Confessions of a Little Black Gown (4 page)

His words trailed off, but Larken knew exactly what he meant.
Just a feeling.

After years in the field, there were times when only instincts could draw a line between facts and uncertainties.

Larken’s chest tightened as he came to the only conclusion he could see. And now he understood why they had awakened him.

At least he thought he did. “That’s why you came here…because you think it was the work of the—”

Pymm groaned. Loudly. And then vented his protest in a sharp burst of spleen. “If you say this is the work of the Order, I will have you both sent to Bedlam,” he declared, his finger wagging sharply. “
L’Ordre du Lis Noir
! Bah! Nothing but centuries of rumors and deceit by the French to keep fools distracted. Women spies! Bah!”

Temple and Larken shared a glance, the duke’s brows tipped at a rakish angle. It was rare they agreed on anything, but this, the Order of the Black Lily, was no fiction to them.

Pymm, while arguably the mastermind who kept England’s enemies at bay, wasn’t a field officer and had spent most of his years behind a desk. It was nigh on impossible to convince him of anything that couldn’t be proved with good evidence.

And evidence of the Order was just that—impossible to discover.

A league of female spies, founded by Mary of Guise, as most tales attested, that had continued, through the centuries, guarding and serving the various French queens and protecting them from the intrigues at home and abroad.

Men like Pymm scoffed at the notion that any woman could hold her tongue long enough to keep the Order’s workings a secret—let alone three centuries of French tarts staying mum.

To Larken, however, the Order was no mere conjecture, no fiction spun by the French to keep the English looking over their shoulders. Yet, to confess he knew the truth would risk revealing
how
he knew the French coven of spies existed.

That his father had been involved with the secret organization, fallen in love with one of them and aided her, until the vindictive lady had made it look like he’d committed treason…then murdered him when he sought the evidence to clear his name…

Hadn’t that been what Larken himself had been doing for years—covertly uncovering the Order’s workings while away on his missions for England? Something he doubted Pymm would have approved of.

Chasing after ghosts…a fool’s errand
, he’d call Larken’s self-appointed mission.

Now he saw he’d been right all along in his attempts to discover their leader, their followers, their mission. Because obviously, they’d brought their mischief to London.

They’d freed Dashwell to put him back on the high seas, so he could once again bedevil England’s navy.

But Larken’s hypothesis was about to find another skeptic.

“Actually, I don’t think this is the work of the Order,” Temple said, jolting him out of his reverie. “I have another theory.”

There was yet another snort from Pymm, but no outburst, and with this less-than-sterling endorsement, the duke continued, explaining his suspicions of what had happened in the shadow of Marshalsea’s protective walls.

And what a theory it turned out to be. For when Temple was finished, Larken gaped at him. “You think this was the work of a pair of Mayfair chits?” He threw up his hands and began pacing again.

And the Foreign Office called
him
unpredictable?

“You’re mad if you think two misses barely out of some Bath school could hatch such a plot.” Pacing a few steps more, Larken stopped and said, “And I suppose the driver still had her dancing shoes on?”

Pymm sat back, and for the first time in quite possibly the history of his career, he smiled. Well, his lips twitched upward.

“You haven’t been listening to me,” Temple argued, rising in front of him, putting a stop to his frantic striding across the carpet. “Thalia Langley and Lady Philippa aren’t your usual debutantes. Tally
grew up in the shadow of her father, Baron Langley, whom you know.”

Larken nodded grudgingly. Lord Langley, under the guise of a diplomat, had been gathering intelligence for England for over thirty years. His unorthodox methods, notorious love affairs, and unwillingness to foster out his daughters—dragging the girls from pillar to post across the Continent—had made him a bit of a pariah in the Foreign Office. But there had been no arguing his results.

“This wouldn’t be the first time Thalia Langley has broken a man out of jail,” Temple said.

Larken’s gaze flew up. “What?”

Then to his shock, Pymm nodded in agreement.

“She broke Lord John out of prison,” Temple explained. “When he’d been arrested by the local magistrate for smuggling—so don’t let her fair sex and Mayfair address fool you into thinking she isn’t a devious and resourceful handful.”

“But why would Lord Langley’s daughter want Dashwell freed?”

Temple shook his head. “She wouldn’t, ordinarily. It has everything to do with her cousin, Lady Philippa Knolles. The gel is, much to the dismay of anyone who knows her, quite smitten with Dashwell.” He paused, and sighed. “Nay, the girl’s head-over-heels in love with him, and she’d go to any length to see him rescued.”

“Wasn’t she the one who—” Larken began.

Temple cut him off with a curt nod, for he knew exactly what Larken was asking.

Lady Philippa had been there the night they’d
captured Dashwell, and a vision of the girl flitted through his memories.

“She’s blond, isn’t she?”

“Both of them are,” Temple said. “Tally and Pippin are very similar in appearance. And Dobbins was quite specific in his description of our mysterious lady in red. I have no doubt our primary suspect is Lady Philippa—whether or not Tally was this hag or the driver is yet to be discovered.”

“I remember the Knolles chit, but I don’t recall Miss Langley at all,” Larken said, sifting through his memories of that cold January night for some image of the lady in question.

“That’s good,” Pymm said. “For if you have no recall of her, then it is unlikely she will remember you.” He studied his coffee for a moment. “You were masked at that ball, correct?”

Larken nodded. “We all were. It was a masquerade.”

“Even better,” Pymm said, more to his cup of coffee than to either of the men before him. But he was like that. With an answer in hand, he was already plotting his next maneuver.

Larken still didn’t see what this had to do with him, but Pymm’s tone and their arrival on his doorstep at this ungodly early hour suggested they already had a scheme in the works.

