Part 13 (1/2)

Justin was surprised. He'd been expecting one of the Inhaber's men. ”You're English? Oh, and as you didn't understand me, you will now greatly relieve my mind by dropping that evil-looking pistol. There's a good fellow. Now turn around so I can get a good look at you.”

The man did as he was told. Justin always appreciated cooperation, it made things so much easier.

The man's dark eyes widened with relief and no small shock. ”Lord Wilde? Is that you? Oh, thank G.o.d. I only saw you the once, on the dock at Portsmouth. But it is you, isn't it? Please, I can explain.”

Justin lightly turned the knife in his hand, so that they were both aware of its continued presence. ”Really?” he drawled. ”And I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to that explanation. But first, you seem to have the advantage of me. Who are you?”

”Your pardon, my lord. My name is Phineas Battle,” the man supplied helpfully, lowering his arms to his sides. ”Late of His Majesty's army and for the moment employed by a person or persons who wish to remain-”

”Don't bother to finish with that drivel,” Justin said, holding up his hand. ”I think I'd rather guess in any case. You're not really sure who hired you, but you do have a fairly good suspicion it was someone important.”

”I really couldn't say, sir. I have considered that possibility, but felt it prudent to keep my questions to myself. I was told that you are a very clever man. Yes, yes, exceedingly clever. And in disguise, no less. That was a man back there, wasn't it, all dressed up that way? I confess, I couldn't stop staring. But I am quite harmless, my lord, with orders to watch over the lady and yourself, without being detected, of course. You haven't made my mission at all easy for me. I'm not accustomed to such deviousness.”

”Clearly. A thousand pardons, I'm sure,” Justin said, still trying to sort things out in his head. Battle had to be the Prince Regent's man. ”You were sent to watch over us, you say? To what end?”

Battle, a man with the look of an underpaid clerk, frowned. ”I beg your pardon, my lord?”

”To what purpose, Phineas,” Justin repeated, as the question had seemed to take the man off guard, as might happen to someone forced to deviate from a prepared script. But that didn't make sense, not if the man was sent to observe without being detected. Did Justin have Wigglesworth's unusual attire to thank for discovering yet another twist in what was already a complicated plot? Or was he being led into some sort of trap?

”I was to report to...my employer. Your location and destination, my lord. That is all.”

That did smack of something the Prince Regent would have ordered. Would Justin really dare to defy him, not come to London as ordered? Yes, Justin could understand Prinny's desire to know that information.

Or had he been supposed to discover Battle, so that the man could feed him information, perhaps deliver a threat? Also possible.

But wait.

Why this man? Why this sad excuse, this little clerk who was so obviously incompetent in the role of spy? And why wasn't he sweating, swallowing over and over again to ease his dry mouth? Justin was holding a knife on the little clerk, and the little clerk wasn't sweating....

”Something niggles at the edges of my brain, Phineas. Why you? Why were you chosen for this mission? Exactly what did you do in His Majesty's army?”

”Do, sir?”

Justin maintained a casually interested expression. ”It isn't a difficult question. Unless, of course, the answer proves troublesome.”

”Not troublesome at all, my lord. I was merely a soldier. And perhaps not a very good one.” Battle raised his arms slightly, and shrugged.

Justin cursed himself for a gullible idiot even as he dropped to the ground, rolling to his left and coming up with both Battle's pistol and the Spanish knife. He didn't bother aiming the pistol, as he was fairly certain it wasn't loaded, or else Battle would never have been so eager to put it in Justin's possession. Still, just to be safe, he flung the pistol into the trees.

His movements had been swift, fluid and took only two heartbeats before he was on his feet once more, but already Phineas Battle held a short, wicked-looking two-sided knife in each palm, probably lowered by some mechanism beneath the ill-fitting frock coat, activated when he shrugged his shoulders.

Battle was also in a crouch, moving his arms side to side, the blades gleaming. ”What was it, my lord, if I may ask? I was being so very helpful, letting you discover me, telling you just what you wanted to hear. What do I do wrong?”

As they began to circle each other, Justin kept his eyes on Battle's waist, the center of the man's body. No matter which way a man moved, the first indication was always at the waist; n.o.body moves feet or arms first, nothing is done without that telltale giveaway.

”You were too meek, Phineas, too eager to give up, give everything away. You volunteered too much, and overplayed your hand. It's always the little things. Now, as you're about to kill me anyway, don't you first want to regale me with how clever you really are?”

”Not particularly, no, as I've already ordered my dinner at the inn for seven o'clock, and I wouldn't wish to be late. My instructions were to follow you until you'd exterminated a certain foreign minister by the name of Novak.”

”One wonders why you simply weren't hired for the job.”

Battle smiled, even as the two men continued to circle each other, feel each other out. Neither had yet to attempt a single move with the knives, a mutual show of respect for the other's abilities. ”I don't think the lady would have fancied me as her affianced husband, do you?”

”You know more than I would have suspected. How?”

