by Candace Camp
Praise for the novels of Candace Camp
“Alex and Sabrina are a charming pair.”
—BookPage on His Sinful Touch
“Fun...frothy...entertaining.”
—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books on His Wicked Charm
“Those who have not discovered Camp’s Mad Morelands are in for a treat… Camp is a consummate storyteller whose well-crafted prose and believable characterization ensure that this intriguing mystery...will utterly enchant readers.”
—RT Book Reviews on His Sinful Touch
“From its delicious beginning to its satisfying ending, Camp’s delectable [story] offers a double helping of romance.”
—Booklist on Mesmerized
“[Camp] is renowned as a storyteller who touches the hearts of her readers time and time again.”
—RT Book Reviews
“A smart, fun-filled romp.”
—Publishers Weekly on Impetuous
“A clever mystery adds intrigue to this lively and gently humorous tale, which simmers with well-handled sexual tension.”
—Library Journal on A Dangerous Man
“Delightful.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Wedding Challenge
“A truly enjoyable read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Mesmerized
Also by Candace Camp
The Mad Morelands
Mesmerized
Beyond Compare
Winterset
An Unexpected Pleasure
His Sinful Touch
His Wicked Charm
Her Scandalous Pursuit
The Aincourts
So Wild a Heart
The Hidden Heart
Secrets of the Heart
The Matchmaker Series
The Marriage Wager
The Bridal Quest
The Wedding Challenge
The Courtship Dance
An Independent Woman
A Dangerous Man
The Lost Heirs
A Stolen Heart
Promise Me Tomorrow
No Other Love
Suddenly
Scandalous
Impulse
Indiscreet
Impetuous
Swept Away
CANDACE CAMP
His Improper Lady
For Kat.
I could never thank you enough for all you do.
You are the best!
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER ONE
THERE WAS A screech somewhere in the building below him. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to awaken Tom in his flat on the top floor. He was a light sleeper, a habit ingrained in him from a childhood in which not letting down your guard was what kept you alive. He lay still for a moment, listening. He knew this building in and out. He’d lived here for a year, ever since Con married, and he’d spent his days in the agency office downstairs for almost fifteen years. He knew each creak or pop; normal noises wouldn’t have brought him out of his sleep.
More than that, he knew how the empty silence of the building at night felt. And right now something felt wrong. He swung out of bed and pulled on his trousers, grabbing the shirt from the back of the chair as he crossed the room to the door. He eased it open and listened. Was that a thump? It wouldn’t be unheard of for someone to try to break into one of the shops on the ground floor, and while it wasn’t part of the bargain for the top-floor flat, he felt an obligation to protect the building. It was, after all, the closest thing Tom had ever had to a home.
He unhooked the ring of keys to the building, curling his hand around them to prevent their clinking together, and moved noiselessly to the staircase. He started down just as quietly, sidestepping the board that creaked. Stealth, too, came naturally to him.
There. Now, that was a thump; he was sure of it. He took the rest of the flight of stairs in a rush and emerged next to Alex’s office. It was dark and silent, and he turned to look down the dark hallway.
He’d expected any intruder to be on the floor below, where the chemist and watchmaker had their shops, but it was the office at the other end of this corridor where a faint light crept out beneath the door. The office of Moreland & Quick. His office. He took off at a run. The doorknob wouldn’t turn, the door still locked, and he ate up precious seconds fitting the key into the slot.
By the time he opened the door, the light had been doused, and a dark figure was climbing out the window. With something like a growl, Tom tore across the room and grabbed the intruder’s arm with both hands, yanking him back inside. They toppled backward and landed on the floor. The thief jumped up more quickly than he, but Tom wrapped an arm around the man’s calves and jerked, and the intruder crashed back to the floor on his knees.
They rose together, wrestling, but his opponent was both smaller and less strong, and Tom was able to wrap his arms around him, pinning the man’s arms to his sides. Surprisingly, a tantalizing perfume clung to the intruder. Even stranger, the man was wearing not trousers and shirt, but some odd sort of clothes that clung to every curve. And there were definitely curves. Soft, inviting curves.
The thief was a woman.
Shocked, Tom loosened his hold, and the thief took advantage of it. Stamping on his bare foot, she shoved her elbow into his stomach, then twisted away. She was out the window in an instant. Tom hurled himself forward, reaching out the window for her, but his hand grasped only air.
The small dark figure was hurrying away from him along the narrow ledge of stone that ran beneath the windows. Her path was no wider than a man’s hand, but she crossed it with quick assurance, one hand steadying her against the brick wall. What the devil was she going to do when she reached the end?
