My Own True Love (10 page)

Then a loose flagstone to the right of the bottom step flipped over as she ran her hands along the ground.

"Got it," she said as the moonlight glinted off a shiny metal object. She fished the key out of its hiding place and smiled triumphantly at the watching Toma.

"Well?" he asked. "What are you waiting for?"

His impatience spurred her back up the stairs. He was right; they had to get this over with and get out of here. The key fit smoothly into the lock. It turned without any trouble. Sara let out a tensely held breath as she heard the lock click open. The door opened without a squeak or rattle.

She hurried inside, Toma a few steps behind her, and quickly closed the door. She didn't know what room they were in, but at least they were inside.

"Servants' hall, I think," Toma said before she could ask. It was light enough in the room to show the outline of a door on the opposite wall. "Kitchen through there, maybe?"

"Sounds good to me." She touched his sleeve. "If you were a collection of gold scarabs, where would you hang out? Wait, maybe the ring would know."

"What?"

Well?
she asked the ring.
Give me some help here.

"Try the library," came the bored voice in her head. "Egyptian jewelry is
so
serious."

"Library." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Has to be in the front of the house where there are windows, plenty of light." She tried to imagine the probable layout of the house's interior. Using her imagination she led the way from the servants' hall through the large kitchen and into a dark hallway.

Without moonlight coming in through windows to see by she was instantly disoriented.

"How do we find the library?" she asked while waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

She soon made out a few dark shapes of furniture lining the walls. There was a thick strip of carpet beneath her feet. She waited for Toma's answer, but none came. She couldn't feel the warmth of his presence, either. Nor the soft sounds of his breathing and almost inaudible sound of his clothes as he moved. A stab of fear shot through her. He. wasn't there, was he?

"Toma?"

She turned slowly, not in any hurry to find out she was alone. Putting it off didn't change the fact that he wasn't there. "Toma?" she repeated, voice a husky whisper. A chill of dread settled over her despite the warmth of the night. She took a step back toward the kitchen. All her confidence disappeared in a nauseating rush. Where was he?

She heard a footstep just as her hand touched the kitchen door. "Thank God!" She whirled around, almost ready to collapse with relief. "Don't do that—"

At first she thought the big man looming out of the darkness was Cummings; then another man appeared from down the hall carrying a candle and she saw that the men were strangers. They were dressed identically in gray coats and white knee breeches, and they were both far larger than she was.

She lunged for the door handle. It was locked.

She was grabbed from behind before she could run, and spun around and marched ahead of her captors down the hall with her arms held behind her back. No one said a word. She longed to scream out to Toma for help, but she didn't want to risk his being captured as well.

The house was no longer completely dark. The men took her to a room she decided must be a sitting room. They made her sit in a brocade chair while they took up posts on either side of the room's only door. Then they waited. Waiting for what, Sara didn't know and couldn't find voice to ask. The cops, she supposed. She'd been caught, and there was no way out. She was going to prison. Worse still, Beth was going to suffer for her failure. She could only pray that Toma got away, that he could do something for the child.

The waiting seemed to go on forever. Sara found herself watching a candle flame slowly burning its way through about an inch of wax. The men didn't move, nor would they answer her questions. The air in the room was stuffy and still. A clock ticked on the mantel; the sound was almost on the edge of hearing, but loud enough to eat at her nerves. She wouldn't look at the clock. She was afraid she'd discover the ring had transported her into some sort of limbo where time didn't pass at all.

By the time the door opened and two men stepped inside she almost welcomed their arrival. It meant she was about to be dragged off to jail but at least the wait was over. She stood as they entered and forced herself to confront them. One was tall and graying; the other was young, slim, with long black hair tied at the nape of his neck.

The younger one approached her. She hoped she'd be given a chance to explain about Beth; maybe the police would do something to help the girl. She looked him in the eye as she tried to think of a lucid explanation. His eyes were bright blue. His face was a handsome, sharp triangle above an elaborate starched collar. He tilted his head slightly, a faint flicker of amusement quirking up his lips for just a moment. Lips she'd kissed not that long ago.

