Or was it?
Quickly, but gingerly, Bill was feeling his way toward what was surely a strip of pale light. From somewhere came the distant sound of a crying baby.
Bill pushed at the door in front of them, and the strip of light widened. They stepped out into another alley. The whole area was a maze of narrow passages and cramped buildings, full of unseen dangers. Bill hurried onward, still grasping her hand. But she could hear footsteps, soft but running somewhere behind them.
She tugged at Bill’s hand in warning. He glanced back, then dragged her to the right into another doorway. The door itself was broken and hung half off its hinges. Behind it was a dark, damp cellar, perhaps a deserted dwelling or store of some kind. She darted behind the door, and Bill followed, pressing her into the tiny space. He seemed suddenly very large, and in the circumstances, very comforting.
Although she was not used to being this close to a man, his attention was not on her. Instead, he peered into the space around the door hinge, through which a slice of the alley beyond was visible. In a moment, the nearing footsteps resolved into two men who ran straight past and vanished from view.
Diana waited until the footsteps and gruff voices had faded altogether. Then her breath came out in a rush. “Who were they?”
He shrugged against her arm. “Who knows? Accomplices or friends of our thieves? Passing opportunists who spotted strangers ripe for robbing?”
“Perhaps they spotted the quite excellent cut of your coat.”
“Or the expensive silk of your exquisite breeches. Between us, we are clearly worth a great deal of money to thieves.”
She couldn’t help the giggle. It might have been nerves or sheer relief that they could exchange banter in the midst of what was surely ongoing danger.
He squeezed her fingers and eased his way out from behind the door before he released her. Emerging warily from the doorway, he looked up and down the empty alley, then walked smartly back the way they’d come.
They threaded their way through the maze of narrow streets and alleys until they emerged into wider, less obviously dangerous streets.
“You know where you’re going,” she observed curiously as they moved toward the lights of a more respectable neighborhood. Although she had spent a good deal of her life in London, she had no idea where they were. “You’ve been here before.”
“I’m blessed with a good sense of direction.” A smile flickered across his face. “But yes, I have been in…similar places.”
For the first time, the thought entered her head that he was not of her class, that he was perhaps a low-born, self-made man, one of the new industrialists or bankers. Or perhaps the son of one, since he spoke like an educated person and had seemed at home among gentleman acquaintances at the den. On the other hand, he seemed equally comfortable among the thieves they had just met. He hadn’t been afraid to fight with them. Plus, her theory of his low birth would explain his ease of manner with her in her guise of servant and musician in a gaming den.
As they neared the fashionable squares and crescents of Mayfair, she examined him curiously. His clothes were muddy, his pantaloons and coat both torn. A trickle of dried blood marred the side of his face.
“Um, you probably don’t want to be seen right now by the residents of this part of town,” she warned.
He looked at his grazed hands and torn coat. “Fair point,” he said ruefully and turned into a lane that ran down the back of the large houses. They traveled by back streets, service lanes, and mews, occasionally scampering over garden walls to avoid being seen by yawning servants or eccentric residents. And then they simply moved across the back yards.
It was an oddly fun experience for Diana, who hadn’t climbed anything more interesting than a flight of stairs since she was fifteen years old. Despite his objections to thieves and people prepared to injure servants for no reason, he was clearly quite happy to break the social rules and banter with her while doing so.
In one garden, a cat wrapped itself around her legs, and she bent to stroke it. She smiled as it purred, and felt Bill’s steady gaze upon her. Then a noise from the house sent the cat bolting for the wall. At the same time, Bill grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her behind an outhouse wall.
“Who’s there?” a voice demanded, presumably a servant from the kitchen door.
Diana and Bill stayed silent. A few moments later, the door closed again, and the lock turned with a definite click. She looked up quizzically at Bill who, after a moment, moved back the way they’d come, only closer to the house. After a few paces, he paused, put one finger to his lips, and then, using both hands, eased up the nearest window casement and held out his hand.
Her eyes widened. She had no idea who lived here, but she had no intention of breaking into anyone’s home, let alone that of a wealthy resident of the vicinity of Grosvenor Square. She shook her head vigorously.
“We need to rest,” he murmured. “Do you really want to walk all the way back to the Den now?”
She closed her mouth.
“Just for a few minutes,” he said persuasively. “It will do no one any harm and us quite a lot of good.”
Tempted, she glanced in the window. That was enough for him. He swung his leg over the sill and ducked inside. Perhaps he was simply insane. If so, the condition seemed to be catching, for she found herself thinking it would not be so very bad just to borrow someone’s room for a few minutes. The house’s occupants would remain undisturbed and would never find out.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or groan at herself. But she climbed after him and hauled herself into the dark room. He closed the window softly and brushed past her. A moment later, she heard the strike of a flint, and a candle flared to life.
They seemed to be in a comfortable, if untidy, study. Books lined the walls and spilled over the papers on the large desk. Further piles of each sat on the floor by one of the armchairs.
Bill lit a lamp from the candle, causing the light to grow quite welcoming. Diana shrugged off the noxious coat and sank onto the nearest armchair with a sigh. He was right. She needed the rest.
