Page 14 of The Truth Serum (My Lady’s Potions #2)

N ate didn’t want to go to tonight’s ball.

And he sure as hell didn’t want to go dancing.

His feet were healing but still hurt whenever he put pressure on the right foot.

But he needed to speak to his contact during the Joguet ball, and he couldn’t use his typical disguise of a footman or delivery person.

Any servant would be expected to work, and the best he could do was recline in an elegant lounge.

So he had to attend the ball as himself, and he had to convince Ras to let him go alone.

The two of them together drew too much attention.

Everyone tracked a duke’s movements, especially one newly engaged.

And then there was all the love potion stuff, which made him especially interesting.

If Nate entered with him, everyone who couldn’t get close to Ras would sidle up to him.

That was hurdle one. The second was getting enough coin to handle all the logistics.

Hackney there and back, new stockings and shoes, because he’d bled all over his, and the bribe.

All information had to be paid for one way or another.

In time and attention if nothing else. But his contact in the Joguet household needed cold, hard coin. And Nate was sadly lacking in that.

Fortunately, he’d been able to borrow some of Ras’s clothing to cover the basics, including a fresh cravat. And he’d won a couple pounds playing cards with Ras last night, so that covered the hackney. But the bribe?

That was going to take finesse.

Ras walked in as Nate was dressing.

“What are you doing?” the man asked as he leaned against the doorframe.

“I can’t sit around any longer. The boredom is killing me.” At least he’d managed to write a little, but he was accustomed to being a great deal more active.

“Your feet will be permanently damaged if you don’t give those bones time to heal.”

It was a real risk but so was letting Napoleon win the continent. “I don’t intend to dance. Just…” He waved a negligent hand in the air. “You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

Damn it, Ras was getting prickly demanding answers. It was a lot easier five years ago when he could distract the man with women or liquor. Fortunately, he had a ready excuse. “Cards, you cretin. I need to win some money. My tailor bill is due.”

“I’ll pay your tailor. You stay here and get better.”

“No.” And at his friend’s sudden sharp look, Nate flashed him a cheeky grin. “But I will borrow a cravat, if you please.” He pointed at a pair of stockings resting on the coverlet. “I’ve already stolen these from you, so you can add those to my bill.”

Ras folded his arms. “Your feet are a mess. The bones have barely had time to mend, you still run the risk of infection, and if the fever strikes, you could die. Why are you risking your life?”

“Don’t be dramatic. It’s just a ball, with pretty ladies who will ooh and ahh over me as I regale them with a tale of my terrible attack. They’ll fall over themselves to pamper me.”

“Hmmm.”

Nate matched Ras’s tight expression, slowly exaggerating it until the duke snorted at the comical display. “Very well. What ball?”

“I’ll take a hackney.”

“The devil you will. I’ll go with you just to make sure—”

“No, Ras. You suck up all the air when you arrive. Not a single pretty girl will look my way when you are there.”

“I’m engaged.”

“Nevertheless.”

Ras stepped further into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. “You are my closest friend, and yet I know nothing about how you spend the bulk of your time.”

“Sitting on my arse, staring at the ceiling! Ras, don’t make more of this—”

“I’m trying to help you!”

Nate had several ready answers to that. He could laugh it off without giving any details.

It was what he’d always done with Ras, but that technique was wearing thin.

Ras wouldn’t tolerate it any longer. Which meant he had to give a cutting remark.

He had to push his dearest friend away, thereby beginning the end of their association.

It was what he’d done with so many others over the last ten years.

One after another had realized their friendship had been built on sand. The moment they pushed to know more was the moment he had to grow cruel and shove them away. That was how this game was played.

But he couldn’t do it with Ras. Just like he’d never been able to stop dreaming about Becca.

They were embedded deep in his childhood, which made them tethers to his true identity.

He wasn’t a footman slipping through the Joguet’s kitchen.

He wasn’t a Portuguese sailor burning through his pay after smuggling supplies to the English soldiers.

And he definitely wasn’t a feckless aristocrat with nothing but time on his hands, though he spent a great deal of effort to appear so.

He was Ras’s friend. And Becca’s lover. And the man who risked everything in service to his country when his country couldn’t even admit he was anything but a half-drunk hanger-on.

