When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,121
fancies that generally feature him keelhauling you or simply running you through. So in the interest of expediency and the preservation of my decor, you will listen and listen carefully.”
King uncrossed his leg, his foot thumping softly on the very fine rug. “You already know who she is.”
Ivory steepled her fingers and exchanged an indecipherable look with Elise. “I am familiar with her work, though she does not often cross the Channel. I cannot speak to why she is currently in London.”
“What can you speak to?”
The duchess once again met his eyes with her own. “To start, her name isn’t Adrestia.”
Chapter 3
Adeline Archambault had counted twelve.
Twelve men around Helmsdale House’s perimeter, each armed with pistols and blades, and each making no effort to conceal that fact. They were all silhouetted in torchlight and easily visible from the tiny window of her hired carriage, which bumped and swayed toward the looming manor. There were more men, Adeline knew, men who guarded the house and the secrets within but had not been put on display to intimidate the arriving peers. Those men had been harder to count, but her vigilance and patience over the last three days had left her with an accurate tally of those guards as well.
Not that the number of guards would matter in the end. Adeline was not a woman hired for her skills at observational arithmetic. She was engaged to make the sort of well-armed math that surrounded Helmsdale House and all its contents irrelevant.
The owner of Helmsdale, however, was very relevant. Before his unexpected and unwelcome appearance at the mouth of that alley, Adeline had already observed the man called King at a distance a half dozen times in her covert surveillance of the manor. And while his men were never far, King himself was always alone. Outside of brief exchanges and orders to his men, Adeline had not once witnessed him in the company of a kept mistress, a favored acquaintance, or even a regular man of business.
Which didn’t surprise her, given his supposed propensity for privacy and the rumors that surrounded him. Facts had been enormously difficult to come by, even through her usual tried-and-true methods involving significant coin. In Adeline’s experience, rumor was a poor substitute for fact, but there were always seeds of truth buried in speculation. She’d been told that men who deceived or betrayed him oft disappeared, never to be seen again. That he was ruthlessly capable of finding anything—or anyone—for a price. That he controlled more than half the Kentish coast and the illicit goods that funneled into London from there. That he had as many peers and politicians in his pocket as he did thieves and assassins. Conjecture, all of it, none of it proven.
Yet Adeline had spent far too much time of late wondering which of the terrifying tales about the lord of London’s underworld contained those seeds of truth.
Those tales should have unsettled her, especially given King’s appearance in that damn alley hours ago. She had made every effort to cloak her presence since she had set foot on English soil, but it had been impossible to discern from their exchange if King’s presence had merely been a coincidence or if he had beaten her at her own game and the hunter had become the hunted.
This should have been unsettling, yet their conversation had left her feeling oddly…liberated. As though she had finally met a man who had seen her for exactly what she was and understood it. Though she wasn’t fool enough to underestimate him, or his displeasure should she be caught. For brief moments she had considered changing her plan, but she had discarded that idea almost immediately. It was far too late for that. This was merely the final chapter in a story that had been written long ago.
“Halt!”
The shout jarred her from her ruminations. Her hired carriage jolted and jerked to a stop in front of a guardhouse that looked more suited to a fortress than to a manor perched on the edge of London. Two of the hulking guards stepped into the flickering torchlight, snow starting to fall around them. One of them said something inaudible to her driver while the other opened the carriage door. A blast of frosty air and falling snowflakes swirled into the cramped space, sending icy fingers up her legs under the hem of her gown.
“Invitation,” the guard grunted, his eyes sweeping the interior of the carriage before coming to rest on Adeline.