Unmasking the Thief, page 10
“If you had been a few seconds later, I would be in there now.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I’ve been driving around the square for the last quarter-hour. I would always have intercepted you.”
She thought he added, “I hope,” under his breath. She wished she could see his expression, but there was no light inside the hackney, and he had sat back into the shadows.
“I am guilty,” he added, “of a touch of temper.”
“Concerning me? Allow me to point out that you have no right.”
One large, elegant hand waved dismissively across the window. “Right has nothing to do with it. I do not want you involved in this.”
“Involved in what? I was barely there. Catherine and Archie were mere observers. You appear to be the one involved.”
She barely saw him move, but suddenly he sat beside her, too close for comfort, and took her hand. It jumped in his, but she would not give him the satisfaction of pulling free. She wished she had worn gloves.
“I am involved,” he said softly, “though in what exactly, I am not sure. Do you ever communicate with Sir Anthony Thorne?”
Whatever she had expected, it was not that. “Not for seven years. At least.”
“What do you do with your free time?”
She stared at him. “That is not your business.”
“It is. Do you go among the poor? Take an interest in politics?”
“Sir, you have a very odd notion of a governess’s free time.”
“Educate me.”
He still held her hand, not ungently, but in the sort of firm grip that she could not break without an obvious effort. His fingers trailed over her wrist, and she knew he must feel the pulse galloping there.
“Mrs. Dove is kind to me,” she blurted. “I am not bombarded with unreasonable demands or expectations to mend or clean the children’s clothes. I am treated almost like one of the family. Which means Viola and Catherine regard me as their friend. The younger children look on me almost as an older sister or an aunt. My supposed free time is absorbed by them and by that ridiculous animal they named a pup.”
Whatever response she had expected to her minor tirade, it was not the flashing smile suddenly on his face. His fingers moved on her wrist in an apparently absent-minded caress.
“That is what I thought,” he murmured. “And yet you and Miss Catherine Dove keep turning up where I wish you didn’t.”
Her eyes were used to the dark now, to the occasional pale shafts of light from the street, so she met and held his gaze. “Why do you care?”
His fingers stilled. Then his thumb circled her palm. “I wish I knew.”
Her whole hand tingled, so sensitized that each distracted caress sent thrills streaming up her arm to her heart, to places farther below that were hardly connected. And yet she found she no longer desired to avoid his touch. Had she ever?
“Who are you?” she demanded in a sudden, harsh attempt to break his spell.
“Were we not introduced?”
“I can’t believe that any more than I can believe in the thief or the working man who attends political meetings.” Finally, she tugged at her hand, but his fingers tightened, and she gave up. “What are you, sir? An English gentleman? A Spanish rogue? Who are you tricking?”
A rut in the road bumped her against his shoulder, but still, she refused to release his gaze. To be fair, he made no effort to avoid hers. He held her hand now in both of his while he played with her fingers. They felt like a gentleman’s hands, smooth, though never soft. Strong, capable hands. Everything about him was strong and capable. She had known that from the moment he had held her in his arms at Maida.
“Who am I tricking?” he repeated thoughtfully. “That is harder to answer than you might think. Everyone, I suppose.”
She frowned, annoyed at the evasion. “Is your name even Francis?”
“Sort of.”
Irritated, she gave a mighty tug of her hand that freed it with more undignified force than she had intended. She reeled backward, righting herself with difficulty, and placed her hand back in her lap.
Francis merely picked it up again and held it between both of his. “My name is Francisco de Salgado y Goya. I was born in Spain, the son of a nobleman who opposed the French alliance. After my family was killed, Wellington himself sent me to England to be educated here. I have interests in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, but my loyalty seems to be mostly to your country. For whom I have done many things that make me proud and a few that don’t. Something is wrong about this latest flurry of political meetings, and I need to find out what.”
She peered into his face. “You are some kind of…agent of the British government?”
“Some kind,” he agreed.
She did her best to take that in, wondering if she believed him or if it was yet another smokescreen, another false identity to veil the others. “What has that to do with Maida Gardens? With Catherine and me and Rollo Darblay’s ring?”
He sighed. “With you and Catherine and the ring, nothing, I suspect. With Maida, a passing moment that may or may not be repeated. I made a mistake at Maida because I was tired and grumpy and distracted and followed the first path I saw. When I went back and met you, I was trying to rectify that path—if it was not already too late. I believe it was. But then, I found this connection to Thorne, and Catherine and you both appeared at this meeting. I am not a great believer in coincidence, and so I was suspicious.”
“Of what?” she demanded.
He was silent, though his fingers idly stroked the side of her hand.
She said, “You don’t want to tell me, do you?”
“I would much rather kiss you.”
Heat flooded her, not just from memory but from sudden, shocking yearning. “To distract me,” she said flatly.
“Not entirely.” Unexpectedly, he dragged her hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Then, opening her stunned fingers, he dropped another lingering kiss in her palm. “It is you who distract me. Someone is organizing these meetings, experimenting with getting lots of them to happen at one time, not just in London, but all over the country.”
