The Lady Risks All Read online

  He’d rather she wasn’t there, a potent distraction, but . . . although he had several matters to attend to with Jordan, there was nothing sensitive, no discussion during which she couldn’t remain on the sofa, at a good distance from his desk. He could suggest she go to his library, but he suspected that wouldn’t serve her any better than Roderick’s drawing room. “I fear you’ll be atrociously bored.”

  Her expression eased. She patted the rather large reticule she held in her lap. “I’ve brought a novel. I’ll sit quietly and read. I won’t keep you from your business—you won’t even know I’m here.”

  He managed not to snort disbelievingly—revealingly. “Very well.” He rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I must return to my work.”

  Her gaze rose, remaining on his face. “Thank you.”

  If he’d wondered why he’d acquiesced to such an indubitably outrageous plea, the answer was there in her wide hazel eyes, in the green and gold gratitude he drank in like fine wine. With an inclination of his head, he turned and walked back to his desk. Settling behind it, he had to exert considerable effort to force his mind to the matters awaiting his attention, but finally, after a glance down the room showed her with her head bowed, a book open in her lap, he managed it.

  Ten minutes later, Jordan tapped on the door and came in.

  Somewhat gratefully, Roscoe let business claim him.

  Two hours later, the door to the study opened. Jordan had returned to his own office to put into action the various decisions they’d reached; assuming he’d returned with some question, Roscoe looked up—to see Rundle carrying in . . . a tea tray.

  With an abbreviated bow his way, Rundle carried the tray to Roscoe’s uninvited guest. He watched as she looked up, then smiled and thanked Rundle as he set the tray on the low table between the sofas.

  Then she glanced Roscoe’s way, a clear question in her face.

  He shook his head. “No, thank you. No tea for me.” Then a delicious smell reached him. He hesitated, then pushed away from his desk. “I will, however, have a biscuit.”

  Lounging once again on the sofa opposite her, he took three biscuits from the plate on the tray and—pretending not to notice the approving look Rundle, retreating, bent on him—asked about the book she was reading. It proved to be one of the redoubtable Miss Austen’s works, but the equally redoubtable Miss Clifford admitted to liking biographies as well.

  After discovering they had both read a certain military history and shared much the same views on the recent actions in India, he took himself back to his work and left her to resume her reading.

  Not, however, for long. A tap on the door and Rawlins entered. Without preamble he said, “Mrs. Selwidge is here. She’s had trouble, it seems.”

  He was aware of Miranda at the far end of the room but didn’t hesitate. “Show her up.”

  He debated asking Miranda to leave, or shifting the meeting to his library, but . . . this was who he was.

  Rawlins opened the door and ushered in a tall woman in her early thirties, respectably, even conservatively dressed, but experience had etched a certain hardness in her face, in her eyes.

  Even after all these years, he still had to fight the instinctive urge to rise; Amelia Selwidge wasn’t a lady and would have been surprised if he had. He waved her to one of the chairs before his desk. “Rawlins said you’d had trouble. What happened?”

  Amelia had worked for him for long enough to know she didn’t need to beat about any bush. “Lord Treloar. The younger one.”

  “That would be . . .” Eyes narrowing, he cast his mind over the relevant family tree. “Christopher?”

  Amelia nodded. “Definitely thinks he’s descended from God, an’ all. I’ve spoken to him twice before, but he refuses to listen—or rather refuses to believe my girls aren’t the type to want a roll in the hay, not with the likes of him, at any rate. Last night, he propositioned two of them again. When the first—Cindy—reported it to me, I put our George on to following Treloar, quiet like. Just as well. Half an hour later, he started in on Jane—you’ll remember her, slip of a thing, but she’s a damn fine baccarat dealer—and when she said no a second time, Treloar went to strike her. Didn’t manage it only because George was on him by then. We threw Treloar out, but he’ll be back sure as some eggs are rotten.”

  “Trust me, he won’t be back.” He glanced at Rawlins, then looked again at Amelia. “Was he drunk?”

