All Through the Night (3 page)

“Kill the thief?”

Knowles shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what else you’ll do with him. Not that anyone gives a bloody damn how many broaches and tiaras and geegaws he’s stolen. But I will have that letter, Jack.”

“Yes, sir, you will.”

Jack stared out of the sitting room window of his rented town house, studying the low, jumbled London skyline. She was out there. Mocking him with her thefts. Uncovering for him in excruciating fashion a vulnerability he’d not known he owned—lust.

He’d never reacted thus before. He’d used sex; sometimes he’d enjoyed it. But he’d always known it to be merely another weapon in his arsenal, a weapon he used to control or manipulate another. Sex had never controlled him. He’d never become so involved in an encounter that he’d relaxed his guard or forgotten the purpose of the encounter—and it always had a purpose. Until now.

And with such scant inducement. A petite wool-covered body, dark eyes, the softness of a small, plump breast, the flavor of expensive burgundy still in her mouth . . .

Remembered sensation overwhelmed him, flooding every nerve ending with a physical memory of her. During the long months of his search he’d developed a certain admiration for his thief, the respect of one professional for another. Few had the wherewithal to evade his relentless pursuit.

He had come to look forward to the next move in the game they played. It was a challenge in a life that increasingly offered little recompense for the tiresome act of breathing.

But now—

Now they were involved in another kind of game, a baser form of stimulation. How brutally amusing that she should be the one who roused his sexual appetite from so long a dormancy. He could still feel her: the slight, accidental weight of her breast in his palm, the texture of her hair slipping through his fingers, the heat between her legs.

She’d gotten in beneath his guard. And in those few intense moments she’d fused herself into his nightly dreams. He very much looked forward to renewing their acquaintance.

The man behind him cleared his throat, and Jack unclasped his hands from behind his back. Vexed by his fixation, he turned away from the window, vaguely surprised to find the room steeped in darkness.

“You have news, Griffin?” he addressed the stout, middle-age man by his side.

“Aye, Cap.”

Jack had met Peter Griffin at a Parisian gallows a hundred years ago, when Jack had still thought—or hoped—dying would repay the debts he owed. A silly, naive notion and one with which he’d long since dispensed. Still, his willingness to trade his life for Griffin’s and four of his compatriots had won him Griffin’s loyalty, a loyalty proven a dozen times to be unwavering and fierce. After the war, Griffin had become Jack’s most trusted subordinate.

“Do you have anything for me?” Jack asked.

Griffin pulled out a heavily scrawled over piece of paper and read. “Lady Houghton’s maid was sneaking out to meet the footman. So it isn’t her. The Frost woman might be interesting. Lady Dibbs’s was a confidante of Caro Lamb. Might think of the whole thing as a bloody lark.”

“Anything more?”

“Yes. The Wilder widow retires early every night and her young charge, the North wench . . . she’s a heartbreaker, Cap. Dozens of laddies milling about those honeyed lips.”

“Yes,” Jack said, “but which of them had the opportunity on all occas—”

A tap on the door prefaced the entry of an anxious-looking youngster. He moved to Jack’s side, murmuring his news into his ear. Jack nodded and the young man left.

“Minions,” Griffin said with a sardonic grin.

“Excuse me?”

“I swear, I’m amazed at how many eyes and ears you have working for you. Children, old pikers, whores, and shopkeepers. Quite a network you have, Cap. Like the devil’s minions.”

“Ah, the tiresome devil appellation again, is it?” Jack said.
She’d
thought him the very devil; he’d no doubt of it.

“Some would say, Cap, and I’d not deny.”

“Your Presbyterian antecedents are showing again, Griffin. At this rate, you’ll be finding yourself in a pulpit renouncing your past. And you’re much more valuable as an agent than as a minister.”

“To whom?”

“Why, to me, of course. Too late to switch masters.” Self-irony robbed the words of conceit. “Now, kindly tell me you were discreet. No one knows either the subject or the reason for your inquiries?”

“No one.” Inspiration slowly filled his expression. “Bloody hell, Cap,” he said, “you didn’t tell your father who you suspect?”

