Christmas in The Duke's Arms

by Grace Burrowes

  A pair of tattered boots paused before her, and Eliza looked up into the face of a harried serving girl, who pushed a tangle of dark, sweaty hair from her forehead. “Welcome, missus. There’s a table there, if ye like.”

  A small wooden table with two empty seats nestled in a nook. Now that her feet had begun to thaw, they itched, and she longed for the warmth of the fire. But spies weren’t interested in comfort. The back table offered a view of the entrances and exits and kept her out of the way. She squeezed past the throng of fellow travelers, eyes downcast, until she reached it. She dropped the heavy valise so it obstructed the path to the table and took a seat with her back to the wall.

  No one paid her any heed. With her drab brown hair in a knot, her spectacles sliding down her nose, and rumpled but modest clothing, there was nothing much to see.

  The inn was very much like any other she’d visited. This was the public room, and there would be a private area nearby for those who wished to pay for it. Simple wooden stairs led to the upper floors and the rooms for rent. The kitchen was in the back or downstairs, and her mouth watered at the smell of some sort of meaty stew.

  The serving girl set down a tray with six tankards of ale one table over, which was crowded with men who spoke with the local accent.

  “Do you care for refreshment, missus?”

  The girl’s use of missus made Eliza feel old. She was too old to be a miss any longer, and the world seemed intent upon reminding her at every turn. Eliza’s age wasn’t this maid’s fault. She was still in the blush of youth, with her ample curves, long, dark hair pulled away from her face, and lively dark eyes. The maid’s life was far from flirtation and frolic, though. The hands on the swell of her hips were red and raw from work.

  “Tea, please,” Eliza said. “And would you tell the innkeeper I need to rent a room?”

  The girl nodded. “I’ll fetch my father, straightaway.”

  “Might I have the tea—”

  The serving girl had already whirled away, and Eliza resigned herself to waiting. The stifling heat took its toll, and she loosened her scarf and tugged at her gloves. Above her, a sprig of the ubiquitous mistletoe drew her attention. She had the urge to cut it down.

  A shadow fell over the table. “What are you doing here?”

  Eliza caught her breath and schooled her features, sliding her hand under the table to reach unobtrusively for the dagger in her boot. Slowly, she lowered her gaze from the mistletoe.

  “What are you doing here?” she sputtered.

  She barely recognized the skittish clerk he’d been when she’d last seen him in London. He had the same lean form, the same rigid posture, the same stiff neckcloth, but his usually soft brown eyes were hard.

  Moneypence folded his arms. He probably thought it made him look gruff and foreboding. He probably thought it made him look intimidating. And he would have been right. That and the day’s worth of stubble added a touch of the ruffian.

  What would that stubble feel like under her fingertips…or against her lips?

  Banish that thought. She’d never touch Pierce Moneypence again.

  Moneypence used the toe of a scuffed boot to push her valise aside. “We can’t talk here. Would you step outside with me for a moment, Miss Qwillen?” He held out a hand sporting more calluses than any clerk’s should and beckoned her impatiently.

  Miss Qwillen. All that had happened between them, and he still called her Miss Qwillen.

  “I most certainly will not,” she said, annoyed at him for no reason she could put a finger on. She had the urge to pull down the mistletoe and throw it at him. “I have just come in from the cold.” She gestured to the window, which framed an ominous-looking sky. “It’s snowing.”

  “But you agree we must speak privately?”

  Moneypence would be here only because of the mission. But why would Baron send both of them? And why not tell her he’d already sent Moneypence? “I agree. Perhaps—” She was prevented from suggesting an alternate meeting place when a large, red-faced man in his middle years approached.

  “Welcome to The Duke’s Arms, missus. I’m Wattles. Mrs. Wattles and I own this fine establishment. Mrs. Wattles does all the cooking, and she is the finest cook in the county.” He caressed his expansive girth. “Pretty as the day we married too and doesn’t look a day older. My daughter Peg tells me you want a room.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wattles,” Eliza said, rising and giving a perfunctory curtsey. “I am Miss Qwillen.” With a glance at Moneypence, she dredged up the story she’d invented. “My sister is traveling to London from Scotland. She’s never been to Town before, and I promised to meet her here and travel the last leg of the trip with her. I am not certain when she will arrive. She might be another day or two, depending on the weather north of here.”

  Wattles squeezed a towel, wringing it this way and that. “I’m afraid, Miss Qwillen, that I’ve let the last room.”

  Eliza hadn’t considered this possibility. With the holidays upon them, many travelers were on the roads. In any other case, she might have simply inquired at another inn, but she’d studied a road guide before leaving home. This was the only inn for miles. Above her, the mistletoe swung merrily. She needed a pistol. “I see.”

  “If only you’d arrived a little earlier,” Wattles said, darting a look at Moneypence. “This man took possession of my last available room.”

  Moneypence grinned. If she’d had that pistol she could have rid herself of the mistletoe and Moneypence’s smirk.

  “That is unfortunate,” she said. “What’s more, I have no option but to stay here and wait for my sister. If you will pardon the reference to Mary and Joseph, is there a stable where I might spend the night?”

