Page 10 of Lady Be Good

“I hope you’ve finished your own preparations,” Catherine Everleigh said. She was pacing her sitting room as the maids packed her clothing. “I intend to leave at daybreak, not a minute later. You will not make me miss the first train.”

Lilah looked over the assorted luggage. So many clothes! A housemaid was folding away a fine silver gown that Lilah had never seen. Perhaps Miss Everleigh meant to wear it in London.

The trip came at a very fine time. Lilah still wasn’t sure what to think of the gunshot yesterday. A hunter, Palmer had said. A very clumsy one. But his manner had suggested otherwise. He’d hustled her back to the house in a grim silence that had caused gooseflesh to rise on her skin. For hours afterward, she had paced by the window, not relaxing until she saw him return.

Of course it had been a hunter. The countryside held no particular dangers. Stray rams—but Palmer had shown himself well able to wrestle with them. And why should she worry for him anyway?

London would clear her head, she hoped. “I’m already packed,” she told Miss Everleigh. They did not even intend to stay overnight. What did she need, but her reticule and hat and pocket money?

“Good.” Catherine smoothed down her lace cuffs. It seemed the telegram from her brother had pulled her from bed. She wore a ruffled silk bed robe in shades of sherbet and marigold, an oddly sunny choice for a woman made of ice. “I can’t imagine what Peter is thinking. To let that idiot take his enamels from the warehouse! I don’t care if he brought an entire army with him. They are the center of the Russian collection. Without them, we’ll have to cancel the auction—and never once, in fifty years, have we done so. It shan’t be some Slavic princeling who breaks that record!”

“I’m sure you’ll manage to reason with him, miss.” Lilah pitied the poor client who thought to cross her.

“Reason!” Miss Everleigh snorted. “These foreign princes have no grasp of logic. He signed a contract with us! Does he think English law will bend to suit his whims? The threat of a lawsuit will teach him better.”

The maids exchanged a speaking look. Lilah gathered that Miss Everleigh had been fuming for some time. She offered them an apologetic grimace.

Miss Everleigh caught it. “And you. Feeling cheeky, I see!”

“No, miss, never.”

“I hope you’re not expecting a holiday in town. While I meet with this rube, you will deliver the tapestries to Mr. Batten. Demand a full accounting of what it will take to restore them.”

Lilah could not imagine having to demand anything of Batten. A stooped little gnome who haunted the workshop in Everleigh’s basement, he was infamous for chattering. A girl had to devise desperate excuses to break away from him. “I will bring you a most thorough report, miss.”

“Good.” Miss Everleigh bent down and buckled a bag shut with barely leashed violence. “Well, to your bed, then. No dillydallying! We’ve a long day ahead—I mean to return on the evening train.”

Lilah bid her a properly chastened farewell, but once in the hallway, her spirit rose like clouds. An entire day in London! She would catch up with her fellow hostesses, learn what mischief the girls had gotten up to. The business with Mr. Batten wouldn’t take more than half the day. Afterward she would stroll through Covent Garden market, taking in the sights, and remembering what it meant to go where she pleased, without Catherine Everleigh hanging over her shoulder.

As she passed the stairs, a dim, strange noise caught her attention—a shrieking scrape, abruptly cut off. Intrigued, she took hold of the banister and listened more intently. Could it be the ghost? The maids had told her about him. They claimed to hear him every night, rattling a saber down some secret route through the west wing.

With her mood so lively, a ghost hunt seemed more appealing than attempting to sleep. She started down the stairs, heading for the noise.

The sound led her through the empty, glass-walled orangerie. A light flickered ahead. She heard the murmur of low voices, masculine, hushed and tense. She stepped around the corner, into a small room where five men sat sharpening knives and cleaning guns. Good heavens!

She retreated immediately, but it was too late—the largest brute had spotted her. She heard him say something. Palmer appeared from around the corner.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, his pleasant tone a jarring counterpoint to the giant knife in his hand. In his other hand he held a strop—a heavy length of leather that would make a weapon in its own right.

