A Secret Love by Stephanie Laurens
“Strange to say, most ladies don’t find such encounters unamusing at all.”
“I am not ‘most ladies.’ I do not find the particular distractions to which you are devoted at all amusing.”
“That’s because you’ve yet to experience them. Besides,” he glibly added, “you’re used to riding every day. You’ll need some activity to . . . keep you exercised.”
He raised eyes filled with limpid innocence to hers, expecting to meet a narrow-eyed glance brimming with aggravation. Instead, her eyes were wide, not shocked but . . . it took him a moment to place their expression.
Defensive. He’d made her defensive.
Guilt rose within him.
Hell! Even when he won a round with her, he still lost.
Stifling a sigh—over what he did not know—he looked away, trying to dampen what he thought of as his bristling fur—that odd aggression she always evoked—and act normally. Reasonably.
He shrugged lightly. “I must be on my way.”
“I dare say.”
To his relief, she contented herself with that small barb. She watched as he bowed to the girls, setting them laughing again. Then he straightened and deliberately caught her gaze.
It was like looking into a mirror—they both had hazel eyes. When he looked into hers, he usually saw his own thoughts and feelings, reflected over and again, into infinity.
Not today. Today all he saw was a definite defensiveness—a shield shutting her off from him. Protecting her from him.
He blinked, breaking the contact. With a curt nod, which she returned, he swung on his heel and strode off.
Slowing as he neared the edge of the lawn, he wondered what he would have done if she’d offered her hand. That unanswerable question led to the thought of when last he’d touched her in any way. He couldn’t remember, but it was certainly not in the last decade.
He crossed the street, wriggling his shoulders as his peculiar tension drained; he called it relief at being out of her presence, but it wasn’t that. It was the reaction—the one he’d never understood but which she evoked so strongly—subsiding again.
Until next they met.
Alathea watched him go; only when his boots struck the cobbles did she breathe freely again. Her nerves easing, she looked around. Beside her, Mary and Alice blithely chatted, serenely unaware. It always amazed her that their nearest and dearest never saw anything odd in their fraught encounters—other than themselves, only Lucifer saw, presumably because he’d grown up side by side with them and knew them both so well.
As her pulse slowed, elation bloomed within her.
He hadn’t recognized her.
Indeed, after the total absence of his typical reaction to her when he’d met the countess last night, combined with the strong resurgence of it in the last hour, she doubted he’d ever make the connection.
This morning, she’d woken to the certain knowledge that it wasn’t her physical self that he found so provoking. If he didn’t know she was Alathea Morwellan, nothing happened. No suppressed irritation, no sparks, no clashes. Blissful nothing. Cloaked and veiled, she was just another woman.
She didn’t want to dwell on why that made her feel so happy, as if a weight had suddenly lifted from her heart. It was clearly her identity that caused his problem—and it was, she now knew, his problem, something that arose first in him, to which she then reacted.
Knowing didn’t make the outcome any easier to endure, but . . .
She focused on the wrought iron gates through which he had emerged. They were open to admit coaches to the courtyard of the Inn. She could see the Inn’s archways and the glint of bronze plaques—it wasn’t hard to guess the purpose of the plaques.
He’d seemed satisfied and confident when he’d strolled away from the gates.
Drawing in a determined, fully recovered breath, Alathea smiled at Mary and Alice. “Come, girls. Let’s stroll about the Inn.”
Evening came, and with it a strange restlessness.
Gabriel prowled the parlor of his house in Brook Street. He’d dined and was dressed to go out, to grace the ballroom of whichever tonnish hostess he chose to favor with his presence. There were four invitations from which to choose; none, however, enticed.
He wondered where the countess would spend her evening. He wondered where Alathea would spend hers.
The door opened; he paused in his pacing. His gentleman’s gentleman, Chance, pale hair gleaming, immaculately turned out in regulation black, entered with the replenished brandy decanter and fresh glasses on a tray.
