The rush of attentions from an insincere man is likely to be as heady as an ascent in a hot air balloon and equally likely to lead to a tumultuous descent.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
When Charles returned to the ballroom, the musicians had stopped playing for the supper interlude, and he perceived at once the difficulty of finding his sister and Miss Swanley in the sea of bobbing ostrich plumes as the crowd pressed toward Lady Hardwicke’s supper room. He set himself to search the room, methodically slowing the sweep of his gaze. He made little progress before he was knocked roughly aside by a gentleman with a glass of claret in his hand.
The wine spilled, and the man swore viciously. He offered no apology but stared at Charles, shaking the drops of wine from his cuffs. “Wynford.”
“Dunraven.” Charles mustered what civility he could for Harriet Swanley’s older brother, the Earl of Dunraven. When Charles had asked her to marry him, he’d forgotten his distaste for her brother. Dunraven’s hair and eyes, even the shape of his face, proclaimed the relationship. Everything except the harsh, resentful spirit.
“You’ve got a nerve,” Dunraven said.
“Have I?”
“Bringing my sister into fashionable society where she has no place.”
“I beg your pardon. It’s true. The company here is far beneath her. I mean to remove her from it as soon as I can. Have you seen her?”
Dunraven peered drunkenly at him as if Charles had made an obscure joke. “Hah! What do you know! Don’t be fooled by that façade of the meek governess. She’s a stubborn, strong-willed jade.”
“Disobeyed you, did she? Refused Torrington’s suit?” Charles continued to look for Octavia and Harriet.
“Damn fool, Torrington. If he hadn’t shot the dog, he could have had her.” Dunraven tossed back the last of the wine in his glass.
An icy chill settled in Charles’s gut. He saw a kneeling girl with her arms around a dog, her gray eyes lifted to his. He kept his voice bland by a supreme effort. “He shot Nelson, her black spaniel?”
“Worthless animal deserved shooting. My foolish sister whistled away a fortune for a dog. But I made her pay,” Dunraven said.
“Did you?” Charles asked. He could no longer keep the edge from his voice.
“What’s it to you, Wynford? You could have had her if you’d stayed. You left.” Dunraven shrugged.
“I found your method of getting a husband for your sister not to my taste.”
“Like her method better? Try the terrace. She followed some officer out there.”
The icy cold left him in a flash of anger that clenched his fists and flexed his arms and legs. He could lay Dunraven flat in an instant. In his mind he already stood over the man who had blighted Harriet’s life.
Dunraven’s eyes widened, and he backed away as he read Charles’s intent. Before the bend and twist of Charles’s body and upward arc of his fist could meet Dunraven’s jaw, Charles caught himself and consciously opened his hands. He promised himself he would deal with Dunraven after he found Harriet and Octavia, and stepped out into the dark.
Within minutes he knew his search of the terrace was fruitless. Back in the heated ballroom, he turned away from the orchestra to circle the end of the ballroom for the benches under the gallery. There in the shadows sat Harriet Swanley, gently holding a dead man’s hand in her lap.
“I thought you would find us,” she said. “Who was he?”
“Ashton,” he said, noting the trickle of blood on the man’s chin.
“You think the marchioness did this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“She is not your cousin, is she?”
“No.”
“How long have you known she was a fraud?”
“There was no proof until tonight. Ashton provided the proof.”
“But you always believed she was dangerous?”
“Very.”
“And yet you continued to let Octavia meet her?” She shuddered, a mix of bafflement and censure in her tone. She was in shock, but he could see that her orderly, unflinching mind kept working to make sense of what she saw.
How could he explain that the plan had been for Octavia to remain safe in the country? “I thought Octavia was in no danger while I had you,” he said. It was true.
She nodded. “While you...did what...the government’s work? It is spying, isn’t it?” she asked. “That’s what you’re doing here tonight?”
“I am,” he said grimly.
She nodded again. “And we, Octavia and I, we are part of your disguise? Like the waistcoats?”
“No.”
She looked at him without reproach really, just an acknowledgment of a calculation he had not realized he’d made until now, the calculation that he could pursue and catch the marchioness without involving his sister or the woman he loved. He wondered if his mother had made a similar calculation that she could use her wits and skills to serve England without endangering her children.
“We have to find her, you know.” She moved the dead man’s hand to his lap, gently releasing it. “Gresham was here with his fiancée. He came because of a letter he received that he believed came from Octavia. He upset her. She ran out onto the terrace, observed by the marchioness. Captain Fanshaw followed.”
“You’ll help me?” he asked. He could not ask or expect it.
