Mistress by Mistake

Charlotte grabbed the hairbrush and threw it at him. His reflexes were excellent. Instead of it braining him, he caught it easily with one hand and pitched it against the opposite wall. He might have been playing cricket. “You will not attempt to do me harm again, do you understand? You’ve done enough.”

Charlotte felt her fury bubble up. “I-I have not yet begun, sir! You are-you are inhuman! A fiend!”

“So I have been told,” he said with a threatening smile. He pulled a watch from his pocket. “I shall return here at four o’clock. I had planned, you know, to spend the day abed with you. Lap perfectly chilled champagne from your skin and retrieve berries from-wherever. But plans change. I think you’ll find me flexible.”

“I don’t care if you can bend like a sapling! You will not bed me, and will certainly not cover me in liquid and foodstuffs! I will not be here when you come back.”

“Off to Little Hyssop? It sounds like a very small village. Little, in fact.”

Damn her prideful tongue. She had told him where she lived. Charlotte had nowhere else to go and no money to get her there in any event. Deb had sent just enough money to come to London and Charlotte had been too stupid to ask for more yesterday in all the confusion. Charlotte turned to speak more cutting words, but instead watched Sir Michael pull his wrinkled shirt over his head.

She could charge him while he was temporarily blinded by linen and bludgeon him with a Cupid if she were quick. But his dark head popped out and her chance was lost. She really was going to kill Deborah when she saw her again, if she wasn’t imprisoned already for killing Sir Michael Xavier Bayard first.

Four o’clock. That gave her hours. It was clear she could not pawn Deb’s necklace, worthless as it was. Perhaps she could persuade the maid, Irene, or Mrs. Kelly to help her escape. There must be petty cash for the household stashed somewhere in a sugar jar. She would plead. She would beg. They must know what a wicked man their master was. And if he came to find her in Little Hyssop, she could shoot him with her papa’s old blunderbuss and afterward say he was an intruder, his big body prostrate at her feet. She smiled.

“You should do that more often.” Sir Michael spoke from the doorway, sinfully handsome even when dressed in clothes that had lain on the floor all night.

“What?”

“Smile. I was beginning to think you didn’t have teeth. Oops, I forgot. You did bite me, didn’t you? In several places.” He ran a long forefinger down the column of his throat.

Oh merciful heavens. She had bitten his tongue in anger, but the other bites, love bites when she’d nipped his delicious salty skin, were done under the influence of an altogether different emotion. She was going to Hell with Satan as her tour guide.

Bay rubbed his forehead in impatience. Mr. Mulgrew droned on, oblivious to the fact that Bay longed to leap across his desk and shake the man. He stabbed an ivory-handled letter opener into his palm instead.

“Yes or no?” he asked, interrupting, watching a drop of blood rise. He hadn’t intended such self-abuse. Charlotte Fallon was taking a toll on him. That is, her sister was. “Will you undertake the effort to find the Bannisters or shall I have to find someone else? I have a four o’clock appointment.”

The large man flushed, adding to the high color he already sported from what had to have been several pints at lunchtime. Bay was beginning to think he had been ill-advised to seek Mr. Mulgrew’s assistance, even if he had come highly recommended. After all, he’d heard wonderful things about Deborah, and look where that had led him-wrangling with a sodden Mr. Mulgrew, whose every breath bespoke middling-priced ale and fried fish.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, my lord. My wife says I do go on.”

“Sir Michael will do. I’m a mere baronet, not a member of the aristocracy.”

“Indeed, indeed, your lordship” the man said, still fawning. “Ye haven’t given me much to go on. The Continent is a mighty big place.”

Bay well knew it. He’d tramped over half of it in the service of His Majesty until the Corsican upstart’s defeat. Civilian life suited him very well, and he would be thoroughly ecstatic to rid himself of the sisters Fallon and enjoy the rest of his life.

“Bannister planned to marry yesterday. They might even still be in town. Look at ships’ passenger lists. I don’t have to tell you your business.” Surely Deborah had not had the time to sell his grandmother’s necklace already. And she would probably like to wear it awhile, even to her wedding. Odd that Deborah had not invited Charlotte, even if it was a hole-and-corner affair. Bay picked up a graphite pencil and began to draw the necklace on a piece of stationery. If he’d had time, he could have rendered the necklace in paint on water-color paper upstairs. He was a fair artist, or had been before the art had been drummed out of him.

Mulgrew patted down the pockets of his tweed coat until he came upon his spectacles. Good lord. A private investigator who couldn’t see. Bay handed him the paper anyway and watched the man hold it up against his nose.

“Hmm. Rubies and diamonds, you say? Worth a pretty penny.”

“Quite. A piece like this doesn’t come along every day. Canvass reputable jewelers, and disreputable ones as well. I don’t care what happens to the Bannisters, but I want the necklace back.”

Mulgrew puffed up. “See here, I don’t do murder. Got a young family, I do. But if it’s murder you want-”

Bay longed to bang his head against his desk. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Mulgrew,” he said icily. “I had understood you were very good in the retrieval business, returning missing persons to those who mislaid them. I most assuredly do not want you to come back with Arthur Bannister and his wife cuffed to your wrists.”

The man beamed. “Ah. Lord Egremont’s wayward daughter. One of my most difficult cases. A regular she-devil, she was. But I am,” he interjected hastily, “very discreet. I’ll not breathe a word of this business with your ex- mistress, I swear. Doesn’t do to have the world know you couldn’t hold on to your woman. To be thrown off for a bit of sparkle, why, that’s just sad.”

Bay gritted his teeth. Sad didn’t begin to cover it. “Thank you for your sympathy, Mr. Mulgrew.” He slid the banknotes across the mahogany. The man was almost as expensive as Deb had been. Bay hoped he got a better return on his investment this time. He looked at his watch.

“I’ll take the hint, Sir Michael,” Mulgrew said cheerfully, pocketing the money. He extended a chapped red paw. Bay shook it. “Good luck to us both, then, eh? Hope I find your old doxy and you find a new one. But there’s something to be said for marriage, you know. Kiddies. They settle a man.”

On that unwanted advice, Mr. Mulgrew shuffled out of Bay’s study, a burly bear who couldn’t possibly go undercover and remain undetected for a moment. Bay wondered what his procedures were, but they didn’t matter as long as the rubies got deposited in a safe. He went through a bit of correspondence, then ordered a bath, his second of this misbegotten day.

He supposed he was overly fastidious, but Bay had too often been walking dirt as a soldier. A hot bath, a close shave, and a bit of lime cologne made a man feel human again. As a considerate lover, he wanted to appeal to a woman’s sense of smell as well as all the others. Charlotte would have nothing to complain about when she moved down his body.

He laughed. He certainly didn’t intend to hold Charlotte Fallon to her sister’s contract, but it wouldn’t hurt for her to believe he did. Until he was certain she was innocent, he would torment her a bit. She was surprisingly passionate for a spinster with cats, and very beautiful, almost as beautiful as Deborah. Less polished to diamond- hard perfection, of course, but somehow more appealing for it. More real. Apart from the loss of the jewelry, Bay thought the sister switch would work out very nicely indeed.

Until he married again. Which he must do, if only to please Mr. Mulgrew.

Chapter 3

She had brought two dresses to London with her, and worn another. One was gray, one was gray, and another was a bluish gray that did something nice for her eyes. She selected the latter. Irene looked faintly horrified as she helped her into it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wear one of your sister’s gowns? They are ever so pretty.”

“Yes, and she took them with her.” Deb did in fact leave four dresses behind. One had a tear at the bodice as though someone had been impatient to get at what was underneath, two were cut scandalously low, and the fourth