“I don’t think I can walk all the way back to the Den,” she whispered. “Do you suppose we can pick up a hackney at this hour?”
“We’ll find a vehicle,” he promised. He stood by the lamp, pouring liquid from a decanter into glasses.
“Bill!” she protested, for somewhere in the night’s adventures, they had lost the formality that should have remained between them.
“What? He won’t mind.” Bill picked up both glasses and strolled across the room to drop one into her hand before stepping over the books and papers to sit in the chair opposite.
“You know who lives here?” she asked, surprised, though perhaps she shouldn’t have been. He was not the sort of person to break into a stranger’s house uninvited, although it seemed she was. He must have had an arrangement with a friend, though she couldn’t imagine the reasons.
“Yes,” he replied, leaning forward to clink glasses with her.
“Who?” she asked.
A smile flickered across his lips. He seemed curiously reluctant, but at last, he said steadily, “Lord Garvie.”
“Garvie!” she exclaimed, sweeping her gaze around the books and pens and copious notes. “Are you sure?”
“Appearances can be deceptive.”
“I would not have imagined him a friend of yours either.”
“He isn’t, always.” He drank from the glass and lowered it, gazing at her. “Di, how do you come to be at the Lyon’s Den?”
It shouldn’t have taken her by surprise. She had relaxed too much into her role, and into his company.
“I needed the work,” she muttered, taking a nervous drink from her glass. It was brandy, reminding her only too well of her night of shame at the princess’s house. Dear God, was that only last night? Carefully, she set the glass down again on the table by her elbow.
“Why?” he said again.
“Why do
es anyone need work?”
“To fill their time with meaning,” he said unexpectedly. “Or to live. The Lyon’s Den is not the answer to the former. And I cannot imagine you are in need of the latter.”
Impetuously, she opened her mouth to retort, then realized the impossibility of saying anything at all that was not lies and shrugged irritably instead. “You know nothing.”
Leaning forward, he set his glass down on the nearest pile of books and reached across the space between them to take her hand. It jumped in his, but his gaze remained steady on her face.
Apparently, she trusted him, for she didn’t pull away. He turned her hand palm upward, spreading her fingers, and she shivered at the unfamiliar touch. Yet, it was far from unpleasant.
His gaze dropped to her hand. His thumb brushed the cut pads of her fingers, damaged by the harp strings.
“I know you are not a professional musician,” he said quietly. “Your talent, like the endurance of your fingers, is that of an accomplishment.” He raised his gaze to her face. “A young lady’s accomplishment.”
In panic, she tugged her hand free, stuffing it in her coat pocket, as though that would make him think her more of a man. “That is insulting,” she declared.
“So is failing to trust me.”
“Oh, sir, I can’t trust you!”
“You already have. You traveled with me into streets no gentle person of either sex would normally go. You have entered a stranger’s house on my urging and are drinking his brandy with me. Alone.”
She couldn’t deny any of that. “This is different,” she insisted. “The secret affects more than just me. Please, sir, if we are friends—”
“Friends trust each other.”
She stared at him, stricken.
His lips quirked upward. “At least take off the damned wig.”
It seemed, as her brother said, she was rumbled. Defeated, she snatched off the wig. Beneath it, a lock of hair had fought its way out of the pins and straggled down to her shoulders.
She met Bill’s gaze with defiance.
He said, “The money you retrieved from our Pete was money you paid Mrs. Dove-Lyon.”
She closed her eyes in shame. “It’s less than half of what my mother paid her.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’ll honor the contract. She always does.”
“Do you think so?” Diana asked before she remembered the contract’s purpose. To marry her to the owner of this house. “Oh, God.”
“Won’t you tell me what happened?” he asked, his voice so gentle that it brought sudden tears to her eyes.
She dashed them away with her free hand. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I was foolish, so foolish, and if I don’t do this, I will have ruined everything for my sisters, for my whole family.”
“But they can’t have left you at the Lyon’s Den,” he said in such a way that she felt obliged to defend her mother.
“There was nowhere else for me to go. And I think it earned us a better deal. But Mrs. Dove-Lyon was kind to me, has all her people looking out for me, I think. Oh, dear, I should be back. God knows what she imagines.”
His fingers curled around hers in a gentle, soothing squeeze before he released them and stood up. “One moment.”
He left the room, leaving her to wonder exactly what terms he was on with Lord Garvie. But he was gone only a moment, returning with the news he’d sent for a carriage.
She blinked at him. “Is Lord Garvie home?”
“You imagine him collapsed and sleeping it off at the Den?”
“It crossed my mind. Do they do your bidding here? Even at this time of night?”
“Mostly.” He drew from his pocket the papers he had extracted from the fallen thief they’d named George.
“You should bathe and dress your knuckles,” she observed. “And the cut on your cheek.”
He glanced up in apparent surprise. “I will.”
“What are these? Letters?”
“There is no direction,” he pointed out. “I thought they must be…contracts of some kind, retrieved for money or perhaps peace of mind.”
