Page 5

Four

“I cannot believe that Devonworth is saddling us with a protector.”

Eliza tromped across the receiving room of Camille’s home for the tenth time that morning to peer out the window that overlooked the street.

She was waiting for her brother-in-law’s carriage to appear at any moment.

He had sent word that he would be bringing over the man who would be in charge of their security for the next couple of weeks.

This would have been fine, except a man whose sole responsibility was to watch over them would most definitely hinder her plan to sneak back into Montague Club.

“Hmm,” her sister Jenny muttered noncommittally from where she sat at the writing desk situated between the two windows.

Nearly the entire flat surface was covered with porcelain miniatures of cherubs and angels, leaving Jenny precious little space to pen her letter.

Honestly, she didn’t know how Camille lived here. The whole house felt overbearing.

Without looking up from the paper, Jenny added, “Assigning someone to protect us does seem to be a bit of an overreaction.”

“A bit? A strange man will have access to our home at all hours of the day and night. Devonworth even implied that other men will be watching from outside. Strangers will be given leave to look into our windows, to come into our bedrooms at will. Why, we’ll have to lock our doors every night before we sleep. ”

Jenny paused her writing and pinned Eliza with her stare. “Devonworth is overreacting, but that is histrionics.”

“It isn’t!” Eliza shot back, even though she secretly agreed.

Probably. She hadn’t been thinking straight the past week.

Ever since she’d run across that brawler named Simon, she’d been trying to figure out a way to get back into the club.

The problem was that Mr. Thorne had gone to Paris where he was opening a new club, and Camille had gone with him.

They were her only ties to the club. She couldn’t very well show up and demand entry without ruining her reputation, which would mean the end of her marriage plans.

She didn’t particularly want to marry Lord Mainwaring, but she did want to collect her inheritance from Mr. Hathaway, and the two were a package deal.

Mr. Hathaway had made it very clear that she and her sisters would collect the money only if they married men he proclaimed suitable.

Men like Devonworth who had a title and a long, respectable lineage.

Lord Mainwaring had that and he’d offered for her and Mr. Hathaway had accepted.

There was her future settled, except now she was questioning everything.

“Oh, I hate Mr. Hathaway.” Eliza stomped her foot like a child.

Perhaps it was a harsh stance. The man was their father, not that many outside of their small family knew that.

To the world he was their godfather, a kindly friend of the late Jeremiah Dove who had stepped in to help the Doves after the death of their patriarch.

No one knew that their mother Fanny had been Mr. Hathaway’s mistress.

When Mr. Hathaway’s mother died last year, she had left the sisters a substantial, guilt-induced inheritance, but it came with a catch.

It would only be doled out to each of them upon their marriage to a suitable man.

Since Mr. Hathaway had wanted them as far away from New York and his real family as possible, suitable had come to mean a titled husband whom he could use to further his ambitions in Europe.

“Eliza, what’s wrong?” Jenny sighed and set her pen back in the little stand. Then she pushed her chair back and rose with a look of resolve on her pretty face. “You’ve been acting distracted and odd all week. What does Mr. Hathaway have to do with anything?”

It was the only prompt Eliza needed. She needed to talk to someone about what had happened at Montague Club. “You have to swear on your life that you won’t repeat to anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

Jenny smiled at her. “Do I want my life to be on the hook for yet another secret? Let’s see…” She looked up and to the right, appearing to catalog them all in her head. “Would this be on par with the night you sneaked out to go to that dance hall or is it more like the secret about you and Olek?”

Eliza could barely keep herself from shaking her sister. This was serious and Jenny was treating it like this was one of Eliza’s indiscretions back home. Granted, those secrets had felt very serious at the time as well, but this was different. This was now .

“Let’s say it’s a combination of the two.

The stakes aren’t quite as high as the Olek one.

” She didn’t fancy herself in love with this Simon fellow as she had with Olek, but what she was about to propose was much more dangerous than looking through the windows of a dancing hall.

“But it does involve sneaking into somewhere.” She lowered her voice on that admission and glanced around needlessly; they were alone, after all.

