The Undercover Scoundrel

by Jessica Peterson

  Bees like honey more than a blow to the gut. Or was it honey attracts more bees than a fist?

  Whatever it was, Henry was determined to heed Moon’s advice, however unsolicited and inane that advice might be. Caroline would never forgive Lake for what he’d done—he didn’t begrudge her that—but he could certainly work to make her hate him a little less.

  Besides, he had a missing diamond to find and a country to save; the more help he could enlist, the sooner he’d find the gem, the sooner he could leave London, and Caroline in peace.

  At least that’s what he told himself.

  “Very well,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

  She blinked. “Very well? That’s all you’ve got to say? I half expected you to arrest me, or at the very least torture and interrogate me until I confessed.”

  “Messy business, torture, and I’ve only one good coat to my name. Well, two, if you count the one I—er—borrowed for Hope’s ball. Can’t spare either of them, I’m afraid, and blood does have a tendency to stain.”

  Caroline’s eyes widened, just a bit. “You’re joking.”

  He smiled. “Of course I’m joking,” he replied. “About the coat. After you so graciously sent it back, I donated it to my associate Mr. Moon. Man does so love a good costume.”

  Caroline ran her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip in an attempt not to smile.

  Henry took a step into the room. He felt unaccountably nervous, all of a sudden. “I would never ask you to betray your brother, Caroline. But I must find the diamond, and soon, if only to remove myself from the widowhood you do seem to so enjoy. If you see anything, or overhear a tidbit that could help . . . perhaps I might see you, ask some questions, look about?”

  “See me?” Caroline arched a brow. “You’ve been away from England too long. You don’t just see a dowager, and one recently out of mourning. William will know you’re up to something.”

  The words came before he could stop them. “Perhaps I could gather my reports under the guise of a social call or two, so William does not suspect me? That way I might poke about without him knowing.”

  “There will be no poking about.”

  “Of course.” He swallowed. Poke—an unfortunate choice of word, he saw that now.

  “I told you I know nothing.”

  “Please,” he said, his voice small. “Help a fellow out. I mean well. Despite our . . . um . . . susceptibility to accident, I do enjoy your company. We were companions once, if you remember.”

  Caroline drew a breath, let it out. “You don’t deserve it, you know. My help.”

  Henry toed at the carpet. “I know, Caroline. I’m sor—”

  “I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “Some cheek you’ve got, coming to me of all people—asking me for a favor, after what you did. I should shove you out the window and be done with you. You cannot possibly understand what I went through after you left. What you did to me, by leaving. Actually—” She made to rise.

  “Wait!” Henry held up his hands. “Wait, please. The sooner I find the diamond, the sooner I might leave you in peace. The French Blue—it’s not just any jewel, my lady. I cannot share details—”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “But suffice it to say you’ll be doing old St. George a solid favor by helping me. Or, at the very least, not impeding my search.”

  Caroline turned her head away from him at that. Like he had that night in his brother’s chamber, Henry watched the working of her throat as she swallowed, hard. When she spoke, her voice was tight.

  “My brother,” she said at last. “If I help you, does that mean you won’t pull out his fingernails, either?”

  Henry hesitated. “If he cooperates—”

  “I don’t care if he cooperates. I want your word that you won’t hurt him, no matter his role in the theft of the diamond. No matter how your hunt for the thief plays out.”

  It was a bad idea to promise such a thing; if she knew all that was at stake, she would know he couldn’t promise to keep William safe.

  But there was a lightness, a spark in her eyes that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before. He didn’t dare hope she was just as eager as he to know, once more, the love they bore each other as companions, but he would dare to believe she was willing to give his proposal a try.

  “You have my word,” he said. Something fizzled at the base of his skull as Henry spoke the words—a warning.

  He ignored it.

  “You may not poke, but you may look.” Caroline lifted the tray from her lap and set it aside. “You might begin by climbing out that window. Go round the house, and knock on the front door—yes, Mr. Lake, you must—so that you might call on me like a sane gentleman. I shall receive you in the drawing room.”

