Page 83 of One Wicked Secret
“You will have to ask her.”
They broke for an interval, with refreshments being served in the drawing room. The marquess enquired after Miss Woolf but she failed to return, which left the lord strangely at odds.
“Rothley hates uncertainty,” Daniel said, though he was looking at Elsa’s lips as he spoke. “I doubt he will trust a woman again, so he searches for flaws long before they become apparent.”
“Because the woman he loved accepted a bribe and left him?”
“Because he hates being taken for a fool.” Daniel leaned closer, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear, and whispered, “I’m tired of playing investigators tonight. I need to be inside you, Elsa.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Every nerve in her bodysparked to life. The memory of him filling her, loving her, left her aching to experience it again.
“I want that, too.” Desperately, so. It was so easy to forget the reasons they should distrust each other when they lay naked in each other’s arms.
“Perhaps we won’t wait until we’re home,” he drawled.
She glanced around the drawing room. “Someone will notice if we slip outside. And we must leave soon to visit The Salty Gull.”
His sinful smile deepened. “It’s a little over a mile to the Shadwell Basin. You’d be surprised what a couple can achieve in fifteen minutes.”
She set her hand on his chest. “Do enlighten me.”
A sudden cough made her jump.
“Sorry to interrupt,” the Earl of Berridge said. The man unsettled most people with his dark glare and brooding countenance.
Daniel straightened. “Do you bring news of Denby?”
“No. The lord leads the most boring life in existence—his club, his tailor, then home again. But I’ll keep my man on him. Sometimes dullness is a deliberate disguise.”
“I’m confident he’s hiding something,” Daniel agreed.
“As to other matters, I received this a moment ago.” The earl offered Daniel a folded note. “Charmers is staying in Kingston upon Thames tonight. At a private residence north of town.”
Daniel took the note. “I heard he went to Epsom.”
“He’ll be there for the Derby tomorrow. Let’s just say he seeks an alternative type of sport tonight. If you want answers, best catch him in the act.”
An alternative sport?
Was her father’s comments about the man true?
Was Mr Charmers a deviant ruled by carnal desires?
Daniel frowned as he read the information on the note. “We have an appointment at the docks in half an hour. It could take all night.”
“Daventry may say questioning Charmers takes priority.And you have until dawn to find him in a compromising manner.” His brow lowered, voice flat as steel, the warning etched in his expression before he said, “Take Rothley with you. When you storm the manor, you may be outnumbered, and the marquess is a superb shot.”
The Salty Gull
Near Shadwell Basin, London Docks
The alehouse was tucked away on a dim, cobbled lane, a path to damnation, for few sinless men drank there. The shouts of drunken sailors and the wails of tuneless maritime songs punctuated the stale, briny air.
A shiver of trepidation ran the length of Daniel’s spine as he waited in the shadows for Daventry. The distant clang of a ship’s bell sounded like a death knell. Only a fool ventured to these parts at night, which begged the question: Why the devil had Lord Grafton lodged in a place a stone’s throw from hell?
“Elsa, you’re certain the blade is strapped securely to your thigh?” The mere mention of his wife’s thigh ignited a fire in his blood. He would have checked for himself during the brief carriage ride to the docks had Rothley not insisted on accompanying them.
“It’s strapped so tightly I suspect my leg is blue, and Ihave the muff pistol the countess gave me hidden in the concealed pocket of my cloak.”
