Unmasking the Thief, page 1
Unmasking the Thief
Pleasure Garden, Book 5
Mary Lancaster
© Copyright 2022 by Mary Lancaster
Text by Mary Lancaster
Cover by Dar Albert
Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
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Produced in the United States of America
First Edition March 2022
Kindle Edition
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All Rights Reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Additional Dragonblade books by Author Mary Lancaster
Pleasure Garden Series
Unmasking the Hero (Book 1)
Unmasking Deception (Book 2)
Unmasking Sin (Book 3)
Unmasking the Duke (Book 4)
Unmasking the Thief (Book 5)
Crime & Passion Series
Mysterious Lover
Letters to a Lover
Dangerous Lover
The Husband Dilemma Series
How to Fool a Duke
Season of Scandal Series
Pursued by the Rake
Abandoned to the Prodigal
Married to the Rogue
Unmasked by her Lover
Imperial Season Series
Vienna Waltz
Vienna Woods
Vienna Dawn
Blackhaven Brides Series
The Wicked Baron
The Wicked Lady
The Wicked Rebel
The Wicked Husband
The Wicked Marquis
The Wicked Governess
The Wicked Spy
The Wicked Gypsy
The Wicked Wife
Wicked Christmas (A Novella)
The Wicked Waif
The Wicked Heir
The Wicked Captain
The Wicked Sister
Unmarriageable Series
The Deserted Heart
The Sinister Heart
The Vulgar Heart
The Broken Heart
The Weary Heart
The Secret Heart
Christmas Heart
The Lyon’s Den Connected World
Fed to the Lyon
De Wolfe Pack: The Series
The Wicked Wolfe
Vienna Wolfe
Also from Mary Lancaster
Madeleine
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Publisher’s Note
Additional Dragonblade books by Author Mary Lancaster
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
About Mary Lancaster
Prologue
Returning to England after almost a year, Francisco de Salgado y Goya was in no mood to tolerate his instructor’s rudeness. Once, he had been amused to be summoned so urgently, only to be left kicking his heels while His Arrogance finished writing his document or reading a report or just staring into space, deep in thought.
Today, Francisco had neither the patience nor the time. He wanted to go and get drunk with his friend, Ludovic Dunne—it had become something of a homecoming tradition—and then do nothing. Nothing was calling him.
So, despite the fact that his instructor continued to write with provoking precision, Francisco dropped his letter, which landed on the desk, right beneath His Arrogance’s hovering pen.
“What is this?” His Arrogance inquired without looking up.
“My resignation,” Francisco said happily. “Feel free to read it at your leisure. Goodbye, sir.”
Turning on his heel, Francisco walked jauntily to the door. At least he appeared to have stunned his instructor at last, for no sound at all came from the desk behind him. That gave him some satisfaction.
“But you can’t,” His Arrogance said at last.
“On the contrary, sir, I have.” Francisco didn’t even pause, except to reach for the door handle.
“Wait. Please, sit.”
Francisco debated whether or not to keep walking. But the man had never said please to him before, so he supposed one civility deserved another.
He sighed but returned to the desk and sat opposite his instructor. The pen was in its stand.
His Arrogance held the letter by one corner. “Why?”
Francisco blinked away the image of the dead face beneath the waves, which had become somehow unbreakably connected to older, much more devastating visions of death. “I’m bored.”
The instructor stared at him. “Are you? But I need you. No one else is available for the next several weeks, and the matter is urgent.”
“Dear me,” Francisco remarked. He flicked a speck of dust from his cuff.
“Do this one, simple thing for me—one evening’s worth at a pleasure garden—and I will accept your resignation.”
Francisco stared at the ceiling and counted to ten. In several languages. Perhaps the instruction would be so simple that he could still go and get drunk with Ludo.
“With full fee?” he asked.
A long-suffering sigh rent the air. Anyone would think it was his money. “Very well.”
Francisco lounged back in his chair, already bored. “Instruct me.”
Chapter One
“Have you ever been to Maida Pleasure Gardens, Miss Matty?”
The innocent question was thrown at the governess by her one-time pupil, Miss Catherine Dove, who sat at the other end of the sitting room deep in whispered conversation with her friend Hope Darblay.
