"Nonsense. Hans!" Miss Dingleby barked, in German. "You will release the two children at once."
"Fräulein?"
"At once, I said."
Hesitation, and then, "Nein, fräulein."
"Let them go, Hans," said Emilie. "I have a fortune in jewels around my neck. They're yours. Let them go, and you'll have me, you'll have the jewels. They're innocent. They have nothing to do with this."
"Stop it, Grimsby!"
A shuffling sound came from the hayloft, a thump. Mary squealed.
"Turn on the lights, fräulein!" shouted Hans. "Now!"
At once, the gaslight illuminated the interior of the mews in a sickly glow. Emilie stumbled back, held up only by Simpson's firm hand on her arm, trying to keep both Miss Dingleby and the hayloft in sight.
The hayloft, where Freddie was half standing, struggling furiously with the ropes around him, and Hans stood with the rope end held above his head, about to strike.
Where the Duke of Ashland, poised along the rafters, dropped silently to the hayloft floor and knocked the pistol out of Hans's astonished hand.
* * *
In India, in Afghanistan, they had called him the Wraith. They had called it impossible, a miracle, that a man so large and solid could move about without disturbing a single breath of air, a tiny pebble on a path. Could creep up on a sentry in a mountain pass and kill him, without either of them making a whisper.
Impossible, the Afghans had said. He cannot be human. He must be a spirit, a ghost.
They had put a price on his head anyway, and had increased that price to a princely sum. Some among the British ranks had thought he should head home while he could, that he'd done enough, that no man could take such chances forever. But Olympia had disagreed. We cannot do without him, not with the British army poised to make its advance over the border.
And Ashland himself? He'd believed himself invulnerable. Everything in life had come naturally to him: his looks, his strength, his brains, his talent, his beautiful wife. He had conceived a healthy male heir on his wedding night. He was the favorite of the gods. How could he fall?
The Wraith had been caught within the week.
But the body remembered. His muscles knew how to perform the little tricks of movement, how to slide soundlessly along the rafters of a mews until he lay inches from the head of his target.
How to lie quietly, waiting for the moment to strike, even as the woman he loved pledged her own precious life in exchange for that of his children.
The woman he loved.
As Emilie's voice floated up from below, serene and determined, he thought his own body might burst from the love he felt for her. He was suffused in it; he was made of it.
The gaslight switched on, and he dropped to the ground.
The pistol clattered to the floor with one efficient cut to Hans's elbow. He wrapped his right arm around the man's neck.
"Let him go, Ashland!" snapped Miss Dingleby.
Hans made a strangled noise. He dropped the rope end and clawed at Ashland's arm with his powerful fingers, but Ashland held firm. A preternatural strength filled his limbs: the strength of battle. The strength of a man protecting what he held most dear.
"Ashland, be careful!" Emilie cried.
"Let him go, by God! Or I'll shoot this pistol!"
"You'll miss," he said. Thirteen years ago, with a hand attached to his right wrist, he could have killed Hans in an instant. Now it was messy work, a brute test of his arm against Hans's thick neck. Hans's right hand had dropped away to scrabble at his jacket. A knife?
"Then I'll hit Hans, and we'll never know who the devil is really after the princesses!"
"You're the one after them!" he roared.
"I am not! But kill him now, and we're back to the beginning! And where does that leave Emilie? Where does that leave her sisters?"
Ashland paused. Trust her, or not? If he killed Hans, what would she do? Use her pistol on Emilie? Could he reach her in time?
"Emilie, is she speaking the truth?" he asked softly.
"I don't know! I . . ." Emilie's voice was agonized.
Ashland eyed the pistol on the ground, a few feet away.
"Very well," he said. In a single movement, he released Hans with a violent toss, dove for the pistol, rolled, and trained it on the German valet. "Now, Hans. You will kindly untie my son and daughter."
"I say, Pater! That was well done," said Freddie. "Most efficient."
Hans raised himself up on his elbows.
"Emilie," Ashland said, "kindly explain to our friend what must be done."
The German words rushed past his ears. He kept his pistol trained between Hans's baleful eyes, which narrowed with comprehension as Emilie finished. Hans looked at the pistol, at Freddie and Mary, and back at Ashland.
"Do it." Ashland's tone of voice required no translation.
Hans rose to his knees and crawled to Freddie and Mary.
"That's the spirit, old chap," said Freddie. "Mind the knots."
"Keep your hands where I can see them, Hans. Emilie?"
Emilie translated swiftly. Hans shot him a murderous look.
Mary slumped forward first. Freddie sprang free and began to rub her wrists. "That's all right, then, old girl. See? I told you Pater would ride up on his cavalry. Reliable chap, Pater."
"Nonetheless," said Mary, "I should much prefer not to repeat the experience."
Ashland's shoulders eased a trifle at the sound of Mary's composed voice. A thoroughbred, his newly adopted daughter.
"Now then, Miss Dingleby," said Ashland, without shifting his gaze an inch, "what do you propose to do to keep Hans's valuable brain to ourselves?"
"I shall take him off at once for questioning, of course," she said crisply. "You and Emilie are free to go."
"How very kind. And if I'd rather stay?"
"I hardly see the use. You have no German."
"Indeed. Perhaps we'd better wait for reinforcements, however. Just to be on the safe side." From the corner of his eye, he saw that Emilie was turning in Miss Dingleby's direction, her right hand hidden in the folds of her satin ball gown.
The stiletto. Did she have it with her?
He kept talking, kept Miss Dingleby's attention focused on the hayloft.
"What I wonder, Miss Dingleby, is why you didn't press him on these matters before. Unless you're the one pulling the strings, of course. Then it would all make sense. Then it would be your valuable brain we must seek to preserve."
She sighed. "How tiresome you all are. You of all people, Ashland, should know that a clever agent does nothing to reveal his hand. If I'd probed Hans for the names of his leaders, I'd have been suspected at once."
"A clever agent has ways of discovering these things."
Emilie was doing something with her left arm, twisting it. He couldn't see more, because Simpson was standing right next to her, immobile, his gaze trained on the small window next to the door.
"In any case," Ashland went on, "I believe I shall have Freddie do the honors of tying up our good friend Hans. It's only fitting, after all."
"With pleasure." Freddie picked up the rope.
Simpson shouted out.
Ashland felt the vibration in the wood below his feet, the electric rush he knew as well as his own heartbeat.
The door flew open.
"Now, boys!" someone shouted.
Hans launched himself forward. Ashland, off balance, stepped aside an instant too late. His left hand gripped the pistol; his right elbow took the force of the fall. Hans landed atop him and pressed the blade of a knife against his throat.
"Pater!" shouted Freddie.
A pistol shot shattered the air.
Hans's eyes opened wide. He mouthed something, but no sound emerged from his throat.
Ashland gave a mighty shove, overturning the body from his chest, and sprang to his feet.
The Duke of Olympia stood near the doorway, as a stream of men eddied around him. In the center of the room, right next to the wheel of the landau, stood Miss Dingleby with her pistol still raised, surrounded by a cloud of acrid smoke.
* * *
In the end, it solves nothing," said Miss Dingleby, sipping her sherry from the comfort of the Duke of Olympia's best club chair. "Emilie is safe for the moment, but there are others involved in the plot, and they will strike again. Hans was the key. I had spent years cultivating him, gaining his trust."
Emilie turned to the window and stared at the midnight blackness. Her brain ached with fatigue, but her thoughts insisted on jumping about. The image of Hans's head, at the moment of impact. The sight of Ashland with a knife to his throat. Simpson's hand on her arm, holding her still. "I'm very sorry to have overturned all the plans."