No Place for a Dame (36 page)

“Anne?” Befuddlement flickered across Jameson’s face then cleared. “Oh. The woman. I don’t care what happens to her. I only want Jack. We have unfinished business, he and I. Business I will see come to an end, by God.” His voice shook slightly.

“Sir Jameson, even if I did know where Jack was, I would not tell you. But the fact is that I do not,” Giles repeated.

Jameson stood up and pointed the end of his cane at Giles. “Lord Strand. If you do not tell me where Jack is by evening tomorrow, I will release to the ton a most titillating scandal, that being that the boy the Marquess of Strand has been introducing around as his protégé and lobbying to have made a member of one of London’s most august societies is, in fact, his lover. His catamite.”

Giles froze. The conversation had suddenly taken a turn that would require immediate action. A hundred threads for a thousand plans streamed through his imagination at breakneck speed while he contrived to keep his countenance from revealing his thoughts.

Jameson took his silence for shock. He sneered.

“And when that happens you may as well be dead. You will never be received anywhere again.” He chuckled. “And we all know how very much you love your consequence, Lord Strand.”

Giles had heard those words before, from his father. And just as they had been then, they were evidence of how little the speaker knew him. But where those words had hurt before, now they bought him precious time. Time to put into action an idea forming as he watched Jameson gloat.

“So then?” Jameson demanded. “What’s it to be?”

Giles kept his gaze fixed on his clenched fists, allowing Jameson to think panic made his knuckles go white, a plan coalescing in his mind. He must speak to Travers at once, before he left to meet Bees.

As much as he wanted to, he could not delay his visit there. To do so might put Jack and Anne in danger. If Bees had information about their whereabouts, he would not hesitate to sell it twice, the second time to Jameson. Giles had to pick up their trail before Jameson knew there were breadcrumbs leading to it.

But the plan he’d just concocted could still be put into play during his absence. Words could begin to be whispered in the right ears. He would have to put Burke’s talents and connections to use. It would be risky, but then they already stood on the precipice of disaster.

“Tell me now and save yourself a trip,” Jameson said softly.

“You’re mistaken in your assumptions about me.”

Jameson chuckled.

“For the last time, I don’t know where Jack is.”

Jameson’s eyes went flat and cold. He spun on his heels and yanked open the door. He glared at Giles over his shoulder. “You have until tomorrow night to rethink your position.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

H
ere I am, Alf. What do you have for me?”

Alfie Bees continued daintily peeling a hard-boiled egg. A milky shaft of light fell over the table where he sat, revealing the dissipation marring his face.

Alf’s ever-present retainers occupied a table a short distance away, their beefy paws wrapped around tankards of small beer. They nodded to Giles and glanced incuriously at Will, who Giles had bid follow him into the tavern.

The boy still didn’t have an adequately warm pair of boots and still he’d insisted on “attending to his duties” as apprentice coachman when Giles had sent for the carriage. Walking would have taken too long. Jameson was hunting Seward with murder in his eye. Giles meant to destroy any trail Bees might have unearthed.

Alf looked him over with bleary eyes. “Got the blunt?”

“Of course.”

Alf grinned. “Right, you do. Okay then.” He wiped his fingertips on his shirt and reached into his coat pocket, withdrawing a filmy piece of cloth. He wafted it gently in the air.

Giles reached for it but Alf shook his head and grinned, setting his forefinger alongside his nose. Wordlessly, Giles withdrew a small purse from inside his coat and tossed it to Alf. He snatched it out of the air and handed the handkerchief to Giles. It was blush pink, made of the finest linen, and edged in Belgian lace. A monogram delicately picked out in white silk spelled the letters AW. Anne Wilder?

“Where did you come by this?”

But Alf was not going to be denied the pleasure of explaining his cleverness.

“I put out the word that it was worth a quid to anyone finds anyt’ing havin’ to do wid Colonel Seward or his lady. I had no luck wid that. Then, yesterday I was looking over some bits o’ this and that what come into my purview.” He looked up at Giles and grinned. He’d undoubtedly been receiving stolen items from his league of pickpockets. “And I sees this bit of pretty and it suddenly comes to me that the captain’s lady’s name were Anne Wilder afore she married him.”

“Who brought it in?”

“Ragman,” Alf said and they both knew he was lying.

“And where did he acquire it?”

“Some lad what pinched it off a lady on Hawke’s Wharf. She was stepping down into one o’ the sloops that carries folks to the passenger ships anchored in deep water. Easy mark.”

“Where can I find this boy?” Strand asked. Natty lads tended not to be found when they were sought. The specter of the workhouse or, worse, of deportation, sent them fleeing.

“Don’t suppose you can.” Alf shrugged. “But I might be able to locate him. Fer another pony.”

Strand nodded. “How soon can you arrange a meeting?”