  “Not even a little bit tipsy. We follow your rules to the letter—halfway drunk and they’re shown the door. Most go, too, but Treloar wasn’t even drinking. Nasty piece of work, he is.”

  He nodded. “You can stop worrying about Treloar. Tell Cindy and Jane—and yes, I recall both of them—that I seriously doubt they’ll set eyes on Treloar again, but if they do, if he approaches them in the club or out of it, they’re to report it to you or George immediately.” He scanned the lines in Amelia Selwidge’s face. “And that goes for you, as well. Any trouble from that quarter again and I want to hear of it. But otherwise, as of this moment, Lord Treloar is banned.” He smiled grimly. “From all my establishments.”

  “All?” A slow smile broke across Amelia’s face as she realized the implications of such a sentence. “Heh! That’s going to put a wrinkle in his lordship’s evenings when he won’t be able to join his friends about your tables.”

  “Indeed.” Roscoe reached for a pen. “Who knows? It might even teach him some manners.”

  After entirely unnecessarily thanking him, Amelia, clearly much relieved, departed; only as she walked back to the door did she notice Miranda Clifford, but his guest had her eyes on her book and kept them there.

  Rawlins returned after seeing Amelia out. “You want for me to pay his lordship a visit?”

  Already writing a letter—more in the nature of an excommunicatory decree—to Christopher, Lord Treloar, Roscoe shook his head. “No—I want you and Mudd with me. Mr. Clifford’s disappearance is more urgent, and this letter . . .” He paused and read what he’d written, then, lips curving with dark satisfaction, continued, “Will, I fancy, suffice to take care of Treloar.” He signed and blotted the missive, folded it, wrote Treloar’s name on the front, then handed the letter to Rawlins. “Jordan will have his lordship’s direction. Send one of the other men to deliver this, then explain the situation to Jordan and ask him to send word to all the clubs. Treloar is banned for life—or until I see fit to rescind my decision.”

  Rawlins grinned. “Yes, sir.” Taking the letter, he left, a distinct spring in his step.

  The door closed behind Rawlins and silence descended. Roscoe sat in his chair and considered Miranda Clifford’s down-bent head. Waited . . .

  When she finally glanced sideways up the room at him, he caught her gaze. “I do not permit prostitution, or soliciting for same, to be practiced in my establishments. I have a large number of female staff, but I ensure they make an excellent living at their trade—dealing cards and managing the social aspects of said establishments.”

  She returned his gaze steadily, then said, “I hadn’t really thought of it, but if I had . . . I suspect I would have made the same mistake as all of society and assumed such practices were an integral part of gambling establishments.”

  “Which shows how much society knows.” He hesitated, then said, “My establishments are specifically designed to attract hardened, inveterate gamblers—they’re the ones who lose the most money—and the truth is that all hardened gamblers are essentially blind to feminine company while gambling.”

  Her lips quirked. She looked down. “I can imagine that’s true—in my experience, men, all men, tend to focus on only one thing at a time.” Settling on the sofa, she raised her book and fixed her gaze on the page.

  He studied her for an instant, then, inwardly shaking his head, returned to the letter he’d been writing.

  Why he’d felt the need to defend himself—and the women who worked for him—he didn’t know, but he had felt not just an impulse but a compulsion to do s
o.

  While he escorted Miranda Clifford downstairs to the smaller dining room, where, Rundle had informed him, luncheon was awaiting them, he wrestled with the realization that, for some reason, her opinion of him and his people mattered.

  Given his history, that made little sense; he’d long ago turned his back on the opinion of polite society.

  Then again, as he ushered her into the dining parlor and saw the linen cloth on the table, the dishes, silverware, and crystal laid out, it seemed he wasn’t the only one trying to show his best face to Roderick’s sister.

  After settling her in the chair to the right of his carver, he sat, and wondered if his staff’s reactions, their insistence on providing the sort of service they considered her due—morning tea on a tray, luncheon in the dining parlor—had arisen because she was the only lady he had ever permitted inside this house, much less inside his study, his inner sanctum.

  That was, he had to admit, excuse enough for their actions. He wasn’t entirely sure what had moved him to acquiesce, but he was and doubtless always would be an easy mark for anyone devoted to protecting family.