Fanny was still upstairs asleep, and Camille’s servants didn’t know what to think of Americans so generally gave them a wide berth unless summoned, the same way they treated Camille.

“Oh, all right, you know I can’t resist. I swear not to tell anyone, but it had better be good.” Jenny’s smile became conspiratorial as they settled themselves on a nearby settee.

“It’s about that night we dined with Mr. Thorne.”

Eliza explained everything that had happened after she’d disappeared into the wall.

Well, almost everything. She left out the part about Simon calling himself the Duke.

It seemed important to keep that part to herself, as if she was keeping a secret for him.

She did tell her about that damned blackboard with Mainwaring’s name, though it smarted a little to say it.

“Ugh!” Jenny scoffed. “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. The nerve of that cad. What a little nincompoop.” She went on with a string of insults for him, and that’s when Eliza realized she was focusing on the wrong part of the story.

“Yes, yes, he is all of those things,” Eliza said, hoping to hurry things along.

Jenny stopped mid-insult and frowned. “But?”

“The man that I followed…” How could she describe him?

Seeing him had sparked something to life inside her.

She’d spent these past months in England resigning herself to her future as a lady and she’d ignored everything she’d previously liked about herself.

She was curious and she enjoyed learning new things.

She wanted to know more about the secret fight he’d come from that night.

She wanted to attend a secret fight. Ever since they’d come to London, however, she’d been forced to put on this persona of a mild-mannered wallflower.

The corners of Jenny’s lips quirked upward and she nodded as if to say, Now I see . “This man piqued your interest, did he?”

“A little.” She stopped short of admitting that she thought she might have seen him again a few days ago at Cora’s home.

A man had been accompanying Devonworth to his study, and he’d looked suspiciously like Simon.

Unlike Simon, this man had been dressed finely and his hair had been styled differently.

Eliza had seen him for only a moment, but she was almost certain it had been him.

Her need to go back to Montague Club had been almost feverish ever since.

“Let me put this together, then,” Jenny said. “You are hoping to sneak back into that club and you’re upset because Devonworth’s hired men will almost certainly keep you from doing that?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I hate to be the bearer of unwelcome tidings, but Devonworth is set in his plan, and you shouldn’t be running back to that place anyway.

You’ll ruin your chances at a respectable marriage.

” Jenny paused and her eyes widened. “Unless you’ve decided that you don’t want to marry Lord Mainwaring? ”

“It’s two hundred fifty thousand dollars, Jenny. I can’t give up my rightful inheritance because my husband who I barely know anyway is off…having an adventure.” She wanted to. God, how she wanted to, but it would be stupid.

Jenny had already decided that she would rather forfeit her inheritance than marry a nobleman who wouldn’t allow her to sing.

She had spent the last several years in Paris living with a widowed friend of Fanny’s learning the art of opera.

She had been born with a beautiful voice, and it had only been refined and polished under Mrs. Wilson’s tutelage.

Her goal was to have a starring role in an opera soon, which was why she didn’t want to marry.

Not many aristocratic husbands would allow her to continue in that sort of career, or any career, actually.

Singing was her dream and the only thing she wanted to do with her life.

Once Eliza was safely wed, Jenny would make her operatic debut in Paris.

The odds of a suitable man marrying her after that would be greatly diminished, which meant that Eliza could not give up her own chance to secure her future.

Jenny and their mother might need to rely on her fortune one day.

“I have to think of our future stability.”

“Then why go back there?” Jenny asked.

“Now that I know that my future husband is enjoying his last summer of freedom, is it too much to ask that I have my own? I want to go out and see things before I’m stuck in some drafty manor house in the country with a lap blanket and a man with venereal disease.”

Jenny laughed but then immediately sobered, contrite, when she saw that her sister wasn’t joining in.

Before she could say anything, the clip-clop of horseshoes on the cobblestones outside drew their attention to the window.

Devonworth dashed out of the carriage as soon as it pulled to a stop, his blond hair bouncing with his step and his face set in a grim expression.

Eliza rose and Jenny followed suit.