Sweetest Little Sin (20 page)

Heavily hooded eyes stared fearlessly into Radleigh’s. “You can’t even kill me.”

God, the man was totally helpless, yet he was unafraid of the son who hated him.

“Have you married that wench yet?”

Radleigh’s body slumped. He didn’t know why he couldn’t simply kill the old man, release himself from the prison of his father’s overweening ambition. “Not yet.”

“Well, you’d better snap to it, boy. I’m not dying until I see you wed.”

JARDINE stood silently among the dense foliage that skirted the Hindu temple. Cold fear gripped his heart, shivered down his spine.

It was a boy. A boy had come for the message that blue ribbon contained. Stuffing something in his pocket, the small figure darted out of the entrance, keeping to the shadows. He headed for the village, if Jardine judged correctly.

However, he couldn’t be sure, so he followed, silently, swiftly, tamping down the fury, the fear. He needed a clear head to deal with whatever lay beyond this wood.

The boy had been taught a few tricks, it seemed, but then, so had Jardine. He simply melted into the night when the boy doubled back on his path, or stopped to take a piss and glanced around casually to check for pursuit.

Finally, the boy approached the busy village inn. This was the week of the Glorious Twelfth, of course, the opening of the hunting season, and the place was packed to the rafters.

The boy slipped into the Bird in Hand’s noisy taproom. Jardine hesitated. He didn’t want whoever was in that taproom to know he’d been found out.

He went around to the side of the inn, where the diamond-paned windows were too smeared with soot and goodness knew what to see inside. He took out his knife and soon had one casement open a fraction, enough to see inside.

The boy was nowhere to be seen. Damn!

The time he’d lost while he tried to find a way in had meant he’d lost the boy, too. He scanned the patrons who sat around tables with foaming tankards in their hands, but there was no one he recognized. Certainly, the man he’d expected to see wasn’t there.

He searched the faces again. Perhaps . . . A bent old man rose from his table and walked slowly, a little unsteadily, to the door. Some helpful lad put a hand under his elbow to support him, and when the old man turned his head to thank the lad, Jardine suffered a shock.

Yet, he’d known it had to be. He’d known from the moment he’d seen that bloody ribbon.

Faulkner.

Jardine set his jaw. He wanted to storm into that inn and knock Faulkner’s teeth down his conniving throat.

The rotten swine was using Louisa.

Now her betrothal made some sort of sense, didn’t it? For some reason known only to that Machiavellian mind, Faulkner wanted her to get close to Radleigh.

Bastard!
One did not force civilians into such dangerous and sensitive work.

Jardine strode away, thinking furiously. Louisa had fallen into Faulkner’s orbit because of that damned business with the Duchess of Lyle’s diary. Bloody Max! Why had he seen fit to involve his sister, even peripherally, in something like that? Max knew what Faulkner was. How could he let the old man get his manipulative and very grubby hands on her?

Max ought to be horsewhipped . . . But no, that wasn’t fair, was it? Who could have foreseen that Faulkner would grasp an opportunity to recruit a new operative? Jardine hadn’t dreamed of it, that was certain.

Why?
The question pounded through his brain as he strode back to the house.

Why would Faulkner want Louisa at this party? What did he have to gain by sending someone so inexperienced . . .
Was
she inexperienced, though? She’d planted that ribbon with the aplomb of a seasoned professional. Too bad for her that he was by nature the most suspicious of men. Any casual observer would not have given her movements a second thought.

He frowned. Had Faulkner trained Louisa in secret for this work? Was she here for the same reason Jardine was? And if Faulkner had known she’d be here and the reason for her presence, why hadn’t he briefed Jardine accordingly?

Too many questions. And he’d be damned if he’d go to Faulkner for answers, or at least, not immediately. Might as well keep the element of surprise up his sleeve. He had bugger-all else to his advantage, it seemed.

When he cooled down, he’d be sure to think this through logically, but he was too unsettled by this new discovery—not to mention his recent round with Louisa—to think with any semblance of clarity.

What did that blue ribbon mean?

He’d been striding along without consciously thinking of where he was going and almost left the screen of the wood without dousing his lantern. Grimly, he extinguished the light. He’d send Ives to sniff around the inn, report on Faulkner’s movements.

As for Louisa . . . Oh,
Louisa
he’d handle personally.

DESPITE not gaining her bed until almost dawn, Louisa rose early, ready to start the day.

She never missed her morning ride. It was an ingrained habit, one that her darling Miniver depended on. They always went out, even on the most dismal day, even when Louisa had danced the night away at some ball or other. For some reason, it had become a point of honor never to miss.

She shook her head as a thought occurred. That she never missed a day showed exactly how dull and predictable her life had been to this point.

As a girl, how often she’d longed to give her pony his head and gallop from her family home, through the fields of the home farm, far beyond the estate’s boundaries, and out into the world. She wouldn’t stop until she reached Scotland—or had an adventure—whichever came first.