“I thought I heard . . .” A ghost? He would laugh at her. “Never mind. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait. If you can’t sleep, you might as well help.”

As she turned back, she noticed how her candle shook. She gripped it harder. Surely there was some unremarkable explanation for this scene. Something other than where her mind led. A hunter, indeed. This looked like a hunting party of its own. “Help with what?” she asked.

He combed his free hand through his shaggy hair. He looked very piratical in those shirtsleeves. “I assume you know how to sharpen a knife, as well as to throw it?”

“Yes, but . . .” Thoughts of the Russian correspondence had not troubled her in days. But now it came to mind. Wedded to the stray gunshot, it sent a shiver through her. “I would not like to disturb you.”

“Disturb us in what?” He glanced back toward the assembly. “You’ve met the assayers, haven’t you?” He gestured her to follow him back around the corner.

“No, I haven’t met them,” she said faintly. They had risen to their feet, the better to display their assembled muscle. Their nods and bows looked suspiciously unpracticed.

“Ah. Well, that’s my oversight.” Palmer sounded quite amiable for a man laboring over weaponry at half past eleven. “Here are Mr. Jones, Mr. Stowe, Mr. Potter, and Mr. Penn. Gentlemen—Miss Marshall.” To Lilah he said, “Now you’ve taken note of them, you’ll no doubt see them prowling about the estate, canvassing for improvements. The land is next to go, once I’ve cleared the house of junk.”

“Junk, is it? Don’t use that word with Miss Everleigh.” And for her own part, she would believe these were assayers when pigs started to fly. Two of them sported the oversized knuckles found on brawlers. She recognized them—they had ridden out with Palmer yesterday, after he had brought her back to the house.

“One of several things I don’t intend to use with her,” he said. “But you, Lilah . . .” He offered her a lopsided smile, and held out his knife.

No point in fleeing. If this was indeed something nefarious, she’d already seen it in full. She set down her candle and took the dagger by its hilt. “Have you a whetstone?”

“Several.” He pulled out a chair at the small table. The other men excused themselves with polite mumbles. They took their weapons with them, she noted.

She dragged the whetstone closer, then set the blade against it. They’d been working for some time; the air smelled burned, sharp with fresh metal shavings, and . . . was that a hint of black powder?

Palmer was surveying the gun rack. No jacket tonight. No waistcoat, either. She’d never imagined that shirtsleeves and suspenders could complement a man so well. Generally it took a drunkard to go abroad without his clothing. But Palmer did not sport a drunkard’s belly. His shirt clung lovingly to a flat abdomen and lean waist. His trousers, thus cinched, cupped his round, high bottom. A very muscular bottom. When he crouched to retrieve a screwdriver, she could almost detect the flex of his—

As he rose, she yanked her attention to the blade in her hand. He straddled the stool across from her and began to disassemble the rifle. “Fine technique you have,” he said.

She’d learned it on her father’s knee. Lily had learned it there. Lilah Marshall should not have known the first thing about it. “A curious tale. I learned the skill quite by accident—”

“Can you clean a rifle, too?”

She hesitated. “No, I’ve never handled one.”

He laid a screw on the table, then set to untwisting another. “I’d teach you to shoot,” he said, “but not on a Martini-Henry. The cartridge tends to jam.” He frowned. “And I’ve seen the recoil break a boy’s shoulder, come to think of it.”

“Heavens.”

“Service rifle,” he said with a shrug.

“I suppose that explains it.” The assayers had military bearings.

He looked up, brow lifting. “Explains what?”

Good Lord. “Nothing.”

His lips quirked. “You’re blushing. Now I’ll insist on the answer.”

She shook her head and scraped the whetstone harder. “Your assayers look very . . .”

“Competent?”

“Large,” she said carefully. “Do they usually operate in gangs?”

“You’ll have to ask them. I’ve little grasp of the profession.”

There was a fine evasion. She shot him a challenging look. In reply, she got a wide smile that told her nothing. He lifted his rifle by the buttstock and began to break it into pieces, his movements quick and confident.

