If Farne finds out there will be hell to pay …
She remembered the ruthlessness she had sensed in Garrick Farne the moment she saw him. Tom had been right: he was no ineffectual scholar, he was a man with a dangerous past.
Tom was watching her face.
“You had better make sure he does not find out,” he said, “but if you are too scared to do it—”
His tone was all the incentive Merryn needed.
“No,” she said. “No, I will do it. It will be my pleasure.”
CHAPTER THREE
“I HAVE FOUND YOU an inquiry agent, your grace, Hammond by name.” Pointer, his nose twitching in a manner that indicated that he could not quite believe how low he had stooped, stood back to allow the ingress of a man into the library at Farne House. The late autumn evening was already drawing in, darkness dropping over the streets of London and creeping into the room. Garrick had forced himself to work for another four hours on the Farne estate papers, acquainting himself with all the dependents on the Dukedom, all the pensions to be paid, the widows and orphans, the servants, estate workers, the whole panoply of his fiefdom. It was terrifying how many people depended upon him.
Despite the presence of a full branch of candles the room looked gloomy and bare, the bookshelves standing like sentinels. Garrick stood up and stretched, only now aware of how stiff he had become poring over the books for hours on end. He shook the newcomer by the hand and gestured him to a chair. The long mirror that stretched along one wall reflected back their images. It was easy to see why Pointer disapproved, Garrick thought. In the butler’s eyes the visitor would be categorized as most definitely not a gentleman. There was about him an indefinable air of seediness. It seemed soaked into his person, from the battered hat he held in his hand to the world-weary expression in his deep-set gray eyes to the cut of his clothes. He was the type of man Garrick had met on many occasions in his work in the Peninsular—the fixer, the intelligence man, for sale to the highest bidder, exactly the man Garrick needed now.
“Mr. Hammond,” he said. “How do you do?”
“Your grace.” The man did not bow. It was more a meeting of equals, Garrick thought. He needed a service Hammond could provide and the inquiry agent saw no need to be deferential.
“A drink?” Garrick offered. “Brandy?”
“Not on duty, thank you, your grace.”
That, Garrick thought, argued a certain discipline. He nodded. “You will excuse me if I do?”
Hammond’s smile indicated that he recognized this was merely a courtesy. He sat in one of the large wing chairs before the fire, his hat on his knee, politely waiting for Garrick to state his business. Garrick poured for himself—no sense in summoning Pointer simply to perform that function, although no doubt the butler would feel he should have preserved the formalities—and took the chair opposite, crossing one ankle over the other. Mr. Hammond raised an interrogative brow. Garrick paused, chose his words with care.
“I need you to find a lady for me, Mr. Hammond.”
Hammond snapped open a notebook with such alacrity Garrick jumped.
“Is she lost, your grace?”
“No,” Garrick said. “What I should have said is that I need you to identify a lady for me.”
“Ah,” Hammond said. “Semantics.”
“Quite,” Garrick said, warming to him. “There is a lady I have met, I do not know her name and I want you to find her and tell me who she is.”
Hammond nodded. “Description?”
“Small, fair-haired, blue-eyed …” Garrick struggled. A pocket goddess, beautifully rounded, soft, smooth skin, vivid blue eyes, hair like a tumble of golden corn …
Get a grip on yourself, he ordered himself.
“Age?” Hammond’s sharp gray gaze was unblinking.
“Twenty-five,” Garrick said, “or so she told me.”
Hammond nodded. “And you met …”
“Here,” Garrick said. “She broke into my house last night. Or rather,” he corrected himself, “I believe she might have been staying here for a little time.”
“Lady Merryn Fenner,” Hammond said.
Garrick blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Lady Merryn Fenner,” the inquiry agent repeated. “Sister to Joanna, Lady Grant, and Teresa, Lady Darent, and daughter of the late Earl of Fenner. Your grace.”
Lady Merryn Fenner.
Garrick felt as though someone had emptied a bucket of ice down his back. The woman he lusted for, the wraith who haunted his thoughts, was Stephen Fenner’s youngest sister. In a flash he remembered the initials in the copy of Mansfield Park, the entwined M and F. He remembered her eyes and saw the vivid blue of Stephen’s.
“How the devil,” he said slowly, “did you know? There must be a hundred small, fair, twenty-five-year-old ladies in London. Two hundred. A thousand.”
Hammond permitted himself a small, wintry smile that was nevertheless full of satisfaction. “Aye, your grace. Normally it would take me—” he paused “—oh, at least a day to come up with that information. But Lady Merryn Fenner works for Tom Bradshaw and we like to keep an eye on his business.” He waited, then as Garrick looked blank: “Bradshaw the inquiry agent, your grace. A rival company.” For a moment Garrick thought Hammond was about to spit but he clearly thought better of it in the ducal library. “Bradshaw’s a cocky fellow,” Hammond said. “Smooth as you like, but bent as a guinea note. A good job you didn’t approach him with your inquiry, sir. He would have taken your money and spun you a line.”
Garrick frowned. Oddly the thought of his midnight visitor working for a corrupt inquiry agent filled him with a strange sense of protectiveness. Merryn Fenner had seemed too innocent and too honest to be mixed up in crooked business. But clearly his instinct about her was wildly astray. She had broken into his house, after all, had been searching his library and his study and his bedroom. She was not a sheltered debutante. She was a burglar and very possibly a thief.
“So you knew,” Garrick said slowly, “that Lady Merryn Fenner had broken in here last night because you were watching her?”
“One of my men reported it,” Hammond said. “She’s been here every night for the past five days.”
Five days. Sleeping in his bed.
Garrick thought of the slide of the sheet against his body and Merryn’s scent enveloping him, soft, sensuous, seductive.
Five days. Searching his papers.
She had nerve. He would give her that. He thought about what Lady Merryn Fenner might be hunting at Farne House. The conclusion was inescapable. The connection between the two of them was her brother.
