by Ava Stone
Bark! From the floor below, the dog began barking up a storm, jolting Marc right out of bed.
Bark! Bark! Bark!
Damn it all. “Stay here.” Marc flew out of Caroline’s chambers, down the darkened corridor and the steps, and was fortunate not to have fallen to his death when Emma’s cat nearly tripped him, racing up the stairs as Marc went down them. For the love of God. Was the dog barking at the cat? In the middle of the goddamned night?
Bark! Bark! Bark!
Apparently not. Marc raced to where the dog was ferociously growling from inside the library just in time to see a fellow hop from the window to the moonlit freedom of the outside world below.
What the bloody hell!
Marc stood, dumbstruck, for just a moment before racing to the open window. And sure enough, a fair haired fellow darted into the mews across the way, or limped rather. Marc was half tempted to go after the man but…he wasn’t wearing any boots, or anything else for that matter.
“Sir?” Simmons asked from the threshold.
“Her thief was back.”
“Galloway’s man?” Simmons crossed the library to stand at Marc’s side, not that there was anything to see out the window now. The man had hidden himself quite away.
Marc nodded. “Or possibly one of St. George’s.” It didn’t matter. Either way, Caroline and her daughters were in grave danger. “Rouse her driver. He’s going on a merry little journey.” It was, after all, the best way to throw someone off, or at least it always had been.
“I’ll give him instructions, milord.” Simmons said as he started for the corridor. “Pardon me, milady,” he muttered.
“Marc?” Caroline said softly from the doorway.
He turned around to face her and shook his head. “I thought I told you to stay put.”
She held out his trousers for him. “Yes, well, I thought you might have need of these.”
He probably shouldn’t be gallivanting around Staveley House without a stitch, but if the thief had still been down here, she could have been harmed. Marc crossed the floor to retrieve his trousers with a sigh and then said, “Wake your girls, have them dress in the dowdiest things they have.” He stepped into the trousers and pulled them up over his arse. “Better yet, borrow something serviceable from your maids. You need to blend into the lower classes, all of you.”
She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Marc buttoned himself into his trousers as a plan started to piece itself together in his mind. “Take a hack to the Gloucester Street Coffee House and buy passage on the mail coach to Driffield, Yorkshire.”
“The mail coach?” Caroline echoed in a whisper. “But you told Simmons—”
“Yes, well, your coachman is going somewhere else,” Marc said, reaching for her hand and pulling her to him. She looked so afraid, and he wanted more than anything to soothe her, but there simply wasn’t time. “Buy passage for me too. I’ll meet you there.” Well, probably. “But if I’m delayed, don’t wait. Go without me. I’ll catch up along the way.” One way or another.
“Marc, what is going on?” she asked, and the panic in her voice made his heart ache.
“Your thief was back. Whether he’s working for Galloway or St. George—”
“Galloway?” Her brow furrowed in confusion.
Marc shook his head. “The Home Office,” he clarified. “Regardless of who the fellow works for, it’s not safe for you and the girls to remain here.” Then he towed her into the corridor and toward the staircase. “Pack only what you can put in a small valise. You don’t want to stand out in the crowd.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, trailing behind him up the stairs.
“If anyone thinks I’m with you, they might head for Saddleworth Hall. If they do, we’ll be ready for them, but I’d rather keep them far away if possible.”
None of that made any sense in the world to Caroline, but all thoughts and questions died on her tongue the moment she spotted Rachel at the top of the stairs. Her daughter’s eyes rounded in surprise when they landed on a half–naked Marc, and Caroline had no idea how to explain that to her daughter. At least he had trousers on.
Marc halted briefly in the middle of the staircase too. Then he heaved a sigh and continued on. “Listen to your mother,” he said to Rachel as he passed her. “And don’t give her a difficult time.”
Rachel’s mouth had fallen quite open and Caroline rushed up the steps toward her daughter. Marc continued on to Caroline’s chambers, but Rachel’s eyes were firmly fixed on Caroline.
