The Cheeky Minx Read online

  She glanced away from a rather large woman who was receiving a great deal of glowing appreciation for her exposed expanses of flesh and stared at him. “And you are one of those men?” she asked, on eyebrow arched.

  Felix laughed, but this time the sound held a good deal of sheepishness. “I do business with the East India Company. I invest with them. They’ve made me quite a bit of money. So I am on their guest list as a matter of course.”

  “I see,” she said, believing him, but putting on a teasing, skeptical look all the same.

  “I’ll stop coming at once, of course,” he said, holding her a little closer as they reached a spot that would give them a clear view of the entire room. “One has no need of the hunt when they have already captured the prey.”

  It was Jo’s turn to laugh. “And what if I want to attend festivities such as this? You forget that I’ve seen what transpires at these events through the walls. What if I want to participate as well?”

  He tugged her close—so close that, were they anywhere else, his embrace would have been seen as deadly scandalous—and slipped one hand into her bodice to squeeze her breast. “I’ll bring you here as often as you’d like and whisk you off to whatever secluded spot you wish to fuck you silly. It’s quite invigorating when you run the risk of being discovered by any number of people mid-rut.”

  They absolutely shouldn’t have, but his words sent shivers of lust through her. There must have been something terribly wrong with her, considering how aroused she was to have him handling her with overt sexuality in a crowded ballroom. Several men and women were watching openly as he rubbed her nipple into a hard point, then withdrew his hand from her bodice, leaving her pert nub exposed to all. Perhaps she was every bit as wicked as her mother believed her to be after all.

  She was within a hair’s breadth of begging him to take her back up to the room where they’d changed and to bury his cock deep within her when he said, with utter seriousness, “Observe.”

  With a supreme effort, Jo dragged herself out of the haze of lust she’d fallen into and followed the line of his gaze. At the other side of the room, near the small orchestra playing all manner of instruments, including some Jo had never seen before, Saif Khan was in deep discussion with Mr. Newman. In a room full of people wearing expressions of carnality and enjoyment, their seriousness stuck out like a sore thumb.

  “Mr. Newman,” Jo whispered. Caro had suspected him as the thief from the start. Could she be right?

  Jo searched the room for her friend and found her in a corner with Lord Herrington. He sat against the arm of a long sofa, Caro straddling him. She had one slippered foot up on the sofa and her entire leg was exposed as Lord Herrington stroked it intimately. Jo’s jaw dropped, but just as she was tempted to believe Caro had abandoned their mission to misbehave with Lord Harrington, she noticed the gravity of Lord Herrington’s expression as he whispered in her ear. His eyes were trained on Saif Khan and Mr. Newman as well. They were as aware of the situation as Jo and Felix were.

  “What do we do?” Jo whispered, panic swirling through the other, nicer emotions coursing through her. The jumble was overwhelming.

  “We wait and watch to see what they do,” Felix murmured to her.

  Jo supposed that was all they could do. She did her best to pretend to be a lust-addled ninny, plying herself against Felix as though she wanted nothing more than for him to lift her skirts and fiddle with her in full view of the rest of the guests. Felix played along, pretending not to be interested in anything else but sampling her favors…and giving the guests around them quite a show. One particularly disturbing, older gentlemen began openly rubbing his breeches when Felix tugged her sleeve down her arm and began kissing her shoulder.

  “Can we move somewhere else?” Jo whispered. “That man is frightening me.”

  “Certainly,” Felix said. He slid his arm through hers and beat a speedy retreat through the ballroom, heading for the door.

  Across the room, Saif Khan broke away from Mr. Newman. Neither man resumed the carefree air of the rest of the guests. Saif Khan appeared to be headed toward the door. He reached the hall and disappeared before Jo and Felix were halfway across the ballroom. Adding to their dilemma, the man who had been watching them was following.

  “What could he possibly be after?” Jo hissed as they picked up their pace and dodged through the party guests and into the hall.

