The Handbook to Handling His Lordship (27 page)

“Jenny, pl—”

“No. You know another spy. Go convince him.”

This, she hadn’t expected. “Jenny, I may not have everything planned completely yet, but I do not mean to murder anyone.”

“You do not understand at all what you may be facing, my dear,” Miss Martine said in an easier tone after a moment spent glaring at Emily. “What you mean or do not mean to do is not necessarily what you could be required to do.”

Blowing out her breath, Emily inclined her head. “Very well. I’ll ask Nate for his assistance. But do you at least have a portmanteau with wigs and face paint or something? I thought all spies carried such a thing about with them.”

“I’m not a spy any longer, Emily.” Grimacing, Jenny turned her back and walked toward her bedchamber. “Wait here. I may have a thing or two that would suffice.”

She returned to the sitting room a few minutes later with a leather-bound case that looked more like a well-used physician’s satchel than a portmanteau. Emily would never have given it a second look, which she supposed was the point of it. “Thank you, Jenny. Truly.”

“My thanks would be you forgetting about this and simply waiting here in safety until Lord Ebberling leaves London.”

“But he’ll return, won’t he? Sometime when I’m less ready for him to appear.”

Jenny gazed at her for a long moment. “You may have the right of it. Only promise that you’ll be careful, whatever you decide to do. Running is always preferable to dying, Emily, Rachel, and whoever else you have become. And whatever heroic men may say, dying is preferable to nothing.”

“I’ll be careful. And if Nate doesn’t think my plan, whatever it is, will work, I won’t do it.” Well, probably not, anyway. Emily pulled open her friend’s door to leave, until Jenny pushed it closed again.

“Oh, bother. I can at least help you learn to look like someone else. Come along. But if your gentleman asks, you forced me to assist you.”

Her gentleman. Nate. He wasn’t hers, though. Not the way she wished for. Not forever. “I agree,” she said aloud. He was hers for today, at least. And she would take all of those todays she could.

Chapter Fourteen

“Shooting him would be easier,” Nate snapped, flinging a stack of his notes across his office.

“It would solve Emily’s troubles,” Laurence agreed, squatting down to pick up the pieces of paper, “but it would begin several new ones for you.”

“Not if no one knew who’d done it.”

That made his brother straighten again. He could read Laurie’s face like a book—was he serious, had he done such a thing before, what was it like to kill a man? “But you wouldn’t, would you?”

“No. I make a point of not killing anyone who isn’t a direct threat to the safety of the nation.” Though at this moment he’d met someone whose safety he prized more highly than that of England’s. That was likely the reason Rycott had made a point of recruiting only single, unattached men and women; evidently a man in love was prone to taking insane risks to protect the woman he loved.

“That’s … good. You only need to continue what you’ve been doing, then. You’ll find something you can use. You said that you always do.”

So he had, back when he’d been stupidly naïve and hopeful. “The man’s remarrying in just over three weeks.”

“Once he marries, then, won’t he think that Emily’s not going to make an appearance after all? Won’t he let everything go back to the way it’s been for the past two years or so, when he wasn’t trying so hard to find her?”

“He might,” Nathaniel conceded. “Of course he might just as easily decide that he’s become even more vulnerable to blackmail. Or that he now has a taste for killing his wives. We have that chit to think of, too, now that we know what he’s about.”

“Can’t we warn her, then? What’s her name, Harriet?”

“Harriet Danders. Yes, we could. If she believed us, then Ebberling would wonder how we discovered that little bit of information, and he’d figure we’d found Rachel Newbury, which would put Emily in even more danger. If she didn’t believe us, she would definitely tell Ebberling, with the same results.”

Laurie planted his face into his hands. “This is very complicated.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned that it would be simple.” Moving away from his office window, he clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Straightforward is for soldiers, Laurie. Straightforward is often also bloodier.”

His brother twisted around to face him. “What would the ideal solution be?”

He considered that for a moment. “Ideally, he would still trust me, and I could buy him a great deal of liquor and convince him to chat all about it while a half-dozen uninvolved lords, ministers, judges overheard him.”

“Then you likely shouldn’t have told him you wouldn’t help him any longer.”

