Free Almost a Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal Page A

veiled smile and nod of assent, and then the touch—light yet firm, she could imagine it perfectly—of his hand at the small of her back. She'd wear a gown of the thinnest silk… his hand would be warm through his kid glove…
    Blast it all! The touch of his hand was the
last
thing she should be imagining
.
    She slammed her fist down on the foyer table, shaking it so violently that the Chinese vase—made for an emperor five hundred years before—tipped, tumbled, and shattered into a thousand pieces.
    "Ah, Simms. No, it's nothing. Well yes, of course it is a shame. A damned shame—it's, it was… a beautiful thing I—destroyed.
    "Yes, thank you, I do need to bathe and dress. The water's hot? Excellent. Yes, I'll go up now."
     
    The Coal Hole had been almost empty and dim as its name suggested when David pushed open the door; the only other customers were two men monopolizing the prime seats by the fire. Street ruffians, David thought at first: the big, bearish fellow with enormous, hamlike fists was certainly a type you'd want to stay clear of. But upon a moment's scrutiny he decided that the man was too heavy and clumsy to pose much threat to himself or his illustrated book. And the second man clearly wasn't dangerous in the least. Half hidden in shadow, he spoke in a thin, piercing upper-class voice pitched somewhere between a whine and a bray. Turning his back to the two men, David quietly ordered an ale and sat behind a pillar at the window table to look at his book by the fading late afternoon light.
    An hour must have passed before he once again became aware of the voices by the fireplace. The upper-class gentleman, forgetting that they weren't alone, suddenly spoke out in angry, impatient tones.
    "No, no Stokes, I don't want him severely beaten. Just a bit roughed up, you know. Humiliated. You might knock him into a ditch and get him all dirty if you wish. Or give him a black eye, something like that. But what I'm paying you for—and very well, I might add—is for you to follow him. Learn where he goes on these little vacations of his. For he seems to disappear into thin air. We all know he's hiding something. I want him unmasked, exposed, humiliated just as…"
    The thin, angry voice trailed off.
    "Just as wot, Baron… ?"
    But the older man interrupted him quickly.
    "Dammit, I told you to call me Mr. Bradley."
    He's not about to share his humiliation with the thug he's hiring, David thought contemptuously. And he's too timid to do the dirty work of personally confronting the man who'd insulted him.
    The craven scoundrel was even too low to use his own name. David tried to turn his attention back to his book. But the conversation had captured his attention.
    "Aw right, then, Mr., uh, Bradley, so it's Marston I'm to go after, is it? Mr. Philip 'Phizz' Marston in Brunswick Square."
    "Marston on Thursday next. Here's ten guineas now, and forty more to come when you tell me where he goes on these mysterious excursions of his."
    "And I ain't to rough him up so bad, eh? Rather takes the fun out of it for a lad like meself."
    "There should be enough fun in forty guineas, Stokes. And you can rough him up later, when we've got him where we want him. When he's learned not to lord it over a real gentleman."
    "Like yerself, Mr. Bradley?"
    "Exactly, Stokes. Like myself."
     
    Phoebe passed an entirely unremarkable night of engagements, encountering no trace of Lord Linseley no matter how many festivities she visited or how long she stayed at them.
    Are you satisfied
? she asked herself with a shrug and a grimace the next afternoon. Well then, she thought wryly, you
could
try doing something useful. Time to open the mail.
    Nothing special. Nothing interesting. She scrawled her replies quickly. But what was this?
    The envelope was of heavy paper, like all the others. But there was no crest printed on it in raised type. She didn't recognize the handwriting either. Nor was there a discernable seal on the blob of wax that