Yes, he’d certainly been a soldier. But now he was a viscount. And viscounts did not usually assemble troops in their country homes.

For several minutes, she pondered this mystery at leisure, the only sounds the complaint of metal against stone, and the scraping of Palmer’s brush along the pieces of his rifle. Because her task required no special concentration, she began to count the weapons hanging from the rack. Some were hunting rifles. But the pistols were not for sport.

He noticed her survey. “I take it you haven’t been in the gun room before.”

“No, not yet. But Miss Everleigh will certainly want to look over the weaponry.”

“No point,” he said. “It’s mine, not the estate’s.”

“So you are a collector, after all.”

“But not a hoarder. I use the guns.”

“All of them?”

He sat back, flipping the gun by its stock. “Some of the rifles I used in the war. The pistols—the two nearest are also from my time in service.”

“And the rest?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Perhaps I do hoard, after all.” His glance dropped to her work. “Looks about right.”

“Yes, I think so.” She held it out. “Have you another for me?”

He held the blade up to the light, angling it to inspect her handiwork. “Not a throwing dagger, this one.”

“No,” she said softly. “I believe they call that a machete.” Nick sometimes carried one, when his task—in his own words—required persuasion.

Palmer gave her a surprised glance. “Have you handled one?”

She scowled. “Of course not! What do you take me for?” And then, because she couldn’t resist: “I’d prefer a cutlass, anyway. A proper handle can be useful.”

His smile was slow and delighted. “You’d make an excellent strategist in Her Majesty’s ranks.”

She knew it was a compliment, but she wasn’t in the mood to be admired. “To say nothing of the assayers. I had no idea that they went armed to the teeth.”

“Yes, and Buckley Hall so short of undergrowth to chop. Why are you wandering the halls so late? Aren’t you bound for town on the morrow?”

A neat change of topic. “On the very first train.”

He took up a rag and polished the muzzle of the gun. “You’ll stick by her during your trip, of course.”

“Of course.”

“At every step.”

She bit her lip. “Every step won’t be possible. She plans to meet with a client.”

“Then you’ll wait outside the door. Eavesdrop, see what you can learn.”

She snorted. “That would make a fine scene. You needn’t fear competition—he’s trying to pull his property from the Russian auction. She’s out for his blood.”

His long lashes dropped, veiling his expression. “Nevertheless,” he said, rubbing hard at a spot on the muzzle. “They’ll be alone, and I don’t like that. See what you overhear.”

He took a curious interest in Miss Everleigh’s business, didn’t he? Frowning, she studied him. The lamp behind him limned his shaggy blond hair, creating the illusion of a halo. Had it not been for his scar, he might well have posed as an angel. An avenging angel, yes. He had the coloring for it, and the cheekbones, and the tall, powerful build.

The notion suddenly struck her as a black joke. He was the last thing from angelic. He was a liar—she knew it in her gut. He’d been lying to her from the start. “Unless your aim is to start a rival auction house, I can’t imagine why you’d care about her dealings with a client.” Or her business correspondence, on which Lilah reported so diligently each day.

“I’m a jealous man,” he said mildly.

“Perhaps. Yet I don’t think you’ve any real interest in her—not romantically, at least.”

He looked up, knocking a lock of blond hair from his eyes. “Is that so?” he said coolly.

“If you did, why would you spend so much time flirting with me?”

He laid down the gun. “I haven’t flirted with you,” he said evenly. “At one point, I was going to make you come, but then you ran out. Is that why your temper’s so sour? Come around the table, and I’ll fix it for you.”

She flushed. Men did not use such language with decent women. “Do you mistake me for a whore as well as a fool?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Both would be more convenient.”

She stood. Let them have it out, then. “But I already offered to become your whore. My body for the letters—and you turned me down, if you recall. You said I would get them back when she agreed to marry you. But that won’t ever happen, will it?”

He was very still. “That depends,” he said. “If you do as I instructed—”

“No.” She was tired of this deceit. “You want something else from her. I thought for a time I didn’t need to know what that was. Didn’t want to know. But now it seems I have no choice—for I need those letters. So tell me what you need to happen in order to give them to me. Be honest, and perhaps I can help you get it.”