“No,” Seward said. Odd that so long into his life a reminder of his and Jamison’s supposed relationship still had the power to prick. “I didn’t tell Jamison.”

“Nor Knowles.” Griffin cocked his head inquiringly. “You didn’t even tell them that their thief was a woman, did you?”

“No.”

“And why not, I’m wondering?”

“Because”—though Seward didn’t move in the slightest and his voice’s modulation did not change one degree, Griffin stepped back—“they might interfere. And she’s not their thief, Griff, she’s mine.
Mine.”

Jack stepped over the threshold into Carlton House. The aroma of overwarm bodies and past-ripe fruit assailed his nostrils as the unchecked shift and press of bodies assaulted his eyes.

He slipped his greatcoat into the waiting hands of an attendant and asked after his host, the prince regent. He doubted whether he would be there. The six years since King George III had succumbed to madness and the prince had acted as his regent had proved unhappy ones. Reviled by the Parliament, despised by his subjects, and deeply depressed by the death of his beloved daughter Charlotte, the time the prince regent spent at his own parties had become increasingly short.

It was just as well, thought Jack. The prince regent could not be trusted to keep up a charade that had him suddenly befriending a base-born soldier.

After ascertaining from the page that the prince regent had, indeed, retired, Jack descended the stairs. A feeling of unaccustomed anticipation hurried his movements as he entered the crush.

From the first, he’d protested the assignment Knowles had given him. Knowles’s only answer had been that finding this thief was more important than any other function Seward could serve. And because Jack had long ago made his pact with the devil, he’d acquiesced without further protest.

But now the thief had made the matter an intensely personal one. Far more than just his body, she’d aroused his imagination. For the first time in his life Jack had become conversant with obsession. He wanted to possess her, all of her: her tensile strength, the exquisite tyranny of her submission, her fear, and her courage.

He took a deep breath and looked around.

Men clad in the universal uniform of the dandy slithered through the throng like black snakes through a field of blowsy feminine flowers. Saffron and ivory, silks and taffeta swept the marble parquet flooring as the women danced by, pale night moths beating powdery wings beneath the light of a thousand tapers.

He slowly searched their faces. He’d spent two weeks cross-checking various guest lists and had found four names occurring regularly: Jeanette Frost, Cora Dibbs, Anne Wilder, and Sophia North. He’d already placed surveillance on each of their houses, having taken for granted that his thief was employed by one of these ladies. But earlier this week, at a similar entertainment, he’d had cause to reevaluate this assumption. He’d been vividly aware he was being watched.

He’d felt her regard as keenly as any physical touch, as intimately as their kiss. Tonight he intended to speak with each of the four women. He smiled. If his thief were one of them, she’d appreciate the excitement of such a close pursuit. He’d felt her addiction to danger in the marchioness’s bedchamber and recognized it immediately. It had been an unanticipated—and fascinating—addition to what he had learned of her.

Something more than monetary rewards drove her. It was the first discernible flaw in an otherwise meticulous career. And one he would use.

He started through the crowd, soon spying a familiar, properly bored-looking young rake—a Mr. Wells, if he recalled correctly—escorting Jeanette Frost from the dance floor. Smoothly Jack intercepted their progress.

“Mr. Wells, I beg you to do me the kindness of an introduction to your lovely companion,” he said, bowing low.

Mr. Wells started but quickly recovered. He sketched a bow. “Course, Seward, old man. My pleasure. Miss Frost, I’d like to make known to you Colonel Henry John Seward. Colonel, Miss Jeanette Frost.”

The dark-haired chit eyed him with a saucy smile, bouncing a little on her toes, causing the soft young flesh above her low décolletage to jiggle merrily.

“I am charmed, Miss Frost,” Jack murmured, “absolutely—”

A red-faced man pushed his way between them. Miss Frost ceased her jiggling.

“Ah,” Jack said smoothly. “Your sire, I presume?”

Miss Frost giggled. The father did not.

“You’ll not know my daughter, sir,” Ronald Frost said. “I don’t care if the king himself claims you as cousin. I know what you are. I had a son under your command in the war.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really!” Frost answered in a low furious voice. “He wrote me letters. I know what went on. What you did. Dirty tricks, assassin’s work—”

“How indiscreet of your son,” Seward murmured.

