He’d brought the dogs along tonight to sniff out the woman from a scrap of her clothing provided by her husband. Sight hounds by breeding, they were helpful enough in a pinch. The manager of the seedy hotel in which they had run the woman to ground hadn’t minded the animals, and the agents of the Falcon Club had once again found their quarry. Yet another lost soul.
Of course the pup, Hermes, had stirred up trouble in the hotel kitchen. But Bella hadn’t bothered anyone. She was a good old girl, maistly wonderfu’ contented.
That made one of them.
“Quite sure you wish to give this up, old chap?” The gentleman on the sidewalk behind Leam murmured into the damp cold. From the tone of Wyn Yale’s voice, Leam guessed his expression: a slight smile, narrowed silver eyes. “Must be satisfying to wrap lovely matrons so easily around your little finger.”
“Ladies admire tragic heroes.” Beside Yale, Constance Read’s soft voice lilted with northern music. “And my cousin is very charming, as well as handsome, of course. Just like you, Wyn.”
“You are all kindness, my lady,” Yale replied. “But alas, a Welshman can never best a Scot.
History proves it.”
“Ladies don’t give a fig about history. Especially the young ladies, who like you quite well enough.” She laughed, a ripple of silk that relieved the tension corded about Leam’s lungs.
“The hotel manager’s wife called him a ruffian,” Yale added.
“She was flirting. They all flirt with him. She also called him a tease.”
“They haven’t any idea.” The Welshman’s voice was sly.
No idea whatsoever.
Leam passed a hand over his face again. Four years at Cambridge. Three after that at Edinburgh.
He spoke seven languages, read two more, had traveled three continents, owned a vast Lowlands estate, and was heir to a dukedom possessed of a fortune built on East Indian silks and tea. Yet society imagined him a ruffian and a tease. Because that was the man he showed to the world.
By God, he’d had enough of this. Five years’ worth of enough. And yet in his heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let him sleep.
Good Lord. Shakespearean thoughts in the wake of silly females and bad poetry. Brandy seemed an excellent idea after all.
Leam swiveled on his heels.
“If you two are quite finished, perhaps we might go inside. The night advances and I have elsewhere to be.” He gestured toward the door to the modest town house before which they stood. Like the falcon-shaped knocker, the bronze numbers 14½ above the lintel glistened in the glow of a nearby gas lamplight.
“Where elsewhere?” His cousin Constance, a sparkling beauty who at twenty had already sent a hundred men to their knees in London drawing rooms, lifted azure eyes full of keen curiosity.
“Anywhere but here.” He drew her up the steps.
“Don’t set your hopes on that too securely, old chap. Colin has plans.” Yale pressed the door open and winked at Constance as she passed through.
“Colin can go hang,” Leam muttered.
“I would rather not.” At the parlor threshold, the head agent of the Falcon Club, Viscount Colin Gray, stood as he had any number of nights, calmly awaiting their return from yet another assignment.
The edge of his mouth ticked up ever so slightly. Gray rarely smiled. His was a grave sort of English rectitude, one Leam had admired since their school days. He met Leam’s gaze, his indigo eyes sober.
“But if you wait long enough, my friend, you might get lucky.”
“More likely to be a guillotine than a noose, though. Hm, Colin?” Yale moved directly to the sideboard. The young Welshman’s speech never slurred nor did his gait falter. But Leam had watched the lad drink an entire bottle of brandy since noon.
A brace of candles illumined crystal decanters. Glass in hand, Yale settled into a chair as easily as a boy. But nothing ever looked as it seemed. Leam had learned that years ago.
The dogs padded in, Bella settling on the rug by the fire, her pup greeting Gray, then following him to the hearth.
“How did matters proceed tonight at the hotel?” The viscount leaned against the mantel. “Mr.
Grimm has gone off in the carriage and you are all here, so I must assume you found the princess and that she is now on her way home.”
“To the loving bosom of her anxiously awaiting husband.” Yale smiled slightly.
“Leam flirted with everything in a skirt.” Constance paused at a window, drawing open a drapery to peer out into the darkness.
