Trapped by Scandal by Jane Feather

Author:Jane Feather
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

SEVENTEEN

It was still dark, although the first faint glimmer of gray showed in the eastern sky when William and Hero left the house on Half Moon Street. The streets were still quiet, although it would not be long before the first costermongers, milkmaids, and barrow boys made their appearance. At the end of Half Moon Street on the corner of Curzon Street, a carriage waited, bearing the Bruton arms. Hero didn’t inquire how or when the mews had been told to send the carriage for her at precisely four thirty in the morning. William would have arranged it in his usual seamless fashion.

He handed her up into the carriage and stood for a moment, one boot resting on the footstep, his arm along the edge of the open window. “I’ll see you this evening.” His eyes still held the residual glow of the passionate hours they had just passed.

“At seven o’clock.” She smiled, leaned through the window, and lightly kissed his mouth.

“Go,” he said, stepping back hastily, casting a quick glance around.

Hero grinned. “Oh, so cautious,” she mocked. “Every right-thinking person is tucked up in his bed at this hour.”

He said nothing, but his face closed, and he turned away without a further gesture of farewell. The coachman’s whip cracked, and the carriage moved off in the direction of Grosvenor Square.

William walked home, wondering what hold Hero had over him that she could so easily overcome his hard-fought resolution. His fears for her reputation were one thing, but now he had Everard Dubois to add to the equation. If the Lizard was playing in the open now, it would be to disarm his quarry. But William couldn’t see how his old enemy thought he could do that just by making himself visible. But he was up to something, and that meant that William and every one of his associates would have to be even more alert. And that included Hero, since, as seemed obvious, he had so spectacularly failed to exclude her from his life.

Every inch of him was resistant to involving her in that world again, whatever her brother had said, but the minute he took her into his confidence, she would see herself as involved, and he knew her well enough to know that she would embrace that involvement with open arms. But if he said nothing to her, she would continue to behave with her habitual reckless disregard for convention and would inevitably come to the notice of the Lizard and his cohorts.

His alternative, of course, was to follow Alec’s advice and make use of her as he had done in Paris. If he had to take her into his confidence, then why not make the most of what she had to offer? Not only was she clever, resourceful, careful when she recognized the need to be, and quick to respond to danger, but she was perfectly placed to do what needed to be done. On the whole, he decided, she would be safer being a part of his enterprise.

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