“With what aim?” she asked breathlessly as he curled her fingers back over her palm as though holding the kiss in place.
He sighed. “Practice, it seems. So that something more important can be coordinated? Some massive rising, perhaps, to force the government into concessions.”
She gazed at her hand, at his long, seductive fingers wrapped around it, and swallowed. “But no one wants that kind of rising. No one would risk revolution.”
“Except the desperate. They are not my concern. I want to find those pulling the strings and doing the coordinating.”
“But surely no one who could would?” she protested. “Opposition leaders are as afraid of revolution as anyone else.”
“That is what confuses me,” he admitted. “I have no evidence, but my instinct is pointing me to Anthony Thorne.”
“He does not believe in revolution,” she said with contempt. “Or even reform, except a few minor concessions as a last resort to make the people grateful.”
“Then you see the problem with my theory. But I believe he is clever, covert, and dishonest. And if I were you, I would not let my sister marry him.”
Her breath caught. “You shift with bewildering speed between the general and the personal. If I have my way, my sister will not marry him, but I am very unlikely to have any say at all. Why would Sir Anthony foment unrest when he spends his parliamentary life quashing it?”
He stilled, gazing down at her hand which lay now on his thigh. The impropriety should have appalled her. Instead, she marveled at his warmth, at the hard muscle beneath her fingertips. It made her feel…odd.
“How well do you know Sir Anthony?”
“Well enough to avoid him.”
“You don’t trust him.”
“I do not.”
“You grew up in the same neighborhood…Why precisely don’t you trust him?”
“God, where do I start? Even as an adolescent, he always considered himself so immeasurably above the rest of us. And yet he was charming. When he married, he ran through his wife’s fortune in short order, getting into parliament, buying the London house, entertaining the right people. By the time she died, his estate had begun to show signs of neglect again. He needs his treasury refilled, and my sister just happened to inherit money from our great-aunt, who always had a soft spot for her. And suddenly, he wants to marry her when he never so much as looked at her before. An imbecile could read his motives, but not Marion.”
She forced her mouth to stop talking and swallowed. “That is not what you want to know, is it? It is certainly not what I should have said.”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “I think, in your own way, you are as much a keeper of secrets as I. It is possible, you know, that your sister does not care about his motives. Perhaps she just wants to be Lady Thorne, because she loves him anyway, or because she wants the position he could give her.”
“As wife to a prime minister, one day?”
“Well, your family clearly understands enough of that to know it will be unsuitable to leave you as governess to the Doves while your sister rises with the great man. Would you consider being governess to your sister’s children instead?”
“Unpaid and dependent?” she retorted. “No.”
“What are you not telling me?” he asked quietly.
“You wish to be bored rigid by my entire life story? I am not that poor a companion.”
A smile flickered across his face in a ripple of light from a passing carriage. “You are a delightful companion. I even like your prickles and your gimlet stare.”
“Basilisk stare,” she corrected.
“Not so very basilisk. I never tire of looking at you.”
“Why do you say these things?” she asked, hoping he could not hear the sudden wistfulness she tried to hide in irritability. “I cannot be flattered into doing whatever it is you wish of me.”
Even in the dark, she could see something change in his eyes. By some trick of the passing light, he looked almost…fierce. And then his lashes, long and thick, came down.
“If I wish you to do something, I will simply ask. Compliments are not related.”
“Then ask so that I can say no and be on my way.” Even as the sharp words spilled out of her mouth, she was conscious of no desire to leave him. On the contrary, she felt curiously…alive. She liked him. She liked his strong, idly stroking fingers and his large, unsafe presence by her side.
“Very well. Thorne will call again, pester you to do as he wishes, and leave the Doves.”
“We have agreed nothing can be done for a month since if I do leave, I owe Mrs. Dove notice.”
“Is he the kind of man to wait a month on the word of two socially inferior women?”
“Mrs. Dove is not socially inferior. She is a cousin of the Earl of Wenning, who married beneath her. Lord Wenning is not nobody,” she added thoughtfully. “And I believe they have returned to England.”
His fingers relaxed on hers with something like relief. “Mrs. Dove is on your side? And can count on Wenning’s support?”
“She does not want me to go. For the rest, I cannot say.”
He nodded. “It is some protection for you, if necessary. In the meantime, Thorne does not strike me as the kind of patient man who will wait out your notice if it impedes his plans. Would you consider letting him try and persuade you? Listen to his arguments—and to his conversation?”
Her fingers, which he had flattened across his lower thigh, curled into a fist. Of course he was using her. Of course. She had always been aware of his flattery, so why did this feel like a bucket of cold water emptied over her from a great height?
“You want me to spy on him, tattle on him to you?” She jerked her hand away and clasped it with the other in her own lap.
“If you wish to use such childish terms,” he said evenly. “To be frank, I would rather he had nothing to do with this, so if you can prove that, or at least show me how unlikely it is, I shall be grateful.”
