The Handbook to Handling His Lordship

by Suzanne Enoch

  “But you two seem so close,” she exclaimed, surprised.

  That made him shake his head. “I’m only in London because I got sent down from Oxford. Nate was … furious. I think he worries that I’ll follow him into espionage, and so he wants me to excel at my studies and be happy here in England.”

  They parted, then joined up again. “You’ve been helping him with my … difficulties, though,” she pursued.

  “Yes, well, you’ve set him on his ear, which has made cracking his damned armor a bit easier.” He grinned. “Thank you for that, by the way. It’s actually rather grand, having an older brother.”

  Was that it? Had she cracked his armor? It was a rather nice sentiment, actually, even if it implied that he would not otherwise have let her so close to him. Perhaps it would have been better if they hadn’t become close, but she’d never expected to fall in love ever, and however it turned out she couldn’t regret it. Later, she might, but not now.

  “He admires you, you know,” Laurence said into the relative silence. “Nate does, I mean.”

  “And what is it that he admires me for?” Emily returned. “It seems to me I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort fleeing from the facts of my life.”

  His grin was young and lopsided and infectious. “I think it’s because you surprise him. I know not many people can do that. I never can; and you have no idea how annoying it is when your own brother knows exactly when you’re lying, and he’s already deciphered what the truth is.”

  Well, that was rather nice to hear. And however much she might be a surprise to him, he was even more of one to her. An aristocrat with a mind and the ambition to utilize it, a man with morality, and one who seemed willing and able to judge a person based on their actions rather than their breeding. She wondered if he had any idea just how rare a specimen he was. It would kill her to lose him. However fairly he might judge her, though, his peers would be far less kind.

  “I don’t know if you’ve realized it, Laurie,” she said after a moment, “but you’ve very nearly been standing toe to toe with the Duke of Greaves and Keating Blackwood. And Lord Haybury. Do you know how many men twice your age have been leveled by any of those three? Many more than have successfully navigated a conversation with them.”

  This time he ducked his head, his cheeks darkening. “That’s damned fine of you to say, Miss Emily.”

  “Just Emily, if you please. Or Em.”

  “Em, then,” he returned. He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but with a rousing crescendo the dance ended.

  She couldn’t even join in the applause. They’d arranged it so Nathaniel wouldn’t be the one handing her over for her dance with Ebberling, which made sense. It also left her without a parting word reminding her to be brave and that he would be close by, or that he’d promised no harm would come to her. But she knew all that. Or she hoped it desperately, anyway. And it needed to be done. The more she’d thought about it, the more strongly she’d come to the conclusion that she would never have peace in her life until the Marquis of Ebberling had been dealt with. She only wished that she didn’t have to be the one with the largest part to play. But then she supposed it could never be any other way.

  When Laurie escorted her to the edge of the dance floor, Ebberling was already standing there, waiting for her. His betrothed stood at his side, her expression not at all friendly. If Miss Harriet Danders thought they were rivals of a sort, that Emily was in competition with her for her fiancé’s favors—well, the girl couldn’t have been more wrong. Emily only hoped the banker’s daughter would eventually appreciate what they were doing, and what they might well be saving her from.

  “Miss Portsman,” the marquis drawled, as the orchestra began to play the first notes of the country dance. “Our dance, I believe.” He held out one hand.

  It took every ounce of willpower Emily possessed to reach out and wrap her fingers around his. For a bare moment she thought he might lock his grip and drag her from the room and into the waiting chains of Bow Street and the magistrates, but he only gazed at her for several long, hard beats of her heart, then walked with her onto the dance floor.

  She could do this. She’d been prevaricating about her identity since she’d been twelve. This was just one more time, one more man who wanted something from her. Emily lifted her chin. “I was surprised you wished to dance with me, my lord,” she said, as they took their places.

  He bowed, and she curtsied, and they began winding through the line of other dancers. “Rycott and I are old friends,” he commented smoothly. “As he’s friends with Westfall, I thought to do them both a kindness.”

  “A great kindness,” she returned, noting that his gaze through the glittering lion mask never seemed to leave her face. How much could he see? Her mouth, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. Would it be enough for him to definitively identify her? She didn’t think so—after all, governesses didn’t dance at grand masked balls.

  Of course, neither did Tantalus girls, unless they wanted to make trouble. Rachel Newbury had never wanted to make trouble. She’d only wanted to earn a good income, live in a fine house, and not have to scrub other people’s clothes or sleep with strange men in exchange for a roof over her head. That was all she’d wanted, and the moment Ebberling had strangled his wife, he’d ruined two lives.

  “How long have you been a Tantalus girl?” he asked, circling her.

  With Laurie dipping and swirling amid the other dancers had been an amusing way to attempt to converse. With Ebberling, she felt as if he was a lion circling a gazelle, looking for a weakness so he could strike. “I’ve been employed at the Tantalus since before the club opened,” she returned. She was supposed to give hints to her identity, and the more truths she could tell, the easier it would be to remember her story for later.

  “So that’s what, four years?”

