Quickly, Augusta flattened herself along one wall, hoping the deep shadows would hide her.
The maid drew closer. She was whispering beneath her breath. Counting.
“Seventy-nine. Eighty.” She paused as she navigated the bottom step. Her feet shuffled. Then the count continued. “Eighty-one.”
Mere inches away, she halted again. Her skirts whispered against Augusta’s. She shifted the load of linens that towered past her mobcap and whispered, “Or is it eighty-two?” A scoff. “Who will care? It’s just a wager with Big Annie, ye silly goose. Now, if it were Mr. Reaver …” The girl shuddered, her stack tilting this way and that. Apparently, Mr. Reaver was a good deal more exacting than Big Annie.
Augusta could believe it. She’d learned a lot about the proprietor of Reaver’s over the past ten days. And none of it boded well for her present task.
His reputation made him sound like a dark god. Hades, perhaps—the guardian of the underworld. Few ever saw him. No one was granted an audience unless he requested it, and when he requested it, the reasons were usually … unpleasant.
The owner of the most exclusive gaming establishment in all of London had not become one of the richest men in all of England by being charitable. No, indeed. Sebastian Reaver—former pugilist, tavern owner, and general ruffian—always collected upon his markers. One way or another.
Most spoke of him in forbidding tones. His staff. The club’s members. The men who delivered coal and the ones who lit the lamps in the club’s quiet square off St. James. Everyone spoke about Mr. Reaver as if he were the devil himself.
Which was why, although her heart pounded while she waited for the little maid with the big stack of linens to pass, Augusta feared discovery far less than what lay ahead.
One step at a time, Augusta. One step at a time.
The maid resumed counting. “Eighty-five. Eighty-seven. Eighty-nine.”
There, now. She’d turned the corner.
Augusta released a breath, her head swimming. With renewed purpose, she climbed the narrow wooden stairs, pausing on the landing to listen for voices. Again, all was quiet. Hurrying now, she raced up one flight after the next, clutching her skirts higher than was proper. Finally, she reached the floor where she’d been assured she would find Mr. Reaver’s private office. She cracked open the door that led into a hushed, white-paneled corridor. Cringing as the boards creaked beneath her feet, she glanced to either side. Empty. Relief was a warm wash. She rushed down the corridor, searching frantically for the hidden door. It should be tucked inside a recess, just past the seventh sconce. Most who managed to visit this floor, her source had claimed, thought it the entrance to a closet or equally innocuous space. He had not used the word “innocuous,” of course. Much like the pickpocket she’d hired to distract Mr. Duff, her source had scarcely spoken a word of proper English, weighing her coins in his palm and muttering about “daft chits what need a man ta take ’em in ’and.”
Augusta begged to differ. She did not need a man. Not for herself, at any rate.
Passing the fifth sconce, she stopped.
Footsteps. A refined masculine voice with admirable diction. It could only be Mr. Shaw, the club’s majordomo.
Oh, dear God. She spun in place, searching frantically for the recess and finding only white paneling and sporadic doors. Ahead, dividing the corridor into two sections was a cased opening where a door must have once been. She rushed toward it, hoping the framed protrusion would hide her well enough. But just before she reached it, the long paneled wall—designed to appear flat until one stood in this precise spot—gave way to a recess.
Inside the recess was a dark wood door.
As Mr. Shaw’s voice grew louder, his brisk footsteps closer, she closed her eyes briefly. Said a quick prayer. And opened the door.
The antechamber was smaller than she’d imagined. Hushed and plain, it contained only a small, L-shaped desk and a rather large set of winged chairs. From floor to ceiling along one wall stood a series of wooden drawers with numbered labels topped by shelves of ledgers. All the ledgers were uniform in size, their spines labeled with a code of numbers and dashes. Upon the desk sat two lamps, both brightly lit. On the far wall was another door.
This was it. Her reason for coming to London, spending her coins on pickpockets and bribable servants, risking her reputation and her safety.
Because she must.
Because Phoebe would suffer if she did not.
She smoothed her hair with a gloved hand. Adjusted the folds of her brown woolen pelisse. Gathered her breath and courage.
Opened the door to the devil’s lair. And stepped inside without so much as a by-your-leave.
The room was not what she’d expected. Neither was he.
“Need a new ink pot, man,” rumbled the black-haired giant wearing wire-rimmed spectacles. He sat behind an oak desk as plain, massive, and neatly arranged as the room itself. He did not look up from his ledger, instead giving the nib of his pen a disgusted glare. “Ran through another one this morning.”
The man’s voice was so deep, it vibrated through the plank floors and up into her bones. She could not place his accent. It sounded similar to the pickpocket’s, but much more comprehensible with rounder O’s, flatter A’s, and a bit of a burr. Northern, perhaps, near the Scottish border? At least she could understand him. That would make this conversation easier.
From where she stood, she could see the white of his shirt, the gray of his waistcoat, the black slash of his brows. She could measure the width of his shoulders and the muscles of his arms as he wrote. His wrists were thick and solid. His hands looked bigger than her head.
She wondered if she might disgrace herself by swooning.
Good God. The man was twice a normal human’s size. He was wider than Mr. Duff and much, much more muscular. His forearms, dusted liberally with hair the same black as the close-shorn strands upon his head, bulged and flexed and rippled in fascinating fashion.
He could not be real. Giants were a myth.
“Frelling, either speak or leave. We’ve discussed this.”
Mr. Frelling was Mr. Reaver’s secretary. Ordinarily, the man would be ensconced in the antechamber, but Augusta had learned of Frelling’s fondness for taking his new wife to Gunter’s Tea Shop on Tuesday mornings. Evidently, this was news to Mr. Reaver.
Delicately, she cleared her throat.
His pen did not stop. He dipped it into the waning ink pot.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to push away from the door and step further into the room. Closer to … him. “Mr. Reaver, there is a matter we must discuss.”
He kept writing.
“It is most urgent.”
The pen stilled. Thick, long, blunt fingers placed it back into its stand with a decisive click. Then, they removed the silver-rimmed spectacles from his nose and laid them gently upon the oak desk. He straightened in his chair and flexed his right hand as though it pained him. Finally, he looked at her.