29

The blast sent a wave of heat and flame sweeping down the corridor. Lydia raised her skirts above her knees and fled up the steps. Seconds later, a second barrel exploded.

Honore screamed. Lydia whirled around. Her sister sat on the bottom step, staring at the encroaching flames with her hands raised as though she could ward them off.

“Honore, get up here,” Lydia cried.

Honore didn’t move. “He was going to burn me alive.”

“Yes, now come along or he still will.” Lydia ran back down, grabbed Honore’s shoulders, and tugged her up.

Honore didn’t run. She stumbled, she fell, she crawled out of the dark stairwell with flames at the bottom and sunlight at the top. With nudges, tugs, and a slap to stop her from screaming further, Lydia got Honore into the alley moments before a third barrel exploded. Her body said collapse onto the fouled cobbles. No more strength to go on. Instinct said to keep running away from the blazing building.

Toward Christien, who came to take her hands in his.

“Je regrette—” Christien said. “You shouldn’t have had to see this or endure this.”

“I was as much a part of this as you. But you’re wounded. Let me help you.”

He glanced down at his arm. “Just a scratch. We need to be away from this building before everything inside explodes.”

“Frobisher?”

“He’s dead.” Honore crawled through the muck to reach his side. “Like he wanted me.”

“Not dead,” Christien said. “Just stunned. I’ll carry him away if you will get your sister,” he said to Lydia.

Lydia bent down to take Honore’s hands. “We need to get out of here.”

“I know.” Honore wiped her sleeve across her face, leaving behind a streak of dirt turning to mud with her tears, then scrambled to her feet and charged down the alley.

Lydia ran after her. By the time she reached the corner, Honore had vanished. Poised on one foot, Lydia swiveled a moment between seeking Honore and returning to Christien. Honore was distraught and alone in a seedy part of London. Christien was wounded and in charge of Gerald Frobisher. Honore was her little sister.

Christien was her future.

With one last scan up and down the street and the alley, Lydia turned and ran past the burning building, past piles of garbage, toward the man at the far end of the alleyway. “We need to see if a fire service will come here.” She was panting. “And a magistrate. And—”

A bell began to clang in the distance, growing closer and closer. A throng materialized seemingly from the broken cobblestones.

“They’ll come.” Christien glanced down at Frobisher lying in the street, his hands tied behind him with Christien’s cravat. “Someone will—”

The clang of the fire wagon drowned out the rest of his words. Apparently whoever owned the gaming establishment had paid a fire company to protect his property. Watching flames leap toward the hazy blue sky, Lydia doubted the firefighters would get more accomplished than keeping the blaze from spreading to other buildings.

Bystanders began to help with that, carrying water from a public well. And in the midst of it, a constable arrived with Honore in tow.

“You’ve some explaining to do,” the officer said.

“We will, mon—sir.” Christien grasped Frobisher’s tied hands and pulled him to his feet. “We need to get this one to a magistrate.”

“Is that so, man?” the constable asked.

Soiled and smelling of refuse, Frobisher stared at the cobbles and said nothing.

The constable escorted them several blocks to the magistrate’s office. Inside a chamber scarcely large enough to hold the six of them and smelling of pickled herring, Christien told his story of working for the War Department and then the special assignment for the Home Office. He told of Lang’s treachery and his intention to kill them all.

“He’s the murderer,” Frobisher burst out from his corner. “He murdered my uncle, the French traitor.”

“Indeed.” The magistrate’s gaze flicked to Lydia. “Lady Gale, what do you have to say regarding this?”

“She’ll lie for him,” Frobisher called out again. “She’s his—”

“Quiet,” the constable commanded.

“I’m his—” Lydia worried her lower lip between her teeth. “He was a friend of my husband’s, is all.”

Beside her, Christien flinched away.

“He is without question loyal to Great Britain,” Lydia continued. “You can trust his word and the word of the daughters of Lord Bainbridge.”

“Of course, my lady.” The magistrate smiled at her and Honore. “I believe you, but I need to ask him more questions.”

“Perhaps you’ll allow me to take the ladies home first, sir?” Beneath the grime of smoke and dried blood, Christien’s face gleamed a sickly gray. He held his arm, the one he’d injured while saving her from a fall in March, taut to his side.

“He needs to see a physician first,” Lydia said.

“He will in good time.” The magistrate nodded, sending his old-fashioned queue sliding over his shoulder. “And I’ll send you ladies home in my carriage now.”

“But—” Lydia began.

“Go.” Christien’s voice cracked like a whip. “You look like you’re about to fall down.”