“I know.”

That small misstep had kept him awake for the past few nights. If he’d still been thinking as a spy he would never have burned the best bridge to a suspect like that. But he’d been thinking as a man with a conscience, and worse, one who was more than halfway to being in love with his target. It had been foolish and stupid, and the idea that it might cost him Emily terrified him.

“Evidently, Nate, you’re human. I’m rather glad to see it.”

Nate glared at his younger brother. “I’d be gladder not to have erred.”

“Yes, but that’s you. I was talking about me.”

“Mm-hm. Thank you for your—”

The butler knocked at the closed door. “My lord?”

“Come in, Garvey.”

The servant opened the door partway and leaned in. “My lord, you have a message.”

Hopefully it was from one of his new friends, who’d learned something that he hadn’t. “Let’s see it.”

“The message is still in the hands of the … person who delivered it. She will only give it to you directly, she says.”

Well, that was curious. “Send her in, then.”

The butler hesitated again. “I … do not think it wise to give her access to the house, my lord.”

Nate straightened, walking to the doorway. “And why is that?” he asked, moving past the butler and into the hallway.

“She has a certain … odor, Lord Westfall. An unpleasant one. I had her wait on the front steps.”

Who would send him a smelly messenger? The Duke of Greaves, perhaps, but it was more likely that she’d come from one of his less highborn sources. And that meant the information was more likely to be useful to someone of his background. Hurrying his steps, he descended the stairs and strode into the foyer, pulling open the door before Garvey could reach it again.

The odor that hit him as the door swung back was indeed unpleasant. Sour milk and rotted eggs, he decided, as the female bearing the scent faced him. “You Westfall?” she asked.

He eyed her. Plump, with an ill-fitting gown of uncertain color under a dirty silk shawl and matted black hair that likely housed a colony of lice. There was also the beginnings of a moustache, bad skin, and what looked like a syphillis sore on one cheek. Nate made her for some very poor quality inn’s resident whore. “I am,” he said. “What do you have for me?”

“I don’t think ye’d want yer highborn neighbors t’see,” she drawled.

Hm. Charing Cross, or Whitechapel, from her accent. That could be Abel Dooling, then, though he doubted that Ebberling was even acquainted with anyone from the area. “Come in, then,” he said, opening the door wider and stepping back both to allow her room and to keep upwind of her. “Into the morning room, if you please.”

“My lord,” Garvey squeaked in protest.

He leaned toward the butler. “We’ll open the windows and air it out after she leaves.”

“Or burn it down,” the man grumbled under his breath.

Nate followed the woman into the morning room, watched as she took in the furnishings and decorations. When she turned around he noticed the heel of one shoe, which made him narrow his eyes. They weren’t anything special, but they were of better quality than the rest of—

“Here ye are,” she said, producing a slip of paper from somewhere he didn’t care to question too closely.

He stepped forward, and the female grabbed his wrist, lifted up on her toes, and kissed him full on the mouth. Her tongue raked across his lips, and Nate recoiled. “What the devil are you—”

She started laughing. And then he realized what the devil she was about.

“Emily?”

Dancing a swift circle, she curtsied. “I fooled you,” she chortled, in her own cultured, careful accent. “I told Jenny it would work. She reckoned you’d see through it, but when I found that rotten egg in the alley on the way here, I knew you’d never get close enough to me to even guess.”

Torn between genuine, surprised delight and horror, he held out one hand. “The egg, if you please.”

She pulled it from her reticule, and the stench intensified. At least she’d wrapped it in a handkerchief, but she’d be lucky if she didn’t have to burn her entire wardrobe and cut her hair off to be rid of the smell. Arm outstretched, he carried the bundle to the open morning room doorway. “Garvey, bury this or something,” he ordered.

The butler took it and practically ran out the front door, no easy task for a man of Garvey’s age. Nate shut the door, then strode past his visitor to open the two windows on the garden side of the room.

“Did I overdo it?” Emily asked, still chuckling.

“The smell was a bit much,” he returned, facing her again and looking at her more closely, “but otherwise you’re nearly perfect. Except for the shoes.”

