Confessions of a Little Black Gown (25 page)

It made sense, it tied everything together so neatly, he couldn’t breathe, yet it still wasn’t enough to erase all his doubts.

“How can you be so sure,” Larken began, “that whoever has Miss Langley’s trunk is one of these French morts, as you call them?”

“Cause I took a closer peek inside that there trunk,” she said quite proudly, leaning over and digging through her workbasket. She plucked out what looked like a heavy purse, and with a measure of agility that surprised him, tossed it to him. The bigger shock came when he caught it, for the weight of was enough to have him nearly drop it. Nearly, for as Larken caught it, a chill ran across his palm.

“Go ahead, look inside,” she said. “Convinced me when I saw them.”

He pulled the ribbons open and pulled out a gold coin, one of many, and found himself looking down at the profile of Bonaparte.

“That’s not all of it,” Aunt Minty told him. “There’s enough French gold in there, hidden ’neath the false bottom, to see our good King George himself murdered.”

Mrs. Browne stood off to one side of the foyer and waited, dismayed and disgruntled to be caught up
in Aurora’s plans. Her sister was mad, always had been, but this…attempting to kidnap someone at the Duke of Hollindrake’s ball, why it was worse than madness…it was utterly ruinous.

If she were caught, where would that leave Sarah? Mrs. Browne pressed her lips together, even as her fingers gripped the pistol she held concealed in the folds of her elaborate gown.

Sarah, dear and darling Sarah. She deserved a good marriage—and far from England, Aveline could see that now.

Whatever had she been thinking, bringing her daughter to England in the first place? She should have known Aurora would show up just when everything was going so well.

Mr. Browne had argued against it, and it had been the only time Aveline had crossed her husband. And him nothing but kind and generous and well-to-do. She’d been a fool. And once she helped Aurora, she and Sarah would be on the first Dutch ship she could find and make their way back to Boston if they had to go by way of the China seas.

Behind her, she heard footsteps on the stairs, and glanced up. It was Mr. Hartwell, that odd cousin of Lady Philippa’s, if she remembered correctly. She looked again. Ah yes. Mr. Hartwell and his valet.

She would have disregarded the pair completely, but something about the man’s servant caught her eye.

When she took another surreptitious peek, shock filled her bones. Though the valet’s hair was shorn closely to his head and his face shaved clean, she knew without a doubt the plainly clad man beside
Mr. Hartwell was the usually wildly flamboyant Captain Thomas Dashwell.

Until this moment she’d been hoping Aurora was wrong, that Dashwell wasn’t here. She rather liked her brash compatriot, knew her husband and many of her fellow countrymen considered him one of their country’s greatest heroes.

Her part in what would surely be his death churned in her stomach, but there was Sarah’s future at stake.

As they exited the front doors, Mrs. Browne followed quickly and caught up with them as they made it to the drive.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hartwell, I believe you dropped something,” she called out, trying to sound sweet and sincere. It worked, for both men turned and she moved forward, pistol in hand.

“My dear Mrs. Browne,” the man brazened. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I must ask you both to continue around the side of the house,” she told them. “If you please, just do as I say and we can be done with this business quickly.” Then she looked Dashwell directly in the eye. “Sir, I know who you are, and if you try anything, my maid is watching from the windows above and she will cry out an alert that will bring every man in this house running. You’ll be hung before dawn.”

Not that it matters
, she thought miserably, nodding for them to continue into the shadows around the house.
You’ll be dead the moment Aurora has her hands on you.

Just then, out of the shadows, a soft laugh rose. “
Trés bien
, Aveline. You have not lost your touch.”

In front of her Dashwell stiffened, as if he had heard a ghost. “Aurora,” he gasped as the lady stepped from the shadows, clad in a black riding habit, pistol in hand.

“Oui, mon chère
. I have come to find you. I should have known you would slip past the English once again, but you shall not find me as easy to evade.”

“If you have come to repay me,” Dashwell said with his usual flirtatious cheek, “your timing is impeccable. I have need of your gold.”

Aurora laughed, a sound that sent a chill of foreboding down Mrs. Browne’s spine. Because she’d heard that mocking laugh once too often. Like just before her sister had murdered her English lover in Paris.

“Dashwell, where you are going, gold will be of no use.” Aurora waved at her sister. “Go get what I need from my trunk.”

“But you said I’d only have to bring—”

Aurora turned on her, pointing the pistol at her. “Go, now. Or when I am done with this business, I will find Sarah and take her with me, where she should have been all these years.”

Mrs. Browne turned and fled, praying with each shaking step that the trunk would be exactly where Aurora thought it was and that the gold inside had yet to be discovered.

If I fail
, she thought wildly,
I’ll find Sarah and be gone from here, before she has time to catch us.

But that was a foolish notion, for there was no escaping Aurora. Not when she held all the cards.

Larken entered the ballroom with only one thought. Find Tally.

All the way down the stairs and as he pushed through the crowd, the idea of her being in danger prodded him forward.

What if something happened to her?

It was enough to make him discover the madness inside him.

He loved her. Somehow in the last few days, he’d fallen in love with the madcap, treasonous, impetuously romantic chit.

When he’d confessed as much to Aunt Minty, it had been as if a weight had been lifted from his heart, his life. He loved her. And demmit if he was going to let anyone harm her or those she loved.

“Excuse me, pardon me,” he said as he prodded and shoved his way through the crowded ballroom. “Please move aside.”