  “Just over three years, my lord.” She met his gaze, trying not to shiver. “Have you visited the club?”

  “I’ve been there once or twice. It’s a damned scandal, really. But that’s what makes it so popular, I imagine.”

  She forced a smile. “Even so.”

  “What did you do before you became a Tantalus girl?”

  “Oh, we all did what we had to. You’ll find former actresses, governesses, bankrupted lords’ daughters, scandal-ridden ladies of good birth—all sorts.”

  “Yes, but what did you do? Specifically?”

  Forcing a laugh, Emily twirled away from him. “So many questions, my lord. Why is it you’ve only visited my club once or twice?” Even though she knew it was only once, arguing with him over that would certainly not be helpful.

  “I’ve been away from London for a time. My wife was murdered, and I’ve been seeking her killer.”

  Her face paled; she couldn’t have stopped it if she’d wanted to, but Nate had figured that her deep dismay would only further the mission, as he called it. To her it felt more like a suicide mission, but she’d promised to trust him. “That’s awful!” she exclaimed belatedly. “Did you find the culprit?”

  “I believe I may have,” he said slowly. “It’s taken a good deal of time and money and effort, but I believe I’ve tracked her down.”

  “Her?” Emily repeated, in a squeak.

  He nodded. “And if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll simply confess and save us all the trouble of a trial.”

  Was that truly what he wanted? For her to say she’d killed Lady Ebberling? They would hang her for it for certain, and he would be free to do as he pleased. Even murder his next wife. “It seems to me, my lord, that expecting someone to confess when that means facing a hangman wouldn’t be in his or her best interest at all.”

  “It would be, if protesting her innocence would only cause harm to her friends and family.”

  The nervous tremors running through Emily stopped abruptly, heating into something far darker and more angry. So he would threaten the Tantalus, would he? And all her friends, the family she’d fo
und there? Nate? “Perhaps a trial might clarify events to everyone’s satisfaction,” she heard herself say, her voice surprising level.

  “Oh, it wouldn’t,” he returned. “There are several witnesses, including myself and my son, who would testify to her guilt. And then her present employers would be forced to admit that they’d hired a murderess. What a scandal that would be, and not at all the same sort of scandal that causes men to flock to The Tantalus Club, for example.”

  “Well. It seems to me you should be telling her all of this,” Emily finally retorted. “Has she been arrested?”

  “Not yet. Tomorrow, I think.”

  “Then perhaps you should wait until tomorrow to boast about how this murderess, as you call her, will do precisely as you say. You may be boasting overmuch, my lord.”

  “It’s only a boast if it isn’t proved true.” He took her fingers, and they pranced down the center between the other dancers. “And I don’t boast.”

  For the next few minutes they danced in silence. Let him think she was trying to decide whether to flee and how to go about it, or whether it would be better for everyone concerned if she simply confessed to a crime committed by one of her betters and let them go on with their far more important lives. In a sense it was ironic, that this was the first time she’d actually ever wanted to murder someone.

  The dance ended, but when she’d curtsied and would have turned away, he seized her hands. “I’ll be calling at the Tantalus in the morning. Ten o’clock. You either meet me out front, or I shall come in after you. And I will have the authorities with me.”

  She yanked her hands free. “You presume too much, my lord. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I suppose we’ll discover the truth of that in the morning.”

  Walking with as much grace and dignity as she could manage, Emily moved away from him. She wanted to keep going, to walk out the door and out of London and all the way to Dover where she could take ship and disappear to the Continent, or to America. But that would mean giving up what she’d earned and beginning all over again. And that, when she hadn’t done anything wrong. That, when she’d finally found what she wanted.

  A warm hand slipped around her arm, angling her toward the hallway beyond the ballroom. “You look ready to shoot someone,” Nathaniel’s low voice drawled, as he fell in beside her.

  “It would be better for me if I confessed,” she murmured. “Better for me in that none of my friends would be dragged into the public eye and ruined for harboring me.”

  “Did he accuse you directly?” the wolf asked quietly, pushing open a door and ushering her through it.

  “No. Very nearly, though. He said directly that he would be calling on the Tantalus at ten o’clock in the morning and that I should be ready to meet him there or he would send the authorities in to drag me out.”

  Silence.

  Emily turned around to see Nate pulling the wolf mask from his face. “Well? Say something reassuring.”

  “He’s moving faster than I would have liked. He must be very certain you’re Rachel Newbury.”

  “I am Rachel Newbury. If he has me arrested, I will have to confess to killing Katherine or he’ll see the Tantalus and my friends destroyed. And what do you mean, ‘faster’? You expected him to attempt to drag me off to prison on Thursday instead of tomorrow?”

  “You knew it would come to this.” Eyeing her for a moment, he walked over to the windows at the far end of the room and pushed one of them open.

  She swallowed down the bitter panic rising in her throat. “I’m not reassured, Nate. You know I won’t allow the Tantalus to be harmed. They’ve given me refuge. I won’t repay that by having it said they’ve been harboring a murderess.”

  Nate faced her again. “Come here.” He held out one hand.

