Twice Tempted (30 page)

Chuffy frowned, rubbing at his nose. “Drake needs to know what we found.”

Alex frowned right back. “I’ll send him a note that we’re on the right track. Maybe that will keep him satisfied for the time being.”

Chuffy was staring. “You want to go to Hawes House.”

Alex grinned. “Exactly.”

“What about the ladies?” Chuffy asked. “We need to tell them.”

Alex faltered. “No. No, I don’t think they need to know this yet. It would only distress them. Above all, they must be protected.”

Chuffy slid his glasses back up his nose. “Because their grandfather has stored important Lion information at his town house?”

No
, Alex thought, trying to give nothing away. Because if he didn’t find anything in that safe, he’d have to devise another way to keep his father’s secrets from being exposed. And right now his only other option was handing over the girls to the men who’d tried to burn down their school.

*  *  *

Of course Mairead didn’t want to go. Fiona had expected it. She hadn’t expected Lennie to be so compliant.

“Better f’r everybody,” the girl said, feet planted wide in a pugilist’s stance.

Fiona ached for that hard little child. “I swore I would never make you go back to the streets.”

The little imp grinned. “But if I don’t go, how are you two gonna survive? You don’ know London. I do.”

Fiona felt the burden of that child’s future weigh on her. She was running again and dragging along Mairead. She didn’t know how they would come about. How could she expect Lennie to face that as well? Except that Lennie was right. Fiona knew where to buy secondhand clothing and bruised fruit in Edinburgh, where to find work, where the marginal neighborhoods met the outright slums. What was safe and what wasn’t for a girl. She had never spent enough time in London proper to learn it. Lennie had.

“But I have just begun measuring my stars again,” Mae protested, sounding suddenly like a little girl. “I will lose too much time. Chuffy said he’d protect me.”

“Alex has a choice,” Fiona said, taking her sister by her shoulders. “Us or his father. If you were given that choice, Mae, say Chuffy or our mother, who would you choose?”

Mae looked away, her head down. Fiona thought her own heart would break. Mae had found real human affection with a man. A man she could respect. And now, just like every time they seemed secure, she was being yanked away.

“We couldn’t go to the Herschels’?” Mairead asked, still not facing her.

“Sweetings, it would be the first place Alex would look. Give him a little time to solve his problem.” Fiona hugged her rigid sister. “When it’s safe, we’ll return.”

Mae’s head came up, her eyes bleak as a late winter sky. “What if it’s never safe?”

Fiona dragged in an unsteady breath. “Then we go home to Edinburgh.”

That didn’t ease Mairead’s frown. “But they know you there.”

“Not after all this time. Besides, Mr. Playfair is building a real telescope up on Calton Hill. Don’t you want to see how it turns out? Don’t you want a turn at it?”

For once, even the lure of the sky didn’t entice Mae. She just looked forlorn. “Whatever you say.”

Fiona pulled her sister into her arms again, just as she had a thousand times before, from the days when they had hidden from their father’s wrath in the linen closet to the hard nights in Edinburgh to the spare loneliness of the castle on the moors. This time, though, there was a difference. It wasn’t Fiona’s arms Mairead wanted to be in, and it tore Fiona apart.

So, she thought, nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. She should have known that this was how it would be. And she hadn’t even begun to contemplate what this would do to
her
heart.

“What first?” Lennie asked.

“Well,” Fiona said, stepping back, “first we’ll need a plan to get away. We are nowhere near where we need to be. Then we’ll need transportation back to London. A place in a neighborhood where we won’t be noticed, but won’t really be in danger.”

Lennie was nodding. “What I know best is Lime’ouse. Down near the docks.”

“It would be the second place they would look.”

“Seven Dials, then. Where the carters and rag-and-bone men live. I know a boarding’ouse there. Friend of me dad’s when he was on the stage.”

“Do I have to cut my hair?” Mae asked, her voice small. “Chuffy likes it so.”

Fiona considered the bright sun of her sister’s mane. “And dye it. We’ll do it before we leave. I have the gall of Aleppo. You’ll need to tell Chuffy that you aren’t feeling well tonight. Lady issues. He will never ask. We’ll wait till the moon sets.”

Once more Mae asked. “Are you sure, Fee?”

