The Perfect Seduction Read online

  But better conservatories than feeling like a rat burrowing beneath the city. And none of it compared with feeling like a bird on a soaring, long-span trestle. "And the third reason you're here?"

  "I was heading to Covent Garden for some sport and wondered if you wanted to go along."

  So that Barrett might - at some critical juncture and ever so accidentally - mention the occasion to Sera. "I can't," he said, wondering if Barrett really thought he was that feebleminded. "I promised Tompkins I'd have some ideas for him first thing tomorrow morning." He hadn't made Tompkins any promises at all, but as excuses went, it was the perfect one.

  Barrett shrugged and took the doorknob in hand, saying, "Work should come before play, I suppose. If you get done sooner than you anticipate or just change your mind ... "

  "I know where to find you," he said, tossing a piece of cheese for Patience.

  Barrett left without another word and Carden snorted as the door closed. Hell would freeze and the Prince Consort would go out in a dress before he made the mistake - the fatal error in judgment - of meeting Barrett anywhere and chasing skirts with him.

  He wasn't willing to give up on his hopes for Sera just yet. He'd behaved like an ass yesterday, raging at her like some cuckolded husband, pushing her too hard and too fast. Of course, she'd retreated behind the facades of pride and propriety; he hadn't given her much of any other choice. And by the time he'd realized his blunder, the damage had already been done.

  The question now was how to smooth things over with her, how to reach past her fear and draw her back to his side, to get her to look up at him, smile, and invite his kisses. Just one soulful kiss; that's all it would take. Sera always melted when ...

  Carden closed his eyes and shook his head. How thick could a man be? He was a master of seduction who had ignored every damn rule of the game. He'd allowed their relationship to wander into the realm of the mundane and everyday. He'd asked Sera to come to his bed by conscious choice. He'd negotiated terms. Jesus. It was no wonder he was home sharing his meal with the dog and she was out to dinner on the arm of his friend.

  Well, by God, that was going to change and change before sunrise. He'd ignore her evening out with John Aiden; just pretend it hadn't happened. It was of the mundane and had no place in the world of enchantment he was going to weave around her. He'd apologize for his behavior in the greenhouse and ask her to forgive him.

  When she lowered her defenses to do so, he'd draw her into his arms and kiss her. And when she looked at him, lost and searching for her way, he'd whisper to the wanton in her. Of decadent pleasures. Of dangerous delights and wicked satisfactions. He wouldn't give her time to think, time to talk .. And Sera would come to him, wanting and trusting and so very willing.

  All he had to do was bide his time until she came home.

  Tompkins's drawings would do for distraction. But the minute Seraphina came through the door ... Carden grinned and tossed Patience what was left of the roast.

  He unrolled the drawings and flipped to the ones for the section Tompkins had said they were presently constructing.

  The problems were small ones and, in and of themselves, no more than an aggravation. But when combined, they were consuming man hours and delaying forward progress. And time was money. Great wads of it.

  Carden studied the design and could see nothing wrong with it. The designing engineer had been a thoroughly competent one. Judging by the general approach, Carden could see that the man had come to the underground project with considerable experience in building aboveground railways. There was nothing wrong with the plans. But given the problems as Tompkins described them ...

  Carden frowned and flipped back to the drawings for the section most recently completed. There was nothing amiss there, either. He went back another section, to a portion of the line nearly a half-mile from where workers were now trying to shore walls, support overheads, and lay track while what should have been solid ground shifted and crumbled by small degrees all around them.

  He sighed and shook his head as he studied the design of the girdings, at the foundations, at the elevations. There was nothing wrong anywhere that he could see. Structurally, there was no reason at all for the problems they were having. Which meant that the source of the problem lay somewhere outside the design and construction of the structure itself. And that "somewhere," he knew, could be anywhere in the unseeable, unknowable mass of soil and rock that lay between the streets of London and the top of the tunnel.

