Free My Lady Gambled by Shirl Anders

from out front when Brynmore settled behind a box-trimmed hedge across the avenue. The concealing hedge was next to the townhouse beside a narrow alleyway on the opposite side of the avenue.
    He watched two male servants lifting a spectacular harp into another half cart, just as a large four-door carriage pulled up behind the cart. Brynmore waited expectantly for someone to open the door and climb down from the carriage. However, this did not happen and the driver just waited patiently up on top. A short time later, a footman and a butler came out carrying a traveling trunk with two aproned maids following behind carrying large valises. All were loaded onto the carriage.
    Somehow, Brynmore thought, these did not belong to the suspects, Baco and Cernno. The harp and the elegant trunk with the various valises had feminine, or at the very least, a well-appointed nobleman’s look to them. The Germans were more rustic.
    Some ten minutes later his theory was confirmed, when an ornately dressed woman, trailing her elaborate skirts, came out of the townhouse with Baco and Cernno. The woman spoke something to one of the two Germans as she approached the carriage. Brynmore cursed his hearing loss as he picked out details of the woman. Older, with an out-of-style powdered wig, sharp nose, and thick theatrical makeup on her face. Dame Baset, perhaps?
    Brynmore could feel the crawling itch, slithering up his spine, and the scent of his prey wafted through his senses as he watched the three enter the carriage. He could try to follow, but without a carriage of his own or a horse, it would prove difficult. First, he would try a moment of information gathering while keeping the carriage in sight. To this end, he left his surveillance position and approached the servants still loading the last cart. He had a question about the harp on his tongue, and in little time, he had the owner’s destination. It was an outlying area of Paris and from there to the docks. To further ask the name of the ship that the three were boarding, or the ship’s destination would leave too much suspicion of his casual attentions.
    Brynmore tipped his hat and quickly headed in the opposite direction. A swift horse would get him there before his quarry. He knew that he was ultimately just going on hunches, however, too many things pointed to this being the right direction. He had to follow it. Going to the little known Aleuts docks could easily confirm his suspicions, and it would also put him near the French coast where he needed to be to send messages by lantern beacon across the channel. The times were set at midnight each night that a courier in Drummond’s employ would wait for Brynmore’s possible updates.
    Now, Brynmore thought, he had something to share. His main concern was the overseas destination of the three he was following. His second concern was the fact that he might have to leave the French coast immediately to follow them overseas. That meant leaving Miss Montoya without a word. It could also mean leaving her with other players around, players she knew nothing about. Brynmore felt certain that she would keep poking and prodding after her brother, stirring up nests of potential danger everywhere she trod.
    “Yer bloody daft,” Brynmore accused himself.
    She was obviously of the genteel lady sort, and the trauma she had gone through would surely send her backtracking to her home. As much as he tried to deflect the nagging war inside him traveling from one camp of reason to the other concerning Miss Montoya’s motives or further methods, it would not leave him alone. And why, he thought that he had any chance to guess what this one woman might do, he had no clue!
    Nevertheless, the only way he was able to quiet his internal carping, was to write a hasty note and give it to a messenger at the nearest livery. He gave a livery boy two pence to deliver the note to one of his personal associates that he used when in Paris. This one was a former spy