Page 65 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
She shook her head. “I won’t have you committing fraud. You’re young and ambitious and talented. Once this matter is settled, you might return to your diplomatic career. And with a title, your chance of a plum assignment is greater.”
A plum assignment would take him far away from her. Unless she came with him.
“I would think of it as correcting a greater, more egregious fraud. But perhaps we might put our heads together and find a better way.”
Before he could explain the carriage drew to a stop at the entrance of a narrow street.
“Which number,” the driver asked.
“We’ll get out here and walk,” Blythe said. “Wait for us, please.”
Number thirteen in the line of narrow terraced dwellings had a single front window on each floor of the smoke-blackened brick façade. In an earlier century, it had likely housed a respectable family.
Perhaps there were respectable tenants living here now, but Graeme doubted it. A door knocker hung by one nail. He banged his fist on the door instead. When there was no answer, he tried the latch and the door opened.
“Shall we?” he asked.
She nodded, and he ushered her across the threshold. The age-old scent of mildew and human odors greeted them. A dim light shone through the transom above the door, highlighting scarred flooring, peeling paint, and the worn steps of the staircase. A door led off the interior hall. The house had most likely been divided into separate lodgings, perhaps one per floor in the narrow structure.
“We should start on the top floor,” she whispered.
They were half-way up the stairs when the ground floor door opened and a woman of middling years stepped out.
“Here now, where are you going?” she asked.
If this was Lunetta Casale, his cousin Archie’s tastes had degenerated. Attired in a threadbare dressing gown that had once been colorful, and with a dingy white cap covering straggling locks that were an improbable shade of yellow, she might be one of London’s more disreputable abbesses.
Blythe stepped down and leaned past him. “Lunetta has asked for me to come,” she said in a shaky voice.
The woman frowned, her eyebrows drawing together.
Graeme pulled out a coin and tossed it. She caught if deftly.
“Where is her room, madame?” he asked. “Or is she still with a customer?”
“This ain’t a bawdy house,” the woman said.
Not until evening, he thought.
“You’re her friend, are you not?” Blythe asked. “Tell her Lord and Lady Chilcombe are here to see her, as she requested.”
“You’ve brought the money?” the woman asked.
“What money is that?” Graeme asked.
Before the woman could answer, Blythe took another step down. “Wait,” she said breathlessly, “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”
Without taking a step, the woman shrunk back. “Don’t play coy, milord. You know what money. Lunetta’s not… not well. She asked me to handle the matter.”
“You have what she was offering?” Graeme asked. “Show us, then.”
“Show me the money.”
Blythe’s chest tightened as jumbled memories careened about in her head, stirring a panicky anger.
The unnaturally yellow hair, the eyes so dark they were almost black, the jaundiced skin—this woman had been at Risley Manor.
“We are at an impasse, my lady.” Graeme’s words, spoken softly into her ear, jolted her back to her senses.
