Twice Tempted (19 page)

How
had
she spent them? The longer he went without that runner’s report, the less he was certain.
The skills that kept them clothed and fed before I found them are never forgotten by women like that.
Her own grandfather’s words. What skills had he meant? Could it be that she was not innocent? That she had never been, even the first time he’d met her four years ago, a gamine queen in a cow pasture?

No. No, that had not been the kiss of an experienced woman. Even the kisses they’d shared the last few days had seemed unpracticed, impulsive. Not the seductive forays of a woman who made her living rousing desire. Surely he would know.

Surely.

“All right?” he heard next to him.

“Fine,” he said, straightening. When he saw the concern on Chuffy’s face he had to smile. “I have been battling unholy thoughts, Chuff.”

Chuffy’s frown deepened. He pulled off his glasses and applied his handkerchief. “Don’t worry, White Knight.”

Alex almost laughed in Chuffy’s face. He was planning to hunt down the man who was blackmailing him, and he hadn’t so much as informed Drake. He had come within ame’s aces of taking Fiona like a two-penny whore, and he couldn’t say for sure if he would have felt any guilt. “Oh, Chuff,” he said, patting his friend on the back. “What is it exactly you see through those spectacles?”

Chuffy’s expression was as guileless as ever. “Same as you. Brought Lady Bea. What now?”

Alex scrubbed at his face. “Well, I for one am about to have a tête-à-tête with our friend Drake. I have the most annoying sense that he won’t be as surprised by Madame Ferrar’s return as we were.”

“Want me along?”

He shook his head. “My father is a bit low on stamina at the moment. I’d appreciate your keeping watch here. When I return we’ll figure out where to go.”

Chuffy hooked his glasses over his ears. “Have an idea. Grandmother’s dower house. Out of the way. Pop over when I need some quiet to work on ciphers.”

“That might be the perfect place.”

They were walking out of the room when Chuffy stopped. “Reminds me. Ciphers. Think Lady Mae has some.”

That brought Alex to an abrupt halt. “Some what? Ciphers? What do you mean?”

Chuffy scratched at his nose. “Had some papers she was working on. Said they were word puzzles she got from her grandfather.”

Alex frowned. “Her
grandfather
? I have trouble believing that old curmudgeon shared games with anyone, much less his granddaughters.”

Chuffy suddenly looked very serious. “What if he has her decoding messages for him? Bright girl and all.”

I don’t have time for this right now
was all Alex could think. “How do you know it’s a cipher?”

Chuffy shrugged. “Don’t. But she had a strip of paper with a string of letters in groups of four. Snatched it away before I could copy more than a few groupings, but it looked familiar. Like the communiqués I’ve been working on. Think it needs a key.”

Alex felt a chill of prescience snake down his back. “The poem?”

Chuffy shrugged. “Tried every word in that poem on the messages we’ve already intercepted. Tried ’em backward. Don’t fit.”

“Why do you think they’ll fit here?”

“Don’t. Wouldn’t mind another eye on it, though.”

Alex took a minute on that one. What he and Chuffy were considering was against all the rules. They had no business bringing civilians into the mix. Especially when it might put them in further danger.

They could also be the break the Rakes needed.

“See if she’d like to help you,” he said.

Chuffy looked up. “Big decision,” he said.

Alex sighed. “I’ll tell Drake. Right after I wring his neck for putting these two women in danger.”

Chuffy huffed. “Give him a twist for me. Not right. Not such a sweet girl.”

Alex’s head snapped up. “Sweet girl?”

Chuffy blinked, as if Alex were the most stupid man on earth. “Lady Mae. Mean to make her Lady Wilde.”

Alex found himself staring at his oldest friend wondering how to tell him he’d just run barking mad. Wondering whether to tell him the possible scandal he was courting, the impossibility of a good outcome. “Do you really think that’s a good idea, Chuff?”

Chuffy’s answering smile was unbearably sweet. “Don’t think I have a choice.”

Which was when it struck Alex. No matter what he learned from the runner. No matter what his own father said, or Drake or Fiona or Ian. He wasn’t sure he did, either.

God, he wished it were that easy.

*  *  *

“She did
what
?” the old man bellowed.

