Free Lady Be Good by Meredith Duran

only break free and come back! I will stand outside your house and HOWL AT THE MOON if I must! But I promise you, if you do not give me permission to stay in town, you will regret it!
    Your loving sister,
Melanie
     
    Amused, Lilah refolded the note, then tucked it into her bodice. Had she ever been so young?
    Above, the door opened. A man lurched down the steps, drunk as blazes. Something clattered onto the pavement ahead of him. He cursed and came to a standstill on the last step, gripping the iron rail as he wobbled indecisively.
    His left leg ended in a wooden stump. It was a canethat he’d dropped. Surprise drew Lilah from her hiding place. As she picked up the cane, he cursed again. “Where in ’ell did you come from?” he demanded.
    “Around the corner.” She handed the cane to him, but got no word of thanks for it. He hobbled past her and took a lurching turn toward the high road, his patched coat billowing out behind him.
    How peculiar! On a deep breath, she marched up to the knocker.
    The butler did not even ask Lilah’s name before admitting her. With a bow, he took her cloak and directed her upstairs. “You will find his lordship at the end of the hall, through the last door on the left.”
    As she crested the stairs, she saw that this was no party after all—not the kind favored in Mayfair, at least. The male assembly wore rough-spun cotton and ragged jackets, and carried plates of plain chicken and potatoes. The group nearest her drank from tankards that smelled of ale, and they made conversation in a variety of unschooled accents. “This was afore that mess at Kabul, y’ken—”
    “Aye, I kent it fine. Right sorry affair, that. Bloody Fred Roberts—”
    She could spy the far hall, but the crush afforded no easy way to reach it. She sidled into the crowd, sidestepping elbows and carelessly handled tankards.
    Evidence of injury was everywhere. Eye patches. Slings. These were military veterans, she suspected. As they took note of her presence, news traveled in a silent wave of nudges and nods. A path cleared, conversations pausing as she passed; with startled glances, men compassedher figure, then quickly and respectfully looked away.
    The crowd thinned as she passed into the hall. To the left, a door stood open to a handsome salon, velvet-flocked walls and gilt molding, furniture upholstered in silk. Men in scarred boots and threadbare trousers sprawled across the sofas, playing chess and smoking pipes.
    The third door stood ajar, only a sliver of light escaping. After a brief hesitation, Lilah nudged it open.
    It was a very masculine kind of morning room, with the requisite writing desk, scattered stands of potted ferns, and a cluster of chairs drawn close to the fire. By tall windows that stood open to the night air, she located the host of the motley crew outside. He was sitting alone, his attention fixed on the street below.
    Belatedly she rapped her knuckles against the door. He did not look over. “Go ahead,” he said quietly. “Shut the door behind you.”
    She lingered at the edge of the carpet, strangely nervous. The first rule of any job was simple, and also, on rare occasions, impossibly complex:
Know your mark
.
    She had spent the day reading old newspapers, reacquainting herself with Palmer’s celebrity. His charge at Bekhole was considered an act of inspired lunacy. From that, she gathered he was a man who liked risks. He had continued his military service after the war’s conclusion, rebuffing the prize of a diplomatic position for the mundane task of cleaning up the war-torn border. When an injury had brought him home, everyone had predicted a political career for him. But the glamor of power did not lure him. A year after his assumption of his late brother’s title, he had yet to take his seat in the House of Lords.
    What did he want, then?
I am eager to reacquaint myself with the pleasures of peacetime
, he’d told a journalist. But that had hardly prepared her to find him