Chapter 31
Talk, talk, talk.
Perry set to grinding coffee, the beans as hard as Fox’s stubborn refusal to allow—allow—her to drop in on Sir Richard that morning. She wrestled the crank, letting the aroma fill her senses, willing it to chase away this sluggish resentment.
Running off on her own hadn’t worked out well. That was a truth that poked at the sore spot in her back with every downward crank.
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Papa was a hard, strong man, a wily man. Old, but not decrepit. If any man could survive a physical challenge, it was the Earl of Shaldon.
“He won’t come.” Kincaid spoke around a bite of bread.
Lady Jane pounded her fist on the kitchen table. “He might, and then we’ll have drawn him out, and some of you can go in. And if he doesn’t, well, then we’ll know.”
Lady Jane wanted to send a message calling Sir Richard to a crime, a normal duty for a country justice of the peace.
“And then he’ll know,” Farnsworth said.
“Oh, hell, Farnsworth,” Kincaid said. “We know he knows. The time for subtlety is past.”
They argued on. Fox caught her eye and came up behind her, enveloping her in his arms.
All of her nerves tingled, warmth rippling from the top of her head to her toes. He’d best not be playing with her.
She leaned into him. “I should go to his manor,” she said. “Make a big splash. Stop at the inn and tell the world where I’m going. He won’t kill me then.”
“He’s tried once already.” His breath tickled her ear.
“But I was alone. And that was in secret. This will be different. Perhaps I can bring Scruggs along.”
The innkeeper had been, finally, talkative after they’d told him someone was bringing in assassins just in time for King George’s coronation. MacEwen had twisted his arm with the mention of the hanging and beheading the previous year of the treasonous Cato Street conspirators.
However, if Scruggs thought Sir Richard was the famous John Black, he wasn’t letting on.
Father might be in a cave down the coast, said Scruggs, now housed in an unused stable box, and the innkeeper could lead them to it.
Or, Father might be at Sir Richard’s manor, the man had said.
Fox’s arms tightened and two large hands cradled her hips on opposite sides. She flexed against him. And…he was aroused.
Desire shot through her, sudden, demanding.
What was he doing? Did he want her or not?
She watched her hand gripping the crank, turning, churning, chopping the beans to tiny bits.
“I don’t want you hurt.” Fox’s quiet murmur stopped her hand’s motion. Thedrub, drub, drub, of her heart, the muffled roar of waves breaking, those were the only sounds. Behind them, the room had gone quiet.
She set her hands atop his. “It’s too late for that,” she whispered.
She craned her neck and looked around him. The others studied a paper spread before them on the table, a crude map, and another man, dirty and disheveled, had joined them.
And she’d not heard a thing. Some spy she would make.
And then Davy entered, towing along a young woman dressed in worn cambric. She had Davy’s same coloring but an air more watchful.
“This is my cousin, Edie,” he said.
The girl curtseyed in the awkward, bobbling way of someone with an ailment, or perhaps someone much older, or someone not used to giving such deference. The brown eye she raised to Perry held curiosity and a touch of apprehension.