  Ten

  As Lake’s rotten luck would have it, Caroline’s brother, William, the Earl of Harclay, was reading the paper in the drawing room when Henry was announced. He was glad he had not risked searching the earl’s dressing room; clearly he’d risen not long after Henry escaped.

  “Mr. Lake,” the earl drawled, looking up from his paper. He didn’t bother to stand. “How early you are! And that costume. Tell me, do you wear black because it is the color of your soul?”

  Lake bowed, wincing at the sharp pain in his leg. “Apologies for the hour, my lord. I have come to call upon your sister the dowager countess.”

  The earl pursed his lips. He lowered the paper. “Have you, now? I’m afraid she’s not yet awake. I would tell you to come back at a more . . . appropriate hour, but Lady Caroline is recently returned to London, you see, and keeps a very busy schedule of appointments.”

  The earl’s lazy, self-satisfied confidence set Henry’s teeth on edge; he wanted, very badly, to reach out and throttle the man. Alas, such things were not permitted in drawing rooms, but if they were, Henry would’ve done it, and soundly, too.

  “Any new leads on our thief?” Harclay asked, crossing one leg over the other with luxurious ease. Henry couldn’t help but feel the gesture was meant to mock him. “My offer of aid stands.”

  Henry managed a tight smile. “Of course it does. And how helpful you’ve been thus far.”

  “Bah, you flatter me,” the earl smiled. He still did not ask Henry to sit. “Doubtless with Lady Violet on the case, you and Hope will have the diamond back in no time.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Henry ground out. “We’ve all got a quite bit at stake, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, we do indeed,” the earl replied.

  Henry rocked back on his heels, and glanced out the window. He felt warm about his collar.

  He wondered, for the hundredth time, where a man like Harclay might hide a fifty-carat gem. Henry searched this room top to bottom an hour ago; he found nothing. But it had to be here, the jewel, hidden away somewhere in this house. If only he knew where! How tempting it was to think this knotty problem might be solved today. Hope could go back to his bank, and Henry to his work in Paris; the earl to Lady Violet, and Caroline to her hard-won widowhood. She’d never have to see Henry again.

  Something heavy moved over Henry’s chest at the thought of leaving her once more, as if his heart were caught under someone’s thumb.

  The earl cleared his throat, glaring at Henry over the paper. “She’s not coming.”

  “I—”

  “And even if she were, Caroline is just out of mourning; she is a creature of delicate sensibilities besides. I am her guardian now, and I shall protect her from those who would do her harm.”

  Anger, mingled with shame, pulsed through Henry. “I would never wish to hurt the lady.” Not if I could help it.

  The earl looked at him for a long moment. “I’m not sure that I believe you. You see, Mr. Lake, while you may believe yourself to be quite mysterious, and dashing, and rather overly tall—irresistible to the opposite sex, in short,
” the earl leaned forward, and murmured, “I know better. You aren’t what you say you are. And I’ll be damned if I let you near my sister.”

  “Talking about me behind my back, are you?”

  The earl and Henry turned at the sound of Caroline’s voice. She was standing in the doorway, lazily tapping a pair of muddy canvas gloves against her palm. She wore a plain muslin gown rubbed an uneven shade of green about the knees and elbows. Her dark hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head, the stray wisps at her ears and neck lending her a windswept appearance.

  The morning sun set fire to her profile, burnishing those wisps bronze and gold. The shoulders and arms of her gown seemed to glow in the harsh light, and for a moment Henry thought she might stretch her wings and fly away; she was an angel, a goddess.

  He looked at her, his pulse drumming inside his skin. He would never get past looking at her; it would never get old.

  The diamond, he told himself. Remember you are here for the diamond.

  But what did a diamond matter, when an angel was in the room?

  “Ah, Caroline! Good morning, sweet Sister. Mr. Lake here was just leaving.”