“Fine,” he said quietly. “A new bargain.” He rose and came around the table. Only when his hand closed on hers did she realize that she had picked up the machete. He loosened it from her grip and set it aside, but did not let go of her hand. He yanked her fist to his chest, pressing it there so she felt the vibrations as he spoke. “We’ll renegotiate, shall we? Honesty. You start. Tell me who you are, Lilah Marshall. Where you learned to throw and sharpen a knife. What your true name is. And who keeps you so afraid that you would sell your body for three slips of paper.”

His gaze was merciless, drilling. She looked away. “There must be some other—”

“No. We start there: what happens if you don’t get back the letters. That, I would very much like to know. Tell me that. Tell me who. And in reply, I’ll be honest as well.”

“You ask for the one thing,” she said very softly, “that you know I will not give.”

“No. I merely demand honesty. Do the terms suit you?” He paused. “No, I didn’t think so.”

Frustration made her tremble. He seemed to sense it. His grip gentled. He lifted her hand to his mouth. “I can speak to one thing,” he murmured against her knuckles. “You’re no whore.” He kissed her pinky, then her ring finger. “If you were truly for sale, I would have bought you a hundred times by now. And I still would not be done with you.”

A shuddering breath slipped from her. Even now, at this moment, he could unsettle her so simply. Send her slipping sideways from fury into desire. “My secrets are boring,” she said. “Don’t you see? You’ve no need to know them! I’m a common thief, who answers to a very ordinary master. There is nothing—”

“No.” His grip suddenly crushed her. “That is where you’re wrong. You answer to me. And God help you, Lilah, but I am coming to enjoy it. Remember that, next time you want to ask me questions. I have as many for you. And I want the answers just as badly as you do.”

A cleared throat broke them apart. One of the assayers hesitated in the doorway, his glance politely averted. “Must speak to you a moment, m’lord.”

“Go,” Palmer said to her. “I will see you tomorrow evening, for your report.”

Everleigh’s Auction Rooms occupied the corner of a wide street not far from the market at Covent Garden. Its broad stone face gazed with curtained dignity upon the constant stream of traffic—which, at this afternoon hour, consisted mainly of farmers driving emptied carts led by oxen. At the top of the carpeted steps, two footmen lounged against the brass rail, idly watching the throng of quarrelsome young men who were sporting down the pavement.

“There will be other footmen posted during the auction,” Ashmore said. He stood beside Christian on the roof of a neighboring building, inspecting the scene through a battered field glass.

“Four at most.” Christian had taken careful note during the ball. “Two to handle the carriages, two at the door. What of the other entrances?”

“The footpath to the east is used by the employees. Not guarded, as far as I can tell. There’s also the alley in the rear, where cargo is received.”

“They’ll close that down. The czar is sending a proxy to bid—his people will insist on the closure, for security.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Yes.” Since the appearance of the damned candelabrum, he had been in steady communication with the Russian embassy. Obolensky seemed skeptical that Bolkhov yet lived; the possibility indicated a failure of intelligence among his own men, spies throughout London who kept tabs on Russians.

Still, he had agreed to investigate. Capturing Bolkhov would be a great boon to his career. The general had absconded from his post, taking half his troops with him. Mutinies were not the kind of insult the Russian government forgot or forgave.

“A risky ploy,” said Ashmore soberly. “If they catch him first, we’ll never know it.”

“That won’t happen.” To remain forever uncertain of Bolkhov’s fate would be tantamount to a curse designed to drive Christian mad.

“Look. Here comes Catherine Everleigh.” Ashmore handed him the field glass.

Catherine’s traveling cloak billowed as she swept down the front steps. At her heels hurried Lilah, looking harried and cross. He could make a good guess about what had put that expression on her face.

“Something amuse you?”

Christian realized he’d begun to smile. “That woman has a natural gift for unpleasantness.”

“Is that your spy trailing her?”

He nodded.

