Lady Be Good (22 page)

“No,” she said softly. “I believe they call that a machete.”
Nick sometimes carried one, when his task—in his own words—
required persuasion
.

Palmer gave her a surprised glance. “Have you handled one?”

She scowled. “Of course not! What do you take me for?” And then, because she couldn’t resist: “I’d prefer a cutlass, anyway. A proper handle can be useful.”

His smile was slow and delighted. “You’d make an excellent strategist in Her Majesty’s ranks.”

She knew it was a compliment, but she wasn’t in the mood to be admired. “To say nothing of the assayers. I had no idea that they went armed to the teeth.”

“Yes, and Buckley Hall so short of undergrowth to chop. Why are you wandering the halls so late? Aren’t you bound for town on the morrow?”

A neat change of topic. “On the very first train.”

He took up a rag and polished the muzzle of the gun. “You’ll stick by her during your trip, of course.”

“Of course.”

“At every step.”

She bit her lip. “
Every
step won’t be possible. She plans to meet with a client.”

“Then you’ll wait outside the door. Eavesdrop, see what you can learn.”

She snorted. “
That
would make a fine scene. You needn’t fear competition—he’s trying to pull his property from the Russian auction. She’s out for his blood.”

His long lashes dropped, veiling his expression. “Nevertheless,” he said, rubbing hard at a spot on the muzzle. “They’ll be alone, and I don’t like that. See what you overhear.”

He took a curious interest in Miss Everleigh’s business, didn’t he? Frowning, she studied him. The lamp
behind him limned his shaggy blond hair, creating the illusion of a halo. Had it not been for his scar, he might well have posed as an angel. An avenging angel, yes. He had the coloring for it, and the cheekbones, and the tall, powerful build.

The notion suddenly struck her as a black joke. He was the last thing from angelic. He was a liar—she knew it in her gut. He’d been lying to her from the start. “Unless your aim is to start a rival auction house, I can’t imagine why you’d care about her dealings with a client.” Or her business correspondence, on which Lilah reported so diligently each day.

“I’m a jealous man,” he said mildly.

“Perhaps. Yet I don’t think you’ve any real interest in her—not romantically, at least.”

He looked up, knocking a lock of blond hair from his eyes. “Is that so?” he said coolly.

“If you did, why would you spend so much time flirting with me?”

He laid down the gun. “I haven’t flirted with you,” he said evenly. “At one point, I was going to make you come, but then you ran out. Is that why your temper’s so sour? Come around the table, and I’ll fix it for you.”

She flushed. Men did not use such language with decent women. “Do you mistake me for a whore as well as a fool?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Both would be more convenient.”

She stood. Let them have it out, then. “But I already offered to become your whore. My body for the letters—and you turned me down, if you recall. You said I would get them back when she agreed to marry you. But that won’t ever happen, will it?”

He was very still. “That depends,” he said. “If you do as I instructed—”

“No.” She was tired of this deceit. “You want something else from her. I thought for a time I didn’t need to know what that was. Didn’t
want
to know. But now it seems I have no choice—for I
need those letters
. So tell me what you need to happen in order to give them to me. Be honest, and perhaps I can help you get it.”

“Fine,” he said quietly. “A new bargain.” He rose and came around the table. Only when his hand closed on hers did she realize that she had picked up the machete. He loosened it from her grip and set it aside, but did not let go of her hand. He yanked her fist to his chest, pressing it there so she felt the vibrations as he spoke. “We’ll renegotiate, shall we?
Honesty
. You start. Tell me who you are, Lilah Marshall. Where you learned to throw and sharpen a knife. What your true name is. And who keeps you so afraid that you would sell your body for three slips of paper.”

His gaze was merciless, drilling. She looked away. “There must be some other—”

“No. We start there: what happens if you don’t get back the letters. That, I would very much like to know. Tell me that. Tell me
who
. And in reply, I’ll be honest as well.”

