Page 1 of His Improper Lady

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WAS A screech somewhere in the building below him. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to awaken Tom in his flat on the top floor. He was a light sleeper, a habit ingrained in him from a childhood in which not letting down your guard was what kept you alive. He lay still for a moment, listening. He knew this building in and out. He’d lived here for a year, ever since Con married, and he’d spent his days in the agency office downstairs for almost fifteen years. He knew each creak or pop; normal noises wouldn’t have brought him out of his sleep.

More than that, he knew how the empty silence of the building at night felt. And right now something felt wrong. He swung out of bed and pulled on his trousers, grabbing the shirt from the back of the chair as he crossed the room to the door. He eased it open and listened. Was that a thump? It wouldn’t be unheard of for someone to try to break into one of the shops on the ground floor, and while it wasn’t part of the bargain for the top-floor flat, he felt an obligation to protect the building. It was, after all, the closest thing Tom had ever had to a home.

He unhooked the ring of keys to the building, curling his hand around them to prevent their clinking together, and moved noiselessly to the staircase. He started down just as quietly, sidestepping the board that creaked. Stealth, too, came naturally to him.

There. Now, that was a thump; he was sure of it. He took the rest of the flight of stairs in a rush and emerged next to Alex’s office. It was dark and silent, and he turned to look down the dark hallway.

He’d expected any intruder to be on the floor below, where the chemist and watchmaker had their shops, but it was the office at the other end of this corridor where a faint light crept out beneath the door. The office of Moreland & Quick. His office. He took off at a run. The doorknob wouldn’t turn, the door still locked, and he ate up precious seconds fitting the key into the slot.

By the time he opened the door, the light had been doused, and a dark figure was climbing out the window. With something like a growl, Tom tore across the room and grabbed the intruder’s arm with both hands, yanking him back inside. They toppled backward and landed on the floor. The thief jumped up more quickly than he, but Tom wrapped an arm around the man’s calves and jerked, and the intruder crashed back to the floor on his knees.

They rose together, wrestling, but his opponent was both smaller and less strong, and Tom was able to wrap his arms around him, pinning the man’s arms to his sides. Surprisingly, a tantalizing perfume clung to the intruder. Even stranger, the man was wearing not trousers and shirt, but some odd sort of clothes that clung to every curve. And there were definitely curves. Soft, inviting curves.

The thief was a woman.

Shocked, Tom loosened his hold, and the thief took advantage of it. Stamping on his bare foot, she shoved her elbow into his stomach, then twisted away. She was out the window in an instant. Tom hurled himself forward, reaching out the window for her, but his hand grasped only air.

The small dark figure was hurrying away from him along the narrow ledge of stone that ran beneath the windows. Her path was no wider than a man’s hand, but she crossed it with quick assurance, one hand steadying her against the brick wall. What the devil was she going to do when she reached the end?

His question was answered when she jumped off the ledge and grabbed the iron bar that held the sign above the shops. The force of her movement made her swing, and incredibly, she seemed to be pumping with her legs to increase the momentum as she worked her way a little farther out on the bar.

After another couple of hard swings, she simply launched herself out into space. Tom’s heart went into his throat as she flew through the air and landed with a roll on the metal awning of the building that abutted his own. There the woman slid down the angled awning, turning as she went. She clung to its frame for an instant to break her speed, then dropped lightly to the ground.

Grabbing a bundle that lay neatly folded beside the building, she darted up the street. The bundle, it seemed, was a cloak, for she shook it out and flung it around her shoulders while she ran. Tom watched in stunned amazement as she disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER TWO

TOM DIDN’T MOVE for a long moment, just continued to stare in bemusement at the spot where the woman had vanished into the dark and fog. The swirl of her cloak as she disappeared made the whole scene even more unreal, like the end of a magic act. Mysterious, even sinister...and utterly enthralling.

“Blimey,” he whispered inadequately and shook his head, as if that would settle the thoughts and questions running around in his brain like mad things.

