Seductive

Page

Prologue

London, England

Winter 1896

He sat hunched in a corner out of the rain, picking at a loaf of moldy bread, a ragged peasant with no home, no life, nowhere to go—the consummate actor so in tune with his character that not a single passerby, on that rain-fogged night, gave him a second glance.

The moment was at hand. Everything ended here. It had been a long road, but he was finally ready to give it all up, ready to walk into the light after having spent most of his life in the dark, edging into the unknown.

He waited, his patience deep as a well. He’d learned the hard way: he never took chances and he always plotted everything out so that he had some control. As recklessly as he had lived, he still was ruled by that caution. He always had been.

Tonight was the culmination of a career lived in secret, in the shadows, and on the run. A few more moments—he merely awaited the sign, the signal, already prearranged—and it would be over.

Over ... A chilling thought. An idea to embrace. No, no—this is just the beginning, his mother had whispered on her deathbed. Claim your inheritance. Don’t deny that which is rightfully yours.

But nothing was his. He’d lived a life devoid of anything that could have a claim on him. He’d needed freedom, detachment, ease of movement, and those things he had claimed, at the ongoing risk of his life.

And so he waited, wallowing in a muddy corner just out of the rain, waiting, waiting, waiting, with the seemingly infinite patience of the bone-weary derelict who knows life will never be fair.

He lifted his head every five minutes or so, as if he were praying for the rain to stop, seeking through the sheets of pouring water, the one inimitable sign that his contact was near.

Shadows, as eerie as ghosts, moved through the downpour, bent double by the rain, darting in and out of doorways seeking shelter. Light punctuated the dark as a door opened or a lantern flashed on a carriage pushing through the muck and mayhem of the storm.

Soon, soon . . . nothing to fear—all under control. Mere moments until . . . until—

Now ... ?

He breathed deep, inhaling the scent of rain, mud, dirt, horse ... there—that . . . He waited that additional moment longer, always cautious . . .

And then he moved into a crouch—scent of unwashed man, rotting bread, faintest whiff of incense perfuming the air—

—he peered around the corner—long shadow coming closer, closer, swinging the thurible, the scent stronger and stronger—

... the sign, the signal—

Now—

He levered himself upward to a howl of pure terror ...

NOOOOO ... !

An ominous thud. Footsteps running, receding ...

Body in the street, drowning in blood, the embers from the thurible spread all over the road hissing wildly, rain drowning the scent of incense . . .

—no time no time to stop, to make sure—

—bloody damn hell . . . a knife . . . grab it—shit—drop it . . . get out!

Pounding footsteps—voices: There—the vagrant—after him...

Bloody, bloody hell . . . the Yard—

There— A whistle blew; more men, streaming out from corners, from houses, from who knew where. Pounding feet, bodies angling off in four directions to corner him . . .

Shouts in the night—"Stop ... ! You—halt!"

Shots in the night, cracking one two three . . . swallowed by the fog and the rain as two dozen constables converged under the street lamp where he was last seen, and where he watched triumphantly from afar.

As if mere mortals could stop him.

Nothing had ever stopped him.

He was the man they called Vapor, because he was known for disappearing into thin air.

And this time, he was taking thousands of pounds’ worth of Russian imperial jewels with him.

Chapter 1

Shenstone House

Exbury, England

One week later

Never come at night.

That was the first thing. She was to be utterly circumspect—and she must come by day, because no one ever knew who might be prowling around at night.

And second, food was not that important. Security was.

And—she would have to take everything on faith.

She balked at that, but she had no choice. Nor did she question; there was no point.

She felt like the most Gothic of heroines as she crept down the steps to the secret underground room every afternoon with a sack of food in hand.

Are you there? she whispered, groping for the door to what had been the wood trough years ago.

And as it had for the past four days, a shadow emerged from one of the dark corners. "Shhh ... not a whisper, dear girl."

The sack was taken from her outstretched hands.

A small candle—today surely it’s safe . . . she ventured.

No, no. This will do for now. Another day or two, I think, and then I’ll be able to leave, and everything will be as it was before.

Will it? she murmured.

My dear Elizabeth—

The chiding tone set her back for a moment. Things would be the same. Things would be better, even, now that her husband was dead, because the waiting was over.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment.

This changes nothing. No one knows I’m here. Everything will be the same as before.

I believe you, she whispered. She did. This was the one person she could believe, the one person she trusted.

And that was the first time this promise had been spoken. And that meant something too.

A little more time, Elizabeth, and all will be well.

But she was the one who must still wait, she thought mordantly. She was so very good at waiting—and always for everyone else’s plans and schemes to come to fruition.

