Never put anything in your reticule you wouldn’t want your dear maman or even your best confidante to discover. And your bodice is never a good second choice. Your lover will most decidedly discover it there.
Advice to Felicity Langley from her Nanny Brigid
When the curtain fell for intermission, Lady Standon plucked her hand from Langley’s grasp and leapt to her feet, saying in a heady rush, “Yes, well, there it is. I’ll be right back.”
Langley caught her by the elbow. “You needn’t go without me, my dear.” He watched the emotions—frustration, concern, and pique—play out behind her kohl-lined eyes. No, she certainly didn’t want his company. “I can go fetch whatever you desire.”
“I don’t desire anything,” she told him, trying to pull her arm free and not succeeding.
He should just let her go, let her play out her intrigues, for Lord knows he had his own pile of troubles to contend with, but something inside him tugged possessively at his heart.
You need to help her, it urged. You must help her.
Those words echoed through his thoughts, like the hiss of a stage manager off to one side prompting a forgetful actor to remember his lines.
But he didn’t want to be prompted to do what was right, what was honorable.
Just let her go and concentrate on keeping Sir Basil off balance, he told himself, recounting the plans he had made with Thomas-William and Lord Andrew.
Including the one that would start tonight.
But intervention came in the form of Tasha, stepping between him and Minerva with all the ease of a sleek cat. “Darling, sometimes a lady doesn’t need a man’s company,” she told him, her brows arched as if to say, In certain circumstances. She extracted Minerva from his side and pulled her to the aisle. “Come, Lady Standon. Men, even one such as Langley, can be so obtuse about a lady’s needs.”
The two women departed, and Langley watched them go, his lips pursed in frustration. He shouldn’t be frustrated, he should be relieved, so he could get on with what he needed to get done, but at the door, Minerva took one furtive glance over her shoulder at him—a guiltier look he had never seen—which only served to drive his curiosity wild.
What the devil was Lady Standon up to?
Then as his gaze swept around, he spied the one thing that would answer his question.
Her reticule.
Dropped and forgotten when she’d bounded to her feet.
He reached down and plucked it up, making a good show of returning it to its rightful place in her seat, even while his fingers slipped inside and plucked out the note she’d concealed.
Surreptitiously, he flipped it open and read it.
Time’s up. Meet me at intermission. Or else.
Langley sniffed. Good God. Or else? What sort of mushroom writes such melodramatic nonsense?
Any number of reasons for such a demand ran through his head—gambling debts, an insult or slight, a love affair gone sour. That last one he dismissed as quickly as he thought of it. Ridiculous notion, that.
Proud and proper Lady Standon in some sort of sordid love affair? He snorted and tossed the thought aside.
Besides, the image of another man with her left him with a pit in his stomach. For what reason he couldn’t fathom, but he didn’t like the idea of it. Not in the least.
Crumpling the paper and then shoving it in his pocket, he made his way through the press of people, determined to put this distraction to an end; that is, until a large gentleman stepped into his path.
“Langley! It is you! Heard you were in Town.”
“Lord Chudley! Why it’s been years. Good to see you, sir,” Langley replied, holding out his hand.
“Take your hand away, you cad. I will not shake it,” Chudley declared. “You are a dead man to me.”
“So that’s him,” Adlington sneered as he glanced over Minerva’s shoulder.
She looked across the foyer, where Langley was coming out of the doorway of their box.
“Leave me. Leave me now!” she said, moving to dodge away. “Before he sees us.”
Gerald stopped her flight almost immediately, catching hold of her elbow and towing her back into place. “What if he does? Doesn’t look like much,” he said. “Besides, I hear tell he’s a traitor.”
Minerva drew in a sharp breath. For while she didn’t know Langley very well—oh, good gracious heavens, she barely knew the man at all—she couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe that of him.
But before she could refute such a lie, Adlington continued, “Is that the game, Maggie? Marry him and then watch him dance at the end of the rope?”