One that he wasn’t going to like.

So, better to cut to the chase and get this over with. Or better yet, get them out of his house.

“Why not go search their residence?” he suggested. “They can’t have gone far. Probably tucked him away in the attic.”

Pymm heaved a disgruntled sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go barging into the Duke of Hollindrake’s house?” he asked. “You want me to go over to Grosvenor Square with a raft of officers, and tell His Grace that his wife’s sister and cousin are harboring an American privateer under his roof? If he didn’t have my head, Wellington would—he regards the former major as one his most brilliant officers.”

Hollindrake?
Oh, that put a different wrinkle on it. Larken glanced over at Temple.

The wry look on the duke’s face suggested he had another plan. “Dashwell isn’t in London. I know exactly where he is.”

Then what the hell are you doing here?
Larken stopped himself from asking aloud, instead glancing up at the ceiling where above them his bed sat. Where he’d be right now if he wasn’t stuck down here listening to Temple’s utterly mad theories and probably just-as-cock-brained solution to this mess.

“How can you be so sure?” Larken asked as he started across the carpet again, his agitation growing with every step. Whether it was left over from the dream of Paris or the news of Dashwell’s escape, he didn’t know.

And as much as that reckless shiver had run down his spine, baiting him with a need for adventure, the thought of going back out on assignment left him rife with fear.
Rash. Dangerous. Reckless.
The words in the report to Pymm haunted him. His fingers curled into a tight fist.

Bloody hell, Dashwell, why couldn’t you have just stayed put?

Temple rolled back on his heels, hands behind his
back. “Hollindrake and his entire household left for his estate in Sussex the morning after Dashwell’s escape. And I have no doubt Dashwell was with them—”

Larken spun around. “You aren’t suggesting that Hollindrake—”

Temple shook his head. “No! I doubt he’s any notion of what they’ve done. That’s why I think it was just Tally and Lady Philippa behind this…If they had involved Felicity…” he paused. “No, Felicity loves Hollindrake too much to risk treason at his doorstep—she probably has no more idea what her sister and cousin have done than the duke. And she’s unlikely to notice, for she’s got a house party about to commence and knowing the chit, she’s got eyes only for the details of making her first big social foray a stunning success.”

“So what has this to do with me?” Larken glanced over at Pymm and then Temple. “This seems more your sort of venture, house parties and the lot.” He didn’t mean this as a compliment, for he’d spent his years on the Continent in some of the harshest conditions, most dangerous spots, while Temple always seemed to be gadding about luxurious salons and palatial courts. “Trot on down to Sussex and search the place,” he told the duke, walking over to the door. His hand went to the latch. “Use your infamous charm, Temple, and leave me to get some sleep.”

“Under normal circumstances that is exactly what I’d do,” the duke agreed. “But I cannot.”

The shiver running down Larken’s spine turned into a warning tremble. “Why not?” he asked, against his better judgment.

“If I set one foot in that house, Tally and Lady Philippa will know we suspect them,” Temple replied.

“They know?”

Temple nodded. “Far too much. The night they broke Jack out of jail, those girls also saved my neck—’tis how Lady Philippa met Dashwell, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, that leaves only you.”

Larken looked up at him and saw the regret and caution in his eyes. So Temple thought him as mad as the rest of the Foreign Office. He shook his head, telling himself yet again that he no longer cared what the world what thought of him. “Send Clifton, send anyone. I have no intention of leaving London. Not now. Besides, I’m retired, might I remind you.”

“You’ll go,” Pymm said. “That’s an order.”

Larken opened his mouth to argue, but knew better and pressed his lips together in a tight line. The dark, dangerous gleam in Pymm’s eyes suggested it was no matter that one was deemed “a danger to himself and others.” When King and Country called, there was no choice.

Yet there was a small wrinkle in their plan. The sort of impasse that might save him from their plans.

“This will never work,” he said, leaning against the door. “I can’t simply show up uninvited and not arouse some sort of suspicion.” He took a deep breath and tried to sound every bit as convincing that he’d need to be to extricate himself from this folly. “Especially if these chits are as smart as you say.”

Pymm glanced over at Temple, nodding at him in a none-so-subtle cue to get on with it.

“We’ve been able to identify one of the guests,
and well, Elton has been dispatched to detain the fellow,” Temple said, mentioning his resourceful batman. “In the meantime,” he began, slowly pulling an envelope from his coat pocket. He held it out, and the last thing Larken wanted to do was take the damned thing. For, once he did…well, he’d be trapped into their mad scheme.

And madness was exactly what it was. A man didn’t need instincts to know that.

Heaving a resigned sigh, Larken took the folded paper and glanced down at the name and directions written in a woman’s perfectly elegant script.

The Reverend M. Ryder

Eveling House

Bindley by Way, Lincolnshire

He shook his head and went to hand the invitation back to Temple. “This isn’t for me. This is for some vicar.”

And then he saw what they wanted only too clearly when Pymm said with a rare bit of humor, “How is your recollection of
Fordyce’s Sermons
?”

Temple waited for Pymm outside Larken’s town house. It wasn’t long before Pymm concluded whatever private matters there were to seeing Larken on his way to Sussex, but he was suspicious nonetheless.

Pymm had insisted on sending Larken, a notion Temple was dead set against.

And he repeated as much the moment he turned
in step with Pymm as they walked down the quiet street. “I don’t like this.” Temple paused and then lowered his voice. “He’s too rash.”

“I’ve heard the same said of you.”

True enough
, Temple might agree.
But I’ve never killed as he has had to.