A Lady Never Tells (Women of Daring)

by Lynn Winchester

  Ben and Michael chuckled. Ethan grunted and downed the rest of his drink. He was paler, his face thinner, but Richard would still wager that the wastrel had no problems seducing his share of women.

  Unlike me. His attempts at seduction that evening had fallen flat. Certainly, he’d seen the blushes and heard her gasps, but Victoria had recovered quickly, easily pushing his flirtations aside like chaff. Though, he had to admit, he’d been a little light on the seduction. A few heated gazes, a few naughty words: how did he expect a woman like Victoria to fall so easily?

  He rather relished the challenge.

  “Ethan and Ben are headed to Hammond’s,” Michael said, interrupting Richard’s thoughts.

  “Oh? Looking for trouble?” he asked, grinning. Hammond’s was a teeming public house in one of the most scandalous rookeries in London. Warm ale, willing women, and plenty of trouble to be had.

  Something flashed in Ethan’s gaze, disappearing as quickly. “Trouble too often finds me, I’m afraid.”

  “What’s the point of living if you don’t have a little fun—especially when you’re staring down the barrel of duty,” Michael grumbled. “Unfortunately for me, I have an early morning. I have already been out later than I should be.”

  Pushing his chair back, Michael stood, downed the last of his Scotch, and grimaced at the burn.

  “Leaving already?” Ethan drawled, raising his own glass. “I salute you, then.”

  Ben and Richard both raised their glasses as well.

  Michael snorted. “You slugs,” he said teasingly before turning and leaving.

  Rather than depart as Richard assumed, Ben and Ethan both ordered another round, seeming to settle in.

  “No Hammond’s then?” he asked, suddenly feeling out of place in their gathering. Why did he care if these men were off to commit debaucheries without him? He hadn’t cared about such things in years.

  But there was something about the way they glanced at each other furtively that had him uneasy. “What?”

  Another furtive glance.

  “What is it?” he asked again, his voice hard.

  Placing his glass on the table beside him, Ethan leaned forward, pressing his elbows into his thighs. “We had hoped you would accompany us this evening.”

  “We’ve heard there is a new…establishment we should visit,” Ben added.

  “New establishment?” Richard asked, quirking an eyebrow. “What about Hammond’s?”

  Ben waved off his question. “Hammond’s is as dull as toast. I am in need of something with more flavor this evening.”

  Richard watched his friends glance at one another again, and he sighed. This feeling of disquiet… It was one of the reasons he’d stopped spending time with people like Ben and Ethan and why he’d begun to spend more time with Michael and Justin. And on his own. He much preferred his own company to wandering around the rookeries in the dead of night.

  “It’s in a warehouse, down by the docks. A seedy, perfectly wretched place,” Ethan offered, reaching for his drink again. Miraculously, it seemed to have refilled itself.

  “And why would I want to visit a seedy, wretched place? I have had more than enough of both of those things to last me into eternity.”

  The things he’d witnessed in some of those establishments—to use the word loosely—had turned his stomach, but he’d gone because his friends had gone, and he’d wanted to impress them with his worldliness.

  He’d been a naive fool then. He was far from that now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two days. It had been two days since that absolutely disastrous dinner, and she still hadn’t stopped thinking about Richard…what he’d said, how he looked, how it felt to be so near him, standing before him as he gazed down at her. His golden eyes aglow with something that made her body tingle.

  After another day of shopping with her mother and sisters—a tedious and tiring labor—Victoria slid under the cool sheets of her bed and sighed into the canopy overhead. Once again, her thoughts slid back to that evening two nights ago.

  The whole affair had been a bust; Richard was no more charmed by her than he had been when they’d officially met in front of the haberdasher’s. Her acting lessons with Madame LaMagre hadn’t helped against him; in fact, her inability to flirt properly had led her down a divergent path into something she dared not give thought to.

  Then again, her lessons with the Madame hadn’t covered flirting. That was something she probably should have learned on her own, through practiced coquetry. For the first time since arriving in England, Victoria felt…underprepared.

  Weapons, hand-to-hand, disguises—she had mastered so much in her life already, but to think that something as ridiculous as flirting would topple her was humiliating.

  No. It wasn’t her; it was him, or rather her reactions to him whenever he was around. In the parlor, at the dinner table, then when he was standing before her, speaking about his manhood…

  She groaned, turning to her side to tuck her knees up to her chest. Her body felt on fire, as though her thoughts of Richard had smoldered into a blaze within her.

  “What will I do?” she asked the silence. “If he is, truly, a party to the earl’s blackmailing, Father will demand a full accounting of each decision I’ve made thus far.”

  A deep, horrible ache sucked the breath from her. As the firstborn, she had a relationship with her father that none of her siblings did. She was the first in his heart, and she could feel the weight of his expectations—first born, most responsible. And though she wasn’t destined for his title, she was still duty bound to be her father’s greatest gift to the world. She couldn’t imagine her father’s shame if she allowed her growing attraction to Richard to cloud her judgment.

