Page 6

With her announcement, his manner changed abruptly. His easy smile died. Stupidly, she missed that smile at once. She should not care that this stranger found her a source of amusement or contempt. If husband hunting deceived the government into believing she had abandoned her quest to rescue her father, she would do it. In time the government’s spies would grow careless or be withdrawn all together. First, she had to deceive the man in front of her.

He stood and held out a hand to help her rise. She guessed that he was being polite. No man in Halab would offer his hand in public to a woman, but she was not in Halab, and it was likely that Hazelwood had never heard the saying, “Better to stab yourself in the hand than to touch a woman’s hand.” She hesitated only the briefest instant. She had to unlearn the habits of the past nine years. Her disguise depended on showing comfort with English ways. She took the hand he offered, and let him help her to her feet. Once again dizziness threatened, but his grasp held her steady.

She looked up and met his gaze. Shocking as it was to look so directly into a man’s eyes, she sensed that she must show resistance, not submission, to gain any advantage with such a man.

“If it were merely a matter of the king himself, I’d put my blunt on you, Miss Fawkener,” he said cordially. “But kings have ministers and minions, secretaries and chancellors, all of whom have a vested interest in bestowing the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George upon your father. You have no idea of the forces of government arrayed against you.”

She recognized his words for the warning he intended. She didn’t know why, but the government wanted her father to remain a dead hero.

* * * *

Hazelwood clearly meant every word he’d said about sticking by her side. He escorted her in the English manner from Lady Violet’s office to a black coach crouched on the pavement below the bank steps. Taking a gentleman’s arm was an unfamiliar act of public intimacy. It set them apart from others but bound them together. Hazelwood’s nearness, his height, his distinctly masculine way of moving, and the strength of his arm, impressed themselves upon her senses. She feigned a degree of comfort she was far from feeling. Outside the bank, London washed over her again, a surging wave of noise and movement, pushed by a powerful cold wind, and stinking of brine and dung. It made her cling more tightly to his arm.

Hazelwood pulled her closer against his side. “Is your boat still rocking?”

She nodded. It was easier to admit that she had not yet shaken off the effects of the long sea voyage.

“Let’s get you to your hotel then.” He nudged her down the steps toward the black coach. In Halab she most often traveled by donkey. It was hard to imagine that the coach before her would hold a man of Hazelwood’s height, let alone the two of them. A young man in a dun-colored coat and black top hat held the door open. A narrow iron step hung down.

She gripped Hazelwood’s hand more tightly when she set her foot to the lowered stair. She ducked into the carriage, which tilted and righted itself again under her weight. She settled in the far corner of the front-facing leather seat and closed her eyes against the motion.

Hazelwood followed her in, setting the carriage dipping again. With one hand he pushed her sprawling skirts aside as he took the seat beside her. The stiff fabric brushed against her legs, and she realized she’d betrayed her ignorance of English ways by not subduing her unruly skirts. Hazelwood wore a fawn-colored wool coat with shoulder capes that brushed against her. Their garments touched with no respect for the strict propriety of Halab.

“Open your eyes when we get moving. The dizziness will pass,” he said.

She nodded, keeping her hands folded around the book in her lap. She wanted to be alone to open it and study that map.

“When were you last in London?” he asked.

“Nearly ten years ago.”

“And where have you been since?” He knocked on the carriage roof, and the driver set the vehicle in motion. Immediately she felt better, as if her head and body were no longer at odds with each other.

“In Halab. Do you know it?” She opened her eyes.

“Only as a dot on a map. There was an earthquake, wasn’t there?”

“Four years ago.”

“You’ll find London strange, in contrast, I suspect.” He leaned back against the seat and stretched out his legs, at ease.

“I do.” She straightened and turned away, but really there was nowhere to look in the confines of the carriage that did not include him. She had not expected him to see London through her eyes. Her father would advise her to study him as she would any adversary.

“May I?” Hazelwood indicated the little book in her lap.

She glanced at him. His mouth was drawn in a line of distaste. Her instinct was to clutch the book protectively, but she opened her palms and let him take the thing in his hands. He thumbed to the table of contents. “You think this little book can bag you a husband?”

“Like a bird, you mean? I suspect the writer is not advising young women to aim firearms at prospective fiancés.”

He laughed, and the sound of it, low, warm, and honest, seemed to vibrate in her, an effect that must be due to the close confines of the carriage. “Nevertheless, Miss Fawkener, you must admit the writer’s title suggests that women are in pursuit of a prize.”

“An odd sort of prize, since it is the husband who will control his wife’s fortune, her style of living, and her future.” She had not thought of marrying in Halab, where fathers arranged such matters for their daughters. She wondered briefly if her father had thought of her marrying at all. They had laughed over the two offers he had received for her hand, and she had gone on with the routines of tending her father’s house and aiding in his work. The husbands she had known in Halab were her adversaries in the souks, merchants who bargained hard, and men like Bilal, the camel trader, who always offered the weakest of his lot first, or Nisos, the Greek map dealer with the inflated prices. Dealing with them had sharpened her wits, but it had not inspired dreams of a husband.

“So, why do you wish to hunt a husband, Miss Fawkener?”

Too late Jane realized she’d revealed thoughts best concealed. She reached for the book. She wanted it back in her possession. “Do you dispute the writer’s premise? Do you think that a woman in London has no need of a husband?” She might wish it were true, but she thought of her two hundred pounds. As long as she lived with her father, she’d had no need of money. Now that she was on her own, she had no source of it.

“I’ll take the book, thank you.” She put steel in her voice. She could not be sure that Hazelwood did not already suspect something about the book, and until she could examine the little volume thoroughly in the privacy of her own rooms, she must not let him get too close a look. She had no way of knowing in which part of the book her father might have concealed his true message to her.