Her breath caught. “Perhaps it is my mother’s. Mrs. Dove-Lyon was to have sent it round to her and have it returned by five o’clock this afternoon. That is, yesterday afternoon.”
He held them out to her. “Do you want to look?”
She glanced at them, then slowly reached out and took them. “I will just glance to see if my name stands out.” She unfolded the first paper, then frowned and stood up, holding it closer to the light. She raised her gaze to Bill’s. “It’s blank. Empty.” Dropping it on the chair, she unfolded the other and found it exactly the same. “Why would thieves steal blank pieces of paper?”
“I don’t know.” Bill bent to pick up the one from the chair. “But I am beginning to think…”
“What?” she urged.
He met her gaze. “That we are part of a wager, a game we don’t know about.”
She stared at him. “Is that possible?” She dragged her fingers through the loose lock of hair and shoved it irritably behind her ear. “There are connections here that I can’t understand. Lord Garvie is your friend, he owns this house, and Mrs. Dove-Lyon wants to compel him to—” She broke off, gasping, as the door hushed open.
There was no time to dive behind a chair or a curtain, so she just spun around, her back to the door.
“The carriage is outside, my lord,” said the deferential voice of a manservant.
“Thank you,” Bill said.
She turned as the door closed, staring up at him. “My lord?” she repeated, as all her theories of a man born into poverty and struggling into wealth and success crumbled around her ears. “Who are you, Bill?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m afraid I am Lord Garvie.”
Chapter Five
William Angus, seventh Earl of Garvie, called Bill by certain of his friends and family, regretfully plonked the wig back on the girl’s head and, with one finger, pushed the enticing, stray lock of chestnut hair underneath it.
She seemed too stunned to notice, let alone complain. At last, she blurted, “But if you are Lord Garvie, who on earth is the loud, drunken man at the Lyon’s Den?”
“Eric Campbell, primarily a merchant and ship owner, who inherited a bit of land, almost by accident. He is of gentle stock, I believe, on his mother’s side.” He shrugged impatiently. “Contrary to appearances, he is far from stupid, in some matters at least. We have done business together, but we are not friends.”
She lifted her gaze to his face, scowling. She was still beautiful. “But you don’t even sound Scottish!” she accused.
“Do you know any Scots noblemen who sound different from their English counterparts?”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t know that I do. I suppose I was not thinking straight, making ill-judged assumptions. My head was woolly, my spirits…” She rubbed her forehead distractedly, looking like a lost child. Which, in many ways, she probably was.
“Come,” he said gently. “I’ll take you back to the Den.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to do that, though to be honest, I don’t think I can make myself refuse your carriage.”
“I wouldn’t allow you to. And I will come. I need a word with Mrs. Dove-Lyon.”
She remained silent, apparently deep in thought, as they walked through the semi-dark hall to the front door. There were no servants to embarrass her, save for the waiting coachman, and he did no more than tip his hat as they descended the front steps. Keeping to the fiction that she was a boy, Bill did not hand her into the carriage.
She sat beside him, not touching, apparently lost in her own world of anxiety and misery. Too much had happened, he thought, for her to make sense of it very easily.
And yet, she began to speak almost as soon as the horses stepped forward. “I’m Diana Wade. I was one of the Princess of Wales’s ladies. When Her Highness left London, she took my betrothed with her, though not bef
ore he told me I was free to marry elsewhere. In other words, he jilted me. I was so shocked, I didn’t immediately go home but accepted a glass of brandy from one of the gentlemen also left behind. I don’t recall drinking much of it, for the glass was always full, but I must have because suddenly there was a party going on around me, and then I fell asleep. When I woke, my head was spinning, and I staggered home, alone and drunk as a wheelbarrow, well after midnight. I was seen by several people, so you probably know the story already.”
“Actually, no,” he said truthfully. “I don’t. Though I guessed you had some relationship with the Princess of Wales—beyond playing the harp for her.”
“My mother took me to Mrs. Dove-Lyon, who promised to find me a respectable husband to save at least some of my reputation. You’ve probably guessed her first choice was you. Which was why my thoughts were so much on Lord Garvie.”
“They were not pleasant thoughts,” he observed.
An unhappy smiled flickered across her shapely lips. “I thought Simon had broken my heart, and I would be tied for life to a loud, drunken, vulgar boor. I didn’t want any of it, but I have to think of my family.”
She fell into silence.
“And did he break your heart?” Bill asked because for some reason, he wanted to know.
She shook her head. “It seems I am fickle on top of everything else. I don’t miss him. In fact, I wouldn’t take him back if he asked. Which, of course, he wouldn’t.”
Bill stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle. “I don’t suppose you’re telling me this now because you trust me.”
“In the light of who you are, you have a right to know. You couldn’t think much worse of me than you already do.”
He gazed at her. “My dear Di, how can I think badly at all of someone whose company I have enjoyed all evening?”
She turned to the window. “You are kind,” she said shakily.
“No, I’m not,” he said ruefully. “If I was, I wouldn’t have led you where I did.”
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