Lady and the Spy (Duke of Lies #4)

Chapter 1

Eleanor Hargrove’s last duty was simple in theory and relentless in practice: to ensure her father’s legacy did not devolve into chaos.

Three weeks after the funeral, her mother finally permitted the study to be disturbed. Two hours later, Eleanor let herself in quietly, lest she summon relatives with opinions, and closed the door with a soft, decisive click.

The air retained the faint scent of pipe tobacco. Light angled through the tall windows, catching dust motes and turning them briefly golden, as if the room itself breathed.

Her father’s spectacles sat atop a stack of reports.

A china dish attempted to corral the chaos—coins, sealing wax, a broken nib, the crumbs of whatever comfort he had allowed himself while working.

Books and correspondence crowded every surface.

The orderly disorder of a mind that did not waste time prettifying the world.

Eleanor moved to the chair, surveyed the piles, then sat.

She approached the task the way she approached everything, methodically.

Personal correspondence. Professional correspondence.

Bills and receipts. Here and there she paused to scan a note, letters and invitations written with varying degrees of sincerity, requests for favors now made grotesque by timing, but mostly she found what she expected.

Until halfway through the first stack, when she encountered a thin sheaf clipped neatly and conspicuously clean, as though it had been handled more recently than the dust suggested.

The top sheet bore a heading in her father’s hand.

Hargrove Library—Private Catalogue Additions (Revised)

Beneath it, columns marched across the page with the calm authority of a ledger.

Shelf | Author | Title | Edition | Notes

Expecting another inventory, she nearly set it aside, but something nagged at her. Her father’s inventories were precise, yes, yet never showy. This was too composed. Too deliberate.

She read the entries.

1. A2 | Byron | “Hours of Idleness” | 18-16 | Restricted

2. B4 | Goldsmith | “The Vicar of Wakefield” | 20-16 | Duplicate

3. C1 | Pope | “An Essay on Criticism” | 18-14 | Restricted

4. D3 | Burke | “Reflections on the Revolution in France” | 18-18 | Withdrawn

5. E2 | Swift | “Gulliver’s Travels” | 19-16 | Restricted

6. C2 | — | — | 20-14 | Missing Volume

Eleanor blinked. What did they mean? What was their purpose? The authors were plausible. The titles respectable. The notes, however... Restricted. Withdrawn. Duplicate. And the ‘Edition’ column was not an edition at all.

She stared at the first line until the truth made itself unavoidable.

Eighteen—sixteen.

Not a printer. A time. A date.

Her pulse gave a sudden, unhelpful leap. She reached for a pencil and wrote in the margin, small and sharp, as if naming a thing made it less dangerous.

A2: 6 o’clock—16th.

Then:

B4: 8 o’clock—16th.

Then:

C1: 6 o’clock—14th.

Her pencil paused above the last line.

C2 | — | — | 20-14 | Missing Volume

Missing volume was not a librarian’s complaint. It was a gap. A deliberate absence. And her father’s hand looked like his, yet smaller, more compressed than usual, as if he had written quickly, or under a watchful eye.

That, more than the code itself, made Eleanor fold the page once and slip it beneath a stack of correspondence as though doing so could quiet the unease it had roused.

She returned to sorting. She told herself she was being sensible. But her mind kept circling the neat little pairs of numbers and the cold finality of the notes column.

A light tap at the door startled her, and her fingers tightened around a bundle of letters.

“Miss?” called the housekeeper.

Eleanor composed her face before she answered. “Yes, Mrs. Finch?”

“Shall I bring the tea in, or are you coming out?”

“I will come,” Eleanor said, and rose too quickly.

She gathered the stacks she meant to move to the drawing room, then at the last moment, she slid the catalogue sheet into a slim volume on the desk, and set it near the bottom of a pile.

The paper rasped softly as it disappeared between pages, the sound absurdly loud in a room that had once belonged to certainty.

Her fingertips lingered on the book’s worn leather, as if she could feel her father’s presence through it. The act was instinct more than strategy. A lifelong reader’s reflex to hide what mattered inside what looked harmless.

She did not trust her pocket. She did not trust the room. And, uneasily, she did not trust how quickly her mind had begun to expect footsteps where none should be.

As she left, she glanced back at the window, and the hairs at the nape of her neck prickled.

She found no answers—only the lingering scent of tobacco and the uneasy knowledge that her father had left her something he had not dared name outright.

Her mind puzzled over the discovery as she took tea in the drawing room, and when mother excused herself, Eleanor returned to the library to prepare for her coming meeting. She did not wait long, Mr. Pritchard arrived with punctuality.

He paused at the threshold of the study as if paying respect, then entered with the careful confidence of a man who believed he had a right to any room that contained documents.

“Miss Hargrove,” he began, bowing his head. “Permit me to express my sincerest condolences.”

Eleanor inclined her head and gestured to the chair opposite.

The morning’s sorting still dominated the desk. A plate of shortbread sat beside the correspondence. Pritchard’s eyes flicked to it, and Eleanor noted the glance with mild disdain. He had the air of a man who measured households by what they could provide.

He produced a portfolio and spread it neatly on the desk. “Your mother is…?”

“In the conservatory,” Eleanor said. “The camellias required intervention.”

