“The plague?” She knew it could kill swiftly, but she’d seen Trick only hours ago. Ill, but very much alive.
And he’d wanted to tell her something.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I will own up I didn’t go in there. One don’t mess with the plague, mistress.”
“Did you see him at all?”
“Aye, through the bars from a safe distance. He was dead, all right. Blue spots all over him, and he was stiff as a long-trapped rat. Within the hour he was put in a coffin and carried out. I imagine he was buried just as quick.”
She sank to the sticky stones, not caring that she sat in filth shared with bugs and rats. Her lids slid closed against the tears that welled, poised to fall.
Trick was dead. Dead and buried. Along with his lies and his deceptions, his soft words and cherishing kisses.
And she was dead inside.
It was over, and she had no emotion left in her.
“Mistress?” The guard shook her shoulder. “Mistress, you cannot just sit here.”
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. No, she could not just sit here. The man reached down a hand, and she let him help her up.
Her brothers. She needed to get to her brothers. Hopefully they hadn’t made fools of themselves already by asking the king for a highwayman’s pardon.
And she needed to lean on them, too. To let them take her home. They would order up a bath, and she’d wash off the incredible stink of Newgate. Then she’d sleep and escape this nightmare her life had turned into.
She had no money left for a hackney, but when she tearfully asked a driver to take her to Whitehall Palace and promised to see he got paid, he agreed.
Eighty-One
THE GATEKEEPERat Whitehall was not about to let a servant girl in.
“I’m Kendra Chase, the Marquess of Cainewood’s sister.”
“Sure you are.” Dressed in red livery, the man looked her over with patent disbelief. “And I’m King Charles himself.”
“I mean…” Drawing a shuddering breath, she closed her eyes, opened them, and tried again. “I’m the Duchess of Amberley.”
“Kendra!”
The voice, heavy and seductive, came from an open window overhead. She’d forgotten Lady Castlemaine’s suite was over Holbein’s Gate. Although both of them had spent the Commonwealth years with King Charles’s exiled court, Barbara, the king’s longtime mistress, had never been her favorite woman. But this wasn’t the time to be choosy.
“Barbara!” she called up. “My brothers are here, and this gentleman refuses to let me in.”
“Dolt,” Barbara said. Her titian head disappeared from the window, and a minute later she was standing on the other side of the scrolled wrought iron gate.
Kendra felt like a guttersnipe beside Barbara’s lush, fashionable form, but she couldn’t dredge up enough energy to feel properly chagrined. She was so tired.
“Let her in, you clodpoll,” Barbara said. She’d never been known for her tact. The gate swung open. “I know just where your brothers are.” Before Kendra knew it, she was following Barbara down the maze of halls that traversed Whitehall’s two thousand rooms. “And your husband along with them.”
“What?” She stopped in her tracks, her heart leaping with relief—until she realized Barbara had to be mistaken.
“You’re married to Amberley, aren’t you?” Barbara pouted as she took Kendra’s arm and hurried her along. “And I wasn’t invited to the wedding. You know how I like a good party.”
“We didn’t have much of a wedding,” Kendra said woodenly. Trick wasn’t here—he was dead in the ground in a graveyard near Newgate.
Coming to a stop, Barbara threw open a magnificent carved and gilded door. Beyond, Kendra saw a splendid sitting room in shades of gold and black. A fire blazed on a marble hearth. King Charles sat in a tufted velvet chair, his head thrown back in laughter. Jason sat in another, laughing along with him.
