Suzi Love (3 page)

He caught her by the arms and swung her around to face him. “Hey. Not so fast,” he said with a chuckle. “Stay and we can discuss it.”

When he slid his hands down to encircle her waist, a shiver rippled down her rigid length. Fear? Why now and why from a brazen and gun-carrying housebreaker?

Two tattered leather gloves pushed in the centre of his chest. She gave an ineffectual little shove. “Release me immediately!” Drawing herself up to her full height of a smidgen over five feet, she thrust out to force away his arms. She adopted her hands on hips stance and hissed out her warning. “Cayle. Saint. Martin.”

“Ah, I’m touched.” He put a hand to his heart. “You remember my name.”

“You blind and intemperate dunderhead. Of course I know your name. As you should remember mine.”

He adopted a soulful puppy expression. “Forgive me. I’ve had a long and tiring evening and struggle to recall my own name. Let alone guess at yours.”

The little witch growled, then waggled her head. “We … you and I … ” The tiny tyrant waved an imperious hand back and forth. “Arggh!
You
were the one who taught me to shoot a pistol.”

He squinted at the woman. Regretted the last brandy. And the three — or was it more? — before it. He ripped off her ridiculous hat and pushed back the curtain of wet hair.

“Merciful heavens!” He stared, wide-eyed, at the distinctive green of her eyes and the red sheen of the drier hair on her crown. “Rebecca Jamison? Is it you? Really you?”

“Of course, it’s me.” She rolled her eyes. “How many girls, apart from my sisters and I, did you teach to shoot?”

“Apart from the Jamison girls?” A deep chuckle rumbled up. “None. Three of you created more than enough anxiety for any sane man.” He touched her face, softly. “Good, Lord, you’ve changed so much.”

“Of course I’ve changed. You’ve been gone for several years. In that time, I’ve grown. Become a woman.”

He stared at the subject of his countless youthful erotic dreams. She was older, stronger, and even more defiant. Yet the lady that stood before him was a riper and more enticing version of the girl he’d known.

“Yes, you’ve certainly grown,” he said, unable to resist another lingering look around the bounteousness of her matured figure. He swallowed, blinked, and dragged his gaze back to her face.

“But what in heaven’s name were you thinking, Becca? Making this hazardous, middle-of-the-night visit? Though my slightly inebriated side is enjoying the situation. You, Lady Rebecca, are an incredibly beautiful — ”

A foot stomping on his tiled floor interrupted him. He dipped his head to hide his grin. Becca had always reacted that way to compliments. She’d never believed she was beautiful. Never understood that men were drawn to her as moths to a brightly burning flame.

“Please stop saying those idiotic things and allow me to speak.”

For a long moment, he stood silent. Then he threw back his head and chortled, though even to his own ears his laughter rasped, sounding rusty with disuse. “Becca. Some things never change. You’re the only lady I know who looks like an angel and insults like a navvy.”

“Huh! Your conversations twirl more than a spinning top. They’d drive a schoolgirl to insults.” She ticked off numbers on the fingers of one revolting brown glove. “First, I’m not a thief. Second, I’m not a courtesan needing coin. Third, I’ve never been your mistress.” She looked down at her maid’s drab clothes, shuddered. “And if the women you’re taking to your bed dress this shabbily, I suggest you raise your standards.”

He drew several shuddering breaths. “Correct, on all counts. Now, appease my burning curiosity. What deception did you employ to hoodwink my servant?”

One shoulder lifted in the semblance of a shrug. “Oh, that! A child’s ploy. I laid coins on the fourth step and paid a street urchin to knock on your door and then run. When your gatekeeper bent to retrieve the coins, I slipped around the door and inside.”

Incredulity, then infuriation, surrendered to mirth. The simplicity of her ruse, alongside her detached style of recounting her deception, startled him into a snort of amusement.

“Huh! My ever-vigilant butler diverted by the sight of a few pennies.”

“Oh, no, not mere pennies. Gleaming new gold coins. Rest easy. Your servant’s momentary distraction cost me a high price.”

He lifted his hand to hide his smirk. Since he’d become Sherwyn, Jenner’s behaviour vacillated between extreme formality due a duke or nose-lifting disdain owed to the family’s black sheep. This chink in Jenner’s polished armour pleased him. He dipped his head, and said, “I bow to your finesse as a trickster. Now for my next pressing question. Why are you here?”

