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Their host, Ravenhurst, stood to one side in conversation with Lord Chartwell of the Foreign Office. Ravenhurst gave only a distracted greeting as guests entered, returning at once to his conversation with Chartwell. As Emily and Lynley passed the two men, Lynley caught the words of an impassioned assurance from Ravenhurst to Chartwell. “We’ll get him tonight. I promise you.”
Chartwell made only a brief, close-lipped reply. “If he takes the bait, Ravenhurst.”
“He will.”
“He’d better.”
Chartwell moved off, and Lynley glanced round to see whether anyone else noted the exchange.
Lynley’s mouth tightened. It was not a house where vital documents would be safe.
* * * *
An hour spent among the Ravenhursts’ guests did not alter Lynley’s opinion. As the guests descended for supper, many passed through the open doors of the library before realizing their mistake. Some guests turned back, blocking the smooth flow to the dining room.
Lord Ravenhurst took charge, assuring his confused guests that they could pass through the library into the dining room. Lynley steered Emily Radstock that way.
Before the window stood a mahogany desk with a red leather government documents box in plain sight and a number of papers lying on the desk’s surface around it. Lynley’s path through the library did not permit him to observe the papers closely, but he suspected that at least one of them had to be the bait Ravenhurst had mentioned to Chartwell, a paper that would be marked as a Foreign Office “confidential print.”
In spite of the confusion on entering the dining room, the guests were seated in minutes. From the head of the table Ravenhurst looked directly toward his library. Then Lady Ravenhurst signaled her butler to close the doors, and the footmen began to serve. Lynley set himself to observe his fellow guests and wait for one of them to make a move toward the door, though he thought it unlikely that a clever spy would fall for Ravenhurst’s bait.
Two hours later Lynley discovered how wrong he was. Servants moved in and out of the dining room as the gentlemen lingered over a good port and a weak sherry. Ravenhurst made a point of bringing the conversation around to the importance of the papers he handled for the Foreign Office. Lynley left the dining room with a pair of gentlemen intent on smoking outside. Another brief ruse and he was on his own. For the moment no one occupied the library, and by standing to one side of the dining room door, Lynley could look at Ravenhurst’s desk unobserved from either the hall or the dining room. The papers had been moved. The thief had been quick and had settled for one paper at best.
When he heard Ravenhurst coming, Lynley backed into the entry and slipped into the darkened cloakroom. It occurred to him as he stood among the coats and cloaks that a clever thief might slip a stolen paper into a pocket or a sleeve for later retrieval.
* * * *
Emily was waltzing with Ajax Lynley when the full force of her folly hit her. She had dressed to test his resolve as a suitor. Her gown was the oldest one she could find in her mother’s closet, a black crape with a high, tight bodice ten years out of fashion and long, loose sleeves that bore a strong resemblance to elephant trunks.
She had counted on shocking him, but if he had recognized her attire as a crime against fashion, he gave no sign of it. Now, she could only look at him as they whirled around the room, for if she allowed her gaze to wander she would encounter the glances of the curious and the judgmental.
After her disastrous third Season when she had tried in earnest to find a husband, she had confined herself to the margins of fashionable gatherings. Now, with an announcement in the papers, a ring on her finger, and the substantial person of Sir Ajax Lynley at her side, she had been lured from the shadows into the glare of public notice.
They were noticed. He, at any rate, was impossible to overlook in a ballroom. His height, his dark good looks, his assured manner drew glances. He appeared oblivious to whispers and stares. And yet, twice in the evening he had vanished from her sight, and she had no idea how he’d contrived to do it or where he’d disappeared.
He plainly knew his way around a ballroom, but she did not remember him from any previous Season.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“When?” He lifted his heavy-lidded gaze, and she realized he’d been looking at her bosom, what little of it her mother’s gown exposed.
“These last few Seasons?”
“In Spain.”
“The war ended years ago.”
“My uncle has business there.”
Emily gave him a sharp glance. His reply told her nothing really. She tried a different tack. “How do you bear being looked at so much?”
A hint of amusement lightened his gaze. “Do you think anyone sees us? Really sees us?”
“What do you think they see?”
One of his black brows lifted. “Clothes. I’m sure there are women in this room who can name your...mother’s modiste, and gentlemen who’d like to know the name of my tailor.”
Emily could not help the laugh that escaped her. So he had noticed her gown after all.
