Jasper Horan, his face pinched with cold, tapped on the fly's window. Von Stühlen opened it a crack.
“Oi, guv'nor—summat's coming along the road, bound for the house.”
They had scattered five men in the sheep meadow as lookouts, against just such an eventuality; one of them must have raised his arm in warning.
Von Stühlen felt for his pistol; it lodged snugly against his ribs, hidden by his cloak. He thrust open the fly's door and walked at a leisurely pace into the middle of the road, leveling his gun on the approaching horse, his gauntleted right hand raised.
And if it were Fitzgerald? Georgiana Armistead with him?
He could carry them both back to London, and the Metropolitan Police. But the Queen would dislike that; it would place her enemies immediately beyond her control. Charges, imprisonment, a trial—all of these would attract the attention of the newspapers, and give Fitzgerald a platform for protesting his innocence. Exactly what Victoria dreaded.
Sick excitement filled von Stühlen's throat, and his fingers gripped the pistol more tightly. He would force Fitzgerald and his woman into the fly and later, in private, he would extort from them everything they knew about Victoria. He would learn, at last, why she feared and hated them so. And then—and then, he would destroy them. . . .
No horseman, but a boy leading a rangy hunter at a walk. He stopped dead when he saw the dark figure with the gun raised.
Von Stühlen's eyes roamed over the tense, whipcord body; no Fitzgerald. No Georgiana Armistead. It was she he had principally hoped to meet with in the dark; she he wanted to watch, as he killed her lover.
He swallowed his disappointment, mind raging, and walked toward the boy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Stolen, I reckon,” Gibbon said tersely. “That boat will never have simply floated away. I made sure the rope was knotted good and tight.”
“Here,” Fitzgerald said. “Support Miss Georgie.” He walked forward a few paces through the pitch black, craning over the tussocks of marsh along the creek bed. In the darkness he struck his shin against a mooring stake—and stifling a curse, felt along its length. Part of the Dauntless's painter dangled from the iron ring.
“Somebody's cut it loose.”
“Von Stühlen?” Georgie faltered.
The hair prickled on the back of Fitzgerald's neck.
He could just faintly catch the sound of plashing oars, familiar since childhood. It came from farther down the channel.
“We might strike out for Brambledown,” Gibbon was saying. “There's a few sheep farmers there'd take us in, mebbe.”
Fitzgerald began to run toward the sound of the boat, tripping and stumbling wildly over the uneven ground. The pale glow of a shuttered lantern shone out some distance ahead, and he had an idea of the thieves, waiting for the cover of darkness, unwilling to fire the steamer's engine out of fear of the noise—
A hand grabbed for his ankle, and he went down hard.
The man was upon him in seconds, all his weight on Fitzgerald's back, forcing his face into the black muck of the marsh.
Gasping, he reached backwards and clawed at the unseen killer, struggling to raise his nose from the bog. No good. The weight shifted and rolled but would not be shed. Fitzgerald's brain screamed with panic and he knew the impulse to suck the marsh deep into his lungs, desperate as he was for air. Something struck the crown of his head, but glancingly—a blow meant for another. And then the weight was gone and he could raise his face from the stinking muck.
Gibbon, cursing gutturally as he rolled in the salt hay, his hands at their attacker's neck.
Fitzgerald thrust himself to his feet, his senses singing, and staggered toward the two men. He began to kick the one that was not Gibbon, hard, in the small of the back. And then he remembered the pistol he'd taken from Shurland's gun room.
With shaking hands he pulled it from his coat. If he fired it, von Stühlen would know where they were. If he fired it, he might hit Gibbon.
He lifted the butt of the gun and brought it down hard on the killer's head.
The man went limp.
“You look like your mother,” von Stühlen observed, as he stopped short in front of Theo. “I knew her once, you see. Long ago. When she still went about in Society.”
“That doesn't give you the right to hold me up like a common highwayman,” Theo said. “May I have the honour of your name, sir?”
“Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen.” He thrust the pistol into his belt. “And yours?”
“Theo Fitzgerald-Hastings.”
“Ah. An improvisation, I suspect.”
The boy ducked his head. “I'm Monteith's heir. My uncle.”
“So. You will be an earl one day, and I am a count. We may speak as one gentleman to another.” Von Stühlen held out his arm in a gesture of invitation. “May I accompany you to the house? There is a matter I must urgently discuss with your parent. Mr. Fitzgerald.”
Theo tugged on Clive's rein, and trod warily forward. “No one's at home, I'm afraid. They've all gone but me.”
“Impossible,” von Stühlen said easily. “I've been watching the road.”
The boy stopped short.
“Forgive me. Such measures are sometimes necessary, when one is in service to the Queen.”
“The Queen?” Theo stared at him. “What has the Queen to do with Shurland Hall?”
“I'm afraid that is your father's question to answer,” von Stühlen said gently. He began to walk again toward the house. Jasper Horan fell in with the pair of them, a few feet behind his master, and others—emerging from the trees—gathered inexorably. Three men, then five . . .
“What do you want with him?” Theo demanded roughly.
“We are looking for Mr. Fitzgerald . . . it pains me to say it . . . on a matter of possible treason . . .”
“Rubbish!”
Von Stühlen inclined his head. “Taken together with the unfortunate murder of his partner in chambers—and your father's sudden flight from London—there are any number of questions to be answered. But only one that I must put to you: Where is your father now? At precisely this moment?”
Theo studied von Stühlen's face, the tension in his frame gradually easing; and then, he told him.
“Georgie!” Fitzgerald muttered in a half-whisper. “Georgie!”
She was sitting on the rock where Gibbon had left her, near the Dauntless's old mooring. Beside her stood a man hunched with age, a lantern raised in his right hand. Both of them turned to look at Fitzgerald and Gibbon as they emerged from the marsh.
“This is Mr. Deane,” Georgie said. “He says he's your neighbour. He has a boat, Patrick.”
It was a fisherman's dory, the oars shipped in their locks—the boat Fitzgerald had heard, before tumbling in the dark.
Fitzgerald reached for his purse. “Could you take us around to Sheerness, Mr. Deane?”
“He left this morning for France?” von Stühlen said as they halted in Shurland's courtyard.
“Yes. He wished to take his mistress there, for the Christmas season,” Theo said indifferently. “Not particularly kind in him, to break his journey under Mother's roof—but Father has always had a curious notion of propriety. All my people have, to be frank.”
“I see.” Von Stühlen scanned the Hall's weathered façade. “How exactly did your father quit the island?”
“On his steamer. The Dauntless. He moors it at the head of the creek, a mile or two south of the Hall.”
“I know. Your blacksmith—Applefield? Applewood?—told me as much. Which is why my men cut the boat adrift this evening.”