Page 75 of Affair

The shock that she had just received upon finding herself pinned in the dark by a man’s unyielding arm had only made matters worse. The realization that the man who held her was none other than Baxter was a tremendous relief but it was not doing much to slow her racing pulse.

Baxter sounded angry.Veryangry. There was an ice-and-steel edge to his voice that she had never before heard.

“I told you to wait in the carriage.”

Charlotte struggled to take several deep, fortifying breaths. “I was concerned. I did not know what was going on. I thought you might need my help.”

“If I had needed your assistance, I would have asked for it.”

“Really, Baxter, there is no call to lose your temper with me. We are in this together, as I keep reminding you.”

“How could I possibly forget?” Baxter released her and gave her a small push toward the door. “We shall go back the way we came. Quickly.”

“But why did you come up here in the first place?”

“To find Hamilton. But that matter must wait. The first order of business is to get you out of here.”

“There is no reason why we cannot go ahead with whatever plan you had in mind.”

“There is every reason why we cannot.”

A burst of muffled masculine laughter echoed from the chamber at the far end of the hall. Baxter stilled. Charlotte felt him turn to glance down the corridor. She followed his gaze.

There was a small, undraped window in the wall at the end of the narrow hall. It provided just enough illumination to reveal the two rows of closed doors that lined the passage. A tiny ray of light winked from beneath the last door on the left.

“Hamilton is in that chamber?” Charlotte asked very softly.

“I suspect that is where the club members meet.”

She was intrigued. “You intended to spy on him?”

“Let’s just say that I was curious.” Baxter reached past her to open the staircase door.

Footsteps thudded on the lower stairs. A fresh dose of alarm went through Charlotte. Someone was coming up the rear staircase. Baxter did not swear aloud but she could almost hear his silentbloody hell.

He closed the door as quietly as he had opened it.

He seized her arm and pulled her down the passageway. She noticed that he did not bother to try the first three doors. Instead, he chose the next one. She breathed a sigh of relief when it opened at his touch. She did not relish the prospect of being caught in the hall by whoever was tromping up the stairs.

It would be not only awkward and embarrassing, but quite scandalous if she and Baxter were discovered there tonight. The fashionable young gentlemen of the club were likely to be incensed at being spied upon by Baxter St. Ives and his fiancée. Word would spread through the ton with the speed of a fire in the stews.

Baxter eased her through the doorway of the small chamber. Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the stale, musty smell that greeted her. It was obvious that the room had not been aired in some time. She moved with great caution, unable to see anything in the dense darkness.

Another distant rumble of laughter sounded from the room at the end of the hall. Baxter quickly closed the door. Charlotte felt him move and realized that he had put his ear to the panel. She knew that he was listening to the footsteps of the person who had climbed the back stairs.

She took a cautious step back and came up hard against another door. She realized it must open into the adjoining room, the one that separated this chamber from the one being used by Hamilton and his friends.

Outside in the hall, floorboards creaked as someone walked steadily past the room in which she and Baxter hid. Whoever it was did not pause. A servant going about his duties, no doubt, she concluded. Perhaps taking claret to the members of the club. She and Baxter would be trapped there until the man went back downstairs.

She touched Baxter’s arm.

“What is it?” he asked in her ear.

“Another door. Leads to the next room. You might be able to overhear what is being said.”

“I’ve got to get you out of here.”

“You keep saying that but we can do nothing until the servant leaves again. And as we are already in the neighborhood, it seems a pity to waste the opportunity.”

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