“I shouldn’t like to be shot,” Charlotte agreed, but she continued to cling to the ladder without moving. She wasn’t particularly sure that down was a safe place to be. Unfortunately, up wasn’t an option, either. He could undoubtedly shoot faster than she could climb.

“Now, Lady Charlotte,” said the monk, very, very patiently, and Charlotte reluctantly began to shimmy downwards, feeling her way down rung by rung. Henrietta had been wrong; it wasn’t any harder going down than it had been going up, but Charlotte deliberately drew out the process, playing for time. If she dawdled long enough, there was a chance the men might finish in the tunnels and charge up to rescue them. Or they might stay down there, searching for nonexistent villains and exchanging witty quips. Charlotte suspected the latter. A more likely avenue of opportunity was Henrietta’s discarded pistol. Where had she left it? Charlotte thought she remembered Henrietta setting it down by the base of the ladder, but her mind had been on other things at the time.

Twisting, shoulder level off the ground, she peered down at the Frenchman as though something had just occurred to her. Which it had. But it also made an excellent opportunity to try to look for the pistol.

Charlotte donned her daftest, vaguest expression — which, as her grandmother was fond of saying, was very daft indeed. “How do you know my name?”

The Frenchman was neither impressed nor diverted. “That would be telling.”

Charlotte widened her eyes at him in the way that had worked so well on the real Dr. Simmons. “I suppose it would be futile to ask who you are?”

“Very.” The Frenchman gestured with his pistol, but not before Charlotte thought she saw something metallic on the ground by the crumpled form of Wrothan’s fallen guard. Charlotte gave silent thanks to St. Lawrence, or whomever it was to whom Medmenham had dedicated the church. The curve of the man’s body shielded the firearm from the Frenchman’s view. “Come along, Lady Charlotte, no dawdling.”

“I’m not very good with ladders,” said Charlotte disarmingly. “I haven’t a very broad acquaintance with them.”

“All the more reason not to prolong your acquaintance with this one,” said their captor pleasantly. “Peter? Would you care to help Lady Charlotte along?”

It was decidedly unclear just what sort of help he intended. From the way Peter — Charlotte assumed he must be Peter, since he had sauntered forwards at the Frenchman’s call — lifted his pistol, potting pigeons came to mind.

“No — no!” Charlotte flailed a foot behind her as she felt for the next rung down. It wasn’t entirely an act. There was nothing like being aimed at to wreak havoc with one’s sense of balance. “That’s quite all right. I can manage.”

Moving with more speed than grace, she deliberately floundered her way down the next few rungs. It was mostly deliberate, at any rate. She was feeling more than a little bit wobbly, and her skirt seemed to catch at her calves even more than usual. Just as a pair of hands reached out to lift her off the ladder, Charlotte contrived to fall sideways, bumping into Peter in the process. Peter stumbled gratifyingly, and Charlotte fell heavily to her knees by the side of the ladder. As Peter swayed and swore, Charlotte scooped the pistol up under her skirt, wedging it as best she could in her garter under pretense of floundering on the floor.

One could only flounder for so long; grabbing a hand, Peter yanked her unceremoniously to her feet, all but pulling her arm out of the socket in the process.

“I’m all right,” she said breathlessly, making a show of swaying dizzily. Her garter sagged but held, just barely supporting the weight of the metal. Charlotte clamped her knees together, trapping the barrel between her thighs. “Really I am.”

“You are also,” said the Frenchman dryly, “blocking the ladder. Jack?”

Peter dragged her backwards while another of the Frenchman’s henchmen made for the ladder, presumably in pursuit of the hidden King. Across the width of the ladder, Charlotte’s eyes met Henrietta’s. She let her eyes slide sideways, towards the ladder. In response, Henrietta lowered both eyelids in a discreet blink. That was one of the joys of over a decade of friendship: There was no need for words to communicate.

They were agreed. It would be much easier to let the Frenchman’s men fetch the King down first and stage their rebellion after, while the Frenchman was preoccupied with the King. At least, Charlotte was fairly sure that that was what Henrietta’s blink meant.

In the meantime, it was best to continue to be as daft as possible. Charlotte fluttered her lashes at the Frenchman, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her knees were pressed together at a very odd angle.“Shouldn’t your men be Jacques and Pierre?” she asked. “Rather than Jack and Peter?”

