A fearless heart, p.1
A Fearless Heart, page 1
Gabriel Courtenay works tirelessly for the British Crown, part of the elite circle of spies known as the Zodiac. He is afraid of nothing, but his latest assignment may be his most deadly yet. A serial poisoner is taking down England’s most influential politicians and personalities one by one, leaving a grim message behind each time. Gabe puts the clues together to point the way to a mysterious estate with a shadowy owner no one ever sees: Calderwood.
Lady Arcadia has suffered tragedy after tragedy, leaving her a shell of herself. Worse, local rumors have driven most people away from Calderwood. All Arcadia wants is to study botany and chemistry and care for her vast gardens of rare plants, but when a suspiciously handsome new gardener shows up asking questions, she knows she can’t trust him.
When another death strikes too close to home, Arcadia has no choice but to accept the help Gabe offers. As they uproot the twisted trail of an assassin using Arcadia’s scientific advances for evil ends, the two grow ever more entwined. Can Arcadia overcome her greatest fears in time to stop the killer…or will someone she loves become the next victim?
Copyright © 2022
Cover art by Renu Sharma.
Cover design by James T. Egan, www.bookflydesign.com.
Edited by Amanda Valentine, ayvalentine.com.
Also by Elizabeth Cole
Secrets of the Zodiac Novels
A Heartless Design
A Reckless Soul
A Shameless Angel
The Lady Dauntless
Beneath Sleepless Stars
A Mad and Mindless Night
A Most Relentless Gentleman
Breathless in the Dark
Swordsworn Knights Novels
Honor & Roses
Choose the Sky
Raven’s Rise
Peregrine’s Call
Wallflowers of Wildwood
Daisy and the Duke
Rose and the Rogue
Heather and the Highlander
Poppy and the Pirate
Camellia and the Christmas Curse
Chapter 1
1812
A raw wind whipped over the bare meadows and gardens, chilling the woman who walked through them. Her gloved fist clutched the top of her black cape to keep the wind from ripping the garment open. Even so, the gust pushed her hood off, revealing dark curls that instantly tangled in the rough air. She pulled the hood back up and knelt on the garden path, reaching out to press her hand into the frost-rimed soil of a garden bed.
Despite the dour, cloudy sky and the cruel weather, Arcadia Osbourne smiled to herself. Though winter seemed to have a deadly grasp on the land, spring lurked underneath, ready to surge forth. She could feel the soil’s softness, and almost hear the awakening of the still-subterranean seeds. One warm, gentle sunny day should do it.
Then she lost her smile. This spring would be different from all the rest. She was alone now, and there were precious few hands to tend the extensive grounds and give her the necessary time to care for the truly rare specimens that were her responsibility to maintain.
No, she wasn’t alone, she quickly reminded herself. Though her brother lived in London, Cady knew that she could reach out to him at any time. Their relationship was the sort that didn’t require constant attention. A quiet yet bone-deep love had grown up amid some harsh times and intense scrutiny from their very demanding father. If Cady ever needed Trevor, he’d be there in a twinkling.
She noticed a spot of color against the dark soil. A plant was just pushing through the earth—a mere speck with two minuscule leaves. She put her finger under one leaf, though she knew that these first leaves, called cotyledons, did not resemble the identifying shape that all future leaves on this planet would share.
“What are you?” she asked the seedling. “A violet? A moonflower? Or something a little different? I’ll just have to keep an eye on you and see, hmm?”
As she regarded the tiny sprout, she was startled by an unexpected movement. A gray spider jumped from the mound of earth to the back of her gloved hand. She shook it off, standing up so quickly that she nearly overbalanced. The pleasure of seeing the new plant evaporated in the aftermath of the spider’s arrival.
Did it bite her? No, it couldn’t have. She was wearing thick cotton gloves. But what if it had bitten through the fabric? No, she’d have felt it. She would have had to have felt it, wouldn’t she?
She looked back at the house, feeling that it was too far away now. How had she been so silly as to walk so far from the safety of the buildings? She’d been blithely confident earlier, sure that nothing could happen on a simple walk.
“I’ll go back and wash my hands and apply alcohol to the spot,” she muttered to herself. “No, take the gloves off first, and check for a hole in the fabric on the right hand. No need to fret over nothing. It’s nothing.”
Walking briskly back toward the house, she shook her head in disgust. She told herself it’s nothing a hundred times a day, and the words always failed to reassure her. She knew exactly where the spider had landed, and she focused on the sensations there. Did her skin feel warmer? Was there pain?
No, but there might be soon. She had to stay alert, examine her skin for changes, be very, very careful to not get herself into a situation like this again, and also careful to not worry the servants or let her concern show, because there was very likely nothing to worry about. And she could hardly maintain order over the house and the estate if she were considered touched in the head, could she? The worries piled upon themselves, making it hard to breathe.
Inside the house, the footman Vernon greeted her. “Ah, back already, Lady Arcadia? You must be chilled to the bone.” Vernon had served her family for decades, starting out as a scullery lad. He was really too old to serve as a footman now, but who else was available?
“It was brisk,” Cady admitted, unclasping her long cape.
