Page 4 of The Duke and Lady Scandal (Princes of London #1)

Allie closed her notebook, satisfied with the list she’d made, though not feeling particularly passionate about any of items on it. Indeed, the idea of reorganizing the back room and the upstairs storage space at Princes intrigued her more.

If she was going to be left to run the shop, then she might as well do it her way.

She glanced up at the counter, wondering if Mrs. Cline had forgotten her. Though, in fairness, the shop was still buzzing with customers and the din of conversation had only grown since her arrival.

Then one man’s voice cut across the cacophony, sounding desperate, raspy, and deep as a foghorn.

“Quiet, man! Talk like that and you’ll see us all hang.”

“Hangin’? Lose our bloody heads, we will,”

a higher-pitched masculine voice offered in a panicked whisper.

Allie stilled but the men’s voices got lost in the hum of conversation. They were close, and she dared a peek around the corner of the nook she sat in. Most customers in the coffeehouse were gentlemen hunched in conversation. She wondered if the trio at the table nearest the nook were the ones she’d heard. All wore dark clothes and two sat elbow to elbow with their backs to her, blocking her view of a third man in a black derby hat.

“Most pathetic thieves I’ve ever known.”

This voice came more clearly in a clipped, elegant style. Not the London accents of the two other men.

“Guv, nobody gets the Crown’s jewels,”

the deep-voiced man muttered in a near whisper.

“We could.”

The man with the upper-crust accent tsked disgustedly. “Such a lack of boldness.”

The words were hissed and then someone slammed a cup on the table with a thunderous thunk. A moment later, chair legs screeched on the tile floor.

Allie dared another glance out of her corner nook.

The derby-hatted man swung about, his black great coat flapping out like raven wings, and headed for a door that customers rarely used. Allie knew it led to the back alley. She’d suspected Mrs. Cline kept it locked during business hours as there was another door through the kitchen for staff to receive supplies.

But the tall man in the black coat slipped through the door as if he did so every day. His compatriots scrambled up from their table, one hesitating and loudly slurping down the last of his brew before shoving a crumpet in his pocket and then following Mr. Derby Hat out the back door.

Allie stood up so fast, her journal slid off her lap. She bent to snatch it up and nearly collided with a kitchen staff member carrying fresh-baked goods to replenish the case at the counter.

“Watch yerself, miss.”

“Yes, of course. My apologies.”

Allie arched back, allowing the man to pass, then pushed past the customers queuing to place an order and made her way out the back door.

The trio were clustered together not ten feet away, and the tallest lifted his head when the door hinges squeaked. He wore dark glasses that obscured his eyes, and a beard and mustache concealed the rest of his face.

After seeming to hold her gaze for a moment, he turned and strode quickly down to the far end of the alley. The two other men followed, struggling to match his long-legged gait.

Allie stood thunderstruck. Though she hadn’t seen his eyes, having the tall man’s attention on her for a moment made her skin crawl.

Were the trio truly planning an attempt on the Crown Jewels?

As mad as the prospect was, something told her that the man in the dark glasses could pull it off. Everything about him felt sinister, and he moved with a confidence neither of his companions seemed to share.

In a sort of muddled daze, Allie found herself at the front door of Princes and only then realized she hadn’t acquired the coffee or treats she’d promised to bring for Jo and Mr. Gibson.

“There you are!”

Jo stepped out of Princes and ushered Allie inside. “What were you doing waiting at the door?”

She wrapped an arm around Allie and chafed her opposite sleeve, trying to generate some heat. Then her friend pulled back, her blue eyes widening.

“Heavens, how long were you out there? You’re pale as chalk and look as if you’ve seen a specter.”

“I overheard something disturbing, Jo.”

Was she mad to give it any credence? A trio of suspicious men who didn’t look equipped to pull off the robbery of the century didn’t equate to a real threat. Probably just idle talk.

Except for the thread of fear in the one man’s voice, and the unrelenting ominousness of the other’s presence.

Jo perched a hand on one hip. “Are you going to tell me or must I guess?”

“Three men were sitting at a table and . . .”

“And?”

Jo prompted impatiently, already intrigued.

“They spoke about stealing the Crown Jewels.”

Allie whispered the words hesitantly as if someone might overhear, though she hadn’t even put the OPEN sign out yet on the shop door.

“Steal them?”

Jo said, her forehead puckering under a fringe of dark hair. “The Crown Jewels? In the Tower of London? Guarded by a dozen tower warders?”

A rumbling chortle drew both of their gazes toward the entry to Princes’ back room. Mr. Gibson stood in the doorway, giving in to a rare moment of mirth.

Allie had seen him smile plenty, but breaking into unbridled laughter? Almost never.

“A wild delusion even for the wiliest thief.”

