Well, Staveley House was certainly lively today, wasn’t it? A peel of laughter spilled out onto the front stoop as Simmons opened the door and greeted Marc with a nod of his head.

“Milord, do come in,” the butler said.

Marc stepped inside the townhouse and handed his hat to the butler. “Is she entertaining?”

Simmons nodded as he shut the door behind Marc. “Quite popular today. Lady Carraway, Lady Juliet, and Lord Peasemore are in there now.”

Well, that was an odd trio. Not Felicity Carraway and Juliet Beckford. They were sisters. But Peasemore? Just the man’s name made Marc scowl. “Jackass,” he muttered.

“Beg your pardon?” Simmons asked.

“Keep an eye on Peasemore. I don’t like the fellow.”

“Of course,” the butler agreed.

Marc heaved a sigh as he glanced down the corridor to make certain they wouldn’t be overheard. “That damn Blackaby tracked me down at Gentleman Jackson’s yesterday.”

Simmons nodded. “I was afraid he might after Lady Staveley summoned him.”

The annoying gnat from Bow Street. Though he had given Marc an important piece of information. “Staveley’s journal is still missing, I assume?”

“No one has found it yet,” the butler replied. “But her ladyship hasn’t mentioned it today either, though she has been busy.”

“I don’t imagine it will turn up,” Marc said. “Though I doubt the thief got what he wanted from it.”

“Sir?” Simmons frowned.

“Staveley was odd, to be sure. But I doubt he’d decode something for the Home Office in his personal journal. If the deciphered code is here, it’ll be in the library somewhere. That was the man’s true domain.”

“I will search—”

The sound of little slippered feet on the marble behind them stopped Simmon’s next words. And then the sound got even faster.

“Lord Haversham!” little Emma Benton gushed, coming around the corner and holding a fluffy white cat in her arms. “I don’t suppose you have any lavender drops?”

So the secret to winning over Caroline’s youngest daughter was with hard candy? Marc made a mental note of that for the future. “I am fresh out, Miss Emma.” He smiled at the child. “Though I’m certain I’ll have some the next time we meet.” He would keep a stash of them from now on. Then he gestured to the white ball of fluff in her arms. “Who do you have there?”

“This is Lord Fluffington,” she said, lifting her cat out for him to take.

Damn it all. He didn’t want to hold the thing. He was just being polite. That was where politeness got one – holding cats one didn’t want to hold. “Hello, my lord,” Marc said as she handed him the ball of fluff, and he couldn’t believe he’d just ‘my lorded’ a cat for God’s sake.

Lord Fluffington began to purr and Marc scratched him behind his ears.

“A very handsome fellow, he is.”

She beamed up at him with that certain childlike sparkle in her eyes that made him miss Callista in that instant. It had been a few weeks since he’d seen his daughter last, and he was clearly due for another visit.

“Did you enjoy Astley’s last night?” he asked.

“Indeed.” She nodded eagerly. “I like it best when the riders stand up on top of the horses. I don’t think I could ever do that. But I like to imagine it.”

“I have no doubt you can do whatever you’d like,” he said and started to hand her cat back to her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Though you might want to run trick riding past your mother before you attempt it.”

She giggled and his heart ached for his own daughter. “Fluff and I were about to have a tea party if you want to join us.”

A tea party with a cat? Not the reason Marc had darkened the doorway of Staveley House that afternoon. “I shall have to decline this time, Miss Emma. I’ve actually come to see your mother.”

“Oh!” Her green eyes twinkled once again. “I’ll take you to her.” Then she grabbed his hand and began to tug Marc down the corridor.

He glanced over his shoulder to find Simmons biting back a smile. The traitor was enjoying himself quite a lot at Marc’s expense.

A moment later, Emma pulled Marc over the threshold into Caroline’s white parlor.

“Here she is,” she sang, and then all of the laugher and chatter in the room came to an instant stop. “Oh! Aunt Juliet!” Emma cried, releasing Marc’s hand and dashing toward the settee where Juliet Beckford and Felicity Carraway sat together. “I didn’t know you were here!” She hugged her aunt.

But all other eyes were firmly on Marc, standing with a fluffy white cat in his arms in the doorway. He must look like a bloody idiot. Of course, his gaze landed on Caroline, and he was relieved when a ghost of a smile tipped her lips. It was gone a second later, but he was certain she was glad to see him. And he was always glad to see her.

“Lord Haversham,” Caroline said, pushing out of her seat, which made that jackass Peasemore push out of his as well. “What a surprise.”

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Marc replied. And he wouldn’t have barged into the parlor if Emma hadn’t pulled him along with her.

“Not at all,” Caroline assured him. “I see you’ve met Fluff.” She seemed to swallow a laugh. “You don’t have to hold him if you don’t want to.”

