Brackley didn’t appear to have used the writing desk at all, but Lucy rifled through his clothing just in case he’d hidden his letters there, instead. If he was corresponding with anyone in the spy network, there was no trace of it.
Just as she finished searching the bed frame for hidden compartments, finding none, the creak of a wooden board out in the corridor caught her ear. Her breath hitched. Had Brackley returned?
Desperate, she searched the room for a hiding place. There weren’t many options. What would he do if he found her in here? She still had found no notion of his allegiance, nothing to tell her on which side he resided. For all she knew, he might be working alone.
But if he was, how had he learned the code to read the note she’d received from Monsieur V? And why had he visited Morgan? Though perhaps that was due to his title and not his service to his country, after all.
Regardless, Lucy didn’t think it boded well for his discovering her in his room. Her heart pounding, she snuffed out the candle, dropped to her belly on the floor, and rolled under the bed. She whisked her skirts out of sight behind her. As the door opened, she held her breath.
Footsteps. The man left the door ajar, letting in some of the light from the corridor. Enough to reflect off his polished black boots as he crept forward. Trying not to make a sound, Lucy adjusted her position to peek beneath the lip of the bed.
It wasn’t Brackley. One of Lady Leighton’s servants bent over the bed, doing something to the coverlet or pillows. They hadn’t been out of order; not to mention, tidying the bed would likely be the maid’s domain, not a footman’s. What was going on?
Mustering her courage, Lucy dared to peek a bit farther. Her angle didn’t allow her a glimpse of the servant’s face, but she caught the shape of his physique. Athletic, tall. Could it be Monsieur V? She couldn’t catch sight of the man’s face to tell for certain. As he stepped back from the bed, she slipped farther into the shadows, hoping not to be caught. His footsteps resonated along the floor as he retreated to the doorway once more. There, he paused to glance out into the hall. When she snuck a glimpse, holding her breath in the hopes that she wouldn’t be discovered, she caught sight of his profile.
It was difficult to tell his identity when she could see no more than the shape of his face, but she didn’t think the man was Monsieur V—unless he’d cosmetically altered the shape of his face, with padding and such like the actors had used.
The servant shut the door. A moment later, muffled footsteps indicated his departure.
Lucy’s limbs went watery with relief. She laid limply beneath the bed as she fought to catch her breath. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. That had been close.
What had the servant done to the bed, and why? She crawled out from under the bed and stood, first brushing herself off so that she looked presentable again for once she left the room. No one must suspect that she’d spent some time hiding beneath a man’s bed. Once she was assured that she was presentable again, she found the tinderbox by feel and used it to light the candle once more.
The bed appeared pristine, the same as it had been before the servant had walked in. But he hadn’t come in to straighten it, so what had he been doing? Lucy ran her hands over the coverlet, feeling for something amiss. When she found nothing, she checked beneath the pillows.
A note. She pulled the folded page from beneath the pillow and opened it. It was written in code. The hairs on the back of her neck rose as she examined the page.
This code wasn’t the lengthy letter with misspellings. This one, to an observer who didn’t know it was a code, would have been gibberish. Did Lucy have the cipher in her notebook? She’d copied quite a few in there from Morgan’s desk, thinking that they might come in handy for her book writing. Despite the fact that she’d begged a moment upstairs to fetch her notebook, she always had it in her reticule; that had merely been a plausible excuse. Fishing the little book out, she flipped through the pages, comparing notes with the message laid out on the nightstand. Finally, she found the translation. She decoded the message on the margin of that page with her pencil.
Stay away from L. Graylocke.
Lucy stared at the message, uncomprehending. When the servant had entered Brackley’s room, she’d assumed he was Monsieur V. Or, if not the spymaster himself, certainly working for him. But why would the French warn Brackley away from her? It didn’t make sense.
Could the servant be employed by Morgan instead? If so, he likely already knew what she was up to. If he didn’t come to collect her himself, he would send one of her brothers. She’d hoped that the new baby and the fact that she’d withheld the missive from Lord Strickland might have bought her some time to investigate on her own. Now, she had to wonder.
Giving herself a mental shake, she folded the note once more and laid it beneath Brackley’s pillow. After returning the candle to the writing desk and blowing it out, she left his room behind, almost exactly as she had found it.
Unfortunately, her search had raised more questions than it had answered.
10
Lucy battled a yawn as she turned down a narrower corridor that wasn’t quite as well-decorated as the rest of the house. The walls were plain, no adornment of any kind or any other sort of decoration in niches. Finally, she’d reached the servant’s wing of the house. If only she wasn’t battling to keep her eyes open after the second night of staying up late with the guests and yet dragging herself out of bed before they rose.
She had work to do, after all. If Monsieur V wasn’t among the guests, there was a chance that he had hidden himself among Lady Leighton’s servants. As the only person who knew his face, Lucy needed to catch a glimpse of all the servants if she was to find him among them.