“Always does. Sets the ladies’ breasts aflutter in sympathy so that they utter every word they ever heard.” Yale sipped his brandy. “Or, always did, rather.”
“He is quite good at it.” In the glow of firelight, Gray’s face was like chiseled marble.
Leam remained on the threshold, eyes half lidded as was his wont even now and here. The habit of years died hard, and he had not yet shaved away the vestiges of his false persona. His costume still clung.
But not for long.
Constance glanced over her shoulder. A sumptuous gold lock dangled along her neck in studied artifice so unlike her actual character. She played a part too. They all did.
As members of the Falcon Club, for five years Leam, Wyn Yale, Colin Gray and their fourth, Jinan Seton, had used their skills to seek out and find missing persons whose retrieval merited a measure of secrecy. For the king. For England. But Leam’s cousin Constance had only entered the game two years ago, when he invited her.
“It is so odd every time,” she said, “seeing them go off like that with Mr. Grimm in the carriage, returning home.” She peered at the viscount. “Colin, how on earth do people find out about us? It’s not as though we advertise in the papers. Do they all know our secret director personally? But then, of course, if that were the case he wouldn’t be very secret, would he? And we might know him too.” Her lips curved sweetly.
“Perhaps if you remain in the Club you might someday,” the viscount replied.
“Oh, you know I could not. Not when Leam, Wyn, and Jinan are all calling it quits.”
Leam studied her. “You needn’t as well, Constance.”
“I shall do as I wish, Leam.”
“Come now, cousins.” Yale waved a hand, brandy swirling in his crystal goblet. “Don’t let’s quarrel. Haven’t yet had enough to drink.”
“They aren’t your cousins, Yale,” came the rejoinder from across the chamber.
The Welshman tilted a black brow and allowed his opinion of the issue to be known to Lord Gray with the barest glitter of silvery eyes.
“I should never have dragged her into this in the first place.” Leam crossed the chamber to his cousin, lowering his voice as he neared. “But at the time I believed you required diversion.” He lifted her hand and gently squeezed her gloved knuckles.
“Oh, don’t.” Constance withdrew her fingers. “You will make me weep with your poet’s eyes. I am quite as susceptible as all those other ladies, you know.”
“Cad,” Lord Gray muttered.
Constance shot him a laughing look. “Weep with affection, Colin. Only slightly greater than the affection I hold for you.”
Lord Gray tilted his head in recognition of the beauty’s gracious condescension.
“You see, Leam? Colin will have your neck now if you cause me to cry.” Her blue eyes twinkled.
“Second that, Blackwood. Never like to see a lady in tears,” mumbled Yale with a sleepy air.
“The lady would not be morose if you weren’t dragging her into retirement with you so abruptly,” Gray commented.
“Tut-tut, old man. Mustn’t scold during our good-bye party.” Yale’s eyes were barely creased open, but that signified little. After working with the Welshman for five years, even Leam did not always know when his friend was truly foxed or merely pretending it.
It mattered nothing—Yale’s acting, Constance’s reluctance, or Gray’s insistence. Leam was through with secrecy and livi
ng like a Gypsy. He’d never much cared for it in the first place and now, at thirty-one, he was far too old to be in this game.
“I take it we shan’t see Seton tonight.” Gray’s voice remained even. “Shoddy of him bowing out like this without even appearing to do it in person.”
“Jinan has never been fully the Club’s man,” Leam said. “You are fortunate he sent word even to me.”
“Wyn, what did you mean with that comment about the guillotine?” Constance tilted her head.
Yale’s slitted gaze went to Gray. “Perhaps our august viscount will explain. Have news of French doings, do you, Colin?”
“How you know that I shan’t ask.” The viscount reached to a box on the mantel and drew forth a folded paper. “The director wishes a last task from the pair of you.”
“No.” Leam’s voice fell like an anvil.
Gray lifted a brow. “Allow me to apprise you of the task first, if you will.”
