Dance of Seduction Read Online Free PDF

windows, too.”
    “Sturdier ones is what you need, tightly hung so as not to let in great drafts.”
    She nodded. “Poor miserable old matron.” It had weathered a hundred years, first as a hospital for the insane until Bedlam had edged it out, and then as her own imperfect Home. “I’d dearly love to dress her up a bit—paint the trim a bright blue and replace the crumbling cornices with more magnificent ones—but then the old girl would look entirely out of place in Spitalfields.”
    “And that’d surely mean trouble, m’lady.”
    “Yes.” It would mean the difference between being left alone or being continually robbed. “I suppose we’d best confine repairs to the practical.” She smiled at Samuel. “I’d better go in. Mrs. Carter will want to hear the good news.” Mrs. Carter managed the Home as lovingly as any hen with a brood of chicks, though she was getting on in years and oftenspoke of retiring. Clara didn’t know what she’d do without her when she did.
    “When shall me and the coachman return to fetch you? Five o’clock as usual?”
    “That’s fine. Oh, and Samuel?” She glanced back down the street to the alley. “Ask Aunt Verity to hunt up the navy lists and send them over at once. I know she has them. She used to follow her cousin’s postings rather closely in the lists.”
    “Planning to check up on the cap’n’s claims, are you?”
    She shrugged. “It’s always good to know who your neighbors are.”
    Samuel eyed her shrewdly. “You never checked up on old Mrs. Tildy, when she moved in down the street, or—”
    “Just tell my aunt to send over her navy lists.” Then she hurried up the stairs, not wanting to see her footman’s curious expression.
    It was simply a precaution. She wanted to make sure Captain Pryce was who he said he was. After all, with him so close by and her children so vulnerable, it only made sense. There was nothing more to it than that. Nothing at all.
    She was so intent on her self-avowals that she didn’t notice five-year-old Timothy Perkins until she’d crossed the foyer. He hadn’t yet seen her. His eyes were fixed on the floor, and only when he suddenly smashed something with his foot did she realize he was absorbed by one of the many bugs that plagued the old building.
    She started to ask why he was waiting outside the library, the one room her charges avoided. Then she thought better of it and glided toward him silently. But as she neared him, he looked up and froze. When he glanced to the library door in a panic, her eyes narrowed. She recognized a lookout when she saw one.

    He opened his mouth to give the warning, but she shot him the Stanbourne Stare and held a finger to her lips. He slumped. Poor lad. His brother Johnny might defy her, but little Timothy was still young enough to be cowed.
    Laying one hand on his shoulder for reassurance, she stepped up to the door and held her ear to the crack.
    “So are you going back?” asked a voice she recognized as David Walsh’s.
    “Bloody right I am.” That was Johnny’s voice. “At least to get me money. The sly knave didn’t give me a farthing for the watch. I know it’s worth at least eight shillings.”
    “Well, you could hardly expect him to give you money with m’lady standing there,” David said. “Then she’d know what you were both doing. And I’ve heard tell that the cap’n ain’t stupid. He wouldn’t let himself get caught in the act by her.”
    The captain? Giving Johnny money for a watch behind her back?
    The truth hit her with brutal force, settling in her belly like a lead weight. Captain Pryce, curse his hide, was one of those awful men who provided the other half of the thievery equation: a receiver of stolen goods.
    Of course! That explained so much. Why a naval captain—if he really was such a thing—had settled in Spitalfields. Why he and Johnny had been in the alley.
    God rot that scoundrel! While she’d been away paying a long overdue visit to Papa’s