His Improper Lady--A Historical Romance

by Candace Camp

  “You could have told me,” Wells pointed out. “Why didn’t you ask me to help?”

  “Wonderful,” Brock said sarcastically. “So both of you could get caught.”

  Wells turned a cool gaze on his brother. “I don’t get caught.”

  Brock shot Wells a sardonic look and turned back to Desiree. “Going back to that old way of life, even for a night, is dangerous, Desiree. Surely you must see that.”

  Desiree glared. “I knew I was safe. Sensing danger is what I do, if you’ll remember.” She decided it was best to skirt the fact that she had been caught.

  “Yes, we’re all aware that you can recognize dangers that ordinary people cannot, but even you can’t be right every time,” Brock retorted. “And why would you want to go back to breaking into houses? You have no need for money. Don’t I provide for you?” He made a sweeping gesture around the elegantly furnished room. “What do you lack? You know I’d—”

  “I don’t lack for anything. You are unfailingly generous. I didn’t do it for money. I did it because Falk told me—”

  “Falk!” Brock gaped at her in astonishment.

  Wells jumped to his feet, his usually calm face blazing. “You were working for Falk? Good God, Desiree, what possessed you to take up with that scoundrel again? Have you forgotten all the times he—”

  “I’ve forgotten nothing,” Desiree retorted shortly. “I despise the man as much as both of you do.”

  “Yet you stole for him.” Brock came forward. “Why? What the devil—”

  “I’ll tell you if you would both stop scolding me and listen!” Desiree stood up. “And stop looming over me.” She sent a hard look at each of her brothers, and they subsided, Wells flopping back into his chair and Brock sitting down for the first time. “Thank you. Falk asked me to break into the office of Moreland & Quick.”

  “Who?” Brock asked. “Why?”

  “Moreland of the Duke of Broughton’s Moreland?” Wells’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes, I think so. I’m not sure what the office has to do with the Morelands, but the sign says it’s a detective agency.”

  “Oh, even better.” Brock sighed.

  She made a face at him. “They won’t know it was me.”

  “I still don’t understand why you did something for Falk.”

  “That was what he wanted from me in return for telling me who our father is.”

  “That’s why you risked jail?” Brock surged to his feet again. “I can tell you who your father is. He is a weak, selfish man who was unfaithful to his wife and uncaring about his children. He was a man who couldn’t face up to his duty to his legal wife and who abandoned you and Wells. He fled his marriage but he didn’t want to have to do it alone, so he took our mother, his mistress, with him, leaving us to starve. Why would you want to find out his name?”

  “I didn’t say I liked him. I know our parents abandoned us like a pair of old shoes. I just want to know who he was!”

  “What good will that do you?” Brock asked.

  “I don’t know. Don’t you ever wonder who your father was? Whose blood runs in your veins?”

  “No. Never. The man is nothing to me. And the blood that runs in my veins is mine.” Brock paused, his eyes dark. “Wells and I are your family. Is that not enough?”

  “Of course you’re enough.” Desiree knew her brother well enough to see the pain that lurked beneath his stern face, and guilt swept her. She jumped up and hugged him, saying fiercely, “You and Wells are my family. The only family I need. The only family I want.” She stepped back, looking intently into his eyes so he would see the truth there. “You’ve been the best brother one could have. You’ve always taken care of us, even when you were so young someone should have been taking care of you. You came back for us, just as you said would, and freed us from Falk. You’ve built this whole lovely life for us.”

  A smile twitched at the corner of Brock’s lips and he raised his hands. “Enough, enough. You’ve convinced me. I am a paragon of a man.” He took her hand and squeezed it, then said, “I cannot think Falk would be a reliable source of information. What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. I haven’t seen him yet. I came straight home. I doubt he’ll tell me anything because I couldn’t find what he wanted. But...” Her eyes took on a sparkle. “As it turns out, I don’t think I’ll need him. Our father was a Moreland.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IF SHE HAD hoped to shock her brothers, she certainly achieved her goal. Both men stared at her blankly. Finally, Brock dropped back into his chair. “What makes you think that?”

  “I found something when I was in the office. I opened a desk drawer, and there was a ring inside. A ring exactly like the one you have. The one our father gave you.”

  “Are you certain?” Wells asked skeptically. “I mean, there must have been little light.”

  “I held it up to my lantern. I could see it clearly. It was just like Brock’s ring. A plain gold ring with that crest engraved on it.”

  “A number of coats of arms look very similar,” Brock pointed out.

  “It was the same.”

  “Even so, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the duke’s crest,” Wells mused.

  “And you don’t know that the desk where you found it belongs to a Moreland. I realize the name is on the door, but I doubt a Moreland actually works there. He probably financed it, and the other chap does the work. What was the other name?”

  “Quick.”

  Brock frowned. “That name sounds faintly familiar.”

  “You mean you remember it? Was that our father’s name?” Desiree asked.

  Brock shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember your father’s name. It wasn’t something they would have bandied about.”