That was, if he was still there. He might have fled shortly after she’d missed their meeting two nights ago. While she questioned the servants today, she would have to ask after men who had mysteriously disappeared. Though, to be honest, she hoped that he hadn’t fled. If he had, she might have trouble leaving the party to follow him. She had not only accepted, but pressed for an invitation. If she left early, she would arouse the hostess’s suspicion—perhaps even incense her. Although Lucy had been willing to risk it if she’d had a notorious criminal in custody, she couldn’t put her family’s reputation on the line simply to follow a clue. She would have to wait.
Had Monsieur V given up on her when she hadn’t arrived for their meeting? She couldn’t fathom why he’d wanted to meet with her to begin with. Perhaps he’d try again to make contact, if only she was patient and waited.
Lucy had never been skilled at showing patience. If she couldn’t fathom waiting until the spymaster sent her another message, she would go out hunting for him instead—or, at the very least, the man who had infiltrated Brackley’s room last night.
Unfortunately, being the sister of a duke had its detriments as well as its benefits. Among the servant class, she found herself shut off by a polite wall. The servants curtsied or bowed, addressed her as my lady despite her repeated corrections, and provided her with no useful information. They didn’t bar her from their domain but it was clear from the polite masks they wore while in her presence that she was unwelcome.
If no one would tell her what she wanted to know, Lucy would at the very least search for the man she’d seen last night. But, as it turned out, identifying a man from his profile was more difficult than she expected. Although she searched the face of every servant to enter or leave the corridor, she left defeated. The hard-eyed woman who had deflected the bulk of Lucy’s inquiries seemed relieved when she gave up.
She’d have to try again later, because quitting was not in Lucy’s vocabulary. One way or another, she would find the man she was looking for. Unlike Monsieur V, she knew this man was in the house.
As she turned the corner to return to the guests’ quarters—with luck, before Charlie and Mrs. Vale awoke to wonder where Lucy had run off to—Lucy found herself face to face with the very man she was looking f
or. Not Monsieur V—that would be far too good a stroke of luck—but the spy who had snuck into Brackley’s room. Lucy recognized the shape of his nose and chin immediately.
Triumph shone through her as she blocked his path. The man looked wary as he bowed, tugging on his forelock. “My lady, how may I be of service?”
You can tell me why you infiltrated the room of a peer last night. But no, she already knew the answer to that. He’d done it to deliver the note.
What did she want to know? She hadn’t stopped to think past finding the man. Now that she had him in her sights—in fact, at her mercy, considering that no other servants or guests populated this corridor for the moment—she realized that she had no idea what information she wanted to draw out of the man. It would help if she knew for whom he worked. If he was her brother’s man, then she likely couldn’t use him at all. If, on the other hand, his allegiance belonged to Monsieur V, she might be able to extract a clue as to the spymaster’s whereabouts.
How did she discover the allegiance of a stranger without him realizing that was what she searched for? If he did work for Morgan, she didn’t want her brother to hear that she had caught on to his underling. Her brothers seemed determined to treat her as though she was too fragile and empty-headed to have learned about their involvement in Britain’s spy network. They wouldn’t be happy to hear otherwise. Better they learn of it after she’d proven that she could handle the rigors of spying.
Donning her sweetest smile and batting her eyelashes, she tried to draw the information out of the man by flirting. Men always felt gratified when a woman paid them extra attention, especially men approaching their fifties, like him. Lucy played to the weakness she’d observed in other men as she attempted to pry the information out of him.
“Have I seen you around the guest wing?”
His expression hardened. “I doubt that, my lady. My duties confine me to the ground floor.”
Lucy bit back a smirk as she stepped closer. She’d gotten him to admit that he shouldn’t have been in that area of the house to begin with. Now, how to coax him to tell her why?
What was it that Lord Strickland’s messenger had said to Lucy, the code phrase to identify her as an ally? She fought not to frown as she recalled it. Her fingers itched to check her book, but she couldn’t do that in front of him. Instead, she flipped the pages in her mind’s eye until she thought she might remember.
“Britain is cold.”
Was it Britain or England? Oh, drat! He looked confused. It must have been England.
The echo of booted footsteps bounded down the corridor a moment before a man latched onto her elbow. “Lady Lucy, what a pleasure to see you awake so early in the morning.”
Without paying any attention to the servant at all, Brackley towed her down the corridor. When he stopped midway, he continued to hold her elbow as he stared over her head. When she glanced over her shoulder, she was just in time to catch the spy hurrying out of sight around the corner.
Blast! How long would it be before she found him again? Let alone without her chaperone so she could speak freely?
She turned to glare at Brackley.
Before she could say a word, he said dryly, “It seems you make a habit of rising early.”
“As do you,” she bit off.
He smirked. “It appears early mornings do little to sweeten your temper. I hear a cup of tea does wonders to brighten the day.”
If she’d had a cup of tea at that moment, she might have upended it in his lap. He was deliberately trying to nettle her. More so, he was having fun doing so!
Although there was no one else in the corridor, she stepped closer and lowered her voice. If she didn’t make an attempt to bridle her annoyance, she feared their conversation would evolve into a shouting match.
“You had no right to interrupt,” she snapped. “That was a private conversation.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “A private conversation with a servant?”
