Page 5

H e didn’t hate it, actually.

When he’d sat down an hour ago, Abe hadn’t known what the hell a seraglio was or why you’d want to abduct someone from one, but now, as the bell chimed for intermission and the lanterns were turned up on the end of the first act, he found himself keenly disappointed that the story was being paused.

A seraglio, as it turned out, was some sort of holding cell for beautiful women.

He thought this was a very good vocabulary word to add to any repertoire.

If one were going to stage an abduction (which Abe did not endorse in any fashion, of course), it seemed the best possible place to undertake such an inadvisable activity.

Alas, an intermission had arrived, and he forced himself to stand and stretch. When the show stopped, that meant it was time for him to get back to work.

Sadly, his job title was not Pasha , another delightful new word this opera had taught him. That job seemed to consist of wearing quite a lot of silk and gold and enjoying the charms of the seraglio.

“Pasha” was a damn sight more appealing than “Private Investigator” at this particular moment, he decided, scanning the mezzanine for the dowager’s box and catching a flash of purple silk and blonde hair as the lady fled her seat into the embrace of the lobby and the fine society gathered in it during the intermission.

There were other people in that box with her, he noted, but they were slower to rise and apparently not necessary company for wherever the lady was heading in this moment.

He would have to hoof it to the stairs to catch her before she could vanish into the crowd.

His shoes were scuffed and the wrong shade of black for Freddy’s fine tails, but they fit him properly and allowed him to move at speed, and so he was glad he had insisted on wearing them, much to his flatmate’s chagrin.

He jostled his way through the affronted folk on the orchestra level, batting off a harmonizing array of exclamations at his behavior and pointy elbows.

Generally, he’d revel a little in the sir s and beg pardon s, but he found he was terribly focused on finding his quarry before she could vanish into the crowd.

Perhaps, he thought with a twist of his lips as he took the twisting stairs to the mezzanine two at a time, Lady Bentley herself would turn out to be the jewel thief, and he could launch himself into this Season’s investigative hiring potential with a true bang.

Of course, she wasn’t in London to have done the thefts from last Season, but these were particulars to be worked out later.

As it happened, his haste was unnecessary.

Patricia Hightower, the esteemed dowager and seemingly merry widow, was practically the centerpiece of the mezzanine foyer, her diamond hairpiece twinkling brightly in the candlelight as she fanned herself slowly and deliberately while speaking to a gaggle of curious socialites.

It was still too early in the year to require fanning, of course, still too cool outside. Abe pulled a face before he could stop himself. It was some sort of code, the fanning.

His sisters would know what was being said in the flapping of lace and silk. The younger one, Rosalind, in particular, had hounded him about such nonsense when she’d learned of his professional pursuits, and he had brushed her off.

He sighed, watching the dowager drop the fan into her left hand, close it, and tap it against the opposing cheek as a new group stepped up to make their introductions, her smile soft and coy and her blue eyes shining.

Yes, he admitted to himself. Rosalind had been right. Again.

He would have to commit the pantomime to memory, as there was no convenient place to whip out his inkwell and commit it to writing.

He stepped against one of the burnished wooden columns and watched her twirling the damn thing as she had animated conversation with the endless parade of interchangeable toffs apparently eager to make her acquaintance.

Just how rich was Freddy, exactly?

Well, how rich had he been, anyway, before his wife swiped his estate out from under him? In Abe’s experience, a person did not garner this much public interest without a sizable treasure hoard hidden under her skirt, no matter how attractive or charming.

Lady Bentley was certainly still a good-looking woman, despite being old enough to have a fully grown son.

Beauty, wealth, and social weight would of course always stir up a few hopeful swains from the sidelines, but this woman was being swarmed.

Perhaps landed widows were a hotter commodity than Abe had realized.

Maybe the son would understand the mother’s secret fan signals. If not, Abe would have to find a lady of breeding to decipher them for him, and for that he’d most certainly need to write down the nuances of what she was doing before he’d forgotten them.

Absently, he mimicked the movement with small gestures of his own. Languid fanning at the collarbone, closing the fan in the left hand, tapping the right cheek, open again to the left.

“What on earth are you doing?” demanded a hushed and throaty female voice, so close to his ear he could feel the warmth of her breath. “Stop that at once!”

