Stephanie Laurens - The Lady Chosen

He recognized the signs, but she seemed in no danger of succumbing to the vapors. Spying a chair along the wall, he guided her to it; she sank down with relief. “I must speak with Lady Amery’s butler. If you’ll remain here, I’ll send a footman with a glass of water.”

Her eyes lifted to his face. Her expression remained almost blank. “Please. If you would…”

He inclined his head; he was conscious of an inward wrench as he turned and headed into the crowd.

He found a footman first and dispatched him to revive the lady. Ignoring the many who tried to catch his eye, he found Clusters, the Amerys’ butler, in the hall, and pulled him into the library to explain the situation and give the necessary orders.

He’d been visiting Amery House since he’d been six months old; the staff knew him well. They acted on his orders, summoning his lordship from the cardroom and her ladyship from the drawing room, and sending a footman running for the Watch.

He wasn’t entirely surprised by the ensuing circus; his godmother was French, after all, and in this instance, she was ably supported by the Watch captain, a supercilious sort who saw difficulties where none existed. Having taken the man’s measure with one glance, Tony omitted mentioning the lady’s presence. There was in his view no reason to expose her to further and unnecessary trauma; given the dead man’s size and the way she’d held the dagger, it was difficult if not impossible to convincingly cast her as the killer.

The man he’d seen leaving by the garden gate was much more likely to have done the deed.

Besides, he didn’t know the lady’s name.

That thought was uppermost in his mind when, finally free of the responsibility of finding a dead body, he returned to the drawing room and discovered the lady gone. She wasn’t where he’d left her; he quickly scouted the rooms, but she was no longer among the guests.

The number of guests had thinned appreciably. No doubt she’d been with others, perhaps a husband, and they’d had to leave…

The possibility put a rein on his thoughts, dampened his enthusiasm.

Glibly extricating himself from the clinging coils of a particularly tenacious matron with two daughters to marry off, he slid into the hall, and headed for the front door.

On the front steps, he paused, and drew in a deep breath. The night was crisp; a sharp frost hung in the air.

His mind remained full of the lady.

He was conscious of a certain disappointment. He hadn’t expected her gratitude, yet…he wouldn’t have minded a chance to look into those wide green eyes again, to have them focus on him when they weren’t glazed with shock.

To look deep and see if she, too, had felt that stirring, the quickening in the blood, the first flicker of heat.

In the distance a bell tolled the hour. Drawing in another breath, he went down the steps and headed home.

Home was a quiet, silent place, a huge old house with only him in it. And his staff of servants, who were usually zealous in preserving him from all undue aggravation.

It was therefore a rude shock to be shaken awake by his father’s valet, who he’d inherited along with the title, and informed that there was a gentleman downstairs wishful of speaking with him even though it was only nine o’clock.

When asked to state his business, the gentleman had replied that his name was Dalziel and their master would assuredly see him.

Accepting that no one in their right mind would claim to be Dalziel if they weren’t, Tony grumbled mightily but consented to rise and get dressed.

Curiosity propelled him downstairs; in the past, he and his peers had always been summoned to wait on Dalziel in his office in Whitehall. Of course, he was no longer one of Dalziel’s minions, yet he couldn’t help feeling that that alone would not account for Dalziel’s courtesy in calling on him.

Even if it was just past nine o’clock.

Entering the library where Hungerford, his butler, had left Dalziel to kick his heels, the first thing he became aware of was the aroma of fresh coffee; Hungerford had served Dalziel a cup.

Tony nodded to Dalziel, elegantly disposed in an armchair; without breaking his stride, he went to the bellpull and tugged. Then he turned and, propping an arm along the mantelpiece, faced Dalziel. He had set his cup down and was waiting.

“I apologize for the early hour, but I understand from Whitley that you discovered a dead body last night.”

Tony looked down into Dalziel’s dark brown eyes, half hidden by heavy lids, and wondered if such occurrences ever slipped past his attention. “I did. Pure chance. What’s your—or Whitley’s—interest?”

Lord Whitley was Dalziel’s opposite number in the Home Office; Tony had been one of, possibly the only member of, Dalziel’s group ever to have liaised with agents run by Whitley. Their mutual targets had been the spy networks operating out of London, attempting to undermine Wellington’s campaigns.

“The victim—a William Ruskin—was a Senior Administrative Clerk in the Customs and Revenue Office.” Dalziel’s expression was totally uninformative; his dark gaze never wavered. “I came to inquire whether there was any story I should know?”

A Senior Administrative Clerk in the Customs and Revenue Office; recalling the stiletto, an assassin’s blade, Tony was no longer truly sure. He refocused on Dalziel’s face. “I don’t believe so.”

He knew that Dalziel would have noted his hesitation; equally, he knew that his erstwhile commander would accept his assessment.

Dalziel did, with an inclination of his head. He rose. Met Tony’s eyes. “If there’s any change in the situation, do let me know.”

With a polite nod, he headed for the door.

Tony saw him into the hall and handed him into the care of a footman; retreating to the library, he wondered, as he often had, just who Dalziel really was. Like recognized like; he was certainly of the aristocracy, with his finely hewn Norman features, pale skin and sable hair, yet Tony had checked enough to know Dalziel wasn’t his last name. Dalziel was somewhat shorter and slighter than the men he had commanded, all ex-Guardsmen, yet he projected an aura of lethal purpose that, in a roomful of larger men, would instantly mark him as the most dangerous.

The one man a wise man would never take his eye from.

The door to the street shut; a second later, Hungerford appeared with a tray bearing a steaming cup of coffee. Tony took it with a grateful murmur; like all excellent butlers, Hungerford always seemed to know what he required without having to be told.

“Shall I ask Cook to send up your breakfast, my lord?”

Tony sipped, then nodded. “Yes—I’ll be going out shortly.”

Hungerford asked no more but silently left him.

Tony savored the coffee. Along with the premonition Dalziel’s appearance and his few words had sent tingling along his nerves.

He was too wise to ignore or dismiss the warning, yet in this case, he wasn’t personally involved.

But she might be.

Dalziel’s query gave him the perfect excuse to learn more of her.

Indeed, given Dalziel’s interest, it seemed incumbent upon him to do so. To assure himself that there really wasn’t anything more nefarious than murder behind Ruskin’s death.

He needed to find the lady.

Cherchez la femme.

Author’s Note

The Bastion Club novels came about when I returned to a character who appeared in my novel Captain Jack’s Woman, with a view to writing his story. Anthony “Tony” Blake, a secondary character in that earlier work, was always destined to be a hero in his own right.

In asking the question, What happened to Tony? the answer grew from and was based on a logical extension of the adventures and dangerous life we’d seen Tony living in 1812 in Captain Jack’s Woman, that of a secret operative going behind enemy lines, exploiting his French background to identify and nullify French spy networks which were, at that time, trying to get details of Wellington’s campaign plans back to France for Napoleon and his generals.