Dani held the music box tightly to her chest as if she could magically embrace Elise through it. Without a thought except that she desperately needed to show her gratitude, she rose onto tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Only a brief and chaste touch, to show what she couldn’t put into words.
But he startled and turned his head. Her mouth unexpectedly caught the corner of his. He inhaled sharply against her lips at the accidental contact. Suddenly, that touch to the cheek had become so much more, and despite herself, a yearning thrill sparked inside her.
He tensed beneath her hand that rested on his shoulder for balance as she lowered herself. But the hard muscle under her fingers felt so solid and strong that for one desperate moment, she didn’t want to step away. She wanted to step into his embrace and absorb his strength.
His hands went to her arms to steady her—no, to steady both of them as they stared into each other’s eyes, both momentarily stunned.
Her cheeks flushed as she stammered out in embarrassment, “I didn’t mean to…kiss you…like that.”
“Damnable shame, then,” he murmured deadpan, which made her flush turn absolutely burning.
“My apologies. I was overcome.” What she’d just done was wholly inappropriate. Yet she couldn’t stop herself from rising onto her toes again, this time to bring her mouth to his ear and whisper with little more than a hint of a voice, “Thank you…so very much.”
She stepped away to place the box onto the mantelpiece, turning her back so he couldn’t see the emotions on her face.
Good heavens. She’d kissed him. Oh, she’d truly gone and proved herself a goose this time! Put herself into foolishness up to her neck.
Oddly, though, she couldn’t find it within her to regret it.
By the time she’d gathered herself and turned to face him, she’d managed to put a smile into place, and his own shocked expression had been squelched. As if nothing at all had happened, as if she hadn’t just had her mouth on his. But tension flared between them, and she remained by the fireplace, where she could easily grab the poker and hit herself over the head with it should she be so idiotic as to attempt to kiss him again.
“I hope that means that you’ve accepted my apology,” he drawled.
She nodded, although suspicion nagged at her that his mission to wring answers from her was far from done.
“Shall we start over, then, as if we’d never waltzed?” He sat casually on the arm of the settee. Although she knew that he was now attempting to be nothing more than her best friend’s older brother, he looked so perfectly like a rake in that position that her pulse spiked. “Perhaps you’ll be willing to give me a second chance at tomorrow’s dinner.”
“Perhaps.” Her fingers plucked at her skirt, that old nervous habit she’d had since she was a girl. Fitting, because she’d been nervous around him since she’d been in braids and never more than at this very moment. “Although I might find that you’re just as poorly behaved at dinners as at parties.”
His sensuous lips curled into an amused smile, which did nothing to take her mind away from wondering how it would feel to kiss him again. A real kiss this time, too, not an accidental one. One that the raffish soldier in him would enjoy. “Ah, but at dinner, I’ll be surrounded by chaperones who’ll be there to keep me in line. Including your aunt.”
“You don’t know Auntie very well.” She arched a brow. “She’d be thrilled to be part of something shocking. More fodder for her stories.”
“Then we must be on our best behavior. I’ll promise to behave if you do.”
Hmm…wishful thinking on his part or a direct lie? Yet she answered, “Agreed.”
His smile didn’t lessen, and she sensed a hardness in him that gave her pause. As if he wanted her to promise to a lot more than simply that. But she couldn’t. No matter how much she wanted to ease his grief and her guilt.
He stood. With a polite nod, he made his way to the door. “Until tomorrow, Miss Williams.”
Then he was gone.
Dani’s knees gave out, and she sank slowly onto the settee. Gripping the armrest, she gulped down several mouthfuls of air to calm her pounding heart and stop her shaking.
Although it had been an accident, she had no business kissing him like that, no matter how kind he was to give her the music box, no matter how chivalrous to apologize…no matter how dashingly intriguing he’d looked in his riding clothes, his dark hair mussed and curling against his collar like that, his muscular thighs so well defined underneath his breeches—
She groaned. Oh, she was an absolute goose!
And if she wasn’t careful, her goose would be good and cooked before this was all over.
Seven
What the devil was she up to?
From a dark corner in the back of the crowded Golden Bell Tavern, dressed inconspicuously in the plain work clothes of a warehouse porter, Marcus watched Danielle as she sat at a little table positioned in front of the grimy windows. She’d been there for almost half an hour, and he’d been right here since shortly after she’d entered, following her inside and keeping watch. And doing his damnedest to figure out why she was here.
This wasn’t the haunt of any gently bred miss. Not the daughter of a baron. And certainly not alone.
Neither was she dressed in clothes befitting a lady. No, she wore the plain, coarse clothes of a laboring woman, one who might have spent her days working in a market stall just down the street. A dress of gray worsted wool covered her from ankle to wrist to neck, along with sturdy shoes and a cap that hid her hair. She’d tried her best to appear ordinary, yet her natural grace couldn’t be hidden. Neither could her fine features or the delicate softness of her hands.
No one would ever mistake her for a laborer. So the question was…why did she want them to?
