Page 10 of An Unexpected Earl

She squeezed the woman’s hand in gratitude, then opened the door and descended to the footpath. If the hackney driver noticed that she’d changed clothes en route, he made no comment, only tugging at the brim of his tall hat when she indicated that someone from inside the house would pay the fare. Linking arms with Maggie, Amelia walked to the front door, rapped the brass knocker, and waited.

The door opened, and the man who served as butler, valet, and footman all rolled into one nodded at her. Another servant whom she now didn’t trust. “Good evening, miss.”

“Drummond.” She smiled. “Would you please pay the jarvey?”

The butler swung his gaze to Maggie, who nervously clutched at her knitting bag so tightly that her fingertips almost glowed white. Under his suspicious frown, the maid began to shake.

But Amelia gave the woman no time to panic as she tightened her hold on her arm and whisked her past Drummond and into the house. She hurried Maggie up the stairs to her room, grabbing a candle from the wall sconce on the first landing to light their way. With a deep sigh of relief, Amelia handed over the candle and sagged back against the closed door.

Thank God this horrible evening was finally over.

Her breathing returned to normal as Maggie moved around the room, lighting another candle on the bedside stand and bending down to stir up the banked fire in the small fireplace. The coals flamed, a soft glow lighting the room.

“You’ll have to keep the gown with you tonight,” Amelia instructed, pushing herself away from the door. She couldn’t risk that the maid-of-all-work might find it in her room, then report to Frederick. “I’ll collect it from you after breakfast and return it to Madame Noir on my way to the shop.”

“La!” Maggie stood and wiped the soot from her hands. “For what that woman charged, you could have bought a new dress of your own.”

No, she couldn’t have. Satin was expensive, and the dressmaker would have sent a bill. Frederick monitored every ha’penny she spent and would want to know why she’d bought a ball gown. A red satin one, no less. But Madame Noir survived on the scandalous and knew how to keep her confidences. That was what Amelia had paid so dearly to obtain—not the woman’s dress but her silence.

Madame Noir ran a brothel on King Street where she sold women to society gentlemen, ironically only a few doors down from Almack’s, where marriage-minded mamas sold their own daughters to the same society gentlemen. Amelia knew about Madame’s business because Frederick had received bills from the woman for services rendered.Discretion guaranteed, the invoices read.

Amelia had taken her up on that promise.

“It was the only way,” she sighed.

She took the gown from the bag and held it up to look covetously at it one more time. Such a beautiful dress! She’d felt beautiful in it, too, especially when Pearce’s eyes darkened when they’d swept over her in a way he’d never looked at her when she was younger. As if he’d wanted to devour her. A shiver sped through her just thinking about it.

“It is a shame, though, that I only wore it once,” she murmured, watching how the firelight shimmered across the material. “How grand it would be to be able to wear something like this to the opera or—”

“Amelia!”

Her heart lurched into her throat as her brother’s voice boomed through the town house. The dress slipped through her numb fingers to the floor.

Frederick was home early. And most certainly because he’d seen her at the masquerade.

Three

“Amelia, where are you?”

As her brother called out for her again, Amelia snatched up the dress and shoved it back into the knitting bag. She yanked the bag closed and buckled the straps, swallowing down her panic.

“I need to talk to you—now!”

With shaking hands, she shoved the bag at her maid, who had gone pale. “Go upstairs to your room. He probably just wants to make certain I arrived home all right.” But even she didn’t believe that. “Everything will be fine.”

Maggie’s jerking nod did little to bolster her courage.

Amelia hurried downstairs before her brother could send up another shout that would wake both the dead and the neighbors on both sides. She paused outside the study to take a deep breath, then plastered on a smile and stepped into the room. “Frederick, you’re home early.”

“And according to Drummond,” he mused as he poured cognac into a crystal tumbler from the drink tray, although he’d clearly had more than his fair share of liquor already, “you were out late.”

“Well, you know how the London Ladies are.” She clasped her hands behind her back, more to hide their shaking than in contriteness. “We often become carried away when we have our discussions, and I lost track of time.”

Did he know she was lying? She couldn’t tell from the way he smiled and returned the stopper to the decanter with a soft clink. His hand shook. Something was bothering him.Please, God, don’t let him have seen me!

He asked over his shoulder, “Voltaire again?”

She forced a long-suffering sigh to hide her nervousness. “Voltaire always.”