pick them up by their collars and throw them out into the street?”
“It’s tempting, but no. I have a more subtle method.”
He beckoned to one of the hovering staff members. “Evening, Tom. I see Alvanley and Stoke are already in their cups and starting to get annoying. I think it’s time for them to leave.”
The thin man smiled. “Very good, sir.”
Anya sent Wolff a confused glance as the servant slipped out of the room and returned moments later with two glasses filled with what looked like more liquor. He delivered them to the troublemakers’ table with a polite bow.
“What’s this?” The red-faced man with a disordered neckcloth peered upward, angry at the interruption to his card game. “I never ordered these.”
“On the ’ouse, gents,” Tom said calmly. “Compliments of the establishment.”
Stoke, or Alvanley, whichever one it was, softened visibly. “Oh. Well. Mighty kind of you.”
Both gamblers accepted their drinks and downed them in a drunken toast.
Wolff smiled. “Watch this. In five minutes, they’ll be asleep.”
Anya gasped. “You’ve drugged them?”
“Just a few drops of mandrake tincture in their brandy. Not enough to cause any lasting harm, just temporary insensibility. Lagrasse has the recipe.”
Sure enough, not five minutes later, both men began to yawn. Stoke—or Alvanley—sagged in his chair, while the other one slowly slumped forward until his forehead came to rest on the card table. He let out a snore. Tom leapt forward and caught the glass from the man’s limp hand before it could fall to the floor.
“That was particularly quick because both of them were already six sheets to the wind. It takes a bit longer on someone who’s sober,” Wolff explained.
“Amazing!” Anya murmured. “That’s far better than using force.”
Just imagine if she’d had something like that when dealing with Vasili. Obviously, as a means of defense, it still relied on getting the target to ingest it, but she would have felt far safer, knowing she had the ability to render him—or any other threat, for that matter—unconscious in a matter of minutes.
“Do you think I could have some of that stuff?”
Wolff sent her a skeptical look. “And have you use it on me? I think not.”
She frowned. “I promise on my life I will never use it on you, nor on any of your staff. You did agree to provide me with means to defend myself without weapons, remember?”
“In exchange for you listening in to your countrymen. Which you have yet to do.”
He led her back into the main room and indicated a group of four men dicing at a table with Lord Naseby. “That’s Prince Trubetskoi, one of the Russian envoys. Go and see if you can hear anything useful.”
Anya nodded, and he slipped away through the crowd. She’d actually met Trubetskoi on several occasions back in Russia. She didn’t know him well, but he would doubtless recognize her if he saw her unmasked. Still, she was sure she looked so different now from the prim and proper ice princess he’d met in St. Petersburg that she’d be safe.
Russians had a saying: Listen more, talk less, and certainly some of the Tricorn’s guests should have heeded that advice. Anya hovered close to the group, and as Wolff had suspected, they were chatting freely in Russian between themselves. She quickly learned that the one called Kutzov was on a prolonged losing streak, that Krupin was pining after a well-endowed girl named Misha, and that all four of them planned to visit Haye’s later that evening.
Anya smiled at the thought of Charlotte’s delight at having five such good-looking new customers.
Unfortunately, her loitering did not go completely unnoticed. The man named Kutzov slid over and caught her playfully around the waist.
“Gut evening, pretty lady,” he breathed in heavily accented English, and Anya caught the fog of vodka on his breath. “Give Mika a kiss for good luck?”
Anya twisted her head away. As the man undressed her with his eyes, she resisted the urge to give him a set-down and instead, tried to imagine what Tess or Jenny would say in the situation. She gave a coquettish giggle and tried to mimic the accented tones of the Covent Garden flower sellers.
“Oi! Easy, sir. I’m wiv anuvver gent tonight. ’E might not take kindly to you breathin’ all over me.”
She wriggled free of his arm and stepped back, only to bump into a large body positioned directly behind her. The newcomer caught her arm.
“Leave her alone, Kutzov,” the man said easily in Russian. “There are plenty more where she came from. No