Plum glanced toward her escritoire. “Was it an extreme measure? That is, did you try to resolve the situation by less fatal means first? Did you try to reason with the people first? Bribe them? Or perhaps, give them a taste of their own medicine? Did you try those things first, Harry, before you were forced to kill?”
Harry smiled a reassuring smile. Dear, sweet innocent Plum. He hesitated to have such a gruesome discussion with his delicate wife, but perhaps it would be for the best. She would no doubt understand just what lengths he was prepared to go to in order to see to the children’s and her protection. He spent the next half hour detailing the more outstanding of circumstances, allowing her to question him closely about the methods he employed to avoid having to kill his enemies, as well as general information about the surrounding events. If the situation facing him weren’t so heinous, he might almost have found her avid interest amusing, but in the end, he rose, gave her what was meant to be a reassuring kiss, but turned into a fiery plundering wherein he tasted the sweet depths of her mouth, then took his leave of her more than a little pleased with the gentle, loving woman he had wed.
CHAPTER Fourteen
“My very most Lady Plump! You must come quickly!”
“What is it, Juan?” Plum asked absently, brushing the end of the quill against her chin as she thought. Would it be better to have Charles found naked in the monkey cage at the Zoological Gardens, or in flagrante delecto with another man?
Juan threw himself to his knees before her. Plum paid little mind to such a show of histrionics. Juan was always throwing himself to his knees over something. Usually it was of no consequence. “It is a most terrible occurrence! It is the even very catastrophic!”
Plum sipped the cold tea that had been sitting at her side while she labored the last two hours, a slight frown between her brows. “Is anything on fire?”
“No, it is not the fire—”
“Is anyone bleeding?” The monkey cage had a certain appeal to it, but sadly, the other would involve the shame of another man. She hated to make anyone but Charles suffer. Perhaps if he was shot while trying to escape after the theft of an object from the newly opened British Museum?
“That I am not knowing. You must come now, it is of the most terrible event—”
What of a harlot? Would that be enough to shame Charles? She shook her head even as the idea formed. The Charles of old certainly had no qualms about making it known to other gentlemen that he used the services of harlots. Then again, if it was a harlot like no other, that might do the trick. Plum wrote a note to investigate whether there were any procurers of sheep for gentlemen of unnatural tastes. “Has any property, real or otherwise, been destroyed?”
Juan clutched her knees. “You are not listening to me! I am trying to tell you—”
“Does the situation involve any sort of weaponry? Swords? Axes? Firearms?”
“Madre Dios, no—”
“Then I don’t want to hear about it. I am very busy at the moment, and as long as no one is in any danger, I will attend to the situation later, when I have time. Is that clear?”
“Of course it is clear, I have not the potatoes growing out of my ears. You must come with me—”
“Is that clear, Juan?” Plum said more forcefully, her frown intensifying.
Juan released her knees, got to his feet, and stalked to the door. “You are being stupid, most lovely lady! I try to tell you, but you will not let me. What am I to do? I do my job. I try to tell you, but you, you would try the saint, you would!”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Juan.” Perhaps if word got around that he carried a plague…no, that had the possibility of harming his wife and children, who were innocent of his sins. Sadly, a plague was out. “You may leave me now. Tell the children I will attend to them later.”
“I will never understand you English,” Juan said with a dramatic air of one grievously injured. He marched over to the door. “You make the fuss most big about the children, but when they have been kidnapped, you will not listen. I try no longer! Bah, I wash my hands!”
“Fine,” Plum said, waving an airy hand and returning to the problem that greatly concerned her. “Water, now there’s an idea. Perhaps it could be put about that he is nigh on insane regarding the subject of water. Bedlam would loom before him, and that, surely, is enough to keep anyone in line. It certainly should stop him…kidnapping?”
Plum was up from her seat the instant the word penetrated her consciousness. Juan, who knew his employers better than he allowed, stood outside the door counting. He opened it just as she raced through.
“I am the butler extraordinary,” he said as she flew past him. “The carriage is waiting for you.”
“Find Harry,” she yelled as she ran down the stairs and across the hall, leaping down the front steps to the waiting carriage. Two footmen clung to the top of the carriage, one of whom was Sam, sporting a dashing white bandage around his head.
Plum didn’t give him a thought as she threw herself into the carriage. “Go!”
The door slammed behind her. Plum fell backward as the horses were sprung. Struggling to sit upright, she opened the trap and yelled for the footman. “Ben, what happened? Where are the children? Who has taken them?”
“I don’t rightly know, my lady. Sam, he went out to the park with the two men his lordship hired to watch over Miss Thom and the children, and he came home with his head all bloody, raving about someone who attacked them and stole the children. The two men and Miss Thom went after the kidnappers.”
“How are we ever to find them in all of London?” Plum wailed.
Sam leaned over to the trap. “They thought I was dead, Lady Rosse. One of the blighters who was standing over me told the others to meet them at the ruins.”
“Ruins? What ruins, London doesn’t have any…oh! Vauxhall.”
Ben’s face reappeared in the square. “That’s what we thought, milady. It was the only ruins we could think of in London.”
“I just pray we get there in time,” Plum said, and sat back to commence some really thoughtful worrying.
“What do you mean my wife wants to hire a murderer? Plum would never do any such thing.” Harry stormed across the smoking room at Britton House, a small headache pulsing to life at the back of his head. Noble had to be wrong, that’s all there was to it. He must have read Thom’s note incorrectly. “She just wouldn’t do it.”
“According to Thom, she’s hoping Nick’ll be able to provide her with an introduction to someone who won’t mind killing a gentleman she assured him no one will miss.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s a joke. The two of them are having Nick on.”
“I don’t think so, Harry. Evidently Thom asked Nick first if he’d do it, but seemed to credit the lad with the niceness of not being a murderer by continuing that if he didn’t have the stomach for it, could he please refer someone to her aunt who would.”
“My lords, my pardon for interrupting, but there’s a man by the name of Juan at the door inquiring for Lord Rosse. He says it is most urgent—”
“Just a minute.” Harry held up a hand to the short, round butler who stood in the doorway, and turned back to the man before him. “Do you mean to say that Thom wrote this letter to Nick? It’s a joke, man! That’s all it can be. She’s testing him. You know how women like to do that to men. It’s in their blood. No doubt she fancies him, and she wants to see just how honorable he really is.”