Privens barely kept from running back to the house. He wished with all his heart he could have waited until the old man had come in from shooting. As it was, he was sharing bad news with a man who was holding a fully loaded Purdy in his arms.

“She…er, used her knives on the watchman. The team had no idea. They were in starting the fire so they could get the women out to search their bedroom. They’d had no success on the main floor.”

“And did they find anything in the bedrooms?” The old man could look quite terrifying, actually, when his choler was up. And it was definitely up. Not the Privens blamed him. This was a cock-up of major proportions.

“No, sir.” Privens looked away, possibly at his last sight of a late autumn sky. “The women…er, never quite made it outside. The guard had been left in the back doorway.”

The old man actually closed his eyes and cursed. “Was there any reason for her actions, or was she just bored?”

“She didn’t say, I’m afraid. She just…laughed.”

“Where. Is. She?”

“Uh, Madame Ferrar?” Privens was beginning to shake now. “We don’t quite…know.”

The eyes snapped open and twin blue fires blazed. “Well, find out. This has gone far enough. She is a liability, and I will no longer tolerate it. If you can’t get her safely to the continent, where she may slaughter the French and Swiss to her heart’s desire, than eliminate her. I don’t care. But do something!”

“Yes, sir.”

“It doesn’t alter the original problem. Where are the Ferguson women?”

Privens could barely get the words past his suddenly dry throat. “Well, sir, we, uh, don’t know that, either. We believe Whitmore snuck them away.”

Privens didn’t need any words to know that if he was forced to deliver one more message like this one, it would be the messenger who was eliminated.

“Then you had better locate Whitmore, hadn’t you? We need those women found.” The old man lifted the Purdy and sighted along its twin barrels, causing a sweat to break out down Privens’s back. “I hate wasting those letters on something this trivial. We could have coerced that prig Knight into compromising Foreign Affairs for us.” Sighing, he let the gun drop. “Well, we’ll have Weams find something else for us. There is always something else.”

“Yes, sir.”

Privens had almost made his escape, when the old man had one final thought. “Oh, and Privens. We’re running out of time. If anyone else finds out we’ve lost that message, we’ll be in serious trouble. I don’t care how the team recovers the items the Fergusons took. Just make sure they get them.”

Chapter 12

A
lex was not polite about invading Drake’s house. He pounded on the door as if the street were on fire, only to have the door opened almost immediately by Drake’s new butler.

“He’d better be here, Wilkins.”

The older man winked. “I believe he heard a rumor you might be on a tear, sir, and headed this way.”

Alex removed his hat and greatcoat and handed them over.

“May I ask how you are tonight, sir?” Wilkins asked, his eyes still twinkling.

Alex scowled. “You may not, you traitor. You deserted me, Wilkins.”

“Lord Drake made me a better offer.”

“He offered you more heads to crack. You are a barbarian.”

Wilkins bowed quite formally. “Only after hours, sir. Come this way.”

They found Drake bent over a billiards table potting a shot. “Grab a cue, Knight.”

“If I grab a cue, I’ll beat you over the head with it. Did you know that Minette Ferrar was on the loose?”

Drake straightened, his face impassive. “I assume you do.”

“She presented herself to Ian Ferguson’s sister as a possible client for her school. Chuffy and I walked right by her. But since we didn’t know she was at large, we never suspected her. Which meant she was then free to set fire to the ladies’ house and carve a man into Sunday roast in their garden.”

Every time Alex thought of that grisly scene, of that horrible keening and Fiona’s ashen features, he battled a fresh explosion of rage. He wanted to kill Minette Ferrar himself. He wanted to know she was as terrified as her victims.

Drake exhaled slowly, resting the cue on the ground. “That
is
unfortunate. Are the ladies unharmed?”

Alex frowned. “If you don’t count shaken and frightened and sick. They tripped over the body when they were fleeing the fire.”

Drake looked down. “Minette wants to draw out Ian, of course.”

“I told Fiona that would never happen. I hope I wasn’t lying about that, too.”

That brought Drake’s head up and Alex was considered by lazy blue eyes. “What else were you lying about?”

Alex met his gaze implacably. “That they weren’t in any danger. My credibility is stretched a bit thin right now.”

“Where are they?”

“My father’s house, which complicates things even more. Chuffy has retrieved Lady Bea. I’m hoping to get them all out by tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Where no one will think to find them,” Alex said. “Especially you.”

