The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3)(119)

Standing at full height, he grasped the ends of the towel with large hands to keep it shadowing his face like the hood of a cloak. He was still bared to the waist, and his woolen trousers rested low across lean hips. Portia’s attention was immediately snared by the way muscles cut across his abdomen and angled past his hips in intriguing lines she hadn’t known the human body possessed.

Her breath arrested quite forcefully on its way out of her lungs. Her knees locked, rooting her to the floor. And a frightening shiver skittered down her spine, while another entirely unfamiliar sensation rippled through her insides.

There was something inherently dangerous about the man before her. Though his posture gave no indication of a threat, it was there anyway. In the subtle tightening of those angular muscles across his chest and abdomen and the way she could feel him staring at her, though she couldn’t see his face beneath the deep shadow created by the towel.

Portia swallowed hard and lifted her chin.

She could not back down. Lily needed her to follow this through. No matter how intimidating the circumstances, it could not be close to what her sister was likely enduring even now.

“Wot should I do with her?”

Portia tensed.

“Nothing,” Honeycutt/Turner/Nightshade replied darkly, sending a shiver down Portia’s spine. “I will handle her. Go ready the carriage.”

The butler left the room, and Portia squared her shoulders, forcing herself to continue. “I am not leaving until you promise to do everything in your power to retrieve my sister.”

“Then you delay me unnecessarily,” he replied tersely. “I always do everything in my power.” He turned and crossed to where a set of clothes had been laid out over a chair. With his back to her, he dropped the towel and bent to retrieve his clothing. She was so distracted by the sight of his woolen trousers tightening briefly over very firm masculine buttocks that she only just then noticed his new clothing was sewn together as one piece in the same manner as Honeycutt’s costume.

In the moment before he drew the garment over his head, Portia noted his hair was not the pale blond and gray it had been as Honeycutt. It appeared much darker, with some caramel-colored streaks, though that impression could have been a trick of the candlelight reflecting on the damp, tousled locks.

He spoke with his back still to her. “If Hale is not behind your sister’s abduction, what would you have me do? Young women disappear off the streets all the time and are most often never seen again.”

Panic and pain lanced through her center, and her stomach churned queasily. She could not contemplate such a possibility. “I do not accept that.”

“You may have to.”

“It has to be Hale,” she insisted. “It is the only thing that even partially makes sense.”

He grunted at that but did not reply as he walked back to take a seat before the mirror. She noticed that he was very careful to keep his face averted. From where she stood, all she saw in the mirror was the empty space over his shoulder.

“Take the old lady home so I can do what you hired me to do.”

Portia’s mind whirled as a strange resistance settled deep in her bones. She stood stiffly, watching as he reached for the towel again and draped it around his shoulders. Then he expertly applied a black, greasy substance to his hair, which had started to dry in a riotous mess. The grease smoothed his hair back along his skull, completely eliminating any suggestion of lighter streaks. After washing his hands in the water basin, he began applying something to his face. His movements were swift and competent, as though he had performed these same actions a thousand times.

Portia watched in silent fascination. Sidling farther into the room, she tried to get a better view, wondering why he donned his disguise so openly in front of her.

By the time she got around to where she could see his face, however, she realized why he hadn’t bothered to chase her off before beginning his ministrations.

He had become a different person.

Not quite as old as Honeycutt, this incarnation appeared perhaps thirty-five to forty, with black hair, a slightly swarthy skin tone, imposing black eyebrows, and a thin black mustache. Put together with the simple white shirt, navy-blue coat, and the basic neckcloth he had donned, he looked like a man of the upper middle class. A lawyer perhaps, or a banker.

She stared in amazement at how completely he had transformed from the forgettable Mr. Honeycutt to this strange man in a matter of minutes. And all while effectively preventing her from seeing anything of his true self—aside from his bare upper body and a firm backside, which she was not likely to forget anytime soon.

Her amazement shifted in an instant to admiration and then determination.

“I am going with you,” she declared.





Four


Dell Turner—who occasionally went by the names Honeycutt, Black, Nightshade, and a host of others—pretended not to hear her. The ridiculous announcement did not deserve a response.

He crossed the room to an oversize bureau in the corner and opened the top drawer to choose some accessories to complete his guise. A watch fob, a pair of leather gloves, a specially designed pistol that he slid into the pocket of his coat. The knife already strapped to his ankle rarely left his person. His line of work tended to become dangerous on occasion.

He didn’t expect any specific trouble from Hale, but it was essential to be prepared for anything.