It was a strange thing, desire. Strange to ride behind someone in silence on a grim and deadly errand, and be rendered weak by a whiff of soap; strange to retain the memory of touch, so strong that even such impersonal and enforced contact could bring back a shiver of anticipation, as though the foolish flesh still anticipated treats the conscious mind had already deemed unwise. Penelope didn’t care whether it was wise or not; she still wanted him, despite Berar, despite Freddy, despite knowing that in the eyes of the world her widowhood was meant to have rendered her as stiff as stone in continual contemplation of the memory of the man who had been legally licensed to share her bed. Not that Freddy would have denied himself any of the usual pleasures had the situation been reversed. But she doubted anyone else would see it that way. Including Alex.

Penelope leaned her cheek against his back, feeling the scrape of his wool jacket against her skin. There was no mistaking the way his muscles tensed every time she adjusted her position.

She could make Alex desire her, she knew that. She certainly had enough experience in that department. But desire was no substitute for what she really wanted. It was no substitute for affection.

Once, she had believed it might be, that it was the closest she might come, but she knew better now.

Not that the knowing helped. It just made it worse. At least one could manufacture lust; it was a simple enough formula. Some organs were more susceptible to manipulation than others. Unfortunately, the heart did not fall into that category. Penelope’s usual weapons dangled blunted from her hands, an entire arsenal of tricks without a single one to accomplish the thing she wanted. It made her feel itchy and restless and irritable, a thousand times worse than being denied the reins.

At least Alex seemed equally restless. She could feel him gearing up to speak long before he did, with that uncanny knowledge provided of being pressed chest to back, with every breath and movement common property.

Well, there was something about a long ride in the dark that prompted reflection. They had a good deal of unfinished business left after their encounter that afternoon. Penelope held herself alert, waiting to hear what it was that Alex had to say.

At long last, he came out with, “I wonder who attacked Fiske.”

So much for grand declarations of thwarted desire.

“It could be anyone,” said Penelope nastily. “Someone he cheated at cards, a servant he kicked, a woman he propositioned. He wasn’t exactly the sort to accumulate friends.”

“But why would any of those people leave my handkerchief next to him?”

That was what had been bothering him for the past mile?

“Maybe they didn’t like you either,” suggested Penelope. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you dropped it there yourself days ago and it was pure happenstance. Maybe you loaned it to someone and he dropped it. You loaned one to me at one point.”

“Are you saying that you hit Fiske and tried to frame me?”

“If I had, would I tell you?”

He was smiling. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it all the same. “Probably. Just to rub it in.” His tone turning serious again, he added, “There are too many potential wrongdoers roaming about. It could be nearly anyone. If Fiske weren’t the Marigold, but knew who the Marigold was . . .”

“Your brother,” Penelope said. From the way his muscles tensed, she could tell her guess had hit home. It was better than a truth serum, sitting as they were. “That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That it’s Jack.”

She expected Alex to try to deny it, to leap to defend his brother as he had with Cleave. Instead, he said, in a voice so low she could hardly hear it, “It is a possibility.”

The depth of the potential betrayal shook Penelope all the way to her cynical core. It was one thing if this Jack wanted to go about working for the French or whoever it was he was supposed to be serving, but quite another to stab back at the brother who had defended him, protected him, and shielded him at the cost of his own career and reputation. The brother who, contrary to all common sense, loved him.

If she ever met this Jack, he had better watch out.

“No,” Penelope said abruptly, so abruptly that the horse’s gait faltered before falling back into rhythm. “No. It isn’t your Jack.”

Alex’s shoulders hunched forward. “I wish it were that easy. There’s no getting around it. My brother is neck deep in treason. All I can hope is that he had nothing to do with this particular piece of treason. But there isn’t much hope for it. And we’ll all go down with him.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Penelope bracingly. “No one can hold you accountable for your brother’s treasons.”

“Can’t they?” Alex said wearily.

If her arms hadn’t already been around him, Penelope would have put them there, to comfort him. Not that she had much experience in the comforting department, but she felt an inexplicable need to try. She could hear the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale in the back of her head, hooting at her for going soft. Well, what if she had? It mightn’t be so awful to care more for someone else than for herself for a change.

Alex said, with difficulty, “If matters had been different — ”

“What?” prompted Penelope, sitting up straighter behind him. “What?”

Whatever it was, it was too late. Alex shook his head, staring off over Bathsheba’s neck, off towards the horizon where Raymond’s obelisk could already be seen, glowing palely in the moonlight.

“Never mind.” With false brightness he said, “It won’t be long now. A few more minutes and we’ll be there.”

If matters had been different what ?

“We’ll see this thing through, one way or another,” he added, and Penelope had the feeling that he was speaking to himself rather than her.

Through with Jack, or through with her?

They rode in silence for the last stretch up the hill, each occupied with his own thoughts. As they drew level with the temple, Penelope noticed a strange light spreading across the ground. It was coming from above, from the moon, or even from a lantern held at normal lantern level. The light came from below, as well, from the floor of the temple where one of the stone slabs appeared to have pulled away, leaving a well-lit cavity below.

