Page 46 of Temptations of a Wallflower
“As you wish.”
With that, he went out to the stairs and shut the door behind him. Removing his mask, he started down the steps, taking them slowly, wondering what his next move was to be. He clung to a precipice. If he found the Lady of Dubious Quality, he’d have the autonomy he longed for. But if he did not . . . his world would become thimble-sized, strangling him.
Steps sounded from the mews that ran alongside the house. Jeremy turned to see a servant hastily edging forward. “Oi, governor,” the man whispered, waving him forward. The man looked around, over his shoulder, and up and down the street. “You want to know about that lady in gold?”
Jeremy hurried over. “I do.”
The servant’s eyes narrowed. “Information don’t come without a price.”
“Why would you tell me?” Jeremy demanded.
The man scowled. “She docked my pay for taking something from the wine cellar. Got to earn my blunt back somehow.”
Jeremy produced several coins from his pocket, which he held up for the other man’s inspection. Bribery wasn’t entirely virtuous behavior, but hopefully the end justified the means in this case.
The servant quickly grabbed the money and tucked it away. “I heard,” he said in a barely audible voice, “the woman call herself Mrs. Chalbury. That was it. Just Mrs. Chalbury.”
Jeremy nodded and wrote the name down in his notebook. A tremor worked through him just to hear it. The mysterious woman had an actual name. It made her more fantastical, but yet more real. “Anything else?”
“She came on foot,” the man said hastily.
An interesting detail. Perhaps it meant that she lived nearby.
“Thank you,” said Jeremy.
But instead of answering, the servant scurried away.
For a moment, Jeremy simply stood there, absorbing the information. His first real clue in this chase.
His future hung in the balance.
Chapter 13
We disported ourselves with a heat and energy unlike anything I had ever known. We were mythical in our need, ageless in our desire.
When he stripped me of my garments, he did so with an uncommon reverence, as though revealing something precious. His hands and mouth possessed extraordinary talent as he ravished my body and plundered my mind. I, too, worshipped his body, using my many skills and considerable experience to show him that I was a woman he would not soon forget.
I could not resist the allure of his body, and eagerly tasted his . . .
The Highwayman’s Seduction
Jeremy searched for Mrs. Chalbury from one London parish to another, yet she eluded him, not appearing on any documentation. The curates and vicars were very gracious, and gave him space in their rectories to peruse the large tomes. Ever hospitable, his colleagues offered him refreshments at each stop. Jeremy drank more tea in a morning than he’d had in a week.
After visiting three churches in the area near the masquerade house with no success, he nearly gave up. But at the fourth church, he found it at last. “Mrs. Mary Chalbury” resided on Gower Street, only a handful of blocks away from where Jeremy was at that very moment.
Right within his grasp. The Golden Woman—and the Lady of Dubious Quality. His goal had almost been achieved. Was he relieved? Disappointed? Perhaps both.
“Find what you’re looking for?” the curate asked him as he strode out of the rectory.
Yes, he’d gotten what he was after, but it was a bitter accomplishment. Now he was going to have to reveal her identity to his father.
She’d be exposed, her books coming to an end. And he’d be the instrument of her destruction.
Jeremy immediately headed toward the address on Gower Street, his heart both pounding with excitement and heavy with regret. He hadn’t known he could feel both emotions at the same time, yet he did. He barely knew himself anymore, torn as he was between so many different desires.
He wanted freedom. He wanted Lady Sarah. He wanted so many things but had no idea how to attain any of them. If anyone would understand what it meant to be uncertain of one’s self, it would be Lady Sarah. She grasped life’s ambiguity.
Yet they would never have the kind of intimacy he desired, and so he had to keep his many questions, his many uncertainties, locked away.
