He shoved the Queen into his brother’s arms without explanation or letting him finish his sentence. Grabbing the lantern, he raced back up as though his very life depended on it—because it did. How would he survive if anything tragic happened to Esme?
Chapter 25
Esme stared at the man to whom she’d been assigned, who gave her the orders she was to follow. “How did you even know a ball was being held here and the Queen would attend?”
“Brewster told me. He reports to me as well, you know. Unfortunately, I thought you were coming here only to protect the Queen. I didn’t realize you were using the opportunity to uncover who wanted the troublesome woman dead. You didn’t tell Brewster everything, did you?”
“I never tell anyone everything.” Except Marcus. No, she hadn’t confided everything to him, she hadn’t told him that she loved him. “Why do you want to end Victoria’s life?”
“Because she is no longer serving as queen. She’s hidden herself away. The country is in shambles, and she mourns her dead love rather than seeing to her duty. I must protect England.It will be much better off in the hands of a king. In my hands. Because I am the true and rightful heir to the throne. I can trace my bloodline back to Richard the Third. Look at me. I even inherited his deformity.”
While Shakespeare had described Richard III as hunchbacked in his play, Esme wasn’t certain if he truly had been. She was beginning to suspect, however, that O was quite mad. “How did you convince Wolfford and Fotheringham to go along with your plans?”
“They believed as I do: that she was bad for the country. I convinced them of my claim to the throne and promised them more wealth and power than they could ever hope to hold otherwise. And then the damned Home Office assigned you to me.”
Her breath caught. “Oh my God. I wasn’t the decoy. Wolfford was. You had me get involved with him so he could keep tabs on me and report to you. Not the other way around.”
“Precisely. Your reputation preceded you. Left to your own devices, I knew it wouldn’t take you long to ferret me out. So I gave you a diversion. I thought once you were publicly associated with him, the Home Office would assign you to something else, but you stuck to it. I needed it to appear I was doing my job, so I made a sacrifice to the greater good.”
“You’re the one who had Wolfford arrested. You didn’t fear he would tell them everything? No, no,you made sure he wouldn’t. You threatened him with something. You killed Fotheringham.”
He shrugged, and in that action, she saw the truth of the matter. It had been no ridingaccident. Somehow, he’d managed to make it look that way, but it had been murder. “When you came on the scene, he began to get scared that we’d be caught before I was in power and could protect us all. I couldn’t risk him mucking things up. So I got rid of him, which turned out to be fortuitous because it proved I was willing to do anything to achieve my ends. When Wolfford was arrested, I told him that if he gave anyone my name, his heir would suffer the same fate as Fotheringham.”
So the Duke of Wolfford had held his tongue and gone to the gallows as a traitor in order to save the life of his son. She wondered if Marcus would take any comfort in knowing. “And Podmore? Why send me to his party with instructions to search his desk?”
“Those papers meant nothing. I needed to place you somewhere within a particular time frame so myassociatescould dispense with you because you’re too smart for your own good, girl. I put my plans on hold for an entire year waiting for the Home Office to determine you were of better use elsewhere. I’d grown tired of the delay in claiming what was mine, and I needed you gone. I’d not counted on blasted Stanwick getting involved that night.”
Although she wanted to believe she could havedefeated those four men, she very much doubted it. Not with her rapier against all those knives. Without Marcus fighting beside her, her life probably would have come to an end.
“I shouldn’t have provided you with the answers,” he said drolly. “Hell would have been pure torment for you with all those questions swirling about.”
“The gunfire will bring people to this room so you can’t shoot me.”
“On the contrary, m’dear. As I’ve long suspected, you are a traitor and were here to kill the Queen.”
He fired.
Esme flung herself to the floor before realizing that Marcus had rejoined her and was flying toward O. What the hell? Did no one understand the importance of sticking to a bloody plan? Before she could begin to worry about where the Queen was, Marcus had crashed into O and taken him down. Only he didn’t move as O struggled to squirm out from beneath that massive body.
The bullet. The bullet must have struck Marcus. The fury that poured through her turned her into a she-devil. She jumped to her feet, darted across, grabbed O, dragged him out from beneath the man she loved, and pounded her fist into O’s face once, twice, thrice, taking satisfaction in his grunts of pain.
As she’d suspected, the gunfire had the ladies-in-waiting and their husbands, if they were in attendance, barging into the room. Along with Glasford and Benedict, who’d also taken rooms on this wing in case they were needed.
“She was planning to kill the Queen,” O shouted or tried. The words were rather unintelligible since she’d broken his jaw.
“He’s lying,” she and Marcus said at the same time. She jerked her attention over to see him, thankfully, sitting up, leaning against the bed, one hand to a shoulder, blood oozing between his fingers, the other holding O’s pistol directed at those standing stupidly just inside the doorway.
“Don’t try to stop Esme from her purpose,” he ground out. “She has the Queen’s blessing on this.”
Roughly, she rolled O over and began tying his hands with a length of rope she’d stored in her pocket.
“Where is the Queen?” one of the men demanded.
“She is here,” a regal voice announced, and Esme wanted to scream. Did no one care about their own safety?
The crowd parted and the Queen strolled in, Brown and Griff in her wake. “Oglethorpe.”
“She is the traitor, Your Majesty,” O blurted. “Look at the bed. You can see where she tried to stab you in your sleep.”