  “There’s a fair chance he will ask to watch us or participate if he catches up to us,” Felix said.

  Jo squealed in disgust. “Hurry. We need to hide.”

  Felix nodded, whisking her into the hall, then rushing along to a door several dozen yards down and on the other side from the ballroom. He pulled it open and tugged Jo inside, shutting the door behind them.

  Jo was ready to breathe a sigh of relief at their narrow escape, but the moment she turned around to survey the room, she was met with an entirely different, far bigger problem.

  Miss Dobson—dressed as scantily as any of the other female party guests—stood from the chair where she’d been sitting, a look of shock and alarm on her wrinkled face. Her jaw dropped, and she demanded, “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 9

  Few things were as disconcerting to Felix as discovering too late that he should have planned better. He was a fool to think that he and Josephine would be able to pick out the diamond thief from among Khan’s party guests, and that as soon as the man was identified, he would be able to swoop in like a hero of legend, apprehend him, and expose his indiscretions to the world. Saif and Newman were behaving suspiciously, but he could do little about it standing on the opposite side of a ballroom and even less by whisking Josephine out of the room and away from a different sort of threat altogether. Lord Hazelton was a notorious libertine, and Felix had no intention of giving the man the slightest notion that he and Josephine would indulge his penchant for voyeurism.

  But Lord Hazelton turned out to be the least of his worries.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He whipped around at the gasped question only to find Miss Dobson—mistress of the so-called school Josephine attended, who also happened to be the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Somerset—gaping at Josephine.

  “I…that is…Felix invited me….” Josephine struggled to explain herself.

  Felix stepped in front of her, drawing himself up to his full height. “Miss Hodges is here as my guest. If you make an issue of that fact, I will withdraw her from your school immediately.”

  He expected indignation and protest. What he received was a look of sheer panic from Miss Dobson. She launched toward Josephine, waving her arms and making a desperate sound.

  “You must leave at once,” she squeaked at last, glancing over her shoulder to a door at the far end of the room. It was a large, public room, decorated lavishly with gilded sofas and chairs. A golden statue of the god Ganesh with a ruby in his forehead stood on the mantel, as if he were there to supervise official meetings. Miss Dobson was clearly there for a meeting of a sinister sort. “You cannot be here, not now.”

  Felix’s nerves bristled. Josephine and her friend had sworn that Miss Dobson was involved in the diamond theft, and her actions seemed to prove it.

  “We are not going anywhere,” he declared. “Not until you confess to being an accomplice in the theft of the Chandramukhi Diamond.”

  Miss Dobson shrieked and reeled back, clutching a hand to her chest. “How did you know?” she gasped, then immediately shook her head and changed her tune. “I didn’t steal anything. I didn’t know about it until after the fact. It’s not my fault that I was embroiled in the fiasco. I only—” She slapped a hand over her mouth as though she’d said too much.

  “You confess, then?” Josephine said, eyes wide, stepping toward Miss Dobson. “You confess to assisting in a criminal act?”

  “Yes. No! I would never….” Miss Dobson gaped for a moment before her expression hardened. “What are you doing out of your room? I l
ocked the door myself. How did you—”

  Her question was cut off as the door Miss Dobson had been glancing toward opened and Newman stepped through. Almost simultaneously, a section of the wall on the opposite side of the room clicked, a door like the one Josephine and Lady Caroline had come through upstairs swung inward, and Saif stepped into the room. He started at the sight of Felix and Jo, or perhaps Miss Dobson, or even Newman.

  A moment later, Saif broke into a wry grin. “Isn’t this a party,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Are we playing three on two after all?”

  No one had a chance to answer. As soon as the question was out of Saif’s mouth, the door Felix and Josephine had entered through swung open once more to reveal the ruddy face and protruding form of Lord Hazelton.

  “Good,” Hazelton said, beginning to unfasten his breeches. “You haven’t started yet.”

