Clandestine

I owe thanks to Bruce Ide and Jay Pfahl for suggesting some orchids that might have been growing in English hothouses in 1829, a time when these glorious flowers were being imported into England from every part of the world.

I'm very grateful indeed for their generous help, though any errors in my choices or descriptions are entirely my own.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

London, June 1829

S
HE HAD BEEN SECRETLY WATCHING HIM FOR DAYS.

He moved with quicksilver vitality, as if he alone were vibrantly, brilliantly alive. Love of life radiated from the tilt of his hat, from his long strides, from the creases that marked his cheeks when he laughed.

He seemed to laugh often.

Guy Devoran no doubt had a great deal to laugh about. His uncle was a duke. He could never have known poverty, or fear, or self-doubt.

He was standing now on the stoop of his townhouse, gazing up at the sky as if he read mysteries in the clouds.

Sarah's heart began to hurt, beating agitation against her ribs. Perhaps this quest really was thunderingly foolish, after all: both the hope for help and the hunger for revenge.

Her quarry tipped his hat to the hidden sun, then strolled away down the wet pavement, exchanging pleasantries with passersby. It seemed impossible ever to catch him alone. Others eddied in his wake as if he were royal.

She dodged after him through the throng of carriages and horsemen and into St. James's. He stopped to talk to another gentleman, who had been gazing idly through a wine merchant's window. Tall and lean, both men betrayed the unstudied elegance of power and unquestioned wealth. The other man laughed at something Guy Devoran said.

Letting her bonnet hide her face, Sarah pretended to be examining a nearby shop window. After a few minutes' conversation, Mr. Devoran bowed good-bye to his friend, then strode off as if he owned London.

She followed, keeping several discreet paces behind, until a group of young men burst from a doorway. Arguing loudly about politics, they blocked the pavement. By the time they dispersed, still shouting to one another, Mr. Devoran had disappeared.

Biting back her frustration, Sarah walked rapidly in what she hoped was the right direction, choosing her path at random until she was lost in a maze of unknown streets.

A bookseller's occupied a corner with doors on both sides. She glanced in through the window as she scurried past.

Her throat froze. Her heart hammered as if she were about to be sick.

The glass panes distorted his image, but Mr. Guy Devoran was moving past the stacks inside, examining titles. He tugged off his gloves and thrust them into a pocket, then stepped out of sight around the end of some shelves. No other customers were visible.

Now or never!

A bell rang as Sarah pushed open the door.

The bookshop smelt musty. The young man behind the counter glanced up, then continued writing in his ledger. She nodded to him before she hurried between the stacks. Her breath raced, as if months of ongoing terror had squeezed a cruel hand around her lungs.

The front room splintered through multiple doorways into a maze of inner rooms. Every wall was filled, floor to ceiling, with leather spines, dust, and cobwebs. Passageways linked or led to dead ends. As if the host of words had simply absorbed him, Mr. Devoran had vanished.

Sarah circled the shop again before she retreated into the deepest room, where she sat down on a wooden trunk and tried to calm her pulse. Perhaps there was no need for such elaborate caution, after all. Perhaps she had simply misjudged everything, right from the beginning. Even if she had not, what real hope could she possibly have that this particular man would help her?

A tiny movement disturbed the dust motes. Her head jerked up.

Arms crossed, brass-headed cane tucked against his body, Mr. Devoran leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and examined her.

Fine olive skin burnished high cheekbones and shadowed the angle of his jaw. Beneath the brim of his hat, exquisitely carved bone defined the harsh arch of eyebrows above dark, liquid eyes.

His gaze was considered, almost daunting.

Sarah stared back, her thoughts hijacked.

A man who might have been crafted in the Underworld to play Theseus stalking through the Labyrinth.

Eyes filled with perilous intelligence met her hot stare, but he smiled and became simply Oberon, lord of gaiety and madness.

Exactly as Rachel had described him. His smile invited only laughter and caresses.

An uncomfortable flush of awareness ran over her body.

“Pray forgive my boldness, ma'am.” He stepped farther into the room, doffed his hat, and bowed. “Mr. Guy Devoran, at your service. I fear my sins must demand instant retribution. If I misread your intentions, I beg you'll accept my apologies, but I believe you've been following me?”

“Why should you think—? Yes, sir, I have. How did you know?”

Humor sheened his expression, but he turned away to study the bookshelves. It was much easier to examine the perfect cut of his coat than face that quick gaze. Perhaps he even knew that.

“A lady wandering alone in St. James's is hard to miss, ma'am, especially when she hovers for several days like one of the Furies near my front door.”

She felt absurdly close to panic. “The Furies?”

“Greek deities of vengeance and destruction.”

A new fear sent clenching fingers through her gut. “I know who the Furies were, sir, of course.”

He had folded his hands around his cane, holding it behind his back. His fingers were lovely, sensitive and strong.

“Ah, very well, then!” The broad shoulders shrugged with consummate elegance. “Yet you're a damsel in distress, I take it. How may I assist you?”

A drumbeat rolled in her chest, robbing her of breath. She pushed two fingers over her tight forehead, trying to force herself to relax. “I hope—Yes, I need your help very urgently, Mr. Devoran.”

He took down a book to flip casually through the pages. “Mine in particular?”

“Yes.”

“Have we met before, ma'am?”

“No, never! But you're very well known in London, sir.”

He set the book back and pulled out another. “And I have the unmistakable aura of a knight errant? I trust I may oblige. Yet you didn't think it seemly to knock at my house, or send me a note?”

