The Heart of a Hellion

by Jess Michaels

  “Or whatever she counts that worth to be.”

  Roseford nodded. “Still, she must have had the jewel available to the Fox in the months since her mother’s death. Why do you think he’ll move here, specifically?”

  Derrick shifted and glanced toward the window. There was a flash of a shadow outside and he got up, moving toward the curtains. He parted them and saw…nothing, except that the window was slightly cracked.

  He frowned. The shadow was likely just a gardener or servant passing by. The window was probably cracked to let in the air so the room didn’t become overheated.

  He turned back and looked at Roseford. There was some information Derrick didn’t regularly share with people outside of Barber. But since they were using Roseford’s home and the man had not shown himself to be a complete bastard yet, he offered a little more than usual.

  “We did receive an anonymous tip that the Fox had intentions here,” Derrick said.

  Barber jerked his face toward him, but then shrugged. “It’s credible.”

  Roseford steepled his fingers and considered the matter for a moment. “I do not think I invited the Faceless Fox to my soiree.”

  Derrick smiled. “You would not have meant to, I’m certain, but the kind of access this man has had in your world says to me that he is one of a few things: he could be a man of title.”

  He waited for Roseford to bluster or refuse to believe a person of his rank could do such a thing. He didn’t. He simply shrugged. “I know a few men who could be living double lives as you describe.”

  Derrick continued, ticking off a second finger. “He might be a family member or friend of someone titled. Again, access to their rooms and areas without suspicion.” He sighed. “Finally, he might be a servant of some kind. One who can slip in and out, almost invisible because he is expected to be there.”

  He and Barber were silent. Often when this matter was discussed, men of Roseford’s ranks clung to the idea of a servant thief. One of his employers, a marquess whose signet ring had been taken by the Fox months ago, had tried to force Derrick and Barber to drag his servants out one by one. He’d threatened to sack the lot of them.

  But Roseford seemed a different man. “It leaves a great deal of options out there, it seems.”

  “I’d like to assure you, Your Grace, that we will do everything in our power not to disrupt your guests if we can.”

  Roseford waved his hand. “That isn’t my concern. They could all do with a bit of disrupting. It will be the most excitement some have had in years. I’ve also taken the liberty of having a workspace set up for you in a quiet, little-used wing of the house. One where you will not be disturbed. I’ll have Jenner show you there after you’re settled into your chambers.”

  Barber exchanged a surprised look with Derrick before he said, “That is incredibly generous of you. It will be very helpful to us.”

  “Excellent. If there is anything I or my staff can do to assist, please don’t hesitate to ask, either of you.”

  Derrick stared at him. He couldn’t help but be impressed. Roseford was clearly far more than the wild rake Society had labeled him to be all those years. Likely he always had been.

  After Barber shook Roseford’s hand, Derrick did the same. Roseford smiled. “My brother is a decent man and he says you two are the same. I can see the importance of what you are doing and in the secrecy. Katherine knows what you’re about, of course. We don’t lie to each other. But my friends and my staff are all in the dark about your true motives. I’ll leave it to you two to decide when, or if, anyone else should be told.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Derrick said, and then he and Barber made their exit.

  As the door shut behind them, Barber leaned in. “Seems a decent fellow,” he murmured.

  Derrick was going to respond, but before he could he caught a glimpse of a scrap of blue fabric disappearing into the parlor next door. Blue fabric that looked suspiciously like the gown worn by Roseford’s sister, Selina Oliver. He’d marked it, just as he’d marked almost everything about the woman during their brief introduction.

  He thought about the shadow at the window in the study. Certainly it could not have been her. He was just on high alert with this case, and with the fact that when he’d met the lady he’d felt…

  Well, attraction was natural, of course. He felt it often. Not always as strongly as he had when the lady had taken his hand and looked up at him with bright blue eyes that seemed to sparkle with a bit of wickedness.

  “Derrick?” Barber said.

  He blinked. His partner must have been trying to get his attention for some time, for Barber rarely used Derrick’s first name.

  “Yes, sorry. Just…distracted,” Derrick said, following his friend up the hallway back toward the guest quarters where they could speak more privately and make their plans.

  “The duke was unexpected,” he said, and glanced behind him at the parlor beside the study. The door was closed now. “I think we may find a great many things to be not as they seem now that we’re here.”

  Selina was able to keep the serene smile on her face until she crossed the threshold into her chamber. Once she shut the door, she pivoted toward her companion, Vale Williams. Vale was a petite woman with pale blonde hair, freckles across her nose and dark brown eyes. Selina had always thought her to look a bit like a fairy in stories. Only she was the kind who didn’t use magic for sweetness or light.

  At present, Vale was seated by the fire and didn’t bother to get up, though she did set her book aside. “Why the look?” she asked.

  Selina shook her head. “Well, we are rightly fucked, my dear. Over a barrel, with hardly more than an ‘as you please’.”

  That forced Vale from her seat and she moved toward Selina. “Why? How?”

  Selina paced the room, mind racing with what she’d overheard at the window of Robert’s study. “My brother has invited some unexpected guests.”