  Wattles’s hands ceased torturing the towel, and he pulled his stained apron over a prodigious belly. “I can’t allow you to sleep in the stable, missus!”

  “I assure you, Mr. Wattles, I will be fine.”

  She was slim and small, but she was no milksop miss. Mr. Wattles began to wring the towel between his hands again. “Begging your pardon, Miss Qwillen, but I can’t allow it. The grooms bed there. I’m sure they’re good fellows, but it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  Of course he was correct. She couldn’t sleep in the stable with a half-dozen men. Just then the driver of the mail coach pulled the inn door open, and a burst of cold air fanned her overheated face. “Last call for the mail coach. Last call!” He announced the next stop, but Eliza didn’t listen. She wasn’t going to the next village.

  She was looking at Moneypence.

  And then Mr. Wattles looked at him too. Wattles took a bit longer than Eliza would have liked, but he finally released the twisted towel and said, “Of course, if this gentleman were willing to give up his room, that would solve your problem.”

  It would indeed. The mail coach passengers were filing out, and the inn felt suddenly empty. A half-dozen men still occupied the seats around the room, but a hush had descended. Or perhaps Eliza simply imagined it because Moneypence was looking at her with daggers in his deep-brown eyes. “It would be my pleasure to give up my room to this lady,” Moneypence said. He did not sound as though he were filled with pleasure.

  “Of course, there’s no charge to sleep in the stable,” the innkeeper assured him. He wrung his towel again. “For a small fee, I can provide blankets and other essentials.”

  Moneypence’s expression turned even more poisonous, if that were possible. “A small fee. Of course. I’ll collect my things, and Miss Qwillen may have possession of the room in order to refresh herself.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she said with a smile.

  “Please do not mention it, Miss Qwillen.”

  Oh, she wouldn’t. Easier that way to ignore the fact that a traitorous part of herself was glad he was here.

  *

  One moment, Pierce had been perfectly situated at a cozy table in the common, where he might overhear any information relevant to the mission. The next, he was s
neezing and treated to the fragrance of horse manure. How the devil had this happened?

  Pierce had no fondness for horses. They bit, and they’d bitten him enough times that he must look like a ripe apple to them. Wattles had shown him an empty loose box and given him a cot on which to place the blanket for which Pierce had paid. One blanket. And a cot. He’d requested a brazier, but the innkeeper had muttered something about hay and fire and that had been that.

  He set his valise on the cot and then seated himself there, testing it. It sank in the middle, almost swallowing him. He flailed about until he was sucked in, arms and legs sticking out as his backside all but touched the ground.

  “Mr. Moneypence!” a female voice called. He struggled to extricate himself, but the cot refused to release its prey. “Mr. Moneypence?”

  Perhaps if he didn’t answer, she would go away. Forever. But he knew she wouldn’t. She would find him in this undignified state, and he’d be mortified for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, Mr. Moneypence!” She’d found him, of course.

  “I do not require assistance,” he said, but his words were incoherent due to the fact that his face was buried in his knees. She tugged at his wrists, and he waved about to dislodge her grip. He moved this way and that in a gross parody of what he imagined resembled the mating dance of an ugly fish and finally managed to fall out of the cot and onto his knees on the hard stable floor.

  He looked up at her, all fresh and pretty and unscathed by man-eating cots. “What do you want?” he asked, rising without grace and brushing his trousers off. They were covered with straw. For the next fortnight, he’d probably be finding straw in parts of him he didn’t want to think about even after his work here was done.

  “I had hoped we might discuss this…situation.”

  She sounded as though she were laughing. She’d clapped a hand over her mouth. To conceal a smile? He would throttle her. She lowered her hand and straightened. “You must leave immediately.”

  Pierce brushed at the straw tickling his nose. “I was here first.”

  She clasped her hands behind her back, either because she thought it would intimidate him or distract him with the way the material pulled taut over her breasts. He raised his gaze to her eyes.

  “I was asked by Baron to come here. Considering he is the head of the”—she lowered her voice—“Barbican, you should be the one to leave.”

  He had assumed she had come of her own accord. He’d assumed she had heard rumor of the mission and decided to investigate on her own. With the holidays nigh, agents were scarce at the moment.

  He’d also hoped she had come to see him, to make amends. He was an idiot, as usual.

  He surrendered to the straw itching his nose and bent to reassemble the cot. “I am also here on official business,” he said, not naming the Barbican. Really, did the woman have no sense? Even a whisper might be overheard. “Bonde ordered me to come.”

  She huffed out a breath and lifted his blanket from the dusty floor. “That explains everything then.” She turned as though to leave.

  “What does that mean?” he asked, blocking her retreat from the box. “Bonde has more authority than Baron.”

  “So says you.” She gave the wreck of the cot a meaningful glance. “Baron is the head of the…of our organization. Not Bonde. He issues the orders.”

  “Bonde is the best agent we have and the natural successor to M.” She was Lord Melbourne’s niece, after all. “Baron is in charge only temporarily.”

  “Aha!” She snapped his blanket, releasing more dust into the air and making his eyes water. “You admit he is in charge. That means my mission is valid, and you should take your leave.”

