Most Eagerly Yours: Her Majesty's Secret Servants

by Allison Chase

  “Discover? I . . . ?” A notion filled her with dismay. “My confections! I left them on the seat of the hansom.”

  “Your what?” He removed his hands from her, but his presence continued to overwhelm her until she felt hot and breathless.

  “My m-marchpane and almond puffs,” she stammered in confusion. “For Melinda and Lady Devonlea. I forgot all about them and now I’ll never get them back.”

  “Damn it, Laurel.” His husky tone, part warning, part caress, spread shivers through her like ripples in a pond. “Don’t you know you might have been killed?”

  “I . . . I still don’t know what happened.”

  “Then let me enlighten you. Four vagabonds had the carriage surrounded and were about to close in on you. If I hadn’t exited the building when I did, they would have attacked. Fiends like that would slice your throat for the buttons on your jacket.”

  “Oh, dear Lord . . .” Ensnared by his blazing eyes, she shook her head. “No. You wouldn’t have let anything happen to me. You didn’t.”

  “Pure luck. You’d be a fool to think otherwise. Interfering in my life is a dangerous endeavor, Laurel. You will never do it again. Understand?”

  He spoke with the sternness of a schoolmaster, in a tone even Uncle Edward had never taken with her. It produced quite the opposite effect from what he must have intended. Once more taking in his obvious attempt to disguise himself, she found the courage to counter his commands. “Then tell me what you were doing at that place, and in those clothes.”

  His scowl filled her vision, making her regret her query. “Just as you told me why you once donned yellow when you should have been in black?”

  He had a valid point. She stared back, mute.

  “This is not a game, Laurel. What you did was both reckless and devious. You owe me an explanation. Not to mention an apology.”

  Yes, perhaps she did. Only, she herself couldn’t quite explain why she had set out after him. Victoria had sent her to Bath to investigate Lord Munster’s activities, not Aidan’s. Earlier, she had observed him in the middle of conducting his banking business, and there was nothing sinister in that. But even with a window and a closed door between them, she had sensed a difference in him as he’d pored over those bank ledgers, a serious, studious quality that contrasted sharply with his reputation.

  Had that difference truly raised her suspicions . . . or her fascination?

  Leaning forward, he shrugged off his tattered suit coat. Next he removed his faded waistcoat. Flinging both into a corner of the floor, he reached with one powerful arm around Laurel. For a moment she thought he meant to embrace her. Heat shimmied through her as their shoulders touched, and her breasts ached at the light contact with the side of his forearm.

  But he only seized a small pile of garments that had been folded on the seat beside her. Straightening, he slid his arms into the brocade silk waistcoat he had worn earlier.

  As he fastened the silver buttons, Laurel exhaled a shaky breath and wondered if he could hear the slamming of her heart as it gradually slowed to a normal pace.

  “Laurel—”

  “You are right,” she said. “I do owe you an apology and an explanation.” She shifted to face him. “I’m very sorry I followed you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “My forgiveness is contingent upon your explanation.”

  “Not very Christian of you,” she murmured. When he opened his mouth to speak again, she thrust up a hand. “Very well. I followed you because you are Lord Munster’s friend.”

  Not entirely true, at least not at first, but after arriving on Avon Street and seeing him transformed from aristocrat to workman, she had based her suspicions about his intentions on her conversation with Lord Munster at the theater last night.

  He said nothing. After donning his proper coat, he crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head in a condescending fashion. He looked very much amused. “Explain.”

  Laurel sighed, a ruse intended to steal another moment to gather her thoughts. “Last night, he raised a rather startling subject. He spoke of political changes and scientific advancements, and how the two together would propel our society into a new age of . . . reform.”

  The term hadn’t actually come up, but she ventured to use it now to see how—or if—Aidan might react.

  He studied her for a lengthy, uncomfortable moment. “And what has that to do with me?”

  She threw up her hands. “As I said, you are his friend. I thought perhaps . . . well . . . that you might share his views.”

  “Is there something wrong with his views?”