  Vale wrinkled her brow. “Not on the original guest list you pilfered from his home before we left London?”

  “No,” Selina said. “They arrived this morning. Former army, I think. I knew that man was trouble. I knew it the moment I looked up into his handsome face. A chin dimple is never to be trusted, Vale. Isn’t that what we always say?”

  Vale blinked at her ramblings. “I’m sorry, who are these men?”

  “Investigators,” she said, drawing out each syllable. “Looking for the Faceless Fox.”

  Vale’s hands dropped to her side and her mouth gaped. “They’re here hunting you!”

  “Indeed.” Selina sat down hard and scowled.

  The Faceless Fox, her second name for years, the identity she’d hidden behind and lived through. So many had screamed that name into the night after she slipped their jewels from their pockets and danced away to the fence. What a life it had been. One she hadn’t regretted…or at least not regretted often.

  And now these two men had come to finish what so many others had started at and failed. To catch her in a trap and unveil her to the world.

  Chapter 3

  Selena sighed heavily. At least with Vale she didn’t have to wear the cloak. The mask. Her friend had never betrayed her, and perhaps she was the only one who hadn’t. Which meant she could trust her, at least more than she did anyone else.

  “At present, they still think the Fox is a man,” she said. “At least according to everything I overheard.”

  “Everything you heard? You were eavesdropping?”

  “Of course.” Selina made a face. “I told you I suspected the men of something.”

  “Tell me everything,” Vale said, retaking her seat across from Selina. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  So she did, telling what she’d overheard before that dratted Derrick Huntington had sensed her at the window. She’d sensed him, too, and barely made her escape before he pushed back the curtain and looked for her.

  She told Vale about what they knew regarding Lady Winford’s necklace and t
he intent of the Fox to seek it out. And as her friend and partner sat and considered all she’d said, Selina did her own pondering about how she’d come here.

  At first stealing had been a lark. She’d been on her own, for all intents and purposes, for so long. Being untamed and wild and unfettered was easy. It was fun. Most of the time it was fun, at any rate. But it didn’t come cheap, that was for certain. Sometimes her father’s allowance just wasn’t enough, especially if a game of cards didn’t go well.

  The first time she’d slipped coins from a lady’s gown pocket at the Donville Masquerade it had been out of necessity. But oh, the thrill of it. Especially since she’d seen the lady being nasty to a courtesan just a short time before. Talking down to her as if she, herself, weren’t at an underground sex club taking her pleasure.

  Taking that coin had led to taking other things. Playing the game, for fun and sport and profit. Selina had gotten very good at it. Good enough that she’d once slipped the ring off of Lady Tinman’s finger and the woman hadn’t been the wiser for hours.

  And the Fox? That alter ego all of Society now whispered about? That had been born almost by accident. She’d always loved to sketch. It had been her one of her few acceptable pastimes as a girl. She’d been hiding in a gentleman’s bedchamber behind the curtain one night, waiting for the household to settle so she could steal the beloved signet ring of an arse who had assaulted a friend of hers from the theatre, and she’d sketched herself a little fox while she waited. When she’d taken the ring, she hadn’t realized the tiny drawing had fallen behind.

  When it was found after he discovered the missing ring…well, the accident had been believed to be a calling card. So it had become one. She loved to sketch her little foxes, a way to tell those in power that someone was in the midst, destroying them from within.

  That everyone thought the Faceless Fox had to be a man was sometimes irritating. But oh, what one could get away with when others underestimated one!

  “You should have come to me first,” Vale was saying, and it drew Selina back to her present position. “Why bring me as your pretend companion if you don’t intend to use me for at least advice and support?”

  Selina frowned. She hadn’t meant to keep Vale out of her plans. The woman had been her friend and a partner to the Fox for years. She’d even saved Selina’s life. That moment had bonded them and inspired Selina to bring her into the fold.

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” she explained. “I had to make my move before the gentlemen met with my brother in his study. I barely had time to crack his window and take a hidden position to hear.”

  Vale seemed comforted by that explanation and smiled at her, the expression softening her pretty face. “It sounds as though it went well, at least. They don’t suspect you. But then, they never do. There have been investigators before. The guard, even Bow Street Runners. None have come close to you.”

  Selina worried her lip as she thought of Derrick Huntington and Edward Barber. “I don’t know. There’s something more…competent in them both. And when Huntington looked at me on the drive when we met…”

  She trailed off as she relived that stern expression as he looked into her eyes. It had done things to her body, that smoldering expression. Things she more than understood the consequences of. But she’d retained enough common sense to also realize this was a man who could read others. A man truly dedicated to his duty, whatever he felt that to be.

  A man who wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted. She shivered.

  “This time just feels different,” Selina said. She worried her hands before her. “I wonder if we should walk away. I could probably find some excuse for us to go back to London so that Huntington and Barber’s interest isn’t heightened. There will be other opportunities to get the Breston necklace. God knows Lady Winford flaunts her receipt of it to all who will listen.”

  Vale tilted her head. “Is the great Faceless Fox actually scared of a man?” she said with a laugh.