“I am very sure, Mae.”

It was the last word that was said on the subject, except when they met to gather their belongings to go. “Only what we need,” Fee said, slipping her knife into its holder.

“Miss?” Lennie said, her own few things wrapped in a large kerchief. “Is it stealin’ to take a book?”

Both Fiona and Mairead stopped what they were doing. “A book?” Fee asked.

Lennie ducked her head, her neck ruddy. “Found it in the library. About fossils and such. Always wanted to see a fossil. Amazin’ creatures, they seem.”

Fiona wished with all her heart she had the time to ask Lennie about her interest, of how she’d come to read, how she’d come to discover the world of natural philosophy. She wished she could refer Lennie to her friend Sarah, who lived down where fossils were hunted like partridges.

“I doubt one book will make a difference,” she said. “When we gather a bit of money, we can replace it and send this one back.”

And that was the sum of discussion about what was to be brought along. Fiona and Mairead had done this so many times that clarification wasn’t needed. And Lennie didn’t have enough to quibble over.

“I got us some bread and cheese and fruit after cook left,” she said. “Last us a coupla days.”

Fiona snapped shut her small bandbox. “All right, then. At moonset, we’ll be off.”

*  *  *

Marcus Drake’s elegant home in Mayfair was usually an oasis of calm. That evening, as the earl stood before his valet deciding whether to secure his neckcloth with the sapphire or emerald pin for his evening stroll through various balls and routs, there came a pounding on the front door.

He looked up, his classic features the image of ennui. “Has no one any manners anymore, Pence?”

“No, milord,” the valet answered, returning the unchosen sapphire to its tray. “I do not believe they do.”

Drake gave a long-suffering sigh. A commotion had risen downstairs, with the cry of “In the king’s name!” echoing up the stairs.

“The poor, mad king,” Drake mourned as Pence slid him into his impeccably tailored dove-gray Westin coat. “He is held responsible for more mischief done in his name than Beelzebub.” Turning to the mirror, he shot his cuffs, straightened a minute crease in the mathematical he had tied, and exited the bedroom door.

By the time he reached the entry hall, it was to face a small force of scruffy men led by a gentleman with a tipstaff prominently displayed in his hand.

“Wilkins?”

His butler, a twinkle in his green eyes, bowed low. “So sorry to bother, milord. This gentleman was wanting to know if you knew where Lord Whitmore was.”

The evening had just become more interesting. “Knight?” he asked, facing the belligerent little constable. “Good heavens, why? The last even vaguely illegal thing Alex Knight did was help me deposit a female goat in the bagwig’s office at Christchurch just in time to birth twin kids. And I assure you, he already paid the penalty for that.” Turning to Wilkins, he smiled. “Neither of us could properly sit a horse for a week.”

“Ye’ll pardon me, I’m sure, milord,” the bantamweight invader interrupted. “But this is a matter of treason. Crimes against the king ’isself. Lookin’ for Lord Whitmore and ’is father, one Sir Joseph Knight. A warrant ’as been issued.”

Alex cocked an eyebrow. “Has it? Treason? My, he has been busy. Constable…?”

“Teastern, milord. Thomas Teastern.”

Drake kept a remarkably bored countenance. “Well, Constable Teastern, I don’t suppose you know who swore out the warrant, or why you are here instead of the army.”

“Not my place to ask, milord. Sheriff signed it and sent me out.”

“Admirable. Inconveniently for you, however, Whitmore has not been here. I have no idea where he is at the moment.”

“Will you know ’ow I can find ’im?”

“I assume you’ve been to his home.”

“I ’ave.”

Drake nodded agreeably. “In that case, I would check some of the spa towns. His father is recovering from a heart seizure. Knight probably took him off somewhere to recuperate.” Pulling out his watch, he flicked it open. “Now, if you’ll pardon me, I am late for a dinner engagement.”

“I ’ave the right to search these premises, milord.”

Not by a flicker did Drake betray any distress. “Do you? Why, I suppose you do. Go on, then. Wilkins will be certain to keep track of anything you break along the way, since it will come out of your pay.”

“Gladly, milord,” Wilkins said with a piratical smile. “Shall we start with the Limoges Room, gentlemen?”