Lucy was friends with some servants. The Tenwick gardener, Rocky, for instance. And she was friendly towards others, such as Bess, her middle-aged lady’s maid. Nothing precluded her from having a conversation with someone.
“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
His second eyebrow rose to join the first. “Frankly, I’m surprised you do not. I was taught that it would mean the devastation of a young lady’s reputation to be found alone with a man—any man—not related to her.”
Lucy fought the urge to roll her eyes. “He’s a servant.” It wasn’t as though Morgan would force her to marry a servant, even if she’d been caught in a more compromising position than a mere conversation. No, she would more likely be married off to one of her peers.
If someone caught her speaking alone with Brackley, on the other hand…
She narrowed her eyes and clenched her fists to keep from jabbing her finger at him. “I was safer with him than I am with you.”
His smile turned wolfish. That rakehell enjoyed putting a woman’s reputation in danger, didn’t he? It was part of the thrill for him. Lucy refused to play his game.
She crossed her arms. “Thank you for your concern, but I believe I’ll be the judge of my associates.”
“Associates like the one you meant to meet two nights ago?”
She smiled up at him sweetly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I spent the night with you, remember?”
The playful look on his face fell into something more serious. “I recall.” His gaze dropped to her mouth before he brought it back to her eyes.
In a light voice, he added, “Do you have anything you’d care to share about your morning?”
“Other than spending it with you yet again?”
He teased, “You really should be more discerning about your companions.”
“Indeed. You made me miss a very important appointment.” Lucy might even call it pivotal. If she wasn’t able to pick up Monsieur V’s trail…
She would. She had to. This wasn’t only about proving to her brothers that she could be every bit as clever as them. She was the best person, perhaps the only person who could see this criminal to justice.
If Brackley stopped getting in her way. Was he doing it on purpose? She didn’t have anything to share about the investigation, but even if she had, perhaps she would do better to keep it to herself. If he was keeping her away from Monsieur V on purpose, he would use anything she told him to stop her from catching the spymaster.
The scoundrel smirked. “I made you miss an appointment with whom?”
He knew very well whom. Either he was working for the man or he had intercepted Lucy’s message and thought to go in her place.
Personally, she didn’t think the dress Monsieur V had insisted the recipient wear would look very flattering on Brackley.
“My lover,” Lucy lied, since apparently this morning they were going to dance around the truth.
His smile grew. “You’re a very poor liar, Lady Lucy.”
She hadn’t been trying. “Perhaps you’re bad at reading people,” she countered.
He shrugged, unconcerned. “Very well. You were meeting with a lover. What would you have done with said lover if you had kept the appointment? Kissed him?”
Kiss a notorious traitor? Lucy had been face to face with him once—not that she’d known his identity at the time—and she hadn’t been the least bit tempted. The thought of kissing the man she conjured in her mind’s eye, Monsieur V, held little appeal for personal reasons. But for her book… How thrilling it would be to kiss a traitor! She wouldn’t be able to describe it properly unless she did it.
And Brackley… although he may not be a traitor himself, he might be in league with one. He was dangerous, rakish. If Lucy wanted to learn what it felt like to kiss someone she shouldn’t, he might do just as well. In fact, considering the sparks that flared to life under her skin whenever he looked at her, he might do even better.
Before she thought better of it, she leaned up on her ti
ptoes, gripped him by the back of the neck, and kissed him. As her body flared to life, she surrendered to the kiss, savoring it and committing every last detail to memory.
11
The Duke of Tenwick was going to kill Alex. Rip him limb from limb as he stared with those colder-than-ice eyes. But at that moment, as Lucy’s warm mouth brushed over his, Alex couldn’t bring himself to care. He could never kiss her again, but he would damn well enjoy it now.
Lucy Graylocke kissed like she processed every new experience; with eagerness and meticulousness, as if going over every detail and committing it to memory to write down later. So Alex gave her something to write about.
He pulled her flush against him, splaying his hand in the small of her back to hold her to him. He deepened the kiss, conquering her with lips and tongue. The taste of her, a hint of sweet like she’d indulged in a cup of chocolate before setting out on this mad and dangerous investigation, made him lightheaded. How long had it been since he’d lost himself to a woman’s touch? And none of them compared to the heady kiss of a woman he shouldn’t have.
A year ago, before Camden had died, he would have taken what he’d wanted without regret. He also would have been drawing as much negative attention to him as he could manage, creating scandal after scandal to cause his father more grief. Camden, the golden boy, had tried to reason with him more than once. To convince him to do right by his family.
Unfortunately, it had taken their deaths to convince Alex of the sensibility of Camden’s advice. Since that day, he’d sworn off his wild ways, rededicating his life to finishing what his brother had started. In other words, finding Monsieur V and seeing that the heinous man got what he deserved. Although his reputation had served as a cover for several spy missions, Alex hadn’t drank more than a glass of spirits, hadn’t gambled when not on mission, and hadn’t so much as looked at a woman for his own pleasure.
Pursuing The Traitor (Scandals and Spies Book 5) Page 8
