Page 66 of An Extraordinary Lord

“Once we arrived at the palace, there was an army of uniformed footmen in the finest livery and powdered wigs just waiting to serve us, complete with gold trim on their velvet jackets and boots shined so well that I could see my reflection in them.” With that captivating description, she pulled up one of the loose floorboards to fish out the key to her armoire. “And those were just the servants. You should have seen the guests. The place was a flood of satins, silks, and kerseymere.” She crossed to her armoire, unlocked it, and opened wide the doors. Inside, she kept all her most precious possessions safely under lock and key, including her sword and knives. “The light blazed from a thousand shimmering candles in the chandeliers overhead, and everywhere I looked, women were draped in diamonds and rubies and wore tall ostrich plumes in their hair.”

“And pearls?”

A slow smile crossed her face as her fingers touched the earbobs. “Yes, those, too.”

“Tell me about the baron you met. Is he special?”

“Very much so.”Too much so.Her smile faded. “He told me that he was once a soldier. Undoubtedly, he was a hero in the wars, although he would never admit to being such a thing. He’s far too modest for that.”

She removed the earbobs and placed them into a secret drawer with its own separate lock. She had to return them to Claudia as soon as possible, and all the while, she would have to pretend with the woman that she didn’t know they were a gift from Merritt. All the while, she would have to pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking. But she simply couldn’t keep them.

“He asked me to dance with him and bowed to me as if I were a grand lady,” she said quietly. She prayed Ivy couldn’t hear the sadness in her voice. “And the way he waltzed, to be in his arms, it felt…”

“Perfect?” the girl guessed.

No. It had felt like coming home.

Veronica took a moment to gather herself as that realization twisted grief through her that she would never be there again. Then she pulled in a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face, and turned around. “It felt like I needed more dance lessons before—”

She froze as icy fear darted through her bones.

Ivy no longer sat on the bed. Instead, she stood next to the sailcloth wall; a man behind her held a knife to her throat. Terror gripped the girl’s pallid face, and she was too frightened to scream or cry for help. In the slant of moonlight that fell through the window, Veronica could see the glistening tears of fear on her cheeks.

“Let her go,” Veronica demanded as coolly as possible.

“I will,” the man answered in a low voice, “if you come with me.” The sailcloth stirred around them in the nighttime drafts like a crowd of ghosts. “I won’t hurt the girl if you do.”

“No,” Veronica countered, turning so she could slowly reach her hand behind herself into the open armoire without him seeing. “You want to hurt me instead.”

“I only want to talk to you.”

As if she were foolish enough to believe that! Her fingers crept slowly along the edge of the shelf. “About what?”

“The riots.”

Her hand touched the hilt of a small knife. “What do you care about those?”

“You’re sticking your nose into places it don’t belong,” he warned. “I need to find out why.”

Slowly, she closed her hand around the knife. But helplessness turned to acid on her tongue that she was too far away to save Ivy. There were too many steps between Veronica and the man to cover in the split second it would take for him to slit the girl’s throat. All Veronica could do was hope for an opportunity to move close enough to strike.

“What does it matter to you?” she pressed, hoping to distract him. “Who paid you to come after me? Was it Malmesbury’s mistress?” She remembered Merritt’s belief that someone else was orchestrating the riots, someone far deadlier… “Or was it Scepter?”

The man froze for only a beat, yet long enough to convince her that her guess was correct. Fresh fear enveloped her.Good God.All this time, she’d thought Merritt and Clayton Elliott had been exaggerating about Scepter’s involvement, that the group couldn’t possibly be connected to the riots.

“Come with me,” the man offered, “and I’ll let the girl go.”

“Let the girl go,” Veronica countered, “and I might come with you.”

“Go on, then.” He jerked his head toward the flap in the wall. “You go first. I’ll follow.”

Veronica slipped the knife from the shelf as she slowly turned toward the door as if to carry out the man’s orders. Her hand nestled unseen in the folds of her gown, with the handle of the knife clasped against her palm and the blade pointing back up her wrist toward her elbow.

She stopped and shook her head as if changing her mind. “And have my back to you so I won’t know when you’ve stabbed a knife into it or reached around to slit my throat? I don’t think so.” She was at least half a dozen feet closer now. Close enough that she might just be able to strike before he could hurt Ivy. She took another step toward him. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

He grinned a devilish smile. Slowly, he moved the edge of the blade back and forth beneath Ivy’s chin. “I don’t have to do anything. I’ve—”

“Please!” Ivy cried, her voice shattered with terror. “Please let me go!”