The Lord and the Wayward Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

pins.
    ‘Your admirer coming back today, Nell?’ Mary Wright’s pert question had her almost swallowing the pins.
    Nell stuck them safely in her pincushion and shook her head. ‘He’s no admirer of mine, if you mean Mr Salterton. I’m just the one who delivers the hats.’
    ‘And does final fittings,’ one of the girls muttered. It was a sore point that Nell had the opportunity to go out and about and to visit the fine houses the other milliners could only dream about entering. Her more refined speech and ladylike manners had not been lost on Madame.
    ‘Well, he only wanted a parcel delivered,’ she said, skewering the finished rosette with a pin and reaching for her needle.
    ‘I’d deliver a parcel for him, any time,’ Polly Lang chipped in. ‘He’s a fine man, he is.’
    ‘How can you tell?’ Nell’s needle hung in mid-air as she stared at Polly’s round, freckled countenance. ‘I’ve never seen more than a glimpse of him.’
    ‘He’s got money; he can have a face like a bailiff, for all I care,’ Polly retorted with a comical grin. ‘You must have seen his clothes. Lovely coats he’s got. And his boots. And he’s dark. I like that in a man, mysterious. I reckon he’s an Italian count or summat, incogerneeto, or whatever you call it.’
    ‘Incognito,’ Nell murmured, setting the first stitch. ‘He’s certainly that.’
    The shop bell tinkled in the distance and Nell stabbed herself. Feminine voices. She relaxed, sucking the drop of blood from her finger. He wouldn’t come back, she told herself; he had done whatever he had intended. Madame was not going to receive any more orders for extravagant hats fit only for high-flyers.
    But how had a man with some grudge against the Carlows found her, of all people? Surely it could not be coincidence? The dark, controlled face of Lord Stanegate came back to her and she shivered again, a strange heat mingling with the anxiety. She had made an enemy there and somewhere out in the fog-bound city was another man, one whose face she could not quite picture, who might feel his unwitting tool was a danger to him.
    The second rosette slipped wildly out of shape. She must be very, very careful, Nell resolved as she began to form it again, wishing she understood what she had become embroiled in.

Chapter Three
    M arcus sat back against the carriage squabs and waited, patient as a cat at a mouse hole, his eyes on the back door of the smart little shop with its glossy dark green paint, gilt lettering and array of fancy hats in each window.
    It had taken Hawkins just twenty-four hours to identify three milliners using the plait. It came from a small Buckinghamshire village and cost double the price of the more common patterns, he reported. Armed with Marcus’s description of Miss Smith, one of the Hawkins daughters had penetrated the workrooms of each, pretending to be seeking employment, and had reported back that a young woman answering to that description was working for Madame Elizabeth’s establishment in the City.
    He had been there since four, the carriage drawn up off Poultry in St Mildred Court, as if waiting for someone to come out of the church. Ladies had gone in and out of the shop, deliveries had been made, a few girls had run out to the pie seller and scurried back, but there had been no sign of the thin girl with hazel-green eyes.
    Now—he checked his watch as the bells of the City’s churches began to chime—it was six and the fog was dark and dirty, full of smoke, swirling in the wake of the carriages, turning the torches and flares a sickly yellow.
    Blinking to try to maintain focus, Marcus missed the door opening for a moment, then half a dozen young women spilled out onto the street, pulling shawls tight around their shoulders, chattering as they split up and began to make their way home.
    ‘John!’ The coachman leaned down from the box. ‘The taller one heading up past the Mansion House. Don’t let her see us.’
    She looked tired,