The door of a parked carriage flew open, and a head popped out. “Bretagne!”
Hortense.
Already on the run, relief flooded Percy as he, once again, grabbed Izzy’s hand. He couldn’t have her getting ideas of flight. He needed her alive and talking.
Once they reached the hackney, Tilly gave a great leap and dove in, followed by Izzy who, when she reached the top step, tipped backward. Without a second thought, Percy gave her rather well-formed rump a shove, and in she gracelessly lurched. He shouted up to the driver, “Go, go, go,” before following suit and slamming the door shut behind them.
Inside, he claimed the leather bench beside Izzy—Hortense and Tilly seated opposite—as the hackney jolted into motion. He peered through the tiny window at his back and found the doorman slowing to a defeated stop. The man never had a chance. Percy turned and met Hortense’s eye.
Unfazed by the events of the last thirty seconds, she asked, “Were these two your winnings?”
“The night got away from me.” It wasn’t untrue.
Hortense gave a slow nod and kept her thoughts to herself. Tilly exercised no such restraint. “Oh, we weren’t won. Or were ye, Izzy? Zounds! It ain’t me ’oo knows what’s ’appenin’.”
Percy kept his gaze fixed on Hortense. She was waiting. “The night was a trap.”
“Of you?”
“No.”
Hortense lifted a single inquiring eyebrow.
“I don’t know who—” It hit him. He did know. But he wanted confirmation first. He turned to Izzy. “You said I was the wrong man.”
Her jaw clenched, and she attempted to wrest her arm free. When had he grabbed it again? “Can I release you?” he asked. Her mouth pressed into a stubborn line. “Hortense, the door.”
Hortense nodded and wrapped her hand around the latch. There would be no brash escape. Percy released Izzy’s wrist. As she rubbed it, he asked, “Who did Montfort tell you was the right man?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “You know Montfort?” The question emerged in a voice the contralto of smoke. A seductive voice, if one was in such a mood. “I was never given the right man’s name.”
“Then how did you come to pick me?”
“I was told to approach the man gambling at the hazard table at the exact place you occupied.”
“Were you given a description of the man?”
She shifted in discomfort. “Tall, dark, aristocratic.”
There. Just as he’d suspected. “The Earl of Pembroke.”
Hortense started in surprise. “You don’t mean—”
“Nick’s brother.”
“He’s the future Marquess of Clare.”
“If he doesn’t drink himself into an early grave,” Percy said slowly. A bigger picture began opening before him. “Pembroke is a future Member of Parliament.” He gave a humorless laugh. “Montfort isn’t out of the game.”
“And we thought he was simply padding his pockets with earnings from dens of iniquity.”
“This is about influence. Setting up a future marquess is political.”
Hortense shook her head and snorted in disbelief. “Leave it to you to stumble into this.”
Percy sat forward. “And”—he pinned Izzy with a hard glare—“you are involved.”
Tilly gasped, eyes wide above the hands covering her mouth.
“In your little game with Pembroke,” Percy continued, refusing to release Izzy’s gaze, “what was the prize to be?”
~ ~ ~
My maidenhead, Isabel didn’t say.
She couldn’t speak the awful truth aloud.
Are you a virgin? That had been the question that had truly sealed her fate and brought her to this night. She’d experienced a flush of heat at the blunt intimacy of the question. For a moment, she hadn’t known the correct answer.
Then she had. Only a few types of women were deemed worth anything by a man like Montfort and a virgin was one of them.
Yes, she’d replied.
It had been the correct answer.
The right man—most definitely not the man at her side—was to be seduced. Her directive had been simple: collect intimate information about his person and allow him to relieve her of her virginity. Stained sheets were to be the proof.
Her father would have been rescued from prison, and her family made whole again.
And this wolfish, devastating man next to her—Bretagne, she’d heard him called—who smelled better than he had a right to—was that sandalwood?—had wrecked it all to bits. Except . . .
He hadn’t done it alone.
It was she who was truly at fault for destroying her and her family’s future.
“Perhaps,” Bretagne began in that hard-edged, self-sure voice of his, “your friend can inform us of the details.”
“Leave Tilly out of it,” Isabel all but growled. “She knows nothing. I demand you stop this carriage and let us leave.”
He scoffed. “I can’t imagine that’s in your best interest.”
“I can assure you,” Isabel protested, “it is absolutely in my best interest that you let us go.”
She had to find a way to fix this night. How had it gone so wrong, so quickly?
“Whatever it is you’re not telling us,” Percy stated, “Montfort knows you know it.”
With those words, Isabel’s night went from bad to worse. Her best hope lay in the possibility of salvaging this night, but was it possible? The odds were looking worse by the minute.
“The safe house in Seven Dials,” supplied Hortense.
Bretagne shook his head. “Montfort could find her. We need to get her out of London.”
Out of London? Isabel snapped to. “You can stop discussing me like I’m not here.”
“I have a place I can take her,” Bretagne continued, ignoring Isabel’s protest. The statement emerged from his firm mouth so sure of itself, even Isabel almost thought the matter settled. Almost.