She felt like she was about to fall down, but she wasn’t comfortable leaving Christien with Frobisher and the magistrate. Without her and Honore there as reminders of who their father was, the magistrate just might choose to believe an Englishman. “If you’ll take Miss Honore home,” Lydia addressed the magistrate, “I’ll stay.”

“But, Lydia,” Honore protested, “I need you to talk to Father for me.”

“You can talk to him yourself. Right now, Monsieur de Meuse needs me more.”

Honore burst into tears. Lydia remained at Christien’s side. He gazed at her with his eyes bright and color returning to his skin.

In the end, Honore departed in the car of the constable’s spinster daughter. The magistrate sent a servant riding for the War Department to verify Christien’s employment with them, and after Frobisher became sick on the magistrate’s floor, the constable took him to a cell beyond a heavy door.

Once they were alone, the magistrate turned to Christien. “I believe you, sir, but must observe the formalities. There will be an inquest, of course, if they find the remains of Elias Lang. Such a pity.”

“I thought he was my friend and a loyal subject.” Christien sounded as though he spoke from inside a well. “I thought—it’s good I already resigned. I can’t have been a very good agent.”

“Nor I a sister,” Lydia said.

“But perhaps—”

The arrival of a colonel from the War Department interrupted Christien. They greeted one another with a firm handshake, obvious acquaintances or even good colleagues.

Christien turned to Lydia. “Lady Gale, allow me to present Colonel Jonathan Timmons.”

“Gale?” Timmons’s pale blue eyes widened. “Any relation to Sir Charles Gale?”

“His wife,” Lydia said.

“Wife? But I thought—” Timmons glanced at Christien. “Quite a sense of humor good ol’ Charles had. Saying you’re a petite thing indeed. Ha-ha.”

“Indeed.” Lydia injected as much frost as she could into her tone. Frost to counteract the heat flushing through her. Frost to steady her suddenly trembling hands.

“If you please,” Christien said, “I’d like to take Lady Gale home.”

“But we need to know about Lang,” Timmons objected.

“Later.” Christien offered Lydia his arm.

“It’s your duty to this country,” Timmons insisted.

“Lang is dead. Enquiries into his death and what he told me beforehand can wait. My lady comes first.” Leaving Timmons spluttering, Christien swept out of the magistrate’s office, Lydia on his arm.

“You put me before duty.” Not so much as a crystal remained of Lydia’s frost.

“If I had weeks ago, none of this would have happened.” Christien raised one hand to hail a passing hackney. “I should have resigned the instant you told me of the blackmail. I should have seen what Lang was doing. But my quest for revenge against Napoleon got in my way.”

“I could have stayed and listened to you about my father. But I was so determined to be loyal to him, to my family.” She swallowed.

The hackney stopped, and Christien handed Lydia inside. Once seated, she turned to him and demanded, “Was Charles unfaithful to me?”

“Ma chère, it does no one any good to rake up the past.”

“Which is as good as a yes.” Lydia stared down at her hands. They trembled. Her lower lip quivered. She clamped it to the upper, but the tears still came, hot, steady, unchecked in their twin paths down her cheeks. “I think I’ve always known, but I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to think he wasn’t a gentleman or wasn’t thinking of me while away—at least partly a good husband. But he lied and cheated and—” She pounded the seat with her fists until the leather cracked open and moldy stuffing oozed onto the floor.

Christien caught hold of her hands and began to caress them. “Lydia, this does you no good. You mustn’t let his bad behavior destroy you. It . . . I . . .” He pried her fingers open. “If I can forgive Napoleon, surely you can forgive Charles for his amour.”

“Charles, yes. Myself?” Lydia dashed her tears away on her sleeve. “I thought I was so clever marrying Charles, even though Father didn’t quite approve. He signed the marriage license, as I wasn’t of age yet, but he didn’t like it.”

“So he isn’t always an autocrat.” Christien smiled at her.

Lydia looked away, her face hot. “No, I suppose not. And he was right in the end. Oh, that hurts to admit.”

“But you did it.” Christien nudged her chin up with his fingertips. His eyes, bluer than a summer sky, gazed into hers. “Not all men are fools, liars, and cheats. And sometimes we have wisdom to impart.”

“A great deal more than sometimes.” Lydia ran her tongue along her parched lips. “I blamed Charles for leaving me in favor of his regiment. I blamed my father for trying to dictate my life. And you—” Her throat closed. She swallowed. “And you for—”

“For loving you?” He rubbed the ball of his thumb along her lower lip. “Or perhaps because you love me too?”

The power of speech eluded her, so she nodded, and he kissed her. He kissed her until they reached Cavendish Square. He kissed her after they stopped.

