Why borrow trouble? The Hawleys were no longer her business. Staying out of jail, proving herself innocent, those were her concerns. Granted, she was too weak to make inquiries, and the gentlemen's clubs' doors were locked to women, but she could examine the accounts books when Lord Rexford brought them, if she could keep her head clear.

"No more laudanum, Nanny. I need to be able to think."

"Oh, you can let Lord Rexford do that, too, I swear." Amanda had to smile at the old woman's confidence in her former nurseling. He was a large man, not as big as his cousin, of course, but still tall and commanding. He was not, however, a god. "He is being immeasurably helpful. He believes me, which is more than anyone else does. But if he manages to free me from the charges, I still have to plan my future. I cannot be a weight around Lady Royce's neck, and my soiled reputation will prevent Elaine's finding a husband, if I were welcome to stay with her at all."

Nanny smiled. "I am thinking you can leave that to his lordship, too. He'll do the right thing."

"The right thing…?"

"Of course. He helped ruin your good name, didn't he?"

The old woman could not be thinking what Amanda thought she was implying. "But I am an accused murderess."

"Not for long, if I know the lad."

But what Nanny did not know was that the viscount believed her another man's mistress, no fit bride for a gentleman, no fit mother to his heir. He might not believe Sir Frederick's slanders like Mr. Ashway, but neither did he believe her untouched. She'd seen the shadows fall over his face when he spoke of the man in the park. She feared for a moment he'd grow violent when she could not, would not, answer his questions. Besides, he did not seem to like her. She was a chore to him, like mucking out the stables. Why, he had not so much as blinked an eye at the change in her looks, after an entire morning of Nanny's fussing. He could have smiled or paid her more than the cursory compliment that she looked better. A small smile of approval would have been enough. His cousin was gallant, but that did not count.

No, Captain Lord Rexford was not the least interested in Amanda as anything but an investigation to pursue; afterward, he could close his notebook and go back to whatever he did in whatever rural fastness. Perhaps he would rejoin the army and torture prisoners.

She shook her head, then regretted the pain that caused. Still, she refused to believe that last, not when the viscount was here at his mother's house, which obviously bothered him, on a stranger's behalf. There was only so much, though, that anyone expected from a good Samaritan. No one would possibly demand that he wed a fallen woman, least of all Amanda.

If some misguided smidgeon of chivalry forced a proposal out of the man, Amanda would refuse. She did not want to be married to a fiercesome gentleman subject to black moods and bouts of drinking. Her mother had made that mistake, and Amanda had seen the results. Worse, Lord Rexford was reclusive and bitter and wont to batter opponents with his fists and his nose. And he had secrets of his own. She doubted he would ever reveal himself to anyone other than his cousin; not even his future wife.

She knew that any number of females would leap at the chance to be a wealthy countess eventually, no matter the costs. Amanda pitied that poor woman, whomever she turned out to be. Marriages of convenience seldom turned out to be convenient at all, especially for the wife.

No, if she could stay out of prison, and out of the hangman's clutches, she could stay out of a lifetime of misery.

"His lordship did not destroy my reputation," she told his doting old nurse, who only wished to spoil another generation of Royce infants. "He saved my life. I can never ask for more. I will be forever in his debt for that alone, and longer if he helps clear my name of the murder. What reward would that be, to demand his bachelor life, his name? Even if he does not wish me near his family, Edwin will assist me, especially if I can show that his father misappropriated my fortune. Any honorable man would make amends, wouldn't he?" she asked, more to convince herself than Nanny. "Perhaps I can recover enough of my father's fortune or my dowry to live quietly somewhere."

Nanny tsked and took up her knitting. Amanda slept, without the drugs, and dreamed of blue capes and blue-eyed babies.

Chapter Eleven


He should have gone through proper channels. He should have made an appointment. He should have reported to the officer in charge. He did nothing of the kind. Damned pettifogging politicians, all of them. The real soldiers were at the front, fighting the bloody war.

Hell, he should have resigned his commission first, in case they wanted to court-martial him.

