She shook off that lowering thought. “I’m almost certain he’s a fortune hunter,” she said defensively, “and I fear that he’s worse.”
There was a long pause. Then he crossed his arms over his chest with a belligerent air. “I’m not sure what any of this has to do with me.”
“That should be obvious: I want you to help me find them before it’s too late.”
“Me? Why not hire a Bow Street runner?”
She looked blankly at him. “A Bow Street runner? What is that?”
He sighed. “I forgot you’ve spent most of your life in the country. Well, m’lady, Bow Street runners track down missing persons, among other things.”
“Oh. Still, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to find one.”
“You found
me,
” he put in dryly.
Was that unusual? Did he hide himself away in St.
Giles because he didn’t want anyone to see his poverty? It was hard to believe he’d
prefer
it here. She could see soot-blackened, dilapidated buildings through the window and hear tenants arguing through the paper-thin walls. “Finding you was easy. I merely asked Griff’s coachman to take me to where you lived.”
“And he brought you to St. Giles, just like that?” He shook his head in obvious disgust. “I’ll have the wretch turned off for that foolishness.”
“You most certainly will not. I told him it was urgent, and I promised there would be no repercussions if he helped me.”
“Oh, did you, now? Nice of you to appropriate Griff’s servants like that. Why not ask one of
them
where to hire somebody to track Lady Juliet?”
“Because servants gossip. I’m certainly not going to let Griff’s servants know what really happened, after taking such great pains to hide it from our own servants.”
“What did you tell yours?”
“That Juliet had gone to London alone to visit Rosalind, and I was following after. Because if word got out that Juliet had run off with some unsavory character—”
“—your family’s good name would be ruined,” he finished for her.
“Don’t be silly—I don’t care one whit about
that.
What worries me most is Juliet’s future. All she has ever wanted is a husband who will make her happy, and I am quite sure this man will
not.
And if anyone hears of the elopement, she’ll be ruined, even if she is still…chaste…when we recover her. I know nothing about your Bow Street runners’ skills or reliability, but I could not trust anyone to be discreet in this matter.”
“Yet you trust me?” he said, clearly surprised.
“To be discreet? Certainly. And Griff trusts you to run
Knighton Trading while he’s gone, so why shouldn’t I trust you with this?”
“That’s another thing. I’m s’posed to be helping Griff.” He began to pace the room with quick, forceful strides. “And you may find this hard to believe, but I also have my own business to run. I advise gentlemen on how to invest their money, and I already have more clients than I can handle. I don’t have time for chasing after foolish girls who elope with unsuitable men.”
“I would have gone to Griff if he were here. I did send him and Rosalind an urgent message, but it won’t reach them on the Continent for days, and this matter requires haste. So I came to you. You’re the logical choice.”
When he raised an eyebrow, she continued in a softer tone, “You know Juliet and seem to like her. I’m sure that if you heard the whole of it, you would understand why I consider this situation so dire.”
That seemed to give him pause. Slowly he approached the table, then settled his hip on the edge, not far from her. “I’m listening.”
Yes, and crowding in upon her with his giant’s body that blocked the meager sunlight silting through the grimy window behind him. Must he loom like the great God of War poised to pounce? It was most unsettling.
She would have stood and moved away if she could, but she’d die before she let him watch her struggle to her feet with her usual awkwardness.
Instead, she concentrated on replacing his half-empty cup on the tray and tidying up the chipped tea things. “About a week after Griff and Rosalind were married, a man named Captain Will Morgan came to Stratford-upon-Avon. He claimed to be interested in seeing the sights in Shakespeare’s birthplace while on leave from
the regiment quartered in Evesham. But he stayed nearly three weeks, which I thought excessive. Indeed, although most people found him amiable, I distrusted him from the first.”
He snorted, “That’s hardly surprising, given your general distrust of my gender.”
He fixed his too-perceptive eyes on her, making her flinch. He’d done that at Swan Park, too, studying her like a teacher searching out his pupil’s weakness. She could easily guess what he saw—a woman whose lameness ought to make her grateful for any affection men might deign to bestow on her, who ought not to berate them for being untrustworthy. Who ought not to wish they could see beyond her deficiencies to the woman beneath.
