Don't Bargain with the Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

delicious smile had tugged at her lips and her eyes had grown suspiciously bright, he had been sure he had succeeded with her at last.
     
Until she had insulted him. Haughty female, citing theEnglish as the model of propriety. Like most English ladies, she had no idea what her countrymen were really like when their masks were off.
     
The next time he encountered Seńorita Schoolteacher, he would manage himself better. And her.
     
“So?” Gaspar asked. “What happened with the servant we saw from the window? And how did you acquire a pair of lady’s slippers?”
     
“As it happens, she wasn’t a servant but a teacher.”
     
“Then she’s no use to us,” Gaspar said dismissively.
     
“I do not agree. We need a source inside.” That was why he had hurried down in the midst of dressing—to see if the lovely woman lying in the grass might provide them an entrée to the school.
     
After tossing his practice ball onto the bed, Diego drew out the miniature given him by the marqués . As Diego stared at the serene face of a beautiful young Spanish woman dressed in an outmoded fashion, Gaspar muttered a curse. “Don Carlos’s granddaughter may not look like her mother, you know. She might resemble her father instead, and we have no miniature for him.”
     
“Or worst of all, she might look like her grandfather.”
     
They laughed. The marqués ’s squinty eyes, bulbous nose, and sour mouth gave him the appearance of a very cranky toad. Diego could not fathom how the rich old grandee had spawned as lovely a creature as Dońa Catalina.
     
“Father or mother, it matters not,” he said. “Both are Spanish. The girl will surely stand out among these pasty-faced English.”
     
“Not even all of the Spanish look Spanish. Better not to rely on that image to find her.” Gaspar hung up one of Diego’s shirts. “I wouldn’t trust that teacher’s word,either. Teachers must be discreet. Servants, however, can be bought.”
     
“Fine,” Diego said irritably. “Feel free to establish a connection with a servant if you think that’s best. I intend to work on the schoolteacher.”
     
He and Gaspar had perfected their technique during two months of trailing about Britain, pretending to seek out sites for a pleasure garden. First, locate the daughter of the next man on their list of soldiers who’d served in Gibraltar. Then glean whatever knowledge they could about the female from servants and acquaintances. Finally, insinuate themselves into the lady’s intimate circle to determine if she was the one they sought.
     
It had not helped that the marqués had given them so little information to go on. All he could tell them was that his granddaughter’s nurse had run off with a soldier from the Forty-second Regiment fifteen years ago, stealing his four-year-old granddaughter in the process. He’d had no name for the man, no description, and little description of the nurse. Only recently had he even learned that the nurse’s lover was an English soldier.
     
Diego and Gaspar had laboriously compiled a list of possible names. The four women they had already investigated had lacked backgrounds that fit the facts. Their sources had said that the daughter of the next soldier on their list was presently enrolled at Mrs. Harris’s School for Young Ladies.
     
Their sources had damned well better be right. He was tired of this madness.
     
With a flick of his fingers, Diego returned the miniature to his pocket. “I believe the teacher will be more useful for our purpose than any servant.” Liar. It had nothing to do with her usefulness. Diego was simply galled that he had not succeeded better with her. She had actually laughed at his compliments!
     
When Gaspar snorted, Diego turned to find the man watching him, eyes as sharp as ever. Gaspar pointed his chin at the window. “So, what’s her name?”
     
Diego gritted his teeth. “I did not…catch it.”
     
Understandably, Gaspar raised an eyebrow at that. Diego always “caught” people’s names. His memory