And then her father had died. Well, why wrap it in clean linen? Tobias Brooke had killed himself. She’d known all along his fall on the hunting field had been due to uncharacteristically reckless riding. No, not simply reckless. Wantonly dangerous. Max knew it, too, though they’d never spoken the truth to one another.

Their beloved father had left them, and from that moment, Louisa had been terrified. Desperate to keep her home and her family intact. Holding everything together while Max went out to work and her mother collapsed with grief and self-pity.

Today, with a wistful glance toward the stables, Louisa broke her habit and instead donned a dark blue walking dress and a becoming chip straw hat for her stroll to the village. She hoped Miniver wouldn’t fret. The dear would have an extra lump of sugar today as an apology for Louisa’s missing their regular appointment.

She had an appointment with a far different character. Or, at least, it was to be hoped she did.

She still hadn’t decided what she’d say to him.

The two-mile walk to the village passed in mental debate. She barely registered the scent of heather and sun-drenched grasses mingled in the air. The Derbyshire countryside, with its peaks and rocky moors, would have to be explored some other time. Her focus remained fixed.

The distant crack of guns made her start. Oh, of course, the shooting would be under way. The beaters would be out, sending flurries of grouse skyward. She shaded her eyes from the strengthening sun and looked up into a near cloudless sky.

There. A flock of birds arrowed upward. One, two, three halted, arrested mid-flight, then plummeted to earth, their eventual resting places swallowed by the thick wood that stood between the moor and the road that led into town.

Now, the dogs would fetch the kill, holding the limp, feathered bodies tenderly in their mouths so as not to maul them.

She walked on, glad of an excuse to stay away. She preferred inanimate targets to birds these days.

The road eventually wound into the village, a single row of buildings and cottages on either side. A pretty, picturesque place, as so many English villages were, culminating in the church at the end of a lane, and opposite that, a green with an enormous horse chestnut tree.

The shops had opened and some displayed a selection of their wares in barrows outside.

And there was the Bird in Hand. She’d reasoned that if Faulkner were in the vicinity, he would most probably put up at the village’s only inn.

Of course, she knew better than to walk into the establishment and inquire after the head of the secret service. Quite apart from the damage asking for a man would do to a spinster’s reputation, Faulkner might not use his own name here.

She wondered, for the first time, why he lurked in the vicinity rather than remaining in his headquarters in London. She’d always assumed he was the puppet master that set all his agent marionettes dancing. Now, here he was, “in the field,” as Max termed it, waiting for word.

If finding that list were so important that he’d become personally involved, why would he entrust such a matter to her?

Only, he hadn’t, had he? He’d entrusted the mission to Harriet.

The notion still rankled. What had taken Harriet away? Had she discovered something important? Had that note even been in her hand? Louisa couldn’t recall ever seeing an example of Harriet’s writing.

“Oh God!” she whispered, furiously replaying the events of that morning in her mind.

What if Harriet had been taken? What if Radleigh already knew that she, Louisa, was involved in a scheme to recover the list of names?

Cold panic swept over her in waves. Her gaze darted right and left. She felt an overwhelming need to be
with
people. Not alone and vulnerable like this.

Blindly, she entered a shop, a haberdasher’s. The abrupt tinkle of the bell overhead as she opened the door made her start.

She sent a quick, nervous look over her shoulder, but outside it seemed as if everyone went normally about their business. Had someone followed her? They might have done, quite easily. How would she know?

Suddenly, she was afraid. More afraid than she’d been last night. Then, all this cloak-and-dagger business had still seemed like a game.

How would she get back to the house if she had to walk alone?

She realized she’d been standing stock-still at the entrance, and that the lady proprietor had called a cheerful greeting.

Louisa made herself respond pleasantly, calmly. In her ordinary life, she might spend an hour in such a place, poring over ribbons and trimmings and bolts of fabric.

She had little patience for her mother’s extravagant frivolity, but back in a time when they’d been obliged to make over gowns and hats instead of buying new ones, it had become a point of honor to strive for fashionable elegance despite their pinched purses.

She possessed a talent for it, she discovered, or perhaps it had been sheer bloody-mindedness that had produced such inspiring results. She had not wanted to look like the charity case she was. And though connoisseurs of the London ton would have easily descried the chasm between her wardrobe and the latest mode, in her and Millicent’s very small sphere during those lean years, people had always complimented them on their style.

And why did her mind run after such inanities when she needed to plan and think?

She fingered a length of scarlet ribbon. Her native caution told her to end this charade, immediately. She had no real hope of finding the paper in question. She ought to report what she knew to Faulkner and leave, whatever he might protest to the contrary. In fact, the safest course might be to hire a post chaise from the inn and not even return to the house.

But . . .

The bell clanged and Louisa’s head jerked up. Lord, she was jumping at shadows! It was only a plump matron with her daughter. But when the pair moved away from the door, Louisa saw him. Faulkner. Standing across the street.

The panic she’d suffered gave way to utter relief. She had to suppress the urge to burst from the shop and call out to him.