Confessions of a Little Black Gown (16 page)

“Exactly,” Tarleton said, slapping his knee and winking at her. “You are as sharp, Miss Langley, as Lady John warned me you would be.”

But one key point to the plan hadn’t escaped Pippin. “But how will I—”

Tarleton shook his head. “My lady, you cannot come with us.”

“But I won’t—”

Mr. Jones was just as adamant. “Her ladyship was firm on the point, you are not to travel with us. It is too dangerous.” Then he looked directly at her. “All the stories in the papers and on the lips of every coachman from London to Hastings is of a lady in red. The fair beauty who rescued her pirate lover. You, my lady, are the real risk of Captain Dashwell being discovered. With him traveling as my valet,
no one will look twice, so intent is everyone in finding you.”

Pippin shook her head furiously, her fingers twining around Dash’s strong, broad hand. “Dash, tell him. Tell him we won’t be separated.”

Dash glanced up at Tarleton, who just simply shook his head.

The answer was clear. There was no escape with Pippin in their company, and Tally could feel her grief cut like a knife even before she started to cry.

Dash drew her closer. “Oh Circe, it is only until the war is over. Before the end of the year, I’d wager. Then I shall be back for you and nothing will ever keep us apart again.”

Yet even as he made his assurances, Tally felt the hand of Fate come down and touch their lives.

It wasn’t going to be as simple as Dash made it sound, and their plans were not going to work. Not with Mr. Ryder already poised to strike.

She glanced up at Tarleton. “Did Lady John say who the Foreign Office sent? Which agent?”

Tarleton nodded. “Lord Larken. They’ve sent Lord Larken.”

Larken? Not Mr. Ryder. Tally let out a breath she felt as if she’d been holding for hours, relief in her every bone.

But not so Dash. He sat up, his brows furrowed together. “Larken? No, you must have it wrong. Larken is—”

“You know him?” Tally asked.

“Yes. He’s a friend. At least I thought he was.” Dash got up and paced back and forth before the
fireplace, then paused. “Is Lady John positive? It’s Larken they’ve sent?”

Tarleton nodded.

Tally looked from one man to another. “But if it is how you say, and this Larken is a friend—”

Dash paced anew. “You don’t understand. Larken is no mere agent. He’s the one they send when there can’t be any mistakes. When it must look like an accident or so that there is nothing left to leave a trail. He’s the most determined, dangerous man I’ve ever met.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Don’t you remember—he was there the night I was arrested—”

“He was?” Tally asked, shocked to discover that she’d had seen him before—or at the least been in the same room. Yet even that, it was Dash’s description of him, for it left her utterly rattled.

“He’s the most determined, dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

“Yes,” insisted Dash. “It was his pistol your sister took and shot me with.”

That night was such a blur of memories, and for the life of her, Tally couldn’t recall the man, so worried had she been for Felicity and moreover, Pippin, who had been in the line of fire.

“That is why I took you in my arms,” he said to Pippin. “I knew Larken wouldn’t shoot. Not you. Not me. Oh, I know much of what he’s done—on the Continent, for that wretched Pymm—and what he’s capable of doing, but I never thought…”

“But this is good, isn’t it?” Pippin asked, rising to her feet as well. “And if he is, as you say, a friend,
then he can’t possibly want to…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

…
kill you.

Sadly, Dash shook his head. “The man I knew, the one I called friend a few years ago, before the entire world plunged into this mad war and made us enemies,
he
wouldn’t have…but the man I saw last winter, the man who was recalled home, isn’t the same person I knew.”

“How can that be?” Pippin asked. “He’s your friend. You’ve saved him, haven’t you?”