“Thank God.” Marc blew out a breath as he bent over and dropped the cat to the floor, who promptly scampered out into the hallway.

“Fluff!” Emma cried, rushing out of the parlor after her cat. “Come back, boy.”

The room was still deathly silent as Marc glanced around the parlor. So he nodded in the general direction of the others. “My ladies. Peasemore,” he grumbled the man’s name.

“Lord Haversham,” Lady Juliet began coolly, lifting to her feet. Of course, she said most things coolly. “It has been an age.”

And she’d prefer it to be another age before she saw him again, if her dismissive expression was any indication. He wasn’t certain how his old friend Luke Beckford ever thawed the lady’s icy demeanor. But as the pair now had a son and a daughter, he apparently did from time to time. Or had at least twice. Personally, Marc would be afraid of coming away from the encounter with frostbit nether regions; but, he supposed, to each his own.

“Actually,” Peasemore began, glancing down at his pocket watch, “I just realized the time. I am due somewhere else, if you’ll all excuse me.”

“Oh!” Caroline said, “I’ll see you out.”

“Not necessary,” the jackass assured her as he started for the doorway. “I’ll see you this evening.”

What the devil was Caroline doing with Peasemore that evening? Marc moved aside, happy to let the man pass, though his mind was awhirl from the earl’s last comment. Bloody Peasemore had been around entirely too often for Marc’s comfort. And now he was seeing Caroline that evening?

“Oh! Sebastian,” Felicity Carraway started after him. “A word first, if you don’t mind.”

And as Caroline, with Felicity at her side, said their goodbyes and whispered something to the earl, Lady Juliet caught Marc’s eye, and she started right for him.

“How is my old friend Beckford?” he asked, thinking the woman’s husband might be the safest topic of conversation.

“Does that mean you haven’t seen him?” she said, her dark brown eyes narrowing slightly.

What the devil was that supposed to mean? Had Luke wised up and abandoned the frosty chit? Did she think he’d taken up refuge at Haversham House or something along those lines? “Should I have?”

“He said he was going to call on you this afternoon.”

Ah! Just a social call, then. They must have passed each other on the street somewhere. “Well, do send him my regards.”

Lady Juliet’s gaze flashed back toward Caroline and she whispered, “I don’t believe she’s seen the gossip columns today.”

Neither had Marc. Reading the rags wasn’t usually part of his day.

“At least she hasn’t mentioned them, and I think she would have.”

“Is there something to be seen in them?” he asked, though there must be something in the day’s columns or Lady Juliet wouldn’t have mentioned them.

The lady’s dark brown eyes narrowed on Marc once more. “Let’s just say your excursion at Astley’s last night did not escape Society’s notice.”

Was that all? Worse had been printed about him in the past.

Lady Juliet, however, seemed to be of a different mind. She heaved a sigh. “If you do anything to hurt Caroline, they’ll never find all the pieces of you to put back together again.”

Marc’s brow lifted in surprise. He’d been threatened by a number of people throughout his life, but never by someone like her in a place such as this. The normalcy of a Mayfair parlor filled with genteel people and a tea service off to the side juxtaposed with a menacing threat from such a sweet sounding voice. It was all very surreal. “I beg your pardon?”

She shrugged slightly. “Paraphrasing, I’m sure. But that’s what Luke meant to say when he saw you.”

It didn’t sound remotely like something Luke would say, his tart-tongued wife, however… “You may tell your husband that you delivered his message. And then you can assure him that the very last thing I would ever do is hurt Caroline.”

She seemed to assess him for the truthfulness of that statement, and she could assess him all she liked. Protecting Caroline, keeping her safe, was Marc’s top priority. Lady Juliet wouldn’t find otherwise, not in his countenance or anywhere else.

“Did I hear my name?” Caroline asked, coming over to stand beside Marc now that the damned earl had taken his leave.

Caroline’s lilac scent swirled about him at her nearness, and Marc couldn’t help but breathe her in. “Well, you know,” he drawled, “you are my favorite topic of conversation. Did I hear you say you were meeting Peasemore this evening?”

“Jealous?” she echoed his usual sentiment to her.

“Insanely,” he replied and didn’t even bother to hide his smile.

Caroline laughed as she shook her head. “Well, I’m sure you could simply ask Alex for my weekly schedule, if you’d like all the details.”

Dear God, she was delightful. The twinkle in her eye, the lilt in her voice. Just being near her lightened his heart. “My dear, on my honor, I did not ask Alex about your whereabouts last night.”

“Your honor?”

He bit back a smile. He was not, after all, known for his honor. “Well, it’s true nonetheless. Alex did happen to mention in passing that he’d be seeing you, but I did not ask.”

“Ah!” She grinned. “So the truth comes out.”

He winked at her. “You have to know the proper questions to ask, my dear.”