  Anxiety bit into her, gnawing on her until she kicked off the counterpane and sat up in bed. She looked out the window at the street lamp just on the other side of the garden wall and wondered who lit it. It was a thankless job, no doubt. One took advantage of the fact that the lamps were lit when the darkness shrouded the city. But she appreciated the light now, because it gave her something to focus on besides the fear slurping up her guts, a fear that she was slowly tumbling into a horrible outcome. One of her own making.

  For the hundredth time, Victoria wondered: how had Richard recognized her? She’d been in full disguise at the Banebridge party. Wig, maid’s uniform, the cant and stature of a lowborn servant. She’d even gone through the trouble of painting her face and adding a dark mole just below her lip. She’d spent weeks designing the perfect disguise, so what was it about her that gave her away? What had he seen that made him suspicious?

  If she couldn’t figure it out and take measures against it happening again, she might as well forget about undercover or infiltration operations.

  Grunting, she kicked her legs over the side of the bed and stood. The floor was cold beneath her feet, and she welcomed the tremor that came with the chill.

  “Thinking of this will do me no good now,” she muttered, ignoring her slippers to walk across the room barefooted. She just needed to get the anxious energy out of her system.

  Entering her dressing room, she pulled a training costume from her bureau and donned it quickly. She was eager to plant her fist in something and let the pain spread from her knuckles and into her mind, wiping out all thought of her botched disguise, Richard, and her unbearable attraction to him.

  And it was that, attraction. She wasn’t fool enough to disregard the heat she felt in her belly whenever she thought of him, or the tingling in her blood that erupted whenever he was near. It was desire, as simple and as unwelcome as it could be.

  She didn’t have the time to be attracted to him; she needed to focus on investigating the men on the Blackguard List. Operation Imperial Twilight absolutely, positively counted on her and her family—they were the operation. They were the ones tasked with bringing an end to the illegal opium trading and all the crimes that funded it. The blackmailing, the back-alley deals, and the ba
llroom betrayals.

  Using the last embers of the fire in the hearth, she lit a taper and left her room, ascending to the third floor to enter the empty dàochǎng. She lit two of the four candles and walked to the center of the large bamboo mat.

  Instinctually, she began shifting through the movements of basic form, holding each position before gracefully moving into the next. Her arms outstretched, her feet sliding along the floor before kicking out in a rapid drive that would have toppled anyone in the way.

  By the time her muscles were loose, she was ready for something more aggressive. Something to help numb the growing frustrations, quiet the discordant voice telling her she should give up, give in, tell her father that she was unworthy of his trust.

  Lining up with the training dummy, she launched into practiced attacks, thrusting her hands into the throat, chest, belly, and underarms of the dummy, mimicking the precise and effective strikes Master Lao-Nang had pounded into her.

  As she moved, struck, bobbed, and spun, her mind drifted, following the flow of her energy, right out of her body and into the night. The sweat dripped from her face and onto her chest, making the fabric stick to her body. But she kept moving, ignoring the pain in her hands and feet and the ache in her arms and legs.

  Grabbing the dao from its place on the wall, she slashed the air artfully, viciously, dancing with the edge of the blade ever before her gaze. She swung, moving as though the blade were part of her, an extension of her arm, a deadly appendage slicing, cutting, cleaving the silence, piercing the shadows, driving her on, faster and faster, until she was a blur in the reflections along the wall of mirrors. A phantom of cold steel and ferociousness.

  Gasping for air, she collapsed onto the mat, the dao falling from her fingertips. Victoria stared silently at her bloodied palms, relief as far out of reach as the stars.

  …

  From across the room, Leavenson roved his gaze over the group sitting in her father’s study, waiting for him to speak. He was dressed in surprisingly somber attire: black coat, gray waistcoat, and black breeches. And Victoria wasn’t the only one to notice; Honoria stared at the man with a look of curious amusement on her face.

  Breakfast had been a typical affair of sideboard fare and conversation, but when the butler announced Leavenson had arrived, their peaceful morning took an abrupt and decidedly anxious turn.

  Lord Gadstoke had excused himself to speak with Leavenson, returning moments later with the command for all but Mother, Grace, and Faith to meet him in his study in half an hour.

  So, there they were: Love, Verity, Honoria, Victoria, and their father. Her hands aching from their abuse the night before, she balled them into fists to hide them from her sisters’ prying eyes. In the light of day, they were bruised and the skin along her palms cracked, but she would heal.

  Her father cleared his throat. “Well then, Leavenson, what have you come to report?”

  Stiffening, Leavenson pushed away from the mantel and strode to the center of the room.

  “As you must have heard, there have been a number of violent break-ins over the last several months, the most recent being the townhouse of Lord and Lady Manderby. Thankfully, the Lord wasn’t at home and his wife was visiting her brother. The actual break-in wasn’t discovered until yesterday morning when Lady Manderby returned home to find her safe missing.”

  “That’s dreadful,” Honoria murmured. “Did the thief take anything else?”

  Leavenson shook his head. “From initial reports, only the safe was missing.”

  “So what was in it?” Verity asked, all business.

  “According to Inspector Greeves, it was only a few financial papers and a pouch containing some emeralds.”

