by Shana Galen
Rising, she pulled the gloves off, then untied her skirts and brushed them off. She scanned the ground and finally spotted the cape she’d dropped down earlier. With a twirl, she dropped it over her clothes and pulled the hood up. She did not want to attract attention, and her blond hair was a beacon in the dark. She’d memorized then burned Blue’s note, which had directed her to Charles Street, not far from her own home in Mayfair. The streets were congested with carriages ferrying the ton to one engagement or another, and she quickly decided she had better take the side streets rather than the main thoroughfares. If the hood of her mantle fell back or a group of foxed gentlemen accosted her, she did not want to be where her aunt and uncle’s acquaintances might recognize her. She cut through an alley behind a row of terraced houses and crept along a line of mews, listening as the horses stabled there pawed and stamped. Gradually, she became aware of another sound.
Footsteps. Quiet and stealthy, but she knew when she was being followed.
Her skin prickled and her senses heightened, but she did not slow or show any sign she had heard her pursuer. The path alongside the mews grew darker and narrower as she continued down it, a situation that was not in her favor. She needed open space to fight, and she did not have it. Her only other option was to run. She took off at full speed, glad she was wearing her half boots. She lifted her skirts and ran with her head down. Her heart began to pound when she heard the echo of heavy footsteps running behind her.
And gaining.
She cut across a busy thoroughfare, skirting carts and carriages and hoping to lose her pursuer. But when she looked back, he was still right behind her. It was a quick glimpse, but she could see he was a man in a greatcoat and hat. He jumped over a crate of coal, ignored the coalman’s curses, and all but flew. She might have remained on the busy lane. Certainly someone would have stopped to help her, but she could not chance being recognized. She cut through another alley between town houses, knowing her pursuer was gaining on her. She felt it the moment he reached for her, and instead of futilely pushing ahead, ducked and rolled. He stumbled and ran by her, and she had enough time to pivot and run back the way they had come. She’d been looking for an escape, and she’d seen a promising ironwork gate. She could evade him in a garden. There were shadows and shrubs to conceal her. But when she reached the gate, it was locked. She swore and launched herself onto it, scrambling over just as he caught her foot. She kicked him somewhere near his neck and fell back. Backpedaling, she scurried into the garden, snagging her cape on a rose bush and diving into a scratchy line of shrubbery. She pushed her way through the tightly packed shrubs, crawled into another patch of shadows, and spotted a low wall at the far end of the garden.
Ducking and running, she angled for it, uncertain where her pursuer was. He was quiet and stealthy. She half-expected him to pop up in front of her. She reached the wall unmolested, jumped up, and rolled over, then flattened herself against it and listened.
Nothing.
Had he not followed her into the garden? She looked to her left and to her right. The wall marked the property line beside a small stone church. It looked Norman in design and perfect for her purposes. She pushed off the wall, and hugging the side of the building so she would remain in the shadows, she slithered around to the small cemetery in the back. Appropriately, it was shrouded in a low mist that looked rather unearthly. Jane did not believe in things she could not see or touch. Real danger did not come at one in the form of a specter. It came in the guise of a man in a caped greatcoat, an assailant firing a pistol, or the knife-wielding thug.
She scooted into the cemetery and leaned against one of the small, stubby trees growing there. She watched and waited for several minutes, looking for any sort of movement or sound.
There was nothing, and yet she felt a sense of unease. She felt as though she was not alone. She shivered. She was being ridiculous. The dead beneath her feet had moved on. She was alone here, and she had better make her way to Charles Street before it grew too much later.
She stepped away from the tree and started for the other end of the graveyard. Once she was away from the churchyard, she would determine how far off course she had traveled. Wolf had better have important information, but even if he did not, she had learned something very valuable tonight.
Someone was after her. She could not be certain it was Foncé or the Maîtriser group, but someone was looking for her. And someone knew where to look, which meant her aunt and uncle were no longer safe. And that made finding Foncé all the more pressing.
She reached for the latch on the cemetery gate, but instead of the cold metal, she touched something warm and soft.
“Allow me.”
Five
Jane pivoted and assumed a fighting stance before the man’s words were even spoken. He was fortunate he had spoken. He was fortunate she knew his voice—that her efforts to annihilate every remembrance of him from her mind had failed. She did not strike.
At the last second, she pulled the round kick she’d been about to deliver and merely stumbled ungracefully backward. She would have died of embarrassment if another agent had witnessed such clumsiness, but here it worked to her advantage. The move made her appear startled and scared.
And Dominic Griffyn had no idea how close he’d come to having his neck broken.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He gave her a dark look, his eyes too deep in the shadows for her to accurately gauge his expression. Those thick, sooty eyelashes worked in his favor.
“Opening the gate for you.” True to his word, he swung it wide. Jane hesitated. This could be a trap. Nothing about the situation screamed trap, but if he was not here to trap her, why was he here? He had either followed her or hunted her. She disliked both possibilities—the second more than the first.