“I never!” murmured one matron as he bullied his way past her to come to the edge of the dance floor.

Before him couples twirled and parted and came together again, but there was no sign of her.

Oh, where the devil was she?

And then, as if in answer to his prayer, he spied her. His relief was immediately replaced by a pang of guilt. She looked positively miserable being paraded down the line by Lord Norridge, who held her hand just so and made sure he smiled and winked at the other ladies he passed.

Gads, what a popinjay! Larken knew he’d owe her more than just a sincere apology for signing her up for what, two dances, with that idiot?

Well, he’d do one better and relieve her of the situation—and he did so, by snagging out his hand, catching her by the elbow and tugging her out of the line and into the crowd.

Larken wondered how long it would take Norridge to realize he was dancing by himself.

Tally, on the other hand, wasn’t coming easily, dragging her heels and tugging at his grasp. When that failed, she cursed him roundly. In Russian. Giving a rather colorful description of his parentage. Or therein lack of.

As if he were going to let her go over a barrage of insults. Now or ever. It was the sort of scene that would have had him grinning if the stakes weren’t so high.

“Let me go or I shall scream,” she threatened.

“Scream,” he told her, “and I will toss you over my shoulder and give every man in this room a good look at those ankles of yours as well as your rather delightful backside.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in a gaping
O
as if she were about to raise the dead with her complaints, but she must have seen the intractable intent behind his threat, and she said nothing.

Though it didn’t keep her from dragging her heels.

Through a doorway and a salon and then through another. And finally into the room where he’d been pinned and poked by the tailor.

Even before they came to a halt, he issued his demand, “You need to tell me where Dashwell is. Now.”

Her reply was a loud, indignant
snort
. Arms cross
ing over her chest, she teetered on her heels and glared at him.

So, this wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d see the sense of trusting him quickly enough.

“You don’t understand,” he told her, “his life is in danger.”

Oh, that got her talking. “Yes, I would say so.
From you
.”

He recoiled a bit as if she had struck him. And in that slight movement, she took a chance to dodge past him, but once again he caught her and this time hauled her right up against him, both hands holding her tight.

“Lord Larken, unhand me.” Her words came out with such deadly calm, he nearly did so.

Nearly.

“Not until you tell me where Dashwell is. I must know.”

She shook her head. “Never.”

Leaning over, he stared right into her eyes. “Demmit, this is no game, Miss Langley. None of your Lady Persephone nonsense.”

Staring right back at him, meeting him word for word, she said, “And it never has been a game to me, my lord.”

Oh, God, this was getting him nowhere. He tried another tact, loosening his grip and trying to smile a bit. “Tally, please. I beseech you, tell me where he is. You must trust me. Your Aunt Minty said—”

“Aunt Minty? What have you done to her?”

“Nothing!”

“Then whatever has she to do with this?”

Larken drew back. The truth was hardly going to help his cause, but he wasn’t going to let any more lies find their way between them. Keep them apart. “I was up in your room just now—”

“In my room? Looking for Dashwell, I assume?”

Going from bad to worse, he flinched. “Yes,” he ground out. “If you must know, then yes, I was in your room looking for him.”

“And if you’d found him, what then, my lord?” The question hung in the air.

Honesty. No lies
, he told himself. “I would have killed him.”

She reeled back from him, slipping out of his grasp. “Murdered him, you mean.”

Larken nodded.

“So why do you think I will help you find him when you have every intention of killing him?” She sidestepped him again and moved so a chair sat between them. It might as well have been the English Channel. “How is it, sir, that you can kill a friend? Is that how you regard those you love? Easily expendable and forgettable in your unending quest for honor? I ask you, sir, where is the honor in murder?”

“Tally, listen to me. Everything has changed. You must believe me. Your Aunt Minty did. In fact it was her reasoning that got me to see the right of things. There is more at stake here than just Dashwell’s life. When we opened the trunk—”

“You were searching my belongings?”

Oh, of all the hypocritical accusations. “Just as you did mine?”

“That was different. I haven’t been lying about my identity or my intentions.”

“You haven’t? Does your sister know what, or rather whom, you’ve been keeping upstairs in your room?”

At this, she had the decency to blanch.

“And I might point out that ‘your things’ are not yours at all, that trunk belongs to a member of
L’Ordre du Lis Noir.”

That brought her gaze up. “The Order of the Black Lily?”

“You know of them?” Now he was taken aback.

“Papa told us stories of them as bedtime tales, but I never thought they truly—”

“Oh, they exist. And that trunk belongs to one of them, and I suspect she is here for the same reason I am. To find Dashwell.”

Her mouth opened in that wide
O
again. “Oh, dear, no!”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “And if the Order is desparate to find Dashwell, mayhap the information they want to stop him from sharing would be valuable to England.”

“Enough to save his life?”

Larken nodded.

For a second they just stood there, and he could see she was sifting through what he’d told her and trying to come to a decision.

To trust him or not.

Since his pleas had gotten him nowhere, he let his infamous reckless nature speak for him. Coming around the chair, he took her in his arms, before she could barely get out a shocked, “My lord!” he sealed her mouth with his lips and kissed her.

Hungry, naked desire filled his veins, and for a
second he wondered if this was the wisest means of persuasion, because it was taking him down at the knees.

At first her hands balled up in fists against his chest, but as his tongue swept over her lips, opened them to his exploration and swept over her own pert one, her fingers uncurled and wound instead around his lapels, pulling him closer.