“Do you believe that?” He appeared perfectly calm, except that his facial muscles were tight and his left hand was clenched by his side. For an instant, she caught the brightness in his eyes before he looked away.
“No,” she said with an effort.
The door burst open and Christina came in, her face white, her eyes brilliant. She was wearing an outdoor cloak and carried a large, handsome reticule.
“Why, Miss Ellison, how delightful to see you again!” she said a little loudly. “I declare, you are the most studious person I have ever known. You will be able to deliver lectures upon the life of a soldier in the Peninsular War to learned societies. That is what you are discussing again, is it not?”
The prefabricated lie came to Charlotte’s lips instantly. “My knowledge is very slight, Mrs. Ross. But I have a relation who is most interested. I wished to show him the general’s letters, but before doing so, I came to request his permission.”
“How diligent of you to come in person.” Christina moved over to the desk and, her eyes still on Charlotte, opened one of the drawers. “A lesser woman would have resorted to the penny post! Especially on such a dreadful day. The streets are white with snow already, and it is growing heavier by the moment. You will become quite frozen going home!” Her face twisted a little. She took something from the drawer and put it into her reticule, closing the catch with a snap.
The general was too angry at the slight to Charlotte to bother to inquire what she had taken. “I shall send Miss Ellison home in the carriage, naturally,” he snapped. “No doubt you brought your own and will not need one of mine?”
“Of course, Papa! Did you imagine I came in a public omnibus?” She walked to the door and opened it. “Good day, Miss Ellison. I hope your-relation-enjoys the Peninsular War as much as you appear to do.” And she went out, closing the door behind her. A moment later they heard hooves on the pavement outside and the slam of a carriage door.
“It seems she has borrowed something of yours,” Charlotte remarked, more to break the silence than because it mattered at all.
Balantyne went to the desk and opened the drawer she had taken the object from. For a moment his face was puzzled. There were lines of pain in it, a new and delicate vulnerability to his mouth.
Christina had been one of Max’s women. Charlotte knew now that Balantyne either knew it or guessed it. What about Alan Ross?
Balantyne stood perfectly straight, his eyes wide, his skin drained of blood. “She’s taken my gun.”
For an instant Charlotte was paralyzed. Then she leaped to her feet. “We must go after her,” she commanded. “Find a hansom. She has only just left. There will be marks in the snow-we can follow her. Whatever she means to do, we may be in time to stop her-or-or if it is good, then to help her!”
He strode to the door and shouted for the footman. He snatched from the man’s hands Charlotte’s coat, ignoring his own. He grasped her arm and pushed her to the door. The next moment they were outside in the whirling snow, blinded by the dusk and the dim lamps, stung by the slithering snowflakes turning to ice.
Balantyne ran across the road onto the snow-covered grass under the trees. Christina’s carriage was still in sight on the far side of the square, slowing to turn the corner. There was a hansom moving from pool to pool of light along the west side.
“Cabbie!” Balantyne shouted, waving his arms. “Cabbie!”
Charlotte scrambled through shrubs and grass, soaked to her ankles, trying to keep up with him. Her face was wet and numb with cold, and though her gloves were locked in her reticule, her fingers were too frozen even to fish for them. All her efforts were concentrated on keeping up with him.
Sir Robert Carlton was already in the cab.
Balantyne pulled the door open. “Emergency!” he shouted above the wind. “Sorry, Robert! I need this!” And, relying on long friendship and a generous nature, he held out his hand and almost hauled Carlton out, then grabbed Charlotte by the waist and lifted her in. He then ordered the cabbie to follow down the far street where Christina’s carriage had disappeared. He thrust a handful of coins at the startled man, and was almost thrown to the floor as the driver was transformed into a Jehu at the flash of gold.
Charlotte sat herself up in the seat where she had landed and clung to the handhold. There was no time or purpose in trying to rearrange her skirts to any sense of decorum. The cab was hurtling around the corner from the square, and Balantyne had his head out the window, trying to see if Christina was still ahead of them, or if in the maelstrom of the storm they had lost her.
The horses’ hooves were curiously silent on the soft padding of snow. The carriage lurched from side to side as the wheels slid, caught again, and then swerved. At any other time Charlotte would have been terrified, but all she could think of now was Christina somewhere ahead of them, holding the general’s gun. Fear sickened her, excluding all thought of her own safety as her body was flung from side to side while the cab careened through the white wilderness. Was it Alan Ross she was going to kill? Was it he, after all, who had murdered first Max, and then the others-and at last Christina knew it? Was she going to shoot him? Or offer him suicide?
Balantyne brought his head in from the window. His skin was whipped raw from the wind, snow crusted his hair.
“They’re still ahead of us. God knows where she’s going!” His face was so cold that his mouth was stiff and his words blurred.
She was thrown against him as the cab wheeled around another corner. He caught her, held her for a moment, then eased her upright again.
“I don’t know where we are,” he went on. “I can’t see anything but snow and gas lamps now and again. I don’t recognize anything.”
“She’s not going home?” Charlotte asked. Then instantly wished she had not said it.
“No, we seem to have turned toward the river.” Had he also been thinking of Alan Ross?
They were lurching through a muted world with muffled hoofbeats and no hiss of wheels. There sounded only the crack of the whip and the cabbie’s shout. Vision was limited to the whirl of white flakes in the islands of the lamps, followed by raging, freezing darkness again till the next brief moon on its iron stand. They were slowed to a trot now, turning more often. Apparently they had not lost her, because the cabbie never asked for further instructions.
Where was she going? To warn Adela Pomeroy? Of what? Had she hired some lunatic to kill her husband?
Answers crowded into Charlotte’s head, and none of them could be right. She put off again and again the one she knew in her heart was the truth. Christina was going back to the Devil’s Acre! To one of the whorehouses … and murder.
Beside her, Balantyne said nothing. Whatever nightmare was in his mind he struggled with it alone.
One more corner, another snow-blanketed street, a crossroad, and then at last they stopped. The cabbie’s head appeared.
“Your party’s gone in there!” He waved his arm and Balantyne forced open the door and jumped out, leaving Charlotte to fend for herself after him. “Over there.” The cabbie waved again. “Dalton sisters’ whorehouse. Don’t know what she’s doin’, if n yer ask me. If ’er ’us-band’s gorn in there, she’d best pretend she don’t know-not goin’ a-chasing after ’im like a madwoman! ’T’ain’t decent.’T’ain’t sense neither! Still-never could tell most women nothin’ fer their own good! ’Ere! Best leave the lady in the cab! Gawd! Yer can’t take ’er in there, guv!”
But Balantyne was not listening. He strode across the glimmering road and up the steps of the house where Christina’s footsteps still showed in the virgin snow.
“’Ere!” The cabbie tried once more. “Miss!”
But Charlotte was after him, running with her skirts trailing wet and heavy, catching Balantyne on the step. There was no one to bar their entrance. The door was on the latch and they threw it open together.