“Mock me if you want, but my boy died retrieving some useless bit of scut for you. You could have sent someone else. Some plebeian nobody. But you sent my
son.
May you rot in hell for that!”

“I wonder,” Jack asked softly, “do you suppose the piece of hell I claim in your son’s name would be so different from the one I would claim in a plebeian nobody’s?”

“Damn your impertinence!” Frost hissed. “He was my heir!”

Jack inclined his head. “I grieve for your loss. Now, if you’ll please ex—”

“The hell you do!”

Lost now to anything but his own grief and fury, Frost’s voice grew louder. A few bystanders turned curiously. In a minute Frost would cause a scene. Jack could not allow that. He would do whatever necessary to prevent it. As he had always done.

“Your son wrote about his assignments, did he?” Jack heard his voice as if from a great distance.
Good.
He’d thought he’d lost that knack of displacement. He’d thought she’d stolen that from him, too.

“Yes,” the man shot back.

“That”—Jack leaned very close, so no one would overhear his next words—“was not only indiscreet but possibly treasonous.”

The older man’s face suffused with an even more brilliant shade of red. His mouth compressed into a thin line as he realized the admission he’d made. Charges could be brought postmortem against his son and taint his family name.

“That’s right, sir. You have a daughter to remember,” Jack urged calmly, and then stepped back and made his bow. He was ruthless and he was callous. His job demanded he was both, but he could choose not to be brutish. That he could control. “Miss Frost, you have honored me.”

Miss Frost, oblivious to the drama just enacted, giggled again. She was either an extraordinary actress or a very simple chit. No one, Jack concluded with a last look, was that good an actress.

“Sir, your servant.” He inclined his head toward the lockjawed Mr. Frost and turned, already scanning the room for the next applicant to the role of thief.

Between the shifting bodies he spotted Malcolm North standing beside two seated women, one in an ugly cap, the other a fresh-faced beauty. North himself was a trim, nervy-looking gentleman with a ready smile and an opportunist’s glib tongue. While his breeding was impeccable, his line of credit was not. He gambled deeply and lost often.

As Jack watched, North addressed the becapped woman—Anne Wilder—and took his leave.

Jack had observed the young widow a few days before, walking in the park on a particularly nasty evening. The wind had tugged a few strands of hair from beneath her hood and she’d stopped, lifting her face to the sky. Hidden from her view he’d watched, unaccountably stirred by the yearning expression that had traveled so openly across her face.

She was still hidden from him. But though her hair was concealed by an ugly cap and the lavender dress disguised her form, Jack read much in her posture: the graceful repose of hands, the downward cast of her eyes, the upward tilt of her chin. Here was a woman who’d learned patience late and perhaps too well.

Beside her sat North’s daughter, the vivacious and petite Sophia, the sole reason the Norths were here—or anywhere in society, for that matter. Because Sophia was very young and very beautiful and the prince regent liked beauty and youth.

Candlelight danced in Sophia’s burnished red hair, glowed on her pink skin. Her movements were artful, designed to attract the eye. She turned and their gazes met. A little frisson of excitement telegraphed itself in the agitation of the plump bosom displayed by a provocative neckline. The very tip of her tongue appeared and wet her lower lip.

A challenge?
Jack wondered. Well, it would be rude to disappoint a lady.

He set his glass on a table and went in search of Giles Dalton, Lord Strand. It was Strand who was largely responsible for the smoothness with which Jack had been introduced into the prince’s set. The marquis had considered the task hugely entertaining, “Rather like sneaking the wolf into the sheep meadow.”

Jack finally found Strand bending the ear of some blushing pretty.

“Lord Strand,” Jack said, approaching him.

“Ah, Colonel Seward.” Strand straightened and greeted Jack. “Have you ever met a real live colonel, Miss—Miss?”

The plump beauty at his side pouted. “Lady Pons-Burton. My husband is Bertram Pons-Burton.”

The knowledge apparently amused Strand, for he laughed. “Old Bertie? Be damned! Lady Pons-Burton, may I present Colonel Seward, my superior in every conceivable way?”

