. It was dark at the time, but that's how I was able to see the man on the roof."

He followed the point of her finger, hoping she'd been wrong about the whole thing, or delirious. Yet knowing in his gut that she was rarely wrong about anything.

Russian guards were everywhere. His own operatives posted quietly out of sight. But her story was becoming all too credible. And that could only mean trouble.

"Which direction did he go when he left the grounds?"

"Through that alleyway. There, next to the bakery on the corner."

"Then use this to tell Henry which way to go." Feeling as though he was putting his wife directly in the line of fire, Ross handed her the speaking tube, then sat back against the seat, to watch out of sight of the window.

"Thank you, Ross." She smiled at him, suddenly, suspiciously, looking every bit the commander in the field as she spoke into the bell. "Are you there, Henry?... Oh, good."

The route led from the emba.s.sy along the most narrow of snickleways, perfect for a conspirator. Through two squares, then finally into Huggett Lane, a street lined with small, we ll -cared-for shops.

"He went in there." His too clever wife had instructed Henry to pa.s.s the shop before she stopped him, and pointed farther down the street. "With the green awning. An import shop, as I said. Foodstuff and fabric and porcelain from the continent."

A tidy, bayed display window. A floor above and an attic.

Nondescript.

It could be anything. Or everything. Making him wonder who the devil he'd married.

"Show me where the man went next, Elizabeth." He wanted to get this over with quickly. Wanted it to end without involving his wife in the danger that he felt p.r.i.c.kling the back of his neck.

She picked up the speaking tube again. And Henry followed her directions.

But in the midst of her instructions he was struck by a thought. The perfectly logical reason that Elizabeth had felt compelled to rescue the princess!

My G.o.d! Why hadn't he thought of it? His heart gave a wild thump.

"Elizabeth... ?"

"Two more blocks, Henry, then to the left." She looked from the window back to Ross, the bell of the tube stuck against her ear. "Yes?"

"Princess Lenka." He leaned f orward, elbows on his knees, his heart slowing with relief. "Is she, by chance, a member of the Abigail Adams? I didn't think to ask becaus e -"

"No, no, she isn't, Ross. I've never met the woman." Yet her face went white, her eyes filled with dread again. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, her voice growing quiet as the carriage rattled on along over the cobbles. "But if you think about it, that's... uh in... that's a problem with this case, isn't it? The common factor among the other abductions that's missing this time."

"The Adams." Or Elizabeth herself.She looked stricken. "It's more than that, Ross, much more.""But if we're not dealing with a - o h, b.l.o.o.d.y, bleeding h.e.l.l.""What is it, Ross?"He hadn't been paying attention to the route or their surroundings, but now he pressed his face closer against the window, praying he was wrong.

"Elizabeth, is that the building you saw the man go into?"

She peered through the window on the other side of the door as their carriage approached from the south. "The large limestone, with the grounds taking up the whole block. Yes."

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! He grabbed the speaking tube, called out for Henry to stop, and the carriage swung up against the curb.

"You're absolutely sure, Elizabeth? It was dark when you were here. You might have missed him entering. It's very important that this is it."

"Definitely. Someone greeted him as he entered from the porte cochere. Why? What is it?"

His heart and his hopes fell. "The Austrian Emba.s.sy." Christ Almighty.

The Austrians had invaded the Russian Emba.s.sy and kidnapped a princess of the blood.

And, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, he would never have known about it if his confounding wife hadn't pointed the way.

"That's the Austrian Emba.s.sy?" She peered more closely, then looked back at him, her forehead deeply fretted. "How do you know? There's no sign."

He couldn't help staring at the building out the window, a catastrophe in the making. "I had dinner there two weeks ago."

"What does it mean, Ross?"

He leaned back against the seat, exhausted by what was to come.

"War."

Chapter 20.

Man with the head and woman with the heart:Man to command and woman to obey;All else confusion.Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Song"Dear G.o.d! Then what happens next, Ross?" His usually unflappable wife's voice cracked on his name. She was sitting across the carriage from him, upright against the seat back.

"The inevitable, my dear, when this whole thing blows up." He crossed his boot over his knee, a.s.sumed an air of aplomb he didn't feel. "Russia will declare war on Austria, followed by the British declaring war on the Russians and possibly the Americans, piling on the French, then the Turks, resulting in a ma.s.sive wa r -"

"Then would you like to hear my idea, Ross?" Panic darkened the emerald green of her eyes.

"Go right ahead, love. You've cracked part of this case wide open all by yourself." And he could use the help. Every idea he'd entertained in the last few moments had ended in a global disaster.

"All right, then, from what I know about the current mood between all the parties, Russia will use any excuse to invade Austria and take over the Danube Territories completely."

"True."

"The fact that the Austrian Emba.s.sy is involved in any way in the kidnapping of a Russian princess is excuse enough for the tsar to overrun Vienna this very afternoon."

"Also true." His remarkable wife even knew her current affairs.

"If, at any point during the rescue of the princess, the Russians discover that the Austrians are involved, it means war."

"Indeed." A lit match flicked into a mountainous stack of powder kegs.

"So the sticky part of the operation, Ross, is going to be rescuing the princess and returning her to the Russians without them guessing that the Austrians were involved."

"That's it in a nutsh.e.l.l." A direct hit on a complex political truth that few in the government even understood. "A secret rescue without involving a horde of police or the army or the press, or, G.o.d knows, the idiots in the Foreign Office. Not possible."

"Are you sure?"

"Diplomatic secrets are like so much smoke."

"So, really, Ross, the operation is left to us, then." She shot a sober smile at him, one that only confused him. "You and me and my three stalwarts."

"You, wife?" His neck tightened suddenly at her inference, that he would even consider sending her out on a dangerous mission. Whatever her plan. "I have seasoned operatives who know how to keep secrets."

"So do I, Ross. But the difference is that I have a plan." She scooted forward into the seat well, wedging her knees between his. "You see, the trick to a successful abduction is to do it in broad daylight, in public . "

"In case you haven't noticed, love, the princess has already been abducted."

"And we're going to abduct her back. From right under the noses of her abductors."

"An interesting fantasy. You mean we just walk into the import shop and take her?"

Her smile brightened. "Exactly. Except that we create a whole fiction and play it out in front of whoever is holding her in the shop. Dodge and distract. And then we have her."

"Just like that." Ross sat back and studied her, suddenly deeply suspicious of the strength of her certainty. As though her strategies were well-practiced, timed right down to the minute. As though she'd done this sort of thing before.

As though she had already donned a costume and would have set her preposterous plan into motion if he hadn't caught her in the catacombs of the Factory.

"What the devil are you wearing?" Those weren't the b.r.e.a.s.t.s he'd spent the last two days making love to.

"Well, it's my..." She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she lifted a bulging satchel into her lap. "That's what I have to tell you."

They were already eye-to-eye across the carriage, her breath breaking against his chin. "Go on."