“One generally wouldn’t.” A horrible suspicion was beginning to coalesce in Alex’s mind, blotting out other, lesser concerns. His troubled eyes met hers. “When was the last time you saw it in place?”

Penelope shrugged, sending her shift plunging still lower. “You needn’t pretend an interest in my sleeping arrangements,” she said caustically. “We’ve covered that quite thoroughly already.”

Alex gave her an exasperated look. “This isn’t bloody about that.” Before she could launch whatever sarcastic comment was cruising to her lips, Alex said hurriedly, “What happened with the snake? Where was it when you first saw it?”

Turning sharply away, Penelope yanked her strap back into place. “There’s nothing to tell. I tossed my dress onto the floor and it must have landed on that hideous thing. It got annoyed. I shot it.”

“But how did it get here?”

“I think we should name it,” said Penelope flippantly. “It seems disrespectful to just refer to it as ‘it.’ How about Marmaduke?”

Irritable with frustrated desire, Alex snapped, “I’m not calling the bloody snake Marmaduke!”

Penelope raised an eyebrow at him. The strap of her shift had begun to slide again.

Flushing, Alex looked away. “Fine. Did you consider that, er, Marmaduke might not have made his way here of his own accord?”

“Are you suggesting that Marmaduke didn’t want to see me?” Penelope lowered her lashes suggestively, but underneath them, her eyes were wary. He knew she knew what he was driving at. But Alex spelled it out anyway.

“What I’m suggesting is that someone else was quite eager for Marmaduke” — did they really have to keep calling it that? — “to make your acquaintance.”

Tilting her head back, Penelope looked Alex square in the eye. “Why not just say it? You think someone wants me dead.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Yes.”

He didn’t bother to sugarcoat it. Penelope gave him points for that, at least. “Other than you, you mean,” she said provocatively.

Alex rubbed a hand across his brow, before letting it fall heavily to his side. “I don’t want you dead,” he said wearily. There were shadows under his eyes and in them, too. Despite herself, Penelope could feel some of her indignation draining away. He looked at her and said simply, “But someone else does.”

She was not prepared to cede the point that easily. Any point. “Cobras are indigenous to India,” she pointed out.

“They are.”

“And they do occasionally wiggle their way into houses.” Penelope folded her arms across her chest, daring him to contradict her.

He dared. “But they generally don’t bother to remove all the mosquito netting. That suggests a degree of premeditation that is beyond, er, Marmaduke’s powers.”

“I won’t have you slandering Marmaduke. He has excellent taste in victims.” Unlike some people, her tone implied.

“It’s not his taste I’m worried about. Let’s not beat about the bush, Penelope.” Her pulse gave a little jump at the intimacy of her name on his lips. Stupid pulse. Penelope scowled. Alex scowled right back, never giving an inch, not letting himself be deflected. “Who wants you dead?”

“You certainly do know how to flatter a lady. Can’t we just concentrate on my brilliant marksmanship? You never did compliment me on that shot, you know.”

It was not one of her more effective attempts to change the subject.

“I don’t want you dead,” he said shortly.

Penelope had received more fulsome comments in her time, but never one that had moved her more. She felt warm all over, despite the cooling sweat on her arms and chest. It was a warmth generated inside, not out. It was an entirely unfamiliar sensation. It made her very, very nervous.

“Does that mean you want me alive?” Penelope said in the sultriest voice she could manage, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

Alex just looked at her, waiting. Bloody single-minded man.

Bloody single-minded man who wanted to keep her alive. One could forgive a certain amount for that. There weren’t that many people in the world who cared whether her skin was intact or not.

But, then, this was Captain Reid, protector of the world, defender of treasonous siblings and small kittens. He would have done the same for the cobra.

Well, maybe not the cobra.

“Oh, all right, all right.” If he was determined to discuss the cobra, they would discuss the cobra. Penelope plonked herself down on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress give around her. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep him there talking. Not in the slightest. She angled her head up at him. “We all know that you weren’t too keen on having me here, but I don’t think you’re trying to kill me — ”

“Thank you.”

Ignoring him, Penelope went on ticking off people on her fingers. “ — Henry Russell wasn’t too pleased when I turned down his overtures, but a little bit of rejection hardly rises to the level of snakebite.”