When the jarvey shouted for them to get down and pay, Christien stopped kissing her and drew away. “I believe after that, a proposal is in order. But I’d rather not ask on the heels of your learning your husband was unfaithful.”

“Thank you. It’s not that I think you will be. I simply fear—”

The hackney shifted, and the door wrenched open. “Get out and pay or I’ll have the Watch on ye,” the jarvey commanded.

“Of course.” Lydia slipped past him and headed toward the house and the now-open front door. In a moment, she could be alone in her room to think, to ponder, to decide whether or not marrying Christien was wise after Charles. He would give her as much time as she demanded, not because he didn’t love her enough to pursue her, but because . . .

Because he understood she needed to stop running and do some pursuing of her own.

Behind her, the hackney door slammed. Wheels began to rumble.

“Wait.” Lydia sped down the steps and into the square. “Wait.”

The hackney stopped. Lydia ran up to the door, making herself the entertainment of several dozen members of the haut ton. She yanked open the door. “Yes, I’ll marry you on one condition.”

Several onlookers, including the loitering hackney driver, applauded. Others called advice, from telling Christien to keep driving away to suggesting he get down immediately.

He took the latter advice. “What’s that?”

She told him and he laughed. Hand in hand, they retraced her steps to the house. Lydia’s cheeks burned at the audience, but she kept her head high and a smile fixed to her lips.

“We’ll enjoy the news sheets tomorrow,” Christien observed.

“Enough to eclipse Honore’s behavior?”

“Along with Lang’s disgrace, yes.”

They climbed the front steps together. Lemster stood at the top, his grin broad. “The family is in the drawing room, my lady, except for Miss Barbara. She’s in Lady Bainbridge’s sitting room. But the library is empty.”

“Thank you. We want the drawing room.” Lydia turned toward the ground floor chamber door. Too little sound emerged from behind it, and her heart began to thud.

Was she making another terrible mistake?

She glanced at Christien, thought of their conversation that felt like a lifetime ago, and whispered a prayer. “Thy will be done, Lord.”

Christien squeezed her hand and pushed open the door. A quiet conversation ceased. Father and Whittaker rose.

“What took you so long?” Honore demanded. She had washed away the dirt and changed her dress, but redness around her eyes told of her earlier tears.

“We had further business,” Lydia said.

“You should have come home with your sister,” Father said.

Lydia took a deep breath to keep her feathers flat. “Honore was taken care of, and I wasn’t certain a magistrate from the East End would treat Christien fairly.”

“Christien, is it?” Father grunted. “Rather familiar, don’t you think?”

“She’s agreed to marry me, sir,” Christien said, “with your permission.”

“My permission?” Father’s jaw dropped. “Lydia, what do you say about that?”

“I said I’d marry him if you approved.”

“Oh, Lydia,” Honore and Cassandra squealed.

Mama started to speak.

A glance from Father quieted all of them. “Why would you suddenly want my permission for one of your starts? You’ve never wanted it before.”

“I made a mistake with Charles. Not,” she added with an upward tilt of her chin, “living in Tavistock, but marrying Charles. I should have listened to your objections.”

“Yes, you should have. He was a lying, cheating—ahem.” Father’s face reddened.

“I know.” Lydia sighed against a lingering pain in her chest. “In my heart I’ve always known. I thought I was just not a good enough wife. But really I wasn’t a good enough daughter, rejecting your counsel.”

Father cleared his throat and blinked. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, but for all my efforts, I’m no good at denying you girls anything.”

“Except me.” Honore jumped up and embraced him. “You never have to concern yourself about me falling in love with the wrong man again. I’m done with falling in love.”

Everyone laughed.

“It’s true,” Honore insisted. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

The laughter continued.

Pouting, she dropped back into her chair.

Dabbing at the corners of his eyes, Father strode forward and clasped Lydia’s and Christien’s hands in his. “I never thought I’d want a foreigner marrying one of my daughters, de Meuse, but you’ll do. You’ll do nicely, though if you are ever unfaithful, you’d better run back to the continent. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly, sir.” Christien bowed. “Do be assured that I’ve waited for Lydia too long to not keep loving her forever, now that I know her in person and find her better in reality than in her letters.”

Mama began to cry, though she smiled. Honore and Cassandra sighed.

Lydia’s heart turned to melted wax. “I never realized that opening my door to a stranger would end up opening my heart to God, to my family even more, and to loving you.” She turned to Christien and kissed him. “Now, can we get married by special license so we can run off to—”

She stopped and laughed and joined Father and Christien in their resounding, “No.”