Jo chuckled too. “It would be impossible, and you certainly wouldn’t sit about plotting at a public coffeehouse.”

“Oh, they weren’t plotting. In fact, two of them were quite set against it. Or even discussing it. But the other was—”

A shiver stopped Allie midthought. If she described the man, she’d sound fanciful and silly.

“Only one man has tried and failed,”

Mr. Gibson intoned thoughtfully. “Not much to inspire future thieves.”

“Was he beheaded?”

Jo asked with the same bloodthirsty eagerness she always showed for one of the colorful stories from history that Allie tended to regale her with.

Gibson let out a bark of laughter. “Not at all, Lady Josephine. Indeed, Thomas Blood was pardoned by the king.”

“Really? Then it’s a wonder no one tried after him,”

Jo opined.

“A fair point.”

Gibson laid a rag he’d been wiping his hands with aside and strode toward the front door of the shop. “Shall I collect our coffee?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Gibson,”

Allie told him. “I wandered out in a bit of a daze.”

Once he’d gone, Jo drew Allie over to the upholstered mahogany Chippendale chairs they usually sat in for their chats. “You’re shockingly quiet, Allie. What’s upset you so?”

“I know it’s madness, but I feel as though they were serious.”

Jo looked dubious, but she had her thinking face on—pursed lips, one finger tapping the edge of her chin.

“If one could successfully steal the jewels, and that seems an extraordinary if, what could a thief do with such recognizable pieces? As soon as they sold them, they’d be immediately apprehended.”

“They’d break them apart,”

Allie told her. “You remove the individual gems, perhaps have them cut. The sapphire in the queen’s coronation crown is over a hundred carats alone. Then you’d melt down the metals. Nothing would be sold as is, unless perhaps to a foreign head of state who would consider it a coup. Or to recoup the treasures taken from them, like the Koh-i-Noor, which I believe was added to the Tower display several years ago.”

Allie realized she was rambling and looked up to find Jo watching her intently.

“Heavens, you sound as if you’re planning the heist.”

Allie smiled and a bit of the tension in her chest loosened. “My father dealt in gems and Mr. Gibson is an expert goldsmith. We learned about the royal jewels as children, of course.”

Rising from the armchair, Allie found she couldn’t sit still. The pressure in her chest built again, an urging, a sense that she must do something.

“I feel as if I must tell someone what I heard.”

“Can you identify any of the men?”

“I’m not certain, except perhaps by height and build. And their voices, which were quite distinct.”

Though she’d seen little of the tall man’s features, Allie felt she’d know him upon seeing him again.

“If it would ease your conscience, perhaps you should.”

“Dom told me to keep out of trouble, but I seem to stumble into it by merely going for coffee.”

Jo chuckled. “You’re not embroiled yet. Tell someone and be done with it.”

She frowned in contemplation. “Actually, I may know just the person you can speak to. My father’s friend, Sir Felix Haverstock, is quite high up at Scotland Yard.”

She drew a pretty engraved case from the pocket of her skirt and slipped one of her calling cards free. “Tell him Lord Wellingdon’s daughter sent you.”

“And if he laughs me out of his office?”

“Then I’ll tell my father his friend treated mine poorly, and you know Papa adores you. Oh, that reminds me. Dinner on Saturday. Will you join us? Come to think of it, Haverstock will likely be there.”

“Should I wait until then?”

Jo shook her head firmly. “No, I know you, dear Alexandra. You’ll fret about this until you’ve taken action. So go and tell the man everything you can remember while it’s still fresh.”

“Duke?”

The voice of his colleague seemed to come only a moment after Drake slid his eyes closed. He willed it away. A few more minutes of sleep and his brain might feel less sluggish.

“Duke?”

DS Ransome said more loudly, and a thread of impatience came with it.

“I’m awake, man. What is it?”

Drake cracked one eye open and then the other. “Something urgent?”

It had to be. Ransome wouldn’t be rattling his door otherwise.

“A lady here to see you, guv.”

Drake frowned and stared at the sergeant as if the man had lost his mind. Their offices did not generally take walk-in visitors.

Then worry twisted his gut and he was up and out of his chair, despite his body protesting with pops and cracks.

“Is it Helen?”

The clinic where his sister worked was in a dangerous part of the city, and despite her insistence that she could care for herself, he worried.

“No, never seen the young lady. Says she was sent to speak to Haverstock, but Boss isn’t in. Says she must speak to someone and wouldn’t tell me more.”

Drake let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wanted to tell Sergeant Ransome to send her away. He wanted to find any flat surface and sleep for even ten more minutes. But the damnable part of being a detective was a relentless curiosity.

Despite himself, he needed to solve the mystery.

“Send her in.”

Ransome gave him a once-over, flicking his gaze across Drake’s rumpled clothes and no doubt wildly mussed hair, then ducked back out the door.