Alex didn’t rise to the bait. His mind was elsewhere, on politics, not dalliance. “You made an enemy of Mir Alam.”

“Nearly a month ago,” countered Penelope. “If he really were set on getting his own back, I doubt he would have waited that long. Revenge tastes better hot.”

“That’s debatable. Mir Alam waited several years before taking his revenge on some of his enemies here in the capital, and I don’t believe he enjoyed it any the less for the wait.”

“Even so,” said Penelope stubbornly. “I doubt that talking out of turn at a durbar is cause enough to elevate me to the top of his enemies list. I imagine I’m somewhere down near the bottom, somewhere below the man who trimmed his mustache too short.”

“That would be a capital offense,” agreed Alex, before adding, “What about Lord Frederick?”

Penelope squirmed slightly against the white coverlet. Something about the question gave her a decidedly queasy sensation, although she wasn’t sure whether it was the implication that her husband wanted her dead or simply the sound of his name on Alex’s lips. “What about him?” she asked belligerently. She didn’t want to talk about Freddy with Alex.

Alex sighed.

With an airiness she was far from feeling, she said, “Of course, you are ignoring the obvious solution, which is that the netting was just taken down for cleaning and the snake crawled in through the drainage sluice on his own scaly initiative.”

“He couldn’t fit through the drainage sluice.”

“The door, then. The window. This house is positively riddled with permeable passages.”

“You said it wasn’t a love match.”

Penelope balled her hands into fists in her lap. “If every marriage of convenience ended in murder, the graveyards of London would be packed to capacity. Freddy might not love me, but that’s no reason to murder me! I’m rather convenient for him, really.”

“How so?”

Penelope gave a bitter laugh. “He can dally all he likes without fear of consequences. It isn’t as though anyone else can force him into marriage.”

Damn, damn, damn. Penelope wished she could suck that betraying “else” right back into her mouth, but it was already too late for that. Alex was wearing his thoughtful expression again, looking at her as though he had just fit the last piece into a puzzle.

Desperate to refocus his attention, Penelope said hastily, “Freddy’s mistress, on the other hand, might justifiably desire to put a period to my existence. Does she speak English?”

If Alex was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Excellent English. And French, too. She was mistress to Guignon, among others.”

“Guignon,” repeated Penelope softly. “The man we chased to that tomb.”

“You mean the man I chased, while you followed,” Alex’s voice was mild, but there was something guarded behind it. At another time, Penelope might have pursued that, but she was preoccupied with something far more pressing. What if it wasn’t all rubbish? What if Alex was right, and the snake had been deliberately released into her room? She didn’t want to think that Freddy wanted to kill her, or even his mistress — although she couldn’t help but admire her initiative if the woman had tried — but there was someone who did have a far more powerful motive than piddling little affairs of the heart.

“It’s Fiske,” said Penelope with resolution, lifting her head an abruptness that made the bed wobble. “It’s Fiske who wants to kill me.”

Alex blinked. “Fiske? He seemed to be having a rather good time in your company earlier tonight. I don’t think murder was what was on his mind,” he added dryly.

“Until,” said Penelope, “I mentioned the Marigold.”

Even if a maddened French spy was trying to murder her, at least she had the satisfaction of doing what she might once have thought impossible: rendering Captain Reid completely and utterly speechless. She hadn’t even had to jump into a river to do it.

“I take it you know of him, too?” she said brightly. “I imagine that was why you were chasing Major Guignon up to that Frenchman’s tomb — not for his onion soup recipes.”

“Raymond’s Tomb,” Alex corrected numbly. “And Guignon was a pastry chef, not a cook. How in the devil do you know about the Marigold?”

Penelope let out a snort of repressed amusement. “This fearsome French military man was a pastry chef ? Oh Lord, whatever will they do next? Boot-blacks leading their engineers? Tailors sailing their ships?”

“Vive la Republique,” agreed Alex absently. “Why Fiske? How in the hell does he come into it? And how in the bloody hell do you know about the Marigold?”

Penelope regarded him with approval. There was nothing more annoying than miss-ish reservations about not cursing in front of a lady. “I have my sources,” she said airily. “And I know that your Guignon was expecting the arrival of a contact who would set certain plans into motion.”