  Emily crossed the room, and he folded her into his arms. “I’m not a spy, Nathaniel,” she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes as she clutched at his lapels. “I don’t know if I can do this. Running is so much easier, except—” She stopped herself.

  “Except what?” he pursued, lowering his face to her hair.

  “Do you need to know everything?” For heaven’s sake, the next hours would be difficult enough without putting what lay between them and in their future beneath a magnifying glass.

  “Where you’re concerned?” he returned. “Yes.”

  “Well, forget it.”

  “Stubborn chit.”

  For a long moment she remained in the solid, unexpected comfort of his embrace. She found him so infinitely arousing, to her body and her mind, that it surprised her when he could also provide her with such peace. Safety. She couldn’t ever remember feeling safe, and she should be feeling nothing of the kind under tonight’s circumstances, but she did. With him, she felt safe. And warm, and loved.

  Finally, he put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. “We have to go tonight.”

  “I know.”

  Slowly he kissed her, his mouth warm and anything but comforting. “There’s more to all this than you know, and I wish … I wish I could tell you.”

  She smiled. “I know, I know. Spies and your secrets. You asked me to trust you, and I do.”

  For the longest time he gazed at her, as if he was attempting to memorize her face. As if he never expected to set eyes on her again. “There is one thing I can tell you, though I likely shouldn’t.” He took a breath. “Promise me you won’t protest or argue or reason or smack me across the face with logic.”

  Well, that sounded interesting. “Very well.”

  “Good.” Tilting her face up again, he kissed her once more, slow and deep and breath-stealing. “One more of those, just in case,” he muttered, that slight, sensual smile of his touching his mouth. “I love you, Emily, Rachel, Eloise, whatever you choose to call yourself. I love you with every ounce of my soul.”

  For several seconds she couldn’t speak. “How…” she began, then cleared her throat. “Well. You’re at least as logical-minded as I am,” she tried a second time, her voice shaking, “so you know how abysmal the odds are of us finding a happy ending.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve spent most of my life being logical, Em,” he murmured, running a finger along her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized she’d shed. “But then this morning I realized that logically I should be dead. Most spies do not survive the end of a war; we know too much that even the winning side would rather no one else learned. And as for you—logically your life should never have brought you to London, much less to me. So tonight logic can go fling itself off a cliff, with my regards.”

  A short laugh burst from her chest before she could stop it. “Well, then. I suppose I love you as well, Nate Stokes.” She straightened in his arms, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead, and kissed him. For a few heartbeats she allowed herself to believe that this could be the rest of her life, in a quiet room with the man she adored holding her close. Then, before that image could sear itself into her mind and lodge there, ruining everything else it touched, she pushed free of him and stood. “Enough. If we need to move more quickly, then I suppose we’d best get on with it.”

  Nate didn’t like it; another day or two would have given him—and more importantly, Rycott—time to set a few more players onto the board, to see that the game progressed as they intended. But if Ebberling had gone so far as to announce that he meant to see Emily in prison in the morning, they’d run out of time.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, sitting on the windowsill and swinging his legs around into the darkness of the garden outside. Opening his battered old pocketwatch, he checked the time. Three minutes of midnight.

  In the past he’d always preferred working through the hours of darkness; physically sneaking about was so much easier than doing so mentally. Tonight they would be doing both, and though he hadn’t a doubt that Emily was game for it, she didn’t have the same experience of operating when failure could mean death. That troubled him.
A mistake could upend everything, and even if all went perfectly there would still be a price to pay that she likely hadn’t yet considered. He had, and he was willing to pay it—and he hoped she didn’t realize what it was until it was too late for her to interfere.

  He felt her warm hand on his shoulder, and then he pushed off from the window, catching the reaching limb of the old elm tree outside and hurriedly swinging from there to the ground. Once down, he turned and held up his arms. “Come along,” he whispered.

  It would be a frightful jump from above, but Emily never even hesitated. Instead she sat on the sill and pushed away much as he had. Her falling weight in his arms sent him to one knee, but no one broke anything, and his first thought was how proud he was of her. “Well done,” he breathed, setting her back onto her feet and rising with her.

  “And now?”

  “Wait for just a moment,” he said, checking the time once more. Any second now, and—”

  “There!” Rycott’s voice came, at the same moment he leaned out the window they’d just left.

  Without looking, Nate grabbed Emily’s hand, and they fled into the darkness of London at midnight. Or at least as far as the street, where a sleek black coach without any marking on the doors awaited them. He boosted Emily inside, then climbed up after her. Before the door was even closed they went rattling up the street at a full gallop.

  “Well done,” he said, nodding at the petite French woman seated opposite him. “I thought we’d have to be doing this on foot.”

  “Rycott sent me a note an hour ago, that Ebberling was already convinced they’d found Rachel Newbury, and that he meant to act in the morning. I’ve been here for twenty minutes. We have moved up our plot, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what of the others who were supposed to be waiting for us at Newgate?” Emily asked, twining her fingers with his. “If Rycott can’t stall Ebberling, then there won’t be enough time. If no one believes me…”