Free Dangerous Dalliance by Joan Smith

had told me. I am not a gambler, but I wouldn’t have minded picking up a few pounds on a sure thing. But then, we had more interesting things to talk about. Well, I must be trotting along. I just wanted to pay my respects. Nice chatting to you again.”
    Not a word was said to detain her. She heaved herself from her chair, assembled her belongings, and I showed her to the door, with a few insincere expressions of gratitude.
    “Hussy!” Mrs. Lovatt exclaimed when the door was closed. “Wouldn’t you know she would have to land in when Lord Fairfield was here. What must he think of that creature? At least she didn’t mention her suspicion that Harold was a spy.” She stopped and emitted a gasp. “Good gracious, Heather. Do you think Mrs. Mobley could be in on it?”
    “She’d have been boasting of it if she were. What do you think of this idea of fixing the races, Auntie?”
    “Your father was a gentleman, miss.”
    “Then I fear he was a gentleman spy. It is odd, her eagerness to get to the Royal Pavilion. That would be an excellent place to pick up news.”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Lovatt said doubtfully, “though I can easily enough believe it is the prince she wishes to pick up there. Thank God at least Harold didn’t marry her. She has an eye for Fairfield, you must have noticed.”
    I laughed. “She is a bit long in the tooth for him.”
    “And a bit broad in the beam.”
    “I shall ask him this evening how he came to know Papa.”
    “I am beginning to think we should drop this entire matter,” my aunt said. “Whatever it is, it’s over and done now.”
    “Not really,” I said. “If it was Snoad at the bottom of it, as you think, then it might be still going on.”
    It was unusual for Mrs. Lovatt to have overlooked this aspect of it, for in the usual way, she is awake on all suits. “We’ll march Snoad out of Gracefield as soon as we get home.”
    I was aware of a strange reluctance. I remembered Snoad’s sadness when he spoke of my father, and his emotion when I had given him the watch. He had looked so very handsome in the moonlight. . . .
     

Chapter Six
     
    We did not see Bunny Smythe again until dinner-time. He sent a note to our room telling us he had hired a private parlor, and would meet us there.
    “I ordered wine and was just having a gargle,” he said, rising to greet us when we entered. “More than ready for fork work after a busy day. Look forward to sinking a bicuspid into a piece of red meat.”
    He had changed to evening attire, but there is not a jacket in all of Christendom that can make Bunny look elegant. Black, in particular, did not suit him. He had the uncanny faculty of attracting every mote of dust and hair and dirt in the air. His jacket looked for the world like a dust rag. He looks least bad in country jacket, buckskins, and top boots. In evening clothes, he looked like a hired mourner at a second-rate funeral.
    As soon as we were seated and given a glass of wine to await our mutton, I said, “Did you have any luck finding Depew?”
    “Not a sniff of him. He isn’t putting up at any of the regular hotels. Plenty of rooming houses, of course.”
    “I don’t see Sir Chauncey putting up at a rooming house,” Mrs. Lovatt said.
    “Might, if his visit is supposed to be a secret.”
    We filled Bunny in on our doings during his absence. No mention was made of the possibility of Papa’s involvement in spying being anything but proper. “So this is where Mrs. Mobley has anchored herself,” he said.
    “Do you know anything about Lord Fairfield?” I asked. Bunny made occasional darts to London during the Season, and had friends there from his school days, and his one term at Cambridge.
    “Bit of a wild buck. Corinthian—baron. Heir to old Lord Albemarle’s title and estates. One in Hampshire, another up north somewhere. Marquess, the papa. Fairfield’ll be rich as Croesus one day. Meanwhile, he’s usually dipped. Bets on the horses.”
    “Perhaps he also bets on