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WHO KNEW LOVE WOULD be her secret weapon?
Cassandra Benton has always survived by her wits and wiles, even working for Bow Street alongside her twin brother. When injury takes him out of commission, Cass must support the family by taking on an intriguing new case: George, Lord Northbrook, believes someone is plotting to kill his father, the Duke of Ardmore. Decades before, the duke was one of ten who formed a wager that would grant a fortune to the last survivor. But someone can’t wait for nature to take its course—and George hopes a seasoned investigator like Cass can find out who.
Cass relishes the chance to spy on the ton, shrewdly disguised as handsome Lord Northbrook’s notorious “cousin.” What she doesn’t expect is her irresistible attraction to her dashing employer, and days of investigation soon turn to passionate nights. But with a killer closing in and her charade as a lady of the ton in danger of collapsing at any moment, Cass has no choice but to put her life—and her heart—in the hands of the last man she ought to trust . . .
Chapter One
On night watch, this was the hour when anything seemed possible but nothing seemed likely to happen.
The longcase clock in the study had just struck one in the morning. Cassandra Benton heard it through the closed door, mere feet away from where she hid in the shadows beside the main staircase of Deverell Place.
This watch was a nightly ritual, one she’d adopted along with the guise of housemaid when she’d been hired a week ago under false pretenses. What with keeping up the daily duties of a maid and shadowing Lord Deverell each night until he went up to bed, she’d hardly slept since then.
Ah, well. One couldn’t expect infiltrating a Mayfair household to be effortless.
One could, however, wish something would happen to break up three to four hours staring at a shut door. Her twin brother, Charles, always got the more interesting parts of a job. Placed as a footman due to his height, he could move around anywhere in the house. Their employer had asked Charles to keep an eye on the safety of the ladies of the family: his lordship’s two half-grown daughters, plus her ladyship. In theory, this meant dignified vigilance.
In practice, Cass kept up the dignified vigilance in her maid’s garb, and Charles disappeared for long afternoons alone with pretty Lady Deverell, the earl’s much younger second wife.
She’d no idea where her fool of a brother was now, but finally, her own nighttime vigils had begun to yield results. The most interesting had been two nights before, when Lord Deverell, wearing worry like a mask on his dissipated features, had welcomed an associate to drink with him at midnight. Cass hadn’t recognized the caller, but from her hiding spot, she’d memorized his features before the two men closed themselves into the study. She’d risked listening at the door after that, catching only one word out of every few. But she had caught the hush, the worry, the change in mood as they’d mentioned the special term: tontine.
That was why Cass was here, and Charles, too. George, Lord Northbrook—son and heir of the Duke of Ardmore—had hired the Bentons privately to learn more about this tontine, a wager placed decades before. And to make certain nobody died as a result of it.
Privately, Cass thought it was likely to be no more dangerous than any of the wagers noblemen were constantly placing. But for the exorbitant fee of five pounds a week, she’d hold her tongue and keep her eyes and ears open for Lord Northbrook.
So far tonight, the darkness pressed heavy, and the silence in the house was a weight. There was nothing to see but the faint outline of the study door, traced by the light of the candles within, and the great snaking spiral of the staircase stretching up overhead. Nothing much to hear, either, save for the crystalline clink she knew to be decanter against glass, decanter against glass. The earl liked his spirits strong and plentiful. Though for a while now, there had been no sound at all. Perhaps his lordship had gone to sleep, the lucky old dog.
She shifted against the wall, easing creaks and pops out of her spine. Being a housemaid wasn’t a good cover identity. It was far more labor than investigating, and she didn’t even perform the work all that well. If she did, her nose wouldn’t be tickled with dust right now. But who had time to wipe down every baluster and newel post and bit of trim on the handrail—especially when there was an earl who needed to be observed?
She settled more deeply into the shadows, pinching at her nose to hold back a sneeze.
Then the screaming began.
Cass tipped her head. “That’s odd,” she murmured.
Screaming at one o’clock in the morning was always odd, but in this case, it was particularly so. The screaming was not coming from the study in which his lordship had sequestered himself, unaware of possible threats to his life. It was coming from upstairs.
