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“I’m surprised all of Scotland couldn’t hear you hollering on.”
She gave him a tight smile.
“Driver, what’s your name?” asked Gillie.
“Noble, miss.”
“Mr. Noble, there’s a guinea extra for you if you drive as fast as you can without wrecking this cab or us, and another if you can do so without asking any questions.”
He laughed. “Can’t argue with that.” And then he slammed the trap shut and the cab lurched forward.
Gillie’s hand gripped Lavinia’s. “Andrew’s smart and resourceful and, from what I’ve read of his field reports, damned difficult to kill. He’s going to be fine.”
Lavinia nodded. He was going to be fine. He had to be.
Andrew groaned as a rough set of hands untied him from under the prince’s carriage, letting his body fall to the ground. He tried to wedge himself up on his elbow, but he was pulled out from under the axles and roundly punched in the gut just for good measure.
His attackers had beaten him badly and gagged him before tying him up and driving off with him. Even with the cobblestones a few inches from his face, rattling his teeth, he could hear the moment the prince and the duke realized there was something horribly wrong. They’d batted against the carriage walls, but when they tried the door handles, they’d found what Andrew already knew. The men had braced them, effectively locking the future monarch and his friend in.
When the carriage stopped in front of an industrial-looking building, however, Andrew had heard another man greet the heir to the throne in a decidedly pleasant manner. Not at all like a man who was about to commit an assassination.
Who was this man and how was he connected to Wark’s plot? Andrew tried to drag the simple question through his brain, but it was proving difficult to cut through the pain. If he could just get to the knife at his calf. He knew they’d missed that when they’d searched him because he could still feel the firm press of the blade against his leg.
“Bind his hands behind his back and take him to the loading dock,” he heard the man order, and he lifted his head.
Douglas. Andrew hadn’t recognized him dressed as a servant, but now he remembered Lavinia telling him about the man’s shock of silver hair. Still, the appearance of the ironmonger wasn’t as surprising as seeing a handsome older woman stride through the door in a green silk gown shot through with silver. Now he understand what Douglas had meant by giving him to Mrs. Wark. It appeared they’d been hunting the son when it was the mother they should’ve been concerned with the entire time.
Mrs. Wark stopped just a few feet from Andrew, staring down at him. “You’re conscious then.”
“Never better,” he managed.
Mrs. Wark raised a brow, then lifted her chin. Andrew was hauled up off the ground by anonymous hands and shoved forward into a stumbling shuffle.
The inside of the warehouse was vast and empty. Andrew could see the prince and the duke sitting on a pair of chairs, both bound around the arms at the waist, but otherwise they appeared to be unharmed.
Andrew was hustled along into a smaller room with high ceilings rigged up with all manner of chains and winches that smelled faintly of horses. The loading dock.
One of the men dressed in the prince’s livery trained a pistol on him while another unbound his hands and then rebound them, looping the ropes at his wrists onto a massive iron hook. Then the man turned the winch so Andrew’s arms were jerked up, high enough to be uncomfortable but not so high that his shoulders were pulled out of their sockets. For that, he supposed, he should be grateful.
A smile crossed Douglas’s face as he surveyed Andrew’s restraints. “Are you quite comfortable?”
“Quite.”
Douglas laughed. “I take it that you work for a government office, or perhaps the military.”
Andrew kept his mouth firmly shut.
Douglas sighed. “It would be helpful to know which it is, but it’s no real matter in the end. We’ll get what we want, and you’ll be eliminated.”
“What is it that you want?” asked Andrew.
“Revenge. The end of the monarchy. You may choose whatever best satisfies your purposes,” said Mrs. Wark with an elegant shrug.
“And what of your own purposes? Or does it matter so little to you the reason behind your plan?” he asked.
“It matters very much to me,” said Mrs. Wark sharply.
“My darling Anne, you see, is not a great believer in the aristocracy,” said Douglas, raising Mrs. Wark’s hand to his lips to kiss the back of it. “It starts with her childhood in Ireland.”
