“Someone took Mouse?” She blinked, not ready to believe it, though she’d known someone could claim the lanky puppy since the day she had found Mouse. It was the day Jonah had found Irene too. The day they’d agreed that a future apart would never do.
Victor corrected her. “Her name’s Princess Amelia, he told us. Not Mouse. Anyway, she trotted off with the man like she’d never known anything else.”
“Bridget’s Brown will miss her.” I will miss her. Jonah will miss her. And no one she tried to help—not Eli, not Mouse—needed her at all. Her every action was only temporary.
Victor was talking again. As usual. “That Bridget would be set right by a race. He’s getting stronger every day. Jonah’s got a gift for working with horses.”
“He should. He lives on a stud farm,” Irene mumbled.
“And you’re here.” Victor leaned forward, confidential. “Reenie, you’re independent like me. I know I can trust you.”
She eyed him askance. “What do you want?”
“Why, just to tell you the truth about a few things. Now that you’re ready.” And then, in the quiet of the teacher’s parlor that should have been her refuge, he told her a story she’d never known. About his life before he came to England. About the trail of unsuccessful schemes and scandals that carried him across the ocean for a fresh start.
About the wife he’d left behind in America, though they were still wed.
“So you see,” he concluded with a sheepish grin, “your mum and I aren’t legally married.”
Irene had listened with eyes wide, with heart frozen. She had to swallow several times before she trusted her voice. “Can you prove that?”
“I’ve the marriage lines right here.” He patted his coat, then drew forth a paper. “I thought you might not believe me.”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Her eyes skimmed the document with wild speed.
Well. She had to believe him now. “Does Mama know?”
He looked horrified as he tucked the document away. “Of course not! It would destroy her. She would lose that job she loves so much, and you’d have to support her and Laurie completely.”
Her throat was so dry. “What would you be doing?”
“Looking after my own interests, if you won’t help me.” He tilted his head. “But I think you will. Don’t you agree? It’d be a shame for the people you love to be hurt, wouldn’t it, when you could stop it all with a word in your husband’s ear? And you’d be helping out your old dad, just like Laurie did this evening.”
“You’re blackmailing me.” When she spoke, she didn’t sound like herself.
“No, indeed! I’m encouraging you. What kind of father would I be if I didn’t?”
His terms stated, he departed soon after that, leaving Irene in solitude with the snap and glow of the dying fire. She stared into its depths as though the little licking flames could tell her what to do. Was it better to give in to her father to help her mother, or to distance herself completely? Was there harm in using her influence with Jonah if it helped Laurie and Susanna?
A coal tumbled forward and died on the brick hearth.
She longed for the moment before Victor had entered the room, when she had wondered only about the fate of her job and her marriage. When she’d thought she might claim a few days of bliss before making a decision she still didn’t know how to make.
Instead, she had more at stake than ever—and she might be left with nothing at all.
Chapter Eighteen
The moon was almost new, which in Jonah’s mind made this the best sort of night for a mission. Irene had told him about it the previous Sunday before returning to the academy, and he waited for her as arranged—three o’clock in the morning as Saturday was just beginning, an hour before the sun would rise. With only a sliver of moon overhead, the gates of the academy were black against black. The school building itself loomed, bricklike and silent. A cool breeze tickled the night.
Footsteps approached; the gate opened silently. Jonah felt it as much as heard it, a movement in the air. And then Irene was at his side. He knew her from the height of her, the slight peppermint scent of her hair.
“Mr. Jonah?” he asked.
“Mr. Tweedy,” she acknowledged, using the ridiculous name she’d given him the day he’d brought her purse to the academy. With his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he could see that she was dressed like Jonah, in a dark cloak over dark clothing. As she’d instructed, he’d brought a half mask, though at present it was tucked in a pocket.
“Where are we going tonight? Or this morning?”
“Well…nowhere.”
“The mission is at the academy?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “There’s no mission. I told Mrs. Brodie yesterday that I wasn’t going to do it. Or today? No, yesterday. Friday.”
“There’s no mission. All right.” He tugged at the ties of his cloak. They were always too tight. “Why is there no mission? And why didn’t you tell me before I met you in the middle of the night?”
“I’m done with the term.” She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice sounded high and strange. “I might be done with the academy.”
“No!” His exclamation was too loud in the slumbering street, and both Irene and Jonah clapped hands over his mouth at once.
“I mean, no,” he all but whispered. “You love your work. You just finished the term. You’re tired. That’s all.”
“I am tired,” she agreed quietly. “Tired of helping when there’s always someone else to help. Tired of privileged girls who could help themselves without using me, time and again, to do their work. Tired of not being enough.”
He’d never heard her talk this way. Should he have been happy to hear her talk about leaving her work? Maybe if she’d sounded happy too, he would have. But she didn’t sound like anything. She didn’t sound like she had any feelings left.
His heart ached for her. He gathered her in his arms. “Something’s gone wrong. Do you want to tell me? There’s got to be some reason we’ve met in the street before dawn.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her head tucked onto his shoulder. “Just hold me.”