“You ask for the one thing,” she said very softly, “that you know I will not give.”

“No. I merely demand honesty. Do the terms suit you?” He paused. “No, I didn’t think so.”

Frustration made her tremble. He seemed to sense it. His grip gentled. He lifted her hand to his mouth. “I can speak to one thing,” he murmured against her knuckles. “You’re no whore.” He kissed her pinky, then
her ring finger. “If you were truly for sale, I would have bought you a hundred times by now. And I still would not be done with you.”

A shuddering breath slipped from her. Even now, at this moment, he could unsettle her so simply. Send her slipping sideways from fury into desire. “My secrets are boring,” she said. “Don’t you see? You’ve no need to know them! I’m a common thief, who answers to a very ordinary master. There is nothing—”

“No.” His grip suddenly crushed her. “That is where you’re wrong. You answer to
me
. And God help you, Lilah, but I am coming to enjoy it. Remember that, next time you want to ask me questions. I have as many for you. And I want the answers just as badly as you do.”

A cleared throat broke them apart. One of the assayers hesitated in the doorway, his glance politely averted. “Must speak to you a moment, m’lord.”

“Go,” Palmer said to her. “I will see you tomorrow evening, for your report.”

Everleigh’s Auction Rooms occupied the corner of a wide street not far from the market at Covent Garden. Its broad stone face gazed with curtained dignity upon the constant stream of traffic—which, at this afternoon hour, consisted mainly of farmers driving emptied carts led by oxen. At the top of the carpeted steps, two footmen lounged against the brass rail, idly watching the throng of quarrelsome young men who were sporting down the pavement.

“There will be other footmen posted during the auction,” Ashmore said. He stood beside Christian on the
roof of a neighboring building, inspecting the scene through a battered field glass.

“Four at most.” Christian had taken careful note during the ball. “Two to handle the carriages, two at the door. What of the other entrances?”

“The footpath to the east is used by the employees. Not guarded, as far as I can tell. There’s also the alley in the rear, where cargo is received.”

“They’ll close that down. The czar is sending a proxy to bid—his people will insist on the closure, for security.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Yes.” Since the appearance of the damned candelabrum, he had been in steady communication with the Russian embassy. Obolensky seemed skeptical that Bolkhov yet lived; the possibility indicated a failure of intelligence among his own men, spies throughout London who kept tabs on Russians.

Still, he had agreed to investigate. Capturing Bolkhov would be a great boon to his career. The general had absconded from his post, taking half his troops with him. Mutinies were not the kind of insult the Russian government forgot or forgave.

“A risky ploy,” said Ashmore soberly. “If they catch him first, we’ll never know it.”

“That won’t happen.” To remain forever uncertain of Bolkhov’s fate would be tantamount to a curse designed to drive Christian mad.

“Look. Here comes Catherine Everleigh.” Ashmore handed him the field glass.

Catherine’s traveling cloak billowed as she swept down the front steps. At her heels hurried Lilah, looking harried and cross. He could make a good guess about what had put that expression on her face.

“Something amuse you?”

Christian realized he’d begun to smile. “That woman has a natural gift for unpleasantness.”

“Is that your spy trailing her?”

He nodded.

“Brilliant strategy,” Ashmore said, “employing hostesses for an auction house. My wife is considering the same for her perfumeries. Says she could cut the product in half and sell twice as much, as long as the salesgirls were pretty.”

For some reason, the remark rubbed him wrong. “She’s got a brain,” he said. “Lilah, I mean.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear it.”

Christian snorted. “I’d imagine your wife would object to that remark.” Blindfolded and drunk, Mina Granville could have outwitted a chess master. Her company spanned the Atlantic, supplying perfumes and lotions to every debutante from Philadelphia to Warsaw.

Ashmore cut him an odd look. “So she would. But we’re not speaking of wives.”

Christian checked the impulse to argue. “You’re right,” he said. A stupid woman would have served him better.

