She tried desperately to think, but her brain felt literally torn, wrenched and shaken, racked with worry for Fergus, laced with guilty regret that her rush to save Miss Spry had led to his injury, and simultaneously rocked by the realization that Deverell now had it in his power to completely overset all her careful work.
If he told anyone—Edith, even though she supported her without knowing the details, even Audrey, who was so eccentric yet would surely draw the line over a lady of the haut ton owning and actively operating an employment agency, let alone consorting with servants and members of the lower orders as she necessarily did—the entire enterprise she’d worked so hard and so long to establish would come tumbling down about her ears.
The man who sat in the armchair opposite quietly watching her was beyond doubt the most potent threat to her—on all levels—that she’d ever even imagined, let alone faced.
Eyes locked on his, green and unwavering, she assimilated that. Along with the fact that he’d made no threats, no decrees, no statements of intent. That he was waiting.
She thought back, reviewing their exchange…realized. Drawing in a slow breath, she shifted, easing her tense back. “What do you wish to know?”
He heard the question for the capitulation it was but gave no sign of gloating. “How do you know which females need rescuing?”
She drained her teacup, set it down, then told him of the network that operated throughout Mayfair and the major country houses, the housekeepers and butlers who knew each other, the interconnecting mesh of family and relatives who worked here or there, in this lord’s employ or that lady’s. “It’s not hard to hear of the problem households if you’re listening in the right quarters. Emmeline worked in a number of establishments, and she has seven sisters and two brothers, similiarly employed. Through them and her, word gets passed back to the agency.”
“And then?”
“And then…” She drew breath and went on, “If we need to rescue someone from an actual residence, as is usually the case with a governess, I visit with Edith or one of my other aunts. It’s not that difficult to arrange. I don’t make direct contact with the young woman involved—that’s always done through the housekeeper or whoever in the household alerted us in the first place.”
“You go there to reconnoiter, to study the house and the approaches to work out how to mount your rescue?”
She could read nothing—neither was there disgust nor condemnation—in his tone. “Yes.” She rose and started pacing before the hearth, rubbing the fingers of one hand, remembering various rescues they’d staged. “If, on the other hand, the girl’s a lady’s maid, dresser, or companion, and therefore likely to travel, it’s often easier to rescue them from other houses.”
“Such as the maid you rescued from Cranbrook Manor—Lady Moffat’s lady’s maid. I take it that was Jessica?”
She cast him a glance, then nodded. “Lord Moffat has a roving eye, and roving appetites as well.”
She sensed a reaction then, a clear response, a tightening of muscles, a swift, involuntary flexing of steel instantly suppressed—but she had no notion what it meant. She didn’t feel it was directed at her, but he remained so calm, so outwardly contained, that even though she could sense he was reining his reactions back, holding them in, even though she could see in his darkened eyes that he wasn’t as unengaged as he was taking care to appear, she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
What he might be considering doing with the secrets she was revealing.
She paced back and forth, casting quick glances his way; he’d fallen silent, thinking, eyes narrowed, face set, the angles unforgivingly harsh.
There was no sense in beating about the bush. Halting before the chair she’d vacated, she drew herself up, clasped her hands before her, trying not to clench her fingers in too obvious trepidation, and faced him. “What are you going to do?”
He blinked, looked up, and focused on her face. Frowned. “Do?”
The incomprehension in his face—as if he had no idea that he held the fate of something she’d worked for years to achieve in his hand, that it was his to smash at his whim—ignited her temper. It flared, infusing her with an almost frenzied fury, lighting her eyes. “Yes,” she hissed. “Do!”
Flinging her hands in the air, she abandoned her supplicant’s stance and fell to pacing again—a great deal more vigorously. “I’m perfectly well aware that the ton would be horrified to learn of my ‘enterprise.’ That one word from you to almost anyone, but especially to my father, would bring the whole to a crashing halt!”
Agitated, she wrapped her arms about her, swung to face him, and again demanded, “So what are you going to do?”
“Ah.” Deverell nodded to indicate he understood her question. What he didn’t understand was how he should answer.
Being able to rapidly assess any situation was an ability he’d taken for granted for years—until now. Now he couldn’t decide—didn’t know what he felt, didn’t even have clear instincts to guide him. A species of horror over what he could imagine she’d been doing warred with admiration, even pride, at her novel tack and the courage and commitment she’d displayed in getting such an “enterprise” underway, let alone keeping it active.
He kept his eyes locked with hers and drew a long, deep breath—more than anything else to give his head a moment to clear. She was keyed up, tense, on edge; the last thing he wanted to do at this point was to take a wrong and potentially seriously damaging step with her. One rather less civilized part of him was seriously irritated that she’d think he would harm her in any way whatever. Against that, the same primitive side wanted to roar at her over the danger she’d been courting, as exemplified by the evening’s events…but roaring at her wouldn’t help—him or her—especially as he had no intention of disrupting her enterprise.
“Who’s Loftus?” That was one thing he hadn’t yet learned. It was a point that might prove decisive.
She narrowed her eyes until the blue-violet seemed purple; her jaw had set long ago. “Tell me what you’re going to do first. I don’t want him damaged by anything that happens—he doesn’t deserve that.”
He frowned at her, but his heart wasn’t in it. Her tone painted Coates as another of her people, someone she felt obligated to protect. There was none of the heightened trepidation that would signal Coates meant more to her than, for instance, McKenna.
“What I’m going to do….” His mind grasped a situation it recognized—negotiation—and finally got to work, seeking the right words, the phrases, the best approach to achieve his objective. An objective that hadn’t, of itself, at any stage been in doubt. The instant he’d learned of her “enterprise,” he’d known without thinking what he wanted.
But she had to agree.
He had to persuade her.