Page 60 of My Rogue, My Ruin
Perhaps that wicked lust had been the reason she’d so quickly believed his assurances that he had not attacked Lord Maynard’s carriage or assaulted his coachman.
But where had Archer gone after leaving the sitting room?
As Madame Despain’s girls began to dress her again in the deep green day gown she had arrived in, Brynn thought of the muted shout she’d heard while lost in the hall on her way downstairs. It had been a man’s voice, and the duke’s study had turned out to be rather close to where she had been at that time.
And then there had been the sound of a woman rushing past the room in which Brynn was hiding, the rustling of skirts, and the distinct sound of crying. Whomever it had been, had been upset. Lady Rochester? She had been gone from the salon when Brynn had finally returned. But her screams upon discovering the duke had come at least five minutes later. Had Lady Rochester delayed them becauseshehad been the one to kill him, and it had taken her that long to gather her senses?
It was too awful to consider. Brynn felt ashamed even thinking it. But the truth was, someone had done the murder, and the crying woman in the hallway was most definitely a suspect. If only Brynn could tell the inquiry agent about her. But then she’d need to explain what she was doing in that part of the house, and hiding in a room, at that. It would also place her close to the duke’s study—and what if Mr. Thomson didn’t believe her about the crying woman?
Oh, it was all so disastrous. Her head spun with the chaos of it, making her dizzier and more nauseated than she already had been all morning. By the time the girls had finished lacing and buttoning her, a sharp pain had started in her temple, and her breath was coming short.
Gray and Mama noticed immediately as she entered the front of the shop.
“Oh, my darling!” Her mother swooped over and guided Brynn to a long, padded bench seat by the front window, where a mannequin, draped in a fine Parisian gown and holding a parasol, stood on display.
“It is just a headache,” Brynn insisted, thinking it wise to make no mention of the tightness in her chest. Gray took her arm and sat beside her on the bench.
“You never could lie worth a damn,” he muttered.
“Graham, your language,” Mama hissed with an apologetic glance toward Madame Despain. “Oh, Briannon, this day has been so taxing for us all. We must get you home to rest.”
She returned to the modiste’s side to finalize the order while Brynn avoided her brother’s searching stare. What was he looking for, some sign that she was about to faint? Well, she would not. Gray would never leave her side if she did, and Brynn could not stay in her room wallowing in her worrisome thoughts for the rest of the day. Just the idea of it made the breath in her throat thicker than air should be.
Some fresh air would be nice, even if the day was overcast and cool. Through the front window, ladies in fashionable dress and men in crisp, clean suits walked by. Carts and drays and carriages filled the street, horse hooves clapped the cobbles, and somewhere nearby a traffic whistle blew.
Brynn’s eyes traveled past a pair of children on leading strings being held in check by their caretaker, to a solitary man standing beside a street lamp. He had one shoulder against the iron column and both hands in his pockets, as if he had been standing there for quite some time. She narrowed her eyes and inspected his suit. Brown tweed. Not current, nor in the least bit dashing. The mannequin and the wide-skirted Parisian gown blocked her a little from his view, but it was clear that the man was watching Madame Despain’s shop.
“You’ve lost more color,” Gray said, standing up and extending his arm. “I’ll escort you to the carriage, and do not even think to refuse.”
She would have usually made some quip in response, but the man across the street had thoroughly distracted her. If Gray noticed, he likely assumed her silence was due to ill health. As they exited the shop door and stepped onto the sidewalk, the man in the brown tweed took a smooth step behind the lamppost. Had she not spied him from inside the shop, she would have most definitely not noticed his attempt to disappear from view.
Hewaswatching her. Who was he, another agent from Bow Street?
Gray helped her into the carriage, her pulse beginning to gallop.
Thomson must truly suspect her. Perhaps he had ordered this man to keep eyes on her, in case she attempted to flee to the Continent as a guilty party might.
Despite the chill early May temperature, Brynn began to grow hot underneath her day dress and cloak.
“I think a rest would be the best thing,” she found herself saying to Gray, who frowned from his seat across from her.
“I will ask Cook to prepare one of her draughts,” he said.
“No, I just want to sleep,” she replied, hoping she was not as poor a liar as Gray had just accused her of being. She wasn’t going to sleep at all. No, as soon as she arrived home at Bishop House, she was going to speak to Lana and formulate some kind of plan.
She needed to see Archer, straightaway.
Brynn stared at Lana from under the counterpane. Lana had become her confidante over the past few months, ever since Dowager Countess Langlevit had asked her parents to employ the young woman as a special favor. But could she trust her with such a secretive and delicate expedition? Her mother would have a fit of the vapors and Gray would likely explode if either of them found out she had slipped off to Hadley Gardens. And now that there would be no forthcoming marriage to the late Duke of Bradburne, she had to be careful. Being seen unaccompanied and unchaperoned at Archer’s house would invite a whole host of other problems. After all, she had her blasted reputation to consider. For the hundredth time since she was little, Brynn cursed the fact that she had been born a girl. Boys simply weren’t saddled with propriety and modesty as much as girls were. They could come and go as they pleased, caring not a whit forreputation.
Still, reputation or not, she had to see Archer.
“Lana,” she began in a low voice. “I must ask you to do something for me. Something that could get us both into a lot of trouble, but I can’t see any other way around it.”
Lana moved to the side of the bed, her face concerned. “What is the matter, my lady?” She set the draught Cook had prepared on the bedside table, and Brynn’s eyes fluttered to the contraption already standing at the side of her bed. A length of Indian rubber tubing ran between a glass container at one end, which Lana was about to fill with the special draught, and a cloth face shield at the other. Her father had consigned the device to be built at the advice from theton’s leading physician, who swore by its lung healing properties. The device had helped to clear her throat when her passages had become blocked as a child and reduced the severity of her infections. But now, she was struck by a brilliant idea.
“I need you to be me,” Brynn said and then clarified what she meant. “Pretend to be me. Lie in bed and wear the mask—it will cover your whole face. We can put a cap over your hair.”
It would be the only thing to give them away—Lana’s hair was glossy and dark, while Brynn’s was decidedly not.