  “No!” Selina said, and then shifted in discomfort as her friend pierced her with a stare. Vale was too long an acquaintance not to know some of the truth of her. “Yes,” she corrected. “Perhaps. He and his partner just feel…unique. Dangerous.”

  Vale leaned back in her seat and folded her arms. “Well, you’ve never backed down from a challenge, my dear. And that’s what this is. A challenge, nothing more.”

  Selina wasn’t certain and it must have shown on her face, for Vale let out a long sigh. “At the very least, you should determine whether or not these men are even as competent as you’ve told yourself. Plenty look to be and turn out to be worthless.”

  “How do you expect me to do that?”

  Vale shrugged. “I see you get all fluttery when you talk about the one, Huntington. You’ve mentioned more than once that he is handsome.”

  “Yes,” Selina admitted through gritted teeth.

  “Well, then you find out his worth…by any means necessary,” Vale teased.

  Selina tensed. Sex. Vale was talking about sex, or something close to it. And she wasn’t wrong. Seduction in a case like this would certainly allow Selina to find out things about Derrick Huntington that would be harder to determine by other means. Unlike many women of her day, Selina had never believed it when she was taught sex was inherently sinful for a woman to participate or revel in. She did both. There were lovers in her past and there would be lovers in her future. She felt no shame in either fact.

  So if she decided to test the limits of the spark she’d felt flare between herself and Huntington, she was certainly equipped to handle the experience. Anyway, it would be fun to tease a man like that. A man with such control pulsing through every single inch of him.

  Breaking that control would certainly be a game worth playing. And if it got her what she wanted? What she needed? All the better.

  “Well,” she said at last. “There is that.” She settled back and folded her hands behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling. “At any rate, I have a few days to decide. Lord and Lady Winford are coming late to the party now. So I won’t have to think about my mark while I play with the hound who is trying to tree this fox.”

  Only Huntington didn’t put her to mind of a hound. A wolf, maybe.

  Vale seemed more relaxed now that Selina had accepted her advice. She picked her book back up from the side table and flipped it open to begin reading again. “Excellent. There is no one more capable than you, my dear. And I can’t wait to see this man who you find so interesting.”

  Interesting. Derrick Huntington was definitely that. Now Selina just had to figure out how to play her interest…and his…to her advantage.

  Derrick stood in the middle of the Duke of Roseford’s vast library, looking up around him at the beautiful bookcases that vaulted high into the room above his head. Hundreds of books, all waiting to be read.

  He’d always appreciated a library. When he was taken to visit his grandfather as a lad, he’d loved nothing more than to go to his library. First to escape, for there had always been yelling during those visits. But escape had transformed to pleasure as he lost himself in stories and history and learning.

  Now he rested his fingers against the woven spines of the books, dragging the tips across their uneven rows and breathing in the scent of pages and words and adventures yet to be had. Before he could choose one of these future friends to pluck from the shelf, he felt a frisson of awareness up his spine. He was being watched.

  He turned, guarded but trying to keep that from being obvious before he knew who was staring at his back. What he found made his heart thud.

  Selina Oliver was standing in the doorway. She wore a red dress with a deep v-neckline, one that only skirted the limits of modesty because of a silk rose that rested between what appeared to be lovely breasts. Her hair had been curled and piled artfully on the crown of her head, with a silk ribbon laced within that matched the scarlet gown to perfection.

  She was stunning, just as she
had been on the drive. With her bright blue eyes that flitted over him and dusky pink lips curled into a cocksure smile, the kind most women were forced by Society to hide.

  But this woman hid nothing. And that artless seduction in her every look and move woke something…dark in him. Stirred his interest and his cock in equal measure.

  “Mr. Huntington,” she said, her rough, breathless voice breaking the silence that had stretched between them since he saw her in the doorway.

  “Miss Oliver,” he managed to choke out. His throat was suddenly very dry. “I have your brother’s permission to explore the library.”

  Her brow wrinkled and then her smile widened. “Why wouldn’t you? You’re a guest, after all.”

  He frowned. He’d been so taken aback by her appearance he’d almost forgotten his role of invited guest and friend, rather than outsider. Strange that she could so easily sweep his duties out of the way. Dangerous.

  “Of course. I suppose I’m just not accustomed to roaming freely through a duke’s home,” he said. “Friend of his brother or not.”

  Her stare wavered at that and she stepped into the room. Now that they were closer, he could scent the faint hint of vanilla from her hair. He suddenly wanted to pull that ribbon from her locks and let the cascade of her sleek, dark hair fall around her like a waterfall.

  What the hell was wrong with him? This was a distraction he could not afford. And if she knew his thoughts, she surely wouldn’t welcome them, knowing smile or not.

  “Are you a great reader, Mr. Huntington?” she asked, gliding past him close enough that the air between them stirred with warmth.

  He cleared his throat and resisted the urge to loosen his suddenly tight cravat. “I don’t know if I would say a great reader, but a passionate one.”

  She pivoted at that word. “A passionate reader. Is reading the passion in itself, or do you specifically seek out passionate subjects?”