“Mama,” she breathed out, clearly horrified.
Caroline pulled her wrap tighter about her waist, not that there was any reason for modesty now. Anyone could tell what she and Marc had been about, and though Rachel was an innocent girl, she wasn’t stupid either. “Someone broke into the house,” Caroline explained.
“That’s what you think I’ll believe?” Rachel glanced toward Caroline’s bedchamber where Marc had disappeared.
“Not him.” Caroline urged Rachel toward her daughter’s doorway, still not certain what she was going to say about Marc. “Get dressed…” What was it Marc had said? “Wear something old. Something from last season. One of your mourning dresses.”
“Why?” Rachel stopped just inside the threshold of her room and glanced over her shoulder at Caroline.
“Because we’re headed to Yorkshire. Someplace safe.”
“Yorkshire?” Rachel echoed, incredulously as if it was the most disagreeable place on earth. “What in the world is in Yorkshire?”
Saddleworth Hall. “Lord Haversham’s family seat.” Caroline pressed Rachel further into her chambers. “Now hurry, I have to wake Emma and get dressed myself.”
Chapter 21
It would be late for most people, but it would still be early for Laura, at least if she was keeping her usual hours. Marc rapped quickly on the door of her little place on Bedford Square. A moment later, the actress opened the door and her eyes widened when they landed on him.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, tossing her blonde locks over her shoulder and synching her wrap tightly about her waist as though he hadn’t seen every part of her before.
Marc gestured to the inside of her home. “Entertaining? Or are you alone?”
“I fail to see how it’s any of your business either way,” Laura replied waspishly.
Well, they certainly weren’t going to have this conversation outside. “Unless you’d like for me to publicize your real name and your true profession, Miss Hale, you’ll invite me in and toss out whomever you have in there.”
“My real name?” She frowned at him like he was mad, but then she was an actress. She was good at pretending in all aspects of her life. “Are you deep in your cups, my lord?”
“Come now, Miss Burke, did you really not think I’d figured it out?” He had, after all, always known who she really was, even that very first time when their gazes had locked back stage at the theatre when he was there to visit someone else. How could he not? Laura looked so much like her sister. And then she’d put all of her acting abilities to the test as she made it her mission to seduce him, which he let her do. He didn’t, after all, have anything to hide from the Home Office. So if they wanted to waste their time having operatives, and pretty ones at that, take him to bed…well, the Home Office did owe him something, didn’t they? “I am waiting.”
Laura Hale, or Anna Burke as she’d been named at birth, opened her door and stepped aside for him to enter. “No one’s here,” she muttered as she shut the door behind him.
And Marc believed her. If someone was there, she wouldn’t want them overhearing this particular conversation. London’s powerful men would not be happy to learn that the government was keeping tabs on them from the nightstand of a very pretty whore. “You owe me a favor,” he said, and made his way directly into her parlor.
She scoffed as she followed him into the room. “I don’t owe you anything, Marc.”
“W
ell—” he shrugged “—not you, specifically, though your family certainly does owe me. But you, specifically, get to repay me on their behalf. Aren’t you fortunate?” He had, after all, saved her sister from certain death, once upon a time.
“What do you want?” She folded her arms across her ample chest.
Marc smiled. That was the question he was waiting for. “I want you to tell Felix you’re leaving London, and—”
“I’m in the middle of Richard III, Marc.”
“Yes, well, Richard shall have to do without his Lady Anne for a while.” When she scowled at him, he continued, “Or I’m certain your understudy will be thrilled for the opportunity.”
“Little harpy’s been waiting on me to take ill.”
“Think how relieved they’ll be when you return,” Marc suggested. “In the morning, you’ll spin some wonderful tale of our reconciliation to anyone and everyone who will listen, especially any gossip columnists you may know.”
She simply looked at him like he was mad.
