Page 61 of Better Off Wed

The shop’s only customer stood admiring a display of enameled snuffboxes, her head tipped forward so that all he could see was the top of her bonnet. The top of a familiar bonnet. One on which he’d spent his last ready coin.

He parted his lips to speak, then hesitated. He couldn’t call her Laura. Best not to go on indulging that familiarity. But he doubted she would thank him to be associated with the names of Sterling or Hopkins either. Not publicly. Not here. He settled for clearing his throat.

When she lifted her face, she gave a most convincing performance of being dragged unwillingly from considering an important purchase. Annoyance. Hesitation. Surprise.

Then her expression cleared, and she favored him with the slightest smile. “Ah. Good morning. Thank you, ma’am,” she called over her shoulder to Mrs. Drummond, who, in the absence of other customers, was making notations in a ledger. In a lower voice, Laura said to him, “May we talk?”

“Yes, of course.” He lifted the hinged section of the countertop that formed a pass-through between the clerk’s side and the customers’ and stepped to her. “How did you—?”

“Not now.” Her whisper was sharp. Peering beneath the brim of her bonnet, he glimpsed a flicker of worry in her gray eyes. “Thornton knows.”

Lord Thornton might have learned many things, all of them dangerous. Before Jeremy could ask for more particulars, however, the bell above the door jangled, signaling the arrival of a customer. Two gentlemen, reeking of smoke and brandy, walked—or, more accurately, staggered—into the shop, evidently turned loose from one of the gambling dens down the street. “Where’s Billy?” one of them demanded.

“Mr. Millrose is below stairs,” Mrs. Drummond informed them.

“Well, better fetch him. I promised my friend here two ounces of that prime cut he sold to me last week. But damn me if I can remember what it was called.”

“Of course, sir,” was her mild reply. “I won’t be a moment.”

In her absence, the two men leaned their backs against the counter and began speculating as to whether someone named Kilburn was likely to make it home with his purse or without the pox. Laura fidgeted impatiently with her reticule—not the one she had carried into Kent and apparently no longer containing Penhurst’s stolen watch. Her fingers now traced a different shape, long and thin. A hat pin, unless Jeremy missed his guess. The two gentlemen had much to be grateful for, more than they knew, when the door behind the counter opened again to reveal Mr. Millrose.

Colonel William Millrose, that was, trusted aide to General Scott, commander of the Underground, and as far as the rest of the street was concerned, purveyor of fine tobacco and snuff. When General Scott had created this secret den to guard his intelligence officers and their work from suspicion, he had insisted that it continue to function as a shop to further the ruse, with the result that Colonel Millrose and some of the Underground’s other denizens, most recently Mrs. Drummond, had been forced to become quite knowledgeable about tobacco products.

A friendly smile split the man’s dark brown face as he approached the two men. “You caught me at my breakfast, sirs,” he said with a hearty laugh. Jeremy very much doubted it was the truth. “How can I assist you?”

While they conducted their business, Laura returned to her perusal of the snuffboxes. Jeremy could see nothing of her profile beyond the brim of her bonnet and found himself wishing he had opted for the little frippery of a hat the milliner had shown him instead.

After several minutes of back and forth, in which Millrose was required to gather several different jars from the tall shelves that lined the shop’s walls and the two gentlemen sniffed, debated, and almost fell into an argument, the transaction was at last completed and the harsh jangle of the bell above the door signaled their departure.

Hardly had the door latched when Jeremy said, “Knows what?”

“Not here,” Colonel Millrose declared before she could speak. With an eye to the wide windows facing the street, he lifted the section of counter and jerked his chin toward the door to the Underground. “Miss Hopkins,” he said with a nod as she passed him.

Jeremy hardly knew which of them was more startled by the colonel’s use of her name: Laura or himself.

At the bottom of the staircase, Laura hesitated and, not knowing what else to do, Jeremy gestured to the workroom. In another moment, Colonel Millrose had accompanied them inside.

“The number of women who have lately found their way here alarms me,” he said, leaning against the door after he closed it and crossing his arms over his chest.

Jeremy knew he referred not only to Mrs. Drummond, who had been placed in the Underground for her protection, but also the incident over the summer involving Major Stanhope and Lady Kingston. Stanhope, a favorite of General Scott, could expect to be forgiven for the breech of protocol. Jeremy doubted he would be so fortunate.

Yet Colonel Millrose had been the one to usher her inside the belly of the beast. “How is it you know Miss Hopkins?” Jeremy asked. Laura, who had been openly staring around the room, turned her gaze on Millrose, as if equally curious about the answer.

“You’re Fitzwilliam Hopkins’s only sibling. The elder by eleven months. You live with your aunt in Clapham and take an active interest in various philanthropic endeavors. I make it my business to know my men’s…points of vulnerability, shall we say?” And before you ask, Addison,” he said, turning toward Jeremy with a stern look, “I know about yours, too.”

All of them? Jeremy wondered, but did not dare to ask.

He shifted his attention back to Laura. “What I don’t know is why you’re here.”

“Hopkins didn’t discover the codebook,” Jeremy explained. “She did. She took it for a mere cookbook, of course, and her brother never told her otherwise. I realized the connection in Kent, when she…that is to say, when we…”

“You were also in Kent?” Colonel Millrose turned sharply toward Laura, as his eyebrows began an ominous creep up his forehead. She nodded. “May I ask why?”

“She—” Jeremy began, then bit off whatever story he’d been about to tell. He dropped his gaze to the floor.

“Because the governess to Lord Thornton’s children wrote and asked for my assistance. You see, sir, I am also known as Lady Sterling, and—

“The Lady Sterling?” Jeremy looked up in time to see Millrose goggle. “The one they write about in the papers?”