”My employer's minion likes his gin and his ladies. Provide both, and a determined man can learn much that is necessary to keep himself alive. But we digress and, as you told me, I've already talked too much. Still, as you are a fellow a.s.sa.s.sin, I will make allowances. Indeed, I've often wished we could have met during the war, broken open a few bottles and talked. I thought there were perhaps some things I could learn from you, as I was told you were the master of our craft.”

”You're about to learn if you were told correctly,” Justin pointed out to him, adjusting his stance slightly, as Battle was a good five inches shorter than he. Whether his own height would prove an advantage or a disadvantage, he had still to find out.

”Ah, very droll, sir,” Phineas said as Justin feinted with the knife and then quickly drew back once more. ”In honor of your reputation, I will tell you this, because I know you want to hear it. I was here today only to keep you on point, as it were, remind you that you have a job of work still to do. My real a.s.signment is, of course, to silence you after you'd dispatched your man to his greater reward.”

”Of course. I should have seen that for myself.” Justin began altering the configuration of their invisible circle, counting his sideways steps and his distance from a network of large, barely concealed tree roots hiding amid the long gra.s.s and fallen leaves. Carefully, he moved back a few inches after every dozen steps, so that Battle stepped slightly forward to keep their distance unchanged; each new maneuver bringing the track of the circle into closer proximity with the tree roots.

”Yes, yes, so now you understand. But we've finished talking, my lord. I thought you could teach me, but it seems that your skills have suffered since the war. Still, as we appear to be at an impa.s.se and it is getting on toward dinnertime, and much as it will undoubtedly pain my employer, you really do have to die now.”

”It would appear that one of us does,” Justin said, having decided that although Battle had been carrying the pistol in his right hand, he was in reality, left-handed. Clever, clever boy, although if he routinely employed those little toys he was brandis.h.i.+ng now, he was probably proficient with both hands. A fair fight could prove injurious, if not deadly. With Alina to protect, much as he no longer valued his own life, he could not die now.

Careful to only keep up the count in his head, and not betray himself by looking at the ground, Justin suddenly lunged forward clumsily with the knife, demonstrating a sad lack of expertise. The now overconfident Battle's instinctive reaction was to laugh and dance backward. His left foot landed awkwardly amid the web of tree roots. He lost his balance, and fell.

He looked up at Justin in real surprise, and perhaps even a little professional admiration, and then down at his chest, and the hilt of Justin's blade that protruded from it. And then he died.

Phineas Battle was laid to rest deep in the trees once it was fully dark, rolled into the grave dug by Brutus and then covered with dirt and leaves, until there was no indication that the ground had been disturbed.

”Poor Phineas,” Justin told Brutus. ”Some lessons can only be learned once, but by then it's too late.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

ALINA REMAINED WITH THE children and the women until the townspeople had drifted back to Farnham and the last cooking pot washed, the last Romany child tucked up in bed.

She had looked in on Luka earlier, but he was still asleep after his visit to the surgeon, and Wigglesworth was tending to him in any case. She'd asked where Justin could be, as she hadn't seen him in several hours. She'd been told that he and Brutus had taken the job of guarding the camp while the men played the instruments as their women danced for the townspeople, who expected this sort of entertainment.

She'd enjoyed her day, most especially her time spent with the children, and then the mothers. All of the Romany were by legend at least loosely related by blood, the sister of one of those Alina spoke to was married to the brother of her sister's husband, and three generations of this particular family traveled together in England as they did each year, before retiring to Wales for the winter. They had none of them been to the Continent in more than a generation, but they each held dear their memories of summers wandering France, winters camping on land surprisingly no more than twenty miles from Alina's childhood home.

Some of these exotic nomadic people had seen Rome, others had walked the streets of Toulouse...and many of their family had died in the wars against Bonaparte.

”Brutus, there you are,” she called to the man as she took one last circuit around the camp on what was proving a fruitless search. ”Have you perhaps seen my sketchbook? I thought I left it on one of the tables, but now I- Oh, no!”

She hiked up her skirts and took off in a panicked run as she saw Justin carrying her sketchbook toward her caravan, idly leafing through the pages as he walked along. She'd told herself she wouldn't speak to him until he came to her, but now she had no choice.

”Justin, wait! Stop! That's mine, don't look at it.”

He turned to her, smiling, and held up the page he'd been looking at. ”A fish, Alina? You shoved a fish in my mouth? Ah, and it's dated, as well, how wonderful. The day we met, isn't it? Clearly your first impression of me wasn't overwhelming positive.”

”What a dreadful, wretched man you are!” She reached for the sketchbook but he held it up over his head, and she wasn't about to be so undignified as to jump up and attempt to snag it from his fingers. Besides, it was far easier to ball up her fingers into a fist, and punch him in the stomach.

Laughing, pretending to be mortally wounded, he handed over her property. All except for one page, she noticed, one he had previously ripped from the sketchbook.