She stared out of the window. The carriage was ambling along the side of Hyde Park. It might have been the country except for the dim lights all around it. She wondered if a fog was coming down. Like the fog on her brain. “And I am to trust you. Believe you are who you say you are, without proof.”
The silence stretched so long, she almost imagined he had quietly left the carriage by the opposite door. Almost. But she knew he was still there because every inch of her was aware of him.
“Perhaps you are acquainted with Mr. Ludovic Dunne,” he said.
She blinked and turned back to face him. “No. Though I know who he is. He was responsible, I believe, for the truth of Lord Dominic’s innocence coming out.”
“If you take the children and their pony to the Green Park tomorrow, perhaps around eleven of the clock, I will try and arrange for Mr. Dunne to be there.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“To vouch for me. We studied law together, a long time ago.” Reaching up, he knocked on the carriage roof. The horses changed direction, veering across the road into South Street.
It crossed her mind that he was actually hurt by her lack of trust and yet amused by his own feeling. But no, that, too, had to be imagination. She could not hurt him if she tried. While she…
Oh, no, this is too confusing. I need to go home, away from him… Because she had finally realized something else, too.
“You held my hand to measure my pulse,” she accused.
“It can help in the detection of lies.” He took her breath away by smiling, the rare, dazzling smile that for no reason seemed to obliterate all offense and anger. “You should be pleased. You may not yet trust me, but at least I trust you.”
Because her pulse raced whenever he touched her? Before he touched her? Pride would not allow her to leave him with that idea.
“It’s as well I am immune to masculine fawning,” she said with contempt.
A breath of laughter seemed to take him by surprise. “I take issue with fawning. For the rest, Miss Mather, you are entirely mistaken.” He leaned closer, and she had to suppress a gasp as his hand cupped her cheek. Butterfly light, his fingertips trailed across her lips and down her throat. They paused at the pulse that galloped at the base of her neck. She could not breathe.
“M-mistaken?” she managed.
“You are not immune at all. And neither am I. So never tempt me, Miss Matty. Never challenge me. Or we will both lose.”
Before she could properly comprehend his words, let alone speak, his mouth covered hers in a short, hard kiss that caused everything in her to leap. She could not hide her gasp, but his lips had already left hers, and he sat back into his shadowed corner, not touching her anywhere at all.
She should have felt safe, not bereft.
“The carriage will stop as far from direct light as possible,” he murmured. “I will not hand you down for obvious reasons. I’m sure you can find your own excuses if you need them for being out of the house.”
Even as he spoke, the hackney pulled up between the Doves’ house and the next. Francis did not move, though when he spoke, she heard the smile in his voice. “Until tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
Bewildered and shocked, for once, she had nothing to say. She merely rose, opened the door of the hackney, and stepped down. She closed the door without looking back and marched somewhat blindly toward the Doves’ front door.
Chapter Eleven
Even as he had written the note to Dunne last night, even as he strode around to the house the following morning, Francis knew he should not have involved Miss Mather in this business. Not that he imagined she would be in any actual danger from Thorne, even if the man was up to something; he would not invite scandal so close to his family. But somehow, that didn’t make Francis feel better.
Which, of course, was why he had asked her. Because if he hadn’t made use of her when she was so well-placed, he would have to have asked himself why he hadn’t. There was no reason not to use her as he had used hundreds of people before. He was not the man to let a little thing like physical attraction get in the way of business.
He didn’t like that about himself either. But he was damned if he’d change at this stage. Matilda Mather was not the sort of woman one seduced into obedience, and he had no intention of trying. But that she interested him on so many levels, that bothered him. And that was why he had asked her: to prove to himself she was no different from anyone else he encountered in the course of his work.
Only she was.
And he didn’t like it. In fact, he had no idea what to do about it except ignore it. Mostly. Apart from his foolish exultation when he discovered she was not physically indifferent to him. Her reaction to his proximity, her rapidly changing pulse, had told him that. It never changed when she answered his questions, only when he touched her, caressed her. And when he had kissed her.
He shouldn’t have done that either, but as he had warned her, he was not the man to refuse a challenge. A sweet challenge and a sweeter kiss, one he had had to force himself to end. In truth, he should not be tormenting himself by gaining her trust and her help. He should find some other tool to whom he was indifferent. Emma Carntree, for example, who had once made his own pulses race and was involved in an adulterous affair with Thorne. And yet her reaction to Francisco’s return provided possibilities. He might be able to seduce her from Thorne.
For a moment, striding into Barclay Square where the Dunnes lived while in London, he forced himself to contemplate the seduction of his own former mistress. And found the whole business distasteful.
The haughty governess seemed to have turned his whole world upside down. Damn her.
He was shown into a graceful salon where Dunne and Rebecca were entertaining two babies and Lady Dominic Gorse.
“Ah, the unlikely host of today’s Venetian breakfast,” Dunne welcomed. “I don’t suppose you thought to bring any food?”
“I thought I was the host of today’s walk in the park. I don’t recall any kind of breakfast being mentioned.”
