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Maggie nodded, her dark eyes serious. “Askin’ questions, at least.”
“It won’t be asking for long, though, will it?” The Bully Boys weren’t known for tact or gentility. They moved with brute force, and The Place had suffered before.
“They’ll have to come armed to the teeth if they want to take us on here again,” Duchess said. The Place was heavily protected by several layers of security both inside and outside the tavern. Not even The Bully Boys would be stupid enough to come for it. “But they don’t want all of us tonight.”
Adelaide looked to the closed door of the tavern. “Just me.”
Still, she’d die before putting these women or those inside The Place in danger. If The Bully Boys had information on her, it was her battle. Alone. She looked to her friends, these women who years ago had given her a new path, a fresh start. “What of you? If they think you’re hiding me...”
Both chins lifted in challenge.
“Let them come,” Maggie said.
Duchess came forward, taking Adelaide by the shoulders. “We’ll send word. Keep to the safe places. The ones where the walls listen for us.” A vast network of taverns and inns on post roads throughout Britain, managed by one of their crew, Mithra Singh, a Punjabi brewmistress with a skill for ale making and secrets. “And stay alert.”
As she’d been her whole life.
Adelaide cursed harshly, knowing they were right and hating it all the same. With no choice, she turned to the carriage. She nodded up to Marcus, who put a hand to his brim in acknowledgment as she made for the dark cabin.
Duchess followed her, staying the door before Adelaide could close it behind her. “Ten days isn’t long.” When Adelaide did not reply, the woman who prided herself on always being one step ahead pressed on, her tone dry, with a hint of amusement. “I’m almost sorry I’m not joining you, Adelaide. I’d dearly like to watch this game play out.”
“It’s not a game,” Adelaide said sharply. “A girl isalone, possibly pursued by her murdering father, with nothing but a useless aristocrat to keep her safe, and I’m in the wind.” She bit her tongue before adding,With the Duke of Clayborn.
“You shall find her, as you always do,” Duchess said simply. “You’ll find her, see her back safely, and we’ll see her safe afterward. If she loves the boy, she can have him eventually. But right now—”
“—we’ve other plans,” Adelaide finished. Ruining an aristocrat. Exposing him for a murderer. Meting out justice.
“That shall all be the easy bit.”
Adelaide’s brows rose. “Then what’s the difficult bit?”
Duchess and Maggie shared a grin before Maggie replied, “The game with the duke.”
The answer thrummed through her. “There won’t be any game with the duke.”
“Of course there will be,” Duchess said. “And if I know you, being in the wind with that duke chasing you, it will turn out to be your favorite game.”
Adelaide didn’t care what that duke did. And still, she asked, “What game is that?”
“Cat and mouse.”
Maggie laughed from beyond the door of the carriage, her rich voice carrying through the darkness. “Who is the cat and who is the mouse?”
“Look at her: Adelaide Frampton, a solitary genius with a wicked sense of justice and a talent for stealing.” Duchess smiled that smile that meant everything was going according to plan. “Obviously, she’s the cat.”
Chapter Five
Clayborn made his way into the Hawk and Hedgehog posting inn the next night, covered in mud and full of frustration.
The tavern was warm and filled with chatter as he pushed inside, squeezing past a customer on his way out, into the cold rainstorm beyond. It took Clayborn a moment to register the way the volume of the room quieted, as his eyes adjusted to the bright interior, awash in golden light.
He’d attracted the attention of most of the people within—a wide cross section of travelers and locals. A group of women in workaday frocks laughing at a far-off table. A pair of young bucks standing at the bar, muddy boots making a mess of the scuffed oak floor. A round-faced, dark-skinned farmer as big as a house, with a buxom beauty pressed to his side. And behind the bar, a plump tavern mistress with gleaming black hair, porcelain skin, and a mouth turned up like a bow. He met her dark, hooded eyes, noting her amused recognition, as though she knew something he did not.
Or, rather, as though she knew what he did not wish her to know.
He’d lost Adelaide.
He knew he shouldn’t think of her in such an informal way. He was a duke, after all, and she was a woman he barely knew, no matter how much thinking of her madehim imagine differently. And Lord knew he’d been thinking of her for the last twenty-four hours.