Vernon took the proffered cape and stood uncertainly for a moment, until she realized he was also waiting for the gloves.
“Oh, I’ll just keep these,” she said quickly. “I wanted to look at the stitching before I forget.”
“Yes, my lady.” The slight crease of his forehead betrayed that he wanted to ask why, but he was far too well trained to do so. Still, his gaze was a little reproving, as if Cady had been found wanting in some way. It was a look rather like her father’s…and considering that Vernon had worked in the house under her father’s rule, the similarity in expression made sense. This whole house was a reflection of her father’s ideals.
“I’m going to my room,” she said. “Will you tell Cook to have some hot tea and some of those scones sent up?”
She ascended the stone staircase to the upper floor, conscious of how odd it was to wear the long, heavy, outdoor gloves while parading down the hall. Once in her room, she sagged against the door. Here she was safe. No one to watch her peel off the gloves and stare intently at the right-hand one, stretching and pulling the fabric to ascertain if a spider had nibbled through the layer. Nothing.
“There’s nothing. It’s a spider, not a pair of scissors.” Annoyed at herself, she flung the gloves onto the back of a chair, then raised her hand to the light from the window, tilting it to see if any bump was rising, or the skin was reddening, or she was showing imminent signs of falling prey to the first arachnid of the season.
Nothing.
“Of course there’s nothing, Cady. It’s always nothing.”
Bold talk, but her heart was still beating a pattern of what-if, what-if, what-if inside her rib cage.
A meow interrupted her worries, and a circle of tabby stretched and stood up on the cushion of a chair near the fireplace. The cat blinked slowly, meowing again.
“Oscar, you have a cat bed of your very own not five steps away. Why must you insist on sleeping on people’s furniture?”
She moved to the fireplace and bent to pet the cat. Oscar started purring immediately and pushed his head up to receive firmer pettings and scratches. Cady always admired the cat for his ability to not worry about anything. He’d been discovered years ago as a stray, hiding in one of the sheds. A groundskeeper had been about to drown him, the common practice for stray kittens. But Cady and Trevor had come upon the scene just in time and begged and pleaded for the cat’s life to be spared.
In repayment for this mercy, Oscar did practically nothing. He slept all day and most of the night, and he tended to meow loudly at shadows for no particular reason. He sometimes decided to curl up on Cady’s own pillow, shoving her to the side in the middle of the night. He occasionally left dead mice inside her slippers.
But Cady loved him all the same. Love is a gift to given, not a prize to be earned.
There was a knock on the door, and Cady stood up straighter. “Yes, bring the tray in!” she called, forcing her tone to be light and cheerful.
“Tea for you,” her maid, Martha, announced, carrying a huge tray to the low table by the fireplace. “We’ll have snow tonight, I shouldn’t wonder. Those clouds look nasty.”
“If we do, it will be the last snow of the season,” Cady said. “The wild onions are up, and even the garden plants are waking. I don’t suppose there have been any takers for those positions I asked Mr Rundle to post? I need a groundskeeper, or we’ll all be living in a tanglewood come June.”
“He’s not mentioned it, but I’m sure we’ll have new faces here soon.” Martha’s optimism was brittle, and Cady knew why. Despite offering greater than usual wages, she still couldn’t convince locals to come to the estate. Not with t he rumors that began to fly the moment her father, the Earl of Calderwood, passed away.
“Some men to help out would be best, I think. The dogs want exercise, not to mention the horses.”
“Perhaps I could walk them…” Cady began to say, though she already doubted herself.
Martha must have been having her own doubts. “Nonsense, my lady. You couldn’t possibly manage them on your own.”
Her father’s wolfhounds were massive creatures able to take down a full-grown deer. Cady lacked the physical strength to hold their leashes should they spot prey. However, the other reason that she refused to walk them (or spend any time with them now) was that she was afraid of them. She hadn’t always been. As a little girl, she remembered curling up against the dogs and drowsing before a fire on a winter’s day. But now that her father wasn’t around, she was always worried that the dogs would turn on her, decide she was the prey, and then tear her to pieces.
Sighing, Cady turned her attention to the tea tray. “Is this all for me, or did I invite ten guests and just forgot about it?” Another poor joke. There hadn’t been ten guests at the house for months. She dipped her finger in the dish of cream and then held her finger toward Oscar, who leaned over to lick it off. His yellow eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“All for you, miss—not that cat—and I do hope you’ll partake of some of it. You’re wasting away. Cook made her onion soup and there’s fresh bread and that good white cheese from over the hill. Will you want supper downstairs?” she asked.
Cady shook her head, wearied by the maid’s questions. Her own servants ordered her around all the time! “No. Just a tray up here again. About six, and then I’ll go to my lab.”
“And stay up all night working on your experiments. You’ll work yourself sick.”
“It’s not work, it’s just a way to pass the time.” Cady couldn’t explain the intricacies of botany to Martha, who regarded plants as either useful in a salad, or weeds to be yanked out of the pathway to the dairy. And she certainly couldn’t confide the more esoteric hopes she had in her chemical experiments, which utilized the exotic specimens growing in a special glasshouse next to her laboratory. The servants did not like her laboratory, and it was the one place where Cady could count on being alone.