But her company would not have been nearly so satisfying. Without Lilah at Buckley Hall, he’d have lost his mind by now.

She was not merely a distraction. It had begun to trouble him deeply that he had involved her in this game. She deserved better. She deserved . . . a tower. Some profoundly safe place, where she could watch from the window, well above the messy fray, and want for nothing.

Ashmore was still watching him. “Time must drag in
the country,” he drawled. “It occurs to me to wonder—however are you keeping yourself occupied?”

Christian snorted. He would need to be deaf to miss the ribbing note in the other man’s words. “I take regular walks.”

“Not alone, I hope?”

“Indeed. Marvelous for the constitution.”

“Mm. Do you know what else profits a man’s constitution? Or shall I spare your bachelor sensibilities?”

“Stuff it.” He ignored Ashmore’s delighted smile and turned his glass toward Catherine Everleigh.
There
was his proper concern, damn it.

Catherine was turning a tight circle on the pavement, evidently searching for a carriage that should have been waiting. She drew her hands out of her muff, jabbing the air for emphasis as she spoke up to the footmen.

The men rushed down the steps to her. One bowed low; the other bounded down the street, hunting between parked vehicles.

“Coachman gone missing,” Ashmore observed.

“God help him.” Christian handed back the field glasses. “I should follow.”

“Who? They’re splitting up.”

Christian wheeled back. Catherine was stalking down the pavement toward the footman, who had located coach and driver. Lilah, meanwhile, had turned on her heel in the opposite direction.

He swore. “She’s meant to follow Catherine. She knows this.
All times
, I said.”

Ashmore shoved the glasses back into the case. “You go with Catherine. I’ll follow the other one.”

“Lilah.” He caught Ashmore’s look. “That’s her name.”

Ashmore cocked a brow. “I’ll remember that. Are you certain you have your lovely Lilah managed? For she appears to be hailing a cab.”

Christian resisted a black urge to laugh.
Managed
was not how he would describe it. He shoved aside the memory of how she sounded when she moaned, instead thinking of a more recent moment.

She was very good with a knife. For a clerk’s daughter, she was too good, and too calm under pressure, by far. And for a thief . . . she chose to steal objects of no use to her whatsoever. For her
ordinary master
, she said.

Christ. He cursed through lips that had gone numb. Could he have been such a fool?

“You follow Catherine,” he bit out. “I’ll make sure I haven’t pulled an adder into the nest.”

Neddie’s tavern was windowless, the air thick with smoke, most of it wafting from her uncle’s cigar. Lilah waved it away. “Can’t you put that out? Since when did you favor tobacco?”

“Gentleman’s habit.” He sucked the tip into a fire-bright glow. “Getting soft,” he added when she coughed. “Must be that country air rotting your lungs. Where did you say you’ve been?”

She hadn’t told him. A good thing, too. Otherwise he might have written her at Buckley Hall. As it was, she’d nearly choked when Susie Snow had handed over his letter this morning. “You can’t write to me,” she told him now. “It’s too risky.”

Nick’s silver eyes narrowed as he tapped his cigar, casting ash onto the floor. The ground was already thick
with discarded shells, sticky with spilled beer. “Fear I’ll sully your postbox?”

She sighed. With other people, Nick plainly traded on his fearsome reputation. But with her, he got prickly about it. “I don’t lodge alone,” she said. “The other girl I share my room with—she also works at Everleigh’s, and she’s the greatest gossip alive. It’s a wonder she didn’t steam open the envelope.”

Certainly Susie had been glad to speculate.
A gentleman admirer?
she had cooed.
You’ve been busy in the country! You must tell us all about it
.

Fortunately, the other girls had been more interested in what Lilah could tell them about Lord Palmer. She had come up with some ridiculous story about the fine figure he cut on horseback. Miss Everleigh’s appearance had spared her the need to embroider further. She’d never been so grateful to be summoned for a scolding—this time, for forgetting her new position.