Page 23 of The Duke and Lady Scandal (Princes of London #1)

One week later

The fourth Saturday of the month dawned bright, with blue skies and just the right nip of autumn chill in the air. Trees still held on to some color, but gold and red and orange decorated the ground too and crunched delightfully under the wheels of Allie’s bicycle as she rode to Hyde Park.

In her wicker basket, she carried a flannel-covered jug of Hawlston’s coffee, and she knew Jo would have come in the family carriage with her bicycle lashed to the back so that she could bring a picnic basket full of warm hand pies and a jug of tea for those who preferred it.

Jo waved in welcome as she rode up, and most of the rest of their bicycle club was already present. Most had leaned their bicycles against trees while they sipped steaming cups of tea.

“Thank goodness,”

Agnes Russell called. “She’s finally here with the coffee.”

“We are pleased to see you too, Allie. Coffee or no coffee,”

Marion Russell retorted. She was ever the sweet counterpart to her rather acerbic cousin.

Though Allie enjoyed both ladies because they were both passionate about bicycling.

October was sometimes their last group ride of the season, since the weather could take a turn by the end of November, so all of them were in high spirits with such fair weather for a day out of doors.

“We still need to have our meeting about the charity dinner,”

Jo said when she approached to hand Allie a cup from those she’d brought.

“We do. Our first try got a bit . . . derailed.”

Jo leaned in. “Never mind about that. We have time.”

Allie didn’t like thinking about that day because the feelings all rushed back. Jo seemed to understand that and did her best to avoid the topic or any mention of Benedict Drake.

Once everyone had a refill of tea or a fresh cup of coffee, Agnes offered up their usual toast.

“To sisterhood, to mobility, to independence.”

Everyone raised their drink to their club’s motto.

Together, the group of seven ladies laughed and chatted and caught up as they hadn’t done since their last meeting in September. Once the jugs of warm refreshment were empty, the Wellingdons’ footman collected all the cups, and everyone began bundling up to prepare for their ride.

From Hyde Park, they usually wound down toward the Natural History Museum and around Chelsea, then up through Kensington and back into the park. Occasionally, they went east toward Mayfair and would also pass by Princes if the area wasn’t too crowded with shoppers.

“I think we’ll take our southerly route today,”

Jo announced. “Oh goodness. Shelton, I almost forgot the books.”

The footman hadn’t forgotten, apparently; he stood nearby with a box teeming with the American bicycling book she’d shown to Allie.

“Before we head off, I’d like to gift each of you a copy of this book I thought perhaps we could read as a group over the winter months.”

“Always trying to turn us into a book club, Lady Jo,”

Agnes put in archly.

“You’ve found me out, Agnes.”

Jo winked at her. “I’m a wily book club mastermind.”

After the books had been distributed, each lady took a moment to flip through theirs. Then most placed it in the basket or saddle bags attached to their bicycle.

Allie noticed that a couple of ladies had drawn together in gossipy whispers, and they kept darting looks toward the park entrance nearest the Albert Memorial.

She turned back to get a look at what had so caught their interest, and her heart did a little jig inside her chest.

Benedict Drake strode toward them with a bunch of flowers—dark, velvet-petaled violets—in his hand.

She blinked, not quite believing the evidence of her eyes.

He wore no hat, no gloves, but he looked remarkably dashing in an ink-black suit, a windswept overcoat, and an emerald-green waistcoat.

She hadn’t heard from him in days. Not even a note. And she’d seen nothing in the papers about the arrest of the man he’d called M or the resolution of the case that had consumed so much of his energy.

When tidying at home, she’d discovered something about the calling card Holcroft had given her. Lottie had come to her distraught. While brushing Allie’s overcoat clean, she’d discovered a stain in the satin lining of her pocket.

A crimson stain.

It had come off the calling card, and when Allie had fully washed it away, it revealed a name. Mortimer Denby. Those bits of paper—the M and the D and clock to indicate time—finally made sense. She’d sent a note to Ben immediately, and it had been two days with no word.

Her hopeful heart still told her that now that the case was over, they could be together. But he hadn’t come. She’d begun to give up on the idea that he would.

So to see him now, striding toward them in a magnificent display of masculine appeal, made her a little giddy.

“Oh bother, who is that?”

Agnes groused. “Does he know this is a ladies-only bicycle club?”

