Rapturous Rakes Bundle (5 page)

French spy, a criminal so cunning that he—or rather,

she—had so far evaded all their attempts at a trap.

Gradually they had drawn nearer to their target. They

had eliminated all those who must be innocent and had

identified a core of people who must be guilty. As yet

they had not caught them red-handed and the spy and

her allies grew ever more brazen, operating under their

noses.

In the course of the investigation both Cory Newlyn

and Richard Kestrel had found themselves brides from

amongst the ladies of the Midwinter villages. It was a

fate that Lucas was determined would not befall him.

In his most recent letter, Justin wrote that the hunt

for the Midwinter spy was entering its final phase.

They had identified that the culprit was still passing

treasonable information to the French on such crucial

matters as harbour defences and troop movements.

They knew that the spy ring communicated by a pic-

torial code rather than a written one. And they now

knew that the original cipher, the key to the entire

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The
Rake’s
Mistress

code, was engraved on glass. They had some examples

of the code in their possession, and Cory, who was a

specialist in code breaking, was working on it even

now.

All they had to do was catch the spies in the act—

and find the engraver. The latter task had been allo-

cated to Lucas and was the reason why he was cur-

rently in London.

Lucas put the letter down slowly. Finding the en-

graver had been like looking for a needle in a hay-

stack. It was not that there were hundreds of glass

engravers in the city, for it was a highly specialised

trade. The difficulty lay in the fact that he was trying

to identify a certain style of engraving. He had ques-

tioned each man, examined their work and inspected

their premises in minute detail on the pretext that he

was about to place a very large order with them. Dur-

ing the course of his enquiries he had found nothing

to match the patterns he was looking for. The mystery

engraver had proved tiresomely elusive. But now per-

haps she had found him rather than the other way

round...

Life was hard, Lucas thought. It must be a damnable

business for a young and unprotected woman to be

obliged to survive by making her own living. If Miss

Raleigh was tempted by work that was not quite legal,

who could blame her? If she accepted a commission

from the Archangel Club, one could not be surprised.

There might even be a connection between the Mid-

winter spy and the Club. The Archangel Club was a

shadowy organisation with some downright dubious

members. One heard rumours...

Nicola
Cornick

37

Lucas pulled the inkpot towards him, selected a

sheet of paper from the drawer, and started to pen a

letter to Justin. If there
was
a link between the Mid-

winter spy and the Archangel Club, then only Justin

had the necessary authority to penetrate the club’s

mysteries. He would have to concentrate on Miss Ra-

leigh herself and see what he could persuade her to

divulge.

Lucas paused. Under the circumstances it was im-

perative that he should rid himself of any designs on

Miss Rebecca Raleigh. There was nothing that con-

fused rational thought so much as unbridled passion.

He liked to keep the two matters entirely separate and

had determined after the disastrous
affaire
in his youth

that he would never make the mistake of letting his

feelings cloud his judgement ever again. It was a vow

that had been surprisingly easy to keep. Until now.

Lucas’s quill scratched as he outlined the situation

to his brother. Of course, he could be getting ahead of

himself and the girl might prove to be quite innocent.

He paused. Innocent was, in fact, a word that would

fit Miss Rebecca Raleigh. For all that she was not a

schoolroom miss, for all that there was a certain ro-

bustness about her as a result, no doubt, of earning her

own living, regardless of all those factors there was

also a vulnerability and an inexperience to her. It was

a curious mix and an intriguing one. A woman who

was not overset at the sight of a naked man, yet re-

tained a certain demureness...

Lucas twitched the pen between his fingers. He did

not delude himself that he was going to find the situ-

ation easy to manage. In some ways it would be his

38

The
Rake’s
Mistress

pleasure to pursue the acquaintance with Miss Raleigh

and in other ways it would be the very devil to keep

his mind on his work. But first, he needed to find her.

He reached out and pulled the bell. When Byrne

trod softly into the room he looked up from his letter.

‘Byrne, would you be so good as to send for Tom

Bradshaw first thing in the morning?’ he said. ‘There

is someone I need him to find.’

‘Very good, my lord,’ Byrne said impassively.

Bradshaw, who had originally been employed by Cory

Newlyn on some of his more dubious adventures, was

a frequent caller in Grosvenor Square. All of the ser-

vants knew not to question why.

The butler went out. Lucas sat back in his chair and

picked up his list again. He could be jumping to con-

clusions, of course. Miss Rebecca Raleigh might be

precisely what she said she was and his quarry was

somewhere else on the list. A prickling instinct, a cer-

tain excitement, told him otherwise. Lucas had always

had a finely developed sense of danger. It had kept

him safe and gained him a legendary reputation

amongst his men for having more lives than a cat.

Now it was telling him that the end game had begun.

His quarry was within his grasp.

Chapter
Two

It was the sound of carriage wheels on the cobbles

outside, followed by a peremptory rapping at the door,

that roused Rebecca from sleep the following morning.