  The question raised her indignation along with her concerns for Victoria’s future. Her spine stiffened. “That depends on his intentions, doesn’t it?”

  “Fair enough . . . for the moment. But should Fitz’s intentions prove less than honorable, what on earth do you intend doing about it?”

  Oh, dear. He had arrived at the crux of the matter and once again she had no answer, at least not one she could share. What she intended was reporting back to Victoria about potential threats posed by Lord Munster or anyone else. Even . . . so help her . . . Aidan.

  She hoped not Aidan.

  She gripped one gloved hand with the other, squeezing until her fingers ached. She forced her hands to relax, and then saw that he had noticed.

  “Humph,” he said, looking down into her lap with a roguish curl of a smile.

  She gathered her courage and took a chance. “Do you know what Lord Munster might have meant? Is he involved in activities or with individuals that might hurt the queen? You must remember that my mother served Her Majesty’s mother, so naturally I feel a certain . . .”

  “Responsibility toward her?”

  “Yes!” Laurel smiled broadly. “That is it exactly. She is so young and—”

  “More than adequately supported by a cabinet full of devoted ministers, an entire Parliament of capable peers and MPs, and a palace filled with servants and guards. Yet you feel the queen needs you to champion her?”

  His condescending laughter piqued her ire. If only he knew the truth!

  “Then you will not ease my mind concerning your friend?”

  The question brought about a sudden change, banishing all trace of his amusement. “I cannot.”

  The soft admission startled her; she had expected him to flatly deny her allegations. His next words rang with haunting sincerity. “He worries me, too, at times. I wish to believe he is all bluster and bitterness and nothing more, but lately . . .”

  He trailed off, gazing out the window at pedestrians and passing shops. “He is not as open with me as he usually is.” Even with his face turned mostly away, Laurel could see the tension working the muscles in his neck. “And that makes me believe he may be hiding something. And if he is, I may not be able to help him.”

  “Do you often help him?” she asked quietly. She could easily imagine him—sophisticated, quick-witted, physically fit—coming to the rescue of the gauche, often inebriated Earl of Munster. Odd, but rumor held that Aidan often shared in Lord Munster’s debauchery, yet Laurel had yet to encounter him in his cups.

  “I try to.” His murmured reply warmed her. For better or worse, he sought to be a good friend to Lord Munster, and that made her want to reach out and caress that little expanse of neck visible above his collar, made her yearn to put an arm around him and lay her cheek against his shoulder.

  Abruptly, he turned back around, pinning her with a harsh glare. “Should you continue keeping company with Fitz, and if he is playing with fire, there is every chance you will find yourself scorched. And I may be unable to help either of you.”

  Disconcerted, she sought refuge by glancing out the window as the carriage slowed. Stately mansions lined a lush sward. “Where are we?”

  “Queen Square. You are expected at Beatrice’s luncheon, are you not?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because after the performance last night, when we men gathered for brandy
in Fitz’s drawing room, he boasted to everyone who would listen that he would be lunching with you today.”

  Again that accusing tone. It obviously irked him that she should associate with the Earl of Munster, even, perhaps, made him jealous. Suppressing the smile evoked by that thought, she said, “I am lunching with Lord and Lady Devonlea. I did not presume to ask who else might be on the guest list. Are . . .”

  She stopped, not wishing to ask, not wishing to appear as if she cared either way. But she could not help herself. “Are you on the guest list?”

  “I am.”

  Her spirits brightened like the midmorning sun, spreading a glow throughout her that must have shown on her face, for she felt the heat of it on her cheeks.

  “However, I have sent my regrets,” he went on. “I have business elsewhere.”

  “Oh.” Her mood deflated. She shook aside her disappointment and attempted one last time to glean insight into today’s events. “I don’t suppose you’d care to share the nature of that business?”

  “No.”

  “Or why you went in disguise to that deplorable place today?”

  “No.” His mouth tightened.

  He reached up, intending to rap on the ceiling, a signal for his driver to come down and open the door for her. She caught his wrist to stop him.

  “Wait.”

