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“Ten!” Prince beamed and waved one hand to get rid of the last of the smoke. “Better! That’s almost long enough for you to disorient Madame enough to steal a kiss or two.”

“Perish the thought!” Nate got to his feet. “You’d need a healing potion if I ever attempted such a thing.”

“Oh, Nathaniel.” His friend was shaking his head. “Perish the thought? Are you telling me or yourself?”

He paused at the door. “Both. You know I never did have the sense to pass up a challenge.”

Prince was still laughing at him as he closed the door. Nate went downstairs and knocked on Madame’s door. “You wanted me?” he drawled when she opened it.

She coolly looked him up and down. “Where did you go?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“Out,” he repeated evenly. “I had some errands to do.”

Madame closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, doing lovely things to her bosom, but then she opened her eyes and glared at him. “When you go out, tell me,” she snapped. “Tell me when you will return. I do not wish to sit about waiting for you to wander back into the house, wondering if you have got yourself lost or in trouble.”

“You were worried,” he said sympathetically. “How kind of you to take such a concern for my well-being.”

Her expression smoothed into something almost frightening. “Do not do it again,” she said in a low voice. “Are we still to go out today in search of these jewels, or have you already visited every jeweler and pawnbroker in town?”

“Not at all. I wouldn’t dream of taking action without your oversight—forgive me, without your assistance. When do you wish to begin?”

“This afternoon,” she said. “The sooner we begin, the sooner we will find your man.”

He leaned one shoulder against the door. “Yes. And then what, exactly?”

Her eyes were clear and innocent. “Then we will achieve your goal, yes? Find the man, reclaim the funds, and you shall return home victorious.”

Nate narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. She always phrased it like that, glossing over any details. It hardly fit with her declared preference for precise planning, and her comment yesterday, that he didn’t really want to know what Stafford’s interest was, had kept him awake last night. He might not want to know, but damn it all, he needed to know. “And you’re under instructions to help me retrieve the funds as well as find Dixon?”

“No,” she said with a little smile. “Are you not relieved to hear I shall leave that to you alone?”

Perhaps. Perhaps not. “I’m only trying to learn from your advice yesterday,” he said, “and make appropriate plans. So you’ll help locate him. I presume it will also be my task to secure his person for the trip to New York.”

“I am under no explicit instruction to help you do that, either,” she agreed.

But there was nothing else to their mission, except the simple act of finding the man. Nate still thought his plan was sensible, and it was certainly one he could carry out without her presence. If he was also supposed to capture Dixon, get him safely on the Water Asp, and then find the missing funds on his own… What was her purpose? This was doing nothing to settle his unease about Stafford’s true interests.

“So,” he said, drawing out the word suggestively, “you won’t be much help at all. I could visit jewel shops on my own.”

“I shall do my best to be as helpful as possible.”

“Just not as enlightening as possible,” he muttered.

She simply smiled, acknowledging the point without yielding an inch.

This could be a problem. Nate couldn’t trust her, not as long as he didn’t know what she really intended to do, but he could keep only so much to himself. In fact, so far he’d kept very little to himself; his goals and plans had been laid before her almost in their entirety. He had gone through the appropriate channels, as directed, and she was operating as an agent of the British government, which had given him assurances they would do all they could to help him… find the man.

Finally Nate realized that point: they had never promised anything else. Selwyn had expressed shock at the amount of the missing funds and agreed that of course Nate must attempt to retrieve them. Stafford had brought him to Madame Martand, saying she was most capable. But all they had promised him was assistance in locating and capturing Dixon.

Again he wondered what motivated the British government to leap so strongly to his aid. Perhaps it was President Monroe’s letter, and perhaps it was something else. But what? Dixon had been in America for at least a decade. He was English by birth, it was true, but only a common man. Nate doubted that was a powerful motivating factor. Now that he thought carefully, he wasn’t sure he’d even mentioned it to Lord Selwyn. The only thing he could think of was that Selwyn, and by extension Stafford, didn’t trust him, and that Madame was here to ensure he merely apprehended Dixon and reclaimed only the funds stolen from New York, no more. That was plausible. Perhaps.

“Then we shall begin this afternoon,” he said.

“Very well.” Without another word she closed the door in his face.