But she had made her own bed, she would never deny it. At seventeen, she had purposefully become the bride of the widowed William Massey, Earl of Shenstone, solely to gain entrée into those rarefied circles in which royalty moved.

She had walked into that marriage with her eyes wide open, knowing that William Massey wanted a son, and that she was exactly what an aging bull needed for that purpose: a beautiful, young, untried, uncritical virgin.

She had thought William would pass away sooner than later, but it was seven long unendurable years until he finally died of a heart attack during yet another futile attempt to get her with child.

And still she was waiting.

I’m so tired of waiting, she murmured.

It won’t be long. This was just a slight detour ...

Among so many other detours, she thought stringently, but why go over things that were past? There was no going back. She, of anyone, knew that. And besides, the promise had been made.

She changed the subject. And I’m to just leave you again?

You are. The tone was implacable now, just as it had been for the last four days, warning her that questions and sympathy were not welcome, and that answers might never be forthcoming.

Women must wait ...

So you’re set for tonight then.

Perfectly. But I’ll be with you soon.

Another promise?

Very well. She kept her tone cool. The answers would come eventually. She paused at the door for a moment, but she could see nothing in the dark.

Elizabeth—?

It was like talking to a ghost. Yes?

There’s been nothing from the solicitors?

Nothing, she whispered.

Good . . .

Did she hear that, or did she imagine it? The darkness was impenetrable behind her.

Everything was impenetrable at the moment; nothing in her life had made sense since her capricious royal lover abandoned her that unspeakable last time because he would not, could not, marry a commoner.

Ah, so be it, she thought grimly, as she picked her way through the long black tunnel and out of the cellar. No use repining about that. And certainly not about her marriage to William.

She pushed against the metal doors at the cellar entrance that gave into the gardens. No one knew of this secret entry, except she; the doors were flush to the ground, and she always covered them over with vines and branches, so no one could ever tell anything was there.

Mum—

The rusty voice of the elderly gardener caught her by surprise, and she whirled on him. Watton! You scared me half to death.

Didn’t mean nothing, mum. He ducked his grizzled head, as if he couldn’t—or shouldn’t—look at her directly. Just saw you walking and thought you might need something.

Nothing. I need nothing, Watton. I was just out for a walk. Why was she explaining to him? Stop it now. Thank you.

He nodded his head, an odd bent-up old man her husband had taken on some five or six years ago, who knew how to grow things and spent hours on his knees digging in the soil. And that made him invaluable despite his infirmities and quirks.

Unless, this afternoon, he had been skulking around. And that made him a nuisance. But surely not a threat.

He hadn’t been prowling: she was just overwrought and not thinking clearly. All those promises ...

She waited impatiently, mistress of the manor now. Is there anything else, Watton?

No, mum. He ducked his head again and shuffled off in the opposite direction, as slow moving as an elephant.

It meant nothing. No one could tell there was anything beneath that pile of vines and branches. She would leave it at that. He had just unfortunately come upon her at the wrong place and time. There was nothing more to it.

And besides, soon everything would be as it had been, and none of this ridiculous secrecy would matter.

It had been promised. And she was counting on it.

Know your enemy. It was the first lesson Nicholas had ever learned and he lived by it.

You never know who your enemy might be.

It might even be his own father, whose death became a betrayal when his mother revealed on her deathbed that his father had been the younger brother of an earl, had had an affair with the Earl’s wife, and thus had been banished to the far reaches of Russia.

It turned everything upside down for Nicholas: his sense of himself and his family; the idea that things could have been so different, and that he could have been raised in another place and lived an entirely different life, if his father had not succumbed to temptation. And worst of all, it made his father too human, and too fallible, when before Nicholas had idolized him.

And all the titles in the world could never make up for it.

That was the hardest lesson, and it had taken root like a weed, growing, gnawing at the bedrock of his being, tangling him up for years so that all he could do was run from it.

But a man never escaped his past.

It haunted him like a spectre, it pursued him with promises, and branded him with a birthright he never wanted.

A man like him only inherited trouble anyway.

There was always an enemy, known or unknown.

This was the second hard lesson that ruled his life.

Even now, he felt that sense of foreboding hovering like sin, defining a world where he had taken too many risks, seen too much danger, caused too many deaths—a half dozen this last mission alone, with him the sole survivor.

But he wasn’t even sure of that.

Yet walking that edge, in and of itself, had been the lure of the cat-and-mouse life he’d led all these years. He’d loved manipulating the chess game; being three jumps ahead, slipping two behind; confounding the enemy, and making him sweat.

