Chapter Seventeen

Richard blinked, then blinked again. Slowly, his eyes cleared of the red haze, leaving only an outline around the figure standing before him. Where they were standing, in the dark of the alley behind Benford’s townhouse, he could just make out the slender Frenchman, and the lump of human refuse at his feet, who had apparently tried to murder him.

But who was the man on the ground, and why had he tried to kill him?

Sucking in a breath, he took stock of his bearings. The man who’d saved his life had tied up the villain with rope he had on his person, then whistled, then another man appeared, and then the other man and the villain were gone. How the hell did he do that?

“Who are you?” he demanded. There was more to this person than just watching the house— He’d come prepared. But for what? Had he meant to capture Richard for ransom, but his plans were thwarted by the attempt on his life? No. That didn’t make any sense; the man couldn’t have known where he’d be tonight— He hadn’t known where he’d be.

He’d been nursing a tumbler of Scotch when Michael arrived, bemoaning his brother’s activities. Ben, having begun his night at Whites, had continued his evening at a seraglio along the river. Michael begged Richard to retrieve his brother for him. The friend he was, he’d agreed. When Richard arrived at the warehouse-cum-den of sin, Ben looked the worse for wear, was mumbling incoherently, and trying to rile the other “patrons” into a round of fisticuffs.

He was exhausted, angry, and frustrated, and the man before him was only making him wish he’d stayed home.

So you could wallow in thoughts of Victoria?

Even drowning in heated thoughts of Victoria was preferable to nearly being killed.

The figure standing there remained silent, watching him. He peered down at him, dressed all in black, his face covered with a dark mask that obscured everything, even his eyes.

And what had happened? One minute he was walking to the carriage house to retrieve his carriage and driver, and the next he was pulling his pistol, then losing his pistol. He had questions, and the only one who could answer them wasn’t saying anything, only staring at him from behind some kind of sheer black material where his eyes would be. In the silence, the figure seemed cloaked in menace, as dangerous as he had ever faced before.

His heart thudded. He could fight with the best of them, but he’d never faced a masked opponent with such deadly grace in their movements; he’d dispatched the malefactor with a precise and stunning kick.

“Are you going to say anything?” he ground out.

The figure took a step back until he was standing under the lamplight, his slender form all the more apparent now.

Blowing out a ragged breath, he tried again. “Who are you? What do you want? Where did you have that man taken?” If anything, he should be calling for the Runners, but something stayed his hand. Curiosity. He’d almost been killed, and the man who’d attempted it had been carted away when he should be in police custody. “That man should be in irons.”

Finally, the figure spoke. “Et vous.”

“Do you not speak English?” His French was passable, but his head ached far too much to carry on this type of conversation in a language not his own.

“Quoi, je suis idiot?” the figure answered, a tinge of humor in his strangely husky voice. It wasn’t a deep voice, per se, but rather…coarse yet smooth, as though his vocal cords were made of tattered silk.

Richard grunted, closing his eyes against the growing ache in his head.

“I speak English,” the figure said in heavily accented English, startling Richard.

“So you do,” he remarked, his gaze pinned to the man’s masked face. “Why were you hiding back here?”

The man dropped his arms to his sides, his right hand brushing over the hilt of a sword Richard had never seen before. Not French.

“What are you and the Duke of Benford planning?” the figure asked, wrapping his fist around the sword hilt.

Struck by the man’s question, Richard blurted, “What do you mean?”

“I found you sneaking from his house. Men do not sneak unless they do not want to be seen,” the figure sneered.

“Like you?” Richard growled. “Seems to me that you would not have seen me leaving if you weren’t hiding in the mews.”

The figure cursed, a phrase Richard couldn’t quite make out. But it had not been in French, that much he knew.

“What are you planning? Who else is working with you?” the stranger demanded

Anger simmered beneath his skin, making him swallow down a retort that would, no doubt, get him gutted. “I am not planning anything. I am not working with anyone. I have no idea what you are talking about. I simply helped my inebriated friend into his house and then left out the back to get to my carriage. I was the one who was accosted.”

Silence met his outburst. The man crossed his arms over his slender chest again. Richard could feel the man’s eyes boring into him, peeling back the layers, seeking out the truth. But the truth was easy to find.

