Fourteen

“MY LORD! MY LORD, YOU MUST WAKE UP!”

Shouts at the bedroom door had Westhaven struggling up from sleep as Anna shook him hard by his shoulder.

“Gayle,” she hissed. “Gayle Tristan Montmorency Windham!” She had her fist cocked back to smack him when he caught her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“Please! You must wake up!” Sterling sounded near tears, but the earl only heaved a sigh, knowing he was going to hear himself addressed as “Your Grace” from that moment on for the rest of his life.

“Under the covers,” he said to Anna quietly as he reached for his dressing gown. A small part of him was grateful he at least wasn’t going to be alone when he got the news of his father’s death.

“Yes, Sterling.” He opened the door, his composure admirable—worthy of a duke.

“A message, my lord”—Sterling bowed—“from Lord Amery. The messenger says there’s a fire at your new property.”

Not His Grace, the earl thought with soaring relief. Not His Grace, not yet.

But there was a fire at Willow Bend.

“Have Pericles hitched to the gig,” the earl said. “Pack a hamper and plenty of water. Send word to my brothers—Val should be at the mansion; Dev will be at Maggie’s. Under no circumstances are Their Graces to get wind of this, Sterling.” He hoped Dev was at Maggie’s, but he might also still be at his stud farm or holed up with old cavalry comrades. He glanced at Douglas’s note.

The Willow Bend stables are ablaze as I write; no loss of life thus far. Will remain on site until the situation is contained. Amery.

A thousand questions fluttered through Westhaven’s head: How did the fire start, how did Amery come upon it, was the house safe, and why the hell was this happening now…?

“What is it?” Anna had risen from the bed, put on her wrapper, and padded over to him silently.

“There’s a fire at Willow Bend. Just the stables, according to a note from Amery. I’m going out there.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He sat on the bed and drew her to stand between his legs. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Fires mean people can get hurt. I can help, and I don’t want you to go alone.”

He didn’t want to go alone, either. He had good memories of her at Willow Bend, and she had a point. Unless he brought medical supplies with him, there were none on hand at Willow Bend adequate to deal with the burns and other mishaps that could come with fighting a fire.

“Please,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I want to go.”

He leaned into her embrace, pressing his face to the soft, comforting fullness of her breast for just a moment. He was torn, knowing he should spare her this but also feeling a vague unease about leaving her side for any extended period.

Mistrust, it seemed, could go both ways.

“Dress quickly,” he said, patting her bottom. “Bring a change of clothes. Fires are filthy business.”

She nodded and darted for the door, pausing only long enough to make sure the corridor was empty before slipping into the darkness beyond. In her absence, Westhaven heard a clock chime twelve times.

“At least we now know for sure where they are,” Helmsley said over their rashers of morning bacon.

“We do.” Stull smacked his greasy lips. “But who could have imagined the earl would snatch up his housekeeper to go to the scene of a fire?”

“She may be more than just his housekeeper,” Helmsley said. Stull looked up sharply, his expression reminiscent of a dog whose bowl of slops was threatened.

“She damned well better not be, Helmsley,” the baron with a snort. “I’ll not pay for used goods, and if she’s strayed, then she’ll be made to wish she hadn’t.”

Helmsley kept his peace, wishing not for the first time he’d had some choice before embarking on this whole miserable scheme with Stull. But really, what choice had he had? A man needed coin, and a gentleman had few means of obtaining same.

Their time in London had been productive, however. It had been Cheevers’s suggestion to check the employment agencies, and with others set to watching in the park, Helmsley had taken his sisters’ miniatures and made the rounds. The third agency had recognized Anna’s portrait immediately, as her case was memorable: Young, not particularly experienced but obviously very genteel, they’d been able to place her in the household of a ducal heir, no less, and she had worked out there beautifully.

Not too beautifully, Helmsley hoped, as Stull could be very nasty when thwarted. In the brief glimpses Helmsley caught of his sister the previous night, Anna had seemed comfortable with the earl but not overly familiar. He hoped for her sake that was the extent of the earl’s interest in his housekeeper.

And Morgan, he realized, must have been stashed somewhere else, perhaps absorbing all of Anna’s wages with her upkeep. The agency had been forthcoming— for a price—with the information that his lordship was again in the market for a housekeeper, this time for a newly acquired property in Surrey.

