“I really don’t, Dalton.”
“I think you like him, too.”
They rode to the docks in tense silence. Giles sulking, Dalton grinning, and Diana pretending to check her notebook because every time she glanced at rumpled Giles and his swirling, brooding dark eyes as he glared at her, it played havoc with her pulse. So, too, did Dalton’s ridiculous suggestion that Giles was being jealous and possessive. He had been much easier to resist when he was a duke in her mind. Dukes and forger’s daughters from Clerkenwell were a million miles apart. A forger’s daughter and a harlot’s son felt like natural bedfellows.
Not that she wanted him in her bed.
Of course she didn’t.
She had never been tempted by all that nonsense. Her mind had only wandered there because Giles, the wretch, had brought up Lady Sewell and the shrubbery again.
Tonight at least.
All the other times it had wandered toward him and the carnal in the last two months she wouldn’t think about. In case shedid, and because a bump in the road made his knee brush hers, Diana shuffled as far as she could across the seat away from him and his wit-scrambling lips. Needing those pitiful inches of space suddenly, more than she needed air.
When they pulled up, and before she could escape the intimate confines of the carriage, he grabbed her hand. As always, it sent ripples of awareness ricocheting throughout her body.
“What is the plan?”
“We just need to confirm that this”—Diana pulled out the little vial of Smith’s Herbal Restorative—“is being made here. Then I can send that information to the authorities tomorrow evening and hopefully, if I can convince them to seize the warehouse and arrest its owner, get the perfect final paragraph of the Sentinel’s story to newspaper before it goes to print. Charlie is banking on me.”
“And who is Charlie?” Something that looked suspiciously like jealously now burned in his eyes as his fingers tightened around hers.
“The proprietor ofThe Tribuneand my employer. Nothing more.” Diana wasn’t entirely sure why she clarified that last bit when he had referred to her as an arctic chill, so she gave herself a stern talking-to as she tugged her hand away.
She didn’t want a man. Didn’t want the restrictions of one or the trials and tribulations that one would inevitably cause. Didn’t want to have to compromise on anything, now that her life was exactly as she had always wanted it. Ever.
She especially didn’t want Giles.
She didn’t!
“Any evidence you spot that suggests that the Edward Davis Ottoman Imports company does more than ship in trinkets, youmake sure to pass on to me.” She leaned to open the door and he beat her to it, insisted on helping her down, which set her nerves bouncing some more. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to find what I need without having to break in.” She could have kicked herself for that comment because Giles almost exploded. Before he did, she offered him a weak smile. “That was a joke, Giles.”
“It had better be.”
In a scene much too reminiscent of the ill-fated one that had happened in Lady Bulphan’s garden, Diana crouched in the shadows as the three of them approached the windowless warehouse. Giles much too close to her person for comfort and Dalton limping behind with his good hand clamped around the handle of the pistol he always tucked in his belt.
The building was a great spot for wrongdoing. The banks of the River Thames lapped along the back wall, providing easy access both to and from it by small boats that would not be easy for the excise patrols to detect at night. All around it were more warehouses in various states of dilapidation, except in deference to the hour, they all sat silent and would until dawn when the workers returned. But as this run-down wharf was one of the original Elizabethan moorings and the bulk of the trade had long since moved to the newer, modern docks along the river, it had the air of the forgotten about it. Another perfect place to do dark deeds.
A slice of light bled into the night from beneath the big double doors. They moved as close as they could, huddling behind a tower of empty packing crates several yards away. Without waiting for any instruction, Dalton dashed forward and pressed his ear against the wall. As they waited for his assessment, Diana tried and failed to put enough distance between her and her new protector to makeher feel less aware of him. He might be dressed like a nobody, but he was still all Giles, drat him, from his unique spicy scent to the peculiar effect he always had on her.
“There’s at least ten of them in there, maybe more.” Dalton darted back behind the crates to join them. “But they are busy. Lots of clattering and banging.”
“Could they be making something?” If the drug wasn’t made here, she would have to find out where it was made before she could close this investigation. To stop Coleridge exploiting people for his own greed, the case against him had to be watertight.
“Hard to tell.” Diana followed Dalton’s gaze to the busy dark shadows that punctuated the line of light beneath the door.
“It looks to me like they are cooking something.” When they turned to him, Giles wasn’t looking at the front door at all—but the steep sloping roof closest to the river’s edge. More specifically at a vent of steam spouting into the air from beneath the eaves. “Unless that is a chimney, in which case that’s the oddest position of a chimney I have ever seen.” He said it as a flippant aside, not realizing it was significant, and seemed surprised when they left him behind to scurry toward it.
The tiny blackened window was barely a foot square and at least seven feet from the ground but it was cracked open. “Fetch some crates for me to climb up.” Diana needed to see inside.
“From where?” Giles searched the immediate vicinity then frowned at the tower they had originally hidden behind. “Fetching them from there is bit risky, don’t you think? If somebody hears, we’re done for, and if they wander out and see them moved, then we’re also done for.”
“Do you only ever see the problems and not the solutions,Giles!” As she hissed at the Vexing Voice of Doom who hadn’t been invited, Dalton interrupted.
“If you want my opinion—”
“We really don’t, Dalton.” Giles scowled but his servant ignored it.
