“And think of the way he shall regale others with that story! It was practically a gift.”

  “Be that as it may,” Duchess said through a laugh, “I do hope we can take care of this particular . . . problem . . . without attracting the attention of Tommy . . . or those others.”

  Imogen grinned. “I shall do my best.”

  “Right, then. We move quickly. Adelaide off the boat, Helene on.” Duchess looked to Adelaide. “There is already a carriage on its way to remove you from the house when your meeting is through. Remember, we don’t want to ruin the boy. We simply want her to fuss.”

  Adelaide nodded as Sesily settled a black hat upon her head, hiding away every errant flame of Adelaide’s red hair that might lack control or reveal too much. “We’ve done it a dozen times before.”

  There was movement at the entrance of the cabin, where Sesily’s husband filled the doorway. Sesily turned, and Adelaide saw something she could not understand in the tall man’s gaze. “Caleb?”

  “We’re here,” he said, quietly.

  Sesily moved to him like a magnet, as though she had no other choice than to match with him when he was in the room, tucking herself into his arms in greeting. Though Adelaide had seen these exact movements a hundred times over the last year since the two were married, that evening, she wondered at it.

  Wondered what it would be like to experience it—just once, to feel as though one had another half. A pair.

  What. Nonsense.

  She shook herself from the reverie. There was no time for wondering.

  Straightening her shoulders, she lifted the folder from the table. When she left this cabin, she would no longer be Adelaide Frampton, lightest fingers in London.

  She would be someone else entirely—more valuable to the women of London society than diamonds or silks or even the latest gossip. More dangerous to the men, too.

  “But—” Caleb said, his low voice carrying through the space.

  Everyone looked to him.

  “The girl . . . she’s not here.”

  Chapter Three

  Henry Carrington, sixth Duke of Clayborn, did not enjoy being summoned.

  In his thirty-six years on this earth, he’d discovered that there were few good things that came from the experience.

  When he was ten, he’d been summoned home from Eton to Sussex for the birth of his younger brother, Jack, and the subsequent death of their mother, four days later. When he was seventeen, he’d been summoned back to the estate to discover that his father had died, and he had been made duke.

  After that, the summonses came more frequently—bringing him home for any number of reasons. At twenty, it was a drought that threatened the crops. At twenty-two, it was a bout of strangles that lay waste to the stables at Clayborn Manor. At twenty-three, twenty-five, and twenty-nine, he’d been summoned to Jack’s school to deal with Young Master Carrington’s errant ways (impossible).

  Society enjoyed summoning him, as well—after all, it was not every day a duke turned up at a ball/luncheon/dinner/musicale/country dance/tea. Neither was it every day that a duke was born the way Clayborn had been—imbued from the womb with a sense of unflagging responsibility, which he bore with a classic stiff upper lip. Stern, well-bred, and impeccably mannered.

  Thankfully, now that he was regarded as a respected peer of the realm and was one of the few active members of the House of Lords actually attempting to serve the people and Her Majesty, few dared summon him.

  Apparently, no one had apprised the Marchioness of Havistock of that fact. The aging aristocratic lady, married to a despicable man who deserved an early grave, had flatly summoned Clayborn for seven o’clock that evening, which explained why the duke was in a particular mood upon his arrival at the elaborate manor house situated east of the city on the banks of the River Thames.

  His mood had nothing to do with the bruise that bloomed in his freshly shaved cheek, nor did it have anything to do with the fact that, not two hours earlier, he’d lost hold of his stolen goods. It certainly had nothing to do with the intriguing thief who’d taken them.

  Miss Adelaide Frampton, who had marched past him as he’d stood outside Alfred Trumbull’s heavily guarded, highly protected headquarters, wondering how he would get inside and retrieve his puzzle box. The lady had had no difficulty in making such a plan—walking directly into the warehouse, picking the lock on a well-secured desk drawer, and stealing the only thing that held any value to him . . . without being noticed.

