Unless he’d been pretending. Doubt gnawed at her innards. Oh, please, no. Was it possible to fake the way he had looked at her? The way he’d seduced her with such reverence as if she were a goddess? Remembering made the doubt worse. Perhaps he thought to ensnare her, lure her close with protestations of love and undying devotion. She remembered his simple words: ‘You’re so beautiful.’
Nora cringed. Someone trying too hard would have made the mistake of using flowery language, comparing her lips to roses or some other body part to some other ridiculous commodity. Not Brandon Wycroft. He was a master at his craft.
Nora reprimanded herself. She’d willingly eaten from the proverbial tree of knowledge last night. She and Brandon had made love and now there was doubt, slinking like a serpent between them. Before last night, everything had been clearly defined; she wanted to see the mill fail and he wanted to see it succeed. It had all been so uncomplicated.
Nora’s eyes lit on the table beside her bed. A note. She reached for it. Nora, do not go to St. John’s on Wednesday night. It is a trap. B.
Nora crumpled the small sheet in her hand. The note was short, concise and, after last night, positively deadly. Was he telling the truth and wished to protect her from harm? Was it a lie? Maybe he hoped she would believe the note and forgo the raid. It might be nothing more than a ploy to get The Cat to stop the robberies. If the robberies stopped, the investors would stay. The mill would go forward. He would get what he wanted. He would win.
She hated herself. He had her right where he wanted her—between doubt and disaster.
‘She’s got you right where she wants you—panting like a stallion around a mare in season,’ Jack drawled, sprawled in a chair before the fire in Brandon’s library, a glass of brandy in one hand. His growing familiarity with that position was starting to irritate Brandon.
Brandon shot Jack a ferocious glare. ‘Don’t be crass. That’s not funny. I brought you here to help me, not to make jokes at my expense. So far, you’ve done nothing but drink my whisky and abuse my hospitality.’ Looking for insight into his problem, Brandon had confessed his night with Nora to Jack, daggers and all.
‘It’s not crass, it’s true.’ Jack twirled the snifter’s stem carelessly. ‘She beds you…’
‘She did not bed me,’ Brandon retorted, his pride stinging.
Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Correction. You bedded her. That’s what she’s convinced you to think anyway. In return, you spilled the beans and told her everything.’
Brandon stared into the fire. He was mad at Jack for making his time with Nora into something manipulative and tainted. He was mad at himself for partially believing his friend might be right. There was nothing like a little disgust and self-loathing to queer his pitch with Nora.
He was conscious of Jack rising from his chair. Jack gained the door and turned back. ‘Tell me, did you ever get a look in that wardrobe she so zealously defended?’
Brandon met his question with stoic silence. No, he hadn’t and, worse, he hadn’t thought anything of it until Jack brought it up. Whatever she was hiding in there, she had successfully defended. So successfully, in fact, he hadn’t even realised she had diverted him until a day later.
‘That’s what I thought. Now, explain to me again how she doesn’t have you where she wants you?’
Brandon sighed and slumped down in his chair. By Lucifer’s stones, sleeping with Nora was the worst best thing he’d ever done.
Chapter Twelve
Wednesday night found Nora guiding her horse up the dark Cheetham Hill Road towards the wealthy neighborhood where Magnus St John lived.
She was glad she had chosen to come. She couldn’t stand hypocrisy in any form. It irked her endlessly that men like St John and Witherspoon made money off the grime of industry, but wouldn’t dare to dirty themselves by living amid the squalor they wrought.
They might think twice about their fortunes if they couldn’t look down on the factories of Manchester from their lofty mansions on Cheetham Hill, but instead had to live in Ardmore, a once-elegant, but quickly succumbing, suburb of Manchester or some other such neighbourhood.
The decision to carry out her plans at St John’s had been a classic prisoner’s dilemma and she’d spent the better part of the week debating her decision.
Go or stay? There appeared no way she could win. If she went and there was no trap, it would mean that Brandon had used their intimate encounter to manipulate her plans. If not, it would mean Brandon held some modicum of feeling for her, but going would put her in significant danger.
Nora knew she should hope the first option was true, but part of her didn’t want to believe Brandon could fake such an intense encounter or, even if he could, that he would have done so with her. After all, she’d been honest with him from the start about who and what she was.
While Nora, the woman on the brink of catapulting into love, was tempted to play the coward and renege on her Wednesday raid, The Cat knew her duty. The Cat did not shirk her responsibilities.
Despite the hiccup of her interlude with Brandon, The Cat was succeeding; the investors were scared; word in the village had it that two were asking to pull out. The mill was short on funds. Everything was going according to plan.
Experience taught her that was when the bottom usually fell out of the bucket. Just not tonight, she prayed, please, just don’t let it be tonight. Still, in spite of her responsibilities, she might have opted for remaining at home this evening if it hadn’t been for the note that arrived Monday afternoon.
The regular food supplies had not improved Mary Malone’s health. She desperately needed a doctor and expensive medicines. Nora was her only hope. That Mary had written to ask for help indicated how dire her situation must be.
The street on which St John lived in his palatial townhouse was near. Nora turned off and followed the lane behind the fine homes leading to the mews where the residents stabled their cattle. She found a quiet corner behind St John’s home, not far from the gate leading to his small city garden where she could discreetly leave her horse.
She’d been here twice before and knew the gardens and house well. The dining room, with its imported Venetian crystal chandelier, was St John’s pride. The elegant room could be accessed from the outside by French doors that opened into the room so guests could be entertained by the burbling fountain in the spring. In the winter, the doors were kept shut and the gardens dark.
It would be the perfect entrance as long as the undercook had done her job and slipped the sleeping potion Nora’s network had provided into the staff’s afternoon tea, the last meal they would have before serving St John’s guests. The powder would induce a sound eight hours of sleep before wearing off.
If the potion worked as planned, all the non-essential staff would be asleep, leaving her to deal only with the footmen in the dining room serving the meal. She wasn’t worried overmuch. Many of them were hired just for the evening and already had sympathies with The Cat. The others didn’t care much for St John and his blustering ways. She was counting on them enjoying the sight of their arrogant master being brought to heel too much to pose any real problem.
Nora dismounted and continued
