Love and Let Spy (Lord and Lady Spy) (6 page)

“I don’t want to. That is reason enough.”

She gave him a sympathetic look, the kind she had given him when he’d been a child and stomped his foot, declaring, “I don’t want to go to bed!”

She did not say
too
bad
now, but he saw it in her expression.

“You are a grown man and able to make your own decisions.” She collected her reticule and made her way toward the door. “If you choose to consider marriage, I expect you to be at Lord Melbourne’s home tomorrow evening for dinner.”

His mother was almost through the door when Dominic said, “Why her? Why Miss Bonde?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Because I always want the best for you.”

***

Jane had climbed out of many windows, but she had never climbed out of her own. She’d never had to, but Blue’s information had intrigued her. She had to meet this Wolf and find out what he’d learned about Foncé. Her uncle had always tried to keep her away from the other agents. She understood and respected the decision, but the situation with Foncé required extreme measures. The man had to be caught. They were all his targets now.

The drop from her window was steep, with little to cling to. Part of the way down, a tree branch touched the wall, and she thought she might be light enough to catch hold and use it to aid her descent. But the straight drop from her window was another matter.

She went to her wardrobe and pulled down a wooden chest with an embellished gold Q on it. It was the right size for jewelry, but it held something infinitely more valuable. She took a key from her dressing table and unlocked the box, pushing the cover back on the hinges. Inside lay a pair of ordinary gloves, an inkwell, and a brush. She opened the inkwell and gagged at the smell. What had Miss Qwillen mixed in here? She dipped the brush inside, and it came out covered in what looked like black honey. Was it tar? Tree sap?

Jane did not know, but she had learned to trust Miss Qwillen, or Q, over the years. She pulled on the gloves and painted the palms with the awful mixture, then waited a quarter of an hour for it to set. She thought she remembered Q saying to wait a quarter of an hour. Perhaps it had been three-quarters of an hour? Oh, bollocks! Jane did not have time to waste. She would go and hope for the best. Nine out of ten of Q’s inventions worked.

Jane stood at her window and looked down at the drop.
Please
let
this
be
one
of
the
nine.

She climbed out of the window, resting her hands on the ledge. The gloves felt sticky, which was encouraging. She looked down at the drop between her window and the tree branch she hoped to catch. It was quite a fall. Taking a deep breath, she moved her feet so they rested on a narrow foothold. She’d tied her skirts up and out of her way, and she looked down to be certain of her footing before she moved. Jane closed her eyes and inched her hands off the window casement one by one. She gripped the wall and wobbled slightly, but when she pressed her hands flat, so that the glue made complete contact with the building, she had a more secure hold.

Inch by inch, she made her way down the side of the town house. It was slow going, and she had to steel her nerves so as not to panic the few times her hands slipped and she slid down the side of the house. Finally, her feet touched the branch, and she lowered herself onto it. But the moment she was sitting securely on the branch, she heard an awful crack and jolted downward. The branch did not snap, but it hung onto the tree by a few layers of thin and peeling wood. Jane held on to the end of the branch, swaying in the breeze.

She almost laughed. She had been in far worse situations. If she fell to her death outside her own window, it would be the ultimate irony. The branch still swayed, and she used her legs to further the momentum, moving them as she might if she were on a swing. The branch dipped perilously close to the tree trunk, and Jane almost wrapped her legs around it, but then she swung back.

And the branch made another ominous cracking sound. She was running out of chances. She swung her legs again, this time catching the trunk at the same time the branch snapped. She let go, but too late, and fell backward, her legs gripping the trunk and her arms hanging down. Fortunately, the ground was not so far below her now. She latched on to the trunk with her hands and flipped her legs over, scratching her neck as she turned. She landed on the ground with a soft thud that reverberated all the way to her forehead. It had been a longer fall than she would have liked. She sat down, took inventory, and decided her neck had borne the worst of it. She would have to wear her hair down for a few days to cover the scratch. She touched it gingerly, wincing when the raw skin flared and burned.

Rising, she pulled the gloves off, then untied her skirts and brushed them off. She scanned the ground and finally spotted the cape she’d dropped down earlier. With a twirl, she dropped it over her clothes and pulled the hood up. She did not want to attract attention, and her blond hair was a beacon in the dark. She’d memorized then burned Blue’s note, which had directed her to Charles Street, not far from her own home in Mayfair. The streets were congested with carriages ferrying the
ton
to one engagement or another, and she quickly decided she had better take the side streets rather than the main thoroughfares. If the hood of her mantle fell back or a group of foxed gentlemen accosted her, she did not want to be where her aunt and uncle’s acquaintances might recognize her. She cut through an alley behind a row of terraced houses and crept along a line of mews, listening as the horses stabled there pawed and stamped. Gradually, she became aware of another sound.

Footsteps. Quiet and stealthy, but she knew when she was being followed.

Her skin prickled and her senses heightened, but she did not slow or show any sign she had heard her pursuer. The path alongside the mews grew darker and narrower as she continued down it, a situation that was not in her favor. She needed open space to fight, and she did not have it. Her only other option was to run. She took off at full speed, glad she was wearing her half boots. She lifted her skirts and ran with her head down. Her heart began to pound when she heard the echo of heavy footsteps running behind her.

And gaining.