She turned her head and squinted at the clock on the

chest of drawers opposite her bed. It was ten o’clock.

The light from behind the thin curtains was bright and

the street was alive with noise.

Rebecca went across to the window and threw the

casement wide. Down in the street was the familiar

green and gold coach with the angel crest on the door,

and hanging from the coach window was a buxom

beauty with tumbling golden curls and a plunging red

silk dress. When she saw Rebecca peering out she let

out a shriek.

‘Becca! Come down and let me in!’

Dragging a shawl about her shoulders, Rebecca ran

down the wooden stairs and threw back the bolts on

the workshop door, then went to unfasten the shutters.

The light flooded in. It showed the room to be narrow,

neat and plain, with a workbench beneath the window

and shelves displaying engraved glassware on the op-

40

The
Rake’s
Mistress

posite wall. Despite its austere emptiness, the studio

had touches of elegance. There was a polished rose-

wood desk where Rebecca took orders and a brocaded

chaise-longue
on which the customers might sit whilst

they discussed their requirements or waited for their

commissions to be packed. Rebecca’s uncle, who had

run the business until his death some four months pre-

viously, had impressed upon her the need to present

an efficient and prosperous face to the world, no mat-

ter the underlying truth. Prosperity begat further busi-

ness, George Provost had told her, so the workshop

was always swept clean and tidy, a fire always burned

in winter and the shelves displaying the glass engrav-

ing were illuminated by candlelight to show the work

to advantage.

This morning, however, there was no fire since Re-

becca had overslept and she had had no maid to help

her since the death of her aunt and uncle. She lived

and worked alone, doggedly enduring with a business

that was failing as surely as the icy rain fell on the

London streets. First it was the apprentices and the

journeymen who had left, shuffling their feet and

avoiding her eye as they made excuses of better paid

work elsewhere. She had known that they did not wish

to work for a woman; had known that the vintner

whose premises abutted hers on the left and the gold-

smith who penned her in on the right were making a

wager over who would get her workshop when she

was forced out. The commissions had fallen off with

the news of her uncle’s death and she had had to let

the maid go after only a month, unable to pay her

wages any longer. She felt nervous living on her own,

Nicola
Cornick

41

for although Clerkenwell was a far more salubrious

neighbourhood than many, it was no place for a

woman alone. Nan had told her this before and here

she was to tell her again.

Nan Astley swept into the workshop in the manner

of a duchess visiting a hovel. She held her red silk

skirts up in one dainty hand for all that she knew the

floor was clean enough to eat her dinner off. Once

upon a time little Nan Lowell had grown up with Re-

becca on these streets, and these days, widowed and

embarked on a very different life, she never lost an

opportunity to make a fuss over her newfound position

as the mistress of a wealthy lord. To those who looked

askance and told her she was no better than she ought

to be, Nan turned up her nose and swept past in a

cloud of jasmine perfume. It was Nan who had gained

Rebecca the precious commission from the Archangel

Club, for she had once been one of the famous Angels

herself before Lord Bosham had taken her under his

sole protection. Now she viewed Rebecca as some-

thing of a prote´geé and was determined to help her

gain a rich protector and escape her penury. In vain

did Rebecca argue that she would rather die then sell

her body. Nan ignored her protests, being something

akin to a force of nature.

‘Darling!’ Nan approximated a kiss an inch from

Rebecca’s cheek. ‘You look so peaky. And here was

I thinking I would find you already hard at work on

the vase and rose bowl for the Archangel. Whatever

can have happened to you that you are still in bed at

this time?’ Her big blue eyes darted around the room

as though expecting to find a gentleman effacing him-

42

The
Rake’s
Mistress

self against the panelling. ‘My darling Boshie posi-

tively forced me out of the house to call on you, Becca

darling. Boshie, I said, nobody but nobody calls at ten,

or at least only if they are most ill bred. But Boshie

was very insistent.’ Nan arched a plucked eyebrow. ‘It

is very cold in here, my dear. I shall get Sam to light

a fire whilst you dress. Ten minutes, mind you! Do

not keep me waiting!’

Rebecca trailed meekly back upstairs to dress. There

was no point in resisting Nan on the small things when

it took all her strength to oppose her on the large ones.

It took her a mere five minutes to dress in the plain

brown gown she wore when working, and to bundle

up her thick, dark hair under the old-fashioned lace

cap. Pausing to inspect her reflection in the speckled

mirror, she thought that she did indeed look pallid

compared to Nan’s glowing and painted beauty. But

such beauty came at a price and it was a cost that

Rebecca had never been prepared to pay. Even now,

as she faced ruin head on, she shuddered to think of

it.

When she descended she found the workshop can-

dles lit, a fire burning in the hearth and Sam the coach-

man fetching a tray of tea in from the scullery. Nan

was reclining on the
chaise-longue,
her feet up on Re-

becca’s workbench, her head tilted as she admired the

red shoes that peeped from below her petticoats. She

looked abandoned and beautiful, all tumbled fair curls