  “I’m not leaving,” he said. “Even if I have to sleep in the stable, I’m not leaving.”

  “Well, you’re not sleeping with me!”

  “Perish the thought!” He hadn’t perished the thought. He entertained the thought all too often, and now that she was in his presence, he was having difficulty forming any other thought. “If you are intent upon staying, perhaps we might work together.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said, brandishing the blanket. He snatched it from her before she set another dust storm in motion. “I would rather stick my hand in acid than work with you.”

  He gaped at her, glad he had resisted the urge to straighten her bonnet. It sat crookedly on the dark curls coming loose from her knot. The angle made her look like a ship listing to port. “What did I ever do to you to deserve that response?”

  She jabbed a finger painfully into his chest. “You asked me to marry you!”

  He wanted to grasp the hand poking into him, perhaps break the finger or perhaps kiss it. Instead, he tried to ignore the heat flowing into him from it. “You say that as though a proposal of marriage is a bad thing.”

  “It is, and you know why.”

  He did not begin to comprehend her objections, but he was not foolish enough to admit as much. “I merely thought it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “An arrangement. Yes, that is what I want. An arrangement.”

  “I could call it something else—”

  “But it wouldn’t be any different! You want a wife to further your career. You want some sort of political hostess who looks pretty and says the right things and spends her days making certain your needs are seen to.”

  “I never said that.”

  “So you aren’t applying for a position in the Swiss offices?”

  “I am, but—”

  “And you didn’t assume I would give up everything here—my work, my family, my life—to follow you?”

  “Not everything.”

  She pinned him with large brown eyes. “Then they need a weaponry designer in Switzerland?”

  He realized he was gripping the blanket and loosed his grip. “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly.” She poked him again, and this time he caught her finger and held it.

  “Eliza—”

  “Miss Qwillen.”

  “I tried to explain. If you’d only listen.”

  “No, because no matter how often you explain, you will never understand what I am trying to explain.”

  He waved the blanket, a green flag of surrender. “You don’t want to give up your work. I don’t want you to. If that is all—”

  “No, that’s not all. That’s not even the beginning.”

  She yanked her hand, and he released it. The woman was a ridiculous amount of trouble and confusing as the devil. He really should put her out of his mind. He had a mission, and her presence here need not interfere. He’d find the highwaymen terrorizing this area of Nottinghamshire and return to London with the capture of the man or men who’d adopted the sobriquet of the New Sheriff of Nottingham to his credit. Then he would begin the Switzerland appointment with not only experience as a clerk but also agent credentials.

  “Very well then,” he said, stepping back into his cold, dark stall. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  “That suits me.” She stalked out of the box and then, perhaps thinking better of her behavior, stepped back into sight. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you,” he said.

  “Thank you for the room.”

  He was reminded of the sad state of his cot and made another futile attempt to right it. “It was nothing, seeing as I had no choice.”

  “Yes, well, thank you anyway.”

  Why was she postponing her leave-taking? Did she feel some sense of guilt for relegating him to sleeping in the stable? Why did she not go so he could pull out his files and decide where best to begin his search for the highwayman?

  She started away, and he kicked the cot in frustration. Now where was that file? He’d opened his satchel to search for the documents when hoofbeats thundered.

  “The coach! The coach!”

  Pierce ran, almost knocking Eliza over when he dashed from the stable. Cursing, he paused to steady her. She shrugged off his assistance, and without spea
king, they walked quickly toward the rider. The innkeeper and several men had exited the inn.

  “What’s wrong?” called Mr. Wattles.

  “It’s the New Sheriff of Nottingham,” the rider said, his breath coming out in great puffs. “He just held up the mail coach!”

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Eliza’s pulse jumped. The highwayman was nearby and growing braver. He’d attacked the coach in daylight, fleeting as it was with the gray sky and the fat snowflakes falling from the heavy clouds. Still, this was her chance to intercept the man. If she’d had a horse, her task would have been made easier.

  She hadn’t thought she would need a horse here. From all accounts, the Sheriff was always on foot. The speculation was that he lived in or near Hopewell-on-Lyft and did not want to risk his mount being recognized. She could walk and investigate the site of the robbery. By the time she reached the scene of the crime, the thief would be well away. Nightfall approached, and any sort of investigation of the scene would have to wait until morning.

  That evening she’d gather a different sort of information.

  The inn’s patrons streamed out of the common to hear the news.

  “Was anyone hurt, Mr. Dowell?” Wattles called.

  “All are well, Mr. Wattles. A bit lighter in the purse.”

  Peg, the serving girl and Wattles’s daughter, whispered something to her father. Their whereabouts during the robbery were accounted for. Eliza could not vouch for Dowell. He might have acted the highwayman and then come to report the theft to deflect suspicion. Other men stood about in the yard. She did not yet know their names, but when she did, she could take them off the list of suspects.

  “I know that look,” Moneypence said. He watched her, his expression speculative.

  “I’m merely making note of those men. They have been here since I arrived, which means they cannot be the Sheriff. However—” She’d grown accustomed to confiding in him, to sharing her thoughts. That was necessarily at an end.