“I think even if I knew the proper questions, you’d answer them in a way to leave me in the dark.”

Well, that was one of his specialties. “You’re no better. Are you going to make me bribe Simmons for the information? Or will you take pity on me and tell me where you’ll be tonight?” With that damned Peasemore. But he left that last bit out, because he truly was insanely jealous. And he’d really rather she not know that.

“Cordie’s ball,” she returned. “I daresay that might be an event you were actually invited to.”

Marc had no idea if he’d been invited or not. He paid very little attention to invitations he received and rarely attended any social functions. But he also knew that neither Cordie nor Clayworth would toss him from their home, invitation or no invitation. And an event without children did sound promising. In fact, he was liking the sound of that more and more. “Should I follow you to Clayworth’s, will you save me a dance?” Or every last one of them, if that wouldn’t get tongues wagging all over Town. Not that it would even matter at this point if they were already in the gossip rags.

“I can’t image you dancing a reel,” she said, her warm eyes captivating him like nothing else.

“Me neither,” he agreed. “Best make it a waltz. I do quite nicely at those.”

A delicate cough from a few feet away reminded them both that there were others in the room. Marc had quite forgotten Juliet and Felicity were still in the parlor, and if the slight blush on Caroline’s cheeks was any indication, she’d forgotten them as well.

“Now that we are friends,” Caroline said, starting back toward her seat, “should I expect you to call often?”

Every damned day of her life. However long it took… “As often as you’ll receive me.” He followed her further into the room and stopped before the seat Peasemore had abandoned. “But you didn’t answer my question. Should I decide to brave society tonight and attend a proper function, will you save me a waltz?”

“Do friends, only friends, waltz?” she asked, with that endearing twinkle back in her eyes.

Friends. What a bloody awful word. “The very best ones do,” he assured her. What he wouldn’t do to scoop her up in his arms and carry her straight to her bedchambers and be the furthest thing from her friend. But they did have an audience. So Marc turned his gaze onto Felicity Carraway. “And I will expect you to keep your husband away from me. One more punch thrown my way and he won’t like the outcome.”

Felicity shook her head slightly. “I’ll make certain he’s on his best behavior.” And then she laughed. “Something I never thought I’d have to say about Fin.”

* * *

Sebastian Alder, the Earl of Peasemore, paused outside the parlor and cringed. What rotten luck he had. What were the bloody odds his cousin’s wife would have been at Staveley House when he arrived? Felicity was certainly throwing a wrench into his plans. How could he garner Lady Staveley’s trust with his new cousin perpetually in the way? He hadn’t, after all, absconded with that damn cat for nothing. The dratted thing was supposed to buy him entrance into her home and grant him the status of trusted confidant in the process. But now, between the three ladies in that parlor, they were plotting to help him find a real bride? Damn it all. The last thing in the world he wanted was a real bride. Not now, in any event.

Of course, his grandmother had threatened to cut off his allowance, but the old dragon would never really do so. Sebastian had plenty of good years before he’d have to settle for the boring life that awaited him somewhere down the road. And by then, he’d have several adventures to think back on fondly. Something that would have given his humdrum existence more meaning.

And in the present, he had a job to do. One he’d hoped he’d accomplished with that damned journal the other night. But there was nothing in the blasted thing except the musings of a brilliant, but rather dry, mind.

Sebastian quietly started down the corridor toward the Staveley study to replace the pointless book he’d pilfered during his previous midnight jaunt through Staveley House. Replace that book and look for another, something that would be easier to do during the light of day, but with a townhouse full of his relations and Haversham who was continually in his way…

One would think that infiltrating a group of double agents in Napoleonic France would be less challenging.

He found the study open and quietly slipped inside. He opened the desk drawer where he’d found the journal, retrieved the leather book from his jacket and replaced it. Then he opened the next drawer and then the next, rifling through the loose papers--correspondence from the late viscount’s sister, some from his solicitor, and one from the Earl of Masten, but nothing that remotely resembled the deciphered or partially-deciphered code he was searching for.

Sebastian felt around the edges of each drawer, hoping to find some evidence of a false bottom. He tapped the legs and underside of the desk, listening for a hollow space where one might hide matters of national security. And he perused the few books on the shelf in the far side of the room. All to no avail.

After the other night and now today, he was relatively certain there was nothing to be found in the study. So where else would Staveley keep something of value? His bedchamber, perhaps? It was unlikely Sebastian would get an invitation to that particular room, not as long as Lady Staveley was searching for a real bride for him. And not with that damned Haversham hanging about. Misanthropic villain that he was.

Sebastian returned to the corridor and took a few steps before…

“May I help you with something, sir?” a man asked from behind him.

Blast and damn. Sebastian glanced back over his shoulder to find the Staveley butler eyeing him suspiciously. “Just leaving, thank you.”