  “Quick doesn’t sound like a patronym that would have a coat of arms,” Wells pointed out.

  “I can see that you two are determined not to believe me,” Desiree said.

  “It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Brock protested. “I’m sure you found the ring. I’m just not sure it means what you think it does.”

  “I am going to find out and prove it to you,” Desiree retorted.

  “Are you going to break in again?” Brock asked, his eyebrows winging up in alarm.

  “No. I don’t like working for Falk any more than you do, and, as you said, I have no reason to believe that Falk would tell me the truth...or even know it.”

  Wells snorted. “Falk wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and spit in his eye.”

  “Which is what I recommend you do if he approaches you again,” Brock told Desiree. “And on that note, children,” he said as he rose from his chair, “I am going to retire, though I’ll doubtless have nightmares about Desiree getting hauled off to jail.” He started toward the door, then turned back around. “Don’t do anything foolish, Dez. Promise me that.”

  “I won’t.”

  He looked at her doubtfully. “Somehow, I think that your idea of foolish differs from mine.”

  With a nod, he left the room. Desiree watched Brock leave, then sighed and went over to her twin. Unceremoniously pushing his feet off the stool, she sat down on it and turned to him. “I’m afraid I hurt him. I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know.” Wells nodded. “He feels guilty because he was gone for all those years, couldn’t keep us from Falk.”

  “Brock was just thirteen, little more than a child himself. What else could he have done? And he came back for us, just as he said he would.”

  “I know that. Even he knows that. But I think he feels that he must have failed or you wouldn’t want to find our father.”

  “That isn’t it at all. It has nothing to do with Brock.”

  “Well, that’s part of the problem for him, isn’t it? The man’s not Brock’s father, just ours.”


  “I know.” Desiree sighed and leaned her shoulder against his chair. “More than that, he despises our father.”

  “Well, we were only babies when our parents ran off, but Brock was six. He doesn’t remember much about the man, but he was old enough to understand that he abandoned us. It’s not the sort of thing that brings up tender feelings.”

  “No,” Desiree said sadly. “He feels the same about our mother. He never calls her ‘Mum’ or ‘Mother.’ Just Stella, as if she were merely an acquaintance, not his mother.”

  “Yes, he has a way of keeping his distance.”

  They were silent for a moment, then Desiree asked, “Does it ever bother you that you don’t know who our father is? Do you never wonder who he was? What he was like?”

  “I have some curiosity. I wouldn’t mind knowing. But I don’t think it matters as much to me as it does to you.” Wells shrugged. “I suppose I felt as if Bruna and Sid were our parents.” The couple who had raised them after they were abandoned had always cared for them well.

  “I did, too, in a way, and of course Brock was always there. The one I could go to when I needed help. But still... I’ve always wondered, is there this whole other family out there that we belong to? What are they like? Do they look like us? Know about us? I used to daydream sometimes that they would find us. That it had all been a mistake, and our mother hadn’t really left us. That she had been searching for us for all those years. And she’d take us away, and our father would welcome us. We’d have cousins and aunts and uncles and...” She shrugged. “Stupid, I know.”

  “Not stupid,” he told her. “I suspect all of us wished we had parents and families. That someone would whisk us away from Falk, and we’d have lots of food and a soft bed and clean clothes.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Wells asked quietly, “Why didn’t you tell me you were bargaining with Falk?”

  Desiree shrugged. “I didn’t see any reason for you to have to deal with Falk again. And if we were caught, the people you work for wouldn’t like it. All I would have to face was Brock. Besides, it didn’t require two people. It was just a second-floor job, easy to get in and out.” She scowled. “Or at least it would have been if that man hadn’t come charging in.”

  “What?” Wells stiffened. “You were caught?”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “I knew I wasn’t in any real jeopardy.”

  “Desiree...” Wells let out an exasperated sigh. “I know that you can see whether a wall is stable or what is the safest route to take, but people are different. Getting the feeling that someone is lying isn’t the same as seeing a danger.”

  “But it is the same,” Desiree protested. “You understand my physical skills better than the mental ones, because they are more like yours, but the things I can do are all part of one ability, like different currents in the same ocean.” It was frustrating that as close as Wells was to her, as much as they had in common, Desiree had never been able to make him fully understand the way her talent worked. “I can see the integrity or corruption in people as clearly as I can see a crack in the wall or a drainpipe that won’t carry my weight. And I can sense danger even when I haven’t seen it yet. You know that better than anyone.”

  “I do,” Wells agreed. “God knows, you’ve saved my life many a time. But I am also aware that these peculiar skills we possess have limits. You have to focus your ability to read a situation just as I do, and you can’t operate with your inner eye open all the time. You miss things—I know because I miss things. That’s why we worked better together. You should have taken me with you.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to avoid him any better than I did. He grabbed me from behind. I couldn’t see his face. I think he’s probably a watchman. He must sleep there—his shirt was unbuttoned.” She remembered the feel of her fingers on his bare chest—and the way his hand slid over her body, accidentally touching her breast. She’d been as startled as he was. Her fingertips tingled again just at the memory. “I’m rusty, though. I assumed there was no one there, and I was impatient. I rushed in instead of taking the time to read the place. And when he grabbed me, it took me longer to get out than it should have.”

