Behind the bar, a grubby innkeeper thumped a pair of pewter pots in front of his most recent customers. The men took their ales to a table in the corner, Barker lighting a pipe, Freddy burying his nose in his tankard while he discreetly scanned the room.
Keeping her shoulders hunched and her face lowered, she shuffled around the room. ‘Spare a copper for a poor auld wider lady?’ she begged in quavering tones, and leaning heavily on her cane so people would see little but the top of her head. She had been practising her accent on the street sweeper on the corner since her arrival in London. A game she’d played for entertainment mostly. She had an ear for accents and she had amused Nicky and Gabe with her imitations, and shocked them, too.
One docker shoved her away fiercely. Another pressed a ha’penny in her mittened hand.
‘She’ll only spend it on gin,’ his companion observed, and turned his back.
A glance from Freddy, who sported a scar on his cheek and nose reddened by drink, flickered over her. Without recognition.
Hah! She’d spotted him right away. To be fair, she had known to expect him. Still...
She sidled up to their table, clawed hand shoved under his nose. ‘Spare a copper.’
‘Clear off.’ Barker tossed her a coin. It glinted silver as it spun on its edge on the scarred and stained tabletop. A ‘thruppny bit’, as the street sweeper called it. Threepence. She reached for it.
Strong fingers clenched around her wrist as she caught up the coin.
‘What in hell’s name are you doing here?’ Freddy rasped in her ear.
She tittered. Let the shawl slip down to her shoulders, revealing the tangle of her hair and red-painted lips, changing from hunched old crone to ravaged prostitute. ‘Want company out in the alley?’ She danced the coin between her fingers. ‘Sailor’s choice.’
Freddy cursed.
Barker buried his face in his tankard, his shoulders shaking. Was he laughing?
The man who had given her the coin started towards them. ‘You cheating baggage.’
Freddy’s lowered brows halted him in midstride. He took the coin and tossed it back to the man. ‘Sit.’ He jerked down by her arm to perch on his knee.
She batted her eyelashes. ‘Changed yer mind, guv? Wot’s yer fancy?’
Barker choked back laughter. ‘Does yer want me to leave yer to it?’
Freddy grinned. An evil leer. ‘You can leave us to it, mate, when we get outside.’ His accent was also of the lower orders and spoken with the ease of long practice.
A shiver went down her spine at the lecherous promise. Not fear. Anticipation. Damn him. Because she had no doubt he intended it as a threat of retribution, not a promise.
Freddy gestured to a waiter passing with a tray. ‘Gin.’
Barker nudged Freddy with his elbow, and Minette caught the jerk of the innkeeper’s unshaven chin at a man entering the taproom.
Minette gave Freddy a winsome smile, careful not to reveal her teeth. ‘That our mark?’
Freddy lifted his pot of ale to his lip. ‘It is.’
He nodded, and the innkeeper handed the new customer a bumper of gin and gestured in their direction.
The man, Henri, narrowed his eyes at her and then at Freddy, then shouldered his way to their table. ‘You ask for me?’
‘’Ave a seat, mate,’ Freddy said, lifting his tankard in salute.
The man glanced around him, grabbed a stool and subsided with a sigh. He took a long pull at his gin. ‘So, messieurs?’
Freddy lowered his voice. ‘You sister says you have news of a certain party.’
‘Name begins with M,’ Barker added.
‘This man, he arrives six week ago. Here.’ He made a vague gesture, encompassing them, the river, London.
‘Where does he stay?’ Freddy leaned back and swigged at his beer.
Henri shook his head and leaned forward, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘He recently travels north. Urgent business.’
How vague could the man get? ‘Not helpful, mon ami,’ Minette muttered under her breath.
He looked startled.
‘Ignore her,’ Freddy ground out. ‘Tell us what you do know.’
Minette bristled but contented herself with a scrape of her nail across the table, knowing it would irritate Freddy and, more importantly, not allow him to forget her presence.