“I do not believe you,” the man said simply, which only riled Richard all the more. He could just walk away, leave the mysterious character in the alley to be forgotten, but there was something about this person, this French upstart, that made him stay right where he was.

“You do not know me, sirrah. I am a man of honor. I would not lie to you.”

“Why not have your carriage brought around? Why walk to it?”

Richard shrugged, the motion pulling on the material of his coat. “I needed to clear my head, and I didn’t want to bother Riggles, the butler, when I could easily get my own carriage.” This was getting more ridiculous by the moment.

Again, silence met his reply, as if the man were sizing up his answers.

“And who are you?” Richard asked, narrowing his gaze. “Why were you watching the duke’s house?” He knew he was being reckless, asking his own questions of the man, but he was tired of getting nowhere. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, one he couldn’t stop his dratted mouth from uttering. “Are you the one breaking into homes—the incidents reported on in the Times?”

That must have struck a chord because the man tensed, taking a step forward.

“No, I am no thief,” he snapped, his husky voice rising…his accent slipping.

So…not really French. But why disguise his voice, and why the need to pretend to be French? Richard couldn’t help but feel that something deeper and more insidious was occurring, and he’d only been caught up in the tide of intrigue.

Wanting to test his theory, he decided to push the man into another mistake. “Not a thief? An abductor, then? Did you plan to snatch me and take me somewhere to ransom me?”

“If I wanted to capture you, you would be unconscious like the other one,” he said, a smirk in his tone as he pointed in the direction that other man had carted the villain.

The bastard was grinning at him from behind that damned mask. Tension roiled through him, and he growled. “Will you answer any of my questions?”

Tilting his head, the man tsked.

“Monsieur. I will answer your questions when you answer mine, and if you need convincing of my intent to get answers, you need only remember how simple it was for me to render you harmless.”

Harmless? He would have laughed if he felt the humor in that word. He was far from harmless, but…he didn’t feel as though the person before him actually meant any harm.

“You can tell me what connection you have to the Duke of Benford,” the masked man remarked, his husky voice grating on Richard’s nerves. It wasn’t that the voice was unpleasant—it was the opposite. How a man’s voice could pluck at Richard’s senses was…disconcerting.

“I am friends with his son,” Richard replied, then swallowed. Exhaustion wore at him, pulling the warmth from his body. He shuddered. “There is no secret there. We have been friends since Eton.”

The man tensed again, his hand on his sword as if preparing to fight Richard’s words. But, finally, the man’s shoulders fell slightly, and he dropped his hand.

“Very well,” he said, crowding him to stare up into his face. “Speak a word of this to anyone, and I will cut your tongue from your head and wear it as a bauble around my neck.”

Struck by the acid in the man’s voice, Richard flinched. “You are not the first one to intimate something like that,” he remarked, his thoughts hurtling toward another night… Victoria Daring. In disguise. Holding a dagger to his throat.

Something inside him pulled at the memory, telling him to look deeper, to remember harder… What was it? Peering down into the man’s mask, Richard tried to see through the fabric over the eyes. It was black inside, as though only a blackness existed beyond the facade.

He let out a slow, deliberate breath, knowing full well he was about to do something wholly foolish. Utterly and completely dangerous.

“Take off the mask…Victoria.”

…

Stunned, Victoria stared up at the man who was, just moments before, convinced she was a Frenchman. But now, he was gazing down at her, righteous anger written on his handsome face. His lips peeled back from his straight white teeth, and he spoke again.

“I know it is you under there, Victoria Daring. You will not fool me again.”

“You are a fool,” she barked in French, forcing outrage into her voice. This couldn’t be happening again. She’d taken pains to not be recognized this time.

All week, she, Verity, and Honoria had perfected their disguises. Love, as a man with a man’s frame, didn’t bother. Vic and her sisters decided to wear their training costumes, the mask with the sheer fabric over the eyes, and to wrap their breasts and pad their hips to remove any trace of their femininity. She even spoke with an utterly perfect French accent, using the technique LaMagre taught her to lower her voice.

She looked and spoke like a man, and yet Richard had peeled away her disguise easily.

Blast him!