"Toma?"

"Hello, Sara," he answered. "You're under arrest."

"What?"

"Arrest," he repeated. "You are my prisoner."

He'd taken his time changing, luxuriating in the feel of a hot bath and being dressed in the clothes that were the first stare of fashion. He had also taken his time so the girl would have a chance to contemplate the horrors awaiting her. Imagination was a powerful weapon, and the gypsies were an imaginative, superstitious lot. And, in truth, he hadn't relished the coming confrontation any.

He'd expected the girl to be huddled on a chair in hysterical tears when he entered. Her reaction upon recognizing him was far from satisfactory.

"You could scream and faint," he suggested with a wry smile. "I promise to catch you."

Instead of fainting, Sara dropped back into the chair as if she'd been struck, raised her right hand in front of her face, and said angrily, "My own true love is an undercover cop? What is going on here?"

"Cool little mort, isn't she?" his companion said.

He found the mixture of contempt and amusement in the man's voice irritating but he ignored him. He kept his attention on Sara. He thought he'd come to know the girl in the time he'd been cultivating her and her tribe, but now he wasn't so sure his assumptions about her were correct. The shy, docile, clever-fingered child he'd first met had been acting very peculiar in the last couple of days. He'd been equally intrigued, amused, and worried at her sudden assertive behavior. Perhaps she was mad, but it was too late to abandon the plan now.

"I don't know what 'cop' means," he said to her. "But you are correct about 'undercover.'" He gave her a condescending smile. "Just where did you learn the language of espionage, my lovely?"

She looked up at him, dark eyes snapping with anger. "I watch a lot of television. Who are you really?

Where's Beth?"

Her concern for the mud lark was touching. Of course, it was also her downfall. "Safely asleep at your aunt's, I should imagine. I gave her a whole pound to make herself absent for a while."

Sara surged angrily to her feet. "You bastard! I was scared to death for her. You knew it was a trap, didn't you? What's this about, anyway?"

He had the oddest notion that she wasn't addressing him. Not for the first time. "What it's about," he answered, "is that I need a cat's paw, and you're it." He made a short bow. "You have the honor of addressing Lieutenant Lewis Morgan, Royal Navy."

"Lewis Morgan?" She stared at him, her anger tempered by incredulity.
"The
Lewis Morgan? The Hero of the Revolution?"

Before he could ask what she meant his companion spoke. "The girl's beetle-headed, my boy. She obviously won't do. Send for the constables."

"She'll do," Lewis answered. "By the way," he went on to Sara, "meet Lord Philipston. My father."

"The situation hardly requires formal introductions." His father glared down his long nose at Sara with disdain. "I shall have to have the chair burned, I suppose."

He watched Sara's hands ball into fists, but she didn't say anything to Lord Philipston. She kept her attention on him. Anger burned in her, and a growing contempt that made it hard for him to continue to look her in the eye. She was supposed to be frightened, confused, begging. He'd been prepared to deal with tears and entreaties.

Sara bit her tongue rather than answer the older man's rude comment. However, she did spread her skirts and sit with deliberate slowness on the fine brocade upholstery of the chair. "Is there a scarab collection?" she asked. She felt an odd sense of victory in managing to keep her voice quite calm. She wasn't calm; she was about a nanosecond away from total panic. She was tempted to take Toma—Lewis Morgan—up on his screaming and fainting offer. Only the thought of being wrapped in the false safety of his arms kept her fromgiving in. The ring felt like a lead weight on her finger. It knew what was going on—she could feel it—but it wasn't talking.

Lewis Morgan stood over her. She hoped she didn't look as intimidated by him as she felt. He looked so ... aristocratic. Not a good sign, she was sure.

"You're not Rom, are you? Not even half?"

His smile was slow, and somehow menacing. "I knew a gypsy girl once, from the Calderash tribe," he said. "She taught me a lot, before her own family denounced her as a whore."

The way they'll denounce you if you aren't careful. He didn't say it, but Sara heard the implication in his tone. She wondered why she'd thought of Toma as a sweet young man. "Everything you've done and said has been a lie." He nodded. "Why?"

