Free What a Gentleman Desires by Kasey Michaels Page A

away in the process. Should I be packing, sir, or do you wish to dispatch Lord Mailer to his dark reward before we go? Your stiletto, sir,” he ended, handing over the blade that had been secured in a special sleeve inside the right boot. “I suggest a swift, straight cut across the windpipe, but from behind, please, as bloodstains are the very devil in the laundry.”
    Valentine rewarded the valet with a lopsided grin. “You speak as if I go about routinely killing people.”
    “No, sir. I speak as if certain you will be forced to dispatch at least one someone before this week is out. I doubt you’ll have a choice.”
    “Peeking at my correspondence again? Because that’s pretty much what Simon told me I’d have to do. Rest assured, Piffkin, if that does prove to be the case, I won’t spend weeks agonizing over the deed. This is war.”
    “More than war, Master Valentine. Hellfire.”
    Valentine deposited his long body on what he hoped would prove a comfortable chair, and then raised his stockinged feet up onto the low table. “Is there anything you don’t know, Piffkin?”
    “Yes, sir. It would appear I remain at a loss to know why Miss Marchant has so upset you.”
    “I suppose I could quote Lord Mailer and say it’s because I suspect she may be smart. Because that’s certainly true. Smart. Too smart not to have noticed something strange is going on here, and too smart to attempt to deny she has some suspicions. On the other hand, she may also have some names for me, which would be an immense help.”
    “How gratifying. However, I believe we’re still missing the bits that contributed to your pout, sir,” Piffkin said, taking a brush to the dried mud on his master’s buckskins.
    “I’m getting to them, if you’ll allow me to first say I believe I shall never enter another greenhouse. The strangest things seem to happen in them.”
    “You’re not dirty enough to have fallen into a pit.”
    “There are pits and then there are pits. In this case I suppose you’d say a human pit.”
    “You’re in danger of falling into Miss Marchant? That hardly seems proper, Master Valentine.”
    “You’re such a wit, Piffkin,” Valentine said dully. “Consider her more of an enigma. I don’t think she just happened to find herself employed here. From what I deduced from Mailer, I’m not inclined to think there was an advertisement placed in the local or London newspapers. I believe she sought out a position here in particular. I think she’s come here with some motive of her own, showing up unbidden to worm her way in as governess to a pair of infants who have as much use for a governess as you have need of a comb.”
    The valet raised a hand to the sleek, polished pate above his bushy brows. “I am experimenting with a new wax. However, it does, sadly, cost you one pound six per pot. Not an extremely large pot.”
    “But worth every groat, I’m sure. I could probably read by the glow from your head in a full moon. Speaking of which—our Miss Marchant has confirmed my information that the Society have been gathering here during the full moon. She’s seen them, at least the ones who stay here at Fernwood. But I was forced to tell her more than I wished in my attempts to get what I thought was the truth from her, and now she refuses to leave, even after I handed her some rather unlovely information that would have had any reasonable woman hot-footedly racing for the nearest posting inn. I never should have said a word to her, not a single word.”
    “You do at times reveal a penchant for needlessly complicating matters, Master Valentine.”
    “Putting my foot in it, you mean. As I told her, it was the disguise, mostly, that steered me in the wrong direction, if I’m to have any excuse at all. She was shocked to hear what I had to say, genuinely shocked. But her reaction fell far short of what I would have expected. She already knew, or at least suspected something havey-cavey going on beneath that