Читать книгу Dangerous Games - Charlotte Mede - Страница 9

Lilly Clarence Hampton was being watched.

Impossible. The barred windows of the Salt Tower, located in the Tower of London, reflected back only the darkness of the night and her bone-pale complexion. Iciness emanated from the worn granite beneath her feet, and behind her, obscured by layers of shadow, she had moments earlier discovered an antechamber, a small circular room with just one small window cut into the thick wall. It had stopped snowing, but she could not control a shiver against the damp and her knowledge of history. Queen Elizabeth had sent several Jesuit priests here to die, and if Lilly cared to look, which she didn’t, their last desperate scrawls were inscribed in the cold and implacable stones just several feet away.

If she cared to look, which she certainly did not. Hundreds of years of history promulgated ghost stories, of course. She clutched her reticule firmly. So what that even dogs refused to enter the edifice? Ghosts, real or imagined—she’d had enough of them.

Ignoring the sensation of heat drilling through the cashmere of her shawl and directly through to the center of her back, she turned to the object in the glass case surrounded by thick iron bars. It glowed sullenly, a multifaceted ostrich egg to her eyes, a stone that very probably dated from before the time of Christ. And for which many had died for stakes that were entirely too high.

Because whoever owned the Koh-I-Noor diamond ruled the world. Or so it was said. Koh-I-Noor, Mountain of Light, the most famous diamond in history, in its original one-hundred-eighty-six-carat form, rested here now in the Tower of London. She read the inscription disclosed to the right of the display case.

The Koh-I-Noor. Its value is Good Fortune, for whoever possesses it has been superior to all his enemies.

Politics and power, always a dirty business, now allied with superstition in the wondrous form of a gemstone. How many more would covet it, die for it?

Pinpricks danced up her spine. The sensation of being watched. She pulled her shawl closer to her body and surveyed her surroundings for at least the tenth time. The blackness of the night, outlined by the lone window, couldn’t hope to penetrate the circular room. She was in the third floor of the tower, at least two hundred feet from the ground. No spying eyes could possibly see…

Guilt was a toxic companion, accompanying her everywhere.

Lilly straightened her spine. A nervous disposition was definitely not permitted. She had no patience for weak, fainting women, their stays pulled too tightly for anybody’s good, their minds closed to logic and good sense. What she needed was a vigorous walk through Hyde Park, a rousing debate, or perhaps another evening spent with Isambard Kingdom Bellamy.

The diamond winked back at her. Mockingly.

She resumed her pacing, making a deliberate circle around the glass case, restraining her emotions with the customary discipline that had become as necessary to her life as breathing. Every few steps, she looked over her shoulder toward the door, fighting a gnawing anxiety. Bellamy was to have met her here this evening, to show her the diamond personally, expound on its history, its infamous significance. When she’d first arrived, almost one hour after midnight, the guards at the entrance had been nonplussed, ushering her up the damp, circular stairs, no wider than a child’s crib, despite her lack of illustrious companion.

She leaned in toward the glass case, studying the diamond closely. The architectural drawings of the Crystal Palace rose clearly in her mind, the soaring ceilings and the expanse of open space that were designed to welcome not only thousands of expectant visitors from near and far to London’s Great Exhibition, but also the historic diamond.

The muscles on the back of her neck tightened. She tapped a tattoo with one finger on the glass case. Too accessible. That was the problem. While the building design, radical and revolutionary, echoed the diamond’s faceted form, it would be next to impossible to protect the Koh-I-Noor and its presentation before the world to Queen Victoria at the opening of the Crystal Palace. It would be a historic occasion in commemoration of May 29, 1849, when the British flag was hoisted on the citadel of Lahore and the Punjab was formally proclaimed part of the British Empire in India.

As she had been apprised, the gem, which had been taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, would be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England, by the hand of the chairman of the British East India Company, Isambard Kingdom Bellamy. A momentous event for the empire.

She continued her measured pacing. Other than the sound of her footsteps, the tower was silent. Yet her ears strained for what exactly—Bellamy’s arrival? The sensation of eyes boring into the back of her head refused to relinquish its hold. She glanced at the darkened antechamber behind her and then at the door, a thick iron grille separating her and the sentry guarding the diamond from the outside world. She was alone and she was protected. Although it wasn’t at all like Bellamy to allow himself to be delayed. He was prompt, attentive, and unfailingly courteous, a protective port in the storm that had become her life.