He missed it. He loathed it.

He wanted to be back in control. A man in hiding, a man chasing shadows, a man wanted for murder, was not in control.

If only he could be sure about the one he called the Unseen Hand.

But even that could be his mind playing tricks on him.

Perhaps it would never be over, he thought warily, and he would die alone, and at the mercy of the shadows.

The choices a man made . . . the things a man did . . .

And someone knew. Knew everything.

And someone had killed.

And that someone was still out there, waiting to steal a fortune in royal jewels; waiting for him to make the next move.

There had been four murders in as many months, in towns from Exbury to London, and there was no doubt in the savage editorials in the London tabloids that there was a maniac on the loose.

Her friends were troubled that Elizabeth lived so far in the country and so all alone, and they were all grateful she was in London this week on the news of the fourth body having been found.

Oh, nonsense. She brushed away their concern. Her stay in London had been part of the plan, a plan that had backfired, but her guests didn’t have to know that. I have the servants, and the groom and stable boys. And if worse comes to worse, Watton can defend me.

Everyone laughed. Everyone knew that Watton couldn’t defend a dandelion let alone a damsel in distress.

Her father protested. Truly, Elizabeth, until this thing is over, one or the other of us ought to come stay with you.

Or I can stay on at the townhouse, she offered, more to make peace with him than from any desire to stay in London. And besides, this talk of the murders was putting a damper on her father’s dinner party, and she wanted to remedy that as quickly as possible and get everyone focused on the purpose of the gathering: business.

And how safe is London? What about that child thrown over the cliffs at Tyne? her father murmured. And the body they found in the churchyard at St. Clare.

And then the one out at Montmorency, Elizabeth put in. So there’s hardly a way to predict where this lunatic might next strike. Surely I’m safer at Shenstone than anywhere else.

Well, here’s what we’ll do, her father decreed. We all like a weekend in the country. We’ll just all come out and stay with you. Remain in London till Friday and then we’ll all go to Exbury—if you must.

Elizabeth closed her eyes in resignation. There was no must about anything. She could stay in London for months, or immure herself at Shenstone forever. There was no difference in that respect. Her friends would come to either place and remain so long as they continued to be amused, and when they got bored, off they went to the next house party, the next hostess, the next round of fun and games.

But something was different now—something not even her father knew yet: Nicholas Massey, the long-lost, presumed-dead son of her husband’s only brother was, in fact, alive.

Alive, and on his way to claim everything she had thought was hers.

How could this have happened? It still wasn’t real to her.

She opened her eyes and smiled at them all down the long glittering damask-covered table. Her father. His three business associates and their wives. Yolanda, the actress, mistress of kings. Grigori Krasnov and his wife Marie. Victor Illyev, ever rebellious, even as he scraped his plate down to the bone china pattern. The Grand Duchess Mena, daintily dipping her fingers in the plate-side cut glass bowl. And Giles, her butler, standing impassively to one side.

She couldn’t tell them yet, not yet, not until she had come to terms with the news herself. Dear God. How? ... How, when agents on two continents had not been able to track him down?

Never ...

There’s an open invitation even if my father issued it, she murmured. Please, all of you, come for the weekend as well, lest Father bore me to tears. And lest that man show up and try to remove her from her house.

My dear, her father said reproachfully. You’re feeling constrained again. But take heart, your time of mourning will be soon up, and you can begin to go out and about even more. But not—please, humor me—while there’s a murderer prowling around.

We will come, Victor said.

And why not? Elizabeth thought trenchantly. Victor lived to sample the luxuries of English country life, while being alternately contemptuous and covetous of them. He was the revolutionary of the moment, handsome, tortured, soulful, spouting rhetoric which never made sense when probed deeper.

But he was amusing, and he was so magnetic that people followed his lead, hoping they would be the first to be counted the friend of a man who might topple an empire. And he was a resource for her father, who was navigating the treacherous waters of financial speculation in Russia.

But more so was Grigori Krasnov, who was so loyal to the new Tsar, and a repository of the underutilized resources ripe for investment by foreign banks in his vast homeland.

A weekend with them would involve business talk unending, but it was better than being alone. And there was always that odd nugget of information that might prove useful later.

But that was something else her father didn’t need to know, how she mined every dinner, every contact, every conversation for possibilities, even as she burnished her reputation as the perfect hostess: elegant, beautiful, tragic, discreet.

And destitute. No. She just wouldn’t think about that.

She stood, signaling that the gentlemen were free to retire. It’s settled then. And anyway, she didn’t know what else to do. We’ll stay in town till Friday, and then you’ll all come back to Shenstone with me.