‘Un homme.’ Henri grimaced. ‘My friend. He says he returns.’
‘He’s coming back to London,’ Freddy rephrased.
Henri nodded. ‘He is expected. Soon.’
‘What is he doing in the north?’ Barker asked.
Henri shrugged. ‘Gathering information?’
‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ Minette asked, ignoring Freddy’s glare. ‘His appearance. The name he is using?’
Freddy kicked her under the table.
‘Beard. Spectacles.’ He touched his cheek. ‘Dark of skin. He goes by Smith.’
Smith sounded nothing like Moreau. But, then, none of them looked like themselves tonight. Moreau was a master of disguises. He’d certainly fooled her for years.
‘You will let your sister know the moment he returns,’ Barker said. ‘Warn him and you are a dead man.’ He issued his threat in a dangerously conversational tone of voice.
Henri ignored him and kept his gaze fixed on Freddy’s face. ‘’E is a bad man. I speak truth.’
Freddy nodded. ‘Then we will get along famously.’
The Frenchman got up and went back to the bar. Minette leaned against Freddy’s shoulder and started playing with his hair and stroking his cheek. He looked at her. She raised a brow in the age-old question.
‘I’ll see you back at the club,’ Freddy said to Barker, and drew her closer to his side, bit the point of her shoulder, hard enough to make her twitch away. ‘This mort owes me thruppence-worth.’
Barker stretched, got up and left. When he was clear, Freddy grabbed her arm and staggered out into the night air. While his steps were sloppy, his eyes slightly unfocussed, his grip was steely. He didn’t lighten it until they were well clear of the inn and he was sure, as she was, that they had not been followed.
He put his arm around her shoulders. Slowly, inexorably, he backed her into the shadows of the nearest alley. He took her chin between her fingers and tipped her face up so she was forced to meet a gaze glinting from a nearby streetlight. Oh, my, he was angry.
‘So, tell me, my dear Minette, what the hell did you think you were doing?’ He spoke in a voice so calm as to be terrifying.
Intimidation. Her own anger rose. ‘I wanted to hear what he had to say for myself and well you know it.’
His gaze dropped to her bosom. ‘Dressed like that, you could have got a lot more than information.’
She pulled her knife from the pocket hidden in her ragged skirts, the pocket she’d sewn into the seam when Christine had come back with the dress, and held it to his Adam’s apple. ‘I think not.’
He cursed softly and fluently. At least she guessed he was cursing. They were English words and not familiar.
‘Now, do you want the value of your thruppence,’ she said softly, ‘or do you take me home?’
He took her wrist and forced the blade away, taking it from her now nerveless fingers and stuffing it into a pocket. ‘A man can get a lot for three pennies, my dear.’
He meant to frighten her. She knew those tactics.
He bent his head and took her mouth in a scalding kiss. Well-remembered sensations struck her low in her belly. She found she could not recall why they were standing in an alley late at night. She was too busy returning his kiss, tangling her tongue with his, plastering herself tight to his body while his fingers cradled her head and held her still to receive his punishing kiss.
Pu
nishing, ravishing and utterly delicious.
Enough to make a girl lose her mind for want of more. Especially a girl who’d been celibate for years and had been tempted for days and days by this virile man.
As if he sensed her thoughts, he backed her up against the wall, while he kept her head angled just right. She felt his lovely weight all down her length and the ridge of his arousal against her belly. Her hands explored the musculature of his shoulders and the bones of his spine. She burrowed beneath his coat to feel the warmth of him, to shape the narrowing of his waist and the firmness of his buttocks.
A lean, beautiful male body she wanted on top of her, all around her, inside her.
He tasted of ale and smoke and of Freddy in the faint whiff of his soap.
He groaned softly and dragged his mouth away. ‘Where on God’s sweet earth did you learn to kiss like that?’
The words were like a dash of cold water. Like a wanton, he’d meant. A woman no better than she should be. As he’d soon find out, if they didn’t stop now.