  How the wide world did not notice Adelaide Frampton the moment she entered a room, he would never understand.

  The entirety of London thought her a quiet, unassuming miss—an unfortunate leaf on the familial branch of the Duchess of Trevescan, one of the aristocracy’s most powerful figures. In the past five years, Clayborn had heard a dozen stories about Adelaide’s past. She was a poor country mouse, arrived with nothing but the clothes on her back. A vicar’s daughter, orphaned too young. The Duchess’s childhood companion—barely a cousin. More like a servant’s child.

  The stories were myriad and short, and always told with a slight twinge of surprise and disdain, as though it were unfathomable that anyone would actually wish to know about Adelaide Frampton.

  The stories were also bollocks, which he’d known for a year—one need only look at Adelaide Frampton to know it. In the year since he’d discovered her, Clayborn had seen her pickpocket a half-dozen aristocrats in full view of all of London and dress down an earl who’d landed soon thereafter in Newgate—a monstrous man who had been born into power and privilege and had never had a woman stand up to him.

  If Clayborn were a man who wagered, he would have placed his entire fortune on the likelihood that Adelaide had more than a small amount to do with that particular arrest.

  That afternoon, he’d watched her lift his own belongings from the warehouse of the South Bank’s notorious gang. If he hadn’t been so concerned about her safety, he would have been impressed.

  The Duke of Clayborn was a man who understood circumstances of birth, and there was no way on earth Adelaide Frampton was a vicar’s daughter, a country lass, or the cousin to a duchess.

  How it was that no one on either side of the Thames seemed to notice her was a puzzle for the ages. Clayborn couldn’t help but notice her. He noticed her constantly. In ballrooms, when she turned up with her odd friends, and at dinner parties, when she was the quietest one in the room, and on her morning walks through Hyde Park. He’d been able to pick Adelaide Frampton from a crowd for years. Christ, he’d been unable not to.

  The point was, since then, he’d noticed her freely. Which he didn’t much care for, as the woman never seemed to notice him.

  Irritating, that.

  She’d noticed him that afternoon. Spoken to him. Sparred with him. Stolen from him.

  Kissed him.

  And . . . to add insult to injury, she had his puzzle box.

  He was going to have to get it back from her. Hell, he’d be searching for her right now if he weren’t here, in the foyer of Havistock House . . . summoned.

  But the notice had been clear.

  Clayborn—

  We must discuss your brother.

  I shall see you at seven o’clock.

  Olivia, Lady Havistock

  Clayborn had been expecting this particular summons for several months, as Jack had fallen, as he described it, utterly and irrevocably in love with the Lady Helene. As though he were in a Shakespearean comedy and been shot with an arrow by a man with a donkey head.

  Clayborn tilted his head.

  It was something like that; he’d always been better at maths.

  The point was, Jack was in love, and Lady Helene seemed somehow willing to suffer his wide-eyed affection. As Clayborn hadn’t seen Jack drink or gamble or even smoke in the last several months, he was inclined to support a marriage between the two.

  Though thirty-six years of receiving summonses made him think that the Marchioness of Havistock might have a different opinion on the situation.

  He followed a liveried servant through the halls of the manor house to a richly appointed sitting room, complete with a small, elaborately carved desk that had clearly been chosen for appearance rather than purpose. Nevertheless, the Marchioness of Havistock sat behind it, as though holding court—an affect that was underscored by her impressive beauty. Despite what could not have been an easy marriage to a vile husband, or the production of six children with the same, the marchioness had somehow avoided the weathering that came for others’ pale skin, her face devoid of all but the most graceful signs of age.

  “Clayborn,” she said as he entered the room, the name clipped, as though she was in a terrible rush and he was putting her out. “Good of you to come.”

  Wishing he could be anywhere but there, Clayborn knew the part he was to play, crossing the room and giving a short bow over the marchioness’s hand. A better gentleman would have told her he’d been happy to receive her summons, but the bow was as much as Clayborn could muster.

