Hetty studied Genevieve. She had no way of knowing if the duchess’s opinion could be relied upon. Guy had been very angry. She shivered, his eyes had pinned her in place. But… He was worried and tense, otherwise he would have recovered his good humor, laughed, and joined them. She recognized the way he’d clenched his jaw, and he had avoided her eyes when questioned. “There is nothing we can do.”
“We shall follow him again this evening.”
“He may not be going out this evening,” Hetty reasoned.
“He must be, otherwise he would call on us,” Genevieve said with French practicality.
“But, he’ll be on the alert for us now.”
“We’ll dress in costume,” the duchess said promptly.
“What kind of costume?”
“Men’s attire, and we’ll hire a hackney.”
“Where will we get… Oh!” Hetty bit her lip. “I do wish I’d brought them to London.”
Her Grace stared at her. “Quoi?”
Distracted by the sudden likeness to her brother, Hetty muttered, “It is nothing. I’ll explain later.”
“I can borrow some clothes from my staff. The footmen are huge, but the younger servants aren’t so big. No one visits before nine in London. I’ll come to you at eight of the clock.”
An alarming thought struck Hetty. “W-what if Guy is visiting a woman?”
“A mistress?” Genevieve asked, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Yes.” Hetty swallowed a lump in her throat. Had she driven Guy into the arms of a Cyprian?
His sister shook her head. “She would not keep him from me for days at a time. And he is in love. A man in love does not visit a courtesan. Not Gee. I may not have seen much of him for years, but I remember him as a loving son and a kind brother. He rescued our Maman and me when our chateau was burning, and my papa had gone to find Vincent. Gee fought a man much bigger than he, who tried to attack us. I don’t know where he found the strength, but he punched him to the ground and he led us to safety.”
That was the man Hetty knew.
“Gee wrote to me when he could,” Genevieve continued. “As a child he was honorable. Vincent never was. The twins were opposites. The light and the dark. This does not change.”
The coach drew to a stop in King Street. Hetty alighted as another problem faced her. What on earth was she to tell her aunt?
Hetty walked in and found the house in upheaval. A maid scurried past with her arms full of linen. “What has happened, Sarah?”
“Your father has arrived,” Sarah said. “Your aunt has put him in the guest bedchamber next to yours.”
“Papa?” Hetty’s voice quavered.
Aunt Emily bustled out of the parlor. “He has news.” She gave a conspiratorial smile. “I shall let him tell you himself.”
As she trudged up the stairs, Hetty searched her mind for an appropriate reason to be absent this evening. She knocked on her father’s door with the hope that a suitable excuse would spring from somewhere when the need arose.
Her father stood before the mirror adjusting his neckcloth. He turned as she entered, and she was struck by how lively he appeared. His beaming face looked years younger.
“My dear.” He kissed her cheek. “I had to come and tell you the news. I have asked Marina Illingworth to be my wife, and she has accepted.”
Pleasure for him threaded through her. His future with Mrs. Illingworth was sure to be a happy and fulfilling one. “Papa, that’s wonderful news. I’m so pleased for you.”
“Are you really, my dear? I hoped you would be.”
“I like Mrs. Illingworth very much.”
“She is a sensible woman.”
“Indeed, she is.”
“I thought we might have a small celebration this evening. If you are not otherwise engaged?”
“I’m afraid I do have an engagement tonight,” Hetty said cautiously. “I received an invitation from the Duchess Châteaudunn, Guy’s sister.”
Her father’s face fell. He considered her words and recovered a little. “The Duchess Châteaudunn, you say?”
“Yes, she has come from France for a visit. Will tomorrow night serve? We can invite her and Guy.”
“Well, yes, I should like that. I should have written, but I wanted to tell you the news myself.”
She hugged him with a fresh flush of guilt. “I’m glad you did. I’m pleased to see you’re in excellent health. When is the wedding?”
“Come and sit down.” He took her hand and steered her to the sofa. “I thought it safe to proceed and have the Banns read.” He frowned. “Has the date for your wedding been set? I’ve been expecting a letter from you.”