“I believe in supporting the local economy,” said the Frenchman blandly. “It would be very inadvisable to travel with a foreign retinue. I am sure your brother would agree with me — Lady Henrietta.”

So he knew who Henrietta was, too. Charlotte had the greatest respect for the Frenchman’s intelligence-gathering network. They were obviously immensely thorough.

Henrietta regarded him narrowly, as though staring long and hard enough might provide a clue to his identity. “Do you know Richard?”

“So to speak.” The Frenchman had his eyes on the ladder, watching as his man climbed, steadily and far more speedily than Charlotte, up towards the painted scene on the ceiling, but Charlotte had no doubt that he was equally attuned to her and Henrietta.

“What do you want with the King?” Charlotte asked boldly.

If he was going to kill them, he would do it, anyway, so where was the harm in asking? Charlotte was nearly certain that he had no interest in killing them, unless circumstances somehow made their deaths absolutely imperative.

Robert would probably say that was taking her trusting nature too far, but Charlotte didn’t think it was about being trusting. It was about the Frenchman not wanting to make more of a mess than he had to.

“I don’t want your King particularly,” said the Frenchman with disarming frankness. “But as you can see, events have forced my hand. I can’t very well leave him here, can I?”

Charlotte felt that that was a rather disingenuous portrayal of the situation. “But you drugged him,” she pointed out. “Why, if not for this?”

With a Gallic shrug, the Frenchman dodged the question. “The old man was half mad, anyway. He scarcely noticed the difference. All I did was . . . help him along a bit.”

“That,” said Charlotte sternly, or at least as sternly as she could with her arms clamped behind her back, “is not an excuse.”

“Justice with her flaming sword,” murmured the Frenchman. “How charming. If somewhat trite.”

“I prefer old-fashioned,” said Charlotte helpfully. “It sounds better that way.”

On the very top of the ladder, his minion — Jack, if Charlotte remembered correctly — was beginning to descend with a man-size bundle draped over his back.

“Well done, Jack,” the Frenchman called. “When you are finished, bring him out to the carriage.”

“Carriage?” said Charlotte, as Jack reached the midway point, carefully balancing his royal burden.

“I fear you will come to know it rather intimately,” said the Frenchman, and although he spoke matter-of-factly, there was something decidedly ominous his words. “I cannot leave you here.”

“Can’t you?” faltered Charlotte.

“As much as I hate to disoblige a lady . . .” The Frenchman held up both hands in a stylized gesture of helplessness. “You do pose something of an inconvenience, you realize.”

“What do you intend to do with us?” Henrietta asked darkly.

“Isn’t the usual procedure to drop you in an oubliette pending ravishment?” He smiled blandly as Henrietta scowled at him. Henrietta had never enjoyed being made fun of. “You really must resort to better reading material, Lady Henrietta. I am, I fear, flat out of oubliettes, and I have no desire to be pursued by your large and irate male relations vowing vengeance. I have,” he added tantalizingly, “met them before. No. Once we have gone a sufficient distance from Wycombe, you will be left at a perfectly nice coaching inn to find your own way back to London. I will even pay for a private parlor. We wouldn’t want you mingling with the masses.”

“Then why take us along at all?” asked Henrietta grumpily.

“Because if I leave you here, you will be able to raise the alarm. It’s really quite simple.” His air of superiority reminded Charlotte of Henrietta’s older brother in one of his lecturing moods; it clearly struck Henrietta the same way. “By the time your companions finish searching the grounds for you, we should be well out of the way.”

“There is a flaw in your reasoning somewhere,” insisted Henrietta.

“When you find it, do be good enough to let me know. Ah, Jack. Excellent.” The Frenchman’s man presented the King to his master like a butler with a decanter of claret. The King was unconscious, unshaven, and strapped into a straight waistcoat. There was a distinctly unpleasant odor to him. Whatever other accommodations Wrothan might have made for his stay, he had never contemplated the incompatibility of a chamber pot and a straight waistcoat. The poor King. The degradation of it all made Charlotte’s throat tight.

The Frenchman’s nose twitched. “This is going to be a very uncomfortable carriage ride,” he said resignedly.

“Couldn’t we change him?” Charlotte suggested tentatively. “We could wrap him in my cloak if there aren’t any other clothes to be had.”

“Swaddled tenderly as a babe by your own lily white hands? I think not, Lady Charlotte.”