A dark spot moving on the china caused her to jump, and she tipped the plate as she grabbed for it. The darkness fell to the floor.
“Was that a spider?” she gasped.
The maid leaned over with a frown and plucked up the dark spot. “Goodness no. Just a currant that escaped the scone. Besides, it’s too early in the year for spiders.”
“Of course. My mistake.” Cady tried to look calm. How she wished she had someone to talk to, someone she could trust to listen and not laugh in her face when she recited her litany of fears. To hope for someone to solve her problems did not even occur to her…and if it had, she would have instantly dismissed the hope as too ambitious. No, the mere presence of a friend would be miracle enough.
There was her brother…but no. She could not add to his complications by piling on her own amorphous, probably entirely fanciful fears.
“Enjoy your tea, my lady,” Martha said on her way out.
Cady maintained the proper posture and the light smile until the door closed and the footsteps faded down the hall. Only then did she carefully set the teacup down and curl up into a tight ball on the armchair, folding herself into a tiny, compressed seed. Oscar saw his opportunity and pounced upon the forgotten dish of cream.
Had she also imagined the spider outside in the garden? Was she prodding at her hand, looking for a bite from a creature that was not just harmless, but maybe never even existed?
“I am losing my mind,” she whispered. “God help me, I am completely losing my mind.”
Chapter 2
That same evening, miles away in London, a large and utterly boring building stood on one corner where Powell and Gate Streets met. A painted placard on one brick wall announced it as a prime location for commerce and progress…which in practice meant that offices were available to let.
A number of firms had their offices in the building, from a tiny one-desk affair rented out by an elderly gentleman offering Russian, German, and French translation services, to a publisher of cheap novels that occupied an entire floor of the building. Nearly all of these businesses were exactly what they purported to be.
One was not.
Despite the hour, a man walked up the steps and opened the far left door. An observer would first notice that he looked dead tired. His eyes were accented by dark circles, and his blond hair hadn’t seen the benefit of a comb for several days. His outfit was unremarkable for a laborer, though few laborers came to this building. A shabby greatcoat, perhaps a castoff from an employer, kept off the chill of the night air. His footwear was difficult to discern in the slowly rising mist.
Gabriel Courtenay went inside and proceeded to pass by every door of every business—which was just as well, considering that all the businesses were long closed at this hour. Not that most people would look upon him as a good prospect, with his rough clothing, his unshaven face, and the general air of weariness he exuded.
When he reached the fifth floor, Gabe shuffled down the long hallway and knocked at a door with a sign declaring it to be the offices of Circle Imports. He knocked in a very particular rhythm, showing more energy than his appearance would suggest.
A moment later, the door opened.
A young woman stood there, with ash-blonde hair pulled up in a careless bun. Rather than a high-waisted gown popular at the time, she wore a white shirtwaist and a black wool skirt that was so long it brushed the wooden floors. She regarded him with a critical eye, then said, “Well. If we’d known you had to dig your way out of a grave to get here, we could have delayed the meeting.”
“Do I look that terrible, Miss Chattan?”
“Frankly, yes.” She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter, then locked the door behind him. This business did not care for uninvited guests. “Aries is in his office. Go on in.”
Gabe nodded. As far as he could tell, Aries was always in his office, for Circle Imports was the front for an organization of spies known as the Zodiac. The group was under the jurisdiction of the British government (an obscure branch, to be sure—so obscure that Gabe didn’t know which branch it was, or whether the other people working there even knew that the Zodiac existed).
At any one time, there were twelve active agents, headed by Aries—Aries being the first sign of the Zodiac. Aries reported to the Astronomer, who was the true head of the organization. What he or she did with all the information the agents gathered Gabe could only guess. He’d never met the Astronomer, and he never would. Clandestine agencies thrived on mystery. In fact, Gabe had only met three other Signs in the course of his whole career.
One of those Signs was Julian Neville, the man codenamed Aries. He worked at all hours, like a spider at the center of a web, pulling this string and that string, gathering signals and weaving a complex pattern to discern what the spies of Europe were plotting next.
When Gabe pulled out a chair and sat down with a little huff of relief, Aries smiled at him briefly. “Capricorn, you’re alive. Well, that’s something.”
“That last assignment was a little difficult,” Gabe admitted. “I’d hoped for a bit of a breather.”
“I wish I could oblige you. However.” Julian slid a sheet of paper across the desk.
Gabe picked it up, reading a list of names:
Sir Michael Montgomery
John Worthham
Wilfred Cawson, Baron Murol
Charles Tompsett
Lewelleyn Parrish
He frowned, matching the names to vague memories of reading news reports over the last few months. “Some of these men are dead.”
“All of them are dead,” Julian clarified. “The most recent died this week, which is why you probably didn’t hear about it. News takes a while to get over to the Continent. And you have been busy.”
“What’s the connection?” Gabe asked, still processing the names.
“That is what I’d kill to find out. They’re all men in positions of importance, whether in government or business or merely by the fact of their lineage. All believed to be very healthy, and with no hint of any physical problems that might turn serious. Yet they have all died. And not by accident or misadventure. They go to sleep…and they never wake up.”