  Miranda looked about her with keen interest, drinking in all she saw. Far from being bored, she’d spent her morning being . . . educated. She hadn’t expected to be waited on, to be served morning tea from a Sèvres service, then escorted to a luncheon table so elegantly laid. Nothing jarred; nothing was too ornate or heavy. Or too extravagant.

  The food followed a similar principle; a light soup, followed by platters of cold meats and seafood patties, with various vegetable garnishes. Cheeses followed, along with a fruit platter. The wine was light and fruity, too.

  On entering the room and sinking into the chair Roscoe had held for her, her gaze had fallen on the wide painting adorning the opposite wall—a Scottish scene complete with stag. It had looked vaguely familiar, so she’d asked him about it, then extended the conversation to the other artwork she’d seen—the paintings on the walls, the busts, figurines, and sculpted bowls placed here and there, the fabulous tapestries.

  While they ate, he answered her questions; his eye for art was one subject they both, apparently, felt was safe. Regardless, his answers and the appreciation and knowledge they revealed only underscored her increasingly definite conclusion.

  Neville Roscoe, London’s gambling king, wasn’t who, much less what, society thought him.

  “I have to ask.” Leaning back in his chair, long fingers idly stroking the stem of his crystal goblet, he fixed her with a direct blue glance. “Won’t your aunt be missing you by now?”

  “No. I told her at breakfast that I was going out to visit someone I hoped would help me find Roderick.”

  “From all I’ve gathered, she would be horrified to learn that you’re here, under this particular roof.”

  Miranda quelled a shudder at the thought of Gladys’s reaction. “I daresay she would, but I’m twenty-nine years old and very much my own person—and at this point my first and only aim is to find and rescue Roderick.” She considered, then added, “Gladys is, in all probability, frantic with worry as we speak. However, her obsession with avoiding scandal is such that she will not lift a finger to find out where Roderick is, which leaves finding help and rescuing him up to me.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” Roscoe caught her gaze. “As you’ve yet to receive any demand, I think we can rule out ransom as a motive. Which leads me to ask if, to your knowledge, Roderick had any enemies.”

  She thought, after a moment shook her head. “I honestly can’t think of anyone with whom he’s had even a significant disagreement.”

  Roscoe inwardly grimaced, unsurprised by her answer. Her brother was quiet, earnest, kind and generous, personable, but not stupid, the sort of person who created very few ripples while walking through the pond of life. But . . . he considered her. “I know a little of Roderick’s background—that he was born in Cheshire, at Oakgrove Manor, which he inherited from your father and continues to own. But I need to know more—there might be something in your joint pasts that might connect with this, so give me a potted history.”

  His reason was real enough, but he also wanted to learn more about her, and it would keep her occupied while they waited for his men to find some sign.

  “Well . . . Roderick is the youngest of the three of us—Rosalind, me, then him. We were all born at Oakgrove. Our parents were alive, then, of course, but when Roderick was an infant and I was six, and Rosalind seven, our parents died in a boating accident.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze on her plate, then fleetingly arched her brows. “Truth be told, even I can’t remember much of our parents. Our aunts—Corrine and Gladys Cuthbert—our mother’s older unmarried sisters, came to live with us, and—”

  He listened, and with a question here, a query there, teased out a far more detailed history than the one in his file. A history of Roderick, but equally, indeed even more so, a history of her.

  It took a little probing to make sense of the basis of her aunt’s belief in Miranda’s and Roderick’s social vulnerability—the reason they had to live by a rigidly respectable code. He’d known that Roderick’s money, and therefore hers, too, derived from the mills, but they hadn’t themselves engaged in trade, nor had their parents. At least in the circle to which he’d been born, that absolved them of any implied taint. Money—as the aristocracy well understood—was money; where it came from only mattered if the connection was still fresh enough, as someone had once put it, to be smelled.

  That said, in the lower gentry, the circle in which her aunt moved, the rules might well be different; for all he knew, her aunt’s view might be entirely valid in that sphere.

