Page 86 of An Inconvenient Duke

Lingering in the shadows, Mrs. Slater nodded.

Dani pushed open the door, the lock long ago broken and never fixed by the owners who had abandoned the warehouse. The ground floor room was dark, but she’d been here enough times to know her way to the lantern hanging on a peg from the center pillar, the one she’d always kept operational and filled with oil for just such an emergency. She struck a light from the little tinderbox she’d stashed into her pelisse pocket and brought the lamp to life.

The dim light lit the large room just enough for Dani to see—empty. There was no sign of Beatrice and the girl. Dread squeezed her chest.

“Beatrice?” Her voice echoed through the dusty building as loud as cannon fire to her ears.Please God, let them be here in hiding!“Where are you?” She paused to listen. “Are you here?”

Heavy steps scuffed over the floor above, and she jumped, startled, her heart flying into her throat. Struggling to keep herself calm, she turned toward the set of narrow wooden stairs in the corner that led to the floors above. She lifted the lamp higher to cast as much light as possible, and from the black shadows, a man’s form emerged as he slowly came down the stairs. Slender and slight of build, not at all the type of broad-shouldered and beefy man a brothel would hire as security—

Oh thank God… “Jenkins.” She eased out a relieved sigh and smiled. “I knew you’d come as planned. I’ve always been able to count on you.”

“Have you?”

The deep voice slithered down her spine. He stepped into the halo of lamplight and revealed his face—

“Lord Hartsham,” she whispered fearfully. “What are you doing here?”

He moved down the final two steps to the stone floor. “Waiting for you.”

All the tiny muscles in her belly tightened sickeningly in instant terror—

She’d been led into a trap.

She wheeled furiously on Mrs. Slater, who stood just inside the doorway where Dani had left her. The woman hadn’t bothered to step farther into the warehouse, knowing all along that Beatrice and the girl weren’t here.

“You,” Dani forced out past the knot of betrayal squeezing in her throat. Everything fell sickeningly into place…why Mrs. Slater had told Beatrice about the girl, knowing that the countess would initially approach Dani for help with the vanishing, why Dani hadn’t given a second thought to rushing off to help…because all the pieces fit. “You deceived me. You brought me here. To him!”

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Slater said remorsefully, not leaving her post by the door. But at least she had the decency to wring her hands in guilt. “I regret that you were caught up in all this. But I cannot let you ruin my husband’s future.”

“Your husband?” Dani rasped out, barely able to breathe. “What does he have to do with this?”

“You interfered! You put his business ventures in jeopardy, all that he and I had risked so much to establish.” The woman’s voice lowered into an accusing hiss. “If you would have just left well enough alone—but you wouldn’t, would you? You let Hampton seduce you into believing that his sister was murdered, that you needed to find her killer.” Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, but Dani knew it wasn’t from remorse at leading her here to the enemy. It was the same dark gleam that had glinted in all the women Nightingale had rescued when they spoke of their abusers—hatred. “I knew that night at Vauxhall that you had to be dealt with.”

A shiver of realization pulsed icily through her. “It was you that night who was keeping watch so closely, who knew exactly where Marcus and I were…” Closely enough to realize the exact moment when Dani discovered the truth about who had murdered Elise. Bile of betrayal rose in her throat. “It wasyouwho signaled for us to be shot at.”

“She did as I ordered,” Hartsham answered for Mrs. Slater as he stalked slowly toward her.

Dani stepped back in fear, still holding the lantern up high, as if the light alone could protect her.

“Just as she was the one who hired that man from among her husband’s dockworkers to break into Charlton Place, to make certain no evidence of Venus’s Folly was left among Elise Donnelly’s things. Just as she did in bringing you here tonight.”

“Where’s Beatrice?” Dani asked, worried about the countess. She didn’t put it past Hartsham to have beaten information from her.

“She should be arriving home at any minute. She’s spent the evening waiting for Jenkins to deliver the girl to her at an inn in Southwark after he retrieved her from the brothel, then pass the child along to another smuggler to take her out of London. Exactly as planned. She has no idea that any of this is happening.”

Dani slowly retreated. With her right hand still tightly gripping the handle of the glass oil lamp, she pressed her left into her stomach to physically suppress the roiling inside. Oh, she was such a fool! Mrs. Slater’s worry and agitation, her insistence that Beatrice had sent her to Dani for help—she’d believed all of it. But there had been no reasonnotto believe her, not when the woman knew all the details of how a vanishing worked, right down to the warehouse.Thiswarehouse. The only way she could have known was if Hartsham had told her. And the only way Hartsham would have known…

Dear God.Elise.He knew about this warehouse only because John Porter must have led him here two years ago, because this must have been where she was to meet up with him. Dani swallowed hard to force down the rising bile—because this was where Hartsham murdered her before dumping her body in the park to make her death look like an accident.

Shaking uncontrollably as fear knotted her insides, she moved away from him with every step he advanced toward her. “You lured me here so you can kill me the same way that”—her words strangled in her tightening throat—“that you killed Elise.”

“Not the same way,” he corrected coldly, his hands tightening and releasing at his sides. As if he couldn’t wait to get his hands around her throat. “Two women with broken necks would be too suspicious. And not at all as easy with you, I suspect. Elise Donnelly was so trusting, so easy to kill. All I had to do was walk up behind her, grab her head, and twist.”

Her belly burned with terror and grief. “This is madness! You’re killing innocent women just because we’ve dared to remove prostitutes from a brothel, just so you can keep committing blackmail. Why? You’re an earl, for God’s sake!” Her gaze swung between the earl and Mrs. Slater. “You don’t need the money—either of you—not badly enough to commit murder.”

“This isn’t about money,” Mrs. Slater interjected. “It’s about power and the crown and all—”

“It wasneverabout money,” Hartsham interjected to silence her. He pulled a knife from his jacket sleeve, and Dani let out a terrified cry. “It was about using the women and girls to exchange favors with men in important positions, or resorting to stronger tactics when the men don’t want to cooperate. Elise Donnelly got in the way when she began to smuggle the girls out of London and had to be removed.” He gestured around the warehouse with the knife. “If you had just stayed silent, no one would have known about her connection to the brothel. But you talked to Hampton, told him about the prostitutes, convinced my wife to confide in you—you’re the link in the chain between Mrs. Donnelly’s murder and the brothel, and tonight, that chain will be broken.”