She tilted her chin up proudly. Let him think what he wished. It didn’t matter. “All the same, Will Morgan seemed far too interested in ascertaining the extent of Juliet’s and my inheritance to suit me.”
“Even a captain must think practically when it comes to marriage.”
“Mr. Morgan is no captain.” Now came the worst of it. “After I discovered him and Juliet gone, I went immediately to his supposed regiment. They’d never heard of him. He lied to us all from the moment he arrived.”
Mr. Brennan rubbed his brow with slow, even strokes. She couldn’t help noticing his blunt fingers and how surprisingly clean the nails were.
“Very strange, that,” he muttered, half to himself. “Why would he pretend to be a military man? Did he think to impress people?”
“I don’t know. He did ask a great many questions about Papa and his estate, his friends, etcetera.”
“You’d expect that of a man intending to marry.”
“Yes, but doesn’t it seem rather calculated? Not to mention the alarming discovery I made as I came after them in Papa’s coach.”
He gaped at her. “You
came after
them? Alone?”
“Of course. Why do you think I’m in London?”
Mr. Brennan stood and began to pace again, like some magnificent golden bull. It gave her shivers just watching him, the dawn light streaking his long Samson hair with gilt and lighting his gray eyes to sparkling silver. How much power lay leashed in that massive chest and those wide, square shoulders, barely constrained by the simple linen shirt and serviceable fustian frock coat?
“What if you’d been accosted by highwaymen or footpads or any of the other unscrupulous wretches who prey on women traveling alone?” he growled. “What then? Did your father approve of this?”
“Certainly; he had no choice. He hasn’t any more desire to see Juliet wed to a conscienceless fortune hunter than I.” The fire had died down, and she shivered beneath her thin muslin pelisse.
Mr. Brennan caught sight of it, and his lips tightened into a grim line. Striding to the hearth, he scooped some coals into the hob grate and watched while they burst into flame. “You’re not even sure the lad
is
a fortune hunter. Juliet’s a fetching lass. P’raps he fell in love with her. I know you believe men don’t marry for love, but young lads do sometimes lose their hearts to pretty women.”
His reproof taxed her temper beyond her control. “Not in this case—or else he loses it with alarming frequency.”
I “What do you mean?”
“He tried courting
me
first. I rebuffed his advances, of course—”
“Of course,” he echoed dryly.
She glared at his broad back. “But not before he waxed poetic about how he was ‘drawn to me from the beginning’ and how he ‘could not resist my heavenly beauty.’ Needless to say, I knew better than to fall for such false blandishments.”
“Why assume they were false?”
“Because men have little use for cripples, sir.”
She regretted her bald statement the moment he swung around to face her. A gaze deep with understanding bore right through to her soul. Then it darkened, edging slowly down her body, rousing a strange, unfamiliar heat wherever it lingered.
“Surely not all men are so foolish,” he said huskily.
His look drove a shaft of need so deep into her that she ached with it. No man had looked at her like that since before the illness that had made her lame. Merciful heavens, she’d forgotten how some men could provoke a woman into wanting them with just a sensuous glance.
Why must he be one of them?
Because he was a libertine, of course. He handed out flatteries and flirtatious looks with the practiced ease of a vendor coaxing matrons to buy beauty aids. She, of all people, should know that.
She cleared her throat and attempted to regain her composure. “Not that I cared what Mr. Morgan thought of me one way or the other, you understand.”
“Of course not.”
The seeming gentleness in his voice made her scramble to hide her susceptibility. “He wasn’t the kind of man I would find acceptable under any circumstances.”
A beat of silence. Then Mr. Brennan said coolly, “No, I don’t s’pose he was.”
Gathering her dignity about her, she strengthened her
defenses against him. “Mr. Morgan’s actions since then have proved I was right to distrust him.”
“But your sister did not share your suspicions.”
