Regency 01 - The Schoolmistress and the Spy

by Julia Byrne

  Luke scowled as he followed the bird’s flight. He’d like to change direction, too—toward the estate he’d inherited, for instance. Instead, his contact at Whitehall, the omniscient Mr. Gibbs, had got to him in a weak moment and dragooned him into one last assignment.

  He’d argued, of course, but it was difficult to protest with any effectiveness when you were flat on your back recovering from various and assorted life-threatening wounds. By the time he’d realized Gibbs was taking no notice of his objections, the heartless bastard was making all speed back to London. He hadn’t even had the consolation of assisting Gibbs’s departure with the toe of his boot.

  Things had improved since then, thank God. He could now pull his boots on. Given that the current task could be accomplished with equal dexterity, he didn’t know why Gibbs hadn’t put some eager young novice onto it. All said novice had to do was insinuate himself into the house he was watching and prove that the owner was blackmailing several aristocratic émigrés.

  How dangerous could it be? The place was a young ladies’ academy.

  The sound of carriage wheels over cobblestones interrupted these profitless ruminations. Luke watched with seemingly idle interest as a barouche bearing several ladies, faces set in lines of rigid disdain, rattled past.

  The sight improved his mood considerably; he smothered a grin. He hated to admit it, but Gibbs had been correct in his assertion that, after an absence of fourteen years and in his present guise, no-one in Lymingford was likely to recognize him. Instead of nodding graciously to the Honorable Lucas Bannister, cousin to the Earl of Danebridge, the occupants of the barouche had turned up their noses at a big, scruffy-looking man lounging against the area steps of a house, his unshaven countenance and ill-fitting attire more suited to the tavern he’d frequented two nights ago than a genteel street.

  No doubt Miss Proudfoot would look at him with the same disdainful sniff, but he didn’t think her disdain would last long when he applied for the post standing vacant. Thanks to Jenkins, Miss Proudfoot should now be coping with a broken window latch, an unpleasant odor wafting from the attic, several smoking chimneys, and a pump that dispensed one drop of water at a time.

  He’d just run through the list with a rather fiendish sense of anticipation when the front door of Number 12 opened with a hideous screech that had him fighting back another grin. It seemed Jenkins had added an extra touch on his way out of the place.

  A lady appeared in the doorway. She looked to be no more than twenty years of age, was slight of build, and elegantly attired in a navy-blue pelisse with a small white ruff lining the upstanding collar and two modest flounces adorning the hem.

  Not his target, Luke decided swiftly. A navy bonnet, secured with navy, white, and coquelicot ribbons tied beneath a firm little chin, permitted only a glimpse of dark hair, and the distance was too great for him to determine the color of her eyes, but she was too pretty to match Jenkins’ description of Miss Proudfoot. And far too young to be the owner and headmistress of a school.

  One of the younger mistresses, he surmised. Or, given that she was hauling someone after her who appeared reluctant to leave, she might be a visitor.

  The unwilling evictee turned out to be a young man in scarlet regimentals. Before Luke could wonder how either had arrived without him seeing them, the lady gave a mighty heave and sent the young man staggering down the steps. He managed to save himself from sprawling ignominiously on the pavement by clutching at the iron railing.

  Luke’s brows rose. The youth must have outweighed the lady by several pounds, but whatever she lacked in muscle was more than made up for by determination. She plunked her hands on her hips and glared down at her victim. Her crisp tones carried easily across the street.

  “I will thank you to remember, sir, that this is a Young Ladies’ Academy, not a House of Ill-Repute. You can’t plant yourself in the drawing room and wait about all morning to be entertained by the lady of your choice.”

  The young man muttered something that appeared to incense his auditor further. Her eyes narrowed.

  “If I was a dragon, Lieutenant Netherby, you would find yourself reduced to a pile of cinders on the street. Now, kindly take yourself off.”

  Lieutenant Netherby clearly felt disinclined to follow this order. He swayed in the stiff breeze coming off the beach, caught his balance, and launched into an earnest speech, the gist of which seemed to be his avowed intention of gambling every night until he made enough money to carry off the lady of his choice.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, go and put your head under a pump,” ordered the lady, quite exasperated.

  Lieutenant Netherby shook the head in question. “Can’t,” he said, not without satisfaction. “Only drips.”

  “I didn’t mean our pump, you imbecile! Go and find one that works. And if you must hang about Miss Cartwright like a homeless puppy, at least wait until our next afternoon tea.”

  “Not ’til Friday,” Netherby said mournfully. “Could’ve sailed by then. Have to see her. Have to see her now.” He lurched forward on the words.

  The lady whipped her hands off her hips and flung them out, clearly intending to resist the charge.

  Luke straightened. It didn’t take a great deal of intelligence to realize that the young man’s faculties were seriously impaired by over-indulgence in spiritous liquors, but he was still capable of sending his smaller opponent flying.

  There would never be a better opportunity. The lady needed help.

  *

  Emily swallowed a startled yelp as Netherby charged toward her. A Proudfoot did not yelp in the face of danger. Not even when the indignity of being hurled backwards into the hall and trampled beneath Netherby’s eager feet seemed her inevitable fate.