  But as he’d hoped, Miranda’s revelations took him further. Her position in Roderick’s life, largely standing between her brother and her aunts, explained her habit of toeing the line her aunts had drawn regardless of whether it suited her or not. It wasn’t so much what she said in describing Roderick’s life as the minor asides, and what she didn’t say, that told the tale; especially after her elder sister’s sad death, she had, over and again, bowed to her aunts’ dictates in order to keep the peace, in order to protect Roderick.

  By the time they rose from the luncheon table and he agreed that he could see nothing in all she’d told him to suggest any enemies who might have kidnapped Roderick, he’d also solved the conundrum she herself posed. The trenchant respectability she clung to wasn’t natural but had been imposed, constantly, over many years, on her.

  She had never embraced the doctrine but had accepted the imposition because that had been the best way to protect Roderick. However, now that clinging to respectability was no longer a viable way to protect Roderick, she’d forsaken that path, stepped away from it, and, even though the move had meant walking into an arena in which she was out of her depth, had come to him for help.

  As he climbed the stairs by her side, he wondered where her new path would lead her, whether she would step back to respectability once Roderick was safe, or . . .

  Regardless, his compulsion to help her find and rescue her brother had grown even more impossible to defy.

  Late that afternoon, when Miranda had set aside her novel and had been standing, restlessly, by the window looking out over his rear gardens for over half an hour, playing havoc with his concentration, a tap fell on the door, then it opened and Mudd looked in.

  Mudd saw him, glanced at Miranda, ducked his head in a bobbing bow, then entered. Shutting the door, Mudd faced him—but had to battle the urge to look at her.

  “Well?” Setting down his pen, Roscoe put his henchman out of his misery. “What have we found?”

  “Located the coach.” Mudd seemed relieved to know which of them to address. “Or leastways, we know where it hails from. A jarvey dropping off a fare in Claverton Street saw it roll away—it passed him so he got a good look. He recognized it—swears it belongs to the owner of the Blue Jug, a tavern down by the docks. He—the jarvey—says the owner hires the coach out.”

>   He glanced at the ormolu clock on one corner of his desk; it was after five o’clock. “Best we arrive at the tavern when it’s most crowded.” He looked at Mudd. “Tell Rawlins the three of us will leave at half past seven. We’ll take one of the carriages.”

  “Yessir.” Mudd grinned, turned, nodded politely to Miranda, and went out, closing the door behind him.

  Rising, he walked down the room to where Miranda stood, frowning. “I’ll go and question the owner and see what he can tell us.”

  Her head snapped up; she stared at him. “I’m coming, too.”

  He felt his face set. “No. You’re not. I—”

  “Mr. Roscoe.” She straightened to her full height, tipped up her chin. “I—”

  “Just Roscoe,” he growled.

  “Regardless!” Her eyes flashed. “I will not sit tamely—”

  “Miss Clifford.” He had extensive experience in using his voice to command obedience; he used every ounce of both experience and will to shut her up.

  Lips compressing to a thin line, she glared.

  He ignored the glare. Only just stopped himself from returning it. “I have allowed you to sit in my house, in my study, all day, and wait so you could hear the news firsthand. That, in case you hadn’t noticed, was a boon—something I didn’t have to grant but elected to extend to you. However, you cannot expect me to step over the line of what I can in all conscience condone and allow you to accompany me to a dockside tavern. Even were you to agree to remain in my carriage, protected by my coachman, the area is too rough and dangerous for me to countenance taking you into it. To say it’s no place for a lady, let alone a respectable one, would be a massive understatement.” His impassivity teetered. “Great heavens, woman—even I will be taking two bodyguards with me.”

  She frowned, rebellion still roiling in her eyes.

  “Don’t make me regret allowing you to stay.”

  Her lips pressed tight again, holding back whatever rash words she might have uttered.

  Deeming that a victory a wise man would seize with all speed, he stepped back and waved to the door. “Come. I’ll walk you home.” Even as he turned to the door, he sensed her drawing in a breath. “And for the Lord’s sake, don’t try to tell me that’s not necessary!”