And it was hardly the slurred baritone of a drunken lord faced with a pistol or stiletto. This scream was that of a woman, probably Lady Deverell from the timbre of it.
As Cass strained to hear, the scream changed from wordless panic into a call for help. He’s fallen, it sounded like the voice was shrieking. He’s fallen!
Oh. That meant the scream wasn’t odd at all. Cass blew out a breath, relaxing back against the wall.
All that had happened was that Charles had fallen out the window. Again.
She was certain of this not because of a miraculous connection between the minds of twins, but because of past experience. Her brother, sometime Bow Street Runner and incorrigible flirt, was notorious for conducting affairs in an impractical way. He fancied himself a Robin Hood, or Romeo, or some other disastrous creature starting with an R who pursued women he ought not and climbed about on the outside of buildings. Charles found it romantic—another disastrous R—to climb up and down ivy or trellises when conducting an assignation, instead of using stairs like a normal adulterer.
Lady Deverell’s calls for help hadn’t yet shut off, which meant that not only had Charles fallen and startled her, but he had probably hurt himself when he fell.
Hell.
By now footsteps were thumping as the servants were roused and ventured forth from their attic or basement rooms. A door opened at a distance, spilling anxious voices out, and then slammed shut again. The household jerked awake in startled fits.
Cass sidled along the wall, looking up into the dim nighttime heights of the first-floor landing, then back at the still-shut study door. His lordship was foxed, as usual; too foxed to respond to the panicked cries of his wife. This was good, since he wouldn’t call Charles out in a duel. Though if a threat on Lord Deverell’s life materialized, as Northbrook seemed certain it would, the old fellow wouldn’t be able to do much about it except offer brandy to his would-be killer.
Another step sideways as Cass craned her neck to look up the sweeping staircase. Who was passing on the floor above? Was that the butler running toward her ladyship? If she could just get to a better vantage point—
With her next step, she smacked into a person, tall and unyielding.
An intruder! Reflex took over. She pressed her lips together, cutting off a scream, and drove her fist forward hard.
A muffled curse. “Cass,” came a whisper. “It’s me. George. Northbrook.”
Lord Northbrook. She drew back, squinting, as if that would help lighten the shadows. Why had no one lit candles, if they insisted on thundering about the house at night?
“Sorry about that,” she apologized. “You caught me by surprise.” Her hands were unsteady, and she hid her fists behind her back.
She ought to have expected the presence of the young marquess. Every night near this time, he tried to meet her at this spot beside the stairs so she could share what she’d learned. She always unlocked the front door for him when she took up her post, then secured it again before she went off to bed. It was a process that left her vulnerable, but she carried a pistol and was, as her employer had just learned, effective with her fists.
“I let myself in when I heard screaming,” he replied. “After a crash.”
“You heard it from outside?”
“The crash was outside. The screams I heard through an open window.”
Cass smothered a sigh. “I believe the window is Lady Deverell’s, and the crash was my brother, Charles.”
“Charles’s what?”
“Charles himself. His person.”
“What? Was he climbing to her ladyship’s window? But why?”
Cass waited a moment while Northbrook’s realization sank in.
“Oh. He—oh. Well done, Charles,” murmured the lord.
The study door remained stubbornly shut, but candlelight now spilled down the stairs along with a clamor of voices. Backlit though Northbrook was by the dim light, Cass could pick out his familiar form. Like her, he was dressed in black, and his face was all hollows and shadows and grim planes. He was scented of citrus, another characteristic she ought to have recognized at once. Whether it was his soap or whether he was uncommonly fond of oranges, she’d no idea. But it was not unpleasant.
Footsteps sounded on the main staircase—close and coming closer. Quicker than thought, Cass grabbed the front of Northbrook’s shirt and yanked him back into the corner where the staircase met the back of the entrance hall.
Pressed beside her, he whispered into her ear, “How forceful you are, Miss Benton. If you wanted to catch me alone in the dark, you had only to say so.”
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