Page 5 of Lie Down With a Lyon (The Lyon’s Den)

D áire hurried away from Blanche.

At the memory of her lips on his, anger blossomed like a black flower. A torrent of frustration tumbled through his veins. All of it raged and smoldered in the flames of his jealousy. He silently cursed himself. He should never have reached for her. Never pressed her so near. Never tasted her.

And she? She should never have offered herself. Never responded to him. Never welcomed what he did. How he did it. How he could not stop himself.

Oh, bloody hell. He ran a hand through his wild locks.

He hastened toward the quaint house upstream. Think of business! Think of facts! Not her, you dolt. You have a job to do for Carlisle. Think on that!

Anything but the marriage of Blanche Rivers to Henry Mercer, chosen by lots or chance or whatever whim of the likes of Mrs. Dove-Lyon. Mercer was not a bad man. But rather bland, colorless, a rich man’s son with little to his name, save his daddy’s wealth. He had often allowed his idleness to become an open door to vice. Did Mrs. Dove-Lyon know that of him? Did she care?

Aye, Dáire knew the lady. Not well. But still. He had even been hired by her once last year on one of her marital arrangements gone wrong. There Dáire substituted the older, titled brother who was a paragon for that man’s scurrilous, illegitimate one. That younger fellow was an inveterate gambler and rake, but had managed to hide it well from Society. Even from Mrs. Dove-Lyon.

If I fixed that, could I fix this?

The idea danced through the red rage of his anger and the clashing green of his jealousy. But if he did, if Blanche ever knew he had meddled, she would hate him.

What a riddle!

Work, O’Neill! Work!

He focused on the small London country estate of the Earl of Carlisle that appeared around the newest bend. It was a modest house, Palladian in form, built by the last earl after a fire had swept through the previous seventeenth-century building.

Dáire took the circular path to the front door. No problems with him being admitted by Carlisle’s butler. He’d done steady jobs for the earl for more than two years, and both the man and Dáire’s own superior, Scarlett Hawthorne, were pleased with the results.

“Good afternoon, sir.” Carlisle’s man, Winston, stepped back to allow him into the marbled foyer. Dáire’s name was not necessary. In fact, after the first introduction of Dáire to Winston here, Carlisle had abolished the requirement.

“We are all friends,” the earl had told his man with a toss of his overlong, sun-bleached brown hair. “Always let him in immediately.”

“Follow me, sir,” Winston said now. “The earl is in his library.”

There he spent many hours these days, Dáire knew from Carlisle’s statements over the past two weeks.

He took the stairs behind Winston, eager to have this interview over. He had to go home and plan how to extricate Blanche from a catastrophic union with Henry Mercer.

“Well, hello, O’Neill!” Carlisle strode forward, one big hand out toward him, the other clutching his favorite tool lately—binoculars. Today, he had a marine spyglass that could afford him ten miles coverage. He collapsed the brass and laid it on his desk.

Hale and hearty, this man who worked on problems with the war on France was recovering his good humor after a long bout of grief over the loss of his wife two years ago.

“You are looking wonderful, my lord!” Dáire accepted the earl’s offer of a large Chippendale chair and a glass of Scotch whisky.

Carlisle had that graceful swagger to his walk. He glanced over a few times at Dáire as he poured. But when he strolled forward, he put the crystal glass into Dáire’s hand and broke his silence. “I wish I could say the same for you, O’Neill.”

Dáire raised the glass in salute, as did Carlisle to him. “A problem.”

Carlisle let a smile curve his lips. “Not work, I wager.”

“Do I wear a sign?”

“You have the look of a man bedeviled not by his challenges with men, but with a woman.”

Dáire sighed and drank. “My problem is one I should not solve.”

“Why not? Can she not be yours?”

“No.” Dáire shook his head once and took another swig. “Shall we discuss your latest discoveries, sir?” He tipped his head toward the collapsed spyglass atop the table.

“The lady I’ve been watching for the past seven weeks has gone. Disappeared! Moved out of the old saddler’s house yesterday, so says the man’s widow.”

“Any idea where she’s gone?”

“She said she was off to visit her aunt in Hastings.”

“On the southern coast?”

“Precisely.”

“Odd,” Dáire mused. “When one of ours engaged her at a country dance weeks ago, she said she had an aunt in Eastbourne. Now she has one in Hastings?”

Carlisle frowned. “A lot of aunts. Too many, if you ask me.”

“All living along the Channel.”

Carlisle clucked his tongue. “Do you have a man near Hastings, O’Neill?”

“He’s in Brighton at the moment. At the end of his case, he is. I’ll send word he is to trace her to Eastbourne.”

“Do it quickly.” Carlisle leaned forward, anxious as Dáire had never seen him before.

