Page 52 of Miss Dignified
He kissed her cheek. “Dream on, my lady. Duty calls.” He permitted himself not so much as one more caress—that way lay the most blissful folly—and collected the rest of his effects. He made it through the kitchen and past the pantries.
By the time he was up the steps, Dylan was congratulating himself on passing through dangerous territory undetected, until he noticed Bowen Brook observing him from the door of Brook’s office. Bowen was dressed, holding a cup of tea and looking puzzled.
“Not like you to bend a rule,” he said, sipping his tea, “though Mrs. Lovelace would tempt many a man to sell his soul. She’s not beautiful in the usual sense, but she’s formidable and decent.”
Dylan set down his boots. “My intentions toward her are honorable, if she’ll have me.”
“But you stand before me, boots off, your shirt undone, not certain she will. What has the world come to when Captain Powell is wandering about headquarters barefoot and smiling?”
It’s not what you think.Dylan didn’t bother protesting, despite the fact that he and Lydia hadn’t even made love. They’d been intimate, though. Spectacularly intimate.
“I can trust your discretion, I hope,” Dylan said.
“Oh, of course.” Bowen saluted with his tea cup. “But more to the point,shecan trust my discretion. Going to be some sort of hell to pay if you’re still on covert missions belowstairs when your sisters arrive, Captain.”
Sisters. Dylan swore in Welsh. Bowen, good Shropshire lad that he was, doubtless understood him.
“I have some time,” Dylan said. “We have some time before they arrive. I spent most of yesterday in St. Giles, by the way.”
“Why would you do a buffle-headed thing like that?”
Bowen’s adjustment to civilian life was proceeding apace. “Looking for Will, and he’s there, Bowen. He’s there, and he’s either threatened the lads into providing him cover, or somebody else has. Nobody gave me honest answers to any question I put to them, though they were all concerned for poor Will and eager to assist me.”
“Like asking the Spanish locals about the movements of the French?”
The analogy was dauntingly apt. “Precisely. They all know something, and they are all as pleasant and helpful as they can be, but nobody’stalkingto me. That tells me Will is still alive, which is progress.”
“I could have a look.”
“We know what happened last time you went nosing around, Bowen. Between Goddard’s urchins and MacKay’s ladies, I am under constant guard, while you are not.” Not to mention the former soldiers reduced to begging on nearly every street corner.
Bowen sipped his tea. “Have you tried asking the ladies to nose about? I found my way to your doorstep when I first mustered out, because one of the streetwalkers told me you were always good for a free meal. I got not only a meal, but a decent pair of boots and some coin here, Captain. I was too ashamed to ask my old mates for aid, but the ladies knew a weary soldier when they saw one.”
Bowen was being polite, allowing Dylan’s sortie belowstairs to earn him a mere scolding before permitting a change in topic. This suggestion, though, to rely on intermediaries and noncombatants wasn’t one Dylan had considered.
“If I involve the ladies and the urchins, then I involve my family. This is not their fight.”
Bowen eyed him up and down, from tousled hair, to rumpled shirt, to bare feet. “Might not be your fight either, Captain. Will’s a big boy and a decent brawler, for all that he has a bad hand. Our mother would say to leave him be and give him time to sort himself out.”
“But your father said to keep an eye on him, because he’s not as smart or formidable as he thinks he is.”
“Is that what your papa told you about your cousins?”
Papa had said exactly that. MacKay was heir to the Scottish equivalent of a barony. Goddard came from English gentry, had risen to colonel, and been knighted. Men of standing needed to know they could rely on family at least.
“My papa told me,” Dylan said, “not to trifle with a lady unless I intended to marry her. That objective requires Mrs. Lovelace’s cooperation.”
“Earning her cooperation. Is that what they call it now?”
“You’re fired,” Dylan said, gathering up his boots. “Drummed out of the regiment, stripped of rank, a disgrace to His Majesty’s army.”
“You forgot insubordinate and on latrine duty until Judgment Day. We knew when you trotted that one out you were truly vexed.”
“I’m not truly vexed.” Dylan started up the steps, realizing he wasn’t vexed at all.
“Captain, you should know that your sisters’ baggage coach arrived last night.”
Well, maybe Dylan was vexed, but only a little. The sisters would aid his cause, and Lydia Lovelace would soon be Lydia Powell. Had a wonderful sound, that did.
