Page 13 of The Rogue's Last Scandal
Chapter 5
“She’s not here.” Perry glided into the empty space next to Charley.
He’d been quite alone at the center of this society rout, being avoided by the stuffier sort and the young virgins they guarded. Rakes and rogues—people in his league—hadn’t been on the guest list, apparently.
But Perry had received an invitation, and once they’d established that the Kingsleys—who hadn’t been at home to Perry that day—would attend, he’d determined to escort her.
Perry greeted a passing dowager, as Penderbrook stepped up to join them.
Charley nodded at the older woman and grinned when she cut him and moved on.
“Yet I sawhimand his lady,” Charley said. Thebig fat deviland his wife had arrived in a new coach. He’d overheard two of the matrons buzzing about the coach’s mahogany trim and silk shades.
“Yes. The word is Miss Kingsley was not feeling well enough to attend. And I have not seen Carvelle.”
Carvelle was not in attendance, nor Miss Kingsley. The skin on his neck twitched, and he caught Penderbrook’s eye.
“Do you suppose...” Perry’s voice cracked. She took a deep breath.
She didn’t need to express the worry. It electrified the air around them. In fact, alarm bells were now clanging in his head.
“Shall we be off?” Penderbrook asked.
“Excellent idea. Will you escort Perry home?”
Perry’s lips firmed, and he sighed.
“Fine. But promise you’ll do as I say.”
As soon asthe elderly maid had tucked her into her bed and clicked the lock on her door, Graciela rose, relit her candle, and dressed herself in her most practical gown. She rummaged in her trunk for the pair ofpantalonesthat she had worn under her dresses during parts of her sea voyage, pulled them on, and then fastened her half boots. She found the pouch with her jewelry and coins and her mother’s slim volume of sonnets, stowed both deep in a pocket, and tied her hair back with a ribbon.
The lovely large Spanish prayer book her father had given her before his departure lay under her pillow. Her eyes clouded as she unfastened the hasp, remembering the words and instructions he’d bestowed with this gift.
She pressed her fists to her eyes and forced the tears back. There was no time for remembering.
The lovely sheathed dagger slipped easily from its hidden space in the spine. She kissed it and tucked it into the sash at her waist.
Then she pulled on her heaviest pelisse, and sorted through her box of hairpins for her picks.
This lock she had not mastered, simply because of interruptions. It could not be so hard. Juan had explained the mechanics mere days ago, after the first time she’d found the door locked, and he’d provided her with tools that he promised would work. With the Kingsleys gone, she would have plenty of time.
She went to the door, setting her ear against it. Some Kingsley forebear in the distant past—one more like her father, perhaps—had built this house solidly. The thick door was no exception. The house had been quiet for some time, the servants off to their final tasks or to bed. They were not entirely a bad sort, the Kingsley servants. The gray-haired maid helping her tonight was hard of hearing and should have been pensioned off long ago, but she had gasped at Graciela’s back, and whispered that Juan had been seen in the mews. If that was so, then he had got Reina and Francisca to safety.
That was something, anyway.
She knelt before the door and began to work. After several minutes, she heard a muffled step. An odor seeped under the door and she sprang to her feet, pocketed her picks, and ran for the darkest corner of the room, by her washstand, grabbing a heavy dark shawl from the bedcoverings as she passed, and shrouding herself.
Heart pounding, she held her breath and rested her hand on the hilt of the dagger.Dios. Even the man’s cologne smelled of rot.
She might hang. Theseinglesesstole all of a woman’s money upon marriage and were not any more sanguine about a woman defending herself than the rankest ofdons,or pirates for that matter.
The door opened and closed, and he filled the room, tainting it.
Anger sparked through her. She did not care if they hanged her. She would have a trial first. She would stand at the King’s bench and tell of his lordship’s beatings. And then shame, shame on these cold people so lacking in honor.
A numbness started in her hands, and she squeezed it down, remembering her father’s lessons. Stab here, to kill a man, and here to disarm him, and here, so that he will never hurt another woman. For this man, it would be all three.
Had not her mother and Consuela shown her how a woman could do hard things?