Without waiting for her answer he patted her hand, his face morose with feigned regret. “Now you’ve had your treat, darling. Begone. I’ve no desire to be called out by some ancient in breeches and powdered wig tomorrow. My club positively frowns on that sort of thing.”

He turned her by the shoulders and pushed her gently away. She departed with a little huff of displeasure.

“Forgive my interruption,” Jack said.

“Nothing to forgive. I’ve no taste for servicing some old stud’s filly,” Strand said evenly. “Now, how can I be of use?”

“Introduce me to Malcolm North’s family.” The words sounded more an order than a request, but during the war Strand had worked for Jack as one of his agents and the habit of command refused to die.

“Little Sophia North, eh? Pretty, isn’t she? I’ve thought of having a go there myself, but I am nothing if not consistent. I absolutely refuse to pursue a woman another man has not claimed.”

Jack did not pretend misunderstanding. A few years ago Strand had discovered he loved a young lady—unfortunately for Strand he’d only made his discovery after she’d lost her heart elsewhere. That woman was now Mrs. Thomas Montrose.

“What more do you know of them?” Jack asked.

The looseness with which Strand shrugged suggested he was well into the wine. Pity. The man had much to recommend him.

“Girl’s been keeping lads on tenterhooks all season,” Strand said. “Her mother died last winter, I believe, and she’s applied to her cousin’s widow, Anne Wilder, to act as her companion and sponsor for the season. Sophia’s something of a romp, I’m afraid. She’s making her bow with a, shall we say, sophistication that is surprising in one so young.”

A few of the prince regent’s cronies sauntered past the North women, the gentlemen’s heads craning as they looked over the beauty and to a lesser extent her chaperone. Like prime cattle at an auction, the women were being discussed, examined, their potential for amusement—all types of amusement—weighed.

“What about the widow?”

Strand’s glance was sardonic. “Ah, you prove yourself a connoisseur, Colonel. An elegant and subtle piece of work is the dark and handsome widow. She has the most extraordinary eyes. Seasoned. Knowing,” Strand said thoughtfully, “and yet she is now regarded as quite a saint.”

“Saint?” Jack asked, amused. In his experience sainthood inevitably proved a guise for self-interest.

Strand’s smile answered Jack’s sardonic tone. “Oh, she wasn’t always so. She made her come-out six, seven years ago. Indulged daughter of a widowed merchant. Only entree to society was some perpetually rusticating grande dame on her mother’s side. Father was knighted for his canny way with a coin during the war. Died a few years back. Yet in spite of her ‘umble antecedents, she became a toast. Most definitely a toast.”

“Really?” Jack invited further revelations.

“Yes. And a prime little hoyden she was, too. Surprised us all when Matthew Wilder, a fine and decent and noble—oh, the glowing adjectives grow too wearisome to recount—actually married the gel. But she settled nicely, I’ll grant her that. Never made a cake or coxcomb of Wilder once he’d given her his name. Not that the marriage ever set well with Mama Wilder. The old biddy still won’t have anything to do with her.”

“How did Wilder die?”

“How did any of us die? In the war. Captained a ship, I believe. But from the way Anne Wilder acts, one would have thought
she’d
died. I’ve never seen a woman so greatly changed. I swear, I’m all agog to see who finally pierces her shell. I liked the hoyden, yet I admit—along with several dozen other fellows here, I’ll wager—I quite lust after the saint.”

“You keep saying saint,” Jack prompted. “In what way?”

“As I said, she’s just recently returned to society, ostensibly to chaperone Sophia. However, she spends a great deal more time eliciting funds for a charity she’s founded than checking the teeth on Sophia’s beaus. She calls it the Soldiers’ Relief and Aid Something or Other.”

Soldiers?
“And you, of course, have contributed,” Jack said.

“Of course. Her cause is quite the darling of society. Everyone donates to it or appears cursed tight-fisted. And you know how important appearances are in my little world.”

Jack did not respond. Perhaps he should cross Anne Wilder’s name from his list. A well-heeled do-gooder with wealthy sponsors for her pet charity would have little reason to clamber about roofs. Still, he reminded himself, the thief was not motivated by avarice alone.