“Not as yet. Guy has other matters to attend to. He plans to obtain a special license and arrange for the wedding to take place at St. Georges in Hanover Square.”
His eyes widened. “St. Georges? The vicar and I had expected… Well of course, that is fitting for a baron.”
Hetty clasped her shaking hands together. Marrying before the eyes of the haute ton terrified her. She could hear the talk now. Cavendish? A branch of the family live in Digswell?
“I’ll learn more about it when Fortescue calls for you tonight.”
“I’m afraid not. Guy has another engagement.”
“An engagement that does not include his betrothed?” He studied her. “You are happy, Horatia? I judged him to be a good man.”
“Guy’s the very best of men, Papa.” The words almost stuck in Hetty’s throat, her guilt overlaid with uneasiness. Was Genevieve right to follow Guy when this matter was surely none of their concern? It was most unlike Hetty not to act on a premonition, but the duchess depended on her, so she would not let her down.
“Good.” Her father rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go downstairs. I have yet to enjoy a good chat with your aunt.”
After dinner, Genevieve called for Hetty in her carriage at the appointed time. She was introduced to Hetty’s father, who was immediately charmed by her.
When she climbed into the coach, Genevieve thrust some clothes into Hetty’s hands. “Put these on.”
“Here?”
“Oui.” She lowered the blinds.
As the carriage rocked along the street, they removed their gowns. Hetty struggled into the ill-fitting clothes that reeked of horse.
“I’m sorry. They belong to the stable boy,” Genevieve said. “They were the only ones that would fit you.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “You are so tall and slim.” She held out a pair of scuffed shoes. “These will be too large for you. You’ll need to stuff the toes with paper.”
Hetty admired Genevieve’s nimble fingers as she tied a credible cravat without a mirror. Her clothes were more suited to the gentry. She wondered whom the duchess had coerced into giving them up and had a ridiculous vision of her ordering a local clerk to remove his clothes. She stifled a nervous giggle, tugging on her black tricorn as Genevieve tucked her dark hair beneath the hat.
A watchman called, to whoever would listen, that the weather remained fine. The coach halted for them to alight at the stand in New Bond Street beside the water trough. A night coach passed them, and link boys lit the way for a chair carrying some important personage.
The bare wisp of smoky cloud hiding the crescent moon slowly drifted away. A cool breeze stirred the trees and fanned the stench of fresh horse manure, stinging Hetty’s nostrils. She shivered in the thin clothing, more from apprehension than cold.
No available hackneys were waiting at the stand. A peddler strolled up to them with a box of clocks strapped around his neck. Hetty waved him away as her frustration grew. She and Genevieve walked up and down. The minutes turned into half an hour.
“It’s growing late. We will have missed him.” Hetty rubbed her arms.
“I see one!” Genevieve darted out to wave it down. Hetty followed, unable to move very fast as the shoes slid off her heels.
“Don’t have smallpox or the plague, do you?” the jarvie asked before they
climbed in.
“Certainly not,” Hetty growled. “Berkley Square, if you please.”
“Toffy kind o’ place for the likes of you, ain’t it?”
Hetty squared her shoulders. “Mind your manners, my man, or you won’t get a tip.”
“No offense meant.” The jarvie pushed his hat back and drew his whip.
They rattled past elegant stone and brick houses as they approached Berkley Square.
“There he is!” Guy walked up Brutton Street, a tall hat on his head, his long dark coat flowing about his ankles. “Follow that man!” she called to the jarvie.
“What kind o’ smoky business is this?” he asked.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Hetty said. “Just think about the extra money you’ll earn.”
The jarvie turned the hackney and drove after Guy, who had disappeared into New Bond Street. An empty hackney passed him and slowed. Guy waved it on, content to go on foot to his destination. They caught sight of him again as he turned from Grafton Street into Albemarle Street. He walked past the grand façade of the Royal Institution and disappeared into the Grillion Hotel.
“What do we do now?” Hetty asked as the jarvie pulled up outside the hotel. “He’ll be here to meet a friend and may be there for hours.”
Suddenly, the hackney doors were flung open, and a man thrust a pistol into their faces. “Out.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
A tall man stood there, another beside him. Both men’s faces were obscured by shadows.