  He lowered his arm to his knee. She looked up at him, at the lushness of the mouth she had tasted and wished to taste again. So close, so tempting, yet, for all her longing, so forbidden.

  Kiss me. Touch me, touch all of me. . . . Unfettered desire pounded through her. She gasped, then pressed her lips together and stared at him, horrified by her own inexplicable loss of composure.

  “Yes?” he murmured.

  Once again her racing heartbeat slowed but never quite achieved its natural rhythm. “I . . . I . . . er . . . that is, may we please return to Milsom Street first?” When he frowned in bafflement, she explained, “For marchpane and almond puffs.”

  Chapter 14

  The day after Aidan visited the bank and officially became an investor in the Summit Pavilion project, he drove his own cabriolet up a hillside to the north of Bath to view the future building site.

  Fitz sat beside him. Behind them were the Lewes-Parker twins, Emily and Edwina, accompanied by their brother, Sanford, a pimply, petulant seventeen-year-old who tended to view Aidan with an air of conjecture, as if contemplating how best to dispose of his inconvenient, titled older cousin.

  Yet the springlike weather thawed even Sanford’s chilly demeanor. With the vehicle’s oiled canvas roof folded down, the warmed breezes hit them full in their faces and raised their spirits. Fitz had babbled nonstop since Aidan had collected him at his home in King’s Circus, the twins had yet to spark an argument, and Sanford joined the conversation without his usual nasal whine dragging at every word.

  Their parents rode somewhere up ahead, part of a long procession of carriages snaking into the Bath countryside. Laurel, Aidan knew, was two carriages behind his, in Melinda’s phaeton.

  It was all he could do not to keep glancing back. He would not give her the satisfaction. Yesterday she had trailed him, discovered his contact’s general whereabouts, and impeded his investigation of a warehouse that might provide key evidence in financial fraud and murder.

  He’d had every right to drive off and leave her stranded on Broad Quay, yet what had he done? He had complied with her wide-eyed request that they return to Milsom Street for more bloody marchpane. God help him if Laurel Sanderson didn’t bring about his and the Home Office’s complete downfall.

  He had returned to Broad Quay later that evening, although damned if he didn’t peer out the back of his carriage every few minutes to make certain no one followed. Once more in his workman’s guise and armed with a dagger in his boot, he had tramped along the wharf area inspecting structures and asking questions.

  “Lookin’ for work,” he’d told several dockworkers ranging in inebriation from mildly tipsy to stinking, staggeringly drunk. “Hear tell of a new owner needin’ lumpers?”

  One of the more coherent of the bunch had sized Aidan up, judging his potential as a cargo loader by the bulk of his biceps. Then the man had challenged him to an arm-wrestling match that had ended in a draw. With a shrug that seemed to indicate Aidan had passed muster, the dockworker had told him, “Ain’t heard nuthin’ ’bout new owners lookin’ for blokes, mate. Try over at Peabody’s.”

  “What about that place?” Leading the man out of the tavern, Aidan had pointed to a warehouse across the way whose silvering plank walls and crumbling roof best fit Henri de Vere’s description of “falling to ruin.” Could that be the property over which Lord Harcourt and Roger Babcock had clashed?

  The dockworker had recoiled a step backward. “Keep away from there. Right peculiar goings-on, over there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Chaps sneaking in and out all hours of the night and . . .” Huddling between his massive shoulders, the worker had leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Ol’ Will Shyler wandered over there one night to take a piss and never came back. Someone found ’im next morning with his face all smashed in.”

  Aidan had come away fairly certain he had found his warehouse. Further investigation would have to wait until after today’s outing, a picnic sponsored by the Bath Corporation to familiarize investors with the plans for the Summit Pavilion and entice others to join the venture. Rousseau would be there, too, giving out more samples of his elixir. This time, Aidan intended to partake of his share.

  At the crest of the hillside, the scalloped edges of three brightly striped, open-sided pavilions flapped in the breeze. Nearby, the sun flashed on tables laden with platters, silverware, and rows of tumblers and goblets. Earlier, a veritable army of servants had set out from town, armed with blankets, baskets of food, kegs of wine and ale, and barrels of lemonade.