“I couldn't be certain that no one else would open your correspondence—a secretary or footman, perhaps. And it's vital that I'm not seen to visit you.”

“Indeed? I shake at the implications.” He did not sound in the least shaken, only mildly curious. He glanced back over his shoulder. “You have my full attention, Miss—?”

Her discomfort had deepened almost to pain. She felt a little faint. “Mrs. Callaway, Mr. Devoran. My maiden name was Sarah Hargreaves. You once met my cousin. She was calling herself Rachel Wren—”

He spun about and caught her by the arm, whether to support her or himself was unclear. Intensity quivered from his strong grip.

“Rachel Wren?”

“It was over a year ago. Rachel said that you asked her—or your cousin, Lord Jonathan St. George, did—to spend a day with you on a yacht. She was free for a few days while her employers were away. Though of course she had reservations about such an indecorous adventure, she was assured of anonymity, and she'd anyway given you a false name. Lord Jonathan wished to escort another lady from town, yet remain unnoticed by his enemies—”

“I remember.”

The strong pulse of life emanated from his fingertips. Echoing ripples seemed to spiral down through her body: a kind of hot madness in the blood.

Sarah glanced down as if to shut out black smoke.

“So she wasn't Rachel Wren,” he said. “What's her real name?”

“Miss Rachel Mansard.” She forced herself to ignore the wild rush of sensation and meet the dark flash of his eyes. “She and I were raised together and have always been close. Though she never saw you again, Rachel never forgot your kindness, Mr. Devoran.”

He smiled entirely without mirth. “Was I kind?”

“She thought so.”

“Ah!” He released her arm and stalked away. Guy Devoran moved with the grace of a dancer, but there was something lethal in it. “And was today's encounter Miss Mansard's idea?”

“No, indeed not! It was entirely my own.” The frantic hammering in her heart threatened to deafen her, but Sarah plunged on, horrified by her clumsy rush of words. “No unmarried lady would impose like this on a single gentleman after one day's acquaintance. Yet though I realize that such a casual episode must have meant very little to you—”

“Quite so! So what brings you to me now, Mrs. Callaway?”

She glanced back toward the main bookstore. “This isn't anywhere near private enough, sir. Someone could come in at any moment.”

He strode to the single doorway to glance through, then walked back to guide her by the elbow into the deepest recesses of the room. He was tall and broad-shouldered enough to block out most of the light.

“No one else is here. Yet if your predicament is so confidential, why trust in a stranger?”

“I don't know anyone else to ask.”

He stood quietly for several seconds, gazing at her like a man eddying into a void, while her heart beat loudly in her chest.

“But what if I'm some kind of villain?” he asked at last.

“Your uncle is the Duke of Blackdown. Your elder cousin is Lord Ryderbourne. If that doesn't place you beyond reproach, Rachel is certain that you're a gentleman of honor. Is she wrong?”

“That a man's noble relations guarantee his good behavior?” He smiled with real amusement—and the shadows fled as if Oberon might yet command the sun to make the world laugh. “London disproves that idea every day.”

“No doubt,” she said. “I'm not very familiar with the habits of town gentlemen.”

“Yet you come to me, when I'm very much the town gentleman. Do you expect me to drop everything in order to help you?”

Suddenly exhausted, as if the musty ranks of books had robbed her of energy, Sarah plunked herself down on the trunk.

“Why not? I doubt that you have anything much better to do.”

“Of course, I'm a member of the idle classes.” Wry irony settled at the corners of his mouth. “My time is obviously my own to indulge as I wish.”

“Yes, I imagine so.”

“And are you always this blunt with strangers, Mrs. Callaway?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not. But Rachel helped you once at some risk to herself. Any true gentleman would honor such a debt.”

“There is no debt.” He tugged out another book and flipped casually through its pages. “Your cousin was very well paid for her services at the time.”

“She was paid?” It seemed unreal. Perhaps he meant that Rachel had been given a gift of some kind. “Then I must appeal to your gallantry, sir. I assure you that I wouldn't approach you like this, were I not quite desperate.”

“There's no family member or close friend who can help you?”

“I've no living family other than Rachel, and I can't trust any of our acquaintances in this.”

“Then there's no Mr. Callaway?”

“Captain Callaway. I'm a widow.”

His fingers rested quietly on the leather binding for a moment, before he set the book back on its shelf.

“My husband died two years ago,” she added. “He was considerably older than I. He'd been wounded at Waterloo and carried the shards of metal in his spine for twelve years. He lived for only a few months after our wedding.”

“I'm so sorry,” Guy Devoran said.

The concern in his voice was almost her undoing. Sarah gripped hard at her reticule. “I haven't told you this to gain your sympathy, sir. Merely to explain my situation.”

“Condolences can only ever be offered,” he said gently. “There's no obligation to accept them. You're not usually a resident of London, I take it?”

Sarah smoothed one hand over her green skirts. To think for even a moment about her past only made this conversation the more bizarrely fantastic. It was absurd, a madness, to imagine that Mr. Guy Devoran would help her.

“No, I teach botany and dancing and geography at a Young Ladies' Academy in Bath.”

“But you came up to town specifically to seek me out, because your cousin mentioned meeting me some thirteen months ago?”

“You spent a whole day together,” she said, “in most unusual circumstances.”

“A day on a yacht, during which we barely exchanged two words. And now you tell me that she was using a false name.”

“Only to protect her reputation should you or your cousin prove less than honorable, and spread wild tales about your adventure together.”

“Yet now her faith in my good nature—from that one encounter—is so absolute that you're certain I will aid you in whatever so disturbs you?”

Swallowing her trepidation, Sarah nodded.