  Caroline glanced from Henry to the earl and back again. Her eyes were dark with confusion; she looked at Henry pleadingly, as if to say you promised, you gave me your word.

  “Yes, of course,” Henry said, and bowed. “My lord, my lady. Good day.”

  But Caroline grabbed him before he could get past the door. “No. Mr. Lake—er—has kindly offered to help me in the garden this morning. Lovely day for it.”

  The earl opened his mouth to protest, or perhaps to ask when, exactly, Lake had the chance to promise such a thing, but Caroline slipped her arm into the crook of Henry’s and quickly led him from the room.

  Henry cleared his throat as they made their way to the back of the house. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t expecting to see your brother. Isn’t he something of a—?”

  “Rakehell? Yes, absolutely. You’d think men like him wouldn’t wake until four after a night out carousing. But alas, William was always an early riser, no matter his prowling the night before. I should’ve warned you.”

  He followed her down the narrow servants’ staircase and through the kitchens, busy with preparations for the day’s meals. Caroline nodded and smiled at the staff as she passed, pausing with the housekeeper to tell her yes, yes, the pudding was lovely last night, might she have another made for this evening?

  The morning sun was bright and clean, staring them down from a wide-open sky as they stepped outside. To their right were the mews, fragrant as ever; Caroline led him to the left to a low brick wall that bisected the property. Passing through an iron gate of elaborate scrollwork, she and Henry stepped into the garden.

  By London standards it was enormous, and like Caroline’s hair, wild and fashionably unkempt. A brick pathway wound about the shrubs and blooming trees, great heaps of hydrangea and purple snapdragons edging out onto the path’s well-swept expanse.

  “You don’t think your brother’s stashed the diamond away here, do you?” Henry asked, voice low.

  “I don’t know where the diamond is,” she replied, gaze trained on her feet. “But he’s suspicious of you, Mr. Lake. He’ll be watching us today. If he sees you gardening with me, he’ll think you’re harmless and, even better, boring. I’m hoping he’ll leave us alone, eventually, so that you might do your work unimpeded. Besides, I do have some flowers to plant, and it can’t hurt digging about—maybe we’ll find more than roots and worms.”

  Just ahead, an elderly gentleman was reaching into a tree dotted with white blooms. He smiled when he saw Caroline; she introduced him as Mr. McCartney, the man who’d served the family as gardener for—well, for as long as she could remember.

  “Come out to work again, m’lady, ’ave ya?” he asked, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist.

  “With this weather I couldn’t resist. I dug up the ivy bed yesterday—oh, I know you said you’d get to it, but I figured since I had the time—but now we can put in those peonies you’ve been growing in the kitchen. How pretty the pink will look against all that purple.”

  Mr. McCartney glanced dubiously at Henry. “Is ’e gonna help ya?”

  Henry glanced dubiously at Caroline. “Am I going to help you?”

  Caroline turned to him. “If you’d like.”

  “I would like to, very much, though I confess I know little about . . . er, the earthly arts?”

  Caroline smiled, one eye squinted against the sun as she looked up at him. “To quote a man of our mutual acquaintance: ‘Then I shall teach you.’”

  “I hope I’m better at gardening than you are at the waltz.”

  “That makes two of us.” She turned to the gardener. “I do hate to inconvenience you, Mr. McCartney, but if Mr. Lake might borrow your gloves, I’d be forever grateful.”

  The gardener handed his well-worn gloves to Henry; excusing himself to gather Caroline’s peonies, McCartney hiked up his wheelbarrow and shuffled out of the garden.

  “Well, then.” Caroline wiggled her fingers into her gloves. “Shall we begin?”

  * * *

  Caroline had always considered a garden a place of refuge and reflection, a tiny square of Eden where, at least for a little while, she might wring her body and her mind of whatever it was that plagued them. She treasured the solitude, the sense of freedom the out-of-doors afforded; her mind would clear and her knees would ache, and there was comfort in knowing she would sleep well that night.

