“Because if he makes you unhappy, then I’ll be unhappy, and Geoffrey and I have been down that road before.”
She studied his eyes. A vise slowly tightened about her lungs. Then she forced in a breath, lifted her head, fixed her gaze over his left shoulder, and stated, “If you imagine I’ll be grateful…”
Her courage failed her; she couldn’t go on. But he thought her a widow, and clearly had a certain interest, and just possibly imagined….
He frowned at her; from the corner of her eye she watched…it took a moment for him to follow her reasoning, then his eyes flared. His lips set in a thin line. The fingers about her hand tightened; the hand at her back tensed… then, very slowly, eased.
Eyes narrow, Tony waited; when she didn’t look at him, he looked away, unseeing. After a moment, he exhaled. “You are without doubt the most difficult female I’ve ever—” He bit the words off, abruptly stopped as his temper threatened to erupt. When he had his fury once more in hand, he drew breath and went on, his voice low, tight, very definitely just for her. “I’m not helping you in the expectation of gaining any specific…” He cast about in his mind, but could only come up with, “Service.”
Her eyes flicked to his face, wide, curious, wanting to know.
He trapped her gaze. “I want you, but not as a result of any damned gratitude!”
Her eyes remained on his, then scanned his features. “Why, then”—her voice, too, was low, intensely private—“are you helping me?”
For an instant, he inwardly rocked, then he found the right words—words he could say. “Because you deserve it. Because you and your sister and your demon brothers don’t deserve the censure of the ton, let alone being implicated in a murder.”
For a long moment, she held his gaze, then her lips gently lifted. “Thank you.” She looked away; he only just caught her last words. “You’re a good man.”
He wasn’t quite so good as he would have her believe, but he definitely wasn’t expecting her gratitude to stretch as far as an invitation to her bed. He did expect to be invited to her bed, but not because of his efforts on her behalf.
The next morning, he was still… not so much smarting as ruffled, a disordered sensation he appreciated not at all. A vague disgruntlement that she’d even imagined that he might need to resort to gratitude—
He cut off the thought and headed for the Bastion Club.
Sanity in a disconcerting world—a world with females in it.
He was looking for advice. In the club’s drawing room, he found Christian Allardyce slouched in an armchair, his long legs stretched out, ankles crossed, a news sheet propped before his face. He lowered it as Tony entered.
“Ho! And here I’ve been wondering about these tales of you stumbling over a dead body.”
Tony grimaced. “All true, I’m afraid, and there’s a deadly twist. The game’s fallen into Dalziel’s lap, and guess who he’s tapped on the shoulder?”
Christian’s brows rose. “And you agreed?”
Elegantly sitting in another chair, Tony shrugged. “Aside from the fact that refusing Dalziel is marginally more difficult than taking an enemy battery single-handed, there were other aspects that attracted me.”
“Quite apart from tripping over the body.”
“Indeed. From what we have, the man was a traitor of sorts.” Crisply, he outlined what he knew of Ruskin, omitting all mention of one lovely widow. After describing the payments made by A. C., he went on, “I wondered if perhaps, if A. C. was truly wise, he might have channeled the payments through a moneylender.”
Christian opened his eyes wide. “Used a moneylender to draw the large sums, then paid them back with numerous smaller amounts much easier to explain from his own accounts?”
“Exactly. Do you think that’s possible?”
Christian nodded. “I would say so.” He met Tony’s gaze. “Certainly worth asking.”
“Next question: who do I ask? I’ve never had any dealings with such gentlemen.”
“Ah! You’ve come to the right source.”
It was Tony’s turn to open his eyes wide. “I would never have imagined you deep in debt and reduced to dealing with moneylenders.”
Christian grinned and laid aside the news sheet. “No, I never was. But I once bailed out a friend, and along the way I made the acquaintance of a good handful of the gentlemen. Enough, certainly, to start you on your way.”
Folding his hands across his waistcoat, Christian leaned his head back; eyes on the ceiling, he started recounting all he knew.
Tony drank it in. At the end of fifteen minutes, he knew exactly who to approach, and even more importantly, how.