  Within minutes Aidan’s cabriolet reached the wide summit and he parked amid a dozen other carriages. He and Fitz helped the Lewes-Parker twins down. A soft breeze ruffled the lace edging their collars and cuffs and sifted through their glossy blond curls.

  “Oh, Cousin Aidan, such a villain you are. You haven’t said if you liked our dresses today,” one of the twins—he was forever confusing them—observed with a pout of her rosebud lips.

  “That is because I find them too elegant for words.” He escorted the girls beneath a pavilion where blankets had been spread out. Hands stuffed into his trouser pockets, their brother trailed them. Fitz had already set out for the food. Claude Rousseau worked his way along the buffet table as well, picking and choosing judiciously from among the many selections.

  Aidan looked for Laurel, and saw her strolling through the next pavilion, stopping to chat and greet acquaintances as she went. She wore cream and rose stripes today, with a wide straw hat covered in tiny silk flowers and a broad velvet ribbon tied beneath her chin.

  An ache grew in his chest as he watched her. In full daylight, she dazzled him as she had on that day in London despite her dishevelment and the dirt streaking her face. Ever since, he had only encountered her by candle-light, in the dim interior of his cabriolet, and beneath a starry sky. In each circumstance she had blazed with un-equaled radiance, but here, with her golden curls spilling out from beneath her hat and her porcelain skin fresh and glowing, he found her as luminous as sunlight slanting through a garden.

  The comparison drew a silent groan. Had he really just waxed poetic for a woman who threatened everything he was trying to accomplish here in Bath?

  “Truly, Cousin, could you be more preoccupied?” one of the twins griped in an octave that set his teeth on edge.

  “I am no such thing.” Finding an empty blanket near their parents, he bade all three of his cousins to sit, then flashed a teasing grin and tweaked one of the girls’ corkscrew curls. “I am merely baffled as to which of you is the more lovely.”

  Sanford rolled his eyes as the sister to his right exclaimed,
“Me, of course. Everyone declares it to be so.”

  “Oh, Edwina, no one makes any such claim.” Ah. Now that Aidan knew which was which, he saw that Emily’s dissatisfied scowl deepened as she peered out at the latest arrivals to reach the crest of the hill. “So many people here today. How will everyone fit?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Sanford retorted. “This hilltop is adequate and then some, or we would not have come. Father said the Summit Pavilion is to be Bath’s grandest facility yet. But then, as females you cannot understand the complexities of such matters.”

  While the siblings argued, Aidan contemplated the party dispersed beneath the three canopies. Many had already visited the buffet tables, returning to their blankets with plates piled high with cold meats and slices of pigeon pie, fruits, cheese, pastries, and tarts.

  Laurel and Melinda had settled with Fitz, Beatrice, and Devonlea beneath the largest of the canopies. At Fitz’s encouragement, Laurel held her cup out to the stream of wine flowing from the footman’s pitcher.

  Fitz had also encouraged her to sample Rousseau’s elixir at the Pump Room. Did he hope to render Laurel inebriated in order to take advantage of her? It wouldn’t be the first time Fitz had relied on liquid persuasion to have his way with a reluctant woman.

  “I do say, the view of Fenwick House is splendid from here,” Edwina mused between sips of the lemonade a footman had just handed her. “A pity Lady Fairmont lives there all alone. A waste of such a grand estate, in my opinion.”

  Sitting straighter, Aidan twisted round to follow his cousin’s gaze. Surprise went through him. He had not realized how close this property lay to Melinda’s. So close, in fact, he surmised that the parcel of land intended for the Summit Pavilion had originally lain within Fenwick’s eastern border.

  His mind raced with what he knew about the estate. Unentailed to the Fairmont title, the house and surrounding land belonged outright to Melinda, bequeathed to her long ago by her maternal grandparents. He also knew that while originally the property did not extend this far east into the Cotswold foothills, Melinda’s husband had purchased all the land within two miles of the house for the purpose of safeguarding the pristine views.