Read Online Almost a Princess by Elizabeth Thornton - Free Book Online

and though it was very late, there was much coming and going on the street below the windows: wheels rattling over cobblestones, the jingle of harness, occasionally a voice raised to hail a passing hackney. London, it seemed, never went to sleep and neither did the Rose and Crown, which was why Piers had chosen to put up here for the few weeks he would be in town. He could come and go at all hours of the day or night without rousing anyone’s suspicions.
    “Tell me about Castleton,” he said.
    Merrick grinned. He was thirtyish, of medium height, stocky, and unremarkable at first glance. A closer look would reveal that his garments were of the first quality and he was fastidious about his tailoring and person. He had expensive tastes and the money to indulge them. Much the same could be said about Piers. He was of the same age, pleasant looking and immaculately turned out, but he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. He was, however, leaner and harder than Merrick, the result of his years in Spain and his devotion to the gentlemanly pursuits of fencing and boxing. Merrick was more often to be found at the card table.
    He’d known Merrick for a long time, from their poorhouse days. They had once been partners in crime, petty thieves who’d stolen from the homes of the wealthy in Mayfair to augment their paltry wages as clerks. Their careers as housebreakers had come to a sudden end when they’d killed a wealthy merchant who had surprised them in the act. When the authorities started closing in on them, Merrick had retired to his home in Yorkshire for a time while he, Gideon, decided to try his luck as a soldier.
    He had no qualms about Merrick’s loyalty, not if the price was right. All the same, Piers revealed as little as possible of his private life. Merrick had no idea that he had established a new identity in Bristol. He was Arthur Ward, a wealthy man of business with an interest in various trading companies around the world. To give Merrick his due, he wasn’t overly interested in Piers’s new life. He, too, regarded himself as a man of business, and his services and connections did not come cheaply.
    Merrick said, “Castleton made it easy for us. Halfway through the performance, he left with a lady by the name of Mrs. Standhurst. His bodyguard did not go with him.”
    “Who is Mrs. Standhurst?”
    “A new light o’ love is my guess.”
    Piers frowned. He’d spent the last month gathering information on everyone the earl was close to. This was the first he’d heard of a Mrs. Standhurst. He didn’t like last-minute wrinkles in a plan that he was ready to set in motion.
    “What about Harper?” he asked. “Why didn’t he follow them?”
    “Now this is interesting. By all appearances, he was left to watch the party in Box Twelve, Viscount Latham, his sister, and a female companion.”
    Piers knew all about Viscount Latham and his sister. They weren’t important. “Do you have the name of the companion?”
    “Jane Mayberry. Yes, you may well stare. The same Jane Mayberry that Castleton saw this morning at the library, then followed to your sister’s place, and encountered tonight at the opera. What’s his interest in her, Gideon?”
    Piers shook his head. “I have no idea, unless he thinks she’s acting as a courier between my sister and me.” There was a pause as he thought things through. “All I remember about the woman is that she taught at the charity school with my sister, and that they were good friends.” He looked at Merrick. “She’s a bookworm and a dowd. Hardly Castleton’s type.”
    “She didn’t look like a bookworm tonight at the opera. She was dressed to turn heads and you’d be surprised how many heads turned to stare at her. Castleton’s included.”
    “Yet Castleton left with this other woman, what’s her name?”
    “Mrs. Amelia Standhurst. But I saw the look he gave the Mayberry woman, and I’d say there’s something between them.”
    There was another pause as Piers