A Dangerous Liaison With Detective Lewis (10 page)

She stiffened in his embrace. “You’ve suffered a shock,” Rafe murmured. “As soon as I warm you up, you’ll be off to sleep.”

After a long silence, she uttered a soft, indignant harrumph.

“May I take your hair down?”

“You may not.” She swatted his hand away.

“Might I ease your stays a bit?”

“Will you stop?” Fanny sighed. “I don’t believe in corsets—can’t catch a breath. Dreadful contraptions whose sole purpose is to repress women.”

He scoffed. “Can a corset be any more tragic than that thing I just hung on the door?”

She yawned. “Women’s fashion is always a bit ridiculous.”

“In defense of Detective Lewis, his only care is for your comfort. And I would like to point out he traveled all the way up from London to guard Miss Greyville-Nugent with his life. And very
appropriately
warn her of the danger she might be facing.” He snuggled up closer.

She squirmed in his arms, grinding against him. “What is that?”

He muffled a snort against the fine hairs of her temple. “A good guess would be my cock.” He made an adjustment
to his trousers. “Actually I’m quite certain of it.”

A quick twist of her torso brought her face within inches of his. “Does this sort of vulgar discourse dazzle the ladies in London?” Her glare lingered even after she turned her back.

Rafe grinned. “You seem to believe I do nothing but mingle with the nobs. Attend teas, musicales, and soirees. Let me assure you, Fanny, I have no social life to speak of.”

“Curious how you neglect to mention gentlemen’s clubs, casinos, and houses of ill repute.” She punched up her pillow.

Astonishing, really, that he could find himself lying in bed with Fanny Greyville-Nugent and not make love to her. As if in answer to a second wave of bewildering arousal and frustration, a round little bottom brushed up against him. Her whisper taunted from the land of Nod. “Our truce is over the moment I awake tomorrow.”

Chapter Eight

A
n eye fluttered open, the one not buried in a pillow. Pale light spilled across the tall figure of a man standing near the window. Fanny lifted her head and rubbed both eyes.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Cutthroat.”

She knew that voice. Fanny sat up with a start.

Raphael Lewis of all people, held back a shabby curtain. The splash of carriage wheels and clip-clop of horses echoed from the street below. With each waking blink the disturbing events of the last two days flooded her mind. “I asked you not to call me that.” Propped on elbows, she yawned. “It’s all true then, isn’t it?

“What, darling?”

“The funeral. Yesterday. Last night. I was hoping it was all a nightmare. And I much prefer Lieutenant Cutthroat to darling.” Rumpled and stiff, she found herself in a strange bed and characterless room, with the exception of Rafe Lewis.

He took his eyes off the street and met her frown with a grin. “Are you always prickly in the morning?”

Cool air drifted into the unfamiliar surroundings. “Rafe, what is going on? I feel as though I’ve tumbled down a rabbit hole.”

“Perhaps we have.” He fixed his gaze out the window. “It’s imperative I get to a telegraph office and contact the Yard. Zeno and Flynn may have a few pieces of the puzzle put together by now. Who’s after you—what we’re up against.” Rafe left his post and crossed the room. He removed the chair wedged under the doorknob and checked the passageway. “Last night on the train you asked about a plan.” He ducked back inside the room and returned to the window. “My plan, at the moment, is to make our way to the shipyards in Glasgow. We have agents stationed there and a safe house.”

“But—couldn’t we simply go to the authorities here and explain our situation?”

“Rain’s letting up.” He released the curtain. “Last night, I observed our natty friends in black searching alongside the local constables. What did you see, Fanny?”

“You’re saying the Broxburn police can’t be trusted.” She chewed her lip.

Rafe shrugged. “More likely they’ve been misled.” He removed a pink and white striped paper sack from his pocket and picked out a peppermint. “Breakfast.”

She swirled the candy lozenge around in her mouth. “I need to use the chamber pot.”

“Ready yourself quickly. I’ll be just outside the door.”

