“Meaning,” translated Robert delicately, “that a new doctor would have to be appointed. Someone unknown.”

Henrietta’s almond eyes had gone nearly as round as Charlotte’s. “That would explain Dr. Simmons. Once in the King’s apartments, he could steal all the secrets he liked.”

For a moment, there was complete silence in the carriage as they all sat staring at one another, speechless at the sheer audacity of the scheme.

“Good God,” breathed Miles.

“Not God,” said Charlotte. “The Prince of Wales. He has the power to appoint the King’s physicians in these . . . well, these interludes. And the Prince of Wales is friends with Sir Francis Medmenham.”

“Who knew Wrothan,” Robert finished grimly. “As you’ve now witnessed for yourself, Medmenham maintains a . . . secret society of sorts.” He looked at her as though daring her to elaborate on his description. “Wrothan was a member.”

“A secret society?” echoed Henrietta.

“Hellfire Club,” elaborated Miles.

That explained the monks’ habits and the bizarre ritual. “Then the only question,” said Charlotte, “is whether Medmenham deliberately sent Wrothan to impersonate Simmons or whether Wrothan heard through Medmenham that a new physician was being appointed and interjected himself.”

“Not exactly the only question,” put in Lieutenant Fluellen equably. “For the sake of argument, let’s say the King was being drugged with opium before they called for a doctor. How did they get it to him in the first place?”

Charlotte remembered that first night, Lord Henry Innes standing irritable and anxious at the door of the King’s bedchamber. “Henry Innes is a member of Medmenham’s secret society, isn’t he?” she asked, looking to Robert.

He confirmed her hunch with a distant nod.

Charlotte soldiered on. “Lord Henry was in attendance on the King. If someone — like your Wrothan — were to give Lord Henry something and tell him it was a nerve tonic or a cure for stomach upsets — ” From the expressions of the others, Charlotte could see they understood. She hurried on. “I saw the King the night he was first taken ill, before the doctor was called. He didn’t act quite as he was reported to in his other illnesses. Rather than being hurried and agitated, there was something almost . . . dreamy. His eyes didn’t seem to want to focus quite properly.”

Lieutenant Fluellen looked at Robert. “Sounds like opium to me.”

“But why” — Miles leaned forwards, bracing his hands on his knees — “would your Frenchie kill Wrothan? Wrothan was his entrée into the palace.”

“Unless,” suggested Charlotte wildly, “he had another false Dr. Simmons lined up. There might be a whole regiment of them. A monstrous regiment of Dr. Simmonses.”

“Or,” countered Robert in a voice that effectively quelled Charlotte’s desire to giggle, “he had already extracted what he wanted. I overheard the two of them talking tonight. Wrothan was bragging that he had removed something from the palace.”

“Did he say what?” asked Henrietta.

Robert held up both hands in a gesture of defeat. “He compared it all to a game of cards. He kept talking about having the King in his hand.”

Charlotte remembered the King as she had seen him: entirely helpless, strapped into a straight waistcoat, denied the use of his limbs, weak and wasted.

“What else did he say?” Charlotte asked urgently, shoving her lap rugs out of the way.

Robert smiled grimly. “Wrothan was waxing poetic today. When the Frenchman asked his price, he demanded a king’s ransom. I imagine Wrothan thought he would get more if he left it to the imagination.”

“Turn the carriage around,” Charlotte said breathlessly.

“What?” said Miles.

“Please.” Reaching out, Charlotte caught at his arm. “Tell your coachman to go to the Queen’s House. As fast as he can.”

“Isn’t it a bit late to go calling at the Palace?” said Miles cautiously, in the sort of tone one uses with small children and excitable maiden aunts.

Looking around the circle of faces in the carriage, Charlotte encountered identical stares of incomprehension. Didn’t even one of them see what she saw? Perhaps it was because they hadn’t been there. Or perhaps it was because they didn’t read as many novels. On the face of it, she realized, it did sound absurd, but she couldn’t think of a better explanation for the events of the evening. And if she was right . . .

Charlotte squashed her hair back behind her ears with both hands and stared imploringly at her companions. “Don’t you see? They can only have been talking about the King. Not a king, the King.”