“No.” Leam’s jaw tightened. “I am through with it, Colin. I’ve told you so any number of times. I am going home. Full stop.”
“But French spies, old man…” Yale murmured. “’S what got us into this in the first place, haring off to Calcutta to save England from informers and all that.”
French spies had not sent Leam to India five years ago. His desperation to escape England had.
And they all knew it.
Yale flashed the viscount a glance. “Is it spies this time, Colin?”
Lord Gray passed him the paper. “The director and several members of the Board of the Admiralty believe so. Informants to the Home Office have identified Scots—Highlanders—whom they believe to be potential threats for leaking information to the French.”
Constance’s clear brow furrowed. “But the war is over.”
“The concern is not French aggression, particularly, but Scottish rebels.”
“Ah.” Yale sipped his drink thoughtfully.
“Indeed.” Gray’s face remained grim. “Scottish insurrectionists may be currying favor with certain French parties to gain support for a rebellion.”
“What could Scottish rebels have that the French would be interested in?”
“Not much, if they were merely northern rabble. But our director and several members the Board of the Admiralty have reason to think the rebels are being fed sensitive information directly from a member of Parliament.”
Yale whistled through his teeth.
“Unless you believe I am one of those insurrectionists,” Leam said, “then I haven’t any idea what it has to do with me. Leave it to the Home Office where it belongs, or to the fellows in Foreign, like you should have five years ago. It’s none of my business and never should have been.”
“You didn’t mind it at the time.”
Leam met Gray’s knowing gaze stonily.
“It is honorable work, Leam.”
“Believe you’re saving the world all you wish, my noble friend. But since the war ended we are no more than glorified carrier pigeons and I’ve no taste for it.”
The snapping of a log in the fire seemed to punctuate his statement.
“Symbolic nonsense,” Yale mumbled. Without a breath of sound, he stood, brushed out the creases in his trousers, and moved toward the door. “I’m off to the races, then. Evening, all,” he said as though it were any evening and not the last. But the spy clung to him, in his every movement and in the perspicacity of his quick gaze. He had been wasted on the Falcon Club.
“If men like you, Leam, do not continue this work, there may be war again much sooner than we like,” the viscount said soberly.
Yale paused, propping a shoulder against the doorjamb. But Leam felt no responsibility. No need to see matters settled.
“During the war at least we retrieved persons of some importance to England’s welfare.” He shook his head. “Now…”
“Your quarry tonight was a princess.”
“I don’t care if she was the goddamned queen. It was never my fondest wish to go chasing after other men’s runaway wives.”
Silence descended upon the room again, this time heavy and fraught with memory. Yale finally broke it, his voice lightly pensive. “They aren’t all runaway wives.”
Leam stared into the fire, feeling his friends’ gazes upon him. The rest of the world imagined poor Uilleam Blackwood a tragic widower. Only these three and Jin Seton knew the truth.
“Remember that little Italian girl we found in ’thirteen? The archbishop’s niece?”
“Just after you returned from Bengal,” Constance added. “You told me about her, Wyn. You and Leam found her working as a maid at a masquerade ball, though I still cannot imagine you dressing in costume.” She smiled.
“I didn’t. But Blackwood did, of course. Recall that one, old chap?”
Leam had never forgotten it. Not in the three years since then. It had been their first assignment in London after India. But that was not the reason that ball had never slipped from his memory.
“He intends to shut himself away this time, Colin.” Constance said quietly. “He thought he was doing so when he joined the Club and went to India upon your behest. But he has found out his mistake finally.”
“One final task, Leam.”
Leam’s gaze met Gray’s. “And after that?”
“I shall never ask again.”
Yale folded his arms. “What does our shadowy director wish this time?”
“He wants the two of you to meet with Seton. Two months ago our sailor friend sent word he had news that could not be imparted to a courier or by post. We haven’t heard from him since then, however, and suspect that at least you know where he is. Do you?”
Leam nodded. Men cut from entirely different cloth, Jinan Seton and Colin Gray had never gotten on particularly well. But the sailor kept Leam apprised of his ship’s location roughly every month. He knew where to find him.