Was there some other reason that set Carlisle’s gaze aglow? Did he like this woman? Unusual, since no one had ever appealed to the earl since he’d met his future wife when he was four and she was five. Her tragic death in the house fire that destroyed the kitchen wing of this house had rocked the earl. For more than a year afterward, he submerged himself in work. Going nowhere, seeing no one, he performed his duties at the admiralty and lately the Foreign Office with an intense dedication. But when twelve- and fourteen-hours days had sapped his good health, he’d gone home to recover. ’Twas then that Carlisle had spotted this woman in the cottage not far away…and begun to rally as a spy, and as a man who was very attracted to the stranger in his midst.

Recalling the details of her face and form, Dáire dug a short pencil and small folio from his breast frock coat pocket. “She always takes her pencils and bound notebooks wherever she goes, correct?”

Carlisle was speaking as Dáire was writing. “Her distinguishing mark, yes. Even took her pencil and paper to the country dance. Claimed she must record what she sees. Keeps her calm.”

“But her habit only upset you because of that one sketch she produced.”

“That’s right. Have you ever seen anyone draw a building so to scale that it’s as if they flew above the treetops? Who does that, eh?”

Dáire locked gazes with his friend. The word that stood between them was one they had spoken when first Carlisle noticed the beautiful woman who walked the Thames and captured his imagination so completely. If she were a spy, why was she sketching so that others might look over her shoulder and see her work?

“My man will find her,” Dáire assured him. “Then we will find a way to pin her down, make her stay until we can figure out what precisely she’s about.”

“The admiralty and the Foreign Office need to know about anyone interested in the coastline. So do I. I had a problem with a double agent a few months ago. I do not wish to be wrong again. Not with Bonaparte’s Grand Army assembling on the French coast and threatening to invade us.” The marquess’s cheeks colored in his anger and embarrassment. Then he rose. “Another drink?”

“No. Thank you, sir. I am off to London.”

Carlisle poured himself a smaller draught this time and sat. “You know, O’Neill, I worry about you. The work can be a nightmare, taking too much from you. I see it. You are pale and worn. Not your usual self. Why don’t you put one of your men in charge and take a few days to yourself? I have a cottage outside Brighton. I will happily send word to my caretakers that a friend comes for a rest.”

“Thank you, sir. But I could not impose.”

“You won’t. I haven’t been south since…well, the fire.” He took a drink. “The place is a lovely cottage along the sands, well appointed, and my two staff write often and beg for someone to take care of. I say it should be you. They are man and wife and live away, far down the lane, so you would have absolute privacy. Take a friend, if you like!” When Dáire hesitated, actually considering the offer, Carlisle persisted. “From what I understand, you are not married.”

“No, sir.”

“Nor have a mistress.”

Four weeks ago, Dáire had broken an arrangement with one certain woman who had visited him twice weekly for over a year. Mary Adams was a lovely lady, a widow, a vendeuse in a French dressmaker’s shop on Half Moon Street. They had comforted each other well, and he had enjoyed her company, smart and witty as she was. But he’d broken it off when he realized he was not being fair to her. He had no desire to make love to anyone. Only Blanche Rivers. Curse my soul.

“No. No one.”

“And this one who makes your brow furrow? Is she married?”

The earl was too perceptive. “Soon to be.”

“Does she care for him?”

Dáire shook his head. “I doubt it. Only for the protection of matrimony.”

“I see.” Carlisle twirled his empty glass. “Another?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Prudent, you are. Always.”

“I was once not prudent at all, sir. I do not tempt myself again, especially when I am…challenged.”

Once more, Carlisle went to his broad stand and poured from the decanter. “Can you personally not give her the protection of matrimony?”

“Circumstances forbid it.”

“Ah. So…she is your cousin?”

Dáire gave a laugh, and so did Carlisle. “No.”

“So then…she marries a man with more money, or land or power, than you can give her.”

“Aside from the fact that none of that appeals to her, no. There are other factors that forbid the union.”

“Hmmm. Truly a mess, then.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Well, O’Neill, I have known you for four years now. There is no problem you cannot solve. No mountain you will not climb to correct a wrong. But I detect here—dare I name it—grief?”

Hell. Carlisle was right.

“My dear friend,” Carlisle said, “it would be wrong for her to wed another.”

It is. I wish I could change it. But Blanche would know it was me who got another man for her. I told her a few stories of how I work. If I fix this, she will condemn me to hell.

“My friend!” Carlisle slapped his knee. “I pester you unmercifully. Now I stop. However, when you figure this out, and you will, do promise me you will come and tell me all the details.”

Carlisle was one for hearing every tiny fact of all his missions. It was what gave him insight into future problems, and Dáire had always been willing, even as he chuckled in the telling, to reveal each pertinent morsel.

“I must see her wed to another.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am, sir. I am.”

