Lady Unveiled (Daughters of Sin 5)

Kitty paused on the threshold. Dare she risk it in the time available? The box could be anywhere, and she had literally seconds. It was madness even to begin to look when any moment his Lordship would return. Then how could she explain herself?

She was about to slip back to Debenham’s private sitting room when through the partly open door, she caught a glimpse of the escritoire that might have been described by Sally. There was little time, but surely time enough to dart across to investigate?

The escritoire was closed, but the key was still in the door. Kitty opened it and within seconds was pulling out a small pewter box and, without even checking its contents, rushing to the mantelpiece. There was the vase that had been described. She dipped her hand in and, to her astonishment, felt the key at the bottom. Even as she ran Kitty was trying the key which, to her incredulity, fitted. She reached the sitting room just as she heard voices from farther up the passage. She’d not been gone more than a minute so accurate had Sally’s instructions been, but if she ran fast enough, she might even make it out into the corridor and around the corner before Lord Debenham returned.

Araminta arrived at the top of the stairs just as she saw Debenham approaching. He halted when he saw her, and his face went rigid. His lip twitched. Clearly, he was far from pleased to see her. She wondered what plans of his she might have derailed, and didn’t care. He’d be very pleased with her when she told him what she’d learned.

“You were staying with your sister, you told me.” His tone was curt, and his eyes glittered, reflecting the candle sconce above his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I missed you too much, my darling.” She didn’t expect him to believe her, but she made a good show of accompanying her words with a long, soulful look as she rested against the balustrade at the top of the staircase, and put her hands to her burning cheeks. She could still feel Teddy’s hot kisses branded there. He was her future, and she wasn’t going to let Debenham near her if she could help it.

But Debenham was too valuable to have been thrown to the wolves, much as she’d have loved to have done the pushing herself.

“Well, you’ve completely turned my plans for this evening upside down,” he grumbled. “Now you’ll expect me to entertain you when I had other plans.”

“Such as entertaining a rather fetching actress?” His expletive made her laugh. “Don’t think ferreting out information is your preserve, darling. I’m rather good at that. Always have been, and it’s what I learned tonight that had me rushing over here with rather more haste than I might have otherwise done.”

“Jealousy?”

“I would prefer to think you had a shred of loyalty toward your wife, but I gave up on that hope long ago. I am resigned to the fact that loyalty is a foreign concept to you, so no, it was not jealousy that brought me here.”

He laughed. “Concern? Love or desire?” He looked anxious to leave. Raising his eyebrows, he added with heavy cynicism, “It must have been a particularly strong emotion to have caused you to act so out of character.”

“Well…” She drew out the word, so he could see she had something important to say. “You are my husband, and if I learn of a plot that endangers your financial interests through your likely arrest for treason, I have a vested interest in acquainting you of such a dastardly plan.”

“Oh, so you’d not mourn if I hanged, but you are concerned with how your financial interests would be affected.”

“Precisely.”

He chuckled. “My dear, my secrets are under lock and key. Not even you know how to ferret them out of me or indeed where they may possibly be.”

His supreme arrogance irritated Araminta. She closed the distance between them and ran her fingers up his sleeve. “I may not, but word has it there’s someone who’s going to make a good job of trying.”

He snorted.

“A little birdie told me that someone, in fact, does know where you keep your secrets under lock and key.”

He regarded her lazily beneath his hooded eyes, his silence spurring her on. Yes, she’d tell him, but she’d draw it out. Make him wait.

“In fact, a certain person who is not at all the kind of creature I’d associate with and who, in fact, you shouldn’t either—except that I know how susceptible you are to a pretty face.” While her words sounded as if they were coated in butter, there was a jagged edge to Araminta’s fury. How had she remained in ignorance for so long that Kitty La Bijou was her sister? All this time the girl had pretended ignorance, but she must be filled with spite and envy that Araminta had what she’d been denied. Miss Bijou must have been carefully plotting to bring to fruition her evil plan—the total destruction of Araminta’s life.

“For God’s sake, Araminta, stop talking in riddles and get to the point. Yes, I’m interested if there is something to suggest a threat against me, though doubtless your only motivation in forewarning me is to save your own skin.”

“Precisely, darling, which is why you should listen to me and why I am, in this instance, so very valuable to you. All right.” She rolled her eyes. “I believe you’ve made arrangements to entertain Miss Kitty La Bijou after tomorrow night’s performance, and I have it on good authority that she has an ulterior motive for agreeing so readily to your charms.”

Just saying the name brought the acid to her mouth, but she went on sweetly, “She is very jealous of me and has been telling terrible lies about me, did you know. But worse is the fact that she knows about a certain box—” Araminta stopped and called after him as her husband turned on his heel and tore up the passage. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Debenham run in his life.

Kitty slipped out of Lord Debenham’s bedchamber with literally a split second to spare before the sound of his footsteps around the next bend alerted her to the fact he was on the warpath. She couldn’t believe it. She had it. The pewter box was in her hands, and it had been so simple.

But how to continue to avoid detection? Surely someone would challenge a strange young lady in an evening gown?

Kitty kept to the back stairs where the lighting was dim, and the corridors were empty. If she could successfully weave her way through the catacombs of Lord Debenham’s spacious London townhouse, she should eventually find her way to the basement and so to the welcoming outdoors.

When she did manage this, blinking in the moonlight at the top of the stairs that led from the coal delivery access, she set her footsteps for north.

She couldn’t go home to her lodgings. While she’d pretended she no longer had the right to live there, it would be the first place Lord Debenham would seek her out as he undoubtedly would do. If the box she had in her arms contained the secrets of which he was suspected, he’d kill to keep her from handing them over. She had to be swift and canny.

She couldn’t go to Lissa. Not at this late hour.