“One hopes Plunge’s tailor has finished humiliating him,” his wife, the Duchess of Raven, said, moving into the line beside Beth. “The man looks like a piece of candied fruit most of the time.”
The duke chuckled.
The music started, and Beth danced as she’d been taught to do, the steps engrained in her memory, but her chest hurt, her eyes felt scratchy, and she called herself every kind of fool for thinking she could do this and not suffer. That she could shut out everything and everyone she’d once held dear and do what she must. That she could see Nathan and feel nothing.
But you have to do it.
She didn’t remember the dance but got through it and the inevitable questions about her family’s absence from those she came into contact with. Of course they’d want to know where the Carlows had suddenly disappeared to, but she wouldn’t tell them. Instead, she offered vague smiles and lies.
As she made her way back to her mother’s side, Beth knew that now it was time to slip away.
“I shall return.” She squeezed her mother’s fingers, then left. Slipping from the ballroom, she hurried to the stairs and climbed, heart thumping. Nodding to guests and servants, she pretended to head for the retiring room.
This evening’s ball was hosted by Lord Russell, friend and adviser to the Prime Minster of the United Kingdom.
“Don’t think about what you are doing,” she whispered.
She walked slowly, studying paintings and peering in cabinets if she saw anyone. Beth kept moving in the direction she’d been told to take. When she was sure no one was looking, she ran along the hall and took the stairs up, remembering the directions she’d been given.
Third floor, third door on the left.Lord Russell’s office looks over Hyde Park.
Heart pounding, she opened door number three.
Entering, Beth closed it softly behind her. A desk lamp glowed, thankfully allowing her to see where she was going. Pressing a palm to her chest, she concentrated on slowing her breathing.
Stay calm and get it done.
Trying the drawers in the desk, she found them locked. Which of course they would be. After all, in no way was this meant to be easy on her! Tugging off her gloves, Beth opened her reticule, then took out the slender leather case she’d been given.
She’d been taught over and over how use the lock picks, now she hoped all that practice would come to fruition.
Dropping to her knees before the desk, she maneuvered first one pick into the lock, then inserted the second. She tried several times, but her fingers shook, and she kept dropping a lock pick.
“Please!” Beth begged the inanimate object. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, she tried again and was finally rewarded with a click.
Opening the drawer, she found two small black books, not dissimilar to her father’s pocket diary. Reading the first, she saw it was household accounts. The second was full of numbers in rows and words written in Latin—or she thought they were Latin.
Bring me the book with lists of codes, Miss Carlow.
Voices outside the door had her stuffing the book down her bodice. She then crawled under the desk as the handle turned.
“An office,” a woman said, sounding disgusted. “I will not be ravished in an office, and most especially not one belonging to that puffed-up, stuffy Lord Russell!”
“Surely it matters not the location, my sweet, only that you will be ravished by me.”
She knew that voice.
“But it is the first time you have done so,” the woman mewed. She then sighed, and Beth heard sounds that could only be kissing. “Oh my,” the woman sighed. “Perhaps Veronica was not overstating your abilities.”
More kissing sounds and sighs. Beth hoped fervently she did not have to stay here while they conducted an entire affair. As an innocent, she had no wish for her first experience with the act to be as silent observer.
“But I wish to be ravished on a sofa or chaise,” the woman said.
Beth held her breath, hoping she got her wish.
“I doubt the comfort will matter soon, as you will be transported into rapturous delights.”
Zacharial Deville certainly had an inflated opinion of himself, Beth thought.
