Lady Honoria?’
As he went inside the room, Nell tiptoed forward, steadying herself with one hand on a side table bearing a silver salver. The second post had obviously arrived. Ears straining, Nell glanced down.
Lady Honoria Carlow read the direction on the topmost letter.
She stood transfixed. Carlow? That was the name that her gentle widowed mother had spoken with such hate when her control cracked and she fell into sobbing despair. The name at the heart of the darkness in the past, the things that had happened when she was only a tiny child, the things that were never spoken of clearly, must never be asked about.
Lord Narborough’s family name was Carlow? Why she must fear that family she had no idea, but they undoubtedly would know and if they found out who she was they would never believe she had acted in innocence.
Nell tiptoed across the marble, her worn shoes making virtually no sound. The door was on the latch, she opened it and was out into the busy late-morning street. A few brisk steps and she was behind the shelter of a waiting hackney carriage. She kept pace as it set off at a walk, held up by traffic, then slipped into Stafford Street. There, I am safe, she told herself, fighting the urge to run. He will never find me now.
Chapter Two
The rope was safely locked in the bottom drawer of the desk. It might as well have been in plain view on the top and hissing at him like the snake it so resembled for all the good that hiding it away did. Marcus thrust the papers that littered the desk in the library back into their folder and contemplated going into the study. But he felt uncomfortable using it when his father was in town. The older man did virtually nothing on family business these days, but even so, to commandeer his desk felt uncomfortably like stepping into his shoes.
He tried to concentrate on writing to his younger brother instead. He would say nothing of the circumstances, merely that their father had suffered an attack, but was now resting and the doctor was sanguine about a recovery, given time and care.
There was no point in agitating Lieutenant the Honourable Hal Carlow. The last they had heard, Hal was confined to his bed in Wellington’s Portuguese headquarters with a nasty infection caused by a slight sabre wound in his side. His regiment, the Eleventh Light Dragoons, had been sent back to England from the Peninsula the previous year, battered and depleted. Hal, predictably, had pulled strings to find himself some sort of attachment to another regiment out there and had promptly disappeared behind enemy lines on a mission.
Marcus could only be selfishly grateful to whoever had inflicted the wound that was keeping Hal out of trouble, although once convalescent, a bored and off-duty Lieutenant Carlow on the loose was a worrying prospect. As an officer, Marcus was frequently assured, his brother was a paragon, destined for great things and possessing the courage of a lion. Under any other circumstances he was a hell-born babe, determined, Marcus was convinced, to drive his brother to drink or the madhouse.
The sounds of a door slamming and raised voices reminded him that his other siblings were more than capable of achieving that without help from Hal. The redoubtable Miss Price was presumably thwarting one of Honoria’s wilder schemes while attempting to preserve Verity, wide-eyed in adoration of her sister, from the sharp edge of Honoria’s teasing tongue.
He tried to imagine the man strong-willed enough to take Honoria off his hands, and failed. The Season loomed ahead, full of opportunities for one sister to get into outrageous scrapes through unquenchable high spirits and the other, through sheer naïvety, to fall victim to every rake on the prowl.
The fog had descended again, blotting out the promise of the fine morning. Now, in mid-afternoon, it was thick outside the long windows, filling the room with damp gloom despite the blazing fire and the array of lamps.
That damned rope. He wanted to discuss it with his father, but the earl was sleeping. That it had something to do with that old business years ago, when his father had been hardly older than he was himself now, was beyond doubt.
Marcus looked up at the portrait that hung over the fire. Lord Narborough stared back: a virile man at the height of his powers, shoulders square, grey eyes blazing out at the watcher, wig elegant, fingers curled around the hilt of a rapier he could use as readily as he did his fine mind and quick wits.
George Carlow and his friends had faced the Revolution in France, the risk of uprising here, the justified fear of year upon year of bloody war. Close to the inner circles of government, they had existed in a hotbed of intrigue and spying, fighting not on the battlefield but amidst the familiar clubs and balls where the enemy did not wear a scarlet uniform but hid behind the facade of fashion and respectability. His father had plunged into that world of secrets and had lost his health, his peace of mind and his closest friends in the process.
Marcus folded his letter, tossed it to one side, got up and began to pace. That young woman. Miss Smith indeed. Was she an innocent tool of someone—her dark man—or was she involved in whatever mischief this man intended?
Instinct told him she was lying. Smith was not her name, and that was not the only falsehood. He could sense the tension in her as she answered him. And yet, he wanted to believe she was innocent of harm. That was presumably his masculine reaction to a remarkably fine pair of greenish hazel eyes, a glimpse of golden-brown hair and a voice that did provocative things at the base of his spine. Marcus frowned. He needed to listen to his brain for this, not other parts of his body.
She was too thin, he told himself. Even bundled up in that drab gown and shapeless pelisse he could tell that. He was not attracted to thin women. Marcus contemplated Mrs Jensen for a pleasurable moment. She was most definitely not thin, not where it mattered. And she would be waiting for their meeting; she had made that quite clear.
Dressmakers were not fair game for a gentleman, in any case. Miss Smith was a respectable young woman so far as chastity went, he would wager. The flare of anger and alarm in her eyes when he had stood toe to toe with her, that was surely not the reaction of a woman who would try to buy her way out of trouble with her body.
He got up and walked to the spot where they had stood so close, wondering if the faint scent of plain soap truly lingered in the air or if it was his imagination. Imagination, obviously. It was too long since he had given his last mistress her congé, tired of her petulance and constant demands. If the household was more settled, he could still go out tonight, conclude matters with the lovely Perdita. That would stop him thinking about Miss Smith.
Something pale clung to the folds of the sofa skirts. Marcus hunkered down to pick it up and found it was an inch of fine straw plait, a long thread dangling from it.
He pulled the bell rope. ‘Peters, ask Miss Price if it would be convenient for her to spare me a moment.’
His sisters’ companion came in promptly, bandbox neat, calm and collected as always. ‘Marcus?’ She smiled and took a seat as he resumed his. In private they had long since used first names, allies in maintaining order and decorum in the Carlow household.
‘What do you make of this, Diana?’ He passed her the fragment of plait and watched as she studied it.
‘It is a straw plait of course. Hat straw—it is too fine for anything else.’ She rubbed and flexed it between her fingers. ‘English, I would say. Very good quality and an unusual plait. I have never seen anything quite like it.’ She tugged the thread dangling from it and looked at him with intelligent eyes. ‘Our visitor of this morning is a milliner?’
‘She said she was a dressmaker, but it would not surprise me to know that was untrue.’
‘If she is working with expensive materials such as this, then she will be with one of the better establishments. Not necessarily of the very highest rank, but good.’
‘Could one narrow them down using that piece of plait?’
‘I should think so.’ Miss Price picked at it with her fingernail. ‘It is unusual enough to be the work of one plaiter, or perhaps from a village where this is a traditional pattern. I can