“Somewhere,” Blaise said confidently. “I suspect it is hidden in his London house. He is too vain to leave it moldering in some solicitor’s office in the country. He would want to be able to gloat over it in private.”
“And you intend to… break into his home?” It sounded foreign on her tongue, like speaking in an unfamiliar language. Iris prided herself on exact accounts, polished silver, and spotless conduct, and now she was in a hackney at night on the way to commit a crime.
Blaise watched her, and some subtle amusement eased the hard line of his mouth.
“Do not look so horrified,” he said. “You have already committed far more scandalous offenses in my company.”
Heat leaped to her cheeks, instant as a slap, as memories unfurled. She could feel his mouth at her throat, his hand tangled in her hair, and hear the things he had coaxed from her in that wicked room.
“That was...” She clutched her reticule tighter. “Different.”
“Was it?” His voice softened, roughened. “Breaking into a cousin’s study to retrieve a stolen document seems pale in comparison.”
Her breath snagged, treacherously. She hated that even now, in the middle of this madness, some part of her responded to him.
“Where is Daniel now?” she asked, forcing the conversation to what they were about to do.
“Enjoying my hospitality with a trusted cousin of mine,” Blaise said. “He is at my house, preparing himself for the dukedom. Alistair is sitting with him as we speak.”
“So, that explains the skiff.”
“Yes, Alistair agreed that Daniel was unlikely to come quietly if we simply asked for the certificate. So, we… persuaded him. A fake death and a few hours alone with him will give us time to find the proof we need that Benjamin and Diana got married before Marcus was conceived.”
“And what, pray, happens when Daniel realizes that you are alive and you have no intention of obligingly disappearing from England?” Iris found it difficult to wrap her head around all of this information.
“That depends on what we find tonight,” Blaise said. “If we secure proof of the marriage, Daniel’s leverage evaporates. Marcus becomes what he always should have been: the unquestioned heir, and Daniel returns to his petty plotting without a dukedom to dangle before him.”
“And if we do not find it?”
He was silent for a moment. The hackney rattled past a row of darkened shops.
“Then,” he said eventually, “I will have to decide how much more of my life I am prepared to sacrifice to protect my nephew.”
Iris heard the protectiveness in his voice, and she understood the cadence of someone who had made a virtue of suffering and believed they must bleed to prove their love or their worth. She exhaled through her mouth.
“So, you thought,” she said quietly, “that if you must trespass and steal and perhaps hang, you might as well drag me along?”
“If I hang, I assure you, you shan’t be there,” he said swiftly, and there was a flicker of real alarm in his face that startled her. “I would never risk you, Iris.”
“You already have,” she said, and he flinched.
He reached into his coat and withdrew a small, folded paper cap, which he offered across the narrow space.
“If you feel yourself in danger at any point, there will be a hackney waiting to take you straight to Alistair. You will be safe.”
“You prepared an escape plan for me and not for yourself?” Despite his plan, she did not wish to leave him behind.
“I am not entirely without common sense,” he replied. “Nor am I idiotic enough to cross Mrs. Henkings by letting harm come to you.”
Iris snorted despite herself.
“You might have asked anyone else,” she said. “Alistair, for instance. Or a thief. Why me?”
His gaze softened unexpectedly in her direction.
“Because I trust you,” he said simply.
The hackney began to slow, and Blaise’s attention shifted to the window.