Matty, on the window seat, mending one of her pupils’ stockings while lost in her own none too pleasant thoughts, glanced up warily. “No. Maida Gardens are bad ton, and full, besides, of vulgar people and pickpockets and worse. You would not find it comfortable.” Matty knew better than to say Mrs. Dove, her employer and Catherine’s mother, would not allow it.
“Oh, I know that,” Catherine replied. “Hope and I were just discussing it because although it’s such bad ton, both our sisters have been there.”
“Well, then,” Matty said mildly, resolving to keep a rather closer eye on Catherine, “I suggest you ask Lady Wenning or Lady Dominic for a description. It would certainly do your consequence no good to be seen there.”
“My sister Grace will be home, soon,” Hope said happily. “And then life will be much more fun.”
Matty frowned at her over the spectacles she wore for close work. Hope had never been her pupil, officially, but a fondness for books and study had forged a bond between her and Catherine well before their come-out, and Matty had tried to fill the gaps left by Hope’s somewhat ramshackle education. Such as the rules of polite behavior.
Hope’s sister, the Countess of Wenning, had been a leader of the fashionable set, before accompanying her husband on his diplomatic posting to Constantinople. Although Hope had shown little desire to follow in her sister’s tonish footsteps, she was a pretty little thing, and Matty doubted she was short of suitors—despite the Darblays’ well-known financial difficulties.
For a sensible, bookish girl to fall in love so fast made Matty uneasy. But she had her own problems to deal with. And despite their eccentricities, neither young lady was foolish.
Matty finished mending the stocking and put it away in her basket before leaving them to their private conversation. It was almost time for them to change for dinner and then on to the next party. While Matty could write back to her mother and tell her she had no intention of coming home.
She would certainly have been considerably more worried had she overheard the discussion that followed her departure.
*
Miss Hope Darblay did not take her first London Season seriously. She accepted gentlemen’s declared admiration with a hefty pinch of salt, well aware that had it not been for her brother-in-law Wenning’s money propping up her dowry, they would not have come near her at all.
Catherine, of course, was in a different position. As the next best thing to penniless, she was entitled to believe in the honesty of her swain, Mr. Granton. Or, at least, to expect it.
“What reason could he have for going to Maida?” Catherine worried.
“Just a lark, I’m sure. Rollo used to go sometimes. Maybe he still does.”
“Yes, but Rollo,” Catherine said significantly.
Hope accepted this perfectly reasonable criticism of her brother in the spirit with which it was meant. “Well, yes, he’s not respectable, and neither is Maida. But the point is, no one goes there to be serious. Your Mr. Granton will dance and perhaps even flirt in a lighthearted manner—”
“As he does with me?” Catherine interrupted, her expression ominous.
“Of course not. That is my point. Maida is a lark. You are his serious interest. At least, I imagine that’s the case. You certainly should not start imagining he is the biggest libertine since the Duke of Dearham—or Rollo!—just because he chooses to go to a Maida Gardens masquerade.”
Catherine looked stricken. “I don’t really know him at all, do I?”
“After two weeks, a few dances, and a drive in the park, no,” Hope said bluntly. “How could you possibly? You only know what you see and what your heart tells you.”
Catherine’s breath caught and held. “We could go to Maida and see for ourselves.”
“Spy on him?” Hope said dryly. “I hardly think that will endear you to him. Nor will his discovering you there, for it will make him think you a hoyden, and your reputation would be bound to suffer.”
“You’re right about the latter,” Catherine admitted. “But as for spying… Doesn’t it seem to you we are expected to go into marriage blind? No one tells us anything until we are married, so any unsavory details are kept from us.”
“I think we’re supposed to rely on our menfolk to keep the wolves from us.”
“Like Adrian,” Catherine said wryly of her own brother.
She had a point. Adrian was a schoolboy. And besides, Hope was adventurous by nature. “I suppose we could go, just for an hour or two, and keep out of his way, just ensure he isn’t entertaining his mistress at Maida.”
“Oh, God, do you think he is?” Catherine broke in.
“Of course not. But if it takes an hour to set your mind, it would be worth it.” Hope frowned. “Only we don’t want to stand out at all. And two young females without a male escort will certainly attract too much notice. Which will be unpleasant for us and, worse, may even attract Mr. Granton’s attention.”