“You followed me,” she said, taking a guess.
“You have a high opinion of yourself.” He casually held the gate open, his arm draped over the decorative pikes.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying you did not follow me?”
“I can’t get anything past you.” He stepped out of her path, but she still hesitated to leave the relative security of the churchyard. She could hide in the cemetery and the nooks and outcroppings of the ancient church building.
“You interrupted my solitude,” he said. “You tell me what you are doing here without”—he glanced around, feigning curiosity—“a chaperone or footman.”
He implied their meeting was coincidence. She didn’t believe it. This cemetery was not Drury Lane or Vauxhall Gardens. The odds of the two of them meeting here, randomly, were…well, larger than her mathematical skills allowed her to calculate. And she would not forget that she’d been pursued. It was far more likely that Griffyn was that pursuer than that they’d met randomly, and now he would lure her into trusting him.
“I don’t have to answer to you,” she said, turning back the way she’d come. She didn’t go far before he caught up. She’d expected him to grab her elbow. She was prepared to knee him, and then shove his face into the mud beneath her boots. But he didn’t touch her. He walked backwards, matching her stride for stride.
She was striding quickly, and though he had to peer over his shoulder time and again to be certain he didn’t trip over any objects in their path, her pace did not seem to discourage him. “You don’t have to answer to me, Miss Bonde,” he said, “and by all that’s holy, I wish we two had not crossed paths. Then you could go on your merry—albeit suicidal—way, and I could go on mine.”
She stopped, and he mirrored her. “But?” she prodded.
“But we did cross paths, and I’d be the worst sort of gentleman to allow my intended bride to continue on unescorted.”
Jane opened her lips to respond and found she didn’t know where to begin. There was so very much in that statement to refute. She decided on the most obvious point. “I don
’t need an escort. You do not know me well, sir. If you did, you would know I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“While I do not doubt the veracity of that statement, Miss Bonde, the fact remains I am obligated now to escort you.”
A clock tower chimed somewhere nearby, and Jane’s pulse quickened. Time was slipping away. She could not afford this delay. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You are not obligated to do anything, sir. And I use that term of respect lightly. You and I both know you are no gentleman. Stop this masquerade and allow me to pass.” She swept past him, her skirts parting the fog swirling about their feet.
He followed her, of course. She could easily lose him once away from the churchyard, but as she neared the low wall she’d scaled to gain entry, she realized she would have preferred to exit through the gate. And now she would feel foolish retracing her steps. This—this—was why she worked alone! Now she would have to scale the dashed wall again.
Resisting the temptation to glance at her shadow, she took two steps back, broke into a run, and leaped onto the low wall. Her hands caught the top, and she was pulling her leg over, when she felt his hands on her bottom. With a jerk of shock—and perhaps something more—she released her hold on the wall. Too late the folly of that impulse registered, and she fell backward.
He caught her, of course. Dashed man. She would have preferred to land on the cold, hard ground. She would have preferred to smash her bones against a pile of unforgiving rocks. She would have preferred…she closed her eyes. She was not even convincing herself. His arms were solid and his chest warm. He smelled of soap and horse and leather. Her body heated and tingled, remembering their kiss the previous night. It was a purely animalistic instinct. She knew this, and yet it was forceful enough that she wanted to give into it. She wanted to turn toward him, press her breasts against his hard chest, wrap her arms around his neck, and press her lips to his sensual mouth.
But she was not so green as to be confused by the conflicting desires at war within her. Her mind wanted to escape him. Her body wanted to ravish him. Her mind would win.
She hoped.
She pushed out of his arms, knowing she’d lingered too long for her protests now to make sense. She would make them anyway. He did not expect her to be logical; men never expected as much from a woman. “Let me go.”
He released her as though she were a hot poker. “I was merely attempting to assist you.”
“I do not need your assistance,” she said through clenched teeth. She’d made the mistake of looking at him, and all that inky hair and those black eyes made her stomach clench in such a way she almost pressed her hand to it to ward off the spirals of heat coursing through her body. “I came in that way, and I can leave that way as well.”
He raised a brow. “And you claim I’m no gentleman.”
Oh, now this was too much. She had no time for it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Are you implying I am not a lady?” She took a menacing step toward him, and though he did not retreat, she thought she saw a flicker of concern in his eyes. “A piece of advice, Mr. Griffyn. A gentleman never even hints that a woman is not a lady, no matter what insult she has given you.”
His brow arched. “I believe we’ve already established I am no gentleman.”
Yes, yes they had. And why did that make her belly flutter? Ridiculous body! She would not be at the mercy of her desires. She stomped away from him and headed for the garden gate. She told herself her change of direction was due to the fact that her pursuer—if, indeed, it was not Griffyn himself—might be lying in wait by the garden wall. It was not because she could not risk Griffyn touching her again.