Poking Alex in the arm, Penelope pointed. Alex nodded. Penelope’s eyes met his and she knew he had reached the same conclusion. That was how his brother had so expeditiously disappeared that day when they were chasing him. The whole time they had stood on the hill, pacing back and forth and scanning the horizon for traces of him, he had been cached away just below.

Penelope’s jaw clenched. If Wellesley didn’t flay Alex’s little brother, she might just do it for him.

“Down?” mouthed Penelope, pointing at the hatch.

It was quite a sophisticated little hidey-hole. Rather than a simple ladder, stone stairs jutted downwards, roughly hewn, but sturdy for all that.

Putting up a hand to counsel caution, Alex dropped to his belly, pulling himself forward against the stone of the temple floor. Following his example, Penelope did likewise. Propelling oneself by one’s elbows was harder than it looked. Her muscles ached as Penelope dragged herself painstakingly forward, wincing every time the material of her dress rasped against the stone flags.

After what seemed an age, she drew abreast with Alex, and peered over the edge of the cavity, down the stone steps. Something glittered darkly at the bottom, like the carapace of a bug. Shiny. Metallic. It took Penelope a moment to realize that it was guns. Pile upon pile upon pile of guns. All the guns the Nizam had been promised. The guns she had accused Alex of stealing. The guns that the commander of the Subsidiary Force swore he had purchased, but had never arrived. Guns enough to arm a rebellion.

Among the jumbled piles of weaponry stood a man. He stooped over to inspect the pile nearest him, unwittingly leaving his back unguarded. Whoever he was, it was clear that his usual role must not be a particularly martial one. His shoulders angled forward in the habitual slouch that came of too many hours at a desk. His head was uncovered, his hat in his hand, a nicety usually wasted on criminal dens, but habitual to him.

Penelope, who had thought she had seen all there was to see, forgot herself so far as to gape in frank astonishment. She forgot that she was lying on her stomach. She barely registered Alex’s bug-eyed confusion. She simply stared, mouth open, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.

The man didn’t need to turn around for Penelope to know him, but turn around he did. He seemed as nonplussed at the sight of them as they were by him.

“Alex?” the man gasped.

To which Alex mustered an incredulous “Cleave?”

Chapter Thirty

“What?” demanded Penelope, but no one paid any attention.

Alex swung to his feet.

“Cleave?” he repeated incredulously, staring down through the hole at an angle that gave Penelope a pain in her neck just watching it. “What are you doing here?”

Without a word to her, he started off down the stairs, leaving Penelope standing there, behind. Rolling her eyes at his back, Penelope scrambled after him, looping the skirt of her riding habit over one arm to get it out of the way. In the other hand, she had firm hold of her pistol. Alex might be willing to go clambering down barehanded into a potential den of thieves, but she wasn’t that trusting. Or that naïve.

But the man at the bottom of the stairs didn’t make any move for a weapon. It was Daniel Cleave, standing beside a lantern balanced on a packing crate. Rather than a hardened criminal, he looked like a fifth former caught smuggling sweets from the headmaster’s study. He looked quite as startled to see Alex as Alex had been to see him.

There was no one else in the long, low room.

“Alex?” he echoed, although Penelope would have thought that they had more than adequately established who everyone was. The two men had only known each for twenty-odd years, after all. “I thought you were in custody.”

“I would have been. Had I made it back to the Residency.” Alex’s face was completely unreadable in the uneven lamplight.

Taking a step back, Cleave gestured ineffectually around the piles of munitions that filled the long, rectangular chamber. “Quite a sight, this.”

“Indeed,” contributed Penelope.

Cleave’s gaze darted in her direction. “Lady Frederick?”

Oh no. They weren’t starting all that again. With an impatient gesture, Penelope said, “I know who you are and you know who he is, but what in the devil” — it felt good to curse, so she decided to repeat it — “what in the devil is all this?”

Cleave looked at her with shocked rabbit eyes. Treachery was one thing, profanity quite another.

“These are guns,” Alex said softly. “Guns that were meant to be delivered to the Nizam. Aren’t they, Daniel?”

“Wellesley will be pleased at this, at least.” Cleave rubbed a hand across his forehead as though it pained him. “The missing guns could have been something of a bother diplomatically.”

“More than a bother if they fell into the wrong hands,” said Alex thoughtfully. “How did you know to find them here?”

“A tip,” said Cleave vaguely, before Alex’s meaning caught up with him. “You can’t think — you don’t think . . .”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Alex frankly. “I heard the Marigold was meeting here tonight with a local contact.”

“So did I. What are you doing here?” challenged his old school-mate. “Did Jack — ”

“No.”

“Dash it all, Alex — ,” began Cleave, and then blushed as he remembered Penelope’s presence.

“Don’t mind me,” said Penelope with a wave of one hand. “I’ll just amuse myself playing with the weaponry.”

Alex’s lip curled.

Cleave looked alarmed.

“They, er, they might be loaded,” he said hesitantly. “Not that I would know. I just got here, you see.”

A man could stutter and stutter and still be a villain. He could

blush at a curse and still be a traitor. But was Daniel Cleave? He did seem to be exuding guilt the way a rose did fragrance, but he always exuded guilt, as though he felt it necessary to apologize to the world for his very existence.

“I received some intelligence,” he said, with more confidence this time, raising his head to look Alex in the eye. “I heard a report that Jack — ”