  “No,” Josephine yelped with a level of offense that would have been charming in any other situation.

  Her cry echoed through the room as though it were a clap of thunder spooking a corral of horses. Everybody moved at once. Newman dashed back through the door he’d appeared through. Saif’s jovial expression vanished as he leapt into the secret passageway once more. Miss Dobson screamed and barreled straight toward Felix and Josephine. When Felix lifted Josephine out of the way, she tore right past them, past Lord Hazelton, and into the hallway.

  “They’re getting away,” Josephine shouted.

  “We’ll go after them,” Felix said. He grabbed her hand and darted toward the door Miss Dobson had left through.

  “They’ve gone in three different directions,” Josephine said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Lord Hazelton said as Felix and Josephine rushed past. His breeches were already undone, and Felix didn’t want to think about the flash of pink he’d seen poking out from the tails of his shirt.

  They ran into the hall in time to see Miss Dobson disappear around the corner, heading to the front of the house. Felix chased after her, still holding tightly to Josephine’s hand. “We have to alert Rufus,” he said, keeping his eyes peeled for any sight of Saif or Newman. “He can chase as well.”

  “But who?” Josephine asked, panting.

  It was a powerful question, one he didn’t have the time to pause and answer.

  They rounded the corner into the front hall just as the front door slammed shut. Someone—Miss Dobson, if he was right—had fled the building. Fortunately for them, Rufus and Lady Caroline sped out into the hall from the ballroom only a moment later.

  “We interrupted something,” Felix said, as they all met in the center of the hall. “Miss Dobson fled. Newman appeared to be there to meet her.”

  “Where is he?” Lady Caroline asked.

  “I don’t know,” Felix told her. “He exited the room through another door. Saif was there as well. He escaped into the secret passageway.”

  “Who has the diamond?” Rufus asked.

  “None of them had it,” Josephine said. “But I am certain they were moments from revealing its whereabouts or arranging a sale.”

  “We have to go after them,” Lady Caroline said.

  Felix nodded in agreement. “We’ll pursue Saif,” he said.

  “And we’ll look for Newman,” Rufus followed. He took Lady Caroline’s hand and dashed toward the large refreshment room opposite the ballroom. Felix trusted his friend knew enough of the layout of the house to guess where Newman had gone.

  “But what about Miss Dobson?” Josephine cried as Felix pulled her down the hall toward the room they’d just left.

  “She’s the least of our worries,” Felix said.

  He could see from her expression she wasn’t convinced, but there was no time to argue.

  They rounded the corner and dashed back to the private room, passing Lord Hazelton as they did.

  “Are we back on?” the oafish lord asked, looking delighted.

  Felix ignored him, racing into the room and over to the doorway to the secret passageway. Only, the wall seemed to be completely intact without a single sign of a door of any sort.

  “They’re difficult to find unless you know what you’re searching for,” Josephine said, leaping in front of him. She placed her hands on the room’s ornate wallpaper once they were right in front of it and appeared to be scanning the design. A moment later she let out an, “Ah ha!” and pressed what seemed like a random spot on the paper.

  To Felix’s immense relief, the door clicked and swung inward. He didn’t hesitate. He leapt through into darkness, taking Josephine’s hand and drawing her in with him.

  “One moment,” she cautioned him, leaping back out into the room. She returned a half second later with a three-pronged candelabra. “The passages are pitch dark.”

  Felix nodded, the situation too urgent for him to say more. He closed the door behind Josephine once she was inside with him. Only then did he realize he wasn’t sure where to go.

  “The mews,” Josephine said, edging in front of him in a way that brought the candelabra far too close to his face for comfort. “If I were running away from being discovered, I would head straight for the mews and out of the house.”

  “There’s a way out of the house from here?” Felix asked, following her closely.

  “There’s more than one. Although the second exit is currently blocked by debris in the alley beside the house.”

