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“Are you certain?” Angelique asked even as she began placing the other letters back in the box.

He tilted the letter toward the light. “He lists the jewels here. The necklace with the teardrop emerald pendant is quite distinctive—as Dixon knows, from the way he mentions its unique design and high value.”

“Do we need anything else here?”

Nate looked down to flip through the other letters, then shook his head. “His last letter is just a day ago from the Pulteney, and makes no mention of leaving. We’re done here.”

“Good.” Angelique replaced the letters, then let Nate return the box to where he had found it. She closed the window and checked once more to see if they had left any trace of their presence. “What are you doing?” Nate was on his knees by the door, running one hand over the carpet.

“Looking for the seal,” he whispered back, wiggling the bottle at her before tucking it into his pocket. She joined him on the floor, and moments later found the wax wafer that had sealed his bottle of ether. With one last look around the room, they blew out the lamp and left, hurrying quietly down the stairs. They had just reached the bottom of the stairs, ready to go out the back, when a key rattled in the lock of the front door.

Angelique’s heart leaped halfway to her throat; there was no place to hide in the hall. Almost before she had formed the thought, Nate seized her arm and hustled her around the corner to the back of the stairs, where the servants’ door was. The front door was opening. Nate shoved her against the wall right behind the baize door, then flattened himself against her as light from the streetlamp in front of the house lit the hall.

Chapter Nineteen

“Puddlestone,” called Davis Hurst. “Puddlestone! Where are you?”

Angelique barely breathed. She was squeezed tight between Nate in front of her and the wall at her back, and breathing would have been difficult even if she weren’t trying to hold herself utterly motionless. She could feel the faint puffs of Nate’s breath on her temple, and knew he was doing the same. As soon as Hurst went upstairs, they could slip out, but for now the man was in his front hall stamping about, waiting for his servant to attend him.

Slowly she tipped back her head, meeting Nate’s eyes. Although his body was taut, he was grinning broadly and there was a wild, excited glint in his eyes. He wiggled his eyebrows, then leered downward at her bosom, flattened against his chest, as if this had all been a ploy to press up against her, and in spite of her thundering pulse, Angelique had to bite her lip hard to keep from smiling back at him. What a daredevil he was, to find it amusing that they were literally inches away from being discovered breaking and entering.

“Puddlestone!” Hurst barked again. He muttered under his breath, and Angelique caught the words “lazy” and “idiot.”

With a creak, the baize door next to them slowly opened. The man Nate had knocked unconscious stumbled out, rubbing his forehead. His gray hair stood up in a ruff around his bald crown, and he moved like a man just roused from a deep sleep.

“Coming, sir,” he mumbled. He shuffled unsteadily toward the front of the hall, not noticing the two of them plastered to the wall barely inches away from him on the other side of the door. The door had shielded them from view this time, but if he came back toward them, there would be no escape. “You’re home early, sir,” Puddlestone said to his master.

“And you took the opportunity to drink, I see,” snapped Hurst. Silently, Nate reached out and caught the edge of the door before it closed. He eased away from her and motioned her to go through.

“No, sir,” Puddlestone protested plaintively. He was around the corner now, his lamplight illuminating the front of the hall. “Just a drop of sherry, no more. I have such a headache, though.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing to mine. Bring some of that headache powder and some wine, and be quick about it,” Hurst ordered. Angelique slid around the door under Nate’s arm, then dashed as quietly as she could through the scullery, Nate right behind her. Once the baize door to the hall had closed, she felt safe enough to slide back the bolt and open the door to the back stoop. Hesitating just long enough to take a quick glance out to be sure there was no one about, they slipped out of the house.

Nate closed the door quietly behind them, then caught her face in his hands and pressed a hard kiss on her mouth. In spite of everything, her knees started to soften, and she had to grab his arms to keep her balance when he released her. Still grinning like a madman, he took her hand and they ran through the garden into the alley and back to the street.

“Mon Dieu!” She sucked in a deep breath. “Incroyable! What brought him home so early? He was not gone above two hours!”

“Perhaps his splitting headache of last night caught up to him.”

She laughed, a little giddy with relief. “Perhaps! And his servant also, I think.”

Nate shrugged modestly, his stride long and easy. “Ether can leave a man as woolly-headed as brandy.”

“Where did you get it?” She had not known he had it, and it was an oddity. If Hurst and his man pieced together what it was, they could chance upon the chemist who sold it. She had tried so hard to eliminate any trail that led to them, even dropping Hurst’s latchkey into the area below the front steps where he would find it eventually and never suspect he had lost it in Vauxhall. She couldn’t deny the ether had come in handy, but she also couldn’t deny being irked Nate hadn’t told her about it.

“Prince made it for me,” he said. “An extra potent mixture. He warned me not to breathe it myself or I’d be staggering around like a drunk.”

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Did the man see you, before you seized him?”

“I doubt it,” he replied, giving her an aggrieved look. “He’ll likely have some very fanciful notions of what happened. Ether gives men strange dreams.”

She said nothing.

Nate, though, could tell she was annoyed at him. He thought it had been a very successful night. They knew where Jacob Dixon was staying and they hadn’t been caught. Those had been his two goals for the housebreaking part of the evening. Now they were on their way home, his blood already running hot and fast from their close escape. He thought Angelique must be the same, given that he’d felt her tremble when he kissed her in elation. The thought of the pleasures she might inflict on him was making him hard and ready. Or maybe it was the way he had pressed her against the wall, sparking all sorts of images in his mind as he inhaled the soft scent of her hair and felt her lithe body shift against his. Or maybe it was the spark of irritation in her face that made him tense in expectation of the unknown. Maybe he’d breathed in some of the ether after all, for his fantasies were taking reckless turns.

“You can exact revenge when we reach home,” he said to her in a low voice.

Her eyes flashed at him. “You may depend on that. I trust you remember your promise last night?”