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There was movement at the entrance of the cabin, where Sesily’s husband filled the doorway. Sesily turned, and Adelaide saw something she could not understand in the tall man’s gaze. “Caleb?”
“We’re here,” he said, quietly.
Sesily moved to him like a magnet, as though she had no other choice than to match with him when he was in the room, tucking herself into his arms in greeting. Though Adelaide had seen these exact movements a hundred times over the last year since the two were married, that evening, she wondered at it.
Wondered what it would be like to experience it—just once, to feel as though one had another half. A pair.
What. Nonsense.
She shook herself from the reverie. There was no time for wondering.
Straightening her shoulders, she lifted the folder from the table. When she left this cabin, she would no longer be Adelaide Frampton, lightest fingers in London.
She would be someone else entirely—more valuable to the women of London society than diamonds or silks or even the latest gossip. More dangerous to the men, too.
“But—” Caleb said, his low voice carrying through the space.
Everyone looked to him.
“The girl... she’s not here.”
Chapter Three
Henry Carrington, sixth Duke of Clayborn, did not enjoy being summoned.
In his thirty-six years on this earth, he’d discovered that there were few good things that came from the experience.
When he was ten, he’d been summoned home from Eton to Sussex for the birth of his younger brother, Jack, and the subsequent death of their mother, four days later. When he was seventeen, he’d been summoned back to the estate to discover that his father had died, and he had been made duke.
After that, the summonses came more frequently—bringing him home for any number of reasons. At twenty, it was a drought that threatened the crops. At twenty-two, it was a bout of strangles that lay waste to the stables at Clayborn Manor. At twenty-three, twenty-five, and twenty-nine, he’d been summoned to Jack’s school to deal with Young Master Carrington’s errant ways (impossible).
Society enjoyed summoning him, as well—after all, it was not every day a duke turned up at a ball/luncheon/dinner/musicale/country dance/tea. Neither was it every day that a duke was born the way Clayborn had been—imbued from the womb with a sense of unflagging responsibility, which he bore with a classic stiff upper lip. Stern, well-bred, and impeccably mannered.
Thankfully, now that he was regarded as a respected peer of the realm and was one of the few active members of the House of Lords actually attempting to serve the people and Her Majesty, few dared summon him.
Apparently, no one had apprised the Marchioness of Havistock of that fact. The aging aristocratic lady, married to a despicable man who deserved an early grave, had flatly summoned Clayborn for seven o’clock that evening, which explained why the duke was in a particular mood upon his arrival at the elaborate manor house situated east of the city on the banks of the River Thames.
His mood had nothing to do with the bruise that bloomed in his freshly shaved cheek, nor did it have anything to do with the fact that, not two hours earlier, he’d lost hold of his stolen goods. It certainly had nothing to do with the intriguing thief who’d taken them.
Miss Adelaide Frampton, who had marched past him as he’d stood outside Alfred Trumbull’s heavily guarded, highly protected headquarters, wondering how he would get inside and retrieve his puzzle box. The lady had had no difficulty in making such a plan—walking directly into the warehouse, picking the lock on a well-secured desk drawer, and stealing the only thing that held any value to him... without being noticed.
How the wide world did not notice Adelaide Frampton the moment she entered a room, he would never understand.
The entirety of London thought her a quiet, unassuming miss—an unfortunate leaf on the familial branch of the Duchess of Trevescan, one of the aristocracy’s most powerful figures. In the past five years, Clayborn had heard a dozen stories about Adelaide’s past. She was a poor country mouse, arrived with nothing but the clothes on her back. A vicar’s daughter, orphaned too young. The Duchess’s childhood companion—barely a cousin. More like a servant’s child.
The stories were myriad and short, and always toldwith a slight twinge of surprise and disdain, as though it were unfathomable that anyone would actuallywishto know about Adelaide Frampton.
The stories were also bollocks, which he’d known for a year—one need only look at Adelaide Frampton to know it. In the year since he’d discovered her, Clayborn had seen her pickpocket a half-dozen aristocrats in full view of all of London and dress down an earl who’d landed soon thereafter in Newgate—a monstrous man who had been born into power and privilege and had never had a woman stand up to him.
If Clayborn were a man who wagered, he would have placed his entire fortune on the likelihood that Adelaide had more than a small amount to do with that particular arrest.
That afternoon, he’d watched her lift his own belongings from the warehouse of the South Bank’s notorious gang. If he hadn’t been so concerned about her safety, he would have been impressed.
The Duke of Clayborn was a man who understood circumstances of birth, and there was no way on earth Adelaide Frampton was a vicar’s daughter, a country lass, or the cousin to a duchess.
How it was that no one on either side of the Thames seemed to notice her was a puzzle for the ages. Clayborn couldn’t help but notice her. He noticed her constantly. In ballrooms, when she turned up with her odd friends, and at dinner parties, when she was the quietest one in the room, and on her morning walks through Hyde Park. He’d been able to pick Adelaide Frampton from a crowd for years. Christ, he’d been unable not to.
The point was, since then, he’d noticed her freely. Which he didn’t much care for, as the woman never seemed to notice him.