He followed, which she expected, but he did not attempt to play the gentleman and open this gate for her. He let her struggle until she’d broken the lock and then watched as she jerked at its heavy weight until the rusty rails cleared the overgrown weeds that had grown up around it. She finally passed through and would have slammed it on him, but it caught on yet another creeping weed. Instead, she gave him a potent glare.
And he said she wasn’t a lady.
She made her way through a dark uneven street. She moved gingerly through the mud and the muck, attempting to keep the hem of her skirts clean. She righted her cape, which had twisted about her shoulders, and pulled the hood over her hair and down to conceal her forehead. Griffyn was right behind her, but as soon as she was out in the open, she would leave him behind. No one followed her if she did not want to be followed.
But he must have anticipated her, because right before they stepped out onto the busy thoroughfare, clogged with carriages and the ton’s town coaches, he took her arm and tucked it into his. She tried to jerk away, subtly, so as not to draw attention, but he held tightly. “Which direction?” he asked.
“Release me.”
“We have had this conversation already.”
She stared at him. She could threaten to scream, but that was patently ridiculous, even as a threat. He knew she would not do it. She’d rather deal with him than a swarm of well-meaning rescuers who would gossip about Miss Bonde’s scandalous appearance on—she glanced around—Chesterfield Hill late at night.
He met her gaze, and she knew he understood her dilemma. She saw the triumph in his eyes. It made her want to scream just to spite him. And that was the sort of unprofessional behavior she always loathed. “This way,” she said sweetly, pointing toward Charles Street. This was not over. He might think he had won, but she would be the victor in the end. She never lost.
They strolled, arm in arm, as though they were a couple walking home after a night’s entertainment. He skillfully steered her away from the less desirable men and women they passed, made certain she did not step in so much as a puddle—even when it meant he could not avoid soaking his boots—and kept her safely on the sidewalk, while he walked along the curb where carriages rolled by, splashing mud onto his trousers. She kept her head angled down so the hood concealed her features and ignored the way her cheeks heated at his closeness and how her heart wanted to melt at his chivalry.
Just because he could act the gentleman did not mean he was one.
Just because she had never particularly cared for gentlemen, at any rate, did not mean she had to push this one up against a wall and take his mouth with hers in a kiss she knew would leave them both breathless. Clearly, his thoughts were not along the same lines. A moment later he asked the perfectly logical and reasonable question, “Are we going to Charles Street?”
“As you see.” She sounded petulant. She was far too old for petulance.
“Meeting your lover at The Running Footman?”
She let out a short laugh. “Hardly. I assure you I am going to a respectable home.” At least she assumed it appeared so on the outside. “You may leave me there without qualm.”
He made no reply, and she could only hope he did not intend to actually see her inside. She could not exactly discuss Foncé or the Maîtriser group with Wolf if Griffyn insisted on chaining himself to her side. It would be humiliating enough to make an appearance with Griffyn beside her. She was supposed to be a spy. She should be able to evade an unwanted tail. Of course, she’d never had to escape the man picked to be her husband. If she could not escape him now, it did not bode well for the marriage.
Not that there would be a marriage. She had not agreed yet. She would find a way out of this conundrum.
She glanced at Griffyn. Surely he did not want to wed her. Perhaps he had thought of an alternative. Perhaps there was some other woman he could marry instead. “You know they expect us to marry.” She didn’t think it necessary to mention whom they comprised. He knew.
“So I have been told.” He steered her around a small group of men watching a bootblack shine a gentleman’s shoes. It was probably prime entertainment for the night.
“And?”
He frowned at her. “
I’m not going to bend down on one knee, if that’s what you want.”
She shuddered. “No! Please do not even entertain the idea.”
“I assure you I am not. I cannot promise not to entertain any ideas, however.”
She supposed he was trying to shock her, but she could hardly find his statements shocking when she herself had pondered the odd fantasy or three involving him. “What I meant was what will you do about it?”
He shrugged. “That is the benefit of being a man. I don’t have to do anything. If I do not act, we do not wed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you truly so naive?”
He stopped walking, forcing several people to circumvent him, and turned to face her. “I believe that is my line.”
“I am not naive, and I know my aunt and uncle. They will have their way if steps are not taken to prevent it. I could act alone, but they know most of my stratagems.”
His lips curved into a dubious smile. “You have stratagems?”
“It might be better if you acted.”
“Better for whom?” His gaze was intent but bemused, and she could not discern whether he was angry or on the verge of laughing at her.
“For both of us, obviously.”
He merely looked at her. She had to curb the urge to dig the toe of her boot into the sidewalk. “I thought…” But she hadn’t thought this through very well. Perhaps she should wait to discuss it with him. Unfortunately, their next discussion might be at the altar.
“You thought?” he prompted.
“Perhaps you might marry someone else. Then you and I could not marry.”
He didn’t speak for the length of seven heartbeats. “You are serious?” he said finally.
“Of course. You simply need to choose a woman to marry. Unless there is a woman you have in mind already. Is there?”