  But even as she braced herself for the collision, its instigator was whisked away by a hand that seemed to come out of nowhere. A large form materialized behind Lieutenant Netherby. That enterprising youth was plucked off the steps and set back on the street with a thump.

  “Take the lady’s advice,” growled a deep voice that rasped over Emily’s shaken nerves. “Find a pump, or I’ll sober you up by hauling you before your commanding officer.”

  Netherby blinked owlishly at the man who held him by the collar of his uniform. The muscles in his throat worked. Several incoherent squawks issued from his mouth.

  Taking the squawks for agreement, the man released his victim, who immediately effected an erratic but speedy departure.

  “Well!” Emily lowered her hands and transferred her approving gaze from Netherby’s fleeing form to her rescuer.

  Her breath, already short, deserted her entirely.

  Instead of the gentleman she expected to see, a ruffian stood before her, watching her with an utterly focused intensity that made Gresham Street and its elegant environs disappear into a mist. For one unnerving instant, she saw herself standing in a dusty arena, crowds of yelling Romans on all sides, while a huge, black-maned lion paced slowly toward her, her fate clear in the predatory intelligence gleaming in his fierce golden eyes.

  Emily blinked and shook her head. Good heavens. She must be teaching too many classes in Ancient History. There was no need to indulge in overwrought flights of imagination because her rescuer was big and had unusually light brown eyes. They probably appeared that way because his brows and lashes were black and his face was lightly tanned.

  What she could see of it beneath a dense layer of stubble as black as his close-cropped hair.

  Emily’s brows snapped together. She lowered her gaze to a pair of dusty topboots then raised it again. Nothing she saw on either pass reassured her. The thought that the employment agency might be responsible for the man’s presence outside her school occurred only to be dismissed. She had specifically requested someone with a high degree of polish.

  The ruffian standing at the foot of her steps failed on all counts. Not only had his rough twill coat never seen a decent tailor, it looked as if it had survived several unfortunate encoun
ters with a succession of hedges—possibly whilst its owner was in flight. A Belcher handkerchief was knotted carelessly about his throat, and there wasn’t a pin, watch, or fob to be seen.

  Emily’s frown deepened. The severe expression, capable of banishing the blustering males who had descended on her after her father’s death, removed neither the man nor the sense of danger charging the air around him. She didn’t think he was being deliberately menacing, however. He was just there. Taking up a lot of space.

  She quickly abandoned the notion of delivering a brisk thank-you and edging around him. First she needed to clear a path to the street.

  “Well…” She turned to close the front door, wincing at the screech that ensued. “Thank you for your assistance, uh…” Not waiting for a name, she delved into her reticule for a few coins.

  “I don’t want any payment,” he murmured, still in that low growl that caused a feather of sensation to brush over her skin. His voice sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t used it for a very long time. Or as if he’d been ill.

  She looked up, her attention suddenly arrested on the poor fit of his coat rather than its condition. His breeches, too, appeared to hang loosely on his big, long-limbed frame, and he seemed to be taking a good deal of his weight on his right leg.

  Rather at a loss, she withdrew her hand from her reticule.

  “It must be damn-near impossible to keep young ladies in line in a town full of soldiers,” he observed, with a glance at the discreetly-lettered sign beside the door that announced her name and business. “You need someone to evict unwanted visitors.”

  Emily was having a hard enough time keeping her own nerves in line. Every time they heard that dark, gravelly voice they sat up and quivered in expectation. She was sure the sensation boded no good.

  “I dare say,” she agreed repressively as her rescuer ran an assessing eye over the building. She hurried on in case he was thinking of recommending himself for the job. “However, a firm hand seems to do the trick. Now—”

  “You’re not worried about that young idiot running off with the, er, lady of his choice?”

  “Not while she’s under my roof,” she retorted with grim determination.

  His gaze flashed to her face. “Your roof? You’re Miss Proudfoot? You don’t look old enough to be a schoolmistress.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m twenty-two,” she announced with some asperity. “Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “That’s very young to own a place like this. What’d you do? Rob the mail?”

  Her jaw dropped.

  The flash of amusement in his eyes had her snapping her teeth shut with an audible click—an instant before she remembered who she had robbed. Heat stung her cheeks.

  “A lucky throw of the dice,” she muttered, glaring at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “Now, if your curiosity is quite satisfied, perhaps you will be good enough to let me pass. I appreciate your help with Lieutenant Netherby, but I have some urgent business to attend to.”

  For several ominous seconds nothing happened. Emily had plenty of time to wonder if the hard, unyielding lines of the man’s face indicated an equally stubborn nature, before he tugged an imaginary forelock and stepped back.

  “Far be it from me to keep a lady from her business,” he murmured. “My humble apologies, Miss Proudfoot.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. But, for some reason, it wasn’t the possibility of sarcasm that was uppermost in her mind. Several observations were winging their way through her head. That the high slant of his cheekbones and the arrogant nose leant a stern, aristocratic cast to his face. That even surrounded by the beginnings of a dark beard, his mouth was wide and beautifully defined with a distinctly sensual curve to his lower lip. That the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes made her wonder what he looked like when he smiled.