Abe turned, two fingers still resting on his cheekbone, to find himself facing a furious pair of rather pretty brown eyes, blazing just now like someone had lit a fire behind them.

He blinked, forcing himself to take in the rest of her, to attempt to identify the pursed rosebud lips or the gleam of glossy brown hair curling around the curve of her cheek.

She was wearing a creamy ivory lace and a pale green satin, rich fabrics draped fetchingly over a generously lush figure, which, sadly, he could not allow his eyes to linger upon for the sake of good manners.

“Oh,” he said stupidly, failing to place the creature, delightful as she was. “Hello?”

“Mr. Murphy,” she hissed, going so far as to reach up and slap at his wrist so he’d drop the mimic of a fan he was holding to his face, which he did with a self-conscious snort of amusement that she did not appear to share. “What are you doing here?”

“Enjoying the opera?” he suggested, unable to help scanning her fully once more, desperate to place the lass. “And you?”

She recognized him, after all, which was unfair. He was certain he’d have remembered such a morsel, had they had dealings in the past.

Her cheeks reddened, an outrage that had rather more of a flattering effect on her visage than he imagined she’d prefer.

“You are most certainly not here to watch the opera, and we both know it. Did Silas send you? I confess I’ve reached my capacity for allowing you to follow and harass those dear to me! ”

“Oho, allowing me?” he repeated, grinning.

He knew her now. It took that last accusation to place her, but there was no mistaking it. She’d been there, at Silas’s wedding last year, holding Freddy’s errant wife in her arms like she’d protect the little minx from any evil that dared step over the threshold.

When Abe had revealed that Freddy himself was just outside the house, waiting in a carriage to reclaim said wife, he’d thought this girl was going to lay him flat at daring to even suggest such a thing.

She was, he thought, the prettiest bodyguard he’d ever seen.

“You’re the sister,” he remembered with some satisfaction. “The new countess’s sister. Miss Yardley, is it? Who are you protecting this evening?”

She hadn’t been so well turned out on the occasion of their first meeting, he noted. Her dress had been dowdy and shapeless, her hair pinned simply, even though it had been a wedding. If she’d been dressed like this, he might have let her punch him.

“Shall I go over and tell the dowager countess that you’re following her?” she snapped, dark brows rising, hands landing on her shapely hips. “It seems preferable to letting whatever you’re up to play out.”

“You can if you like,” he said with a shrug, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the column at his back. “But if you do, you’ll never know what I was up to in the first place. Hand to heart, Silas Cain has no involvement in my presence here.”

Her eyes narrowed, that lovely cedar color sparking with ire, but he could see he’d knocked her off balance, even if only a little. “You are in Mr. Cain’s employ, are you not?”

“Occasionally, but work from the barrister doesn’t keep home and hearth. I’ve an entire business ’round investigations, love, and he’s only one client.” He tilted forward a little, beckoning her closer, and despite herself, she leaned toward him. “I’m on the tail of a jewel thief, as it happens.”

She was silent for a moment, her posture straightening and her lashes batting at him once, then again. “That is absurd.”

He flashed her his teeth. “Aye, well, the truth often is.”

She considered him, her breath coming shallow and irritated as she chewed on what she might say next. The very concept of what he’d suggested seemed to annoy her. “A jewel thief,” she repeated, dry as a stalk of hay.

“Same one that terrorized the ton last Season,” he confirmed. “This is the type of venue that’s ripe for the plucking, wouldn’t you say? And it’s best to start looking early if the fiend is going to return.”

She glared at him as though if she looked sharply enough, she could tap right through his skull and find the truth hiding behind it.

He had the sudden, troublemaking urge to invite her closer, so that she may proceed with her examination at her leisure.

As though she could read this thought, her glare seemed to shift, something akin to bafflement weaving its way into her stern little facade.

Alas, the chime of a bell broke her concentration before any blood could be spilled, pulling her attention abruptly back to the opera itself and the call of her seat.

She looked over her shoulder to find her mistress, whose coterie of admirers had begun to scatter at the signal that intermission was ending.

And while her attention was diverted elsewhere, Abe slipped away, so that by the time she turned back, there was nothing to find but the empty space where he’d once stood.