  Love sat forward, his face tight. “You said ‘according to Inspector Greeves.’ Is there something about the break-in the inspector doesn’t know?”

  The ghost of a chilly grin spread across Leavenson’s face. “My connections within the Bow Street Runners brought me this,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out something that closely resembled a playing card. He laid it on the table in front of the chaise where Victoria was sitting.

  It was a playing card, a Jack of Spades.

  “This was left in place of the safe,” Leavenson informed them.

  “Why leave a playing card? What does this have to do with stealing the safe?” Honoria inquired.

  “Wondering the same thing, I took the card to one of my informants in St. Giles. He keeps an eye on my interests in several of the gaming hells. He noticed that the card lacks a maker’s mark, a small stamp that tells you which printer printed it.”

  “So…it was handmade?” Lord Gadstoke asked, his brow furrowed.

  “I believe so. Either that or it was commissioned by a print shop.”

  “It’s easy enough to ask around— There cannot be that many of them in the city,” Love responded.

  “There are sixty in London alone, and who is to say they used a printer in town? He could have very well commissioned one in Cumbria or York.” Leavenson had done much for the investigation already, it seemed.

  “What is written on it?” Verity asked, moving to the edge of the chaise to pick up the card. “Sinner?”

  “Sinner?” Victoria echoed. “What does that mean?” She scoured her memory for anything about Lady Manderby. From what she knew of the ton, Lady Manderby was related to a duke and was an active member of several of the most affluent and influential women’s groups in London. Her word was as good as Princess Charlotte’s.

  “Does it matter what it means? Do we have any idea why it was left and by whom?” their father asked, sliding his hands into his pockets. It was his tell; when he became overwrought, he would hide his hands. Vic expected he meant to cover his nervousness.

  Leavenson sighed, tensing. “There is something else…”

  Vic held her breath.

  “There have been six reported break-ins. Only two made it into the Times.”

  Honoria admitted, “We read about those—prominent families. Some at home. The gall of the thief to break into occupied dwellings.”

  “That isn’t the worst of it,” Leavenson continued, casting an icy glare over Honoria. “Four of the homes targeted were owned by men on the list.”

  It took a moment for Victoria to realize what he meant. “The Prince’s list? The list of men we are investigating?”

  “The very same one.”

  Heavy silence filled the study, only broken by the sounds of carriages rumbling by in the street below.

  “If no one else will ask, then I will…” Love began. “What do the break-ins have to do with the list of men suspected of taking part in the illegal opium trade?”

  Leavenson paced back toward the mantel and leaned against it.

  “I believe that whoever is breaking into those homes is looking for the same information we are: property lists, shipping manifests, accounting books, coded correspondence,” he replied.

  The anxiety simmering beneath her restraint began to force its way up, grasping at the calm she’d been fighting to retain since her breakdown the night before.

  “So, what should we do? We cannot let anyone else get the evidence,” Love said, his voice rising.

  “That is precisely the reason I have come,” Leavenson snapped, turning back toward them, his expression hard and his eyes cold. Victoria couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was happening behind those eyes of his. Leavenson was a man of secrets, Crown secrets and his own.

  “This card is the only thing the thief has left behind. It is almost as though he knew what we were doing and is teasing us, letting us know he is one step ahead of us,” he continued, unaware of Vic’s wary thoughts.

  “What are we to do about it?” Honoria asked. “What can we learn from this card that will give us any clue about where they will strike next? Because they will strike again, won’t they?”

  “That is the assumption. Why stop now when they have been successful thus far?”
Leavenson answered.

  “They are getting cocky, flaunting their gains in our faces,” Vic said, anger sharpening her words.

  Her father stepped into the circle. “I think the best plan of action is to send each of you out—each one take a name on the list, watch the houses, look for anyone or anything suspicious. Then report back.”

  “What if we see someone breaking in?” Verity interjected, her shoulders stiff. “Are we simply to watch, or do we take action?”

  Lord Gadstoke’s face became as stone, his eyes as fire from the heavens. In a voice of command, intense and black, he drawled, “Take care of it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The night of the ball was a harried, chaotic, and yet utterly exciting affair. Victoria, Honoria, and Verity had spent the day preparing their gowns, styling their hair, and discussing the ball as if it were a unicorn—something they’d heard of spoken in whispers but had never seen for themselves.

  Though Vic had been to the Banebridge ball, so she knew some of what to expect, she hadn’t been an actual participant. This time around, rather than being the help, she was one of the guests of honor. She supposed that she and her sisters were a curiosity: grown women, born and raised abroad, only just returned from the Orient. Their mother had told them that they were already the talk of the town, and she’d had to turn down many an invitation because they hadn’t had a proper coming-out yet.

  Tonight was the night, though. Tonight was a turning point in their lives as proper debutantes, and Victoria didn’t know whether she was anxious about being on display or because the ballroom would be crowded with possible enemies.

  In less than an hour, men and women would be filing into their second-floor ballroom, drinking weak punch, eating small sandwiches with their fingers, and gossiping about one another—and especially Vic and her sisters, and dancing to the sounds of a string quartet for six hours.

  And Richard would be there. But so would several of the men on the operation’s list of suspected opium traders.