  “Good thing we’re not making a living off it anymore, then.”

  “Yes.” Desiree was silent for a moment, thinking. “Do you ever miss it?”

  “What? Stealing things?”

  She nodded. “The excitement. The thrill of getting away. The challenge of getting in. The anticipation.”

  “Sometimes,” her twin admitted.

  “But I guess you have that, doing whatever it is you do.”

  “It’s a bit more comfortable when you’re doing it for the government.”

  “Do you suppose they’d like to have a woman working for them in the shadows?”

  He chuckled. “I can see old Pomeroy’s face if I suggested that. Are you bored, Dizzy?”

  “I hope you know that you are the only person who can get away with calling me that.”

  “I remember you going after Willie Sparks when he tried to. He got a grand black eye from it, as I remember.”

  “Lost a tooth, as well. The dolt. Everyone knew I was faster than him and didn’t punch like a girl.”

  “But what about my question—are you bored with your life?” Wells pressed her.

  “I suppose...a little. Not like I was when Brock sent me to that school for young ladies so I could learn to speak and act correctly.”

  “Mm. School was a misery.”

  “At least the boys at your school liked you. I could hardly get anyone to talk to me.” Desiree grimaced at the memory of those two lonely years.

  “I was shunned at first, until they found out I could ride better and run faster than any of them. And could climb up to tie the proctor’s underpants to the steeple—I was very useful for pulling off pranks.”

  “Yes, well, I can tell you that being able to blacken someone’s eye doesn’t attract many friends at a young ladies’ finishing school.”

  “I’d guess not.” He paused. “I thought after you convinced Brock to let you help at the casino, you’d be more...satisfied.”

  “I am. I enjoy my work. It’s never boring, and there’s ample excitement in the turn of the cards. I get to use my talent.” Her lips curved up a little as she remembered that night at Brock’s club a few years ago when she had swept in and proved to him how good she was at cards and how much business her presence attracted. Her protective older brother had finally had to admit that his attempts to give her the life of a lady were not working. “I must sound like a terrible ingrate. I’m not, truly. I very much appreciate everything Brock has done for me—these clothes, this house, freedom, safety. I’d probably be dead or in jail by now if he hadn’t come back to rescue us. I wouldn’t go back to that old life for anything.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ in there.”

  “But I don’t really belong anywhere. I can talk like a lady, walk like one, act like one. But I’m not a lady. To the people we grew up with, I’m now a snob. But a gentlewoman knows at once I’m not one of them. One can’t simply buy a social circle, and I don’t have old friends from school as you do. Even if I did, they’d not want to be seen with a woman who spends her evenings gambling in a club. Anyway, I’d die of boredom doing nothing but paying calls and doing...whatever it is that ladies do. I’m not like anyone else.”

  “You’re unique. Nothing wrong with that.” Wells paused. “Desiree...what are you going to do if you find out our father was one of the Moreland family?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

  “Brock is right. They had ample opportunities over the years to see us if they chose. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She looked up at him. His dark blue eyes were filled with concern. “I’m not naive, Wells. I realize that they won’t look with favor on being connected to a family who owns a gamb
ling club, much less one that used to be circus performers and thieves. I don’t expect them to welcome me with open arms. I just want to know who they are.”

  “I know you won’t rest until you do.” Wells stood up, reaching down to pull her up with him. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he looked into her eyes. “If you need help, call on me. You know I’ll always help you. Don’t worry about damaging my position with my employers.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m quite capable of doing that all on my own.”

  Desiree had to laugh. “I know. I will. I promise.”

  “Good girl.” He released her and stepped back. “I have something I need to attend to.”

  “More ‘shadowy’ business?”

  Wells just grinned and walked out of the room. She didn’t hear him leave the house—he’d always been as silent as the grave—but she knew the instant he was gone. Wells left a certain emptiness behind him. Desiree went up the stairs to her room. The evening had held so many reminders of her past that she stopped inside her door and looked around the spacious room.

  When they were with Falk, all the children who worked for him slept in a room smaller than this. She could still remember the smell of it, the wariness that only her twin’s presence had calmed. She would never take this luxury for granted, and she would never be kin to anyone the way she was connected to Brock and Wells.

  But none of that would stop her from uncovering the secrets of her past. And she was certain she was on the correct path. She had seen the faint glow of truth in the ring, felt the rightness of it in her palm. Her mind had buzzed with the implications.

  That was why she’d been distracted in her search, why she’d made those mistakes—she’d never before been so clumsy as to knock a book off a desk, and it had taken her too long to hear the man’s footsteps. She’d managed to get away, leaving only her lantern behind, and no one could trace a common lantern back to her. But the ineptitude was galling.