Page 62 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“Yes, I know. I heard the duke tell him to…” Her gaze darted away and her voice dipped to a whisper. “Go to hell.”

“Good for him,” Fitz declared, earning a wide-eyed flare of surprise from Fanny. “From what she told you the other day about her father, Hartwell was in the right to do it. It’s a gentleman’s duty to protect his lady.”

Fanny sighed and moved on to the next bathing machine, and he remembered too late her ambivalence toward protective men. But just as her hand reached for the door, she paused. “Did you say…did you say that Geoffrey was drinking the duchess’s wine?”

“I’m not sure whose particular glass he’d snatched, but yes.”

“And is that…common behavior among servants, do you suppose?”

He shrugged, stepping carefully over the iron tongue of one of the contraptions, the means by which it was hauled into the water. “Must be hard to see it all go to waste.”

She nodded, thoughtful. “But if it were a habit…”

“What are you getting at?”

“The morning the duchess was taken ill,” she said, turning toward him so abruptly they nearly collided, “Geoffrey was too. And the only explanation anyone ever gave was something they’d both eaten. But Mrs. Horn was adamant that the duchess never eats before her walks. So what if…” Though her gaze was far away, she stood close enough that he could soak in her sweetly spicy scent. “What if it was something they both drank? Wasn’t there…?” She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, then opened them wide again, latching onto his. “When the duke carried her upstairs, there was a coffeepot sitting on the table on the landing. Outside her bedchamber door.”

“Are you suggesting the duchess’s servants were trying to poison her?”

Doubt flickered into her eyes and she turned away again, laying her hand not on his chest, as he’d hoped, but onto the painted wood of the bathing machine. “No. No, of course not. That would be…that would be ludicrous. Because everyone knew she took nothing before she went out…” He could practically hear the gears turning in her head. When she spoke again, excitement once more raised her voice. “So that coffee must have been left there for the duke.”

“You think the duchess’s servants were trying to poison the duke?”

“No. Look.” Her fingertips were tracing a mark carved into the door of the bathing machine. No mere incidental scratch. An X, small but definite. And recent too. The wood beneath was pale, unweathered. “What if the duke’s valet intended to poison him? What if he—he—?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Fitz cautioned, raising his own hand to follow hers over the wood. “Hartwell would have taken every precaution to make sure such an intimate associate was trustworthy. He brought him back to England, for God’s sake.”

“I hope you don’t mean to suggest that General Scott’s men are incapable of misjudging?”

In spite of the seriousness of the moment, Fitz narrowed his eyes at that direct hit. “I wouldn’t dare, Mrs. Drummond.”

She ignored him. “It makes perfect sense. You know it does. Leclerc left the coffee, intending for the duke to drink it. Instead, the duchess did—and passed her not quite empty cup to the footman as she left the house. And…and Leclerc was also the one who arranged for the boat that sank. Now he’s…” Her hand slapped the wood in frustration. “He’s what? What was he doing down here?”

“This could have been a rendezvous point. Or a place where a message had been left.” He opened the little door and climbed the slatted wooden steps.

He’d never been inside a bathing machine before. All was dark. The piney scent of cedar mingled with brine and a vaguely musty dampness. Even with his head bent, he was conscious of the low ceiling. When he took a step forward, his shin collided with a bench built along the back. Ladies willingly undressed inside these rickety little boxes and let themselves be dragged out to sea? With outstretched hands, he felt all around the walls for a crack, a niche, a loose board: anywhere a note might be hidden.

When his questing fingertips encountered Fanny—specifically, Fanny’s bosom—he froze. “I—I didn’t realize you’d come inside.”

“Aren’t you going to move your hand, Lieutenant Hopkins?” Some of the primness in her voice had been replaced by a trembling note.

He grazed the pad of his thumb over her nipple, feeling a surge of triumph as it peaked beneath his touch. “Like this, Fanny?”

“Fitz.” Hardly more than a breath of sound. Certainly not a scold. And then, “We can’t.”

“We already did,” he reminded her. “And I had been very much looking forward to doing it again.”

“I can’t,” she insisted, even as she stepped closer, her breast filling his hand. “I can’t.” In the darkness, her lips sought and found his. She tasted of peppermint drops. “I can’t.”

He dragged his mouth across hers and wrapped his other arm around her, the search for a hidden message momentarily forgotten. “Why not?”

“Because.” Her hands came to rest on his chest, her fingertips curling into his coat at first, then flattening to push him ever so slightly away. “Because it would ruin everything.”

It took all his strength to release her, and the cramped quarters made it impossible for them to get far enough apart not to touch. “How so?”

She pushed open the door, which let in a gust of fresh sea air and the faintest trace of moonlight, enough that he could pick out her delicate profile. “What you did to me yesterday was…extraordinary. I never knew—” Her head sank. “In some ways, I wish I still didn’t. That’s the sort of knowledge that could ruin a woman.”

“But what a way to go, eh?” he tried to tease.