Since their waltz, he’d been left with more questions than answers, so he’d set about watching her. When she’d left her town house tonight under the cover of darkness and wound her way through the streets of London, he’d followed. But he hadn’t expected her to lead him to the Golden Bell.
The bells of St Bride’s Church struck midnight and echoed faintly through the black night over the Strand, just barely heard above the noise of drunken revelry. A man entered the tavern as if on cue and hesitated just inside the doorway. Then, spotting Danielle, he made his way through the crowd to sit at her table.
Marcus lifted the tankard of ale to his mouth, watching them over the rim as the two engaged in private conversation. They leaned close together to be heard above the noise.
So…another midnight meeting with a man. Just like the one planned in Elise’s letter. And based on what he’d seen tonight, this wasn’t Danielle’s first.
He had to give her credit for her artfulness. When she’d left the house, she’d worn a velvet cape edged in ermine over a blue muslin gown. She’d also been in the company of her maid, who was acting as chaperone in her aunt’s absence. All perfectly proper for a society outing.
Except that she didn’t go to one.
Instead, she’d set out a goose chase. He’d followed her on horseback, easily keeping out of sight in the shadows as the baron’s town coach rolled its way toward Westminster. When it reached the Queen’s House and stopped on an empty side street, Danielle emerged, the cape and dress gone. In their place was the worsted wool costume she now wore. He’d watched as she hired a hackney and was off again, this time winding through the streets toward Covent Garden. Another change of carriages there, and a second hired hackney brought her to this tavern. Watching from the shadows down the street, he hadn’t heard what she said to the driver when she paid him, but the carriage stayed right there on the cobblestones, waiting for her to return. Marcus stabled his horse and followed her inside.
His gaze narrowed. What was she doing, laying down a chase like that through the dark city to meet a man? Not the kind of man a baron’s d
aughter should be spending time with, either. Coarse and rough, he was dressed like any other riverfront worker, in dirty tan clothes and a tweed cap. He could have been any age from twenty to forty, weathered by too many cold London winters and the harsh life that came from clawing out a living in a city that could be brutal. Even more so now that the wars were over and too many men were seeking the same too few jobs, now that food prices had shot up to the heavens.
What the hell was she up to?
He had no idea, but as he watched Danielle surreptitiously hand a bag of coins beneath the table to the man, he became determined to find out.
“’Nother ale?” A barmaid pointed at his tankard.
“Please.” Marcus slid a coin across the table toward her, then asked, “Can you help me with something else?”
Misreading his question as an opening for a solicitation, she propped a round hip against the table and leaned toward him, her large bosom nearly falling out of her tightly laced bodice as she reached to trail her hand down his arm. “What you have i’ mind?”
“Information.” He watched her eye the first coin, then set down a second and pushed it toward her. “There’s a woman in a gray dress at a table in front of the windows.” He withdrew a third coin and set it on the table in front of him with the others, but he kept this one pinned to the table beneath his finger. “The man who’s with her. Do you know him?”
She stiffened coldly when she realized that he didn’t want to take her upstairs. Yet she very much wanted the coins and glanced over her shoulder. Her face hardened when she saw Danielle, as if she was her competition tonight. With an unimpressed sniff, she looked past her to the man sitting across from her.
“He comes in ’ere e’ry now an’ again fer supper an’ ale.” She reached down to scoop up the first two coins. She gave him a bright smile as she slipped the coins down inside her bodice, still wrongly thinking that she could persuade him to tup her. “His name’s Jenkins. Works down a’ the river.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“Nothin’.”
“Are you sure?” He pushed the coin toward her but didn’t remove his finger. “Has he ever spent time with you or the other barmaids?”
She laughed. “Not ’im! Stingy bloke that one. An’ ne’er seen him crack a smile.” She jerked a thumb toward Danielle. “That one’s wastin’ her time if’n she thinks she’ll get any blunt out o’ him.” Then she shook her head and leaned lower to give him a better view of her breasts. “That one don’t know what she’s doin’, dressed like an old church matron. But I do.” She smiled seductively, revealing a wide gap between her front teeth. “I’ll make it good fer you. Give you a satisfyin’ ride.”
Marcus hadn’t been intimate with a woman since he’d returned from the continent. He had to be careful, given his new position and fortune, and becoming involved with the wrong woman was a mistake he didn’t want to make. But he wasn’t so desperate for female intimacies that he had to stoop to paying for them.
“Just the ale.” He removed his finger from the coin and sat back. “Thank you for the information.”
She reached for the coin with an irritated scowl.
Without warning, he brought his hand down over hers and pinned it to the table. Her mouth fell open in surprise.
“One more thing.” His voice was low and controlled, despite the hard clench of his gut. “Do you remember another woman meeting with that man here at midnight? About two years ago. A young woman about three and twenty, with light brown hair, piercing sky-blue eyes, pale skin.”
She’d remember seeing his sister, even after two years. No one who saw Elise could forget her. She’d made an impression on every room she’d entered.
“Not ’im!” She cackled out a laugh. “Ne’er seen ’im wi’ any other woman but that one. He just comes in fer a bit of stew an’ ale, sits by ’imself, eats by ’imself, then leaves.”
