Page 61 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

Fitz sorted through what the fragments of their conversation had revealed. So, the unexpected visitors had been the duchess’s family, most of whom were spending the night in Royal Crescent—also unexpectedly, if the servants’ hustle and bustle was anything to go by. And as he’d overheard on the day of the visit to the circulating library, the duchess didn’t get on well with her father, which might explain Hartwell’s dismissal of the man.

Unfortunately, tossing him out the front door meant thrusting him into Fanny’s path.

Fitz turned and hurried from the alleyway on silent feet. But when he reached the front of the house, he saw no sign of her. The black-tiled edifice glittered, an echo of the starry sky above. Moonlight cast eerie shadows, any one of which might disguise a man—or a woman. At the center of the crescent stood a poorly executed statue of the Prince of Wales—one armed, thanks to the corrosive salt air, and looking ghastlier than ever. Fitz’s steps slowed as he crept from one spot to another, all the while trying to persuade himself that she would not have been so foolish as to have followed the man.

Except, of course, that she’d been precisely that foolish—no, determined—all day long. Determined to handle matters on her own.

“Damn,” he muttered beneath his breath.

From a nearby hedge he heard a quiet, but clearly disapproving, gasp. “Lieutenant Hopkins?”

Crouching, he slipped between two bushes and saw her. The moonlight silvered her hair—she’d shed her bonnet, apparently, or lost it to some wayward branch—and lent her eyes and cheeks a ghostly pallor. He had the sudden, strange sense that if he reached out a hand to grasp her, it might pass right through.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded in a fierce whisper.

“I might ask you the same thing.”

“I’m here to protect the duchess.”

“And just how do you propose to do that from behind this shrubbery?”

She lifted a finger to point at herself. “I—”

For one glorious moment, he thought she was at a loss for words. Then her eyes widened, and she turned her finger to point at him. No, behind him. He tried to twist around in silence, but leaves rustled beneath the balls of his feet.

The duke’s manservant, who had been descending the front steps of the house, paused to look about him. He was a slender, graceful fellow, the sort who moved on cat’s feet under the most ordinary of circumstances. Difficult to determine whether he was trying to be sneaky at present. After all, if the duchess had dismissed her maid for the night, certainly the duke might also have dismissed his valet.

Apparently deciding that the noise from the shrubbery was nothing to alarm him, he moved along the path the duchess ordinarily took on her morning strolls. Fitz caught the scent of peppermint before he realized Fanny had shuffled closer to him.

“What do you suppose he’s doing?” she whispered, gripping his arm as if to steady herself.

Fitz shrugged. Perhaps the fellow only wanted a bit of fresh air.

Once the man had traveled some yards down the Marine Parade, Fitz stood. Fanny, still holding his arm, rose up with him. The little noise of protest in her throat suggested that her muscles had grown stiff from crouching in the cold. “Time for you to head back to German Place, I think,” he said, curving a hand beneath her elbow with the intention of directing her steps westward.

Her hair sparked like diamonds as she shook her head. “I want to know where he’s headed,” she insisted, walking toward the iron paling that edged the cliff.

From this vantage point, they could watch as Monsieur Leclerc descended to the beach. As he approached the row of bathing machines, he began to move more quickly, weaving among their jagged shadows so that his path became difficult to track. Perhaps ten minutes later, he reappeared and began to walk back toward the Marine Parade, his stride once more leisurely. Fitz took Fanny’s arm and led her into the shadows. Not long after that, Leclerc passed in front of them and returned to the house. Within a quarter of an hour, the entire interlude was over.

“Surely, now you can return home,” Fitz declared.

Once more, Fanny shook her head. “I want to know what he was doing down there, among the bathing machines.”

Probably taking a piss, Fitz thought. “Why?”

“Don’t you find his behavior the slightest bit suspicious?”

He’d been trained to regard everyone with suspicion. Still, he shook his head. If it took a lie to get Fanny home safe, so be it.

“Well, I do,” she said. Slipping free of his hand, she set off in the direction of the bathing machines.

After a mostly silent string of epithets, Fitz followed.

The hour was not late enough to ensure they would not encounter anyone. The grand houses edging the Steyne were still brightly lit. A fine time for respectable Mrs. Drummond to be wandering about without a bonnet to disguise her distinctive hair. For a moment, he could almost regret that she’d abandoned those hideous wigs Colonel Millrose had once insisted she wear.

Thankfully, they descended to the beach without being seen. The row of bathing machines looked perfectly unremarkable, drawn up into the shelter of the cliff face. High tide left only a narrow strip of pebbled strand between them and the water. Fanny picked her way across it with surprising dexterity.

“If you wish to give the duchess a full report on her servants’ after-hours activities,” Fitz said, catching up to her when she paused to examine the fourth bathing machine from the end, “you should also mention that her footman and her upper housemaid are carrying on beneath her nose.” Fanny sent him a skeptical, sidelong glance. “I watched Geoffrey try to win Nan over with a glass of wine lifted from the duke’s dinner table. It seems the family abandoned their meal in the furor over the duchess’s father,” he explained.