  “I read about your . . . display in Lords last week,” she said, disdain dripping from every word as she referenced his losing his temper before the assembly as he attempted to move them to compassion for literally anyone but themselves. “What a good Samaritan you are, speaking on . . . what was it? Labor of some kind?”

  “Child labor,” he replied, cold as ice. The kind of labor her husband used without hesitation or conscience. The kind of labor that made the marquess enough money that he’d hired a gang of thieves to destroy Clayborn’s future on the floor of Parliament.

  Of course, now, the stolen item, and the information within, was in the hands of another, far more interesting, thief—one with whom he’d much prefer negotiating.

  “Ah, yes,” the marchioness went on, waving a hand as though the entire topic was beyond her grasp. “You know Havistock never speaks to me about the things you men debate.”

  “Child labor should not be a thing only men debate.”

  Clayborn turned at the words, and that’s when he noticed that a woman sat nearby in lush, cascading skirts of black silk, wrist-length gloves, pristinely polished boots, a small hat and a half veil.

  He froze in all too familiar shock, his gaze tracing over her, registering her straight spine, the trim tuck of her waist beneath her corset, the freckled skin of her breast above the gown, the long column of her neck, her angled jaw and full lips—lips he knew intimately as of that afternoon.

  Lips belonging to Adelaide Frampton. Lips attached to the rest of Adelaide Frampton’s body.

  If he were another man, his brows might have risen in surprise. But he was the Duke of Clayborn, and surprise was never for public revelation.

  What in hell was she doing here?

  She didn’t move, and he couldn’t read her enormous, brown eyes hidden behind her short veil. He would have done anything to see those expressive eyes. It was a clever disguise—one that shielded the spectacles that would so easily reveal her identity. Still, he had the wild instinct to rip the silly black hat from her head and loose the hair that she usually kept tightly moored. The fiery, red hair he’d discovered that afternoon.

  It was a decidedly un-Clayborn-like instinct.

  Much like all the others she summoned from him.

  “It should not be a debate at all,” she continued, as he ignored the wild pounding of his heart. “A scourge. A thing we should banish to the darkness of the past and lock away.” She paused. “Is that not what you said in your speech last week, Your Grace?”

  “It is,” he agreed. How did she know?

  “You are wrong, of course.”

  The marchioness sucked in a shocked breath as Clayborn’s brows rose. It was not an assessment he heard often. “Do tell me how.”

  “When we banish sins to the past, we must not lock them away. We must keep them close so that their memory reminds us never to allow them back to the light.”

  How could anyone fail to notice her?

  “Well, I am not certain that we should call this a sin. My husband tells me that the children are well rewarded by the work. It keeps them from developing a taste for idleness.”

  It was a disgusting argument, one Havistock had made a dozen times during debate in the House of Lords. Clayborn held his tongue rather than deliver a scathing setdown to the woman behind the desk, who was as odious as her husband, it seemed.

  Adelaide Frampton had no such hesitation. “Truly, hearing such an argument in a home built for idleness with funds earned via the work of those children and others around the world is . . .” She paused, and he imagined she searched for a word she might use in polite company. “. . . a journey.”

  The marchioness’s eyes nearly rolled from her head. “Madam. You overstep.”

  A retort sprang to Clayborn’s lips—words commanding the marchioness to watch her tone. To know her betters.

  Before he could speak, however, Miss Frampton said, “We have not been introduced.”

  Silence fell as the marchioness collected herself and spoke. “I suppose you would not know each other.”

  Why not? Adelaide Frampton was regularly at balls and dinners, dances and musicales.

  Before he could point it out, the marchioness continued, “Men do work their very hardest to avoid the messy bits of life, do they not?”

  Clayborn assumed the question was rhetorical.

  “This, dear boy,” the marchioness pressed on, “is the Matchbreaker.”

  Another surprise to hide.