His question was answered when she jumped off the ledge and grabbed the iron bar that held the sign above the shops. The force of her movement made her swing, and incredibly, she seemed to be pumping with her legs to increase the momentum as she worked her way a little farther out on the bar.
After another couple of hard swings, she simply launched herself out into space. Tom’s heart went into his throat as she flew through the air and landed with a roll on the metal awning of the building that abutted his own. There the woman slid down the angled awning, turning as she went. She clung to its frame for an instant
to break her speed, then dropped lightly to the ground.
Grabbing a bundle that lay neatly folded beside the building, she darted up the street. The bundle, it seemed, was a cloak, for she shook it out and flung it around her shoulders while she ran. Tom watched in stunned amazement as she disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER TWO
TOM DIDN’T MOVE for a long moment, just continued to stare in bemusement at the spot where the woman had vanished into the dark and fog. The swirl of her cloak as she disappeared made the whole scene even more unreal, like the end of a magic act. Mysterious, even sinister...and utterly enthralling.
“Blimey,” he whispered inadequately and shook his head, as if that would settle the thoughts and questions running around in his brain like mad things.
It had been no magic act. It had been a planned and well-executed escape. She’d even folded her cloak into a neat pile where she could pick it up as she left. God knows, she would need something to cover what she was wearing. What the devil had those clothes been?
The material had been soft beneath his hands, and it had lain as close to her skin as a stocking. The attire had covered her from neck to ankle, including her arms, but it was scarcely modest, leaving nothing to the imagination. Or, perhaps, leaving too much to the imagination, leading to all sorts of distracting thoughts. There had been an exceedingly short skirt, ending a few inches down her thighs, more enticement than concealment.
That wasn’t why she had worn it, of course; obviously, it enabled her to climb a building and make those astonishing acrobatic moves. Of course! That was it. Her clothes had been the sort circus performers wore. Theirs were white and adorned with sparkling beads and sequins and such, but they were essentially the same. She was an acrobat, one of those women who flew through the air and trusted some man hanging upside down from a trapeze to catch them.
He wondered if she performed in a circus or at a music hall and broke into buildings to make extra coin. Or perhaps she’d traded in her spangles to devote herself to thievery full-time. Such skills would certainly be useful for a thief. And her skills were impressive.
Tom made a disgusted noise. What was he doing standing about admiring the thief’s abilities or thinking about the feel of her breast beneath his fingers and the way her perfume had curled right through him? He needed to work out what was going on. He turned on the gaslights, brightening the room, then surveyed the damage. There wasn’t much.
She was obviously a professional, her work quick and tidy. He might not even have noticed that someone had searched the place if he hadn’t been awakened. He suspected the noise had come from opening the cabinet behind Con’s desk; it had developed a nerve-shredding screech—he’d been intending to oil the hinges, but perhaps he should leave it alone.
Drawers here and there were a little too far out, the objects on his desk not quite in the same place. A book had fallen off a pile—no doubt that had been the thud he’d heard as he went down the stairs. But identifying the noises didn’t help him figure out what she had been after. She hadn’t left with whatever it was; he was certain of that. There had been nothing tucked away anywhere in that costume, and her hands had been empty. That was all to the good, but it left him not knowing what needed guarding.
Tom supposed she might have been after money, but there was no reason to keep anything more than petty cash here. Their profits were put in a bank, and it wasn’t as if they were paid huge chunks of money. No, if one wanted money, the watchmaker’s or the apothecary’s shop downstairs had much more valuable items. And both would have had more cash in the till from daily sales.
In all likelihood she’d been after a certain item that had some value other than a monetary one. And since professional thieves were usually interested only in money, it seemed likely that she had been hired to find this desired object. But what was it? Who had hired her? And why?
The logical answer would be that it was something to do with one of the agency’s cases, so he ran over them in his mind while he went around the room straightening the little things that had been put awry by the thief. Moreland & Quick was well-known for finding and restoring missing people and lost or stolen items. Sometimes the objects were valuable, and they might store them in the office safe until they could return them to the owners, but there were none in the safe now. They had only one case regarding a stolen item, but they had yet to find it.
That left only information. Which would explain opening the drawers and cabinets instead of going for the safe. The agency had only a few open cases. There was a woman who suspected her husband of having an affair. Another one who was certain a servant was pilfering various objects, and she wanted to identify the thief. A missing persons case that had sat in their files for months now and was for all purposes dead. Tom hadn’t turned up a clue, and even Alex’s and Con’s special abilities had come up short.