She pushed him away, breathing hard. ‘You kiss pretty well yourself.’ She flicked her skirts straight. ‘For an Englishman.’ Let him make of that what he would.
He gave a shake of his head as if to clear it. Then struck the wall behind her with the side of his fist. ‘There is no need for you to take such risks. You are not in France any longer. You are not friendless and alone. When will you learn I am not your enemy?’
‘Never.’
‘Then we have a problem.’
‘We have a worse one. We have lost Moreau.’
‘We know he will return to London in due course. In the meantime, I will have men searching the north for him.’ He took her arm. ‘Come, time to see you home. We will be able to pick up a hackney in the next street.’ He glanced down at her. ‘I presume you left the garden gate open?’
‘Naturellement.’ She kept her voice calm. It wouldn’t do to let him see how much Moreau’s disappearance had her worried.
Chapter Nine
Minette climbed down from Gabe’s carriage at Falconwood Hall. Dear man that he was, he’d insisted that his coachman drive her, along with a footman and her maid, while Freddy went on ahead, to be there to greet her along with his mother. Gabe was still angry at the incident that had brought them to this pass and hadn’t been about to trust her to Freddy’s tender care when he’d realised that he and Nicky would not be able to accompany her to Kent. Gabe’s parliamentary business could not be abandoned on a whim.
She stared up at the house while she waited for her maid to gather up their belongings and alight. She had expected something on a grand scale—after all, Freddy was a Duke—but she had not expected anything quite so old and rambling. Freddy had called it a pile. It was a sprawling, warm red-brick place with stone towers above the arched front entrance.
The drive from the gatehouse, where she was sure there had been a portcullis at some point in time, had been extraordinarily beautiful, spreading oaks scattered across a rolling green park filled with deer. She could almost imagine Freddy riding hell for leather around the grounds as a boy. It would have been a wonderful place to bring up children.
A pang caused a hitch in her breathing. A sense of loss. The knowledge that it would not be her children who would grow up in this lovely old house. The footman climbed down from the box and hurried to ring the doorbell, but a butler with a prim mouth and small stature was already walking sedately down the steps. A groom appeared around the side of the house and led the carriage away, along with her maid and luggage.
‘If you would care to follow me, miss, Their Graces are waiting in the drawing room.’
At that moment Freddy stepped out onto the drive. ‘It is all right, Patterson,’ he said. ‘I will show Miss Rideau the way.’
The tension in her shoulders flowed away, though she hadn’t realised quite how nervous she’d been about this meeting until it dissipated. After their last encounter, when it had been obvious she didn’t trust him, she hadn’t been sure he wouldn’t withdraw from her completely. Every time she thought of the way she’d dressed and played her part, she flushed hot then went cold. If he didn’t know the extent of her carnal knowledge, he must now guess she knew far more than a gently bred girl ought.
Pierre had been bad for her in so many ways, and not just because of his betrayal.
With the utmost courtesy, Freddy held out his arm and walked her beneath the stone arch, through an ancient door and into a rectangular medieval great hall. A beautifully carved screen occupied one end and a huge fireplace dominated the centre of one long wall. Faded banners and painted shields hung on stone above the dark panelling, along with ancient weaponry. The only items of furniture were an enormously long trestle table and some horribly uncomfortable-looking carved wooden armchairs.
‘Mon Dieu,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It is positively antiquated.’
Freddy patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry, most of the house is quite modern. We only use the Great Hall for large events and when the Duke needs to make an impression.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I can just imagine the three of us dining here in state, you at one end and your mother at the other and me in the middle, unable to speak without shouting.’
‘If Mother had her way, your imagination might not be far from the truth.’
Another wry remark about his mother. The woman must be a veritable dragon. But then, she was a duchess.
He led them through yet another arch into a paved corridor and from there into an elegantly appointed room full of light, with pale green walls and cornices of white and gilt. It was, she realised, a perfect cube in the Palladian style.