“I couldn’t find any wretched ones that fit.” She lifted her hem a little and stuck out the toe of one black walking shoe. “I didn’t think you’d see them.”

“I noticed them at the last moment,” he conceded, “just before you assaulted me.”

Abruptly she stopped laughing. “I might have stabbed you instead of just kissing you, Nate. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking first that I could see both your hands and that you weren’t carrying a knife, and second that one of my men might finally have found something useful for me.” And that he would have risked an armed assault in order to find the information that would save Emily Portsman from having to leave London and find yet another life for herself—one that didn’t include him.

“Oh.”

He closed the distance between them. “Assault me again, why don’t you?” Taking her chin in his fingers, he lifted her face to his and kissed her softly.

“Better?” she asked breathlessly, once he’d released her.

“You still stink, but yes. Much better.”

Now that he looked, she was quite impressive. Most people wearing a disguise overdid it, adding warts and moles and becoming far too hideous to pass as someone unmemorable and unremarkable. He could see that she’d had some practiced help, though, nothing to make her too ugly, but merely too dirty to warrant a second look. And in her favor, the smell had worked, too, if only to keep anyone from getting too close to detect her true identity.

“Why are you wearing a disguise?” he asked finally, though he could guess the answer. And he didn’t like it at all.

“Because I refuse to hide while you and Haybury and Jenny and everyone else are trying to help me.”

“What if we’re all just waiting for Ebberling to leave London?” he shot back. “Did you consider that?”

“Yes, and they might be doing just that. You wouldn’t be.”

“And how do you know that?”

She touched his cheek, and he just kept himself from leaning into her palm. “Because you’re Nate Stokes.”

The morning room door opened again. “What the devil is that smell?” Laurie asked, walking into the room with his hand over his nose. His eyes widened. “And why is that … woman touching you?”

Lowering her hand, she gathered her skirt and waddled over to his brother. “So this is the boy ye want me to break in? Seems a bit skinny.”

His brother’s face went white, and he backed toward the door. “I don’t need to be broken in! What—”

“It’s Emily, Laurie. Calm down and shut the door.”

“Em … What? Why the bloody hell are you dressed like that?”

Once Laurence had shut the door, Nate faced his stubborn, exasperating, impossible love again. “Yes, why are you dressed like that?”

“I wanted to see if I could change my appearance enough to fool you. Which I did. Which means I can fool him, even more easily.”

Nate shook his head. “No. Absolutely not.”

Laurie circled them, then reached out to poke one finger into Emily’s plump side. “What are you wearing under there?”

“Several pouches of beans and rice,” Emily returned. “Jenny said they hang more like real fat than cloth or feathers would.”

“Yes, they do,” Laurence agreed, poking at her again. “But I don’t think you’ll be able to seduce Lord Ebberling looking like that. Or stinking like that.”

“She’s not seducing anyone,” Nate snapped, too vehemently. She was his, damn it all. For as long as he could hold on to her. “And stop jabbing at her.”

Laurence lifted both hands in surrender. “I think I’ll leave you two to figure this out,” he said, backing away and slipping out of the room.

Nate strode over and locked the damned thing before someone else could barge in. “You want to go work in his household. No.”

“Then you have a better idea?” she retorted. “I am not going to sit by waiting for him to find me any longer! So I can either leave London, or help you stop him before he can murder anyone else, including me!”

He looked at her for a long moment, then frowned. “Take that off, will you? I can’t think with you looking like a Gorgon.”

Emily blew out her breath, then reached up to pull off her black wig. “Very well. But I’m not going away until you have a better plan than mine, or you agree that this is the best way to proceed.”

If he’d ever needed something to prove that Emily was unlike anyone he’d ever met, she’d just provided it. He knew that Ebberling frightened her, yet there she was, prepared to beard the lion in his very den. “And what is your plan, then?” he asked, just barely resisting the urge to pull the pins from her hair and set it loose down her shoulders.

“I…” She frowned. “I’m not certain yet. I wouldn’t dress like this, of course; that was only to see if I could fool you. But I do know how to be a servant. I watched my mother for twelve years, after all. Once I was in his household, I could watch him.”