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Angelique blushed—deeply. It was a knife he held out to her, with a dark carved handle and a sheath of pale leather embroidered with multicolored beads. She slid out the blade. It was slightly curved, made of finely honed steel. The hilt was as smooth as satin under her palm, and perfectly balanced. It was a beautiful, deadly, weapon, but not like any knife she had ever seen before.

“It’s a Wyandot knife,” he said when she looked up in wonder. “From the frontier of America.”

“How exotic.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“I thought you might like it,” he said. “Should you need to protect yourself against men like Hurst again.”

“It is beautiful.” She tested the blade, razor sharp against her thumb.

He grinned. “It’s not meant to be an object of art. Mind you don’t cut yourself.”

“I do know how to use a knife.” But she slid it back into the ornate sheath. “Thank you.”

“Thank me tonight,” he replied in a low voice. “In any way you like.”

She met his gaze and awareness crackled in the air between them. “I will,” she whispered.

His slow smile made her stomach flutter. He caught her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing the tip of her index finger. “I look forward to it.” Then he turned to go.

“What is a Wyandot?” she asked on impulse. He stopped at the door to his bedroom and glanced back at her.

“A tribe of native people in America,” he said. “They live in the Ohio Territory. They are known for their ferocity, especially to their enemies.” She turned the knife over, looking at it in renewed amazement. “It’s a warrior’s blade,” he added. “A scalping knife.”

Chapter Eighteen

It was as dark and silent as a tomb inside Davis Hurst’s house. Getting in was no trouble at all, thanks to the purloined latchkey, and now they stood in the narrow hallway listening to the faint ticking of a clock. Any servants must have retired for the evening when Hurst left for his club, sporting a bandage just visible under his hat. Angelique had quietly relished the sight of that bandage.

With a soft touch on Nate’s arm, she led the way up the stairs. She winced as one step gave a soft squeak, but behind her Nate was utterly soundless, and the house remained as still as before. Upstairs, they found Hurst’s study and slipped inside, and Angelique drew her first full breath in some time when Nate closed the door behind them.

“I shall start on the desk,” she murmured. “Will you do the cabinet?” He nodded once and moved to the ornately carved cabinet between the windows. Angelique knelt on the hearth and poked at the fire until she got an ember to light her small lantern. Nate lit a candle from the mantel and they turned to their respective tasks.

The desk drawers were locked, but she was able to open them with only a few minutes’ work with her lock picks. Hurst was a careful bookkeeper who kept detailed ledgers detailing his transactions. He was nothing more than a glorified fence, she realized, but a clever enough fence to identify his clients only by numbers. She paged through all the ledgers and searched the other drawers, but couldn’t locate a key listing names and directions.

By the dates, they could make a guess which transactions might be connected to Jacob Dixon, but that would still tell them nothing about where the man or his stolen funds were now. Angelique was just cursing eloquently in her mind as she replaced the ledgers when an unexpected sound stopped her cold.

Someone was at the door.

She froze, her gaze flying to Nate. There was no escape from the room; two tall windows looked out on the street, and there was no other door. Nate made a motion urging her to get down and blew out his candle. Angelique followed suit with her lantern, then dropped to the floor behind the desk and held her breath.

Metal rasped against metal as the doorknob turned, until the latch released with a soft click. She could hear rapid, heavy breathing, then an extended creak as the door opened. A slice of light fanned across the carpet, less than a foot from where she huddled. Slowly her fingers inched toward the dagger strapped at her waist, the scalping knife Nate had given her. She wasn’t going to kill a servant simply doing his job, but if he had a pistol, she wasn’t going to wait to be shot, either.

With terrible precision, there came a footstep, then another. The light spilled over the desk now, and Angelique had to dig her fingernails into her palm to keep herself from flinching away. Staying completely motionless was far better than instinctively jerking out of sight; the movement itself, the rustle of cloth, a change in breathing would give her away. She remained still as a stone and waited. Where was Nate? she wondered. Her fingers tightened on the knife hilt as she imagined him being slowly revealed by that approaching light. He had been exposed on the other side of the room by the windows, with no large furniture to hide behind.

The next thing she heard, over the pounding of her heart, was a startled intake of air, followed by a thump and a wheeze. Something pinged softly, like a fork tapping on a wineglass, and then there was a choking, gargling sound. It sounded like someone being strangled.

Angelique scrambled to the corner of the desk away from the light, no longer silent but ready to spring to Nate’s aid. Her fingers touched her garrote, coiled at her waist by the knife, and she rocked onto the balls of her feet. She slid around the heavy mahogany desk with deadly intent, then stopped in surprise.

Nate held a stocky older man with one arm around his forehead covering the man’s eyes. His other hand was cupped over his captive’s face, covering his mouth and nose. Hurst’s servant clutched at Nate’s imprisoning forearm, his other hand frantically waving through the air as if groping for held. A stout walking stick on the floor beside him rattled as his scrabbling feet kicked it under the cabinet. As Angelique watched, the servant’s arms relaxed and then flopped to his side, and his head lolled unconscious on his neck. Only then did Nate ease his grip. The man in his grasp slumped forward.

Nate glanced at her. “I found a box of correspondence,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Look—there on the table. I’ll take care of him.” He set something down on the desk and hefted the unconscious man over his shoulder with a strength greater than his lean frame indicated. Moving slowly and carefully, he went out the open door, and a moment later she heard his footsteps descending the stairs.

Angelique snatched up the squat little glass bottle he had left and took a cautious sniff. The sickly sweet scent of ether made her wrinkle her nose and put it down. A small bit of liquid still sloshed in the bottom. Ether fumes could make one feel faint, and she kept her distance from the bottle, even opening a window to get rid of the smell. She fetched the lamp that the servant had left burning on the table by the door and went back to work, making much faster progress with better light.

Nate returned a few minutes later, less quietly than before. “There’s no one else in the house,” he reported. “Did you find anything?”

“He is an organized rogue,” she said, digging through Hurst’s correspondence. “These, perhaps. I cannot read it all.”

Nate took the letters she held out, scanning through them. After a moment he made a quiet hiss of triumph. “Here’s Dixon,” he muttered. “He’s being called Chartley now, staying at the Pulteney Hotel in London.”