*  *  *

Four hours later, Fiona was back in a carriage rebruising the same patch of hip and bottom she had bruised on the last carriage ride, squashed between the window and Mairead in another job coach. She didn’t care where Alex was taking them, as long as they arrived soon. Ever since they had left his father’s town house and set off on this rambling trek meant to lose any interested followers, she had been dividing her time between Lady Bea’s carriage sickness and Mairead’s increasing distress. Even Chuffy had stopped trying to soothe her, evidently having run out of platitudes. The best Fiona could do was offer a flask of spirits—a bit to Mae, a bit to Lady Bea, and a bit more to herself.

“I want to get out,” Mairead kept whining, her voice pitched perfectly to pierce eardrums. “I want to go home.”

“A little selfish, you ask me,” Chuffy finally retorted, arms crossed. “Lady Fiona might want to see my surprise, even if you don’t.”

“I don’t. I want my house. I want my bed and my telescope and my books.”

“We have your books, sweetings,” Fiona said, her fingers numb from where Mairead was squeezing them. She didn’t have the heart yet to tell her sister that the tabletop telescope Margaret had lent them had been lost to the fire, its beautiful little lenses cracked like windows from a hard frost. “We’ll be there soon.”

Fiona wasn’t at all certain how much more she could tolerate. She had had less than three hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four, her own stomach roiled with the movement, and the brick at her feet had long since lost its warmth. She had spent two hours being interrogated by a Bow Street Runner, a magistrate, and Chuffy, and spent another two talking Mae into getting back into the coach.

Fiona was aching for rest, twitching with nerves at the thought that they might be followed by Madame Ferrar or any of her henchmen, and still distracted by the kiss she had shared with Alex.

Distracted.
What a pale word. Her body still hummed, as if she should shed light. Her lips still felt tender and her breasts heavy. And tears, useless, frustrating, unfamiliar tears, backed up in her throat as if that one kiss had loosened her hold over them.

She didn’t want to succumb. She couldn’t afford it. Not around Alex, and not now.

Fiona actually thought of grabbing the pillow from Mairead and burying her own face in it. Maybe she could resurrect the last trace of the lavender they’d slipped inside. Maybe she could remember the older scent of heather and gorse. Anything to soothe the growing clamor in her head.

“Well, I think you’re ungrateful,” Chuffy suddenly said, as if he had run out of patience.

Fiona’s eyes popped open to see Mairead staring at him as if he had bitten her. “And you are a selfish beast,” Mairead hissed, worrying at the thread on the old pillow in her arms. “How dare you press me? How
dare
you? You don’t understand.”

“Oh, but I do,” Chuffy said, leaning forward a bit. “You want to play with your toys. You haven’t even noticed that Lady Bea and your sister don’t feel at all well.”

“Oh, no, I—” Fiona didn’t get any more out before Chuffy glared at her. Chuffy!

Mairead turned on her, eyes wide and glistening. “Fee, no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Now see what you’ve done,” Fiona growled across the coach as Mae threw herself into Fiona’s arms, pillow and all. “I am perfectly fine, Mae. I believe Lord Wilde was just quizzing you.”

Chuffy tilted his head like a curious bird. “Got her attention, didn’t I?”

Mairead straightened like a shot. “Do you mean…do…Don’t…
ever
…do that again. Don’t, don’t, don’t, you miserable slug of an invertebrate! You’re the one giving Fee the headache.”

Fiona couldn’t believe it. Chuffy grinned. “Do too have a backbone,” he insisted. “Enough to keep you on your toes, my girl.”

Mae opened her mouth to argue. Fiona held her breath. Lady Bea, her eyes still closed, smiled as if she were listening to beautiful music. Fortunately for them all, the coach swung around a long curve and pulled to a jangling, rattling stop before a low-roofed, rambling house Fiona could barely see in the first wash of dawn. Elizabethan, she thought, comprised of old brick and gables, with a forest of chimneys on a meandering roofline, a plain oaken door, and a surfeit of mullioned windows.

At any other time, Fiona would have been delighted with the place. It was just the kind of venerable old lady she would have loved to explore from top to bottom, seeking out secrets and ghosts and surprises. At this moment, though, all she could think of was getting to some kind of bed she could sink into.