Confessions of a Little Black Gown (11 page)

Larken blanched from a guilty flinch that hit him at Temple’s nearly perfect description of the night before.

Tangled…

“As much as I could,” he told him. “I have a suspicion of where he might be.” A vision of Lady Philippa crossing her room and closing the curtains flitted through his thoughts. He’d been watching her when Miss Langley had come upon him.

“Are you positive?” Temple asked.

Larken shook his head.

Cursing, Temple continued, “We can’t go in until you are positive where Dash is hidden. We need to go in and get him out, without any fuss or anyone seeing us do it.”

Larken looked away, studying the arrangement of the stones, for he didn’t want his astute companion to see the conflict in his eyes.

Luckily, Temple had continued blithely on, “…if Lady Philippa and Tally are involved in any of this, I won’t have them ruined over it.”

Their ruin was the least of Larken’s concern. Certainly his behavior last night proved that. For his
orders were quite another thing. Orders given to him directly from Pymm after Temple had been dismissed.

He wasn’t here to extract Dashwell, as Temple believed.

Pymm’s orders had been quite specific, and given to Larken alone so as not to be contradicted. England’s ruthless spymaster feared (and rightly so) that Temple’s close association with the Langley family could cloud his judgment.

So, Larken hadn’t been ordered to just recapture Dashwell, but to eliminate the reckless American privateer once and for all.

Larken had come here to murder his friend.

“‘Go after Mr. Ryder,’ she says,” Tally muttered to herself as she followed the path through the woods. “‘Bring him back,’ she orders. ‘The tailor will be here before two. Mr. Ryder must have a new jacket for the ball.’ Bah! I hope he falls down some old well and stays there.” She paused for a moment and spoke to a little squirrel up on a branch. “And if I could contrive to push Felicity down it after him, there would be much rejoicing.”

The squirrel seemed unimpressed, chattering and scolding her before scampering off through the close-knit branches.

“Ah, yes, everyone has to have their say in my life,” Tally muttered. “Even the Hollindrake squirrels.”

So here she was, tromping through the forest, on Felicity’s orders to “find Mr. Ryder, immediately.” She’d been about to protest, but Felicity had then added if “she” (meaning Tally) “wouldn’t do it, then
she would scare up Pippin and send their cousin to do it.”

Well, they hardly needed Felicity nosing about their suite, so she’d agreed to go.

Of course that hadn’t been enough for Felicity. “Encourage him to confide in you,” she’d admonished Tally as she followed her down the front steps. “See if you can discover his likes and dislikes. For we must know what he favors so we can encourage him to acquire a liking for Miss DeFisser.”

He likes kissing
, Tally had almost told her sister, if only to see the shocked look on Felicity’s face.

And he’s no vicar. I am even starting to doubt that he’s truly Hollindrake’s cousin.

Of course if she had said anything at all like this to Felicity, then she, Tally, would most likely have found herself being dispatched to the nearest asylum,
ahem
, resort, for her,
ahem
, health.

No, she would have to unmask this faux cousin all on her own and at the same time convince Pippin that it was time to move “Aunt Minty.”

She followed the trail toward the folly, which, Staines had told her, was the one that Mr. Ryder had taken for his walk.

A walk, indeed!
Harrumph.
The man had fled from Felicity’s machinations like a coward.

A smart one, though.

Tally paused on the pathway, watching the dappled light fall on the forest floor, her mind threading her thoughts together in another way—certainly a man seeking to be married wouldn’t be fleeing Felicity’s endeavors but welcoming them.

So whatever was he doing here? she asked her
self for about the thousandth time. And when she looked up, the sight before her came into focus.

For there at the foot of the folly paced Mr. Ryder, just as the butler said he would be. It wasn’t so much the sight of Mr. Ryder that surprised her, after all she’d come this way to find him.

No, it was the way he was walking. Nay, striding. Tall and purposeful. His legs moving with steady grace, and his hand gesturing with strength and meaning.

