Adele wriggled in her ropes.
She couldn't see a damned thing, and there was a hood over her face. First thing first. Using her teeth and her shoulder, she managed to get hold of the edge of the hood and then painstakingly drag it off her head. It hit the floor beside her, and Adele took her first blessedly cool breath of air even as light blinded her.
Where on earth was she? As her eyes slowly adjusted, she took in the stage around her, the red velvet curtains—and the spotlight shining directly upon her.
"Hello?" she called.
Adele began to notice the elegant chairs and the sumptuous carpets. She'd been here. Many a time. The opera. She was tied to a chair on the opera stage.
"Devoncourt?" she yelled, and her voice echoed through the room.
That rat bastard.
He'd kidnapped her, and tied her here and—
There were half a dozen barrels all around her, marked ominously with painted green flames, but no sign of anyone else. Clearly, nobody expected her to escape, and the barrels.... There was a good reason she might be here alone.
Adele swallowed hard. She knew the symbol for Greek Fire when she saw it. And judging from that ticking sound, there was some sort of explosive device stacked among the barrels.
Devoncourt had left her here to die.
And he'd done a jolly good job of tying these knots.
I am not going to die in the bloody opera house.
And certainly not at Devoncourt's hand.
If she couldn't loosen her ropes, then she would have to cut them, or abrade them. She glanced down, at the coiled spring attached to the chair she sat in. Any sharp jerk might trigger the mechanism there. So, not only would she have to cut her ropes, but she'd have to do it gently.
Not a great deal of time to lose then.
It was a good thing she'd come prepared.
Adele gritted her teeth and tried to force her blood-starved fingers to work. They flapped uselessly against her lacy sleeve. She couldn't remember much of her kidnapping, but as her fingers groped blindly, she hoped whoever had been behind it hadn't thought to search her.
Almost there.... Her fingers brushed the hilt of the small knife she always carried up her sleeve. Come on. Sweat dripped down her temple. Then she caught hold of the hilt with her fore and middle fingers.
It took her perhaps ten minutes, but Adele finally gasped in success as she managed to tumble the hilt into her palm. Her fingers snapped closed around it.
Time to get out of here.
Before those barrels exploded.
"Where is she? Where is she?"
Malloryn shoved through the smoky crowd outside the opera, finding Byrnes and Ingrid sitting on the steps of the palladium opposite the burning opera house. All he saw was blood and ash marking Ingrid's face, and Byrnes's protective arm around her shoulders.
The world started buzzing again. Malloryn staggered to a halt. "Adele?"
There was no sign of her.
"Adele?" Byrnes's frown drew his eyebrows together, and Malloryn watched as the other man suddenly realized exactly what had happened.
Ingrid looked up, her nostrils flaring with pain as she held her arm across her chest. "I'm sorry."
"It went up just as we breached the opera house door," Byrnes said gently, but Malloryn didn't hear any of it. "We were too late. I'm sorry...." A gurgle died in his throat. "It was all I could do to get Ingrid out of the way in time."
Malloryn finally managed to take in what remained of the opera house. Rubble lay strewn across the square, fire licking at what was left of the building. Men manning water pumps seemed to be streaming from nowhere, and as he watched, an enormous column of marble toppled, shattering across the cobbles.
"Stay back!" someone called.
There was no way anyone inside could have survived.
This was his fault.
And suddenly Malloryn was on his knees, the heat—what there was of it—draining from his face, and the world rushing away from him.
"Malloryn?" Byrnes caught him by the arm, and the duke groped for his hand blindly.
Adele.
That was when he knew what she'd meant to him.
Chapter 29
Adele surfaced from the Thames with a gasp, filthy water streaming down her face, her skirts threatening to suck her under.
There was a boat nearby, and she kicked toward it, going under a couple more times before her hand finally caught in the mooring rope.
It took an enormous amount of effort to draw herself onto the banks of the Thames, and she collapsed there, shivering with cold.
Fire raged and bloomed in the distance. She was somewhere near the base of Waterloo Bridge. Slowly she sat up, staring at the opera house. It was on fire... or what was left of it was. It struck her then. How close she'd come to being inside that building when the explosion occurred....
A wave of trembling broke over her. Somehow she forced herself to her feet, her teeth chattering.
This was the third time the Opera House burned.
She could barely remember escaping. All the doors had been locked, and she'd returned to the stage, somehow managing to open one of the trapdoors by pulling on several of the ropes. Then she was working her way through the bowels of the building, ending up in a tunnel below it.
And from there, the river.
She took a step toward the opera house, and then paused.
Devoncourt had put her inside it for a reason.
Perhaps she would find help there, but who knew if the perpetrator lingered behind?
She couldn't go to the opera house. She couldn't go home to Malloryn Court, just in case it was being watched.
There was really only one place left for her.
Shivering with cold, Adele pushed her way inside Hardcastle Lane without bothering to knock. Some man by the river had given her his cloak and a ride to Hardcastle Lane in exchange for one of her rings.
The house was oddly silent.
Subdued almost.
She'd expected Herbert to pop out of nowhere to offer her a "spot of hot tea," but even he was nowhere to be seen.
"Hello?" Adele called softly, swinging the damp cloak from her shoulders.
Had something happened?