The Bride of the Unicorn

She couldn’t breathe.

All she could do was watch, horrified, paralyzed, her fingers still locked behind the windowpane, as another shot rang out and Henry was flung forward heavily, to fall against the side of the coach, then slide away from her, to the ground.

“Henry—no!” Lady Gwendolyn reached for the latch, disregarding the earl’s warning, forgetting her child, not caring for her own safety. She threw open the door her husband, her protector, had closed behind him a minute earlier—a lifetime ago.

Her hands braced on either side of the opening, she struggled with the damning reality of seeing her husband lying just below her feet, his body facedown in the mud, a dark, ominous stain spreading on the back of his jacket. “Henry. Oh, my dear God—Henry!”

She raised her head and screamed at the highwaymen, her voice high-pitched with mounting hysteria. “We gave you all our money—all our jewelry. We gave you everything! And you killed him. There was no reason, no need. Why? Why did you do this?”

The man who had discharged his second pistol into the seventh earl of Witham stripped away his dark mask, revealing wickedly grinning features as he advanced in Lady Gwendolyn’s direction. “Good evening, Gwen. Beastly weather, isn’t it?”

She stared at the man as his face was revealed in the flickering light of the coach lamps, unable to understand either his presence or his actions. She then looked down at her husband’s body and shuddered convulsively before turning uncomprehending eyes back to Lord Henry’s killer. “But why? Why?”

She continued to watch as the man—this man she knew, this man she had trusted—took another step forward and slowly pulled a third long-barreled weapon from his belt….

BOOK ONE

A QUESTION OF HONOR

October 1815

Chance is a nickname for Providence.

Sébastien R. N. Chamfort

CHAPTER ONE

We die only once, and for such a long time!

Molière

LORD JAMES BLAKELY trusted his nephew did not view the scene now unfolding for his benefit as particularly jolly. Such interludes were by right supposed to be off-putting, damn it, deadly solemn and hung heavy with foreboding. Later—once the body had grown stiff and cold—there would be ample time for Morgan Blakely to perform a jig on his grave.

If he could.

For now, however, Lord James, in his own way, and in his own good time, would dance.

He had set up the particulars for this occasion with infinite care—planned his starring role down to the last detail. The gloomy, barnlike bedchamber suited his purpose perfectly, for he knew it had never been the most advantageous stage setting for any save moribund frolic.

Lord James had long ago opted to take his physical pleasures in somewhat less inhibiting surroundings, the more baseborn his partner the better. That sort of female did not take exception when the play turned rough. At least they had never shown their distaste—not for the heavy blunt he’d paid down to indulge his appetites.

And if he’d ruined one or two of the round-heeled bitches for the business, well, what of it? Nothing lasted. Nothing lived forever.

And he should know. He could see the demons gathering now, hovering in a far corner, high against the ceiling, rubbing their clawlike hands together and licking slimy, reptilian lips; eager to snatch him up, slash out his soul, and pitch it down, down, into the very bowels of the earth.

But not yet. No. He still had time. He still had something he had to do; a last, perfect mischief that would render his damnation tolerable.

Lord James moistened his parched, fever-cracked lips and looked about the room, searching out his audience of one.

The chamber was particularly musty this October evening, its bog-water green velvet draperies shut tight, its heavy Tudor furniture hulking ponderously against the tapestry-hung walls, the wretchedly ineffectual fire in the oversized grate hissing rather than crackling.

The price of good wood could beggar a man. The smoke and sizzle of green wood might make living plaguey uncomfortable, but it was more than good enough to die by.

The world outside the drafty windows couldn’t have been any more appropriate, nature helping him with his scene-setting. It had been raining all day; a heavy, drenching, reminiscent downpour that had set all the usual damp patches on the ceiling to showing themselves to disadvantage while lending to the stale, musty air another aroma to ponder: mildew.

The only sound Lord James heard was that of rainwater splashing tinnily into a half dozen pails set at irregular intervals on the threadbare carpet—along with his own decidedly evil chuckling and intermittent coughing, as he had just completed entertaining his guest with a little tale about a liaison he’d once had with the local rat catcher’s daughter.

Vulgarity was so comforting, such a glaringly human vice in the midst of this tawdry business of dying. He, Lord James Blakely, rapidly fading but still cheerfully malevolent, would do his damnedest to make his passing as miserable for his guest as possible. He might be only a few days or hours away from being put to bed with a shovel, but was that any reason to alter by so much as a hair the habits of a lifetime?

“The rat catcher’s daughter. My congratulations, Uncle, for you are nothing if not consistent,” Morgan Blakely said now, as Lord James went off in another paroxysm of high-pitched giggles. “I have always so enjoyed your feeble attempts at humor. You really should have written them all down somewhere, for the sake of posterity, you understand. But then, you did write some things down, didn’t you, some little tidbits of information—and then forwarded them directly to France via one of the less discriminating smuggling gangs that frequent the coast.”