  And that the expression in those eyes was now hard and watchful.

  Emily shivered and wrenched her gaze away. Muttering an incoherent rejoinder, she descended the steps and slipped past him, conscious of a moment of acute breathlessness as her arm brushed his coat in passing.

  The condition didn’t abate as she hurried off down the street. Her heart hammered in her throat, every nerve was taut, and she had to exert a considerable effort to prevent her feet from scurrying faster. All in all she felt as if she’d just escaped from an encounter with an extremely dangerous wild animal.

  Which was ridiculous. The man had been somewhat forward, but he hadn’t threatened her. It was probably her sense of obligation that was responsible for the butterflies darting about in her stomach. They couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that, for a moment or two, she’d found herself intrigued by her rescuer. He was a ruffian, for goodness’ sake.

  Ah, but a ruffian who had come to her aid, her conscience reminded her. A ruffian who, at some stage, might have been wounded in the service of his country. She should have insisted on paying him. At the very least she could have considered the notion of hiring him when the subject of a manservant came up.

  Especially as there wasn’t a score of applicants lining up for the vacancy in dire need of filling.

  But Emily set her teeth and kept on walking. She already had enough to worry about; she didn’t need a lion running loose in the house. If she encountered her rescuer again, she would offer him a meal.

  In the kitchen.

  That in itself would be quite a concession. Despite her sense of obligation, she knew she’d feel a great deal more comfortable if he was kept outside.

  Preferably on the end of a chain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Well, he’d certainly handled that with a fine degree of stealth and cunning. He’d been so stealthy his quarry was sailing off down the street, leaving him on the wrong side of her front door, still unemployed.

  And that was the least of his problems.

  Luke watched Miss Emily Proudfoot turn the corner with an agitated flip of her skirts and fought a violent urge to go after her, pin her against the nearest wall, and demand to know why, if she wanted money, she didn’t go into Society under her grandmother’s aegis and marry a respectable fortune. She should look what she was, damn it.

  And he should have reacted to what she was, not to the way she looked.

  He scowled at the spot where Emily had vanished and wondered what the hell he was doing. There he’d been, leading up to the point of asking for employment, and the instant he’d learned Emily’s identity and encountered the clear, direct gaze of her dark sapphire eyes, his image of a vicious blackmailer had winked out like a snuffed candle.

  It hadn’t been restored when, in those few seconds before she’d whisked past him, she had gazed up at him with a startled feminine awareness that brought every male instinct he possessed to full alert.

  He could have blamed Jenkins’ woefully inadequate description of Miss Proudfoot for his lapse, but he hadn’t survived this long by lying to himself. Black hair, blue eyes, and a shrewish tongue was accurate. If one didn’t take into account that, despite her tart tongue, her mouth was as sweet and softly-curved as the rosy petals of a flower, or if one didn’t notice that her eyes were framed by long, sooty lashes that made a man want to brush his lips across them until they drifted downward in surrender.

  Luke cursed softly. He supposed he should be grateful his male responses were still in working order, but for the first time in his career he’d been thrown off balance when encountering an adversary and he wasn’t enjoying the experience. Even less did he like the doubts raised in his mind by the way Emily had looked at him. There had been something innocent and open about her, something almost vulnerable in her startled gaze.

  On the other hand, there had been nothing innocent about the blush that heated her cheeks when he’d asked how she’d purchased her school. She’d looked as guilty as hell.

  Luke cursed again and resisted the urge to kick something. The nearest object was the iron railing and he didn’t need any more injuries. The situation wasn’t ir
retrievable. When Emily returned she would find him inside her house, and he wouldn’t be as easy to evict as Netherby.

  For one thing, he was a good deal bigger. And for another, he was a good deal more determined.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emily’s mood was not one of unalloyed happiness as she approached her school an hour later. She had spent the time walking home from an unproductive visit to Poole’s Employment Agency composing her own advertisement for a respectable man-of-all-work, only to have the very disreputable man who’d rescued her from Netherby invade her mind.

  When the front door emitted another blood-curdling shriek as she opened it, she even found herself wishing she’d offered to pay the fellow to fix the wretched thing—except that one didn’t hire people off the street. Unless one was desperate.

  Emily shut the door on the lowering thought that she was that desperate.

  “Emily! Thank heavens you’re back.”

  Emily looked up to see Charlotte Haymes, her friend and fellow teacher, hurrying down the flight of stairs at the side of the hall. Not for the first time, she gave a little inward sigh at the appearance her friend presented.

  Charlotte was a tall lady and rather too thin for her inches, and, today, had chosen to wear a plain, dark-grey dress that, although it matched her eyes, did nothing for her pale complexion and overly-slender figure. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face and confined in a tight coil at the nape of her neck and a frown marred her brow.

  Emily had once gently suggested that the wearing of somber-hued dresses, unadorned by any ribbons or flounces, was not required of her teachers, especially when the teacher concerned was only in her mid-thirties. Charlotte had merely said “how kind” and continued to dress as plainly as possible.