“Brilliant strategy,” Ashmore said, “employing hostesses for an auction house. My wife is considering the same for her perfumeries. Says she could cut the product in half and sell twice as much, as long as the salesgirls were pretty.”

For some reason, the remark rubbed him wrong. “She’s got a brain,” he said. “Lilah, I mean.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear it.”

Christian snorted. “I’d imagine your wife would object to that remark.” Blindfolded and drunk, Mina Granville could have outwitted a chess master. Her company spanned the Atlantic, supplying perfumes and lotions to every debutante from Philadelphia to Warsaw.

Ashmore cut him an odd look. “So she would. But we’re not speaking of wives.”

Christian checked the impulse to argue. “You’re right,” he said. A stupid woman would have served him better.

But her company would not have been nearly so satisfying. Without Lilah at Buckley Hall, he’d have lost his mind by now.

She was not merely a distraction. It had begun to trouble him deeply that he had involved her in this game. She deserved better. She deserved . . . a tower. Some profoundly safe place, where she could watch from the window, well above the messy fray, and want for nothing.

Ashmore was still watching him. “Time must drag in the country,” he drawled. “It occurs to me to wonder—however are you keeping yourself occupied?”

Christian snorted. He would need to be deaf to miss the ribbing note in the other man’s words. “I take regular walks.”

“Not alone, I hope?”

“Indeed. Marvelous for the constitution.”

“Mm. Do you know what else profits a man’s constitution? Or shall I spare your bachelor sensibilities?”

“Stuff it.” He ignored Ashmore’s delighted smile and turned his glass toward Catherine Everleigh. There was his proper concern, damn it.

Catherine was turning a tight circle on the pavement, evidently searching for a carriage that should have been waiting. She drew her hands out of her muff, jabbing the air for emphasis as she spoke up to the footmen.

The men rushed down the steps to her. One bowed low; the other bounded down the street, hunting between parked vehicles.

“Coachman gone missing,” Ashmore observed.

“God help him.” Christian handed back the field glasses. “I should follow.”

“Who? They’re splitting up.”

Christian wheeled back. Catherine was stalking down the pavement toward the footman, who had located coach and driver. Lilah, meanwhile, had turned on her heel in the opposite direction.

He swore. “She’s meant to follow Catherine. She knows this. All times, I said.”

Ashmore shoved the glasses back into the case. “You go with Catherine. I’ll follow the other one.”

“Lilah.” He caught Ashmore’s look. “That’s her name.”

Ashmore cocked a brow. “I’ll remember that. Are you certain you have your lovely Lilah managed? For she appears to be hailing a cab.”

Christian resisted a black urge to laugh. Managed was not how he would describe it. He shoved aside the memory of how she sounded when she moaned, instead thinking of a more recent moment.

She was very good with a knife. For a clerk’s daughter, she was too good, and too calm under pressure, by far. And for a thief . . . she chose to steal objects of no use to her whatsoever. For her ordinary master, she said.

Christ. He cursed through lips that had gone numb. Could he have been such a fool?

“You follow Catherine,” he bit out. “I’ll make sure I haven’t pulled an adder into the nest.”

Neddie’s tavern was windowless, the air thick with smoke, most of it wafting from her uncle’s cigar. Lilah waved it away. “Can’t you put that out? Since when did you favor tobacco?”

“Gentleman’s habit.” He sucked the tip into a fire-bright glow. “Getting soft,” he added when she coughed. “Must be that country air rotting your lungs. Where did you say you’ve been?”

She hadn’t told him. A good thing, too. Otherwise he might have written her at Buckley Hall. As it was, she’d nearly choked when Susie Snow had handed over his letter this morning. “You can’t write to me,” she told him now. “It’s too risky.”

Nick’s silver eyes narrowed as he tapped his cigar, casting ash onto the floor. The ground was already thick with discarded shells, sticky with spilled beer. “Fear I’ll sully your postbox?”

She sighed. With other people, Nick plainly traded on his fearsome reputation. But with her, he got prickly about it. “I don’t lodge alone,” she said. “The other girl I share my room with—she also works at Everleigh’s, and she’s the greatest gossip alive. It’s a wonder she didn’t steam open the envelope.”

