Alex compounded his foolishness by adding, “Cleave can show you back. I’ll wait here.”

Penelope didn’t budge. “And leave you to the mercies of goodness only knows how many French spies? I think not.”

“They’re named after flowers. How frightening can they be?”

“Very,” interjected Cleave, but no one paid the least bit of attention to him.

“If you face them, I face them,” said Penelope, knowing she was talking about far more than French spies. “Mr. Cleave can go.”

“And leave you unchaperoned?” Earnestly, Mr. Cleave said, “No, I couldn’t do that. I’ll stay, Lady Frederick. Reid can escort you back.”

“I’m a widow. I don’t need chaperonage,” snapped Penelope. “And I fail to see why I should be any safer from Captain Reid’s advances on a dark road than I would be in this room. Unless you intend to suggest that there are hitherto unrecognized amorous properties to the presence of large quantities of gunpowder?”

“I didn’t mean — ,” Mr. Cleave began, but whatever he had meant or hadn’t meant was lost in the horrifying sound of footfalls overhead.

Without saying a word, Alex grabbed Penelope by the arm and hauled her back into the lee of the stairs. It was really quite impressive. One moment she was standing at the foot of the stairs, the next she was jammed against Alex’s side in an impromptu alcove created by a keg of musket balls on one side and the stone side of the stairs on the other.

Cleave made a move to extinguish the lantern, but he was too slow. A pair of scuffed boots appeared on the stairs. They seemed too small to support the girth of the man who followed them. It was a belly that wobbled its way down into view, a massive belly, buttoned into, but not contained by, a blue wool coat with tarnished brass buttons. The coat might once have been of some military order, but now was barely clinging to its usefulness. Beneath the straining wool, the man’s legs looked absurdly skinny, rather like a chicken’s, if chickens wore boots.

The rest of him did little to counter that impression. An impressive wattle fell over his neck cloth, the fifth of several chins, and the remaining reddish hair on his head had been combed straight up in a futile attempt to disguise its thinning, like the crest of a rooster.

“Guignon,” Alex mouthed, his face so close to hers that Penelope could feel his breath on her lips.

Penelope inclined her head to show that she had understood, angling her face away in a desperate bid at self-preservation. She was sure the signs of heightened awareness must be written all over her face, in the color in her cheeks, the quickening of her breath, the odd tingling of her lips, as though that accidental exhalation had been the prelude to a kiss. She had kissed him too many times in the past. She knew exactly how it felt and her treacherous body was intent on reminding her. Penelope found herself painfully aware of Alex’s arm clamped tightly around her waist. Admittedly, his arm was only there as a means of keeping her pressed back out of sight, but her body wasn’t interested in insignificant details. It just registered arm. Alex’s arm.

What was it that Charlotte had said? That she could never do anything in the normal course? Naturally. That would be why her body decided that being cornered by a French spy — a French spy who could probably squish them both in one go just by sitting on them — was an excellent time to contemplate a little bit of light dalliance.

The Frenchman clumped his way down to the bottom of the flight. Spotting Cleave, he raised a hand in a genial greeting. “Ah, you are here. Good. I hate the waiting, me.”

Next to her, Penelope could feel Alex stiffen into complete immobility as his eyes narrowed on his old schoolfellow.

Cleave’s eyes slid sideways towards the corner in which Penelope and Alex were hiding. “I think we should go upstairs. The air in here. Close, you know.” Cleave tugged at his collar in illustration. He did, indeed, seem to be feeling the heat.

“You do not want to check the inventory?” Guignon lumbered down the last few steps. His belly wobbled like a bowl of blanc mange as he indulged in a hearty chuckle. “I should not be so trusting, me.”

Sound sense on the Frenchman’s part, thought Penelope. Trusting often got one in trouble, as she could tell from the stunned expression on Alex’s face as he stared at his childhood playmate. Bewilderment warred with disbelief on Alex’s countenance as Guignon dealt Cleave a hearty slap on the back that sent the younger man staggering forward. Penelope found herself wanting to squeeze his hand, to touch his cheek, to offer some small gesture of comfort, whatever it might be. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and drag his head down into the crook of her shoulder and promise him that at least she was always what she was, no matter how the rest of the world dissembled and betrayed him. But she couldn’t. They were mewed in their corner like mice in a hole. Any movement might be fatal.