No stumbling man of the cloth. No bumbling would-be gentleman. But a man arguing his point with vigor.

The vigorous part didn’t surprise her. She knew already he was a man of passion.

It was rather the “who” he was arguing with that had Tally slipping into the shadows of the trees and tiptoeing along so she could not only discover who he was meeting in secret, but to what purpose.

For now she suspected, only too well, that she and Mr. Ryder held something else in common.

A heart full of secrets.

L
arken felt Miss Langley’s presence long before he heard the
crack
of a twig. He told himself it was years of living under the threat of detection that had heightened his senses, made him as wary as a tomcat in the Dials.

But that wasn’t entirely true, for the sense that she was close left him rife with other feelings…ones that had no place in his life.

Like a cacophony of wishful desires…especially when he heard the rustle of leaves behind him again and could feel her coming closer, an awareness that was more unsettling than the threat of discovery.

Temple heard her as well, and without a word, slipped silently behind the half-wall of stones that made up the back of the folly, hiding himself completely.

Larken looked around, hunting for excuses to explain his presence here, so far from the house.

Lord, what am I going to tell her?

That was it!
Lord…
A sly smile tipped his lips as he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved his glasses, along with the slim volume he’d tucked in there for just this sort of emergency.

Flipping open the book, his gaze scanned the page until he came to a most fortuitous line. Larken wanted to laugh.

Oh, yes, this is perfect. Let’s see how Miss Langley likes Fordyce.

He struck a stiff pose and began to read aloud, letting his voice carry. “I would exhort and even enjoin Christian women always to dress with decency and moderation; never to go beyond their circumstances and, nor aspire above their station—”

This time it wasn’t the crack of twigs, but Brutus who announced her. The little mutt came bounding up the pathway, barking and growling as he approached.

Larken had enough sense to leap up onto one of the stones, even though what he wanted to do was give the mutt a good shake and remind him who was the master and who was the dog.

However, that would mean picking up the damned bit of fluff. Given how the little vermin was about sausages, and from the hungry glint of his squinty little eyes, Larken suspected that to Brutus, fingers and sausages looked quite alike.

And Larken liked all his fingers more than proving his point to a dog.

“Woof, woof
,” Brutus snapped, running around the stone, vexed at being deprived of yet another chance to chew the heels from Larken’s boots.

And that was exactly why he was up here, not just to pretend to be this harebrained, innocuous fellow he’d invented, but to save his boots. This was the only pair he’d brought with him, and he wasn’t about to find himself padding about Hollindrake House in his stocking feet while the duchess “insisted” on sending his ruined boots off to London for a proper repair—leaving him at her disposal, not to mention complete and utter mercy.

“Ah, Miss Langley, imagine you out here,” he said, as blandly as he could from atop his ridiculous perch. In truth, he felt anything but dull looking down at her.

For even in her plain morning gown, Miss Thalia Langley was a sight to behold. Perhaps it was the blue of her pelisse, for it matched the color of her eyes, brightening their sparkle. Used as he was to his own dark, dull pair, her eyes reminded him of the sparkle of the Mediterranean Sea, or the sight of cheery bluebells in an otherwise gray London garden.

Gads, Larken! Pull yourself together. You’re thinking in poetry. You’re one step away from reciting Byron.

No, looking at her, poetry paled. Especially with the memory of that demmed kiss he’d stolen from her in the maze still fresh in his thoughts.

That was exactly why he should never have done it. For having felt her curves, explored just a hint of her lithesome body, it was impossible to see her as that prattling bit of muslin he’d met in Hollindrake’s study.

She approached him slowly, looking one way, then the other as if she were…searching for some
one. But quite clearly from the perplexed tip of her brows, she hadn’t exactly seen Temple, perhaps had only thought she’d seen Larken with someone.

