To Distraction (Bastion Club 5)

If the situation warranted it. She’d long ago learned not to rush a “rescue.” Much better to take an extra day and be sure, but if after she met the Chifleys’ eldest son and got some idea of the household she deemed the young governess at immediate risk, then they would act tonight, no matter the difficulties.

Skinner grunted and went off to send the message.

Phoebe gave her attention to her tea and toast, swiftly reviewing the engagements she and Edith had planned for that day. She and her aunt had an unspoken agreement; as, regardless of Phoebe’s age, Edith stood essentially in loco parentis, no specific description of the agency and its works, let alone Phoebe’s central role in both, had ever fallen on Edith’s ears.

She knew, of course, but not having heard the facts stated, she felt no obligation to report to her brother what was, after all, only “female intuition, if not mere speculation”—something Phoebe’s father would be the first to discount.

Edith had always, from the first, supported Phoebe’s “little crusade.” Phoebe hadn’t explained what had driven her to take up such a cause, but she’d long suspected Edith had read between the lines and understood. Regardless, if she required assistance of the sort her aunt or her cronies could provide, she only had to ask.

Pouring herself another cup of tea, Phoebe considered how best to engineer a social meeting with the Chifleys’ son.

Five minutes later, she realized her mind had wandered. With a guilty start, she hauled it back, faintly appalled at how constantly thoughts of Deverell intruded on her mind. Thoughts of how he made her feel, of the emotions that ran rampant when she was with him—of how much more this liaison of theirs had grown to be, so much more than she’d imagined, so much more addictive.

All day, every day, she looked forward to the night, to being with him, in his arms again, to experiencing the next plateau of sensual delight, not just the sensations but the feelings, too, that welled and cascaded through her. With him, only him. Her lips felt permanently sensitized, her body more alive, every nerve more aware; at her own instigation, she’d become enmeshed in a sensual web, yet the fascination he exerted, the quality in him that held her attention so effortlessly, wasn’t that, or not only that.

What it was…

She frowned, pondering, then realized.

With a muttered oath, she read herself a stern, mentally strident lecture on where her priorities lay. She had the agency and her purpose in life, and people who depended on her—they had to be her first consideration. Dallying with a too-handsome viscount was all very well, but what lay between them, intense and exciting though it might be, was a liaison, nothing more.

That was all she was prepared to allow, and her first priority ensured that that was all it would ever be.

Deverell wasn’t the fulcrum of her life—her work was. She clearly needed to keep that point uppermost in her mind.

Apropos of which…after their interlude last night, she’d made it patently, abundantly, insistently clear that she expected to take her last and final step into intimacy tonight. If instead she had to organize and carry out a rescue, then she wouldn’t be meeting Deverell in Lady Fortescue’s ballroom, and her final plunge into intimacy wouldn’t take place. At least not tonight. Courtesy dictated she send him a note to inform him of that fact, but…if she did, he’d immediately guess she was up to something.

The damned man was already watching the house, making organizing things doubly difficult. Serve him and his arrogance right if he turned up at Lady Fortescue’s and discovered she wasn’t there. He’d be irritated and annoyed, and doubtless she’d later have to do something to appease him—her traitorous senses came alert at the thought—but, she concluded, ruthlessly suppressing them, that would be later, after the rescue; simply discovering her absent from the ball wouldn’t tell him anything.

It wouldn’t lead him to the agency and her secret.

But that was assuming the rescue would indeed have to be staged tonight. First things first.

Setting down her empty cup, she rose and crossed to her armoire. Opening the doors, she stood back and contemplated the best gown in which to interrogate Lady Chifley.

An hour later, Deverell leisurely descended the stairs at the club, summoned by the succulent aromas of coffee and bacon. Ambling into the dining room, he headed for the table.

Gasthorpe looked up from the sideboard. “Good morning, my lord. There’s a message just arrived for you.”

Lifting a silver salver, Gasthorpe crossed to the head of the table, where Deverell had elected to sit.

“Thank you.” Deverell lifted the folded note from the

tray and recognized Montague’s neat script. He smiled. “And a very good day it’s shaping up to be.”

And if he had any say in it, the night would be even better.

Breaking the seal, he spread the sheets, picked up the coffee cup Gasthorpe had filled, sipped, and started to read.

The first three lines had him smiling again. “Well, well.”

“Good news, my lord?”

“Indeed.” Phoebe’s bank drafts—all of them—had been paid to the account of the Athena Agency. Montague had, of course, dug further; the Athena Agency was an employment agency “specializing in the employment of superior young women in genteel establishments.”

The further Deverell read, the more he regretted not pressing Montague to take his wager. Neither he nor his man-of-business would ever have imagined the Athena Agency or anything like it as the recipient of Phoebe’s considerable largesse.

Following a summation of his financial scrutiny, Montague had listed the agency’s address—Kensington Church Street, a stultifyingly proper neighborhood—along with the registered principals of the business, a Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Birtles and a Mr. Loftus Coates.