Hetty stilled the clink of coins in her pocket as she climbed down, having heard of some people being robbed, sometimes just for their handkerchiefs. Genevieve followed her to the pavement, unusually silent. Hetty couldn’t be sure that a scolding tirade wouldn’t erupt from Genevieve’s lips and get them both shot.
She hurriedly spoke before the duchess could. “We has nothin’ of value ’ere,” she croaked, her voice lowered to a bark by the fear that tightened her throat.
The tall man grabbed her by the arm while the other attempted to drag the struggling Genevieve into the light cast by a street lamp. “What business do you have here?” the tall man demanded.
“They look like pigs, they do, miss,” the jarvie offered from his seat. “From Bow Street I’ll be bound.”
The light fell on the tall man’s face. Hetty gasped. “Is it you, Lord Strathairn?”
“What the devil?” He whipped off her hat. “Miss Cavendish. Why are you dressed like that and talking that way? Those clothes reek of the stable. And why are you following Lord Fortescue?”
“We are most worried about Gee,” Genevieve said, finding her voice.
“I’m sorry, Lord Strathairn.” Hetty finally remembered her manners. “I’d like you to meet Duchess Châteaudunn. Lord Fortescue’s sister.”
Lord Strathairn’s accomplice whistled. “I’ll be damned!”
“I appreciate your concern, Your Grace.” Lord Strathairn spoke through clenched teeth. “But you’ll make matters worse for the baron if you remain here. Please go home.”
“I demand you tell us what this is about,” Genevieve said, having regained her poise. Her voice rang with imperiousness, and the other man hesitated then made an awkward bow.
“It’s secret government business that does not concern you, Your Grace,” Lord Strathairn said in a cool tone. “Have no fear. We shall keep your brother safe. Please leave now or you’ll both spend the night in a Bow Street cell.”
“Guy’s on secret government business?” Hetty gasped. That would certainly account for his odd behavior. “If you’re sure…”
“We’ll guard him like a baby.” The Runner–if indeed he was one–gave a guffaw which was cut short by Genevieve’s icy glare.
“I do hope so, monsieur,” the duchess said. “There will be trouble should you fail.”
Once back in the hackney, Hetty instructed the jarvie where to take them. He moved the horse on without further comment, apparently struck dumb by what he’d witnessed.
“What on earth is Guy involved in?” Hetty asked. She’d experienced cold fear before but was now chilled to the bone.
The hackney turned the corner into Grafton Street and passed a lane behind the hotel. Hetty caught sight of two men exiting from the rear of the building.
“Look, there’s Guy!” Hetty clutched Genevieve’s sleeve. She hung out the window. “Stop the carriage!”
The jarvie cursed as he pulled the horse up.
Genevieve craned her neck. “They are entering a carriage.”
“I can’t run in these shoes! You go! Tell Lord Strathairn,” Hetty said. “I’ll keep their carriage in sight.”
“Oui.” Genevieve climbed down onto the pavement. She paused. “But what if we lose you?”
“Hurry! Tell Lord Strathairn. He will follow us.”
As the duchess ran back to Albemarle Street, Guy’s carriage passed Hetty’s. She watched it go and shouted to the jarvie. “Don’t lose sight of that carriage!”
“You meet all kinds in this ’ere job,” the jarvie said with a crack of his whip.
The hackney moved at a clip to the next corner in time for Hetty to see the carriage that bore Guy trundle down Dover Street toward Piccadilly.
Hetty looked back. Lord Strathairn was half a block behind driving a curricle, the other man beside him. Had they forced Genevieve to go home? Hetty bit her lip. Genevieve would be furious.
At Piccadilly, the hackney was slowed by a stream of evening traffic. Ahead, a slow wagon loaded with wares rattled along at a snail’s pace. With mounting horror, Hetty watched Guy’s carriage disappear into the gloom. “Have we lost them?” she yelled, trying to make herself heard above the noise of clattering wheels and pedestrian chatter.
“Not bloody likely,” the jarvie yelled back. “When Pete sets his mind to it, he doesn’t fail.”