  "Somewhere" was within the midnight-black realm that was the responsibility of the geologists - who were either doddering old men or peach - faced boys who made nothing more than educated guesses. If he had a gold sovereign for every time one of them had been wrong, he could buy the throne, Carden silently groused, turning back to the page with the geological drawings and notes.

  There was nothing there to suggest that the ground hadn't been undisturbed and perfectly stable for the last eternity. Nothing to suggest that it wouldn't be equally stable for all of the next.

  He flipped back to the uppermost of the drawings and considered the xs Tompkins had made to note the most problematic areas of the site. With a few exceptions, they were down the north side and fairly well distributed from the top to the bottom.

  "It has to be water," he muttered. "Has to be. But from where?"

  He returned to the geology reports, looking for any references that might have been made to ancient streambeds, old wells, or abandoned underground cisterns. And he found nothing. Which really wasn't all that surprising.

  He'd never encountered a university - educated geologist who could find and track underground water sources with anywhere near the accuracy a good witcher with a divining rod could.

  Frustrated, he went back to the top drawing and read the platting description, trying to put it within the context of the city above. When he had it fixed in his head, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, mentally sorting through the buildings there, searching for one that could be a source of a water mass sufficiently large to flow through the underground strata and eat away at the tunnel. Finding no suspects, he began stripping away the current structures and putting in their places the ones he remembered from earlier years, buildings and businesses that had been the victims of the drive to raze the old and build newer and better. There had been a spectacular fire there when he was a boy, he remembered. It had started in one of the -

  Carden bolted upright and flipped through all the sheets Tompkins had given him, mentally drawing the route aboveground, hoping he was wrong.

  He wasn't. The tunnel was following a line just south of where the old foundries had been. At least a dozen of them and each with a huge underground cistern to hold the water needed to cool forged metal. He remembered how fast the charred remains had been cleared away, how quickly the new had risen from the ashes. No one had taken the time to tear out the cisterns. They'd simply been covered over and forgotten, the wood allowed to slowly rot, the metal to rust away. And every time it rained, every time the snow melted, the cisterns had continued to do what they had been designed to.

  Carden looked at the x’s and knew with dreadful certainty that the old caverns were finally giving way, that the accumulated water was flowing out of them, and that it was only a matter of time before the weight of water and mud and rock brought not just the current section of tunnel down, but at least the last four. It was a miracle that it hadn't happened already.

  Snatching up the drawings, he rolled them as he strode from his study and to the servants' quarters. "Sawyer!" he barked, flinging open his butler's door. "Wake up!"

  Sawyer barely raised his head from the pillow and lifted one side of his sleeping mask to ask, "Are there flames, sir?"

  "No. But there's going to be a tunnel collapse. I have to go."

  Pulling off the mask and pushing aside the bed coverings, Sawyer sat up. "And my role in averting this disaster, sir?"

  "Tell Sera where I've gone and that it may be a da
y or two before I get back here. If she looks the least bit rumpled when she comes in this evening, take John Aiden aside and tell him that he's a dead man. And send a note to Barrett telling him that I want one of his men watching this house while I'm gone. Tell him that I'm willing to pay men to look. He left for Covent Garden just a while ago. Monroe will find him there if he hurries."

  "Good luck to you, sir. I shall see to it all and keep the home fires burning."

  "Just make sure Seraphina and the girls are safe," Carden called back over his shoulder. "I don't much care about the rest of it."

  God, he hoped Tompkins was still at the club. If he wasn't, he was going to be dragged out of bed. In fact, before the hour was out, there were going to be a hell of a lot of men rousted from the comfort of their beds and homes. And their assumptions.

  Lying along the bracing timber, Carden looked along the top half of the tunnel, back into the completed sections, searching in the dim light for any signs of bulging plate or bowing timber. Deciding that all looked well at the moment, he turned his head to look the other way, resting his cheek against the tarred wood as he scanned the entirety of the newest section-the one still most in danger of being structurally compromised. Two days. Two days and nights and they were still hauling in metal plate and timbers, still battling to keep the ground in place.