She recoiled in horror at such a suggestion, yanking her arm free.
Adlington clucked his tongue at her. “Bad idea, my girl. They take everything from traitors. There’s no profit in marrying one.”
No profit . . . Never had she wished more for Thomas-William’s pistol in her grasp. She wouldn’t even be in this predicament if profit wasn’t Gerald’s middle name.
“I’ll leave London if you don’t stop this,” she threatened.
“No you won’t,” he said. “Not until you give me my money.” He glanced at her décolletage and shook his head. “ ‘Nothing of worth,’ she says. You little liar. Those diamonds would keep a king in style.”
“The money was never yours, it was for Minnie,” Minerva corrected as she watched—with some relief—Lord Chudley step into Langley’s path and bring him to a halt. For the time being. “And neither are these diamonds—they belong to the Sterling family. They are the duchess’s, if you must know.”
“A duchess probably won’t miss a few baubles.”
Baubles? Only an idiot like Gerald would call such stones “baubles.”
“Then you are a fool. The Duchess of Hollindrake would hunt you down herself,” she told him. After she finished me off for losing a family heirloom.
Adlington leaned closer. “We could both go, Maggie. Take that necklace and leave.”
She scoffed at him and tried to escape, but he had her pinned in place, with her back to the wall and his hand planted just over her shoulder.
“We could go to America,” he continued. “You fancied that notion once; you could again.”
She made her answer with an inelegant snort. “I’d rather spend the rest of my days in Newgate.”
He pointedly ignored her sarcasm as if it weren’t meant for him. “Boston would be a far sight better. Or New York. Mayhap down South—there’s land a plenty there, so I hear, and those diamonds would buy us a kingdom and all the help we’d ever need.”
“Slaves? You’d buy slaves?” She couldn’t fathom such a thing. But apparently Adlington wasn’t averse to the notion.
“You’ve forgotten what living is like without a household of maids and cooks and fancy fellows at your beck and call. You’d change your mind right quick if you were tossed back into the kitchens.” He snorted as if that thought was a great jest, then leaned closer and said softly, “And over there, none of that rabble will care if you are naught but an earl’s by-blow. Might even give you some standing amongst the blighters.”
“Hardly,” she scoffed, “if I arrived with the likes of you.”
He leaned closer still. “You’ve turned out uppity, Maggie. That title of yours has gone to your head. But when they throw you out, what then? You’ll be in the gutter, just where you would have been if I hadn’t seen the way clear for you to marry that old goat.” He leered at her, and Minerva knew immediately who had replaced her former husband as London’s most ghastly old goat. “Come with me now, Maggie,” he cooed. “Just say the word.”
She recoiled as best she could. “How about this one: ‘No!’ Or to be more precise: ‘Never!’ ” Truly, did he think her so daft? “Why, you’d run through whatever coins came your way for this necklace before you got to Plymouth.” She paused as his brow furrowed tellingly. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re in deep, aren’t you? And to someone who isn’t as forgiving as my sister was?”
“That is none of your business,” he whispered, his teeth grinding together like a wolf, his face turning an angry shade of red.
But as much as he taunted her about her lowly origins, he seemed in the same measure to have forgotten where she’d come from as well. Minerva wasn’t merely the earl’s natural child. “As my mother always said, ‘I may be only a woman, but a man has to eat and he’s got to sleep.’ ” She straightened up on her high heels so she almost looked him in the eye. “Have a care, Mr. Adlington, what you take for supper tomorrow night and where you decide to slumber.”
He paled, but before he could rally, counter her threats, a loud voice stopped them. Stopped all the conversations in the foyer.
“I’ll have satisfaction, Langley! I demand it!” Lord Chudley bellowed.
Everyone turned toward this pronouncement, even Adlington.
Minerva used the distraction to slip out of Gerald’s trap.
“Chudley, there is no reason to—” Langley was saying.
“Demmit, man! Are you going to back away from a challenge like a coward?”
There was a collective inhale of breath.