“Pour me one, will you?” Gabriel swung away as Chance, short and slight, headed for the sideboard. He felt peculiarly distracted; he hoped a stiff brandy would clear his mind.
He’d left Lincoln’s Inn buoyed by his small success, focused on the countess and the sensual game unfolding between them. Then he’d met Alathea. Ten minutes in her company had left him feeling like the earth had shifted beneath his feet.
She’d been part of his life for as long as he could remember; never before had she shut him out of her thoughts. Never before had she been anything but utterly free with her opinions, even when he’d wished otherwise. When they’d met in January, she’d been her usual open, sharp-tongued self. This afternoon, she’d shut him out, kept him at a distance.
Something had changed. He couldn’t believe his comments had made her defensive; it had to be something else. Had something happened to her that he hadn’t heard about?
The prospect unsettled him. He wanted to focus on the countess, but his thoughts kept drifting to Alathea.
Reaching the room’s end, he swung around—and nearly mowed Chance down.
Chance staggered back—Gabriel caught his arm, simultaneously rescuing the brimming tumbler from the wildly tipping salver.
“Hoo!” Chance waved the salver before his unprepossessing visage. “That was a close one.”
Gabriel caught his eye, paused, then said, “That will be all.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” With cheery insouciance, Chance headed for the door.
Gabriel sighed. “Not ‘Aye, aye’—a simple ‘Yes, sir’ will do.”
“Oh.” Chance paused at the door. “Right-oh, then. ‘Yes-sir,’ it is!”
He opened the door, and saw Lucifer about to enter—Chance stepped back, bowing and waving. “Come you right in, sir. I was just a-leaving.”
“Thank you, Chance.” Grinning, Lucifer strolled in. With unimpaired serenity, Chance bounced out—then remembered and returned to shut the door.
Closing his eyes, Gabriel took a large swallow of brandy.
Lucifer chuckled. “I told you it wouldn’t simply be a matter of a suit of clothes.”
“I don’t care.” Opening his eyes, Gabriel regarded the exceedingly large quantity of brandy in the tumbler, then sighed, turned, and sank into a well-stuffed armchair to one side of the hearth. “He’ll become something employable if it kills him.”
“Judging by his progress to date, it might kill you first.”
“Quite possibly.” Gabriel took another fortifying swallow. “I’ll risk it.”
Standing before the mantelpiece checking his own stack of invitations, Lucifer shot him a look. “I thought you were going to say you’d ‘chance’ it.”
“That would be redundant—I am ‘chancing’ it. Precisely why I named him that.”
Chance was not Chance’s real name—no one, including Chance, knew what that was. As for his age, they’d settled on twenty-five. Chance was a product of the London slums; his elevation to the house in Brook Street had come about through his own merit. Caught up in the stews while helping a friend, Gabriel might not have made it out again but for Chance’s aid, given not for any promise of reward, but simply in the way of helping another man with the scales weighted heavily and unfairly against him. Chance had, in a way, rescued Gabriel—Gabriel, in turn, had rescued Chance.
“Which have you chosen?” Lucifer looked from his invitations to the four lined up on Gabri
“I haven’t. They all seem similarly boring.”
“Boring?” Lucifer glanced at him. “You want to be careful of using that word, and even more of giving way to the feeling. Just look where it got Richard. And Devil. And Vane, too, come to think of it.”
“But not Demon—he wasn’t bored.”
“He was running, and that didn’t work, either.” After a moment, Lucifer added, “And anyway, I’m sure he is bored now. He’s not even sure they’ll come up for any of the Season.” His tone labeled such behavior incomprehensible.
“Give him time—they’ve only been married a week.”
A week ago, Demon Harry Cynster, their cousin and a member of the group of six popularly known as the Bar Cynster, had said the fateful words and taken a bride, one who shared his interest in horse-racing. Demon and Felicity were presently making a prolonged tour of the major racecourses.