“Gladly, though I could do a better job of it at the house.” Stroking her back, he asked, “Did you not want to do today’s mission? Or you don’t want to do any mission?”
“Today’s, though if I start turning down missions, I won’t be useful to Mrs. Brodie anymore. I’ve only declined one other in the six years I’ve worked for her.” She lifted her head, looking up at him. He could tell from the movement of the shadows, the faint gleam of her eyes and lips. “It was when I was in Newmarket. Meeting you. I was supposed to spy on your father even as I was supposed to keep an eye on mine. Instead…there was you.”
“There was me,” he repeated, “and you gave up a mission.”
“Do you mind?”
“That you came to Newmarket to spy on my father? Not at all, because it brought you to Newmarket.” He kissed whatever he could reach, which turned out to be her eyebrow, then the tip of her nose. “I’m honored that you gave up a mission for me. For us. But that’s not why you gave up tonight’s, is it?”
He wanted her to say yes. He knew she’d say no.
“No. It’s because of who the mission is for. She’s a rich girl who doesn’t want to marry the man her parents have picked out. There are letters arranging the match. They need to be stolen.”
“You do love stealing things,” he pointed out.
Her mouth barely twitched. “She was one of my students, and she was horrid to me. Her parents taught her to be horrid. I don’t want to waste my time on her.”
Ah. “I understand,” Jonah said cautiously. “I don’t fault you. But she’s still a girl who needs help.”
“She’ll get it. Rich girls always do. My chamber-mate, Rebecca, and the French teacher, Valérie, are going to do the mission instead.”
“All right.” Anything he said might be importa
nt, yet he had no idea what he ought to say. “Do you want to go back to bed, then?”
“I haven’t been to bed yet, so I can’t go back to bed.”
“Very logical. Do you…want to go help your friends? Not the girl,” he added quickly. “But your friends. Rebecca and Valérie?”
Was she sniffling? Was she sad? He’d thought she was angry, or maybe worried. Maybe she was all three. “All right,” she agreed. “We can go. Only to help them.”
This felt like a victory. But why? They were going somewhere neither of them was expected to be, and they were both tired and frayed about the edges.
He supposed it was a victory because they were going together.
The dark streets were their friend as they wound their way through the wealthy part of London. Tall town houses, wide streets, empty squares. Some sections were lit by flickering gas, and they stayed to the shadows, away from the golden flames. The night sky was beginning to fade with the first hints of dawn by the time they reached their quarry, a trimmed-stone mansion facing a fenced-off green square.
They crouched by the fence, watching the house. “Now what do we do?”
“We wait for Rebecca and Valérie to come out of the house. If they do, they’re all right.”
“How long before we know they’re…how long before we worry?”
At his side, Irene tilted her head upward as if looking at the stars. “When the sun rises, we worry.”
They had perhaps half an hour, then. “How do we know they’re not already done with their mission?”
“Because the house is quiet and peaceful.”
“Maybe they’re very stealthy, and no one awoke,” Jonah suggested. “Maybe they just entered and stole and left.”
“Maybe.” Irene’s tone was rich with doubt. “But this wretched girl told Mrs. Brodie that her father sleeps with the letters under his pillow. So it’s not likely they’ll be able to leave undetected.”
All right. He thought he understood this mission. “Just one more question. Well, two. How did they get in, and how will they leave?”
“I told Rebecca to check the ground-floor windows, then those on the first floor. A window is almost always easier and safer than a door.”
“You’ve done this often?”
“I’ve done a lot of things often.” She let her head fall into her arms, making a small bundle of her body.
“You sound weary. Let me make the wait more entertaining for you.”
“Entertaining?” She managed a touch of amusement. “Did you bring cards or juggling balls? We won’t be able to see them.”
“We don’t need to see anything except the house. You keep watch.”
“And what are you going to—Jonah!”
He’d pulled her sideways as he settled onto the ground. An iron picket at his back, his legs stretched out on the grass, he tugged his wife’s legs across his lap. “Are you comfortable?”
“I could become so,” she said. “Why, what’s on your mind?”
“It’s really more about what’s on my body.” Under the cover of dark, with the street still silent, he slipped a hand under Irene’s skirts. He stroked her calves, tickled the tender backs of her knees, reached ever upward to trail across her thighs. “Is this all right?”
“I’m keeping watch,” said Irene faintly. “I shouldn’t take my attention from the house to stop what you’re doing.”
He had to sort through this. “Which means ‘keep going, Jonah’?”
“Obviously. Keep going, Jonah.”
“Keep watch, then, Irene.” He breathed in the scent of her hair, her skin, as she settled herself with legs splayed apart.
She watched the house, and he watched her, greedy for signs of pleasure in the growing glow of dawn. To an observer, they would have looked like a weary couple in a pile of clothing. But beneath the cloaks and layers, his hand quested upward, parting her thighs. Stroking private curls, tender flesh slick with dampness. Her breathing slowed, deepened. The strong muscles of her legs bunched.
“Keep going, Jonah,” she whispered.