  He glanced along the crown, finding some comfort in the fact that there were no longer tiny rivulets of water seeping through the seams between the iron plates they'd hoisted up and pinned into place with whatever would do for a support column. As engineering went, it was a visual nightmare of cobble, slapdash, and make-do, but it was, apparently, working well enough to keep the roof off the floor. There was definitely something to be said for that.

  "Now, if we can keep the foundations intact," he murmured, leaning over to study the scene below.

  The noise was thundering, the light miserably dim, and the air smoky and ominously damp. But he could see that the braces were still coming down the ramp from above ground on sleds, their descent swift and efficient as teams of filthy, grim-faced men fed the ropes through the pulleys and called for the next hauling team to stand ready. The beams, wood and iron alike, were still being dragged down the tunnel floor by another army of equally resolute workers and left for the teams that were hefting them up one by one, working their way toward the ramp, positioning the ends against the stone foundations and then sledging them into place.

  Carden shifted, moving forward on the beam to see around a column, and studied the north wall, hoping that the steel plate and prop supports they'd desperately thrown up the first night would continue to be sufficient for the task. Water trickled through the seams and he swore softly, glaring at the crown above him and wondering if the pumping crews were emptying the cisterns with a goddamn teaspoon.

  Knowing there was going to be no rescinding the orders to prepare for setting mid-level braces, he visually marked the wall in regular intervals from the end of the section to the ramp.

  It was when he reached the end of the course that he saw him.

  He was tall. He was massively shouldered. But mostly Barrett Stanbridge stuck out because he was the only man in a clean white shirt. Carden studied him for a minute, trying to tell by his demeanor why he'd come down from above. He didn't seem agitated or even slightly concerned about finding him with any sort of haste. Actually, he seemed more interested in analyzing the bracing structures than anything else. Which, in all likelihood, meant that nothing horrible had happened to Sera or the girls.

  He'd no more than framed the thought and sighed in relief when Barrett looked up and met his gaze. His smile instant and wide, he shook his head and started forward.

  Carden leaned out from the timber, grasped the edge of a vertical support steel beam, and then half jumped, half pulled himself fully onto it. Barrett was waiting for him at the base when he slid to a halt.

  "Seraphina sent me down here to check on you and make sure you're not doing anything risky or foolish," he explained. "I think that particular maneuver might be something I should keep to myself. She can't fret over what she doesn't know."

  Sera was worried about him? Was she worried enough that she'd already forgiven him for being an oafish ogre? "Well," he drawled, bringing his attention back to Barrett, "I can't very well put my own life and limb before those of others. Neither can I point to a problem, wish them the best of luck in solving it, and walk away."

  "Agreed. Leadership by example and all of that," his friend said as they started toward the ramp together. "Do you need another set of hands and a bit of brawn?"

  Carden shook his head. ''There's sufficient brawn. Simmons and Franklin are the bracing - crew leaders. They mustered out a month after we resigned our commissions. And I think enough water has been pumped topside and we've done enough strategic shoring down here to stave off an imminent collapse. If, however, I'm wrong in the longer run, I'd rather have you on the outside."

  "Any particular reason other than you're a selfless friend?"

  Carden stopped and waited until Barrett had turned to face him before saying, "I'm assuming that, as my friend, you'll see that Sera and the girls aren't left alone to make their way in the world."

  "I'm not the only one capable of doing so. John Aiden would see to it, as well."

  "Yes, but it would never cross John Aiden's mind to marry Sera. You, on the other hand, have already given the notion some thought."

  "Oh?" Barrett countered with a cocked brow and a guilty smile. "And what have I decided?"

  Carden grinned. ''That it's a damn good thing women like Sera are a rarity because they can actually make horrible fates-like marriage-look appealing."

  Slowly sobering, carefully studying him, Barrett bluntly asked, "Are you considering it?"

  "It's flitted through my mind once or twice," he admitted.