“I don’t think we can prevent men from walking through Hyde Park entirely, Agnes.”

Marion shot her cousin an amused look.

“He’s not here for us,”

Jo said softly.

Jo was right, of course. His gaze was entirely fixed on Allie.

As he drew closer, she felt as if she might leap out of her skin. Anticipation and yearning and hope filled her so quickly that she felt a bit dizzy.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your note, but thank you for it,”

he said as soon as he was close. He stopped a few steps away from her, giving her room to come to him. “I’d gotten his name out of him. The son of that poor man in Grosvenor Square, who thought he’d died five years ago.”

“You have enough to keep him from hurting anyone else?”

“I do. But I thought telling you in a note wouldn’t suffice. Besides, I have more to say and wanted to come in person.”

“Does he not see that we are conducting a meeting?”

Agnes said in a not-at-all-quiet tone.

For the first time, Ben skimmed his gaze over the gathering. “I ask your patience and forgiveness, ladies. I need to speak to Miss Prince.”

“Is it important?”

Agnes asked with rude frankness.

“Quite important.”

She emitted a long, weary sigh. “Very well, then.”

Allie couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s not you,”

she whispered to him. “She’s like that with everyone.”

“It’s all right,”

he told her with a smile. “I won’t be deterred today.”

He looked down as if just recalling he clutched a bundle of violets. “These are for you.”

“I’d hoped.”

Allie took them, drew in their rich scent, and smiled. “But what is the occasion?”

He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on hers. “First, an apology. I was . . .”

He bent his head, then lifted it, his eyes bright. “Wrong. And I’m sorry. I gave in to fear. I let it rule me. Even my hunger for advancement was driven by fear. Of not measuring up. Not making up for what happened to George.”

Allie’s eyes welled with tears, but she refused to let them fall until he’d finished.

“But even in that wrongness,”

he said more quietly, “I knew the truth. That you mattered most. That meeting you was the most important moment of my life.”

“Oh, Ben—”

“There’s more,”

he said with a delicious grin that made her heart thud against her ribs. “I like how you changed me. I like all the ways you defied me and were honest and impulsive and turned my single-minded world upside down.”

He reached into the upper pocket of his overcoat and hesitated. One brow winged up, and he glanced over her head at the assembled ladies.

Silently, he was asking her permission to make a scene.

Allie smiled in reply.

With two fingers, he dug deeper and soon emerged with a small, perfect box.

“Alexandra Prince, I would like to request a lifetime’s worth of you turning my life upside down.”

He took a step closer, crunching across fallen leaves. Then he lowered himself to one knee and opened the box. “Will you marry me?”

Inside sat a lovely gold ring with a single round diamond surrounded by polished green stones.

“Are those what I think they are?”

“You said green amber is rare, but Mr. Gibson managed to find a stone to cut into all the tiny ones.”

“So you two have been conspiring.”

He chuckled. “A bit.”

“What’s your answer, Miss Prince?”

Agnes barked. “We’re a quarter of an hour late al—”

“Hush,”

several of the ladies crowed in unison.

“Take your time, Allie,”

Jo offered in a kind, soft voice.

“Marriage is a trap for women,”

Agnes grumbled, “so she should take all the time she needs.”

“Agnes!”

Marion Russell hissed. “Really?”

Allie kept her eyes on Ben while the ladies murmured behind her.

“It won’t be a prison,”

he said quietly. “I know you value your independence, and I won’t take it from you.”

“I’ll keep running the shop.”

“Of course you will.”

“And you’ll stay on at Scotland Yard?”

Allie couldn’t forget that he’d used the job as a rationale for putting his feelings for her aside.

“I’m considering my options.”

There wasn’t an ounce of regret in his tone. In fact, he sounded downright hopeful. “Private inquiry agent might suit me better.”

“Maybe it would.”

She didn’t like much of what she’d heard of Sir Felix Haverstock or his hold over Ben.

“So will you, Alexandra?”

“Yes.”

He stood and pulled her into an embrace, pulled her right off her feet, and she didn’t mind a bit.

“With all my heart, yes,”

she whispered against his neck.

“With all my heart too,”

he murmured in her ear.

Two days later, an hour before Allie and Mr. Gibson were preparing to close up for the day, a coach pulled up to the curb in front of the shop.