“Act outraged if you want, Victoria, but I will not be fooled,” he drawled, leaning as far forward as he could while still standing in one place. “I must admit, I cannot see the woman under that disguise, and I am quite impressed with your accent and how deep you were able to get your voice, but I can see you…” He straightened. “I can feel you,” he murmured, his voice deeper than hers and far more…alarming.

A ripple of awareness made her gasp.

A slow, wicked grin spread out over his face, and she held her breath. “No denial?”

She flinched. Her silence had spelled her doom.

“Take off the mask,” he said, his tone coaxing. “And then talk to me…” She wondered what he would do once she was unmasked—probably call for the night watch and have her clapped in irons.

She swallowed, her fear of failure rooting itself deeper in her chest. Stealing her breath.

Closing her eyes, cursing, she reached up to untie the mask from behind her head. She pulled it forward slowly, until she’d completely revealed her face.

The greasepaint around her eyes would, no doubt, make her look like a raccoon, but she hadn’t been thinking about her appearance when she’d slathered it on earlier that evening. And besides, raccoon dogs were cunning and wily.

Her eyes still closed, she listened, wondering what Richard was seeing, what he was thinking.

“Open your eyes, Victoria.” His voice was husky, heavy, drawing her in.

She opened her eyes and pinned her gaze to his face. He wasn’t smiling any longer, and his eyes were hard and cold, like gold coins dipped in ice.

“Now, answer me,” he ordered in a voice just as hard.

She hesitated; she could leave—with what she knew about evasion, he wouldn’t be able to catch her—but it would only be a matter of time before he showed up at her house, demanding her attention. And alerted her father to what occurred. She would be well and truly ruined then. No matter what she did now, she would be a stain on her family. What good was an Imperial spy who couldn’t circulate the ballroom in the open?

She planted her hands on her hips, wondering what he saw when he looked at her.

With her mask on, she could have been anyone else. She felt safe. But now, staring at him as he stared back, she felt naked. Vulnerable.

“What gave me away?” she asked, mentally comparing her previous costume to the one she was now wearing.

The wretch lifted a single eyebrow, his eyes twinkling.

“Your threat to divest me of my tongue,” he answered, his lips quirking.

“What?”

A deep chuckle rumbled into the night.

“Your threat to remove my tongue was delivered with a familiar…intensity as the threat to my person in Banebridge’s study.”

As his words filtered in, the heat of humiliation smoldered in her cheeks.

“So, what will you do with me now?” she asked, her hand inching to grasp the hilt of her sword. It helped her feel in control, to have the cold steel of a hundred-year-old weapon against her fingertips.

Richard’s gaze never left her face. He stepped forward, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t move a single muscle. She had no doubt she could defend herself if it came to that…but, somehow, she didn’t think he would ever raise a hand to her. He wouldn’t hurt her. And from the look in his eyes, he knew she wouldn’t hurt him, either.

And he was right.

I have become as soft as butter.

“Well?” she prodded, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he finally spoke, his question something she was expecting.

“No.”

“You’re not going to explain why you are dressed…like that”—he waved his hand over her—“and hiding in the mews behind the Duke of Benford’s house?”

“No.” It was the easiest, safest answer. He already knew who she was; he didn’t need to know what she was, a highly-trained member of a family recruited to manage an operation specifically commissioned by the reigning monarch.

Richard let out a heavy breath and reached up to run his fingers through his hair, disheveling it. It looked dashing even in its disarray. He looked more human.

More touchable.

“Victoria, you were waiting for me outside this house, then you just happen to stop a man from killing me. I am going to ask this again… Why were you here?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she stood still, watching him, her mind twisting around itself, desperate to find a way out of the mess in which she’d tossed herself. She should have just dispatched the attacker and made a run for it.

He straightened, his eyes sliding over her face to land on her lips.

“You cannot speak a word about recognizing me to anyone.”

“Why not? What are you involved in that requires such secrecy?”

She bit her lip, drawing his gaze downward once again.

“I cannot tell you. It is not my place to divulge critical information,” she replied.

“Ask whomever you must ask, and then tell me what it is I wish to know. I am an honorable, trustworthy man. Anything you tell me will remain with me… I swear it.”

She cursed.

His focus flew to her eyes, surprise flashing within the molten depths. But then something like iron slid in over it.