“Then tomorrow afternoon, you’ll take my carriage to Brighton to enjoy the beach or head to Bath and take the waters, I don’t really care where you go. Just so long as everyone thinks I’m with you.”
“You’re running off with Lady Staveley,” she said, narrowing her eyes on him.
“Well, I’d never leave her behind with Galloway breathing down her neck.”
Laura shook her head. “They only want Staveley’s deciphered code, Marc. Help them find it. She has nothing to fear from Whitehall.”
He scoffed at the suggestion. “I know you’re not that naïve.”
The actress released a beleaguered sigh. “Just naïve enough to leave Town in the middle of a play and sacrifice my career for you?” She shook her head. “Not a chance, Marc.”
“Oh, come now,” he said. “You’re a pretty girl, Laura, but looks won’t last forever. Eventually, those roles will start to dwindle and those fellows lining up to take a turn in your bed will become fewer and fewer with each passing year.” He shrugged. “But I’ll fund Felix’s next play on the condition you have the lead. Then when those less fruitful years find you, I’ll see you happily settled in a nice cottage in…Norfolk?”
“Suffolk,” she countered. “Near Oliver.” Her brother who’d returned home from the war a hero and who, if Marc wasn’t mistaken, had taken in Laura’s bastard daughter.
“Done,” Marc said. “Just make sure you’re believable as you spin your tale tomorrow. I don’t want anyone looking for me.”
“Where will you be?” she asked. “In case I need to reach you.”
Certainly, she didn’t think he’d tell her the truth. He didn’t trust her that much even if he had saved her sister’s life. “I’m headed to France,” he lied. “A small village in the south.”
“Grasse?” she guessed aloud, confirming Marc’s suspicion that she truly had studied up on him before their chance meeting.
Marc shrugged his response. “Seems poetic, I think. The last place St. George would think to look for me, I’m sure.”
“So I do this for you,” Laura began.
Oh, she was going to do it. His expression must have said as much because she did scowl at him.
“Alice doesn’t owe you anything after this.”
That was the deal he was making. So Marc nodded. “So long as you uphold your end of the deal. And no telling Whitehall where I’ve gone either. I’d just as soon disappear from all the bastards who may be looking for me.”
She traced an X over her heart with her finger. “I won’t breathe a word to Galloway.”
Which he knew was a lie, but Marc truly didn’t care. She could tell Galloway he was headed to Grasse if she was foolish enough to believe that was his actual destination for all he cared. They could look for him and exhaust all resources until they were blue in the face. But if they came for him at Saddleworth Hall, he’d be ready.
“In that case—” Marc started for the doorway “—best of luck with your performance tomorrow. I’ll have my carriage and any funds you may be needing awaiting you in the morning.”
Pistol in hand, Sebastian stood just inside Laura’s small kitchen, listening to that entire exchange. She didn’t seem to be in any trouble, so he waited for Haversham to leave, and then he limped his way into the corridor, his thigh pulsing with pain the whole while. He stopped and rested his shoulder against the doorjamb to her parlor, and spotted her looking out her front window after the blackguard.
Laura glanced over her shoulder at him and sighed. “I’m sure you heard all of that.”
Every last word. “Any reason you’re helping the bastard?”
“Any one of us could find ourselves in a similar situation in the future. I’d like to think there’d be someone to help me should the need arise.”
A situation of his own making. The villainous traitor. “He’s working with St. George.”
Unmoved by that pronouncement, Laura started toward him. “Take off your trousers and lay on your stomach.”
“Is this how you talk to those benefactors of yours?”
She narrowed her pretty grey eyes on him and said, “Most of them don’t come to me with dog bites.” Then she brushed past him into the corridor as Sebastian hobbled into her parlor.
Bloody awful beagle. Sebastian thought he might have preferred being shot, not that he’d been given a choice.
He placed his pistol on a nearby table, shrugged out of his jacket and started on the fastenings of his trousers. “You don’t owe him anything,” he called toward the empty corridor.
