Page 22 of The Duke and Lady Scandal (Princes of London #1)

It wasn’t until she was standing next to him that she knew the old man was familiar. At first, she had been drawn in, thinking he might be an unassuming resident of the square. It was the dog that had put her mind at ease.

And he’d kept up the facade well. Even feigned being hard of hearing to draw her closer.

Close enough that Ben and the others surrounding the square wouldn’t hear their exchange.

He was the man who’d come into her shop—the talkative, amiable version of Holcroft.

“There are sharpshooters on high, positioned on four houses in the square,”

he’d whispered. “All pointed at your detective inspector.”

Her body had threatened to betray her then. She’d frozen when she should have run. Lost her voice the one time she should have blurted something useful.

Now she was glad she hadn’t.

However the elusive M had led Ben to believe this was where M could be found, the criminal mastermind had done it well. She and Ben were creatures in a fishbowl, and she believed the claim of sharpshooters was more than a boast. High ground was the best position from which to strike.

“Go and knock at number two and go inside.”

The man—actor, criminal, conspirator, whatever he was—smiled. “Go now, little bird. A cage has been prepared for you.”

Allie did as she was bid because she could not bear to be the cause of harm to Ben.

They may be dreadful thieves, but she’d felt menace from the man who’d given her instructions. For one who feigned amiability well, he wore chilling coldness better.

The man inside the door was brawny and had gripped her arm so hard, her fingers began to go numb.

He’d led her through an elegantly appointed townhouse. Then he’d suddenly clapped his beefy hand over her eyes and shoved her into another room, then another, and finally released her.

Her prison was blue. A cool, muted blue box of a room with no wainscoting or friezes or gilding—none of the touches that one would usually find in a fine London townhouse.

She’d paced at first, searching the blank, unadorned walls for any kind of opening. The door she’d been pushed through had no inner handle and blended with the wall almost seamlessly.

A bit later, she shed her coat and gloves and hat and considered removing her boots, since the heel of her boot was probably the closest thing to a hammer on her person. She could strike someone hard if necessary. Or chip away at these bloody walls if it came to that.

After a while, she slumped onto the polished wood floor. But she couldn’t stay still for long and began pacing again.

“I picked this room for you because it matches your eyes. Don’t you think?”

Allie spun toward the voice, but there was no else in the room.

Then she saw it. A grate painted over in the far wall. He was using some mechanism to transfer his voice through it.

“Why are you doing this?”

Laughter filled the room, high-pitched and without a hint of true mirth. “It amuses me. Is that not enough?”

“But you’re not very good at any of it.”

Allie wondered if she’d regret her boldness, but for a man who didn’t have the courage to show himself, she felt it was warranted. “You failed to steal the regalia and only stole back a diamond that is apparently your own.”

“You forgot the blackmail, or didn’t your lover tell you about that? I suppose the prince’s sins are too much for your delicate ears.”

“He didn’t tell me. Did you fail at that too?”

“Failure matters not. I didn’t need Bertie’s blackmail payment or to place the stolen Imperial Crown on my head to succeed. I struck fear into his heart. Caused the old dragon on the throne a bit of embarrassment. That is success, Miss Prince.”

The man’s shout echoed in the room. “Chaos is its own reward, Miss Prince.”

“Is it?”

Perhaps if she could keep him talking, she could give Ben and the constables in the square time to unfold their own plan. And she was certain Ben had one.

“To those who feel safe, pompous, and untouchable in their wealth and power, nothing is as dangerous as chaos. My family was disgraced and stripped of its power. Should the queen and her offspring not at least feel a bit of fear?”

“You hate them.”

The only reply was snide laughter. “Hate is too simple. It is a complicated loathing.”

Allie heard the faint echo of other men’s voices beyond the walls of the room.

“Loathing doesn’t seem very rewarding if you never achieve your ends.”

From the grate, she heard rustling and then a long, irritated sigh. “But I have achieved every end I wished for. I thought you clever, but it seems I was mistaken. And I might say the same for your detective.”