Instead he asked the subaltern at the door for Major Harrison. There was no Major Harrison, of course; he'd checked the roster of officers. The name was a code to open doors, a great many successive doors, at which he had to identify himself with the proper answer to the query: "What is the nature of your business with Major Harrison?"

The proper response was: "I come in aid of my country and the war effort." Rex supposed that was how the man he wished to see became known as the Aide, although he served no general in London and wore no uniform. Rex had been through the intricate rigmarole once before, when he was given his orders to report to General Wellesley himself. His father had given him the passwords. To this day he wondered how the Earl of Royce had come to know the key to the most secret of England's hidden defenses. He also wondered if the codes had changed, or if his own name would be enough to deliver him to the innermost sanctum.

He was passed from one junior officer to another, each waiting for instructions to proceed. Then he was handed over to a higher-ranking flunky who led him up stairs and down corridors in the vast building, with no concern for Rex's leg or his limp. If he was not fit for duty, the attitude seemed to be, he should not be wasting the Aide's time.

Rex made no complaint, nor did he when left to wait in a small office empty of everything but two hard wooden chairs. He sat on one and put his aching leg on the other. To the devil with protocol and politeness. Of course he had to jump to his feet, doing his leg more insult, when a lieutenant colonel he did not know entered the room.

He saluted, gave his name and rank and unit, to the officer's grim disapproval and rigid posture. Then he repeated that he had come in aid of the country and the war effort but added: "And please inform Major Harrison that I have come about the truth." That way Major Harrison, who did not exist, would be sure of his caller. The officer left without saying a word.

A man in rumpled civilian clothes hurried into the room next, nodded to Rex and said, "Follow me," without giving his name. Ah, Rex thought as he went up corridors and down stairs, he had finally reached the inner level of the spymasters, where the real work was accomplished.

As they neared the very hallway where Rex had begun his journey, he began to wonder if he was being shown the door. He'd never find the office he wanted on his own, and doubted if shouts or orders, threats or bribes, would bring him any closer to a man who existed only as a myth to most of the army.

Instead of leading him to an exit, however, his guide took Rex through a dining hall, through a kitchen, and then down what appeared to be service stairs. They went past a wine cellar, munitions rooms, and a series of barred cells. Then the man used a key to open a door that led to more downward stairs, with twists and turns and dark corridors, which was not at all the way Rex had come the first time. He thought they must be in the catacombs beneath London's streets by now, judging from the dank and damp air. They trudged so far he felt they might be in another country soon.

Just when he thought his leg would stiffen entirely from the cold or collapse beneath him from exhaustion, his guide used another key at another door. This one led up several sets of stairs that finally, thankfully, ended at a door opening into a dimly lit but ordinary-appearing book room. Draperies were drawn across the windows, and only one shaded oil lamp burned on a wide wooden desktop covered with papers. The lamp did not give off enough light to read any of the titles on the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, or to see into the darker corners-all on purpose, of course, to obscure the room's sole occupant.

The gentleman behind the desk rose and held out his hand before Rex could salute. "Ah, Rexford, I have been expecting you."

Major Harrison, which was surely not the man's name, but was the only one Rex knew other than the Aide, had a firm grip for a man who appeared to be in his dotage, with an old-fashioned gray wig and thick, tinted glasses and a silver-streaked beard and mustache. Of course, they could all be fake.

Rex shook the hand, bowed, and took the seat he was offered in a comfortable leather armchair, too far away across the desk to make out his host's features or expression by the meager light. "I do not see how you could be expecting me, sir, when I did not know I was coming."

Harrison tapped one opened letter in front of him. "From your father, who asked me to lend what assistance I might." He tapped another. "From a justice of the court, demanding satisfaction." Another: "From the Lord Mayor's office, in reference to a public disturbance. And this one?" He stroked it gently, as one might a lover's cheek. "Well, let me simply say that I have indeed been expecting you." He poured wine into two glasses waiting on the side of the desk. "How is the leg?" He politely ignored the nose and the scar, unless he truly had such weak eyesight he could not see them. That might explain the darkness, Rex considered, if light exacerbated the problem. On the other hand, not a single drop of wine went awry.