Minerva was stopped from stepping into the fray by Nanny Brigid, who stood on the inner circle of witnesses, Throssell hovering protectively at her side.
“Seconds, sir. Name them!” Chudley bellowed.
Seconds? Had Aunt Bedelia’s husband gone mad? But then the madness spread as Langley nodded in agreement and the foyer buzzed with the news.
A duel!
Good heavens! Blackmail and now this . . . Minerva found her once staid life being thrust into a maelstrom of scandal.
She was starting to think that, perhaps, a quiet cell in Newgate might be a welcome respite.
Gerald Adlington was about to go after his quarry when a lady tapped him on the sleeve with her fan.
“Excuse me, were you just speaking to that lady?”
“What business is it of yours?” he said, not really looking at the woman, but trying his damnedest to keep Maggie in his sights. Bitch! She wouldn’t slight him so if she knew it had been his idea to have the earl send her in her sister’s place to marry Philip Sterling.
Bloody stroke of genius that, if he did say so himself. Maggie’s placement so close to the Sterling coffers had given him and his suddenly useless bride an endless supply of illicit cash.
Especially after the old earl had made it clear he wouldn’t give his errant legitimate daughter and her new husband a shilling, not even when he turned up his toes.
Useless. That was what Minnie had become. Then again, weren’t most women useless? Save for when a man wanted . . . He watched Maggie’s hips sway, the curve of her backside as she departed, and he groaned a little bit. She’d always found a way to stir him. And London whores were expensive. Perhaps he should just find a way to nab her, her bloody diamonds and make off to America.
But that notion would have to wait, for the overdone bird at his side became overly insistent. “I would have a word with you—in private,” she was saying, this time taking his arm and tugging him back into an alcove.
Gerald gave her a hard stare, and found his gaze was met with an equally merciless one. Instantly he knew who she was, one of those fancy foreign pieces who was rumored to have been one of Langley’s warming pans.
“Stop gaping like a fish and close your mouth,” she told him, giving him another nudge with her elbow. “You will listen to what I have to say, if you know what is good for you.”
Gerald’s temper flared to be spoken to thusly. Obviously Langley liked them bossy. Fool. Personally, he liked his birds a bit more submissive.
“What do you want?” he asked, puffing out his chest and facing her down.
She was, after all, just a woman.
She took a slow glance over at Minerva and said, “I think we have mutual desires that need to be addressed. Much to be gained if we worked together.”
He liked the sound of that. “What do you have in mind?”
And so she told him.
“I thought you said you would handle this?” Neville Nottage said, sidling up behind Sir Basil and watching the growing fracas between Lord Langley and that old fool, Viscount Chudley.
“What the devil are you doing here? I told you when we parted at White’s to hide! Better still, leave London,” Sir Basil said, pulling him into an alcove. Not that anyone was looking, for they were too busy watching the escalating scandal.
“I think not,” Nottage said. “Every day Langley is alive puts us in danger.” Still, he pulled the collar of his coat up higher and the brim of his hat down lower.
“Very soon he will be under attainder for treason, and it won’t matter what he knows,” Sir Basil replied, glancing down at his program as if scanning it for something interesting in the next act.
“When?” Nottage demanded.
“When what?” Sir Basil said, taking a peek over at Chudley’s buffoonery.
“When will he be arrested? I detest this loathsome cowering.”
“By the end of the week,” Sir Basil told him.
Nottage shook his head furiously. “No! He needs to be eliminated now.”
“We wouldn’t be discussing this at all if you had finished the task in Paris. After all, you said he was dead. That Paris was the end of our concerns.”
“I would have sworn—” Nottage muttered, glancing furtively over his shoulder, but keeping his back to the crowd.
Yes, well your swearing didn’t do it, now did it? Sir Basil mused silently, vexed at living in the baron’s crosshairs, for here was the seemingly unstoppable Lord Langley still alive.
Though perhaps not for long.
