She gave him a knowing glance. “Is dangling such a treat before me meant to advance your matrimonial plans?”
Rayne smiled. “In part.”
“Your offer is indeed tempting, but with the salary I will earn from my new position, I can afford to subscribe to a lending library.”
“Then let us see if I can conceive of a better way to influence you….”
Continuing his plan to woo her, Rayne escorted Madeline to a nearby tea shop, where he bought her three different flavors of ices over her objections, as well as one for himself.
“This is truly decadent,” she murmured when they were seated at a table by the window overlooking the busy street. “I haven’t tasted an ice in years, and now I have an overabundance.”
Her enjoyment of the sweets, however, seemed to match her enjoyment of watching the passersby outside the shop window, Rayne noted. Under that spinsterish exterior, Madeline Ellis had a hunger for living that was palpable.
Rayne waited until she had finished every last spoonful of her ices before standing and holding out his hand to her.
“Come, we should go. I don’t want to be late to the soirée.”
Madeline looked puzzled as he helped her to rise. “I thought we had more than an hour before it begins.”
“We won’t be going there directly. We need to make a stop at my London home first to collect a few access
ories.”
“What accessories?”
“I want to replace your cloak, for one thing, and dress up your gown a bit.”
“What is wrong with my gown?” Madeline asked, her chin lifting in a position of pride.
His gaze dropped to the lavender crepe dress she wore under her drab brown cloak. “Nothing is wrong with it,” Rayne said, keeping his tone mild. “But for you to be welcomed by Madame Sauville’s guests, you need to look the part. The aristocrats there put great store in dressing well—I suspect because they cling to the grandeur they once knew before the Revolution, or would have known had they not been exiled and stripped of their lands and fortunes. Additionally, I need to change my own attire for something more appropriate to carrying a packet of concealed letters.”
“Oh,” Madeline said, seemingly mollified.
She willingly accompanied Rayne back to his coach, and, while driving to his house on Bedford Avenue, she commented on his choice of professions.
“It is curious that the heir to an earldom would become an agent for British Intelligence. How did you become involved in spying in the first place?”
Rayne’s mouth curved in remembrance. “Would you believe a stolen loaf of bread inspired my career?”
“Truly? I should like to hear that story.”
Deciding there was no harm in Madeline knowing how he had gotten his start as a spy, he told her the truth.
“I had a great deal of restless energy as a boy, for which I could find adequate outlets in the country, at Haviland Park. But when my parents came to London for the Season, I frequently escaped my tutors and spent numerous hours prowling parts of the city far from Mayfair. One day when I was eleven, I happened upon a ragged lad about my same age who had been apprehended by a baker for stealing a loaf of bread. The thief likely would have hanged or wasted his life away in prison, and since I didn’t think that fair for so minor a crime, I created a diversion and helped him escape from the baker. We became fast friends after that.”
Madeline’s eyes were bright and eager as she prodded him for more details. “I would imagine your parents were not happy about your new acquaintance.”
Smiling wryly, Rayne nodded. “My parents cared little about how I spent my time, but they would have been horrified to know I was associating with such riffraff. My thieving friend came from the London stews. With no home or family, he was living in alleys, scrounging for scraps to survive. I was horrified by his circumstance, so I gave him the funds for food and decent lodgings, but while he was grateful to have enough to eat, he refused to be confined to civilized surroundings. After living on the streets for so long, he was a bit savage, like a feral fox.”
“So how did that lead to you becoming a spy?”
“To satisfy my curiosity and my longing for adventure, my new friend introduced me to the sordid but fascinating London underworld and taught me some rather unique skills that were critical to his way of life—such as how to pilfer and to slip in and out of places undetected. And in exchange, I taught him how to pass for a gentleman … how to speak properly, to read, to ride, to shoot and fence. I thought it a great lark at the time, but years later we put our skills to good use. We both joined the Foreign Office and then worked our way up the ranks.”
“So you saved a stranger’s life, and in turn, he changed yours,” Madeline said softly, admiration clear in her eyes.
“A fate for which I will always be grateful,” Rayne acknowledged. “Otherwise I might have ended up a reckless care-for-nothing buck with too much time on my hands, getting into the kinds of scrapes Freddie regularly lands himself in, or worse.”
“I doubt that would ever be possible,” Madeline murmured. “You were meant to be a knight in shining armor.”