“Yes, good day to you, sir,” she said politely. “My, it is a fair walk all the way out here. Whatever are you doing?” She continued into the circle of the folly and scooped up Brutus, glancing at Larken’s perch atop the rock and then down at her dog as if she couldn’t see what he was making such a fuss over.

Then again, she most likely had more than one pair of boots, as evidenced by the one Brutus had found in the maze.

“I was practicing a sermon,” he offered, climbing down from his faux pulpit and remembering to do it with less agility than he’d used to get up on it.

“What on?” she asked, a teasing twinkle to her blue eyes. “The wages of sin?”

Sin.
The way the word tripped from her tongue was a sin in itself.

“Yes, well—” he stammered along, and not because he was trying to play the bumbling vicar, but because this bit of muslin had him at sixes and sevens. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, where Temple was hidden, and then lowered his voice to say, “Miss Langley, on that subject, I fear I owe you an apology.”

“Whatever for?” she asked, moving like a nymph across the grass, weaving her way artfully through the arranged stones.

“For last night. My, um, my behavior. My behavior was boorish.”

“It was?” she asked, smiling at him. “I thought quite differently. For if that was you behaving boor
ishly, I daresay I wonder what you would be like if you chose to be wicked?”

Wicked.
Another word that sent a ripple down his spine, as if she’d thrown down a gauntlet and issued a challenge. One he could ill afford to take, no matter how tempting it was.

Demmed flirtatious chit.

Her fingers toyed with the lionlike mane around Brutus’s head. “Well, I suppose if you are going to apologize, then I must as well. I could make excuses like Mrs. Hutchinson used to do and blame the brandy bottle for leaving me quite bosky—”

Bosky?
He hardly expected such a piece of cant to come out of the mouth of a Mayfair miss, let alone hear her make such a reference to someone she was obviously familiar with. Intimately so.

“Mrs. Hutchinson?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, our housekeeper and cook when we lived on Brook Street.” She paused for a moment and then lowered her voice. “She drank shamelessly, but as Felicity said, it kept the dear lady from noticing that we couldn’t pay her. Happily, she’s taken up with the duke’s batman, Mr. Mudgett, and she’s become quite a puritan of late—well, if you don’t count the fact that they are, oh, how shall I say it?” She tapped her fingers to her lips, and then smiled. “Living together without the benefit of marriage. Mrs. Hutchinson avers she won’t be married again, and Mr. Mudgett doesn’t mind as long as she stays away from the bottle. Actually, they are quite content, though no doubt Felicity will see to it that they marry before long. Bad example for the other servants and all.”

Larken coughed as her shocking speech sunk deeper and deeper into his head. Certainly he’d spent no time at Almack’s and very little in the gilded drawing rooms of London, but he doubted this was the sort of conversation one heard bandied about like the weather or the next evening’s invitations. It was almost as if she was trying to…

He glanced up at her as the realization hit him. Why the demmed little minx!

She was deliberately trying to tempt him. Vex him. Get him to slip out of character.

Just as he had done last night when he’d kissed her.

Ignore her, Larken. You have done this for years and can easily outwit an inexperienced chit.

But she wasn’t done yet.

“Listen to me prattle on,” she was saying. “Since I can’t really blame my poor showing last night on Hollindrake’s wine cellar, then I will blame that dress. Have you ever seen such a creation?” She sighed. “How I wish it was truly mine.”

This caught his attention. “Not yours?”

She shook her head. “No, not at all. You see my trunk went missing—’tis a long story, and once again, all Felicity’s doing—and another trunk was sent in its place. The dress belongs to someone else, and what an interesting lady she must be to have had such an elegant gown made up. Not to mention the shoes. You remember the shoes, don’t you?”

He did. How he wished he didn’t. Attached as they were to her feet which led up to her ankles and shapely calves…

“Yes, well,” Miss Langley was saying, “once I
got the trunk opened—no easy feat, mind you, the lock was devilishly tricky—and discovered that dress—”

“You broke into someone else’s trunk?” he sputtered.