“Then why not leave us alone and find someone clever to torment?”

Laughter came again, booming around the room. So loud Allie reached up to cover her ears.

All she could think about was Ben. She knew he’d try to get into the house, that he wouldn’t stop until he got to her, but she feared what he might face. Beyond the behemoth at the door, she suspected there were more men guarding this madman.

She lifted her hands from her ears. The laughter had stopped, but she could hear the spine-chilling sound of breathing through the grate.

What did he have planned for them that would evoke such maniacal laughter?

Walking toward the wall furthest from the grate, she slid down to the floor, her legs splayed in front of her. She should have taken Ben’s revolver. Or kept a knife in her boot. Eve probably kept a knife in her boot. Dom surely did.

Tipping her head back against the wall, she closed her eyes.

Shouting beyond the wall caused her to flick her eyes open again. She turned, pressing her ear to the wall, and her heartbeat rioted.

Ben’s voice. He was shouting, and then she heard the thud of footsteps and the crash of furniture.

She closed her eyes again, feigning fatigue, and listened intently.

A sound came that she hadn’t heard in years, and tears welled in her eyes. Someone had fired a gun, and soon after a chorus of shouting ensued. Maddeningly, she could not make out anything clearly. It was as if the walls were stuffed with cotton wool.

She glared at the grate in the wall, unsure whether the madman could see her or only speak to her through some mechanism, the way some servants’ quarters in the wealthiest households had speaking tubes connected to their masters’ suites.

If any harm came to Ben, she’d claw through the wall to get the cowardly phantom of a man.

Not only was the pain sharp, but it was hot too. As if all the blood in his body had rushed to the spot.

The bullet caught his arm near his bicep. But he still had use of it, and his fingers worked fine too. As soon as he’d gotten out of his overcoat and suit jacket, it became clear that the bullet had grazed him.

His own bullet had done much worse.

They’d fired almost simultaneously, and M’s man went down with a resounding thud. Once Ben had kicked the man’s pistol away, he’d been unable to rouse him.

Though he had no time for it now, guilt sat waiting on his shoulders for him. He hadn’t meant to take a life, only to capture one man.

His constables had three other men in shackles, but they insisted the man Ben shot was the one who’d taken Alexandra to one of the rooms. He’d been questioning and threatening them for the last ten minutes while trying to staunch his blood with a bit of torn shirt from his other arm.

“Try the blue room,”

one finally mumbled.

“Where’s that?”

“Hidden inside that room.”

He stared across from Ben at what looked to be a ballroom.

Ben strode inside and realized that the room was an illusion. Mirrors lined the walls to make it seem larger, but it was truncated, and there was a door between two mirrors. So flat and unadorned that it blended into the rest of the wall. But a gold latch glinted and caught his eye.

Twisting it, he pushed in and thanked Christ he’d found her.

She shot to her feet, looking scared and confused, and she ran into his arms.

Ben caught her with his uninjured arm and pulled her out of the room.

“Wait,”

she said, sliding her hands down his arms.

When he winced, she pulled back, and her eyes shot wide when she spotted the blood.

“It’s nothing,”

he told her. “A scratch.”

“Did he shoot you?”

When she started to turn back to the room, Ben wrapped a hand around her wrist to stop her.

“No,”

she whispered. “Look.”

She pointed high on the far wall, but he saw nothing.

“Tip your head. You’ll see a painted grate.”

She turned back to face him. “He spoke to me through it,”

she whispered. “He’s back there, beyond that wall.”

Ben led her out and slid the door almost shut behind him.

He gestured to one of his men guarding the three they’d shackled.

“Come with me out back and you’ll take position behind the house to the right of this one. Send Wainwright and anyone he wants to take post out front,”

he told his man quietly. “He’s in that house, and I’m going to flush him out.”

Alexandra moved past Ben.

“Where are you going?”

“He will have heard all of this,”

she shout-whispered. “He’ll already have fled.”

“No carriage will have left this square, nor the mews behind, without us hearing,”

Constable Eddings told her.