"I need you," he said. "I need to control you."

She had the feeling his reasons were going to be treacherous and convoluted. She looked at the intricate knotwork pattern of the ring. She was beginning to realize that the ring liked things convoluted.

"You're a spy, aren't you?" she asked Lewis. None of her father's historical bedtime stories had mentioned anything about Lewis Morgan being a British spy. She did her best to remember everything she knew about him. Anything she could remember would come in handy right now. She hoped. Maybe a knowledge of history didn't help when the history hadn't happened yet.

"I am an officer in His Majesty's Navy," he answered. "And, yes, I am a spy."

The bitterness in his voice did nothing to mollify her newborn hatred for him. "Why did you set me up?

What do you want me for?" Lord Philipston snickered lewdly, but she didn't pay him any attention.

Lewis gave his father an annoyed look. He was obviously finding the girl's humiliation amusing. He owed the man a debt of gratitude for allowing him to use Philipston House for this operation. He hadn't minded agreeing to his father's request to "be in at the kill," but now that the vixen was cornered his presence was proving obstructive. "Could you leave us alone, please?" he requested. "State Secrets," he explained as his father turned a dark frown on him. "My apologies, sir."

His father hesitated for a moment, then gave an annoyed nod. "You're cheating me of my fun, lad." He left the room, signaling the footmen to go with him.

Once away from his father's stern scrutiny, Lewis pulled up a chair and sat down facing the girl.

"Now, love, let's have a little talk."

"I'm not your love." She twisted the fingers of her left hand around the ring finger of her right hand.

She'd been making the nervous gesture quite a bit lately.

He sat back and tried to act relaxed. "Let's just pretend you are."

"Let's not. What's going on here, Morgan?" Her voice was as cold as iron, her expression about as hard.

He'd definitely been mistaken about the girl. He'd approached her thinking his job would be easy. He didn't know when it had gotten complicated, when she had gotten complicated. "You have a choice," he told her. "Cooperate with everything I want of you, or accept the just punishment for your crimes."

"Crimes?" she looked around her. "Breaking in here?" He nodded. She shook her head. "I don't think so. Where I come from this is called entrapment. You can't do this."

"You're a long way from Bororavia, Sara."

"I'm not from Bororavia, I'm from Minnesota." She ran her hands through her hair in sudden agitation.

"Oh, God, this is 1811, isn't it?"

"By the English calendar, it is." He supposed gypsies reckoned the time differently, if the wanderers reckoned it at all. Since he'd started studying them he'd been slowly discovering that they did everything differently.

She knew he wouldn't believe her if she told him she was from 1994. She needed the ring's help, but the ring felt like a dead weight on her finger. Find out what the man wants, she told herself. Work from there.

"You didn't con me into this mess just to send me to Botany Bay."

"Correct," he acknowledged. "But Botany Bay will be your destination if you don't fully cooperate."

"Cooperate with what?"

"My plans."

She got the impression he was embarrassed. Or that the plan was so secret even he didn't know what it was. She started in surprise when he said, "Marry me, Sara."

She stared at him in utter confusion. He was obviously out of his mind. Finally, all she could manage to say was, "In your dreams."

"It wasn't a request."

"But... why do you want to marry me?"

"I don't. It's necessary for my mission."

"And your mission is?"

"None of your concern."

She was so frustrated she wanted to hit him. She had never wanted to hit anyone in her life before, but the man had the ability to stir violent emotion in her. "An hour ago I loved you," she said. "I wouldn't marry you now if my life depended on it."

"It does."

The cold finality of his voice chilled her to the bone. She didn't have any choice. She hated not having any choice. It almost choked her to get the words out. It was him or the prison hulks. "I'll marry you."

The look of hatred on Sara's face warned Lewis that he wasn't going to have an easy time of it. "It's late," he said. "We should get some rest." In truth, he wanted the chance to spend the night in a decent bed between clean linen sheets before he had to resume his disguise. "Come along."