The Duke’s Perfect Wife (MacKenzies & McBrides #4)(78)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

The only thing Reeve refused to let Hart do was go with him into the tunnels—it took a special knack, Reeve said, and he didn’t want to be hunting for Hart in them again. Hart agreed, never wanting to see the bloody sewers again. Hart knew too that Reeve didn’t want to take the chance that Hart would disappear and not give Reeve his reward money.

As for Hart, he was not yet ready to leave. He wanted more than anything to get back to Eleanor—he dreamed of her every night. But once he’d discovered, through the discarded newspapers Reeve brought to the boat, that Eleanor was alive and well, and so was Ian, he made himself resist the frantic urge to rush to her. Scotland Yard and others were still hunting those trying to kill Hart, and Hart could protect Eleanor and his family better by lying low. He needed to get a message to Eleanor, however, to reassure her he was all right.

For that, he’d have to recruit help. Hart watched the Reeves, assessing them, working on winning their trust as he decided whether to trust them in return.

Hart never tried to take command of Reeve’s boat or tell him what to do. He made requests instead, reasonable ones, offhand. For boots that fit so he could better help carry the boat over the shingle. A fisherman’s sweater to wear over his thin shirt so he didn’t have to borrow Reeve’s extra coat. He’d had Mrs. Reeve find him some trousers before he’d been there a day, converting his plaid into a cover for his pallet. He also let his beard grow in, rough and red, prickly stubble. From a distance, and perhaps even up close too, he now looked like just another fisherman.

Hart started suggesting where they might take the boat and cast the nets for a better haul. He began standing guard at night so the boy and Reeve could get more sleep. Gradually Reeve began asking for Hart’s opinions, and then, when Hart’s ideas found them more valuable flotsam and jetsam, Reeve started waiting to be told what to do. Hart was a natural leader, and Reeve, though not a mindless follower, began to acknowledge Hart’s casual command.

He decided that he should not use Reeve as his messenger to Eleanor, however. Reeve would do anything for money, and he might decide that selling information about a rich stranger leaving a message in an odd place would fetch more than what Hart could give him. Mrs. Reeve was stoutly loyal to her husband, though she let her opinion be known when she disagreed with him. Loudly.

The lad, now. Hart had won Lewis’s respect by helping with the nets and letting Lewis instruct him what to look for. Hart learned much about which bits of trash could be turned into money and which bits were worthless. Lewis was loyal to his father but also his own man, young as he was. Lads grew up fast on the river.

“Lewis,” Hart said to him when he felt the time ripe. “I need you to run an errand for me.”

Lewis looked up at him, neither interested nor uninterested. Hart rubbed his face, feeling that his beard had softened from stiff bristles to wiry hair.

“I need you to go to Mayfair for me,” Hart said. “And not tell your father. It’s a simple task, nothing dangerous to you, and I promise I am not trying to cheat your father out of what I owe him.”

“How much?” Lewis asked.

He was his father’s son. “How much do you want?”

Lewis contemplated. “Twenty shillings. Ten for doing it, ten for not telling my father.”

The boy was a shark. “Done.” Hart held out his hand, and Lewis shook it in a firm grip. “Now, then, lad, how good are you at climbing fences?”

Eleanor opened the gate of Grosvenor Square and walked into the little park. It was early by Mayfair standards, about eleven o’clock in the morning. Nannies in gray with white starched aprons pushed prams or held the hands of small children, or sat on benches while their charges played on the grass. They watched Eleanor, used by now to seeing the famous duke’s wife take her morning amble. Such a brave woman, trying to bear up.

Eleanor walked past them as usual, keeping her pace unhurried. No sense rushing to the middle of the gardens, no sense drawing attention to herself. She strolled along, a parasol raised against the sunshine. Yesterday, it had been an umbrella against the rain. She came here every day, rain or bloody shine.

Eleanor counted her steps, the mantra keeping her pace even. Perhaps today. Perhaps today… forty-two, forty-three, forty-four…

When she reached the center of the garden, she kept walking, off the path and onto the green. Seventeen more steps. Around the base of the wide-trunked tree…

Eleanor stopped. A little violet, the kind men purchased from flower girls to wear on their lapels, rested at the base of the tree. Not a hothouse rose, no, but the sort of thing a man who was hiding for his life might be able to obtain and leave for her.

She closed her eyes. Someone must have dropped the flower. She wanted so much for Hart to have left it that she was inventing things.

Eleanor opened her eyes again. The flower remained, sitting in the exact place Hart had left the others for her years before.

The flower will mean that I cannot come to you as promised, but I will when I can, he’d told her when he’d come up with the idea. And that you are in my thoughts. He’d missed a walk with her, she’d been angry, and Hart had invented the scheme to charm her out of her bad temper. It had worked.

Eleanor picked up the violet and pressed it to her nose. Hart was alive. This had to mean that Hart was alive. She lowered the flower to her chest, to her heart, and drew in a shuddering breath, forcing back tears.

Maigdlin came around the tree. “You all right, Your Grace?”

Eleanor wiped her eyes and thrust the violet into her pocket. “Yes, yes. I’m fine. Go on. I want to sit by myself a moment.”

Maigdlin peered suspiciously at Eleanor’s eyes, but she nodded. “Yes, Your Grace,” she said, and faded discreetly away.

You are in my thoughts.

“But where are you, Hart Mackenzie?” Eleanor whispered. No one knew the signal but the two of them. Why had Hart chosen to leave it but not come to the house or write a note? Did he believe himself still in danger? Or was this some new machination of his?

Eleanor doubted he’d left the flower himself. But who had he sent? She’d suspected Wilfred in the past, but Wilfred wore a black band around his arm and never left the house these days. If Hart wanted to be entirely secret, he’d need someone who’d not be suspected to be connected with him. But that someone would need a way into the gardens. Eleanor doubted that Hart had taken his key with him.

Then again, she might be entirely mistaken that Hart had left the flower. Her first thought had been that someone had dropped it, and this might be true.