“Then he’s on foot.”

She pulled away from him, lifted her skirt, and broke into a run toward the front door.

“There,”

she shouted, pointing to a tall man in a long dark coat with a black beard and dark glasses.

Ben lifted his revolver from his pocket and approached the man, who was walking as if he was on an afternoon stroll. “Stop. Police.”

The man jerked to a stop and whirled toward him with a smile. “Good afternoon, Inspector.”

Allie placed a hand on his uninjured arm and whispered, “I don’t think it’s M. It’s not the one who got me into the house.”

“How do you know?”

Ben asked her, never taking his eyes from the man.

“Because this is the man I overheard at Hawlston’s and saw in the alley.”

The tall man nodded at her, as if acknowledging her claim, but said nothing.

“I’m still taking him in.”

Ben lifted a pair of shackles from his other pocket.

Allie took them and attached them to the man’s outstretched wrists.

M’s confederate was being far too bloody accommodating.

Soon, Ben saw why. A man emerged from one of the other M properties wearing the same disguise. Then another in the same disguise, though far shorter, strode out of a house he didn’t know had any connection to M at all.

Collier, who had apparently made his way to Bedford Square after all, approached one of the men. That one wasn’t nearly as accommodating and put up a boisterous resistance to Collier’s questioning. Another constable apprehended one of M’s other disguised men.

“Always a bloody game.”

“I’ll speak to them all.”

Alexandra seemed shockingly unfazed by the madness. “I’ll know his voice.”

“Collect all three of them,”

Ben shouted, his voice echoing off the buildings in the squares. “I still need to search that house,”

he told her. “Stay with Collier or one of the other men. Never go off alone.”

“You mean like you are right now.”

He bent to kiss her cheek, and then left her. He had to. He had to find M and put an end to his games.

As he climbed the two stairs toward the townhouse’s facade, it reminded him too much of his first time in Bedford Square. The afternoon was waning toward dusk, but there were no lights on in any of the windows. No curtains on most of them either.

He feared it was another shell of a house. Another blind alley. Another trick.

Then he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. An old man emerged from a house two doors down. Not one of the M properties. He wore a dark wool coat with a bright white fur collar. Enormous gold-rimmed glasses obscured his eyes.

“Too much hubbub in this square if you ask me,”

he said in an affronted aristocratic voice. “What are you all gadding about for?”

He waved his cane. “Shouting and rushing and carrying on.”

“We’re seeking a criminal, sir.”

The man grumbled and harrumphed and then hobbled down his steps, leaning heavily on his cane. At the pavement, he turned toward Ben.

“I do hope you find him.”

Ben twisted the latch on the townhouse door, prepared to force it, but it gave way.

A madman criminal in an unlocked townhouse.

And that was the moment he knew. He cast a gaze at the old man hobbling unsteadily down the pavement. And his gut told him he’d just been taken for a fool again.

Ben approached the old man quickly but managed to keep himself from breaking into a run.

Not for the first time, he wished he could move with more stealth, that his boots hit the pavement more quietly. But if the old man was M, he’d not yet given up his ruse. He hobbled slowly, steadily down the pavement.

“Hold there, old man.”

He lifted his revolver and pulled back the hammer. “I’d like to speak to you. Don’t you think it’s about time we met face-to-face?”

Ben heard a click, and then the hunched old man rose to his full height and spun to face him. He held the walking stick at the height of Ben’s chest, and there was no mistaking the hollow barrel of the cane, nor the little trigger that M had slipped his index finger around.

Ben had heard of cane guns, but he’d never been at the wrong end of one.

“There’s only one bullet,”

M said. “But you’re ever so close. I can’t miss, can I?”

Ben held his revolver steady. “This square is crawling with Met policemen. You won’t get far.”

“Farther than you, Inspector.”

His voice had flattened to a singsong tone. Not unlike a petulant child. “Shall we step back a few paces?”

he said in mock seriousness. “Do it like an old-fashioned duel?”