Certainly Susie had been glad to speculate. A gentleman admirer? she had cooed. You’ve been busy in the country! You must tell us all about it.

Fortunately, the other girls had been more interested in what Lilah could tell them about Lord Palmer. She had come up with some ridiculous story about the fine figure he cut on horseback. Miss Everleigh’s appearance had spared her the need to embroider further. She’d never been so grateful to be summoned for a scolding—this time, for forgetting her new position.

If you wish to return to hostessing, you need only say the word, Miss Everleigh had snapped, before dismissing her for the afternoon to see to her own business before they reunited at Paddington Station.

“All I’m saying,” Lilah told Nick, “is that until this business is done, you can’t write to me at all.”

Her uncle shrugged. “She wouldn’t have found any interest in that note, unless she knows how to crack code—in which case, send her my way. I’ve got a project or two I could use a hand with.”

Good Lord. She could just imagine what he’d do with Susie. Like a cat handed a limping mouse, he’d grow bored and shred her in five seconds. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve blended in at Everleigh’s. I do nothing to draw notice; otherwise I’d never have made it so far. I don’t want anyone getting curious about me.”

Old Neddie came over with a pint and a basket of fried oysters. Nick thanked him with a fat coin, far too generous; he owned this place, after all, and could have eaten for free. But it was his strategy to keep his old friends thickly buttered.

He rolled his cigar in his fingers, studying her. “You’ve got a lot of fear in you, Lily. I don’t remember you being so timid.”

By old habit, the words stung. She reminded herself that she wasn’t a part of this world anymore. In her new life, timidity wasn’t a weakness. It was ladylike. “I’ve got something to lose now. But I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” He was a fine hypocrite, making her feel guilty about turning her back on her kin, when he was trading on threats to manipulate her. “You’re counting on me wanting to keep my position. Otherwise your threats wouldn’t work, and you’d have no hope of getting back those letters.”

“I’ve made no threats today,” he said. “But I thank you for the reminder. You got the letters with you?”

She’d been dreading this question since she’d deciphered his demand for a meeting. “Not yet. But soon.”

He made no reply. He didn’t need to. His silence, and the slight cruel smile that curved his full lips, spoke the threat for him.

“You always stood by your word before,” she said. “Has that changed? The last week of June, you said.”

He sighed, then lifted one finger to signal the barman. “You’ll wet your lips before you go.”

“Why do you need the letters, anyway? None of those men is rich enough to be worth your time. They’re mere vestrymen, not a fat cat among them.”

He glanced back at her, his dark face thoughtful. “Why would you need to know?”

When she’d worked for him, she’d been too young to share fully in his confidences. But he’d trusted her. He’d sometimes even asked her advice. She felt the loss of that now, a funny little pang. It wasn’t only she who’d turned her back here. “Never mind,” she said.

Neddie brought over a mug, slammed it down in front of her, and then stalked off in his usual cheerful way. “You drink it,” she told Nick. “Miss—I can’t go back to work with liquor on my breath.”

“Miss Everleigh wouldn’t like it?” Nick purred.

She caught her breath. There was no way he could know she was working for Miss Everleigh, unless . . .

Cold purled down her spine. “You’ve a spy,” she said. “At the auction house?”

He offered her a gentle smile. “Apart from my dear niece? Why, what a suspicious man it would make me, if I thought you weren’t sufficient.” He picked up the mug, forced it into her hand. “We’ll toast your successes,” he said. “My Lily’s moved up in the world. Assistant to the pretty owner.” He lifted his own drink. “Sláinte.”

She barely tasted the ale. “Why? Why would you care what happens at Everleigh’s?”

“You’re there,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I care?”

She didn’t believe for a moment that he worried for her. Not as a habit. Had he been so inclined, he never would have trained her into a thief, and set her on her first job at thirteen years of age. “You’ve no cause to fear for me.”