Her bustle was barely tied before he was back inside their small chamber. “Several men are checking rooms at the end of the hall.” He led her to the window. “See that ledge?” She craned her neck and tilted her head. “If you crawl along there, about ten or twelve feet, you’ll come to a partially open window. Shove the sash up a bit and worm your way through. You’ll find yourself on the back stairs.”

She took a quick note of the three-story drop. And a ledge barely wide enough to accommodate an alley cat. “Rafe. How do you know all this?”

He shoved the window up as far as it would go. “Did a bit of poking about last night while you slept. Always like to have an escape plan.” He lifted her by the waist. “Knee on the sill. That’s it.”

Tentatively she crawled out onto the narrow overhang and stopped. “If I get killed, I am never speaking to you again,” she called over her shoulder.

“I say, Mother would approve.”

If she so much as snorted a laugh, she’d tumble over the edge. Her heart pattered a country dance inside her chest.

“Push on a bit so I can get behind you.” He scrambled onto the roof. “Remember when you climbed the giant oak by the prayer chapel and were afraid to come down?” Rafe was right behind her.

Fanny nodded. “You talked me down, an inch at a time.” The window ledge was directly ahead. Gritting her teeth, she yanked her skirt out of the way and scurried along the roof edge to the window. Grasping the
open sash, she pushed up the glazing and dipped her head inside.

“Pull yourself through, until you can hitch a leg around.” Except for the sound of his voice, she eliminated all terrifying thoughts and followed his instructions to the letter. Seconds later she was safely inside.

Rafe swung through the window feetfirst and landed beside her. “You did wonderfully well.” He grabbed her hand and they were down the stairs and out the back entrance before she could catch her breath.

They stayed close together, hugging the back sides of the terraced buildings perched above the train station. In daylight everything appeared completely ordinary and unthreatening.

“One almost feels a bit silly, skulking along like this.” She nodded down the embankment. “Might we chance the train station?”

He pulled her into a door niche. “I did a quick calculation. Our chances of escape, should they corner us in the telegraph office, is the grim part of the equation.”

Fanny swiveled around in the doorway and read a brass placard. “Mr. Howard, Surgeon-Dentist.” She wasted no time ringing the bell.

“Fanny what are you—?”

“Simple, Detective Lewis. The dentist who lives here is also a surgeon. If I am not mistaken, you still require stitching up.” Rafe pulled her away from the door just as it opened.

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the back entrance.” A balding, near to middle-aged gent with a good bit of
side whisker stood in the doorway. “How can I help you?”

“My friend, the gentleman standing behind me, is in need of medical attention.”

Rafe pulled her away. “Honestly, just a scratch—“

Fanny dragged him back. “Mr. Howard, allow me to introduce Detective Lewis of Scotland Yard.”

Rafe suddenly stopped their tug of war. “Hold on. I do have a favor to ask.” A reach inside his jacket produced a large banknote and his calling card.

The dentist stuck his hand out for a shake. “Rupert Howard, at your service, Detective Lewis.” The man’s excessively expressive brows traveled up and down as he pumped Rafe’s hand.

“I need you to deliver a few handwritten messages to the telegraph office.” Rafe handed over a note covered with scribblings. “Wait there. Make sure all the messages are sent, then destroy the originals.”

Howard stood up straight, nearly bursting with enthusiasm. “I would be honored to be of service to Scotland Yard.”

“Take care, play your part well, Mr. Howard, and you’ll have a tale to tell your grandchildren.” That said, Rafe moved off, and Fanny yanked him back.

“As I said, Detective Lewis could use a bit of patching up.”

Rafe hissed from the sting of antiseptic and yowled with every stitch. Fanny could not be sure whether she was happiest over the much-needed medical attention to his wound or Rafe’s obvious discomfort. “Why, Detective
Lewis, you’re going to draw alley cats.” She received a glare followed by a spark of light in his eye. Pure Raphael.

