Yes, there was that. The Duke of Arden thought himself invincible. She had spotted it from the moment she had first set eyes upon him when she had entered his study.
She frowned down at the sudden ink blot, which fell from her nib and marred the page.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered.
Now she would have to tear out the sheet and begin again. The ink stain ruined it all. Hazel tore the bound page in one hasty rip, then crumpled it and set it aside.
She began again.
Lucien West, Duke of Arden.
Arrogant.
Forbidding.
Suffering from an abundance of self-confidence.
Strongly objects to being referred to as “Mr. Arden.”
She could not repress her smile as she wrote the last. Her intentional needling of him had proven fruitful indeed. Not only had it revealed a great deal to her about him, but it had also been vastly entertaining to watch the flush of anger steal over his sharp cheekbones. To witness him shifting in his seat, to note the ferocious slant of his brows, the pursing of his lips, the grinding of his teeth, and the tensing of his jaw.
Yet another necessity Hazel had learned during the course of her years as a Pinkerton agent: always study your fellow agents and detectives. It was the key, not only to working well with others, but to understanding their weaknesses and being able to fill the holes they inevitably left in an investigation accordingly, before it was too late.
And the Duke of Arden possessed a waterfall of weaknesses.
A gushing geyser of them after she’d had enough time to study him and anticipate his reactions. He was surprisingly easy to manipulate. Though, to herself alone, she would admit some of her manipulations had been for her own pleasure, and had nothing whatsoever to do with her role as his partner.
A role he resented her for obtaining.
He had not been expecting a woman, and he had made no effort to hide that fact. Nor had he expected her to be a guest of his. Her smile deepened at the thought of her most successful manipulation of the duke. The Home Office did not give a damn where she laid her head at night, and she knew it. Nor had there been any thefts in the hotel at which she had been scheduled to stay. But she had been struck as she sat there in Arden’s study, the subject of his unnerving perusal, by the notion she should see how far she could push him.
Staying as a guest in his home seemed an excellent choice.
He had been too polite to deny her. Not an hour earlier, Arden’s butler, a man who seemed to view smiling as a sin, had escorted her to the chamber in which she now found herself. Naturally, though she had extended the offer to him, the duke would never deign to stoop so low as to show her to a room, as if he were no better than a servant himself. His sense of self-importance, likely ingrained in him since birth, would not allow it.
Easily manipulated, she added to her list. No surprise on that account; most men were, especially by fluttering lashes and feminine praise.
Pompous.
Strong.
Damn it all, where had the last item on her list emerged from?
She once more crossed out and continued on.
Strong.
Dark hair.
Emerald eyes.
Possessed of an authoritative manner.
No, this simply would not do. It made the Duke of Arden sound like a marital prospect, and Hazel had decidedly not suffered sailing over an ocean, then riding a train across England, merely so she could find herself a husband. Not only did she not want to marry, but she also had a purpose.
The information she had gleaned when she had posed as Mrs. Eliza Jane Mulligan in New York City would prove crucial to her work here in London. Of that, she was certain. If only her partner was as sure. She thought once more of the manner in which he had carelessly paged through her journal before dismissing it earlier, and returned to her list with a new resolve.
Emerald eyes.
