The Regency Season: Passionate Promises: The Duke's Daring Debutante / Return of the Prodigal Gilvry

‘What in hell’s name are you doing here?’ Freddy rasped in her ear.

She tittered. Let the shawl slip down to her shoulders, revealing the tangle of her hair and red-painted lips, changing from hunched old crone to ravaged prostitute. ‘Want company out in the alley?’ She danced the coin between her fingers. ‘Sailor’s choice.’

Freddy cursed.

Barker buried his face in his tankard, his shoulders shaking. Was he laughing?

The man who had given her the coin started towards them. ‘You cheating baggage.’

Freddy’s lowered brows halted him in midstride. He took the coin and tossed it back to the man. ‘Sit.’ He jerked down by her arm to perch on his knee.

She batted her eyelashes. ‘Changed yer mind, guv? Wot’s yer fancy?’

Barker choked back laughter. ‘Does yer want me to leave yer to it?’

Freddy grinned. An evil leer. ‘You can leave us to it, mate, when we get outside.’ His accent was also of the lower orders and spoken with the ease of long practice.

A shiver went down her spine at the lecherous promise. Not fear. Anticipation. Damn him. Because she had no doubt he intended it as a threat of retribution, not a promise.

Freddy gestured to a waiter passing with a tray. ‘Gin.’

Barker nudged Freddy with his elbow, and Minette caught the jerk of the innkeeper’s unshaven chin at a man entering the taproom.

Minette gave Freddy a winsome smile, careful not to reveal her teeth. ‘That our mark?’

Freddy lifted his pot of ale to his lip. ‘It is.’

He nodded, and the innkeeper handed the new customer a bumper of gin and gestured in their direction.

The man, Henri, narrowed his eyes at her and then at Freddy, then shouldered his way to their table. ‘You ask for me?’

‘’Ave a seat, mate,’ Freddy said, lifting his tankard in salute.

The man glanced around him, grabbed a stool and subsided with a sigh. He took a long pull at his gin. ‘So, messieurs?’

Freddy lowered his voice. ‘You sister says you have news of a certain party.’

‘Name begins with M,’ Barker added.

‘This man, he arrives six week ago. Here.’ He made a vague gesture, encompassing them, the river, London.

‘Where does he stay?’ Freddy leaned back and swigged at his beer.

Henri shook his head and leaned forward, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘He recently travels north. Urgent business.’

How vague could the man get? ‘Not helpful, mon ami,’ Minette muttered under her breath.

He looked startled.

‘Ignore her,’ Freddy ground out. ‘Tell us what you do know.’

Minette bristled but contented herself with a scrape of her nail across the table, knowing it would irritate Freddy and, more importantly, not allow him to forget her presence.

‘Un homme.’ Henri grimaced. ‘My friend. He says he returns.’

‘He’s coming back to London,’ Freddy rephrased.

Henri nodded. ‘He is expected. Soon.’

‘What is he doing in the north?’ Barker asked.

Henri shrugged. ‘Gathering information?’

‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ Minette asked, ignoring Freddy’s glare. ‘His appearance. The name he is using?’

Freddy kicked her under the table.

‘Beard. Spectacles.’ He touched his cheek. ‘Dark of skin. He goes by Smith.’

Smith sounded nothing like Moreau. But, then, none of them looked like themselves tonight. Moreau was a master of disguises. He’d certainly fooled her for years.

‘You will let your sister know the moment he returns,’ Barker said. ‘Warn him and you are a dead man.’ He issued his threat in a dangerously conversational tone of voice.

Henri ignored him and kept his gaze fixed on Freddy’s face. ‘’E is a bad man. I speak truth.’

Freddy nodded. ‘Then we will get along famously.’

The Frenchman got up and went back to the bar. Minette leaned against Freddy’s shoulder and started playing with his hair and stroking his cheek. He looked at her. She raised a brow in the age-old question.

‘I’ll see you back at the club,’ Freddy said to Barker, and drew her closer to his side, bit the point of her shoulder, hard enough to make her twitch away. ‘This mort owes me thruppence-worth.’

Barker stretched, got up and left. When he was clear, Freddy grabbed her arm and staggered out into the night air. While his steps were sloppy, his eyes slightly unfocussed, his grip was steely. He didn’t lighten it until they were well clear of the inn and he was sure, as she was, that they had not been followed.

He put his arm around her shoulders. Slowly, inexorably, he backed her into the shadows of the nearest alley. He took her chin between her fingers and tipped her face up so she was forced to meet a gaze glinting from a nearby streetlight. Oh, my, he was angry.

‘So, tell me, my dear Minette, what the hell did you think you were doing?’ He spoke in a voice so calm as to be terrifying.

Intimidation. Her own anger rose. ‘I wanted to hear what he had to say for myself and well you know it.’

His gaze dropped to her bosom. ‘Dressed like that, you could have got a lot more than information.’

She pulled her knife from the pocket hidden in her ragged skirts, the pocket she’d sewn into the seam when Christine had come back with the dress, and held it to his Adam’s apple. ‘I think not.’

He cursed softly and fluently. At least she guessed he was cursing. They were English words and not familiar.

‘Now, do you want the value of your thruppence,’ she said softly, ‘or do you take me home?’

He took her wrist and forced the blade away, taking it from her now nerveless fingers and stuffing it into a pocket. ‘A man can get a lot for three pennies, my dear.’