She would simply have to leave it behind. Time was of the essence and her cousin wouldn’t wait forever. Duncan was more apt to forget the reason he was waiting in the alley. Though she loved him dearly, he tended to be more than slightly beef-witted.
Jane adeptly maneuvered a path through the copse of nude statues, past the tufted rose hassock in the center of the carpet, and stopped behind a large fern on a pedestal near the camouflaged servant’s entrance.
And she was just in time, too.
At the precise instant that she stepped into the narrow servant’s corridor, she heard the unmistakable turn of a lock across the room. Someone was coming into the study!
Closing the door carefully, she hoped that no one would discover her or the scandalously affixed glove she’d left behind.
Chapter 2
Using the dim phosphorescent light from a small jar of glowworms—lampyris noctilua—in her reticule, Jane stealthily navigated the concealed passageway. She was immensely grateful for the architectural drawings she’d committed to memory beforehand. Otherwise, she might have taken a wrong turn and found herself in the kitchens.
Instead, she stepped through another hidden door in the corner of the main parlor. Tucking her makeshift lamp away, she went inside to learn all she could about a man’s primal nature.
A potted palm concealed her entrance from the small gathering of gentlemen and their paramours. An entrancing melody of flute, lyre and spinet drifted down from an ovoid minstrel’s gallery perched high in the far wall, effectively muting the click of the latch as she closed the door behind her.
The room was precisely as it had been described. Honestly, it was positively astounding what gentlemen spoke of at soirees when they forgot a member of the female sex was among them. Then again, she supposed that being practically invisible to men ought to have some advantages.
And now here she was, inside a veritable womb of wickedness.
Red-tinted globes diffused the sconce light, giving the room a crepuscular glow. Walls papered in oxblood silk were trimmed in ebony wood and adorned with long gilt-framed mirrors. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling was painted with a fresco of nude heavenly bodies in unabashed poses that, in many cases, appeared anatomically impossible. And, in a nearby corner, stood a mysterious curtained alcove swathed in black brocade.
The interior was completely immersed in darkness. It would be perfect!
Hidden behind her cloak and a convenient copse of palm trees, she crept to the shadowy nook like a zoologist on a London jungle expedition. The air was thick with jumentous body odors, poorly cloaked in perfumes. And peculiar porcine swoughs and squeals drifted down a recessed staircase tucked into the far wall beneath the gallery.
Utterly fascinating!
Peering through palm fronds, she spotted a pack of wild gentlemen—genus intoxicatus—playing cards at one of eight linen-draped tables. They tossed back their amber libations and communicated in grunts, snorts and nods to the cyprians draped in silken petticoats and colorful corsets.
In turn, these rouge-cheeked and kohl-eyed women fawned and fussed over them, enswathing their patrons’ necks in bare-armed embraces, displaying their voluptuous adornments in a proximity very near to smothering.
Strangely, the men appeared to enjoy the oxygen deprivation.
Jane pursed her lips in scholarly contemplation as she skirted, unnoticed, into the dark alcove. Absently, she speculated if a simple test to discover the difference between gentlemen and scoundrels might be the duration in which one could hold his breath. Perhaps, the longer the interval, the greater likelihood that he was, indeed, a scoundrel. Hmm . . .
To ensure she recalled this hypothesis later, she reached inside her reticule and withdrew a small ledger to scrawl a hasty note.
Lifting her gaze to the inhabitants of the room once more, she caught sight of a man standing beneath the arched doorway. He was lean and broad-shouldered. A fine figure of a man. But there was something guarded in the alert glance he swept over the room beneath the shadow of his brim. He was so intent in his scrutiny that even she scanned the room in speculation once more. Then her study returned to him as he doffed his hat, revealing hair as black as jet and eyes so pale and bright that she could see the glow of them from a distance. Her entire attention was ensnared by them.
A strange current of static electricity skittered up her spine and burrowed into the wispy brown curls at her nape, lifting them. If she were given to flights of fancy, she might even make note of the occurrence and think about it later. However, her pragmatic self reasoned that his arrival had brought a waft of air from the opening of the outer door. Said waft merely swept into the alcove with enough force to disturb her coiffure, albeit without moving the drapes. An architectural oddity was all it was.
Even so, she couldn’t look away.
And she wasn’t the only one either. Every female eye veered in his direction. Even the musicians in the gallery abruptly stopped playing.
In the quiet that followed, Jane heard a slow sigh from one of the women, the susurration dissipating in the air like the slow evaporation of steam from a Watt condensing engine.
He was unlike other men she’d observed before. There was nothing stiff-shouldered or aristocratic about the way he prowled along the perimeter of the room. His body moved in a lithe pantherlike stride, arms slightly forward as if prepared to defend himself from unseen assailants at any given moment. The hard set of his angular features and razor-cut mandible looked positively feral, especially with his inky black brows lowered.
He appeared unduly focused on the task that brought him here. Though, if his primary objective was to find companionship, his intensity was surely unwarranted. He was in a brothel, after all, she thought with amusement.
Her gaze wandered appreciatively over his form. Jane told herself it was no different than a scientist studying a prime example of any species. But she must have become too distracted. Because, before she realized how close his steps had brought him, he suddenly halted.
Directly in front of her hiding place.
Jane held her breath and remained perfectly still. Even though the mirror across from her proved that she was fully concealed in the shadows, her pulse did not care. It hopped like a kernel of popping corn prepared to burst from its pericarp.
She watched the slight tilt of his head. Heard the deep inhalation through his nostrils. And saw the satisfied smirk curl the corner of his mouth.
Newton’s apple! Surely, he wasn’t intending to enter into this alcove?
He issued a murmur deep in his throat. The sound was little more than a low growl, but the deep timbre vibrated inside her and caused the rush of her blood to purr feline-like in her ears. It made her peculiarly dizzy, befuddling her senses.
“Ah ha,” he said quietly. “Here you are.”
She startled. It took every ounce of control over her central nervous system not to gasp, or shift, or move in any way to alert him to her presence.
He couldn’t be addressing her. Could he?
No, of course not. He must have a habit of speaking to himself. Perhaps his introspection was directed at one of the cyprians he’d hoped to encounter this evening, which would explain his concentrated perusal of the room.
But Jane, no matter how curious, did not turn her gaze to see which woman had earned his attention. She dared not even blink for fear of discovery.
Then, after what felt like an eon of continental shifting and tectonic plates rumbling beneath her feet, eroding her balance, he moved on.