“Is that all?”
“The director would also like confirmation of Seton’s resignation from the Club, from his own hand.”
“Then, no Scottish rebels or French spies after all?” Yale’s gaze shifted between Leam and Gray.
“Not at this time.”
“Then why did you mention them?” They’d known each other for years, but Leam did not entirely trust his old friend. Colin Gray possessed one purpose in life: to keep England safe. Leam did not fault him for it, but neither did he understand it. He felt no such staunch loyalty to anything. He only pretended it.
“I hoped you would bite at the bait. But clearly that is not to be.” Gray’s regard remained sober.
“Will you do this last favor?”
Jin’s ship was berthed in Bristol. Leam could make it there on horseback and still arrive at Alvamoor in time for Christmas. He would like to see the sailor once more before retreating to Scotland. And he owed it to Gray, the man who had come to his rescue when he’d needed it five years earlier.
He nodded.
“Good.” Gray strode toward the door. He paused there. “Keep yourself out of trouble, Yale.”
“Not a breath of scandal shall be linked to my name.”
The viscount looked as though he wished to smile. “I daresay.” He bowed to Constance. “My lady.” He departed.
Upon the hearth rug, Hermes shifted onto his side with a lazy sigh.
“What do you say, Con,” Yale quipped, assessing her from brow to toe. “Join me for a midnight stroll? With you on my arm I shall be in heaven.”
“Oh, Wyn. Go.”
Silvery eyes alight, the young man grinned, bowed, and followed Gray from the house.
Constance chuckled. “He is incorrigible.”
“He holds you in very high esteem.”
“He likes to pretend he does, but I have yet to encounter the girl who could—” Abruptly she turned from her contemplation of the door to Leam. “Are you truly going to Scotland? Permanently this time?”
“Aye.”
She tilted her golden head. “Can you be h
appy at Alvamoor?”
“It is my home, Constance.”
“Won’t she always be there, in a manner?”
“Better in the ground than in the house.”
She flinched, a delicate withdrawal of tapered shoulders. “Those words are not you.”
“They are as much me as aught else.” More so. Nothing remained of the foolish lad he had been six years ago.
“You have not forgiven her in all this time?”
“The righteous make far too much of forgiveness.”
She remained silent a moment. Then, “I am to dine with Papa this evening. He will no doubt read the paper while we eat and leave to me all the conversation.”
Leam smiled for her sake. She sought to divert him. Even as a mere slip of a girl she had. But she had been too late. “Give my best to His Grace.”
She lifted her cloak from a chair. “Why don’t you join us? Papa asked after his favorite nephew only this morning.”
“Thank you. I am otherwise engaged.” If he were to make it to Alvamoor by Christmas, he must move swiftly to meet Jinan on the coast. Yale, of course, would accompany him.
Her carriage stood at the curb, an elegant vehicle with the ducal crest covered. He handed her in.
She squeezed his fingers. “After the season I will come up to Alvamoor for the summer.”
“Fiona and Jamie will be in alt. As will I. Until then.” He reached to shut the door. Constance’s hand on his sleeve arrested him.
“Leam, have you considered marriage? Again?”
“No.” Never again.
She held his gaze. “Have a pleasant trip, darling,” she said softly. “Happy Christmas.” She drew her cloak close about her and sat back on the squabs.
The rumble of the carriage receded down the street. He pivoted about and for a long moment stared at the door to 14½ Dover Street. For five years he had given his life to the king’s pleasure, behind that door with the raptor-shaped knocker, and in ballrooms, drawing rooms, and squalid alleyways throughout London. Throughout all of Britain. Commenced in desperation on an eastern-
sailing ship, his tenure as a member of the Falcon Club had distracted him. Aye, for a time, it had distracted.
He turned away and started up the street. Gas lamps and the tread of his boots marked his passage through the midnight gloom. He needed the scent of the north in his senses. The Lothians at midwinter called, vibrant skies crystal clear unless they were fraught with clouds or pouring buckets of rain or barrels of snow upon a man’s lands.
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