“This may be better,” he said aloud. “Lord Chudley is a demmed good shot, even at his age. He’ll finish this business for us. Besides, Langley hasn’t got any evidence against us. Remember he came to me begging for help.” Sir Basil snorted and went back to looking over his program.
“I know Langley,” Nottage grumbled. “He’s playing with you. And even if he doesn’t have anything, what if he discovers something before Chudley manages to send him aloft?”
“He won’t find anything. I’ve covered my tracks well. I wish I could say the same about you.”
Nottage colored. Dangerously so, but Sir Basil was confident in his own position.
There was nothing left that could point the finger at him save a few suspicions and the jealousies that came with rising in the ranks as he had.
“There is that one missing shipment,” Nottage pressed.
“Yes, which was lost. And if we couldn’t find it, why do you think Langley will be able to make it materialize out of thin air?”
“Because he’s Langley,” Nottage said, watching his former mentor with a narrowed gaze. “Listen well, Brownie, I’ll not be hanged for any of this. Not I. There is nothing to be done save stop the man. Without delay.”
Nottage turned to leave, but Sir Basil stepped into his path. “Stop bleating like a lamb. I have this well in hand. If this isn’t done with care and caution, we will both fall.”
“I beg to differ. I don’t think you do have this in order,” his co-conspirator replied. “Nor do you have the stomach for what needs to be done. Easy to order his murder when the man is across the Channel, but you haven’t the nerve to kill a fellow when he’s standing right in front of you, now do you, Brownie?”
“These things need to be done wisely. There is too much at stake.”
“This is no time, my good man, for care or reason,” Nottage told him, “Langley must die. Now.”
Sir Basil shuddered, and clenched his teeth together. Whatever did the man want him to do? Pull out a pistol and shoot the baron in front of the entire ton? Ridiculous notion. These things took careful planning, deliberation, timing . . .
“So I thought,” Nottage sneered. He leaned closer and whispered, “Time for you to step aside and I’ll show you how it is done in the field.”
“Like you did in Paris?” Sir Basil said, managing a brazen bit of courage.
But it was too late, for Nottage had already slipped into the crowd, moving like an eel through the excited throng that was even now rushing back to its seats for the next act, if not for the play, but to make sure they had the finer points of the scene they had just seen enacted in the foyer.
No one noticed Nottage, but then again the man was like that—familiar but utterly forgettable.
Alone, Sir Basil fumed, watching Nottage stride boldly out the door and into the night, where most likely the man was planning a murderous final act of his own.
“A duel?” Minerva said to the baron as they exited Drury-Lane Theatre. “Really? That is how you avoid a scandal, Langley?”
“I can hardly be held accountable for Chudley’s sense of honor,” he replied. “Nor is it the time to have this discussion.” Langley glanced up and nodded at the gaping crowd that parted to let them through. Then he took her hand, placed it on his sleeve and began a slow, staged descent down the steps.
Minerva glanced up and immediately her fingers curled tighter around her spray of orange blossoms.
Oh, good heavens! It seemed everyone in the theatre—whether they’d witnessed the exchange or not—had lined up on the steps to watch them leave, just in case there happened to be an encore performance.
“What do they think is going to happen?” she asked under her breath as they walked along, her hand firmly pinned to his sleeve by his other hand.
He needn’t hold her so, she would have told him. She wasn’t about to let go.
“Perhaps they are waiting for another aggrieved husband to step forward and challenge me as well.”
“How many more are there out there?” she asked, pausing at the curb as he waved for their carriage to come forward. The driver pulled into place and Langley stepped out into the street and opened the door for her.
“More than you would like, I’m willing to wager,” he joked.
Oh, you would jest, she mused as she picked her way to the carriage. It had rained while they’d been inside, and the puddles were everywhere. It wouldn’t do to ruin Nanny Brigid’s elegant shoes, for with her accounts cut so drastically, Minerva knew this finely crafted pair wouldn’t be easily replaced, nor would the gown if the hem got soiled.
