Page 21 of An Inconvenient Duke

“Swear it on me mum’s grave.”

He released her hand. She snatched up the coin and spun on her heel to walk away. If he had any luck at all, she’d not bother him again.

His gaze drifted back to Danielle. He had enough trouble with females tonight as it was.

The man stood and left. From across the tavern, the barmaid shot Marcus anI told you solook so hard that it could have cut glass.

Danielle remained behind, no doubt to wait long enough before leaving that no one who might be outside would assume she and that man had met together in the tavern. There was no need for Marcus to keep watching her. She’d retrace her steps all the way home, he would have bet his fortune on it.

But the man she’d met with was a different story. One capable of providing answers.

When Jenkins slipped outside onto the street, so did Marcus.

Marcus followed after him, moving quickly but silently. No longer bothering to stay to the shadows, he closed the distance between them until he was only a few feet behind. When the man turned down an alley cutting toward the Thames, Marcus lunged.

He grabbed Jenkins by his shoulder and tossed him back against the wall, then pinned him there with his forearm against the man’s neck. His other hand wrapped around his own wrist for additional leverage, turning his forearm into a bar across Jenkins’s throat. He could easily crush his windpipe with a single forward step.

“Relax,” Marcus calmly ordered, his voice nonthreatening. “I don’t want your money.”

Jenkins said nothing. Marcus had easily surprised him. Like most men, he’d been too focused on what lay before him to worry about what was sneaking up from behind. Marcus had seen more soldiers than he wanted to count who had fallen victim to the same short-sightedness on the battlefield.

“I want answers. About the woman you met with tonight.”

Jenkins’s gaze narrowed as he accused harshly, “Yer after one of ’em, then.”

He frowned. “One of what?”

“The women.”

Women? First Elise, then Danielle…how many society ladies were arranging clandestine midnight meetings?

“Got none with me, so yer old lady or yer tart ain’t here. Ain’t no vanishings set for t’night neither.”

Vanishing.The word that had been in Elise’s note. The same word that had raised such panic in Danielle last night. “What do you mean?”

“’Xactly what I said! No one’s disappearin’ t’night, including whate’er bit you’re looking fer. If she ain’t at home, then she done run on her own. None o’ my business.”

“And the woman you met with in the Golden Bell? What did she want with you?”

“Nightingale hired me.”

He pressed harder against the man’s throat—a reminder not to lie. “To do what?” And who the hell was Nightingale? Was Danielle using a false identity?Noneof this made any sense, and none of it was giving him any answers about Elise.

“I help wi’ the vanishings an’ transfers.” His brow pulled into a deep furrow. “You ain’t a husband or pimp, then? You ain’t tryin’ to locate one o’ the missin’ women?”

“What women?”

The man smiled, his eyes gleaming as he realized that Marcus wasn’t who he thought. Although who Jenkins thought he was, he had no idea. “Ask Nightingale yerself.” He jerked his head in the direction of the tavern. “’Cause she ain’t at all what she seems.”

He was beginning to learn that himself. “And Scepter?”

Jenkins blanched, his face paling visibly even in the darkness. “What do ye want wi’ them bastards?”

Marcus kept his face inscrutable against his rising frustration. “Who are they?”

He laughed, an evil and rasping sound that echoed off the damp stone walls. “If’n ye figure that out, guv’nor, we both’ll be rich in reward money!”

Then the man clenched his jaw and refused to say anything more.