man has a way with words.” He shook his head. “Ice water runs through his veins, I’m sure.”
Louise covered her mouth with one hand, hiding her smile. Not always.
“Enough of this talk of assassins.” Victoria waved a hand in dismissal. “They’re hooligans, all of them—out to cause mayhem to no purpose. Louise, you said you came to discuss our rats? I can think of no less delightful topic.”
“Yes, I did.” Louise ignored her mother’s chiding glare. This had better be worth my time, the queen’s eyes warned. “I’ve been thinking. Mr. Brown and your guardsmen assure us that no deliveries were made the morning the rats appeared. And all visitors were accounted for—those, at the time, being Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone, and their secretaries. And the rats could not have been in Bea’s room for long without being discovered.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Disraeli agreed. “Have the staff as well as gentlemen and ladies of the court been questioned?”
“They have. To no good result.” Louise paused. “I believe, therefore, that the person to blame is someone not presently among us. Some person or persons who at one time deserved our trust but now harbors a violent grudge, and has become allied with the Fenians for the purpose of revenge.”
Her mother blanched to nearly the whiteness of her lace collar but said nothing.
“You know someone who fits that description. Don’t you, Mama?”
Victoria’s eyes met hers and slowly widened. Louise watched her mother’s fear transform into revulsion. “The baron,” she whispered.
Louise shuddered at the mention of the man. There were, of course, many who owned that title, throughout England and the Continent. But she had no doubt who her mother meant.
“Baron Stockmar,” Louise said to Disraeli’s questioning look. She turned back to her mother. “He’s dead, though, isn’t he?”
The queen broke into a smile and actually cackled her pleasure. “He hates me so much, maybe he’s come back from the grave to haunt us.”
Louise chewed her bottom lip. Yes, she thought, if such a thing were possible, she had no doubt Stockmar would do it. The question remained—how?
Thirty-five
Rupert stood on the splintery dock inches above the fetid flow of slime called the Thames River. He listened to what the Lieutenant was saying, but used the time to get a better look at him. The man’s cap brim hid the upper half of his features. A thin slash of lips interrupted a beardless jaw. His chin jutted forward in a way that made him look as if he was always leaning forward, on the verge of striding out, even when he was standing still. He spoke with the slightest of accents—an Irish lilt mixed with something else. Northern European? Napoleon III had just lost the Franco-Prussian War. Maybe he was a defeated soldier like them?
It didn’t really matter. Rupert was used to taking orders as long as there was a strong man at the helm. He didn’t even blame the Lieutenant for speaking harshly to him and Will after it became clear they’d killed the wrong men in the park. Will had worried the Fenians would send him and Rupert packing without so much as a penny for a pie. Or worse, shoot them and dump their bodies in the river, no one the wiser.
But he also knew that one good black powder man was worth a battalion of foot soldiers. So he wasn’t surprised when the Lieutenant kept them on despite their mistake.
“Arrangements have been made for the two boats you requested,” the man was saying. “A skiff and a steamer.” He glanced down at Rupert’s right hand. “You say you can manage both vessels between the two of you?”
Rupert stuffed his injured hand in his pocket and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The first vessel, a sturdy, flat-bottomed rowing boat, would be loaded with powder and primer and, after he and Will worked their magic, become their bomb. The larger steam-powered ship was a retired ferry, just twenty feet long and a rusty junker, but with a solid working engine. Like the other boat, it would blend in with the commercial craft clogging the river. Neither boat would attract attention from the queen’s security detail.
“Yes, sir. Will here, he ran a steamboat afore the war, on the Missouri.”
“Excellent. Let’s be clear, gentlemen. I need that center span destroyed and the queen’s coach isolated from the forward escort, so that my men can move in and make the snatch.”
Rupert imagined the violent clash of the two forces on Vauxhall Bridge above them. The queen’s Hussars would fight to