Page 41 of An Inconvenient Duke

But this time…silence.

She looked over her shoulder to find him frowning as his fingers played with the last button even though he’d already fastened it. He was a man with the weight of the world on his broad shoulders, or at least a deep worry for his family. She understood that and ached for him. After all, she loved Claudia and Pippa as dearly as if they were her own.

“I won’t give up the names of the women currently working with Nightingale,” she stated with quiet resolve as she turned toward him. “No matter how often you ask. Their lives are just as important to their families as Claudia and Pippa are to you.”

“Of course.”

“But…” She bit her lip.

“But?”

“There is a woman, someone who helped with Nightingale only tangentially and who has nothing to do with us now,” she explained, hesitating with each bit of information she offered. “But Elise might have been working with her to identify women who needed to be rescued.”

“Who?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling like a traitor. Trust had always been important to her, and now she was betraying the network. But he deserved answers, even if this small bit of information was all she was willing to provide. “Lady Hartsham.”

“The Countess of Hartsham?” He clarified in disbelief, “Beatrice McTavish?”

She didn’t blame him for sounding incredulous. Beatrice was nothing if not a mouse afraid of her own shadow. “She’s not the most daring of women, I’ll admit.”

He arched a brow at that whopper of an understatement.

“She’d been involved with Nightingale when we first started—nothing important, but she knew people. Her father had owned one of the largest breweries in England, so she still had connections at inns and taverns where we could move the women if necessary.”

“At the beginning, but not now,” he surmised from her words. “Why not? I thought her husband and your father were good friends.”

“They are.” The Earl of Hartsham was an old family friend, one of the gentlemen her father trusted to keep watch over her while her parents were in Italy. “But Beatrice had nervous fits that the network might be discovered. She’d prattled on in worried rants about what would happen if Lord Hartsham ever learned what she’d been doing, how furious he’d be with her.” Dani certainly couldn’t fault the woman’s concern, although she had to admit that her excitability had been distracting. And grating. “So I eased Beatrice out of Nightingale completely.”

“You stopped working with her just in time for Elise to take her on.”

“I think so. It would make sense if she did. Elise wanted to help women in the brothels. Perhaps Lady Hartsham’s connections extended that far.”

“But you never asked that of her?”

“Absolutely not.” It would have been too dangerous to take on brothel owners, as well as far too easy for Nightingale to be tracked down through the personal connections that Beatrice had. But Elise… She bit her bottom lip. “Yet your sister might have.”

“If she did, then Lady Hartsham might know who else Elise was working with during those last days and how to find John Porter. She might know who wanted Elise dead.”

“But if she wasn’t,” Dani warned, placing her hand on his arm, “we might very well be putting her into danger by approaching her.”

“Then we need to be very careful when we do.”

Excitement began to tease at her toes. “How?”

“I’ll have Lord Hartsham invite me to be his guest of honor at Vauxhall.”

He’d have Hartsham… She blinked. “Why would he do that?”

“Haven’t you heard?” He leaned against the wall with a confident grin, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m England’s greatest hero next to Wellington. And a damned duke. If I suggest to Hartsham that he host me in his private box at Vauxhall, he won’t pass up the favors he’ll be certain to believe he’ll gain from it. He’ll also use it as a grand opportunity to invite others who want to ingratiate themselves by having the chance to speak with me. Peers and patronage…as thick as thieves.”

He would despise every moment of it. What he was suggesting epitomized everything he hated about society and its sycophants. “You don’t have to do that.”

His eyes softened on her face as his smile faded. He pushed himself away from the wall and crossed to her, then stroked his thumb across her bottom lip and elicited a heated shiver from her. “Yes, I do.” Then he tapped her on the nose and earned himself a scowl. “And you’re coming with me.”

“Pardon?” she squeaked out, not at all prepared for that.

“I can’t approach her myself.”