  He accepted her explanation without question. No doubt Josephine and Lady Caroline had explored every inch of the passageway. He would tease her about how naughty it was to sneak through someone else’s house another time. For now, he needed her expertise.

  Evidently, Saif could have used her expertise as well. He must have been navigating the passageway in the dark, for as Felix and Josephine turned a corner and reached the passage that Josephine said led to the mews, they saw a sudden flash of night sky and felt a breath of cool air as the mews door opened.

  “Saif,” Felix called out, resting a hand on Josephine’s back and urging her to move faster.

  No answer came, and the door swung shut, but by then they were so close that Felix had no doubt they were moments from catching Saif. And once they did, Felix had a thousand questions for his so-called friend.

  But when they reached the door, it stuck. Josephine stepped back to allow Felix to go first, but the door remained stuck. Felix threw his shoulder into it, and it budged a bit. He slammed into it again, and it opened a bit more. A few more crashing blows were enough to reveal that a heavy barrel had been rolled in front of the door. Once Felix was able to get that out of the way, allowing him and Josephine to run into the mews, Saif was nowhere to be seen.

  “Dammit,” Felix hissed under his breath, balling his hands into fists.

  “Over there.” Josephine pointed toward one of the rows of stalls with her free hand.

  Felix pivoted in time to see a shadowy figure on a dark horse leap out of a stall and charge down the alley to the mews’ exit.

  “Was that him?” Josephine asked.

  “Who else would it be?” Felix answered, taking her hand and running toward the exit. There was little chance they would catch Saif, but they had to—

  “Friends! Where are you going?”

  Felix skidded to a stop and jerked around, searching for the source of the voice that echoed through the mews. Josephine’s gasp as she glanced back toward the house drew him in the right direction. A first-floor window was open and Wakas Khan leaned out, his sherwani fully unbuttoned to expose a chest that was surprisingly muscular for a man of his age.

  “Where are you going?” he called again, laughter in his voice. The Wyncoll twins, both clearly naked, their blonde hair loose over their shoulders, appeared on either side of him, reaching inside his unbuttoned sherwani to stroke his chest. “There are pleasures of all kinds to be enjoyed here tonight.”

  Felix frowned, suspicion firing within him. “We’re looking for your son,” he said.

  “Bah.” Khan made a dismissiv
e gesture. “My son is a disgrace. He piles up debt through gambling and bad investment and expects me to save him. Let him sort things for himself this time. I have far better things to—” His words changed to a strangled gasp, then a laugh, as one of the twins reached for something Felix was glad he couldn’t see below the man’s waist.

  There was no point in questioning Khan further. In fact, he was wasting their time. “Come on,” Felix said, pulling Josephine into motion once more.

  “Could he be helping Saif Khan?” Josephine asked the very question Felix was thinking as they rounded the corner and dashed from the mews into Manchester Square.

  “He could,” Felix answered.

  Manchester Square was as sleepy as it ever was at that time of night. The square was lined with carriages that had brought people to Khan’s entertainment. The drivers clustered together, passing the time until their employers wandered out of the reveries. There were as many carriages waiting on the north end of the square, outside of Hertford House, as there were in front of the East India Company’s house, a fact which alarmed Felix. Saif could easily have escaped one raucous party by inviting himself into a second party. The Marquess of Hertford was generous in his guest list.

  “What do we do?” Josephine asked.

  Felix wished he had an authoritative answer to her question. The fact of the matter was, he was at a loss.

  He was only saved somewhat when Rufus and Lady Caroline came dashing toward them from the other side of the East India Company’s house.

  “Newman is nowhere to be found,” Rufus said, out of breath, face red from exertion.

  “We thought we’d caught up with him only a moment after we parted ways,” Lady Caroline added, equally breathless. “But he seemed to know what we were after as soon as he spotted us, and he ran.”

  “Saif Khan appears to have gotten away as well,” Josephine said, disappointment lacing her voice.