“Derrick?” Barber said.
He blinked. His partner must have been trying to get his attention for some time, for Barber rarely used Derrick’s first name.
“Yes, sorry. Just…distracted,” Derrick said, following his friend up the hallway back toward the guest quarters where they could speak more privately and make their plans.
“The duke was unexpected,” he said, and glanced behind him at the parlor beside the study. The door was closed now. “I think we may find a great many things to be not as they seem now that we’re here.”
Selina was able to keep the serene smile on her face until she crossed the threshold into her chamber. Once she shut the door, she pivoted toward her companion, Vale Williams. Vale was a petite woman with pale blonde hair, freckles across her nose and dark brown eyes. Selina had always thought her to look a bit like a fairy in stories. Only she was the kind who didn’t use magic for sweetness or light.
At present, Vale was seated by the fire and didn’t bother to get up, though she did set her book aside. “Why the look?” she asked.
Selina shook her head. “Well, we are rightly fucked, my dear. Over a barrel, with hardly more than an ‘as you please’.”
That forced Vale from her seat and she moved toward Selina. “Why? How?”
Selina paced the room, mind racing with what she’d overheard at the window of Robert’s study. “My brother has invited some unexpected guests.”
Vale wrinkled her brow. “Not on the original guest list you pilfered from his home before we left London?”
“No,” Selina said. “They arrived this morning. Former army, I think. I knew that man was trouble. I knew it the moment I looked up into his handsome face. A chin dimple is never to be trusted, Vale. Isn’t that what we always say?”
Vale blinked at her ramblings. “I’m sorry, who are these men?”
“Investigators,” she said, drawing out each syllable. “Looking for the Faceless Fox.”
Vale’s hands dropped to her side and her mouth gaped. “They’re here hunting you!”
“Indeed.” Selina sat down hard and scowled.
The Faceless Fox, her second name for years, the identity she’d hidden behind and lived through. So many had screamed that name into the night after she slipped their jewels from their pockets and danced away to the fence. What a life it had been. One she hadn’t regretted…or at least not regretted often.
And now these two men had come to finish what so many others had started at and failed. To catch her in a trap and unveil her to the world.
Chapter 3
Selena sighed heavily. At least with Vale she didn’t have to wear the cloak. The mask. Her friend had never betrayed her, and perhaps she was the only one who hadn’t. Which meant she could trust her, at least more than she did anyone else.
“At present, they still think the Fox is a man,” she said. “At least according to everything I overheard.”
“Everything you heard? You were eavesdropping?”
“Of course.” Selina made a face. “I told you I suspected the men of something.”
“Tell me everything,” Vale said, retaking her seat across from Selina. “Don’t leave anything out.”
So she did, telling what she’d overheard before that dratted Derrick Huntington had sensed her at the window. She’d sensed him, too, and barely made her escape before he pushed back the curtain and looked for her.
She told Vale about what they knew regarding Lady Winford’s necklace and the intent of the Fox to seek it out. And as her friend and partner sat and considered all she’d said, Selina did her own pondering about how she’d come here.
At first stealing had been a lark. She’d been on her own, for all intents and purposes, for so long. Being untamed and wild and unfettered was easy. It was fun. Most of the time it was fun, at any rate. But it didn’t come cheap, that was for certain. Sometimes her father’s allowance just wasn’t enough, especially if a game of cards didn’t go well.
The first time she’d slipped coins from a lady’s gown pocket at the Donville Masquerade it had been out of necessity. But oh, the thrill of it. Especially since she’d seen the lady being nasty to a courtesan just a short time before. Talking down to her as if she, herself, weren’t at an underground sex club taking her pleasure.
Taking that coin had led to taking other things. Playing the game, for fun and sport and profit. Selina had gotten very good at it. Good enough that she’d once slipped the ring off of Lady Tinman’s finger and the woman hadn’t been the wiser for hours.
And the Fox? That alter ego all of Society now whispered about?Thathad been born almost by accident. She’d always loved to sketch. It had been her one of her few acceptable pastimes as a girl. She’d been hiding in a gentleman’s bedchamber behind the curtain one night, waiting for the household to settle so she could steal the beloved signet ring of an arse who had assaulted a friend of hers from the theatre, and she’d sketched herself a little fox while she waited. When she’d taken the ring, she hadn’t realized the tiny drawing had fallen behind.
When it was found after he discovered the missing ring…well, the accident had been believed to be a calling card. So it had become one. She loved to sketch her little foxes, a way to tell those in power that someone was in the midst, destroying them from within.