“I need your assistance.”

He grinned. “Ah, so once again your white knight is being asked to draw an imaginary sword and defend your ladyship’s honour.”

She groaned. “If only things were still as uncomplicated as in our childhood games.”

He tensed, fists clenched. “Is it Bennett? That scoundrel always had a reputation for coercing innocents.”

She shook her head.

“Lord Mitchell then?”

Another shake of her head. He loosened his fingers, unclenched his teeth, and forced himself to stay calm.

“No. Though as they followed me tonight, they’ve proved themselves to be mixed up in it.”

Despite having no idea why Bennett was a threat, his fingers twitched with the urge to press his knife to the man’s throat again. His instinct had always been to protect Becca. Nothing seemed to have changed there.

“Two nights ago,” she said, “the woman we engaged at the Women’s Betterment Society to tally the Stock Exchange ledgers — our friend — was murdered. The killer was still inside Peggy’s house when I arrived. Her slayer stopped at the back door and stared directly at me, memorising my features.” Her pronouncement was flat-voiced, deadly calm. “Thankfully, his immediate concern was escaping with our two accounting books. But when the cache identifies me as the woman who saw their lackey’s face, I am certain they will send him to dispose of me as well. They are peers, titled and wealthy, and cannot risk being exposed as members of an illegal group. If we cannot stop these men, brutes who employ cold-blooded assassins to do their dirty work, I will certainly be the next to die.”

The Duke of Sherwyn’s chilled blood turned to ice.

Becca watched Cayle. Under the rules of etiquette, she must remember to address him as Your Grace or Sherwyn in public despite knowing he’d abhorred the bowing and scraping to expected by dukes, including his father. She tried to judge his level of inebriation and his reaction to her news though she was wise enough to stay out of arm’s reach. In the past, her knight in shining armour had constantly overreacted if he thought her adventures, or misadventures, placed her in harm’s way.

“Please, my dear.” His fists unfurled as he flung his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “Go ahead and clarify that terrifying statement.” His voice lifted another octave. “Before my hair turns completely white. Or my legs give out.”

Neither Cayle’s fury nor his towering size frightened Becca. But she was terrified that the city would awaken and the streets fill with people before he became calm and rational and listened to her plea for his help in collecting the final proof that would send at least a dozen of their peers to prison for illegal trading practices.

“Or even worse.” He voice was a low snarl as he pointed at the floor. “I misplace the contents of my heaving stomach all over the duchess’s prized carpet.”

She winced. For the tenth time she listed to herself the reasons she’d bravely bearded this particular panther in his lair.

To protect her family.

To secure the nest eggs saved by the fallen women at the shelter.

To save her own life.

As the new Duke of Sherwyn, Cayle was her best, or possibly only, chance to do all that and to keep her promise to Scotland Yard. She hoped he’d listen with an open mind. Hoped he’d comprehend how much danger her family and friends were in without realising how close she had come to also being murdered.

• • •

“I’d gone to Peggy’s cottage to collect some letters she’d written on behalf of our Women’s Society. The door was ajar. I knocked but Peggy didn’t answer so I went inside.”

Peggy had been sprawled across the floor, her sturdy legs protruding at odd angles from her yellowing nightgown. Her hair had been matted with blood and tangled in the strings of her dislodged nightcap and her plait had been a rusty red mess instead of a neat tail of plain brown.

“I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see the murderer standing over Peggy’s battered body. But he runs towards me. Not away.” She shuddered and closed her eyes.

Fingers brushed her cheek. “Becca, I’ll not let anyone harm you.”

“If I’d only arrived at Peggy’s cottage a few minutes earlier.”

“Stop it. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“How can I not? One life has already been destroyed because of me. My friend was killed. Her body discarded like a tattered rag doll.”

His bloodshot gaze narrowed on her face. “So, knowing how your mind works, you’ll try to focus the consortium on yourself, and thereby keep everyone else out of danger.” He raised a brow. “Am I correct?”

Damned man was still a mind reading menace. “You’re wrong. I’ve little wish to confront those men by myself. But neither will I allow anyone else to be hurt.”

“And who protects you from the current set of fire-breathing dragons?”