“I never thought of that,” Catherine said, wriggling back discontentedly on the sofa. She brightened. “Perhaps Rollo would take us!”
Hope looked appalled. “Of course, he would not! He may be a shocking rake, but he would never let me go to a Maida masquerade, with or without him.”
“Didn’t he take your sister once?” Catherine asked.
“Well, yes, but that was Grace, and she was married, and there was a good reason. Forget Rollo. He won’t do it.”
“Adrian would,” Catherine said wistfully. “If only he wasn’t at school, we could have made him look older and…”
Hope’s eyes widened. Her heart began to beat faster, with mischief, excitement, and pure fun. “We don’t need our brothers. We just need their clothes.”
*
Francisco was tired, irritable, and not best pleased to be at Maida Gardens in pursuit of some shadowy goal he expected to dislike. He still needed a rest, a holiday, a change in the direction of his life. But for the moment, all he could do was swill wine and gaze moodily around the dance floor and the tables surrounding it.
He had been to the Gardens before, in his youth, when he had met some charming and generous women who had given him some very memorable nights. At least they had seemed memorable at the time, even though he could not now remember their faces with any clarity. Well, it had been a long time ago, and he was not here to entice women to his bed.
More recently, he had come here as a favor to his friend Ludovic Dunne, to persuade a very nasty and dangerous man into loose-tongued confession. Even then, he had found the place tawdry and vulgar—which, considering many of the gutters in which he spent his time, was saying something. Perhaps he had just grown up.
Not before time. I am almost thirty years old with damn all to show for my life of adventure. And yet here I sit, watching for a young man in a red mask to give a large ring to a lady with a red corsage. All with the aim of preventing a few poor people asking for a better chance at life.
Francisco had done some distasteful things in his life, but he had always seen the higher cause. This was…
Someone brushed past him, her voice strumming his memory as she said with perfect clarity, “Isn’t this all quite deliciously vulgar?”
From old habit, he almost answered her before he realized that, of course, she was not addressing him but the gentlemen on either side of her. She had not even seen him. Which was just as well. Behind the mask, she looked as beautiful as ever, her body swaying with just that touch of slow, sensual swagger that had once driven him wild.
It wasn’t doing a bad job now, he realized, hauling his gaze away from her and casting it swiftly over her companions—another fashionable young matron and four gentlemen, all but falling over themselves to seat the ladies to their own advantage. Another set of rich, bored aristocrats amusing themselves at the expense of the vulgar.
Francisco moved unobtrusively away. Even if he had not been working, he had no desire to encounter Emma Carntree again. Still, the stab of lust had shaken him from his normally cool observations, so much so that he almost missed the odd young couple sitting near the door.
She wore a red tulip threaded through the fastenings of her pink domino cloak. And her swain, wearing a red mask, sniffed dubiously at the contents of the glass set before him. The girl beside him giggled.
Christ, was this what he had been reduced to? Pursuing children at a party just to make sure the poor stayed poor and power remained in the hands of those who had always had it? If Francisco had been tired and disillusioned before, he was seething now.
Tomorrow, I shall most definitely resign, with or without permission. I’ll buy an estate in the country—I don’t care which country—and devote myself to the land and rural pursuits. Whatever they are.
In the meantime, he propped his shoulder against the nearby pillar and tried to keep the savagery from his eyes as he regarded his prey. As the young man twirled the glass in his fingers, he reached out to the girl, laying his other hand over her arm and directing her attention to the front of the ballroom, where, among other people, his old lover, Emma Carntree, was preparing to dance with one of the gentlemen from her party.
Francisco was more interested in the large, opal ring gracing the boy’s left hand. That appeared to remove any doubt that they were his villains of the evening, God help them. His best plan would be to wait until the boy slipped the girl the ring, then steal her reticule. Or if she was silly enough to wear the thing, then he would dance with her and distract her with flirtation while he slipped the ring from her finger.
But frankly, the whole matter left a nasty taste in his mouth, and he just wanted it over with. Cursory observation told him the girl was an innocent, probably of good family, judging by her posture and her wide-eyed, troubled perusal of the dance floor. What a stupid place for them to meet just to pass a message, however important. It made no sense to Francisco, who just wanted his task done so he could go home to bed and resign in the morning.