The sky was darkening as they spoke, but in his periphery, Ben noticed movement in the green. He prayed it was one of his men, or preferably several, maneuvering to create a cordon around M.

“Yes,”

Ben told him, “let’s do it like a duel.”

The madman smiled underneath his bushy mustache and stepped backward, his cane-pistol still trained on Ben. Ben took one step back, and the movement in his periphery shot forward.

A moment later, an object sailed through the air toward them. Toward M. The mastermind caught sight of it late and swung wildly with his cane in an attempt to deflect it.

Ben rushed him, pushing the cane from his hand and using the full force of his body to tumble the smaller man to the ground.

M let out a high-pitched scream, then he squirmed and squealed, kicking and flailing like an animal caught in a trap.

Alexandra rushed up a moment later, her gait uneven. Then she bent and picked up the object that had thwacked M’s head before Ben tackled him.

It was her boot.

She smiled and winked at Ben when he looked up at her.

“Constable,”

she shouted, “we need your shackles.”

To his shock, M’s arms slackened and he stopped kicking. Ben braced his hands on the ground and lifted some of his weight off the man, thinking perhaps he’d lost consciousness.

But then he saw M’s chest heave as he began weeping.

Ben tugged at the mustache and beard, which both peeled off readily. Then he plucked the glasses away and stared in shock.

He was young. Not much older than twenty.

Ben stared up at Alexandra. “I’m not sure it’s him.”

“Stand him up,”

she told him.

Ben heaved the weeping young man to his feet and turned him so that the constable who’d approached could clap him in shackles.

Alexandra drew closer. Too close for Ben’s comfort.

“Keep your distance.”

“I’m not frightened of him, but I do have a question.”

She looked up at the young man, who stood several heads above her. “Do you still think chaos is its own reward?”

The young man sniffed, straightened up tall, squared his fur-covered shoulders, and looked down at her with a smirk. Not a tear in sight. “I struck fear in their hearts, Miss Prince, and that pleases me. And I did enjoy meddling with you and your detective.”

Sickening laughter burst out of him.

“It’s him,”

Alexandra said decisively before turning back to face Ben. “Do you still have doubts that he’s your M?”

“Soon the world will know my name,”

the man whispered as if to himself.

Ben felt disgust for the young man, but now a bit of pity too. There was madness in his eyes, a wild sort of instability he’d rarely seen in even the cruelest criminals. It chilled his blood that one so young could be so lost to his own hateful machinations.

“Get a wagon to carry them all back to the Yard,”

he told the constable, who still stood awaiting orders.

“Already here, Duke.”

The man nudged his chin toward M. “Just waiting to add him to the lot.”

“Once he’s there, I want double watch on him.”

“He knows I’m a slippery one,”

M said in a grating singsong voice as the constable led him away.

Ben turned to Alexandra and shook his head in wonder. “Saved by a boot.”

She laughed, and he did too.

“Technically, I didn’t save you.”

“I beg to differ. Take it from the man who had a pistol pointed at his heart.”

“It’s just a cane, isn’t it?”

She walked over, bent, and retrieved it. When she examined it further, she gasped. “How clever it is.”

“Not as clever as a boot as deterrent.”

She smiled proudly. “It was awfully good timing on my part.”

“Undeniably so.”

Ben reached for her hand.

She clasped his eagerly, and something flickered to life in his chest.

“Deserves a write-up in the London newspapers, if you ask me. The Illustrated Police News, perhaps.”

“Don’t tease me.”

She squeezed his hand.

Ben wanted to kiss her. He’d never wanted anything more. But the night wasn’t over yet.

“There will be a great deal to do over the next few days.”

“I understand.”

She watched as the police wagon pulled out of the square and headed toward Scotland Yard. “Will you come and see me when it’s all done? If only to visit?”

“I will. I promise I will.”

Hope kindled inside him. Just an ember, but he wanted to stoke it.

“That’s enough, then,”

she said with quiet resolve.

But Ben still believed she deserved so much more.