She raised her chin. “I’ve outgrown such childishness.” She lowered herself to the closest settee, a demonstration of ladylike maturity and a reprieve for her trembling knees.

“Pity.” His forehead furrowed into a pained frown. “Ah. That’s why you wore a disguise. And why you came so late at night.”

She nodded. “The consortium watches our house and tracks our movements. In order to speak with you alone, I was forced to dress like this and sneak out the servant’s entrance in the dark. Although luckily, the syndicate’s inner circle doesn’t want me dead. Not yet.

“Wonderful!” He glared at her. “Your blithe not yet offers such comfort to my nerves.”

She glared back. “Oooh! I cannot explain if you interrupt with your sarcastic jabs.”

He dipped his head, and then waved a hand. “I apologise for my uncertain temperament this evening. Please, tell me about Peggy, and what she did at your Women’s Society.”

“She writes — No, she wrote the letters for women who wish to invest in stock ventures. We were trying to keep their identities, and their objectives, a secret.”

“Why? Because they’re women? Because jobbers stood for them in the Exchange?”

She raised a brow. “For someone only recently returned to London, you appear exceedingly well acquainted with the inside activities at the Exchange.”

He shrugged. “I’ve spent every spare moment since my return settling the family’s finances. Naturally, I’ve looked in at the Foreign Funds Room a time or two. Nobody in my position can afford to let bank balances sit idle, despite some labelling it as trade.”

“I’m impressed, Cayle. You detested accounts when your father wanted you to learn.”

Once more he shrugged, yet his show of nonchalance appeared overdone. “Perhaps it was more of not liking the methods of the educator, rather than the subject being taught.”

She shuddered at her recollection of the late duke’s disciplinary methods. “But you’re correct,” she said, pushing away images of birch rods twanging on bare flesh. “Some in our prudish society frown upon a gentleman of your calibre frequenting auction rooms, but for a woman, it’d be an outrage.”

His eyes fixed upon her, all signs of his earlier fatigue vanished. “I can well imagine.”

“Though legally nothing prevents a woman from owning shares,” she said, assessing his concentration by the tense way he held his long, muscled body. “Visiting members are vetted at the door. Bank managers and jobbers pay eight guineas a year to enter the main Exchange room, yet self-righteous men evict females.”

“So, is it your gender that sees you under threat?”

“Not merely our gender. When the consortium heard we invested in secret, and often did very well, at first they became alarmed. Then, they became angry. Very angry indeed.”

“I can well imagine men abhorring being bested by a female.”

“Exactly. Therefore, we utilise Foster and Braithwaite as our agents and invest through them using the minimum identification on any documents.”

“Impressive. I heard that Foster and Braithwaite’s business grew twelvefold in the last few years by riding on railway stocks.”

“Hence, our problem. Their profits, our profits, became legendary. People speculated about the mysterious names on share certificates.” At his puzzled look she added, “Simple enough. We draw up letters. Ladies sign with their initials and family name, nothing more, so no one realises the investors aren’t men. Or rather, no one did before.”

“And now?”

“Two weeks ago, some members of the outer circle approached my brother, Michael. They believe him to be personally responsible for our own change in fortune.”

“How big a change in fortune?”

“Oh, nothing too major.” She waved a hand in a vague manner and hoped her face didn’t flush. “Modest successes. Dividend rates in excess of six percent in some situations.”

His eyebrows shot upwards. “Six percent! Nobody I do business with calls that modest. No wonder they wish to obliterate all reference to your family, and your society.”

“Yes, if only we’d been able to keep our good fortune a secret. We take the uttermost care with our clandestine activities, as we value our privacy and our reputations.”

He raised a brow and pointed at his clock. “Oh, yes. Great care with your reputation!”

She chose to ignore him. “Michael laughed it off. Refused to join their so-called group of friends who dabbled in investing. So they raised the stakes. If he refuses to hand over m … his calculations for all the new railway share ventures opening, within the next two weeks, they vowed to destroy the members of his family. One by one, until he gives in.”

“Ah, now I understand. That’s why they’re keeping you alive. They’re waiting to acquire the records. They assume as eldest, and involved in a charitable society, you hold the most knowledge of … ” When he mumbled, she stiffened. Did he guess? “Of Michael’s future stock predictions. Then, when they have all they require, they’ll kill all — ”