As they all stared at her uncomprehendingly, the level of her voice rose. “If the false doctor was planted by the French spy to secure something that the doctor then ran off with to hold it for ransom — not just any ransom,” Charlotte continued relentlessly. “A king’s ransom.”

“No,” said Robert flatly. “No. It can’t be.”

“What else can it be?” Charlotte twisted the lap rug so hard that it nearly ripped in two. “Your Mr. Wrothan has kidnapped the King!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“We don’t know that,” said Robert forcefully, when the furor had died down enough for him to make himself heard. “We don’t know anything of the kind.”

Charlotte’s small hands were clasped as if in prayer. “What else is there in the Palace worth stealing?”

“Aside from state papers, priceless art, a king’s ransom in silver and jewels . . .”

Charlotte waved all that aside. “Why else drug the King into a state of insensibility?”

“I can think of a number of reasons,” said Robert grimly. “You can have your pick. There’s simple theft, the Prince of Wales’s reversionary interest, or an attempt to sow discord by our friends across the Channel.”

“Any of those might have been the original plan. But,” Charlotte took a very deep breath, “what if your friend decided to take it a step further?”

“He wasn’t my friend.” Robert wasn’t sure why he felt the need to specify that, but he did. “He was never my friend.”

“Your enemy, then. Suppose your enemy double-crossed his conspirator and, finding himself in a position to do so, made off with the King. It needn’t have been a well-thought-out plan,” she added, as an afterthought. “He might simply have seen the opportunity and seized it.”

“Like a boy with a plate of unguarded jam tarts?” Robert saw the quick flash of recognition before Charlotte’s eyes dropped again.

“Rather larger, but otherwise the same idea,” acknowledged Charlotte, not quite meeting his eyes. “He saw his opportunity and seized it.”

It would be like Wrothan to snatch up whatever fell conveniently into his path, whether it belonged to him or not, but Robert had difficulties with the logistics of it. One didn’t just walk off with a monarch.

“It’s one thing to seize a jam tart and quite another thing to seize a King,” Robert pressed. “As you said, the King is larger. And, one would presume, would be more likely to protest at being carried off.”

“You have to admit that he has a point,” said Miles, who had been watching the exchange like a spectator at a sporting match. “My pudding seldom protests. People do.”

“Not if they’re bound and drugged. The people, I mean, not the puddings.” Charlotte cast an imploring glance around the carriage. “None of you saw the King I did. Anyone could have walked in, tossed him over his shoulder, and walked out with him.”

“With the King,” Robert said incredulously. “Aren’t there guards? Attendants? Something?”

Charlotte shook her head. “The King prides himself on not surrounding himself with guards. He says he doesn’t like to be separated from his subjects. As for attendants, as soon as he fell ill, all his pages were dismissed. His most loyal gentlemen of the bedchamber were barred from him. The Queen, too,” she added. “We were told it was all by his own orders.”

Miles pounded with one large fist on the hatch leading to the box.

“The Queen’s House,” he instructed the coachman. Looking sheepish, he said, “I suppose it doesn’t hurt to check. Just to set Charlotte’s mind at ease.”

“Charlotte is all appreciation,” murmured Charlotte, although she looked anything but at ease. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that it was a wonder they didn’t crack. She looked, Robert thought, like the more fragile sort of porcelain shepherdess, in danger of shattering at a careless touch.

“How do you intend to get in?” asked Robert brusquely as the carriage drew up by St. James’s Park. He knew he was being surly, but he couldn’t seem to help it. Too much had happened, and none of it the way he had planned it. Wrothan was meant to be dead by his sword, not by an assassin’s knife. And Charlotte . . . Charlotte was meant to be safe at home not tracking murderers by moonlight. “I imagine one can’t just stroll in to the King’s apartments.”

“One can, actually,” Charlotte said demurely. “If one knows how to go about it.”

“Lead the way, O Captain, my Captain,” signaled Miles, with an extravagant salute.

And she did. It was Charlotte who took the lead, Charlotte who guided them through the snow and the slush, down a long avenue shaded by lime trees to a square courtyard. They passed a dry fountain, the stone statues around its edge huddling in on themselves against the cold. Locating an entrance half obscured in the shrubbery, Charlotte guided them downstairs, through a warren of subterranean rooms that smelled pungently of glue and leather.

“This is the King’s personal bindery,” Charlotte explained in a whisper. “It connects to the library.”