This time Dash grinned. “Aye. Several times.” Then he laughed. “Plucked him off a beach near Le Havre once with half the French army after him. Nearly got shot myself trying to get him through the surf.” His eyes glittered as if the memory was that of a fine picnic, but then just as quickly they clouded over and he sighed. “But none of that matters now…”

“But friendship,” Pippin insisted. “His life—”

“Oh, Circe, my dear, good-hearted Circe,” Dash said, reaching out and toying with a strand of her hair. “War can do that to a man. One who’s been asked to do too much. Things he can’t take back or ever forget.” He looked down at his boots and shook his head. “That is the man they’ve sent. Why, he’s feared by even his own.”

Pippin sank down into the sofa, as pale as her muslin gown, and Dash stalked back and forth across the room.

Tally’s gaze followed Dash’s haphazard pacing. “You know what he looks like? You could describe him for us, couldn’t you?” Inside she was making
her own sort of plea.
Please say he’s fair and blue-eyed. Slight of build and a jovial sort.

Describe anyone but…

“He’ll be disguised,” Dash said. “The man is capable of being anyone. A Swiss jeweler, a Portuguese banker, even a priest.” He paused. “His eyes. You’ll not miss his eyes. Black as night. Like looking into the heart of the devil.”

Tally swayed, barely able to listen to the rest of what Dash was saying.
Black as night.

“Teased him once about ’em,” he joked. “We were both drunk, quite pissed actually, and I asked him if he had some Spanish blood to him or if his mother had been a gypsy. Blackened my eye, the ruddy bastard. But I never poked fun at his honor again. Takes it quite seriously. Father was tangled up in some disgrace and Temple said Larken had nearly gotten himself killed ten times over to restore his family’s honor. ’Twas what made him so dangerous, so ruthless.”

“He’s here,” Tally whispered. And once she stopped trembling, she managed to repeat it. This time louder. “Lord Larken is already here.” Everyone turned to her. “’Tis Mr. Ryder, he’s Larken, come disguised.”

Dash’s words rattled about inside her like a discordant melody.
Dangerous. Go to any length.

Even seduce me to gain my confidence
, she guessed.
And I nearly gave in.
She couldn’t stop the shaking that ran through her.

“Tally, you can’t be certain—” Pippin argued.

“His eyes, Pippin, his eyes.” Tally’s hands fisted at her sides. “You saw them. You know I’m right. I said
as much—from the first moment I met him, something wasn’t right.”

That wasn’t entirely the truth, it was more that there was something
too
right about him. Something beneath his vicarly veneer that called to a dangerous vein in Tally’s heart.

“Mr. Jones, dare we wait until tomorrow?” she asked, panic pushing her to see this over, and quickly.

“I don’t see how we can do it earlier,” Tarleton said. “Still have to get Aramintha in and my horses are demmed tired. But tomorrow night it must be and no later.”

“So soon?” Pippin said, as if the plans were finally registering with her. “And then what? How can you ask me to wait again? I cannot, Dash. I cannot.”

“But you must.” He returned to the sofa and tried to cheer her spirits. “Think of this as just another act in your play.”

“Yes, Pippin,” Tally added. “This will give us time to finish
Helene
.”

But Pippin was too lost in her own misery to listen.

Yet even as she tried to cheer her cousin, something about the mention of their play tugged at Tally. She glanced at the empty spot on her desk and then uttered a thick curse in Russian. Words that would have curled the hair of every matron in London—that is, if they spoke the language.

The vehemence behind her exclamation was enough to bring Pippin out of her misery. “What is it, Tally?”

“Our play. Our foolish, ridiculous play!” she com
plained, rising and rushing to her desk, seeing one manuscript but not the other. “I gave Mr. Ryder—oh, drat, I mean Lord Larken—our play.”

“I thought you said he wanted to read it,” Pippin replied.

“Yes,
Tears of Helene
. But oh, Pippin, I’ve done something dreadful.” She turned from the desk, her hands knotting into her skirt. “In my haste, I gave him the wrong play. Lord Larken has
Lady Persephone’s Perilous Affair
. He has our entire plot and plan on his nightstand.”

Miss Browne stood in the middle of the large parlor holding court as if she were royalty.

