Twice Tempted (3 page)

Chuffy stretched out on Alex’s bed as if it were his own. “Closemouthed as that minx fella.”

Alex couldn’t help but smile. “Sphinx, Chuff.”

His eyes opened. “Egyptian cove? Furry hands?”

“The same.”

He nodded. “That. Didn’t even admit that he hates the old man. Does. Thinks he’s smarter. Probably is.”

“And?” Alex knew there was more. There always was with Chuffy. Getting it was like bringing in a recalcitrant trout, though.

Chuffy was scrubbing at the side of his nose again. “Not sure. Marquess stiff-rumped as a deposed king. But something in the way Bryce-Jones described him made me think there’s more. Lion?”

Brandy bottle in hand, Alex paused. That would certainly alter the picture, now, wouldn’t it? The Lions were the group of highly placed aristocrats Alex and Chuffy had been investigating over charges of possible treason when they’d been pulled to deliver Ian’s good news to Fiona.

Fiona. Dear God, where
was
she?

“I haven’t heard anything that might implicate the marquess,” Alex said, his gut sour with dread. “But you’re right about his attitude.”

Alex handed Chuffy a glass of brandy and some of the letters Bryce-Jones had given him. “What do you make of these?”

One look had Chuffy sitting up. “Zounds.” Opening the letter more fully, he shoved his glasses atop his head and held the paper close, as if the German would be easier to translate. It took a minute of reading before he looked up. “Do you know what this is? And from whom?”

“Equations of some sort,” Alex said, pouring them both out a tot of brandy and handing Chuffy his. “From someone named Gauss.”

“Someone?”
Chuffy set his glass down untasted. “Only one of the greatest mathematicians of the age. He seems to be debating a theory using Euler’s formula in something…I’m not sure what, though. I don’t recognize it.”

This time Alex admitted surprise. “You? Impossible.”

Chuffy was nibbling on his thumb, his lips moving as he scanned the letter. “Astronomy ain’t my field. Need to ask the pater.”

Alex nodded, not understanding any of it but the fact that it took complex mathematics to get Chuffy to speak in complete sentences.

“Didn’t you say they lived in the streets?” Chuffy demanded. “How could they have learned this? It’s advanced, even for me. Have to be wrong.”

Alex downed his drink and poured another. “Not wrong. Their mother spirited them to Scotland when they were young to save them from their father. You remember Viscount Hawes.”

Chuffy shuddered. “Didn’t die soon enough.”

“Ferguson supported them all with army pay from the time he was fifteen. He came home some time later to find his mother dead and the girls living under a bridge. But as I said, they were already twelve or fourteen or so. The marquess didn’t step in until Hawes died and left him without heirs.”

“Might have known.”

“Tell me these letters will help us find them.”

Chuffy was shaking his head, his focus obviously on the squiggles and letters and numbers. “Depends on whether they feel comfortable battening down on any of these folk. Not sure I would, but I’ve never had the nerve to correspond, either.”

Alex separated out a few letters. “Fiona bought coach fare to London. A few of these addresses are in the vicinity. We might as well look there first.”

Chuffy began to carefully fold his letter. “Read the others later. Right now, need to do some more work on those blasted ciphers.”

Alex looked up. “No luck?”

“Dead annoying. Have half a dozen messages. Have a whole bloody poem full of keywords. Nothing seems to fit. Awful poem. Hurts my eyes.”

Alex cuffed him on the shoulder. “Well, if anybody can crack the thing, it’s you.”

It was the Rakes’ greatest secret. No one who met Chuffy would think him a code-breaker without equal.

Chuffy frowned. “Feel like Octopus, solvin’ riddles all the time.”

Alex tried not to smile. “You mean Oedipus? Well, it could be worse, Chuff. He did solve the Sphinx’s riddle and get the fair princess.”

“Don’t want a princess. Want to sleep.” Handing over the letters, Chuffy gave a mournful sigh. “Might have known it’d be back to the minx fellow.”

Alex grinned. “The Sphinx is actually female.”

“Figures.” Chuffy shook his head and slid his glasses back into place. “At least I don’t have to tell Drake we’re deserting the princess’s house party. I’ll let you do that.”

Alex felt a new weight drop on his chest. An old weight, really. A weight Chuffy didn’t know about. “I’m not sure Drake will understand.”