The constable wavered and finally surrendered. “Don’t warn ’im off, now,” the little man threatened, giving his tipstaff a wave in the earl’s face before marshaling his forces back out the door.

Wilkins had barely gotten the door closed when Drake cocked his head. “Most curious. Wilkins…”

“I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“You know where to go?”

Wilkins held out the earl’s overcoat. “I do.”

Nodding, Drake slipped into it and accepted his hat. “Well, for God’s sake,” he said before stepping through the open door. “Don’t tell me.”

*  *  *

Fiona wasn’t certain whether it was because the three of them had had so much experience fleeing and hiding, or whether it was simply serendipity, but their escape went fairly seamlessly. Mairead pleaded lady problems, and Fiona excused herself to sit with her sister, as if she had ever needed to before. The hardest part was when Alex would look over at her during the dinner they took in the breakfast room, sharing the table with a pile of papers and a small lewd poem. Every time she caught his intense gaze on her, she flushed with pleasure and squirmed with discomfort. Every time he accidentally touched her, brushing a hand across hers, nudging a hip as he moved his chair, backing into her when carrying something, she felt her resolve erode a little more. She needed to leave; she knew it. Not just for her safety, but for Alex’s. She could never ask him to choose between his father and her. She could never put either of the two men in danger. But if she took herself and Mairead out of the equation, Alex would have more leeway to solve his problem.

If only she could take him aside. If only he would confide in her, ask her help. Reassure her about his affection. Trust her. But that would only complicate a too-complicated matter and make it harder for her to leave.

And leave she did, tiptoeing out after sneaking some laudanum from Dr. O’Roarke’s bag and lacing the guards’ ale. As she crept through the deepening night, she was beset by powerful memories.

“It reminds me of the night we ran away the first time,” Mae whispered alongside, her hood shadowing her face, her hand in her sister’s.

Fiona shivered, the memory suddenly too fresh. “I know.”

Her baby brother Teddy had been dead mere days when their mother had woken them from sound sleep, her hand over their mouths, their little bags packed. They had stolen away from the estate exactly the way they were doing now, holding hands and holding their breath lest their father wake from his drunken sleep to notice them gone and come raging after them. She remembered her mother already had bruises on her face. She remembered she had limped the whole way and that they had stopped in the churchyard to say farewell to little Teddy, who had cried too much.

But they had escaped. Their lives had been difficult and poor. But no longer had they needed to live in constant dread of a man’s capricious violence and compulsive control. No longer did they suffer the indifference of their family. They protected themselves. Just as they would again.

Only once did she look back, just as they rounded the bend that would take the house out of sight. She could see its black mass blotting the starlight, smoke curling out of a few chimneys. She thought of the people who slept there and how hard it was to leave their kindness. She thought of Alex, sprawled out on his great bed, naked and vulnerable, his hair tousled, his cheeks bristled, his body so sleek and beautiful in the silvered light. She thought of what it had felt like the night before when he had driven into her, as if she had split into two people, before and after. As if from that moment on, she was not an independent soul, but melded to his. As if that melding had ripped apart the fabric of the universe to expose unbearable beauty.

It would not happen again. She was alone once more and would stay that way because Alex still didn’t know the whole truth about her, and when he did, he would not be able to stay. But at least once she had known a man’s touch. A man’s mastery. A man’s gentleness and generosity. She knew it was possible, and it had been hers. Once.

From now on, she would rely only on herself.

She just wished that it didn’t hurt so badly.

*  *  *

“Damn her.
Damn
her!”

Alex couldn’t seem to move from where he stood at the entrance to an empty bedroom, the door still in his hand, the mumbled excuses of the guards still echoing in his head. Lady Bea had been the one to raise the alarm, running into the breakfast room, breathless and stuttering. Alex had risen immediately, but neither he nor Chuffy had been able to calm her. Then he thought of her voice. That magical, musical voice.

“Sing it,” he suggested.

“Oh, how could you let her,” Bea sang, her sweet, clear voice throbbing to the tune of “Early One Morning,” one of the ubiquitous folk songs about love, loss, and betrayal. “Gone, gone, gone, and left us all behind.”

Alex hadn’t had to ask any more. He had just run for the guest wing, accompanied by a roused Chuffy.