Andrea Penrose - The Cocoa Conspiracy

“Yes, and he would have ignored you,” countered Arianna. “When you were his age, would you have listened to your elders?”

The surgeon frowned, and then crooked a grudging smile. “No, I would have told them to go to hell.”

“There, you see.” She set down her glass. “But before we go on about Rochemont’s past, I think you had better hear what I have to say about tonight.”

Her husband looked at Henning and then gave a gruff nod.

Arianna quickly detailed what she had seen in the kitchen.

“His hands were burned?” said Saybrook.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “Which has to mean he killed Kydd. Any other explanation seems absurd.”

“But why?” mused Saybrook.

“He must have suspected that Kydd was having second thoughts. And perhaps he feared that things were getting too cozy with me,” she said.

Her husband took his time in answering. “Perhaps. And yet, an assassin, be it Rochemont or one of his cohorts, could not have known that you and Kydd would be walking that way.”

“A good point,” said Henning.

Arianna thought back over her encounter with the young Scotsman. “Kydd was quick to suggest we walk that way,” she said carefully. “He hinted that he had an important meeting. He was nervous and on edge, so I would guess that he had a rendezvous planned with his killer for later in the evening.”

“Pure speculation,” the earl pointed out.

“As is your guess that someone lobbed a bomb at us with the intention of murdering both of us.”

“The evidence of a lethal metallic sphere—what we in the military called a grenade—is inarguable,” said Saybrook. “How it came to explode by Kydd’s head is, I grant you, not something we know for sure.”

“There are too damn many unknowns in this bloody case,” muttered Henning. “One would almost think Grentham manipulated you into taking this assignment because he was sure you would fail.”

Arianna swallowed hard, the lingering sweetness of the wine turning sour on her tongue.

“Another speculation,” said Saybrook curtly. “We could sit here and spin conjectures all night. What facts are we missing?”

Her head jerked up. “I—I was just getting to that. After Rochemont went out, I decided to have a look around his quarters. Hidden inside his jewel case was a coded letter.”

A sound—a snarl?—vibrated deep in Saybrook’s throat.

“For God’s sake, give me a little credit for clandestine conniving,” she snapped, feeling a little defensive. “I was exceedingly careful about leaving no trace that it had been tampered with. I made a copy and put the original back exactly as I found it.”

He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Then how did you come to be chased within an inch of your life by the comte and his hellhounds?”

“As it happens, I heard him returning and knew I didn’t have time to put his desk back in order and escape. So I threw some things around, including the jewel case, and pocketed the baubles to make it look like a robbery.”

Without further comment, Saybrook extracted the paper from his pocket. Slowly, precisely, he unfolded the creases and began studying the contents.

“Bravo, lassie,” said Henning. “Perhaps your clue will help us figure out what Rochemont and that bastard Talleyrand are up to. I don’t know what new mayhem the two of them are planning together. But mark my words, I think we’ll find that Talleyrand is at the heart of all this. He just has to be.”

The earl kept on reading.

Arianna bit her lip, uncertain whether to feel angry or guilty. Had she been stubbornly reckless simply to prove her independence?

Tearing her gaze from his profile, she forced a careless shrug. “One other thing. It may mean nothing, but one of the kitchen maids mentioned that Talleyrand is expecting a special guest for next week’s gala Carrousel, and apparently it’s a matter of great secrecy. According to her, the person is a general, however she didn’t remember his name . . .” Her brows pinched together. “Save for the fact that it has something to do with water.”

“A general,” repeated Henning. “That’s hardly a notable personage these days. After a decade of constant wars, they are as common as cow dung.”

“Water,” she mused, then repeated the word in several different languages. “Anything strike a bell?”

Henning shook his head.

Preoccupied with the coded letter, Saybrook didn’t answer.

“Sea . . . Spring . . . Creek.” Each elicited a negative response from the surgeon, so she abandoned the effort. “Perhaps something will come to us later. In any case, it’s likely not important.”

At that, Saybrook grunted, showing that he had been listening, if only with half an ear. “We’ve enough word games to occupy our attention.” He rose and went to the desk to fetch his notebooks, which contained the other coded document. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t the two of you get some rest.”

“What about you?” asked Arianna.

Saybrook picked up a pencil. “I want to work for a while longer. Now that I have two samples, I might see something new.”

“Can I help?”

“I don’t know.” His temper sounded dangerously frayed.

Arianna was about to retort when all of a sudden, she spotted the uncertainty in his eyes.

He’s not angry at me—he is angry at himself.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sandro,” she whispered as Henning bid them good night and headed off to the spare bedchamber on the floor above.

“Ah, yes—it’s only a matter of life and death,” he replied, his voice sharp with sarcasm. Unknotting his cravat, he tugged it off and tossed it onto the sofa. “Sorry,” he muttered after expelling a low oath. “This whole damnable mission has me feeling as if I am dancing on a razor’s edge.”

“While playing blind man’s bluff,” she added.

A ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. “With two grenades in my outstretched hands, the fuses cut short to explode at any moment.”

“Is that all?” She waggled a brow. “And here I thought you were trying to do something difficult.”

He laughed.

“Come, get some rest.”

“I will.” His gaze had already slipped down to the papers. “I’ll just be a little while longer.”

Arianna woke several hours later, her mind too restless to sleep any longer despite the bone deep fatigue of her body. A hazy gray glow had begun to lighten the horizon. Clouds hung low in the pewter skies, heavy with the promise of rain.

Stifling a yawn, she pulled on her wrapper and padded out to the parlor.

The candles had burned out and in the murky shadows, she saw that Saybrook had fallen asleep in his chair. Tiptoeing across the carpet, she stood over his chair and watched the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

“Sandro.” The word was a whisper that barely stirred the air. She pressed a palm lightly to his unshaven cheek, feeling the rough stubbling of his skin, the faint thud of his heart. Shadows, dark as charcoal, hung in half moon smudges beneath his closed eyes, and the hollows in his cheeks made his face look even leaner.

When Arianna had first met her husband, he had been thin as a cadaver and living on a diet of laudanum—a pernicious mix of liquid opium and precious little else. It was a wonder that he had survived the dangerous web of intrigue that had first drawn them together.

Actually, it’s a wonder that either of us survived.

Grentham . . .

No, she would not think of Grentham. The tangle of deceptions and betrayals was twisted enough here in Vienna. If the threads, once unknotted, eventually led back to the inner sanctum of Whitehall, they would deal with that when the time came.