Chuffy gave him a look that reduced him to a first-former. “Gentlemen first, old lad. Spies second.”

Gentlemen first.
But was he? Alex wondered.

The truth twisted in his gut like bad meat. Gentlemen didn’t betray their friends. Gentlemen didn’t sell their souls to retrieve incriminating letters. Alex had done both not a week earlier, at the house party he and Chuffy had been monitoring. But at the time he had convinced himself that he could save Ian once he’d saved his own family.

It hadn’t worked out that way.

Alex couldn’t shut his eyes without seeing Ian Ferguson torn and bloody and bowed from his encounter with Minette Ferrar, only still alive because others had found him. He couldn’t think of what he’d done without wanting to vomit.

Every day he promised to make it up to his friend somehow. And now, already, he had failed him again.

He had to find Fiona for Ian.

He had to find Fiona for himself.

“Indeed, Chuff,” he said, downing his drink as if the matter were that easy. “I wouldn’t be able to face my father if I deserted two innocents just to save the nation.”

Chuffy gave that little huff of his as he bundled the letters. “Others can save the nation. No one around for the ladies. Not worried, though. White Knight and all.”

Alex’s stomach lurched again at the hated appellation. “I’m no White Knight, Chuff.”

Chuffy blinked. “You are. Always do the right thing.”

Alex clenched his brandy glass so tightly he almost snapped the stem. “Don’t you dare burden me with that kind of nonsense. No one can always do the right thing.”

But Chuffy’s smile was complacent. “First time I met you, down at Eton. Being beat to flinders. Got your lights darkened for me. Never forget. Haven’t changed.”

Have
, Alex thought, his gut on fire. Only Chuffy still saw the world in absolutes. Mortals like Alex had had their ideals eroded by time trudging along battlefields, lurking in alleys, betraying friends, being betrayed by friends. By lovers and wives. A man didn’t come out of that unscathed. He learned too quickly that he couldn’t save everybody.

God knew he hadn’t saved his wife. He hadn’t even saved Ian Ferguson.

But Chuffy wouldn’t understand. So Alex grabbed the letter in Chuffy’s hand. “I’ll notify Drake that we’ve been detained. He can get Beau Drummond to take over. He was in the princess’s train anyway.”

Climbing off the bed, Chuffy suddenly grinned. “Your sister’s there. Be happy to help, I’m sure.”

Alex groaned. “Pippin? Don’t even think of it. I am not letting Pip loose anywhere near a government investigation. She’d muck it up more royally than Prinny’s marriage.”

Chuffy gave his head a ruminative shake. “Not so sure. Sharp as scissors, Pip.”

“And too inquisitive by half. Don’t encourage her, Chuffy.” Finishing his own brandy, he put the decanter away. “Now, go be Oedipus.”

Long after Chuffy left, Alex stood at the window thinking. He knew he should get back to Sussex and follow up on that blackmail attempt. He should ride hard for London and confer with the Rakes, the untidy group of gentlemen spies Drake led.

But he couldn’t face Ian Ferguson. Not until he’d made some kind of amends. Not until he’d brought home Ian’s sisters. Until he made sure they were safe.

Until Fiona was safe. Until she knew she wasn’t alone again with no help and no friends and no hope.

He thought again of that day four years earlier when he’d met her. He could still remember that jolt of awareness when he’d spotted her, the gut-twisting connection from just the sight of a girl leaning out a coach window. He could still see the wild banner of lush red-gold silk that was her hair, hear that throaty voice.

He smiled at the memory of her standing before him, head back, back straight, determination a living thing in her. He remembered being surprised. He’d set off after a petulant schoolgirl and stumbled over an Amazon. A young, painfully earnest warrior who only wanted to see her sister safe.

He still didn’t know why he’d kissed her. Maybe it was because she had looked so frustrated, so lost when she’d gotten so tangled up in the briars. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been the most honest thing he’d seen in four months spent trolling London’s underbelly. He just remembered the scent of clean soap and sunlight on her neck as he bent to free her from her prison. He remembered being humbled by her bravery.

He remembered that he’d been surprised by her innocence and backed right off. And he remembered that he’d carried the memory of that moment with him through the ensuing years of pain and drama, when futility had eaten away at the marriage he’d once seen as a miracle, and around him the world had shown itself to be a place of deceit and violence.

