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Clive watched from the landing as Malikov returned. He glanced up the staircase once and nodded at Clive. The deed was done. As the count had predicted, there was no trouble in removing Jane from the ball. The ruse of Allegra’s feeling faint had worked. Still Clive felt unsettled as if he had eaten a bit of bad beef. The affair connected him too closely with Malikov. The Russian was not, after all, a charming émigré with a longing for home. He was a man capable of using and casting aside anyone who stood in his way. Malikov knew ways in which Clive could be hurt. The situation was untenable. Clive needed to rid himself of his false friend. Some way to do it would come to him he felt sure. The more immediate problem was what to tell Allegra and his mother in the next few minutes when they inquired about Jane.

* * * *

The chiming of the hour by the mantel clock did not bring Jane. Hazelwood knew he could not have missed her earlier. He left the anteroom and made his way back to the grand staircase where guests leaving the supper room would pass. This time he looked for Allegra. With her golden hair she would be easy to spot, and presumably Jane would be close by. He glanced from one elaborate coiffure to another, but did not see Allegra or Jane.

He saw Clive Walhouse opposite also watching the flow of guests.

As the crowd bunched up at the supper room entrance, Hazelwood attempted to slip by. A hand on his shoulder stopped him abruptly, and he turned to see an old school friend.

“Hullo, man. It’s Thorndike. Haven’t seen you in a proper ballroom in years. Are you back in your father’s good graces?”

“Thorndike.” Hazelwood shook the man’s hand. “Still out of favor, I’m afraid, but not with the ladies, you see.” Guests streamed by, casting curious glances their way.Hazelwood looked for Jane.

“Ah, wrangled an invitation, did you? Brilliant. Found that lady who fancies herself the mother of the next Earl of Vange?”

“Exactly. But must keep it quiet, you know, ‘til the deal’s done.” What Hazelwood didn’t need was to be spotted by anyone who might take exception to his being there.

His friend offered another hearty handshake. “Let me know when congratulations are in order.”

Hazelwood nodded. Just then Clive caught sight of him and started.

“Where’s Jane?” Hazelwood asked.

“Allegra was feeling faint, and Jane is attending her.” His glance at the supper room door gave away the lie.

“Try again, Walhouse.”

Allegra chose that moment to pass by on the arm of Ainsworth. “Clive?” She looked from him to Hazelwood and back. “Have you seen Jane? She did not come in to supper.”

Clive met Hazelwood’s stare. “Do not alarm my sister.” He turned to Allegra.

“Let’s look for her. It’s not like her to desert you unless she’s stolen one of your beaux.”

* * * *

Clive could feel Hazelwood’s gaze on his back, but the man was powerless here. He could not provoke a scene in Langford House. Clive thought he had rid himself of Jane Fawkener, but she was proving inconvenient. She had been so from the first. It was her return to London that had set Malikov off. Clive had not bothered to think why, but now he tried to sort it out. What the count wanted was information, so it was reasonable to assume that Jane had information, and it must be valuable information at that, nothing like the letters and papers that Clive had handed over to the Russian in years past.

Hazelwood was a further complication. His actions would make the count unhappy. Clive really needed a plan to eliminate the two of them. It occurred to him that he knew how to do it. First he would ask Pamela to forgive him for not keeping their engagement tonight. Then he would see his mother and sister home, and finally he would find Lord Chartwell at the man’s club. It was time to confess to his former employer that he had stumbled on a plot by the disgraced Viscount Hazelwood to betray British secrets to a subject of the Czar.

There are two antidotes for the dizzying effects of a ball. The first is immediately to seek a genuinely thrilling experience. If a balloon ascension is not an available option, it is advisable to take a fast gallop over open fields and set one’s horse at a high fence. At the very least, the Husband Hunter should ascend Primrose Hill (see the map inset) and consider the sweeping panorama before her. The second antidote is to contrive a meeting with this paragon of gentlemanly excellence in the most prosaic of circumstances. You must visit him when he is felled with a cold, or observe how he handles a session with his man of business. Observe him shopping with his mother at the linen draper’s, or instructing his nephew in flying a kite. If he is as charming in the harsh light of day in the company of his family as he was in the ballroom, then you may permit yourself to like him.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter Twenty-three

Hazelwood strode into the club, Wilde at his heels. They’d lost her. The count had her. Hazelwood needed a convenient heath or moor, a vast wasteland where he could howl out his rage and loss, not the coffee room of a gentleman’s club.

It was his fault, of course. He’d been playing at being a spy. Already an outcast in London, it had cost him nothing to spend his nights in the lowest pits of sin and villainy. It had cost nothing to live in comfortable rooms, well-fed, well-dressed, and flattered. What had he sacrificed but the sponging house and the duns who’d dogged his every step before he’d accepted Goldsworthy’s offer? He’d liked the spying life so much that he’d made no preparation for leaving the club at the end of his term of service.

Then, unexpectedly, when his time of playing the game was nearly done, Goldsworthy had dangled before him a prize he actually wanted. To have it, he now saw, he would have to lose at the spying game.

Such a simple thing she seemed to be, Jane Fawkener, a thing that had eluded him before his disgrace. But to have her, to get her back from the enemy, he would have to give up the club, his friends, and his future. The thing that Malikov wanted was the map. And he wanted it not because it revealed those eastern caliphs and satraps friendly to England, but because it revealed England’s false friends, those who pretended loyalty but who would side with the Czar in return for power over their neighbors.

The coffee room had never looked more welcoming with its lamps lit, a fire burning, the tray of punch and cups set out for the last drinks of the evening. Blackstone and Clare looked up from a document spread out across a leather ottoman.

“Did you get her?” Clare asked.

“She didn’t make the meeting. She left the ball about midnight, about the time Wilde saw Malikov gag a woman and send her off in a coach. Jane’s cousins didn’t know where she was.”