Page 60

Jane found her footman lurking in the back of the foyer. He stepped out of the shadows without speaking and reached for the squirming puppy in her arms. As Jane surrendered her burden, she could hear Phoebe admonishing Allegra on the stairs above them. She looked at the earnest young man all ears and teeth, and it occurred to her how awkward it was going to be to convey the message she wished to convey to her love through the medium of the sturdy young man in front of her. Then he spoke.

“Miss, Lord Hazelwood says we must get you out of here. He has a plan.” He spoke in a low, serious voice for her alone.

Out of here? “Of course he does,” she said. So much for a deep exchange of sentiment with Hazelwood. “Help me take the puppy to the stable, will you?” she said in a carrying voice.

“Yes, Miss. Follow me, Miss.” They passed through a concealed door in the wall into a narrow hallway. The puppy looked at Jane over the footman’s shoulder and licked the young man’s ear. Jane tried to see the danger in her situation. Allegra’s bedroom, the bedroom of a baron’s favored daughter, had to be one of the safest places in London. Jane had detected no signs of followers or intruders there. Her enemies had not been able to reach her in days. She had read her guide to Allegra, handed her cousin a glass of water, or helped her arrange the cards and flowers of admirers in her room. No one came to Jane’s own room except Nell, who helped her dress and undress, and the young maid who did the fires. If there was danger in her cousins’ house, she did not know where it lay.

When they reached the stable, the young footman looked around. The grooms and coachman were not about. “Lord Hazelwood can’t protect you here.”

“But I’m with my family,” she explained. She could not see Teddy or Philip as stout defenders, but surely Phoebe or Clive would stand up to an attacker. “Don’t my cousins need protection, too? Allegra was hurt when someone tampered with the carriage.”

The puppy pulled on the young man’s ear. “Please, Miss. Lord Hazelwood wants you to go shopping today. You can take me to carry the packages. And we’ll get you to a place where he can keep you safe.”

“I promised to stay with Allegra until after the Langford ball.”

“He won’t like that, Miss.”

Jane raised her brows. She looked around for someplace where the wriggling puppy could be contained and opened an empty horse stall.

“You’re watched, Miss. There are two of them. They trade off. They know your window.” The footman let the puppy down, and he trotted into a corner and relieved himself.

“But it’s Allegra’s window that I look out of, not my own. They can’t be very smart.”

The young man snorted. “They’re not paid to be smart, Miss.”

“I mean, we ought to be able to outsmart them. Tell Hazelwood I can leave from the ball.” Jane watched the puppy poke his nose into the straw and sneeze.

“He won’t like it, Miss,” he repeated, shaking his head.

“Tell him…tell him, I know. I understand.”

Unless one is a duchess, the experience of taking one’s place in the great world of London society requires the enduring of slights. Inevitably, the Husband Hunter will meet people whose sense of their own superiority is so keen that they will look down on her as from a great height, as if she were an insect on a leaf, to be trod underfoot. These persons are conscious of every distinction of rank, particularly rankings of their devising. One person may be a snob in the matter of personal appearance and think everyone else deficient in handsomeness. Another person may be a snob in matters of accomplishment and may disdain your modest achievements with a musical instrument. Still others, many indeed, are snobs in matters of taste. These latter will see inferiority in every preference of yours that does not conform to their refined aesthetic sense.

What is the Husband Hunter to do in the face of such slights? Surely, she should laugh.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter Twenty-one

Hazelwood swore quietly as he removed his evening pumps at the top of the servants’ stair. His love was inconveniently principled. He understood that a promise was a promise, but he regretted that she’d given hers to a vain beauty from a family of idle, self-indulgent twits, who hadn’t the wit to avoid a present danger. Jane’s promise was keeping her where Malikov and his thugs could get at her.

The night had gone three. The watcher across the way had retreated to someplace where he wouldn’t be turned to a block of ice by morning, and Wilde had admitted Hazelwood to the house through the kitchen and directed him up the servants’ stair to the floor where she had a bedroom. He found his way to her door, which was locked, used the key Wilde had procured and let himself in. She breathed softly in sleep, on her side, turned toward the window. He didn’t risk a light, but crossed to the bed and placed his hand over her mouth. “Jane, it’s Hazelwood,” he whispered.

She started and her teeth sank into his fingers. He held on, repeating his earlier words. She let go with her teeth and shook her head free of his hand, and he heard her push herself upright in the bed.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered hoarsely.

What was he doing there? Momentarily, he was a man drawn to the temptation of a warm woman newly roused from sleep. In the cold room, her warmth was as palpable as the embers of a banked fire waiting to be stirred to life. He was perfectly willing to do the stirring, to tend and stoke that fire till it blazed.

Of course, he was a spy, and his mission was to remove this girl with her valuable information from the path of the enemy. They were closing in. He only hoped they did not know how much she knew.

“I believe you started this particular game.”

“Ah, so I did.”

“I don’t think you fully understood the message I sent through Wilde.”

“I promised I’d stay with Allegra through the Langford ball.”