Nursing his brandy, Gabriel mused, “After a few weeks, or months, I dare say the novelty will wear off.”
Lucifer threw him a cynical look. They were both well aware that when Cynsters married, the novelty did not, strange as it seemed, wear off at all. Quite the opposite. To them both, it was an inexplicable conundrum, however, as the last unmarried members of the group, they were exceedingly wary of having it explained to them.
How on earth men like them—like Devil, Vane, Richard, and Demon—could suddenly turn their backs on all the feminine delights so freely on offer within the ton, and happily—and to all appearances contentedly—settle to wedded bliss and the charms of just one woman, was a mystery that confounded their male minds and defied their imaginations.
Both sincerely hoped it never happened to them.
Resettling his cloak, Lucifer selected one gilt-edged card from his stack. “I’m going to Molly Hardwick’s.” He glanced at Gabriel. “Coming?”
Gabriel studied his brother’s face; anticipation glinted in the dark blue eyes. “Who’ll be at Molly Hardwick’s?”
Lucifer’s quick smile flashed. “A certain young matron whose husband finds the bills before Parliament more enticing than she.”
That was Lucifer’s speciality—convincing ladies of insufficiently serviced passions that permitting him to service them was in their best interests. Considering his brother’s long, lean frame and rakishly disheveled black locks, Gabriel raised a brow. “What’s the odds?”
“None at all.” Lucifer strolled to the door. “She’ll surrender—not tonight, but soon.” Pausing at the door, he nodded at the glass of brandy. “I take it you’re going to see that to the end, in which case, I’ll leave you to it.” With a wave, he opened the door; an instant later it clicked shut behind him.
Gabriel studied the dark panels, then raised his glass and took another sip. Transferring his gaze to the fire burning in the grate, he stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, and settled down for the evening.
It was, he felt, a telling fact that he would rather wait out the hours until midnight here, safe and comfortable before his own hearth, than risk his freedom in a tonnish ballroom, no matter how tempting the ladies filling it. Ever since Demon’s engagement had been announced nearly a month ago, every matron with a daughter suitable in any degree had set her sights on him, as if marriage was some poisoned chalice the Bar Cynster was handing around, member to member, and he was the next in line.
They could live in hope, but he wasn’t about to drink.
Turning his head, he studied the pile of journals stacked on a side table. The latest issue of the Gentlemen’s Magazine was there, yet . . . he’d rather consider the countess—all six feet of her. It was rare to meet a lady so tall . . .
Alathea was nearly as tall.
Three minutes later, he shook aside the thoughts that, unbidden, had crowded into his mind. Confusing thoughts, unsettling thoughts, thoughts that left him more distracted than he could ever remember feeling. Clearing his mind, he focused on the countess.
He enjoyed helping people—not in the general sense but specifically. Individual people. Like Chance. Like the countess.
The countess needed his help—even more, she had asked for it. Alathea didn’t, and hadn’t. Given how he felt, that was probably just as well. His gaze fixed on the flames, he kept his mind on the countess—on plotting the next phase in their investigation, and planning the next stage in her seduction.
At twenty minutes past midnight, Gabriel stood outside the oak door guarding the offices of Thurlow and Brown and studied the old lock. He’d seen no one while crossing the quiet courtyard. Light had shone from a few windows, where clerks were presumably laboring through the night; the rooms directly below were occupied, but no one had heard him slip past on the stair.
He felt in his pocket for the lockpick he’d brought, one capable of dealing with such a large lock. Simultaneously, without thought, he tested the door, turning the knob—
The door eased open.
Gabriel stared at the door, at the lock that had been unlocked, and tried to imagine the old clerk shutting up and going home without locking up.
That scenario wasn’t convincing.
He could see no light through the crack between door and jamb. He eased the door further open. As earlier in the day, it opened noiselessly. The reception area and the room off it were in darkness. In the room at the end of the corridor, however, faint light gleamed.