“Very good.” He opened his case. “I thought we might review the formalities before the reading.”

He reviewed the will. There were no surprises, save for the repeated insistence that the library remain intact to the last volume, and the household accounts, where he traced each entry as though searching for a threat.

Through it all, Eleanor watched his hands. Too smooth. Too pale. Nails too well kept for a man who claimed to spend his days wrestling estates into order.

Only when the papers were aligned into tidy certainty did he glance toward her piles. “Sorting, Miss Hargrove?”

“It has grown untidy in his absence,” she said lightly. “I should like my mother spared the sight of it.”

“A wise instinct,” Pritchard said. “Your mother cannot bear disorder or business.”

“It is a labor of love, Mr. Pritchard.”

His smile thinned. “I hate to trouble you,” he said, “but among the late Mr. Hargrove’s effects, were there any… unusual correspondences?”

“Unusual?” she prompted, keeping her tone mild.

“Oh, nothing of value, I am sure.” His gaze did not quite meet hers. “Only, one would not want sensitive materials in the wrong hands. Old cases. Government inquiries. As a precaution.”

Eleanor’s mind snapped, unbidden, to the hidden catalogue. “No official documents,” she said. “Only his own notes and journals.”

Pritchard’s eyes narrowed, then softened into a practiced concern. “Of course. He was a most thorough record-keeper.” His voice dipped. “There are, however, individuals… perhaps you have heard of a Mr. Halford?”

The name landed like a pebble dropped into still water, and her stomach tightened.

Not because she knew him, she did not, but because the syllables sounded placed, as though he were testing a pressure point he expected to exist. Eleanor’s thoughts snapped to the catalogue hidden in her father’s book, to the neat cold numbers that had no business sitting beside Byron and Pope.

Her pulse quickened.

“He served as an unofficial secretary to several inquiries your father contributed to,” Pritchard continued smoothly, “and it was his custom to keep duplicates. Entirely aboveboard, you understand. But one never knows when the government will take a sudden interest in its own history.”

Eleanor filed the name away with care. Halford. She lifted her chin. “I can assure you,” she said, “that nothing dangerous will leave this house without review.”

He made a small bow. “Very good. I do hope you will not find my queries offensive, Miss Hargrove. One must always err on the side of caution, especially with such a distinguished family legacy.” He rose, smoothing his gloves.

“If you should see fit to set aside any papers that require special handling,” he added, “do let me know.”

“Of course,” Eleanor said.

When he had gone, she remained in the study for a long moment, the air thick with his sandalwood and bergamot cologne.

She was bothered by the meeting. It was not merely that he had asked about government correspondences, but also that he had asked so soon. So directly. As if someone had already alerted him to something he had not earned the right to know.

Eleanor retrieved her father’s slim volume, opened it, and pressed the folded catalogue sheet to her palm.

The paper was cool and thin, yet it felt suddenly heavy—as if it carried not only ink, but the weight of whatever had frightened her father enough to leave warnings instead of explanations. She closed her fingers over it until the edges bit, welcoming the small, honest sting.

Her father had not simply left her a puzzle.

He had left her a warning.

Eleanor had never loved sleep. The hours before dawn were the only ones reliably her own. They gave her time to reorder the world without interruption, time to let her mind gnaw at oddities until they became truths.

But tonight, as rain whispered against the window and the house settled into the tentative peace of shared grief, even she found herself drifting.

The sound that distracted her was tiny and metallic.

A careful click. Then, after a pause long enough to make her doubt herself, the soft scrape of a latch.

Her heart steadied instead of racing. Fear could come later. Now there was only assessment.

She swung her feet to the floor, stepped into slippers, and took up her candlestick. Habit made her seize the pencil nub she always kept by the bed.

She paused at her door, ears straining.

Nothing. Only the hush of rain and, somewhere below, a clock ticking.

Then the sound came again from the direction of the study.

She moved into the corridor, keeping to the runner to muffle her steps. The house was dark, but her memory of its angles and thresholds was perfect. She paused in the hall, her gaze sweeping its length.

The study door stood ajar. She tip-toed toward it, inhaled once, then pushed it open and stepped into the room. She strode to the desk, glanced around, then stilled as the window creaked.

She turned.

It opened.

A man in dark, nondescript clothing—neither servant nor gentleman, climbed through with practiced familiarity. His face was unremarkable in the way of men who preferred to be forgotten.

“You are not here by invitation,” Eleanor said.

He said nothing.

“If you have come for valuables,” she continued, “I fear you have mistaken the address.”

A faint movement at his wrist revealed a gleam of metal. His gaze flicked, quick and hungry, to the desk’s left-hand pile.

To her father’s slim volume.

Eleanor’s stomach tightened.

She let her candle-hand waver, feigning uncertainty she did not feel. “I know what you are after,” she said, and reached toward the pile as though to offer surrender. Instead, she knocked a stack of papers askew.

The intruder came around the desk, but Eleanor did not retreat.

Because she was not alone.

She did not know how she knew—only that the air had changed, the way it did when someone stepped close behind you in a crowded bookshop. A presence, controlled and watchful, settling into the room’s shadows.

For one suspended heartbeat, Eleanor’s fear did not flare. It sharpened. Then a shape detached from the darkness with a quiet that did not belong to any honest man.