The face of Isambard Kingdom Bellamy momentarily blotted out the diamond encased in glass and iron. The other evening, at the Adelphi Theatre when they’d shared a glass of champagne, she had to admit that there was more to his attentiveness than simple friendship and that, somehow over the past year, they had been drifting toward courtship, their association taking on a new and stronger dimension. A long-time business associate of Charles’s, Bellamy was not well known to her during the course of her marriage, other than in a social sense. But he had made himself readily available to her after the tragedy with kind words and a patient benevolence that she had never encountered before. Not that she had ever been a good judge of character, Lord only knew. After Charles, self-doubt was a troublesome attendant. The last thing she needed to do at the moment was to question why Bellamy would find interest in a widow, with an unimpressive family background, who had been absurdly and unfashionably in love with her late husband.

Her mouth thinned and she adjusted her shawl. Bellamy, for whatever reasons, demonstrated only the best of intentions toward her. He was a powerful man, and if she required further evidence, she needed only to remember how neatly he’d dispatched the inspector at Covent Gardens a fortnight earlier. Insistent, disrespectful, and very public with his inquiries, the inspector had made it clear that he was a terrier with a bone, ferocious and implacable. Until he had met with the wolfhound that was Bellamy who, with a low snarl, had sent the man packing. She had not been harassed since, not a coincidence, surely. Bellamy’s influence reached to the highest corridors of government, and a single word could definitively halt an entire army on the other side of the world, not to mention an inconsequential investigation.

Marriage to him would mean she could continue her work discreetly. As with most men, he was vaguely supportive of her pursuits, and that was enough, more than enough. He spent most of his time with his vast business concerns in India, a situation that would translate into a measure of freedom for her. And security. No one would dare cast aspersions…the rumors would stop. She took a breath against the tightness around her heart. Then she—and the world—could forget the death of Charles Hampton.

The lights flickered strangely. A breeze perhaps snaking its way through one of the barred windows. The Tower was not yet outfitted with gas fixtures, the tall candles dripping wax on the cold stone floor. The outlines of her profile etched eerily against the glass case, she deliberately returned her attention to the diamond, shutting out memories, too painful and too dangerous. When she looked up again, she saw the face hovering over hers.

Haggard and masculine, stopping the breath in her lungs.

This was no ghost. A heavy arm roped around her neck and shoulders, pulling her back toward a hard chest.

“Obscene.” The low whisper was hot menace in her ear. No time for thought, she clawed instinctively and ineffectually at the solid muscles of an arm. Reflected in the glass, his eyes glittered strangely, dark as onyx. Her head felt light, and her reticule, clamped in her hand, slid to the floor.

Her body frozen, her mind skittered with hundreds of possibilities. Obscene. Her eyes returned to the Koh-I-Noor. He was referring to the diamond. “What do you want?” The barely managed words were hoarse, strangulated.

He dragged her away from the glass case and toward the small antechamber behind them. Plunged into medieval gloom, she could make out three missing bars from the lone window in the room, weak moonlight the only source of illumination. Realization dawned, inconceivable as it was indisputable. The man had scaled two hundred feet in the dark.

She didn’t know whether she’d cursed under her breath or aloud. “Let go of me—I can scarcely breathe.” As if that should matter to him.

Trapped at such an awkward angle, her stays were gnawing into her abdomen, her breath coming in halting pants. But he refused to relinquish his hold. Anger was beginning to replace the numbing fear in the pit of her stomach.

“See reason.” Words were the only weapon she had, and she knew how to use them. “There’s a guard standing outside the door and he’s expecting me to emerge at some point.” Her mind did summersaults. “And then there are the soldiers at the entrance of the Tower, and in all probability an even greater number inside.”

“I know.” The simple statement, filled with supreme unconcern, chilled her more than any knife or pistol could.

Her elbow jammed his ribcage, barely registering. There wasn’t an ounce of padding on the man, save ridged sinew and bone separated by a few layers of leather and fabric. She took a ragged breath, his scent strangely neutral, soap and skin. Her careening thoughts slid to a halt.

It was the diamond he wanted. The diamond he believed obscene.

“Take it and see how far you get.” She could not even sway her body against his, her arms pinned helplessly at her sides. Her anger burned brighter. “You must be a madman to think you could break into the Tower of London and make off with the Koh-I-Noor.” She’d just sputtered utter nonsense. He’d already penetrated the Tower, beyond the phalanx of soldiers and guards who protected the Crown Jewels with their lives.

What kind of man was this? She commanded herself to be still, to tamp down her fury, marshaling her thoughts. Once long ago, she’d attended a naturalist’s lecture, a scientist who had blithely categorized the human species as simply another animal. And at this moment, in the damp and in the dark, she knew his theory to be true. Because every particle of her being, from her cold skin to her rigid body, told her that she was a hairbreadth away from a death as meaningless as that of stalked prey on an open plain.

