Page 20 of An Inconvenient Duke

Neither was she dressed in clothes befitting a lady. No, she wore the plain, coarse clothes of a laboring woman, one who might have spent her days working in a market stall just down the street. A dress of gray worsted wool covered her from ankle to wrist to neck, along with sturdy shoes and a cap that hid her hair. She’d tried her best to appear ordinary, yet her natural grace couldn’t be hidden. Neither could her fine features or the delicate softness of her hands.

No one would ever mistake her for a laborer. So the question was…why did she want them to?

Since their waltz, he’d been left with more questions than answers, so he’d set about watching her. When she’d left her town house tonight under the cover of darkness and wound her way through the streets of London, he’d followed. But he hadn’t expected her to lead him to the Golden Bell.

The bells of St Bride’s Church struck midnight and echoed faintly through the black night over the Strand, just barely heard above the noise of drunken revelry. A man entered the tavern as if on cue and hesitated just inside the doorway. Then, spotting Danielle, he made his way through the crowd to sit at her table.

Marcus lifted the tankard of ale to his mouth, watching them over the rim as the two engaged in private conversation. They leaned close together to be heard above the noise.

So…another midnight meeting with a man. Just like the one planned in Elise’s letter. And based on what he’d seen tonight, this wasn’t Danielle’s first.

He had to give her credit for her artfulness. When she’d left the house, she’d worn a velvet cape edged in ermine over a blue muslin gown. She’d also been in the company of her maid, who was acting as chaperone in her aunt’s absence. All perfectly proper for a society outing.

Except that she didn’t go to one.

Instead, she’d set out a goose chase. He’d followed her on horseback, easily keeping out of sight in the shadows as the baron’s town coach rolled its way toward Westminster. When it reached the Queen’s House and stopped on an empty side street, Danielle emerged, the cape and dress gone. In their place was the worsted wool costume she now wore. He’d watched as she hired a hackney and was off again, this time winding through the streets toward Covent Garden. Another change of carriages there, and a second hired hackney brought her to this tavern. Watching from the shadows down the street, he hadn’t heard what she said to the driver when she paid him, but the carriage stayed right there on the cobblestones, waiting for her to return. Marcus stabled his horse and followed her inside.

His gaze narrowed. What was she doing, laying down a chase like that through the dark city to meet a man? Not the kind of man a baron’s daughter should be spending time with, either. Coarse and rough, he was dressed like any other riverfront worker, in dirty tan clothes and a tweed cap. He could have been any age from twenty to forty, weathered by too many cold London winters and the harsh life that came from clawing out a living in a city that could be brutal. Even more so now that the wars were over and too many men were seeking the same too few jobs, now that food prices had shot up to the heavens.

What thehellwas she up to?

He had no idea, but as he watched Danielle surreptitiously hand a bag of coins beneath the table to the man, he became determined to find out.

“’Nother ale?” A barmaid pointed at his tankard.

“Please.” Marcus slid a coin across the table toward her, then asked, “Can you help me with something else?”

Misreading his question as an opening for a solicitation, she propped a round hip against the table and leaned toward him, her large bosom nearly falling out of her tightly laced bodice as she reached to trail her hand down his arm. “What you have i’ mind?”

“Information.” He watched her eye the first coin, then set down a second and pushed it toward her. “There’s a woman in a gray dress at a table in front of the windows.” He withdrew a third coin and set it on the table in front of him with the others, but he kept this one pinned to the table beneath his finger. “The man who’s with her. Do you know him?”

She stiffened coldly when she realized that he didn’t want to take her upstairs. Yet she very much wanted the coins and glanced over her shoulder. Her face hardened when she saw Danielle, as if she was her competition tonight. With an unimpressed sniff, she looked past her to the man sitting across from her.

“He comes in ’ere e’ry now an’ again fer supper an’ ale.” She reached down to scoop up the first two coins. She gave him a bright smile as she slipped the coins down inside her bodice, still wrongly thinking that she could persuade him to tup her. “His name’s Jenkins. Works down a’ the river.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Nothin’.”

“Are you sure?” He pushed the coin toward her but didn’t remove his finger. “Has he ever spent time with you or the other barmaids?”

She laughed. “Not ’im! Stingy bloke that one. An’ ne’er seen him crack a smile.” She jerked a thumb toward Danielle. “That one’s wastin’ her time if’n she thinks she’ll get any blunt out o’ him.” Then she shook her head and leaned lower to give him a better view of her breasts. “That one don’t know what she’s doin’, dressed like an old church matron. But I do.” She smiled seductively, revealing a wide gap between her front teeth. “I’ll make it good fer you. Give you a satisfyin’ ride.”

Marcus hadn’t been intimate with a woman since he’d returned from the continent. He had to be careful, given his new position and fortune, and becoming involved with the wrong woman was a mistake he didn’t want to make. But he wasn’t so desperate for female intimacies that he had to stoop to paying for them.

“Just the ale.” He removed his finger from the coin and sat back. “Thank you for the information.”

She reached for the coin with an irritated scowl.

Without warning, he brought his hand down over hers and pinned it to the table. Her mouth fell open in surprise.

“One more thing.” His voice was low and controlled, despite the hard clench of his gut. “Do you remember another woman meeting with that man here at midnight? About two years ago. A young woman about three and twenty, with light brown hair, piercing sky-blue eyes, pale skin.”

She’d remember seeing his sister, even after two years. No one who saw Elise could forget her. She’d made an impression on every room she’d entered.

“Not ’im!” She cackled out a laugh. “Ne’er seen ’im wi’ any other woman but that one. He just comes in fer a bit of stew an’ ale, sits by ’imself, eats by ’imself, then leaves.”

Frustration growled inside him. “Are you absolutely certain that you’ve never seen him with another woman?”