Alf scowled. “I’m not his bleedin’ mum. I dunno where any of the lads sleep or where they work. They shows up once a week and we have a bit of business.” Apparently Alf had decided to dispense with the imaginary ragman. “Which reminds me,” he glanced past Giles towards where Will waited, “yer da’s been lookin’ fer you, lad.”

“How sad that he won’t find him,” Giles replied, holding Alfie’s eye long enough for the slighter man to look away.

“ ’Course not.”

“What day do the boys meet up with you?”

“Tuesdays.”

“If you can find him before then I’ll pay you fifty pounds.”

Alf’s brows rose. “Two ponies? I’ll see what I can do.”

Avery felt Giles’s absence before she’d even fully awoken. The large, warm body that had curled around hers all night was gone. She glanced at the clock. It was going on ten o’clock and she was alone.

Her heart kicked into a gallop. What was he thinking this morning? Did he regret making love?
Making love
. Did he think of it that way? Or was this what a Corinthian did? Was she simply one of his lovers? Like that woman she’d seen him with last night. Had he been planning to spend the evening in
her
bed and then, when he’d been obliged to save Avery, and she’d thrown herself at him, had he simply accepted her as substitute?

No
. No, no, no.

There had been tenderness as well as passion in their union, a wholehearted and happy commitment to giving her pleasure. He’d whispered how beautiful she was, how desirable, how she made his body sing and all rational thoughts evaporate. But might not that simply be the way of an unselfish lover? Had he said anything about his heart?

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, snatched up his banyan, and jerked it on. She should have been asking herself these questions before she ripped his clothes off.

But her earlier terror had been so concentrated and prolonged and then when he’d arrived and taken her out of that place her relief had been just as intense, just as visceral. There had been no
thought
. There had been no plan. There had been no past or future. There had only been the present, overwhelming relief and the just-learned lesson that tomorrow might not come so she best pursue what she wanted today. And she’d wanted Giles.

She still wanted him.

But she didn’t know what he wanted from her.

In many ways Giles was a cipher, a collection of discordant parts: this cold, gorgeous house without a soul; his reputation as a Pink of the Ton; his drawling sneer, careless mockery, and dandified pretentions. But then there were his strange nocturnal ramblings dressed like a cit and his prowess with his fists. His kindness to an orphan and his old dog. His honorable determination to abide by their deal. It did not make sense.

She needed to know more.

She stood, looking around for the hated corset, and only then noticed that the door between her bedchamber and the smaller room next to it was ajar. Light spilled on the carpet in a thin wedge. It had always been kept locked before. Giles must have opened it. But why?

“Mr. Travers?”

Travers looked up from the book he’d been reading and saw Avery in the doorway. For once, she was not wearing the horrible padded corset. Nor the glasses. Instead, she wore Lord Strand’s dressing gown.

“Ah, Avery. You are awake. Good.”

“What happened to him, Mr. Travers? To make him like this?”

He sighed. So it was like that, was it? He was supposed to appraise Avery of Lord Strand’s plan, but one look at her drawn and anxious face and he realized it would have to wait. He’d known, of course. Only a fool wouldn’t see what was between the two of them. And he didn’t mean just since coming to London, either.

He’d been sitting beside the fire, a cup of hot chocolate in hand, his feet toasting on the hearth. As per Lord Strand’s instructions, he’d told the staff that Mr. Quinn was feeling very poorly, very poorly indeed, and they were to vacate the floor, lest their cleaning disturb him. He was then to go to the room next to Avery’s and make it look as if someone had spent the night there, occasionally moving about so that anyone passing in the hall would hear him. Once Avery woke he was to make sure she didn’t leave her room until Strand returned.

Avery slipped into the room and took a seat across from him. “What happened to Strand? Why does he act like two different people? Here he’s Lord Strand, a dandy and a rake. But at Killylea he’s… not. Sometimes, when there is no one else around, he is still the man I know from Killylea. Why? Please.”

Travers considered. This was not his tale to tell. But one look into her eyes and he realized it was her tale to hear. Still, it was not an easy story. He sighed.

“France had taken over the world, or so it seemed,” he began. “Young Lord Giles was eighteen and he begged his father to buy him a commission in some regiment that would see action. He wanted to fight for his country alongside his schoolmates.

“The old marquess refused. He’d already lost Louis and Giles was the last of his line. He would not risk the Dalton name dying on a foreign battlefield and he
was
convinced that if Giles went to war he would die. He had little faith in Giles’s judgment or his character. In fact, he thought Giles was mostly enamored of an officer’s uniform so he offered to buy him a commission in a regiment that never strayed off English soil, a stylish regiment, whose raison d’être was to protect fashion’s sensibilities and populate Society’s dance floors with dandified officers.” He shook his head lightly.

“Why would he think that?” Avery asked, astonished, and Travers liked her for that, for her surprise that anyone who knew him could think so poorly of Giles.

“It’s complicated. I’m not sure how to explain.”

“Try.”