She cut across a busy thoroughfare, skirting carts and carriages and hoping to lose her pursuer. But when she looked back, he was still right behind her. It was a quick glimpse, but she could see he was a man in a greatcoat and hat. He jumped over a crate of coal, ignored the coalman’s curses, and all but flew. She might have remained on the busy lane. Certainly someone would have stopped to help her, but she could not chance being recognized. She cut through another alley between town houses, knowing her pursuer was gaining on her. She felt it the moment he reached for her, and instead of futilely pushing ahead, ducked and rolled. He stumbled and ran by her, and she had enough time to pivot and run back the way they had come. She’d been looking for an escape, and she’d seen a promising ironwork gate. She could evade him in a garden. There were shadows and shrubs to conceal her. But when she reached the gate, it was locked. She swore and launched herself onto it, scrambling over just as he caught her foot. She kicked him somewhere near his neck and fell back. Backpedaling, she scurried into the garden, snagging her cape on a rose bush and diving into a scratchy line of shrubbery. She pushed her way through the tightly packed shrubs, crawled into another patch of shadows, and spotted a low wall at the far end of the garden.

Ducking and running, she angled for it, uncertain where her pursuer was. He was quiet and stealthy. She half-expected him to pop up in front of her. She reached the wall unmolested, jumped up, and rolled over, then flattened herself against it and listened.

Nothing.

Had he not followed her into the garden? She looked to her left and to her right. The wall marked the property line beside a small stone church. It looked Norman in design and perfect for her purposes. She pushed off the wall, and hugging the side of the building so she would remain in the shadows, she slithered around to the small cemetery in the back. Appropriately, it was shrouded in a low mist that looked rather unearthly. Jane did not believe in things she could not see or touch. Real danger did not come at one in the form of a specter. It came in the guise of a man in a caped greatcoat, an assailant firing a pistol, or the knife-wielding thug.

She scooted into the cemetery and leaned against one of the small, stubby trees growing there. She watched and waited for several minutes, looking for any sort of movement or sound.

There was nothing, and yet she felt a sense of unease. She felt as though she was not alone. She shivered. She was being ridiculous. The dead beneath her feet had moved on. She was alone here, and she had better make her way to Charles Street before it grew too much later.

She stepped away from the tree and started for the other end of the graveyard. Once she was away from the churchyard, she would determine how far off course she had traveled. Wolf had better have important information, but even if he did not, she had learned something very valuable tonight.

Someone was after her. She could not be certain it was Foncé or the Maîtriser group, but someone was looking for her. And someone knew where to look, which meant her aunt and uncle were no longer safe. And that made finding Foncé all the more pressing.

She reached for the latch on the cemetery gate, but instead of the cold metal, she touched something warm and soft.

“Allow me.”

Five

Jane pivoted and assumed a fighting stance before the man’s words were even spoken. He was fortunate he had spoken. He was fortunate she knew his voice—that her efforts to annihilate every remembrance of him from her mind had failed. She did not strike.

At the last second, she pulled the round kick she’d been about to deliver and merely stumbled ungracefully backward. She would have died of embarrassment if another agent had witnessed such clumsiness, but here it worked to her advantage. The move made her appear startled and scared.

And Dominic Griffyn had no idea how close he’d come to having his neck broken.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He gave her a dark look, his eyes too deep in the shadows for her to accurately gauge his expression. Those thick, sooty eyelashes worked in his favor.

“Opening the gate for you.” True to his word, he swung it wide. Jane hesitated. This could be a trap. Nothing about the situation screamed
trap
, but if he was not here to trap her, why was he here? He had either followed her or hunted her. She disliked both possibilities—the second more than the first.

“You followed me,” she said, taking a guess.

“You have a high opinion of yourself.” He casually held the gate open, his arm draped over the decorative pikes.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying you did not follow me?”

“I can’t get anything past you.” He stepped out of her path, but she still hesitated to leave the relative security of the churchyard. She could hide in the cemetery and the nooks and outcroppings of the ancient church building.

“
You
interrupted my solitude,” he said. “You tell me what you are doing here without”—he glanced around, feigning curiosity—“a chaperone or footman.”

He implied their meeting was coincidence. She didn’t believe it. This cemetery was not Drury Lane or Vauxhall Gardens. The odds of the two of them meeting here, randomly, were…well, larger than her mathematical skills allowed her to calculate. And she would not forget that she’d been pursued. It was far more likely that Griffyn was that pursuer than that they’d met randomly, and now he would lure her into trusting him.

“I don’t have to answer to you,” she said, turning back the way she’d come. She didn’t go far before he caught up. She’d expected him to grab her elbow. She was prepared to knee him, and then shove his face into the mud beneath her boots. But he didn’t touch her. He walked backwards, matching her stride for stride.

She was striding quickly, and though he had to peer over his shoulder time and again to be certain he didn’t trip over any objects in their path, her pace did not seem to discourage him. “You don’t have to answer to me, Miss Bonde,” he said, “and by all that’s holy, I wish we two had not crossed paths. Then you could go on your merry—albeit suicidal—way, and I could go on mine.”

She stopped, and he mirrored her. “But?” she prodded.

“But we did cross paths, and I’d be the worst sort of gentleman to allow my intended bride to continue on unescorted.”

Jane opened her lips to respond and found she didn’t know where to begin. There was so very much in that statement to refute. She decided on the most obvious point. “I don’t need an escort. You do not know me well, sir. If you did, you would know I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.”

“While I do not doubt the veracity of that statement, Miss Bonde, the fact remains I am obligated now to escort you.”

A clock tower chimed somewhere nearby, and Jane’s pulse quickened. Time was slipping away. She could not afford this delay. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You are not obligated to do anything, sir. And I use that term of respect lightly. You and I both know you are no gentleman. Stop this masquerade and allow me to pass.” She swept past him, her skirts parting the fog swirling about their feet.

He followed her, of course. She could easily lose him once away from the churchyard, but as she neared the low wall she’d scaled to gain entry, she realized she would have preferred to exit through the gate. And now she would feel foolish retracing her steps. This—
this
—was why she worked alone! Now she would have to scale the dashed wall again.