Frustration growled inside him. “Are you absolutely certain that you’ve never seen him with another woman?”
“Swear it on me mum’s grave.”
He released her hand. She snatched up the coin and spun on her heel to walk away. If he had any luck at all, she’d not bother him again.
His gaze drifted back to Danielle. He had enough trouble with females tonight as it was.
The man stood and left. From across the tavern, the barmaid shot Marcus an I told you so look so hard that it could have cut glass.
Danielle remained behind, no doubt to wait long enough before leaving that no one who might be outside would assume she and that man had met together in the tavern. There was no need for Marcus to keep watching her. She’d retrace her steps all the way home, he would have bet his fortune on it.
But the man she’d met with was a different story. One capable of providing answers.
When Jenkins slipped outside onto the street, so did Marcus.
Marcus followed after him, moving quickly but silently. No longer bothering to stay to the shadows, he closed the distance between them until he was only a few feet behind. When the man turned down an alley cutting toward the Thames, Marcus lunged.
He grabbed Jenkins by his shoulder and tossed him back against the wall, then pinned him there with his forearm against the man’s neck. His other hand wrapped around his own wrist for additional leverage, turning his forearm into a bar across Jenkins’s throat. He could easily crush his windpipe with a single forward step.
“Relax,” Marcus calmly ordered, his voice nonthreatening. “I don’t want your money.”
Jenkins said nothing. Marcus had easily surprised him. Like most men, he’d been too focused on what lay before him to worry about what was sneaking up from behind. Marcus had seen more soldiers than he wanted to count who had fallen victim to the same short-sightedness on the battlefield.
“I want answers. About the woman you met with tonight.”
Jenkins’s gaze narrowed as he accused harshly, “Yer after one of ’em, then.”
He frowned. “One of what?”
“The women.”
Women? First Elise, then Danielle…how many society ladies were arranging clandestine midnight meetings?
“Got none with me, so yer old lady or yer tart ain’t here. Ain’t no vanishings set for t’night neither.”
Vanishing. The word that had been in Elise’s note. The same word that had raised such panic in Danielle last night. “What do you mean?”
“’Xactly what I said! No one’s disappearin’ t’night, including whate’er bit you’re looking fer. If she ain’t at home, then she done run on her own. None o’ my business.”
“And the woman you met with in the Golden Bell? What did she want with you?”
“Nightingale hired me.”
He pressed harder against the man’s throat—a reminder not to lie. “To do what?” And who the hell was Nightingale? Was Danielle using a false identity? None of this made any sense, and none of it was giving him any answers about Elise.
“I help wi’ the vanishings an’ transfers.” His brow pulled into a deep furrow. “You ain’t a husband or pimp, then? You ain’t tryin’ to locate one o’ the missin’ women?”
“What women?”
The man smiled, his eyes gleaming as he realized that Marcus wasn’t who he thought. Although who Jenkins thought he was, he had no idea. “Ask Nightingale yerself.” He jerked his head in the direction of the tavern. “’Cause she ain’t at all what she seems.”
He was beginning to learn that himself. “And Scepter?”
Jenkins blanched, his face paling visibly even in the darkness. “What do ye want wi’ them bastards?”
Marcus kept his face inscrutable against his rising frustration. “Who are they?”
He laughed, an evil and rasping sound that echoed off the damp stone walls. “If’n ye figure that out, guv’nor, we both’ll be rich
in reward money!”
Then the man clenched his jaw and refused to say anything more.
Knowing he would get no more useful information tonight, Marcus released his hold on Jenkins’s neck and stepped back.
The man scurried down the alley, half turning to make certain Marcus didn’t change his mind and come after him. In a matter of seconds, he’d disappeared into the foggy darkness.
He’d gotten no more answers. It was time to deal with Danielle.
He returned to the tavern just in time to see her slight figure emerge into the street. But instead of walking toward the waiting hackney to retrace her circuitous path home, she turned in the opposite direction.
Marcus followed behind, staying a dozen strides back and careful not to be seen. But no matter if he lost her. He knew where she’d left her father’s carriage and could intercept her there.
When she reached a narrow passageway leading off the main street, she paused to glance in both directions. Marcus flattened himself inside a doorway in the shadows, out of sight. Then he watched as she foolishly headed into the dark passageway alone.
With a curse, he shoved himself out of the doorway and hurried after her.
He darted into the alley and saw Danielle standing only a few feet away, her back against the brick wall. In front of her, a large man towered over her, blocking her escape. The man was tensed and ready to attack, and a knife gleamed in the hand dangling at his side.
“Get away from her!” Marcus shouted and rushed forward.
The man raised his knife to strike at Danielle, but Marcus dropped his shoulder and plowed into the stranger’s gut. His body blocked the downward arc of the knife, and he grabbed at the winded man’s arm, twisting it forcefully back at an unnatural angle to his elbow. A painful curse tore from the attacker’s lips, and his fingers opened with a convulsing shudder. The knife dropped with a clatter onto the ground.
An Inconvenient Duke Page 6