In a twinkling, they were back out in the street and on their way out of town. Following the back alley to the base of the hill, they turned south and wound their way through a run-down district of miner’s cottages. Fanny gritted her teeth and recoiled at the sight of fresh laundry lines hanging above open sewer trenches. She studied every detail of the deplorable living conditions, taking mental notes as she and Rafe walked the meandering path between a hodgepodge of crude shacks and stone hovels.

Children dressed in tattered clothing, many without shoes, ran alongside, pulling her skirt and begging for ha’pennies. Rafe managed to distribute a few small coins before a woman chased after the urchins with a switch. Fanny could not take her eyes off the stray children as they ran off, each holding up a copper coin as if it were a gold sovereign.

Rafe pointed at a cluster of oddly pointed hills, gob piles of waste coal heaped along the back side of the shale pits. “Those spoil tips make a lovely picture. Fanny, are you quite sure you want to preside over an industrial empire?” He shook his head. “Honestly, I can’t picture it.”

His words stirred a cauldron of fear as well as joy inside her. “You haven’t been around to know anything about my life, my dreams and ambitions. My interest in women’s suffrage, for instance, goes well beyond anything the feeble masculine brain might imagine.”

She did not miss the subtle flicker of eyelash and accompanying eye roll.

“If I am to run one of the largest steam machinery enterprises in the empire, I believe I should be able to vote, run for government office, and attend as well as graduate college. Many of the rights gentlemen take for granted.”

“But if you wish to be of service, say, to those little guttersnipes, you might do the same good works through a local ladies auxiliary.”

“Charity events?” She scoffed. “If I am to help those families in Broxburn, I can do a better job by attending college and studying business economics or passing laws that protect workers as well as encourage commerce. You remember Mr. Lewis; it was the government who treated the workhouse children as pauper apprentices. Besides, I have a very keen interest in what I believe to be a noble experiment. I should like to see if it is possible to create a manufacturing enterprise that can satisfactorily address the interests of the worker and business owner.”

He stopped and blinked at her. “My God, Fanny, you’ll only succeed in running the factories into the ground—and where will all those street urchins be then? Even worse off.”

“I am determined to try, Rafe.”

“What did your father have to say about these progressive ideas of yours?”

Fanny marched ahead of him. “My father’s opinions are—
were
his. Mine are my own.”

Rafe snorted. “He said you’d run the business right into bankruptcy. He did, didn’t he?”

Fanny covered her ears and lengthened her stride. She would not listen to another word from him. Still, she wondered if her own ambitions for Greyville-Nugent Enterprises were, well, too ambitious. And there was something else—something her father only suspected before his death. Fanny was secretly enthralled with invention and design. The next generation of machines would be driven by electric and petrol engines. Machines that would replace the horse and carriage, and take the drudgery out of housework.

Father had chided her over the concept, but had walked away pulling on his moustache, a sign he was taken with her ideas. Now, more than anything else in the world, she wanted those machines to be engineered and manufactured by Greyville-Nugent Enterprises.

She walked a mile or two in solitary thought before Rafe intruded, hastening her past a cluster of village shops and a few local residents, who paid them little mind. They kept to the shady side of the street until they reached a crossroads. A church and vicarage were not far down the lane.

She stopped to examine the road signs. “Which way are we going?”

“Southeast.” A jumble of arrows pointed in a myriad of directions. Three of them aimed their direction. “Bathgate. Coatbridge. And Glasgow, thirty-seven miles.”

The cooling mists of morning had long since given way to another sultry day. Fanny blew a few loose hairs from her face and rued the black dress with its heavy skirt and shelf bustle.

Rafe turned off the main road and started down a cart path. “Just past those bluffs in the distance, I reckon we’ll find Bathgate and the next telegraph office.”

They soon arrived at a copse of elm trees surrounding a quaint church and a modest vicar’s residence. Fanny raised her skirts and stepped through a patch of tall grass. “How is it you came to be married?”