Elizabeth Beacon - A Regency Rebel's Seduction - A Most Unladylike Adventure / The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle

Reminding herself she wasn’t here to redeem her blemished soul, she followed the boy as he finally quit his native streets and again they were into quieter, wealthier areas and she wondered whether it might be better to come down from her unlikely perch and risk the broader streets with her now-sooty clothes and grimy hands and face making her remarkable in such a place. The apprentice tough ended the chase he didn’t know he was involved in at a quietly respectable church, of all unlikely places. Louisa paused and watched with bafflement as the rough youth from the slums removed his apology for a hat and bowed his head, as he entered the church by a side door as humbly as if he really had come to seek salvation. Could she be mistaken about him after all, then? Was he really a lost soul in search of redemption, who just happened to have been going in the same direction as herself and the Captain this morning? Her once-honed instincts argued he was nothing so simple and she stayed to see if anyone else would come to such a sacrilegious meeting place.

Nobody went in or out until the boy came out and sauntered down the street looking singularly unrepentant. Torn between wanting to follow him and staying to watch for his confederate, Louisa tried to decide which would gain her more, then the door opened again and a soberly dressed gentleman stepped out of the church.

Something about that clerical-seeming figure below seemed wrong and she didn’t know why the hairs on the back of her head rose in warning at the sight of him, but this was clearly a more important rogue than the one she now had to let go. Louisa eyed up her possible routes and hoped the man wasn’t about to cross the wide square the church was set in, as she would either have to scramble across a good many rooftops to follow him, or climb down and risk being seen in the open.

Luckily he headed towards her rather than away, so they were soon in the maze of service streets and wide roads that made up the most exclusive part of the capital. Louisa’s mind buzzed with possibilities as the sober figure finally entered one of the most prosperous squares through the mews behind it, then she scrambled to follow along the more generous roofs and was only just in time to see him disappear through French windows giving on to a town garden, as if he knew the house very well and could stroll in and out as he pleased. She pondered the man’s position in such a household and wondered what to do next. No scruffy idler would gain access to such a house and how would she find out anything about the owner and his connections from such a humble position even if she did?

Marking the house on her internal map for future reference, she waited until a genteel bustle of activity made her realise it was the fashionable hour for visiting and any trail the man had left was about to be wiped out. He could have left in any of those coaches in whatever guise he usually wore, he might be someone she’d met at a ball or some soirée he couldn’t manage to escape, she could even have danced with him in her other life. Horrified by the idea of being so close to a man who clearly wished Hugh Darke no good, she finally left very cautiously indeed and travelled a few streets at her lofty level before descending. She could find out nothing more just now, so she headed for a dealer in second-hand clothing that she knew from experience was the least likely to leave her scratching and cursing at someone else’s parasites when she wore their wares.

By mid-afternoon Hugh had ploughed through his mathematical duties and was secretly relieved to get an urgent summons to the enclosed dock his youthful employers were having built to cut down on the organised pilfering of their cargoes. Hugh frowned as he pondered that pilfering and told himself it was normal, all owners suffered from the problem, which was why the East India Company had already built a closed dock and were probably planning more. Like Kit, he thought there was something more than chance behind their own heavy losses. It was all of a piece with the loss of one of his ships and the murder of its crew not already corrupted by whoever organised the infamous scheme a couple of years ago.

It had taken a deal of hard work and scrupulously fair accounting to repair the damage to their reputation and persuade Lloyds that Stone & Shaw were not behind the fraud. Rumours that the Mirabelle had not gone down after all, but was sailing under another name with an entirely different crew, had horrified her young owners and sent Kit on a quest to discover the truth and Hugh knew his friend wouldn’t give up until he had every detail of the infamous scheme at his fingertips. Having an implacable yet invisible enemy of his own, Hugh knew how that constant but intangible malice ate away at a man’s soul. At least he knew his foe was probably one of his late wife’s legion of lovers, determined to make him pay for the unresolved crime that ended her life, but Hugh couldn’t solve it and prove he wasn’t a wife killer, so it had seemed better to take a captaincy from Stone & Shaw and stay out of the idiot’s way rather than fight for his good name—a lost cause if ever there was one.

Hugh frowned blackly out of the window of the hackney he’d summoned to get to Stone & Shaw’s dock as fast as he could and wondered at the elaborate route the jarvey was taking. About to tap on the roof and inform the driver he wasn’t the flat he probably looked today, he jolted in his seat as the hackney veered abruptly and threw him forwards with a jarring thud. Hugh was still rubbing his bruised temple and trying to reassemble his dignity when the door was thrust open and a familiar voice demanded he get down immediately and follow her.

‘Why the devil should I?’ he snapped back crossly.

‘Because it’s all a sham and you’re being kidnapped,’ Eloise informed him shortly, tugging ineffectually at his sleeve. ‘Please, believe me. I’m not sure how much longer my diversion will hold up,’ she added desperately and he believed her, despite all her secrets and lies.

‘I’ll come, but only because this is the most unlikely route to my destination.’

‘Good of you, now hurry up,’ she urged impatiently.

Hugh took a swift glance about him and suppressed a grin as he took in the quality of her helpers. A one-legged sailor was sitting in the road, scrabbling for his wooden leg and loudly bemoaning the losses from his spilled apple cart in terms that must make even the assembled urchins blush, while an old woman berated him for a drunken and careless old fool. The urchins were wriggling about under the cab for the fallen and bruised apples and tangling up the traces as they darted nimbly out of the way of the jarvey’s whiplash whenever he tried to fend off the sea of bodies suddenly surrounding his battered vehicle.

‘Hurry,’ Eloise urged and he gave her a long, distrustful look before deciding she’d gone to such a deal of trouble to get him out of that cab, he might as well humour her, if only to find out exactly what she was up to.

This time she was dressed in layer upon layer of disreputable clothes like a rag-picker’s daughter, carrying as many of his wares as she could on her own back. It certainly hid her fine figure a lot better than her last disguise, he thought as he followed her into a maze of courts and alleys and had to concentrate hard to recall the way back should he need a hasty escape from her toils. Sensing his resistance, she tugged on his hand impatiently and drew him on as swiftly as she could. He could sense her apprehension through their locked hands as he felt a prickle of awareness shiver over his own skin and knew they were being watched from dark doorways and darker rooms. Unwillingly caught up in her drama, he made himself as silent and wary as he could and hoped he managed to seem the over-eager client to Eloise’s part-time whore, although he wondered how such a client would know what delights lay under her false bulk.