Confessions of a Little Black Gown by Elizabeth Boyle Read Free Book Online

England’s enemies at bay, wasn’t a field officer and had spent most of his years behind a desk. It was nigh on impossible to convince him of anything that couldn’t be proved with good evidence.
    And evidence of the Order was just that—impossible to discover.
    A league of female spies, founded by Mary of Guise, as most tales attested, that had continued, through the centuries, guarding and serving the various French queens and protecting them from the intrigues at home and abroad.
    Men like Pymm scoffed at the notion that any woman could hold her tongue long enough to keep the Order’s workings a secret—let alone three centuries of French tarts staying mum.
    To Larken, however, the Order was no mere conjecture, no fiction spun by the French to keep the English looking over their shoulders. Yet, to confess he knew the truth would risk revealing how he knew the French coven of spies existed.
    That his father had been involved with the secret organization, fallen in love with one of them and aided her, until the vindictive lady had made it look like he’d committed treason…then murdered him when he sought the evidence to clear his name…
    Hadn’t that been what Larken himself had been doing for years—covertly uncovering the Order’s workings while away on his missions for England? Something he doubted Pymm would have approved of.
    Chasing after ghosts…a fool’s errand , he’d call Larken’s self-appointed mission.
    Now he saw he’d been right all along in his attempts to discover their leader, their followers, their mission. Because obviously, they’d brought their mischief to London.
    They’d freed Dashwell to put him back on the high seas, so he could once again bedevil England’s navy.
    But Larken’s hypothesis was about to find another skeptic.
    “Actually, I don’t think this is the work of the Order,” Temple said, jolting him out of his reverie. “I have another theory.”
    There was yet another snort from Pymm, but no outburst, and with this less-than-sterling endorsement, the duke continued, explaining his suspicions of what had happened in the shadow of Marshalsea’s protective walls.
    And what a theory it turned out to be. For when Temple was finished, Larken gaped at him. “You think this was the work of a pair of Mayfair chits?” He threw up his hands and began pacing again.
    And the Foreign Office called him unpredictable?
    “You’re mad if you think two misses barely out of some Bath school could hatch such a plot.” Pacing a few steps more, Larken stopped and said, “And I suppose the driver still had her dancing shoes on?”
    Pymm sat back, and for the first time in quite possibly the history of his career, he smiled. Well, his lips twitched upward.
    “You haven’t been listening to me,” Temple argued, rising in front of him, putting a stop to his frantic striding across the carpet. “Thalia Langley and Lady Philippa aren’t your usual debutantes. Tallygrew up in the shadow of her father, Baron Langley, whom you know.”
    Larken nodded grudgingly. Lord Langley, under the guise of a diplomat, had been gathering intelligence for England for over thirty years. His unorthodox methods, notorious love affairs, and unwillingness to foster out his daughters—dragging the girls from pillar to post across the Continent—had made him a bit of a pariah in the Foreign Office. But there had been no arguing his results.
    “This wouldn’t be the first time Thalia Langley has broken a man out of jail,” Temple said.
    Larken’s gaze flew up. “What?”
    Then to his shock, Pymm nodded in agreement.
    “She broke Lord John out of prison,” Temple explained. “When he’d been arrested by the local magistrate for smuggling—so don’t let her fair sex and Mayfair address fool you into thinking she isn’t a devious and resourceful handful.”
    “But why would Lord Langley’s daughter want Dashwell freed?”
    Temple shook his head. “She wouldn’t, ordinarily. It has