  Today, though, was an entirely different story; while her knees ached, her mind was anything but clear. Indeed, her thoughts were a riot as she watched Henry clumsily dump a handful of peonies into a misshapen hole in the ground.

  Why she had agreed to let Henry sniff about for the jewel on her watch, she hadn’t a clue. Normal people invited gentleman callers to tea; normal people told ex-lovers who’d stolen their virtue and their sanity to sod off. Really, what was wrong with tea and sodding off? Why couldn’t Caroline have picked one or the other, instead of the garden?

  And what did the diamond matter to her, anyway?

  She could tell herself she did it for William, so that he might be spared whatever sorts of medieval torture Henry liked to administer to his enemies; saving her brother was certainly reason enough to agree to Henry’s request.

  But it wasn’t the reason she’d done it. Caroline didn’t know what the reason was, exactly, except that it had little to do with William, and even less with honorably saving someone from torture.

  Besides. She hadn’t been entirely honest with Henry. It was true she hadn’t been aware of William’s plans to thieve the French Blue from Mr. Hope’s ball.

  But that bit about not knowing where William might be hiding the diamond—well. That was something of a gray area.

  “I take it you still enjoy your gardens,” he said.

  “I do,” she replied. “When I was young, it was just an excuse to get outside and away from my mother’s tedious friends. I started to feel at home in our garden. And there’s nothing like the satisfaction of seeing your work come to life.”

  “Literally.” He smiled.

  She smiled, too. “Literally.”

  “There.” Henry leaned back on his haunch. “How’s that?”

  They were kneeling beside one another in a bare patch of earth—well, Caroline kneeled, and Henry crouched in an awkward half kneel, one leg bent, the other stretched out before him, stiff—toward the back of the garden; the sun streamed through the leaves of a young tree above, dappling Henry and Caroline in light and shadow. She’d been very careful not to touch him all morning.

  She watched him curl a stray lock of hair behind his ear; he stained the pale strands with mud from his glove as he pulled away his hand.

  Realizing, suddenly, that he was looking at her looking at him, Carolin
e turned to the peonies. They sagged against the black earth like a boxer after a fist to the face.

  “It’s—”

  Henry laughed. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  Caroline laughed, too, and reached for the stranded stems. “Here, let me show you again. Dig a little deeper.”

  Henry slipped his enormous hands into the earth, cupping a small mountain of dirt that he tossed silently aside. She ventured another glance at his face; sweat dripped down his forehead and temples, catching on the leather thong of his eye patch.

  She looked away. His sweat—his aliveness—unsettled her.

  “Deep enough?”

  Caroline peered over his arms. “That should do. Add a bit more manure—”

  “The smell makes me gag. I think we’ve got enough manure in there.”

  Rolling her eyes, Caroline bit back a grin as she grasped the trowel stuck in the small pile of manure and lifted a healthy scoop into the hole.

  “I didn’t know your sensibilities were so delicate,” she said.

  Henry grinned. “Not so delicate that I wouldn’t take a handful of that lovely stuff and drop it down the back of your dress.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  He looked at her for a moment, eyes gleaming with mischief, and then, quick as a snake, his arm darted out and his fingers pawed at the nape of her gown, holding it open as he reached for the manure with his other hand.

  “Don’t you—stop it!—you wouldn’t—dare!” Caroline tried to fight off his grip, breathless as her belly tightened with laughter. She ducked, swatting at his hand, but he held the back of her dress just out of reach.

  “You,” he panted, “issued the challenge! What sort of gentleman would I be if I didn’t accept it?”

  Caroline grabbed a handful of manure and, turning, splattered it against Henry’s chest. He looked down, his eyes and mouth wide as he surveyed the damage.

  “This is my best coat. My only coat!” he said. “Oh, you’re going to regret that, my lady.”

  And then he was trickling manure down the back of her gown—“It’s cold! It’s cold! Stop it, this instant!”—and she was arching away from his touch, screeching and laughing, and Henry was laughing, too. His laughter was rich, deep, entirely male; entirely satisfied.