“She’ll only ruin herself,” he said.
His partner patted his shoulder with a laugh. “I think you gentlemen put too little faith in us women. If she’s anything like her elder brother, that girl won’t allow herself to be ruined. Or perhaps she’s the sort who doesn’t put much stock in ruination—we’re quite a popular set, you know. Keep an eye on her, if you must, but I suspect that Lady Bronwyn might be made of much sterner stuff than we know.”
“I won’t hold my breath,” he said drily. “The chit’s head is full of matrimonial ribbons and conceited delusions of grandeur.”
Lisbeth laughed at his droll reply. “She sounds delightful! I could do with some entertainment after the last few days. Invite me to your little dinner and I’ll be the judge. Twenty guineas says you’re overreacting.”
He entered his room and nodded just before closing the door. “I’ll take that wager. Don’t blame me when your ears start to bleed, and remember that you brought this on yourself.”
A pair of limpid crystal-blue eyes formed in his head with a face like an angel. She had the body of a siren and the wits of a gnat. Despite the former, Valentine felt a beat of distaste. He’d never been a man ruled by base passions. He wasn’t about to start now. Lady Bronwyn might be beautiful, but she was a pest and a grasping sycophant just like her mother.
He scowled with dispassion. He would not allow her to filter into his thoughts…or his dreams. Some strong physical activity was in order so that he could work himself to exhaustion and fall into a dreamless sleep. After putting his body through a grueling bout of exercises that left his muscles weary and shivering, he was finally fatigued enough to crawl into bed.
He needed rest.
Hopefully, one unplagued by blue-eyed angels intent on wedlock.
Two
Bronwyn’s hands trembled as Cora put the finishing touches on her coiffure. When the maid was done, Bronwyn dismissed her and expelled a labored breath. Why, oh why hadn’t she gone incognito? Purchased a ticket for a smaller stateroom. Worn a disguise. Not been so in-his-face bold. Because that was the problem with catching the attention of a man like the Duke of Thornbury. It could not be uncaught.
A cold shiver rolled through her. Over the past two days, she had felt his piercing gaze upon her the moment she entered any shared space on the ship. In the cardroom, he’d watched her instead of his cards. In the ballroom, she’d felt his looming presence, even though he’d never approached for a dance.
Bronwyn felt exposed.
Worried that she’d make a misstep and give away her true purpose, instead of embracing the role of witless heiress, she’d gone all stiff and jumpy like a nervous ninny. On top of that, she had removed the correspondence from its very clever hiding place—though probably not from an expert spy like the Duke of Thornbury—inside her mattress and had yet to find another spot for it. Nowhere seemed safe.
She glanced at the folded piece of parchment sitting atop a sheet of paper on her dresser. The wax on the seal had nearly come unstuck, likely from the humidity in the salted air of the ocean. Perhaps she could commit the details to memory and then she would not have to worry about someone finding it.
Her pulse raced. Should she? It was exceedingly sensitive information, she knew, especially since the page beneath was from a report on Brent Sommers, an American man who had been arrested by Thornbury himself for smuggling, treason, and other crimes.
She’d read that with no compunction.
Fascinated by the neat, meticulous handwriting, she’d practically memorized the information that detailed Brent Sommers’s extensive network of accomplices on both sides of the Atlantic. Snatching up the sheet, she traced the lettering. How did the duke have such precise, beautiful calligraphy? Strong and controlled. Much like him. Her fingertip brushed over the initials at the bottom. V.A.M.
Valentine Alexander Medford.
Even his name sounded like it had a giant stick lodged up its arse. Bronwyn stifled a snicker. Not that hers was any better. Perhaps their parents had been cut from the same cloth—pretentious and affected. It was why she had preferred the much simpler nickname Bee, given to her by Rawley, Courtland’s cousin from Antigua, though her mother detested the shortened sobriquet.
“It’s common, Bronwyn,” the marchioness had sneered with such disdain that Bronwyn had tasted it. “You are a highborn lady and you will conduct yourself as such. No more of this nickname nonsense. And you will stay a far step from Ashvale’s contemptuous relations. The nerve of him, sullying your father’s good name with the lower classes from the islands. The horror.”
“What makes them contemptuous to you, Mama?” she had shot back without thinking. “The fact that they might not have money or the fact that they are not white?”
“How dare you speak to me so, you wretched child?”
Bronwyn had dared because her mother was wrong.
She rather liked her brother’s family, particularly Rawley, whose easy humor, incisive intelligence, and unswerving loyalty to her brother had won her over. Bronwyn had been so tempted to call herself Bronnie just to aggravate her mother, but the punishments were never worth the overstep. The last time Bronwyn had gone toe-to-toe with the marchioness had been by betraying her, as her mother called it. When Bronwyn provided the documents of birth for her half brother’s claim to her grandfather’s dukedom, the marchioness had cut the family’s season short and taken everyone back to the country in a fit of pique.
Bronwyn and her younger sister, Florence, had been confined in seclusion for weeks. Florence had blamed her, of course, but Bronwyn would not have changed a thing. She’d done what was right. Courtland Chase had been the rightful heir, regardless of her mother’s unlawful machinations to make her own son duke. Bronwyn loved Stinson, but her full-blooded brother had always been their mother’s puppet. He had a thing or two to learn from their half brother, Courtland, who was a decent and honorable man.
She had a feeling that Courtland would not endorse her actions now, however.
Heiress turned international spy was a scandal in itself.
While they had been in Kettering, the marchioness had relented, driven by a desire to see her daughter marvelously wed. They had attended a few country house parties, including a daring masquerade, whereupon Bronwyn had discovered her latest purpose.
Always a magnet for trouble with a curious eye, she’d seen one of her old finishing-school mates, Miss Sesily Pleasant, with her mask askew and arguing with a well-heeled gentleman in an alcove off the retiring room. Sesily was a Black heiress from San Francisco whose business-owning and very wealthy mother had sent her only daughter to England with an immense dowry.
Like most of the American “dollar princesses” who came to England to marry into the nobility, Sesily had been sent for the same reason. However, unlike many of the other young ladies of their acquaintance, she had been kind and sweet, and one of the few girls Bronwyn had counted a friend at school. Sesily’s entrepreneur mother had also been an empowering influence on Bronwyn—that a free Black woman could amass such a fortune on her own was a testament to women everywhere.