Nicholas didn’t know when it occurred to him that there was a pattern to the killings, because at first glance, they seemed so random, and because no one had linked the death of the priest at Bengate to what came after.

But the priest was the first, and five more had followed: the woman in the churchyard; the child dashed on the rocks at Tyne; the elderly woman strangled at Montmorency; and the attack on a young mother and her child in Lytton Wood that took both lives.

Brutal murders, all of them, and different enough to send the Yard scrambling after four different killers.

But the killer was one and the same: the one he called the Unseen Hand, taunting him, knowing he would deduce who it was from the clues, and daring him to put a name to the evil, and stop the murders.

So simple, my worthy opponent—I want YOU.

It was that simple. He had merely to show his face publicly and the killings would stop.

And meanwhile, he must live with the possibility of another death.

Ingenious. The cat toying with the mouse, presenting the one thing that would draw it out of hiding.

Goading him with the one thing for which he would willingly become the pawn: to save the families of the men in his charge who had been murdered.

All those so-called unrelated killings, all members of his hired mercenaries’ families. A sister. A child. A mother. A wife.

Blood on his hands . . . not the Unseen Hand.

The killer didn’t care.

Come to me. We have much to discuss, much to decide.

The message was as clear as if it were written in stone.

The Unseen Hand was waiting.

And just as he always had thought, there was always an enemy, and he had never been alone.

Shenstone House—One Week Later

Victor . . . you drink too much. Deftly, Elizabeth lifted his glass and held it away from his grasping hand.

I drink not enough. He reached up to grab it, and she caught a whiff of ripe male scent and a blast of vodka fumes. Besides, we have come to play. And how can one play without liquid sustenance.

Oh, please— She backed away determinedly. She could have written the script for this scene: it was the same every time, and she should have considered that before issuing her open-ended invitation to Shenstone. Perhaps the last invitation to Shenstone.

She shuddered at the thought. Enough of this. She threw the glass against the wall; the shattering sound halted conversation, and then: Oh, it’s just Victor, someone murmured, and the voices rose again.

It’s just Victor, Victor mimicked. "That is what I do. I drink. I give a voice to the part of the English soul that lives so comfortably and feels so guilty. There is a purpose here, Elizabeth, deeper, higher, and more moral than even you can know. I need to drink because, with alcohol, there comes clarity and direction and . . . and the words to encompass the work that still must be done . . ."

Elizabeth clapped. "Oh, bravo, Victor. You’ve never been so eloquent . . . it’s a shame you play to an audience of one . . ."

He made a sound. You have no idea what you mock. Change is coming, Elizabeth. They all are blind. They go their heedless way down the long corridor toward death . . . He wobbled toward her, and then collapsed at her feet.

Oh, put him away, Elizabeth begged, as her father wandered into the foyer. He’s babbling again.

My dear, he’s serious as aces.

I should know better than to invite him anyway, Elizabeth muttered. Take him up to one of the guest bedrooms, Father, do. And perhaps get him a bath. There’s a revolutionary idea.

Don’t be snobbish, my dear. He’s a great help to all of us.

When he’s quiet, he is, Elizabeth retorted. Ah, here comes Giles. Take him away, will you?

As you wish, my lady.

Two footmen magically appeared and immediately and efficiently lifted Victor and carried him up the steps.

"There now, Father. Now he is most useful—not disrupting the house party."

You’re too cruel, Elizabeth. You know what that man has suffered.

"Yes, and despite all his protestations, his pamphlets, his lectures, and his philosophy, here he is, coddled by you—us—and selling himself for a morsel of caviar. Really."

He, at least, is honest, her father said pointedly.

Elizabeth stiffened. This on top of everything else, and she hadn’t yet said one word about the other. God. We weren’t to talk about Peter ever again. That episode is over.

Nonsense. You’d take him back quicker than I could snap my fingers.

He made his choice. He went back to Moscow seven years ago to give his allegiance to his family. There is truly nothing more to be said.

Only there were volumes to be said, and no one to confide in, so she had submerged it all for these seven years And she thought she had held together so well after all this time. One mention of his name and—what? Her knees went weak? Her resolve buckled?

It was too unkind of her father to flick the whip now. He had been the only one to talk to during those heady months when it seemed that Peter would come to the point and ask her to marry him.

Until that painful letter had come, handwritten by Nicholas Romanov, Emperor-to-be and Peter’s nephew, laying out for Peter exactly what marriage to her would mean and precisely what he would give up and what he would lose.