It had been no magic act. It had been a planned and well-executed escape. She’d even folded her cloak into a neat pile where she could pick it up as she left. God knows, she would need something to cover what she was wearing. What the devil had those clothes been?

The material had been soft beneath his hands, and it had lain as close to her skin as a stocking. The attire had covered her from neck to ankle, including her arms, but it was scarcely modest, leaving nothing to the imagination. Or, perhaps, leaving too much to the imagination, leading to all sorts of distracting thoughts. There had been an exceedingly short skirt, ending a few inches down her thighs, more enticement than concealment.

That wasn’t why she had worn it, of course; obviously, it enabled her to climb a building and make those astonishing acrobatic moves. Of course! That was it. Her clothes had been the sort circus performers wore. Theirs were white and adorned with sparkling beads and sequins and such, but they were essentially the same. She was an acrobat, one of those women who flew through the air and trusted some man hanging upside down from a trapeze to catch them.

He wondered if she performed in a circus or at a music hall and broke into buildings to make extra coin. Or perhaps she’d traded in her spangles to devote herself to thievery full-time. Such skills would certainly be useful for a thief. And her skills were impressive.

Tom made a disgusted noise. What was he doing standing about admiring the thief’s abilities or thinking about the feel of her breast beneath his fingers and the way her perfume had curled right through him? He needed to work out what was going on. He turned on the gaslights, brightening the room, then surveyed the damage. There wasn’t much.

She was obviously a professional, her work quick and tidy. He might not even have noticed that someone had searched the place if he hadn’t been awakened. He suspected the noise had come from opening the cabinet behind Con’s desk; it had developed a nerve-shredding screech—he’d been intending to oil the hinges, but perhaps he should leave it alone.

Drawers here and there were a little too far out, the objects on his desk not quite in the same place. A book had fallen off a pile—no doubt that had been the thud he’d heard as he went down the stairs. But identifying the noises didn’t help him figure out what she had been after. She hadn’t left with whatever it was; he was certain of that. There had been nothing tucked away anywhere in that costume, and her hands had been empty. That was all to the good, but it left him not knowing what needed guarding.

Tom supposed she might have been after money, but there was no reason to keep anything more than petty cash here. Their profits were put in a bank, and it wasn’t as if they were paid huge chunks of money. No, if one wanted money, the watchmaker’s or the apothecary’s shop downstairs had much more valuable items. And both would have had more cash in the till from daily sales.

In all likelihood she’d been after a certain item that had some value other than a monetary one. And since professional thieves were usually interested only in money, it seemed likely that she had been hired to find this desired object. But what was it? Who had hired her? And why?

The logical answer would be that it was something to do with one of the agency’s cases, so he ran over them in his mind while he went around the room straightening the little things that had been put awry by the thief. Moreland & Quick was well-known for finding and restoring missing people and lost or stolen items. Sometimes the objects were valuable, and they might store them in the office safe until they could return them to the owners, but there were none in the safe now. They had only one case regarding a stolen item, but they had yet to find it.

That left only information. Which would explain opening the drawers and cabinets instead of going for the safe. The agency had only a few open cases. There was a woman who suspected her husband of having an affair. Another one who was certain a servant was pilfering various objects, and she wanted to identify the thief. A missing persons case that had sat in their files for months now and was for all purposes dead. Tom hadn’t turned up a clue, and even Alex’s and Con’s special abilities had come up short.

Clearly, they had no useful information on the missing persons case. As for the wayward husband, Tom had trailed the man several times and had notes of his whereabouts. Since it appeared to him that the man not only had a mistress but also now and then visited a certain married woman, the husband, if he had learned about the investigation, might take steps to thwart it. But the information was secure in Tom’s head; he didn’t really need his notes. In any case, as long as the man kept up his activities, Tom would only have to follow him again.

The same thing applied to the thieving servant—the interesting thing there was that Tom had come to suspect, not one of the servants, but one of the woman’s friends, but again, all he had were notes of interviews with the servants, and that information was easily obtained again, as well as being in his head.