There was still always the chance that Cleave was what he claimed; that it was Guignon he had lured to the cavern under false pretenses; that he had lied to the Frenchman, and not to them. Penelope found herself hoping, for Alex’s sake, that it would be so.

Lord, she must be going soft in her old age. Much more of this and she’d find herself thinking like Charlotte, all hearts and stars and fluffy bunnies.

“It all seems to be accounted for,” said Cleave stiffly, making a doomed attempt to herd the Frenchman back towards the stairs. “As you promised.”

Guignon bumped Cleave out of the way with one casual wiggle, making an expansive gesture that encompassed the pile upon pile upon pile of munitions stacked against the stone walls. “An impressive sight, non ? Musket, powder . . . Par dieu! Who are they?”

“No one,” Cleave said hastily. “No one at all.”

Penelope did her best to look like a musket. Alex seemed to be doing a bit better with his stone pillar impression, but it was still not enough.

“You cannot fool me so easily,” said Guignon. “That ” — he nodded to Alex — “is not a keg of powder. And that ” — his gaze traveled appre ciatively over Penelope — “is most certainly not — ”

Penelope rose smoothly to her feet. “A loaded gun?” she said sweetly, training hers on his midsection. It was the largest target in the room, after all. As an extra precaution, she added chillingly, “All of the others are empty. I can shoot you long before you load.”

Guignon appeared to take her threat at face value, which was a very good thing, since Penelope wasn’t at all sure whether any of the muskets, rifles, and assorted instruments of destruction were loaded or not. Instead of reaching for the nearest firearm, he turned to Cleave, with a look that would have turned Medusa herself to stone.

With great dignity, he looked the other man in the eye, and pronounced, “You have betrayed me, Monsieur.”

Cleave opened his mouth in an immediate negation — and snapped it shut again as Alex stepped forward, his gaze as hard as Guignon’s. Harder, even.

“You’ve betrayed one of us,” Alex said. He said it in a conversational tone, but Penelope could hear the rough edge beneath. They had grown up together, she remembered. Played together. Studied together. He held tightly to his loyalties, as did Alex, and every betrayal was like a little fall of man. “Which one is it, Daniel?”

Cleave looked from one to the other, from Guignon’s threatening bulk to Penelope’s pistol and back again. “I didn’t — I mean — dash it, Alex! I had to. I had no choice.”

His voice was low and pleading. From the corner of her eye, Penelope could see Alex wince, as though pierced by a sudden, acute pain. And then it was gone and his face was under control again, but for a certain bitterness around the lips that hadn’t been there before.

“Had to?” Alex repeated. Shrugging, Guignon seated himself heavily on the bottom step, removed a squashed pastry from his waistcoat pocket, and proceeded to rip off a hearty bite. “Had to do what ?”

Cleave looked away. Penelope could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up over the edge of his cravat as he swallowed hard. “This,” he said in a low voice. “These.”

“You,” said Alex, in a hard voice. “You were the Marigold.”

“There is no ‘were’ about it,” contributed Guignon, spitting puff pastry as he spoke. With his accent thickened by a mouthful of doughy treat, it came out more as dere eez noo werr . “M. Cleave is the Marigold.”

“And the attack on Fiske?” demanded Alex, his eyes never leaving his old friend. “That was you?”

Cleave’s head moved in a barely perceptible nod.

“My handkerchief?”

Cleave pressed the back of his hand to his lips. “It was the handkerchief gave me the idea,” he said, in a barely audible voice. “I had one among my things. Kat” — he faltered on the name of Alex’s sister before pulling himself together — “Kat had given it to me. She said she had made you too many anyway. Not that it would have been hard to take one from you. I had — have — a man in your household. I would never have let them hang you,” he added desperately. “You have to believe that. It was just until — just until this was all over. And then I would have done everything I could for you, I promise.”

“Forgive me if your promises carry little weight at the moment,” said Alex dryly, and Cleave turned a deep, unbecoming red.

Penelope heard her own voice, as though from very far away. “You planted that cobra in my room, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean — ” Cleave took a stumbling step back in reflex as Alex tensed like a spring waiting to uncoil.