Page 4 of A Relentless Rake

“What brought you out of the safety of your bed tonight and led you here?” His gloved fingers stole a caress across her cheek, but his touch wasn’t at all flirtatious. It was a subtle warning. “You should have stayed in your schoolroom where you belong.”

His first comment had surprised her.Thisone angered her, and she shot back, “Obviously, I wanted to carve a chicken.”

His mouth twisted at her impudence. He lowered his face until it was even with hers and placed both palms flat against the wall on either side of her shoulders.

“Where is Henry Everett?” he demanded. “Where has your brother gone?”

An electric jolt slammed through her that stripped away her breath. “How do you— Whoareyou?” A deafening rush of blood pounded in her ears with every terrified heartbeat.No onebut she and Mrs. Adams knew her brother was missing. Not even the other school employees or the students. “What do you know about Henry?”

The hard set of his face told her he wouldn’t answer. “Where is—”

A clamor went up in the darkness. Shouts and the sound of racing hoofbeats striking over the cobblestones reverberated off the stone walls until the noise seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The man turned away from her as a rider on horseback charged into the alley toward them.

Olivia shoved him. She caught him off-balance, and when he staggered back, she darted away, hitched up her skirts, and ran as fast as she could toward the far end of the alley and the safety of the darkness beyond.

***

“Damnation!” Alec Sinclair ripped his mask off as Nate Reed rode toward him.

Two days of nonstop searching—ruined. The name on the charred slip of building plans had led them to Westminster, to a man named Henry Everett, who was a schoolteacher and mathematician vying for fellowship in the Royal Society. But Everett had gone missing. So the two men had split up. Reed was tracking down Everett’s last known movements, and Alec had taken watch over Everett’s sister. But for both to collide here—

Fate must have been laughing.

“You have lousy timing,” Alec muttered.

“I saved your aristocratic arse,” Reed shot back. “Those men had grabbed up clubs and were headed back this way.”

Alec grimaced. The last thing he wanted was to be in Reed’s debt. “You also chased away the sister.”

Alec glanced toward where the alley emptied into the street to the south and where Olivia Everett had fled into the darkness. God only knew where she’d gone in the rabbit warren of streets and alleys that formed this part of the City.

Reed’s black horse pranced anxiously in a circle. The beast was as eager as his master to give chase. “I’ll go after her.”

“No.” She was already frightened from being attacked—and from Alec’s botched rescue. Even if Reed caught her, she was in no state to offer up the kind of information about her brother they needed to drive their mission forward.

Yet.

But he would gain that information from her, no matter what he had to do.

He crumpled the mask in his fist. “Olivia Everett is mine.”

Two

“Drive!” Olivia shouted at the jarvey as she ran toward the waiting hackney. Mrs. Adams was already inside and gesturing fiercely through the open door for her to hurry.

She jumped inside and slammed shut the door. Her bottom just barely touched the seat before the driver flicked his whip and sent the horses scrambling forward. He was as anxious as the two women to drive away from the dark backstreets of the City and into a better area of London.

Olivia leaned back and pulled in a deep, jerking lungful of air.

“What happened?” Mrs. Adams’s voice pulsed with worry. “I saw that man ride into the alley.”

Olivia nodded and squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to slow the relentless pounding of her heart and gain back her breath. “He arrived,” she panted out, “just in time.”

Mrs. Adams reached across the small compartment to clasp her hand. “Did those men hurt you?”

Olivia shook her head, unable to open her eyes for the roiling of her stomach. Good heavens—she might just cast up her accounts right there on the carriage floor! “Another man fought them off. They didn’t harm me.”