Page 84 of An Inconvenient Duke

Of course she didn’t. Beatrice was scatterbrained under the best of circumstances, but tonight, when everything was going wrong around her, hiding in the darkness with a crying child, fearing for her life—

Dani’s heart ripped. “Yes,” she reluctantly agreed, ignoring the unease prickling at the backs of her knees and making her decision. “I’ll help you as much as I can.”

“Oh, thank God!” Mrs. Slater’s face lit up with gratitude and relief, although Dani suspected more of her tears might yet fall. “Let’s go now, and we’ll—”

“Wait here. I have to collect a few things from my room that we’ll need.” She forcibly wrenched her arm away from the woman, who clung to it as if terrified that Dani would change her mind and run away, the same way their hired man had. “I’ll be right back.”

Calling out for Alice, she hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. She yanked open the doors to her armoire and looked hopefully inside, only for her chest to sink. What on earth did she have in her wardrobe that a twelve-year-old girl would fit into? So she snatched up a short cloak, an old spencer, and one of her bonnets. They would have to do. Somehow.

When Alice hurried into the room, Dani thrust everything into her arms before she could blurt out any questions. “Find a travel bag and put all this into it, along with soap, a flannel, woolen stockings—whatever a young girl might need for travel. Then hurry back.”

Alice nodded sharply, bewildered but knowing from past experience that now was not the time to press for answers. “Yes, miss!” she called out as she ran from the room.

Dani sat at her writing desk and quickly scratched out a message to the innkeeper’s wife at the Golden Bell, giving her a list of men who had worked for Dani in the past and asking her to have them come to the tavern as soon as they could to carry out the rest of the vanishing. If the girl was gone by the time they arrived, they would still get paid, but the man who arrived first would receive triple his pay. An excellent incentive for them to hurry to help. And if none of the men came to the tavern, then the girl would be hidden there in an attic room until tomorrow, until Dani could vanish her completely. Even if it meant driving her to Manchester herself.

When Alice returned with a small travel bag stuffed so full that it could barely close, Dani gave her the note. “The Golden Bell. Take one of the footmen with you. Go!”

Then Dani wrote out a second message, this one to Marcus when he finally came to collect her, explaining what had happened and where she’d gone. Only a brief delay, she assured him, not more than an hour to wait for Jenkins or one of the other men to arrive. Certainly nothing as dramatic as Beatrice and Mrs. Slater were making their situation out to be. She believed that men from the brothel had given chase, although most likely giving up after only a few minutes. But Dani couldn’t abandon Beatrice. She promised to arrive at Pearce’s town house as soon as she could, and then they would continue the night exactly as planned.

“I’m ready,” she said as she came down the stairs, the bag in one hand and the note in the other. “Let’s depart.”

With a relieved nod, Mrs. Slater hurried out of the house to the waiting carriage.

Dani paused as she closed the door behind her to leave the note on the brass knocker. Then she ran to join Mrs. Slater in the carriage.

* * *

Marcus walked up to stand beside Clayton in the double doorway of Pearce’s dining room. The woman whom Hartsham had arranged for him sat on a dining chair pushed into the corner of the room while Pearce guarded her.Guarding herbeing a very loose definition of what the man was actually doing as he leaned against the fireplace with a glass of port in one hand and gestured enthusiastically at her with the other as he described what Spain and France had been like during the wars, peppering his portrayals with several tales of his own personal misadventures. Including the one about the flamenco dancer who swung through his bedroom window on the end of a rope.

The woman stared at him, wide-eyed and saying nothing, just as she’d done since he’d started his tales nearly half an hour ago.

But of course she did. She obviously thought he was a bedlamite.

“Has he gotten to the Battle of Toulouse yet?” Marcus drawled in a lowered voice so he wouldn’t be overheard.

Across the room, Pearce laughed and gestured with the glass. “One newspaper said that horses were in blood up to their forelocks. Theirforelocks! As if they were swimming in it!”

“Yes,” Clayton answered dryly, his face impassive. “For the last five minutes, in fact.” He slid a sideways gaze at Marcus. “We should probably question her soon before we’re accused of torturing her by setting Pearce on her like this.”

“Not until Danielle arrives.” He took another uneasy glance over his shoulder toward the front door. Where the devil was she?

The woman’s late arrival to the town house had not only put going after Danielle behind schedule, but it had also raised Marcus’s wariness about the night’s plans to the point that he’d been forced to send Merritt in his place instead of fetching her himself so he could be here at the town house in case anything went wrong. Danielle was in very capable hands with Merritt, he knew that, perhaps even more so than in his own if he were honest about it, given Merritt’s fighting skills. Yet he wanted her by his side, where he knew she would be safe.

“Is that a good idea,” Clayton countered quietly, “having a society lady here while we ask that woman about the kinds of things that Hartsham is using for blackmail? Will Miss Williams be able to tolerate it?”

“Without so much as a blink.” Marcus smiled in private amusement. Clayton didn’t know the kind of woman Danielle was, a society lady who had more spine and resilience than half the men in His Majesty’s service. “Her presence here will make the woman more comfortable when we question her and hopefully make her willing to tell us more. She can reassure her that she’ll be set free as soon as we have the information we need and that Hartsham won’t be able to harm her.”

After the way the woman arrived—late and scurrying up to the town house alone from a rented carriage, only to be met not by one man as expected when she walked into the drawing room but four—reassurances were definitely in order. But they had time. All night, in fact. Hartsham had encouraged him to feel free to do anything he wanted with the woman, so no suspicions would be raised if she made no attempt to meet up with Hartsham afterward to tell him what Marcus had done with her. By dawn, she would be so thoroughly hidden that no one would be able to find her.

But Marcus wanted this over as soon as possible so that Clayton’s men could greet the earl when he rose for breakfast, search his properties before he knew to destroy or hide any evidence there, and place him under house arrest until a formal warrant could be issued. The trial and execution might yet take months, but with the earl closely under guard and his every move watched, he wouldn’t be able to harm Marcus’s family again. A family that now included Danielle.

The front door opened, and Merritt strode inside and down the hall toward them. Alone.

Marcus demanded, “Where’s Danielle?”

“Gone.” He grimly held out a folded note. “She left this for you. I took the liberty of reading it.”

Marcus opened the note and scanned it. His blood turned to ice as he read what she’d done.