The woman seated where the light from the window fell on her embroidery looked up at their entry. She was lovely. Dainty, with gold-blonde hair shot through with threads of silver and skin that made one think of peaches and cream. She was dressed in lavender. Half-mourning? Blue eyes arctic enough to freeze one’s blood remained fixed on Minette’s face while Freddy made the introductions. Now she knew from where Freddy inherited his cold expression.
Minette dipped a curtsey.
The eyes assessed her performance with chilly intensity, while the face showed no expression at all. The perfect aristocrat.
‘Miss Rideau.’ The duchess gestured for her to take a seat. ‘Welcome to Falconwood. My son has told me much about you.’ There was a fragility to her air, in the lightness of her voice. As if it was almost too great an effort for her to speak.
Oh, dear. This was likely to be a lot worse than she had hoped. She sat down in the seat set at a right angle to the Duchess.
‘Was your journey bearable?’ the dowager asked. ‘I would have sent our carriage for you. It was built for me by my husband, who took every care of my person, but Freddy said it was not necessary.’ The blue eyes turned to her son. ‘Not worth the bother of getting it cleaned and polished, I think you said.’
The barb apparently sailed over Freddy’s head. ‘Lord, no. You haven’t had it on the road in years. The last time you went in it to Town you said it was the most dreadfully uncomfortable trip you had ever undertaken.’
‘You misremember,’ his mother said. ‘It certainly was not the fault of the carriage. The roads are much improved since then.’
The atmosphere in the room was frosty. Minette smiled. ‘It was a very pleasant journey, thank you. Mooreshead made sure I had all the necessary comforts.’
The duchess frowned. ‘You accent is quite noticeable.’
‘Miss Rideau is half-French, Mother, and lived in France until quite recently. I informed you of that fact both in my letter and when I arrived yesterday.’
Defending her, when he had not defended himself. Warmth spread in her chest.
His mother’s shoulders stiffened. ‘You said nothing about her speech. I am sure
I had no intention to criticise, I just didn’t expect...’ Her voice trailed off in a weak gesture of her hand.
Freddy’s lips flattened to a thin straight line as if he was doing all in his power not to say something harsh.
Minette kept her expression pleasant. ‘My mother was English, but she died when I was very young. I am sure, in time, I will become less noticeably French.’
‘I like the way you speak,’ Freddy said stiffly.
She gave him a grateful smile.
His mother gazed at him thoughtfully, her glance holding such coldness Minette stifled the urge to shiver. ‘Ring for tea, Falconwood. Miss Rideau must be parched after her journey.’
Stone-faced, he strode across to the bell-pull beside a hearth of brilliant white plaster carved with vegetation and ferocious-looking animals.
‘Your leg is dragging more than usual,’ his mother said with a grimace. ‘I told you not to hack out on that animal of yours this morning. It tires you.’
Freddy glared at her as he returned to his seat. ‘What would you have me do, take up embroidery?’
His mother laughed, a tinkle of sound laced with malice. ‘Do not tease so, Freddy. No, you would be better off spending time with the accounts, seeing to the business of running the estate. A gentle walk in the park...’
Fury heated Minette’s blood. How could the woman be so stupid as to treat Freddy with so little regard for his pride? She wanted to take the woman by the shoulders and give her a good shake.
Fortunately for them all the butler entered at that moment, followed by a line of footmen carrying ludicrously enormous silver trays. The butler set a side table in front of the Duchess, and the footmen carefully set out a tea urn, sandwiches cut so fine it looked as if they would blow away if one breathed too hard, and small fancy cakes along with sweetmeats.
‘Will there be anything else, Your Grace?’
‘No, thank you,’ Freddy said.
His mother stiffened as if he’d offered her some insult.
Freddy winced. ‘Mother, did you require anything?’
The Duke's Daring Debutante (Regency Historical Romance) Page 11