Drake yawned and scratched a hand across his jaw. The lady, whoever she was, would have to take him as she found him.

At the sound of footsteps marching toward his office, he straightened his suit coat, took a deep breath, and—

A whirlwind burst through his office door. A petite, flower-scented whirlwind.

He registered the purple of her dress, the glossy chestnut shade of her hair, and the scent of sweet flowers and fresh rain-clean air, and then she was talking so fast and animatedly that his exhausted brain couldn’t assemble the words into any sort of sense. Something about a theft and jewels and a suspicious gang of men.

“Slow down, miss, and take a seat.”

“I don’t think I can sit still.”

But she did fall silent and planted her hands on her hips, dipping her head and breathing deeply as if she needed a moment. When she lifted her gaze to his again, she seemed less agitated. “Forgive me, Inspector. Traffic was a tangle, and this matter felt more urgent the longer it took. I suppose it is urgent if the men I heard were in earnest.”

He’d honed the skill of memorizing faces, cataloging details that distinguished one from another. The lady had a birthmark near her left temple that drew one’s attention there, and her eyes flared at the edges with a little upward tilt. An inch-long faded scar marked the skin above her mouth, but it only served to emphasize the curved peaks of her upper lip.

Indeed, her lips were so enticing, he found himself staring. Then he inwardly chastised himself. Fatigue was addling his brain, chipping at his self-control.

The lady possessed a face of interesting and memorable details, but simply describing them wouldn’t capture what intrigued him most. She vibrated with energy.

“Let’s start again. Tell me your name.”

“My name?”

She looked at him as if he’d confounded her. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“Frankly, not a great deal of it.”

He pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit. And let’s start from the beginning, Miss . . . ?”

He prompted for her name again.

“Alexandra Prince.”

She took a step closer, and the gaslight on the wall behind him revealed the unique color of her eyes.

They were a cool, muted blue, almost lavender, and shadowed by thick lashes. She ran her gaze down him in one scraping assessment, and his unshaven, unpressed state didn’t seem to stand him well in her estimation. Her forehead scrunched in a frown.

“You have blood on your cuff, sir, and bruises on your hand.”

Drake glanced down, surprised at the spots of blood. He’d changed at his flat before meeting Haverstock.

“It was a long night,”

he admitted.

Such proofs of violence must have shocked her. As they should.

Miss Prince was well-dressed, her voice cultured, her gleaming hair tucked neatly into pins. She seemed a lady of quality, and her assessing gaze unsettled him. Being studied by her felt like sitting for an exam he wished he’d been better prepared for.

“Shall I start at the beginning again?”

she asked, perching on the chair in front of his desk. She sat reluctantly, shifting the moment she did. Indeed, her whole body hummed. Her eyes held a spark of it, a kind of determination that he recognized in himself. It called to the part of him that needed to solve every mystery. Fix every problem.

“Tell me what brought you here this morning.”

“I overheard something suspicious not an hour ago,”

she started as she settled into her chair. “There were three men in a coffeehouse next to my family’s shop. I was waiting for coffee and scones, you see. Hidden in a nook where most of the shop’s patrons couldn’t see me. Certainly not this trio. They were intent on their conversation.”

“Where’s the shop?”

Her brows, a darker shade than her hair, knitted in confusion. “Yes, of course. They might return. Is that what you’re thinking? It’s in Moulton Street. Hawlston’s Coffeehouse. But the most important part is what I heard the men say.”

She tapped one neatly tapered finger on his desktop to emphasize her point, somehow unerringly finding the single spot that was clear of files and papers.

“And what did they say, Miss Prince?”

She flicked her gaze to where he’d crossed his hands and settled them on his desktop.

“Don’t you wish to take notes or make a report?”

“I’d like to hear the story first.”

She shot him a dubious look but continued.

“The men were speaking heatedly, though it was clear they were trying to keep their voices down. I only heard them because I was sitting so near, you see? Though they couldn’t see me. I was in the—”

“The nook, yes. Go on.”

That earned him the merest jump of one brow. He suspected he’d won a sliver of trust from her by proving he was listening. But he’d still heard nothing that would merit completing a report or taking any action.

“One man, the only one I truly saw, told the others that they were pathetic because they weren’t keen on what he’d proposed.”

Now it was Drake’s turn to lift a brow.

She leaned forward, locked her blue eyes on him, and whispered, “They plan to steal the Crown Jewels.”

His lungs deflated and all the tiredness he’d barely kept at bay swept over him. Something else rushed in too. The frustration he usually felt when dealing with a member of the public who believed their neighbor was plotting treason, or the local butcher was secretly a murderer, or that a dream they’d had portended danger for the queen.

Over the years, there had been more than a few hysterical citizens bringing him fanciful stories. Though none, he had to admit, as pretty as this one.