“There they are,” Hetty called. “They’re heading toward the Strand.” She had no idea if Lord Strathairn still followed or was held up in the traffic.
They traveled under the stone gateway of Temple Bar and the nearby Inns of Court where judges, barristers, and silks wandered the courts and chambers in their robes. Then the printing shops, churches, inns, and coffee houses in Fleet Street. Ahead, Guy’s carriage turned into Bridge Street, where a motley crowd overflowed the pavements. “Could they be heading for the river?” she yelled.
“Looks like it,” Pete yelled back.
A group of sailors gathered in a pool of lamplight to eye a pair of well-dressed gentlemen intent on some evening’s entertainment.
As Guy’s carriage turned into Earl Street toward Puddle Dock, they barely avoided a cat streaking across the road. They stopped outside a warehouse, only feet from the moss-covered steps leading down to where a sea of masts swayed on the Thames. Boatmen rowed passengers over the river during the day, but it was now deserted but for one lantern lit wherry winking out on the river.
“Smokey business,” Pete muttered. “Best we stop ’ere.” He pulled up the horse at the top of the lane, beside a pen filled with ducks and fowl settling for the night.
Hetty covered her nose at the stench of manure mingling with sea-coal smoke. Fingers of mist rose from the water and curled around them while clouds shrouded the moon in a ghostly haze. Muffled by the mist, it was deathly quiet but for the creak of boats rocking on the swell.
In the poor light, Hetty jumped down onto the sandy gravel in time to see two vague shapes enter the building. She whirled around with the hope of finding Lord Strathairn coming behind them, but the lane was empty.
She shuddered as a rat scuttled across the ground intent on its own pursuits. “You can leave me here, Pete.”
“You shouldna go after ’em, miss,” Pete said. He removed his hat to scratch his head. “Don’t like the looks of this ’ere place at all. They might be ark pirates, being so close to the river as they are.”
“What are ark pirates?”
“Those who rob an’ plunder on the river, m
iss. Anyways, there’s something smoky goin’ on behind that door.”
“Go, if you’d rather.” She reached into her pocket and drew out some coins for him, dismayed at how much her hand shook.
“Hold on a bit,” Pete said, deep furrows forming in his brow in the light from the lantern he held. “I didna say I’d leave, did I? You might be a bit dicked in the nob, but you ain’t short of pluck, and I ain’t about to cast you to the birds of a feather in that there place. I’ll stay ’til your friends show up, that I will.”
Relieved, she smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you, Pete. I’ll go and see if I can hear what’s being said.”
“Not sure you should, but you be careful, miss.”
“I will.”
She picked her way down the lane toward the warehouse, edging around a stinking and rotting animal corpse on the ground. The mist thickened, extinguishing all light. She faltered, unable to see the way. Distant sounds reached her, echoing through the fog. Was it a carriage? She stood still, unsure whether to return to the hackney. Had Pete decided to leave after all? Moving closer, light flickered around an ill-fitting door at the side of the warehouse. She crept forward and placed an eye to the crack. She could make out only blurred movement in the flickering candlelight and the indistinct hum of voices. Frustrated, she hesitated. Should she go and find Lord Strathairn?
An arm around her waist pulled her backward off her feet. A smothering hand covered her mouth and nose, clamping down on her scream.
*
Guy was convinced they’d lost Strathairn when he and Forney left by the rear of the hotel. He looked around the bare candlelit warehouse at the dozen men who stood to greet him. They had been sitting at a table drinking brandy. Heavy curved wooden ribs marched across the ceiling like the inside of a whale’s belly. An anchor propped against a wall alongside a pile of fishing nets. The strong smell of rotten fish lingered in the air.
“Please take off your coat, baron,” Forney said, hanging his on a peg near the door.
Guy did the same, ruing the fact that his new gun was in the pocket. He fought to appear calm as he greeted each man around the table. So far, none had questioned his authenticity. Whenever a man eyed him, however, saliva dried in his mouth and his heart banged against his ribs. Despite John’s instruction, he was poorly prepared for this dangerous gamble. One question could strip him bare.
The Baron's Betrothal (Dangerous Lords Book 1) Page 22