What if he hadn’t been married the first time he’d met Fiona? Would the ensuing years have been different? Would he have kept better track of her? Would he have missed seeing her the year she should have debuted and wondered what had happened to the sharp, bright girl he’d met?

He would never know. He would never know just how different his life could have been if he hadn’t fallen so hopelessly in love with Amabelle Taverner. He would never know if he could have changed Fiona’s life. Or his own.

Fiona was a strong woman. If Alex hadn’t already known that from her life story, he certainly would have realized it the day he’d delivered the bad news about Ian. She had stood up to her grief and her grandfather’s animosity with amazing courage. But she was more alone than ever, penniless and friendless, with Mairead to care for.

It was up to Alex to find her. Not just for her own sake, or her brother’s. For his own.

*  *  *

In a paneled library two hundred miles away in Mayfair, a tall, lean, middle-aged gentleman sat at his desk going through the mail. The room was silent, even birdsong failing to breach the heavy windows, the man’s only company an elderly hound bitch who lay curled up before the fire. The man was so absorbed in the letter he held in hands that betrayed a faint tremor that it took him a moment to hear the knock on his door.

The white of his thick hair gleamed in the candlelight as he set down the letter and looked up. “Enter.”

Another unmemorable young man cast in shades of medium brown stepped into the room, a missive in his hands. “I beg your pardon, sir, but we’ve just had word. Madame Ferrar has been safely recovered from the authorities.”

The older gentleman went still. “Good. How?”

The younger man shrugged. “The communiqué doesn’t say. Just that she left behind a jarvey with his throat slit. The militia has mounted a full search for her, but she is already out of the area.”

The man behind the desk rubbed at his forehead, his eyes closed. “Good. I admit I was a bit worried. She is the best assassin in Europe, but one doesn’t wish to chance our odds with her in custody. Tell them to get her safely back here as soon as possible. I’d rather she didn’t do any more solo jobs. Her habit of leaving behind calling cards like that is beginning to be commented upon.”

Privens, poised at the edge of the carpet, scribbled on his notes. “Yes, sir.”

“What about the other matter, Privens?” the man asked, reaching under his reading glasses to rub his eyes. “The missing message from Hawesworth.”

Privens shifted on his feet. “No luck, sir. We don’t know if they did it on purpose, but the ladies must have carried it away with them.”

“I doubt they did it on purpose. It was in code, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The silver hair gleamed as the man nodded. “Have we found them yet?”

“We’re having Whitmore followed. Our bet is that he won’t rest until he finds them. Especially after what happened with their brother.”

“Whitmore, eh?” The older man smiled and picked his mail back up. “A tidy solution all round. If he balks at helping us, make sure he knows what he owes us.”

The older man’s smile was satisfied. “It was a lucky day we stumbled across those letters, Privens. Strap me if it wasn’t.”

Privens seemed to be having trouble swallowing. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, make sure we don’t botch this. We need to find those women. And then we need to find that message. Christmas is coming up fast, and everything has to be ready for the attack.” Tidying his desk, he rose to his feet, so that he looked down on the secretary. “In fact, let Madame Ferrar go along to search. It will keep her busy. And as a woman, she should know where they would hide the thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

For a moment there was silence. The older man looked up. “Well? What else?”

“If we find out that the Ferguson women are actually involved, do you wish us to ask for further instructions?” he asked, the missive crackling a bit in his hands.

The old man’s eyebrow rose. “Can’t you take care of them yourself?”

“Of course, sir.” The younger man bowed. “They won’t bother you again.”

The older man nodded and returned to his work. “See to it.”

Chapter 2

F
or the fifth time that day, Fiona Ferguson thanked the education she had received at Last Chance Academy. It had been an awful school, but the staff had definitely beaten the maidenly arts into its students. Because of it, Fiona could draw a figure, sing a tune, play a reasonably melodic piano, sew a sampler, and set a dinner table. All of which she taught to the Blackheath neighborhood girls, along with Latin, Mathematics, Globes, and Natural Philosophy.

As she accompanied the last of her students to the door, she thanked her friend Margaret Bryan most of all for the chance to do both, at least for now. If not for Margaret, Fiona and Mairead would have been back on the streets. Instead, at least until the lease ran out in two months, they had a roof, some furniture, and a bit of egg money.