Shutting the door, Gabriel eased the bolt home. Leaning his cane beside the door, he paused, letting his eyes adjust to the denser gloom, noting again the position of the wooden gate in the railing of the reception area through which clients were admitted to the chambers beyond.
That, too, opened noiselessly.
His footfalls muffled by the runner, he made his way silently along the corridor and wondered if it was remotely possible that Mr. Brown without an “e” was working late. The occasionally pulsing light presumably came from a lamp turned very low; the lamp was also partially screened, the light thrown back into the room, away from the windows, presumably toward Brown’s desk. Pausing at the threshold, Gabriel listened—and heard the steady flick of pages being turned. Then came the soft thump of a book being closed, then papers were shuffled. That was followed by a different sound—he eventually placed it as papers and books being placed into a tin box, and the box shut.
Another box was opened. A second later came more flicking—steady, even, purposeful.
It didn’t sound like Mr. Brown.
Beyond curious, Gabriel stepped over the threshold into the shadowed gap created by the half-open door and looked around its edge.
A tall cloaked and hooded figure stood before the large desk, rifling the papers she’d lifted from one of the boxes stacked on the desktop. Her gloved hands gave her away, as did the curve of her jaw, fleetingly revealed when she tilted her head, angling a document so that the light fell more definitely on it. The lamp stood on the desk to her left, a tall ledger propped around it to act as a screen.
Conscious of the tension leaving muscles he hadn’t been aware he’d tensed, Gabriel leaned against the bookshelves and considered.
He waited until she’d methodically searched the contents of the now open box and restacked the papers. Then he reached out and pushed the door.
It squeaked.
She gasped. Papers scattered. In a furious flurry she flicked down her veil and whirled, so quickly that, despite watching closely, he failed to catch even a glimpse of her face. One hand at her breast, the other clutching the edge of the desk against which she’d backed, the countess stared at him, as deeply incognito as she’d been in Hanover Square.
“Oh!” Her voice wavered as if uncertain of its register, then, with an obvious effort, she caught her breath and said in the same low tone he recalled, “It’s you.”
He bowed. “As you see.”
She continued to stare at him. “You . . . gave me quite a start.”
“I would apologize, but”—he pushed away from the bookshe
She was breathing rapidly, her gaze locked on his face, then she looked away. With a sliding step, she slipped out of the trap between him and the desk, smoothly turning so she faced the desk again. “I chanced upon them.” Her voice was very low; it strengthened as, collecting the scattered papers, she went on, “I had to visit our family solicitor in Chancery Lane and on impulse I strolled into the Inn. I saw the plaques, so I wandered about—and found them.”
“You should have left it to me. Sent a note and stayed safely at home while I did this.” Why he was so annoyed, he couldn’t have said. She was, after all, a free agent—except that she’d asked for his help.
She shrugged. “I thought, as I’d found them, I’d see what I could discover. The sooner we locate the company, the better. All we need is their address.”
Gabriel inwardly frowned. Had his kissing her made her regret approaching him? If so, too late—she had. Her breathless skittishness reached him clearly, but he knew women too well to confuse resistance with rejection. If she wasn’t seriously tempted, she wouldn’t be skittish. “How did you get in? The door was unlocked . . .” Only then did he notice that the boxes she’d been searching were pad-locked. Only one was presently open, but . . . “You can pick locks.”
She shifted. “Well—yes.” She gestured briefly. “It’s a small talent I have.”
He wondered what other talents she was concealing. “As it happens, it’s a talent I share.” He reached for one of the boxes she’d yet to search. Each was labeled but only with a surname. The one he held was labeled “Mitcham.” He looked at the small lock.
“Here.”
He glanced up. One delicate hand, gloved in the finest Cordovan leather, offered a hairpin.
“It’s just the right size.”
His hand surrounded hers as he plucked it from her fingers. He had the box open in a trice; setting back the lid, he picked up the mass of papers within. “Have you stumbled on any details yet—names or other references to the company?”