Dáire rushed away from Carlisle to return his horse to the stables one mile away from Blanche’s. After paying off his fees to the head groom, he caught a hack and hurried to the center of Richmond and the White Duck to meet Tim Farrell. That man had done an excellent job of accompanying Blanche as her hired groom each time she and Dáire met on the bridal path. Farrell was one of Dáire’s men in Richmond, and this job had been a convenient one with Farrell’s mother so ill at home. Dáire was right to have hired him, and paid the stable master handsomely to appoint Farrell to be Miss Delacourt’s hired man each time she appeared.

“The lady will not be riding again,” Dáire told his young man soon after he sat down. “You’ve done a fine job o’ keeping her safe.” He drained his mug of beer, extracted a paper package filled with pound notes, and slid it across the old, rough wooden table.

Farrell weighed it in his hand. His eyes widened. “This is more than before, sir.”

“Aye, ’tis so, Farrell.” Dáire shot to his feet, unable to sit still. Besides what he really wanted was a tall four fingers of whisky. But Dáire had experience with John Power & Son and, thankfully, after years of too much fine whisky, had learned to temper his desires. All of them. Save one…

But when she marries Friday morning, there’ll be no time for you, boy-o.

He strode to the bar and got another ale for Farrell and one short whisky for himself. He had to be positive, look toward his future. He’d learned that every day, every hour, presented an opportunity for him to catch a job…and good money. He could make friends, high and low on the social rungs. Folks liked him, his smile, his openness.

But it was his unrelenting drive to do a job well that made him a unique man with a unique job. Only one man hated him and threatened death. That man was Jonathan Rivers, and Dáire had never worked a job in the intervening three years in which Rivers was implicated.

A good thing. Dáire did not look for trouble. He’d explained to Rivers what he did, how he worked, but the job that had raised Rivers’s hackles was a murder in St. Katherine’s Docks. Dáire had solved the crime, found the murderer. But not before Rivers had warned him never to take any of his friends to gaol again. Of course, Dáire had not known the culprit was in any way attached to Rivers. But his statement meant nothing to the man. Rivers would not accept Dáire as foe…or son-in-law.

“Come near me and mine again,” Rivers threatened then, “and you’ll be feedin’ the fish in the Thames.”

Dáire was pleased he’d never had another reason to go near the man.

He liked his work. He provided a service no one else rendered.

He used his friendships and his dearly earned knowledge observing others in the streets to buy himself access, information—and power. Now, after ten years in every street and alley, each dock and pub, and every rookery in London, he had fourteen men to steer, problems to solve for many Society leaders or businessmen. His allies were men in government, clerks with years of experience. His Shadows were expert agents who followed quarry and investigated as they could. Those men he had trained as well as any Bow Street runner. His own runners were more recent recruits who learned on the job. Stationed all over town, they provided eyes and ears for the Shadows and for any accidental mischief. All of his men were thorough, resolute, devoted to ethics, uncovering those who cheated or stole or did worse to further their own cause.

Like a merchant jobber of army uniforms who took bribes—and would soon learn that Dáire O’Neill would end that money-making scheme. An MP, married and amoral, had ruined a young lady and refused to aid her financially. He would soon know that Dáire O’Neill required that he pay the woman a handsome monthly living. That or his father-in-law, averse to scandal as that man was, would cancel the man’s monthly draft.

Dáire returned to Farrell with their drinks and took his seat opposite. “I thank you for your service to the lady and to me. I know it was irregular work to ride as groom, but you helped me.”

“Glad, I am, sir. But…” Farrell winced. “Well, sir, ye must know, today was different from the last.”

Dáire sipped his drink. Farrell’s note of apprehension struck him. “How so?”

“We were followed.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“He was no gent. Not dressed for it, no. Not the best horse rider, either. Rough, if you ask me.”

Dáire had not noticed a thing. Not a twig out of place. But then Blanche’s news, even though he already knew it, set him on fire. He saw and heard only her. “How rough?”

“Bad shave, to start. Poor shoes. Clothes, dirty.”

Dáire got the picture. “Up from London?”

“Who knows, eh, sir?” Farrell took another sip. “I didn’t hear him speak.”

“He was there the whole time?”

“He was following our lady, sir. Appeared behind her before you did.”

“And when we parted?”

“He went off behind our lady. Not you he wants at all, sir.”

This man was one of Jonathan Rivers’s boys. Dáire knew it. Who else would be interested in what Blanche Delacourt did? Mrs. Dove-Lyon wouldn’t care to follow her. Henry Mercer might. Or his father. Dáire would check on that when he returned to London.

Dáire got to her feet, his hand out. He had to leave and investigate. “Thank you, Farrell.”

“It’s been an honor to help you, sir. Able to pay a doctor for me mother, I was.” Farrell pressed the money to his chest. “I am grateful.”

“Come see me in London when she’s better, eh? I think it’s time we talked about moving you up the ladder.”

“Aye, sir!” Farrell’s freckled face broke into a grin. “I’d like that, I would!”