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

everything to do with her cousin, Lady Philippa Knolles. The gel is, much to the dismay of anyone who knows her, quite smitten with Dashwell.” He paused, and sighed. “Nay, the girl’s head-over-heels in love with him, and she’d go to any length to see him rescued.”
    “Wasn’t she the one who—” Larken began.
    Temple cut him off with a curt nod, for he knew exactly what Larken was asking.
    Lady Philippa had been there the night they’dcaptured Dashwell, and a vision of the girl flitted through his memories.
    “She’s blond, isn’t she?”
    “Both of them are,” Temple said. “Tally and Pippin are very similar in appearance. And Dobbins was quite specific in his description of our mysterious lady in red. I have no doubt our primary suspect is Lady Philippa—whether or not Tally was this hag or the driver is yet to be discovered.”
    “I remember the Knolles chit, but I don’t recall Miss Langley at all,” Larken said, sifting through his memories of that cold January night for some image of the lady in question.
    “That’s good,” Pymm said. “For if you have no recall of her, then it is unlikely she will remember you.” He studied his coffee for a moment. “You were masked at that ball, correct?”
    Larken nodded. “We all were. It was a masquerade.”
    “Even better,” Pymm said, more to his cup of coffee than to either of the men before him. But he was like that. With an answer in hand, he was already plotting his next maneuver.
    Larken still didn’t see what this had to do with him, but Pymm’s tone and their arrival on his doorstep at this ungodly early hour suggested they already had a scheme in the works.
    One that he wasn’t going to like.
    So, better to cut to the chase and get this over with. Or better yet, get them out of his house.
    “Why not go search their residence?” he suggested. “They can’t have gone far. Probably tucked him away in the attic.”
    Pymm heaved a disgruntled sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go barging into the Duke of Hollindrake’s house?” he asked. “You want me to go over to Grosvenor Square with a raft of officers, and tell His Grace that his wife’s sister and cousin are harboring an American privateer under his roof? If he didn’t have my head, Wellington would—he regards the former major as one his most brilliant officers.”
    Hollindrake? Oh, that put a different wrinkle on it. Larken glanced over at Temple.
    The wry look on the duke’s face suggested he had another plan. “Dashwell isn’t in London. I know exactly where he is.”
    Then what the hell are you doing here? Larken stopped himself from asking aloud, instead glancing up at the ceiling where above them his bed sat. Where he’d be right now if he wasn’t stuck down here listening to Temple’s utterly mad theories and probably just-as-cock-brained solution to this mess.
    “How can you be so sure?” Larken asked as he started across the carpet again, his agitation growing with every step. Whether it was left over from the dream of Paris or the news of Dashwell’s escape, he didn’t know.
    And as much as that reckless shiver had run down his spine, baiting him with a need for adventure, the thought of going back out on assignment left him rife with fear. Rash. Dangerous. Reckless. The words in the report to Pymm haunted him. His fingers curled into a tight fist.
    Bloody hell, Dashwell, why couldn’t you have just stayed put?
    Temple rolled back on his heels, hands behind hisback. “Hollindrake and his entire household left for his estate in Sussex the morning after Dashwell’s escape. And I have no doubt Dashwell was with them—”
    Larken spun around. “You aren’t suggesting that Hollindrake—”
    Temple shook his head. “No! I doubt he’s any notion of what they’ve done. That’s why I think it was just Tally and Lady Philippa behind this…If they had involved Felicity…” he paused. “No, Felicity loves Hollindrake too much to risk treason at