Lady Rogue by Suzanne Enoch Read Free Book Online

back for a moment. Even from this small sampling, it was obvious that Alexander Cale hadn’t been joking before. He was as rich as Croesus.
    The bottom drawer was her last chance to find any further evidence, and she hesitated, realizing she didn’t want to find anything that could tip the balance toward his guilt. That was absurd. It didn’t matter who the spy was, so long as she found him in time to see that the next shipment went through and Fouché was appeased. With a quick breath, angry at herself, she yanked the drawer open. And stopped.
    A box of chocolates, half-consumed, sat beside a bottle of port and a box of very expensive-looking cigars.All of Everton’s vices, apparently, laid out together. With a surprised, immediately smothered chuckle, Kit took one of the chocolates and shut the drawer. She munched on the candy as she checked the single bookshelf and the few papers stacked on the corner of the desk, but found nothing else remotely of interest. Apparently Everton’s best-kept secret was a fondness for chocolate—or so he wanted everyone to think. Kit hadn’t made up her mind about him yet. Far from it.
    She exited the study, making certain the door was locked and her finger marks wiped from the shiny door handle. After hurrying across the way to the library, she immediately turned around again to make a show of exiting the room and shutting the door behind her. Everton’s abandonment would make it more difficult to gain entrance to some of the places her quarry was likely to be found, but there wasn’t enough time for her to sit and wait for an opportunity. She needed to make her own luck.
    Waiting about for luncheon at Cale House was out of the question, so she stepped into the breakfast room for one of the peaches left in a bowl on the sideboard. She hefted it in her hand, and then paused as she heard the front door open.
    “Where is dear Alexander?” a male voice queried from the entryway.
    “The earl is out,” Wenton informed the three gentlemen lounging in the doorway, as Kit stepped back into the hall. All three were well dressed, obviously fellow members of the ton , and she straightened as one of them spied her standing there.
    “You’re the one,” he said, looking at her with twinkling brown eyes set beneath fashionably immaculate brown hair.
    Kit’s heartbeat quickened as she coolly returned his baldly curious gaze. He was the tariff supporter from Hyde Park. And he was apparently friends with a man who kept notated coastal maps and French coins in his desk. “Which one?” she asked belatedly, hoping Everton wasn’t such a fool that he had told everyone in London that his houseguest was a female.
    The other two turned as well, and the shorter one, a dark-haired imp with high shirt points and an achingly intricate cravat, grinned and started toward her. “You’re right, Reg,” he said over his shoulder.
    Kit repeated the name to herself and leaned sideways against the doorframe. “Exactly which one am I supposed to be?” she repeated, unconsciously imitating the slight, affected drawl of Alexander Cale’s guests.
    “You know,” Reg said, following the other two as they stopped before her, “the one Barbara was chattering about all night. Everton’s cousin. The one who’s supposed to steal Caroline’s heart.”
    “Who is Caroline?” Kit asked, trying to keep her attention on the conversation. Staring at her quarry would get her nowhere but arrested, if she wasn’t careful.
    “The woman I’m going to marry.” Reg grinned.
    “Poor, deluded boy,” the third one murmured, looking at Kit with dark, speculative eyes in a pale specter’s face. The others would be easy to deceive, she decided, but she would be wary of this one.
    “I say, why don’t you join us at Boodle’s for luncheon, and we’ll let you in on the conspiracy?” Reg continued.
    Kit grinned, delighted. But she had to play her part correctly, or they might suspect something. “I might, if you told