They woke early and dressed, then went down for breakfast. The whole household knew about the peculiar guest so there was no need for discretion.
He read his mail. She drank her coffee. The half hour of domesticity amused her. Here she sat in a duke’s home, acting like a lady, pretending the man at the table did not hold her fate in his hands.
She watched him calmly execute his morning routine. If the man were not a duke, not a peer, not a gentleman bound by honor, not a devil of a seducer who had known many women far more delectable than she, maybe, just maybe, she could sway him to let her run away. Only he was all those things and her own skills at seduction were no match for the principles that would decide her fate.
She was not sure she would want to win that challenge if she made it. She did not want him to be other than he was.
He set aside the letters. “I have devised a plan.”
“I am afraid to ask what it is.”
He looked at her kindly, and there was resolve in his eyes. “Today you will show me where this go-between Pritchard fellow lives. I will speak with him. He will tell me where that buckle went.”
“What if he refuses?” He overestimated the influence of dukes on criminals. In this one small part of life, she was the expert and he was fairly green, she suspected.
“I will reason with him.”
“He may not be reasonable.”
“Then I will persuade him another way. I will pay him.”
“That might work,” she conceded.
“If it doesn’t, I will leave it to Vincent and Michael.”
“Ah. Now that persuasion may well be successful.”
“I trust it will not come to that.”
“I will not object if it did. I have suffered much due to this scheme.”
He stood. “Then let us go at once and be done with it.”
* * *
Langford paced the wooden floors of the simple chamber. Amanda stood in its center, so disappointed she could barely feel her own body.
“It appears thoroughly unoccupied,” he said. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“I watched him enter this building. I was told he let the attic room.”
Langford ran his finger through the thick dust on the one table. “I suppose he might have left yesterday.”
His tentative words drew her attention on him fully. A new seriousness had claimed him. His posture, his expression, the way he looked everywhere but at her—a subtle formality tinged all of him.
Perhaps he thought she had lied. Perhaps he wondered if all of it had been a story to divert him from the real truth. She was a criminal, after all. Why wouldn’t she lie if it served her purpose?
He looked at her and the distance fell away as if his mind rejected whatever it pondered. “So, we missed him,” he said. “That makes matters more complicated, but all is not lost.”
“How will we find him now?”
“The buckle is on its way. Your mother will remain safe. But he will send another demand. When he does, we can use it to find her and this blackmailer and the stolen items.”
She sank onto the old wooden chair near the table. “What if there isn’t another demand?”
“There will be,” he said grimly. “There is one more item that goes with the two he wanted. He will want it too.”
“And I will steal it?”
