A Wicked Gentleman Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands of Sophia Lacey’s three retainers. After the lady’s death, he had knocked on the door with what he thought was a perfect pretext to enter and search. He was to value the contents for probate.
    His reception had been dusty to say the least. An elderly man in stained leather britches and jerkin, bent almost double but with fierce if rheumy eyes, and two severely black-gowned women, both with a greenish pallor that made them look as if the earth of the cemetery had just opened to disgorge them, stared at him in forbidding silence as he’d explained his business.
    The gentleman, whom he took to be a butler of sorts, turned to his companions and stated, “One of them, again, Ada. Not a furriner this time, though.” And he had closed the door in the visitor’s face, locking and bolting it with a vigor that belied his age.
    Somehow he had to get into the house, and his first thought had been that the easiest way of doing that was to own it. But thanks to Lady Livia Lacey, the house didn’t look to be his in the foreseeable future.
    However…however…
    A slow smile spread across his face. Maybe he didn’t need to own the house to gain access; maybe cultivating its new owner would do the trick. He had the perfect excuse for introducing himself…he was still a prospective and most eager buyer for her property, hoping to persuade her to sell.
    He gave a nod of satisfaction and urged his horse to increase his pace. The Ministry would keep the house under observation until Lady Livia Lacey came to town, then he’d pay a social call and see what he could see.
    But despite this logical plan he found it impossible to sit on the sidelines during the next few days and took his own part in the surveillance of the house on Cavendish Square even though he knew the Ministry’s observers were more than capable.
    It was several days later on a moonless night when the long hours of cramped and frozen watching were rewarded. A figure approached the basement steps…a darker shadow in the shadows of the night, with his black cloak drawn tight about him, a black hat pulled low over his brow.
    The prospect of action warmed his blood. Harry crept out of his observation point behind the hedge in the square garden and moved soundlessly to crouch behind the railings on the pavement while he waited for the intruder to reemerge safely in possession of the package, if the gods were on the side of the angels. If he himself couldn’t catch him, there were four other men strategically positioned along the street and around the square who could pick up the pursuit if necessary.
    But Harry was grimly determined to retrieve himself what had been stolen from him…the fruits of hours of complex mathematical calculations and intricate mental gymnastics…personal issues quite apart from the theft’s vital significance to the bloody struggle that engulfed the Continent.
    The massive explosion sent him leaping to his feet, the months of painstaking training vanquished by the sheer magnitude and unexpectedness of the sound on this genteel, quiet piece of Mayfair. Windows flew open, shrieks rent the air, and up the basement steps came the shadowy figure of a man, his cloak in tatters, hatless, his hair standing up around his head like a halo.
    Harry hurled himself at the man’s ankles as he leaped onto the pavement from the top step and brought him down to the hard ground in a tangle of limbs that winded him as much as his quarry.
    â€œIt’s all right, sir, we’ve got him.” Hands reached down and pulled him to his feet, while others hauled his breathless quarry upright.
    Harry brushed off his hands demanding, “What the hell was that?”
    â€œHaven’t a clue, sir.” The man who’d helped him to his feet looked around as if a clue might materialize from the gloom. “Never heard its like.”
    Harry shrugged. “Well, it scared the wits out of our