  "Both times when I'd had too much to drink. But in a cold, sober light ... " He shook his head. "No. She's held my interest longer than any other woman, but reality being what it is ... Forever is a damn long time, Barrett. I'm not a forever man and I know it."

  "Neither am I," his friend countered, "so try not to get yourself killed so that I don't have to seriously contemplate such somber possibilities."

  Carden considered the water trickling out of the north wall and how to answer. He couldn't very well tell Barrett not to worry, that everything would be fine; Barrett was an engineer and could see for himself that matters could go to hell in a heartbeat. "How is Sera?" he asked instead.

  "Quite distracted."

  "By whom?" he asked dryly. "You? Or Aiden?"

  "You and your dash into dangerous pursuits," Barrett shot back. "Sawyer says she spends a great deal of time pacing and looking out the windows. Which explains why the girls tell me that she's making no progress whatsoever on getting her pictures sorted for the publisher. You failed to mention the other day at the club that she's been asked to submit them."

  "I was more concerned with finding Reginald Carter.

  Have you?"

  Barrett looked away. "We're getting closer."

  And he was frustrated for not having already accomplished the task. Carden abandoned the subject, asking, "Do you have a man watching the house as I asked?"

  "Two. One front, one back. Both well armed."

  "I appreciate it, Barrett," he said, clamping a hand on his friend's shoulder. ''Thank you. With any luck, I'll be out of here tomorrow and free them to go back to looking for Sera's soon-to-be-former husband."

  They resumed their course toward the ramp, walking in companionable silence until Barrett cleared his throat and asked, "Would it trouble you greatly if you heard that Gerald Treadwell had been found dead?" Without giving him a chance to reply, he stepped over a foundation brace, saying, "You know just as well as I do that violent ends are common in Newcastle and Southwark. His timely demise would save Seraphina a great deal of heartache and scandal. And no one will be unduly suspicious unless he dies after you're kno
wn to have met with him."

  Barrett's approach would be neat and clean; the problem quietly and permanently solved before it could grow any uglier than it already was. But creating a problem in solving one wasn't an acceptable solution. Barrett had nightmares enough already and he wouldn't add to them simply for the sake of making his life - or Sera's-easier.

  "It's a risk I'll have to take," Carden replied, as they stepped over another brace. "Honor requires that he have a chance to make right some of the wrongs he's done to Sera."

  Barrett snorted. "And if he atones and wants Seraphina back as his wife?"

  "I won't let that happen. He'd have to kill me first."

  "Well, as the barristers always say, self-defense is the best defense. And it would solve the problem. The scandal will be horrific, though. Neither you nor Seraphina would ever live it down."

  "Well, as I always say," he countered, unable to keep the bitter memories from edging his tone, "better scandalized than dead."

  Barrett was looking at him askance when Simmons strode over and barely kept himself from saluting. "Cap'n Reeves," he said, "I thought you'd want to know that we're about ready to put in the first mid-level brace." His gaze snapped over to Barrett and he nodded crisply, adding, "Lieutenant Stanbridge, it's good to see you, sir. Have you come to give us a hand, too?"

  "Yes," Carden answered for his friend, "but we don't need it. He's just leaving."

  Simmons checked another salute, disguising it by pulling on the brim of his wool cap and walked off toward the north wall.

  "I'll give Sera your regards," Barrett said, studying the plates and supports already in place. "Should I give her a kiss from you, too?'

  "Only if I die in here," he quipped. ''Touch her while I'm still breathing and you're going to die out there."

  His friend's smile was weak and fleeting. "Be careful, Carden," he said solemnly. "Mind the walls. If they shift even the littlest bit more, get out."

  Carden nodded and watched Barrett make his way up the ramp, knowing that if the walls caved in a lot of men were going to die. And he stood a damn good chance of being among them. No matter how fast he ran or how high he climbed. Carden cocked a brow as he realized that for the first time in his life he wasn't inclined to simply shrug his shoulders over the possibility and go on.