Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(96)

Blinking, Cora rose to a sitting position. After a lazy stretch, she peered out the window, just as they were drawing up to the house.

“La!” she said. “Isn’t that just the picture of a fright. I’m not staying in the coach alone. I want to come in with you.”

“We don’t know what we’ll meet with inside,” Rhys said. “There may be danger.”

“I thought I was here to identify the man. How can I do that from here? I tell you, I’m not staying in this coach.”

As the carriage rolled to a halt, Bellamy leaned forward. “What will you do? Run off into the fog again?”

“I didn’t run off into the fog. I do know better than that, it’s just what everyone assumed.” She sighed. “I suppose I’m used to being thought stupid.”

“You’d rather be thought a whore?”

“I’m not a whore! Not any longer. I never took a penny from Mr. Myles. It wasn’t at all like you’re thinking.” She cast a brief, fearful look at Rhys. “Or what you supposed, my lord. Gideon was very kind to me. We have a great deal in common, it seems. We talked all night. Mostly.”

“Oh, mostly,” Bellamy echoed. “And now I suppose you’re in love with this criminal.”

“What if I were?” Cora said. “I don’t see that it’s any of your affair.”

“The way you were so in love with Leo after an hour in his company, then stripped his corpse of every last coin before dumping it on my doorstep?”

Cora’s lip quivered. “I can’t believe you’d say that. I might have left Leo there, you know. Let him die on the street, unclaimed and alone.”

Rhys sighed heavily. “Leave off, Bellamy. God only knows what manner of lies the cur fed her, just to get under her skirts. She’s not a bad girl, just too easily swayed.”

Cora’s bronze lashes trembled as she studied her hands. “Perhaps I am.”

Bellamy said hotly, “I’m only—”

“You’re only being an ass. I know. We’re all getting weary of it. Let’s hope it’s a curable condition.”

He suspected it was. Bellamy was clearly still mourning the loss of his friend. He was hungry for answers; Cora craved affection. Rhys sympathized with them both, but he wasn’t good with comfort or diplomacy. He had precisely two methods at his disposal for remedying people’s problems: his right fist and his left. Yesterday he’d dealt with Gideon Myles. Today he’d see about Faraday.

The coach door swung open. Bellamy curled his fingers over the rooftop edge to help himself out. “Come along, then. Both of you.”

Rhys went first, then handed Cora out. They crossed an archipelago of stepping stones to reach the front entrance.

Bellamy extended his walking stick and rapped smartly on the door. “Hullo! We’re here for Mr. Peter Faraday.”

No answer. After a minute of waiting, Bellamy banged on the door again. “Hullo in there. Hullo!”

The latch scraped. Finally, the door creaked open a space of inches. An ancient manservant revealed a thin slice of himself through the crack. Not that he likely had much more to show them. He was rather a thin slice of a man to start, dusted with powder-white hair. He’d missed a button on his waistcoat, and as the result or perhaps the cause, his whole body was askew.

“Beg pardon,” Bellamy told the aging servant. “We’ve traveled from London to speak with Mr. Peter Faraday on a matter of some urgency.”

The old man grunted. “Urgency? There’s nothing urgent in this neighborhood, save my need to make water in the night. Furthermore, it’s not noon yet, so Mr. Faraday is not at home to callers.”

“Good Lord, man. This isn’t Mayfair. Damn your receiving hours. We’re here now, and we demand to see him. If you won’t step aside, we shall have to move you.”

With a wheeze of indignation, the old man said, “You haven’t even offered your card.”

Sighing with impatience, Bellamy reached into his breast pocket and withdrew two coins. Rhys recognized one as a brass Stud Club token.

“This is our card. Show it to your master.” In the old man’s other palm, he dropped a guinea. “This one is for you.”

The aging butler’s hoary eyebrows rose. His fingers curled over the coins. “Wait here, gentlemen, if you’d be so kind.”

Within the minute, he’d returned. He placed the brass token—only—back in Bellamy’s hand. “Mr. Faraday will see you in the drawing room.”

They followed the butler down a narrow corridor that seemed to have warped and twisted with age. The drawing room was empty, and the butler left them yet again, with no word as to when they might expect their host.

“You wait here.” Bellamy dragged an armchair to the far corner of the room and settled Cora in it, partly behind a small screen. She wouldn’t be immediately noticed there.

For his part, Rhys took a seat on a threadbare divan and propped one boot on the small, square table before him.

Bellamy did not approve. “You’ve been sitting in the carriage all day,” he said. “Do you have to sit down now? You’re supposed to hulk in the corner and look threatening. Menacing, not … cozy.”

Ignoring him, Rhys stretched his arm across the back of the divan and surveyed the meager furnishings and cobwebbed corners. “I thought this was supposed to be a well-heeled dandy we’re chasing. Perhaps all his fortune is sunk into gold embroidery. It’s certainly not poured into the furnishings.”