Happily she made it to Langley’s side unstained and was just about to step into the dry confines of the Hollindrake carriage when she spied the flower girl from earlier—her bright copper curls so hard to miss—dashing up the street from where the carriage had come, darting around the crowds and horses, her face twisted in terror.
Something was terribly wrong, but what, Minerva had no idea. Just this jolt of warning racing along her spine that said her entire world was about to be turned upside down.
Then it seemed everything around her stilled, as if the seconds that usually ticked easily by were slowed by the hands of Fate. The little girl shouted something, but what it was, Minerva couldn’t discern, not over the hullabaloo around them. But the child, realizing she had Minerva’s attention, pointed up.
She twisted around to see what had the little urchin so frightened and her heart stopped.
The driver had risen up in his post—only it wasn’t the usual fellow who drove the Duke of Hollindrake’s spare carriage, but a stranger, wearing a mask, with a low-slung hat and his collar pulled up high. But there was no mistaking his intent—from inside his coat he was drawing out a pistol and aiming it.
Right at Lord Langley, who with his back to the man had no idea what was about to happen.
Minerva twisted again, this time so she faced Langley, terror robbing her of her wits, her ability to speak. And here was the baron smiling at her, probably coming up with another flirtatious quip about his unsavory reputation, and she knew in that split second she didn’t even have time to warn him.
Only to save him.
Catching hold of his lapels, she shoved them both into the crowd, even as the driver’s pistol fired.
They hit the street hard, Minerva atop him, splashing in the mud and muck. Ladies screamed and men shouted in terror as the horses bolted forward, then took off in a mad dash down the street to escape the chaos.
Langley’s arms had wound tight around her. He held her close, not only in shock, but in a possessive sort of way that she could feel all the way down to her bones. His eyes, robbed of their usual mirth, held a different sort of light altogether—amazement, shock, fear, and then an unholy fury.
“Are you hit?” he asked, his question clipped and short.
She shook her head. Amazingly, she wasn’t. “Are you?”
“No,” he said, righting them both with amazing speed. He strode out into the street and watched with narrowed eyes as the carriage sped around the corner, then he turned to look at her. “Did you see him? Who was it?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t the usual fellow. Not the one who drove us here.”
Langley glanced back down the road, then returned to her side, catching her in his arms. “You could have been killed!” he scolded. “Whatever were you thinking? You foolish, madcap woman!”
Well, good heavens! Minerva ruffled at his description. She’d just kept him from being shot and he was of a mind to ring a peal over her head? “I did what I thought was best. ’Twas the little girl, the flower girl, who warned me—”
She couldn’t finish her sentence for suddenly her eyes welled up with tears and she looked around for the child, but she’d disappeared from sight.
Langley smoothed back the long curls that had fallen from her once perfect and enticing coiffure. “Minerva, you have more bottom than any woman I have ever met, and now I owe you my life.”
She swallowed back a gulp that she feared would turn into a sob.
It wasn’t exactly the most perfectly worded bit of praise she’d ever heard—truly, bottom?—but it pierced her heart just like the sight of her lovely little spray of orange blossoms, which lay trampled and lost in the mire of the muddy street.
That could have been Langley, she realized. Or her. Lost in the mud, lost forever. Oh, dear, how had her life gotten so tangled?
For the first time since her wedding night, she began to cry. And worse, in public. Welling up like a regular watering pot.
Oh, the devil take her! She was crying over a spray of orange blossoms. Wasn’t she?
Langley caught hold of her and pulled her close. “Are you sure you weren’t hit? That you’re unharmed?”
She nestled closer. Discovering the steely warmth of being held thusly.
“Whatever were you thinking?” he whispered into her ear.
“Saving you for Lord Chudley, I imagine,” she replied, wiping at her eyes.
“I’m hardly worth the effort,” he told her.
“Yes, I can see that now,” she lied. “It won’t happen again.”
But she had to imagine that with a man like Langley at her side, it would.