Stull’s plan had been to draw the earl out to Willow Bend then hie into the city and snatch the housekeeper from under his nose. With Anna in their grasp, it would have been short work to extract Morgan’s location from her. It was, like most of Stull’s endeavors, clumsily done—and now they had the King’s man nosing about, looking for arsonists, which was no small worry.

Arson, even if only the stables burned, was a hanging felony, though they’d be tried in the Lords and probably get transported instead. Helmsley wondered for the millionth time why his sisters had to be so stubborn, wily, and unnatural, but it seemed he’d soon be rid of the pair of them.

Stull, greedy shoat, wanted them both, and Helmsley had agreed it would be better for the sisters that way— and easier for him, than if he had to live with either of them when this debacle was complete. And deaf as she was, Morgan’s options were limited at best, earl’s granddaughter or not.

Stull patted his lips with his napkin, chugged his ale, and belched contentedly. “What say we check in with those fellows watching the park, and perhaps find one of their confreres who might keep an eye on this Westhaven’s townhouse, eh? Sooner or later, a housekeeper must go to market, run her little errands, or have her half-day. We can snatch my Anna then, and the earl will be none the wiser.”

“A capital idea,” Helmsley agreed, rising. It had actually been his idea, proffered as an alternative to torching the earl’s country retreat, but Stull was not the most receptive to another’s notions once he’d got the bit between his teeth.

Stull rubbed his hands together. “And then we can have a lie down through the worst heat of the day, before turning ourselves loose on the evening entertainments, what?”

“Splendid notion.” Helmsley dredged up a smile. In London, the better brothels kept out the likes of Stull and himself. Titled though they were, Helmsley had never taken his seat, and Stull had probably voted exactly twice since coming into his title. They were not… Connected. They were instead caricatures of the sophisticated lordlings on the town, having neither savoir faire nor physical appeal.

With any luck, they would soon be in possession of both of his sisters and on their way back north. Helmsley’s pockets would be heavily lined with Stull’s gold and his conscience numbed by as much alcohol as a man could consume and remain alive.

“I tell ye, guv, the bird ain’t there.” The dirty little man spat his words, disdaining his betters with each syllable.

“She has to be there.” Helmsley threw up his hands in exasperation. “You set men to watching both the front and back of the house?”

“Lads, not men,” the man replied. “Lads be cheaper, more reliable, and not so fond of their ale, nor as apt to wander off when they’s bored.”

“And in four days,” Helmsley went on, “your… boys haven’t left the place unattended once?”

“Not fer a bleedin’ minute. No bird, at least not the one in yer little paintin’. Maids and laundresses and such, but no lady bird like you showed us. Now where’s me blunt, guv?”

“Stull!” Helmsley bellowed, and the baron lumbered out of his room into their shared sitting room. “The man wants his blunt.”

Stull frowned, disappeared, and reappeared, a velvet bag in hand. Too late, Helmsley realized the cretin they’d hired to manage surveillance of Westhaven’s townhouse was eyeing the velvet bag shrewdly.

“Your coin.” Stull counted out the payment carefully and dropped it into the man’s hand from a height of several inches above his palm. “Now be off with you. She’s there, and we know it. Your job is to tell us when she leaves the house.”

“Not so fast,” their hireling sneered. “You pay us for the next four days, too, guv. Unless you want me sorry self gracin’ yer ’umble abode again.”

Slowly, Stull counted out another fistful of coins.

“My thanks.” The man smiled a gap-toothed grin. “If we see the bird, we’ll send a boy.”

He took his leave, and Stull shrugged, much to Helmsley’s relief.

“We’ll find her,” Stull said. “She’s got a decent job, probably making enough to look after Morgan, for which we must give my Anna credit, and when she pokes her nose out of that earl’s townhouse, we’ll snatch her up and be gone. I’m for a little stroll down to the Pig, Helmsley. You can come along and put in a good word for me with Wee Betty?”

Helmsley smiled thinly and reached for his hat and gloves. He was of the mind that Anna had once again given them the slip, just as she had in Liverpool a few weeks after leaving Yorkshire. He was damned, damned, if he’d spend another two years haring all over England, drinking bad ale and screwing dirty serving maids in Stull’s wake.

Anna had given her word, in writing, and Helmsley was going to see she kept it—or died trying. Either way, the result was the same for him: His troubles would be over, and so would hers.