  Generally, Clayborn did his level best to remain outside the gossip and discussion of society. Oh, he attended balls and turned up at his club and showed his face at the races, but that was for politics and propriety, not pleasure. Even so, one would have to be birthed beneath a rock not to have heard of the Matchbreaker.

  Hired by the women in society to check the pedigree of the men who wished to marry their daughters. The Matchbreaker was whispered about throughout Mayfair, any time a society jewel was courted by a less than ideal gentleman. Poor girl, they would whisper behind their fans, someone should summon the Matchbreaker.

  And when she was summoned, usually to confirm an already existing suspicion, she knew everything—childhood fears, schoolboy foibles, adult flaws. Full accounting of debts. Webs of friendships and business acquaintances. Mistresses. Illegitimate offspring. Incurable vice.

  There was no secret the Matchbreaker could not uncover. She was a legend to the women of Mayfair . . . and enemy to many of its men.

  And no one knew her name. At least, no one admitted to knowing it, despite the unmarried men of London being willing to do virtually anything to get it. The true identity of the Matchbreaker was the best-kept secret of their counterparts in skirts, until that moment, when the Duke of Clayborn discovered her identity.

  A sizzle of excitement coursed through him at the knowledge that, suddenly, the field that stretched between him and Miss Adelaide Frampton was once more level. She thought herself disguised, never imagining that he had watched her long enough to turn a veil into a day-old beard—barely any disguise at all.

  Showing none of his thoughts, Clayborn turned in the little chair, keenly aware that the legs were as fragile as matchsticks, to consider the woman in black. “The Matchbreaker?” he asked, willing his tone slow and even, despite nearly a dozen questions immediately on his tongue. “Is that a formal designation? A post from the queen?”

  Lady Havistock chuckled. Adelaide did not, and Clayborn marveled at her even, cool demeanor. “I believe you’re about to discover just how important it is, Duke.”

  He leaned back in his chair, not replying, not liking how unmoved she was by his presence. She’d been well moved earlier; why was she so even-keeled now?

  Adelaide reached down to her feet where a small bag sat, barely large enough to fit a piece of paper, and extracted a blue file, inked on the front with a large indigo bell.

  Clayborn’s heart began to pound. “What is that?”

  “This,” she said, the words measured and careful, as she set the file to her lap, laying one gloved hand, clad in magnificent lace as dark as midnight, atop it, “is your brother’s file.”

  Clayborn shot forward. “And in it?”

  Pink lips curved beneath her veil. “Everything.”

  What did she know?

  Had she opened the box? This quickly? No. She’d barely had enough time to change disguises—it was impossible to imagine that she’d found the trick to the puzzle box. That she’d understood what was inside.

  And yet, even without his stolen property, the idea that such a dossier would exist—something that might haunt Jack for the rest of his years—and that such a thing would be in the hands of Adelaide Frampton and whomever else she worked with—was . . . unnerving, to say the least. What was in it? About Jack? About him? And who would commission such a dossier?

  The answer was clear: the Marquess of Havistock. His own father’s once friend, then sworn enemy. The man who would stoop to anything to destroy Clayborn, including, apparently, ruining his brother’s chances with the woman he loved.

  The man who’d hired Alfie Trumbull to steal his puzzle box, now in Adelaide Frampton’s hands.

  Not for long.

  She opened the folder. “John, your younger brother by ten years.”

  Dammit. Jack was foolish but he wasn’t evil, and he would bear the heirs to the line. He didn’t deserve whatever this was—especially if it was a message designed to silence Clayborn himself. In the Marquess’s hands, it would be used to silence Clayborn in Parliament. To stop his work to end child labor. To keep Havistock’s coffers filled with gold made on the backs of those who could not stand for themselves.

  Let them come for him. But she would not ruin Jack. Not if Clayborn had anything to say about it.

  He ran a thumb along the edge of his index finger, the only movement he allowed himself, as he resisted the urge to move closer. To crane his neck. He ignored the scattershot of his pounding heart. What did she know?

  “I’m sure you meant to refer to him as Lord Carrington.”