“Of course. We should speak with the footmen at the entry. There’s a chance that Fanshaw has taken her somewhere.”
Charles extended a hand to lift her from the bench. She rose. Charles stepped forward to set the dead man upright. Something brittle snapped under his boot, and he looked down to see a crushed sprig of mistletoe. He nudged it aside.
“I will send someone for Ashton,” he said.
* * * *
In the hall at the foot of the grand staircase, Harriet and Wynford found a busy scene of leave-taking, with servants scurrying to do the bidding of numerous lofty and impatient persons. Wynford spoke with the man in charge of the cloakroom first and made sure that he understood he was to satisfy Harriet’s questions. While Harriet conferred with him to secure their cloaks and hats, Wynford strode out into the cold to question the footmen and grooms attending to various vehicles in the lane.
As Harriet feared, the servant readily found her cloak and Wynford’s greatcoat but not Octavia’s. He admitted he had handed over Octavia’s cloak earlier in the evening to a gentleman. He remembered because he had been rewarded with a gold coin.
“Was the man an officer?” Harriet asked. Sick dread filled her at the thought.
“Yes, miss,” the footman answered.
“Did you see the girl?”
“No, miss.”
Harriet thanked him and turned to find Wynford coming back to her. Her face must have betrayed her anxiety.
He seized her shoulders at once. “No luck?” he asked.
“A footman gave her cloak to an officer, but he didn’t see her.”
“I heard that Fanshaw left,” he said. “More than thirty minutes ago. No markings on his coach.”
“How do we pursue them?” she asked, handing Wynford his coat, hat, and gloves.
He took them from her with a faint smile, quickly donning his outerwear. “I pursue them. You go home and wait to hear from me.”
“Do you think I can sit safe and idle at home not knowing where Octavia is? Knowing the marchioness may have her?”
“I can find you at Luxborough House more easily than I can find you here.”
At that moment, a young man joined them. He had a handsome face; white, white teeth; and an air of brisk efficiency. “Sir,” he said. “No sign of the marchioness or Captain Fanshaw.”
“Lady Harriet,” Wynford said, “this is Wilde. He will see you home.”
Wilde bowed.
“And Perry?” Wynford asked him.
Wilde shook his head. “Haven’t seen him, sir.”
Wynford took him aside, gave him instructions, and sent him off. Harriet slipped into her cloak, and when he turned back to her, he tied the strings under her chin. Their dance had been a brief moment out of time when she was not a governess and he was not a spy. When they separated, the moment would fade away, like a half-remembered tune one could faintly recall but not play again.
“You couldn’t wear the mistletoe?” he asked.
She lifted her empty hand, realizing that she’d lost the little sprig somewhere in her pursuit of Octavia or discovery of the dead man. It had been the frailest of hopes, a bundle of brittle twigs, easily crushed.
“If you cannot leave the Luxboroughs for me,” he said solemnly, “you must still leave them. You do not belong in yellow back rooms, in borrowed shawls...” He took her by the shoulders to draw her close.
She put up a hand, her palm flattening against the plane of his belly to hold him back, but her fingers closed around the silk of his waistcoat and clung. She leaned her head against his heart. His arms slipped around her. His chin rested on the top of her head.
“Your brother is wrong about you. You are above your company, not beneath it,” he said. He lifted her face to his and kissed her, a kiss full of longing and regret.
He pulled back from their embrace. “I cannot tell you why the marchioness has come after us, but I will stop her. Wilde will see that you get home.”
She nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat. He had called her back into the world, out of the safe refuge in which she had hidden herself. He had violated the principles of protecting and guiding by which she had lived for ten years. He was dangerous, and he had involved them all in danger. He would do so again. She watched him stride off to face that danger and knew that she loved him.
* * * *
Ashton had been stabbed by an assailant who knew his or her business. His body lay on a table in an anteroom at the back of Hardwicke House while Charles waited for a constable Goldsworthy trusted. The marchioness had disappeared. She had had Charles’s measure from the first. Hers had been the grand design. He meant to distract her with flowered waistcoats and gallantry, but it was she who had seen his weakness and distracted him by embroiling Octavia in her schemes. Now she would make her move against her real target. He still did not know where she would strike, but before he could stop her, he had to find Octavia.
He returned to Dover Street before dawn and received a chilling message.
You can prevent your sister’s ruin if you are willing to meet me when and where I shall direct you. Any delay, any involvement of other parties, and she will be lost to you forever.
In Octavia’s hand—or a hand that closely resembled hers—was scrawled the added note—
Charles, I implore you, please do as our cousin says. I am wholly in the captain’s power.