“No?” He eyed her. “Crossing swords with viscounts, and cozening pretty rich girls . . . you’ve set yourself up for a mighty grand fall, I think.”

“But you’d be glad to see me fall,” she said softly. He’d said it often enough. “My comeuppance. You’ve been waiting for it, haven’t you?”

He sighed. “I’d be glad to see you back where you belong, Lily. So much talent going to waste, while you lick those swells’ boots.” He paused. “Of course, you’ve not been licking boots recently. What kept you away these last few weeks?”

She knew him too well to miss the silken note in his voice. This was the voice he used when interrogating a man, before he turned to force. “You can’t . . . you can’t doubt me?”

He ran his finger around the rim of his tankard, considering. “Tell me where you’ve been, and I’ll think on my answer.”

God above. She’d had nightmares about this moment. She didn’t know everything about his business, but she still knew enough. That he’d let her make her own way was something of a miracle—but then, she was his niece. Blood must mean something!

Blood did mean something. “I knew you thought me low. But to betray you? Why, you must think me some new form of dirt.”

“Calm yourself.” He took a long sip. “I never accused you.”

“Oh? What did you mean to say, then? Speaking to me as though I’m a—” She could not think of an insult low enough. “A McGowan—”

“Here now,” he said curtly. “Lots of money flows through those auction rooms. Would have caught my interest, with or without you. But when you disappear from town without so much as a word, I’m bound to wonder where you went.”

“Well, stop wondering.” She realized she had a stranglehold on her mug, and set it down with a thump. “I was at Lord Palmer’s estate.” No point in lying, when the truth would serve her better. “The man who caught me—he’s the one who got me the position with Miss Everleigh. I’m helping her ready his estate for auction.”

Nick’s expression didn’t alter a whit. “Curious of him,” he said. “Inviting a known thief under his roof.”

“And into his bed, if he has his way.”

Her uncle’s face darkened. “That’s how you’re getting back those notes?”

She felt a spiteful pleasure in his reaction. This was what he had driven her to. His own niece. “Maybe so.”

His jaw flexed. He loosed a harsh breath, then growled, “Are you willing?”

She wouldn’t push her revenge further. If Nick thought Palmer meant to force her, he’d go after him, rank be damned. Nick would probably enjoy it the more, for the fact that Palmer was a lord.

But the truth was hard to speak, even so. “Yes,” she muttered. “God help me. I’m too willing.”

He grimaced. “Ah.” He bolted the rest of his drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, then. That’s a different brand of foolishness.”

“Idiocy,” she whispered. “I know it.”

He looked at her narrowly. “You watch out for yourself, Lily. These toffs aren’t like us. Don’t see us as people. He’ll use and discard you without losing a night of sleep.”

“I know it.” She was on her feet, though she didn’t remember how. Relief had brought wings with it; she could see in Nick’s face that he was no longer doubting her. Instead he felt . . . pity.

He stood to walk her out. “You know the way of it, I hope.” He cleared his throat. “To avoid complications, I mean.”

His gruffness made her turn red. Good heavens. He was asking if she knew how to avoid pregnancy. “Yes, yes, of course.”

At the door he paused, one palm pressed flat against the wood. “I mean it,” he said. “I can arrange for you to speak with someone. Peg Mulry would help.”

Peg Mulry had used to watch her when she was small. Now Peg made her living at a high-class brothel. “Please don’t,” she said in a strangled voice, and shoved open the door.

The sudden bright sunlight made Nick squint. “No use in prettiness,” he said curtly. “If it’s a career you want, a child would be the end of it.”

“I know that.” She edged into the open lane. “But thanks so much, Uncle, it’s very kind of you to think of me.”

He laughed at her. “Kind, is it? And now you’re fixing to run away, hands clapped to your ears. Is that how these nobs like their women? Empty-brained dolts?” He fluttered his lashes. “What’s a cock, m’lord? I’ve never heard of it.”

“You’re awful!” She turned to stalk toward the high road, catching only at the last instant the way his face hardened.

Too late for warning. A hand closed around her elbow. “What in God’s name,” Palmer bit out, “are you doing here?”