“Did you find anything incriminating?” she couldn’t help asking when the steps brought them together.
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Where?”
“When you went to search his chamber,” she said, out of all patience with him.
“How well yellow suits you, Lady Diana,” Ballantine said, raising his voice above the din.
She glared at him.
“Was my compliment not to your taste?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.
“The color is called primrose. You meant to distract me. I am not so easily fooled, my lord.”
He cocked his head and smiled slightly. “It was sincerely meant. You look like a fragrant flower.”
Warmth spread up her neck, and she feared she had a silly smile on her face. “We shall dispense with this nonsense when we talk tomorrow,” she dared to whisper when they came together again.
“Shall we? Pity. I enjoy praising a pretty woman and having her in my arms.”
She felt the flush deepen on her cheeks. He had not bothered to lower his voice. A lady in their set overheard them and giggled.
Diana’s face still burned when Ballantine returned her to her chair.
He wasn’t a man to be manipulated. She suddenly felt very dispirited. Her plan to find Anne suddenly seemed unlikely to succeed. “Shall we go up to bed, Grandmama? I am rather tired.”
Grandmama observed her but blessedly asked no questions.
As Diana settled into bed and blew out the candle, she went over the evening in her mind. She believed that her dance with Lord Montgomery had allowed Ballantine to search the viscount’s chamber. Why else would he be away from the ballroom for so long? But of course, he would continue to deny it.
She prayed Grandmama could successfully quash her father’s interest in Lord Montgomery. But there was something about the way he had looked at her when she’d rattled on about politics and spoke of a desire to write pamphlets. A steely expression had come into his eyes, as if he saw through her, which made her swallow nervously. He was not a man to dupe, and she feared could be dangerous if she persisted.
*
After another headydance with Lady Diana, where Damian sought, somewhat unsuccessfully, to cool things down, he did at last manage to gain some discipline over his thoughts and concentrate on the reason he had been sent here.
Since nothing had been found in Montgomery’s room, he made his last attempt to locate the documents by searching the chamber allotted to the Frenchman Jean-Claude de La Touche, a man who had ingratiated himself into English society by employing his knowledge of the French to good use. Damian’s opportunity came after breakfast the next morning, when he spied, through a window, the man leaving in a hackney as Damian was about to climb the stairs.
“Where has Monsignor gone?” he asked a footman at the door. “I wished to speak to him.”
“I heard him direct the jarvie to the docks, my lord.”
So the Frenchman was arranging his passage to France. Damian ran up the stairs. Would he have taken the documentswith him? It was unlikely when the chance of being robbed rose considerably in the area around the docks.
De La Touche’s bedchamber was on the second floor at the rear of the building. Damian entered the empty room, then stood and took stock. The Frenchman had neatly ordered his possessions, lining up his brush and comb on the dresser, and Damian intended to leave the chamber exactly as he’d found it after making a thorough search. He opened the bureau drawers, which contained folded cravats, stockings, and laundered shirts. Nothing beneath the mattress. Opening the wardrobe door, Damian checked the pockets of de La Touche’s spare tailcoat, his evening clothes and banyan hanging on a hook. Although the man would be gone for a while, Damian didn’t want a maid to come in and find him here. Nor did he want the occupants of the neighboring rooms becoming interested.
He stepped back and looked around. If he wished to hide documents here, where would he put them so servants wouldn’t accidentally come across them?
He flipped back the edges of the rug, then straightened, empty-handed. Not there. Turning to the bed, he pulled back the covers and sheets and removed the pillowslips from the pillows. He ran his hand over the squabs of a chair upholstered in dark-blue velvet. Something rustled. His pulse racing, Damian plunged his hand up inside the loose slip cover. His fingers touched paper. He drew out a document and unfolded it. With no doubt, this was one of the two stolen documents that his spymaster had sent him to find.
“Not a very imaginative hiding place, de La Touche,” Damian murmured. “But thank you.”
When his search failed to turn up the other document, he smoothed the chair covers and replaced the linen on the bed. Then he checked the room to be sure he’d left no sign of his search before tucking the paper inside his coat. He cautiouslyopened the door. The corridor was empty, but when he headed for the stairs, a door opened farther down the hall.
Montgomery stepped out. “Calling on someone, Ballantine?” he asked with his humorless smile.
“A gentleman never tells, Montgomery.” Damian walked past him.
Leaving the man watching him, he ran down the stairs. He must pass this document on to Scovell before the spies wrestled it back from him. Damian didn’t doubt they’d use force.