“You believe I want the diamond.” The hot whisper in her ear again. The heavy walls of the small antechamber were suffocating, closing in around her, the stranger holding her so closely that she thought any moment their two bodies would merge. She shut her eyes against the renewed shock, and inexplicably, the image of Charles floated into her awareness. A harbinger of death. Her Charles with his soft brown hair and benign gaze. She had been so young when they’d married and he so poetic, so artistic, and so handsome. Dry tears burned behind her eyelids. The room around her faded away, the pain of the past smothering.

“Perhaps I want something else.”

Charles vanished. Her eyes snapped open and the earth beneath her feet lifted as the band of steel around her neck and shoulder gave way. She struggled to recover her balance, legs unsteady, combs falling from her hair, one by one to the floor.

Her vision steadied, the chalky moonlight illuminating the small chamber. A few inches separated them. He stood almost a foot taller than she with broad shoulders and a hardened musculature that had only moments ago been pressed against her body. Clean shaven, sporting neither beard nor muttonchops, he pilloried her with his eyes, so dark and penetrating, Lilly took a step back.

“What is it that you want?” Panic crowded out the possibilities, one more horrendous than the next. Black breeches and shirt matched his expression. He was a fallen Lucifer, the hardened set of his jaw and the lines bracketing the sides of his wide mouth telling a story she didn’t want to hear. A savaged, ravaged face, telling her he had nothing to lose.

He was no longer touching her but it didn’t seem to matter. “What I require is you. Willing or not, is immaterial to me.”

Without looking behind her, she sensed the door to the small antechamber would be closed tightly. “Me? Why me?” She repeated the words blindly, heedless now of the fall of hair around her face. She grasped at options, one more impossible than the next. “If you believe that I will help you with your foolish plan to steal the diamond, you’re mad. And as though I even could.”

He shrugged. “You can and you will.”

She wiped a strand of hair back from her face. “Whoever you are—this high-handedness is positively risible, as though you could do, say, or threaten me with anything that would in any way assist you. I will not help you steal the Koh-INoor.”

“If I wanted to steal it, it would be already gone,” he said implacably. “Right out from under your superior nose.” He advanced toward her in the already enclosed space. “I said it’s you I’m interested in at the moment. The diamond may come later.”

“You must have the wrong individual,” she tried. “I am not the person you are looking for.”

“I believe that you’re deliberately misunderstanding me. For your own purposes. As though you may have something to hide. Am I right, Mrs. Hampton?”

She felt the blood drain from her face. He knew her name. She searched his expression frantically, noting the too-long hair, black as ink, scraped untidily back from his forehead. “What can I possibly provide you with?” she asked with a desperate tilt of her chin.

He pretended to smile, the flash of teeth white in the darkened room. “You have the plans for the Crystal Palace. The architectural plans.”

She jerked as though she’d been struck, his statement taking her in an entirely new and even more dangerous direction. “What of them?” she asked, lowering her voice, rubbing her arms through the soft cashmere of her shawl. “And they are not my plans,” she lied. “They belong to my late husband and are presently unavailable.”

“Are they now?” His eyes, dark and fathomless, glittered with knowledge.

Suddenly, she thought of the guard behind the grillwork of the Salt Tower’s door, and desperately hoped he wouldn’t intervene. Nor, dear God, Bellamy. It would only make matters worse, multiply the complications. She’d made her decision one year ago, lived with it, lived with the blood on her hands.

“It’s irrelevant whether you believe me or not.” She took a step backward until she was only two feet from the window, now stripped of its bars, and she had a wild thought that he meant to throw her over the ledge and onto the cobblestones below.

“This might be the time to tell you that I have a bad temper.” It was as though he could read her fevered mind. For emphasis, he moved in closer, crunching one of her tortoise-shell combs underfoot. A gift from Charles, she thought wildly, irrationally. Now her only choice was to decide between the broadest shoulders she had ever seen and the window. Falling to her death would be preferable to meeting it at his hands.

Moonlight lit his face, throwing into sharp relief the hard plane of a jaw, the strong nose. A small scar sat above his right eyebrow. Backing up one more step, she felt the cold stone ledge through her shawl and dress to her corset and chemise.

She stopped breathing because she could go no farther and because something told her that he knew. He knew.

He smiled again, more chilling than the cold coming off the flagstone floor. “I see we’ve reached an understanding. How fortunate for you and me both.”

She dug her nails into her palms in the vain hope she could keep the truth at bay. But she couldn’t because he wouldn’t let her.

“I will do anything,” she whispered.

“I thought as much,” he said, holding her gaze for the longest moment before nodding a grudging consent. “Yours is a perfectly reasonable response—for a wife who murdered her beloved husband. In cold blood.”