“Heavens, no! I merely picked the lock, but like I said—” She stopped and glanced up at him. “Oh, dear, I’ve shocked you. Why is it I keep forgetting who you are?”

Larken felt the weight of her gaze pierce all the way past his collar, past the bad pomade, back into that place she’d teased open last night. “You picked the lock?” he managed to ask, returning to the safer subject of her litany of crimes. Breaking into another’s property. Absconding with their clothes.

Tempting vicars with her ankles and come-hither glances.

“Yes, but it was a rather tricky one. Probably French made. The French are a very suspicious people. They make their locks far more difficult to open than English locks.” She set Brutus down and the little mutt went off to sniff away at the rocks and fauna. “I fear the real crime was those shoes. They were divine, weren’t they?”

She parted her lips and smiled at him and it was clear it wasn’t her shoes that she was referring to, but the kiss they’d shared.

Larken took a deep breath. Then another.
Steady, my good man. Remember you’re a vicar.
“You mean the pair you tripped in?”

“Oh, yes, they are the devil to walk in, but as Nanny Jamilla says, ‘Women must endure all sorts of trials to be fashionable.’ And those shoes were too
tempting. Have you ever been tempted by a pair of shoes, Mr. Ryder?”

Yes, he had. Last night, as a matter of fact. But he wasn’t about to admit it to her. He took another breath and glanced down at the volume in his hand, trying to remember the dull and lofty-minded passage he’d been reading.

“Oh, what is that you are reading?” she asked, pointing at the book.

He held it up for her to see. “
Fordyce’s Sermons
. I was just memorizing a pertinent passage.”

Her nose wrinkled. “
Fordyce
? You intend to preach from
Fordyce
on Sunday?”

“Why, yes,” he said, all ready to launch into his planned prating speech on the edifying qualities of the dull reverend’s sermons when her words finally connected.

You intend to preach from
Fordyce
on Sunday?

As in
this
Sunday? His gaze swung momentarily over toward where he knew Temple was hiding. And was now most likely doubled over in laughter.

Oh, this assignment just kept getting better and better.

“Preach? This Sunday? Well, I hadn’t thought—”

“Of course, you probably didn’t,” she rushed to say. “But with the duke’s old vicar doing so poorly of late, and with all the bother of the party to organize, I daresay Felicity forgot to tell you. She plans to have you replace Mr. Roberts this Sunday, if only to put you to your advantage before Miss DeFisser.”

Yes, she did indeed mean
this
Sunday. Which meant he had no choice but to find Dashwell before
Saturday night and be long gone before the church bells tolled Sunday morning.

Still, he shook his head. Adamantly. “I couldn’t…that is to say, I would be…” This time he struggled to find the right explanation as to why he’d rather be drawn and quartered than get up before the entire house party, the Hollindrake servants and the nearby village, and make a complete fool of himself.

Not that he’d ever worried overly much as to the state of his immortal soul, but he had to imagine there was a slight distinction between being Mr. Ryder in the line of duty during the week and offering spiritual advice…unless it was how to be damned for all eternity.

“Oh, you’ll do very well.” Now it was her turn to smile slyly. “However, I would advise you not to quote from
Fordyce
. He tends to put Felicity in an ill humor.”

“And you, Miss Langley? What is your opinion of the good reverend?”

“Me?” She shook her head. “I don’t think…”

“Certainly you have an opinion—” he said, thinking he sounded quite convincing as the concerned vicar.

“Oh, yes, but I don’t think you will think too highly of my opinion of Mr. Fordyce.”

Larken glanced down at the volume in his hands. “I would be honored to hear your thoughts.”

She made an amusing little snort of disbelief. A
harrumph
that suggested otherwise. “Remember, you insisted.”

“I’ll remember. Pray, go on.”

“There are his views on marriage for one thing,” she said with a shudder.