But she didn’t reply, and he didn’t expect her to. There was no need. She was still in love with Haversham, Sebastian would bet his future dukedom on it, though she’d never admit as much aloud, not to him, probably not even to herself. Agents of the Home Office, after all, should be detached at all times, and they should certainly never fall in love with their marks.
Sebastian sat gingerly on the edge her settee and tugged off both of his Hessians, wincing the entire time as even the tiniest of movements seemed to send pain shooting through him.
Finally, painfully, he managed to slide his trousers off, and then he laid face down on her settee, burying his face in a pillow.
Laura returned a moment later, and knelt on the floor beside him. Her soft fingers traced the outer rim of his injury and she sucked in a breath. “He certainly did a number on you, didn’t he?”
“Damn dog,” Sebastian muttered into the pillow as she started to clean his wound with water and some cloth. “First the bloody cat gets my face and now this.”
“I think you should never have pets,” Laura said, dabbing at the bite on the back of his thigh. “I don’t think animals care for you.”
But Sebastian didn’t want to think about cats or dogs. He was on a mission and this little setback didn’t change things. “Where do you think he’s headed?”
“Anywhere in the world but Grasse,” she replied quietly. “I think you’re going to need stitches, Sebastian.”
He lifted his head off the pillow to glance at her over his shoulder. “That bad, is it?”
“I’ve seen worse,” she said. “But it’s far from pretty.” Then Laura pushed back to her feet. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Not Grasse, clearly. But where else would the man go? Laura knew Haversham astronomically better than Sebastian did. But the marquess was a very good friend of Thurlstone’s, he knew that. Haversham could hop a ship and go anywhere in the world if he called in the right favor.
Laura returned with a sewing kit and bottle of whisky that she placed on the floor, before kneeling beside him again. “This is going to sting a little,” she said as she retrieved the whisky bottle from the rug.
And then… “Mother of God!” Sebastian bellowed into the pillow to muffle his scream. Damn it all, that stung more than a little, but the exposed flesh of his wound did seem to numb a bit.
“And that is why men don’t bear children,” Laura mutter
ed to herself.
Bloody hell that hurt. After a moment, Sebastian lifted his head off the pillow and glanced back at the beautiful agent. “It’s a very good thing you went into acting instead of nursing. You know that, don’t you?”
She shook her head in response and her long blonde locks brushed against the outline of her breasts in the process, and Sebastian wished he was in a condition to appreciate that better. But as it was, he felt like the dickens.
“Would you like a sip of whisky for courage, Sebastian?”
And dull his senses? He couldn’t afford that luxury. “Just get on with it.”
Laura retrieved a needle and thread from her sewing kit and her soft hands found the back of his thigh again. Damn it all, he needed to distract himself.
“If he could go anywhere in the world, where do you think he’d head?”
“I don’t think he’ll leave England,” she said as her needle pierced his skin.
Sebastian bit back a curse, though his fingers did squeeze the edge of her settee probably more than she would have liked.
“Or Wales, rather,” she added, puncturing his skin once more.
“Wales?” he gritted out between his teeth.
“Rhyd Ystwyth Mining. The fortune he married,” Laura explained. “It’s in Cardiganshire, in the River Ystwyth Valley. He never goes there. He’s made a point of never going there.”
“So that’s where you think he’s—” Sebastian winced as she finished a stich “—headed?” That last word sounding more than slightly strangled.
“Well, he had no love for his wife. No one would think to look for him there.”
“Except you?” Sebastian asked,
“I did know him rather well, at one time.” She stuck him with her needle once more. “Almost done.”
“Thank God,” he muttered.
She pierced his skin again. “But you won’t tell Galloway,” she said evenly. “Tell me you won’t.”
“He’s committing treason.”
Laura breathed out a breath. “When you have proof of that, then you can tell Galloway.”
“I saw him with my own eyes, Laura.”