She sighed. “No, Juliet is young and naive. She dismissed my cautions with scarcely a thought. I’m afraid that my…er…viewpoint on men led her to assume I was unjustifiably biased.”
“Can’t imagine why she’d think that,” he retorted. “You said you made ‘an alarming discovery’ while following them?”
She blinked. Lord, he’d been paying close attention. But then, he’d always been one to make a woman feel as if her every word was important. It was another of his little tricks. “On the road, I showed Mr. Morgan’s picture to several people.”
“You have a picture of him?”
“Yes. As soon as I found Juliet gone, I sketched an image as best I could from memory. With the aid of my sketch and a miniature of Juliet, I traced their steps and discovered they were headed south for London, not north to Gretna Green. If he intended to marry her, why did he bring her here?”
“A very good question,” Mr. Brennan said, a frown knitting his brow.
“My alarm increased when I reached an inn in Aylesbury and found a maidservant who’d met Mr. Morgan
before
he’d come to Warwickshire.” Her throat constricted. “On his journey from London, he’d stopped there with male companions, whom he’d left behind before heading off for Stratford. These friends of his were rather unsavory characters, however.”
When she paused, remembering the maid’s full recitation and the awful chill it had sent through her, Mr. Brennan approached the table. “Unsavory? How?”
“Well, they talked openly about their profession, and...” She lifted an earnest gaze to him. “She was almost certain that they and their friend Mr. Will Morgan are smugglers.”
Oh, it happened one evening at the playing of ball
That I first met lovely Willie, so proper and tall.
He was neat, fair, and handsome, and straight in every limb;
There’s a heart in this bosom lies breaking for him.
“Lovely Willie,”
anonymous Irish ballad
D
aniel barely stifled his laughter.
Smugglers?
In Aylesbury, the heart of England? What a daft idea. It was miles from where smugglers worked and traded. And if this Will Morgan was one of them, why travel all the way to Warwickshire to carry off a girl with a moderate dowry, when there were plenty of rich heiresses in London?
But judging from Lady Helena’s pale face, she be
lieved it to be true. Some young fool eloped with her sister, and she decided at once he was a criminal.
Morgan did sound like a fortune hunter, however, He’d probably gone to Stratford on legitimate business, when Juliet—and her new dowry—had caught his eye. Perhaps he’d termed himself a captain to sound interesting.
But fortune hunters and smugglers were different sorts of scoundrel altogether. He fought to hide his amusement. “Why did this maid think all these men were smugglers?”
“They were rather free with their favors, giving away French goods to all the servants. One of them gave the maid a lace shawl from France and said he’d dodged the excisemen to bring it in.”
This time Daniel didn’t bother to suppress his laugh. “That’s a young buck’s foolish boast, is all. He probably bought the shawl in London, then spun that tale of adventure to win a warm bed with an easy wench. Men do it all the time.”
“
You
would know more about that than I,” she said, tilting her chin up so high he could see her lovely throat.
“Careful, m’lady, one of these days that tongue of yours will freeze solid and fall right off.” That gained him a frigid glance. Perhaps he shouldn’t tease her so, but God knew she provoked him to it. Smugglers, indeed. “Did this maid have any other reason for her suspicions?”
“She said the men sold the innkeeper some French brandy.”
That was a bit more telling, but it didn’t mean the fool had been a free trader. “Was she sure Morgan was one of them? P’raps he simply wanted drinking companions.”
“Mr. Morgan did not strike me as the sort to require companionship. There was something heartless about him, despite his handsome looks and gentlemanly manner.”
“Which of course means he’s a criminal.”
“I did not say that! Although he roused my suspicions from the first, I didn’t think him a criminal until I heard of his companions.”
“Who may not have been true companions at all.”
“If you insist,” she said crisply. “In any case, after I left Aylesbury I continued to London, but I lost them in the city yesterday.”
Christ, he supposed he should be grateful she hadn’t shown up here last night while he and Sall were drinking and prigging.
“I have no idea where to look,” she went on. “So when I realized last night that I would not be able to find them, I thought of you.”