Dom and Eve had sent a telegram the day before, but Allie wasn’t certain when to expect them.

It took several minutes for the coachmen to take down all of their luggage, and Allie came out to offer to help carry the pile in.

Eve embraced her immediately. “It’s so good to see you.”

Allie smiled and gave her sister a squeeze. “You too.”

“You’ll be glad you didn’t come on this one. Every single thing that could go wrong did, at least in terms of our travel arrangements.”

“Not everything went wrong,”

Dom announced as he approached with a polished wooden box that he carried as gently as if he was balancing an infant in his arms. “We found this.”

He lifted it out to Allie. “Will you carry it in while we get the bags?” He pointed as soon as he’d handed the box off. “And be careful.”

“Of course.”

She imagined what treasure might be nestled inside as she brought it back into the shop and set it gently on the counter.

They always brought the scent of fresh air and trampled grass and freshly turned earth with them when they came back from an expedition, or so it seemed to Allie.

And this time, they both seemed brimming with eagerness to show her what they found.

Dom shucked his coat, casually draping it over one of a pair of eighteenth-century chairs. Eve was still unraveling her scarf when she shot him an exasperated look.

“Well, come on and show her.”

He strode to the counter dramatically, and then stepped behind it.

With his usual flair for the theatrical, he flicked the metal clasp on the box and lifted its lid open inch by inch.

Allie stepped closer to peer inside.

A beautiful strip of stamped gold, not much longer than the length of her index finger, glinted in the gaslights’ glow.

Indeed, its shine seemed to make the whole box glow as if it was indeed some hallowed object.

“Do you recognize that styling?”

Eve prompted.

“Anglo-Saxon?”

She beamed with pride. “Anglo-Saxon indeed. Not the Viking hoard Dom expected.”

Dom doffed an invisible hat at Eve. “This is your find, and I’ve already acknowledged it a half dozen times.”

“Yes, but I wanted you to do it in front of Allie for good measure.”

They both laughed.

“And there’s more. So much more,”

Eve enthused. “We’re going to assemble a full crew and return for a complete excavation. This is a ship’s burial and the things we’ve already found, Allie, you can’t imagine.”

“I’m going to write to Van Arsdale and get you on the crew, Allie,”

Dom vowed.

Allie looked at each of them in turn, happy for them but without an ounce of eagerness to leave London, or the shop, or her fiancé.

“Actually, I’m content here,”

she told them. “I don’t want to join the crew.”

Dom blinked in disbelief. Eve tipped her head in confusion.

“If you’re certain,”

Eve said slowly. “Whatever you prefer, of course.”

“I prefer to manage the shop.”

Dom shrugged. “Well, that’s settled, then.”

He yawned and ran a hand through his hair. “God, I’m exhausted. And starving.”

“Well, I should imagine you are.”

Mr. Gibson was dressed for departing, but Allie knew he’d overheard her siblings’ arrival and would come up to greet them first.

“Gibson,”

Dom said with true warmth, “aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

He walked over and shook Mr. Gibson’s hand vigorously.

“Thank you,”

Eve said, “both of you, for watching over the shop.”

Allie exchanged a glance with Mr. Gibson.

“Did anything happen while we were away?”

Dom asked with mild interest. He scanned his gaze around the shop. “Everything looks much the same, so I’m assuming it was business as usual.”

Allie pressed her lips together and Mr. Gibson’s bushy gray brows danced on his forehead.

“There are a few things to report,”

Allie told them as evenly as she could manage.

“Oh?”

Eve looked intrigued.

“To start, we have a new and much-improved safe.”

Eve and Dom exchanged a look.

“Why?”

Dom asked, his brows dipping now. “That must have been quite an expense.”

“Luckily, we keep up our insurance payments and Lloyd’s of London covered the replacement due to theft.”

“What?”

Eve gasped.

“Theft of what?”

Dom asked, already striding toward the back room.

“That is a rather complicated story,”

Mr. Gibson told him. “But do let me show you the new safe.”

“I want to see too,”

Eve said, and then followed them both to Mr. Gibson’s workroom.

Allie waited in the front, planting herself near the windows and looking out for any sign of Ben. Each time a hansom slowed, she expected him to dash out.

Finally, one pulled right into the spot that Eve and Dom’s coach had recently vacated, and he stepped down. He spotted her and gave her a wolfish smile.

