The Marquess Read Online Free PDF Page A

fingers and stopped before they
reached the carriage. The older statesman presented an expressionless visage as
he studied the intruder.
    “If you know that,” Neville said, “then you
know the magistrate is a sapskulled idiot who thinks an unhappy employee set
it. Blanche’s servants are never unhappy. The house was nearly two
centuries old. It was a firetrap.”
    “The magistrate arrived in time to observe that the
fire came out all the downstairs windows before moving up. A fire started in
one place goes directly up before spreading out. I have enough experience to
have observed that on any number of occasions myself. That fire must have
started in several downstairs locations at once to spread in that manner.”
    The duke stared over O’Toole’s shoulder at the
narrow village town houses leaning up against one another. Had Blanche’s
house not been separated from the village by a narrow park, the whole town
could have gone up in flames. He gritted his teeth and returned his glare to
the stranger whose face now disappeared in shadow beneath the wide brim of his
hat.
    “What in hell kind of business are you in that you
have such wide experience with fires?”
    “Military, Your Grace,” O’Toole answered snappily.
“Until the end of the late war, I was an officer on the Continent as well
as the Americas. You have heard, of course, of how we burned the capital of
that country to the ground? I learned a great deal from that event which I
found useful when Napoleon emerged from hiding later. But that is not my
specialty.”
    “I suppose your specialty is finding runaway
heiresses?” Neville asked snidely.
    O’Toole shrugged. “I would not say offhand that
she ran away. She could have been stolen. As injured as she was, I would say
that the more likely answer. My specialty is finding people who are considered
unreachable.”
    Neville strode impatiently toward the carriage. “That
is faradiddle. The military does not run a lost and found.”
    O’Toole made a polite cough as he unhurriedly kept up
with the duke’s longer strides. “I did not say people who are lost.
I said people who are considered unreachable.”
    The duke stopped and stared. Growing impatient, the earl
continued on down the hill to yell at the coach driver.
    “You’re saying you were a spy. Do you have
references?”
    O’Toole gave a deprecating smile. “I could give
the name of my commanding officer, but he only handed me my orders. You
don’t really think anyone in the ministry would willingly admit to my
existence, would you? You need only pay my daily expenses if I fail. Such a sum
is trifling if I have a chance of succeeding, and I can assure you, I have a
very good chance of succeeding. I have already told you more than you knew
before.” O’Toole removed a card from a gold carrying case and
handed it over.
    At this point Neville was prepared to pay the devil himself
if he offered to find Blanche. He glanced at the card, scowled at the Mayfair
address, and reached for his purse. “How could a scoundrel like you have
a nobleman’s address?”
    O’Toole turned his face up to the sun and smiled. “I
live a charmed life, I suppose.”
    Neville didn’t have time to ask more. The damned earl
had set the coach in motion. He had to return to London. With an air of
resignation, he handed over a hundred-pound note. “This should be
sufficient to set the entire countryside on fire. I want her found, do you
understand me? If you don’t, I’ll have your head on a platter. If
you do, I’ll see you amply rewarded.”
    O’Toole whistled as he tucked the note into his pocket
and watched the duke hurry down the hill toward the waiting carriage. A hundred
pounds was a hundred pounds. The duke could spare it. He knew others who could
use it more.
    Smiling cheerfully, Michael strolled back up the hill in the
direction of the now cold ashes of a once lovely Elizabethan cottage.
    * * * *
    Exhaustion finally overcoming her need for exploring