So he slid a finger within her, stroking slowly. She felt wonderful, tight and wet. She looked beautiful, lovely and trusting and starlit and sunrise-warm. Black was fading to orange was fading to pink as he found the nub of her pleasure. He curled his finger within her and shivered his thumb over the tight bud until she was clenching around him, and her body was jolting in his arms, and she was making soft moans and sighs. One final cry, smothered against his shoulder, and she went boneless. Her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder.
“This is the best time I’ve ever had on a mission,” she murmured.
“Then I’m glad we came. Really, that you came.”
She chuckled, sounding drowsy.
He withdrew his hand, wiping the dampness on the grass. It would have been nice to do this in a bedroom instead, to be able to bring himself off while she fell into a doze. But for a mission that was just one of many to her, at least it had held a moment of pleasure. He wondered how many days they’d have to have together, how many missions they’d have to complete, before each one stopped feeling like a stolen purse.
Then she jerked upright, kicking amidst the tangle of her skirts. “I’m supposed to be keeping watch! What did I miss?”
“Only about one minute, and nothing happened during that time.” But with eyes adjusted to the dim beginnings of sunlight, Jonah thought day probably wasn’t far away. “How long now until we worry about your friends?”
“We can begin worrying anytime.” Irene sounded grim. She stood, shaking her heavy skirts and cloak into place. “The sooner the better. Do you have your mask?”
“Indeed.” He pulled the half mask from his pocket and tied it on. Irene did the same with her own so they were only eyes and mouths.
“If you have to address me,” she said, “call me Elle. We use letters instead of names to protect our identities. And what should I call you?”
Hell. He couldn’t think of any names besides his own. “Jay?” He felt rather than saw the roll of her eyes.
In silence, then, she motioned for him to follow her. They crept across the quiet distance from fenced green to the facing houses, avoiding the pools of light spilled by the gas lamps. Fingers grasped his—Irene, pulling him nearer the right house, nearer her side. “I’ll listen at the servants’ door,” she whispered, “and you peer into the ground-floor windows. If either of us notices—”
Crash.
The unmistakable sound of breaking glass cut off Irene’s sentence. A shout followed the crash; a thump followed the shout.
“This way!” Irene yanked at Jonah’s hand, pulling him toward the sound. It had come from the side of the house, a broken window that had roused the household. Already, lamps were lighting, lights flickering in the windows. On reflex, Jonah pressed closer to the house, disappearing from the sight of anyone who could be looking out.
When they rounded the corner, a mess greeted their eyes. A tall woman had evidently dived or kicked her way out through a ground-floor window, and she was now helping a slighter figure to escape through the shattered remnants. A man was clutching at the second woman, yelling for a constable. On the ground amidst bits of glass, a packet of papers glowed pale in the dawning day.
“Help her,” Irene said, then hared toward the packet of papers. Jonah took her to mean the two women at the window, one pulling, one being all but throttled by the shouting man. A whistle sounded in the distance, clopping hoofbeats. Someone was coming. A lot of someones were coming.
“I’m here to help,” Jonah blurted toward the tall woman. He brought his fist down hard onto the clutching hand of the man at the window, trying to break his grasp. The blow did more than that—it sliced the man’s hand against the broken glass of the window. With a howl, he released the smaller woman, who fell in a heap atop the first one.
“You bastard! I’ll have your neck for this!” The man was hale and middle-aged, wearing a nightshirt now spotted
with blood from his cut hand.
“Wrap it and keep pressure on it until the bleeding stops!” Jonah called. “That always works for horses!”
A cuff on his shoulder had him turning. The taller woman, a red-headed, strong-shouldered figure, was stuffing the parcel into her bodice with her free hand. “You don’t have to help him. He’s the enemy.”
“I just thought—”
“Quiet! You’ve got to go,” Irene hissed. “Kay, get Em out of here. She landed hard.”
“I know,” the taller woman said dryly. “I felt it. She landed on me.”
“I’m hardly hurt,” said a faintly French-accented voice. “I only need a moment. Then I can walk.”
“You don’t have it,” Irene said grimly. “Kay, carry her. Em, don’t fight it. We’ll stall them as long as we can. Go!”
“Stall them?” Jonah asked as the woman called Kay scooped the slighter figure into her arms. Staggering slightly, she disappeared into the shadows. “Who’s them?”
“Them.” Irene pointed behind him. Jonah turned on his heel to see two men, one armed with a knife and one with a cudgel, running toward them from the front steps of the house.
“Shit!” Jonah called, startled. Before the word had left his mouth, Irene was already running toward them. Toward danger. And was that a smile on her face?
Well, hell. He’d have to run toward the men with the weapons too, and what the devil did he have with which to defend himself? His boots thumped; his heart raced. He wasn’t fast enough, not fast enough at all, and the man with the cudgel was raising it over Irene’s head, and he was bringing it down! He was about to hit her, and Jonah was too far away to take the blow in her place, and what would he do without her, and—
“Shit,” he said again, this time admiringly as the man with the cudgel flipped over Irene’s head and smacked into the other man, taking him down like a struck ninepin.
“Nice work, Ir—Elle!” He caught himself just in time. “Defense class?”
His Wayward Bride (Romance of the Turf Book 3) Page 20
