It wasn’t until we were inside that he asked, ‘How on earth were you together?’
‘Later, dear. Miss Lawrence and I are in no state for an analysis just now. Ah, Wilkins. Send Stratton to my dressing room and have tea brought up.’
Stratton proved to be a formidably elegant dresser who had us both out of our gowns and petticoats in no time and then checked us over minutely for fragments of glass. Nothing had stuck in anywhere, thank goodness, and the little cuts soon stopped bleeding.
Really, I felt quite well until I was laced into a borrowed gown, my shoes were returned to me and I sat down with a cup of tea in the little boudoir next to Lady Radcliffe’s bedchamber. Then the shakes hit.
‘I want Luc,’ I said. ‘And Garrick.’
‘My dear, I expect the men – ’
I stood up and put down my cup. ‘Where will they be?’
There was a scratch at the door and Luc came in. I didn’t expect anything from him – this was a time when ladies addressed their husbands by their surname or title, even in the bedchamber, and where for even a married couple to show any affection in public was considered hopelessly gauche. A smile could have done. Instead he took me by the shoulders, jerked me to him and kissed me – hard, fast, possessive. The look on his face when he released me stole my breath.
He kept hold of me as he looked across to his mother. ‘Mama? You really are both unhurt?’
‘When the shooting started your Miss Lawrence threw me to the floor and shielded me with her body,’ Lady Radcliffe said. ‘She then took a seat squab to barricade the window and was prepared to shoot the attackers with the carriage pistols. I was very well guarded.’
‘Yes,’ Luc said. His smile was just a bit lopsided. ‘My Miss Lawrence is both courageous and formidable. Do you feel well enough to go to the boys, Mama? We need a council of war and I do not want them suspecting anything is wrong.’
‘Of course, dear. I will go along to the nursery now. What on earth is that racket?’
The racket was James bursting through the front door, demanding to know what the devil was going on. Luc ran downstairs to shut him up before the boys heard him, leaving me to follow more slowly. My Miss Lawrence. It warmed the chilly emptiness inside that I suspected was fear. An attack in broad daylight in a crowded street meant whoever was behind this was either desperate or utterly ruthless. Possibly both.
James was explaining that he’d been in Boodles’, a club on St James’s Street just around the corner from the attack, when one of the members had come in and told him that his mother’s carriage had been shot at. We ca
lmed him down, stopped him dashing upstairs to check on his mother because of alarming the twins and sat down in a grim-faced circle in the drawing room.
Garrick was reporting on the coachman – flesh wound only, according to the doctor in attendance – before I realised that there were five of us. James, Luc, Garrick, me – and the Comte de Hautmont.
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ I said and realised that I no longer suspected him. He was against Elliott Reece, Lady Radcliffe vouched for him, he had come to help us just now… and I had not the slightest evidence against him.
‘Mademoiselle.’ He gave me a half-bow from his seat and I saw that the shoulder of his coat was ripped. The contrast to the rest of his immaculate elegance was shocking.
‘You’re wounded?’
‘A graze.’ He shrugged, as though to show it was trivial.
‘The Count ran to the carriage through the gunfire,’ Garrick said. ‘It would have been impossible to do what he did with the slightest certainty he wouldn’t be hit.’ In other words, it could not have been a put-up job.
He hadn’t bothered to try and make it tactful and the Count grimaced. ‘I am not your enemy, Lord Radcliffe. And I owe your mother a great deal – without her I would probably have starved when I came to this country. I saw her lozenge on the carriage door before a bullet splintered it and… Shall we say that I would like to be in line when you confront whoever did this?’
‘My mother vouches for you, Garrick vouches for you and my instincts tell me to trust you,’ Luc said, with a glance at me.
‘Aha. Mademoiselle Lawrence is still suspicious.’
‘When – er, where, I come from we call spies put in place years, even decades, before they are activated, sleepers. I wondered whether you were such a sleeper, Monsieur.’
The faintest flicker of an eyelash revealed that he had noticed that little slip and had stowed it away. ‘You think I am a spy? I am of course. I am an agent of intelligence, but for the British. But do you trust me?’
‘Now I think I trust you.’ I smiled and he smiled back, an intelligent, wary, dangerous man.
‘I believe we should take the Count into our confidence and share our investigations with him,’ Luc said. Garrick nodded and after a moment, so did I. James frowned, but got a reassuring nod from his brother. ‘Garrick has been and fetched the boards.’ He gestured to a corner where they were lined up on a sideboard, still draped in sheets.
I tried frantically to recall what there might be on them that could betray James’s sexuality, then relaxed as I realised we had been instinctively careful about that.
‘Are you skilled with codes?’ I asked the Count, suddenly hopeful we could deal with the Doctor’s ledgers in cypher.