“I truly loathe her,” Tally complained in an aside to Pippin, who stood beside her. After dinner, the entire assemblage of guests had arrived in this stately room for an evening of light entertainment. The doors to the garden were open and twilight gathered outside, leaving the roses and rich lawns in romantic half-light.

Felicity’s party now included not only the family, the Elsfords, and the Brownes, but also Lord Cranwich, Sir Robert Foxley, and Lord Grimston, a trio known for their love of sport, excellent lineages and, most important, fine estates with good incomes. How Felicity had managed to induce them to come, Tally couldn’t imagine, but she suspected that her sister intended Sir Robert, who sat next to Cranwich on the settee, for one of the Elsford sisters, and either Cranwich or Grimston for Miss Browne.

Most likely because their holdings were close to
the Scottish border, about as far as one could get from Felicity’s domain in Sussex.

Mr. Jones, under his guise as Pippin’s cousin Mr. Hartwell, sat in the corner trying to entertain a less than amused Lady Geneva.

Over by the pianoforte, leafing through the music sheets with the youngest Miss Elsford at his side, stood Lord Boyce, a shy sort of fellow who had warranted a starred entry in the
Bachelor Chronicles
for his gentle disposition and good income.

And the final bachelor was Brent, Viscount Gossett, who stood on the other side of the room with his gaze cast on one lady, and one lady only. He came from a line as old as the Domesday record, and Tally knew exactly whom he was slated for: Pippin. Not that the viscount appeared to mind, for his interest hadn’t moved away from her cousin all night.

And then there was Mr. Ryder. Or rather, Lord Larken. Tally sighed, unable to look at him and not feel…guilt mostly, for even though she knew who and what he was, she couldn’t shake her desire for him.

“You asked how it is that
Maman
and I are still in England, what with our countries at war, did you not, Lord Cranwich?” Miss Browne asked the man seated before her on the couch.

“Yes, Miss Browne, you were saying at dinner that it was a most thrilling tale.”

“It is, if I may modestly say.” The chit preened and posed a bit, waiting for the prompt from her audience to begin.

Pippin leaned over and whispered, “
Modestly
! I daresay she’d be hard-pressed to spell the word.”

Tally laughed out loud, and then covered her gaff by coughing and making a great show of pulling a handkerchief out of her sleeve.

“Do tell us, Miss Browne,” Lord Grimston called out. “I love a good adventure.”

The girl smiled at him, favoring him with a coy glance before she began. “You see, we had first set out for Havana on a British ship with every intention of transferring there to a ship bound for an American port.”

“If they could get past the English blockades, that is,” Sir Robert boasted.

Miss Browne’s eyes narrowed, but her smile never wavered, “Yes, quite,” she replied. “However, our difficulties arose shortly after we left London…”

Tally drew a deep breath and glanced around the room, caring not a whit about the girl’s prattling tale, only to find her attention pulled in Lord Larken’s direction.

She cursed silently in Russian and dragged her gaze toward a vase on the mantel.

“…and can you imagine our despair when the captain struck the colors and surrendered to the other ship?” Miss Browne was saying. “
Maman
and I were in despair over our fate.”

“What is she going on about?” Tally whispered to Pippin.

“Her ship was stopped at sea,” she replied, her gaze fixed on the door, her thoughts most likely occupied with the plan for tomorrow.

“Turkish pirates?” Tally suggested, nudging her cousin in hopes of cheering her up.

“Oh, how I wish,” Pippin said. “Do you think it is too late to hire some?”

“Unfortunately so,” Tally replied in a soft whisper, shifting from one foot to another. “I need to find a way out of here and get upstairs and get our play out of his room.”

Pippin nodded in agreement.

Mr. Jones had tried earlier to slip into Lord Larken’s room, but the man had locked his door. A locked door would present no problem to Tally, however. Still, there was no leaving with Lord Larken’s ever watchful gaze upon her.