She could not compete with that. Back Peter went to Russia and that had been been the end. Except for her broken heart. And her ill-considered marriage, which threw her, as she had hoped, into the elevated social circles in which Peter traveled because she had thought, if she could just see him once in a while—

But no. Even seeing him . . . no—she heaved a deep breath. That had been futile too.

Her father looked at her oddly. He never married, of course.

No.

And now that another of Nicholas’s uncles has paved the way...

The grand love affair of Peter’s brother that produced a child? No. How could any woman settle for that? Her freedom for an illegitimate child and the bottomless monetary gain? Never. Never?

Even if he walked in the front door right now ... ?

So happy to hear that— her father began approvingly, only to be interrupted.

My lady? Giles, silent as smoke. Another guest, my lady.

I’m expecting no one else, she murmured, frowning. Who would be so rude, so late? Who is it, Giles?

My lady. He handed her a card; she scanned it and her breath caught.

Her father read it over her shoulder. Oh, dear God—Peter . . . And Elizabeth glanced up at her father.

... Everything will be as it was ...

The promise and prophecy—surely the complications didn’t matter—and all her good intentions evaporated.

And then Peter was there, tall, incredibly handsome, perfectly dressed, reaching out to take her hands, and seven years’ separation vanished on a sigh, and it was as if he’d never gone away.

Mornings, the rare times when there was company, were the best. Everyone slept in, and would take breakfast en buffet at eleven.

Today, however, Elizabeth chose to have breakfast at seven o’clock, on the terrace outside the library, long before her guests would join her. Long before she had to face her father.

She needed to think. She needed to plan. And on top of all of that, Peter . . . She hadn’t expected to see him again—not soon, not ever.

Not after the last time—two years ago, was it? Across a hot, crowded room, buffeted by the dainty fluttering social butterflies on the hunt, who were in the midst of their first Season.

God, it had been ghastly sitting there with William by her side, watching them preen and parade by, open to every chance and choice, watching Peter eye them all speculatively until he had seen her, made a move toward her, and then veered away.

She didn’t think her heart could break a second time. She had thought she was over him. And the worse part had been that he hadn’t yet married. And that he was going back to Moscow one more time.

She’d had two years to harden her heart.

And the minute he walked in the door, it had burst open again, and she felt as violently happy as if she were seventeen again.

She had almost forgotten what it was like to be in love. And it didn’t matter that mourning must still be observed. Peter was finally here and all things were possible.

Everything will be as it was ...

The thought of the promise stopped her cold.

She had to tell her father about Nicholas Massey. There was no time, no time at all. And Peter’s arrival muddled everything. . .

Elizabeth— Her father came up behind her, and pulled out a chair.

She glanced at her watch. It was ten o’clock.

Good morning, Father. She could tell him now—

Maybe—

He poured his own tea. So he’s finally here. He didn’t have much to say, did he?

He speaks volumes by his presence, she murmured. That sounded good. Royalty should be that charismatic, she thought, and Peter was. They hadn’t needed words. They had joined her guests, and she had spent the entire evening just looking at him.

He wasn’t a day older, it seemed. And he’d captivated everyone with his interest in every topic they discussed. And everyone pretended not to notice that he’d spent a good part of the evening staring at her.

She would not let her father deflate her happiness. The explanations would come later, she was sure of it. And ultimately, Peter’s proposal.

True—you couldn’t hear a word he said, his voice was pitched so low, her father said.

"Stop it. I am happy to see him, if you’re not."

He won’t marry you, Elizabeth.

Nor do I want to hear any doom-and-gloom predictions.

You’re still a naif, even if you’ve been keeping such sophisticated company.

Then let me not remind you, Father, that all your good fortune stems from the Masseys.

Indeed, do not. I’ve spun gold from such hay as William cared to toss me, Elizabeth, but all my success is not pinioned on what little he chose to send my way.

Elizabeth stiffened. How the story changed as the years went on. In point of fact, every success her father enjoyed had come from William and his connections, and lately from her, as she gutted her income to keep him in business.

But while they had each made their own bargains with the devil, only she had been the one to pay. Surely with Peter’s arrival, she would finally have her reward. The rest didn’t—shouldn’t—matter.

Come back to London with us tomorrow, her father said.

But I won’t be alone here, Father. I’m sure Peter is planning to stay.

Until he tells you his plans, you can’t be sure of anything.

You really are determined to spoil my day.

I’m determined to get you to think clearly about Peter. There’s no future there for you.

I think I will let Peter tell me that.

And trample your heart all over again? her father asked. "I can’t go through that again."

"Well, then, you won’t.