Lord James’s face blanched, his enjoyment decimated, and he looked furtively at his nephew. “You know about that?” he asked, his handkerchief still pressed to his mouth, a string of spittle dribbling from his chin.

Morgan spoke in a deadly sweet drawl, his distaste for his uncle maddeningly obvious in the relaxed stance of his long, leanly muscled body. “Dear me, yes,” he answered, smiling for the first time since he’d entered the bedchamber.

Lord James gritted his teeth, shaking with fury. “When? How?”

“Must I really indulge you? Oh, very well. I have known since before Waterloo, since shortly after my return from France. As for the how of it—you do remember my mission during the war, don’t you, my area of operation? Tell me, Uncle—was the money you received for selling secrets all the sweeter for the thought that the information you forwarded to Bonaparte could have meant the end of your brother’s son? I’ve occasionally wondered about that possibility—in idle moments, you understand.”

Morgan knew. Cold-hearted bastard! If only I had my pistol, I’d shoot him square between those mocking devil-black eyes, and consign him to hell before me!

But Lord James didn’t have his pistol. He was dying; defenseless in front of the man he had planned to bring low, now with more reason than simple hate to goad him. Was there no justice? No justice at all?

Lord James’s eyes slid away from his nephew’s face. He felt himself growing weaker by the moment, and still he had not begun to tell Morgan the reason he had summoned him. Instead, Morgan had taken center stage, had muddled the plot with a last-minute alteration to the script. Lord James had wondered why his contacts on the Continent had dried up three years ago—and with them nearly his sole source of income. Morgan had done it. His own nephew!

Yet why was he surprised? Shouldn’t he have known that Morgan was behind it—his maddeningly secretive nephew with the heart of stone and ice water in his veins?

Suddenly it became important to Lord James that his nephew understand the horrors he had been through, the very valid reasons for his treason. “This house took all my money, always has. Decrepit pile, the bane of every younger son! Why else do you think I agreed to work with Bonaparte? But my contact stopped asking for my help, stopped sending all that lovely money.” He tried to lift himself onto his elbows. “Because of you. All because of you!”

Morgan raised a perfectly manicured finger to stroke at one ebony eyebrow. “Ah, your contact, at the War Office. Thorndyke, wasn’t it? Yes, that was his name. George Thorndyke. He became very useful, once we were able to supply him with secrets we wished passed along—through other channels, of course. I could not have the family name involved. Having one’s own uncle hanging from a gibbet could be a tad embarrassing, you understand. I did tell you that poor Thorndyke is dead these past two months or more, didn’t I? I know you’ve been out of touch here in Sussex, dying and all.”

“Thorndyke’s dead?” Lord James narrowed his eyes as he glared at Morgan. “What did you do?”

“Uncle—how you wound me. You know I am not a man of violence. Thorndyke died suddenly. Hanged himself in his study only hours after I left him, as a matter of fact. And we’d had such a lovely visit, too. It was a most depressing funeral. You can count yourself lucky to have missed it.”

Lord James’s once large frame, now ravaged by illness, seemed to shrink even more under his nephew’s casually spoken words. It didn’t matter now. He couldn’t be hurt now, carted away for treason. Yet he had to know. “Who else? Who else knows?”

“Actually,” Morgan answered, “nobody.” He pulled over a chair and positioned it at his uncle’s bedside before sitting down. “I thought it prudent to keep your dirty linen in the cupboard.”

“Your father,” Lord James spat grudgingly, his ravaged face pinched into a condescending sneer. “Your endlessly ungrateful idiot of a father. You did it for him.”

“For my father, yes,” Morgan answered shortly. “I discovered that, at the time, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice his good name in order to exercise a paltry justice on you. But that is neither here nor there now, as your sadly wasted body has saved me from suffering through another interview such as the one I had with Thorndyke—just to tie up all the loose ends now that the war is over, you understand. Dearest Uncle James—and I trust I have deduced correctly: that is a death rattle I hear in your throat, isn’t it?”

Lord James looked at his nephew, seeing the dangerous facade the world saw, the darkly handsome, impeccably dressed gentleman of fashion whose sartorial splendor could never quite disguise the fact that Morgan Blakely could be a very, very dangerous man.

“I’ve always hated you, Morgan. If it weren’t for you, I would have inherited all my brother’s wealth. I had so counted on that. Instead, all my plans have come to naught. And now I am dying, while my holy brother still lives, mumbling his prayers on his makeshift altar while you live high on the Blakely money. There is no justice in this world.”

“I see no need to make my father any major part of this discussion.”