Clearly, they had no useful information on the missing persons case. As for the wayward husband, Tom had trailed the man several times and had notes of his whereabouts. Since it appeared to him that the man not only had a mistress but also now and then visited a certain married woman, the husband, if he had learned about the investigation, might take steps to thwart it. But the information was secure in Tom’s head; he didn’t really need his notes. In any case, as long as the man kept up his activities, Tom would only have to follow him again.
The same thing applied to the thieving servant—the interesting thing there was that Tom had come to suspect, not one of the servants, but one of the woman’s friends, but again, all he had were notes of interviews with the servants, and that information was easily obtained again, as well as being in his head.
There wasn’t even one of Con’s peculiar cases. Now that Con’s wife, Lilah, was expecting, Con had become far less interested in eerie phenomenon and visited the office infrequently, preferring to stay at home and fuss over Lilah instead. Tom smiled faintly at that thought. Tom and Alex had a small wager over when Lilah would crack under Con’s over-solicitous care and threaten him with bodily harm.
One of their old cases, then? He couldn’t imagine why anyone would grab one of the old files. He went to his desk and pulled out his chair. There was still a trace of that scent in the air here, where they had struggled. It wasn’t quite like any perfume he’d smelled before—exotic and lush—and it affected him as no other perfume ever had—instantly, viscerally.
Even this trace of it teased at him. Shrugging it off, Tom started to sit down. A metallic glint caught his eye, just under his desk, hidden until now by the chair. Reaching down, he picked up a delicate chain and a silver disc.
He remembered at one point feeling the rasp of a chain across his fingers as he struggled with the thief. This must have been her necklace, and the narrow chain had broken and fallen to the floor during the struggle. Certainly, it did not belong to him and had not been beneath his desk this evening when he left the office.
Tom held it up and studied it. The disc was oblong in shape, and someone had created a small hole in one end, no doubt to put the chain through. The chain looked far more expensive than the medallion, which was probably made of tin and stamped rather than engraved. But it had a stylish look to it, and the lettering across it was in a flowing, elegant script: The Farrington Club.
Tom closed his fist around the token and smiled grimly. “Well, it looks like you left me a calling card.”
* * *
DESIREE MALONE JUMPED out of the hackney and ran up the steps into the house, her black cloak fluttering out behind her. Hopeful that no one was awake, she slipped through the front door and started toward the stairs, her flexible, thin-soled shoes soundless on the Persian carpet.
“Desiree?”
Blast it. Of course Brock would be right there in the parlor. She turned toward him, pasting on a smile. “What are you doing still up?”
“Wondering where you were” was her brother’s dry repl
y. Brock Malone stood in the wide doorway of the front parlor, still dressed in his elegant evening attire, arms crossed and face frowning. “I got back from the club half an hour ago and you weren’t here.”
“I’m a grown woman, Brock.” Desiree bristled. “I don’t have to report to you.”
“I am well aware of that,” Brock replied. “But I saw you leave the club two hours ago, and no one knew where you were.”
“We were just worried, Dez.” Her twin joined Brock in the doorway. Wells was a leaner version of their older brother, though his coloring, like Desiree’s, was lighter than Brock’s black hair and storm-gray eyes. He had a lazy way of standing, often leaning against things or lounging in a chair, the picture of vaguely amused ennui. People who took him at face value often regretted doing so.
“Why didn’t you take the carriage?” Brock’s eyes went down to the front of her cloak. The pugnacious stance she had taken had pushed apart the sides of the concealing garment, revealing a large slice of her costume. “Well, you’ve just answered my question. You’ve been breaking in somewhere.” Her brother sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Desiree...what are you doing?”
Not waiting for an answer, he waved the other two inside the parlor and closed the door. Brock walked across the room, his limp more pronounced, as it often was by the end of the day, and stood beside the fireplace, crossing his arms and leaning against the mantel to take the weight off his bad leg. Wells slouched in his favorite chair, legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. He didn’t scowl at her as Brock did, but Desiree could see the intense interest in his eyes, the alertness masked by his lazy posture.
“Now, what have you got yourself into?” Brock asked, his voice now more resigned than stern.
“I haven’t ‘got myself’ into anything,” she retorted, but, seeing the worry in her older brother’s eyes, the lines that bracketed his mouth, she couldn’t help but feel guilty. With a sigh, she took off her cloak, draped it over the back of the sofa and sat down. “I’m sorry for worrying you. But I had something I had to do tonight, and I couldn’t tell the coachman about it.”