Lady Perpetua Everly rattled the latch in frustration, and sat back on her heels.

Given the state of her half boots, that was probably a mistake. She shifted herself upright, fought her tight stays for a breath, and rolled the picks between her fingers.

By all the stars, she would conquer this lock. She would get this door opened and then she would close it again on the world outside. No one would know she was here. Not the people in the nearby village, nor the Riding Officer and the free-traders he chased, not even the local squire, Sir Richard Fenwick.

The cold flagstone soaked through her layers of skirts, crimping her knees and sending a moist chill into her marrow. When her grasp on the narrow picks slipped yet again, she tore off her wet kid gloves and willed her fingers to cease their trembling.

Jenny had laced her far too tightly that morning for any sort of calming breath.

Blast it. She could do this. She had learned how to manage a lock the same way she’d done everything—carefully, while no one was looking, using her intellect. During one of her brother’s construction sprees to make the country estate and the London townhouse secure against yet another of Father’s enemies, she’d stolen a new lock from a pile of them. It had been a day and a night of faked ague before she’d conquered that mechanism and returned it, to the relief of the servant charged with the inventory.

Jenny bent for the discarded gloves and hovered nearer. “It’s a shame your spectacles broke. Shall I have a go at it, my lady?”

Perry squeezed her eyes shut. The rough road had rattled her glasses right off her face, but no matter. Only a few people knew she didn’t truly need the spectacles, and Jenny wasn’t one of them. Wearing them was her small act of defiance, and here, in her own home, she wouldn’t need them. There’d be no one here to defend herself against. She could be her true self.

If she could but work the dratted lock. “You’re in my light, Jenny.”

The maid shuffled aside. “Such as it is on this gloomy day, miss.”

This lock was not the newest sort, but neither was it ancient. Someone—her brother, Viscount Bakeley, her father, the Earl of Shaldon, or the family steward, someone—had included this unused, unknown property on the Shaldon maintenance list. The deed called this a cottage, yet it sprawled on the side of a cliff and had a plethora of windows and at least two outbuildings.

With a few more delicate jiggles and careful clicks, the lock shifted, sending a warm elation that made her want to whoop. She tilted her chin and beamed at the maid.

“Good on, my lady.” Jenny still whispered. “I couldn’t have done it as well meself.” She grinned. “Myself.”

Jenny had learned many skills in her rookery years, proper English not being one of them, nor proper limits on lacing a corset.

Never mind. Her other abilities made her a perfect companion for this journey.

The drops of comfortable drizzle that had beset them on the trip turned fat and impossibly wetter. Jenny’s bonnet was limp and her gown clinging, as must be her own.

A cascade of louder crashes on the other side of the house made the girl tense.

“That’s only the waves,” Perry said. “Don’t worry. You saw when we came up the cliff road how high we are.”

High. Very high. As the plodding horse had struggled pulling their cart, the mist below had shimmied and shifted, revealing the sharp points below, Neptune’s daggers, welcoming errant travelers.

At the narrowest point of the cliff road, she’d had to stop the cart and get out just to be able to take a proper breath. Whether the cause of her inability to breathe was the height or the tight lacing, she couldn’t be sure.

Had that been the spot of her mother’s accident? The road was so treacherous that every bend and every tight corner might lure a carriage over the side, perhaps even a rider.

Jenny had discovered a fear of heights. After that, there was no returning to their seats in the cart. The remaining few furlongs of slick coastal road, the only access to the cottage that dodged the village of Clampton, had stretched impossibly high, interminably long. Perry had taken the halter of the hired plodder pulling the cart and untied Chestnut for Jenny to lead, warning her against showing fear to the horses, reminding her that the surefooted mare would not take her over the side.

Now Jenny was shivering again. Afraid of heights, and horses, and the sea, was this saucy girl.

“Stop shaking, Jenny, and don’t be a nodcock. The waves can’t reach us up here.” Perry got to her feet. “We should get inside and light a fire. There’s a storm coming in.”

“Storm’s here already, my lady.” The words rattled through chattering teeth. “I wonder, will there be coal?”

Coal? She hadn’t thought of fuel. Whether the estate’s steward kept this house fully provisioned was an open question. Perhaps along with their soggy basket of food and the feed for the horses, she should have hauled up some wood on the cart she’d obtained from the inn where they’d stopped for the night.

She certainly didn’t wish to visit Clampton and make her presence here known.

She shook off the worry and tried to sound cheery. “We’ll throw a chair on the grate if we must.” The latch opened easily and the slightest of nudges swung the door wide. No squeaking, no creaking. Well-oiled and well-maintained, like everything in the Earl of Shaldon’s empire.

The air inside wafted to her, her corset cutting off her sharp intake of breath.

She glanced at Jenny and put a finger to her lips. All was dark inside, and no movement caught her eye.

Perry squeezed her eyes and inhaled again, ignoring the stabbing at her chest. No odors of cooking.

Lamp oil, she decided, and a burned-out fire, smells that might have lingered from a recent visit by the maids who serviced this property. Bakeley had such arrangements for all of the family estates.

She eased in another breath and another odor came to her. Her eyes shot open and anxiety rushed in.