He leaned forward to match her, close enough to notice the sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks, to notice that her lips were flushed, and that the sparks in her eyes were like threads of silver hidden in pale violet.

She held herself tensely, almost defiantly, as if she expected his reaction.

Even as tired as he was, he could appreciate her loveliness, her vividness. She made the gas sconces in the room blaze brighter.

He almost regretted how thoroughly he intended to disappoint her.

“Miss Prince . . .”

he started slowly. Delicacy and taking care not to offend weren’t his strong suit. “If there were truly a group of thieves planning to steal the Crown Jewels—”

“Please—”

She interrupted him, as if to stave off what he intended to say next. And that one word, the desperation with which she said it, made him hold his tongue for a moment.

But only for a moment.

“Allow me to finish?”

he asked when he rarely asked anyone for permission for anything.

She seamed her lips together.

“The possibility that thieves would seriously discuss such a plan openly in a crowded coffeehouse where others could hear seems very unlikely. I’m certain that many dream of such a feat, or even boast of it. But it’s never been successfully accomplished, nor truly attempted except—”

“Yes, Thomas Blood in 1670. I know the story. Perhaps they do too. Look.”

She shocked him by rising from her chair and picking up his inkwell.

“Do you mind?”

He didn’t like it when people touched his things or mussed up his desk. Some might see the piles as chaos but they made perfect sense to him.

“I’m just borrowing it,”

she declared as she moved it to the edge of the desk, then she had the audacity to pluck up a bottle of glue. When she reached for the polished river stone paperweight his sister had once given to him as a gift, he lifted his hand to stop her. But her fingers were already curving around the edges of the rock, and he found his own fingers clashing with hers.

Something jolted in his chest at the contact. Her skin was warm and deliciously soft and he quite liked the feel of her fingers next to his.

When she sucked in a shocked breath, his wits returned to him and he pulled his hand away, relinquishing the stone to her.

He knew he should apologize. Fully intended to, in fact. But when he looked up into her wide eyes, the silver threads among the violet seemed to shimmer. He searched her face for offense, shock. The lady simply looked as befuddled as he suddenly felt.

But she gathered herself and shot her gaze down to the rock, then positioned it catty-corner to the inkwell.

“You see? I was sitting here.”

She pointed to the inkwell, her voice a bit breathier than before. “This is a wall that separates the kitchen from where the customers sit.”

With her index finger, she tapped the flat river stone. “And this is where the trio were hunched.” She indicated the glue bottle. “They didn’t know they were sitting close enough for someone to hear.”

“What was the plan they unfolded?”

Even attempting such a brazen theft would take months of planning, and more importantly, gaining the trust of at least one confederate on the inside. Probably more. That seemed impossible since the Tower Yeomen were a notoriously staunch and loyal bunch.

She wilted a bit, her shoulders dropping an inch. “There were no details about the plan.”

With one swift pivot away from his desk, she began pacing again. “But one gentleman was angry. Another was worried, I’d say. It must have been something they’d seriously discussed.”

“You said you got a look at one of them.”

“Yes, the angry one.”

Drake pulled a slip of paper toward him and reached for his pencil. “Describe him if you would.”

She approached again and lifted a hand to tap a finger against her lips. “Tall. Dark coat. And a black derby hat. He had a dark beard and mustache, and he wore glasses with smoky lenses.”

Drake stilled his pencil and arched a brow. “So you didn’t truly see him at all. It sounds as if most of his face was obscured. This description is vague enough to fit half of the men on any London street.”

“The glasses were unusual,”

she said defensively. “An odd square shape.”

“And they served to further hide his features.”

Drake set the piece of paper aside.

She’d come because she thought she’d heard men conspiring to commit a crime, and for that he admired her. Londoners had plenty of cause for apathy and many would hear such an exchange and think nothing more of it.

But if she couldn’t identify any of the men, Drake had virtually nothing to proceed with unless he wished to haunt Hawlston’s Coffeehouse, hoping the trio might reconvene and repeat themselves. He’d alert those at the Tower and inquire about whether there’d been any word of a plot afoot, but there wasn’t much more he could do.

“Unfortunately, even if I showed you photographs of known London thieves, he’s not a man you could identify.”

Miss Prince let out a sigh so full of frustration that he had the urge to comfort her, but she recovered almost instantly, crossing her arms and tapping one foot against the floor.

“Are you saying I’m a fool to have come?”

He didn’t think that. She was obviously a spirited young woman. One who acted independently, which was intriguing considering her age and the lack of a wedding band on her finger. Impetuous, perhaps, but intelligent and with every good intention.

Drake frowned. He usually didn’t assume the best of anyone. His mistakes and his work had made him jaded. But apparently, this vibrant beauty had unearthed a shred of optimism he still possessed.

That fascinated and unsettled him in equal measure.