“Don’t make me do this, Ras,” he said. “Please.”

He’d already lost Becca. That disastrous tea a week ago had shown him that. He couldn’t lose Ras as well. It would destroy him.

“You can trust me,” his friend said.

“I do.” Two words that meant the world to him.

He trusted Ras as much as he could trust anyone.

But the only reason he could function as a spy, the only way he could slip in and out of the shadows as he did, was if no one saw anything but the feckless, irreverent ne’er-do-well that he presented to the world.

And that included Ras.

Because one exception here and another exception there was how people got exposed. Or played. Or killed. And that didn’t even factor in all the English boys who would get killed if men like him failed.

So he looked at his very last friend and flashed an irreverent smile. “Come on. Lend me a cravat and let me go play with some pretty girls. You’ve got Kynthea. Let me—”

“Will Lady Rebecca be at this ball?”

He winced. He couldn’t hear her name without flinching in memory. He’d really botched that reunion.

“I don’t know.”

“And if she is?”

“I’ll call for a glass of brandy and devote myself to charming the nearest blonde.” His lips curled. “I’ve always had a fondness for blondes.”

“No, you haven’t.”

Truth. Becca had curly brown hair. And the prettiest blue eyes.

“Ras…” he began but then didn’t know what to say. He’d run out of convenient lies, and he hadn’t the wits to craft another.

The duke waited, his expression somber, and then he sighed. “I’ll get you a cravat that will match your droopy green eyes.”

“And fifty pounds, if you please.”

Ras jolted. “What?”

“I suppose I could make do with forty.” Then he glared at his friend. “And my eyes don’t droop!”

He thought for a moment that Ras would cut up stiff. Indeed, he waited with his gut clenched tight and his breath suspended. He couldn’t bear it if…

“God, you are an intolerable burden.”

The words were spoken as such phrases often were. It was a throw-away line. A grumble. It meant nothing, unless it meant everything.

So when Nate didn’t chuckle, Ras’s expression abruptly softened.

“You’re not a burden,” he said gently. “Well, you can be, but not in the way you think. Damn it, man, I want to help!”

“Damn it, man, you are!” Then he pointed. “Stockings! Honey ointment! Safe lodging!” Then he grinned. “Fifty pounds.”

“Forty. And a cravat.”

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” he sang.

In the end, Ras brought him fifty pounds, a cravat, and use of the ducal carriage.

Normally he would refuse, but since he was going to the ball as himself, there was no reason to refuse the conveyance.

And if his eyes were moist when he accepted the pound notes, then that must have been because he’d shoved his broken feet into his shoes.

He hoped Ras knew how much of a lifeline he was to Nate. Just as he fervently hoped that tonight’s excursion would be worth the effort.

Then he gingerly walked down the stairs before directing the ducal carriage to Madame and Monsieur Joguet’s ball.

The two were French emigres, loud and proud royalists, and connected enough to London society to host an annual ball.

But they wouldn’t be the first French emigres to harbor split loyalties.

The Joguets’ ball was an obvious place to go, in order to ascertain the couple’s potential as rifle smugglers.

They had money, connections, and an interesting one-upmanship relationship.

Husband and wife made sport of finding interesting ways to make coin.

While all of society disdained those who worked for a living, the Joguets were open about their ventures. At least some of them.

Even if the Joguets weren’t the ones smuggling guns, they might know who was.

Either way, it was a good place to start. And Nate already had someone on the inside. Still, he quietly hoped he was on a fool’s errand. He liked Madame Joguet. She was funny and sweet. She was also a great deal more intelligent than she let on.

Which, of course, made her a strong possibility.

He arrived after the first set had begun. He waited at the top of the staircase, surveying the crush. He immediately noted the cluster of the crowd, all the various possible suspects, Madame and Mons…

Becca.

Damn. The last thing he wanted was to be distracted by her, and yet, his gaze followed her no matter what he told himself.

He needed to start chatting people up. He needed to find his contact.

She was Madame’s maid and was undoubtably here somewhere.

And he needed to sit down because his feet hurt like the devil.

Instead, he descended the steps and wandered to the edge of the dancing so that Becca would see him. He had to know if a week apart had softened her attitude toward him.