She stood perfectly still and beat the alarm down to a rumble of unease. She had lived around men all her life—her brothers, her footmen, her grooms, her father’s spies and soldiers, all of them mostly well-washed and well-laundered. But even so…

Very likely, a man was here, or had been here recently. And there was another scent, one that poked deeper than the damned stays. She squeezed her eyes tight.

Turpentine.

Fox yielded his watching place to the rain and, out of sheer force of habit, closed the kitchen door noiselessly. No boat would come close to these rocks in this weather, especially not the curricle that had been dodging in and out of the cloud cover in his scope.

He set the instrument on the rough kitchen table, tore off his neck cloth and wet coats, and pulled at the shirt sticking like a second layer of skin. Then he went to stir the embers in the wide hearth.

This hearth would accommodate the angles of a Benjamin Thompson design, but the lady had failed to install the Massachusetts-born inventor’s modern cooking stove. Still, the room otherwise bore her stamp—fine pots and dishes graced well-built shelves, and a collection of ornamental rolling pins decorated all the walls. It was a fine place for a cook to work, and for a man to think.

And in his case, a fire, a strong drink, and some thinking time were in order. This waiting while his wound healed had been fruitless and boring. He was no closer to finding his quarry than on his arrival weeks earlier.

His fine brushes, however, had acquired their own frenzied life. One he couldn’t control. Like the stack of canvas in his rented rooms in town, his work here was more evidence of a pointless obsession; pointless and mad. He found last night’s bottle, raised it to his lips, and drained the last swallow of brandy.

He swirled the bottle. Never mind. His room on the top floor held a case of full bottles next to the spare canvases and paints he’d hauled up and stashed near the yawning windows. The brandy was partial payment; the brushes and paints were his cover from his real task. Both were also his escape from the tedium of this mission.

God’s blood, when this job was over he was going home to New England to take up the land his brother had promised him. The English could find a new artist to paint their lords and ladies.

Cool air touched his cheek, sending a prickle through him. He set the bottle down carefully.

There were no leaks or cracks in this tight seaside cottage, not on any of the four floors, and certainly not on this servants’ floor, walled as it was on one side by the hard rock of the cliff. She would not have allowed it. Nor would she have returned for a visit. The only spirits he believed in came out of a bottle.

At the open door that led to the stairway, he paused to listen. The quietest of footfalls. The swishing of skirts. A hushed feminine voice.

He ground his teeth as irritation spiked through him. A woman was here, and no lady would be out in this weather to visit a single man.

There was however that damned Scruggs’ girl at the inn. She’d pillowed her big breasts into his shoulder whilst serving his dinner there his first night in the neighborhood, and blast it, every time he stopped in for a pint, she flirted without shame. Scruggs always sent one of his boys with bread and supplies. If the fool girl was here, she’d come on her own, likely expecting a few coins for a tumble.

Unless…He had no specific reason to think Scruggs was spying on him, no reason to distrust Scruggs—nor any reason to trust him. Scruggs had been the innkeeper here on his last visit, ten years past, and she’d trusted him.

And then she’d died. Something to think about—loyalties could be bought.

Muffled, furtive steps crossed the front hall to the tall windows that looked out on the sea.

He’d locked all the doors, and none of the locals had a key. His presence here was known to the villagers in Clampton, purposefully known.

If this was someone else, he’d not be snatched up like a worm on a hook. No matter that, as far as he knew, the fish he was after had not come close to shore yet.

Whoever this was had picked her way in.

He patted his sleeve over the sheathed blade strapped to his arm.

Perry stood at the mullioned French doors looking out over a narrow-tiled terrace. In the distance, a boat, as tiny as a beetle on the top of a pond, bobbed on a sea that roiled like her heart. Next to her, Jenny’s mouth had dropped open.

“Are you wondering what you’ve got yourself into?” Perry whispered.

“You did promise an adventure, miss.” She put the tip of one gloved finger on the pristine window. “But I’ll not go out there on any boat, no matter.”

Perry grinned through trembling lips. Nor would she, if she could help it.

“No? In for a penny, in for a pound.” She took a breath and another fragrance came to her, the scent of her mother’s preserved rooms at Cransdall. Her father had not bothered looking for a new countess to occupy them, thank God.

“It’s spotless. They must have a girl come up from the village to clean,” Jenny whispered and pointed. “Except for the mess over there.”

Empty dishes and a glass rested on a pretty oval table. Nearby, a dark shawl, much like the ones her mother had favored, draped over the back of a sofa.

Perry stood taller. “The house is not let. No one should be here but me. I have a right.”

“But no key, miss?” Jenny arched a brow.

The sound of a footstep drew their gaze to the drawing room door. A man stood in the shadow, tall, with dark hair longer than what was fashionable. Dim light caught the white of his linens. He was naked of coats.

The clacking in her chest beat all the way to her ears. Inside her pocket was a pistol, not primed, not cocked, and no doubt far too wet to fire.

He stepped through the door, into the gray light from the windows, and her heart all but stopped.

Fox was here. Fox, the artist. Fox, the scoundrel. Fox, the thief.