“Please m-make haste to leave here,” she said putting on a terrible Irish accent because Warwick would hear every word she spoke, “and I will give you the address. I-I am in danger.”
“Very well, ma’am.”
Climbing in, Samantha quickly shut the door and held the handle with both hands.
Warwick could not find her.
“Stop!” She could hear the pounding of his feet as he ran toward her.
“Hurry!” She yelled through the roof to the driver just as Warwick reached the hackney. The door rattled, and then they were rolling away.
Pressing a hand to her chest she tried to soothe the painful thudding. Warwick had clearly heard her voice as she had his. Had she fooled him when she changed to the Irish accent?
“Where to, miss?”
Samantha gave the driver the address of the Raven townhouse and settled back in her seat. She had to hope Warwick would doubt she’d be on that street at that hour. Hope her accent had thrown him off.
It was too dark to read the papers in here. But she felt the weight of it in the reticule around her wrist.
When the hackney stopped, she climbed out and ran back to her house. Slipping in through the window she’d left by, Samantha hurried out of the parlor and up to her rooms.
Reaching them undetected, she quickly removed her clothes with hands that still trembled and pulled on her nightdress. Lighting her lamp, she then climbed into bed.
She felt nauseous thinking what would have happened had Warwick caught her. Her life would have been over. He would have yelled at her and told her family.
“But he didn’t find you,” Samantha reminded herself. Opening her reticule she took out the papers the man had given her, and unfolded the first one. Drawing in a steadying breath, she then exhaled and began to read.
Your father, the late Duke of Raven, had several secret exchanges with a French spy called Theo Lavigne. The Duke double-crossed his country by giving Lavigne information about English troop movements, weapons, and those working in secret behind enemy lines in France. Your father then exposed Lavigne to the English and had him hanged when he no longer had use for him.
“Dear Lord.” Samantha felt ill at the possible loss of life that had been a direct result of her father’s treasonous actions.If this was true, he had betrayed his country in the worst possible way, and then the one man who could expose him, he’d had killed.
How had that man in the Duck and Goose come across this information?
Samantha read the second piece of paper. Inside was a short note, faded, but she could still decipher the black ink scrawled across the page.
Raven, we meet at midnight two miles from Crunston Cliff at Withers Peak. I have gold, which I will exchange for information.
Samantha read the angry scrawl on the bottom of the page. T. Lavigne. The date was 1811 two years after she was born. The last piece of paper was even more incriminating.
Her hands shook as she refolded the papers and put them back in her reticule. She then tucked it under her mattress. No one must see this. She had to come up with the money to stop this man from exposing her father and therefore shaming her family.
Extinguishing the lamp, Samantha lay in the dark, wondering where she could obtain the funds necessary to silence the man. She would have to sell some jewelry.
“I can do that,” she whispered into the dark.
Max would give her money, as would others if she asked, but she did not want to alert them that something was not right. Perhaps she’d ask them all for a small amount. Money for a gift. A surprise gift for James who had a birthday next month.
Would that work?
Samantha had never lied to her family before. Small, white ones, like “no, she had not had a piece of cake already,” but nothing big. Nothing like this. The thought she had to do so now saddened her.
“But I must do it.” The tears fell, and she let them. This would be her one weakness. She’d allow this but then no more. She had to be strong now.
“I can do this.”
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Warwick hadn’t slept well, which was odd, because his bed was comfortable, and it had been late when he’d fallen into it after a night spent at his club. The problem started with the woman. The woman who had sounded like Samantha. Or had she? The Irish accent had thrown him. That and the fact that there was no reason for Lady Samantha to be on his street at such an hour.
