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“Can Miss give me an answer?” the footman asked.

“One minute.” She disappeared through the curtain. The footman cast a dismissive glance over Nate with his hammer and nails.

Miranda returned with a skip in her step and a look that told Nate she would not reveal the contents of her letter.

“Here’s my reply to your mistress.” Miranda handed the footman the folded paper again and a tip for his service like the haughtiest London lady, and the fellow took off.

“Miranda, what are you about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She lifted her chin in her best fine-lady imitation. Nate felt his heart sink. It was pointless to tell his proud, stubborn love that she would suffer if she did not mind her place in the world.

The best remedy for the inevitable disappointments and embarrassments of the Husband Hunter’s misjudgment in one case is a return to the fray. One ball, one rout party, one excursion to the park or to a museum, or one evening at the theatre is inevitably followed by another. A certain stamina for pleasure is a necessary quality of the serious Husband Hunter. She must be willing, even after severe disappointment to dry her tears, don her best raiment, and go forth to give and receive pleasure in the company of others. A willingness to let go of the anticipated pleasures denied her and to look with favor on the pleasures immediately available marks her as a woman worthy of the happiness that will ultimately be hers.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter Seventeen

When Jane returned to the hotel, she discovered that Hazelwood had been there and left her a message. There was an evening to be got through, and then she would put her plan in motion.

It was plain that Hazelwood was not strictly a protocol officer. He was a tool of the government. He had stuck to her side and flattered her and even made love to her simply to obtain her father’s hard won information while doing nothing to find her father.

She would get her book back and move out of Hazelwood’s reach. She would be safe from him in her cousins’ house. Once there, she would take the first opportunity to find the hidden map. As long as she, not Hazelwood, possessed the information for which her father had risked his life, she would be in a position to bargain with the Foreign Office.

Mrs. Lowndes listened without comment to Jane’s plan of moving to her cousins’ house and began to help direct Nell in packing Jane’s things. Jane offered her a hug, and the good lady waved away Jane’s thanks. Jane set to work immediately sending messages. Activity kept her mind as fully occupied as she could wish right up until the moment that Hazelwood called to collect them for the evening’s engagement.

In the carriage no one remarked on anything other than the weather. Hazelwood and Mrs. Lowndes agreed they’d not experienced a colder January. Jane said nothing about mountain caves and passes in that part of the world where her father might be held captive through the winter because the British government refused to come to his aid and instead set a protocol officer to spy on his daughter.

Outside the grand house, where the party was to be held, they waited in a long string of carriages, growing colder by the moment, until it was their turn to alight and enter the heated rooms of their hosts. The requirements of politeness, the noise of guests greeting their hostess, and the tide of movement made conversation impossible for nearly half an hour as they ascended a grand staircase and passed into a vast glittering salon. The press of the crowd did not permit Hazelwood to offer both ladies an arm, so Jane insisted he give his arm to Mrs. Lowndes while she walked behind them. The ladies around them looked so lightly clad they might have been in the disrobing room of the women’s baths of Halab. Beside them, Jane felt invisible.

As they finally entered the salon, Hazelwood grasped her arm firmly above the elbow, arresting her movement. He spoke directly into her right ear. “Shall we argue?”

“Later,” she said, shaking off his hold and smiling to see Lady Violet present. Violet at once introduced Jane to a gentleman of her acquaintance. Jane accepted the arm he offered and followed him into a room arranged for dancing. Jane’s partner led her to a place in the set that was forming, and she set herself to concentrate on the pattern of the unfamiliar dance. Her partner was handsome, young, rich, and mad for politics. And Jane discovered how difficult it was to attend to an eligible partner when invisible gossamer strings bound one to another person in the room.

In spite of a warm welcome from Lady Violet and the dignity of Mrs. Lowndes on his arm, most of the guests, as they recognized Hazelwood, turned away. Jane tried to give her partner her smiles and her attention, but against her will, her gaze kept returning to Hazelwood as he crossed the salon speaking lightly as in jest to Mrs. Lowndes, apparently indifferent to the shoulders and heads that turned away from him. When he had settled Mrs. Lowndes among the chaperones, he did something Jane now knew him to be an expert at. He made himself invisible.

She told herself that he deserved such slights if he had done to others the sort of thing he had done to her, if he made girls love him with no intention of loving them back. He had probably made some ladies among the guests tonight love him, and now they punished him for having rejected them.

By the end of the first set, she could no longer find him, and she accepted her partner’s offer to accompany her to the refreshment room. From there it was easy to find her way back to the dancing with a new partner. She expected to wear away her slippers with dancing until it was time to collect their cloaks and gloves and step back into the carriage. The musicians upset her plan by taking break. Her partner of a moment before was distracted by an acquaintance. Jane turned and found Mrs. Lowndes beside her.

“My dear, I am going to accompany Lady Violet home. Can you manage on your own with Hazelwood?”

Jane nodded. She could. She was undeceived now about his character. One short carriage ride more, and she would be free of him.

He was there to meet her just beyond the blaze of torches that lighted a path to the waiting vehicles of the guests. Hazelwood hauled her into their coach beside him with a firm grip on her arm. “Let’s have that argument now,” he said.

“All right then.” She twisted on the bench and leveled a fierce gaze at him. “You stole my book.”

“You exposed yourself to unnecessary danger.”

“You mean, rather, that I exposed the book to danger, that had I been felled by that brick or stone or whatever it was that smashed the shop window, the book you wanted would now be in someone else’s hands.”

“The hands of an enemy with the will and means to destroy your father and his friends.”

“Like a certain large, redheaded man who entered Kirby & Sons shop? Are you not in league with him against my father?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Do you deny that you know the man?”