A moment later, he was through the door and in her arms.

His greeting kisses were dizzying and delicious. This time he pulled her nearly off her toes, sweeping his tongue into her mouth to deepen the kiss.

When he turned with her, his boot heel caught the edge of one of Dom’s bags.

Ben looked down and settled her gently onto her feet. “They’re back.”

“They are.”

Allie still kept hold of him, one hand on his chest, the other resting on his injured arm.

“And you’re certain you want to spring this on them first thing?”

“We’re happy and we should share it.”

She stroked her hand along the hard muscles of his arm. “They’ll be happy for us too.”

“Excuse me,”

Dom all but shouted from the back room. He was using his overprotective brother voice. “Who are you?”

Allie laughed as she turned to face her brother, and Dom looked at her as if she’d lost her wits.

“Dom, Eve, this is Detective Inspector Benedict Drake.”

“For a little while longer,”

Ben whispered so only she could hear.

Allie glanced back at him, and he smiled. After they’d talked the matter through, and he’d pondered on his own, he’d decided to tender his notice to Scotland Yard and open his own detective agency.

Mr. Fitzroy was trying to lure him to his own agency, but Ben liked the idea of independence. And Allie couldn’t have agreed more.

“Is he here about the theft?”

Eve queried as she stepped out of the back with Mr. Gibson.

“He was here about the theft actually. And about a strange conversation I overheard at Hawlston’s.”

“And then to find you before you went to the house of a madman,”

Ben said quietly.

“Would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Dom strode to the center of the room and glared at Ben.

“We had an adventurous couple of weeks,”

Allie told them with not a small amount of pleasure. “Then he asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”

Ben drew closer and curled his hand around her waist.

Dom stood slack-jawed, darting his gaze from Allie to Ben and back again.

Eve stood with one hand over her mouth and then moved past Dom to give Allie a hug. She offered Ben a smile too.

“May I offer a pre-wedding welcome to the Prince family, Detective Inspector?” she said.

“Ben will do just fine.”

He reached out his hand to shake hers.

Dom’s jaw was clenched and he was frozen in the contemplative mode that led either to acceptance or to him railing against fate.

Finally, some of the tension in his body eased and he approached to offer Ben his hand.

“This is highly irregular, but I welcome you too.”

Dom turned a disgruntled look Allie’s way. “I take it we’ll get further explanation at some point.”

“Perhaps we can all go out to dinner, and we’ll tell you the whole complicated story,”

Allie offered.

“We should,”

Eve agreed. “In fact, if Dom and I get washed and changed, we could try for this evening.”

Dom murmured in agreement.

“Will you join us, Mr. Gibson?”

Allie asked. “You’re part of the family too.”

“I’d be delighted.”

Ben shifted from behind her and took up the spot Dom had vacated in the center of the room.

“Before anyone departs, I thought you’d all like to have a look at this.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled out a folded and neatly clipped rectangle of newspaper. “I’m assuming you haven’t seen today’s Illustrated Police News?”

Allie shook her head, disbelieving, and reached for the clipping.

Unfolding the paper carefully, she gulped and laughed at the same time.

“Is this real?”

“As you see. It’s very real indeed.”

The article featured sketches of her and Ben and a rather extreme caricature of Mortimer Denby. The title read Lady Shop Owner Helps Nab Jewel Thief.

Eve and Dom and Mr. Gibson crowded in for a look too.

Dom lifted his gaze to Allie’s with a sort of awestruck pride. “It seems your days while we were gone weren’t humdrum at all.”

“Goodness,”

Eve said as she skimmed the article. “You hit him with your boot?”

“Saved by that bloody boot.”

Ben chuckled, and Allie pushed at his chest playfully. “We should pin this,”

he told her, “in the back.”

“We most definitely should,”

Eve agreed. In fact, she took the page right out of Allie’s fingers and marched straight back to do it.

“Thank you,”

Allie told Ben, turning to twine her arms around his neck. “For understanding how much that would mean to me.”

“Thank you for marching into my office.”

He glanced up to see that Mr. Gibson and Dom were distracted and gave her a quick kiss. “And for saving me.”

“With the boot,”

she teased.

“From my fear and stubborn foolishness. Here with you is exactly where I’m meant to be.”

“And where you’ll stay?”

“Always.”